The most important piece of news yesterday, this week, this month, and this year was a new set of statistics released yesterday by the Global Carbon Project. It showed that carbon emissions from our planet had increased 5.9 percent between 2009 and 2010. In fact, it was arguably among the most important pieces of data in the last, oh, three centuries, since according to the New York Times it represented "almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution."
What it means, in climate terms, is that we've all but lost the battle to reduce the damage from global warming. The planet has already warmed about a degree Celsius; it's clearly going to go well past two degrees. It means, in political terms, that the fossil fuel industry has delayed effective action for the 12 years since the Kyoto treaty was signed. It means, in diplomatic terms, that the endless talks underway in Durban should be more important than ever -- they should be the focus of a planetary population desperate to figure out how it's going to survive the century.
But instead, almost no one is paying attention to the proceedings, at least on this continent. One of our political parties has decided that global warming is a hoax -- it's two leading candidates are busily apologizing for anything they said in the past that might possibly have been construed as backing, you know, science. President Obama hasn't yet spoken on the Durban talks, and informed international observers like Joss Garman are beginning to despair that he ever will.
Who are the 99%? In this country, they're those of us who aren't making any of these deadly decisions. In this world, they're the vast majority of people who didn't contribute to those soaring emissions. In this biosphere they're every other species now living on a disorienting earth.
Corporate power has occupied the atmosphere. 2011 showed we could fight back. 2012 would be a good year to step up the pressure. Because this time next year the Global Carbon Project will release another number. And I'm betting it will be grim.
Originally posted on Daily Kos.
Follow Bill McKibben on Twitter: www.twitter.com/billmckibben
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Moreover it's not only Exxon's CEO in his company who is responsible for gas emission. We also change the chemical composition of the atmosphere, all of us, by our cars, our consumption, our way of life. By an accumulation effect over the years.
Step up the pressure will be useless if we deny this fact.
McKibben's approach is the true 'Hail Mary' pass. It requires the most immediate and drastic reductions in fossil fuel use from the major governments of the world. Yet, the reality is the polar opposite, as the quoted numbers show. In the USA, there is zero will to reduce fossil fuel use one iota, and our global competitors will follow suit.
Today, the world is replaying Jonestown 1979, and the results will be very similar.
Shakespeare's weird sisters said it best:
"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes".
I was in the energy business at one time, and was involved with every form of energy production, conversion, and storage. Except for nuclear, there was nothing that could challenge fossil fuels for cost, and nuclear has its own set of problems. Simply put, the energy cost is strongly related to the ease of extracting the energy. Having oil gush up or digging coal is about as easy as it gets. Other forms like solar and wind don't have the energy or power density or duty cycle that matches our lifestyle needs. Given the cost reality, nothing will replace fossil until we're decades too late. All these grandiose alternative energy proposals are nothing more than dog and pony shows, to get as much money from potential sponsors for as long as possible. Dig deep, and you'll find they are all flawed to the core.
The 'Hail Mary' proposal for global warming some people tout is geoengineering. That, to me, is like testing a drug on a mosquito, and one week later injecting millions of people with it in a clinic. Because of scale-up unknowns, geoengineering is as fraught with danger as anything I have ever heard. It may very well be the case that the treatment is worse than the disease.
http://www.davidlynchfoundation.org/featured-past-events.html
G. Foster and S. Rahmstorf, Environmental Research Letters
“We analyze five prominent time series of global temperature (over land and ocean) for their common time interval since 1979: three surface temperature records (from NASA/GISS, NOAA/NCDC and HadCRU) and two lower-troposphere (LT) temperature records based on satellite microwave sensors (from RSS and UAH). All five series show consistent global warming trends ranging from 0.014 to 0.018 K yr−1. When the data are adjusted to remove the estimated impact of known factors on short-term temperature variations (El Niño/southern oscillation, volcanic aerosols and solar variability), the global warming signal becomes even more evident as noise is reduced. Lower-troposphere temperature responds more strongly to El Niño/southern oscillation and to volcanic forcing than surface temperature data. The adjusted data show warming at very similar rates to the unadjusted data, with smaller probable errors, and the warming rate is steady over the whole time interval. In all adjusted series, the two hottest years are 2009 and 2010.”
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022
Here's the actual interview with Phil Jones, which you were too lazy to source.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm#
"Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods."
And an update
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13719510
""The trend over the period 1995-2009 was significant at the 90% level, but wasn't significant at the standard 95% level that people use," Professor Jones told BBC News.
"Basically what's changed is one more year [of data]. That period 1995-2009 was just 15 years - and because of the uncertainty in estimating trends over short periods, an extra year has made that trend significant at the 95% level which is the traditional threshold that statisticians have used for many years.
"It just shows the difficulty of achieving significance with a short time series, and that's why longer series - 20 or 30 years - would be a much better way of estimating trends and getting significance on a consistent basis.""
Here's that one
http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/4195.txt
"Tim, Chris,
> I hope you're not right about the lack of warming lasting
> till about 2020. I'd rather hoped to see the earlier Met Office
> press release with Doug's paper that said something like -
> half the years to 2014 would exceed the warmest year currently on
> record, 1998!
> Still a way to go before 2014.
>
> I seem to be getting an email a week from skeptics saying
> where's the warming gone. I know the warming is on the decadal
> scale, but it would be nice to wear their smug grins away."
He's talking about decadal predictions, not current temps, and it doesn't seem like he wants it to continue to warm for the sake of warming, but rather he would like to see skeptics rendered speechless. That last sentence seems to indicate that.
Kind of similar to the way people debate this topic on Huffpost. While not necessarily wanting it to get hotter, some (myself included) still take pleasure in proving people wrong and rendering them speechless (or in more general terms, since we are on the internet here, responseless).
That's my take.
However, moreover, other peer-reviewed research results also contradict the distorted interpretation of Phil Jones remarks. A similar study by Swanson, et al., came out a few years ago, which also showed that filtering out all current natural climate fluctuations simply leaves a clear global warming signal that was accelerating quadratically through 2001.
http://deepeco.ucsd.edu/~george/publications/09_long-term_variability.pdf
That result was doubly interesting because it came from the same group (Tsonis and Swanson, 2007) that global warming deniers used to cite regularly as evidence AGAINST anthropogenic global warming.
So, the deniers were wrong, as they always are.
https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/aatsonis/www/2007GL030288.pdf
Yet, Foster and Rahmstorff's new results do suggest during the past decade that temperatures are trending upward at a linear rate rather than continuing to accelerate.
And James Hansen just published a paper supporting the prime cause as aerosolized sulphates spewed from unscrubbed Chinese coal-fired power plants, like the U.S. did before the various Clean Air acts of the 1970's.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/11/27031/2011/acpd-11-27031-2011.pdf
Scientists tend to determine facts, however they turn out. While, as above, the basically politically driven will try to distort and deny, while contributing little of real value.
I.e., reality's just not their strong suit.
Orr summarizes four major reasons for maintaining the status quo re: slavery:
1) Slavery has been used throughout history to advance human culture.
2) Slaves are "better off" under the care of plantation owners than they were in Africa.
3) Yes, slavery is problematic, but abolishing slavery would destabilize the economy of the South.
4) The federal government has no right to interfere with individual state's decisions regarding slavery.
He then frames these same justifications in the context of climate change resistance:
1) Economic growth depends on the burning of fossil fuels (i.e. burning fossil fuels is necessary to "advance human culture").
2) Hell, maybe we'll be "better off" with a warmer planet!
3) Yes,climate change is happening, but converting to alternative sources of energy is too expensive (would destabilize the economy).
4) It's our right as to burn as much fossil fuel as we damn well please.
Is a devasted planet the legacy we want to leave our children? How will future generations judge us when they look back and see that we had the chance to do something but didn't?
But if you want to reduce global warming with everyday solutions you could for instance save the light which you don't need, go to work by bike or by bus, recycle your wastes. Things as simple as that.
Take a quick look at this:
http://environment.about.com/od/globalwarming/tp/globalwarmtips.htm
What "significant" data has been ignored? Give it too us.
Specifics? You sound just like Rush.
Brad Fregger: "In addition, it turns that potentially significant data has been ignored, the hypothesis cannot be accepted."
Specifics? Or are you just repeating what Rush said.
Brad Fregger: "Don't tell us what's science and what isn't."
Right, you'll get your science from Rush and friends.
It's all going exponential, peak oil, energy, population and pollution as well as Chris Martenson describes in a recent presentation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WBiTnBwSWc
They don´t understand that in the long run Malthus was right. It took much longer to reach the end of growth. Maybe with fusion energy and a massive reactor programm we could postpone the crash another 25 years. But the "club of rom" showed very convincingly that the collapse would be even bigger if we manage to grow another 10 to 20 years. It will end with a mass extinction first of other species and then our own. Like it happend so many times in prehistory with bacteria. We have reached the walls of the petri dish.
Can you tell where the reader stops paying attention? It's right about when the parser has to kick in and resolve the problem that arises from hearing "it is two leading candidates are."
Europe is very successful with the Kyoto Accord, and that says a lot. The Canadian government signed on, but did nothing, and now we have the Tar Sands, waiting to go to the USA. And for those of you who don't care about other nations, Canada will sign off the accord this winter, because you are going to get that pipe line you hate so much, and the Koch brothers are going to dig the biggest hole in the earth man has ever seen. You won't see it at night because it is a very black hole.
They're at the leading edge of the glorious warming.
Keep up the good work!
Glad you got your voice back after the weekend in jail in August.