This column from Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times really pushes my buttons. There’s something beneath the surface that is downright pathological, and not at all unique to Rachman. It besets most political pundits on this issue. I’ll try to dig it out.
The premise of Rachman’s column is that while everyone accuses climate change skeptics of being in denial, in fact climate activists are in denial as well. They keep hanging on to the U.N. negotiation process long after it’s become clear that developing countries aren’t going to budge. The politics of an international climate accord are incredibly difficult, possibly insoluble.
That’s an arguable point, but a fair one. The U.N. process is open to criticism. And the politics really are difficult. But listen to this conclusion:
The state of international negotiations presents a huge dilemma for climate change activists. Most genuinely believe that a failure to achieve an international agreement in Copenhagen would be catastrophic. But they also know that, even if a deal is reached, it is likely to be feeble and ineffective. If they admit this publicly, they risk creating a climate of despair and inaction. But if they press ahead, they are putting all their energy into an approach that they must know is highly unlikely to deliver.
It is a horrible dilemma. But, in difficult situations, it is best to start by facing facts. The trouble is that—in different ways—both sides of the climate change debate are in denial.
This kind of language is so familiar that you have to step back a moment to recognize that there’s something bizarre about it.
Climate science indicates that a business-as-usual path will lead to at least 5 degrees of warming by 2100, which represents utter catastrophe. Many scientists believe that we are near (or have passed) tipping points after which positive feedbacks become self-reinforcing and climate changes are irreversible. If we want to avoid that, we have very little time to peak and start reducing global emissions. No one has proposed a credible way of doing that aside from international negotiations.
All that is either true, or it’s not. The mainstream science and policy communities think it’s true.
If it is true, then millions of people, and possibly civilization itself, are threatened by climate shifts, within the lifetime of people alive today. If it is true, then the difficulty of getting an international agreement is not a “dilemma for climate change activists.” It’s a dilemma for human beings. “A climate of despair and inaction” is not a risk to activists. It’s a risk to the lives and welfare of hundreds of millions of people and future generations.
So I want to ask Rachman, and all the pundits who address climate politics: Do you believe it’s true? Do you believe the mainstream scientific consensus that climate change poses massive risks for humanity, and that urgent international action is necessary to reduce those risks?
If so, it is incoherent, even immoral, to go on treating this issue as though it were merely a clash of interest groups. It’s not like climate policy is for “climate activists” what card check is for unions, or financial regulations are to the banking sector, or subsidies are to farmers. It’s not a parochial issue.
Do you believe it’s true? If not, say so, clearly. If so, then it’s your fight too. You cannot stand on the sidelines in the pose of a savvy, above-it-all observer. There are no sidelines.
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"Even with their gargantuan effort, the oil company still felt slighted in the version of the climate bill that passed the House last month (coal and agriculture got far more free permits to pollute than the oil company). Perhaps they at least got a consolation prize? Maybe an "I Spent $15 Million on Lobbying and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt" tee, or something?"
"Because that's how much the oil giant shelled out--$14.9 million over the last six months. As Bloomberg points out, that's a solid 23% more than the $12.1 million clean energy companies spent all told. Altogether, oil and gas companies spent $82.2 million on Washington lobbyists, dwarfing the wind, solar, and biofuel companies that nonetheless spent more than ever before."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/09/lobbyblog_n_228657.html
But if we're brave enough to state the disastrous situation, why not be truthful about the real cause of it?
No, it is not about the "overpopulated earth", which is "unable to feed its children". In this age of information it doesn't take a doctor degree to see the real cause.
It is because of the way humans rule themselves and manage their businesses. It is because the principle "love your neighbor as yourself" is not the main principal in the political affairs, nor in the society in general.
So, before considering any solutions it is important to have a realistic and truthful view of the problem and its real cause, is it not? Just call things the right names, then you will be able to find the solution that really works.
I'm personally sure: if humans could abide by the well-known "ten commandments" of the Bible, all these problems would be gone in a decade! If only those just and loving principles could be accepted as cornerstone of the governmental policies, as well as personal relations between humans. Thankfully, the Giver of these commandments has also given a promise to take care of the situation, as I read about it in my Bible.
Yes, I know, many dislike the word "Bible"... but the power of the Maker is undeniable, and his promises are made known in that book. Alternatively, what heartwarming hope do YOU cherish, I wonder?
No and No. The models are deeply flawed, the climate changes are all local - the idea of "global mean temp" is meaningless. So places warm, others get cooler or remain the same
Let the author answer some questions:
1) What is the ideal global temp?
2) Who gets to decide what that temp is?
3) What is the cost/benefit of crippling the economy to try mitigate a problem that's not fully understood?
cj
Why? Got another planet to hop over to if we ruin this one? You think you can have an economy without a living planet and the means to support life?
No problem is ever FULLY understood. This one included. Every time there’s a fresh calculation based on new observations, we discover that global warming wasn’t fully understood:
It was underestimated.
Every time.
GM Frankenfoods might just solve the world hunger, population, and climate problems over the next few generations, but not in the way you would expect.
From research on the effects of GM foods on animals (illness and failure to reproduce), it could be just a matter of time until humans will feel the same effects of eating this junk- susceptibility to illnesses (such as pandemics and epidemics) for which there are no cures (perhaps already happening), and low sperm count in men and infertility in women (perhaps already happening).
The resulting increase in death rate and decrease in birth rate will speed up the process used by nature to deal with other species that exceed the carrying capacity of their environment – a path toward sustainability - or extinction.
I see nothing in the climate change proposals that deals with the population issue, so nature will do it for us.
In "The Wellness Project," I explore ways to increase the chances of being one of those still standing, based on paying close attention to clues from Nature.
Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www.MontecitoWellness.com
Personally I think we ought to think outside the box and find carbon-monoxide eating bacteria or algae to clean up the pollution/repair the ozone, while simultaneously putting as many resources as we can spare towards getting off this planet in case it doesn't work. We should be building domes on the moon and terraforming it while we still have time.
oh. wait. there all here for humans to use and abuse.
that does so not sound like jesus's words to me.
As long as they aren't inconvenienced they're fine and dandy.
They still don't realize the Old Testament was taken from the Jewish Bible. LMAO!
You took the words out of my mouth (and spoke/wrote them far more intelligently and eloquently than I ever could).
P.S. If it gets too warm where you are come to the Northeast.....WE'RE FREEZING !!!
Observations indicate that global temperature rise has slowed in the last decade (Fig. 2.8a [ed.- above, caption below]). The least squares trend for January 1999 to December 2008 calculated from the HadCRUT3 dataset (Brohan et al. 2006) is +0.07±0.07°C decade–1—much less than the 0.18°C decade–1 recorded between 1979 and 2005 and the 0.2°C decade–1 expected in the next decade (IPCC; Solomon et al. 2007). This is despite a steady increase in radiative forcing as a result of human activities and has led some to question climate predictions of substantial twenty-first century warming (Lawson 2008; Carter 2008).
+0.07±0.07°C?
How many tons of CO2 has been pumped into the atmosphere?
Haven't India and China dramatically increased their CO2 emissions in the last 10 years?
Wouldn't it be safe to say, as a species, we've pumped more CO2 into the atmosphere over the last 10 years than the previous 20 combined?
Yet all the models predicting an increasing rise in temperatures were wrong.
Aren't they suppose to be boiling?
Didn't Al Gore sell a movie with a hurricane coming from a smokestack?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025
In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.
"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says.
So the oceans are cooling.
But wait, Al Gore assured us the oceans were boiling, spawing massive hurricanes!
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/
•May - June - July Northern Hemisphere Tropical Cyclone Activity: With 5-days left in the month of July, the three month ACE sum for 2009 is in the lead for the lowest since at least 1970.
Not only is tropical cyclone activity at HISTORIC lows, it's been trending downward for several years.
The kool-aide the global warming crowd drinks must sure be yummy, it's a shame it causes them to ignore real-world data that contradicts their fear-mongering.
This statement has been floating around the internet since last year. It is incorrect. 1998 showed a huge leap in temperature, I think there was an El Ninjo effect or something. Its true that no year since then has topped the global average for 1998. But when the Researchers who took a ten-year average to smooth out the random variability they found the planet was substantially hotter in the decade 1999-2008 than in the decade before, which was in turn hotter than the preceding decade, and so forth back to the 1970s. There is no doubt in the mainstream scientific community that global temperature is increasing. Here’s a good link that documents the global temperature increase. http://www.aip.org/history/climate/20ctrend.htm#L_0272 Near the end of the article there is a graph and just a few paragraphs before the graph the statement about there being no increase since 1998 is carefully debunked.
I know what you mean about it being hard to know who to trust. I've followed global warming for about a decade now and much of what is out there is bullshit. But there is a consensus among climate experts and there are a few websites that are doing an incredible job of reporting the facts and debunking the bullshit. My favorite is realclimate.com the site that I recommend you to above. Hope you find all this helpful.
"Do you believe the mainstream scientific consensus that climate change poses massive risks for humanity ?" Yes - but I doubt very much the role man plays in altering it up or down !
Perhaps a pandemic could reduce the population and leave the survivors with a better living condition.
there is an infinite supply of energy deeper down:
http://www.physorg.com/print167835116.html
Time was when War, Famine and Plague controlled population. Now, our only hope is PLAGUE. Perhaps the AIDS virus could mutate (they do that, you know) into an airborn, like the cold virus. That would probably greatly reduce the global population and those who survive would live a better life.
Already the shortages have begun, with rice riots last year, a late monsoon this year meaning Asian crops will be slashed by about a third, and increasing climate instability (more droughts and floods and temperature fluctuations) making harvests unpredictable, and making it more difficult to determine what crops will do well.
Basic resources are dwindling, such as oil and, even more important, water: glaciers which are a reliable source of year-round water are shrinking. Fertile land is less available because of population burden and erosion. These are the things that wars are fought over.
Nuclear weapons are more widely distributed than ever before, and virtually every country (or group) that has them is at loggerheads with someone. Sabers are being rattled all over, test missiles have already started flying, and there's a lot of killing power available. Even without nuclear deployment, 21st century war doesn't have "fronts" and lines and "non-combat zones". You're not left with pretty wives and pristine fields - the fields have unexploded mines and other ordnance in them, the land is poisoned, the infrastructure is ruined.
You say "those who survive would live a better life". Probably not after a big nuclear war. And anyway, what makes you think you'd be one of the ones who survived?
The money behind cap and trade is parochial.
An earth that is several degrees hotter can support life, just a lot less of it.
So the question becomes, which species, and who of our own species, will be able to live in that world.
It’s useful to have the masses scrapping over whether it’s happening, how bad it is, and who has to reduce their carbon footprint – very useful when you’re in the know and you have the means to buy and prepare northern islands to live on, to set up remote seed banks and store other resources, to build forts, and floating forts stacked with supplies to get there (did you see all those superyachts? Some looked like liners!). Yes, all that fuzziness and arguing keeps the unwashed out of the way, buys time to get it all in place without anyone interfering.
Let them squawk and brawl over the the crumbs that are left of the world economy: we just TOOK everything for our grand plan, for our survival. Did you think the biggest heist in history was just about greed for money?
I don’t believe that they will succeed. But I DO think that’s the elite's general plan.