Among the unnoticed ironies of the controversy over Obamacare is the effect it had on climate change. No, not the trees felled to produce the paper for the Supreme Court's decision, but the tendentious politics besetting the health care debate in 2010 that convinced several lawmakers and the Obama White House that they could not push an energy bill in that same session. Ryan Lizza's fine piece of reporting on that in the New Yorker ("As the World Burns") in the autumn of 2010 showed this effect very clearly when quoting Obama adviser David Axelrod: "The horse has been ridden hard this year and just wants to go back to the barn."
During the victory dance over the Court's Obamacare decision, the West was on fire and record heat and severe weather punished much of the rest of the country. It is hard not to draw the connection between our abject failure to address climate change and the septic politics that have infected Washington. We know this, of course, but every now and then the profundity of it really hits home.
Out West, the right-wing blogger Michele Malkin and her family were among the unfortunate thousands to be evacuated due to the Waldo Canyon fire near her home in Colorado Springs. It's hard to imagine how harrowing that must be, especially with small children. Remarkably, however, Malkin's writing about the events there failed to notice or admit that the wildfires erupting all over the West -- due to drought and high temperatures -- very likely are the consequence of human-induced climate change.
This sort of denial or head-in-the-sand neglect is evident in Mitt Romney's campaign, whose website does not mention climate change at all. Of 27 issues listed, none addresses global warming, although his position on regulating greenhouse gases -- "Amend Clean Air Act to exclude carbon dioxide from its purview" -- does give the back of his hand to those who seek some remedies.
The right wing's petulant attitudes about climate change are perplexing for those of us who appreciate traditional conservatism's innate caution about preserving what we have in society and questioning radical disruptions. And what we are beginning to understand -- what the scientific community is trying to tell us -- is that climate change is the most destructive disruption imaginable, and it is already well underway.
A recent TEDx lecture by David Roberts, a writer with Grist magazine, sums up what we are facing very neatly. It is deeply disturbing. We are looking at temperature rises that could literally devastate the planet within 100 years if we remain on the current track of pouring carbon into the atmosphere and oceans. What much of climate science is finding recently is that the pace of change is faster and more odious than what many anticipated just a few years ago. For example, a new study from the National Research Council (a branch of the National Academy of Sciences) concludes we are witnessing faster sea-level rises than expected, based on their examination of the U.S. West Coast. And the U.S. Geological Survey found similarly troubling news about the East Coast.
For the right wing, such studies are frequently disparaged as so much alarmism. Being a harsh critic of climate science is now standard rhetoric in the Republican Party, akin to its heated opposition to gay marriage, Obamacare, and Planned Parenthood. Romney, typically, will not show an ounce of courage on this issue.
But what's more difficult to fathom is the near silence about global climate change by Democrats, and particularly by President Obama. Yes, he does talk up "green" jobs and has made some important regulatory changes. But the overall record of the Obama presidency on climate is disappointing to most activists. "Environmental protection did not prove to be a first-tier activity for the White House," a clean air activist told a reporter.
And there's the rub. It's not that Obama doesn't recognize the importance of the issue; it's that climate change has been made into a difficult political sell in a weak economy. The White House failed to back up the energy bill in 2010, and has proposed little since. "I suspect that over the next six months, this is going to be a debate that will become part of the campaign," the president told Rolling Stone magazine two months ago, "and I will be very clear in voicing my belief that we're going to have to take further steps to deal with climate change in a serious way. "
But even that mild expression of interest is not in evidence in the campaign. This is all the more remarkable because the public seems to be on board. In several polls this year, large majorities identify climate change as scientifically credible, already underway, and a serious problem. What the public does not identify, in large numbers, is climate change as something that directly affects them (they may start to with the extreme weather we've been having). But they do support by 2-to-1 margins strong federal policies to reduce greenhouse gases.
This broad public support provides the Democrats with a strong foundation for speaking up on this issue. And Obama will need to make climate change a pivotal part of his campaign to have the credibility in a second term to deal with it assertively.
His natural constituencies will need to make this clear -- that their support is contingent on strong action to stem carbon emissions. No other issue -- not health care nor jobs nor Iran nor immigration -- is anywhere nearly as crucial as this.
One knowledgeable comment about this last month's extreme temperature, hundreds of wildfires, and raging storms was especially sobering for me as the father of a 13-year-old. That is that within her lifetime, within her young adulthood, this kind of weather could be the new normal. It will be the new normal if we don't make the simple, affordable changes we must make. That's what the flames -- not the politicians -- are telling us.
Bob Keefe: Effects of Climate Change Hit Home
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The Earth's climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming. Many components of the climate system — including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, the extent of sea ice and mountain glaciers, the sea level, the distribution of precipitation, and the length of seasons — are now changing at rates and in patterns that are not natural and are best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century...
In the next 50 years, even the lower limit of impending climate change—an additional global mean warming of 1°C above the last decade—is far beyond the range of climate variability experienced during the past thousand years and poses global problems in planning for and adapting to it. Warming greater than 2°C above 19th century levels is projected to be disruptive, reducing global agricultural productivity, causing widespread loss of biodiversity, and—if sustained over centuries—melting much of the Greenland ice sheet with ensuing rise in sea level of several meters. If this 2°C warming is to be avoided, then our net annual emissions of CO2 must be reduced by more than 50 percent within this century.
http://www.agu.org/sci_pol/positions/climate_change2008.shtml
"Since 2001 it has cooled..."
Dear Netdr,
Please stop repeating that same science denier falsehood of yours, which as you know has been debunked unnumerable times before.
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/02/23/robot-wars/
Whay sort of scientific background and training do you have that somehow leads you to think that you understand climate science better than the experts at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences?
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ROFLMAO
hey FUMES..
speaking of your relentless science denial..
when are you going to stop denying basic science..
such as for example your repeated denial that downward infrared radiation exists?
you'll never understand even basic climate science..
until you stop denying science!
Let analyze quote from Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, M. Sato, and K. Lo (2010), Global
surface temperature change,
"Local anthropogenic cooling can also occur, for example, from irrigation and planting of vegetation
[Oke, 1989], but on average, these effects are probably outweighed by urban warming.)
It is again a riddle for me that Hansen agrees that “local anthropogenic cooling can also occur, for example, from irrigation and planting of vegetation”and throw away this point. At the same time
in USA in 2000, harvested area only for grain was 282.1 million acres. PLEASE COMPARE WITH URBAN AREA.
If it means that evaporation could cool the atmosphere, why again and again we speaking about reduction of GHGs.
It is almost impossible to reduce amount of GHGs in atmosphere.
IT IS SO EASY TO INCREASE EVAPORATION FROM CONTINENTS with arable land.
Recommendation from science of climate change how to influent climate is deadly WRONG.
when Ken Venturi won the Open at Congressional:
108 degrees HOT..
and 90% humidity!
If we adjusted our economic models to greater sustainability, we could carry the current population. What is not sustainable is the capitalist model, as you have rightly pointed out.
"And there's the rub. It's not that Obama doesn't recognize the importance of the issue; it's that climate change has been made into a difficult political sell in a weak economy."
No, sir...
It is the obstructionist congress backed by the gluttonous richy-rich, like the Koch brothers, (that also make massive donations to MIT) that won't vote on bills in congress.
It is the corruption of campaign finance donations, curtesy of Citizen's United, and 'money trumps all capitalism' that prevents the passing of a clean energy bill.
Additionally, what GOP candidate has come forward with a green/clean energy bill?
We will watch millions of the politically powerless die from drought, flood, disease, etc. We will watch our own needs outstrip our resources with cities battling suburbs and ranchers battling farmers for water and land. The petrol-ocrats will continue to insist that there is no other course but to drill-baby-drill in oceans, national forests and parks, anywhere and everywhere.
Right-wing commentators will make puerile jokes about the ridiculousness of endangered species---their names, their size, their obvious utter valuelessness. Pastors will preach against paganism and pantheism wherever ecological concerns are raised, and lovers of liberty will defend their sacred central air with their God-endorsed guns.
In the end there will be the war of all against all. Which will be lost decisively by all.
And the ants and the roaches will inherit the earth.
Amen.
We must begin to think anew because if any credibility exists to the ecology of our ecosystem dependent Earth, mankind will fall extinct because he is killing all the reasons his lungs breathe in oxygen.
So, keeping things on a theoretical basis (for discussion purposes) - simply put, those that understand it and understand something of the consequences of how it will unfold where they live and either move away or prepare for it will, if their belief proves correct, survive and flourish while those that don't will not.
While I encourage those who strongly believe in anthropomorphic climate change to continue to argue for "greener" policies, I would tell them that those arguments should take a back seat to preparing themselves and their children to live in a world where atmospheric CO2 is above 400ppm: There are plenty of models and data on the web that tell one where one would most definitely NOT want to be living under those conditions.
Don't argue too much or wait for the rest of the world. Life's too short.