The Children's Book That Has Global Warming Deniers Up in Arms
A global warming denier group is attacking The Down To Earth Guide to Global Warming, the new children's book I co-authored with Cami Gordon.
Our crime? It turns out one of the illustrations in the book was accidentally mislabeled. This has got the gang at the at the Science and Public Policy Instituted up in arms - or at least pretending to be -- no doubt hoping to ride our coattails, create some controversy, and promote their own new book.
Why am I not surprised? These "skeptics" have grown so predictable.
Even so, I'd like to thank the SPPI for pointing out this minor error to us. However, we have checked with climate experts who confirmed that the text accompanying the mislabeled illustration, and our description of the close relationship between CO2 and temperature, is accurate and fairly represents the current state of scientific knowledge.
Apparently the climate change "skeptics" have grown so desperate in their attempts to hide the truth from the American people that they've taken to spending hours scrutinizing a children's book, trying to marginalize the urgent information it contains about global warming. And through all their efforts, all they uncovered in a hundred pages was a single mislabeled illustration -- an illustration accompanied by accurate text. Now they've launched a full 'report' attempting to discredit the entire book, even though they can't find anything wrong with it besides the flipping of two colors on a solitary illustration.
So thanks guys! We will correct the illustration in the next edition. We're happy to learn that that was the only question SPPI had about the entire fact-filled book! The Down To Earth Guide translates complex scientific facts about global warming into language that is easily understood by kids.
I hope children of all ages read this book because, ultimately -- and unfortunately -- global warming is the grim legacy we are passing on to them.
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Here is an interesting link. It shows only facts in regards to our atmosphere. Amount of greenhouse gasses and how much man has created. It may be rather surprising to some of you. http://ete
Yeah sure. It shows only the facts alright. Just like the Tobacco Council provided only the fact about the health effects of smoking. That 'facts' in that link probably wouldn't fool the average 6th grader. I'm a biomedical research scientist and I could give an entire lecture course on how this particular piece of propaganda illustrates the deceptions that can be promulgated through the misuse and distortion of scientific information.
This is what we in the scientific community call bull sh*t.
"Human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels for energy and deforestation, have contributed to an increase in greenhouse gases and many scientists believe this has caused the present warming trend." This is the second line of the report. Is this "bull sh*t" as you call it? I am guessing you didn't read the report and just skimmed through and figured you didn't like what you saw so you had to resort to swearing. Most persuasive of you.
John, I would suggest checking out this article from National Geographic from earlier today. It is about the nature of methane and its effects on climate in the past and today. Since you are in the scientific community you should find it an interesting read.
http://new
Nice document. That has a lot of interesting information.
I made a decision long ago not to have kids. I have two nephews, 3 and 1. I dread the world they will live in 50 years from now.
Folks, it is real simple. The biosphere is a closed system. A remarkable, self-healing system, but still a closed system. But man has come along and has found ways (overpopulation, pollution etc..) to overwhelm the self-healing mechanisms. We can only pump so much crap into the biosphere before it becomes impossible to live in.
Once we are gone, or the human population vastly reduced, the planet will sort it self out again.
You've nailed it, Madprophet.
I offer a wonderful website here:
www.illumi
they are a small Bellvue publisher of marvelous children's books. wish they were in all homes, schools, libraries, etc. Beautifully illustrated!
Spiritually gifted! Check it out. Peace, Jane
Facts are Facts; Opinions are Opinions. While everyone is entitled to their own opinion, they are not entitled to make up their own facts to make it look like their opinion is reasonable.
We don't argue about whether or not gravity exists when we discuss how to throw a curve ball. Same should hold true for global climate change.
1. It exists-fact
2. It has been made worse by our actions-fact
3. There are grave consequences-fact.
However, people can argue about what to do about it. Either take responsibility and start trying to make it better or think of excuses why we shouldn't have to. This Conservative lying to deny that it exists and falsify information when they don't like what it says hurts us all as Americans.
One big reason why I am a liberal is because I care about using the best evidence to solve problems. I wish *that* hadn't become *controversial*!
Are you actually going to try to equate the existence of gravity to global warming? While I've never met a scientist that would argue that gravity doesn't exist, I've met and heard scientists argue that global warming doesn't.
BTW, haven't you ever noticed that global warming is just another way for liberals to attack conservatives? That's why this issue is so contentious. Also, one big reason why I'm a conservative is because I care about using the best evidence to solve problems.
DLB-
The methane trapped under the tundra in Alaska and Siberia is beginning to be released-
methane is 40 times worse than any other greenhouse gas-
oh-and sure-that's all global warming is-just a way for people you don't like to make you feel bad about yourself-
yea-that's the ticket.
I think you have mixed in a few opinions and subject interpretations with your facts here.
If by made 'worse' you mean that the globe has been caused to warm slightly more, then you are right. But saying this is worse is just your opinion. Many people live in places where increased temperatures will be appreciated.
'Grave' consequences is another opinion rather than a fact. Certainly there will be consequences, what event doesn't have some kind of result? But to come to the conclusion that these results will be 'grave' is nothing more than an opinion. If you can site some specific occurances that you know will happen, that might help to support your opinion. When people start to get into any specifics about what will happen the discussion moves away from facts, and toward speculation and guess work. We just don't know enough about the complex interactions of earth's climate to know what will happen in the future.
Whether global weather changes are man-made or naturally occurring should be irrelevant at this point. Anyone can see that there are climatic changes happening. They constantly are.
The scientific history, and proof, is there.
Whether it's caused by emissions, cow farts and rice paddies, a tilt in the Earth's axis, or a change in the position of the planet's orbit this is something that affects all life on Earth.
Why not take advantage of science, learn from what's happening, see if man can make any difference, and then do it?
We all learned about the greenhouse effect in elementary school. We know about it firsthand each summer whenever we get into a hot car. Do we continue to drive in that heat or do we open a window or turn on the AC? We at least do something.
Not to act now, even though we may not see the desired benefit in our lifetime, makes us all poor stewards of planet Earth.
Switching to nuclear power and creating an infrastructure built on the electricity produced would go a long way to solving the world's CO2 emissions problems. Have you ever heard the global warming alarmists bring that up?
Expansion of the nuclear industry has serious risks as well. Unlike global warming which will be temporary (CO2 gets removed from the atmosphere naturally over a period of decades), dangers from nuclear waste last billions of years. If we are concerned about the viability of the planet hundreds of years from now, nuclear should be much higher on the agenda.
Ah, YES! Let's go from one form of polluting energy generation to another one that pollutes for THOUSANDS of years. YEAH! THAT'S the ticket. (sarcasm)
Why on earth can't we just really go for the non-polluting sources of energy in a big way? What is WITH you folks that only want POLLUTING forms of energy generation? I don't get it. Do you LIKE pollution? Or what?
Hey! I can answer my own question, provided out friends at HuffPo let it in:
The Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) was founded by a long-time Republican staffer named Robert Ferguson. According to the SPPI website, Ferguson "has 26 years of Capitol Hill experience, having worked in both the House and Senate. He served in the House Republican Study Committee, the Senate Republican Policy Committee; as Chief of Staff to Congressman Jack Fields (R-TX) from 1981-1997, Chief of Staff to Congressman John E. Peterson (R-PA) from 1997-2002 and Chief of Staff to Congressman Rick Renzi (R-AZ) in 2002."
Until recently, Ferguson worked for an oil-industry funded think tank called Frontiers of Freedom. The Frontiers of Freedom are one of the most active groups in the attack on climate science and have received over $1 million in grants from oil giant ExxonMobil.
Ladies and Gentlemen, your global warming fact finders!
Thank you. I rest my case.
Why not include a link so we can read it for ourselves?
http://sci
Who funds these guys?
They are the laid off scientists from the tobacco industry who used to promote the idea that cigarette smoking is good for you.
Who funds them? I think we all know: Exxon, The American Enterprise Institute, and other hyper right-wing types. I read the first paragraph of the SPPI link and was disgusted by
the alarmist wording. Talk about propaganda! How ironic that they call this book propaganda. But that's typical of the right wing these days: divert attention from their skulduggery by pointing the finger to someone else. That "science" should be in their name alone is misrepresentation.
One more thing to consider. Global warming isn't a left thing or a right thing. It's a science thing!
Kids like science, whether the illustrations are labeled correctly or not. They just like the sciency stuff. We ought to try liking it too. Might save those little kids of ours down the road.
I don't think our children will be concerned with a mislabeled illustration.
I do think they'll dislike the effects of global warming.
Sheesh, people! It's our KIDS we're talking about. The stupid straw argument of a mislabeled illustration is just that -- stupid.
We ought to properly inform ourselves. We ought to read. READ. And we ought to consider the sources of the material we read. Who is telling us to keep on poking holes in the earth for oil? Who is giving us specious arguments that we're not frogs in a pot?
As far as this earth is concerned, WE are the annoying fleas itching its skin. If we don't want to get scratched off this poor old dog, we ought to become informed and think about our own little carbon footprints. Each of us.
We might consider whether we're slowly cooking or drowning our children before we go buy that next big Hummer just to drive them to school.
Good reading, everyone.
Ani
Miami, London, Manhattan, hyoooge swaths of the Netherlands, much of central Asia, whole populations of some South Pacific atolls would all be VERY interested in your cost/benefit analysis, I think.
I think all the global warming deniers should be gathered up and given property in Tuvalu, and as the waters rise and they beg to be rescued, be reminded that "it's a natural cycle" and it wouldn't be "cost-effective" to rescue them.
Death is a natural cycle too. No one wants to die by this eventually happens to everyone. Just like land very near to bodies of water will eventually be submersed if/when the water raises.
Good one!
Don't forget what you're dealing with here is a group of people who said that "Happy Feet" was a propaganda tool created by the Hollywood Liberals to mislead children into believing that global warming actually happens and to promote homosexuality via a gay penguin.
Global warming is not a new thing. It has occurred in the past resulting in the extinction of species. This time the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is increasing due to our actions. So we are the architects of our own demise as a species.
How do you know that a warmer planet will not be more suitable to human uses than a cooler one?
Ask the people in the Pacific whose islands are being covered in water as the ocean rises as polar ice melts. But maybe the ungrateful fools should just consider themselves lucky to now be proud residents of the world's largest swimming pool, right?
global warming is a vast left wing conspiracy!!!!
Yes, and huge a swath of frozen sea ice the size of Florida in the arctic didn't really melt away into the ocean this month. http://www
Deny, deny, deny until your little coastal "McMansions" and resorts are all washed away.
The Democrats can't even organize an effective presidential campaign--do you think they could manage to pull off a conspiracy involving melting glaciers, thawing permafrost, and getting thousands of scientists to agree that global warming exists?
The naysayers have yet to pick the plank out of their own eye...wond
Of course, nobody ever addresses the cost/benefit equation of attempting to reverse warming, even if you grant that it is occuring and man made. If the largest impact that could likely be made is 1 degree in temperature, and at a cost of untold trillions, it simply isn't worth it.
Actually, my fact-challenged friend, many people have looked at this issue. Sterns (a former head of the world bank) headed up a panel of distinguishd economists charged with examining the costs and benefits of mitigating global warming. They concluded that it would cost orders of magnitude more to ignore global warming than it would to address it. Ditto the Resources for the Future ( a non-partisan economic think tank) WRI, Janet Yellin (former chief economist for the US), etc. etc. etc.
Of course, none of these facts will alter your head-in-the-sand opinions.
As my daughter explained to me when she was 3 years old and trying to say that dinosaurs still walked the earth, "It's my opinion, and it's very true."
so, in other words, radicalized left wing propaganda and junk science being used to brainwash little children is being exposed by conservatives.
It's easy to know what's really going on if you can just "unspin" lib-speak.
Do the deniers have their heads in the sand, or somewhere else?
http://www
There's a simple, logical way to think about global warming that involves two questions: Is global warming manmade? And, will it be consequential, even catastrophic?
Global warming must be one of four things:
Manmade and consequential
Manmade and inconsequential
Not manmade and consequential
Not manmade and inconsequential.
It doesn't take a moral philospher to see that even if the chance that global warming is manmade and consequential is one in four, the ethical thing to do is to act now to minimize its effects.
Scientists estimate that the chances are nine in ten that global warming is both manmade and consequential, potentially catastrophic. To encourage false skepticism and self-indulgent passivity--whether out of ideology or to preserve a decadent lifestyle--is just plain evil.
Actually, I was simply unaware. I am a skeptic about everything, especially things that require me to give up my freedom. I advise you to be the same.
O.K., where did you get the figure of "untold trillions?"
I'm not saying that all conversions will be free, but it's generally been my experience in life that the more environmentally oriented alternative is also the more economical.
with the exception of organic food.
If the issue was approached from a pragmatic point of view, there is plenty that could be done relatively inexpensively.
For instance, there are coal seam fires in China that have been burning for decades. They will continue burning for decades because nobody wants to deal with it. In China alone all these coal seam fires liberate more CO2 than all the cars and trucks in the US combined, plus all sorts of other nasty pollutants and greenhouse gases.
Why not spend a billion putting out all the fires? That would be as if not more effective than if we removed every US car, truck, and SUV from the road.
It makes much more sense to me to target these low hanging fruit that would make big impacts. But this issue isn't really about "solving" anything, it's about manipulating society and punishing the Western lifestyle.
And pray tell, who is motivated to want to 'punish the Western lifestyle'? And while we're at it, just what is the definition of the Western lifestyle?
Sounds alot like rightwing paranoia to me.
Your estimate on the amount of the emissions from those Chinese coal mine fires seems wildly overblown, can you cite a reference? According to Smithsonian Magazine “Estimates vary, but some scientists believe that anywhere from 20 million to 200 million tons burn there each year, producing as much carbon dioxide as about 1 percent of the total carbon dioxide from fossil fuels burned on earth.”
http://www
The Burning Mountain coal fire in Australia has been burning for an estimated 6,000 years and the Centralia fire in central Pennsylvania has been burning since 1962. This is a global phenomenon and in a world ravenous for energy, saving those coal supplies and reducing the pollution would be a win-win situation. pelosiforpresident has it right – the environmentally oriented alternative is (often) also the more economical.
Sounds like Frank Luntz to me. The "Western lifestyle" trollspeak for Gluttony is still considered one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Maybe it needs some manipulation.
What about the coal seam fires in the USA. Centralia in Pennsylvania - is just one example!
The fire was started in a garbage dump over an open coal seam in May of 1962. The fire was reported and seemed to be quenched at the time, but actually continued underground. There are many additional versions of the original cause but the garbage pit and the date are probably right. First bid to extinguish the fire was $175.
Rather than putting them out, perhaps they could build water containers over them to boil the water and create electricity, and capture the CO2 while they were at it.
See, that's thinking out of the box. What you should try sometime.
There's a lot of professional blog commenters out there these days, hired by big business and lobbyists to try and steer the debate. The powers that be are scared of the blog rabble, and are trying their best to muddy the waters. I'm not pointing at any specific commenters, but there seems to be a awarm of naysayers that reliably show up on Huffpost, who express opinions that show that they rarely agree with anything on this site.
It is much more interesting to debate with people who don't agree with you.
Your screen name is appropriate as you are obviously a crack pot.
How is one to argue with you? Simply because someone disagrees with the commentary on Huffpost they must be a hired guns of 'the powers that be'?
What does that make you, part of the swarm of hired 'yeasayners'
I agree with you. They jump to be the first to post on any global warming articles, or anything that is against the crap the right wingers are pulling.
We committed resources to efficiency in the mid 70's and brought about economic benefits to meet the challenge of an oil price shock. With proper tax incentives we can do it again, to all our economic benefit. You are simply lying to cover the entrenched economic interests of the oil companies, the auto companies (US Only, the Asians and Europeans seem to understand the issue), and others who live high on the hog when oil prices are high. By maintaining the status quo wrt energy use, consumers are forced to buy continually more and use continually more energy at inefficiencies which are stupid, given our understanding of the technologies and ecologies available to us now.
I'll say it again. You are lying to cover for fraudulent misappropriation of consumer dollars.
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