Following the weather is beginning to feel like revisiting the Biblical plagues. Tornadoes rip through Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma -- even Massachusetts. A million acres burn in Texas wildfires. The Army Corps of Engineers floods 135,000 acres of farmland and three million acres of bayou country to save Memphis and New Orleans. Earlier in the past year, a 2,000-mile storm dumped near-record snow from Texas to Maine, a fifth of Pakistan flooded, fires made Moscow's air nearly unbreathable, and drought devastated China's wheat crop. You'd think we'd suspect something's grievously wrong.
But media coverage rarely connects the unfolding cataclysms with the global climate change that fuels them. We can't guarantee that any specific disaster is caused by our warming atmosphere. The links are delayed and diffuse. But considered together, the escalating floods, droughts, tornadoes, and hurricanes fit all the predicted models. So do the extreme snowfalls and ice storms, as our heated atmosphere carries more water vapor. So why deem them isolated acts of God -- instead of urgent warnings to change our course?
Scientists are more certain than ever, from the National Academy of Science and its counterparts in every other country to such "radical groups" as the American Chemical Society and American Statistical Society. But the media has buried their voices, giving near-equal "point/counterpoint" credence to a handful of deniers promoted by Exxon, the coal companies and the Koch brothers. Fox News's managing editor even prohibited any reporting on global climate change that didn't immediately then question the overwhelming scientific consensus. The escalating disasters dominate the news, but stripped of context. We're given no perspective to reflect on their likely root causes.
Meanwhile, leading Republicans who once acknowledged the need to act, like Tim Pawlenty, disavow their previous stands like sinners begging forgiveness. A Tea Party Congress insists that they know better than do all the world's scientists, dismissing decades of meticulous research as Ivory Tower elitism. Even Obama has fallen largely silent, as if he can't afford an honest discussion.
As a result, too many Americans still don't know what to believe. We can't see, smell or taste the core emissions that create climate change. The industrial processes that create the crisis are so familiar we don't even question them, no more than the air that we breathe. And if we're not getting hammered by the weather, the world still seems normal, particularly on a lovely summer day. Plus we're told that in the current economic crisis we can't afford even to think about climate change or any other urgent environmental issue, even though the technologies that provide the necessary alternatives are precisely those our country will need to compete economically. Add in a culture of overload and distraction, and it's easy to retreat into denial or self-defeating resignation. It's as if half our population was diagnosed with life-threatening but treatable cancer -- visited the world's leading medical centers to confirm it -- and then decided instead to heed forwarded emails that assure them that they can freely ignore the counsel of the doctors and simply do nothing.
The antidote to denial and the forces that promote it is courage. And as Egypt and Tunisia remind us, courage is contagious. We need to act and speak out in every conceivable way, and demand that our leaders do the same. We need to engage new allies, like religious evangelicals who've recently spoken out to defend "God's creation," from best-selling minister Rick Warren to highly conservative organizations like the Christian Coalition. We need to work with labor activists who link this ultimate issue with the renewal of American jobs. A recent BlueGreen Alliance conference, for instance, brought together leaders of major unions like the United Steel Workers, SEIU, Communications Workers of America, United Auto Workers, Laborers' International, and American Federation of Teachers, with environmental groups like the Sierra Club, National Resource Defense Council, National Wildlife Federation and Union of Concerned Scientists, all speaking about the need to invest in an economy where both ordinary workers and the planet are respected. We need to join with these allies and others to voice our outrage at those risking our common future for greed. We need to find creative ways to do this until America's political climate comes to grips with the changing climate of the earth. Here's hoping the mounting disasters will finally teach us to turn off The Weather Channel and begin taking action.
Paul Loeb is author of Soul of a Citizen, with 130,000 copies in print including a newly updated second edition now being used in hundreds of schools to promote civic engagement. He's also the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association. See www.paulloeb.org To receive Paul's articles directly www.paulloeb.org/subscribe.html You can sign up here for his Huffington Post pieces.
Follow Paul Loeb on Twitter: www.twitter.com/www.twitter.com
Anis Shivani: 25 Overlooked Political Books of 2011
Brian Buck: Is the News Stressing Your Kid Out?
Citizens around the world are speaking up and demanding an end to this corporate power gone nuts. Their employees want freedom from the threat of climate meltdown as much as we do. In a green economy, there will be more manufacturing jobs, more exports, cheaper energy, and healthier neighborhoods. Break the fossil fuel monopoly by taxing carbon emissions , and capitalism will enrich us instead of them.
http://www.citizensclimatelobby.org/ or 1 sky http://www.1sky.org/ http://nrdc.org
More ideas in Climate Challenge, 101 Solutions to Global Warming by Guy Dauncey.
'The science establishment has fallen so low that it thinks it is a useful tactic to deal with its critics by accusing them of conspiracies financed by tobacco companies and oil companies. For the last 50 years, starting with DDT, we have been subjected to junk science scares. The scares were invariably false or exaggerated. Most of these scares were not more than brief media sensations, but some scares have been disruptive, diverting attention from real problems. The king of all scares is global warming. Taken seriously, it requires revamping the entire world economy and making us all poorer. The predictions of global warming disaster are deeply flawed junk science dressed up with an impressive "scientific" structure of panels, committees and organizations. The global warming scare is rapidly collapsing. Scientists outside of the global warming bubble are pointing out the flaws in the science and a coterie of well-informed bloggers is getting out the message by bypassing the establishment media where critics' voices are generally blocked. Nature is helping because the earth and the oceans are failing to warm according to script. '
Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/06/naomi_oreskes_conspiracy_queen.html
But hey some people will believe whatever they want to believe, even the "science" they want to believe in violates the laws of physics.
Rachel Carson was right, but DDT use was already on the decline in the United States because critters evolved resistance to it.
http://climate.NASA.gov/keyIndicators
Arctic sea ice extent for example is important because the ice reflects light and as the extent shrinks more sunlight is absorbed and converted to heat.
Any positive feedback is bad news, including this one.
And what could be a clearer sign of a warmer Arctic than less ice? Heat melts ice, you know.
In layman's terms, that means more flooding, which just happens to be exactly what we've been observing the past several years. Or, haven't you noticed?
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n6/full/ngeo202.html
When I came on to write a comment I was surprised to see the debate that had ensued - going back to is climate change real or not, human induced or not. I suppose I shouldn't be but I always am. What I think it boils down to is that we are so removed from living by what is healthy (so many of our values being completely embedded in economic definitions) that we cannot even even see how far we have pushed the envelope. And as Riversong mentioned, it is a faulty paradigm by which we live and that things like chemical waste and pollution (be it in air, water, or soil) are acceptible even in degrees is, well, in my mind problematic. So whether or not the earth's current climate change is human induced (which I believe it is) the baseline question is shouldn't we be looking for better ways regardless?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7njsMKRnnw
. he uses the rev persona and fire and brimstone preaching as a platform to get people to think although this one is better i think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YApK_plLdss&feature=related
i caught '' what would jesus buy '' on tv last year and have been a fan ever since.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1056487665981560376#
in case i have to spell it out.
he is an actor using a evangelical preacher persona to get attention although the chuch of live after shopping does now do churchy stuff like marry people though they also do un marriage to protest the fact that gay's can't marry.
meanwhile i discovered this guy through them as well
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHMvknT_uk4&feature=related
Of course the media is also to blame. The media is now debased to the extent that very few messages consisting of more than a couple of words, or more than a few seconds are able to be communicated to the people. The media will also attack anyone who has the honesty to point out the uncertainties and complexities that are present in every real world situation. Instead the media and the people value empty certainties and sloganeering by those who are non-reflective, uneducated and dishonest.
With respect to the issue of climate change, it is a sad shame that our societies are confronted by their greatest challenge at the same time that our political systems have completely failed.
We need to support people who refuse to spin. We should support people who clearly state what they believe in, and are willing to win or lose power based on those beliefs. We need to support people who are not blinded to reality by their ideologically driven delusional world view.
We must condemn those who are wilfully dishonest, and always seeking to deceive the people.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/03/news-corporation-announces-sustainability-targets-2015-and-beyond.php
Rhetoric, meet reality.
See http://www.tccpi.org for the story of how one community has built a coalition of local government, business, education, and nonprofit leaders to implement climate protection measures and accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/01/rupert-murdoch-news-corp-carbon-neutral_n_829640.html
Ailes knows he can make money by pushing climate denialism and Murdoch knows he can make money and reduce risk by pushing all of the News Corps companies to go carbon neutral.
The science of extreme events and how they change with global warming is very much work in progress and at this point quite uncertain.
Therefore I think that claiming that all those events are caused by humans, like Loeb's comments imply, is dangerous and invites critizism of alarmism and exaggeration.
I think climate change is serious enough that we don't need exaggerations.
My guess is that most of these events have in fact been isolated "acts of God". Of course I cannot prove this assertion either. It is difficult to prove that a particular extreme event or a particular year with extreme whether is indeed caused by humans. If it can be proven then usually only years after the event and with careful analysis such as in the case of the 2003 heat wave in Europe (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v427/n6972/abs/nature02300.html).
Here%u2019s a good blog on the climate - tornado connection:
http://boingboing.net/2011/05/27/tornadoes-climate-ch.html
I agree that we should do something about climate change but I think we should not blame each and every extreme event on humans. This approach will not only discredit those who make the unsubstantiated claims but it will also cast doubt on other, more serious and well understood dangers of climate change. This will only lead to further confusion and disbelieve in the public.
Rainfall has increased by just under 1% per decade in the mid to high latitudes of the northern hemisphere during the 20th century. The number of heavy storms has also increased by about 4% during the 20th century.
The oceans are warming, expanding and rising and warmer oceans contribute more energy to cyclonic activity. The atmosphere is warming and warm air holds more water vapor. Not only does that mean more rainfall (in some areas with corresponding droughts in others) but water vapor is, itself, a greenhouse gas and will create one of many self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms that will dramatically accelerate global warming.
Other such feedback loops are the loss of the ice caps and glaciers (less reflectivity or albedo and more terrestrial solar absorption), and the thawing of the Siberian permafrost (with consequent release of 25% of the world's stored methane - 20x more powerful in trapping heat than CO2),
Hurricanes are projected to decrease in frequency and increase in intensity. I think the latter statement is a more differentiated and correct formulation than "escalating ... hurricanes".
Yes there are a number of different studies that suggest different types of weather impacts in various locations due to climate change. There are differences in exactly what various people predict about frequencies vs. extremity of such things as hurricanes.
These problems of prediction are made somewhat moot however by the observed changes in numbers and severity of extreme weather events.
In some ways, the relevance of modelling to the question of weather or not more extreme weather is being produce by climate change is as small as the relevance of modelling to the clear empirical evidence that shows the Earth is warming as we speak.
The modelling may allow us to make predictions about the future, but the evidence now speaks a lot louder in terms of confirming the effects.
One criticism, though, of your analysis. The life-threatening cancer analogy is apropos, but - as with cancer, which our medical technology cannot cure but only ameliorate or postpone with somewhat less life-threatening treatments - there is no technological "fix" for the climate change we've initiated and which, almost certainly, will progress well beyond the tipping point towards an uninhabitable world which will also result in the loss of 50% of all species and require perhaps 100 million years to self-correct (judging by past mass extinction episodes).
As a 30 year pioneer in sustainable building, and a teacher and advocate in that realm, I'm not suggesting we shouldn't use the opportunity to do whatever's possible in creating a more appropriate human culture on this little planet. But, as we open our eyes to what we've done to this earth, let's not allow ourselves to fall into the old-paradigm self-deception that every problem has a technical solution. In fact, as Eric Sevareid once said, %u201CThe chief cause of problems is solutions.%u201D
Re technological fixes, my sense is that we actually have most of the necessary technologies around right now, but choose not to invest in them--if we incentivized renewable energy and conservation enough (and raised the costs on carbon), we'd could make a major dent pretty quickly.
And then there are technologies that need more development, like algae-based biofuels and efficient battery and other storage techology. So the technologies are important, but the key question is whether we invest enough to get them adopted, which we haven't so far. So that brings us back to common political action.
The reason that Western medicine has not found a cure for cancer is that it's working from a dysfunctional paradigm. And the reason we will not invent a "cure" for global warming is because global human culture is built upon a completely dysfunctional paradigm. It took this ostensibly intelligent species 10,000 years to create this paradigm we call "civilization" and propagate it across the globe and we simply don't have even one percent of that time scale to create and live into a wholly new paradigm before irreversible damage is done to the earth's biosphere.
It is true that prediction is difficult in complex systems. But the question is not whether the science can definitively predict precisely how much the oceans will rise, or precisely where the worst droughts will occur... the question is whether the accumulated scientific evidence dictates that we have reached the "Threshold for Action." Unequivocally, we reached that point years ago.
Unfortunately, our future is in the hands of those who not only do not understand the science, but who will not listen to the unanimous warnings from qualified climate scientists. And as Becker presciently observed 40 years ago in "Escape From Evil," homo sapiens may not be destined to continue on earth. The earth itself, of course, would be much better off without us, but the process of extinction would be an unbelievable hell that would make Mad Max look like a picnic in the park.
Wonder what those curves would look like. Maybe a pair of hockey sticks, with the denier curve lagging the evidence curve.
You have asked a great many questions of me. The sum of them seems to not be a genuine seeking of information, but rather reflexive denial. You give "denier" a new meaning :-)
At any rate, I do wish to acknowledge receipt of your many questions but I judge them to be rhetorical and not really seeking responses, which is good since there's not really a good place to make that response in the appropriate column.
In the early days after Climategate, people that had not already taken a position, or didn't even know it was an issue, studied it and started taking sides. More than two sides exist. I am on the side of "the science is not done, a good start has been made, some climatologists have seriously damaged the credibility of the effort by blocking debate" just as you are attempting.
You have said nothing, that I've seen, explaining why you believe what you believe. Indeed, you merely ask questions like "Wonder what those curves would look like. Maybe a pair of hockey sticks, with the denier curve lagging the evidence curve."
Indeed, I expect it would look just like that. If not, tweak the data a bit and then it will :-)
Why is such a thing so difficult for the rest of you? Debate happens. In the world of public opinion, who is "right" is usually impossible to tell for certain, the jury of public opinion looks to your character -- do you offer information or ridicule?
I have no knowledge of Oil industry involvement neither should it be any more relevant than leftwing sources financing global warming research. Either such things are relevant to everyone, or not to anyone.
You seem to think I am involved with the oil industry. Nope. 20 years in the U.S. Navy, most of them outside the continental united states. I know quite a bit about world politics as a result. I also scored top in class in both micro and macro economics. My knowledge is broad, not particularly deep, but I can see associations between things that specialists will fail to see.
More importantly, I recognize the need for the same adversarial system here that is needed in a court of law before a jury. Scientists don't get to just "say stuff" and move trillions of dollars without a bit of challenge. So brace yourselves.
A peer-reviewed paper published in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics finds global warming over the 20th century "not significantly different" from warming episodes that occurred in earlier centuries. The paper finds that the increase in solar activity over the past 400 years explains the warming, without any need to search for a unique cause of late 20th century warming, such as greenhouse gas concentrations.
Here's the TOC of that issue:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PublicationURL&_tockey=%23TOC%236062%232011%23999269990%233193782%23FLA%23&_cdi=6062&_pubType=J&_auth=y&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=e235753d2eb8bf04906c17b63c868dc7
The BlueGreen Alliance seems to hold great promise that we can indeed tackle these enormous issues through our working together.
I believe that our leaders (or at least most of them) WILL listen if enough of us "speak up" intelligently, respectively, and can provide tangible, WORKING MODELS of alternatives to our current economical and environmentally unsustainable ways. It is encouraging that there is a growing number of us looking for and/or supporting exciting working models of living, working and "being".
As someone with 30 years working with others and encouraging sustainable green building pointed out to me: when people hear the "doom and gloom" , and frightening news or predictions (no matter how based in truth), they tend to shut off, tune out and react as if everything is a bed of roses. They do this out of fear. However, when they see tangible, positive, FUN working models of alternatives to their current way of living, then they can see possibilities and their own place within those possibilities or working models.
Again, thank you for your important role of encouraging positive change. I look forward to reading more of your thoughtful articles.
Lynn (Canada)