The most recent report from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says, "Global warming is undeniable," and it's happening fast. NOAA's study, an in-depth analysis of ten key climate indicators, all point to marked and accelerating warming. This disturbing consistency should scare policy makers -- if they were listening. As Derek Arndt, head of NOAA's Climate Monitoring Branch clearly put it, "This is like going to the doctor and getting your respiratory test and circulatory test and your neurosystem test...It's testing all the parts, and they're all in agreement that the same thing's going on."
That "thing" is accelerating climate change.
Those few extreme policy makers and pundits who continue to deny the realities of climate change often point to "uncertainty" in the observations, models, and climate system itself that make perfect predictions impossible. Of course, climate scientists also talk about uncertainty all of the time -- it is a characteristic of the science, not an excuse for politicians to avoid taking action. What the deniers don't cop to, in a great example of selective one-sided argumentation, is that uncertainty cuts both ways. As Stephen Schneider, one of the world's greatest climate scientists and communicator regularly pointed out, while there is always a possibility that climate changes will fall on the less severe end of the scale, there is a comparable probability that climate changes will be far worse than we expect, with far more serious consequences to the planet.
And this lopsidedness works in another important way. If we act to slow climate change, and the impacts turn out to be less severe than we predict, all we've done is reduce our emissions of pollutants, cut our economic dependence on fossil fuels from countries that fund extremism and terror, and boosted our economy with new green technologies and jobs. But if we do nothing, and climate changes turn out to be more severe than we fear, we've made things far worse than they needed to be.
And that's what's happening.
There is growing evidence from the real world that climate changes are accelerating faster than we originally feared and that impacts -- already appearing -- will be more widespread and severe than expected. This makes the arguments against taking actions against climate change not just wrong, but dangerous. We cannot expect climate deniers to change their tune: they've made up their minds, despite all new evidence. As Epictetus said, "It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows."
But to be a climate denier these days means sticking in earplugs, covering your head with a pillow, and then burying your head deeper and deeper in the sand. Why? Because new physical evidence comes in every day that climate extremes are piling up. I know it is harder and harder to find real news anymore. You often don't get it from the cable "news" shows, which in a perfect world would be the gold standard on this issue. But there is climate news. And it is bad. And it is consistent with or even worse than what the climate models have been predicting.
So, I have a new proposal. Henceforth, just as we give names to hurricanes, I propose we name climate disasters after those who deny the reality of climate change in the face of incontrovertible scientific evidence. After all, why use generic names and tarnish all future Andrews, Betsys, Charleys, and Katrinas when we can remind ourselves that without these individuals' stubborn opposition in the face of all evidence, we and our children could have lived in a world where these events were far less prevalent. And just for fun, I have some modest examples here:
The Inhofe Lake Mead Bathtub Ring: Water levels in Lake Mead on the Colorado River have dropped to levels not seen since the reservoir was first filled in the 1930s, threatening water supplies throughout the southwest, and exposing whitened rock rings around the lake's edge. Over the last decade, the Southwest has suffered the sharpest temperature increase in North America, rapidly diminishing snowpack, loss of vegetation, expansion of forest pests, and rampant wildfires.
The Michaels Pakistani Floods: This summer has seen the heaviest monsoon rains on record in Pakistan.
The Monckton Russian Heat and Fires: It's been the hottest summer ever recorded in Russia, with Moscow temperatures topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the first time, unprecedented wildfires in their forest and peat fields, a reduction in Russia's wheat harvest by a third, and a big jump in heat-related deaths.
The Morano Greenland Ice Floe: A 100-square-mile ice island calved off from the Petermann Glacier - the largest ice island to break away in the Arctic in a half-century of observation.
The Ebell Ice-Free Arctic: satellite data show the Arctic Ocean area covered by ice this summer to be the second-lowest ever recorded - and the lowest was just a few years ago.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Heat Wave: The east coast of the U.S. experienced record-breaking temperatures this summer, again. It seems like we're breaking these records at record-breaking speed.
Of course, climate deniers can't take full credit or blame for each of these problems, but we'll run out of names and associations of those promulgating misinformation about climate change long before we'll run out of climate disasters. Though there are a lot of names in Congress we can use.
Peter Gleick
Follow Peter H. Gleick on Twitter: www.twitter.com/PeterGleick
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Pakistan floods, Haiti earthquake: unprecedented 1-2 punch for US aid
Disputed water resources in California are the reason for Lake Meade's low water levels ... the Sierra Mountains had record snowpack ie: cold this year which could fill the lake but you conveniently leave this out. in Russia perhaps a discarded cigarette caused the massive fires which in turn led to record heat due to fire and smoks. Pakistan floods?.. every year somewhere in the world experiences a record rainfall, thanks for pointing out that it was Pakistan this year. The Moreno Glacier has released enormous icebergs over the years .. ice flows out over the water and eventually breaks off, its natural, if the Globe were warming that Ice sheet would not have built up to that extent. That huge chunk of ice which busted off of Antartica a few years ago .. well that area has already been filled in with ... you guessed it .. MORE ICE !!
While New York had high temps this year .. the whole of Southern California had RECORD LOWS. how do you explain this? Russia, China, South America had RECORD cold blizzard like conditions this past winter, how do you explain this?
Selective facts produce selective results.
www.skepticalscience.com/nasa-giss-what-global-warming-looks-like.html
Meanwhile, far from considering doing a damn thing about the general global warming issue, has anyone here seen a peep of condolence from our resident global warming deniers about all the people who died during the unprecedented, two month long Russian heat wave?
Reportage from
Aug. 6th: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/7931206/Russian-heatwave-kills-5000-as-fires-rage-out-of-control.html
Aug. 10th: www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-10/russia-may-lose-15-000-lives-15-billion-of-economic-output-in-heat-wave.html
Aug. 19th: www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/08/19/world/main6787655.shtml
I have never seen the strict, pre-approval standard on *any* climate thread that I have seen in effect in 'blogs on other topics which the management knows to be controversial, despite the fact that *this* topic is known, throughout *all* media, to be the *most* polluted by corporate-sponsored lies, of all subjects of political debate.
Huffington Post does a lousy job of making this a conducive space for honest people to discuss climate science and policies based on climate science. Specifically, there seem to be no consequences whatsoever for lying, libeling official HP 'bloggers and making all manner of off-topic arguments only tangentially related, if at all, to the topic of each article.
Richard2, you are a known liar, repeatedly proven. You have been shown proof positive that your sources are garbage and that the accusations against the quality of climate science and the character of climate scientists which you parrot are utterly false but you refuse every time to admit that you're wrong, as you are every single time. You refuse even to engage in discussion of the superior, scientific sources that invalidate your claims from 'bloggers who are not peer reviewed, and many of which are anonymous.
At a certain point, what is called "common courtesy" ceases to be your entitlement. That point comes sometime after your own dishonesty shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are intentionally denying all of us the common courtesy of telling us the truth, and you crossed that line *long* ago. You are a waste of carbon and you have no complaint with the *manner* in which I or anybody else exposes the *fact* that you are a compulsive liar that has never contributed anything factual to any discussion of climate science or science-based environment and energy policies. Fact.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19653
Since the essay is about exposing falsehoods, it is important to establish that Rancourt is a former university professor. As for the essay itself, it provides possible reasons why someone might go along with lies, but no evidence that the science of global warming is wrong.
How quiet you go once directly challenged perhaps retreating behind a nom du plume. In a bout of scribal puffery you complain about
challenges to the "Integrity of Science". Sir the integrity of science is the integrand of the integrity of its practitioners. It is
therefore surprising you are unable to respond to any of the questions raised over the last four months that go right to the heart
of the integrity and credibility of the "Pacific Institute" including:-
** Matters surrounding the infamous '250 Scientists" letter to Science.
** Your remarkable claims of sea rise on the Cal coast versus straight lining at Alameda
** Issues surrounding the tax exempt status of the charitable "Pacific Institute"
** Non-participation in legal action re the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta
** Influence of your partner Ceres and the $10 trillion green investments it directs
** Apparent anomalies in the "Pacific Institute" IRS return
** Your climategate involvement etc etc
Do tell
1. Cite what you claim is erroneous, in the other person's exact words, and with a hyperlink to the original source.
2. Post a link to the original source of data that proves that the other person's claim is incorrect.
These two simple minimum standards will ensure that you and the people you accuse are talking about the same thing. When you omit these minimum standards, a professional, which Peter H. Gleick indisputably is, has no incentive to reply, nor even to take you seriously.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs76-00/
Distinguishing Climate Deniers From Skeptics
An excerpt:
"At the 2008 Future in Review Conference, Harvard professor James McCarth, former co-chair of the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change), was asked how many of the world's top 1000 climate experts would disagree with the basic scientific consensus that the increase in green house gas concentrations over the last 50 years to levels not seen in 650,000 years is primarily anthropogenic and is the cause of an increase in global temperatures. He replied, "Five."
...Despite publicly bruited offers of jobs, publicity and lavish rewards from fossil fuel companies and neoconservative media, very few qualified experts in climate have stepped forward to object to the overall consensus on AGW, and those who have done so couch their doubts very specifically, so as to be almost useless to the Climate Denier community."
--Skeptic Magazine, vol. 15, No. 4, page 14 (current issue)
I have found it posted online so you can read it for free here:
http://www.davidbrin.com/climate2.htm
Until a few years ago the editor of Skeptic Magazine (Michael Shermer) didn't accept the mainstream science on the issue. Now he does. That's what a real a skeptic does. They change their beliefs to be in accord with the data. The honest ones do at least.
D.
"If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response."
Cheney went on to state that even aggressively peremptory acts of war, leading to great pain and cost, are justified if there is a small likelihood that greater pain and cost can be averted."
WOW, a philosophy based on Dick Cheney rationale. What garbage? Is that all you have to offer?
DAR
The article above by Mr. Gleick explains why your comparison is bogus. Unlike suffering the terrible consequences of going to war and killing people in order to prevent something potentially bad (Cheney's recommendation), the consequences for taking action with GW are:
"If we act to slow climate change, and the impacts turn out to be less severe than we predict, all we've done is reduce our emissions of pollutants, cut our economic dependence on fossil fuels from countries that fund extremism and terror, and boosted our economy with new green technologies and jobs."
Is that all you've got?
D.
We need to decrease these emissions in order to stagger the most catastrophic of effects. I personally believe the skeptics using the " I don't believe humans are causing it" red herring do it as a diversion to keep the debate off solutions and actions for political, economic, and ideological reasons. Whether or not you believe humans are contributing to it, it is happening and it is affecting humans! There is no disputing that and we better get off our high horses and start thinking of the future.
There is something about having the proper proportions that is very important.
DAR
Well said. Have you tried watching FOX news a bit? This is where people are learning their "critical thinking" skills. They confuse yelling, interrupting and hyperbole with reasoning. They confuse spin and mere assertions made loudly and convincingly with actual argument. Did you know a majority of rightwingers (the real people we are dealing with in this denial movement) don't know the Colbert Report is making fun of them? I live in Arkansas, I have met these people. They can't think straight. Their brains don't work. Is there something in the water in red state south?
D.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2010/06/06/legal-verdict-manmade-global-warming-science-doesn%E2%80%99t-withstand-scrutiny/
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?p=5&t=209&&a=17
You were saying?
The base paper:-
http://www.probeinternational.org/UPennCross.pdf
"This paper departs from such faith in the climate establishment by comparing the
picture of climate science presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) and other global warming scientist advocates with the peer-edited scientific
literature on climate change. A review of the peer-edited literature reveals a systematic
tendency of the climate establishment to engage in a variety of stylized rhetorical
techniques that seem to oversell what is actually known about climate change while
concealing fundamental uncertainties and open questions regarding many of the key
processes involved in climate change. Fundamental open questions include not only the
size but the direction of feedback effects that are responsible for the bulk of the
temperature increase predicted to result from atmospheric greenhouse gas increases:
while climate models all presume that such feedback effects are on balance strongly
positive, more and more peer-edited scientific papers seem to suggest that feedback
effects may be small or even negative."
Real legal review of the AGW cult is long overdue, certainly before the western world self immolates on the pyre ofGore green political cant
"Fundamental open questions include not only the size but the direction of feedback effects that are responsible for the bulk of the temperature increase ..."
In fact, for any "feedback effects that are responsible for the bulk of the temperature increase," the *direction* of their effects is, by definition, known: temperature increase. Clearly the author of UPennCross.pdf is not even sure of which lies to try to tell. Amusing, as I said, but not useful.
DAR
The first shiney clue that your unscientific, unpeer-reviewed, law school propaganda project (put together by those with no training in the field) is junk is when they stack ad hominem attacks in their very first sentence. Worthless.
For an actual competent look at this question (to compliment ReedYoung above) we look to qualified experts:
"A 2004 article by geologist and historian of science Naomi Oreskes summarized a study of the scientific literature on climate change.[87] The essay concluded that there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. The author analyzed 928 abstracts of papers from refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003,... none of the abstracts disagreed with the consensus position, which the author found to be "remarkable."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
An extremely strong consensus. Also note:
"All scientific bod[ies] of national or international standing [agree with] the basic findings of human influence on recent climate change.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
All. Of. Them.
"But to be a climate denier these days means sticking in earplugs, covering your head with a pillow, and then burying your head deeper and deeper in the sand. Why? Because new physical evidence comes in every day that climate extremes are piling up."
Nuf Said.
Climate science "skepticism" does not accurately reflect climate science denialism, and calling climate science deniers "skeptics" is a denigration of the term that does a disservice to true scientific skeptics (which is to say, all scientists who practice proper science).
This behaviour is not uncommon in immediately pre-pubescent girls; fortunately rarely seen outside that cohort./
That's pretty funny, coming as it does from someone who cites a cite that denies the laws of physics
gleikenspiel: "'Disciple Glieck/Publicola"
You keep trying to falsely conflate us - again I am not Gleick.
Are you Glenn Beck, aka GlennBeckenspiel?
Richard2 below posts satellitegate article:-
"John O Sullivan writes:
US Government admits satellite temperature readings “degraded.” All data taken offline in shock move. Global warming temperatures may be 10 to 15 degrees too high..........."
Ref: http://www.climatechangefraud.com/climate-reports/7491-official-satellite-failure-means-decade-of-global-warming-data-doubtful
Your grade school 'liar liar pants on fire' response was:_
"Interesting. This appears to simply be a lie, spread by climate deniers. Where is the evidence, proof, news story? Nothing but a blog post that appears to have been completely made up..."
Is your accusation the Coastwatch image at:-
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/images/stories/pics3/bewareofdata.gif
is fraudulent?
Do tell.
Or will you continue to hide in your burrow as per the infamous letter to Science, sea level changes at Alameda, the Ceres connection to big business etc etc etc
Show some backbone - clearly state "The Coastwatch image posted on climatechangefraud.com is fraudulent"
Ah yes, ClimateChangeFraud.com, the same people who claim the Moon violates the laws of physics in what science deniers have called "Moongate" - now there's some entertaining science denial.
Great ref you got there, spiel.
How amusing
And amusing that you cite a blog that denies the laws of physics.
They would probably wear the titles as badges of honor. Basically, it's a matter of what they WANT to believe over what they actually will accept, based on the very-well documented science.
D.