It's too late. The world has missed the opportunity to avoid serious, damaging human-induced climate change. For a variety of reasons ranging from ignorance to political ideology to commercial self-interest to inertia to intentional misrepresentations and misdirections on the part of a small number of committed climate deniers, the United States and the rest of the world have waited too long to act to cut the emissions of damaging greenhouse gas pollutants. We are now committed to irreversible long-term and inevitably damaging consequences ranging from rapidly rising sea levels, far greater heat stress and damages, disappearing glaciers and snowpack, more flooding and droughts, and far, far more.
For over two decades, there have only been a few people and groups that have argued against climate change, and very few of these have done so in good faith (though there is no denying that they've been effective). Sometimes they have tried to hide behind scientific "uncertainty" to mask their anti-climate-change arguments. But the fundamental science has long been irrefutable, and so recently, we've seen all pretense of caring about science thrown out the door by elected officials such as Congressman John Shimkus simply (vice chairman of the Republican Party's Congressional campaign committee and vying to become chair of the influential House Energy and Commerce Committee), who rejects climate change by turning to the Bible to refute the science or as justification to ignore it.
"The earth will end only when God declares it's time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth," Shimkus said. "I believe that's the infallible word of God, and that's the way it's going to be for his creation."
Here, in a nutshell, is the best argument against global climate change:
There isn't one.
No scientific body of national or international standing rejects the findings that humans are changing the climate. Indeed, every single legitimate scientific organization and society that works on atmospheric, climatological, meteorological, geological, hydrological, ecological, physical, chemical, and biological sciences supports the scientific findings of human-induced climate change. All of them. Here are a few examples.
For reasons well described by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, the media has also failed to distinguish between correct and incorrect, because it is far easier simply to describe this as a debate between equals. Like the argument about the health consequences of tobacco, it is inevitable that reality will ultimately win over fantasy and that the truth about the seriousness of climate change will become widely accepted. But as I argue above, that inevitability will come too late, leading to another inevitability: unavoidable, severe climate impacts to all of us (or to coming generations).
Worse, the misrepresentations continue. At Wednesday's Congressional climate hearing of the House Committee on Science and Technology, some of the nation's top climate scientists once again (as they have over and over for decades) explained to a few congressmen about the nature of climate change, while climate-confusers such as Patrick Michaels (a perennial fixture in the decades-long effort of the fossil fuel industry and conservative "think tanks" to confuse Congress and the public about the science of climate change), came up with novel (but alas, scientifically discredited) arguments about why humans are not largely responsible for changing the climate. As a journal article noted a few years ago, in a funny, albeit dry academic style: "...the observations upon which PM [Patrick Michaels] draws his case are not good enough to bear the weight of the argument he wishes to make."
The new Congress will almost certainly see more science pushed out by ideology and hearings characterized by cherry-picking of witnesses and selective use of climate deniers rather than mainstream scientists.
As a result, in twenty more years, the Earth will be even hotter, sea levels will be higher and rising faster, water and food resources will be increasingly stressed, extinction rates will accelerate, and our forced expenditures for climate adaptation will be far, far greater than they would otherwise have been.
For example, at the request of three separate California state agencies, the Pacific Institute recently completed a comprehensive assessment of the vulnerabilities of the California coast to accelerating sea-level rise (using scenarios of sea-level rise that may turn out to be far too low). There is already over $100 billion in infrastructure (housing, airports, wastewater treatment plants, schools, hospitals, roads, power plants) and a population of nearly 500,000 people at risk of increased coastal flooding, and we estimated that adaptation costs just to protect existing infrastructure will run around $15 billion, plus high annual costs to maintain these protections. Other major areas and populations simply cannot be realistically protected and will have to be abandoned, with people forced to move over time. And this is just one small piece of the coming threats for one small part of the country. How bad it ultimately gets depends on how much longer we fail to act and how much longer Congress and others hide behind ignorance, political ideology, and religion to deny the reality of climate change.
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A great many of my friends are climate-change deniers of one sort or another, the common thread among them being not that climate change can't or isn't occurring (they simple ascribe it to Mother Nature, the Fates, whatever).
I live in central Bangkok, which turns out to be a handy spot in which to have this conversation. The pollution here, while far from the worst on the planet, is awful. There are days here when the weather folks assure us that *weather-wise* the skies are clear -- but good luck seeing Sol that day. That's right: on the odd day, the Sun is almost entirely obscured by nothing more than pollution. There also is the country's main river coursing through the city, plus a lot of artificial canals (think "Venice"). The water in them is filthy, including some air pollution settling onto the water (and the ground).
What my friend and I can agree on is that none of us like a filthy environment -- while still disagreeing about what role, if any, humanity might play in climate change, assuming it's happening. But we all can agree that cleaning up the environment is A Good Thing. Even those who rudely mock anyone who believes in anthropogenic-influenced climate change will (usually) buy into that proposition.
Good enough for me.
Can anyone tell us how much of CO2 scrubbing would be necessary? It would be helpful to see the magnitude of the required effort expressed in some kind of meaningful units- for example, would a CO2 removal effort on the order of ten World War 2's be sufficient to pull back from the point of no return? 10,000 WW2's?
http://www.munichre.com/en/media_relations/company_news/2010/2010-11-08_company_news.aspx
http://www.ey.com/US/en/Services/Specialty-Services/Climate-Change-and-Sustainability-Services/Climate_Change_Sustainability_Services_our_services
http://www.ey.com/GL/en/Newsroom/News-releases/Juan-Costa-Climent-appointed-Ernst-and-Young-Global-Leader-for-Climate-Change-and-Sustainability-Services
Munich Reinsurance is _the_ largest reinsurer in the world, and it has placed its bet. If you examine other insurance companies, they all understand that catastrophic increases in climate disasters are now inevitable. The entire insurance industry is governed by probabilities, and the entire insurance industry is reacting the same way to our government's failure to make climate and energy policy changes indicated by climate science. Regarding scientific truth, those _most_ on the hook financially if they're wrong _either_ way are, in gambling terms, "all in" with the IPCC.
Money has talked. Climate deniars, walk.
Those who do not understand science, or care to believe the science, or are willing to dig even a tiny bit on the science sites on the web are unlikely to be swayed. They hold positions based on ideology, or fear, or ignorance.
I think that's pretty clear - People could certainly destroy the earth; God is utterly against them and considers his people to be those who take the opposite stance.
We had already past the tipping point but hey... who's listening right? Certainly NOT our world leaders who needed to act years ago to really make a difference...
Shame, shame, SHAME on America and ALL of our leaders since Jimmy Carter (who had the foresight THEN to know what was happening and install solar panels on the White House which Reagan promptly removed)!!!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock-climate-change
For decades Paul Ehrlich told us of the Population Bomb and how the world would starve to death and a third of the world would die off. Today's solution comes from John Holdren advocating forced birth control and abortion.
Rachel Carson told us of the horrors of DDT and the end result is millions of dead from malaria and other mosquito and fly borne diseases. The solution now is to donate mosquito nets.
In 1979, we were told the earth was headed to another ice age. The evidence for all these scenarios was overwhelming, not in dispute, and supported by the vast maority of the scientific community.
BTW Reagan had the panels removed when the roof on the White House was being replaced, not because he hated the planet like you imply.
Wrong again - way wrong.
Science denier talking points never die, no matter how many times a stake is driven through their hearts.
"In the 70s, They said there'd be an Ice Age"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB3S0fnOr0M
http://www.trinityhartford.org/content/view/171/78/
The sermon is specifically about one way we've broken that covenant -- by allowing slavery -- but it also makes the point, relevant to Shimkus, that there is no unilateral guarantee that there won't be a civilization-destroying disaster in the future, because that covenant has two parties, and if one party -- namely, us -- breaks it, all bets are off. I wanted to include some excepts but keep hitting the length limit -- it's well worth reading, both to see an actual Christian point of view, and to use with people who need an antidote to Shimkus.
The reason I found this was that I was looking for the lyrics to a gospel song used as the title of an excellent TV miniseries about global warming made in the early '90s -- the title is "The Fire Next Time". That happens to be the title of the sermon as well, and the sermon references the same song.
http://www.lyricstime.com/rev-milton-brunson-fire-next-time-lyrics.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105998/
With respect to global warming what's relevant isn't how much of the Earth's total CO2 is anthropogenic (man-made), but instead how much of the almost 40% rise in atmospheric CO2 since the dawn of the fossil fuel-era is anthropogenic. And per the science the answer to that question is: almost all of the close to 40% increase in atmospheric CO2 since the dawn of the fossil fuel era is anthropogenic.
With respect to your second question, what do you mean by "harmful"? If by that you mean which one is more responsible for driving the observed global warming over recent decades then the answer is CO2, not the least of reasons being that H2O cannot do so because it is feedback of global temperature and not a multidecadal driver of it.
HTH.
If by "Co2 causing elements" you are referring to *anthropogenic* "CO2 causing elements", then the answer is essentially no atmospheric CO2 will be reduced for many generations.
Alwayspissedoffatsomeone: "and what is more harmful to the atmosphere, Co2 or water vapor?"
Again, if by "more harmful" you mean which one is more responsible for driving the observed global warming over recent decades (and thus more responsible for global warming over the coming decades as well), then again the answer is CO2, since again H2O is a feedback of global temperature and not a multidecadal driver of it.
Both CO2 and H2O are greenhouse gases that make Earth's climate warmer than it would be if neither were present in the atmosphere. Increasing either or both will make it even warmer. Humans have increased CO2 directly by 38%, but because the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere is determined by the temperature of the atmosphere (relative and absolute humidity) humans can not increase water in the atmosphere directly even if we try to.
However, by increasing CO2 we have made the atmosphere a bit warmer, which then allows it to hold more water vapour, so humans have indirectly increased water vapour in the atmosphere.
Since humans can not directly increase H2O in the atmosphere, but are directly increasing CO2, which then indirectly causes H2O to also increase, which do you think is more of problem?
It's a common misconception that if atmospheric CO2 were to merely stop rising temperature rise would stop. The problem with this reasoning is that due to thermal inertia the coupled atmosphere-ocean system has yet to reach equilibrium with the amount of CO2 we have already injected into that atmosphere and the active carbon cycle, and will not for several decades.
For temperature to actually fall atmospheric CO2 would have to *decline*, not just stop rising, thereby reducing the greenhouse effect. The kicker is, even if we stopped emitting all CO2 from burning fossil fuels it would take a few hundred years for the ocean to absorb even half of the existing slug of excess carbon that we have injected into the atmosphere and the active carbon cycle, and thousands of years for the very slow geologic carbon cycle to permanently remove all of it.
There will be no quick fix for what we have wrought.
You are apparently also unaware that that over the past ten years the Earth has continued to warm.
Yawn.
The following are scientific facts:
* The Earth has warmed significantly over recent decades, to what may be the highest level in 2,000 years or more.
* Anthropogenic greenhouse gases including CO2 -- which is generated mostly by fossil fuel burning -- warm the Earth. Without greenhouse gases including CO2 the average temperature of the Earth would be below freezing.
* The atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased by more than a third since the dawn of the fossil fuel era, to the highest level in at least 800,000 years.
* Satellite measurements demonstrate that increasing atmospheric CO2 has increased retention of heat energy in the atmosphere.
* The scientific evidence strongly indicates that said increased atmospheric CO2 is due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions, and there is no other viable scientific explanation for said atmospheric CO2 increase.
* There is a strong correlation between said atmospheric CO2 increase and said recent warming.
* Known natural forcing agents of past global warming - including changes in orbital cycles and increases in solar radiative output - cannot explain the bulk of said recent warming. Neither has any scientific theory to explain the bulk of said recent warming other than anthropogenic global warming survived scientific scrutiny.
Again these are all scientific facts. Which is to say:
The scientific evidence supporting anthropogenic global warming is overwhelming.
I don't understand what you mean by "said" there. In any event those aren't merely assertions - they are scientific facts.
Kizay: "For instance, tell us what percentage of the atmosphere is currently carbon dioxide and how big a percentage it was 800,000 years ago."
The current atmospheric concentration is ~390 ppm. Over the past 800,000 years (and likely far longer) until now the atmospheric concentration did not exceed ~300 ppm, as is demonstrated in the ice core record.
"Anthroprogenic is a nice addition too.....very.........overwhelming."
I don't understand what you are trying to communicate with that wording either.
--- a) You deny it publicly, but suspect the global warming evidence is pretty strong.
--- b) Yet, you know that mitigating global warming will incur considerable costs, not in abstractions like % GDP, but in societal pressure on your habitually wasteful lifestyle.
--- c) You don't want life to be even slightly inconvenienced.
And you're old enough to
--- d) think you'll likely die of natural causes before it really hits the fan.
--- e) You have no progeny, or if you do, their welfare is their problem, not yours. Moreover,
--- f) Humanity's future is also their problem, not yours, especially after you're dead. And
--- g) You don't believe in an afterlife that rewards or punishes your behavior.
So, as one who dies alone, apart from all others, combating global warming seems like poor use of your resources.
This rather ugly set of beliefs seems "Ayn Randish", but perhaps an apt personal portrait for many.
That said, if you hold such innately selfish beliefs (close to the vest), one good public posture to shroud your real motives would be to deny that global warming even exists.
However, if you have such an attitude but are young, familial, ethical, or religious enough to question assumptions d), e), f), or g), then, beyond it's being disingenuous,
you might want to reconsider your stance for other reasons.