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For Cancun Climate Summit, Activists Consider the Long View
A year ago, it seemed possible—likely, even—that President Barack Obama would sweep into the international negotiations on climate change at Copenhagen and make serious progress on the tangle of issues at stake. The reality was quite different. This year, the expectations for the United Nations Climate Conference in Cancun are less exuberant.
Last year, climate activists put their faith in international leaders to make progress. This year, they believe that it’s up to them, as outside actors, to marshal a grassroots movement and pressure their leaders towards decreased carbon emissions. (photo by Flickr user Greenpeace Finland) The conference will be held from Nov 29 to Dec 10 and the same issues from 2009 are up for debate. Countries like the United States, Britain, and Germany are still contributing an outsize share of carbon to the atmosphere. Countries like India and China are still rapidly increasing their own carbon output. And countries like Bangladesh, Tuvalu, and Bolivia are still bearing an unfair share of the environmental impacts brought on by climate change.
A very different set of expectations are building in the climate movement this year. If last year was about moving forward as fast as possible, this year, climate activists seem resigned to the idea that politicians just aren’t getting it. Change, when it comes, will have to be be built on a popular movement, not a political negotiation.
Climate change from the bottom up
Last year, climate activists put their faith in international leaders to make progress. This year, they believe that it’s up to them, as outside actors, to marshal a grassroots movement and pressure their leaders towards decreased carbon emissions.
“There’s a recognition that the insider strategy to push from inside the Beltway to impact what will happen in DC, or what will happen in Cancun has really not succeeded,” Rose Braz, climate campaign director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Making Contact’s Andrew Stelzer. “What we’re doing in conjunction with a number of groups across the country and across the world is really build the type of movement that will change what happens in Cancun, what changes what happens in DC from the bottom up.” (This entire episode of Making Contact is dedicated to new approaches to climate change, at Cancun and beyond, and is worth a listen.)
Fighting the indolence of capitalists
Here’s one example of this new strategy: as Zachary Shahan writes at Change.org, La Via Campesina, an international peasant movement, is coordinating a march that will begin in San Luis Potosi, Guadalajara, Acapulco, Oaxaca, and Chiapas, then converge on Cancun. The march will include “thousands of farmers, indigenous people, rural villagers, urbanites, and more,” Shahan reports.
After they arrive in Cancun, the organizers are planning an “Alternative Global Forum for Life and Environmental and Social Justice” for the final days of the negotiations, which they say will be a mass mobilisation of peasants, indigenous and social movements. The action extends far beyond Cancun, though. Actually, they are organizing thousands of Cancuns around the world on this day to denounce what they see as false climate solutions.
These actions echo the strategy that environmentalist and author Bill McKibben and other climate leaders are promoting to push for climate change policies in the U.S. All this talk about building momentum from the bottom up, from populations, means that anyone looking for change is now looking years into the future.
The U.S. is not leading the way
Of course, ultimately, politicians will need to agree on a couple of standards. In particular, how much carbon each country should be emitting and how fast each country should power down its current emission levels. The U.S. is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to agreement on these questions, especially due to the recent mid-term elections. As Claudia Salerno, Venezuela’s lead climate change negotiator wrote at AlterNet:
Unlike what many suggest, China is not the problem. China, along with India and others, have made considerable commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and are already working to realize them. Other developing countries have done the same, although we only generate a virtual drop in the bucket of global carbon emissions. The key player missing here is the U.S.
China, the U.S. and Clean Coal
The most interesting collaborations on clean energy, however, aren’t happening around the negotiating table. This week, The Atlantic’s James Fallows wrote a long piece about the work that the U.S. and China are doing together on clean coal technology, the magic cure-all to the world’s energy ills.
In the piece, Fallows recognizes what environmentalists have long argued: coal is bad for the environment and for coal-mining communities. But, unlike clean energy advocates who want to phase coal out of the energy equation, Fallows argues that coal must play a part in the world’s energy future. Therefore, we must find a way to burn it without releasing clouds of carbon into the atmosphere. That’s where clean coal technology comes in. So far, however, researchers have had little luck minimizing coal’s carbon output.
A few progressive writers weighed in on Fallows’ piece: Grist’s David Roberts thought Fallows was too hard on the anti-coal camp, while Campus Progress’ Sara Rubin argued that the piece did a good job of grappling with the reality of clean energy economics. And Mother Jones‘ Kevin Drum had one very clear criticism—that the piece skated over the question of progress on carbon capture, the one real way to dramatically reduce carbon pollution from coal. He wrote:
All the collaboration sounds wonderful, and even a 20% or 30% improvement in coal technology would be welcome. But that said, sequestration is the holy grail and I still don’t know if the Chinese are doing anything more on that front than the rest of us.
On every front, then, the view on climate change is now a long one.
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68 Comments so far
Show AllCoincidentally, today on Science Friday (NPR) a group of scientists ( climatologists among them) appeared saying that they had banded together to stand up to the silliness of the global warming critics and even go on the offensive.
About time I say!
http://www.npr.org/search/index.php?searchinput=science+friday
Where is the science? All you have is emotional argument, and doctored and cherry-picked data. No wonder you can't convince anyone with your voodoo. The actual measured - NOT computer modeled - science shows that climate change is extremely unlikely to be catastrophic. Problem is that 'your guys' are on record as having clearly stated that they're willing to lie and exaggerate in order to get their agenda passed into law. THAT is not science.
You're a herd of sheep running to your own slaughter.
Oh, lord. The irony of that statement. We'll see what you think in a few years when you're gasping for air like a fish out of water. Of all the ignorant causes a person can side with, this has got to be it.
You're silly. But then, your sort are prone to exaggeration.
Dear Jonathan Edwards.
Computer model? Oh, is that the same one that Wall St. and the banks used?
Pretty much. The IPCC exaggerates data and presents computer models as if they were the real thing. The actual measured data, according to climatologists who do not side with the alarmists, does not agree with the models at all.
The UN's IPCC pushes for the agenda of multi-(oil-)billionaire Maurice Strong, who has over 60 years of very well developed connections all through the UN, and stands to profit personally if the agenda gets enacted. This is about billions of dollars, not climate change.
Jonathan, below you write your scientist is suggesting global warming has "Ceased."
Why are the global Temperatures average rising and Why are the polar caps disappearing fast?
What is your so called "ACTUAL MEASURED"?
Your scientist also seems to think we are sheep because since this debate has been around for 20 years, it is crazy to pick up the debate in the last "4 years".... Just from that opening statement shows me mental instability.
This is goofy talk... so prove global warming is over or find some real "sheep" to lead.
I agree that there is a lot of profiteering going on with Carbon Trading, but that is a side issue because capitalists always want to profit from bad news.
Where is your real Science?
Show me the good news that Global Warming is over, but back it up with real climate science data.
Dear Jim Glover, please refer to scientific studies if you are serious about wanting to see that. I am not a scientist, and hence have no scientific studies of my own to show you.
Richard Lindzen, who wrote part of the IPCC report in 2001, should be a good starting point. After all, he has written more than 200 peer reviewed scientific papers and books on the subject.
"Lindzen is a recipient of the American Meteorological Society's Meisinger and Charney Awards, American Geophysical Union's Macelwane Medal, and the Leo Prize from the Wallin Foundation in Goteborg, Sweden. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and was named Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society. He is a corresponding member of the NAS Committee on Human Rights, and a member of the United States National Research Council Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate. He was a consultant to the Global Modeling and Simulation Group at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Lindzen is an ISI highly cited researcher, and his biography has been included in American Men and Women of Science." [from Wikipedia]
The polar caps are not disappearing, as you claim. Antarctic ice has increased at approximately the equivalent as Arctic sea ice has increased.
The profiteering in Carbon Trading is NOT a side issue, when the VERY SAME PEOPLE who push for it via Kyoto, Copenhagen, etc, are the same people who stand to profit. That is a clear conflict of interest. [Al Gore, Maurice Strong, David Mayer de Rothschild, are all invested in the success of carbon trading]
Why would you think that Global Warming being over would be the good news? Where I live used to be tropical climate, teeming with flora and fauna. Warming is not a problem. Environmental destruction brought on by human rape of the planet's resources however, is. The disappearing forests, the poisoned oceans, the depleted animal life, the toxic soil. All those are the real issues that are not solved by CO2 taxation. You breathe out CO2. It is a natural part of the ecological cycle, and not a problem at all.
You are entitled to be fooled, and I would not take that right away from you if I could. It is folks like you, either shills for or tools of unscrupulous scientists working for the very polluters most vulnerable to costly legislation, that the aforementioned bloc of climatologists ban together to combat.
All your bluster notwithstanding, and most of what you posted here is old crap long discredited,( such as your smarmy reference to one obscure university and the few stupid guys there who fudged data to advance a career, trying to lie to us that that sole act represents all the data), the great majority of the scientific community, the really great majority in fact, all line up behind the validity of man made global warming.
I am awaiting this group of committed and concerned scientists to get their publicity train a'rolling, if only so that those like you can return the the dark ages and get back to your real job of burning witches.
Isn't it your job to burn witches? I mean, after all, you're the religious fanatic here, aren't you?
AGW is a religion that must be believed, even without irrefutable proof. Even when there is plenty of evidence against it. Those who will not believe in your "God" and take AGW on faith must burn. I think that sums it up.
Sums it up just fine. When you take your head out of the sand it will be because the damn sand has gotten to hot to continue to hide within it.
There's the real world, and there's fiction.
Look at NASA. NASA has a map that shows temperature increases from 1 degree to 10 degrees worldwide, from 1960-2060. http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/105582main_GlobalWarming_2060_lg.jpg . That's terrible. But then again, it's also fiction and scaremongering, because, last time I looked, it's not 2060 yet, so how can they determine the changes for that 100 year span? They should write a science fiction novel with all that tax money they get. They show Antarctica from 5-10 degrees warmer, when in fact, Antarctica has been getting colder. But don't let reality sidetrack you from your climate paranoia.
Of the overall warming trend of 0.35 degrees C in the last 50 years [source: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/global-sfc-radiosonde-temp/200901-200912.gif] - temperatures where I live fluctuate by 70C or more through the course of the year, to put that in perspective - HOW MUCH is part of the natural cycle of warming, and how much is man-made? To put it into perspective even more, at this speed, global temperatures will take until 2110 to rise 1 degree from 1958 levels, and considering the Peak Oil theory, the planet will have virtually run out of carbon energy long before then. 100 years from now, humans will not be using 85 million barrels of oil a day. Humanity may be lucky to still have 10, as per some. But then again, long before that happens, human population will likely crash, through engineered or natural causes.
Gee, let me see if I understand this.
Thousands of "environmentalists" are flying down to get people to cut their consumption of fossil fuels. But, by flying down to Cancun they, themselves, are consuming thousands of tons of fossil fuel to get there and back.
So, if the so-called environmentalists think their fossil fuel consumption doesn't count and they will not take responsibility for their own personal consumption, what makes anyone think that the averge person (or corporation) will cut their consumption?
Looks like leading by bad example to me.
You're right. The leading figures behind the "evil CO2" push are multi billionaires who are invested in the successful implementation of worldwide carbon trading. At the same time they pushed for labeling CO2 a pollutant, they themselves pollute, being invested in oil and gas, car manufacturing, constantly traveling all over the world, living in super-sized mansions, driving super-sized vehicles, and breeding more than the average family.
If their example shows anything, it is that "Catastrophic AGW" is a cynical myth, designed to shift power from one block of elites to another, and nothing more. It is a money racket that intends to reduce world population by making food unaffordable to the poorest couple of billion people, while at the same time trying to corner ownership of the world food supply by patenting seeds.
It's probably my inability to express myself, but you have misunderstood my comment.
I have no doubt that global warming is real and is going go be the greatest issue facing mankind in the next 100 years.
It seems to me if one believes in global warming, yet does nothing personally to cut their own consumption, it is overtly hypocritical.
It is like someone smoking a cigarette while saying how evil cigarette smoking is.
As far as the carbon trading thing; IMHO it is simply Disaster Capitalism. The greedy are trying to cash in on a global catrastrophy.
But that seems to be human nature. So, personally I don't think there is going to be a solution until it is way too late. In fact, it is probably already way too late.
The Cancun meeting is nothing more than a feel-good pep rally. Nothing will be accomplished at the meeting.
But, hey, for the "environmentalists" in Cancun having a good time at the expense of the environment all I can say is "party on, dudes" while you still can.
Consider the "long view": Extinction. In the short run, business as usual. Why not cancel a meeting where no one expects anything to come from it? The coal and oil bosses have won. Nothing renewable but maybe less than 1 percent would be okay while we burn up the rest of the fossil fuel. Right? Are we on the same page? Everyone okay with global warming? Obama is in favor of it--it can't be that bad.
The search for a magic silver bullet like clean coal is limited imagination attempting to continue the same old way but with a cleaner version of energy inputs. Accomplishment of this very unlikely miracle depends on blind faith that the old way is the best way and simply needs a little tweaking. Scientific observation of collapsing planetary life support systems confirms that carbon dioxide is indeed causing problems, yet the complete picture is more complicated than this one simple gas ... there are literally thousands of awful poisons being vented along with CO2. Environmental toxins are in every living cell on the planet, they float in the air and water and when their atoms are struck and energized by solar radiation they morph and combine into totally unexpected and often even more harmful pollutants.
Justice is the foundation of a sustainable human culture : liberty and justice for all, justice for the future, and justice with nature. There is no justice on earth when people and all life forms must eat, drink and breath corporate disposal of poisons into the general environment, rather than cleaning up after themselves. Affluence equals effluence according to the famous equation of China Melville. There is no real economy of scale beyond a little job specialization, most profits are a complete illusion, what the current system calls profit is simply the money saved by not cleaning up life killing poisons. A completely different way of doing business is required to save humanity from extinction, growth in quality of life for all living creatures is the magic path to a just and sustainable human culture.
The long view is:
1. Nuclear power.
*Finish development of DU or thorium recycling/breeding reactors and deploy around the world.
*Use nuclear power for industry, electricity, rail, even fast ships to replace aircraft.
*Use nuclear to remove CO2 from atmosphere, even synthesize hydrocarbon fuel from CO2 and H2O. (Don't want to wait 100,000 years for return to 350 ppm!)
2. Species preservation.
*Save critical numbers of as many endangered species in reservations, zoos, seed banks...
*Deploy and repopulate when climate returns to normal.
3. Population and Lifestyle Control.
The Tea Party thinks there is too much gov't control now!
The longer we wait...
Nukes are promoted by a few notable people who are doing good work otherwise, such as James Hansen.
However, the real solutions, in my view, involve doing a load analysis on the typical home, realizing most electricity is wasted. That waste is sometimes in the form of unnecessary appliances, phantom loads, and poor insulation and a compromised 'building envelope.'
Renewable energy sources can be ramped up and expanded--wind, solar thermal, solar PV are all workable technologies when combined with energy efficiency programs, load analysis, and downsizing electrical use. Feed-in-tariffs have proven an effective way to make renewable energy of all sorts viable. Cut subsidies to coal, gas, and nukes--trade those subsidies for feed-in-tariffs on renewable energy sources. Why am I the only one promoting this on a supposedly 'progressive' forum? Am I just dialoguing with poseur-agents working as boosters for the nuclear and coal industries?
Nuclear power is dependent on a finite fuel sources and the waste is a long-term liability. We see how the dangers of it can only be financed by the government underwriting the insurance policy, otherwise, it is NOT economically viable.
Cut the military budget, slash it to pieces--plenty of money there to build trains, develop renewable energy financing, replace the aging grid, promote cycling, promote mass transit, tax gasoline to change habits, provide free service to help people insulate and weatherproof their homes, and so on.
Get it?
Richard Lindzen on the agenda of "Climate Change Environmentalists"
"[...]One may ask why there has been the astounding upsurge in alarmism in the past four years. When an issue like global warming is around for more than 20 years, numerous agendas are developed to exploit the issue. The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power, influence and donations are reasonably clear. So, too, are the interests of bureaucrats for whom control of carbon dioxide is a dream come true. After all, carbon dioxide is a product of breathing itself.
Politicians can see the possibility of taxation that will be cheerfully accepted to save Earth. Nations see how to exploit this issue in order to gain competitive advantages. So do private firms. The case of Enron (a now bankrupt Texas energy firm) is illustrative. Before disintegrating in a pyrotechnic display of unscrupulous manipulation, Enron was one of the most intense lobbyists for Kyoto. It had hoped to become a trading firm dealing in carbon-emission rights. This was no small hope. These rights are likely to amount to trillions of dollars, and the commissions will run into many billions.
It is probably no accident that Al Gore himself is associated with such activities. The sale of indulgences is already in full swing with organizations selling offsets to one’s carbon footprint while sometimes acknowledging that the offsets are irrelevant. The possibilities for corruption are immense.
Finally, there are the well-meaning individuals who believe that in accepting the alarmist view of climate change, they are displaying intelligence and virtue. For them, psychic welfare is at stake.
Clearly, the possibility that warming may have ceased could provoke a sense of urgency. For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed. However, the need to courageously resist hysteria is equally clear. Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever-present climate change is no substitute for prudence."
- Richard S. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan professor of atmospheric science at MIT.
This is an excerpt of a longer article, which can be read at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/09/lindzen-earth-is-never-in-equilibrium/
Rubbish. Some scientists are climate-change deniers, but those folks represent a minority of climate scientists; they are typically bought-off academics who have been found to be benefiting from their stance, like all the climate-denier Republicans who got gobs of corporate money to champion the causes of coal and gas--the cheap suicide.
Please tell us all who is buying off Richard Lindzen, a man with more than 35 years of climatology experience, at one of the most prestigious scientific institutions on this planet. I'd love to know.
Boy, if they're counting on the power of the people of the United States of Apathy are they/we ever screwed!
There's a low quality picture of climate pattern we can expect to see more of at NOAA/NWS aviation/obs/satellite/ water vapor (not a URL , sorry)
Notice cyclonic rotation N of Greenland with 4-5 rough "arms" trailing, about equally spaced over the N hemisphere.
Tonite, about 9PM.
Buy silver now!
Ever since the Supreme Court's decisions on "Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad" (Presonhood) and "Citizens United" (Omnipotence) human beings have had no chance at all against corporations. It's time to emigrate or secede.
Where is all the science? Get your head of the tar sands, man, and do the reading. The basic science dates back to the early 19th century - adding carbon to the atmosphere causes global warming. If you're foggy on the science (or prone to conspiracy theories in place of serious political economic analysis) read Keeping Our Cool by Andrew Weaver, one of the world's leading climatologists. There is total unanimity in the climatology community that global warming is caused by humans adding carbon to the atmosphere - see Naomi Oreske's book Merchant of Doubt or James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore's Climate Coverup: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming or their Desmogblog for a penetrating analysis on the criminal perfidy and calumny of the vested interests who are bank rolling the denial machine. The fact that Al Gore might live in a big house with an above average power bill is irrelevant to the objective causes of anthropogenic climate change. Big oil and big coal have trillions invested and have set their minions - junk scientists and spin doctors with no ethical conscience - into motion to spread disinformation about the causes of global warming. The IPCC scientists and the thousands of scientists doing the cutting edge research in the field or developing the computer modelling (which to date has underestimated the warming trend) are not part of some conspiracy by big oil or big coal to sew confusion on the science of climate change. As for the claim that global warming is not likely to be catastrophic - read Alana Mitchell's Sea Sick. If we tip the chemical balance in the ocean's - and we are on the cusp - the impacts will be catastrophic indeed.
THANK YOU! Finally, a sane person...
Sane? or are you merely applauding because you opine the same? Richard Lindzen is a 35-year veteran of climate science at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. He has not been connected to industry, corruption and lies as several scientists of the IPCC. He has many peer-reviewed scientific studies to show, and he (and many others) say that the alarmists are wrong. I take his word over the words of proven liars with an agenda.
If you take one persons "word" you are a fool.
If you take Al Gore's, Maurice Strong's, David Mayer de Rothschild's, et al, you are an even greater fool. :-)
And China and almost every country in the world too.... no you have no science you are a nut case.
You have shown you are a jerk on this issue as well.
I am not a jerk for not agreeing to let you rob me of my livelihood based on mere professions of junk science.
1. There is no urgency to "act on CO2". It's a money extraction racket to make a few people filthy rich on the backs of the deceived middle class and poor. In fact, atmospheric CO2 levels are lower now than they have been for hundreds of millions or even billions of years, during which entire time life flourished on earth.
While CO2 is not the problem, Overpopulation is destroying plant and animal life, forests and oceans, a phenomena that was not part of the equation before humans.
2. CO2 is not the pollution that is killing the planet. Man is.
3. I don't care about your grandchildren's planet. If you continue to procreate in an environment as overpopulated as this one, then you bear responsibility for personal lifestyle cuts to save the planet for your children and grandchildren.
My impact on this planet will cease in probably 30 years or less, because I have made the conscious choice not to contribute to the overpopulation and pollution problem.
Well, I agree that pollution is a problem but like warming ... Environmentalists are fighting pollution too and they go together.
Of course there are cycles to these changes, and all changes in nature and energy itself... it is the intensity of each new cycle that is the issue.
I agree children are the villains,snark.
Every child born represents an ecological footprint that (under normal circumstances) impacts the planet for over 70 years. Children are not villains, but the children born today are still the victims of genetic programming by evolution. It is built into humanity by mother nature itself, to breed until the point of collapse, as happens with every species. Humans are no exception and are not any wiser than any other animal when it comes to controlling sexual and reproductive urges. Instead of using technological advances to live a better life, humans have used it to fill every nook and cranny of the planet with more humans and human destruction.
Just like humans finding ways to increase food production led to more humans (though not necessarily less suffering), better use of energy will also not serve to better our lives, but to increase human population even more. Unless of course, GMO foods will be engineered to give humanity incurable illnesses in order to force down human population. With the same people who want to bring us a form of carbon tax also being invested in the spreading of GMO's AND having expressed the desire to force worldwide population to below a billion, the latter, as part of an overall strategy, would actually not surprise me at all.
Don't take their word. Read the credible climate scientists like Andrew Weaver (Keeping Our Cool), one of the many thousands of climate scientists doing the serious peer-reviewed research. Read Merchants of Doubt by Naomo Oreskes who surveyed all the peer-reviewed papers in the scientific journals - some 920 - and couldn't find one that disputes anthropogenic climate change. I put my money on the climate scientists doing the serious peer-reviewed research, not on the handful of bought off scientists (and their fellow travelers like Lindzen) who are doing the dirty work for the world's most profitable corporations such as Exxon Mobil and Shell.
dgrey, you do realize that the IPCC is under the control of the UN. There is hardly any pure science anymore. Sources of Funding, not science, determines the outcome. We probably haven't had real science since before I was born. Modern science is poisoning the planet and killing us all with a very slow poison-drip. It is a political battlefield, not a scientific one, and both camps have enormous sums of money to gain or lose. But of one thing you can be sure. No matter which side wins, you and I will lose.
It's not about the environment and the survival of the biosphere, but about trillions of dollars in future tax-extortion.
Given his support for industry shills such as Fred Singer, Lindzen isn't credible. (See Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, page 211.) Your claim that scientists at the IPCC are proven liars is likewise ill founded and baseless. Why would the army of scientists doing the field work - who have compiled mountains of research data to support the international scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change - have a political agenda, while the handful of bought-off industry front men, people who routinely lie through their teeth for dollars, many of whom are recycled hacks from the tobacco lobby and right wing think tanks - not have a political agenda? Your argument strains rational debate not to mention the limits of irony.
one word: funding
it is all about politics, power and money. none of it is about the environment. it is a power struggle between capitalists and capitalists. one side wants to consolidate power in the hands of corporations and the other wants to place it into the hands of unelected global bureaucrats. the common denominator are billions, if not trillions, of dollars to be made.
the ipcc is beholden to the agenda of the UN which, on the climate file, is beholden to the interests of oil-billionaires Maurice Strong and finance-billionaires the House of Rothschild. Maurice Strong wants the carbon trade, the destruction of the middle class, the collapse of western societies, and forced population reduction. all of these pieces are parts of the same puzzle. you won't see the whole picture without piecing them all together.
by the way, there is no "army" of scientists doing the work. the actual research done is the work of only a handful of people. the rest just sign off on it.
Absolutely nothing will be done until it is far too late.
The planet is being scuttled so a handful of men can become obscenely wealthy. The split second there's a snow storm during winter, the media airs a number of talking heads paid by the oil companies to smirk about "global warming." It's incredible. Arguing with the deniers is a huge waste of time, the only evidence they will accept will be their dying families and that will no doubt be chalked off to "God's will" and responsibility will be pushed aside one more time.
In the words of James Lovelock: "Try to enjoy your life while you can. If you're lucky, you have twenty years left."
In order to "save the Earth" one needs the understanding and support of lots of Earthlings. Here are several reasons why you will fail for now. A person who has lost his/her job recently and cannot find another one will ignore you. A person who is evicted from his/her house will ignore you. A person who fears that his/her health is endangered because of insufficient insurance will ignore you. A person who fears that his/her job is in danger will ignore you. A person whose retirement funding is kaput will ignore you. These persons are the vast majority of our nation. They have no time or computer to read this posting. You will be a loser until you begin to realize that "Saving the Earth" requires first a concerted effort to replace the current economic/social system by a more humane one before your lofty goal has even a chance to appear on the horizon of conscience of enough Earthlings.
You are talking to and are heard by a very limited group of elitists.
To a significant extent, the issue of climate change revolves around the elevation of the commonplace to the ancient level of ominous omen. In a world where climate change has always been the norm, climate change is now taken as punishment for sinful levels of consumption. In a world where we experience temperature changes of tens of degrees in a single day, we treat changes of a few tenths of a degree in some statistical residue, known as the global mean temperature anomaly (GATA), as portents of disaster.
Earth has had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a 100,000-year cycle for the last 700,000 years, and there have been previous interglacials that appear to have been warmer than the present despite lower carbon-dioxide levels. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th century, these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat, and, indeed, some alpine glaciers are advancing again.
For small changes in GATA, there is no need for any external cause. Earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Examples include El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation, etc. Recent work suggests that this variability is enough to account for all change in the globally averaged temperature anomaly since the 19th century. To be sure, man’s emissions of carbon dioxide must have some impact. The question of importance, however, is how much.
A generally accepted answer is that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (it turns out that one gets the same value for a doubling regardless of what value one starts from) would perturb the energy balance of Earth about 2 percent, and this would produce about 2 degrees Fahrenheit warming in the absence of feedbacks. The observed warming over the past century, even if it were all due to increases in carbon dioxide, would not imply any greater warming.
However, current climate models do predict that a doubling of carbon dioxide might produce more warming: from 3.6 degrees F to 9 degrees F or more. They do so because within these models the far more important radiative substances, water vapor and clouds, act to greatly amplify whatever an increase in carbon dioxide might do. This is known as positive feedback. Thus, if adding carbon dioxide reduces the ability of the earth system to cool by emitting thermal radiation to space, the positive feedbacks will further reduce this ability.
It is again acknowledged that such processes are poorly handled in current models, and there is substantial evidence that the feedbacks may actually be negative rather than positive. Citing but one example, 2.5 billion years ago the sun’s brightness was 20 percent to 30 percent less than it is today (compared to the 2 percent change in energy balance associated with a doubling of carbon-dioxide levels) yet the oceans were unfrozen and the temperatures appear to have been similar to today’s.
[continued]
[...]This was referred to by Carl Sagan as the Early Faint Sun Paradox. For 30 years, there has been an unsuccessful search for a greenhouse gas resolution of the paradox, but it turns out that a modest negative feedback from clouds is entirely adequate. With the positive feedback in current models, the resolution would be essentially impossible.
Interestingly, according to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the greenhouse forcing from manmade gases is already about 86 percent of what one expects from a doubling of carbon dioxide (with about half coming from methane, nitrous oxide, freons, and ozone). Thus, these models should show much more warming than has been observed. The reason they don’t is that they have arbitrarily removed the difference and attributed this to essentially unknown aerosols.
The IPCC claim that most of the recent warming (since the 1950s) is due to man assumed that current models adequately accounted for natural internal variability. The failure of these models to anticipate the fact that there has been no statistically significant warming for the past 14 years or so contradicts this assumption. This has been acknowledged by major modeling groups in England and Germany.
However, the modelers chose not to stress this. Rather they suggested that the models could be further corrected, and that warming would resume by 2009, 2013, or even 2030.
Global warming enthusiasts have responded to the absence of warming in recent years by arguing that the past decade has been the warmest on record. We are still speaking of tenths of a degree, and the records themselves have come into question. Since we are, according to these records, in a relatively warm period, it is not surprising that the past decade was the warmest on record. This in no way contradicts the absence of increasing temperatures for over a decade.
Given that the evidence (and I have noted only a few of many pieces of evidence) suggests that anthropogenic warming has been greatly exaggerated, so too is the basis for alarm. However, the case for alarm would still be weak even if anthropogenic global warming were significant. Polar bears, arctic summer sea ice, regional droughts and floods, coral bleaching, hurricanes, alpine glaciers, malaria, etc., all depend not on GATA but on a huge number of regional variables including temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, and direction and magnitude of wind and the state of the ocean.
The fact that some models suggest changes in alarming phenomena will accompany global warming does not logically imply that changes in these phenomena imply global warming. This is not to say that disasters will not occur; they always have occurred, and this will not change in the future. Fighting global warming with symbolic gestures will certainly not change this. However, history tells us that greater wealth and development can profoundly increase our resilience.
- Richard Lindzen, Climate scientist at MIT, with over 200 scientific papers and books.
I don't think he really knows that the weather was like it is today 2.5 billion years ago.
He can speculate and you still haven't shown your temperature data proving that global warming is over.
Why should it be over? Where I live, we have 7 months in which we can't grow anything. I don't think that is a good thing. I'm ok with climate change, as it has always happened throughout the course of this planet.
National Geographic has reported that the Sahara Desert is shrinking due to 'Global Warming'. That's a good thing. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html
First it is a myth and now it is a "good thing".
If Global warming is now a good thing after you spent this whole discussion trying to prove it is not true and your one scientist is suggesting it has ceased with speculation about the weather over 2 billion yeas ago, you are only reinforcing your own confusion.
Jim, please point to a single post where I call Global Warming a myth. My contention is that Climate Change is a naturally occurring cycle.
As far as Human contribution to it, it is pretty much limited to factors like deforestation and destruction of the ecological cycle, by seriously altering the 'landscape' of the planet. Every year, the planet is losing 13-16 million hectares of forest to accommodate and feed more human population. You want something to worry about? then worry about that.
Everything in nature is cycles, but all cycles are not equal.
Your Scientist, that you pasted in here was suggesting that Global warming has "ceased".
Do you agree with your Scientist you used for your argument or not?
From what I see, there is enough data to suggest that there is no crisis, any way you slice it, and that the alarmism is wrong and merely meant to steer us into accepting a worldwide carbon-feudal system.
I did not read into Lindzen's article that he believes that 'Global Warming' has permanently 'ceased', but that there has been no significant change in more than a decade. Why would global climate stop changing now, when it has changed for billions of years? If climate change had ceased, that, to me, would be cause for alarm, as that would indicate that systems no longer function as they always have.
It's not relevant to share opinions on every detail of every finding. I do not have all the data. However, I do agree with his general opinion on the issue of climate change.
What I have seen suggests to me that carbon is not a problem, will not be a problem, and that climate alarmism is misguided and driven by a political and capitalist, and not an ecological, agenda.