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Climate Change: Science's Fresh Fight to Win Over the Sceptics
Hacked emails from climate researchers at the University of East Anglia caused a storm last year. Now scientists say it's even harder to convince the world of the reality of climate change
This was simply "the worst scientific scandal of a generation" – a bid by researchers to hoodwink the public over global warming and hide evidence showing fossil fuels were not really heating up our planet. These were the dramatic claims made by newspapers, websites and blogs across the globe a year ago this week, following the hacking of emails from a computer at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
If "climategate" has had a major impact, how long will it last? Has it permanently damaged politicians's hopes of controlling global carbon emissions? Or is there hope that the cause of climate science can be resurrected? (photo: REUTERS/Paul Hackett) Those emails – subsequently posted on a website via a Russian computer server – appeared to show that unit researchers, led by Professor Phil Jones, were working with scientists round the world to suppress data that proved global warming was not happening. One email in which the word "trick" was used by Jones was said to demonstrate he was hiding evidence while others were said to show that scientists were trying to prevent the publication of studies contradicting the idea that carbon emissions were heating up Earth.
The affair – inevitably dubbed climategate – caused considerable controversy at the Copenhagen talks that December. Many analysts believe its "revelations" were used by some delegates, including those from Saudi Arabia, to scupper a binding deal to limit global carbon emissions while Sarah Palin claimed the emails showed leading climate "experts" had "destroyed records, manipulated data and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing".
Public support for climate scientists was also harmed, with polls showing that trust in them dropped to 40%, from around 60%, in the UK. "By any measure, the leaking of those emails had a tremendous impact not only on Copenhagen but on all the international discussions that followed that meeting," said John Abraham, a University of Minnesota researcher who last week launched a new US campaign to fight those who deny humans' influence on climate. "All sorts of allegations were made and these still stick in people's minds."
Abraham's remarks raise key questions. If climategate has had a major impact, how long will it last? Has it permanently damaged politicians's hopes of controlling global carbon emissions? Or is there hope that the cause of climate science can be resurrected?
Answers to these questions are unexpected and disturbing. In the case of Jones and his colleagues, the impact of the affair was deeply unpleasant. They were inundated with abusive messages including death threats. Jones, one of the world's most respected climate scientists, lost more than a stone in weight and entertained suicidal thoughts on several occasions, he later admitted. "I was shocked. People said I should go and kill myself. They said that they knew where I lived. They were coming from all over the world."
Jones survived, however. After standing down as head of his unit, he was reappointed following publication of a series of independent UK reports which backed the integrity of his work and his behaviour and which concluded those examples of "scandal" had been cherry-picked and quoted out of context. Sir Muir Russell, the senior civil servant who led one inquiry, praised the "rigour and honesty" of the unit's scientists, for example, while another inquiry, chaired by Lord Oxburgh, found "no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice".
Even more stark were the findings of a separate inquiry in America by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This report not only endorsed the work of the East Anglian climate researchers, it also strongly attacked US politicians and energy groups who had tried to suggest that the leaked East Anglia emails revealed that humans were not playing a role in warming of the planet.
According to the EPA, these people had "routinely misunderstood or mis-characterised the scientific issues, drawn faulty conclusions, resorted to hyperbole, impugned the ethics of climate scientists in general, and characterised actions as 'falsifications' and 'manipulation' with no basis or support." Such individuals had also cherry-picked the language of the emails without looking deeper into the issues or providing corroborating evidence to assert that improper action had occurred. As a summation of climate scientists' disdain for global warming deniers, these words could hardly be bettered.
Among those who had petitioned the EPA to change US environment regulations, using the East Anglia emails as evidence of meteorological fraud and manipulation, was Peabody Energy, the world's largest private coal company. Its executives were so confident that climategate could be exploited as a global scandal that it even sent a memo to the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee when it began to deliberate the affair this year, accusing the unit's scientists of "suppressing dissenting views". (The committee disagreed and vindicated the unit.)
The fact that companies like Peabody have exploited the East Anglia emails is revealing. As Bob Ward, policy director at the London School of Economics' Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, pointed out: "It is clear the leaked emails have been used by companies and groups with large financial interests in oil and coal production in order to oppose the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions". The reverberations of climategate run deep and hard.
For those who believe carbon emissions pose a serious threat of triggering devastating temperature rises by the end of the century, the controversy has been a dispiriting experience. However they should not despair completely. For one thing, it would wrong to blame the leaked emails for the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks last year.
"They certainly influenced the atmosphere of the talks," said Michael Jacobs, who, as Gordon Brown's special adviser on climate change, participated in all the high-level talks at Copenhagen. "They were mentioned by the Saudi Arabian delegation, for example, and got widespread coverage in the US. But they weren't decisive. Countries' negotiating positions had been formed over the previous two years and were based on the accepted science. They could not be altered by a single new controversy."
In fact, since the talks ended, most countries have continued to pursue the goals they set for themselves before the meeting. Only the US and Australia have deviated from their decisions to take some action against global warming. Most other countries, including Britain and its European neighbours, have continued to build wind farms and establish ambitious renewable energy goals. "There has not been a massive rowing back of measures to counter climate change," added Jacobs.
This view was backed by Gavin Schmidt, a Nasa climatologist and founding member of RealClimate, a pro-science blog on climate issues. "The climate and global warming are not top issues on world news agendas at present. But you cannot expect those issues to be topping agendas all the time. There are spikes and troughs."
The illegal leaking of the East Anglia emails may have helped push aside global warming as a topic of popular appeal but that lack of interest will not continue for ever. Public concern will return. "There is growing underlying trend of concern about climate change," Schmidt insists. "The next spike of interest will be higher than the last and that background trend of concern will go on."
In other words, all is not lost for climate sciene – though the tasks facing its practitioners should not be underestimated, a point stressed by Professor Trevor Davies, pro-vice-chancellor at the University of East Anglia and a former director of its climate-research unit. "This affair has showed just how difficult it is to get over rational, objective arguments to people who are just not prepared to listen. It is going to be very, very difficult to engage and converse with some of these people."
Nevertheless, climate researchers will have to do just that in the coming years. The one criticism levelled by those groups who investigated and reported on climategate was their concern that its researchers had failed to answer properly the many requests for information that they had received from the public and from climate-change deniers. "We are going to have deal with that. We accept that," said Davies. "In future we will have to be utterly transparent in our undertakings. We will have to go out and engage with the public and justify our stance. That is the real lesson of this affair."
Vicky Pope, head of climate-change advice at the UK Met Office, agreed. "We are currently collecting vast sets of data for our studies of the climate and we are going to have make these available in forms that can be used by interested groups. They can then see for themselves that our analyses are sound and correct. It means a lot of extra work but if that is the price for making sure we demonstrate the dangers posed by climate change then we will have to pay it."
HOW THE DRAMA UNFOLDED
2009
19 Nov Rumours begin to appear on climate change denier blogs that a hacker had obtained emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) computers.
20 Nov UEA confirms that emails and documents from CRU have been illegally leaked online.
23 Nov Climate change deniers call for an inquiry. Articles in the press allege that the leaked emails show that data are being manipulated.
1 Dec CRU head Professor Phil Jones stands down while an independent inquiry, commissioned by the Royal Society and chaired by Lord Oxburgh, is conducted.
3 Dec During the UN climate talks in Copenhagen, the Saudi chief negotiator claims the CRU controversy proves climate change is not caused by humans.
Meanwhile, the UEA commission former civil servant Sir Muir Russell is to chair a separate independent inquiry into the leaks.
4 Dec Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says the matter cannot be swept "under the carpet".
2010
14 Apr CRU is cleared of malpractice in Lord Oxburgh's report.
7 Jul Sir Muir Russell's Independent Climate Change Email Review finds that CRU scientists 'did not withhold evidence', concluding that 'their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt'.
- Posted in
70 Comments so far
Show AllI have not heard whether anyone determined who did the hacking. Surely it was done from a computer belonging to a "denier." Not that that would convince anyone whose agenda involves denial, but it would be interesting to know.
I read that the emails were first posted to the internet from a computer in a University in Siberia that has long been linked to the Russian counterpart of the CIA. Russia, one of the worlds major oil producers, has a lot to gain from slowing down progress on Climate Change. If you want to witness a 'news' hack job on Climate Change even worse than the one Faux News does, check out Russia Today on youtube. Truly remarkable cherry picking going on there.
Modern psychology tells us that people make a decision first--for reasons not always apparent to themselves--and only afterwards create an explanation for their act. That fits the climate "debate" perfectly. First, on the basis of past experience, they decide global warming cannot be true and then they grope around for reasons to support this judgment. It doesn't matter what scientists do or don't do: people will always invent a reason that supports their decision. (By the way, for the most part, those who accept climate change are no different--they are inclined to believe it for reasons not always apparent to others or themselves). Very few people will look at the evidence in independent fashion and evaluate the strength of claims made based upon actual arguments. Rational explanations come after the fact, not before. The point is that people are prisoners of their past experience in making decisions; characters like Mr. Spock of Star Trek do not exist. All of this does not auger well for humankind or the rest of the planet. Humans are too inclined to believe what they WANT to be true, not what is true. As evidence piles up over the coming generations, perhaps this unwanted truth of global warming will seep into our consciousness. More likely, it will be repressed and people will invent new reasons for propping up their decision to do nothing about changing their life habits.
"By the way, for the most part, those who accept climate change are no different--they are inclined to believe it for reasons not always apparent to others or themselves"
"Very few people will look at the evidence in independent fashion and evaluate the strength of claims made based upon actual arguments."
Of course they won't. But, in the case of those who take AGW seriously, it isn't because of preconceived bias, but because it is a technical issue, and it is perfectly rational to rely on the competence of experts on issues for which one is not qualified to evaluate!
Nowhere except the in the USA are there so many people who know nothing about anything think they know everything about everything, and I include the "right" and "left" in this.
SaboCat,
Your nod to American Exceptionalism (Nowhere except in the USA...) is unfortunately misplaced. I have met many people from Europe, Africa, Japan, China, Korea, and Canada who are as ignorant of their own ignorance as the dullest American.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change papers are posted on line. We do not have to take anthropogenic climate change on faith because experts say it's so: they publish the evidence and its reasonably accessible. The IPCC papers are actually very interesting; every literate person should read them.
Civilization and science could have scarcely developed if humans always base their understanding of the world on preconceived notions. We would never have developed the stone axe, the control of fire, agriculture, towns, modern medicine, etc. A person's propensity to base their views on preconceived notions that are unfounded and false rather than on critical reading and thinking would seem more an artifact of the manufactured misinformation and distractions rampant in contemporary American society than on your somewhat reactionary view of human nature. Ordinary people - especially when advantaged by an education that fosters critical thinking - have the capacity to thoroughly understand issues such as anthropogenic climate change. If there were a truly democratic public discussion about climate change, i.e., if all sides of the debate had the same resources at their disposal, if the mass media were not largely controlled by a handful of large monopolies interlocked with those vested interests that seek to deny the science, episodes like 'climagate' would never get any traction and the disconnect between the science and public policy would be soon rectified. The task at hand is to organize effectively against the calumny and lies being propagated by these vested interests and their denial machine to reveal where the truth lies. Don't universalize the anti-intellectual strains in contemporary US culture into a pessimistic theory of human psychology. Many cultures revere and listen to their public intellectuals - their best writers, scientists, philosophers. We need to do the same.
drosera; Ah yes, Mr. Spock and logic; the glaciars are melting, we will have a northwest passage which will change the ocean currents, which is logical and which,in turn, will change weather patterns on land affecting crops and everything else. Giant garbage dumps out in the oceans, sattalite images that show pollution coming out of world rivers and so much more! You mentioned Spock and logic jumped into my fingers.That is all people should need but you are correct; people on both sides of the equation are going to "personally" going to have to get smacked in the face to understand that global warming is. I believe we have already passed the tipping point but have no clue as to how severe the changes will be. Tony
Keep getting error 403 for CD home page. I am able to see CD now and log in using a proxy server...
The hacked e-mails and other frauds did not help the cause. All credibility has been lost... All the deniers (and scientists who questioned methods used for data collection and analysis) did was point out what the climate scientists who supported AGW got caught did. The damage is done and it will be years before any climate scientist will be taken seriously.
[Posted by 98.110.229.122 via http://algart.net/ww This is added while posting a message to avoid misuse.
Try: http://webwarper.net/webwarper.exe Example of viewing: http://webwarper.net/ww/www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/11/14-1#comment-form ]
"All the deniers (and scientists who questioned methods used for data collection and analysis) did was point out what the climate scientists who supported AGW got caught did. The damage is done and it will be years before any climate scientist will be taken seriously."
So you are still being hoodwinked by the jerks that intentionally tried to discredit these scientists, through their own lying, obfuscation, and fraudulent acts.
DESTRUCTION FROM POLITECAL ADS
The effectiveness of the misinformation and childish rhetoric in political ads & commentary defy logic and reflect poorly on the American intellect.
More importantly they have lead to many of the warped policies which have generated and prolonged our economic and environmental declines.
Until Americans gain some astuteness, and defang he special interest racketeers who are stealing our livlilhood, through such deceptive tactics, our economy and quality of life can never improve.
Its amazing how Fox News and others can grab on to a tidbit of correspondance for their purposes and can still obscure the much larger body of evidence from NASA, NOAA, and independent researchers and universities all over the world.
Millions of Fox viewers consider Hannity, Beck and company the last word on everything, and still think NASA only does rockets, and are barely aware NOAA even exists.
Good luck scientists. Looking at the latest ocean temp, air temp, CO2, methane, coral bleaching, drought, sea level, arctic melting, extinctions, super storms...data, it might be too late already.
The global warming skeptics such as Bush, Limbaugh, Inayu,etc, who have opposed every environmental measure, are endowed by divine intellect. We all understand that this precludes evidence, developed by the dedicated scientific community who have spent their careers studyihg this problem.
For making decisions under conditions of uncertainty, people should consider what is called "Signal Detection Theory". There are four conditions to consider. If human activity is changing the climate in dangerous ways, and that is what we believe to be true, then there is no error. If human activity is NOT changing the climate in dangerous ways, and that is what we believe to be true, then again, there is not error. But, if humans are changing the climate and we do NOT believe it, that is called a "false-negative" error. On the opposite side, if humans are NOT changing the climate and we believe we are, that is called a "false-positive" error. Since we have no external basis for knowing for certain what is the reality, we have to consider the consequences of the errors we might be making. If we are making a false-negative error, then the consequences will be deaths of 10s of millions of people, rising sea levels, and maybe, worst-case, extermination of humans as a species. If we are making a false-positive error, then the consequences will be energy efficiency, population control, and diversion of public and private money from consumer goods and war to energy infrastructure. Looking at the consequences of the errors, then it is much better to make the false-positive error than the false-negative error. That is, given the choice of adding your voice, vote, and allegiance to the climate deniers or to the greens, it is more rational to go with the greens.
Well said.
SeriousCitizen:
You make the exact point I also wanted to make. To put it another way:
The climate change issue is one of public policy, not one of science. Once scientists established the reasonable likelihood that human-induced climate change is occurring with the potential for catastrophic consequences, the issue becomes what to do about this information.
Should we sit on our hands, fingers crossed, eyes closed, and pray that nothing bad happens? Maybe it won't. But if it does, the human species is screwed. On the other hand, if we act now, doing things like increasing energy efficiency and cutting our reliance on fossil fuels, we will hardly bring civilization to a halt.
In science there should always be room for skepticism, but there can be NO QUESTION that it's imperative we act, and act now!
What happens when CO2 gets taxed in some way, which feeds directly through to food prices?
When inputs (oil & gas for fertilizer and transportation) become more expensive, food yields will inevidably drop, driving the cost of food up. What will happen to the more than three billion people who live on less than 2 dollars a day?
More than half a billion hectares of forest have been destroyed in the last 30 years. Releasing the carbon from trillions of trees as well as destroying the carbon sinks.
The planet can deal with CO2, but it cannot deal with the deforestation.
Taxation of carbon will spread poverty and starvation among the world's poorest, and create massive unemployment among the working class.
A doubling in price for basic food stuffs is devastating for the poor, but doesn't matter to the billionaires behind the carbon-taxation push.
Of course, taxation will not stop climate change. Why is this always about taking money from people, instead of doing something effective, like massive reforestation of the planet, thereby restoring carbon sinks AND habitat for wildlife?
The effect of a carbon tax on food production will be tiny compared to grain-futures speculation, which I'm sure a good capitalist like you fully supports.
SaboCat, do you get all your exercise by jumping to conclusions? I am not a capitalist. Far from it.
And just to be clear, no amount of the effect of carbon tax on food production will be tiny to the worlds poorest. For you, perhaps. For someone living off $2 a day or less, it's a matter of survival.
The whole point is that a negligible amount of carbon tax will not change habits. The price of gasoline can go up by $0.30 a litre, and driving habits don't change. To have an effect on human behaviour, the carbon tax would have to be significant as to FORCE behaviour change. And by that, you will share responsibility for killing billions, which will be a lot more than any potential climate change could effect.
Can you cite a technical article concluding that a carbon tax would have such terrible implications for the worlds food supply? Most of the world's poor grow their food, or can return to growing it, with little fuel and fertilizer input. It is excesively low grain prices, that have driven the world's small farmers off their land.
And, even if you argument had merit, it would be a simple matter to apply an offsetting credit to agricultural fuels and other important petroleum-or coal based agricultural inputs. This is alerady done, for example, diesel for ag and marine use in the US is exempt from the FET and many state taxes.
It is odd that you appear here on CD to comment on AGW articles and nowhere else. Which oil or coal lobby group do you work for?
I don't have to read "technical reports" to know the implications of carbon taxation on the poorest. But because you require someone else to spell it out for you, since you won't take anything an 'antagonist' tells you, no matter how much sense it might make, here is a tidbit for you, which I easily found by the simple google search "impact of carbon tax on world food prices".
(World development report 2010: development and climate change)
"The real income of the poorest will also be reduced in the near term as the higher up-front costs of greener infrastructure construction, operation and services hit the supply side of the economy. A green tax could have a direct effect on households (caused by the increase in energy prices) and an indirect effect (on total household expenditures as a result of higher cost of production and thus prices of consumer goods). A study in Madagascar found that the indirect effects could represent 40 percent of the welfare losses through higher prices of food, textiles and transport. Despite the greater direct consumption of infrastructure services by the middle class, the poorest quintile was projected to suffer the biggest loss in real income."
I comment a lot on AGW threads here, because I believe the whole AGW hoax and it's envisioned carbon-slavery, is a far greater danger to humanity than climate change could ever be. If you want to be a serf, and sign all your offspring up to be slaves forever, please go ahead. But you will never have my voice added to it.
Either you are living off the social system, and have never earned your own in this life, or you have no idea how rapidly your source of income will disappear in the form of evaporating jobs. If you think unemployment in the US is bad now, you haven't seen anything yet, if carbon taxation (in the amount necessary to affect the climate) were ever instituted. Virtually EVERY job depends on oil, gas and coal, and the perceived 'cheap' energy it provides. A world without your hated oil and gas will be a world of joblessness, hyper-inflation and hunger. And if you are capable to put your blinders aside for just a few minutes and think it through, and string some logical conclusions together, is not hype.
Yes, surely you are as tired of hearing this as I am of hearing about carbon taxes, but: The only way to reduce humanity's effect on the ecology is by encouraging population reduction and discouraging large families. Carbon taxation and the food-price induced genocide against the world's poorest, which must logically follow, simply do not appeal to me at all.
I want to add one more thing you must be aware of. The very same people who invented the idea of the carbon trade, ALSO
- aim for the destruction of the middle class
- aim for the destruction of the economies of the developed world
- are invested in genetically modified "food"
- are invested in the Carbon Exchanges
- envision a planet with vastly reduced population [between 500 million and 1 billion, depending on whose comments you read] (and by their language, I do not believe they want to achieve that by persuasion or education)
At the same time, these very same people enjoy an incredible amount of wealth, which they are not willing to give up for the benefit of humanity and the environment.
I look at these people in terms of the big picture, and the word that comes to mind is: evil. There's a lot more going on than we realize. We get piecemeal feedings, but these people really are hellbent on destruction, not 'salvation'. This is not a fight of good vs evil. It is a fight between two utterly evil and competing camps.
As I understand it, the point of a carbon tax is to use a financial stick and carrot to encourage lower carbon usage. It would make organic farming and non-carbon energy sources more attractive, which would have a beneficial effect on all life on earth, including the world's poorest.
Fred, I already cannot afford to buy organic, and I am not low income. Now imagine a world where 'conventional' (i.e. forced yield) crops will be reduced due to less fertilizer and oil input. You realize that a lot of people in Haiti (for example) already can not afford to eat, so they resort to what's called Mud Pies. What will you tell them, when the cost of food rises even further? I am not making this up. Read it here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/29/food.internationalaidanddevelopment
Are you willing to starve 3 billion people to death, so that you can feel better about 'the environment'? When you lose your work and cannot find a new job that will supply your necessities, will you still praise the carbon tax? You see how much impact it has all throughout the economy when oil supply gets even a little disrupted. It ripples through the entire house of cards. There is NO other solution beside a planned (and peaceful) human population reduction over the next decades. Everything in our economies is tied to, and dependent, on carbon input. Without oil you will not eat. You will not have customers to buy the goods or services you supply to make your living with. It's a chain reaction that ripples through the entire economy.
Read up on tax and DIVIDEND!
Inputs are going up anyway- peak oil and phosphorus and peak nitrogen,and etc.
Thinking about the last stanza of "Dover Beach".--- MD
The tax goes to the poor. The dividend to the billionaires. ;-)
Carbon tax will make the poorest pay for the lifestyle of the richest. Brilliant concept.
Jonathan,
Now tell us what you really think like the other day you said about Global Warming:
----------
"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."
-------------
Now Jonathan,
Your "Actual measured Science" by your favorite denier, Richard Lindzen, is about the many ICE Ages, the many cycles from over 2 billion years ago, but this was before the Industrial revolution and 6 billion people polluting and speeding up climate change.
Maybe you can wait for the next Little Polluted Ice Age for relief but the next few generations cannot or the people that live on Sea Coasts threatened by rising seas from melting polar Ice Caps.
Fossil fuel burning pollution is bad for health and the environment and is bad for the trees, acid rain, and the oceans and the air we breath like smog.
Carbon pollution is from Oil addiction and it fuels the War Machine more than anything else, while the threat of carbon pollution is not just CO2 alone from burning fossil fuels it is also all the toxic chemicals that are included.
The best way to save the the air, forests and the oceans from the oil based plastic waste and pollution is to free Industrial Hemp, but that happening has as much chance as anything else being considered these days.
Jim, if there weren't ~7 billion people (and growing population by the minute), you wouldn't have the issue of people living by the Sea Coast being threatened, would you now? Sea levels rise approximately 2.5-3mm a year. It hasn't changed. It's still the same as it has been for tens of thousands of years.
Oil doesn't fuel the war machine. Unbridled/Uncontrolled Capitalism does. The same could be said about gold or diamonds or water or food or drugs.
Reduce population in a planned and non-violent way, and you reduce all problems the planet is facing today. If you fail to act on overpopulation, all your exercises in taxation will be nothing more but quixotic exercises in futility. You cannot reduce pollution and save the environment while global population is still growing. It is impossible.
Yeah, you sound so reasoned and all until you start to examine what you really mean...then one begins to recoil in horror. This world could possibly support 7+ billions of people if we lived like the Yanomami or some other tribal grouping. What this world cannot stand is 7+ billions trying to live like us privileged fuckers here in Amurikkka. I saw a statistic that Amurikkkans have the equivalent of 100 energy slaves per person. We live like a population of around 31 billion and we have the nerve, the unmitigated gall, to try and force (peaceably or not) population control on the rest of the world?!
I'm sorry but, 'population control' is simply a euphemism for 'eliminate all those poor yellow, brown and black fuckers who are keeping us from our resources in their countries'. Think about this. Why are these people that are yapping about controlling population, not coming down publicly against ridiculous families like the Duggars? 19 Kids and Counting is one of the most popular shows in Amerika, just like Kate plus Eight and other big family shows.
Charity starts at home. Reduce the population that lives in 2500 sq ft (5.9 m3) houses and who all drives individual cars. Reduce the exurban and suburban population here in good ol' USA. Don't point the fingers of population reduction at the poorest folk on this planet. Living like them ain't causing the entire ecosystem to collapse. Living like us is. Capitalism is monstrous. Bankersterism, politics and even the tyrant based religions are doing more to kill us all than any amount of people ever could. Even controlled, Capitalism hurts us more than just sharing what we have. Fuck, I wish I was a bonobo. They're smarter than we are.
Edited for grammar...
I am really not interested in living like the Yanomami or other tribal groupings. Are you living like them? I mean, it certainly doesn't seem so, having internet access and such.
You're right. The world cannot stand 7+ billion living like Americans. But it can stand 1 billon or 500 million living like Americans (minus the constant war).
YOU don't have 100 energy slaves. That's like saying you have one, and Bill Gates has 199,000, so on average each one of you has 100,000. It doesn't work that way. The US is the throne of capitalism. A large percentage of Americans hardly participates in the rape of the planet, being too poor to afford to participate. ;-)
"I'm sorry but, 'population control' is simply a euphemism for 'eliminate all those poor yellow, brown and black fuckers who are keeping us from our resources in their countries'."
Actually, to me it isn't. Perhaps you have a racist mind. To me, each human is of the same value, except the ultra rich and powerful, which are below the value of any decent human being. ;-)
I find it ridiculous that people of whatever ethnic background turn into breeding factories. Of course they rely on the 'social net' to pick up a lot of the cost inherent in 'fertility'.
You won't hear a complaint from me about your criticism of opulence. The fingers have to be pointed in all sorts of directions, for various reasons.
All I can say is... I - and I am sure several of the readers on this board, for other reasons - am glad that my line comes to a full stop in about 30 years, give or take a few. Humanity is ill, and it has infected all life on this planet with its soulless ecological rape. And for what? So we can use the planets resources and dig up its minerals for the latest rage and the latest garbage made-to-break product that will find its way to a landfill within the next 3 to 12 months.
We are in a race to self-elimination, but not without eliminating a huge chunk of life on the planet first.
Great logic and analysis. Thanks for sharing.
Alas, most of our decision-makers believe in, and often talk to an imaginary friend. Think they're going to follow logic?
"it is much better to make the false-positive error than the false-negative error. " The problem here is that you're using logic. With the kinds of profits at stake in this debate, logic is the last thing money wants heard, and so it is the last thing that IS heard. There is only one logical path through this mess, but fortunately for the money-powers, there are a trillion emotional paths, which is why they are keeping this discussion on the emotional plane.
I mean, really, what was climategate all about? It was about personalizing the debate: taking several private emails out of context and using that fantastic media weight to hammer Phil Jones into the ground. Half of the audience was aghast, but mutely fascinated, the other half were cheering and jeering. Well trained by Faux News, such emotions come now as second nature to them; like vultures they are trained to smell out a fresh killing. With their mammalian brain they know its unfair, but their reptilian brain can't stop them from being fascinated at someone else getting lynched. A lynching is not an inappropriate comparison: remember all those pictures of people getting lynched in the American south in the 1930s? Remember the glaze on the faces of those gathered to watch? That's the glaze Faux News is going for. 'I may not know any more about the human condition than when I came here, but at least I'm not THAT poor bugger...'
Same thing happened to ACORN and the 'prostitute' imbroglio. Its about building a circus sideshow, and bidding everyone take a look at the bearded lady before taking on a serious discussion. But after the bearded lady comes the 'Thing', and then 'Magneto the Magnificent' and before you know it the emotionally exhausted public can't remember what they came here for. They just recall that there was something horribly wrong with a Phil Jones, or an ACORN, and that that thing went away, so everything must be OK.
McKie's timeline ignored one critical date:
2009
20 Nov: RealClimate.com commences reading (what a novel concept!) the leaked emails and publishes a series of analysis (starting with "The CRU hack") that demonstrated that the popular mass media had been fed material from heavily redacted emails.
Within days, no smoking gun was found. Yet the popular mass media continued to parrot the redacted text for months. Nobody listened to scientists defending themselves.
The popular mass media, especially the News Corporation, is a big problem.
I think we also need to keep in mind the PR-type tactics that the timeline at the end of the article really reveal. I am certain those emails had been stolen for some time. The strategic release right before Copenhagen was designed to undercut any deal, however good or flawed. Of course the excerpts were highly distorted, that's what a good PR campaign is all about.
Maybe the scientific community will abandon the neo-liberal ship? Let us hope so.
Why do you think they support it?
Neo-liberalism represents economic policy of the US government and corporate power who fund the institutions that employ the scientific community. There's a structural connection. The scientists as individuals, whether they are fans of Naomi Klein or Milton Friedman, is somewhat irrelevant. "Support" should mean more than just having an opinion, support should represent tangible action in the world. The question of support is most meaningful if this is the question: Will they bite the hand that feeds?
The rigor and honesty of public climate change deniers is seriously in doubt, but has never ever put to the sort of public investigation and media hounding that these scientists have had to endure.
Richard Lindzen IS a scientist. And an accomplished one at that. There are many others who do not buy into the computer models, but based on factual measured data, see no reason for the alarmism.
The goal of reducing fossil fuel pollution is not "alarmism" it is common sense.
Now, what "factual measured data" is that?
Carbon is not pollution. You don't get sick from the CO2 in the air.
The politics are not concerned with real pollutants, that's why your water is loaded up with carcinogens and chemicals, your food is barely recognizable as food, except by shape, your soil is poisoned, your air is unbreathable and makes you asthmatic and your oceans are empty.
When you understand the difference between CO2 and other (actual) pollutants (which HURT your body), perhaps we can have a rational chat.
GLOBAL WARMING DIVERSION.
After six years of stonewalling & deception to impede global warming mitigation, The right wing now finds an insignificant error on which to capitalize The dangerous manipulation of essential scientific data used by them to conceal and derail corrective measures for this threat and other vital environmental reforms has always been apparent--and all indicators still show that their motives have not changed.
Contrary to their assertions, measures to reduce greenhouse gases could only improve our economy by lessening our trade deficits, and improving our security by reducing our dependance on foreign oil. We could also regain some of our lost world respect that has resulted from our opposition Kyoto while arrogantly contributing disproportionally to carbon pollution.
Evidence linking carbon pollution to warming has been as close to certain as science can be for many years. Its causes, consequences, and mitigation requirements have been documented by many dedicated environmental organizations including The Union of Concerned Scientists.
Often overlooked is the fact that the same measures needed to mitigate global warming would be necessary even if it were not an issue. Conservation, alternative energy development, anti- pollution refinements, etc are essential for other vital environmental reforms such as air and water quality, reductions in toxic waste generation, land preservation, etc.
The environmental and social damage from our indifference to carbon pollution and related environmental measures can only worsen if we allow this reckless and unlearned president to continue this war on the environment.
Carbon pollution.
Hook. Line. Sinker.
Continue cutting down the forests of the world.
To worry about carbon is the equivalent of having a plugged sink but worrying about the water. While people happily breed more and more humans, to the tune of a billion every decade or so, forests are lost and oceans polluted, to accommodate the food and space needs of the masses, and you foolish people worry merely about a symptom... the water in the plugged sink.
Solve the issue of why the sink is plugged, and the waste water (i.e. carbon) is no longer a problem.
Carbon tax is economic genocide against more than 3 billion of the world's poorest.
I agree with you if you are saying that the main problem is the growth of human population. I don't think any solution is possible that doesn't include there being fewer people than there are now. We cannot continue converting everything on earth to food for humans. The trick is to figure out how to reduce the world's population and consumption in a fair and humane way. For example, if every family on earth would agree to have only one child, the situation would improve greatly in a generation or two.
On the other hand, I don't see why you are against a carbon tax, which is an attempt to reduce use of a dwindling and polluting resource. Since we are running up against limits to the use of oil and coal anyway, a carbon tax seems like a way to reduce their use in a more controlled and gradual rather than catastrophic and perhaps painful way. There are better things to do with our limited supply of oil than burn it all up.
Currently the elites in the USA are working on reducing the consumption of the elderly. They will do this by going after the pensions. I guess that the elderly will need to rely more on their families. Those without families will become examples for the young of what happens if you do not have enough children to support you when you get old. Best to make a lot of money or to have enough children to look after you in your old age.
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More seriously, if you want most every family on Earth to agree to have only one child then they must know that they will have pensions and Medicare in their own age without needing to rely on their children.
Also, what about the peoples whose numbers are small because of genocide in their past. Do we ask them too to only have one child?
Should those who are vegetarian, and thus require less land and water to support themselves be limited to one child as stringently as those who eat mostly meat and require as much as 10x the land and water to support themselves?
What do we say to people who believe that God told them to have many children?
Rand,
1. if you could get governments to waste our labor on weaponry and death and paying real labor for phantom debt created out of thin air, a significant tax reduction would be possible without impacting the necessary social services. There is enough money to take care of everyone's needs. There's just not enough money (i.e. labor) to turn every billionaire into a trillionaire by stealing from the taxpayers to shift wealth to the banks and corporations, and bomb other countries from the 6th century into the stone age.
2. Yes. Every couple on the planet should be limited to one child, and national borders should disappear, to allow every human free movement on the planet. The resulting drawdown on global human population will allow the planet to regenerate itself.
3. Same applies to Vegetarians. Sure they require less land, but its their personal conviction, and not one their children will automatically adopt. By nature/evolution humans are omnivores. Their children will choose their own path. Eating meat is not a problem when you have a billion people or less. Likewise, this will lead to a reduction in cruelty against animals, inherent in todays factory "farming".
4. I'd say the first one is free, the next and any after will cost them $20,000 annual tax each, to pay for the social services of the people who chose not to continue overpopulating the planet. ;-)
Jonathan,
1) Granted that there are enough resources available to meet everyone's needs, but money and resources are different. One is a concept, the other is real. But my argument is not that there is or is not sufficient resources to guarantee people that they will have a reasonably comfortable retirement without relying on their children. My argument is that it is not in their interest to not have children that will look after them in their future if not doing so means that they will more likely be destitute. The argument is simple. If you want to reduce the population by having families have one child then you need to push for social security and fairly accessible Medicare for all that you ask this of, both here and around the world.
2) If every couple is limited to one child and national borders disappear then are we not entrenching the genocides of the past. In North America the indigenous peoples are struggling to survive physically and culturally. Why would they want to limit themselves to just one child per family when their numbers are already too small? Personally I do not see expecting them to do so as being fair and decent.
3) Being vegetarian is a personal conviction. OK. But you are making a practical suggestion that families be restricted to one child. The reasoning being that mankind is using too much of the Earth's resources so in order to reduce this demand on the Earth's resources we need to reduce the Earth's population. If we are being practical why then use just one method of reducing this demand on the Earth's resources. If we encourage vegetarianism now and also small families then we will see a huge reduction in the demand on the Earth's resources rather quickly. This will happen several years before the effects of the smaller families on the demands for the Earth's resources is seen.
Consider also that everyone being vegetarian would have a much larger effect in the reducing the demand for the Earth's resources than would halving the population, at least for a couple of generations. We could encourage a move towards vegetarianism. One way of encouraging vegetarianism would be to allow vegetarians to have two children instead of one. I suspect most would not, but even if they did we would still be reducing the demand for the Earth's resources faster than we would if we limit the push to just one child per family.
4) Taxing the prolific to pay for the social security of the responsible has the possibility of discouraging the prolific from having their large families. If successful then the money collected from your annual $20,000 tax will decrease and there will be less money available for the pensions of those who did not have families of more than one child. We cannot ask people to not invest in their future by not having many children without at the same time building fair and adequate and universal pension plans and having Medicare for all. We need to provide for a secure old age safe from the randomness of the market if we want to convince people to not have children to look after them when they get old.
If we did build these universal pension plans and Medicare, then we could say to the prolific that they will have their access to these plans reduced if they have more than one child and that their children will be burdened by supporting them and their health problems in their old age.
Hi Rand,
you state that "it is not in [people's] interest to not have children that will look after them in their future".
First of all, the excesses currently fed by taxation must be removed: wars of aggression, corporate bailouts, corporate fraud, economic warfare and subsidies, and the seizure of private banking and fictional public debt. The reduction in taxes resulting from this will be sufficient to allow people to save again, and take care of their own needs. The need for Medicare is overstated when a lot of the cost could be alleviated by regulating what can (and cannot) be in our food, water, soil and air. Sensible prevention of illness which is the direct result of corporate profiteering, would reduce the cost of medical care, leaving only genetic/hereditary disorders, the occasional surgery or treatment of broken bones, and such like. Diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, are largely the product of 'toxic' "foods", Corn/Glucose-Fructose, sugar, salt, trans and saturated fats, etc.
"In North America the indigenous peoples are struggling to survive physically and culturally. Why would they want to limit themselves to just one child per family when their numbers are already too small?"
When their numbers are too small for what? Are we all human, or are some us us worth more or less? I think it's time to stop thinking in tribal terms. All humans should be treated with the same set of rules. There is only one humanity. When you give special privileges to a subset, all you are doing is encouraging the resentment of the outsiders and guaranteeing problems for the future.
"If we encourage vegetarianism now and also small families then we will see a huge reduction in the demand on the Earth's resources rather quickly. This will happen several years before the effects of the smaller families on the demands for the Earth's resources is seen."
I am not a vegetarian. I don't expect I ever will be. Humans have evolved as omnivores, not as vegetarians. Now, people can certainly make that choice for themselves (not for their offspring), and people make that choice for various reasons, but that should (again) not exclude them from general rules. If we make exceptions for every group which appears to make less impact on the planet, then what exception will you make for people who don't own a car? who don't have children? who grow their own food? what "perks" should each of these groups be entitled to? I don't own a car. Does that mean I should have the right to have my power or heating bill reduced by 50% vs everyone else who owns a car?
"Consider also that everyone being vegetarian would have a much larger effect in the reducing the demand for the Earth's resources than would halving the population, at least for a couple of generations."
Actually, I don't think it would. While it takes some time to reduce consumption by population reduction, the reduction will nevertheless be measurable and carry forward. Vegetarianism alone will not reduce the use of resources, merely the use of food. Vegetarians still need clothing, housing, transportation and infrastructure, jobs, healthcare and social services and such like. Not eating meat is only a small portion of that energy budget, which would be quickly taken up by the growing population. Going 'meatless' will not bring about a permanent reduction in resource use.
Vegetarianism is not a genetic condition. What if people decided to go 'vegetarian' merely to use this loophole to make more children, and later eat meat again? Realistically, despite our discussions, I believe the planet (and future life) is screwed. Humans will never agree to do what is necessary to reach sustainability. We cannot even come to an agreement on what exactly that is. ;-) The answer is certainly not, having 10, 15, 25 billion people live in stoneage conditions, when the planet could easily and sustainably handle half a billion people at current comfortable standard of living.
"Taxing the prolific to pay for the social security of the responsible has the possibility of discouraging the prolific from having their large families."
That's the whole point. It's not about the money, but about bringing population down without violence, so that the biosphere can recover itself. It's kind of like a "pollution tax" over which people have complete control.
When the drive to war and bailing out bankers and corporate gangsters ceases, we can save for the needs of our own retirement. But to make the waste and tax-slavery stop, you first have to get rid of the servants of the gangsters, who present themselves as 'our' representatives, when in reality they have never been such.
Having 'more' than one child is not an investment in the future. Certainly not for the poor. Instead of lifting people from poverty, larger families ensure they never emerge from it. Besides, I think when people have children without being able to adequately care of them, is a form of child abuse. You cannot starve your dog or horse, but you can starve your own children. The world is a weird place.
If a couple has one child, that is sufficient to take care of them in their old age, whether through direct care or whether though input into a social payment system. I remind again that I did not say EVERY child should carry such a tax, but only every child over the first.
Anyway, nice discussing this with you, even though we have obviously differing viewpoints.
Jonathan,
Interestingly this discussion began with a posting by SeriousCitizen November 14th, 2010 2:15 pm.
Of all the postings SeriousCitizen's posting was the most germane to the article. Perhaps you would like to comment on it. Try not to be too glib. I have copied it below:
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"For making decisions under conditions of uncertainty, people should consider what is called "Signal Detection Theory". There are four conditions to consider. If human activity is changing the climate in dangerous ways, and that is what we believe to be true, then there is no error. If human activity is NOT changing the climate in dangerous ways, and that is what we believe to be true, then again, there is not error. But, if humans are changing the climate and we do NOT believe it, that is called a "false-negative" error. On the opposite side, if humans are NOT changing the climate and we believe we are, that is called a "false-positive" error. Since we have no external basis for knowing for certain what is the reality, we have to consider the consequences of the errors we might be making. If we are making a false-negative error, then the consequences will be deaths of 10s of millions of people, rising sea levels, and maybe, worst-case, extermination of humans as a species. If we are making a false-positive error, then the consequences will be energy efficiency, population control, and diversion of public and private money from consumer goods and war to energy infrastructure. Looking at the consequences of the errors, then it is much better to make the false-positive error than the false-negative error. ..."
Rand, I think that this sounds a lot like the reason why some people think we should believe there is a 'god'. Because, if no god exists, and we believe in its existence, we lose nothing, but if a god exists and we do not believe, we lose everything. I don't think it's good enough.
In my opinion, it is necessary to back up claims by observations, and in terms of climate change, with observations that show deviation from generally normal processes. A lot of claims get made which are mostly based on computer modeling, and not borne out by real data. Often, rising oceans get cited as a sign of climate change, but even now, and still, oceans rise at a rate of approximately one tenth of an inch a year, which is completely normal, and has been occurring for at least the last 60,000 years. If however the rise of the oceans would dramatically increase, then I could accept that something is seriously going wrong with the planet.
Likewise, mention is made continuously of receding sea ice in the Arctic, while at the same time ignoring the fact that ice has piled up in Antarctica at approximately the same pace, and average temperatures in Antarctica have fallen, and not risen.
Yes, the climate is changing, but again, it always has. How much man's contribution is to an otherwise normal warming trend, is a question of debate. There are too many factors playing into the global changes to blame it all on one "culprit", especially when temperature rise is not corresponding in ratio to carbon output. Despite the consumption of about half a trillion barrels of oil over the last 15 years - and the resulting release of CO2 into the atmosphere -, there has been virtually no overall warming in the last decade and a half.
While I believe that humans are killing the planet, I do not believe that CO2 is part of that particular problem.