Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
One Shot Left
The latest science suggests that preventing runaway climate change means total decarbonisation.
George Bush is behaving like a furious defaulter whose home is about to be repossessed. Smashing the porcelain, ripping the doors off their hinges, he is determined that there will be nothing worth owning by the time the bastards kick him out. His midnight regulations, opening America's wilderness to logging and mining, trashing pollution controls, tearing up conservation laws, will do almost as much damage in the last 60 days of his presidency as he achieved in the foregoing 3000(1).
His backers – among them the nastiest pollutocrats in America – are calling in their favours. But this last binge of vandalism is also the Bush presidency reduced to its essentials. Destruction is not an accidental product of its ideology. Destruction is the ideology. Neoconservatism is power expressed by showing that you can reduce any part of the world to rubble.
If it is now too late to prevent runaway climate change, the Bush team must carry much of the blame. His wilful trashing of the Middle Climate – the interlude of benign temperatures which allowed human civilisation to flourish – makes the mass murder he engineered in Iraq only the second of his crimes against humanity. Bush has waged his war on science with the same obtuse determination with which he has waged his war on terror.
Is it too late? To say so is to make it true. To suggest that there is nothing that can now be done is to ensure that nothing is done. But even a resolute optimist like me finds hope ever harder to summon. A new summary of the science published since last year's Intergovernmental Panel report suggests that - almost a century ahead of schedule - the critical climate processes might have begun(2).
Just a year ago the Intergovernmental Panel warned that the Arctic's "late-summer sea ice is projected to disappear almost completely towards the end of the 21st century … in some models."(3) But, as the new report by the Public Interest Research Centre (PIRC) shows, climate scientists are now predicting the end of late-summer sea ice within three to seven years. The trajectory of current melting plummets through the graphs like a meteorite falling to earth.
Forget the sodding polar bears: this is about all of us. As the ice disappears, the region becomes darker, which means that it absorbs more heat. A recent paper published in Geophysical Research Letters shows that the extra warming caused by disappearing sea ice penetrates 1500km inland, covering almost the entire region of continuous permafrost(4). Arctic permafrost contains twice as much carbon as the entire global atmosphere(5). It remains safe for as long as the ground stays frozen. But the melting has begun. Methane gushers are now gassing out of some places with such force that they keep the water open in Arctic lakes, through the winter(6).
The effects of melting permafrost are not incorporated into any global climate models. Runaway warming in the Arctic alone could flip the entire planet into a new climatic state. The Middle Climate could collapse faster and sooner than the grimmest forecasts proposed.
Barack Obama's speech to the US climate summit last week was an astonishing development(7). It shows that, in this respect at least, there really is a prospect of profound political change in America. But while he described a workable plan for dealing with the problem perceived by the Earth Summit of 1992, the measures he proposes are now hopelessly out of date. The science has moved on. The events the Earth Summit and the Kyoto process were supposed to have prevented are already beginning. Thanks to the wrecking tactics of Bush the elder, Clinton (and Gore) and Bush the younger, steady, sensible programmes of the kind that Obama proposes are now irrelevant. As the PIRC report suggests, the years of sabotage and procrastination have left us with only one remaining shot: a crash programme of total energy replacement.
A paper by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research shows that if we are to give ourselves a roughly even chance(8,9) of preventing more than two degrees of warming, global emissions from energy must peak by 2015 and decline by between six and eight per cent per year from 2020 to 2040, leading to a complete decarbonisation of the global economy soon after 2050(10). Even this programme would work only if some optimistic assumptions about the response of the biosphere hold true. Delivering a high chance of preventing two degrees of warming would mean cutting global emissions by over 8% a year.
Is this possible? Is this acceptable? The Tyndall paper points out that annual emission reductions greater than one per cent have "been associated only with economic recession or upheaval." When the Soviet Union collapsed, they fell by some 5% a year. But you can answer these questions only by considering the alternatives. The trajectory both Barack Obama and Gordon Brown have proposed - an 80% cut by 2050 - means reducing emissions by an average of 2% a year. This programme, the figures in the Tyndall paper suggest, is likely to commit the world to at least four or five degrees of warming(11), which means the likely collapse of human civilisation across much of the planet. Is this acceptable?
The costs of a total energy replacement and conservation plan would be astronomical, the speed improbable. But the governments of the rich nations have already deployed a scheme like this for another purpose. A survey by the broadcasting network CNBC suggests that the US federal government has now spent $4.2 trillion in response to the financial crisis, more than the total spending on World War Two when adjusted for inflation(12). Do we want to be remembered as the generation that saved the banks and let the biosphere collapse?
This approach is challenged by the American thinker Sharon Astyk. In an interesting new essay, she points out that replacing the world's energy infrastructure involves "an enormous front-load of fossil fuels", which are required to manufacture wind turbines, electric cars, new grid connections, insulation and all the rest(13). This could push us past the climate tipping point. Instead, she proposes, we must ask people "to make short term, radical sacrifices", cutting our energy consumption by 50%, with little technological assistance, in five years. There are two problems: the first is that all previous attempts show that relying on voluntary abstinence does not work. The second is that a 10% annual cut in energy consumption while the infrastructure remains mostly unchanged means a 10% annual cut in total consumption: a deeper depression than the modern world has ever experienced. No political system - even an absolute monarchy - could survive an economic collapse on this scale.
She is right about the risks of a technological green new deal, but these are risks we have to take. Astyk's proposals travel far into the realm of wishful thinking. Even the technological solution I favour inhabits the distant margins of possibility.
Can we do it? Search me. Reviewing the new evidence, I have to admit that we might have left it too late. But there is another question I can answer more easily. Can we afford not to try? No we can't.
- Posted in
78 Comments so far
Show AllGood piece, except for one thing: there is no such thing as "one shot left" as far as human intention is concerned. We can try to fix things, but in the end, natural selection decides, and the self-focused human species falls into line w/ all the creatures of this Earth. Beautifully, we are just generators of variation and Mother Selection ultimately decides how things are filtered, for good or ill.
Strength through Peace.
Too deterministic. Humans, individuals, all actors in the universe, are part determiners and part determined. It is a never-ending dance involving an infinite number of feedback loops, each of infinite complexity, going on for an eternity.
Um, yeah, and when I pull three bong tokes instead of just two it looks like you are laughing out the other side of your face. The idea that humans can direct variation is what leads to determinism my dear 'kivals", not the other way around. Evolution requires three things: 1) variation; 2) heritability of the variation; and 3) the (potential) differential success of inherited variability in subsequent states. Natural selection plays a primary role, but there exist other "filter" mechanisms such as drift, stochastic processes, mutation, etc. So, before you wax pseudo-poetic while being critical get your facts straight.
What a childish response from a simple and confused mind. For starters, you apparently are not well-acquainted with the concept of "determinism." Under an assumption of determinism, all human action is directed by antecedent events, including action to "direct variation" or not. That is completely consistent with your model, which assumes some natural order, beyond human control, that will direct all phenomena relevant to human survival in a manner that determines the outcome.
Furthermore, your simple model is handicapped by its top down structure, with no possibility for loops, and certainly not feedback loops. Just the human knowledge, the human models, of the process empowers humans to alter the process. That makes human action a particularly important part of the feedback loops involved in the evolutionary process regarding humans, but even animals without such awareness and knowledge are involved in their own processes, helping to determine the outcome. The animal could be viewed as the embodiment of the evolutionary process in a particular instance, determined and determining simultaneously.
And, maybe the most important point, is that you apparently do not understand the duality of (1) models of processes vs. (2) actual participation in the processes. I would elaborate but you are not worth the time.
Good-bye.
Sioux Rose
KIVALS: Good analysis, although I would add the fixed orbits of the planets in our solar system, and the spiritual tasks they, as emissaries, perform. It's all in the vibrations... evident enough in the moon's pull on the tides, our biological aging process according with earth's revolution around the sun. There are far more subtle, equally powerful cycles operating that link all sentient beings with this green planet and its place in the dance of time.
Bush has waged his war on science with the same obtuse determination with which he has waged his war on terror.
The war the Bush regime waged, and continues to wage, against science is, in a way, even more shameful, depraved and degrading than the invasion and occupation of Iraq. You would expect a nobody, a nonentity, a piece of human excrement like George Wanker Bush to do the latter and kill hundreds of thousands. In this, he is no different than any other murdering tyrant in history. But for the government of the United States, early in the 21st century, to trash science . . . I don't know; what can you say? Soon he'll be gone and I hope I outlive him so I can piss on his grave.
GO TIDAL (CURRENT) ENERGY!! If we are serious about 'decarbonizing', then we need to accelerate deployment of all carbon-reduction schemes, and especially those that have the potential for large-scale reliable carbon-offset. IMO, the most feasible high-density resource for providing FIRM, carbon-free baseline energy is in the tidal currents sloshing by on all our maritime shores and major river estuaries. FYI, tidal (current) energy has the following remarkable advantages: it is predictable (i.e. FIRM), it has much higher energy density-potential than wind or solar (e.g. sea water is 832 times as dense as air), there are many excellent tidal current resource sites nearby to grid-hookups and population centres on both maritime coasts (and worldwide), it is non-polluting and has the lowest enviro-footprint relative to other large-generation energy technologies, and the concepts or tidal technologies now emerging worldwide are proven.
All that remains to fully seat this technology is the political will to support it; presently the UK is working most aggressively to develop a tidal industry for electricity and billions in jobs and exports, but so is Korea, New Zealand and others. FYI, JFK was a huge tidal energy proponent and champion of harnessing the Passamaquoddy tides for renewable, FIRM, non-polluting energy.
Check out this industry association: Ocean Renewable Energy Group: oreg.ca for more industry news;
- Sincerely, Michael Maser, Blue Energy International (www.bluenergy.com)
I checked the site, I like it, it looks very good..I do have a question though...would using the energy of the tides affect coastal erosion...make erosion slower? I would think that would be a good side effect.
Decarbonization will more than likely require serious action up to and including warfare, as there are powerful corporations and nations for whom a carbon based energy economy is viewed as a life or death proposition. They include Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Shell, Exxon, & BP, among others. Until the disadvantages greatly outweigh the adventages for these players, then this problem remains.
www.wunderman-comics.com
The population of the planet increases at three people per second.
But let's ignore that and pretend technology will fix everything.
And soon it will be four people per second. Give people means of birth control and the birth rate decreases. Get the population of the globe to agree to one child per family for two or three generations and then the problem would be much more tractable. In the mean time stop useing fossil fuels.
Other things that reduce birth rate: educating young girls, reducing child deaths.
A good way to reduce waste would be to eliminate the private auto. A campaign exists for free public transit.
http://freepublictransit.org
Do you still think vegans are grey George?
You really damaged your credibility with that one.
Its fine that you warn about disaster but if your answer for not doing the sensible thing and cutting the meat diet is "vegans look grey skinned to me," then it makes it hard to take what else you say seriously.
Walk the walk, not just talk the talk.
You are correct. Eating a lot of meat is as bad as driving a car. You should be kinder to George Monbiot, he is a potential ally.
http://freepublictransit.org
The study of conditions on other planets has convinced me that the scenario is even more grim that noted. The methane gushers noted above from the permafrost are a very serious matter, not only because methane is four times more efficient as CO2 for retaining heat, but because releasing methane into a hydrated atmosphere is a recipe for producing ammonia. Reflectivity of sea ice could, in short order, be replaced by the reflectivity of ammonia clouds forming seasonally over the poles. Since ammonia freezes at a lower temperature than water, ammonia clouds would form at higher elevations, blocking the solar energy sustaining the water cycle in the atmosphere. Water below would precipitate out and little outside water would circulate back inside. Winters at the poles could become bitterly cold and dry, although global temperatures would continue to climb and the atmospheric water cycle is compressed beyond the area where the ammonia clouds cover the poles. This would greatly increase the violence of storms throughout the rest of the world and further accelerate the timetable of imminent catastrophe. I, for one, predict the formation of seasonal ammonia clouds over the poles by 2015.
Is it too late for total debushification?
Or is that debullshitification?
Nothing can nor will be done when you got Rush telling 10+ million a day:
"Man-made global warming is a total hoax. It has no basis in fact, and yet it has acolytes out the wazoo."
Multiply his brainwashed legions by 4, add in another 20 million FOX and friends zombies, and we got nearly half the country unwilling to do a damn thing about the "liberal" hoax until it's way, way too late. They're like the drunk drivers who swear they drive better wasted - until they wipe out a family. And even then, after they're released from prison, most usually end up driving drunk again.
Advice to the rest of us: spend a bit more time preparing to survive what's coming, and a bit less trying to change un-changeable minds.
Agreed that there is a huge oppositional force in the face of scientific and empirical findings about climate change. A few skeptics/acolytes haunts the halls of CD as well, as we've seen. I appreciate their skepticism, but in the face of the evidence, they are whistling in the dark or simply parroting what they've heard on thug radio.
I also agree that the rest of us should be learning how to live in a different world. Though, I don't think anyone can predict in what form that will be - so, let's not lose hope. And yes, let's let go of those who won't change. C'est la vie.
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research. A study by Swiss and German scientists suggests that increasing radiation from the sun is responsible for recent global climate changes. Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: "The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures. The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently - in the last 100 to 150 years." [Telegraph]
Global warming and melting polar ice caps are not just problems here on Earth. Mars is facing similar global changes, researchers say, with temperatures across the red planet rising by around 0.65 degrees over the last few decades. [Register]
UPDATE: Since this article was first written, the sun has gone into a quiet phase. There are no sunspots, and the Ulysses spacecraft is confirming that the sun has dimmed slightly and the solar wind slowed down. Inevitably, and to nobody's surprise (except perhaps Al Gore), the Earth is now showing signs of cooling. Defying the predictions of an ice-free arctic sea this summer, the north polar icecap actually increased its area by twice the size of Germany.
Here is the problem as I see it. You can't get most people on board unless it is scientifically proven, so far it is not, or you can present a compeklling argument to do something. So its very hard to refute some idiot like Limbaugh by suggesting its a good idea to do what we can just in case.
"Man-made global warming is a total hoax. It has no basis in fact, and yet it has acolytes out the wazoo."
This based on the evidence is obviously false. There is enough evidence to suggest that even if it turns out not to be man made, we contribute to it....So how do you present a good argument for doing what we can?
My suggestion is to go after the things that could be sold as good for everyone that also would help with Global Warming.
If your observations reflect your true view of the situation, then I'm probably not as optimistic as you seem to be about the impact of 'scientific evidence' on the actions of supposedly 'thinking' individuals. If people can believe in immaculate conceptions, 72 virgins for martyrs, hell and fairy-tale heavens - without any actual scientific evidence - then they can be induced to believe in just about anything. And if they can believe in such things then why are you surprised (if you are surprised) that, generally the same people, prefer to believe pleasing stories that reject global climate change and don't require them to alter their lifestyles?
I don't see religious faith being related to climate change in belief. Religious belief is belief in something that cannot be proven scientifically.
Climate change could be proven scientifically to be man made, so far it just hasn't been possible. There are many folks that believe in it similarly to a religious belief, others that believe there is enough evidence to make it believeable even though it is not proven.
"generally the same people, prefer to believe pleasing stories that reject global climate change and don't require them to alter their lifestyles?"
My view is that they don't reject climate change, they reject the notion that it is man made and if its not man made we can't do anything about it. I believe it has been presented too radically or perhaps I should say presented as ...climate change is man made, we can't prove it scientifically, but we say so and if you don't believe us and go along you are a bunch of knuckle dragging rednecks.
The Green group han't been noted for their political skills I'd say.
But if it could be proven scientifically or presented in a more palateable way, I think it wouldn't be as much of a problem.
Watch the approach to cars, that will exemplify whats wrong with this kind of approach and why it give the opposition such an easy target.
I trust I've just made myself as obscure as usual (LOL) Does this make sense to you?
I don't think any government ever has all the information about a huge problem before it makes a decision to confront it. Did JFK know with exact certainty that the Soviets would back down over Cuba? Did Reagan know with absolute certainty that the Soviet Union would collapse just after he left office? Why does climate change have to have absolute proof, so much so that even Rush Limbaugh would believe it, before we do anything to stop wasting energy (and money), stop polluting (and poisoning our own people), and instead harvest the elements provided freely (sun, wind, geothermal, tidal) instead of permanently destroying vast areas of land (coal/uranium mining) and risking nuclear fallout?
The problem is that the government doesn't need to believe it, the population needs to believe it. They won't accept it based on theory, though I don't think there is any problem getting incremental thins done like solar panels, better CAFE standards, energy credits for retrofitting homes, etc.
What they won't stand for is being lectured asnd having something crammed down their throat thats a theory. Thats my opinion at least. Present it differently in other words.
A theory...like evolution or gravity? I wonder, has global warming been declared as a scientific theory yet (which is as close as science can come to proof).
The only useful connection I see between religious belief and let's call it 'climate belief', is to make the point that people are extraordinarily gullible and resistant to reality - particularly a 'reality' which makes them uncomfortable. That, and people don't like anybody fiddling with their lifestyles.
Whether 'climate change' is 'natural', 'man made' or only 'man abetted' it seems to be occurring. With species survival possibly at stake you would think we as a species would not risk extermination and recognize that the problem exists and try to mitigate it to the best of our ability. But then I sometimes overstate our capability to act with reason. So I won't hold my breath - until, that is, I have to.
I agree with you, except people aren't nearly as gullible as you think they are in my opinion.
"particularly a 'reality' which makes them uncomfortable. That, and people don't like anybody fiddling with their lifestyles."
This is oh so true!
As I said above, my feeling is this has to be presented in a different way. The "my way or the highway" approach of the Greens isn't working that well and does play right into the hands of the Limbaughs of the world.
George Monbiot says that it is unrealistic to expect humans to change their behavior and reduce their consumption voluntarily so he wants to take on the laws of thermodynamics and build the infrastructure for us all to drive electric cars.
Human behavior is what we have to work with. We haven't even tried to encourage conservation. A five-dollar gasoline tax would do a lot to encourage the kind of behavior that needs to be adopted. But everybody just throws up their hands and says it's "politically unrealistic."
Bullshit.
Tommy:
I think that you are essentially correct. The majority of activity (in the U.S.) concerning climate disruption has been symbolic or efforts so small as to be a drop in the bucket. The problem cannot be addressed by individuals buying a hybrid car or using green light bulbs. The problem can only be effectively dealt with by governments and their societies' working together globally. The countries most responsible aren't really doing anything, but it is not the fault of their populations. There's a great desire by many people to do something. Changing human behavior is fairly easy; look at advertising, look at Public Relations, look at Fox News. What is difficult is changing human behavior while our society is propagandized daily by the values of consumerism. If our governments actually represented us instead of corporate power, who knows what could be done? If you look at the countries which have made the most green progress, like Germany and the Scandinavian countries, there seems to be a correlation to the level of meaningful democracy. I wonder why?
Fundamentally, what's best for the environment and ourselves within it is diametrically oppositional to what's best for "our economy", that is, Market Capitalism. This is the real issue, which Monbiot omits. We have known about climate change for 30 years and very little progress has been made. Although, lots of progress has been made for maximizing profits. Until our economic system is challenged, green activities and technologies won't be much more than green washing.
Here is a way to change human behavior: free public transit:
http://freepublictransit.org
Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research. A study by Swiss and German scientists suggests that increasing radiation from the sun is responsible for recent global climate changes. Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: "The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures. The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently - in the last 100 to 150 years." [Telegraph]
Global warming and melting polar ice caps are not just problems here on Earth. Mars is facing similar global changes, researchers say, with temperatures across the red planet rising by around 0.65 degrees over the last few decades. [Register]
UPDATE: Since this article was first written, the sun has gone into a quiet phase. There are no sunspots, and the Ulysses spacecraft is confirming that the sun has dimmed slightly and the solar wind slowed down. Inevitably, and to nobody's surprise (except perhaps Al Gore), the Earth is now showing signs of cooling. Defying the predictions of an ice-free arctic sea this summer, the north polar icecap actually increased its area by twice the size of Germany.
The first paragraph implies that Dr. Solanki attributes climate change to solar activity. This does not appear to be the case. Here is one specific link:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=14751, with a quote:
>>The influence of the Sun on the Earth is seen increasingly as one cause of the observed global warming since 1900, along with the emission of the greenhouse gas
, carbon dioxide, from the combustion of coal, gas, and oil. "Just how large this role is, must still be investigated, since, according to our latest knowledge on the variations of the solar magnetic field, the significant increase in the Earth's temperature since 1980 is indeed to be ascribed to the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide," says Prof. Sami K. Solanki, solar physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research. <<
And another: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3869753.stm
And one more: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=15385
I wish the OP had put more specifics to the sources rather than simply naming newspapers.
Will someone more scientifically literate than I please help with this? I got an email from an old classmate (very right-wing) including the following article: "By Christopher Booker, The TELEGRAPH, London UK. Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 16/11/2008 (I cut some because of the 1000-word limit.) Yet I couldn't find it on the Telegraph's website 2 days later. Is this just tin-foil hat stuff??
"A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which...is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.
This was startling because: Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, NOAA ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years...
GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit [Adele again: are these bloggers credible?], began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery...scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October...Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated TWO MONTHS running.
The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than the same time last year. {Adele again: ANYONE SEE THESE IMAGES?)
A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over it. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's IPCC relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.
...Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change...Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.
...Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped...Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether...it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought."
One set of bad data does not negate a theory which has literally billions of data points. And "temperatures...since 2007 have dropped" That was last year! Hardly long enough for a trend.
Good point!
See this: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/10/giss-releases-october-2008-data/
And this:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/mountains-and-molehills/
I recommend following the Realclimate.org blog to keep up with the actual science.
David
One effect of our apparent climate change is higher precipitation, leading to more powerful low pressure systems and higher wind on average. Stronger lows can pull polar air down to temperate zones more effectively, causing snow where weaker lows cause rain. So, we can both have higher average temperatures and more snow at times.
The Exxon/Mobil well-funded whispering campaign to discredit global warming theories will attempt to raise any current scientific defect, large or small, into the press's awareness. However, science doesn't work by daily "talking points". Science presumes a sense of good will in a cooperating body of scientists, a few of whom will make honest mistakes in data collection, and a very few of whom will fabricate evidence, but most of whom generate consistent data. Right now many global warming projections and simulations are fitting past and present data pretty well. Most researchers in the field are tuning out the paid nitpickers as untrustworthy sources of data or of useful theories.
The press is different. Sometimes wealthy wingnuts pay reporters' salaries, so they need to pay rapt attention to a particular day's talking points.
as some have pointed out already, the physics of the situation will be the emotionless arbiter of the future of all life on this planet...human opinion is worse than worthless, as it is given worth by humans where none exists, thereby continuing to dominate discussion (we gotta have jobs\cars\tvs\stores\cell phones\toys\computers\houses!)...we must completely stop industrially altering the molecular structure of our planet and start planting food and living by consuming that food...this is the only 'change' that counts...can we do it? is it too late? I'm not optimistic, but I really want to feel like part of a worldwide movement in the 'reversal' direction, as it's difficult to find motivation in continuing to destroy, alter, consume and discard until it's over...who needs more crap in the form of presents? Is there a name for this recent malaise ~ a certainty that the planet is dying due to human chemical activity, coupled with a certainty that there will be no large-scale changes in that behavior due to human mental activity?
Nice post.
Not exactly PC but cuts to the chase & then puts it in a nutshell.
Shame that there only appear to be a few folk that see it that way.
'do we want to be remembered as the generation that saved the banks and let the biosphere collapse?'.............
that's a 'loaded' question................i don't want to hazard an answer.
but i don't think we'll be remembered at all.........if we continue the way we are going, there won't BE anyone left to remember...........
This was not mentioned in this article, but I have been wondering about whether or not chemtrails are affecting climate change. I have read about them and there appears to be a lot of 'assumptions' but no real definite answers as to what they really are. Here in northern Michigan we were bombarded with chemtrails all summer. I just returned from a ten day visit to Virginia and every day the sky was filled with chemtrails. They are a curious configuration and it is interesting how they can meld into a hazy day even with clear skies. Any information on the affect on pollution or climate change?
According to an NPR news story of the early 90s, “chemtrails” were confirmed by the USAF to a New York weather station as being elements in the Star Wars program.
Apparently George Wanker Bush also has one more shot left. There's a photo on The Huffington Post of The Great Texas Worm drinking a Pisco Sour at the APEC meeting in Latin America. We always knew he still needs a little help from his friends. The day before he was squinting and wearing a poncho, trying to look like Clint Eastwood in "Fistful of Dollars". The problem with a weakling like Bush is that having reached the pinnacle of failure and having done it on the world stage, having spent so many days chasing greatness only to wind up like Wile E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner and having dynamite explode in his face, or running off a cliff, is that failure that big, that overwhelming, cannot be denied. So yes, he's drinking again because the only alternative is impossible: telling himself he's a great man while sober. His fantasies are like complex machines; they need to be well oiled.
annabelle: i seem to remember a point back in the late 60's or early 70's when commercial airlines switched over their engines to smokeless..that left only the military with smoking engines..as i am an old small plane pilot i observed the disappearing of the smoking planes..then i left flying and lived for 30 yrs. in the woods where i always believed any plane i saw smoking was military..in 2000 i moved to new hampshire and had a house with a southern view..there were dozens of smoke trails on a daily basis..took me a while to realize all these planes were probably not military..something changed from the mid 70's to 2000..i have seen references over the years on cd to chemtrails, but have never really looked to see what changed..
ken
ken, thanks for the input. There are so many of the chemtrails at any given time that it must involve at least five or six planes each leaving a four part trail that disperses over a wide area and lingers in unusual patterns, these planes appear to be flying at a lower altitude than commercial jets and certainly out of the normal flight pattern. Most of the information available is either a conspiracy theory or someone is selling something to protect you from the deadly combination of barium and other chemicals. If this is an attempt to alter naturally occuring weather patterns it would be nice to know that the combination of different chemicals that are being used is hazardess for public health. If it is a blind experiment the public should be made aware of the hazards if they exist. I have been taking pictures of chemtrails for over five years and still no one seems to understand what chemtrails are all about.
they don't need chemtrails to do anything to weather patterns.......
they already have HAARP.................
coco
I have heard about HAARP several times, but haven't read a clear explanation of how it works. Can you point me towards that information?
with pleasure................
www.haarp.alaska.edu
www.haarp.net
the first site is the official site and the second is, well, see for yourself.
Anyone who thinks that the dire threat of global warming is going to seriously disrupt the pollution of the planet with greenhouse gases by industry has rocks in their head.
You have to get your priorities right. Profit comes before survival. I mean George told us at APEC that free trade and free markets and no regulation is what counts in this (dying) world.
We humans are simple savages. We know not what we do. We care not what we do.
Evolution will take care of us. Soon.
Read more at:
www.dangerouscreation.com