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TechnoratiClimate Change Deniers Are Not Skeptics - They're Suckers
My fiercest opponents on global warming tend to be in their 60s and 70s. This offers a fascinating, if chilling, insight into human psychology
There is no point in denying it: we're losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease. It exists in a sphere that cannot be reached by evidence or reasoned argument; any attempt to draw attention to scientific findings is greeted with furious invective. This sphere is expanding with astonishing speed.
A survey last month by the Pew Research Centre suggests that the proportion of Americans who believe there is solid evidence that the world has been warming over the last few decades has fallen from 71% to 57% in just 18 months. Another survey, conducted in January by Rasmussen Reports, suggests that, due to a sharp rise since 2006, US voters who believe global warming has natural causes (44%) outnumber those who believe it is the result of human action (41%).
A study by the website Desmogblog shows that the number of internet pages proposing that man-made global warming is a hoax or a lie more than doubled last year. The Science Museum's Prove it! exhibition asks online readers to endorse or reject a statement that they've seen the evidence and want governments to take action. As of yesterday afternoon, 1,006 people had endorsed it and 6,110 had rejected it. On Amazon.co.uk, books championing climate change denial are currently ranked at 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 and 8 in the global warming category. Never mind that they've been torn to shreds by scientists and reviewers, they are beating the scientific books by miles. What is going on?
It certainly doesn't reflect the state of the science, which has hardened dramatically over the past two years. If you don't believe me, open any recent edition of Science or Nature or any peer-reviewed journal specialising in atmospheric or environmental science. Go on, try it. The debate about global warming that's raging on the internet and in the rightwing press does not reflect any such debate in the scientific journals.
An American scientist I know suggests that these books and websites cater to a new literary market: people with room-temperature IQs. He didn't say whether he meant fahrenheit or centigrade. But this can't be the whole story. Plenty of intelligent people have also declared themselves sceptics.
One such is the critic Clive James. You could accuse him of purveying trite received wisdom, but not of being dumb. On Radio 4 a few days ago he delivered an essay about the importance of scepticism, during which he maintained that "the number of scientists who voice scepticism [about climate change] has lately been increasing". He presented no evidence to support this statement and, as far as I can tell, none exists. But he used this contention to argue that "either side might well be right, but I think that if you have a division on that scale, you can't call it a consensus. Nobody can meaningfully say that the science is in."
Had he bothered to take a look at the quality of the evidence on either side of this media debate, and the nature of the opposing armies – climate scientists on one side, rightwing bloggers on the other – he too might have realised that the science is in. In, at any rate, to the extent that science can ever be, which is to say that the evidence for man-made global warming is as strong as the evidence for Darwinian evolution, or for the link between smoking and lung cancer. I am constantly struck by the way in which people like James, who proclaim themselves sceptics, will believe any old claptrap that suits their views. Their position was perfectly summarised by a supporter of Ian Plimer (author of a marvellous concatenation of gibberish called Heaven and Earth), commenting on a recent article in the Spectator: "Whether Plimer is a charlatan or not, he speaks for many of us." These people aren't sceptics; they're suckers.
Such beliefs seem to be strongly influenced by age. The Pew report found that people over 65 are much more likely than the rest of the population to deny that there is solid evidence that the earth is warming, that it's caused by humans, or that it's a serious problem. This chimes with my own experience. Almost all my fiercest arguments over climate change, both in print and in person, have been with people in their 60s or 70s. Why might this be?
There are some obvious answers: they won't be around to see the results; they were brought up in a period of technological optimism; they feel entitled, having worked all their lives, to fly or cruise to wherever they wish. But there might also be a less intuitive reason, which shines a light into a fascinating corner of human psychology.
In 1973 the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker proposed that the fear of death drives us to protect ourselves with "vital lies" or "the armour of character". We defend ourselves from the ultimate terror by engaging in immortality projects, which boost our self-esteem and grant us meaning that extends beyond death. More than 300 studies conducted in 15 countries appear to confirm Becker's thesis. When people are confronted with images or words or questions that remind them of death they respond by shoring up their worldview, rejecting people and ideas that threaten it, and increasing their striving for self-esteem.
One of the most arresting findings is that immortality projects can bring death closer. In seeking to defend the symbolic, heroic self that we create to suppress thoughts of death, we might expose the physical self to greater danger. For example, researchers at Bar-Ilan University in Israel found that people who reported that driving boosted their self-esteem drove faster and took greater risks after they had been exposed to reminders of death.
A recent paper by the biologist Janis L Dickinson, published in the journal Ecology and Society, proposes that constant news and discussion about global warming makes it difficult to repress thoughts of death, and that people might respond to the terrifying prospect of climate breakdown in ways that strengthen their character armour but diminish our chances of survival. There is already experimental evidence that some people respond to reminders of death by increasing consumption. Dickinson proposes that growing evidence of climate change might boost this tendency, as well as raising antagonism towards scientists and environmentalists. Our message, after all, presents a lethal threat to the central immortality project of western society: perpetual economic growth, supported by an ideology of entitlement and exceptionalism.
If Dickinson is correct, is it fanciful to suppose that those who are closer to the end of their lives might react more strongly against reminders of death? I haven't been able to find any experiments testing this proposition, but it is surely worth investigating. And could it be that the rapid growth of climate change denial over the last two years is actually a response to the hardening of scientific evidence? If so, how the hell do we confront it?
106 Comments so far
Show AllMy father was a career weatherman. I remember him telling me about 20 years ago that he didn't buy the science claiming that the earth was getting hotter because of manmade causes. He said, "We haven't been studying the weather long enough to know whether this is a cycle that the earth goes through periodically." Being someone who was very well read on many subjects, I respected him, on an intellectual level. (His people skills sucked.) I know that studies of the Greenland ice field cores and other core samples from glaciers have shown that what we are going through right now is worse than any melting that has occurred for a very long time. That _still_ doesn't prove that this kind of warming has never happened before. It would be interesting to see if my father would have changed his mind by now.
Anyway, I'm sure that there is a natural cycle occurring as well as manmade influences. I suspect that BOTH may be happening.
I hope your Dad was a good enough scientist to realise that, just because such perturbation might have happened before in the planetary history, that doesn't mean we modern life forms could live under such conditions. In geologic time, high-order life evolved only yesterday, and we modern humans only in the past five minutes.
As author Sir Terry Pratchett, a *very* intelligent non-scientist put it in a recent interview "I think we're doomed because politicians think in five years at a time. Every time I remember that we live on a planet, it scares the shit out of me, because they're such dangerous things to live on: two miles down there you burn, two miles up there you freeze. It's so delicate."
For me, the idea that what's going on is partly 'natural' doesn't change things a bit, since while there certainly are natural heating cycles, it's barking madness to *reinforce* them.
Nanoo
Look at the bright side, if countries and or corporations were to give up polluting machines, there would be full employment and further development would slow way way down.
"could it be that the rapid growth of climate change denial over the last two years is actually a response to the hardening of scientific evidence? If so, how the hell do we confront it?"
We on the far left advocate the same simple solution to all fallout of elite rule: Ending elite rule. We end elite rule by advocating localism, so the people can build a stake in something, i.e. their local community, that is more meaningful than the elite establishment. The western seniors that Monibot refers to are not so much shuddering at the grim reaper but are looking at global warming catastrophe as devaluing their lives which were built, by the direction of elites, on the consumption of fossil fuels and neglect of the biosphere.
I remember when I was a kid I thought the world was going to be like Soylent Green when I grew up because of all the talk about overpopulation at the time. As a teenager I was led to believe everyone was going to be dead from AIDS by now. But none of the dire predictions ever really come true, often they turn out to be completely wrong. Who knows maybe everything will finally happen at once and the results will all cancel each other out. People will be wiped out by the millions from a killer flu, then our computers will all stop working, then terrorists go on a rampage around the planet setting off nukes in the cities. The survivors will then will move out of the cities to escape the fallout, the disease and because nothing works without computers. They will go back to the land, living in communes and farming. And if it wasn't soon enough and the world gets hotter and the sea rises it won't matter because everyone is further inland away from the cities anyway...
But then just when we think, well everything worked out for the best anyway, BAM! a gigantic asteroid hits the planet!
No, the overpopulation thing IS killing us. It's just that the late Prof. Borlaug delayed it a bit with his agro fix. But we'd be fools to expect another such reprieve. Lovelock reckons that, if we don't take the world away from the psychopaths *SOON*, techno civilisation is finished and there'll only be 1G-2G of us humans around in 2100, the rest having died young and horribly.
here's the bet:
horse 1: climate cheange is real it's here, and we need to make radical reductions in enegy consumption.
bet 2.: climate change is a hoax- keep on producing and consuming as usual. drive a hummer. shop till you drop. it don't matter.
bet on horse one. now let's say 20 years later we find out we lost our bet. climate change is not real after all. what have we lost? just some junk we were better off without. we drove tiny cars, mopeds, rode bike and walked. we spent more time not working, hanging out with family and friends.
the is is clean and almost fresh. fish are coming back in the streams. hardly anyone is going extinct anymore.
but if we bet on horse 2 and lose, we are doomed. the world will end for us.
so that is the only argument we should need. the stakes are just too high. we cannot risk taking such a chance.
The Free markets and profits are infallible.
Companies and people profit off the ability to dump Greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at will.
Global warming suggests fallibility.
Therefore there can not be such a thing as Global Warming.
Computer illiteracy maybe.
I'm getting tired of repeating myself.
The argument over anthropogenic climate change is MOOT, at least insofar as how we generate electricity is concerned.
It's possible to generate electricity in most areas of the world far more cheaply ($/per kwh) by harvesting either Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) or Ocean Thermal energy than it is to make it by burning coal (or using nuclear or natural gas), whether carbon is being captured or not.
The enabling technology is the Atmospheric Vortex Engine, which uses the earth's surface as it's "solar" collector and the upper troposphere as the "heat sink" much like a hurricane does.
Ref: http://vortexengine.ca
After an intense, two-year development period to obtain required design parameters, it would make sense to immediately start shutting down coal plants and replacing them with this distributed form of energy at a rapid rate.
This is something even the "skeptics" should be able to support since coal produces a lot more types of pollution than just CO2.
I suspect that because global warming became cause celebre with Al Gore's work, its popularity as a cause has fallen with the plummeting credibility of the Democratic party, the lowered willingness of Democrats to criticise their own, and the passing into bleary chemical sunset of a once-in-a-lifetime easy target in Bu$h.
Well, I'm skeptical of this theory of Monbiot's: that older people are more likely to be skeptics. In my experience there isn't an age link.
I think some of the problem is the internet. It's great for organizing that there are no gate keepers--but it also means there is no limit even on long-ago-proved-false rumors--they just keep circulating and circulating. A retired engineer that I know (he's gotta be at least 70) noted that he took one of those petitions, this one signed by 1500 "scientists," and Googled the names. He found a real estate salesman, a dentist, a car salesman--not one climate scientist on the list! But that list will still persuade people WHO ARE EAGER TO BELIEVE THEY DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THIS ENORMOUS THREAT that it's all a hoax. And that's the key: most people--in the US anyway--don't want to believe we need to make major changes in our way of life. They know corporations have essentially complete control and can prevent any useful action, and they don't want to believe we're screwed. Trying to do anything about this is daunting, boggling, depressing, exhausting--deciding it's a hoax is blissfully easy.
Trouble is, everyone under 60 or so can expect to see a day when a gang of extremely pissed off young people, likely including their own offspring, slams them against a wall and shows them a National Geographic from the 1980s or 1990s with beautiful, colorful pictures of lost treasures like giraffes and the creatures of the reefs. And, in the same issue, an article about climate change and what a serious threat it is. The young people will demand to know why their elders in general and this scrawny critter in particular now cowering against the wall degraded their world so horribly, letting it go from the rich place it was even at the turn of the century to the miserable, hot, droughty and insect-ridden place they struggle to survive on. When the old person tries to explain that "I didn't believe in climate change--I thought it was a hoax"--they will be surprised to see that this explanation holds no water at all with the pissed off young...
Wouldn't it be funny if everytime you breathed out poisonous CO2 you were taxed?
Anyway...
"Death and Death Rates due to Extreme Weather Events"
http://goklany.org/library/deaths%20death%20rates%20from%20extreme%20events%202007.pdf
A graph showing the increase in cyclones, from Florida State University
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/global_year_ace.jpg
More about these devastating weather patterns:
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/
A study on sea-level change which should indicate something:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/MG_Leuliette2004.pdf
And finally a study indicating that AGW is severely exagerated, er, I mean a fun theory entertained by "suckers".
http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm
“We have to ride the theory of global warming even if it is wrong. ... A global warming treaty must be implemented even if there is no evidence of global warming.” Richard Benedict, former advisor to Kofi Annan.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." H. L. Mencken
cheller182 November 3rd, 2009 7:38 pm -- Thanks for the links. The Christopher Monckton article is especially impressive in the dispassionate and systematic way it challenges the IPCC (2007).
In case the readers may not want to wade through the Monckton article to find the gist, here's what I think it is; the capitalization is mine:
"In short, we must get the science right, or we shall get the policy wrong. If the concluding equation in this analysis (Eqn. 30) is correct, the IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity must have been very much exaggerated. There may, therefore, be a good reason why, CONTRARY TO THE PROJECTIONS OF THE MODELS ON WHICH THE IPCC RELIES, TEMPERATURES HAVE NOT RISEN FOR A DECADE AND HAVE BEEN FALLING SINCE THE PHASE-TRANSITION IN GLOBAL TEMPERATURE TRENDS THAT OCCURRED IN LATE 2001. Perhaps real-world climate sensitivity is very much below the IPCC’s estimates. Perhaps, therefore, there is no 'climate crisis' at all. At present, then, in policy terms there is no case for doing anything. The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing."
Monckton's equations and analyses are well beyond my understanding, but I think anyone would have to admit he approaches the subject scientifically.
Some information about Monckton, from wikipedia, not directly related to his views on climate change, but his general views on other issues, from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Christopher_Monckton,_3rd_Viscount_Monckton_of_Brenchley
"His warning that US President Barack Obama intended to sign a treaty at the conference which would "impose a communist world government on the world"
"Monckton's views on how the AIDS epidemic should be tackled have been the subject of some controversy. In an article for The American Spectator entitled "AIDS: A British View",[39] written for the January 1987 issue of The American Spectator, he argued that "there is only one way to stop AIDS. That is to screen the entire population regularly and to quarantine all carriers of the disease for life. Every member of the population should be blood-tested every month ... all those found to be infected with the virus, even if only as carriers, should be isolated compulsorily, immediately, and permanently." This would involve isolating between 1.5 and 3 million people in the United States ("not altogether impossible") and another 30,000 people in the UK ("not insuperably difficult"). The article was highly controversial, with The American Spectator's then assistant managing editor, Andrew Ferguson, denouncing it in the letters column of the same issue."
"he would "leave the European Union, close down 90 per cent of government services and shift power away from the atheistic, humanistic government and into the hands of families and individuals."
Monbiot has responded to Monckton's article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/nov/14/science.comment
Some selections:
"The author of this "research article" is Christopher Monckton, otherwise known as Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. He has a degree in classics and a diploma in journalism and, as far as I can tell, no further qualifications. But he is confident enough to maintain that - by contrast to all those charlatans and amateurs who wrote the reports produced by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - he is publishing "the truth"."
"His claims about the Stefan-Boltzmann equation have been addressed by someone who does know what he's talking about, Dr Gavin Schmidt of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He begins by pointing out that Stefan-Boltzmann is a description of radiation from a "black body" - an idealised planet that absorbs all the electromagnetic radiation that reaches it. The Earth is not a black body. It reflects some of the radiation it receives back into space."
"Schmidt points out that Monckton also forgets, in making his calculations, that "climate sensitivity is an equilibrium concept": in other words that there is a time-lag of several decades between the release of carbon dioxide and the eventual temperature rise it causes. If you don't take this into account, the climate's sensitivity to carbon dioxide looks much smaller. This is about as fundamental a mistake as you can make in climate science."
"So what of those graphs? Look at them carefully and you see that they are measuring two different things: global temperatures (the UN panel's progression) and European temperatures (Monckton's line). You will also discover that the scales are different."
"Pat Michaels's misrepresentation of Hansen's claims was picked up by Michael Crichton in his novel State of Fear, and somehow transmuted into an "error" of 300%. Monckton gives no source for his claim about Hansen, but Crichton's novel features in his references. The howlers go on and on. There is scarcely a line in Lord Monckton's paper which is not wildly wrong."
From the American Physical Society itself, from wikipedia:
"In response, the APS reaffirmed its unchanged position on climate change and pointed out that the newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society "carries the statement that 'Opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the APS or of the Forum.' This newsletter is not a journal of the APS and it is not peer reviewed."[28] The APS further added a disclaimer to the top of Monckton's article stating: "...Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article's conclusions."[29]"
"Arthur Smith, long-time member at the APS Forum, has identified 125 errors, irrelevancies, and contradictions in the article.[31][32]"
http://altenergyaction.org/Monckton.html
http://arxiv.org/abs/0811.4600
Throwing a bunch of equations and graphs in an article is NOT a scientific approach. Monckton's article is the worst kind of "science": pseudo-science.
rfloh November 4th, 2009 2:52 am -- Your comment is very much appreciated. I had seen a video circulating on the Internet of Monckton's comment on the proposed climate change treaty (10/14/09) but failed to recognize that the man making those ridiculous claims was the same man who authored the persuasive article cheller182 referred to (http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm).
It may be that the article isn't scientific. If so, it would take a scientist to tell you. In other words, Monckton is a very very smooth operator if he really doesn't know science. It might be that some well-financed group assisted in loading the article with apparently rigorous scientific thinking.
Be that as it may, I can't disagree with Monckton's thesis that the IPCC's predictions are in question due to the recent data on the leveling off in the upward trend of global temperatures. I can't help it if idiots like Limbaugh, Hannity, etc., feed on Monckton's ideas for their own purpose (entertainment). And certainly none of his ideas outside the scope of the article appeal to me.
Again, thanks to you and others for alerting me to the very substantial issues regarding Lord Monckton.
With "crash" Flisom solar panels on every roof and a mass-produced Tesla in every garage on earth, NOW! But don't count this CHANGE coming from "our" president Barack Obama Rusefailt!
how about this...in the USA take the average household's energy use and make that the standard to start the taxation rates. It will be zero at the average. 10% more then the average, 10% energy tax hike, 20% - 20%, up to 50% after 50% make it 200% and at 75% make it 400%, ect. Then we'll see where the Hollywood and leftist elites stand. They may drive a Prius but they live in 20,000 sq ft homes. Don't tax the average Joe to death, make energy taxes extremely progressive. I'd love to see a debate in Congress on that. Albert Gore III wouldn't support that. If anything the cap and tax taxes will DESTROY the middle class in America. The costs to the middle class are very regressive. And it will send more production to China will I am sure will be exempt somehow (like with Kyoto). Makes one wonder if Big Business wants cap and trade in the USA. I know China and India do!
many people are worried about feeding their kids, paying the mortgage, ect. Only the elites who can afford cap and tax and all these other tax schemes want this BS anymore. Why was China exempt from Kyoto? Their pollution cleaner then ours? Lets see, the dirtiest cities in the world? Rio? Mexico City? Bejing? Shanghi? When these global warming chicken littles demand ALL countries do what the USA has to do, then maybe I will believe. And Al Gore stops riding in private jets!
Per capita CO2 emissions, top 10:
Qatar
Kuwait
Bahrain
Aruba
Netherlands Antilles
Trinidad and Tobago
USA
Canada
Brazil is 123, China 96, India 139. Mexico 87.
with half the country gunning for Al Gore, I don't blame him for flying private.
Copenhagen will attempt to do precisely what you want. Developing nations are correct to claim that reckless CO2 emissions by the U.S. has benefitted our economy enormously and now THEY are being asked to 'fix it'.
The foundational knowledge and ways of thinking to understand science takes many years from a youngish age to develop. A bit like music performance ability, it takes both talent and rigourously applied training over a long time.
And its difficult for the lower IQ levels to take in that long term project. In the process of learning us lesser intellectuals tend to reject what we fail to understand, to defend our our egos, and take instead the irrational, religious and social group-think, which in other circumstances is maybe an evolutionary group survival advantage.
Clive James is cued in to populist celebrity media trash, the sort of stuff that fills in the vacuums in the majority of minds these days. Media moguls make money selling the junk. There is a lot of it around in endless permutations. But the road to understanding and science is hard mental work.
The over 60 s age group are in addition beset by age and disease related mental declines, and generally many of them are not able or prepared to take in a changed world view. When the world is changing we must look to the young to learn the new circumstances.
Never trust anyone over 30!
Unfortunately all the power and money resides with the crusty old fools who run the corporations, political parties and governments. Since climate change demands action that cannot wait for these powerful yet people to die and relinquish power, they will have to be pushed aside and deposed as soon as possible.
The political problem is that standards of public education have fallen, and the education potential of mass media is controlled and abused by the very same ossified generation that seeks to hang on to their definitions of power. These old people who are part of the problems of human civilisation have nothing but obstruction to offer to meet the challenges to the foundational precepts of our economy, that is the failing ecosystem we all exploit.
How does the HAARP program and weather modification experiments and Chem trails play into the global climate change data gathering process...? They have been spraying chemicals to create rain in military applications since the Vietnam war to flood the Ho Chi Min trail... And have the technology to create mega storms of tornados or hurricanes, or cause earthquakes or tsunamis since the 1970's...
This is Tesla technology, and these HAARP installations broadcast ELF waves to the GWEN towers and then to our digital TV converter boxes with subaudible waves that affect us psychotronically... Or they can focus the ELF waves in a certain location to cause cataclismic events or long standing weather trends to cause drought or flooding... The aluminum and barium and other metals being sprayed in grid patterns over most cities and countrysides of all NATO countries may also have an effect on data collection for climate change scientists, as the chem trails fan out over time and create a foggy cirrus cover which causes temperatures to climb like in a greenhouse... Yet less sunlight gets through, which affects the trees and plants ability to transpire and humans and animals ability to breathe...
Most people are skeptics when it comes to HAARP & chemtrails... They would rather assume it doesn't exist, yet they are overhead most of the time since the mid 1990's, and you would have to be a sucker to ignore that kind of prevalent and visible evidence... How come no one is mentioning these factors in their assessment of global climate change? Yes Humans are indirectly affecting the planet through burning carbon, pollution, & deforestation... However, we are also directly manipulating the weather in various locales & scales, and the existence of these facilities have been declassified, their patent numbers are in the public domain... yet skeptics ridicule folks who have done their own research and do speak about this taboo subject as if they are confusing science fiction with reality...
Many climate change activists are being duped into supporting a cap & trade shell game that will make Al Gore & GoldmanSachs private equity firm very wealthy, without actually curbing any of the pollution... And the "deniers" are reacting to the reactionaries in predictable ways by denying that it is a manmade phenomenon... and both sides are being played as pawns in the Hegelian Dialectic of Problem-Reaction-Solution...
Great comment Goldenmean. I wonder where Henry8 is today. He usually speaks out against global warming talk and often says it's not man-made. I need to share this with him the next time he shows up.
Ice Age man made?????
Government and the UN don't want this information to be known. Abolishing the UN and getting out of foreign affairs would help.
^now your talking! Get US out of the UN!
I'm in the right age range. I'm immediately pegged as a "denier," "shill," or "troll" because I look at the latest data and say, wait a minute.
If AGW is going on and leading us to catastrophe in the next 50 to 100 years, that implies that each year, as the unbridled increase of GHG's continues, the temperature should be going up. Not the case. There's no dispute about this. Warmists struggle to deny or minimize it. They say the leveling off of the increase in global temperature, or even slight cooling, since 1998 isn't really what it seems to be. They say it's because of sunspots, or a phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. But facts are facts: there's been a leveling off of the increase in global temperature, or even slight cooling, since 1998. The increase in the extent of arctic sea ice since 2007 isn't an illusion, although warmists deny its significance because evidently the actual volume of ice is less. The warming of the antarctic is nothing like as great as the warming of the arctic. Why not, if AGW has put us on a course for imminent disaster?
When someone points out that climate change is nothing new, that warmer periods than the one we're in now have come and gone long before man's recent contribution of GHG's, and that CO2 has actually been in ancient times more abundant in the atmosphere than it is now, one is labeled a denier.
Non-scientists on both sides of this issue tend to hold their beliefs religiously. Meanwhile, scientists, in my opinion (I'm not one, by the way), are busy studying and experimenting, and disagreeing among themselves as to the degree of warming that has occurred, or will occur; as to the causes of warming, or of increases in GHG's; as to exactly how the dozen or so drivers of climate change and climate stability will interact and affect each other over decades; etc. That doesn't sound like consensus to me. Scientists still quarrel and debate about quantum physics, relativity, evolution, string theory, and so on. Why would they be united on just climate change? As I read the literature (as a non-scientist, admittedly), they aren't.
By the way, whatever happened in 2009 to the huge increase in hurricanes resulting from global warming (such as what we had in 2005)? Please don't think my religion is showing just because I asked the question. You can check my bank account if you think I'm being paid to ask such silly (?) questions.
And this is why "suckers" is such an apt description of global warming deniers. They have great skepticism about overwhelming evidence, but accept half-truths and misleading statements from people telling them what they want to hear. If you're going to make scientific arguments against AGW, that requires engaging with the science instead of burning down straw men.
AGW does not make the prediction that temperatures will monotonically increase every year. This point misleadingly conflates "weather" and "climate." If the stock of a company is in long-term decline, but it occasionally gains a dollar or two in value before falling again, nobody disputes the long-term decline.
There's also the fact that the atmosphere is only part of the Earth. Lest we forget, land and oceans also exist. The total amount of heat in the world has actually been increasing. Any slight decrease in atmospheric temperature has been more than made up for by increases in ocean temperature.
Land ice in Antarctica is decreasing, even while sea ice increases. The sea ice increase is happening because convection in the oceans is being changed by...global warming. The water temperature in the southern ocean is increasing.
There were times when CO2 has been this high in the past. That happened most recently 15 million years ago, and sea level was 75-120 feet higher than it is today. There was a high-profile paper about this just last month.
Scientists agree that we are screwed. The scientific debate concerns HOW screwed we are, and it looks like we're pretty screwed no matter who you ask. There are droughts across all the world's farmlands. We're in the midst of a mass extinction event comparable to the end of the dinosaurs. You can see the glaciers melting with your own eyes.
Every dumb argument advanced by global warming deniers has been definitively refuted at skepticalscience.com. It sure would've been nice if a fraction of this hard-nosed skepticism had been directed toward the governments and corporations that have been creating these problems that will kill a great many of us.
inverse_agonist November 3rd, 2009 5:15 pm (and others who have expressed similar objections) -- Please see my comment on cheller182's comment on November 3rd, 2009 7:38 pm. I would be interested to know if Christopher Monckton's article changes your view.
Christopher Monckton's article has already been picked apart by others.
I've seen you state that in your opinion wikipedia is very useful. You should have used wikipedia on Monckton's views.
"By the way, whatever happened in 2009 to the huge increase in hurricanes resulting from global warming (such as what we had in 2005)?"
Don't ask your question in Manila, you'll get mobbed.
It sounds like you'll be unconvinced GW is real until temps start tracking upward again. (you can't prove statistically, btw, that temps have 'levelled out' as you say they have in the last 10 years, whereas I can prove statistically that they have gone up in the last century.) But I worry that, by then, you'll have some other excuse. AGW hasn't been controversial in the climatological or even geophysical communities for 10 years or more. While you've been focused on the thermometer, two years ago the IPCC estimated global sea levels would rise 1.5 ft by end of century. Last year, they increased the estimate to 3 ft. This year, 4 ft. So, what do you think their estimate will be NEXT year? Don't assume that just because we 'don't have all the facts' on this issue that what we don't know will be benign. What we don't know may well kill us, and that is really all us GW alarmists are saying.
Finally, I'll ask you a question I'd ask any denier: if CO2 is a major greenhouse gas (without which earth would be frozen), how can CO2 levels be doubled from their historical value of 250ppm without heating the ocean-atmosphere system? What possible physical pathway do you propose that would allow the doubling of a major greenhouse gas in our atmosphere without an attendant strengthening of the greenhouse effect?
(if you deny the greenhouse effect then, frankly, we are in a whole other world of denial.)
ubrew12 November 3rd, 2009 4:58 pm -- I'm still asking about tropical storms. You seem to know. Did the number and intensity of hurricanes/cyclones/typhoons go up or down in 2009 from, say, 2005? Why?
The significance of ancient increases in CO2 is that a) it suggests non-anthropogenic factors may be at work, b) it suggests that the planet can survive a more drastic increase than we're likely to experience any time soon, and c) it establishes that the CO2 goes down periodically without human intervention. Are scientists unanimous (or nearly so) in saying there's no room for debate about any of this?
I don't know whether tropical storms have gone down or up overall. If I did, I wouldn't know why. I'm just willing to admit that what I don't know could kill me, and I don't think many deniers are. CO2 has been largely pegged around 250 ppm for the last 600,000 years. As has been mentioned, they just reported that the last time CO2 was this high, sea levels were 75-150ft higher than they are today. Of course, a) is true, b) is true, and c) is true. As to a), no one has identified another source of CO2. As to b) the planets survival is not in question, OUR survival is. As to c), all such pathways have been investigated and found wanting in the current circumstance. Hence, CO2 has a half-life of 800 years: put it in the atmosphere, and its not going away for a looong time.
Scientists debate the significance of the ancient record, but the PHYSICS by which atmospheric CO2 does and SHOULD heat the ocean-atmosphere system is accepted science for 120 years. Given the undeniability of this FACT and of the FACT that CO2 levels are on their way to DOUBLING in 200 years, what possible controversy can attend the simple conclusion that the ocean-atmosphere system should be HEATING UP? The PHYSICS says it should be heating up, the THERMOMETER says it HAS been heating up. The ICE LOSS says it has been heating up. MAYBE the physics is correct, yes? I mean, its not complicated physics. The greenhouse effect was first proposed 180 years ago, and within 60 years was an accepted FACT. Why all the controversy? Why are deniers literally proposing cosmic rays from the center of the Milky Way to explain this?
"If so, how the hell do we confront it?"
GEORGE,
THIS IS HOW WE CONFRONT IT:
I'll preface by saying, this is the problem with geniuses and scientists; they do not speak to the average person.
SELL HEALTH EFFECTS
What is CO2 emmissions doing to our health?
What about the proliferation of chemicals emitted in the land, water, air?
It's not just about dying.
It's about suffering and damage to our quality of life.
PLEASE, climate change activists, reach out to people on how it affects their lives TODAY.
I am deeply concerned about all of the effects of climate change: the polar bears struggle to survive, the increased rates of asthma and respiratory disease, the forest fires.
Some people, though, just want to know HOW it affects them NOW.
WHY should they care?
TELL THEM.
To fear death is to fear life because death is part of life!I'm 73 where have these old folks been hiding?Wrote this before.Tony
CONNECTIONS
Has anyone the reason, inclination or time to place the times of our seasons?
Will the months of spring and the stirrings of new beginnings be the apex of this diamond in which life is and will be shown?
Place the hand on the summers growth, for is not youth to be nurtured and prized by a guide, a possible maturing progenitor?
How the fall is maligned! Is not this the time of reflection and the time to know the beauty in all?
Where can the all be without the rest and sleep before renewal? Is not the winter a vital pause ere the beginnings to be?
The spring brings forth all of the earths glorious effects from the cold and ice of the Arctic's, the highs and lows of the lands and waters, from deserts and lush lands and all in between and for many reasons.
Summer comes and growth is. For as the young is brought forward to take it's turn in the sun; with it's maturity comes the knowledge of responsibility to do it's part and show it has grown.
Oh! How is the fall to be viewed? yea, as it is being plucked, reaped, turned to nurture new growing’s as a spring provider.
Is this not the habitation of the treasures of the life giving elixir called water? The mountains serve as repositories and the oceans as fountains of the deep to serve and give life to all who would have it in the beauty of the rush of water or the fall.
Irony: Humans are the only ones who enjoy or destroy. Yet a butterfly's wings pushing air in a lush environment may change destiny. What a wonderful and paradoxical world! Are these not connections for all to see?
"If so, how the hell do we confront it?"
Ya don't. Stop wasting your time and start preparing.
As others here have noted, the human race will be rocked, but it won't be wiped out.
There are scads of sites and books on the range of knowledge, skills, abilities and supplies necessary to survive any number of surprises the future holds.
But make no mistake - as GM stated first off: "face it - we're losing." And when the match is finally lost, the real battles will begin...
"If so, how the hell do we confront it?"
Ya don't. Stop wasting your time and start preparing.
As others here have noted, the human race will be rocked, but it won't be wiped out.
=====
Agreed. And to Global Climate change add, financial crash, and peak oil. Everybody should do as much as they can to be as self reliant as they can, as soon as they can.
Hey, it's the end of the world aint it? We can preach to the choir all day but what good does it do to drive and fly around the world screaming "save the environment, we're doomed !" when the solutions are here at home. There are fewer investments in green sources of fuel, no green jobs, and no reduction in costs for environmentally friendly merchandise. The UN blames cows and grass for global warming and protects ADM for its environmental abuses. If government would get out of the way, Greenpeace wouldn't be under the knife and I work my way towards being a self-employed entrepreneur specializing in making and selling environmentally friendly hardware. The UN needs to be abolished so that ADM can whither away and local farmers can prosper.
To Monbiots point: I think a lot of Americans are trained to trust 'critical thinking' over 'critical thought', where the former is a personal process while the latter is a product often coming from some other 'authority'. For thought to be critical it isn't sufficient for it to be arrived at by critical thinking, it must have thought critically over data that was REAL.
A lot of ordinary Americans who believe in GW (global warming) are, when you dig into their beliefs, just taking the science communities word for it. They understand its a complicated subject and trust the scientists to 'get it right'. But the rightwing denier community has been trained to trust only their own senses, and especially to distrust authority. Thus, if you say you are from the scientific authority and GW is real, they automatically distrust you, and they turn on their critical thinking apparatus to 'see for themselves'. But this apparatus needs data, which Exxon is only too happy to provide via the internet. So, using the correct process of critical thinking the denier nevertheless comes up with the wrong conclusion. And when you tell him his ideas need to be 'vetted' through a critical peer-review process, he sees the scientific 'authority' trying to silence him, and redoubles his efforts. The more you push, the more he sees a conspiracy and, having his ego involved in it, and no small amount of time, he is now much more resolved to turn against it.
Americans are staunchly independent. They 'think for themselves'. Furthermore, the deniers tap into a NATIONAL proclivity for independent thought. You believe them because it says something about you personally, that you can reach your own conclusions and not merely get fed conclusions by some authority.
My tact, lately, has been to state the consequences of GW in the most personal of terms: your home IS GOING UNDERWATER IN TWENTY YEARS. This creates the internal self-doubt needed to turn minds at the most personal of levels. GW deniers may crow at the top of their lungs about how they aren't headed for a cliff, but if you can show them the cliff and how close they are to it, they will shut up as a matter of survival. These people understand that there's one thing that trumps promoting their own egos, and that is saving their own skins.
Sioux Rose
UBREW: On this one, you and I are like the 2 blind men that apparently touch the elephant in very different places.
The right wing tend to be AUTHORITARIAN and they DO listen to authority, the question is what they take for that authority and the answer is: the likes of Rush Limbaugh and/or their fundamentalist churches. They are suspicious of academic studies and credentialed thinkers (like scientists) because many prefer the Bible stories they have been fed (as food for thought) since childhood; and those in media who speak directly to them--as the target audience--have managed to associate thinkers with "the dangerous lefties, communists, and socialists." The radio "hate" set are well-funded by corporations to make sure that citizens do NOT get the clarity on the core issues central to their would-be well-being. This is the set that thought Saddam was behind 911, and that there were WMD found in Iraq.
What's funny is that both sides realize that there will be those who seek to make a profit from global warming, selling carbon credits, etc. But just because a few apply the profit motive (this same ilk would have taken bets on the Titanic) does not mean the evidence (of dangerous climate change) is worthy of being thrown away.
As for Americans as individuals, they're largely conformists. The only projection of individuality that's clear is seen in terms of ownership: This is my car, this is my house, this is my child, this is my big screen, this is my television, etc. This identification with personal objects should not be taken for a capacity for independent thought or action. I would say about 20% of the population works "those" autonomous muscles.
"Thus, if you say you are from the scientific authority and GW is real, they automatically distrust you, and they turn on their critical thinking apparatus to 'see for themselves'."
Actually I've come to the conclusion that most USAns follow the rule that if it requires reading a whole book to get an elementary uderstanding of it, and especially, if the book contains mathematical expressions, the refuse to believe it.
In other words: "I can't understand it, therefore I don't believe it!" Sounds like something a character in a Lewis Carroll story Wonderland might say, but it seems to be true.
Sometimes I think, under everything, people are so genuinely freaked out by the global environmental changes they sense coming, due to destruction they themselves have enabled, that denial is the only thing keeping them from shitting their pants and puking and slitting their wrists at the same time...
If only the alternative ~ natural living as one of the many living things here ~ didn't seem to be so damned scary and different than the industrialized, chemicalized, electro-comforted and delivered-necessity world we have now...
Humans lived without modern industry and electricity for eons, but we're afraid...
"Humans lived without modern industry and electricity for eons, but we're afraid..."
Afraid of phantoms. We don't have to give up modern technology. We simply have to give up over-use of it, and general over-consumption. We can THRIVE on 1/10 of our current consumption, a sustainable rate. To do this we have to purge the elites from the government.
Respectfully, I think you are incorrect on a few points.
The Rightwing community, GW deniers or not, are mostly of the authoritarian personality, pre-ordained to trust not distrust the dominators in their midst. They are no more independent thinkers than the common sheep. Their "staunch" independence is a facade. Their brains are plastered with bumper stickers.
Combine this with the lifelong anti-intellectual and anti-science propaganda they have been bombarded with and you have a lethal impediment to progressive thinking and change.
Sioux
Z-MAN: I hadn't read your post when I just left my response to UBREW. Evidently you and I were thinking in a similar manner. You made the point well.
Actually, it is in arguing with deniers that I've come across some of the most inventive 'explanations' for GW: they clearly have their thinking-caps on. And their claim that the rest of us are falling for a 'secular religion' is partly correct: we start by having faith in the scientific authority. But, to a large extent, they have just as much faith, only in Glenn Beck, etc. They are undeniably well-funded, which is why we are where we are on this issue. To me, the Achilles Heel of the deniers is on the role of CO2 in our climate. Knowing that CO2 is a major greenhouse gas (without which Earth would be freezing), and knowing that levels of CO2 are on their way to doubling from standard values of 250 ppm, how do they explain that the extra CO2 can't have any effect on our climate? I mean, these people are literally looking for cosmic rays from the Milky Ways galactic center to explain GW, as a way of avoiding the 'CO2 question'. But, even if these cosmic rays are found, how could a doubling of ANY major greenhouse gas NOT have an affect on earth's climate? I believe that this question is the 'fly in the ointment' by which to unravel the entire denier logical construction.
ubrew12 --
Your error is in the "thinking cap" mirage. Those are dunce caps and what's more, they are proud to wear them.
How can you credit them with fact- and logic-based thinking capabilities and at the same time write "...these people are literally looking for cosmic rays from the Milky Ways galactic center to explain GW, as a way of avoiding the 'CO2 question'"?
Well, point taken.
I'm a technological optimist. I believe that we can soon generate, store and distribute shockingly cheap electricity. I believe that buildings can pretty much heat themselves cheaper than by using petroleum or coal. I believe that electric battery cars with swappable battery packs can rule the highways until we get electric transit that ends the 42,000 deaths per year industry. Finally, I think we can drive down the cost of oilgae below the cost of petroleum pretty quickly.
Having said all that, I doubt that we shall lower the carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere. We're at 380 ppm. It would be nice to be at 350 ppm but if wishes came true we'd take 300 ppm. The ocean temperatures lag the solar inputs by maybe 30 years, so we're going to cook and we're going to get salt water storm surges ruining millions of our houses and buried electrical cables.
Worse, this country has no political will to defend the citizens' interests. That's why we're not stopping at 380.
Next the suckers will believe that cancer is good for you. Instead of 50% of the kids forecast to deal with tumors in their lifetimes, we can go to 90%. No problem if you're in your 70s, you're on the way out anyways, so go kill off all your grandkids after you're dead, like a bad Halloween movie.
CONSIDER:
IF EVEN the Carbon Energy Rich countries like those in the middle east - and elsewhere - are having MASSIVE plans to wean THEIR economies from the polluting energy sources THEY actually own -
if EVEN the MONEY RICH countries like China and many in Asia, such as hongkong, Singapore, South Korea, able to USE their dollar reserves and savings to invest and "lock up" carbon energy - ARE ALSO behaving with MASSIVE national plans to eventually wean away from crude oil or other highly polluting energy sources ...
what does it say that the USA
which possesses NEITHER the Energy rich sources these countries own or have locked up
DRAGS ITS FEET about the matter?.
what it shows is:
THE ONE COUNTRY that has LED the world to a system of global "energy use" that is so polluting and FORCEd that kind of global econmic structure on everyone else but POSSESSES NEITHER those resources NOR the money to pay for it
ALSO is the country that demands THOSE countries pay the price for ITS development over the decades - and continue to pay the price for ITS "exemptions" - as it goes about
behaving in its BACKWARD ENERGY RESOURCES habits
while THEY have to make the MASSIVE NATIONAL PROGRAMS globally to COMPENSATE for the USA's OWN profligacy!
now - THAT is what I call HYPOCRISY of an order beyond measure!
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/vertica-farm-dubai-seawater.php
http://www.treehugger.com/seawater-daytime.jpg
Vertical Farm in Dubai Uses Seawater
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 03. 5.09
Design & Architecture
http://www.treehugger.com/seawater-night.jpg
A good rendering is a thing of beauty, and when it is of an amazing vertical farm, so much the better. Italian architects Studiomobile has developed a Seawater vertical farm to be built in Dubai.
"The seawater vertical farm uses seawater to cool and humidify greenhouses and to
convert sufficient humidity back in to fresh water to irrigate the crops."
http://www.treehugger.com/seawater-daytime.jpg
It is designed to work with seawater:
http://www.treehugger.com/seawater3.jpg
phase 01
The air going into the greenhouse is first cooled and humidified by seawater,
which is trickled over the first evaporator. this provides a fresh and humid climate
for the crops that in these conditions need very little water as they are not stressed
by excessive transpiration.
phase 02
As the air leaves the growing area it passes through the second evaporator which
has seawater flowing over it. during this phase the humid air mix with the warm
dry air of the ceiling interspace. thus the air is made much hotter and more humid.
phase 03
The warm air is forced to flow upward by the stack effect that is temperature induced.
in the central chimney the warm and humid air will condense when in contact with
plastic tubes where cool sea water is pumped. in the surface of the condenser many
drops of fresh water will appear, ready to be recollected in a tank to water the crops
and for other uses.
http://www.treehugger.com/seawater-detail.jpg
http://www.treehugger.com/seawater-intieror.jpg
Some people are just more suckered by advertising. That's really all it is on the surface: scientific data versus commercial ads by energy corporations. Commercials send subliminal messages and appeal to certain emotional points that experts in advertising psychology can probably understand better than anthropologists and biologists. In any case, Monbiot is right, because the same principle holds: whether you buy Camel cigarettes because the ads got to you (even though Camels will kill you) or you deny global warming because the ads got to you (even though denying it kill you, eventually), you're still a sucker. Here's some idea of the money that's pouring in for these ads:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/03-4
by the time the "climate deniers" in the USA - are DEAD -- and IF countries manage to come together following the LEAD OF CHINA in actually making the changes --
and by the time the USA is HOLLOWED OUT even more by its BACkWARD , BARBARIC wars for conquest and energy resource...which it can't find other ways of getting except by GANGSTERISM ....
by the time Americans WAKE UP to the reality that EVEN THEIR OWN "electric grid" tied to SOLAR and WIND and other renewable resources power and distribution are controlled BY china or other countries .........
the USA will be known as the "BACKWARD NATION" that
was LEFT BEHIND.
and only TOLERATED as a nation of "customers" for resources and infrastructures America REFUSED to build or take part in building.
as of this week -- CHINA has openly expressed interest in FINANCING Solar and Wind Power energy companies IN THE USA - in texas , - that americans don't even want to really support or are too much of an IDIOT constituency to support - or their own billionaires are hedging their funds until "further notice of profitability".
and lo and behold - some americans, including IN CONGRESS are HOWLING that the "chinese are coming".........
well - guess what -- IF AMERICANS won't DO THE JOB required -- the CHINESE are READY to DO IT!!!
i've said it for over a decade now - especially to friends and relatives , if they are into "investing":
"INVEST IN FUTURES - such as SOLAR and WIND POWER - anything "green" if you can study the companies that are legitimate"
"INVEST even if the current "markets" are not yet so committed"
"INVEST in CHINA's plans and companies to go Solar, Wind, Electric Grid"
"INVEST in high-rise urban architecture in firms that are futuristic and use technology , even if they are not YET *financially viable* as of today , that use URBAN FARMING incorporated INTO architectural structures "....
I am proving to have been right.
i just wish i HAD the money already to invest in these things.
hehe.
SIOUXROSE -- this is specially for you.
Sioux Rose
Hi, TEDDY: Thanks for thinking of me! A very wise friend of mine (Cuban) who lives in Puerto Rico sent me a scary email today about the U.S. dollar. I'd be happy to email it to you. I know you often copy and paste articles onto this site, but I haven't figured out how to do that. My system doesn't allow it. I would like to get out of DOLLARS in general. You were right about gold, too. What worries me is that given that our government now routinely bypasses the rule of law, has one set of officials giving the next carte blanche to continue in lawless ways... what would stop the government from deciding it wanted the dental gold caps of citizens? What if it used the "law of eminent domain" to begin confiscating property? I have little confidence in the insurance companies. Just as they have pros paid to make sure some don't get the medical help them need (due to the "pre-existing condition, I was thinking that DEATH qualifies as such since we are all, after all, mortal), if there was a large weather event, the property insurers could say they ran out of money and "tough luck." I have almost no faith left in the US dollar, stocks are smoke and mirrors. The rules of fair play along with basic accountability have mostly broken down.
I studied with the Buddhists in Nepal and fully understand what it means to live in impermanence, but honestly, it's like chaos is now the rule. If one lives by an internal compass, not only is the climate radically altering, spiritual due north is harder to locate on personal "radar." I was shown that this time period would involve a massive "transition" when I let stories of the future come through me. The catalyst was a contest sponsored by Ted Turner back in l990. I self-published this material a few years ago. The Transition, indeed! What a roller coaster ride! And it's only just begun. Tonight when I went biking I realized what's coming to America is a crash course in compassion. As the film, "Little Murders" portrayed many moons ago, it was only the person mugged who showed empathy for the stab wound victim as both boarded a NYC subway. No one else looked up to acknowledge the two passengers bleeding among them.
here are a few examples of visionary stuff I would invest in , if i had any money at all:
http://dornob.com/green-in-3d-16-vertical-farm-skyscraper-park-designs/
http://dornob.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/urban-pyramid-farm-landscape-idea.jpg
In increasingly dense urban areas, sometimes the only way to build is up. And with a movement to grow more food locally and to add more green to our urban environments so too has grown the impulse to build skyscraper farms, solar tower parks and other unique and uncanny forms of vertical vegetecture such as the sixteen shown here.
http://dornob.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/urban-creative-green-roof-designs.jpg
Green roofs have recently become almost the industry standard for urban architectural designs, found on many major civic projects but also in residential complexes and office parks. In turn, these have given way to vertically vegetated surfaces and structures – skyscraper farms were the almost inevitable next step.
http://dornob.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/urban-vertical-farm-design-ideas.jpg
Many initial vertical urban farm ideas were theoretical, at least to begin with. They involved layering buildings with levels of greenery or applying a green layer to their facades – in short, they were attempts to integrate green alongside traditional architectural forms and functions.
http://dornob.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/urban-skyscraper-farming-ideas.jpg
Subsequent ideas for building up and green have further integrated greenery into the very function of buildings, from pragmatic passive cooling and filtering systems to organic forms that reflect the function of these hybrid structures.
http://dornob.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/urban-farm-plants-vegetables.jpg
Many current urban farm and skyscraper park proposals are also incredibly thought-out to the tiniest details, including the species of plant that will work best in various positions throughout the structure.
Sioux Rose
TEDDY: Funny, I was going to add a P.S if you had any ideas in the way of companies to recommend. I never bought a stock in my life, but my parents both passed over in the past 3 years and they left me and three sisters some stocks. I thought it was typical of my life of much financial struggle to actually appreciate a gain, just when the markets were about to implode.
In any case, I'd like to send you one of my books as a thank you. I see you are up on lots of international news. You post things I don't see anywhere else. I hope to travel to Asia in 2010, and when I am overseas I will look into ways to get off the US dollar, see about producing this Oracle I designed many years ago, and get a beat on how life is progressing on the other "side" of the world. You can obtain my email through my website, and choose which book you'd like (they are posted there). www.siouxrose.com
The other side of the world is just as hooked to the dollar and likely to stay that way. Capitalism has taken over most of Asia. Some people like the changes while some don't. No place on the planet is perfect.
Thanks for all that, teddy. I agree. I especially liked: "the USA will be known as the 'BACKWARD NATION' that was LEFT BEHIND." That is so true. Many at CD are so USA- and Euro-centric that they cannot fathom that the USA and Europe are not the best places to find hope for the future of human civilization. That future lies in Asia, as that is where the real action is taking place. The USA is a dying, disintegrating country with a decadent culture. As I have been saying for many years, the USA's greatest value in the future will be to serve as an example of what not to do.
The IRONY of this is:
while the USA goes around preaching and hectoring other countries about "caps and trade" on pollution designed to EXCUSE the USA from having to do what it demands other countries should do for the environment....
CHINA is on track -- as an article notes : "ENORMOUSLY DETERMINED to correct its Pollution problems" - to becoming what it has expressly, openly stated:
to become the world's PREMIERE nation in combating Global Warming and Pollution TIED to its own national interests.
that means - a great majority of its own population UNDERSTANDS and is willing to cooperate.
================
article below , which, mind you, is written by an American Masters degree student.
=================
Business
Nov 4, 2009
China electrifies urban transit
By Ryan Rutkowski
Chinese companies such as Zhengzhou Yutong Bus and Anhui Ankai Automobile China, whose vehicles serve an urban market two times as big as the entire population of the United States, are set to lead the world in making public buses fit for a health-conscious world, backed by a government drive to clean up China's vast and growing cities.
The government in Beijing is determined to resolve the competing demands of a growing urban population and ever-mounting air pollution in China, already the world's biggest maker of conventional buses.
China's overall goal is to create a generation of environmentally friendly cities, exemplified by the "Better City, Better Life" slogan for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010. The country is at the forefront of a change that will see megacities around the world
develop clean urban transit systems to reduce pollution, offering people low-emission buses for their daily commute rather than gasoline-powered cars. As one of the fastest urbanizing countries in the world, China is by far the largest market for metro buses, seeking to meet the needs of an urban population already twice the population of the United States although so far only 45% of Chinese people live in cities. By 2030, China's urban population is expected to reach close to 1 billion.
Public buses account for 70% of all forms of public transit, with the remaining 30% subways, light-rail and taxis. By next year, China will need to have 630,000 public buses on the road to meet the demand for an estimate 630 million urban residents. In 2007, the country's 347,000 public buses carried 554 million passengers, compared with only 65 million public-bus passengers in North America.
That demand is matched by production of buses, at which China leads all rivals. Zhengzhou Yutong Bus is one of the world's top producers of transit buses, after only Daimler Chrysler, South Korea's Hyundai, India's Tata, Fiat of Italy, and Brazil-based Marco Polo.
article continued
================================
By next year, China will likely account for one-third of global autobuses sales and is expected to become the dominant global exporter.
However, in the wake of rapid urbanization, China faces widespread urban pollution. In 2006, China became the leading emitter of carbon dioxide in the world. The country is already home to 16 of the world's 20 worst air quality cities, with particulates such as nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide making live miserable and hazardous in most of China's cities.
The Chinese government hopes to alleviate urban pollution and make Chinese bus manufacturers dominant players by supporting the development of alternative-fuel transit vehicles.
Large-scale capital investment for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and a concern for presenting a clean city to overseas visitors for the event, helped to bring electric buses to that city, and the same is now happening in Shanghai in advance of the World Expo.
In 2008, Beijing employed 50 super-capacitor lithium-ion electric buses around the city to ferry visitors of the Beijing Olympics. Shanghai hopes to go one up next year, by deploying more than 500 zero-emissions vehicles, including super-capacitor electric and hydrogen fuel cell buses, for visitors traveling to the trade extravanganza. The city will also introduce 4,000 hybrid buses on the road in time for the event.
This year, China launched the "10 city, 1,000 buses" initiative to encourage the adoption and development of alternative fuel buses across the country. The initiative calls for more than 10 of China's large cities, such as Shanghai, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Wuhan and Zhuzhou, to put 1,000 alternative fuel vehicles on the streets within the next three to four years. The plan also calls for public services - taxis, postal services, public transit companies, government agencies - to adopt at least 60,000 alternative fuel vehicles. In doing so, they will help obtain the national goal of having 10% of China's domestic vehicles using alternative fuel by 2012.
Electric buses are the most promising alternative fuel vehicles in the near term. This type of vehicle has been around for decades, but the next generation of electric bus will utilize new battery technology and infrastructure to make them more competitive in price and efficiency with the diesel buses prevalent in most cities today.
Electric buses offer less vibration, lower emissions, less noise pollution, higher efficiency, and often lower costs over the lifetime of the vehicle than conventional diesel-powered counterparts.
Nonetheless, there are still significant barriers to their widespread adoption. They still require a higher initial capital investment than diesel engines to develop the recharging infrastructure or power lines necessary for daily operation. Many types of existing electric buses also utilize different types of infrastructure.
Among the four broad categories of electric buses that operate in China today, hybrid-electric vehicles utilize lithium-ion batteries to reduce reliance on traditional diesel or gasoline engine for propulsion. Trolley buses, which have come in and out of popularity for decades, use overhead electric wires to charge capacitors in the vehicles.
Lithium-ion electric buses use lithium-ion batteries to power an electric motor and motor controller, rather than a gasoline or diesel engine. Due to the lack of recharge infrastructure and limits of lithium-ion recharge speeds these buses operate during the day and charge at night, reducing reduce demand on the power grid during peak hours.
Ultracapacitor vehciles are a new type of bus that uses overhead recharge stations at bus stops to recharge a capacitor in the bus, rather than using batteries or diesel fuel. While, these ultracapacitors can only function for a couple of miles on a single charge, they can charge much faster than battery-powered buses, making them ideal for metro buses with frequent starts and stops.
China's leading bus manufacturers Zhengzhou Yutong Bus and Xiamen King Long United Automotive Industry are dominant players in hybrid-electric bus technology.
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Yutong's new hybrid electric metro-bus (the ZK6126HGZ1) claims to have 15-20% better fuel economy than traditional counterparts. Currently, Yutong has seven hybrid buses in trial operation in Beijing, the southern industrial center of Guangzhou and Zhengzhou, in central Henan province.
Xiamen King Long Motor, a subsidiary of Xiamen King Long United Automotive Industry, partnered with Dongfeng Electric Car Technology Group in 2004 to produce two hybrid electric bus models, with one, the XMQ6125GH, already involved in trial operations in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province.
Zhongtong Bus & Holding, Anhui Ankai Automobile, and First Automobile Works (FAW) Group are leading China in the development of battery-powered electric buses. Zhongtong Bus has three fully-electric models and six hybrid-electric, with its LCK6128EV model capable of running 250 kilometers on a single charge.
Zhongtong Bus provided five fully-electric buses for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and will produce 200-300 alternative fuel buses for the 10 cities, 1,000 buses initiative.
Ankai Automobile Co's fully-electric battery-powered bus model (the HFF6127K46EV) was also put to use during the Beijing Olympics and will be featured in the Shanghai World Expo. Ankai's new third generation battery-powered model claims to travel up to 200 kilometers on a single charge and recharge in less than four hours.
FAW Bus and Coach has partnered with Tongkun New Energy to release a new line of battery-powered buses capable of covering 300 kilometers on one charge and recharging in under 20 minutes. Jilin province in northeast China has already agreed to purchase 70 of these new 24-passenger buses.
Shanghai Sunwin Bus Corporation (SUNWIN) is a joint-venture between Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp (SAIC), Volvo China Investment Group, and Volvo Bus Corp. Recently, Sunwin has provided buses to Shanghai Aowei Technology Development Company and its US partner Sinautec Automobile Technologies to develop a new model of ultracapacitor electric buses. Over the past three years, they have built 17 of these buses in the outskirts of Shanghai.
Rather than using overhead power-lines to recharge buses, these buses will recharge using designated stations at bus stops. SAIC Motor Group has agreed to provide 300 electric-line buses and 36 super-capacitor buses for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 under the SUNWIN brand.
All this activity, backed by government goals, will give Chinese manufacturers serving the world's largest market for buses, additional advantages to propel the spread of electric buses worldwide and put them in the driving seat to dominate that market.
Ryan Rutkowski is a masters student studying international economics at the Johns Hopkins-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
This battle has already been lost. The deniers control the resources and the megaphone. The Gilgamesh's have their back, blathering on about 30,000+ "scientists" who disclaim human-made climate change -- peer-reviewed by themselves in one mass circle-jerk.
It is now a matter of just how bad it'll get and how fast it'll happen. Which brings us to a section of the human community I don't see referenced in these discussions very often, if at all ...
These folks, numbering in the millions, are the same ones mesmerized by the spectacle of a train wreck and fascinated with images of Armageddon, whether described in the Bible or brought to them on the IMax screen.
No one wants to actually be IN the train wreck, of course, but the visceral attraction of imagining and watching one is overwhelming.
So many climate change scenarios are, well, captivating. It'll be so cool to be ALIVE to see it ...
... and then get Raptured away at the appropriate moment, of course.
Beam me up, Scotty...right now, Mr. Scott...Scotty?
Monbiot's been looking for someone like you to have a £5K bet with. Just think of the credibility you could gain --not to mention a nice bit of pocket change. How about it? Are you willing? Or are you a despicable hypocrite, like the other deniers?
after a certain point, planning for the future becomes ludicrous, the changes will be so dramatic and widespread...the only logical things to do are:
stop destroying the world, restore natural conditions
replant, especially locally native amd sustainable edibles
I suggest we start planting now, and stop destroying on...
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...
you can stop destroying now, at the same time you start planting, of course...I just built in a window for people to get ready first...the primary thing in our way is the financial system we've built on top of the private ownership of property...
Lowering C02 levels below 350 ppm by means of political action is politically impossible. Few people are willing to believe that the sky is falling. It is more plausible to think that there is scaremongering going on in the service of a collectivist political agenda.
That said, if global warming is anthropogenic, and if it is going to result in climate change that will eliminate a large percentage of the human population by means of disasters untold, then how is this not in fact a self-solving problem? Over the years, population radically decreases, consequently anthropogenic green house gas emissions radically decrease (perhaps as the remaining humans are forced by circumstances to adopt an essentially medieval economy), and eventually CO2 levels stabilize, and then finally begin to fall. Right? In a couple of thousand years, we're back to pre-industrial CO2 levels. Darwinian evolution has again worked its magic, and the fittest have survived. Problem solved.
"The unfit die: the fit both live and thrive."
Alas, who say so?--They who do survive.
So when her bonfires lighted hill and plain,
Did Bloody Mary think on Lady Jane.
So Russia thought of Finland, while her heel
Fell heavier on the prostrate commonweal.
So Booth of Lincoln thought; and so the High
Priests let Barabbas live, and Jesus die.
I think I saw this post on another article, and the response was well put. It went something like:
Fine, but we're not talking about simply ridding the world of humans, but also untold numbers of other species. The recovery time could be millions of years, or never.
We are told by scientists ("trust me, I'm a doctor") that 20 million years ago, CO2 was about 450 ppm, and of course the earth was teeming with animal life 20 million years ago. Humans and many other animal species can survive a seven degree temperature variation. If New York City is underwater, humans will move inland. Humans cope -indeed we are better at coping on an ad hoc basis than we are at grandiose uber-planning, possibly because that is the way we evolved.
Someone sneaks into your house. Ties you up. Tortures you to death. Sneaks out unnoticed.
The rest of humanity copes. Life goes on. Survival of the fittest.
Sioux Rose
DWATKINS: And the top 40 # 1 tune goes out to "Jungle Jim and the Shaman," for their: "Steamy Love" in the year's countdown for 2045.
A really big problem with global climate change are positive feedback loops. At 350 ppm of CO2 we are already seeing permafrost melting and Methane being released in the arctic. Methane is a a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 is. If large amounts of it get released there is no guarantee that warming will stop at a seven degree rise in temperature.
You also have huge amounts of Methane Hydrates frozen at the bottoms of various oceans. If things warm enough to release them we are screwed. This is what is thought to have happened during the greatest mass extinction ever. The details of that extinction are shown below.
"During the Permian extinction (about 251 million years ago), about 95 percent of all marine species went extinct. This catastrophe was Earth's worst mass extinction, killing 53 percent of marine families, 84 percent of marine genera, and an estimated 70 percent of land species (including plants, insects, and vertebrate animals.)"
We are literally playing with fire with what we are doing to the planet. Will some people survive if climate change goes completely out of control? Who knows. I guess it depends how bad things end up getting.
What, Me Worry?
ALFRED E NEWMAN for PRESIDENT!!
Oh wait -- he already is.
I'm a member of the age group Mr Monbiot finds difficult to convince. I was convinced that humans were destroying the planet back in 1969. Not destroying through global warming, but simply from destruction and pollution... Forty years later I'm a lot closer to a natural death but having been aware since I was thirteen that we are all one minute away from death every moment of our lives my age has not changed my views of humanity's dire effect on the planet. I have no problem at all believing that thousands of scientists might possibly be right about global warming.
The point is that it's not about my death, or other old peoples' death, or young peoples' death. It's about the death of nearly every living creature on this amazing blue jewel God gave us to live on. We will never stop destroying it until we realise that we are only one species amongst billions, that we should always be in a relationship of equality with our co-inhabitants of planet earth. We've been given this miraculously beautiful place to live and we've turned most of it into a garbage dump. Now we're planning to incinerate the garbage.
If people are acting on a fear of death and searching for a road to immortality tell them they can go out fighting for the ants and the koalas and the snakes and the polar bears and the trees and the rocks and the sunrises and snow in the moonlight. Tell them to pick up their stiff old bones and go out and shout that they won't allow the deniers to murder this wondrous place and all its true inhabitants. Tell them their death won't matter a bit if they leave a world full of songbirds behind.
Sioux Rose
3645: Eloquent and moving post. Thank you for sharing it. I feel a very strong affinity with the natural world, too. The heinous disregard on the part of so many who argue for their materialistic, don't give a shit attitudes as per their usage patterns is a crime against nature, our collective home, and yes, a blue-green jewel given us by The Infinite to love and maintain in a loving manner.
That was the most thoughtful post I have read anywhere today.
On your comment, "It's about the death of nearly every living creature on this amazing blue jewel God gave us to live on.";
When the Voyager space craft was way out in space Carl Sagan asked to have it turned around so a picture of the Earth could be taken from 4 billion miles away. The result was a pale blue dot only .12 pixels in size. This is what he wrote about that distant view of our fragile Earth.
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."
I want to personally thank you for a wonderful and thoughtful post, that was shoulders above some of the truly uninspired thoughtless drivel that was found in parts of this discussion thread.
How could Carl Sagan or anyone possibly know whether or not human life does or has existed elsewhere in the universe besides earth?
I think you missed the point he was trying to make. He was saying anything and everything we know about humans was found on that little blue dot, Earth.
In the unlikely event that "humans" live on other planets is irrelevant to what he was saying because we don't know anything about them.
The Ernest Becker posit of "vital lies" & "the armor of character" can well be characterized in another way; as narcissism. Human history is littered with a myriad of "legacy projects," with the Pyramids of Giza as the shining example. That the deniers have a demographic profile that also fits the lunatic fringe that it currently taking over the GOP is no surprise, as climate change denial is part and parcel of their warped extraction corporation (Oil, Coal, Agri-business, etc.) infected program. It's bad enough that the rest of us have had to suffer while that bunch misruled spectacularly during the Bush errors & Grandpa Caligula (Reagan), but now they want to leave us with a "legacy" that has an environmental disaster which our great-grandchildren will be lucky to see through: NO WAY!
well done Monbiot.
because anybody who fails to tow the official line is a "sucker"
i guess those 30,000+ scientist who dont agree with man made climate change are all suckers as well.
ad hominem attacks are useful because once you label someone a "denier" (holocaust anybody) you dont have to refute their point with FACTS.
climate change is about de-industrialization and global governance (government). that 350 group was founded with rockefeller money. oligarchs dont care about the environment, theyre all about consolidation of power.
dont be duped people. theres nothing wrong with living in equalibrium with nature, but dont force your views on others and dont surrender national sovereignty.
the climate changes naturally. it has been for millions and millions of years.
"climate change is about de-industrialization and global governance"
Exactly. Our response to global meltdown should be to reaffirm our commitment to what we should have been doing for quite a number of other reasons: retire/retrain 3 out of 4 merkans cuz 3/4ths of what they produce/consume is completely unnecessary waste. But it's not their fault entirely. They are pushed by the elite pushers. As for global governance, sure, let's have it. Governance of reason, which is relatively abundant outside the petro-fried USA.
"that 350 group was founded with rockefeller money. oligarchs dont care about the environment, theyre all about consolidation of power."
If an elite tries to co-opt a progressive movement, that doesn't discredit the movement's original agenda. But when you try to use such an event, in a strategy to discredit the movement's agenda, you may as well be taking payola from that very same elite.
"theres nothing wrong with living in equalibrium with nature, but dont force your views on others"
You could tell the elites to not force their views on others. But if you give them a pass, then it appears from here that you are kind of in cahoots with them.
"and dont surrender national sovereignty"
Tell the elites that. The elites shipped our industry off to China, and whacked our democracy, cut the enlightenment foundation out from under us. Donated our government to vicious corporate monsters. Where's the sovereignty?
"the climate changes naturally. it has been for millions and millions of years"
Right, so let's allow it to resume its natural course, by drastically cutting our fossil consumption.
Monbiot's been looking for a denier to bet with. It's only £5K. Will you take him up on it? Other deniers are despicable hypocrites - they won't bet with him. How about you?
"Monbiot's been looking for a denier to bet with. "
What are the exact terms? Thank you.
I don't know the exact terms, just that it was for £5K and he couldn't find any takers--they all ran away.
Mail him and ask him.
All I could find was a single instance of a 5K bet against a particular individual he was about to debate. No one should accept a bet where the terms are not understood.
Did you mail him?
"i guess those 30,000+ scientist who dont agree with man made climate change are all suckers as well."
Where are those 30,000+ "scientists" publishing their research and their articles? Since there are 30,000+ "scientists" who support your position, surely you don't have no problem citing an article in either a respected peer reviewed scientific journal, or in a peer reviewed scientific journal that specialises in climate science?
"ad hominem attacks are useful because once you label someone a "denier" (holocaust anybody) you dont have to refute their point with FACTS."
Right. Let me guess, the holocaust is a zionist conspiracy.
"climate change is about de-industrialization and global governance (government). that 350 group was founded with rockefeller money. oligarchs dont care about the environment, theyre all about consolidation of power."
Yeah they are. You notice the amount of power they have now? You notice that the oligarchs are hardly enthusiastic about restrictions on carbon?
"dont be duped people. theres nothing wrong with living in equalibrium with nature, but dont force your views on others and dont surrender national sovereignty. "
Spare me. The oligarchs, the ones with money, are not restricted by national sovereignty. National sovereignty only restricts those who don't have money to get around it.