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Climate Change Deniers Cost the Earth
Hardliners around the English-speaking world who ignore the evidence for global warming will pay a heavy political price
A generation of young conservative politicians and journalists across the English-speaking world have put down a historic bet that could decimate their movement.
From the Senate chamber in Canberra, Australia, to the editorial offices of The Spectator in London, an entire class of right-wing leaders has hitched its wagon to an outlandish conspiracy theory without seemingly appreciating the profound implications their move will have not just for the planet, but also for the viability of their political project.
The conspiracy theory in question, which has been given unparalleled publicity ahead of the Copenhagen summit, goes like this: several thousand leading scientists, seeking to secure research funding, have corrupted global temperature data to stay in the pay of governments bent upon extorting higher taxes through the dissemination of scare stories about so-called global warming. Climate change is a hoax propagated by greedy academics and greens, better described as "the new reds".
Clearly this theory is undiluted lunacy, but its adoption by great swathes of the right is the most significant strategic blunder by a political movement in my lifetime. The great debates of the last century - be they over a woman's right to choose or whether the US should have fought on in Vietnam - have never, and likely will never, be entirely resolved. And even if they were, the public was never likely to exact a catastrophic and permanent political price from the losing side.
But with climate change things are very different, presenting a grave danger to the electoral success of right-wing politics this century. Because man-made climate change is not some abstract political theory but a scientific prediction that will be proven beyond doubt in the years ahead in the form of climate impacts.
The new decade will likely see record global temperatures, severe - possibly terminal - depletion of Arctic summer sea ice, huge loss of mass from glaciers, and wildfire epidemics. Taken collectively, these climate signals will be among the most important events in human history. In the decade following, any remaining climate deniers will surely lose their tenuous hold on the levers of influence because the public will witness first hand profound changes to our world. We'll want somebody to blame - we always do.
Just as George Bush was defined by Iraq and Margaret Thatcher by privatization, the conservative movement outside of the Cameron clique is rapidly becoming defined by climate denial. For example, all the top 10 Tory bloggers in the UK are deniers. By the end of the next decade, this could be politically toxic.
For Tony Abbott, the new leader of the opposition Liberal party in Australia who assumed his role last week on a platform of climate skepticism - "absolute crap," he said of the science - the reckoning may come too late. But younger Australian politicians and journalists will, in years to come, be seeking the support of a public which will want to know why they willfully misreported the consensus scientific view while we still stood a realistic chance of preventing climate breakdown. The same will be true of Sarah Palin and young Republican members of the US Congress who proclaim climate change to be a swindle designed to destroy the American way of life.
I find it extraordinary that the Conservatives Andrew Tyrie and Daniel Hannan, James Delingpole of The Daily Telegraph and Fraser Nelson of The Spectator have gambled their reputations on a conspiracy theory supported by the flimsiest of evidence.
Earlier this year they hitched their wagons to Ian Plimer, an Australian academic whose central thesis involves the assertion that volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans. It was Plimer's work that formed the core of the Daily Express front page last week, headlined "The Big Climate Change Fraud". This will appear in exhibitions in years to come alongside the Daily Mail headline of the Thirties - "Hurrah for the Blackshirts".
His volcano claim is an assertion that can be tested beyond doubt by the application of empirical data. And, of course, Plimer is wrong. Very wrong. In fact, humans emit 130 times more CO2 than volcanoes. NASA's Gavin Schmidt, a world-leading climate scientist, dissected the Plimer hypothesis in excruciating detail and found it to be based, among other things, on a "basic logical fallacy".
The most common deniers' meme is centered on the claim that we have just experienced a decade of global cooling, a willful misinterpretation of data. In fact, the eight warmest years in recorded history are, according to the Hadley Center, 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2007. In other words, this is the hottest decade in the 150-year global temperature record.
The deniers have also claimed that the extent of the Arctic sea ice increased dramatically in winter 2008. Yes, it did. It increases in size every winter - because it's winter. But the long-term trend is one of alarming decline, such that scientists at the US Naval Postgraduate School now fear summer sea ice may disappear in the next decade, a century earlier than had been expected.
Armed with nothing more substantial than their cod science, the deniers have been emboldened these past weeks by the Climate Research Unit email hacking. But the welter of misinformation written about the CRU leak reminds me of the CNBC financial analyst Jim Cramer. On 11 March 2008 Cramer stared into the camera and shouted - yes, shouted - "No! No! No! Bear Stearns is fine. Do not take your money out. Bear Stearns is not in trouble." Days later Bear Stearns went into liquidation in the first great financial failure of the crash. Cramer's credibility was shredded beyond repair. But the right is now populated by the Cramers of climate change. They're shouting, too - that the climate is not in trouble. But they're wrong, and their credibility will not long survive.
One of the defining moments of last year's financial meltdown was Alan Greenspan's questioning before a US House committee. The committee chairman pressed him, "You found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right - it was not working?" Greenspan answered, "Absolutely, precisely. You know, that's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well."
The collapse of the banking system, we know, will be nothing compared with the collapse of the climate system. And being hauled before committees will be the least of the deniers' worries as an entire generation of conservatives are forced to answer for their role in the great climate crash.
55 Comments so far
Show AllGarman: "man-made climate change is not some abstract political theory but a scientific prediction that will be proven beyond doubt in the years ahead in the form of climate impacts."
Based on my reading of the GRACE satellite data on Greenland and Antarctica's mass loss since 2000, I believe sea levels will rise 3 ft within the next 20 years.
IPCC is more conservative in its assessment (4ft in 90 years). But IPCC has been behind the curve on Polar Warming every year for the last 10; and with such regularity you could set your watch by it. Consider the statement above: "scientists at the US Naval Postgraduate School now fear [Arctic] summer sea ice may disappear in the next decade, a CENTURY earlier than had been expected." That inability to recognize what was actually happening in our Polar Regions aptly describes IPCC's history as well.
The GRACE data shows that Greenland and Antarctica have moved into an 'ice-shedding' period. Just a decade ago, Greenland wasn't losing ANY mass. It seemed to be fairly stable in mass back to 1960. Now its losing 300 gigatons of ice a year, and each year that number goes up by 10%, so that in about 5 years it'll be 600 gigatons a year. A similar amount of ice, and a similar acceleration, is occuring in Antarctica.
The human cost of delay will be catastrophic. However, Garman is wrong about the political cost. The sad fact of politics is that crisis are manufactured, slanted, and buried by money. And there's plenty of THAT in conservative pockets.
"The most common deniers' meme is centred on the claim that we have just experienced a decade of global cooling, a willful misinterpretation of data"
hey, Joss you thought we cannot find the Hadley Center data?
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/comparison.html
Depends on what the meaning of the word cooling is, but the graph does show a steep fall in temperature there at the end.
It also shows fairly rapid warming between 1910 and 1940. This article discusses that this was due to a lack of volcanic events between 1910 and 1955:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/10/19/volcanic-lull/
What's neat about this paper, is that just in using a simple two-forcing model of the atmosphere, and calculating the relative forcing of each (volcano forcing and CO2 forcing), practically the entire behavior of the 20th century temperature record can be closely modelled.
Another thing from the paper.: The time constant of Earths atmosphere is about 30 years. That means that a step change in a forcing, like volcanoes, sunlight, or CO2, will take 30 years for one-third (1/e) of its total effect to manifest itself in the temperature record. Hence, it may be too soon to state that a 10 year trend establishes anything. A similar unexplained 10 year cooling trend occurs around WWII.
When the sh!t hits the fan, Politics will be the last thing anyones' thinking about.
I, for one, am sick to death of the use of the word, "DENIERS" by champions of the politically correct to attempt to intimidate their opposition. Its use has become equivalent to an ad hominem attack and should label its user as a bully.
Tony Vodvarka
What word would you use, Tony?
'alarmist' (oh, wait, thats what they're using on US)
I believe that there are outright GW deniers, but realise that there are critics, questioners, and some, or many (?), of these latter people call for totally open debate and there's certainly nothing wrong about such demands. People denying full openness are questionable, to say the least. One top concern of critics isn't about GW, but the major corporations that are the sole ones seated at the Copenhagen summit, f.e.
Racket tactics need to be avoided and the pro-GW activists risk doing the wrong thing in this regard; backing the new BIG racket corporate chiefs wanting mainly profit for themselves and shareholders from GW business, "cap and trade" business anyway. There are articles about C&T being like the main topic at the summit and there's purportedly HUGE money to be made from this scheming. I linked two related articles further below.
The author of this piece claims that the right wing will someday have to pay politically for its denial of global warming. That assumes two things that, for the United States at least, I believe to be false:
1. The electorate has a memory. By the time global warming becomes undeniable in its effects in the United States, no one will remember what the right wing said about it in 2009, and no one will care. Furthermore, the right wingers will deny they ever denied global warming, and anyone listening to them will believe them. Reality has no part to play in American politics.
2. The right wing will be in a position to be punished. Long before global warming fully kicks in, the American right wing will have ended its policy of running our affairs in a somewhat veiled fashion. By then, it will have eliminated American democracy, even as a vestigial form, and established totalitarian rule in the United States. In doing this, the right wing will have become unpunishable.
Good points. The right-wing can always count on the short memory of the electorate as well as their short attention span. There will be no shortage of distractions to throw at the people - like Tiger Woods' "infidelity" or a race-baiting event. And don't forget the serious believers - who actually believe in an apocalypse. It's unbelievable and scary to hear some of the religious "prophecies" as I flip through TV channels sometimes. When the right-wing bigmouths can blame Obama for the economy and "dithering" on Afghanistan, do you think they'll lose sleep over being proven false on their climate change position?
They haven't paid much of a price for the total failure of "supply-side" economics.
You are definitely correct on point 1. How much punishment did the right wing cop over the lack of WMD in Iraq?
P.S. I love your final sentence in that paragraph.
"1. ... Reality has no part to play in American politics."
Sure it does. Dark realities. Gangsterism is a reality. State, political gangsterism also is real.
"2. ... the American right wing will have ended its policy of running our affairs in a somewhat veiled fashion."
SEE:
"20. Secret Control of the Presidential Debates
In Top 25 Censored Stories for 2010"
(url split over two lines)
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/
20-secret-control-of-the-presidential-debates
Re: your point #2: is anyone under ANY illusion that this is where our military is going? Obama just got his head busted by the Joint Chiefs for suggesting we leave Afghanistan. What I liked about that whole scenario:
Obama, 'leader of the free world', in some detail haltingly explains why we're staying in Afghanistan, but will put out by 2011.
The NEXT day, the Joint Chiefs guys says: 'well, we'll START pulling out in 2011'. As in, 'that cardboard cutout yesterday didn't tell the whole truth, so here is the full disclosure. Take it and go fvck urself!'
Based on my own reading, I'd say that the best known denier in the USA is Alexander Cockburn of "The Nation" magazine -- and no one has ever accused him of being right-wing.
Do you have a cite?
I don't usually read what he writes, in part because my impression is that he's a devout marxist and I'm not interested in theologies, but I just skimmed an article and he *seems* to accept that earth is overheating and we're responsible.
I recently read a Cockburn "Counterpunch Journal", where he simply dismissed AGW theory as "junk science" without explanation or reference. Sort of a Glenn Beck "gut feeling". He has lost quite a bot of credibility with me.
Don't you love it when people 'go with their gut' on scientific issues? I can see Einstein saying, 'ya know, I'm just going to have to go with my gut on this one, and propose that the photon is both a wave AND a particle at the same time. And, oh by the way, that the faster you go, the slower you'll age. These are things that just make my gut happy.'
The evidence MADE the scientists accept the wave-particle duality of nature. Their 'gut' doesn't understand it, even today.
Of "The Nation" mag? Are you sure? Is he the same Alexander Cockburn who's co-editor of Counterpunch.org?
I recently revisited my home town of Helena, Montana. Mount Helena, our landmark, is where I played and explored caves as a child. In the past 60 years the forested part of the mountain has gradually descended to the edge of town. Today, like much of the Northwest forests, the trees are infected by bark beetles, a bug that lays its eggs under the bark of pine trees. In a normal winter most of their eggs are killed by extended subzero temperatures, but there hasn't been a normal winter in a number of years. About half of the trees on Mt. Helena are already dead, turned brittle and red in a grotesque parody of fall colors. Those are last year's kill. This year's haven't shown themselves yet. I took some pictures of the mountain to remember it by, for it will soon be a bare hill covered with weeds and grasshoppers. The beetle epidemic, a direct product of climate warming, promises to be more devastating by far than all the fires and clear cut logging operations to date. And it is only one of many losses in store for our careless species - and all the others as well.
Viietnam, Iraq, privatization, the banking meltdown are all temporary evils. The governor of Utah and his defiantly uneducated peers, by parking their fat, complacent asses in the path of climate remedies, are destroying much more than their future political careers. They are destroying everybody elses' careers as well, and the careers of untold plant and animal life present and future. The potential damage level is off the charts.
CV has got it right. By the time we realize that these obstructionist bozos are more dangerous than armed lunatics on a killing spree and send the SWAT teams to take them out it will be a bit late to address the problem. I'll mourn the loss of Mt. Helena's trees today, while they are still standing. By next year, between hungry bugs and ignorant politicians, there will be more to worry about. The mourning has scarcely begun.
"send the SWAT teams to take them out "???
You are seriously deranged.
Perhaps we should just take out the hate-radio outlets that keep pumping them full of anti-social propaganda.
That was part of the metaphor. In other words, eliminate the idiots who are going to get us all killed.
I agree. If the deniers have there way, resulting in a mere remnant of civilization 100 years from now, it will be cursing our culture in general, and will be too busy to distinguish the James Hansens from James Inhofes.
I've been out of work this year so I have had lots of time to follow what passes for political discourse, and political "action" in this country and I am almost to the point of depression over what is going on.
This government seems to be completely incapable of doing the right thing anymore. We continue to kill people in two wars, appear unable of passing a meaningful health care reform, are handing out hundreds of billions of dollars to crooked banksters. The country is incredibly in debt, we can't pass any meaningful legislation to reign in the crooked banks, and credit card companies. The government wont allow itself to negotiate drug prices with Big Pharma. Our infrastructure is starting to fall apart, we have a bunch of dumb-ass politicians that are denying climate change, we can't even do a simple thing right like ban land mines.
We have no meaningful energy policy, we continue to execute, and torture people like some third world country, were afraid of gays getting married or being in the military, we continue to allow media mergers that continue to ruin the quality of that same media. We have people that want to kill the president because he's black, We lockup more people per capita than any other country in the world, we have been fighting a ridiculous war on drugs for 40 years, and we've been blockading Cuba for about 50 years, for what friging reason? And lastly we have people being thrown out of their houses because of crooked loans and appear to be unable to even do something about that!
I am SO TIRED of being flat out lied to by politicians ESPECIALLY Republicans which seem to have pretty much gone insane. This country seems to be going right down the toilet and are leaders as a group seem to be completely incapable of doing anything to stop it!
The Chinese curse: "may you live in 'interesting' times"
These are that, but don't give up so easily. Society will right itself, poorer, but wiser. Not so lucky will be the environment, which I think will be damaged for centuries to come. But even it will recover in time.
Vietnam and Iraq wars are not "temporary evils". Try LONG TERM and with the widespread radiological poisoning of Iraq, try many millenia.
It's "interesting" to see how climate activists easily disregard the lives and health of many tens of millions of innocent people the countries of these climate activists launched totally criminal wars against.
Contrary to what the author of the article says about global warming being catastrophic, while the wars supposedly aren't, the wars of the U.S. on Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, Kosovo, ..., and covert U.S. and European wars in Africa and Latin America are catastrophic for all of humanity. Their ramifications [are] catastrophic on a global scale.
And are ecological disasters in their own right.
Particularly DU.
That's one of the ramifications of the catastrophic, on a global scale, nature of the wars. And while DU might be the immediately worst toxic poisonings from these wars and will outlast the others, they nevertheless are among the many catastrophic consequences. And how it is that Joss Garman can treat this as lightly as he does is ...; well, not good for his credibility anyway. I have no need of such "activists".
I just read about "A Short History of Progress" on Wikipedia and added to my list of books to read. Thanks for that reference.
Check the ProjectCensored.org article I linked in a post that I believe is further below; else, it's further above this one. It'll provide readers with a look at or a picture of a certain "twist" or kind of progress(ion); progress for some people, while being extremely unwelcome progress for most of us. Progress doesn't imply only one direction or course, method, ....
"I honestly don't know what the activist 'dinosaurs' - the hard men and women of Big Oil and the far right - think they are doing. They have children and grandchildren who will need safe food and clean air and water, and who may wish to see living oceans and forests."
-----------------------------------------
There is something we have to get into our heads at the level of certainty we have for other facts like fire burns, water is wet, and gravity keeps us attached to the earth, namely that 80% or more of those in power have a *serious mental disorder*. They should be in locked wards somewhere because they are a danger to every living creature on Earth.
They are, in a way, addicts. Like more conventional addicts, they will sacrifice anything and anyone for their next fix.
The big difference is that their drug is status, wealth, and *power* --being "better" and more entitled than the rest of us-- and they can't get it by anything so benign as ripping off someone's telly and flogging it for the price of a dime bag or a jug of plonk.
They buy *their* fix by ripping off the populations of entire countries: property, lives, the health of Earth, everything.
We *must* *must* *MUST* get them out of power forever, and build social barriers against them. They will kill us all if we don't.
The quote from Ronald Wright seems so reasonable, so deep. But think about it. He's talking about very rich ass....s who have, throughout history, done incredibly awful things like enslave people and provoked wars for their $$$.
They will still be filthy rich as the world is in chaos with wars and famines, etc., everywhere. But they (the rich elite) will still have the best real estate on the planet by virtue of their $$$ and the protection it can buy. The odds are not good that their direct descendants will be amongst the climate refugees. They don't give a good you-know-what about the rest of us.
ABC AM radio on 630 in Sydney this morning interviewed a stolen email exploiter and climate change denier. Without describing a single element of corroborative evidence, he implicated that the stolen emails showed the famous hockey stick graph was a fraud and that somehow all of climate science depended on the allegedly cherry-picked data from that institute in East Anglia. None of this has been proven.
No following interview of a climate science representive occurred. The deniers style was that all the scientists are involved in vast conspiracy. The interviewer did ask whether the denialists were themselves guilty of misleading through cherrypicked data and statements against a world wide broad concensus. The climate is in no danger from man-made emissions, and we are in no danger from climate change, the denier says.
Following the alleged strength of their own logic the deniers should next demand that any scientists supporting climate change should be arrested for defrauding the public. If left to the deniers they would order the arrest of a very large majority of competent and honest scientists and their supporters, and afterwards have us put on the dark sun glasses, drink the alchohol, play loud music and carry on meaningless conversations untill the exploit the earth party crashes.
The names and statements of deniers should be carefully recorded, as they are opening themselves to libel suites by those they casually slander, and this shows the desperation of their political backers close to the Copenhagen meeting. I have no doubts that the backers are fossil fuel companies. I presume the negotiaters have done their homework, and are a little more sophisticated and should see past these grubby attempts to willfully exploit public ignorance and fears.
"NASA climate change pioneer hopes global warming talks in Copenhagen will fail; Cash commitments from rich countries seen as vital for deal"
by Finfacts Team, Dec 4, 2009
http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1018612.shtml
The sustainablebusiness.com piece in my next post also refers to James Hansen and there's a link for the Reuters piece about what he says.
"Americans Want Carbon Tax, Not Cap-And-Trade: Survey", Dec 4, 2009
http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/19351
The above article at Finfacts also is related to cap-and-trade definitely being unacceptable and that it's a carbon tax that's needed.
An article, which I believe is of last week, by Michel Chossudovsky, editor of www.globalresearch.ca, is on the Copenhagen summit, the IPCC's relationship to Big Business, ..., and says that many execs of Big Business will be attending the summit and that many or all of them badly want cap-and-trade. Climate activists need to be careful to avoid supporting C&T.
No Cap and Trade. Cap and ENFORCE.
No more grandfathered old plants poisoning people 800 miles and four states downwind.
James Hansen, who is "director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York", says NO cap-and-trade, phase out use of coal, unless its carbon emissions are captured (Times UK article below), "prohibit unconventional fossil fuels", like from tar sands, and establish a carbon tax ($1 per gallon, the Times, UK, piece says of his words). He says it's not realistic to phase out other fossil fuels.
The Guardian piece is by James Hansen, the first part of the page, anyway.
"Copenhagen summit: Is there any real chance of averting the climate crisis?", Nov 29, 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/29/copenhagen-summit-climate-change
"Climate scientist James Hansen hopes summit will fail",
by Brian Bone, Dec 3rd
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6941974.ece
He is for use of nuclear-generated power, but from what I've gathered, MANY activists are against this; being totally opposed to nuclear plants for energy as well as against nuclear weapons, instead of only opposing the latter. James Hansen isn't for only nuclear power, but it's one of the methods he supports or promotes use of.
"No more grandfathered old plants poisoning people 800 miles and four states downwind."
Local environments and populations are also important, imo.
"Cap and ENFORCE."
It's virtually certain that the Copenhagen summit will not do this.
Jim Cramer is still alive and screaming on the same show every day.
You're correct in saying that the so-called conspiracy theory is "undiluted lunacy," as are all conspiracy theories, but the rest of your article is pure undiluted nonsense, scaremongering, and illogic. You need to get a grip, my good man.
It's getting pretty tiresome to see the constant back and forth name-calling of semi-literate partisans, with limited vocabularies, on both the warmsters and the non-warmsters sides. It's getting tiresome to see gross generalizations, like belittling anyone who disagrees with any part of the warmsters program as right-wing lunatics. This is, by the way, as bad as their calling the warmsters a conspiracy theory. I see no difference between the warmsters and the supporters of Creation "Science," so-called. Both defending their positions with unscientifc, irrational, propaganda. A pox on both your houses.
For my part, I am appalled by the filth that humans in this civilization have thrown upon the planet. But even pre-industrial peoples dirtied their nests. I would shed no tears to see the entire oil-based industrial system and its capitalist gangsters disappear. But we're not going to get there with poorly designed geo-engineering programs and totalitarian methods and constant alarmism.
Then you don't know enough. Global warming adherents have actual evidence, "creation scientists" and their slightly more reputable progeny, IDiots, don't.
The conspiracy theory as outlined here is actually understated. The true wingnut conspiracy is quite a bit more elaborate and ambitious. Right wingers think GW is a "globalist" conspiracy, perpetrated by "them" to wrest control from sovereign governments and give it to "supra-national" entities like the UN. I wish I was actually making that up, but I'm not. Go listen to what rightwing talk radio is spewing, go read the rightwing blogs.
Lest you doubt me:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=118179
Yes, they ARE, in fact, certifiable. Global warming as the impetus to world domination by ... who exactly? God knows.