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The Truth: Still There, Still Inconvenient
As 'Climategate' scientists are cleared, no doubt about warming remains.
Meanwhile, back in America, prominent climatologist Michael Mann, also reviled by critics for his "Climategate" e-mails (and for his solid climate science), was similarly exonerated by a full review panel at Penn State University, where he teaches. Most important, all review panels affirmed the underlying science, and thereby the established scientific consensus that human activity is warming the planet. "The rigor and honesty of the scientists in not in doubt," the British panel concluded.
This should put to rest any remaining public "skepticism" of the scientific facts of climate change. If it doesn't, two new books will.
"Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming," by science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, forcefully debunks the handful of credentialed scientists, such as S. Fred Singer, who continue to beat the drum against the mainstream consensus. Singer, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, publishes his virulent skepticism on the hospitable opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal and from his own foundation. The authors prove him to be practicing science outside his realm of expertise as an antiregulation ideologue.
A second book, "The Lomborg Deception" by Howard Friel, is as devastating. Lomborg's two big books, "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and "Cool It," are the bibles of climate-change nonbelievers. Lomborg, a Danish statistician who portrays himself as a reasonable apostate from excessive environmentalism, argues in heavily footnoted texts that the threat of manmade global warming is "exaggerated," and that in any event a warmer planet may be good for us.
Reputable scientists immediately smelled something fishy in Lomborg's work. Now Freil, a journalist, has found the source of the stink. He painstakingly tracks down every one of Lomborg's thousands of endnotes and finds that his citations are a sea of deception. In many cases, the sources cited by Lomborg say exactly the opposite of what he states in his text. In others he leaves out or distorts inconvenient evidence. Sometimes there is no source at all to be found.
Pseudo-scientists like Lomborg or hypocrites like Singer are not honest scientific skeptics --skepticism is a valuable and necessary part of the scientific process -- but are ideologues who believe nothing should be done about climate change and who argue from that premise.
With these reports and books, the public debate on climate change should finally be over.
No Americans, including conservatives, have an excuse now to say that it is not happening, or to continue to argue that is caused by volcanoes (fully taken into account by scientists) or by natural climate variation (the observed evidence is way outside of historic natural variation) or that the cause is variable solar radiation (again outside the range of the sun's variable radiation). The only scientific explanation for the temperature increases observed here and now is the simultaneous dramatic increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane as a result of human activities, including the waste carbon from the burning of fossil fuels.
So I challenge conservative commentators Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Katherine Kersten; the editors of the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute, the Heartland Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute, the Cato Institute, the Center of the American Experiment and other vehicles of opposition to mainstream climate science to face the facts. Stop allowing yourselves to be deceived and therefore to deceive the people who trust and depend on you.
Put the phony crisis of "Climategate" away, along with your criticism of the vast consensus of honest scientists working around the globe to bring us the truth of our changing climate. Face the facts so that your public, and the politicians who work for them, can face the facts.
The evidence is irrefutable: Global warming is upon us, and it is primarily caused by human activities. Now what are we as one people, and the family of nations, going to do about it?
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19 Comments so far
Show AllI thought Mr Lenfestey should have included the fact that the first half of 2010 is the warmest on record, but he may have written the article before that very recent fact was released.
Yes, I recall learning in primary school in the 50's that the mean temperature of Earth was 59F degrees. The report for the first 6 months of 2010 was a mean of 61F degrees. Expecting the increase to be exponential to a new stable level.
"prominent climatologist Michael Mann, also reviled by critics for his "Climategate" e-mails (and for his solid climate science), was similarly exonerated by a full review panel at Penn State University...".
However, the government of Virginia, (he was a prof. at U.Va until 2005), led by its extremist Attorney General, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, is still demanding that Mann turn over every scrap and byte of informaition, and faces possible prosecution for the "misuse" of public science funding in perpretating the "global warming hoax".
Mr. Lenfestey is a delusional dreamer if he thinks that actual, irrefutable facts will change the minds and tactics of the Becks and Limbaughs and the deniers.
Beck and Limbaugh et al will continue to lie and obfuscate, no doubt now including Mr. Lenfestey in their screeds, because that's how they make their millions of dollars every year. They are sociopaths who simply do not care, and neither of them is capable of thinking clearly on this, or any other, issue. The same goes for the rest of that crowd. Appealing to their conscience or to their intellect is fruitless: they have neither.
As long as they are allowed to continue their activities, in their perversion of so-called free speech, action against global warming by United States governments and other entities won't happen.
These are the kinds of people and the kind of leadership a country gets when greed, ignorance, superstition, and religion are allowed to trump science in the public arena.
That may be true but if these same people were actually given cleaner solutions at affordable prices, how many of them would be the same? Solutions exist but none of the good ones are getting a chance.
Sometimes, it is also simply a quesition of people rejecting solutions that are already both green and cheaper becasue they aren't fashionable. Just less than half of downtown commuters in Pittsburgh commute by bus or light rail. Taking the bus downtown is far more convienient and cheaper than driving and parking downtown. What about the other half? There are many people in my neighborhood, in spite of several bus routes each going downtown every 15 minutes to 1/2 hour from early morning to late night, who will still endure the inconvienience of driving downtown.
Why? Simply because riding the bus is unfashionable, and due to more than a little racism. Suburbanites view riding the bus as only for "losers" and black people. I have even seen Indian immigrants from impoverished backgrounds adopt this attitude within a couple years of arriving here.
"I have even seen Indian immigrants from impoverished backgrounds adopt this attitude within a couple years of arriving here."
There is more to that and I saw this even in India, China, and other nations in the Far East what with autos becoming a little more popular there as yuppie style capitalism keeps climbing. It used to be that people who immigrated would find themselves in a different life almost. The pattern I see is that some of the Asians back home are marveled by this and by perceiving it as luxury, they want it on their own homeland. It's one thing when as immigrants they are too easily tempted into copying the bad values of put cars ahead of buses but I think that it only gets worse when they're trying to implement similar patterns back in their countries thereby spreading like cancer. Alcyon has described this in detail in past posts.
"There are many people in my neighborhood, in spite of several bus routes each going downtown every 15 minutes to 1/2 hour from early morning to late night, who will still endure the inconvienience of driving downtown."
We get no such luxury in Hampton Roads. Why would they still want to drive downtown even with sufficient bus routes? Is it shopping or what? Knowing the root causes could help us devise and pass strategies to remedy these kinds of abnormalities.
"Why would they still want to drive downtown even with sufficient bus routes?"
I explained the root causes in my earlier post.
If riding on public transit particularly the bus was positively portrayed on popular entertainment and advertising, ridership would increase greatly. But for obvious reasons, we will NOT be seeing such a thing anytime soon.
Also, there is a sense that it taking 25 minutes to get somewhere compared to 15 minutes is unacceptable, even if cheaper, and even if when riding a public conveyance you can do lots of things you can't while driving. Recall that poster here on CD living in NoVa who would compalin incessantly about traffic, but come up with the most petty excuses for not riding the metro to his job in Arlington.
I give up.
I have visited Arlington before on my business trips and other big cities too. Despite metro, the traffic jams are still horrible. Now if it cost less but traveled faster than car? But such expectations would require funding from state and federal governments. Ok, I think I see where this is going. Don't expect any taxes to be raised that easy. I remember 2002 when then-governor Warner never bothered to get transportation reforms in motion but would leave it to ballot initiatives which was guaranteed to fail. People were up in arms about getting nuisance calls from campaigners on raising the sales tax by 1 cent just to pay for transportation improvements. One would think that the state legislators would do the right thing themselves instead of a ballot initiative of all things.
I suspect we're beyond the point where taking the bus should be an option, and well into the area where governments need to say 'No cars or private vehicles allowed downtown.' If you want to go to work, take the bus or the subway. And if we haven't reached that point, we will soon. Or we had better. And related decisions will have to be taken across society.
The more the Limbaughs, the Becks, the Inhofes, and the rest are allowed to peddle lies, the sooner civilization dies.
The right wing howler monkees are paid whores and care nothing at all about the facts or truth or any of it. They are paid to LIE and LIE and LIE which they do with pleasure and a big Ka ching each time they open their pie holes. Beck, Limpdick and the rest have become wildly rich by being the mouth pieces for the climate deniers and the rest.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
I am reminded of the 1959 movie, On the Beach. Nuclear war has destroyed most of humanity and the survivors know they will be killed by atmospheric fallout and there is not a damn thing they can do about it.
Let's party!
Another image that comes to mind is that classic cartoon of the mouse giving the finger to the eagle swooping down to grab it.
What if it really is too late? What if there will be mass extinctions (of which there are already indications) and billions of humans will die because of our stupidity? How does our globalized economic and political system organize around such an inevitability?
How's that hopey changey thingy workin for ya?
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"If" there is a max extinction of millions or billions of human beings upon Creator's earth then that is what happens. All Cause and Effect reverberating through all of time since the foundations of Creation until now.
There are very few ways to live upon Creator's earth without human beings destroying themselves by their own hands through their own pollution/destruction of Creator's earth, or their their modern day weapons upon the earth that would have made the Caesar's drool.
So see what happens now upon the earth under the Glorious Rule of the Europeans and their cash register world. Will there be mass extinctions? Won't there be mass extinctions?
Creator already knows so no reason for me to worry about or fear these things.
Life is good. What an experience! It's always best to forgive.
"The Truth: Still There, Still Inconvenient"
Mainstream - and main politics - acceptance of the ongoing Climate Extreming means accepting that the current exploitative global economic system needs to change, to much nearer egalitarian. Money (dollars) issued at interest and compound interest must be abolished for this equalizing "egalitarianing" to happen.
The realtively small circle of "Money masters" guiding profiteering plus their hangers-on won't accept such change easily. Conflicts are escalating, and will continue to do so until participation in the 'production of meaning' that we humans perform continously is available to everyone and everyone is truly encouraged to participate. We need all of US to make US function well. No more exclusion of huge parts of humanity from decision-making. We'll need to acknowledge officially that we're all one - the one tribe that's US humans. No if's and but's about it.
The bad state of our ecology is making the economy break down. The current systemic holders of power won't let go. Unlimited material growth in our limited environment won't go on. The stark current contradiction won't last long.
By forethought or crises, change is coming. - Up to US how big the many ongoing crises will be before we change the main attitude of the human tribe, from lording it over nature and each other to humbly harmonizing ourselves with the biosphere we grow in and ourselves.
On the other side of the Big Change in attitudes which is brewing, life will be hopeful to live again. But what we hope for will have changed drastically - from material growth to spiritual growth in understanding of our role on this tiny planet swirling in vast space. - With us humans as transformers between inner space and external space, both of equal importance and infinity.
I don't accept that greater participation in decision making will lead to less environmental degradation. In the US, citizens have been voting for politicians for decades who enact policies that heavily subsidize carbon-intensive lifestyles. Without a concurrent decline in materialism, greater democracy will only lead to more environmental degradation. Although there are a few noble souls who VOLUNTARILY make do with smaller houses, smaller cars, fewer trips etc., until there is a massive mind shift away from possessions and toward deeper relationships with nature and other human beings, we are without hope.
Of course the deniers won't listen to reason. They're the same sort of fools who buy into the idea that 'gawd' created the earth and all life forms in their present forms in October 4004 BC.
They don't need evidence, they have 'faith'. Walt Disney created the myth of the lemmings who jumped over a cliff when the environment couldn't support their numbers. These fools are prepared to lead all of humanity in a real jump over a cliff.
I think we're doomed.
Bingo! Sociopaths. Craziods control most of the media, all of the school systems, lots of business, and their spawn becomes clueless denizens of suburbia. Positive feedback.
I think that when it comes to science and facts, we aren't the brightest of people. We're increasingly poorly educated and apathetic. Consider something: An American is a person who can rage at someone who walks past with a lit cigaret for polluting his air, while sitting in his car with the engine running. The most carcinogenic type of smoke is the kind with oil particles -- from traffic, not tobacco -- yet we target tobacco alone. . It would take a crowd of smokers to produce as much pollution as merely turning the ignition key in your car. Most people who develop a breathing related disease don't smoke, and most smokers don't develop a breathing related disease. Most of us have no exposure to tobacco smoke whatsoever. Our environment isn't being destroyed by tobacco spills. It's not cigarets that creates the yellow-gray domes of smoke that enable you to spot cities in the distance, or that leaves a greasy film on the outsides of windows (and insides of lungs). In defiance of all logic, though, we target tobacco while ignoring the far greater danger of traffic fumes.
Why? Because this is the message we've had drummed into our minds by the power of repetition. Adolph Hitler was a master propagandist, and he explained that anything, if repeated often enough, will be accepted as fact by most people. This is true even when they have access to the facts.We accepted that our "generous" welfare benefits enabled people to live in lazy luxury, even though we could have checked for ourselves; this would have shown that (with the exception of a brief time in the 1970s) welfare benefits remained well below the poverty line. But we were told otherwise -- repeatedly.
How many other things do we believe, not because they're fact, but because we were taught to believe them by sheer repetition? As long as the Glen Becks of the world can repeat "There is no global warming", most people will believe it, even though they have access to the facts that contradict it.
To: DHFabian July 21st, 2010 1:28 am
Excellent observations.
Atmospheric researcher Edward Martell showed decades ago that lung-cancer incidence among tobacco smokers increased drastically after the introduction of atmospheric nuclear testing, such that radioactive isotopes floated out of the sky and landed on the sticky leaves of the tobacco plant.
The tobacco was not the health threat; the human-induced radiation it now carried was. Nor was tobacco the only human ingested 'vegetable' similarly irradiated. Kruschchev and Kennedy and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty ended most of that atrocity (the atmospheric tests), but a lot of that old radiation is still out there, slowly floating down, and changing anything we can call a valid "background radiation baseline".
It's sort of like the weather. If the temperature increases every year, then the previous "average temperature" against which today's temperature is measured also keeps on increasing, so while we are boiling, the weatherpeople make the temperature look closer to "normal" than it really is.
Don't worry. Be happy. Go shopping.
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