Dealing With Crises

The global warming issue is a real bear, because while not preparing to deal with it is dangerous, those against preparation can make "relative situation" arguments; they can point out that all of the US's sacrifices won't mean much if China (now the largest net CO2 polluter in the world) and the rest of the Developing World doesn't go along, and it doesn't look like they will.

Building a lot of windmills with all our excess capacity would be a great start.

daCascadian wrote: "One of the reasons we (the international community & governments) can`t do so is stuff like this." The Japanese organization JSTOR that produced that report is an energy-industry funded group -- they are NOT "climate researchers". And the report is rubbish, of the same sort as the pseudoscientific denialist drivel cranked out by the Heartland Institute and other ExxonMobil-funded propaganda mills masquerading as "conservative" think tanks in the USA. It is certainly true that one of the reasons, if not THE reason, that governments have not already taken stronger action to reduce carbon pollution is the very, very successful denialist propaganda campaigns funded by the fossil fuel corporations, which have proved very effective at deceiving the public and thus undermining public support for the necessary actions. And now that Cheney and Bush are no longer in the White House to run the executive branch as a wholly-owned subsidiary of ExxonMobil, Chevron, et al, and now that the Obama administration and the Democratic majority Congress are moving to take action -- however inadequate -- to reduce CO2 emissions, the fossil fuel corporations' campaign of deceit will kick into overdrive. As the legitimate scientific community becomes ever more alarmed at the world's ongoing, accelerating emissions and the rapid, extreme effects that current levels of anthropogenic warming are already having -- both of which are outpacing the worst-case IPCC scenarios of only a couple of years ago -- the media will be ever more saturated with corporate-sponsored denialist propaganda. You can already see this everywhere, from George Will's blatantly dishonest columns in the Washington Post to the Ditto-Head denialist comments on every blog where climate change is discussed.

Tom Fuller wrote: "I wish you would criticize the science instead." There is no "science" in the JSTOR report to criticize -- it has no content except long-debunked pseudoscience and the ill-informed opinions of cranks who don't understand even the basics of climate science. Tom Fuller wrote: "temperatures have plateaued over the past decade" That's a blatant falsehood. Temperatures have not "plateaued" over the past decade. Tom Fuller wrote: "Obama's policy allows us to take the first steps while we actually collect data on what the climate is doing over a period of time." We already have plenty of data on "what the climate is doing over a period of time" -- not only during the past century, and particularly the last 50 years, of rapid, accelerating anthropogenic warming, but from paleoclimate research (e.g. ice cores) we have data on what the climate has been doing for hundreds of thousands of years. There is absolutely NO question that (1) CO2 is a "greenhouse gas" and increased atmospheric concentrations of CO2 cause the Earth system to retain more of the Sun's energy and get warmer; that (2) human activities, principally the burning of fossil fuels, have released huge amounts of long-sequestered "fossil" carbon into the atmosphere as CO2 over the last century; and that (3) this rapid and extreme anthropogenic increase in CO2 is causing a rapid and extreme warming of the Earth system, which is already having severe detrimental effects on the climate, hydrosphere and biosphere. Anyone who denies these facts is ignorant or a liar. And there are plenty of people who do confidently deny these facts, precisely because they are ignorant as a result of being deceived by liars. As for the proposals being put forward by Obama and the Democratic majority Congress, it is surely a huge improvement over the denial and stonewalling of the Bush administration and Republicans like Senator Inhofe. And it is certainly true that there is a lot of "low-hanging fruit" that we can go after -- particularly in the realm of efficiency, and basic policies to support and encourage the private sector's existing enthusiasm for wind and solar technologies (the top recipient of private venture capital investments in 2008 was Nanosolar, a manufacturer of innovative, high-efficiency, ultra-low-cost thin-film photovoltaics). But having said that, the emissions reduction goals that Obama and the Democrats have publicly embraced fall far, far short of what mainstream climate scientists say is needed if we are to have any hope of averting the most catastrophic effects of anthropogenic global warming. Yes, their proposals would be a good start -- IF they can get them past the fossil fuel corporations' bought-and-paid-for tools in Congress -- but they are only a start.

Secular Animist, you say that when I write that temperatures have plateaued for a decade that is a 'blatant falsehood.' No, it is the truth, and even the BBC acknowledges it: "Temperatures have not risen globally since 1998 when El Nino warmed the world." Another study, released on Jan. 28 by Kyle L. Swanson and Anastasios A. Tsonis, who are professors in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, found that the Earth has been cooling since 2001 and projected that due to “global variation” the climate would continue to cool for the next 20 to 30 years. You can say that they are wrong. You can say I am wrong. You can say that we are legally required to look at 5-year moving averages. You can say that a ten year period is irrelevant to the overall issue. But to say it is a blatant falsehood says more about you than it does about global warming, Japanese scientists, or me. In your tired recitals of the facts above, nobody disputes 1 or 2. Many respected people not in the pay of energy companies and with scientific qualifications that might even equal your own do dispute number 3. Here are two: “I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever. “Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical...The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.” If you want more than two, I am happy to provide them. Are these two ignorant, liars, or deceived by clever and evil people? You claim the right to define what 'mainstream science' is. I don't think your comments makes the case that you deserve to have that right bestowed upon you. In fact, you seem very much like one of a couple of dozen people that flit from blog to blog, pasting the same garbage into the comments every time someone posts on a semi-related issue, and flaming anyone who doesn't agree with you. You don't seem secular at all, Secular Animist. You seem very much like an acolyte of a new religion. Which is a bit tough when you're discussing science.

Tom Fuller wrote: "you say that when I write that temperatures have plateaued for a decade that is a 'blatant falsehood.' No, it is the truth ... But to say it is a blatant falsehood says more about you than it does about global warming, Japanese scientists, or me." Here's what I have to say about you: you are engaging in rote regurgitation of fake, phony, scripted, ExxonMobil-funded, pseudo-scientific denialist drivel. You cite Ivar Giaever. According to Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute, the University of Oslo, and Google Scholar, Dr. Giaever has not published any work in the area of climate science. He has, in fact, NO background in climate science at all. You value his opinion above that of hundreds of climate scientists who have diligently studied the issue and subjected their findings to rigorous peer review in the relevant scientific journals for decades. Why? And you grossly misrepresent the Swanson and Tsonis study. Here's what they actually conclude: "It is purely speculative to presume that the global mean temperature will remain near current levels for such an extended period of time. Moreover, we caution that the shifts described here are presumably superimposed upon a long term warming trend due to anthropogenic forcing .... If the role of internal variability in the climate system is as large as this analysis would seem to suggest, warming over the 21st century may well be larger than that predicted by the current generation of models, given the propensity of those models to underestimate climate internal variability." Why do you misrepresent their conclusions? Ignorance, or dishonesty? According to the World Meteorological Organization, "The ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1997. Global temperatures for 2000-2008 now stand almost 0.2 degrees Centigrade warmer than the average for the decade 1990–1999." Denialist BS artists like to use the year 1998 as a baseline because it was an extraordinarily warm year, due to a strong El Nino. That's called "cherry picking" and it is a form of deliberate fraud. The only question about you is, have you been deceived by that fraud? Or are you deliberately, knowingly, dishonestly helping to perpetrate it? In short, are you ignorant? Or are you a liar? In either case, the discussion has long since moved on beyond the fake "controversy" about whether or not anthropogenic global warming is real, and whether it is dangerous. It is both real and dangerous. The adults are now talking about what to do about it. If you want to join the adult conversation, then you need to put aside your childish denial and get real.

Secular Animist, Does someone pay you to do this?

daCascadian wrote: "One of the reasons we (the international community & governments) can`t do so is stuff like this." I replied: "The Japanese organization JSTOR that produced that report is an energy-industry funded group -- they are NOT 'climate researchers'. " I made an error in my reply. The Japanese organization that produced the report is not JSTOR, it is JSER, the Japan Society of Energy and Resources. JSTOR is a nonprofit organization that was commissioned to translate the JSER report by the UK newspaper The Register. I apologize for any confusion caused by this careless error. According to the JSER website, it is "an academic society to promote the science and technology concerning energy and resources and thus to facilitate cooperation among industry academia and governmental sectors for coping with the problems in this field." According to The Register, JSER "acts as a government advisory panel." JSER's executive directors include academics and energy industry officials, including the president of the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum and "advisers" to the Tokyo Electric Power Corporation, the Osaka Gas Corporation, the Osaka Gas Chemicals Corporation, and the Kansai Electric Power Corporation. JSER neither conducts nor publishes peer-reviewed climate research. The organization is heavily funded by the Japanese energy industry and represents its interests as an "advisory group" to the Japanese government. The JSER report being discussed here contains bizarre opinions -- e.g. that several decades of intensive study of anthropogenic global warming by hundreds of climate scientists representing every major relevant scientific body in the world has no more validity than "ancient astrology" -- and numerous flat-out falsehoods. And of course, this report -- published by an energy industry group -- is being trumpeted by denialists everywhere as a refutation of the overwhelming consensus of the entire world's scientific community that anthropogenic global warming is both very real and very dangerous.