`Gotcha Time' over Climate Change

(AP)

Catching up on my reading after being offline-don't tell the boss! - and out of pocket, a couple of items caught my eye. In Israel, they're experiencing the country's longest winter heat wave in 38 years years. It could be El Nino. It could be something else. But that's a topic of investigation for their country's climatologists. How nice to know that in some places ideology doesn't get in the way of the pursuit of scientific truth.

On this side of the globe, by contrast, we're still loading up on verbal spitballs. In lieu of serious conversations about serious questions about energy policy and climate - even the skeptics understand the two are related - it's `gotcha' time. First you had Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina tweeting during the recent record-breaking snowstorm which blanketed Washington that "it is going to keep snowing until Al Gore cries "uncle.'" That was followed by a media stunt starring family members of Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who mocked the former vice president by building an igloo next to the Capitol with a sign that read, "Al Gore's New Home."

What wits.

If some politicians are so keen to take victory laps because the east coast got nailed by an especially cold winter, God bless. It's too easy to caricature DeMint and Inhofe as intellectual troglodytes, but their trivialization of what should be a serious policy debate does carry real-world implications for U.S. competitiveness.

In his recent piece, the New York Times' Tom Friedman noted the (dismal) contrast with China, where that government is making big investments in "clean-tech, efficiency and high-speed rail." With the world population heading for 9 billion-plus souls by mid-century, you'd think the arguments for our getting behind major renewable energy and clean water would be no-brainers.

Not in contemporary Washington, where dysfunction has become a way of life in a real winter of discontent.

[lakota2012]

Although CO2 makes up only 0.04 percent of the atmosphere, that small number says nothing about its significance in climate dynamics. Even at that low concentration, CO2 absorbs infrared radiation and acts as a greenhouse gas, as physicist John Tyndall demonstrated in 1859. The chemist Svante Arrhenius went further in 1896 by estimating the impact of CO2 on the climate; after painstaking hand calculations he concluded that doubling its concentration might cause almost 6 degrees Celsius of warming?an answer not much out of line with recent, far more rigorous computations.

Contrary to the contrarians, human activity is by far the largest contributor to the observed increase in atmospheric CO2. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, anthropogenic CO2 amounts to about 30 billion tons annually?more than 130 times as much as volcanoes produce. True, 95 percent of the releases of CO2 to the atmosphere are natural, but natural processes such as plant growth and absorption into the oceans pull the gas back out of the atmosphere and almost precisely offset them, leaving the human additions as a net surplus. Moreover, several sets of experimental measurements, including analyses of the shifting ratio of carbon isotopes in the air, further confirm that fossil-fuel burning and deforestation are the primary reasons that CO2 levels have risen 35 percent since 1832, from 284 parts per million (ppm) to 388 ppm?a remarkable jump to the highest levels seen in millions of years.

Because of CO2's inescapable greenhouse effect, contrarians holding out for a natural explanation for current global warming need to explain why, in their scenarios, CO2 is not compounding the problem.

[Steven_Douglas]

Yvo de Boer, Conoco, BP, Caterpillar, like rats leaving a sinking ship. You have the right attitude, Charles. Shun the life vests, grab that violin and keep playing the same old doleful ditties. No need for a life raft, since God Himself could not sink this ship.

Now enter Phil Jones with all his latest turnabouts, including one saying that the debate is not over (in hopes of at least keeping it alive). But not you, Charles. You're hanging right in there like a trooper. I won't call you a denier, because I think only a truly blackhearted and morally deficient person would toss around such a term outside of an actual direct Holocaust context. But I will say that you are in denial. And it is truly surreal to witness.

[lakota2012]

In his recent piece, the New York Times' Tom Friedman noted the (dismal) contrast with China, where that government is making big investments in "clean-tech, efficiency and high-speed rail." With the world population heading for 9 billion-plus souls by mid-century, you'd think the arguments for our getting behind major renewable energy and clean water would be no-brainers.

Not in contemporary Washington, where dysfunction has become a way of life in a real winter of discontent.
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This is definitely the best point that Coop makes, since all I've heard over the past few years as China's emissions have caught the U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases, is "well, what about China?"

Even though we emit far more greenhouse gases per capita (close to 4 times what the 1.3 billion Chinese do) by importing almost 70% of all our OIL (because we only have 3% of the world's OIL reserves) and generate 50% of our electricity with dirty coal-fired plants, it seems as if Washington doesn't have the will that the Chinese do!

To fight all clean and green renewable energy as well as efficiency, only takes us back to the 1950's as the republiCONS want, while we see China embracing the newer technology and renewable energy that we should also be embracing with vigor instead of fighting it!

Whether or not any American still wants to be a part of the inhoffe/demint denialism through an endless campaign against science, it still makes more sense to embrace new technology and renewable energy to replace the dirty and finite fossil fuels like China.

[lakota2012]

Thanks louiville for proving my point, and trying to push the blame of our pathetic energy policy still dictated by the GOP's 2005 Energy Bill, to a matter of entitlements. One could make the same argument of the excessive waste, fraud and abuse of "defense" budget money used to fund the bloated military/industrial complex. Both will need to be addressed in the coming years, but this is all about poor energy policy.

The fact of the matter is, our pathetic energy policy has been dictated by the antiquated fossil fuel industry and their republiCON sycophants, hobbling both the nuclear industry as well as the renewable energy industry over the past 30 years. The only two presidents with any kind of foresight seeing the need for renewable energy have been Carter and Obama, but it was BIG OIL and the fossil fuel industry that has won the battle so far with their manufactured doubt campaign, along with the republiCON WAR on SCIENCE.

www.waronscience.com

[lakota2012]

In Israel, they're experiencing the country's longest winter heat wave in 38 years years. It could be El Nino. It could be something else. But that's a topic of investigation for their country's climatologists. How nice to know that in some places ideology doesn't get in the way of the pursuit of scientific truth.
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Yep, but the conservitard ideologues in the U.S. continue to push their anti-scientific political rhetoric on Americans, through the same, old, tired, dogma of the manufactured doubt industry, in order to protect the fossil fuel interests and record profits.

Not only do the republiCONS keep parroting the same debunked propaganda from conspiracy theorists like glenn beck, paid to scare you with his FEARmongering, but they also have to attack all sources of clean and green renewable energy, since global warming and a good energy policy (not the 2005 GOP idea of corporate welfare to Exxon) are totally intertwined.

[lakota2012]

No matter how much propaganda the conservitards throw out there trying to get something to stick to the wall via the manufactured doubt industry, the vast consensus of real climatologists are convinced that the steady global warming over the past 30 years is definitely caused by mankind's unchecked emissions and destruction of carbon sinks.

[debinok1]

And U.N. Climate Chief Boer is stepping down just because things didn't go well in Copenhagen and he can do more good by working in the private sector on environmental sustainability.
It would never have anything to do with him wanting to get out of dodge before all heck breaks loose.
He would never cover his own rear and let the person who replaces him take the heat.

[lakota2012]

Quite possibly, you're reading a bit too much in between the lines.....

"It was a difficult decision to make, but I believe the time is ripe for me to take on a new challenge, working on climate and sustainability with the private sector and academia," de Boer said in the statement.

"Copenhagen did not provide us with a clear agreement in legal terms, but the political commitment and sense of direction toward a low-emissions world are overwhelming. This calls for new partnerships with the business sector and I now have the chance to help make this happen," he added.

[Wolf1944]

If there was this much evidence that your brakes were going bad, would you refuse to fix your brakes?

[afmcalax]

Unfortunately the Democrats are the party of hyperbole; while the Republicans are the party of scientific ignorance. Combine the two and you get total gridlock. The Republicans have made a living at distorting science to retain the corporate profits of their patrons. Democrats overplayed the science and are paying the price. But the real facts is that there are multiple untainted scientific studies to prove climate change is in fact taking place. Forget global warming it was a poorly created label. Climate change means some places will get warmer; while other places get colder. Some places will get more precipatation; while others get less. Even the neanderthals that state climate change is an on-going event need to realize that even a slight shift in temperature, rainfall, and the gulf stream would have huge economic impacts on the U.S. We could easily find ourselves no longer able to produce the food needeed to feed ourselves much less the world. Reasonable people should think before discounting the effects of climate change, even if the dooms day forecasts are difficult to prove.

[endurorob_5]

"How nice to know that in some places ideology doesn't get in the way of the pursuit of scientific truth."


This coming from a guy that bleeds liberal idealogy.

[lakota2012]

"How nice to know that in some places ideology doesn't get in the way of the pursuit of scientific truth."
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by endurorob_5:
"This coming from a guy that bleeds liberal idealogy."
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And this coming from the rabid far-right that has been waging a WAR on science for decades (www.waronscience.com) since it is definitely not about ideology like the republiCONS try to make it appear, but science!

[live4jesus]

I have lived long enough to know that the climate changes, and that's why we have record highs and record lows. This has been going on since we could record the weather. The weather some years is milder than in other years and some are extremely worse than others. The Earth has its own cycle; it warms for a few years and then it cools for a few years. Leave it to Al Gore to try and make a buck over a naturally occuring phenomenon. Of course it's easy for him to manipulate when you have people who blindly follow without doing their own investigatons and finding their own answers. Maybe we should say the sky is falling and watch how many run for cover.

[afmcalax]

Unless you are 100 or more years old; you have not lived long enough to actually observe climate change. You are experiencing variations in the weather. Climate change shows the Arctic and Antarctic ice flows disappearing at remarkable rates. This is not going to be reversed in a 3 year cycle. In fact it may become irreversible. This much loss of ice at the poles have not been recorded in centuries. What the real effect of this melting will have on global climate patterns will not be known for years; but by that time putting the ice back will be impossible.

[radicalc-2009]

The guy who helped create the hockey stick graph, Phil Jones, now says there has been no warming since 1995. Data is missing tha was used to create the hockey stick. You should read some news other than the New York Times Cooper. I though you said Sara Palin was out of touch.

[lakota2012]

by radicalc-2009:
"You should read some news other than the New York Times Cooper."
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What?.....like the U.K. Daily Mail tabloid spreading more propaganda?

A headline in the Daily Mail has spread like wildfire, claiming that Phil Jones, ex-director of the University of East Anglia?s Climatic Research Unit, said "there has been no global warming since 1995". Not only did Phil Jones not say these words, this interpretation shows a poor understanding of the scientific concepts behind his words.

Phil Jones is saying there is a warming trend but it's not statistically significant. He's not talking about whether warming is actually happening. He's discussing our ability to detect that warming trend in a noisy signal over a short period. The linear trend is that of warming. However, the temperature record is very noisy with lots of short term variability.

Besides.....
It bears remembering that the HadCRUT record only covers around 80% of the globe. Analysis by European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and NASA GISS (Hansen 2006) find that the areas omitted by HadCRUT are some of the fastest warming regions in the world. Consequently, the HadCRUT record underestimates the warming trend, as demonstrated by the NASA GISS record which covers the whole globe.