tagged w/ greenhouse effect
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New York Times Reporter Criticizes His Paper For ‘Scandal’ Of ‘Dodging’ How Global Warming Is Poisoning Our Weather
By Brad Johnson | April 3, 2012
In an interview with Columbia Journalism Review, New York Times reporter Justin Gillis criticizes the media, including his own paper, for failing to connect the dots on how the hundreds of billions of tons of greenhouse pollution humanity has spewed into the atmosphere is making weather more extreme and “crazy”:
“One thing I’m seeing—and I see it in our own paper as well as many other news outlets—is that people are covering the crazy weather we’re having and, more often than not, dodging the subject of whether there’s any relationship to climate change. TV weathermen are dodging that subject. Print reporters are dodging the subject
"And it’s not so easy to cover because science does not have particularly good answers for us. The concept that I wrote about last week—that we’re in the middle of a sort of weather “weirding”—isn’t really a scientific concept for which you can build a weird index and figure out where we are on that index, but there are some things that scientists can say about weather extremes. Some of the extremes are very consistent with what is expected and what has long been predicted, and we’re seeing very clear trends in certain extremes like heat waves and heavy precipitation events.
"Reporters are not going to be able to be definitive, in real time, about whether this particular event was or wasn’t connected to climate change, but it’s a bit of a scandal that there’s not enough connecting the dots for people.”
As climate scientist Kevin Trenberth said in 2011, “It is irresponsible not to mention climate change in stories that presume to say something about why all these storms and tornadoes are happening.”New York Times Reporter Criticizes His Paper For ‘Scandal’ Of... more
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Just keep smiling (and get a snorkel).
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The agreement between these studies using a variety of different methods and approaches is quite remarkable. Every study concluded that over the most recent 100-150 year period examined, humans are responsible for at least 50% of the observed warming, and most estimates put the human contribution between 75 and 90% over that period (Figure 2). Over the most recent 25-65 years, every study put the human contribution at a minimum of 98%, and most put it at well above 100%, because natural factors have probably had a small net cooling effect over recent decades (Figures 3 and 4).
Additionally, in every study over every timeframe examined, the two largest factors influencing global temperatures were human-caused: (1) GHGs, followed by (2) human aerosol emissions. This is a dangerous situation because as we clean our air and reduce our SO2 emissions, their cooling effect will dissipate, revealing more of the underlying GHG-caused global warming trend. Note that not all studies broke out the effects the same way (i.e. only examining ‘natural’ and not solar or volcanic effects individually), which is the reason some bars appear to be missing from Figures 2 to 4.
Figure 2: Percent contributions of various effects to the observed global surface warming over the past 100-150 years according to Tett et al. 2000 (T00, dark blue), Meehl et al. 2004 (M04, red), Stone et al. 2007 (S07, green), Lean and Rind 2008 (LR08, purple), Stott et al. 2010 (S10, gray), and Huber and Knutti 2011 (HR11, light blue).
Figure 3: Percent contributions of various effects to the observed global surface warming over the past 50-65 years according to Tett et al. 2000 (T00, dark blue), Meehl et al. 2004 (M04, red), Stone et al. 2007 (S07, green), Lean and Rind 2008 (LR08, purple), Huber and Knutti 2011 (HK11, light blue), and Gillett et al. 2012 (G12, orange).
Figure 4: Percent contributions of various effects to the observed global surface warming over the past 100-150 years according to Meehl et al. 2004 (M04, red), Lean and Rind 2008 (LR08, purple), and Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 (FR11, green).
There was a period of warming between 1910 and 1940 which was predominantly caused by increasing solar activity and an extended period of low volcanic activity, with some contribution by human effects. However, since mid-century, solar activity has been flat, there has been moderate volcanic activity, and ENSO has had little net impact on global temperatures. All the while GHGs kept increasing, and became the dominant effect on global temperature changes, as Figures 3 and 4 illustrate.
A wide variety of statistical and physical approaches all arrived at the same conclusion: that humans are the dominant cause of the global warming over the past century, and particularly over the past 50 years. This robust scientific evidence is why there is a consensus among scientific experts that humans are the dominant cause of global warming.
More at the linkThe agreement between these studies using a variety of different methods and... more
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Naomi Oreskes is a Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego, and Adjunct Professor of Geosciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Oreskes is also a co-author, along with Erik M. Conway, of the book, "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming."
This presentation was made possible through a cooperative effort between Fort Hays State University, Kansas State University, and the University of Kansas.Naomi Oreskes is a Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of... more
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Naomi Oreskes found herself under attack in 2004, when she called attention to the scientific consensus on climate change. Her search for those behind the broadside led her to document the evolution of doubt-mongering.
Climate Query For Naomi Oreskes
Naomi Oreskes is a science historian, professor at the University of California, San Diego, and co-author (with Erik Conway) of Merchants of Doubt, a book that examined how a handful of scientists obscure the facts on a range of issues, including tobacco use and climate change. Her seminal paper in the journal Science, "Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change," challenged - back in 2004 - the notion that climate change science was uncertain. Her work has documented the spread of doubt-mongering from an industry practice to a political strategy.
Oreskes did her undergraduate work at the Royal School of Mines in London and received her graduate degree from Stanford University. With her husband, Ken Belitz, and daughter, Clara, the family lives in San Diego. Her older daughter, Hannah, attends Stanford.
Somewhere between your undergraduate and graduate degrees, you became interested in the history of science. What drew you to that field?
I was always interested in the human side of science, especially why people disagreed about evidence, and the strong - yet divergent - opinions that my professors had about what constitutes good science. Beyond that, it is a long story.
What attracted you to the climate change deniers?
I fell into this. I was working on the history of oceanography, and came across the work of Roger Revelle, Dave Keeling and others who'd been working on climate change since the 1950s. I came to understand that the scientific basis for understanding anthropogenic climate change was much firmer than most people knew. That led to my 2004 work, which led to me being attacked. So we started digging and found direct links to the tobacco industry.
Science is not sufficient to solve this problem, but it is necessary.
How do most mainstream scientists view this contrary viewpoint from their colleagues?
They are thoroughly appalled. Because it isn't a "contrary viewpoint," in the sense that the scientific evidence is contradictory or incomplete, or that our theories are inadequate to explain the observations. This is not the case, this is not a scientific debate.
Is the need to expose deniers that important in the policy world? Aren't other issues - such as economics and energy - far more important?
If we didn't have the science, we wouldn't know the cause. We wouldn't know that we have to control greenhouse gas emissions, and we could just burn coal. It is science that revealed the problem, science that pinpoints its cause, and science (that) tells us what kinds of interventions will be efficacious. Science is not sufficient to solve this problem, but it is necessary.
Are you frustrated by the continuing debate over the reality of climate change?
Yes, because some people are now saying, we should just accept that climate change is happening and not worry about the cause. Climate change is caused by greenhouse gases and that is why we need to do something about them. So it's time we rolled up our sleeves and got to work doing what we know in our hearts we need to do.
More at the linkNaomi Oreskes found herself under attack in 2004, when she called attention to the... more
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Ain’t eBay grand? For $10 you can buy a sack of 50 assorted Obama ’08 buttons, and that’s what I’ve been doing. If you look closely, you might see them this weekend on the lapels of some of the global warming protesters holding a sit-in outside the White House.
Already, more than a thousand people have signed up to be arrested over two weeks beginning Aug. 20 — the biggest display of civil disobedience in the environmental movement in decades and one of the largest nonviolent direct actions since the World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle back before Sept. 11. (Among the first 500 to sign up, the biggest cohort was born in the Truman administration, followed closely by FDR babies and Eisenhower kids. These seniors contradict the stereotype of greedy geezers who care only about their own future.)
The issue is simple: We want the president to block construction of Keystone XL, a pipeline that would carry oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta down to the Gulf of Mexico. We have, not surprisingly, concerns about potential spills and environmental degradation from construction of the pipeline. But those tar sands are also the second-largest pool of carbon in the atmosphere, behind only the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. If we tap into them in a big way, NASA climatologist James Hansen explained in a paper issued this summer, the emissions would mean it’s “essentially game over” for the climate. That’s why the executive directors of many environmental groups and 20 of the country’s leading climate scientists wrote letters asking people to head to Washington for the demonstrations. In scientific terms, it’s as close to a no-brainer as you can get.
But in political terms it may turn out to be a defining moment of the Obama years.
That’s because, for once, the president will get to make an important call all by himself. He has to sign a certificate of national interest before the border-crossing pipeline can be built. Under the relevant statutes, Congress is not involved, so he doesn’t need to stand up to the global-warming deniers calling the shots in the House.
But the president does need to stand up to the fossil fuel industry, which has done its best to influence the decision. Since the State Department plays a role in recommending a decision, the main pipeline company helpfully hired the former national deputy director of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign as its lead lobbyist. WikiLeaks documents emerged recently showing U.S. envoys conspiring with the oil industry to win favorable media coverage for tar sands oil. If you were a cynic, you’d say the fix was in.
Still, the final call rests with Barack Obama, who said the night that he clinched the Democratic nomination in June 2008 that his ascension would mark “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Now he gets a chance to prove that he meant it. In basketball terms, he’s alone at the top of the key — will he take the 20-foot jumper or pass the ball? It’s a rare, character-defining moment. Obama can’t escape it simply by saying that someone else will burn the oil if we don’t. Alberta is remote, and its only other possible pipeline route — to the Pacific and hence Asia — is tangled in litigation. That’s why the province’s energy minister told Canada’s Globe and Mail last month that without the Keystone pipeline Alberta would be “landlocked in bitumen,” the technical name for the heavy, gooey tar that is its chief export. Critics may argue otherwise, but Obama’s call is key; without it, that oil will stay in the ground for at least a while longer. Long enough, perhaps, that the planet will come fully to its senses about climate change.
It’s hard to predict what will happen. Earlier this summer Al Gore tossed up his hands in despair: “President Obama has never presented to the American people the magnitude of the climate crisis,” Gore said. “He has not defended the science against the ongoing withering and dishonest attacks.” Yet it’s hard to give up on the image of the skinny senator from Illinois and the young people who were his most fervent supporters — young people who, according to pollsters, wanted a climate bill by a 5-to-1 margin. That didn’t happen, of course; for now, the Keystone pipeline is the best proxy we have for real presidential commitment to the global warming fight.
More at the linkAin’t eBay grand? For $10 you can buy a sack of 50 assorted Obama ’08... more
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The record cold, sleet and snow over much of the United States and Europe this winter has made it hard for people to continue believing in Global Warming.
Read the whole story, watch the video and check out the latest evidence supporting that its all just annother big lie, at ConspiracyWatch.net.
I'm watching out for you, too.The record cold, sleet and snow over much of the United States and Europe this winter... more
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The global warming meltdown will now accelerate rapidly as methane, which traps much more heat than does carbon dioxide, escapes from previously-frozen tundra. Fasten your seat belts and move away from the coast.The global warming meltdown will now accelerate rapidly as methane, which traps much... more
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All but one of the 48 Republican hopefuls for the Senate mid-term elections in November deny the existence of climate change or oppose action on global warming, according to a just released report. The report, by the Center for American Progress, says the strong Republican front against established science includes entrenched Senate leaders such as John McCain.All but one of the 48 Republican hopefuls for the Senate mid-term elections in... more
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A panel of scientists told Congress the entire ice mass of Greenland will disappear from the world map if temperatures rise by as little as 2C –3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, with severe consequences for the rest of the world.The fall-out would be felt thousands of miles away from the Arctic, unleashing a global sea level rise of 23 feet. Low-lying cities such as New Orleans would vanish.A panel of scientists told Congress the entire ice mass of Greenland will disappear... more
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Surprising facts about carbon dioxide emission from the world over.
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A distinguished panel of independent scientists has given a resounding vote of confidence in the credibility and integrity of the key studies into climate change that have emerged over the past 20 years from the embattled Climatic Research Unit, or CRU, at the University of East Anglia.A distinguished panel of independent scientists has given a resounding vote of... more
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A huge glacier broke off and plunged into a lake in Peru, causing a 75-foot tsunami wave that swept away at least three people and destroyed a water processing plant serving 60,000 local residents.A huge glacier broke off and plunged into a lake in Peru, causing a 75-foot tsunami... more
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A Greenpeace investigation has identified a little-known, privately owned US oil company as the paymaster of global warming skeptics in the United States and Europe.A Greenpeace investigation has identified a little-known, privately owned US oil... more
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Military chiefs are holding discussions on how to cope with the threat of a world ravaged by wars provoked by uncontrolled climate change.Military chiefs are holding discussions on how to cope with the threat of a world... more
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Scientists are saying lower levels of oxygen in the Earth's oceans, particularly off the United States' Pacific Northwest coast, could be another sign of fundamental changes linked to global climate change. They warn that the oceans' complex undersea ecosystems and fragile food chains could be disrupted.Scientists are saying lower levels of oxygen in the Earth's oceans, particularly... more
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A major unpublished study for the United Nations has found that the cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world's biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable.A major unpublished study for the United Nations has found that the cost of pollution... more
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A new report from the National Wildlife Federation finds that this winter's extreme weather -- with heavy snowfall in some places and unusually low temperatures -- is in fact a sign of how climate change disrupts long-standing patterns.A new report from the National Wildlife Federation finds that this winter's... more
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A new report by environmental think-thank the New Economics Foundation warns that continuing global economic growth is not possible if nations are to tackle climate change.A new report by environmental think-thank the New Economics Foundation warns that... more
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New surface temperature figures just released by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration show the decade ending in 2009 was the warmest on record.New surface temperature figures just released by the National Aeronautics and Space... more
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