tagged w/ climate deniers
-
In case you haven’t heard, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is dead, done in by the nefarious failure to check a single reference in a 3000 page report. Or rather, that’s what climate disruption deniers want you to think. Here’s what’s really going on.
Back in 2007, Working Group 2 (WG2) of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) put together a large list of what climate disruption was likely to impact around the world. One of the impacts was reduced availability of fresh water due to rapidly melting glaciers around the world, and especially in the Himalayas. One of the specific claims was that all Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035, an amazingly and likely unrealistically fast rate of melting. After an Indian government minister questioned this claim, scientists looked into it and found that the date was incorrect and that internal procedures for vetting references weren’t followed in this particular case. As as result, the IPCC has issued a formal statement of apology for the error.
And if this were about any other topic except climate disruption, that would be the end of it.
But given the denial echo chamber, that’s not the end of it.
More at the link.In case you haven’t heard, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)... more
-
-
Maybe Palin will pose in front of this one, like she did last time.
-
-
In all of the recent news about climate change, leaked emails, complex negotiations, and watered-down agreements in Copenhagen, one fact has’t received enough attention. The climate “hoax” is real. The only problem is that the real hoax is the effort by climate change deniers who argue that the climate isn’t changing, or that it isn’t because of human actions. It is, and it is. The science is unambiguous. The climate is changing, rapidly, and it is doing so because of our emissions of greenhouse gases.
I know many people have said this. I’ve been saying it for twenty-five years in my research and writings. But if the phrase “climate hoax” is going to enter the public vernacular, it should do so in the right way. So from now on, I intend to use it to refer to the efforts of climate change deniers to misinform the public and our policy makers. Some, like Senator James Inhofe (of Oklahoma), love the phrase “climate hoax.” Fine, but since he is a major elected official perpetrating this hoax (actually, I think he is probably both a hoax-er and a hoax-ee), let the words represent his own actions.
He and the other deniers are foisting a hoax on the American people by misusing and abusing science and by misrepresenting facts for narrow ideological purposes. If he and the other climate hoaxers don’t think we ought to do anything about climate change because they fear it will hurt the economy, or they just can’t bear for the government to do anything at all, fine, they should make that argument. But instead they pretend the science isn’t firm.
It is. There are plenty of uncertainties about how bad climate change is going to get, and how fast, and how the impacts will be distributed. But not about whether the climate is changing or whether humans are driving those changes.
Water Number: Because my blog is called “Water Numbers,” here is the number for today’s post. 20%. This is the expected decrease in recharge of the vitally important Ogallala Aquifer under the Great Plains of the United States (including important parts of Oklahoma, Senator Inhofe), if temperatures increase by 2.5 degrees C, which they almost certainly will. (”Climate Change: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability,” IPCC Working Group II, 4th Assessment, 2007).
But there is more bad news for Oklahoma. As temperature and rainfall patterns begin to rapidly change from climate change, the yields of two of the most important crops in the United States, corn and soybeans, are expected to be severely damaged (including in Oklahoma, Senator Inhofe), according a 2009 scientific paper by Schlenker and Roberts from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This study suggests that average yields could decrease by 30 to 46% before the end of the century under the slowest warming scenario and decrease by 63 to 82% under the most rapid warming scenario. And the recent lack of action in Copenhagen pretty much ensures we’re going to see the most rapid warming scenario. The warming the planet is already experiencing already exceeds that worst scenario.
So it is time to call what the climate deniers are doing by its real name: the climate hoax: denying the reality of climate change.In all of the recent news about climate change, leaked emails, complex negotiations,... more
-
-
Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, a noted climate change denier, gave a speech in St. Paul, Minnesota on October 14 that has the conservative blogosphere abuzz, especially a 4-minute clip near the end in which he says the upcoming Copenhagen climate treaty threatens "democracy" and "freedom." That whopper earned Monckton a "pants-on-fire" rating from PolitiFact's Truth-o-Meter.
But more interesting, perhaps, is Monckton's truthiness when it comes to the science of global warming. Like Monckton, I’m not a scientist, so I can’t pretend to be qualified to debunk his claims point-by-point. I don’t even understand many of his graphs and formulas. But as one of his critics points out, “just because somebody uses a lot of numbers and formulas, that doesn’t make their analysis either scientific or credible.” And there are many more voices in the scientific community (real scientists, no less!) that I find far more credible than Monckton.
So I asked around a bit. No one seems to have yet done a thorough, point-by-point response to Monckton’s entire 10/14 speech in St. Paul, but I found a wealth of useful links that address different pieces of his presentation. Here's what I found...Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, a noted climate change denier, gave a speech... more
-
