tagged w/ DENIERS HAVE NO SCIENCE
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Arguing That Republicans Aren’t Science Deniers, S.E. Cupp Says Climate Change Is ‘Phony Studies’
By Brad Johnson on Apr 5, 2012 at 3:21 pm
Arguing that Republicans don’t reflexively deny scientific facts, conservative MSNBC commentator S.E. Cupp repeated Climategate smears against climate science. Cupp was attacking the premise of author and Science Progress contributor Chris Mooney’s new book, The Republican Brain, which looks at how conservative propaganda and ideological tendencies have led to increasing distrust in science among the American right. Cupp bowled over host Alex Wagner, citing Rick Santorum as her authority that the fact of man-made climate change is “corrupted” by “phony studies”:
CUPP: Here’s what I find infuriating. We have a long and glorious tradition in this country of questioning science. We’ve been questioning science in fact for centuries, asking is science right on this? The idea that science is some unimpeachable institution that cannot be questioned flies in fact in the face of the bedrock of the scientific method, which is skepticism. Whether we are trying to disprove science as junk science or exposing certain science as immoral. I’m thinking of eugenics here, population control. The idea that when a Republican does it is somehow scary or backwards, is exactly why the public is skeptical of science as having been politicized because of suggestions like this that Republicans writ large are afraid of science.
WAGNER: I mean honestly. We have seen Newt Gingrich on the couch with Nancy Pelosi talking about climate change.
CUPP: There have been, to quote Rick Santorum, phony studies on climate change. East Anglia University I should mention!
WAGNER: And that study –
CUPP: Every time science has been corrupted by politics, everyone in the scientific community should be worried!
As Wagner was evidently trying to point out, the hacked emails from East Anglia University were shown by repeated independent investigation to show nothing other than private conversations among ethical scientists doing valid scientific work, despite a well-funded smear campaign to distort the contents of the emails.
“It’s good to be open-minded,” Mooney responded, “but at some point you have to respect the process and the scientific consensus that emerges. That’s what doesn’t happen from the right.”Arguing That Republicans Aren’t Science Deniers, S.E. Cupp Says Climate Change... more
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The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund was established with one goal: to protect the scientific endeavor. Scientific research has brought us amazing advancements in technology, medicine, and in our basic understanding of the planet. Over the last twenty years, a small handful of politically-motivated think tanks and legal foundations, because they disliked certain scientific findings, have taken legal action against scientific institutions and individual scientists. In recent years, the legal attacks have intensified, especially against climate scientists.
The scientific method is designed around the belief that skepticism is good. Results should be subjected to the utmost scrutiny through the peer review process, followed by close examination and replication by others in the scientific community. Those whose ideas do not live up to the standards of rigorous science have instead chosen to litigate.
For the individual scientist these legal actions are a painful burden. Academic salaries were not designed to support ongoing legal expenses. Legal actions also have taken many of our brightest scientific minds away from their research to focus on frivolous lawsuits.
This state of affairs is unacceptable. The United States of America should be the leader in science and technology, and it cannot do so if unscrupulous people subject our scientists to these actions.
The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund was established to make sure that these legal claims are not viewed as an action against one scientist or institution, but that they are seen as actions against the scientific endeavor as a whole. As such the Fund will defend climate scientists who are dragged into litigation and act aggressively to protect the interests of the scientific endeavor.
In addition, the Climate Science Defense Fund will create platforms and opportunities for members of the scientific community to gain a better understanding of the legal issues surrounding their work.The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund was established with one goal: to protect the... more
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Disclaimer: The events depicted in this video and the previous two parts are of global climate extremes for 2011 that were unusual or extreme in scope and fit the trend that suggests the strongest link between anthropogenic global warming and weather events through extreme precipitation events, floods and droughts. Nothing was inferred by this video and any such inferment placed on this by the viewer is based on their own preconceptions and biases. All photos depict the events and all information was gleaned from public sources for educational purposes as noted at the conclusion of the video.
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Previously I had posted two parts of this video series that I put together of climate extremes for 2011. Seeing just this one year in totality is an eye opener. With all three parts put together there is close to a half hour of information and pictures depicting the world we are making for our children and it is not a good report on the human species.
There is no mistaking anymore that we are affecting the cycles of this planet that provide the two most basic needs for our survival: food and water. The willful damage we are inflicting on our lifeline is irresponsible, arrogant and immoral regardless of what you think is the cause. This year requires REAL action. So please, pass this on and thanks for watching.
This was for me a labor of love and my heart goes out to all in this world who lost loved ones and who stilll deal with the effects of this crisis daily. May we collectively find the moral courage we need now to make this right as much as possibly can be done at this point.
CLIMATE CHANGE KILLS.
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I thought this fit here based on the events covered in this recap video:
"Brenda Ekwurzel, a UCS climate scientist, emphasized the varying levels of scientific certainty when it comes to links between extreme weather and climate change. “In some cases, the links between extreme weather and climate change are crystal clear,” she said. “In other cases, the picture is murkier.”
Ekwurzel said scientists see the strongest links to extreme heat and shifts in precipitation away from lighter and toward heavier events, meaning longer periods of drought punctuated by heavy flooding. "
Link to enitre article is in the thread.Disclaimer: The events depicted in this video and the previous two parts are of global... more
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Leading Climatologist Michael Mann's TEDx Talk on Climate Science and Deniers
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Last month, the BBC released Frozen Planet, its much-anticipated follow-up to the Planet Earth series. The new seven-part documentary explores life in the Arctic and Antarctic, including an entire episode on the dangers posed by humans and global warming.
However, viewers in the United States will not see that final episode because the BBC believed it would not play well abroad.
The Discovery Channel, which will broadcast the series in the U.S., claimed it “only had slots for six episodes,” preventing an extended discussion on the effects of climate change. The BBC also justified the move by claiming that Sir David Attenborough, the iconic British voice of many nature documentaries, was not well known enough to justify the episode, which features the Brit talking at length to the camera.
“British viewers will see seven episodes, the last of which deals with global warming and the threat to the natural world posed by man. However, viewers in other countries, including the United States, will only see six episodes.
The environmental programme has been relegated by the BBC to an “optional extra” alongside a behind-the-scenes documentary which foreign networks can ignore. [...] Viewers in the United States, where climate change sceptics are particularly strong group, will not see the full episode.”
Instead, the BBC said that Discovery, which shows the series in the U.S., had a “scheduling issue so only had slots for six episodes,” so “elements” of the climate change episode would be incorporated into their final show, with editorial assistance from the Corporation.
The Earth’s poles are acutely affected by climate change. Any discussion of their life and environment would be sorely lacking without noting the ways in which they are harmed by global warming. Unfortunately, the BBC has decided to alter its series for American viewers rather than have a frank and honest discussion with Americans about the effects of climate change.
By Scott Keys | Nov 15, 2011Last month, the BBC released Frozen Planet, its much-anticipated follow-up to the... more
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For the clueless or cynical diehards who deny global warming, it’s getting awfully cold out there.
The latest icy blast of reality comes from an eminent scientist whom the climate-change skeptics once lauded as one of their own. Richard Muller, a respected physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, used to dismiss alarmist climate research as being “polluted by political and activist frenzy.” Frustrated at what he considered shoddy science, Muller launched his own comprehensive study to set the record straight. Instead, the record set him straight.
“Global warming is real,” Muller wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal.
Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann and the rest of the neo-Luddites who are turning the GOP into the anti-science party should pay attention.
“When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn’t know what we’d find,” Muller wrote. “Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that.”
In other words, the deniers’ claims about the alleged sloppiness or fraudulence of climate science are wrong. Muller’s team, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, rigorously explored the specific objections raised by skeptics — and found them groundless.
Muller and his fellow researchers examined an enormous data set of observed temperatures from monitoring stations around the world and concluded that the average land temperature has risen 1 degree Celsius — or about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit — since the mid-1950s.
This agrees with the increase estimated by the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Muller’s figures also conform with the estimates of those British and American researchers whose catty e-mails were the basis for the alleged “Climategate” scandal, which was never a scandal in the first place.
The Berkeley group’s research even confirms the infamous “hockey stick” graph — showing a sharp recent temperature rise — that Muller once snarkily called “the poster child of the global warming community.” Muller’s new graph isn’t just similar, it’s identical.
Muller found that skeptics are wrong when they claim that a “heat island” effect from urbanization is skewing average temperature readings; monitoring instruments in rural areas show rapid warming, too. He found that skeptics are wrong to base their arguments on the fact that records from some sites seem to indicate a cooling trend, since records from at least twice as many sites clearly indicate warming. And he found that skeptics are wrong to accuse climate scientists of cherry-picking the data, since the readings that are often omitted — because they are judged unreliable — show the same warming trend.
Muller and his colleagues examined five times as many temperature readings as did other researchers — a total of 1.6 billion records — and now have put that merged database online. The results have not yet been subjected to peer review, so technically they are still preliminary. But Muller’s plain-spoken admonition that “you should not be a skeptic, at least not any longer” has reduced many deniers to incoherent grumbling or stunned silence.
Not so, I predict, with the blowhards such as Perry, Cain and Bachmann, who, out of ignorance or perceived self-interest, are willing to play politics with the Earth’s future. They may concede that warming is taking place, but they call it a natural phenomenon and deny that human activity is the cause.
It is true that Muller made no attempt to ascertain “how much of the warming is due to humans.” Still, the Berkeley group’s work should help lead all but the dimmest policymakers to the overwhelmingly probable answer.
We know that the rise in temperatures over the past five decades is abrupt and very large. We know it is consistent with models developed by other climate researchers that posit greenhouse gas emissions — the burning of fossil fuels by humans — as the cause. And now we know, thanks to Muller, that those other scientists have been both careful and honorable in their work.
Nobody’s fudging the numbers. Nobody’s manipulating data to win research grants, as Perry claims, or making an undue fuss over a “naturally occurring” warm-up, as Bachmann alleges. Contrary to what Cain says, the science is real.
It is the know-nothing politicians — not scientists — who are committing an unforgivable fraud.
By Eugene Robinson, Published: October 24For the clueless or cynical diehards who deny global warming, it’s getting... more
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This past Wednesday and Thursday there was an event that took place that once again reiterated the urgency of a crisis that scientists have been warning us about for the last five plus decades. 24 Hours of Reality started at 8pm EST culminating in 23 subsequent hours from around the world in relaying to the over 8 million viewers the urgency of a crisis that warranted our attention all of those years ago. And I personally think it succeeded in doing just that. While in my own personal opinion I think some of the presenters could have been a bit more passionate about the information, it nevertheless was an effective tool in showing the reality of the consequences of the human forcings upon our natural processes that are now pushing this planet to a tipping point. Although, some complained of the monotony of the same presentation over and over and over again and I can also see that point. It actually might have been better to do a documentary on the effects of climate change globally with us actually seeing testimonials from people experiencing its effects (like the Inuit in Alaska) then have Al with the help of the scientists tie it all together along with the information on the well funded denier movement and a special segment on solutions and their availability to us right now. However, I still think the point was made.
There is definitely a need to remove the doubt which has been paid for by entities such as the Marshall Institute which was also instrumental in sowing seeds of doubt about missile defense, acid rain, effects of smoking and now seeds of doubt regarding the established and settled science behind global warming. And the established science that was discussed by the scientists on the panels put together for this event that spoke the facts about a world on the precipice regarding food, water and humanity, but with solutions that can still be implemented and are being implemented by the most unlikely among us were also informative.
A boy in Malawi who made a windmill out of old bicycle parts and other materials that wound up serving the needs of his community. The rise of solar in places like Sierra Leone and Kenya, as well as the international shift towards renewable energy even here in the US where wind energy has soared made the message clear: This is not a political issue, but a human one. Our ability to survive the effects of what we have now brought upon ourselves is indeed in the balance in the greatest test of the human spirit.
In watching this these were the messages: that this transcends politics and all of the other stigmatisms placed on the human condition. That we now must finally see that it matters not where you live, or your culture, or your beliefs, or your color, or your biases because this is a real crisis that calls upon our moral courage as citizens of this planet to make it right as best we can now possibly do. And that finally we must bring out into the light of day those who have been slinking in the darkness doing all they could to keep this truth from being believed for what it is and thus delaying action on a crisis of our environment and conscience that now sees our work made even harder.
These are messages we must take to heart, and to our pens, and our modems, and our voices, and our votes. There is no contestation of these facts. Every national scientific academy in the world agrees that this is happening and that we humans are primarily responsible for these shifts and changes by our actions. Every scientific institution whose scientists publish in the peer reviewed journals agrees that this is happening and is primarily driven by human activity.
The Earth revolves around the sun, gravity keeps you grounded and CO2 traps heat. And when more of it goes into our atmosphere than is within the natural envelope that keeps our temperature comfortable for our existence and the balance of our ecosystems, it traps more of the sun's infrared rays thus warming the lower atmosphere and raising temperature. This combines with other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere such as water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, land usage, deforestation etc. and it amplifies the effects of the forcings upon the atmosphere resulting in patterns that lead us to water evaporation, droughts, sea level rise, glacier melt, floods, storms, as well as species invasion, extinction and the spread of diseases. And the more we continue to treat the atmosphere as an open sewer the more we amplify these effects now to the point where we have actually managed to oversaturate the hydrologic cycle which explains in part the severity and frequency of the global events that we have experienced costing us lives, agriculture, water quality, economies and biodiversity.
The atmosphere like our water is a public trust, a public commons if you will. Not to be used as a dumping ground at the whim of those who have the money to do so. We all need to be able to breathe the air and be confident that we and other species will all be assured equality in the quality of our air, water and other life sustaining resources. However, this is not happening presently and it needs to be addressed now.
And for me the one man who has been able to articulate this message in the way it needs to be articulated is Al Gore. For over thirty years he has been out here telling us about the findings of scientists like Roger Revelle, Charles Keeling and the world we would find ourselves in if we did not heed these findings and warnings. It was why he decided to seek public office all those years ago hoping that once this was seen it would be of primary importance. And here a bit over thrity years later here we are still at that fork in the road.
Only now, it is not just some faraway scenario of the future that we can afford to place at the bottom of the pile. It is a present danger to our continued existence because it is not just a rainstorm here and there or a heatwave every once in a while. It is about the total shifting of the patterns of the climate system that sustains our ability to feed ourselves, house ourselves and provide for our sustenance. It is about our morality, our humanity and our ability to come together without seeing the labels that have to this point restricted our humanity. It is about providing a cleaner healthier environment for us and for those to come in order to preserve that climate system and the other systems that depend on it as we do.
But as we all know, certain interests with their money and political ties have been working overtime to keep their status quo at any cost and work to smear anyone who dares challenge it, but challenge it we must if we are to have a future. And this is just one reason why I love this man so much. His unwavering passion, perseverence and courage to do what is right in the face of what seems like insurmountable odds and hatefilled rancor. It is truly a testamount to a man who has transcended it because he sees the higher purpose to it. This is what we all must strive for. For this is not an illusion, it is reality. A reality of our making and a reality we can make even better in seeing at last our true purpose on this planet.
This is my comment which can be found here:
http://progressivesforgore.blogspot.com/2011/09/earth-definitely-in-balance.html
Videos of the event can be seen on the Climate Reality Project site since it seems they are not allowing sharing outside of the site.This past Wednesday and Thursday there was an event that took place that once again... more
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Friedman has a great NY Times column today, “Is It Weird Enough Yet?“ He writes:
“Thanks Mr. Perry and Mrs. Bachmann, but we really are all stocked up on crazy right now. I mean, here is the Texas governor rejecting the science of climate change while his own state is on fire — after the worst droughts on record have propelled wildfires to devour an area the size of Connecticut. As a statement by the Texas Forest Service said last week: “No one on the face of this earth has ever fought fires in these extreme conditions.”
Remember the first rule of global warming. The way it unfolds is really “global weirding.” The weather gets weird: the hots get hotter; the wets wetter; and the dries get drier. This is not a hoax. This is high school physics, as Katharine Hayhoe, a climatologist in Texas, explained on Joe Romm’s invaluable Climateprogress.org blog:
“As our atmosphere becomes warmer, it can hold more water vapor. Atmospheric circulation patterns shift, bringing more rain to some places and less to others. For example, when a storm comes, in many cases there is more water available in the atmosphere and rainfall is heavier. When a drought comes, often temperatures are already higher than they would have been 50 years ago, and so the effects of the drought are magnified by higher evaporation rates.”
"It really is high school physics. But I suppose that, along with biology, will be censored in President Perry’s USA. For the CP piece Friedman references, see “Hell and High Water Stoke Texas Blaze.”
Personally, I’ve never been thrilled with the term “global weirding,” mainly because “weirding” carries the connotation of “related to the supernatural” — with the origin of the word “weird” being “Middle English werde, fate, having power to control fate, from Old English wyrd, fate.”
There is nothing supernatural about what’s going on, and we don’t need any supernatural powers to control our fate.
Still, some people are using the phrase — and what’s happening does appear weird (see Virginia Deluge Was an “Off the Charts Above a 1000-year Rainfall,” Says National Weather Service). So I am interested in your thoughts on the phrase.
Here’s more from the piece:
“CNN reported on Sept. 9 that “Texas had the distinction of experiencing the warmest summer on record of any state in America, with an average of 86.8 degrees. Dallas residents sweltered for 40 consecutive days of grueling 100-plus degree temperatures. … Temperature-related energy demands soared more than “22 percent above the norm this summer, the largest increase since record-keeping of energy demands began more than a century ago.”
“There is still much we don’t know about how climate change will unfold, but it is no hoax. We need to start taking steps, as our scientists urge, “to manage the unavoidable and avoid the unmanageable.” If you want a quick primer on the latest climate science, tune into “24 Hours of Reality.” It is a worldwide live, online update that can be found at climaterealityproject.org and will be going on from Sept. 14-15, over 24 hours, with contributors from 24 time zones.
I’ll do a post on this shortly.
Not only has the science of climate change come under attack lately, so has the economics of green jobs. Here the critics have a point — sort of. I wasn’t surprised to read that the solar panel company Solyndra, which got $535 million in loan guarantees from the Department of Energy to make solar panels in America, filed for bankruptcy protection two weeks ago and laid off 1,100 workers. This story is an embarrassment to the green jobs movement, but the death by bankruptcy was a collaboration of the worst Democratic and Republican impulses.
How so? There is only one effective, sustainable way to produce “green jobs,” and that is with a fixed, durable, long-term price signal that raises the price of dirty fuels and thereby creates sustained consumer demand for, and sustained private sector investment in, renewables. Without a carbon tax or gasoline tax or cap-and-trade system that makes renewable energies competitive with dirty fuels, while they achieve scale and move down the cost curve, green jobs will remain a hobby.
I don’t disagree that nothing is more important than a price signal. If we had a bipartisan deal for a high and rising price for carbon to, say, help address the deficit, then I would agree that other incentives would be far less important. But absent that, if we want to compete with the Chinese and other countries with massive support for clean energy industries, we need to help our emerging industries.
President Obama has chosen not to push for a price signal for political reasons. He has opted for using regulations and government funding. In the area of regulation, he deserves great credit for just pushing through new fuel economy standards that will ensure that by 2025 the average U.S. car will get the mileage (and have the emissions) of today’s Prius hybrid. But elsewhere, Obama has relied on green subsidies rather than a price signal. Some of this has really helped start-ups leverage private capital, but you also get Solyndras. The G.O.P. has blocked any price signal and fought every regulation. The result too often is taxpayer money subsidizing wonderful green innovation, but with no sustainable market within which these companies can scale.
Let’s fix that. We need revenue to balance the budget. We need sustainable clean-tech jobs. We need less dependence on Mideast oil. And we need to take steps to mitigate climate change — just in case Governor Perry is wrong. The easiest way to do all of this at once is with a gasoline tax or price on carbon. Would you rather cut Social Security and Medicare or pay a little more per gallon of gas and make the country stronger, safer and healthier? It still amazes me that our politicians have the courage to send our citizens to war but not to ask the public that question.
By Joe Romm on Sep 14, 2011 at 10:47 amFriedman has a great NY Times column today, “Is It Weird Enough Yet?“ He... more
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NEW YORK -- Current TV plans to air a presentation on climate change by former vice president Al Gore.
The live broadcast of Gore's multimedia talk begins Thursday at 7 p.m. Eastern time. The cable network said Monday it will culminate a worldwide, 24-hour initiative called "24 Hours of Reality," designed to explore the scope and impact of global warming.
In addition to its TV broadcast, Current will present a live Internet feed of "24 Hours of Reality" starting Wednesday at 8 p.m. Eastern time. It will feature 23 different citizen-activists from different parts of the world, beginning in Mexico City.
Gore is a Nobel laureate for his environmental activism and is chairman of Current TV.
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Online:
http://www.current.com
http://www.climaterealityproject.org
Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/09/12/3904056/current-tv...NEW YORK -- Current TV plans to air a presentation on climate change by former vice... more
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Heat waves, droughts, blizzards and the the rest of the year's U.S. record-breaking extreme weather, likely enjoyed a boost from global warming, suggests a climate report.
Hurricane Irene this year pushed the U.S. yearly record for billion-dollar natural disasters to 10, smashing the 2008 record of nine. In the "Current Extreme Weather and Climate Change" report, released today by the Climate Communication scientific group, leading climate scientists outlined how increasing global atmospheric temperatures and other climate change effects -- triggered by industrial emissions of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and methane -- are loading the dice for the sort of extreme weather seen this year.
"Greenhouse gases are the steroids of weather," says climate projection expert Jerry Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, at a briefing held by the report's expert reviewers. "Small increases in temperature set the stage for record breaking extreme temperature events." Overall, says the report, higher temperatures tied to global warming, about a one-degree global average temperature rise in the last century, have widely contributed to recent runs of horrible weather:
•In 1950, U.S. record breaking hot weather days were as likely as cold ones. By 2000, they were twice as likely, and in 2011 they are three times more likely, so far. By the end of the century they will be 50 times more likely, Meehl says.
•With global warming's higher temperatures packing about 4% more water into the atmosphere, total average U.S. snow and rainfall has increased by about 7% in the past century, says the study. The amount of rain falling in the heaviest 1% of cloudbursts has increased 20%, leading to more flooding.
•Early snow melt, and more rain rather than snow, has led to water cycle changes in the western U.S. in river flow, winter air temperature, and snow pack from 1950 to 1999. The effects are up to 60% attributable to human influence.
Rather than totally triggering any extreme event, global warming just makes it worse, says meteorologist Jeff Masters of Weather Underground, a report reviewer. "A warmer atmosphere has more energy," he says, contributing to heat waves, tornadoes and other extremes. Even heavy blizzards come from an atmosphere packed with extra moisture by global warming he adds. "Years like 2011 may be the new normal."
The report notes scientific disagreement exists over the role of global warming in some severe weather events, such as hurricanes, or the frequency of El Nino weather patterns.
"There's really no such thing as natural weather anymore," says climate scientist Donald Wuebbles of the University of Illinois, who was not involved with the report, but said he largely agreed with its conclusions. "Anything that takes place today in the weather system has been affected by the changes we've made to the climate system. That's just the background situation and it's good for people to know that," Wuebbles says. Although scientists cannot immediately tie what percentage of an extreme weather event relies on global warming to make it more severe, he says. "It's always a factor in today's world."
More at the link.Heat waves, droughts, blizzards and the the rest of the year's U.S.... more
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By Joe Romm on Aug 22, 2011
NSF Inspector General: “Finding no research misconduct or other matter raised by the various regulations and laws discussed above, this case is closed.”
Two things we know with extremely high confidence:
Recent warming is unprecedented in magnitude and speed and cause (so the temperature history looks like a Hockey Stick).
Michael Mann, the lead author on the original Hockey Stick paper, is one of the nation’s top climatologists and a source of first-rate analysis.
We know these things because both the Hockey Stick and Mann have been independently investigated and vindicated more times than any other facet of climate science or any other climate scientist (see links below).
Readers also know that “the first rule of vindicating climate science is you do not talk about vindicating climate science.” While the anti-science extremists who rule the Tea Party and the right-wing bunkosphere keep shouting lies about the Hockey Stick and Mann — and urging their followers to “shout down” science-based commenters on independent websites — the vindications of the science and the man are reported as quietly as if they came from the Whos of Whoville.
And so after countless investigations — 3 in the U.K., 2 by Penn State, the EPA, the NOAA IG — that have all unanimously found the allegations against climate scientists and their research conclusions based on the hacked “ClimateGate” emails to be wholly unsubstantiated, a top GOP presidential candidate backed by the fossil fuel industry still gives voice to the Texas-sized lie (see “Denier Rick Perry Takes $11 Million from Big Oil, Then Claims Climate Scientists ‘Manipulated Data’ For Money“).
And so while Mann and the Hockey Stick were getting yet another full vindication (from Penn State) earlier this year, Fox News was trumpeting one final investigation:
But the final say will be in the hands of a skeptical inspector general at the National Science Foundation, the primary funder of the research into global warming. According to published documents obtained by FoxNews.com, the IG must determine whether Penn State’s investigation was adequate.
The Office of Inspector General confirmed that it will review the misconduct charges. A spokeswoman told FoxNews.com that “in accordance with our research misconduct regulation, (45 C.F.R. part 689), when the OIG is provided with an institution’s investigation report, we review it for fairness, accuracy and completeness” — issues the investigation has already been faulted for.
Yes, well, the Penn State investigation was faulted only by anti-science deniers. And NSF’s IG is “skeptical” only in the sense that global warming “skeptics” are not — which is to say it analyzes the facts objectively and come to defensible and reproducible conclusions.
The IG analyzed all of the charges “de novo” and concluded:
“Finding no research misconduct or other matter raised by the various regulations and laws discussed above, this case is closed.”
I have uploaded the full report here, but you can also go the NSF IG website here and insert “A09120086.”
Let me end with some key findings of the Penn State investigation:
“An Investigatory Committee of faculty members with impeccable credentials” has unanimously “determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities.”
His work “clearly places Dr. Mann among the most respected scientists in his field…. Dr. Mann’s work, from the beginning of his career, has been recognized as outstanding.“
So Mann isn’t merely a competent researcher. He is one of the leading climate scientists in this country, which of course is precisely why the anti-science crowd has gone after him, much as they have with other leading climate scientists, including Hansen and Santer.
And that’s one more reason why the major media outlets who smeared and defamed him owe him an apology and a retraction — loud ones!
Recent Studies Vindicating the Hockey Stick:
Temperatures of North Atlantic “are unprecedented over the past 2000 years and are presumably linked to the Arctic amplification of global warming” — Science (2011)
GRL (2010): “We conclude that the 20th century warming of the incoming intermediate North Atlantic water has had no equivalent during the last thousand years.“
JGR (2010): “The last decades of the past millennium are characterized again by warm temperatures that seem to be unprecedented in the context of the last 1600 years.”
Human-caused Arctic warming overtakes 2,000 years of natural cooling, “seminal” study finds (2009)
Unprecedented warming in Lake Tanganyika and its impact on humanity (2010)
Links at websiteBy Joe Romm on Aug 22, 2011
NSF Inspector General: “Finding no research... more
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Stephen Colbert isn’t taking any of this global warming nonsense. In fact, he doesn’t believe the science is in on the whole “warming” thing at all: “I say the science isn’t in on thermodynamics. I believe water boils because it’s scared of fire.”
The government-manufactured heat index is just as bad. Steven enlightens us by explaining that it’s a government conspiracy to tell you “how hot to feel” just like that silly “time index tells you how sleepy to feel.”
“Oh it’s midnight here, but it’s nine in LA. Which is it President Obama? I don’t have to go to bed!”
It’s time to wake up on this, America. Let the real pundits communicate science.
By Stephen Lacey on Aug 10, 2011 at 8:47 amStephen Colbert isn’t taking any of this global warming nonsense. In fact, he... more
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By Brad Johnson on Aug 9, 2011 at 11:58 am
In response to the fourth hottest July in U.S. history — the hottest ever in Oklahoma and Texas — Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News is reheating climate denier myths. Saturday’s Fox & Friends show featured climate zombie Joe Bastardi, a wrestler and weatherman who believes the rapid global warming since the 1950s is a natural blip in the climate. Hosts Alisyn Camerota and Dave Briggs claimed that a “new NASA study” debunks man-made global warming. Bastardi then cited “the first law of thermodynamics” and “La Chatelier’s principle” to argue that the greenhouse effect from a 40 percent increase in a “trace gas” isn’t physically possible:
BASTARDI: When you look at carbon dioxide, it increases 1.5 parts per million each year. We contribute 3 percent of that, which means that the human contribution is one part per 20 billion. Do you realize how small that is for a trace gas necessary for life on the planet? it is almost incomprehensible that this has taken off the way it has, the whole argument, it contradicts what we call the first law of thermodynamics: energy can neither be created or destroyed. So to look for input of energy into the atmosphere, you have to come from a foreign source and it is already out there. Carbon dioxide may be a part of it. May be the sun.
CAMEROTA: And what is that principle of Le Chatelier? Have I pronounced zat propairlee?
BASTARDI: I don’t know, but making a mistake his name isn’t as bad as making a mistake with mine. That any system in distress, physical or chemical in the atmosphere, tries to return to normal. That is why you see temperatures leveling off. We have warmed up overall the last 20 to 30 years, over the last two hundred years, because of sun spot cycles, you can trace it to the sun spot cycles, and you can trace it to the oceans. Look, in the next 20 to 30 years global temperatures should return to where they were in the 70′s.
The paper that Camerota and Bastardi claim is a “NASA study” is no such thing — it’s a mathematically and scientifically flawed paper by climate denier Roy Spencer, a University of Alabama professor.
Most of Bastardi’s lies and obfuscations are so trite that one can simply refer to SkepticalScience’s list by number: #2, #7, #21, #32, #62, #78, and #132. Bastardi’s appeal to the first law of thermodynamics is actually a new one — usually deniers try to claim that the greenhouse effect violates the second law of thermodynamics (#59). The invocation of Le Chatelier’s principle has some merit. Once humans stop adding fossil-based greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the planet’s geochemical systems will restore an equilibrium — in many hundreds of thousands of years.
More at linkBy Brad Johnson on Aug 9, 2011 at 11:58 am
In response to the fourth hottest July... more
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By Joe Romm on Aug 4, 2011 at 2:28 pm
Fox News repeatedly criticized a SpongeBob SquarePants book and video about manmade global warming because “they did not tell kids that that is actually a disputed fact.” In reality, it is not controversial among the mainstream scientific community that humans are changing the climate.
The cartoonish hominids who pretend to be journalists on Fox News have a new villain — SpongeBob SquarePants. Why are they incensed at the high-energy invertebrate? Because he understands climate science, that human emissions are warming the planet, and would like to explain that to the children whose climate will be destroyed by the professional deniers like Fox.
Fox News believes this is a “disputed fact” – we’ll set aside the oxymoronic phrase “disputed fact” and merely note that for the National Academy of Sciences, it is a “settled fact.”
Continued at linkBy Joe Romm on Aug 4, 2011 at 2:28 pm
Fox News repeatedly criticized a SpongeBob... more
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By Joe Romm on Aug 4, 2011 at 6:21 pm
“In light of the sustained drought, Governor Mary Fallin today asked all Oklahomans to set aside time this Sunday, July 17, to pray for rain.”
That was two week ago. The result is that Oklahoma went from the drought condition below on the right below to the one on the left in just two short weeks:
Yes, in a mere two weeks, another 30% of the state went into extreme or exceptional drought! Now the entire state is under severe drought or worse.
For some reason, science-denying southern Republican governors keep returning to one particular ineffectual ‘adaptation’ strategy: “Texas Drought Now Far, Far Worse Than When Gov. Rick Perry Issued Proclamation Calling on All Texans to Pray for Rain“ (7/15/11).
And speaking of Gov. Perry, who apparently is edging closer and closer to a presidential run, his state has been utterly devastated since his proclamation. Texas A&M reports:
“As Texas continues to bake in record heat, the drought news for the state continues to be bleak – Texas is now in the midst of its most severe one-year drought on record, according to John Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas State Climatologist and professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University….
Nielsen-Gammon explains [,] “Never before has so little rain been recorded prior to and during the primary growing season for crops, plants and warm-season grasses.”
More at linkBy Joe Romm on Aug 4, 2011 at 6:21 pm
“In light of the sustained drought,... more
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By Tanya Somanader on Aug 4, 2011 at 4:00 pm
GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) stopped by the Miami Herald during his “press-palooza” in Florida this week to offer his thoughts on immigration, gay marriage, and the debt ceiling. When it came to global warming, the once-strong proponent of cap-and-trade legislation reiterated that his hard reversal on the policy came from his belief that the science behind climate change is “based on unreliable conclusions.” When asked if he even believed there was “man-made climate change,” Pawlenty informed the Herald — and the climate researcher they checked with — that most, if not all, climate change occurs “because of natural causes“:
Pawlenty: “It’s something we have to look to the science on. The weight of the evidence is that most of it, maybe all of it, is because of natural causes. But to the extent there is some element of human behavior causing some of it – that’s what the scientific debate is about. That’s why we’ve seen all this back and forth between some of those prominent scientists in the world arguing about that very point.”
Q: There is a strong case for man-made climate change, according to a University of Miami climate researcher I’ve spoken to. You don’t agree with him?
Pawlenty: “There’s lots of layers to it. But at least as to any potential man-made contribution to it, it’s fair to say the science is in dispute. There’s a lot of people who say the majority of the scientists think this way. And there’s a minority that way. And you count the number of scientists versus the quality of scientists and the like. But I think it’s fair to say that, as to whether and how much – if any – is attributable to human behavior, there’s dispute and controversy over it….. Cap and trade I thought is a ham-fisted, expensive, job-rui[n]ng economy-stifling approach.”
Incidentally, Pawlenty was once the “driving force” behind the so-called “ham-fisted” cap-and-trade policy when he was Minnesota’s governor. Back-peddling fast from his former position, Pawlenty has chucked actual science out of the window. Unlike the ideologically-driven delusions on which he now relies, actual facts do indeed point to human activity as a cause of climate change.By Tanya Somanader on Aug 4, 2011 at 4:00 pm
GOP presidential candidate Tim... more
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How Murdoch’s Times of London and Fox News Coordinate Their Deceitful Reporting on Climate Change
Jul 24, 2011 at 11:32 am
By David Fiderer
If you wondered whether Murdoch’s various news outlets operate in sync when they misrepresent the facts about climate change, consider the deceitful reporting done by Ben Webster, the Environmental Editor for The Times of London. His smears against the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were immediately amplified and embellished by Fox News in New York. Both Webster’s story and its Fox News incarnation were used to defame the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and to lend an air of legitimacy to the phony “Climate-gate” scandal that had already been debunked by scientific journals and scientific inquiries .
Today we know that one of the Murdoch employees arrested in Britain, Neil Wallis, was deeply implicated in two hacking scandals, the first pertaining to the News of the World, and the second pertaining to the invasion of computers at the University of East Anglia, the victim of the phony Climate-gate scandal touted by Fox News. So it may be worthwhile to take another look at how deceitful reporting within the Murdoch empire can spread like a virus. Look at the opening paragraphs in The Times of London story:
“Climate scientists at the centre of the row over stolen e-mails acted with integrity and made no attempt to manipulate their research on global temperatures, an external inquiry has found.
Their research was, however, misrepresented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which failed to reflect uncertainties the scientists had reported concerning the raw temperature data.
An inquiry panel of leading scientists, nominated by the Royal Society, said that the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit may not have used the best methods for analyzing temperature records.”
Webster’s second and third paragraphs distort the panel’s findings beyond all recognition. The IPCC misrepresented nothing. The inquiry panel merely pointed out that IPCC neglected to highlight a truism, which is obvious to all climate scientists and to the anyone else who gave 10 seconds of thought to the subject. How can scientists gather data to measure changes in global temperatures going back in history? Recent data may be gleaned from meteorological instruments. Older data may be gleaned from tree rings, which can be found on land but not on the ocean. So scientists rely on well-established statistical methods to develop certain inferences global temperatures at earlier times in history. All science is based on mathematics.
Here’s what the scientific panel actually said:
“Recent public discussion of climate change and summaries and popularizations of the work of CRU and others often contain oversimplifications that omit serious discussion of uncertainties emphasized by the original authors. For example, CRU publications repeatedly emphasize the discrepancy between instrumental and tree-based proxy reconstructions of temperature during the late 20th century, but presentations of this work by the IPCC and others have sometimes neglected to highlight this issue. While we find this regrettable, we could find no such fault with the peer-reviewed papers we examined.”
The CRU research was misrepresented by the IPCC? Only to the extent that the IPCC failed to belabor the obvious. Nor did the inquiry panel say anything like, the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit may not have used the best methods for analyzing temperature records. That was an extreme embellishment by Webster. The only thing the scientific panel said that remotely similar to Webster’s allegation pertained to the data analyses of tree rings:
“After reading publications and interviewing the senior staff of CRU in depth, we are satisfied that the CRU tree-ring work has been carried out with integrity, and that allegations of deliberate misrepresentation and unjustified selection of data are not valid. In the event CRU scientists were able to give convincing answers to our detailed questions about data choice, data handling and statistical methodology. The Unit freely admits that many data analyses they made in the past are superseded and they would not do things that way today.”
But also:
“It is not clear, however, that better methods would have produced significantly different results. The published work also contains many cautions about the limitations of the data and their interpretation.”
And the panel was also very clear that the CRU’s critics, to put it charitably, did not know what they were talking about:
“We have not exhaustively reviewed the external criticism of the dendroclimatological work, but it seems that some of these criticisms show a rather selective and uncharitable approach to information made available by CRU. They seem also to reflect a lack of awareness of the ongoing and dynamic nature of chronologies, and of the difficult circumstances under which university research is sometimes conducted.”
Remember, this is The Times‘ Environmental Editor reporting the story, which, on this side of the Atlantic, became:
“Climate Scientists Cleared, U.N. Blamed for Misinterpreting Data
British climate scientists at the center of the scandal over stolen e-mails acted with integrity and made no attempt to manipulate their research on global temperatures, an external inquiry has found. But the U.N.? That’s another story.
The scientific research into historical temperature records was misrepresented by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which failed to consider uncertainties the scientists had reported concerning the raw temperature data.
The inquiry panel of leading scientists, nominated by the Royal Society, said that the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit may not have used the best methods for analyzing temperature records.”
For a sense of deja vu all over again, check out this 18-month old piece: “Fox News Embraces Cyber-Terrorism to Subvert the Copenhagen Summit.”
– David Fiderer is currently working on several journalism projects dealing with corporate and political corruption.How Murdoch’s Times of London and Fox News Coordinate Their Deceitful Reporting... more
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http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/07/19/272361/news-corp-hacked-climategate-emails-time-for-an-independent-investigation/
News Corp and the Hacked Climategate Emails: Time for an Independent Investigation
By Joe Romm on Jul 19, 2011 at 12:55 pm
There have been countless independent investigations into the scientists whose e-mails were hacked in November 2009. And the scientists have been (quietly) vindicated every time (see “The first rule of vindicating climate science is you do not talk about vindicating climate science“).
But we still don’t know who hacked the emails! And now we know that one of the key investigative bodies tasked with tracking down the hackers — Scotland Yard – were compromised at the time.
How were they compromised? Neil Wallis — the former News of the World executive editor — became a “£1,000 a day” consultant to Scotland Yard in October 2009. Last week he became the ninth person arrested in the metastasizing News Corp scandal “on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, contrary to section 1(1) Criminal Law Act 1977.”
Certainly Wallis had plenty of motive to join Scotland Yard just to keep an eye on the investigation into the phone-hacking scandal. Indeed, the NY Times reports Wallis “was reporting back to News International while he was working for the police on the hacking case.” But this also suggests how corrupt Wallis was — and how corrupted Scotland Yard was.
In the light of the News Corp phone-hacking scandal, it is clear that Murdoch’s outfit had means, motive, and opportunity for the Climategate email hacking. News Corp certainly has a history of defaming climate scientists and a penchant for hacking.
Indeed, in this country, a division of News Corp had a federal case brought against it for “hacking its way into Floorgraphics’s password protected computer system.” The complaint said News America had “illegally accessed plaintiff’s computer system and obtained proprietary information” and “disseminated false, misleading and malicious information about the plaintiff.” Sounds familiar, no?
After a few days of testimony, News Corp “settled with Floorgraphics for $29.5 million and then, days later, bought it, even though it reportedly had sales of less than $1 million.” This behavior simply wasn’t a big shock to News Corp.
So News Corp would obviously now be on the top of anybody’s short list for possible suspects in the Climategate hacking. At the same time, we now know things were so cozy between News Corp, Wallis, and Scotland Yard that it is hard to believe News Corp would have been thoroughly investigated for Climategate, if they were investigated at all.
How cozy? Staff at News Corp’s News of the World tabloid apparently routinely paid off members of the Metropolitan Police Service aka Scotland Yard – payments that were “condoned” by then-editor Andy Coulson, who later became chief spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron.
How cozy? The Guardian dropped this bombshell Friday: “Scotland Yard’s most senior officers tried to convince the Guardian during two private meetings that its coverage of phone hacking was exaggerated and incorrect without revealing they had hired Neil Wallis….” Scotland Yard shilling for News Corp? I don’t think people would have believed this had they seen it in a blockbuster movie.
How cozy? As the NYT explains in “Stain From Tabloids Rubs Off on a Cozy Scotland Yard,” the Yard hardly investigated the phone hacking scandal, ignoring mountains of evidence for years.
And then we have the social coziness:
“Executives and others at the company also enjoyed close social ties to Scotland Yard’s top officials. Since the hacking scandal began in 2006, Mr. Yates [the assistant commissioner] and others regularly dined with editors from News International papers, records show. Sir Paul Stephenson, the police commissioner, met for meals 18 times with company executives and editors during the investigation, including on eight occasions with Mr. Wallis while he was still working at The News of the World….
Just after Christmas last year Sir Paul recovered from surgery at a Champneys Spa in Hertfordshire, and his $19,000 bill was paid by a friend, the spa’s managing partner, Sky News reported. Sir Paul learned Saturday that Mr. Wallis had worked as a public-relations consultant for the spa….”
So I think it is quite safe to say that it is unlikely Scotland Yard pursued any serious investigation into the possibility that News Corp was involved in Climategate.
Now it is entirely possible that News Corp wasn’t involved. But there is no way of knowing until we get a thorough and independent investigation.
Here’s one more astrological coincidence of the highest order: In October 2009, Wallis became a senior consultant to Outside Organisation — a PR firm and crisis management agency, which … wait for it … “was used by the UEA following the Climategate scandal.”
What’s funny is that if you go over to the denier sites, like Climate Audit, the hiring of Wallis’s firm by the University of East Anglia’s CRU (Climatic Research Unit) is somehow further evidence of their corruption, that they were trying to carry out “covert” operations to clear their name. One article reports:
“Wallis led on the University of East Anglia “climategate” job, when Outside was drafted in to help the university’s Climatic Research Unit defend itself against charges of scientific misconduct.”
In fact, most people think that UEA’s crisis management was catastrophically bad for months — “covert” is a good word for it, though I prefer “virtually nonexistent.” I can’t imagine wanting to put on your resume that you were the guy in charge of UEA’s PR after Climategate. It’d be like saying you advised President Bush on how to handle PR around his response to Hurricane Katrina. Of course, Wallis won’t be getting many PR jobs for the foreseeable future.
Whether there is anything more than just extreme coincidence in Wallis leading on UEA’s Climategate defense, I do know that when the deniers say it is cooling, you can be certain it is warming, and when they say there is no smoke, you can be sure it is a hellish, record-breaking wildfire.
In any case, it is time for an independent investigation into the Climategate email hacking. We now know that for four years, Scotland Yard sat on evidence suggesting the phones of “nearly 4,000 celebrities, politicians, sports stars, police officials and crime victims” had been hacked.
So the Climategate investigation should not involve Scotland Yard, and should investigate whether News Corp had any involvement. It could start by investigating whether News Corp hacked the phone of any climate scientists.http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/07/19/272361/news-corp-hacked-climategate-emails-tim... more
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It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Stupidity: Limbaugh Calls Heat Index a Liberal Government Conspiracy
By Joe Romm on Jul 20, 2011 at 6:47 pm
Wikipedia: “The heat index … combines air temperature and relative humidity in an attempt to determine the human-perceived equivalent temperature — how hot it feels…. The heat index was developed in 1978 … and was adopted by the National Weather Service a year later.”
Rush Limbaugh: "They’re playing games with us on this heat wave, again. Even Drudge, drudge getting sucked in here. Gonna be a 116 in Washington. No, it’s not. It’s going to be a 100, maybe 99. The heat index, manufactured by the government, they tell you what it feels like when you add the humidity in there. 116 - When’s the last time the heat index was reported as an actual temperature?"
It hasn’t been. But it looks like they’re trying to get away with doing that now.
Yes, the black helicopters are after Limbaugh and the whole country now. Well, actually if there were UN helicopters, I’m sure they’d be white, since the black ones would just get too damn hot in this weather!
In the real world, the heat index adds to the actual temperature the effect of humidity, which interferes with the body’s ability to perspire and carry away heat: “When the relative humidity is high, the evaporation rate is reduced, so heat is removed from the body at a lower rate causing it to retain more heat than it would in dry air.”
Now it just so happens we’ve had record rainfall and flooding in the spring — precisely what you would expect from human-caused global warming (see “Two seminal Nature papers join growing body of evidence that human emissions fuel extreme weather, flooding that harm humans and the environment“). That helps boost the heat index, as one meteorologist explained today:
"We are into a very dangerous heat wave this week that will last until the weekend. Millions of people are affected, and with heat indices forecast above 100 degrees for dozens of states, the warnings are dire. Here’s a list of the peak heat index numbers for Tuesday. One of the reasons we’re seeing such high values is because of the record flooding that we saw this spring across the Midwest and Mississippi Valley. There is plenty of available moisture that is evaporating and combined with the soaring temperatures, this is causing a “sauna effect” for dozens of states."
That is Janice Dean, a Fox News Channel meteorologist! I guess she would be part of the conspiracy Limbaugh is warning us about.
(continued at link)It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Stupidity: Limbaugh Calls Heat Index a Liberal... more
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Climate change is causing devastating droughts across East Africa - leading to an end of the pastoral way of life.
Many tribes across East Africa are having to leave their pastoral way of life for urban poverty because of severe droughts [Andrew Wander/Save the Children]
Whether you ask about the carcasses of livestock baked white in the sun, the gaggle of people crowding around the district commissioner's door, or the wards of malnourished children lying listlessly in hospital beds, the explanation given is always the same.
"It's because of the drought", they say.
The failure of rains across arid parts of East Africa has brought misery to millions of people, affecting almost every aspect of life.
In this dry, dusty part of the world, every drop that falls helps people scrape a living from the land. If the rains don't come for a season people go hungry. If they fail twice in a row, as they have in Kenya's impoverished north eastern province, they begin to starve.
At the hospital in Wajir town, the paediatric ward is full of young mothers clutching the tiny, wasted forms of their children.
Doctors estimate admissions for severe malnutrition in children have risen by at least 25 per cent in recent months, and fear that the dozens of referrals they have seen could be the tip of a large and deadly iceberg.
"Some parents are reluctant to bring their children to the hospital because it is such a long journey, or they don't recognise the symptoms of malnutrition. Some think they can cure the problem by praying - they don't realise the children need treatment. Children could be dying because of this and we wouldn't know about it," says Dr Moses Menza, the chief medical officer at the hospital.
He is talking at the bedside of two-year old Bashara, the daughter of nomadic cattle grazers who wander the desert four hours to the west of Wajir town. There is no need for Menza to explain what is wrong with her; her sunken features and twig-like limbs tell their own desperate tale.
Bashara is here with her grandmother, Amina Mohamed; her parents left her in the village and drove their animals to more fertile ground as the drought began to bite. She should have been safer there than out on the plains, but when the livestock began to die, the villagers found themselves with nothing to feed their families.
As always, it was growing children like Bashara who were hit hardest.
"The animals are the way we earn money and how we get food," Amina says, as she waves the flies off the starving child's tiny face. "Now they have died we have nothing to eat and nothing to sell. We have no milk any more, so we cannot feed the children."
Save the Children has treated thousands of drought-affected children for malnutrition in Kenya alone, and believes that across the region, in neighbouring Somalia and Ethiopia, more than millions of children could be at risk over the next three months.
"When these people lose their livestock, they lose their source of food, their livelihood and their savings in a single stroke," said Matt Croucher, Save the Children's regional emergency manager for East Africa.
"We can only imagine the desperation such families feel at not being able to give their children enough to eat and drink to stay healthy. They need help now, before this crisis turns into a catastrophe."
Changing climate
East Africans are no strangers to drought conditions. Traditionally, the rains here have failed around once a decade, giving communities time to build up emergency stocks and to restore the condition of their livestock on the good years. But for the past decade, droughts have been coming more regularly.
The people here reckon the rains fail one year in every two now; consecutive failings, like this one, have the potential to totally destroy the herds upon which they rely.
With their prime assets gone, they lose both their source of food, and their sole source of income. Their nomadic lifestyle prevents them from growing crops; the animals they graze are their only means to survive. Now it appears that climate change is robbing them of that livelihood.
A study by the US Geological Survey, published earlier this year, linked the increased frequency of drought in East Africa with global warming, suggesting that there is more than bad luck behind the latest wave of hunger sweeping the region.
Faced with a changing climate increasing numbers of pastoralists are leaving the land, settling in permanent communities on the edge of towns like Wajir. A way of life that has persisted for thousands of years is slowly dying out.
Those who leave will find little in the way of work in the towns. That pastoralists are willing to opt for grinding urban poverty over the only work they have ever known is a testament to how bad the situation has become.
For those who remain, the next few months will be critical.
More at the link.Climate change is causing devastating droughts across East Africa - leading to an end... more
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