The last few months, in light of inconsistencies in a 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, intelligence, common sense, and responsibility to our children have come under assault by climate change skeptics. Despite inaccuracies in the report, the balance of evidence continues to confirm that climate change is occurring and that man’s industrial output is behind it. In Sunday’s New York Times, Al Gore tackles the naysayers head on. The reminder of the opportunity lost before the Copenhagen climate summit, when the politically paralyzed Senate failed to act on climate legislation, leading to the passing of an opportunity to act in concert with the Chinese, is particularly heart-wrenching, but this is nevertheless is a must-read story.
“I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion,” Gore writes. “But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.
“It is true that the climate panel published a flawed overestimate of the melting rate of debris-covered glaciers in the Himalayas, and used information about the Netherlands provided to it by the government, which was later found to be partly inaccurate. In addition, e-mail messages stolen from the University of East Anglia in Britain showed that scientists besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skeptics may not have adequately followed the requirements of the British freedom of information law.
“But the scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes. What is important is that the overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged. It is also worth noting that the panel’s scientists — acting in good faith on the best information then available to them — probably underestimated the range of sea-level rise in this century, the speed with which the Arctic ice cap is disappearing and the speed with which some of the large glacial flows in Antarctica and Greenland are melting and racing to the sea.
“Because these and other effects of global warming are distributed globally, they are difficult to identify and interpret in any particular location. For example, January was seen as unusually cold in much of the United States. Yet from a global perspective, it was the second-hottest January since surface temperatures were first measured 130 years ago.
“Similarly, even though climate deniers have speciously argued for several years that there has been no warming in the last decade, scientists confirmed last month that the last 10 years were the hottest decade since modern records have been kept.”
Read the entire op-ed piece at the New York Times. LINK
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Great article. Thanks for the link.
I also found this paragraph important:
“…changes in America’s political system — including the replacement of newspapers and magazines by television as the dominant medium of communication — conferred powerful advantages on wealthy advocates of unrestrained markets and weakened advocates of legal and regulatory reforms. Some news media organizations now present showmen masquerading as political thinkers who package hatred and divisiveness as entertainment. And as in times past, that has proved to be a potent drug in the veins of the body politic. Their most consistent theme is to label as “socialist” any proposal to reform exploitive behavior in the marketplace.”
On a related note, there is a book due out in March that debunks claims by a major climate change skeptic: http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/02/fact-checking-skeptical-environmentalist
So is the article about climate change or political change?
As a student of science, I loathe the idea of scientific consensus. It is not evidence in favour of a theory, law or hypothesis. Thousands of people believing the same thing can still be wrong.
I also dislike the labeling of skeptics. Skepticism is not a bad thing — not in science, not in a major policy issue such as this. Science is built upon skepticism: you can never prove your theory with 100% certainty, but it certainly can be disproved. Indeed, anyone who says they can predict with any accuracy the effects of climate change on the complex weather system should be met with heavy skepticism. Labeling skeptics as a bad thing is also bad leadership on the part of the climate change activists: taking a moral high ground does not encourage your opponent to meet you in the middle as a partner. In short, it ensures dichotomy on an issue that needs consensus.
Finally, climate activists need to avoid mixing political change with an environmental issue. Not all of us who believe we need action on this issue share your beliefs for a socialist revival. Free market environmentalists exist: we and the general public are not going to appreciate a mixing of the two issues.
Consensus… some of the greatest scientists in history have gone against consensus to state that the Earth is not the center of the Universe… that it’s round instead of flat… Consensus is, in itself, unscientific.
Pollution is a bad thing. No question about it. It does damage and needs to be stopped. But in recent weeks, there have been so many admissions from scientists who MADE UP their findings, and hid the data that showed them to be wrong, how can a thinking person believe any of it? Why not just face it honestly and say that we need to take care of our world, without throwing guilt and false information at people, not to mention the socialist BS they’re dishing out?
While we’re at it, if those who are saying these things would stop driving big cars, flying in private jets, and start living in energy-efficient homes, I’d be a lot more likely to believe it! We tend to act on the things we truly believe. I live in a small, energy efficient home on the desert in California. I use LED lighting (FAR less dangerous and more energy-saving than CFL bulbs), and I’m slowly working on converting my energy use to solar, wherever possible. I do not do what I do so that someone else can jet around the world and have to import hundreds of limo’s to Copenhagen for a bunch of phony delegates to sip wine and pretend they believe in something they obviously don’t, since they couldn’t come up with any kind of consensus… This is stupid!
I’m doing my part. Let’s see some other people do theirs!
Come up with something real, or sit down and be quiet.
(cindy clary & Foster)
Thanks you Thank you Thank you.
These are refreshing responses to this post and nothing like I expected to find on this site. We all know things like pollution and litter and trash and our emissions and impacts as humans are all problems that need to be taken care of and fast. Not because we will drowned when the sea rises, but because we can do better as a society and we should want to because we love the places we live and want to keep them clean and beautiful. We also should do it for reason like lowering our dependence on foreign oil and lowering our bills at home, and because we believe it is the right things to do. We should want to be independent and not need foreign supplies to fuel our nation. We can use Natural gas (which is almost zero emissions) and we have a major abundance of, (enough to fuel the whole nation for hundreds of years) to supplement wind and solar and other forms that we already have. We should do it for ourselves to make life easier on us and our kids by lowering global conflicts (wars) and lowering our national debt. We can do better for ourselves and that why we should want to do it not because some hot shot is telling us to, or because it’s cool to walk into whole foods with your reusable shopping bag. If you love the place you live and you enjoy living in clean air clean streets and producing less trash that’s all you should need to do your part. The earths climate has changed many many times and it will continue to do so while I certainly don’t think we have nothing to do with it, I am also not arrogant enough to think that we have as much control over mother nature as some of the “so-called” experts would lead you to believe.