‘Merchants of Doubt’ Misuse Science to Mislead the Public
A dark ideology is driving those who deny climate change
People who claim that climate science is a conspiracy or the work of charlatans are talking rubbish
by Robin McKie
The Observer, August 1, 2010
Cross-posted from BC-SEA News
Life can be hard in Moscow. The Russian capital is sweltering in temperatures that reached a record 37.7C last week. Vast [...]
A Great Champion in the Battle to Save Our Planet Has Died
Video of the late Stephen H. Schneider, a Stanford University climate scientist speaking on “Is the Science Settled.” Professor Schneider “for decades built the case that global warming, while laden with complexity, justified an aggressive response,” died of a heart attack on July 19. He was 65.
Paper from PNAS: Expert credibility in climate change
97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field surveyed in this report support the tenets of ACC outlined by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.
A Lot More Scientific Research Needed: Margery Moore’s Tar Sands Journey, March 31st, 2010
Margery Moore writes, “For the Alberta Tar Sands, we need to support more scientists, studies and research papers. I never thought I would advocate so strongly for more reports! I’m the one that wants action, right now. But, I was truly alarmed at how little data there was that could be used, without a shadow of a doubt to clearly prove the impacts this massive collection of developments is having on the environment, biodiversity, water systems, etc.”
The Rachel Maddow Show, March 31: Climate Change Denial, Brought to You by the Koch Brothers
Climate Change Denial, Brought to You by the Koch Brothers. Jim Hoggan, co-founder of the DeSmog Blog, discusses how the oil and gas industry’s massive efforts to direct the climate change debate have “poisoned” public discussion on the issue.
Bill McKibben: The Attack on Climate-Change Science
“In early 2009,” writes Bill McKibben in a soon-to-be-published new book, “just as Obama was getting set to unveil his energy plans, word came that 2,340 lobbyists had registered to work on climate change on Capitol Hill (that’s about six per congressman), 85 percent of them devoted to slowing down progress.” By early 2010, you can see the results of such efforts, multiplied many times over by the staggering levels of support available for anti-climate-change work from the richest industry on the planet: the energy business. All this was not helped, of course, by the much hyped “climate-gate” which proved that climate-change scientists were fallible human beings and not simply extraterrestrial super-brains. These “scandals” were, in turn, blown up to proportions that seemed to blot out the very image of the disappearing Arctic icepack.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, the latest poll on the American public’s attitude toward climate change shows startling drops in the belief in the very existence of climate change, in humanity’s role in causing it, and in its import for the planet: a 14-point drop since October 2008 in Americans who believe climate change is happening at all (to 57%), a 10-point drop in those who believe that human activity is at the root of the problem (to 47%), and a 13-point drop in those who claim to be “somewhat” or “very” worried about the problem (to 50%).
What’s strangest in all this is that the evidence for our changing planet seems to stare us in the face — from the previously mythical, now navigable Northwest Passage to melting glaciers just about everywhere to more intense storms (including, of course, more intense snowstorms because, despite the name “global warming,” no one has yet banished winter from the planet). What makes this sadder yet is that, if the U.S. refuses to deal with our planet’s health and well-being (and ours), everything becomes so much harder, so much less likely. If you want to put all of this into some reasonable perspective, when you’ve finished Bill McKibben’s latest piece, think about ordering his new book Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet (to be published this April). The title is unsettling — especially for an editor, with those two “a”s in Eaarth — and the book more so, but it’s not without hope and it could be the necessary guide to, and text for, the new planet with ever quirkier weather on which, after so many thousands of years, we humans suddenly find ourselves.
Where in the World is the Worst Place for Cold Weather?
The past year, 2009, tied as the second warmest year in the 130 years of global instrumental temperature records, in the surface temperature analysis of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). The Southern Hemisphere set a record as the warmest year for that half of the world.
Global Climatic Disruption Becoming More Evident
It’s easy for people in Russia, England and on the eastern coast of the US, with the severe winter conditions they’re experiencing, to forget that on other parts of our Planet are feeling the heat of dangerous climate change. What we should remember is that what we’re witnessing is not so much “Global Warming,” or even “Climate Change,” but “Global Climatic Disruption,” the term coined by President Obama’s chief science advisor John Holdren.
Watch Ross Gelbspan’s “great and profound” new video at Climate Progress
Pulitzer Prize-winning Investigative journalist Ross Gelbspan has a new video out — and is very much interested in your feedback on it. Please click here to get to the ClimateProgress site and post your own comment. There are over 90 comments to read, most of them very useful, some truly inspiring. And Ross is responding personally to many of them. Something important is beginning to happen here, and we may all want to be part of it.
Final Episode of BBC World’s “Hot Cities” Available
Los Angeles is one of the most polluting cities in the world thanks largely to its love affair with the car. It is a city built on consumption. Each person produces around 20 tonnes of emissions per year – twice as much as anyone else. Now they are about to reap what has been sown. In LA there has been a big increase in wildfires, water supplies are under threat, rising sea levels could have a massive impact on LA’s huge port and destroy thousands of homes. “Hot Cities” goes to LA just as the city launches its adaptation strategy.
