EcoWorld - Urban Cold Islands

The real take-away here is, once again, that there is very little certainty regarding the causes, the severity, or even the direction of climate change. The rhetoric and the conventional wisdom is way behind the latest science and observational data. The policymakers and pundits who have ridiculed the notion of an urban heat island are the same people who are uncritically reporting we must now make every road and roof reflective to mitigate this heat island. There’s nothing wrong with making rooftops reflective to save energy - but does every sensible green product have to incorporate avoiding doomsday in their marketing and lobbying strategy?

Climate change is not a trivial issue. Concern about climate change is nothing to be mocked. But if you removed from the alarmist coalition the people who condone this alarm because they like the side effects - bigger government, more funds for environmental groups, nonprofits and academia, more taxes so the public sector can avoid fiscal reform, more subsidies and regulations so large corporations can crush emerging corporations, and greater energy independence - the only good side effect on that list - you aren’t left with much. At the least, journalists and scientists should recover their innate skepticism, the lifeblood of their professions, and not abdicate their responsibility to point out this contradiction - the IPCC dismisses the heat island effect, yet today’s latest scientific study claims if we made our cities reflective “the global cooling effect would be massive.”

Palin allegedly the latest torch bearer for anti-science

Up until two weeks ago, the consensus view within the scientific and environmental community was that, no matter who took up residence in the White House next January, global efforts to head off climate catastrophe would begin in earnest. Republican candidate John McCain is almost unique in his party in actually taking climate change seriously.

The catapulting of Sarah Palin onto the Republican ticket means all bets are off. She has positioned herself firmly to the right of even Bush with her pronouncement: "I'm not one who would attribute [global warming] to being man-made." Palin has, in an instant, threatened to turn the clock back on critical US action on climate change by a decade.

The irony of a climate change denier being based in Alaska is breathtaking. The state is warming faster than practically anywhere else, with winter temperatures up by six degrees Fahrenheit since 1950. Visitors to Alaska can see the evidence all around, from "drunken forests" of semi-fallen trees and sunken roads, all unseated by the melting of the permafrost, to unprecedented forest fires.
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A poll published in May by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre found that belief among Republicans in the fact that the Earth is warming (irrespective of cause) actually fell sharply, to 49 per cent this year.

A comparison of the attitudes of college-educated Americans to the question of whether global warming is as a result of human activity is revealing. A full 75 per cent of Democrats with college degrees accept this to be true, in stark contrast with just 19 per cent of Republicans with degrees.

Support for this view is actually higher among less-educated Republicans, suggesting how ideology has contaminated education to the extent that the more education a Republican receives, the more misinformed they are likely to become. Today, exactly seven years since the September 11th attacks, novelist Sinclair Lewis's warning from 1935 bears repeating: "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."