Speaking at the University of Delaware, New York Times environment writer Andrew Revkin explores the role of the media in influencing the global debate over climate change. Revkin discusses the pressures of journalism, science and politics on the media's handling of climate change.
(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - People in all European Union (EU) countries express concern over climate change, according to the Eurobarometer conducted by TNS Opinion & Social. 57 per cent of respondents in the 27 nations list the phenomenon as their top environmental worry.That last sentence should read "57 per cent of respondents in the 27 nations list the phenomenon among the top five of their environmental worries".
By the way, does jetting from city to city across the country to sell his book make him a sustainability expert? If [Bill McKibben] believes what he says, why doesn't he just sell his book within a 50-mile radius of his home?
But as the details of the plan have emerged, environmental groups and politicians — who applaud Norway’s impulse — say the feat relies too heavily on sleight-of-hand accounting and huge donations to environmental projects abroad, rather than meaningful emissions reductions.
When Americans are asked what costs they are willing to bear, and for what actual benefit for the environment, support “to do something” on global warming evaporates.Update: From a related post here:
If half of all Americans are unwilling to pay anything more to combat global warming, and nearly 20 percent more are willing to spend only a small amount, how seriously do Americans view the problem? It seems that the appetite for a drastic tax increase continues to rest where it always has: with a relatively small activist minority.
The huge warming of the Arctic that started in the early 1920s and lasted for almost two decades is one of the most spectacular climate events of the twentieth century. During the peak period 1930–40, the annually averaged temperature anomaly for the area 60°–90°N amounted to some 1.7°C. Whether this event is an example of an internal climate mode or is externally forced, such as by enhanced solar effects, is presently under debate. This study suggests that natural variability is a likely cause, with reduced sea ice cover being crucial for the warming.
New Delhi, Mar 21 (ANI/Business Wire India): US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi met Dr. RK Pachauri, Director General, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and Chairman IPCC, to discuss major issues related to climate change in India and the various options that can engage both side of the world to tackle its impact and the potential human costs of climate change.
A brain storming session for the Speaker and the US delegation accompanying Pelosi, which consisted of 32 members, comprising of Congressmen, senior Army staff and congressional staff, was held at the Resource Efficient Retreat for Environmental Awareness and Training or the TERI - RETREAT, here last evening.
The 48-year-old Mr. Bremby doesn’t have a law degree or a long history in climate-change politics. Before becoming Kansas’ top health and environmental regulator, he was an assistant city manager in Lawrence, Kan., where his most extensive environmental work was controlling storm-water runoff and pesticide use in local parks.
Marc Morano also emailed the Borenstein propaganda machine as follows:
How could you have failed to note that the 1930's were the hottest decade in the U.S. before 80% of man-made CO2 emissions occurred? Don't you think that is relevant to a story like yours? Why did your editor's allow this oversight to occur? Wouldn't the fact that temps were warmer in the U.S. before 80% of man-made CO2 went into air have placed your article in a much different light? Please consider a follow up noting these simple facts.
Voters were told: "Congress is currently considering legislation that would raise the tax on gasoline in an attempt to motivate Americans to conserve fuel and reduce greenhouse gas emissions."
They were asked how much more they'd be willing to pay in gasoline taxes and given seven choices: nothing, less than 50 cents, 50 cents, one dollar, two dollars, five dollars, eight dollars or more.
18% were willing to pay 50 cents or more; 8% a dollar or more and 2% $2 or more.
Leaving aside the fact that NPR - god love’em - is compelled to frame this news in terms of what “global warming involves,” objective readers will be hard pressed to conclude anything other than that ‘global warming’ is going the way of blood-letting as far as hard science goes. So when we are confronted with flat-Earth ideologists who persist in trying to sell the global warming scam, it might be most appropriate to reply, “Groovy, dude,” or even “How now, Sirrah!”
Many executives and financiers, including some in attendance at the retreat, have a lot of money riding on global warming. Branson, for example, has invested in a host of alternative energy enterprises, including existing businesses within his sprawling Virgin Group.
The audience -- a sold-out crowd of hundreds who had to apply to be admitted and pay a $3,500 fee -- consisted of representatives of the myriad businesses that seek to make a financial killing from climate alarmism. There were representatives of the solar, wind, and biofuel industries that profit from taxpayer mandates and subsidies, representatives from financial services companies that want to trade permits to emit CO2, and public relations and strategic consultants to all of the above.
We libertarians would call such an event a rent-seekers ball -- the vast majority of the audience was there to plot how they could lock-in profits from government mandates on taxpayers and consumers.
It was an amazing collection of pseudo-entrepreneurs who were absolutely impervious to the scientific and economic facts that ought to deflate the global warming bubble.
Britain's finest scientific minds have turned their attention to a problem that they claim is threatening the future of the entire planet - farm animal flatulence.
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The New Zealand government briefly considered taxing farmers on their herds' methane output but the proposal had to be dropped following opposition.
The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs considered introducing a system of tradable methane permits but the system was considered too complex.
"If we don't get this under control by 2050, we all ought to get snorkels," said [Maryland] Sen. Paul Pinsky, D-Prince George's.
MIAMI - Bowing to unexpected public opposition, Florida Power & Light is abandoning plans to use a state-owned beach on Hutchinson Island for Florida's first industrial wind farm.
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The largest producer of wind energy in the nation, FPL had planned to erect nine turbines -- each 400 feet tall -- that it said would generate energy capable of powering more than 3,000 homes. It wanted to put six of the 2.3 megawatt turbines on a popular surf spot it owns south of the plant, and the other three just to the north at Blind Creek, a 400-acre river-to-ocean parcel that the county and state helped buy in 1998 for $13 million.
The poll found just 18% of Americans are willing to pay 50 cents or more in additional taxes per gallon of gas to reduce greenhouse emissions.
This poses a huge political dilemma for the current slate of presidential candidates, all of whom have promised big action on global warming: If they recant after they get elected, they will enrage the enviros and risk being branded as planet destroyers, much like the current administration. If they impose a tax, they can expect a huge voter backlash.
The lesson here for politicians is: Think with a cool head before emitting hot air.
This legislation mandates a 25 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. It also sets a goal of a 90 percent reduction in by 2050. The Maryland Chamber strongly opposes the bill. It’s not the answer to the global warming problem. It will cost Maryland jobs, increase energy prices, and cripple industries trying to compete in a global marketplace.
...more informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming.
Japanese households and businesses could end up paying more than $500 billion to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 11 percent over the next decade...
We, the undersigned presidents and chancellors of colleges and universities, are deeply concerned about the unprecedented scale and speed of global warming and its potential for large-scale, adverse health, social, economic and ecological effects. We recognize the scientific consensus that global warming is real and is largely being caused by humans. We further recognize the need to reduce the global emission of greenhouse gases by 80% by mid-century at the latest, in order to avert the worst impacts of global warming and to reestablish the more stable climatic conditions that have made human progress over the last 10,000 years possible.
This is denial of the obvious. The observed absence of heat accumulation (of Joules) in the upper ocean (and in the troposphere) for the last four years means that there has been NO global warming in these climate metrics during this time period. It is unknown whether this is a short term aberration but, regardless, it is clear that the IPCC models have failed to skillfully predict this absence of warming. That should have been the conclusion stated at the end of the NPR story.
Asked for his thoughts on global warming, Wachowski said he agrees with Skilling that “the jury is still out.”
“Obviously, it appears that the Arctic is getting warmer and causing problems for polar bears and other animals. But are we doing it? It has become a big political issue.”
He said it is harder to come to a definite conclusion about weather changes locally, because of the location of the equipment being moved over the years, and all the farmland in the Chicago area being built up and paved over.
“That definitely changes the temperature. We don’t have a long-enough period to study yet.
He said that even the heavy snowfall this past winter wasn’t that unusual when everything is taken into consideration.
“Everything goes through cycles,” he said.
According to MTV News, the idea came to emo hero Peter Wentz when he was just ‘sitting around’.A related article is here:
He immediately e-mailed his manager Bob McLynn with the immortal line: “Let’s be the first band to play all five continents.”
The band will make the journey to Antarctica with Greenpeace and will bring a crew to film the trek in order to document the impact of global warming.From this article:
According to FOB's management company, Crush, on March 25, the band will board a private jet in southern Chile for a 90-minute flight to Antarctica...This certainly outdoes last February's FOB stunt, Infinity Flight 206, in which the band played in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles on the same day.
Models, at best can present theories in a form that is easier to visualize; however, they are dangerous in giving us a feeling of confidence that we know a forthcoming reality.
In summary, climate science has allowed pseudoscience elements to distort the issues. The suggestion that the warming trend in the 20th century, after the little ice age, will continue in the 21st century is not sustained by empirical evidence. The assumed relationship between the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere with considerable temperature rise is doubtful. The computer-based projections for future climate change are intended to sustain a dogma rather than to challenge assumptions. We regularly observe official authorities manipulating or providing distorted interpretations of data. Fraudulent practice has been tolerated.
CLIMATE change is one of the biggest challenges facing mankind in the 21st century. There is an acute need for more expertise – especially mathematical expertise – to better understand the phenomenon.Isn't that dangerously close to an admission that the science isn't settled?
The university and the Met Office Hadley Centre, in Exeter, which is researching climate change, have sufficient computer power to do a lot of climate simulations, he adds, but insufficient brain power to analyse them all. “We need to understand what the models are telling us,” he says.So we've somehow created computer models that know more about climate than we do?
Since instrumentation was installed in 1993 on Tuvalu's main island Funafuti, sea level has shown no discernible trend. There is some inundation evident on islands in Tuvalu, but global warming is not the cause.
It is the result of erosion, sand mining and construction projects causing an inflow of sea water.
Other factors are also involved.
Even for the contrarians, the main argument is no longer whether climate change is happening—in fact, their main remaining scientific function is to bolster the understanding, and dreaded modeling, of the global climate.It should go without saying that climate change is always happening.
Whether mass media advertising, like the kind the Alliance for Climate Protection intends to deploy, can effectively motivate large groups of Americans is a question that’s open for much debate. McKenzie-Mohr cites a $26 million anti-global-warming ad campaign in 2004 sponsored by the Canadian government that auditors later found did nothing to change viewers’ environmental behavior. “It didn’t tackle the significant barriers that exist to behavior change,” McKenzie-Mohr notes.
Last summer, Arctic ice shrank to an area that was 27 percent smaller than the previous record. This winter, it recovered to a maximum of 5.8 million square miles, up 4 percent and the most since 2003, NASA ice scientist Josefino Comiso said. It is still a bit below the long-term average level for this time of year.Although the article claims that the Arctic ice is "very thin", note that the article linked here says that Arctic sea ice thickness slightly increased from the mid-1990s to at least 2003.
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At the South Pole, in Antarctica, sea ice seems stable, even slightly above normal, the scientists reported. However, ice levels in Antarctica always are quite different from the Arctic and aren't as connected to the world's weather.
...A personal friend of the Gore family, [Kathy] Mattea took part in the grassroots training program with the Vice President and top scientists in the field, learning how to present his slideshow around the country.From Mattea's Wikipedia entry:
"In January 2006, I saw Al Gore give his now-famous Power-Point presentation on Global Warming, at Vanderbilt," Mattea said. "I didn't sleep for the next 2 nights. I found myself thinking about it constantly. I spent 3 days last September training with Mr. Gore and one of the top scientists in the field. I walked out with a burning commitment to take this message to as many people as I can. I was one of those people who thought that there's nothing a lone person can do to make a difference, and I learned differently. Now I want to spread the word of hope to regular people, and help them learn what the huge ripple effect can be when we each make small changes in our daily routines. We really can be part of the Solution. Even the smallest action empowers us to change our world. I want to help people remember that."
Kathy currently travels the country presenting Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and speaking to crowds about the importance fighting global warming and the environmental and physical devastation of coal mining.Mattea's efforts are panned here.
Singer Songwriter Kathy Mattea is one of 50 entertainers coached by former Vice President Al Gore to speak about Global Warming.Update: In response to the first commenter--thanks for bringing up Bill Gates!
"The more one becomes aware of climate history the less credence the statement 'unprecedented' this or that becomes."
Unfortunately stem-cell research hasn't progressed to the stage that could help politicians grow backbones and just say no to global warming hysteria.
Professor Ian Plimer, a renowned educator and author, told the Paydirt 2008 Uranium Conference in Adelaide today that the blame factor applied to CO2 in causing global warming was wrong.
The University of Adelaide Professor of Mining Geology said: "Humans have adapted to life on earth ranging from ice sheets to mountains to tropics and have survived far warmer and far colder climates than currently being experienced or forecast by the climate doomists.
"We need to be far more realistic and educative about where the CO2 comes from that we blame as the causative factor behind global warming.
"The human contribution is minor. The majority of CO2 in the crustal atmospheric layers comes from volcanoes, earthquakes, pulling apart of the ocean floor, metamorphism, hot flushes of the Earth, ocean degassing, plant bacteria and comets," he explained.
TOKYO (AFP) — Japanese professional baseball players have vowed to shorten playing time per game as part of the national pastime's contribution to the fight against global warming.
They will aim to cut playing time by six percent, or 12 minutes, from the average of three hours and 18 minutes per game, the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) commissioners' office said.
"When a professional baseball game is staged, a huge amount of carbon dioxides, a cause of global warming, is discharged because it requires use of energy to move players and spectators, supply electricity for lighting and other purposes and dispose of food and drink waste," NPB said in a statement.
The pledge to cut playing time was set in accordance with Japan's promise to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases by six percent from 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012 under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
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To speed up games and save time, NPB said teams will be required to change offensive and defensive sides within two minutes and 15 seconds and the pitcher can spend no longer than 15 seconds throwing a pitch after receiving the ball from the catcher when all bases are empty.
The urgency therefore is not that of runaway climate change: it’s that technology will indeed save us, something which would never do. So better get the societal oppression in first, before the technology arrives.
Earlier this year, huge UK food retailer Tesco announced that it would introduce a climate labeling system. Tesco's plan is to climate rate on a sliding scale all of the more than 70,000 products founds on its shelves.
The power utility started implementing emergency load shedding on Monday morning as it could not meet demand due to current cold weather conditions which has increased the demand for electricity.
Three years ago, Hansen (and others) argued in Science that [due to fast feedbacks], we would warm another “0.6°C without further change of atmospheric composition” [i.e. with no more CO2 emissions]. Now he’s saying “Warming ‘in the pipeline’, most due to slow feedbacks, is now about 2°C.”
Historically, certain nations in Europe, Germany in particular, have invented a crisis to provide an excuse for taking controversial action. Global warming may be just such a “crisis.”
Actually George is partly right, albeit by accident — carbon capture is an expensive scam with zero application for a better environment. Worse, coal-fired power plants capturing and sequesting exhaust CO2 are squandering 30-40% output just to pretend they are "doing something" about "global warming".
PP: Yours is one of the few skeptical voices in the media on global warming, do you feel that this is changing? Is there now a greater willingness to give the skeptical viewpoint?
CB: Certainly the BBC and the press in general remain absurdly one-sided in their coverage of the global warming scare, but two things have recently been changing the debate. One has been a significantly more skeptical and better informed response from many members of the public (as can be seen from blogs and comment forums). The other has been the recent dramatic drop in global temperatures and the record snowfalls recorded this winter right across the northern hemisphere, except in Western Europe. Although they have been generally ignored by the British media, the extraordinary events of recent months have raised the largest question marks so far over the CO2-global warming thesis. If the 'orthodoxy' was correct, with CO2 levels continuing to rise, the recent events in Asia and north American should simply not have happened.
I hate to have to agree with Greenpeace, but, for once, their spokesperson got it absolutely right: “Labour’s claim that Britain’s carbon footprint is shrinking is a scam.”
There was widespread scepticism about Darling’s individual tax rises. Three out of four or 74% agreed that so-called “green” taxation on polluting cars and flights were a “con” and 85% say the higher alcohol duty rates will do nothing to curb binge drinking.
Q. Climate change is one of the preoccupations of humankind in today's world. Can you tell us about its long-term effects on our life? How can we prevent its negative effects?
A. Climate Change will create a whole host of problems for the nations of the world during this present century. As it causes desertification and reduced landmass, people will consider living in even artic conditions and regions of the world that never thought of in the centuries gone by.
Indeed, ice cities and where these are now on the drawing board for future eventualities and where this is not an over statement, as artic cities have already been mooted to provide for the people in future years.
As sea levels rise, this will also add to the fact as even more land will be lost to the oceans and where there just will not be enough economic land area to sustain human life in its present state. In some ways, if ever the Atlantic Conveyor stops, we will have no other alternative in the Northern hemisphere which encapsulates most of the develop nations of the world.
Prevention of climate change is in the hands of our politicians, global industrialists and the people themselves. Governments still have a nationalistic view and therefore will try and obtain as much wealth for themselves as they can at the general expense of other nations and their people.
Therefore it is still a dog eat dog situation and I see no real change in this respect in the mindsets of our political leaders. Indeed, I see even more of this unsustainable way of developing the world emerging, as the world's finite resources continue to deplete at an alarming rate. But added to this as politicians are well connected with global industry also, I see no chance of any major movements away from the capitalist system, which is unsustainable in the long term.
Therefore, if politicians do not change their spots and industrialists do not stop catering to their shareholders, we have little hope of finding any solutions for global warming and all the harm that this will bring to humankind.
What governments should be doing is to invest heavily in new technological discoveries that address the world's huge problems in a holistic way. Industry should be doing likewise.
But unfortunately what we see happening is the opposite and where new discoveries that would help humankind, are being stifled by industry on the altar of quick profits that shareholders demand.
In this respect we know of many inventions that would help mankind that have been shelved in this respect, as the company's bottom-line is paramount and any new invention that threaten this base is eradicated.
So we have with the capitalist system, highly negative overtones that although they have not hurt humankind much to date, over the next fifty years they will and in a highly undesirable way.
Therefore, the people have to make governments and industry change all this. That is the only real way that we can prevent the catastrophes that will come as night follows day in the 21st century.
The House is likely to delay the governor's climate-change initiatives and teacher merit pay and postpone a plan to renew Florida Forever, the program that purchases land for conservation.
Anyway, at the end someone said “Our climate is always changing, throughout history is had warmed and cooled on it’s own, how do you know this time it is us humans?” Just as Claire looked at me and said ‘He must get really sick of that question”, George said “I get REALLY sick of that question.”
He went on to rip apart the sheer arrogance of anyone who had read a newspaper or watched a TV programme or talked to a scientist and thought that was a good enough reason to question the absolute conclusions of the top climatologists in the world who have spent YEARS studying and understanding one of our most complex sciences.
I believe a fair statement is that the GH [greenhouse] effect of CO2 etc must exist (after all, CO2 is a GH gas and is increasing) but we cannot detect it in the record of temp patterns.Some background information about Singer is here and here.
So we must conclude that its contribution to climate change is swamped by natural changes.
Why do models suggest a much larger effect? Because they all incorporate a positive feedback from WV [water vapor], which in actuality is more likely to be negative. Empirical evidence is beginning to support this explanation.
We hold a skeptical view on the climate science that forms the basis of the National Assessment because we see no evidence to back its findings; climate model exercises are NOT evidence. Vice President Al Gore keeps referring to scientific skeptics as a "tiny minority outside the mainstream." This position is hard to maintain when more than 17,000 scientists have signed the Oregon Petition against the Kyoto Protocol because they see "no compelling evidence that humans are causing discernible climate change."
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I hold a degree in engineering from Ohio State and a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. For more than 40 years I have researched and published in atmospheric and space physics. I received a Special Commendation from President Eisenhower for the early design of satellites. In 1962, I established the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, served as its first director, and received a Gold Medal award from the Department of Commerce for this contribution.
As a climate scientist, I would like to see some answers to a few basic global warming science questions which I’m sure the U.N.’s Ministry of Global Warming Truth (also known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC) can handle. After all, since they are 90% confident that recent global warming is manmade, they surely must have already addressed these issues:(Via Marc Morano)
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The fact that we don’t have a good enough understanding (or observations) of cloud changes, or precipitation efficiency changes, on decadal time scales to document such potential mechanisms seems like pretty weak justification for blaming all of our recent warming on mankind. And if you say, "well, the IPCC doesn’t claim that ALL of the warming is manmade…", then tell me: About what percentage of the warming IS natural, and how did you come up with that quantitative estimate?
I fear that the sloppy science that too many climate researchers have lapsed into could, in the end, hurt our scientific discipline beyond repair. The very high level of certainty (90%) claimed by the IPCC for their manmade explanation for warming can not be justified based upon the scientific evidence, and is little more than an expression of their faith that they understand the causes of climate variability – which they clearly don’t.
For those scientists who value their scientific reputations, I would advise that they distance themselves from politically-motivated claims of a "scientific consensus" on the causes of global warming -- before it is too late. Don’t let five Norwegians on the Nobel Prize committee be the arbiters of what is good science.
I’m often amazed at the reach this blog has been getting worldwide. Last month, I found it hitting almost a quarter million visits. This month it is on track to exceed 300,000. And you never know who will drop by. For example MIT’s Richard Lindzen dropped by a few days ago and offered some insight and a graph.
Along those lines I’ve recently been given an offer of a sit down visit with one of the principal organizations and investigators of climate science today. I won’t say who just yet, (except to say it is not Al Gore) but I can say that the offer is genuine and exciting.
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