Paul Blakeman

A good read for anyone who says “global warming is not caused by man’s misuse of this planet” :

azspot:

sds:

Ken Caldeira (via azspot):

“Climate science has reached the point that plate tectonics reached 30 years ago. It is the basic view of the vast majority of working scientists that human-induced climate change is real. There is a real diversity of informed opinion on how important climate change is going to be to various things that affect humans, and there is a diversity of opinion on how to address this problem, but the debate over human-induced climate change is over.”

False.

A concerted effort by propaganda organs has successfully, shifted public opinion on the state of climate science.

Then came the backlash. The Global Climate Coalition (funded by over 40 major corporate groups like Amoco, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and General Motors) began spending millions of dollars each year to derail the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty to help reduce global warming. They held conferences entitled “The Costs of Kyoto,” issued press releases and faxes dismissing the scientific evidence for global warming, and spent more than $3 million on newspaper and television ads claiming Kyoto would mean a “50-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax.”†

The media, in response to flurries of “blast faxes” (a technique in which a press release is simultaneously faxed to thousands of journalists) and accusations of left-wing bias, began backing off from the scientific evidence.† A recent study found only 35% of newspaper stories on global warming accurately described the scientific consensus, with the majority implying that scientists who believed in global warming were just as common as global warming deniers (of which there were only a tiny handful, almost all of whom had received funding from energy companies or associated groups).†

It all had an incredible effect on the public. In 1993, 88% of Americans thought global warming was a serious problem. By 1997, that number had fallen to 42%, with only 28% saying immediate action was necessary. 1 And so Clinton changed course and insisted that cutting emissions should be put off for 20 years.

US businesses seriously weakened the Kyoto Protocol, leading it to require only a 7% reduction in emissions (compared to the 20% requested by European nations) and then President Bush refused to sign on to even that.† In four short years, big business had managed to turn nearly half the country around and halt the efforts to protect the planet.

And now, the principal on Bainbridge Island, like most people, thinks global warming is a hotly contested issue — the paradigmatic example of a hotly contested issue — even when the science is clear. (“There’s no better scientific consensus on this on any issue I know,” said the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “except maybe Newton’s second law of dynamics.”)2 But all this debate about problems has kept us away from talk about solutions. As journalist Ross Gelbspan puts it, “By keeping the discussion focused on whether there is a problem in the first place, they have effectively silenced the debate over what to do about it.”† So is it any wonder that conservatives want to do the same thing again? And again? And again?

Typically, when I encounter a global warming denialist, I refrain from immediately labeling such a viewpoint as anti-science (though, it is true for a sizable segment, especially Christians, who are anti-science in a number of realms, i.e., embracing doctrine of young earth creationism over evolution). I figure that the malformed opinion is due to the incessant ignorance transmitted by right wing hucksters, neoliberal/conservative/libertarian think tanks, fossil fuel industry public relations flacks and corporate propagandists.

Yes, there is some dissent to the scientific consensus, but it’s not a “debate”. More like a few naysayers, amplified exponentially, by a “he said, she said” media, eager to sell controversy in lieu of informing the citizenry.

But I am amazed at the steadfast insistence to contrarian doctrine, despite the preponderance of empirical evidence and the overwhelming consensus of knowledgeable scientists.

While I will not attempt a comprehensive write-up here, let me just cite that all of the major Science journals and periodicals have pronounced “global warming” as a real phenomenon.  And here are a few links here from Discover, New Scientist, National Geographic, and Scientific American, all weighing in with affirmative assessments on the reality of global warming:

Discover: The State of the Climate — and of Climate Science

National Geographic: Is Global Warming Real?

Signs that the earth is warming are recorded all over the globe. The easiest way to see increasing temperatures is through the thermometer records kept over the past century and a half. Around the world, the earth’s average temperature has risen more than 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.8 degrees Celsius) over the last century, and about twice that in parts of the Arctic.

National Geographic: Global Warming Fast Facts

New Scientist: Climate Change, A Guide for the Perplexed

Yet despite all the complexities, a firm and ever-growing body of evidence points to a clear picture: the world is warming, this warming is due to human activity increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and if emissions continue unabated the warming will too, with increasingly serious consequences.

Scientific American: Is Global Warming a Myth?

But scientists have not been able to validate any such reasons for the current warming trend, despite exhaustive efforts. And a raft of recent peer reviewed studies—many which take advantage of new satellite data—back up the claim that it is emissions from tailpipes, smokestacks (and now factory farmed food animals, which release methane) that are causing potentially irreparable damage to the environment.… …To wit, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences declared in 2005 that “greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise,” adding that “the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action.” Other leading U.S. scientific bodies, including the American Meteorological Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Geophysical Union have issued concurring statements—placing the blame squarely on humans’ shoulders.

The typical denialist redress in response — crackpots, foreign billionaire propagandist respites, oddball theorists far removed from sanity (though to be fair, all new science results from such “kooky” outliers), scientists outside their realm of expertise and of course, vile baseless money grubbing corporate shills.