Long term campaigns to decarbonize the economy and demand emergency climate policies are getting stronger, write Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers.
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers
PopularResistance.org
The warnings of climate chaos are coming so fast they are difficult to keep up with. Storms, heatwaves and climate-related weather disasters are increasing at a rapid pace. The leadership of the two corporate-dominated political parties are trying to keep the climate issue out of the 2020 campaign, but the movement is becoming too big to ignore.
Climate justice protests against fossil fuel infrastructure, politicians and the media are also growing. An industry publication describes how activists are “driving pipeline rejections” reporting, “From large, interstate pipelines to small lines connecting towns and neighborhoods, anti-fossil fuel activists have proven highly successful at blocking, through regulations or lawsuits, new natural gas infrastructure in the Northeastern United States.”
Earth Strike kick-off protest in Amsterdam, Jan. 15, 2019. (Accon4, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Reports of Climate Chaos
Several reports in recent weeks are expressing new concerns about the climate crisis.
An MIT study published last week found that we may be “at the precipice of an excitation” of the carbon cycle. Authors reported that when the rate at which carbon dioxide enters the oceans pushes past a certain critical threshold, it can trigger a reflex of severe ocean acidification that lasts for 10,000 years. The history of the earth shows that over the last 540 million years, this has coincided with four of the five great mass extinctions. Today’s oceans are absorbing carbon at an order of magnitude faster than the worst case in the geologic record, even though humans have only been extracting carbon for the last 100 years. This is likely to be similar to past global catastrophes potentially culminating in the Earth’s sixth mass extinction.
A June 20 report by the Center for Climate Integrity found that U.S. coastal communities face more than $400 billion in costs over the next 20 years, much of it sooner, to defend themselves from inevitable sea-level rise.
Related to this, a study published May 20 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that coasts should plan for 6.5 feet of sea level rise by 2100. Ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland could cause far more sea-level rise than previously thought.
These reports are forcing the power structure to face the reality of the climate crisis. Last month, Moody’s Analytics examined the economic impact of the failure to curb planet-warming emissions in “The Economic Implications of Climate Change.” Moody’s warns there will be a $69 trillion price tag by 2100 due to the far-reaching economic damage of the climate crisis. They warned: “There is no denying it: The longer we wait to take bold action to curb emissions, the higher the costs will be for all of us.”
These reports come at a time of increased climate-caused disasters.
- This year, wildfires have scorched more than 1.2 million acres in Alaska, making it one of the state’s three biggest fire years on record. Fires are spreading farther north into the Arctic, burning more intensely and starting earlier in the year as climate models have suggested. On July 4, Anchorage hit 90°F, breaking the city’s all-time record by 5 degrees. Alaska’s statewide average temperature was 7.9°F above average, according to NOAA’s latest National State of the Climate report. For the first time in the 95-year record, the year-long July-to-June average temperature for Alaska as a whole was above freezing.
A member of the Geronimo Interagency Hotshot [wildfire] Crew, Bureau of Indian Affairs, San Carlos Agency in Arizona in 2014. (USDA/ Lance Cheung)
- Around the world, global warming has clearly contributed to an increase in extreme fires from tropical rainforests to boreal evergreen forests, and they are often linked with heatwaves. Fires pose new threats to places that aren’t used to experiencing them, including temperate mid-latitude forests near regions with dense populations, as shown by unusual wildfires in places like Germany during last summer’s European heatwave and drought. There is rapid growth of unusually extreme fires burning across South America, Australia, and western North America like the extreme fires in California and Canada last year.
- Tropical Storm Barry, fueled by warm offshore waters, recently caused downpours in Louisiana. The situation showed the compounding of risks that scientists have been warning about due to climate change. Like Hurricane Florence in North Carolina last year and Hurricane Harvey, which sat over Houston for days in 2017, Barry brought heavy rainfall and flooding on the coast and lower Mississippi Valley, according to the National Hurricane Center.
- A report released July 10 by the NOAA finds that sunny-day flooding has doubled since 2000 in the United States. Floods interfered with traffic in northeast states, swamped septic systems in Florida and choked Delaware and Maryland coastal farms with saltwater over the past year. In 2018, the U.S. tied the record for high-tide flood days. The report predicted that annual flood records will be broken again next year and for years and decades to come due to sea-level rise.
- In Indian Country, according to the 2018 National Climate Assessment, weather on the Northern Great Plains has been getting more variable, erratic and destructive. In 2011, the Northern Plains faced a rash of wildfires and drought, followed in 2012, by severe flooding. Occasionally, these take the form of high-powered storms, like tornadoes that ravaged South Dakota reservations in 2016, or the ice storm of 2018, or the bomb cyclone of 2019. A bomb cyclone, last March occurred when an unseasonably hot column of air shot suddenly upward and collided with the frigid high atmosphere sending barometric pressure plummeting. In seconds, the sky erupted bringing devastating wind, storm, and flooding. Homes and ranches of South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation were hit like a missile, more than 500 homes were left uninhabitable. Click here for information on how you can help.
- Washington, D.C., just experienced nearly a month’s worth of rain in an hour. According to a paper published in the journal Nature, these intense rains are a byproduct of man-made climate change.
- Last month was the hottest June on record globally. In Europe, there were record heat waves that sent Europe’s temperatures soaring to 114 degrees Fahrenheit.
Satellite images of the same agricultural fields around the town of Slagelse in Zealand, Denmark. The one on the left is from July 2017. The one on the right, from July 2018, shows the toll of heat and drought. (European Space Agency via Flickr)
Despite these realities, there is inadequate action by most nations of the world especially the United States. President Donald Trump dismissed the need for climate action during the G-20 summit in Japan, saying he doesn’t want to take action to confront the emergency because such a move would threaten corporate profits. As experts have warned, if we do not confront the climate emergency now, we will pay much more later.
DNC Resisting Climate Debate
In the 2020 election cycle, the Democratic Party is resisting climate change as an issue even though 15 of its presidential candidates, more than 50 of its member organizations in the states, and a slew of progressive organizations that make up its voting base, some armed with petitions bearing over 200,000 signatures, are calling for the Democratic National Committee to hold a separate climate-focused debate. On June 10, the executive committee of the Democratic Party in Miami-Dade County — the U.S. metropolitan area considered most vulnerable to sea-level rise — voted unanimously to urge Democrats to devote one of the 12 Democratic presidential debates to the climate crisis.
Banner at San Francisco Youth Climate Strike, March 2019.
(Intothewoods7, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
DNC Chairman Tom Perez, who rejected a climate-focused debate, tried to explain the party’s opposition in a post on Medium, saying it would be impractical to hold a single-issue forum. His refusal led to hundreds of activists sitting in at the DNC headquarters, including sleeping overnight, before the first debate, demanding a debate on climate change.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a resolution asking Congress to declare that global warming is an emergency and demanding a massive mobilization of resources to protect the U.S. economy, society and national security. They called for “a national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization of the resources and labor of the United States at a massive-scale to halt, reverse, mitigate, and prepare for the consequences of the climate emergency and to restore the climate for future generations.”
Billionaire Tom Steyer has entered the 2020 race pledging to spend $100 million and focus his campaign on climate change. In his first television advertisement, he focused on the corruption of government and the economy and on climate. He said: “You look at climate change, that is people who are saying we’d rather make money than save the world.”
Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins has put forward an ecosocialist Green New Deal that not only transitions to a clean energy economy but remakes the economy and creates an economic bill of rights while cutting the military budget by 75 percent.
The Climate Justice Movement’s Growing Power
The movement is building power and impacting the direction of the U.S. and the world, but the response by those supporting the status quo was shown in France recently when on the hottest day in French history climate protesters were brutally tear-gassed for demanding climate action.
PARIS – Intervention des CRS qui utilisent des gazeuses pour tenter de déloger les militants.
Plusieurs journalistes ont été empêcher de filmer. pic.twitter.com/XzwTCTYyJE
— Clément Lanot (@ClementLanot) June 28, 2019
This action, occurring in Paris where the Paris Climate Accord was reached, adds to the heightening of the conflict. The inadequate Paris agreement showed the movement must do more than rely on international agreements.
Third Phase
A longtime labor and climate activist, Jeremy Brecher, describes the climate movement entering a third phase. In the first phase, the man-made climate crisis was confirmed and the movement focused on international agreements and lobbying governments. The second phase arose when the Copenhagen agreement failed, leading to a protest movement against fossil fuel infrastructure, protests of fossil fuel corporations and against investors funding climate-destroying infrastructure.
The third phase centers around a global Green New Deal. It involves protests, electoral demands, and challenging inaction of fossil fuel-funded politicians. He points to groups like Sunrise, Extinction Rebellion and the Student Strike for Climate as examples of this phase. It is a meta-movement that integrates, environmentalism, ecological restoration, social justice, racial equality, workers’ rights, restorative agriculture, and many other challenges to our unjust and unsustainable world order into a practical program.
Climate protests, which have been ongoing for a decade, are having victories. Recently, two major oil pipelines for carrying crude oil from Canada’s tar sands region were called into question as judges in Minnesota overturned a key approval for a proposed pipeline and Michigan’s attorney general threatened to shut down an aging pipeline under the Great Lakes. These were the latest setbacks for a series of five pipelines designed to transport tar sands that have either been canceled or delayed. The other projects include Energy East and Northern Gateway, both of which were canceled, and Trans Mountain expansion and Keystone XL pipelines, both of which are on hold.
People protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline march past San Francisco City Hall, Nov. 15, 2016. (Pax Ahimsa Gethen, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
On July 13, climate activists from Beyond Extreme Energy held a protest outside Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) commissioner Cheryl LaFleur’s home in Massachusetts. They demanded that LaFleur vote “no” on all new fossil fuel infrastructure. Jordan Engel listed the 100 people responsible for killing the planet. Holding people accountable is becoming a reality in this new phase of climate activism.
People are connecting the issue of militarism with climate. In Maine, 22 people were arrested protesting spending on Navy ships urging “Fund Climate Solutions, Not Endless War.” The facts are in, the Pentagon is a top global climate polluter. Popular Resistance and other organizations are organizing the People’s Mobilization to Stop the U.S. War Machine and Save the Planet on Sept. 22 and 23, while the UN High Commission meets, and encouraging people to participate in other actions that weekend, the Climate Strike and Puerto Rican Independence Day March. In our most recent interview on Clearing the FOG, we spoke with David Schwartzman, author of “The Earth is Not For Sale,” about ending Fossil Fuel Militarized Capitalism.
Extinction Rebellion brought the protest movement to The New York Times. On June 24, 70 were arrested demanding the Times cover the climate crisis as a global emergency. During a sit-in on 8th Avenue they chanted “Report the urgency, this is a climate emergency!” On Monday, Extinction Rebellion D.C. demonstrated at the Capitol.
The movement continues to grow. More than 7,000 colleges and universities across the globe declared a climate emergency on July 10 committing to mobilize on the crisis. This month, more than 70 health organizations called for urgent action on “one of the greatest threats to health America has ever faced,” calling it the “cancer of climate change.” They cite storm and flood emergencies, chronic air pollution, the spread of diseases carried by insects, and heat-related illnesses. Extreme heat has been the leading cause of weather-related deaths.
The movement is having an impact and industry and politicians know it. Long term campaigns to stop climate infrastructure, force banks and investors to divest from the fossil fuel industry and demand emergency climate policies are getting stronger.
At the beginning of July, after a meeting of OPEC in Vienna, their Secretary-General Mohammed Barkindo said, “there is a growing mass mobilization of world opinion… against oil,” children “are asking us about their future because… they see their peers on the streets campaigning against this industry.” Barkindo added the “mobilization” was “beginning to… dictate policies and corporate decisions, including investment in the industry.”
In testimony to British lawmakers this month, famed scientist and environmental advocate David Attenborough said, “We cannot be radical enough in dealing with the issues that face us at the moment. The question is: what is practically possible? How can we take the electorate with us in dealing with these things?” It is the job of the climate movement to push political systems to respond.
Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance.
A version of this article first appeared on PopularResistance.org.
The question is not whether climate change is occurring. The question is, what is the best solution, and progressives should beware of very sophisticated attempts to foist off brutal austerity plans upon lower income people both here and in the developing sector, all under the pretext of fighting climate change. The Green New Deal is such a plan.
https://medium.com/@marisol.nostromo/the-green-new-deal-a-right-wing-austerity-plan-b88b4b694d22
I am sick and tired hearing about global warming aka climate change. It is nothing but a political shell game. All the while the real environmental disaster is coming. The world is running out of fresh clean drinking water. You cannot even survive a week without water. Unfortunately no one in the political or environmental groups of the world seems to care.
Anyone notice the record colds across upper North/Midwest this week? 30 deg in Minnesota. Funny how warm and cool pressure systems keep a nice tandem, like Russian figure skaters. Here’s to constantly changing weather patterns.
Actually, were you to compare the record of extreme cold events with the record of extreme hot events, you would learn that the number of extreme hot events has been double the number of extreme cold events over the last sixteen years. This plays havoc with you happy ice skater imagery.
Further, when ice cores from Antarctica were first examined, it was determined that the oldest end sample core contained air bubbles from 650,000 years ago, permitting researchers to measure the percent of CO2 in the atmosphere for each of those 650,000 years, sort of like counting tree rings.
The data showed that current atmospheric CO2 levels are higher than during any previous year in the past 650,000. 27% higher, in point of measured fact.
A second core, provided data going back 800,000 years, confirming that current percentages of CO2 are at record levels.
As well, this ice core permitted researchers to determine the temperatures for each of those years,
The correlation between temperature rise and fall coincided precisely with atmospheric CO2 rise and fall, which is far more consonant with your image of Russian ice skaters dashing, twirling, and moving in matched and related unison.
If the effective heat capacity of the earth surface is decreased by deforestation, paving, etc. Then there will be an increase in extreme temperatures. There will be more hot events than cold because the earth on average is closed to freezing than boiling. This was understood 50 years ago.
There appear to be two schools of doubt (or certainty) be expressed in the comment section.
One school asserts that NOTHING is happening.
The second agrees that SOMETHING is happening. However, this school considers that people have nothing to do with what is happening, that the causes are beyond human behavior.
To the First: Do you think that there are ANY possible negative consequences of human activity, on the “environment”, such as “pollution”, in the broadest sense, or excessive “use”, say soil or forest depletion, that can or could have negative results for humans?
That is, can we human beings do anything that might come to threaten our existence?
For example, could “fracking” have long-term deleterious effects on aquifers or on geological structures that bring about future earth-shaking results?
Feel free to speculate, only words and opinions are involved.
To the Second: If things ARE happening that could impact human well-being, then what are these things, specifically, and what mitigatory actions do you consider that humans may take, if any?
Is it merely a question of waiting out natural occurrences, or can (and ought) humans do anything to protect themselves from what IS happening?
If you consider that something can (and ought) be done, then are you willing to work with the folks who think humans are contributing to “environmental” degradation, great or small?
If so, then where would you suggest that we, together, begin to prepare for what the future might hold, for ALL of us?
Should we build sea walls, try to limit the use of some resources, especially those that might mitigate the consequences of large natural fluctuation? Maintaining forests (and oceans) as carbon sinks, for instance,and so on?
How would you suggest we might do so, and when should we begin, especially if the Change is driven by the Sun, or some other rather large entity or “process”?
Should these steps be considered of prime importance, say commensurate with “defense” spending, or relegated to peripheral concern?
Again, if we humans are not responsible FOR the changes we witness, we feel, and must consider will affect us even more seriously in future, assuming you think that to be so, then do you think that concerted, educated awareness that there ARE actual changes NOW occurring, needs to be to be systematically addressed, needs to be generally understood, and that a public and politic response is required?
If so, then who ought play the role of modern-day Paul Revere and sound the alert?
Should the media discuss it? Should schools teach courses about it? Should politicians include it, free of partisan posturing, in their platforms?
How serious is IT?
Does it deserve our attention? Does it require action?
These are all question which I consider are worth asking.
Do you agree?
If not, then what questions do you think ought be asked?
If we, collectively, might be facing calamity, especially not of our own making (or doing), but of, for example, a Sun gone a wee bit roguish, then, in your opinion, can humankind actually protect itself in the face of such perturbed “external” fluctuations?
Good points, on the “Second” I know humans can cause environmental damage but carbon emissions have nothing to do with our climate, other than that without it everything is dead. I’ll leave the weather modifications up to our Sun as it works like clockwork going through its warm and cool periods. Honestly I think the designers put it in to keep the planet in good shape while grinding humanity into crushed ice when it needs too.
Well this is not a parlor game, nor am I particularly fond of the Hamlet “to be or not to be” as an never-ending question.
Debating science as if anyone here is in fact a scientist is rather absurd. Clinging to a one-off notion and amplifying it as if “you KNOW CO2” has nothing to do with climate change or warming is typical of the arguments I’ve heard over the years. They are evidence-free, baseless from a scientific perspective.
It has been known, even before science began its arduous task of testing all parts of the planet, modeling and re-modeling to understand empirically what many knew was happening. Many indigenous people have known that colony-settlers were destroying the landscape.
We know that the massive spike during the industrial revolution and fossil emissions occurred more or less simultaneously and continues. That the extraction of CO2 was not normal, but excessive, beyond the point at which the atmosphere could manage and in a relatively very short period of time. As I noted CO2 has been the prime mover in climate disruption, and glacier melting, and the increase of methane into the atmospere (even more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 that actually consumes oxygen).
But this is only a small part of the story. This has set in motion a huge shift in climate from South to North, and the deforestation which comes from farming methods.
As far as what we should do. We need to shift our economy which has become the perpetrator of the dilemma from growth to degrowth and than a steady state economy. We need to draw down and sequester CO2 where it is meant to be to nourish plant life. This can be down naturally through regeneration farming methods, for starts. We’ll need to migrate from our current shorelines to inland and create soft buffer as sea levels rise. We need to live, dare I say, differently on this planet. We have hit the end of the road of endless growth and war.
Is this politically feasible? Perhaps not, but nature does not give a flying fig about our human systems. Civilizations have collapsed numerous times throughout history, mostly due to mis-use of natural resources and over extensions.
This is not a game, a Trump “let’s make a deal” or picking some obscure article to bolster a claim of counter-intuitiveness. Are we up to the challenge? At best I give us a 50/50 chance. Given some of these posts it could be even less.
Well and truly said, Antonio Costa
DW
US military and all government Departments of the Executive Branch, at least portions of them are prepared for an extended SHTF scenarios.
Among non government climatologist there are a large number who talk of an extinction event, “of humanity”, and that it is already underway and will continue no matter what we do.
Their time line varies as there are multiples of variants and wether we have wars conventional or limited nuclear weapons used by US/Israel, drastic climate events or even a singular worldwide cataclism.
Those whose lives have been spent within their artificial urban and metro plastic lives and think all answers can be found in political realms have no real contact with an already dying natural world.
Not an expert by the supposed “environmentalist protectors eyes” yet it seems that those outside their juvenile clubs and burnt out hippys there is a very large portion of US population that see a dying and planet first hand.
Greta Thunberg is right. It is a CLIMATE EMERGENCY.
Comments are not being posted on the article about the war industry merger.
When much younger, I used to read a lot of science fiction. For years, I wondered how humanity would react if there was a giant asteroid hurtling toward Earth. Do we spend the money to change its flight path with nuclear missiles or spend that money on some grand project like going to Mars that produces far more secondary economic benefits? I think we finally have the answer to that question, based on the response to the climate science.
We would have a group of scientists who favor the Mars trip protesting that the science that the asteroid will actually hit the Earth is faulty; therefore we should go to Mars. We would have a larger group of scientists who say we’re doomed unless we launch those nukes.
The Mars mission is launched. A few months later, human civilization is wiped out by the asteroid.
The Problem being that The Powers That Be have never believed in the Precautionary Principle. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle
..but whether you are right or wrong about globale warming, you have still not proved that the cause of climate change is due to c02 and/or caused by anthropogenic – component of the greenhouse effect. Neither have you taken into account geoengineering and the weather warfare that might or might not be proved, but if it does exist (which I think it does) the effect of bureaucrats in the US, Europe and other places decision to use weather modification techniques such as cloud seeding for military purposes.
So who knows why the weather has changed and the reason for the change!
You have an excellent site, but this article is not improving your site, on the contrary.
Brgds
Thomas
Agree or disagree with the article, it’s purpose, which is very apparent, was NOT to prove anything. It begins with the premise that humans have through excessive release of CO2 (primarily fossil) set in motion global warming. The article takes it from where overwhelming scientific studies and refined modeling leaves it. Neither author is a scientist and they don’t pretend to be.
CO2 is only part of the problem. There are other more potent contributing factors. But it is CO2 according to scientific study and refined modeling that set this in motion and we humans are the direct cause.
Ecological degradation is a huge human-based contributor and it is a result of excessive extraction, use of pesticides, etc.
It may be an inconvient truth for some, but truth nonetheless.
Yes, climate change is happening, but can we do anything about it (other than adapt) and are our acts causing it?
I ‘ve never been convinced of those last two ideas.
And a new serious study tends to agree, finding virtually no role for humans.
https://sputniknews.com/environment/201907111076211867-study-sees-no-solid-evidence-for-man-made-climate-change/
It isn’t the first time something has pointed this way either.
I know we face problems with the very real threats of climate change, but I do think overturning our entire lives and societies and spending trillions of dollars in a desperate effort to “do something” is pretty damned foolish.
It is religion, not science.
And it is so easy, when you do not really understand and you rush ahead, to do the wrong thing, too.
For example, several serious studies have pointed to electric-powered vehicles being more detrimental than petroleum-powered ones when their entire life cycle and the production of raw materials are accounted for.
And that, as any genuine expert will tell you, is the only way to make such comparisons validly. With full cycle costs and costs of producing inputs as well as of disposing of trash at the end.
How have past societies dealt with the many, many climate changes earth has experienced. My God, it was only about ten thousand years ago that the Great Lakes were created by the receding of massive glaciers taller than any skyscrapers.
And Tacitus spoke of North Africa as “the granary of Rome.”
Look at the drifting sands that cover all the land around ancient Egypt’s great monuments to its civilization. Once those were lush places. The wealth from organized early agriculture on them is what Egypt an impressive society.
And we’ve found the fossils of some dinosaurs who once roamed Antarctica.
The semi-desert Canadian Province of Alberta was a large inland sea tens of millions of years ago.
Nothing ever stays the same in our universe. There really is no such thing as keeping some landscape and environment as though they were part of a huge museum dedicated of some arbitrarily selected period of time.
Yes, climate change is happening, but can we do anything about it (other than adapt) andare our acts causing it?
I ‘ve never been convinced of those last two ideas.
And a new serious study tends to agree, finding virtually no role for humans.
https://sputniknews.com/environment/201907111076211867-study-sees-no-solid-evidence-for-man-made-climate-change/
It isn’t the first time something has pointed this way either.
I know we face problems with the very real threats of climate change, but I do think overturning our entire lives and societies and spending trillions of dollars in a desperate effort to “do something” is pretty damned foolish.
It is religion, not science.
And it is so easy, when you do not really understand and you rush ahead, to do the wrong thing, too.
For example, several serious studies have pointed to electric-powered vehicles being more detrimental than petroleum-powered ones when their entire life cycle and the production of raw materials are accounted for.
And that, as any genuine expert will tell you, is the only way to make such comparisons validly. With full cycle costs and costs of producing inputs as well as of disposing of trash at the end.
How have past societies dealt with the many, many climate changes earth has experienced. My God, it was only about ten thousand years ago that the Great Lakes were created by the receding of massive glaciers taller than any skyscrapers.
And Tacitus spoke of North Africa as “the granary of Rome.”
Look at the drifting sands that cover all the land around ancient Egypt’s great monuments to its civilization. Once those were lush places. The wealth from organized early agriculture on them is what Egypt an impressive society.
And we’ve found the fossils of some dinosaurs who once roamed Antarctica.
The semi-desert Canadian Province of Alberta was a large inland sea tens of millions of years ago.
Nothing ever stays the same in our universe. There really is no such thing as keeping some landscape and environment as though they were part of a huge museum dedicated of some arbitrarily selected period of time.
This Sputnicnews article seems weak. There is no established scientific theory established from what I can see. This has not been vetted through peer review by thousands (as the case for global warming) of scientists. To say climate science and much of physics that supports these claims is not science raises some rather deeper questions about what exactly do you think science is? It would appear that it doesn’t include scientific method.
Sputnic should stick to Russiagate and other imperial nonsense.
“Last month was the hottest June on record globally. In Europe, there were record heat waves that sent Europe’s temperatures soaring to 114 degrees Fahrenheit.” You’ll still grow food when its warm, but when summer doesn’t arrive you’ll starve to death guaranteed. Just look at base food items that have skyrocketed this year due to late spring, cool summer. We’ve survived from 1988 (hottest year since records) and grown food at amazing rates, go back to 1940-1970s which was a serious cooling period and half the planet would starve to death.
Floods caused the prices to climb along with tariffs on China. Please what you’ve posted has either been thoroughly debunked or ignored as simply not worth confronting since the data and evidence have been overwhelming and continue to be as increases in global warming and ecological degradation effects continue to rapidly and nonlinearly move apace throughout the globe.
The monoculture farming methods have been major contributors to massive injections of poisons in waterways and have undermined local farmers throughout the world through dumping.
You either don’t know this or are using this article to foist you bogus claims.
So many people on here calling people “trolls” when the basis of there education is a Nova program or following WWF panic leaflets. The IPCC has been proven to factually manipulate the majority of its data. How can a single person discount all the climategate scandal(S) the IPCC has had? There are way more than 20 at this point. Zero credibility left with those non scientists who provide cut and paste reports for the IPCC, looking at you WWF and other biased environmentalists. I believe in the factual records produced by plasma and other scientists studying energy in the cosmos. They have show good data that, when the sun stops regulating its energy via sunspots it plays massive havoc on our and other planets. The historical record bares that out, people can ignore the real charts all they want, but they can’t ignore whats coming, which is a drastic dip in our global temps, according to historical records over the past thousand’s of years. There appear to be pretty defined cycles of sunspot activity and earths weather. Guess we’ll see who’s right when we get to the middle of Solar Cycle 25, maybe we do a “told you so” in 2025, which, I’ll gladly eat crow, I am not so hubris as to admit my reasoning is/was and certainly will be incorrect throughout life on many things. But you don’t find that around the IPCC personnel, they’ll rip you to shreds and make certain your life’s work is suppressed, ban you from publication, disparage its whistleblowers etc. And thats how mainstream science rolls today, “destroy any rational observations as they ruin our theoretical modeling”. How is that science? One should never do science via consensus and computer modeling that fits pre determined thinking. “We need a hockey stick temp record so I’ll code one in for you”, thats dogma, not science. And thats exactly how this all kicked off in 1998, stone cold fact.
@ Hawaii Guy:
The Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets are melting at a dangerous rate. That’s fact. The weather is changing drastically, resulting in drouths and intense storms. That’s fact. There are many more global warming facts that do not depend on IPCC studies.
Whether these global warming are caused by humans is not a relevant question. What is relevant is whether humanity can do anything to slow or stop the trend. You don’t say, but do you believe we should not try to do so?
http://osociety.org/2019/07/21/on-stupidity
Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice.One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.
In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
“If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect, but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them.
We note further people who isolate themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.
The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for this can once and for all destroy human beings.
Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in must cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person. This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what ‘the people’ really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly. The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.
But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from people’s stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.
Unfortunately the super-rich couldn’t care less what happens to the rest of us. And they hold the strings of power that could act to avert this global disaster.
Interesting. I keep wondering where all of the data is to go along with the hysteria.
I read all of the comments below, and agree with Hawaiiguy in that we should pay more attention to the effects of the Sun on our planet. I wrote a book on the subject, which I will not pump here, but in doing so I studied the Sun a bit deeper than a reporter. Our Sun is amazing and powerful, and scientists are learning more about it everyday. When the Sun winks, weather changes on Earth. When the Sun has a bad hair day (1921, 1944, 1989 etc.) more severe events occur. When the Sun gets really pissed off (1859) the excrement hits the fan–as in, if that occurred today no electronic devices would continue to function on the surface of our planet (unless well shielded).
While I was writing that book, the big Japanese quakes occurred. What I found interesting was that the timing of the quakes (plural) coincided with coronal mass ejections produced by solar flares. First there was an ‘M’ class flare and, when it struck Earth hours later a series of earthquakes occurred south of Japan. Then, two bigger X-class flares, followed by the big quakes off the coast. That propelled me to write a chapter with the data: Do Solar Flares Cause Earthquakes?
Oh, and thank you Jeff Harrison for the physics primer.
Hate to be the one to have to break the news to some folks here but your high school science teachers did you a disservice. Y’all should get your money back from your local public school system.
Thing is, real science curricula included teaching students about The Greenhouse Effect and the gases which cause it:
Methane CH4 is a big one. Comes from cow farts. Agriculture. Domestication of cows. Beef. I’m from Texas and saw cows walk across my aunt’s front porch. You can light farts on fire because they are composed of natural gas. The gut flora and fauna of ruminants such as bovine produce tons of methane.
Carbon dioxide CO2 from breathing and internal combustion engines produce tons of it. The bigger the human population and the more cars we drive, the worse it gets. Go to LA and see the smog from the highways.
This stuff isn’t rocket science folks. It’s easy to understand. The oil companies are in league with the military to burn fossil fuels, spinning smoke and bullets and fuel into fool’s gold. The bankers invest in commodities such as oil and natural gas. Trump and Obama put the pedal to the metal on drilling and warring. They are demons and their name is Legion.
You see neoconservatives and neoliberals are two sides of the same coin. And those coins are to be placed on our children’s eyelids so the oligarchs and plutocrats can party like it’s 1999 until it’s too late.
Simple math. Farts and fire and breath snd smoke. Our resources are finite. Growth for the sake of infinite growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. This way of doing multiplying people and cows and cars and wars endlessly will cause not only human extinction, it’ll take most life on earth with it.
It’s easy to understand how this works. Some folks just enjoy getting played by the powers that be. The play is running out of acts now.
https://osociety.org/2019/07/05/doubling-down-the-military-big-bankers-and-big-oil-are-not-in-climate-denial-they-are-in-control-and-plan-to-keep-it-that-way/
Homo sapiens are the most invasive species on the planet. Western strain is by far the most egregious in this regard. What we’ve facing are several centuries of human attempts to dominate nature and in that effort destruction through most practices of production from consumable products to food. War is the ultimate destructive tool bar none as it is unending in today’s environment. The US has been in some sort of destructive war/conflict for over 90% of her existence.
Science is but a tool. Indigenous people have seen it as the handy-work of colonial-settler culture – total war, trash and burn, with nuclear war as the final threat. We are suffering from the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan to this day, nuclear reactor meltdowns and near melt downs, nuclear testing through much of the 50 into the early 60. Radioactivity does not simply disappear. Deforestation and loss of potable water is pronounced. It’s real.
Playing word games with “scientific methods” and “doubting the impact of excessive CO2 into the atmosphere is a nonsensical game used to undermine what is right in front of us.
The atmosphere that protects life on this planet from sun’s heat is thin and fragile. Our consumption of the planet for economic (not human quality of life) has been insatiable.
It is not just CO2 and our excessive release over the past 2 centuries, but the destruction that that was born from. You don’t need to be a scientist to understand what is clearly apparent.
Now, now Dunder, calm yourself and breathe deeply. Let’s play a game, shall we? OK, here goes:
I know climate change is happening when: A. I finally broke down and had air conditioning installed in my previously summer-comfortable Pacific NW home last year because I was about to crater from heatstroke each summer. (I know, I contributed to the problem by finally having AC) B. My blueberries, after giving me 30 quarts in July last year, decided to reflower and berry-up again in NOVEMBER of that same year, a first-ever occurrence. C. Oregon’s wine industry has gone stratospheric over the last couple decades due to much better and warmer growing conditions. D. All of the above. Now take a sip of our glorious Pinot Noir, Dunderhead, have a heaping helping of blueberry cobbler, and throw that anger overboard. Mother Nature is trying to tell us something. And please don’t name-call the lovely people here at CN. They’re the BEST in the business.
The current heat wave with 100 degrees and higher temperatures are caused by climate change–and yet the unstable twitter emperor –loud- mouthed Donald–calls it a hoax–the pathological liar–calls it a lie–because He`s an employee of Corporate America —–The main contributor to Global warming—-
Hfvh
While the temperature rise is real to some degree, it is not clear that it is man-made, nor that Western society has the right to interfere with third world industry and growth, which will greatly affect climate (if the claims are true). The vast majority of the “climate change” effects were created by Europeans and the US; manufacturing and agricultural practices are where their riches derived. Clearly people have limited ability to affect the weather (and climate is just 30 year blocks of weather); if real, it is beyond any fix but Happy Talk by politicians flying all over the world in their private jets (Al Gore has one of the biggest carbon footprints in his state; thus who can take anything he says seriously?)
Best to follow Russia’s lead and build trading routes along the Arctic (the history of Russia has largely been the search for open water ports). Canada now has the same opportunities. Genetically engineer crops for the “coming climate”. Adapt and make the best of it. “There is nothing constant but change”.
Lots od earlier societies desttoyed themselves by screwing up their enviroments. As our engineering is more powerful than theirs, so the damage we can do is greater.
We Americans believe in Positive Thinking (magic), which never yet pstchef a, leaky roof. Other countries’ peoples are are not into magical thinking, but are they enough to do the repairs before the roof caves in, or the dyke bursts? I’m not optimistic
“There comes a time in the life of any reasonable man when the only sensible course to pursue is to spit on his hands and start slitting throats.” – H.L.Menken
CLIMATE CHANGE KNUCKLEHEADS CANT CITE ANY FACTS! THE WORLDS GOING TO END! HOW? TOO BAD ROBERT PARRY IS DEAD. HE HAD ALOT OF RESPECT FOR NON PARTISAN HONESTY. THIS SUPPOSED ARTICLE IS PURE PROPAGANDA. YOUR UNHINGED HYPERBOLE BASED IN FAIRY TALES “DEAD PLANET” IS UTTERLY INSANE AND YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOUR TALKING ABOUT. PERIOD
What a complete piece of garbage, it’s going to be fun watching you climate change morons twist in the wind, when I think of what a bunch of welfare enabling lickspittle toadies support this nonsense it actually makes me want to see an environmental cataclysm but alas carbon is just a lagging indicator, suck it normie’s
Why so angry, D. ? Why do you care at all? If Global Warming isn’t happening, then what I might think is irrelevant. You are reacting like religious oe political zealot, furious that someone doesn’t share his take on the Trinity ir Chairman Mao’s Glorious Thoughts!
Very true Zhu. The outraged passion on both sides is far more interesting than whether the climate is or isn’t a big issue. Perhaps the real chaos, catastrophe, and crisis, is the mindless polarisation of humanity.
‘Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come.’ Haruki Murakami
At first scan I just registered this remark, but it deserves some deliberation. I was, in the prime of my life, an optimistic person. The love of good woman saved me; I was near the end of a rope, quite seriously. If I hadn’t been made optimistic to that certain degree I would never have agreed to have children. We had two, both now adults and free-thinkers I’m proud to say, even of my influence. If I had realized then, where we seem to be headed now, I may have tried to convince the love of my life that we probably should not bring children into this world. And now we have a grand-son, and I tremble for the future that we have bequeathed.
When our youngest was a teen-ager I was finalizing my own long secret journey to understand WTF is this all about. I told him that if we are to have a purpose it must be survival, to be able to continue to pursue all those questions that continue to vex us, and which spur us to understand more. I am not awaiting the end of the world, nor of my life, though both are as certain as the dawn.
I am not familiar with Haruki Murakami. But I trust he was making a dispassionate observation and not a predictive judgement. Some time last week I saw the current director of NASA say how fine it would be to see the US flag planted on Mars. I was saddened beyond words. Thank you to the first man to step on the moon: “One small step for man, one giant leap for MANKIND.”
Vinnieoh, beautifully said. One of my favorite quotes is from Maya Angelou who once said in regards to survival: “Surviving is important, but thriving is elegant.” I try each day to thrive in spite of our collective situation. Living elegantly, even if one lives with very little, is possible. To me, “waiting for the end of the world” means waiting for the end of the self. Maybe that is what Murakami meant. Meanwhile, we can survive and thrive in whatever way we can, with awe, compassion, and good intent, creating beauty amidst despair, in the tiniest of ways. I love reading your posts; they are always thoughtful.
ML: Thanks so much, you’re very generous. And thank you for bringing out what is most probably Murakami’s meaning. And as matt (below) said, confrontation and domination are our past; the future must surely rest on co-operation and collaboration.
That’s the rub. The hundreds of warring Nation States future isn’t any brighter. Civilization has to find a balance between the individual and collective. Like it or not, we are a social and interdependent species.
As the article name suggests, this ludicrously polarising issue is all about the COST and the PROFIT. There is potentially considerably more profit in alternatives than there is in fossil fuels. We tend to overlook who stands to make this profit.
Frankly, I never understood why the largest energy (mostly oil) companies preferred to keep cleaner energy largely suppressed for decades instead of trying to use their vast resources to perfect it, build it up and position themselves thereafter into the future as the new solar cartel. They did small scale research but shied away from really serious investments.
(The answer is perhaps that they didn’t think it could ever power industrial society at the level we have become accustomed to with any foreseeable developments in the technology, which might well be true, but it is surprising that none of them took a real stab at it.)
Well, it’s already clear the Resistance is going to fracture the Democratic Party coalition and Trump will be re-elected. But it is probably better to have a true enemy than a false friend.
In America, people are entitled to believe whatever they want without suffering consequences from physics or biology.
https://osociety.org/2019/01/29/the-case-of-the-staggering-moron-meanwhile-in-australia/
Don’t bother to try to reason with such American know-nothing. You can’t reason a man out of a belief with sound logic when he did not reason himself into it in the first place.
Unless it makes us feel good we don’t want to hear it. So we get people believing humans can’t change the climate or fly to the moon. Some people believe Santa Claus eats their milk and cookies and Obama is a Kenyan Muslim too.
Personally, I believe the Great Pumpkin is going to save us all from the Anthropocene by martyrdom. He’ll absorb all the climate crisis by allowing it to bake Him into a Great Pumpkin Pie.
Praise the Gourd!
Great article with great links. It’s both encouraging that there are so many groups around the world organizing and also discouraging that there are so many people in this country who don’t get the urgency.
Today I decided to put “There are NO JOBS on a DEAD PLANET!” on the lettered sign outside my bookstore. It will be interesting to see what sort of comments we get.
Great article with great links. It’s both heartening to learn how many groups there are making news about this disaster and also discouraging that so many in this country don’t understand the urgency – and how many who are smart enough to get it, are also greedy enough not to care.
Right now I’m thinking of Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes who natter on and on about Trump idiocy with never a word about what really matters. Chris on rare occasions throws out a bone, but Rachel is so besotted with her version of Russian deviltry and her own adorable cuteness that she doesn’t care – just let the money roll in to her bank account and she’s happy.
I wonder what would happen if thousands wrote to her and told her what they really thought of her abdication of truth and common sense?
Today I decided to put “There are NO JOBS on a DEAD PLANET!” on my lettered sign outside my bookstore. It’ll be interesting to see what sort of comments we get.
I affirm the belief that climate change is indeed occurring and that, in the simplest of terms, is not man made (anthropogenic). Here’s a recap of commentaries I made previous to this article.
From Ptolemy’s planetary hypotheses to, Phrenology, to “too cheap to meter” nuclear power, then onward to the irreversible ozone holes consensus, John Doe has been exposed to facts, figures, graphs, inundated with approving nods from the scientific community at large. These approvals were eventually withdrawn, discredited or completely modified. Climategate has gradually pulled back the curtain only to expose the “Wizard” of Oz, thunderously proclaiming that the sky is indeed falling! and who is this fake? why it’s another man from Rockefeller’s ilk, emphasizing a need for austerity, pointing to so called global resource scarcity, with many a justification to suppress the impoverished of this world still further, all under the guise of “climate change” Again, let’s not forget to reemphasize, one of the top scandals in the last ten years, “Climategate” where various e-mails were hacked and then released to the general public. Those e-mails, exchanged between Australian scientists showing a deliberate attempt on their part to fashion a new climate model. In short, through the efforts of some nerdy hackers, they revealed various correspondences, proving that climate data was indeed fudged to fit that new and fictitious model. I also suggest reading the works of Patrick Wood, his book entitled, Technocracy Rising, as well as profound statements made by a geologist, Professor Ian Plimer during an address to various representatives of the UK Parliament.
The new climate change script began long ago (circa 1965) with the likes of Maurice Strong, noted as the most dangerous man in the world, he wanted nothing more than to destroy our great nation by De-industrializing it.
ASIDE: The official cover story to hide this climate change plot, was concocted by the same banksters who ushered in the Panic of 1907 -But all they wanted back then, was to corner the stock market, now they seek to corner a WORLD market in human transaction(s) of every kind and sort and the climate change theme is part of their latest strategy…
The new contrivance or plot begins with an allegation of planetary over population (to some extent this is true) and when taken to the extreme, human existence causes dangerous pollution, consequently a sharp rise in atmospheric CO2 from various human and industrial activities. Thus, by deliberately excluding research that would have monitored an estimated one million or so small volcanoes dotting the five ocean floors, (belching CO2 whenever they please) a skewed version of Mankind’s contribution to CO2 production comes to the fore but in fact, is quite minuscule in comparison to mother natures contributions. But who can tell? when deliberately manipulated data-graphs are all we have to look at… Today, I believe our climate scientists monitor about a dozen or so volcanoes and thus, on a grand scale of geologic activity, those fancy computerized models, don’t add up to much of anything in the way of accurate projections.
No RIP for you Mr Strong! and please! NO more social engineering tricks from you big time banksters and NeoCon artists. We will never have a one world, one government, one currency, one big fat bank, one language and one smothering big brother, future.
I made an error in this commentary. There are approximately 1,500 active volcanoes that dot the ocean floor not one million. Just another senior moment…
I’ll further add, everyone in the UN should know the name Dr Michael “should be in state pen” Mann of Penn St. In the late 90s the global warming alarmists had a serious issue to contend with, the 1,000 plus year historical record accurately showed our earth had a warmer period over hundreds of years (medieval warming period) than we have today. It also historically shows our weather changes from warm periods to ice ages and back again, no carbon emissions from mankind needed. So what does this recently “doctored” scientist do in 1998? He erases the entire history of our climate and chenges it to what has fomously been coined “the hockey stick”! This of the infamous AL Gore film where he uses a fork lift to dramatically highlight the top of the hockey stick graph. This complete fabrication in greedy fantasy has decimated good scientific research. There is ZERO FACTUAL EVIDENCE sea levels have, or will rise due to mankind’s contributions to the miniscule total of carbon makeup in our atmosphere! I mean how can science hinge all their credibility onto what is less than… 0035% of a TOTAL .. 04% of earth’s carbon emissions? Dr Michael Mann should be in the state pen, and his absolute refusal to turn over his data, computer code etc when demanded by a judge was proof enough he is nothing but a snake oil charlatan.
“The current sea level is about 130 metres (426.5 feet) higher than the historical minimum. Historically low levels were reached during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), about 20,000 years ago. Over a shorter timescale, the low level reached during the LGM rebounded in the early Holocene, between about 14,000 and 6,000 years ago” (8,000 year period where the sealevel rose on average over 1.5 cm per year),” and sea levels have been comparably stable over the past 6,000 years. ” There are civilizations buried under the sea, vast primitive cities abandoned as the sea levels rose.
One would think people would be smarter nowadays but they still build on barrier islands and in flood planes. Developers have no conscience or empathy, and there’s lots of money to be made. The US recently had the longest period in their history with no major hurricanes (https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/has-gone-record-years-without-major-hurricane/vaMP1YyTIYuaibviWrFTUP/), but those 11 major hurricane-free years just encouraged developers to build in more low lying areas. In America, we do not hold politicians, bankers or other financial crooks accountable; they are above the Law.
Well put,factual, and almost universally ignored. The simple truth is that the western world mentality has degenerated to the point where the majority are now conditioned to react emotionally to anything that’s thrown at them, without even attempting the process of critical thinking and analysis. Worse still two thousand years of being conditioned to believe that we are “born in sin” and are responsible for every perceived “ill” that befall our planet has made a population easy prey to the manipulations of those who recognise this and misuse the power and levers it gives them. Give them the chance to “save the world” and “atone” for their very existence and they will jump at every bait that’s dangled in front of them.
You speaking in tongues of snake oil charlatans reminds me of this projection we used to watch on the cave wall while we smoked Winstons back in the good ole days at the cement pond…
https://youtu.be/YD22a4APsCg
Blaming climate change on mankind is factually the equivalent of blaming the color white for producing the color black. Mankind’s total contribution to carbon emissions is… 0035% of nature’s total emissions of.. 04%
Yes that’s absolutely correct, total carbon emissions on the entire planet is less than 1/2 of 1%. Our Sun on the otherhand can and does regulate our weather with ease, if mankind is a single matchstick starting a fire to change our weather, Our Sun is a
Nuclear explosion by comparison. Whatever the sun is doing should be watched, (it is by scientists like Valentina Zharkova) and planned for as it’s cyclical patterns that take us from ice ages to warm periods. And it looks like the next ice age is upon us, no matter how many corrupt IPCC reports they print is glossary color. Every single report from before IPCC AR1 has been thoroughly debunked as complete ameturish gibberish where it’s been shown they use WWF and other alarmist biased theory as facts to use in there “scientific” pamphlets. One can be an environmentalist without being so hubris as to think mankind controls or affects the earth’s weather. That’s as ludicrous as believing big bang and black hole theory.
Lot of trolls out today. Hate to break it to you but the sun is not he cause of global warming. There is ZERO correlation between rising global temperatures and the sun’s activity. Global temperatures have been rising while the sun’s activity has been waning. Look it up.
So no the sun is not the cause. Green house gasses have been increasing global temperatures and human activity has increased green house gas emissions. Those are all facts.
JoeSixPack
The Sun is a phenomenon. There is so much we do not know about it, but they-the heliophysicists are learning more all of the time. They have something like 17 spacecraft watching it all the time, as well as instruments on Earth.
True, we are just past Solar Minimum now, which occurs in 10.66 year cycles so far, but during Solar Minimum periods we are bombarded with far more radiation from outer space because of the decrease in the Sun’s magnetic field, which partially shields us. According to spaceweather.com the count is unusually high right now (they are not sure why).
That may not change our weather much. but can be damaging to integrated circuitry in space.
As far as solar minimums and maximum periods, there is also the Grand Cycle, which tracks much longer periods, and is at a high now.
Frankly, with all due respect your comment about the Sun’s effect on Earthly weather cycles is ignorant in it’s purest sense–as in not knowing.
Nobody really talks about the actual science involved here even though they claim that opposing this crap is anti-science. The crap here isn’t that we aren’t having environmental disequilibrium, it’s that CO2 has anything to do with it. So here’s your science lesson for the day.
Carbon Dioxide traps heat. Not science. Trapping heat would require a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. To wit: Clausius statement of the second law: Heat cannot transfer from a low-temperature body to the high-temperature body until unless there is an external force on the system. But this is exactly what “trapping” heat would require as it would require low temperature CO2 in the upper atmosphere to transfer heat to warmer lower atmosphere CO2 to make it happen.
For those of you who don’t do theoretical physics, there’s also this. What precisely is heat? You kinda have to know that before you know how to trap it. I suspect that many have an 18th century understanding of heat when they thought that heat was an invisible fluid that they called Caloric that flowed from body to body and imbued each body with heat. Answer this question: what is the difference between your oven door when it is cold as opposed to when it’s hot? Do you think that the hot door has more caloric in it? No. All the atoms and molecules in the hot door are vibrating at a higher frequency and amplitude than the cold door. Thus we see that heat is the kinetic energy of motion of atoms and molecules (the 1/2mv^2 energy of motion). This is, in fact, why absolute zero is defined as that temperature where all atomic thermal motion ceases. This is extremely important to understand because it means that heat is an attribute of matter, just like mass, density, length, width, etc. Heat has no existence except as the motion of atoms and molecules. If you want to “trap” heat, you must trap the atoms and molecules that possess it. And if you want to transfer heat between two bodies, they have to be in contact with each other. This is why your plates have a rim at the bottom to minimize the contact with the table and why paper cups have the same thing. Glasses would have the same thing but that would break so you get a thick layer of glass because glass has a crappy coefficient of thermal transfer. How, precisely, could CO2 start trapping molecules?
My point in writing this was to point out the flaw in thinking that CO2 can trap heat. The whole subject is much more complex than I’ve let on. Heat is a form of energy and so is light (electromagnetic radiation). Matter will absorb electromagnetic radiation and thus convert it to heat energy IF AND ONLY IF the wavelength of the light is in the absorption spectrum of the matter in question. Amusingly, CO2 is a simple inorganic molecule and only has two narrow absorption bands in the infrared/near infrared spectrum. What has a broad absorption spectrum is just about any organic matter. Why talk about IR? Only to point out the flip side of all this that the UCEWA types seem to miss. Thanks to two of Maxwell’s four equations, everything in the universe is constantly emitting electromagnetic radiation as a function of, among other things, its temperature. At earth normal temperatures, that electromagnetic radiation is in the infrared region of the spectrum. Thus everything is constantly getting hotter and colder all the time. That’s why nobody studies thermostatics and instead studies thermodynamics. There is nothing static about heat.
The fact Dr Michael Mann disappeared historical warming and cooling data over more than 1,000years, says all we need to know, or should be. But the IPCC (and every tree hugger in the western world) latched onto his “hockey stick” graph like Bill Clinton at a secret children’s island in the US Virgin Islands. Thanks “doctored” Mann this is just the graph we needed to scare the gullible and Bill them for trillions in taxes, now burn your data and refuse to show it in court in the Ball vs Mann court case. – – The IPCC
You are nowhere near as smart as you think you are. Hopefully, you’re good looking.
Don’t you love these posts that just casually explain away scientific orthodoxy, as if a rhetorical argument is all that is needed to refute it? (I particularly enjoy the ones that assume that it hasn’t ever occurred to climate specialists to factor the Sun, volcanoes, etc into their models.) They’d be world famous if they could prove any of their assertions.
Why is it that no one ever addressed climate manipulation. Geoengineeringwatch.org is in the process of legal action against Canadian and American governments to reveal what they are doing to the weather.
Yes, but important not to overlook the other big threat, that posed by the existence of nuclear weapons:
Banning them is essential to our survival:
https://www.icanw.org/
You are loyally serving the bankers. Jamie Dimon loves you.
Everybody knows the Titanic sinks at the end of the movie, yet people still paid a great deal of money to watch the film. Humans are funny this way…
https://osociety.org/2019/03/03/what-the-republican-party-knows-about-climate-change-the-democratic-party-does-not/
There is no climate crisis. Whatever happens with climate isn’t due to human activity.
Yawn. Cigarettes don’t cause cancer and even if they did, humans didn’t invent tobacco, God did because He wants us all to die coughing.
Next, let’s pretend humans can’t land on the moon or better yet, it’s made of Martian green cheese and the Earth is flat, shall we?
There’s a name for people who spread ignorance intentionally for attention and money.
https://osociety.org/2018/10/27/theres-a-word-for-the-study-of-the-intentional-spread-of-ignorance-agnotology/
Thats not a very reasoned reply, do you even know who Dr Michael Mann is? Or how his “hockey stick” chart changed the course of the IPCC and every western government into what they’re forcing upon western societies? When a new scientist comes along (Dr Mann had just received his doctorate) and blatantly ignores all factual data of our historical warming and cooling periods with manipulated, secret data, one should challenge that data. And thankfully many well established scientists have. There was a court decision just a few years ago where Dr Ball was being sued by Dr Mann under the asinine “SLAPP” defense. Well what should have been historical, explosive news around mainstream media, didn’t get any recognition. For Dr Mann was under court order to produce his hockey “schtick” data and computer code to prove his work wasn’t a fraud. He refused to turn over his data and lost his court case. He’s lost all credibility along with every group who latched onto his initial useless hockey schtick chart, which was the IPCC itself. There is resounding evidence though that when our Sun goes to sleep the weather changes drastically. When it has an average amount of sunspots the weather generally average here. These are very well established historical facts, and its why before Dr Mann came along the historical record (which still exists) showed warming and cooling on the planet over the past 1,000s of years. In fact the MWP was warmer than we see today, but over those hundreds of years of the “medieval warm period” there was no carbon emissions from the industrial revolution, yet the planet still warmed. Just because WWF and other organizations (IPCC) get hundreds of millions (and hundreds of billions) of dollars a year in tax payer funding doesn’t mean they know what the heck they are doing. That climategate, glaciergate, africagate, himalayagate, sealevelgate have disappeared from mainstream media doesn’t mean they weren’t caught out in serious (continued) data manipulation, email scandals and obfuscation of major facts showing theres no evidence mankind has any control on the weather. And none of this means you can’t be an environmentalist and have concern for our planet, it means simply climate change has zero to do with mankind’s activities.
The scientific community would disagree with you. So who should we believe. The tinfoil hat brigade or science. Move along troll.
I have this mental image of Hawaii Guy as he lectures us on the finer points of being HI
https://d3hp8xnxb3lun4.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/The-Rake-Hawaiian-Shirts-14.jpg
GO BACK TO HUFFPOST! THIS IS SUPPOSE TO BE A REAL JOURNALISM SITE! WATER LEVELS WILL BE SIX FEET HIGHER IN 86 YEARS! RUN FOR COVER!
Yawn. The fossil fuel companies knew from their own research beginning way back in grandpa’s day they were f’ing up the world for future generations, as in us and our kids. We’ve all seen the supporting documents.
Therefore, continuing to argue about the vaccines causing autism and Bigfoot trudging around California and which Kardashian is the biggest whore is a waste of everyone’s time. Which is why the the fossil fuel companies deliberately spread such ignorance, as in agnotology, to waste our time rather than do something. Our time is short and much better used in how to fix this hellified mess rather than checking on the sanity of some ostriches with sand up to their shoulders.
Here’s 100 ways to do something useful from Paul Hawken:
https://osociety.org/2019/04/22/top-100-solutions-to-address-our-climate-crisis-problems-to-celebrate-earth-day/
One thing most articles about climate change don’t include is the aerosol masking effect. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cleaning-up-air-pollution-may-strengthen-global-warming/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190122104611.htm
If the MSM were to spend as much time on the collapse of our environment and ecology destruction as our MSM reports on Trump what a necessary job of reporting it would accomplish. Only you know as I know that our corporate owned media has its mindset in the same place as our president and that setting is all based on profit.
We have a profit based military so we have continuous war. We have a profit based healthcare system so more people either go bankrupt or they die. We have a profit based media so more citizens go terribly ill informed. When profits mean that oil out ways water then you know we have reached that ugliness of parts that capitalism is all about. But never fear the coming wars and the huge profit to be made from those wars will come from the final fight for clean drinkable water.
“Reflections on Oil and Water”, an excellent article : https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/moebius/vol2/iss2/6/
Good night, Irina! This is an excellent article. If only it had more Marilyn…
https://osociety.org/2019/07/22/reflections-on-water-and-oil/
Don’t forget “profit based” climate change !