Politics of Global Warming

[Tyger]

There are threads that have - and are, albeit in abeyance - discussing the validity of the science substanding Global Warming/AGW/Catastrophic Global Warming. There is also a thread that is exploring the world emerging under the aegis of all that, without debate on the science, presuming the science is accurate.

However there is not a thread exploring the politics of Global Warming, which is considerable.

My newsfeed keeps me abreast of most elements in this area - and some interesting articles have been showing up that I thought warranted a new thread. What prompted the decision was an article that indicated (apparently) a decision by editors to close down the voices of those keen to bring the skeptics' voice to the table. I admit to being initially startled. I would not anticipate this - given that the current US Congress is full of deniers and the assumption was that we were in for a 'bumpy ride' around issues of Global Warming for the next two years. But something else seems to be afoot - what really is, appears to be otherwise on closer inspection.

I offer these articles for a fuller picture around the politics of this topic.

The above said, there is internal evidence that this could be a planted article, that will then get referenced as back-up for other articles. I am reminded of Dick Cheney going on 'Meet the Press' and quoting the New York Times's article the previous day about WMD's to back up what he was saying about WMD's. The New York Times article was a 'plant', so Cheney was effectively quoting himself - even though the Times article was actually not saying what Cheney said it was. We seem to find ourselves in a similar situation here. Not saying it is, just that I am speculating that.

First the article, then the analysis -

Reporters told to stop interviewing 'irrelevant' climate change critics
BY PAUL BEDARD | FEBRUARY 10, 2015
LINK: Reporters told to stop interviewing 'irrelevant' climate change critics | WashingtonExaminer.com

TEXT: "A new study of how environmental reporters cover global warming and climate change reveals that they see the issue as one America has endorsed and, as a result, no longer include critics in their reports because they are “generally irrelevant.” And the orders are coming from editors. What’s more, the study from George Mason University found that climate change reporters are weaving their coverage into stories on broader issues to get around editors who don’t want a lot of reports on global warming.

"The study in the authoritative trade magazine Journalism dubbed getting both sides on the climate change issue “false balance.” The study is available by subscription. In “Covering global warming in dubious times: Environmental reporters in the new media ecosystem,” the study authors interviewed nearly a dozen seasoned climate change reporters in the dwindling world of environmental journalism.

"The reporters described how their field was getting hit by newsroom cuts and always under fire because climate change stories are both incremental and bad news. But they said that the fight over climate change is over, that America believes it is happening, and that critics are no longer being interviewed. “As one reporter said, ‘there is pretty much understanding across the board in the United States media now that this is real, this is true, it’s happening, [and] we’re responsible. That debate is over.’ For this reason, he concluded, ‘in this day and age, including climate denialists in a story about climate change is generally irrelevant,’” said the study.

"The anonymous journalists told the scholars that “this practice of ignoring skeptics was largely supported by their managers and editors. In fact, one reporter’s news organization had recently developed an explicit editorial policy discouraging reporters from quoting climate change deniers in environment or science coverage.” The only paper mentioned in the study was the New York Times.

"The study said that how media covers climate change determines what many people believe, and ignoring criticism is a big deal. “If accurate, this claim of a shift away from the ‘false balance’ coverage of the past is potentially quite significant, because research also suggests that how journalists choose to cover and frame climate change matters. In short, decisions about who to source, how to communicate uncertainty, and even choices of basic terminology can subtly shape how the public understands the issue, including, as numerous studies suggest, their overall level of knowledge as well as their specific views on the causes of climate change, the severity of the problem, and the level of consensus among scientist,” said the study.

"Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist."


The 'Washington Examiner' is LINK: The Washington Examiner - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

TEXT: "The Washington Examiner is a political journalism publication based in Washington, D.C., that distributes its content via daily online reports and a weekly magazine. It is owned by MediaDC, a subsidiary of Clarity Media Group, which is owned by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz and which also owns the influential conservative opinion magazine The Weekly Standard. From 2005 to mid-2013, the Examiner published a daily tabloid-sized newspaper, distributed free throughout the Washington, D.C., metro area, largely focused on local news and conservative commentary. The local newspaper ceased publication on June 14, 2013, and its content began to focus exclusively on national politics, switching its print edition from a daily newspaper to a weekly magazine format." "...right-wing tilt of its editorial pages and sensationalist front-page headlines..."

Wiki states that: "The neutrality of this article's introduction is disputed."

The problem that arises here is that the report being discussed doesn't actually say what the article is reporting (as far as I can determine). Rather than talking about deniers being silenced, it is reporting on what reporters do to get their climate change articles past editors. There is a difference.

Covering global warming in dubious times: Environmental reporters in the new media ecosystem
LINK: Covering global warming in dubious times: Environmental reporters in the new media ecosystem
TEXT: "ABSTRACT - With every Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, the predicted consequences of global warming become increasingly dire. Yet public engagement on the issue, particularly in the United States, lags far behind what is required for collective action. There is therefore an urgent need for vigorous and engaging journalism on climate science and policy-making. Unfortunately, the profession of journalism is currently experiencing an unprecedented period of ferment, as media firms experiment with new ways to expand profits in a rapidly changing media ecosystem. Drawing on in-depth interviews, this article examines how environmental journalists have coped with the challenge of covering climate change in the context of a restructuring news industry. The interviews reveal that, despite the challenges they face – particularly regarding the complexity of the issue and their own economic insecurity – environmental journalists have developed a number of creative strategies for getting climate change stories past editors and in front of audiences. A concluding section draws on a cultural industries approach to studying media institutions in order to evaluate both the promise and limits of these individual acts of creativity."

 

[Tyger]

Very long, intriguing article -

The Pentagon & Climate Change: How Deniers Put National Security at Risk: The leaders of our armed forces know what's coming next – but deniers in Congress are ignoring the warnings
By Jeff Goodell February 12, 2015
LINK: The Pentagon and Climate Change: Is National Security at Risk? | Rolling Stone

 

[Tyger]

Obama Tells the Truth About Climate Change. Oops?
LINK:Terrorism vs climate change: Obama says global warming impacts more people than terrorism—he’s right.

TEXT: "Climate change got only a passing mention in President Obama’s lengthy Voxinterview, but what at first seemed like a largely forgettable exchange has since generated a decent amount of buzz in Washington. Asked whether the media “sometimes overstates” the risks posed by terrorism when compared to things like global warming and epidemic disease, the president responded, “Absolutely.”

"That was a somewhat politically risky response given the flak Obama took for his no-show at last month’s Paris unity march. It drew the predictable response from Mike Huckabee, who quipped on Fox News, “I assure you that a beheading is much worse than a sunburn.” And it also led to a prolonged back-and-forth between White House press secretary Josh Earnest and ABC News’ Jonathan Karl at Tuesday’s briefing, during which Earnest fleshed out Obama’s position like so: "The point that the president is making is that there are many more people on an annual basis who have to confront the impact, the direct impact on their lives of climate change or on the spread of a disease than on terrorism.”

"Which leads me to two points, the first of which the New Republic’s Rebecca Leber makes for me—the numbers back up Obama’s general take. A 2012 DARA International report, commissioned by 20 governments, estimated that climate change causes an average of 400,000 deaths each year—a total that could grow to more than 600,000 by 2030. “Inaction on climate change,” the report concludes, “can be considered a leading global cause of death.” Global warming’s reach grows exponentially larger when you consider more than just fatalities. According to DARA, “250 million people face the pressures of sea-level rise; 30 million people are affected by more extreme weather, especially flooding; 25 million people are affected by permafrost thawing; and 5 million people are pressured by desertification.”

"Terrorism doesn’t even begin to approach those numbers. According to the Global Terrorism Index compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace, there were nearly 18,000 deaths from terrorist attacks in 2013. The report itself concedes that even though terrorism is on the rise, it claims 40 times fewer lives globally than homicide. Only roughly half of terrorist attacks include a fatality, so the true number of those impacted is surely higher, but it’s impossible to imagine the total could approach DARA’s climate figures.

"My second point is that we’ve actually heard a version of this public-health sales pitch from Obama before. During this past summer’s rollout of the EPA’s historic climate initiative, the president and his allies went to great lengths to reframe the climate change debate around the health of our children and the elderly, as opposed to the fate of the polar bears and the melting ice caps that have long served as the de facto mascots of the climate movement.

"There’s evidence that was a smart move. A 2012 research report from Yale University’s Project on Climate Change Communication found that placing the conversation within a public-health frame was more likely “to elicit emotional reactions consistent with support for climate change mitigation and adaptation” than a traditional environmental frame, or even one focused on national security. More importantly was whom the health pitch spoke to loudest: Americans who to varying degrees haven’t made up their minds about just how pressing a threat man-made climate change is.

"Still, it’s not entirely clear if this is a battle the White House wants to have, or just Obama speaking truth off the cuff. Hyping the public-health benefits of addressing climate change is one thing, but the introduction of terrorism into the conversation at least gives the impression that Obama is prioritizing one above the other. The numbers may support doing just that, but it’s unclear if that’s a message Americans are eager to hear. In a Pew Research Center poll last month, global warming came in second from the bottom on a list of Americans’ 23 top policy priorities for 2015. Terrorism, meanwhile, came in first."

 

[Charlie Prime]

AGW is a global tax scheme to transfer wealth from poor people to rich people.

It's a brilliant scam. I'm working to get in on it.

 

[Tyger]

AGW is a global tax scheme to transfer wealth from poor people to rich people.

Don't just assert, explain how the scheme works.

 

[Charlie Prime]

Don't just assert, explain how the scheme works.

It works just like the old scheme of indulgences the Catholic Church employed.

Humans are born filthy sinners. Their very existence produces the sin of carbon emissions. Humans pop out of the womb sinning against God/Gaia.

Fortunately, there exists a class of learned Priests who posses the unique ability to sell forgiveness for sin in the form of indulgences/carbon credits. This technocratic priest class builds highly regressive Carbon Taxes into every human activity such as growing food, staying warm, or moving across the land.

These regressive sin taxes are then extracted from poor people and transferred to the super-rich. The super-rich then use this wealth as power to control and tax ever larger amounts of human activity.

It's brilliant.

 

[Charlie Prime]

My newsfeed keeps me abreast of most elements in this area -

That's well and good, but you aren't really helping the earth unless you purchase Carbon Credits.

The average American emits 20 tons of carbon per year. I will sell you 20 Carbon Credits for the low, one-time price of $16 per ton if you buy 20. If you buy less than 20, I'll sell them to you for $17 each.

How many would you like Tyger?

 

[manxman]

You were warned by one of your greatest statesmen, who could it see coming.

Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation

Eisenhower’s true words still ring valid today, with the great global warming scam.


The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project funding, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.

 

[manxman]

Articles: Climate Change Hysteria and the Madness of Crowds


Shakespeare’s Hamlet pondered the eternal conundrum of competing choices. His “Aye, there’s the rub” nicely summarizes the conflicts inherent in the present socio/political/scientific arena of climate discussions.

Years of relentless doomsday prognostications by a variety of public voices spanning the political-scientific spectrum have found their mark in a gullible and guilt-prone public. There is a Medusa-like quality in the serpentine web of doomsday prophets, including members of the Club of Rome, Paul Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb,” and the current White House science advisor, John Holdren. In the U.S., Rachel Carson proclaimed DDT to be environmental enemy number one, and inspired Al Gore to discover “Inconvenient Truths,” later found to be not so truthful. Al Gore’s contribution to making climate change a co-equal amongst the four horsemen of the apocalypse is matched by M. Mann’s reinterpretation of global temperature history. Repeated refutations of “faulty” science and failed predictions of climate calamities have not deterred these marketers of doom. Cut the head off, yet it lives on.

Sustainability, population control, and redistributive-based social justice were offered as moral justifications for the one-world governance needed to solve one-world problems, as posited by the UK’s Barbara Ward. Answering this “cri de coeur,” the U.N. global bureaucrats crafted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as the instrument by which life-sustaining carbon dioxide would be reinvented as the most dangerous threat to the world. Our current Federal government is more certain than ever that “the science is settled,” and that the global climate bears the human stain of excessive consumption of fossil fuels. An unelected Federal agency, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has assumed the role of guardian of public health via arbitrary edicts regulating all things atmospheric, in addition to all surface waters. Those wishing to pursue independent traditional scientific inquiry and reproducibility of EPA claimed findings have noted an adamant shyness by the EPA in producing the requested original data.

“Fear and loathing” is no longer confined to Las Vegas, but has been turned into a self-hate/guilt propaganda tool by doomsday prophets and fear profiteers. Humans are carbon -- based life forms intertwined in the biological interdependence upon green plant production of oxygen and consumption of carbon dioxide. Thus the guilt stage is set for humans to be declared a living source of this newly-defined carbon pollution, and therefore enemies of mother Earth. According to the Club of Rome: "The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself." Population control is the implied remedy.

More recently, a trio of financial market heavyweights has entered the climate change propaganda fray with their “Risky Business” media blitz. Perhaps somewhat jealous of the huge financial profits that Al Gore‘s Generation Investment Management (GIM) made from his doomsday climate predictions and inconvenient truth campaign, these risk experts have their own updated scare story. Business will lead the way, they say: “We believe that American businesses should play an active role in helping the public sector determine how best to react to the risks and costs posed by climate change, and how to set the rules that move the country forward in a new, more sustainable direction.” Trust us, we are from the government has been usurped by a “trust us, we are from business.” These risk experts and their companies have reaped huge financial rewards by profitably defining and pricing risk, and then getting the public to pay insurance premiums to protect itself from the hypothetical risk. The greater the hyped risk, the greater the corporate insurance profit.

Countering this climate doomsday propaganda has been a number of scientists and independent organizations. Manipulation of the historical temperature record by our own government agencies has been documented. Such revisions serve to make the historical record conform to the political aims and views of our Federal government, that global warming is occurring and is linked to fossil fuel use. Proliferation of internet access has provided the new open public soap box, independent of traditional media, itself fully in the climate panic mode. Web sites maintained by Anthony Watts, Marc Morano, and Steve Milloy are just a few of many striving to get the unpoliticized science before the public.

In this admittedly truncated history of climate change propaganda and counterargument, there is contained the conundrum originally mentioned. Incomplete climate science, unsubstantiated claims in place of traditional scientific proof, political policy dogma, social equity objectives, and businesses feeding off the largess of government and public fear continue to receive scant criticism in the general media. The public has downgraded its concern with “climate change” when polled, yet it continues to elect politicians dedicated to enacting a governmental cure for climate change. Businesses profit from proclaiming that they are “green.” Renewable is the key word for obtaining government largesse.

For the public at large, scientific truth alone does not trump feelings of environmental guilt and demands that politicians take care of the presumptive problem. Scientific validity in these matters is an essential, but not adequate response to change the public’s emotional concerns for “clean air,” “clean energy,” and a “healthy environment for themselves and their children.”

Economist Julian Simon reflected upon the failure of the news media to report his debunking of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s “vanishing farmland scam” in his 1999 book, Hoodwinking the Nation. Most of the rest of the book deals with the conundrum of the public’s propensity to accept “false bad news.” In the intervening 15 years there is little evidence that this peculiar human trait has changed; bad news still sells; bad news still drives charitable public donations.

Even earlier, Charles Mackay provided historical evidence for the peculiar behavior and beliefs of large crowds in his 1841 book, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. It contains an insightful account of the “Tulipomania” craze of the mid-1600s. When considering the current climate change craze, reflect upon Mackay’s observation that: “We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.”

So perhaps climate change hysteria may yet have to burn itself out much like a disease pandemic. Meanwhile traditional science-backed climate studies will continue to have an uphill fight against the propensities of human nature and the madness of crowds.

 

[Tyger]

The Pentagon & Climate Change: How Deniers Put National Security at Risk
The leaders of our armed forces know what's coming next – but deniers in Congress are ignoring the warnings
By Jeff Goodell February 12, 2015
LINK: Page 8 of The Pentagon and Climate Change: Is National Security at Risk? | Rolling Stone

TEXT: "Rear Adm. Jonathan White, the Navy's chief oceanographer and head of its climate-change task force, is one of the most knowledgeable people in the military about what's actually happening on our rapidly heating planet. Whenever another officer or a congressperson corners White and presses him about why he spends so much time thinking about climate change, he doesn't even try to explain thermal expansion of the oceans or ice dynamics in the Arctic. "I just take them down to Norfolk," White says. "When you see what's going on down there, it gives you a sense of what climate change means to the Navy — and to America. And you can see why we're concerned."

"Those who talk most about climate change — scientists, politicians, environmental activists — tend to frame the discussion in economic and moral terms. But last month, in a dramatic turn, President Obama talked about climate change in an explicitly military context: "The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security," he said in his State of the Union address. "We should act like it." "

 

[Tyger]

China, the Climate and the Fate of the Planet
If the world's biggest polluter doesn't radically reduce the amount of coal it burns, nothing anyone does to stabilize the climate will matter. Inside the slow, frustrating — and maybe even hopeful — struggle to find a new way forward
By Jeff Goodell September 15, 2014
LINK: China, the Climate and the Fate of the Planet | Rolling Stone

TEXT: "The blunt truth is that what China decides to do in the next decade will likely determine whether or not mankind can halt – or at least ameliorate – global warming. The view among a number of prominent climate scientists is that if China's emissions peak around 2025, we may – just barely – have a shot at stabilizing the climate before all hell breaks loose. But the Chinese have resisted international pressure to curb their emissions. For years, they have used the argument that they are poor, the West is rich, and that the high levels of carbon in the atmosphere were caused by America's and Europe's 200-year-long fossilfuel binge. Climate change is your problem, they argued – you deal with it. But that logic doesn't hold anymore. China is set to become the largest economy in the world this year, and in 2006, it passed the U.S. as the planet's largest carbon polluter. China now dumps 10 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. That number is expected to grow to 15 billion tons by 2030, dwarfing the pollution of the rest of the world. If that happens, then the chances that the world will cut carbon pollution quickly enough to avert dangerous climate change is, according to Kevin Anderson, deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the U.K., "virtually zero." "

 

[Tyger]

Fossil Fuel Donations Largely Absent From Newspapers' Coverage Of Keystone XL
February 3, 2015
LINK: Fossil Fuel Donations Largely Absent From Newspapers' Coverage Of Keystone XL

 

[Stagger Lee]

It works just like the old scheme of indulgences the Catholic Church employed.

Humans are born filthy sinners. Their very existence produces the sin of carbon emissions. Humans pop out of the womb sinning against God/Gaia.

Fortunately, there exists a class of learned Priests who posses the unique ability to sell forgiveness for sin in the form of indulgences/carbon credits. This technocratic priest class builds highly regressive Carbon Taxes into every human activity such as growing food, staying warm, or moving across the land.

These regressive sin taxes are then extracted from poor people and transferred to the super-rich. The super-rich then use this wealth as power to control and tax ever larger amounts of human activity.

It's brilliant.

Could this be why I received a $1200 dollar electric bill last year for the month of February? We switched providers in the fall of that year to save money on electric bill. That provider jack up it's rates in the winter months putting our 1000 sq ft. ranch home in the thousands to heat last winter. We are still paying it off.

 

[manxman]

Could this be why I received a $1200 dollar electric bill last year for the month of February? We switched providers in the fall of that year to save money on electric bill. That provider jack up it's rates in the winter months putting our 1000 sq ft. ranch home in the thousands to heat last winter. We are still paying it off.

Sheesh, ah well, thats climate change for ya, funny enough weve had a mild winter, we use around 10kwh a day average, 16.1p, and with extras final 18p kwh, i have the july/aug/sept here, £147.11 [ 820kwh ]with promp payment discount, heating is by oil, about £30 a week mid winter months, about £800 a year now [1000ltr] its cheap, oil is only used to heat the water 7 months of the year, pretty cheap all the same.

This quarters bill last year was 179.99 [jan/feb/march]. that rise is lighting and central heating water pump, pumping hot water round radiators all day.

I thought you yanks got your gas cheap, our electric is oil generated.

 

[Open-Minded-Earthling]

Could this be why I received a $1200 dollar electric bill last year for the month of February? We switched providers in the fall of that year to save money on electric bill. That provider jack up it's rates in the winter months putting our 1000 sq ft. ranch home in the thousands to heat last winter. We are still paying it off.

Btw, what was your thermostat set at [or the range if changed] for how long each day? Can you share with us the electric company that charges such high rates?

Were you always having to keep it at that setting, since someone was at home all the time? I'm just trying to understand how high it had to be set for X-hours a day. Sometimes, people are gone most of the day, and can turn it down during work hours too. Etc. Etc.

For such a small place it sure seems excessively high.

 

[Tyger]

An article from just over a year ago - not really that long ago but it's amazing how quickly events move and how quickly information becomes dated. Records are being broken left and right - and here in the winter of 2015 the eastern US is dealing with another Polar Vortex weather system.

As the following article demonstrates, it's a far from clear story playing out.

Obama and Climate Change: The Real Story
The president has said the right things about climate change – and has taken some positive steps. But we're drilling for more oil and digging up more carbon than ever
By Bill McKibben December 17, 2013
LINK: Page 3 of Obama and Climate Change: The Real Story | Rolling Stone

 

[Open-Minded-Earthling]

Referring to this: "Actually, of course, "the problem" is that climate change is spiraling out of control. Under Obama we've had the warmest year in American history – 2012 – featuring a summer so hot that corn couldn't grow across much of the richest farmland on the planet. We've seen the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded north of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and the largest wind field ever measured, both from Hurricane Sandy. We've watched the Arctic melt, losing three quarters of its summer sea ice. We've seen some of the largest fires ever recorded in the mountains of California, Colorado and New Mexico. And not just here, of course – his term has seen unprecedented drought and flood around the world. The typhoon that just hit the Philippines, according to some meteorologists, had higher wind speeds at landfall than any we've ever seen.
======================

There really needs to be a graph showing and tracking the extremes in weather and climate conditions from around the world and in critical regions prone to famine and drought vs average climate change periods and cycles. Why?

Seeing is believing. Get hard science graphs that plot the "extreme measurement" increases and intensity over time vs previous long-term periods, and it could convince people on "the fence" that this is a real danger to humanity and the harmful extinction and reduction of species. There ought to be some natural cycles that are recorded in nature that will clear-out "the noise" patterns to tune-in a very definite increase in extremes of climate and weather intensities that will plot well outside the norms and ranges for what we should be experiencing now.

 

[Tyger]

Referring to this: "Actually, of course, "the problem" is that climate change is spiraling out of control. Under Obama we've had the warmest year in American history – 2012 – featuring a summer so hot that corn couldn't grow across much of the richest farmland on the planet. We've seen the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded north of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and the largest wind field ever measured, both from Hurricane Sandy. We've watched the Arctic melt, losing three quarters of its summer sea ice. We've seen some of the largest fires ever recorded in the mountains of California, Colorado and New Mexico. And not just here, of course – his term has seen unprecedented drought and flood around the world. The typhoon that just hit the Philippines, according to some meteorologists, had higher wind speeds at landfall than any we've ever seen.
======================

There really needs to be a graph showing and tracking the extremes in weather and climate conditions from around the world and in critical regions prone to famine and drought vs average climate change periods and cycles. Why?

Seeing is believing. Get hard science graphs that plot the "extreme measurement" increases and intensity over time vs previous long-term periods, and it could convince people on "the fence" that this is a real danger to humanity and the harmful extinction and reduction of species. There ought to be some natural cycles that are recorded in nature that will clear-out "the noise" patterns to tune-in a very definite increase in extremes of climate and weather intensities that will plot well outside the norms and ranges for what we should be experiencing now.

There is another poster - Dissection Stalker - who has said much the same thing on another thread - New World: Climate Change New World: Climate Change | Page 14 | The Paracast Community Forums though in Dissection Stalker's case its about the predictions - making a time line and ticking off the events as they occur, or if they occur.

The premise of that thread is that climate change is occurring, no debate, for clarity sake. It looks at what the world coming will be like - determined as much by facts and unfolding natural events as by beliefs stemming from how to proceed in the face of it all.

Anyway, on that thread all the evidence of the world-wide changes that I find is being gathered, but one has to read and sift through the articles and videos to assemble the facts, the extremes, etc. Wander over and take a look.

It'd be great if you could do those graphs.

 

[Tyger]

Merchants of Doubt is the film being spoken about with such high praise in the above link, based on the book of the same name.

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming – by Naomi Oreskes Erik M. Conway

TEXT: " Merchants of Doubt should finally put to rest the question of whether the science of climate change is settled. It is, and we ignore this message at our peril." - Elizabeth Kolbert

"Brilliantly reported andwritten with brutal clarity." - Huffington Post

"Merchants of Doubt was one of the most talked-about climate change books of recent years, for reasons easy to understand: It tells the controversialstory of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. The same individuals who claim the scienceof global warming is "not settled" have also denied the truth about studies linking smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. "Doubt is our product," wrote one tobacco executive. These "experts" supplied it."

 

[Tyger]

Here is the top-rated Amazon review of the above book: 'Merchants of Doubt'.

I have read many books that infuriated me, and I was glad for the experience. It's good to get pissed off at injustice, fictional or real, and come away energized, eager to do your small part in correcting whatever wrong the book exposed. But although "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming" is brilliantly reported and written with brutal clarity, it has left me with a different reaction --- frustration that lobbyists and "experts" have blocked all meaningful steps to avert environment disaster. And will continue to do so, not just until millions are afflicted with skin cancer and the wheat fields are bone dry and the poor are fighting in the streets for water. No. In the very last minute of the very last hour of humanity's very last day on earth, a scientist on the payroll of an oil or coal company --- most likely a scientist who has no expertise in environmental matters and whose scientific contributions ended decades ago --- will be saying there's "still doubt" about global warming.

Naomi Oreskes is a real scientist and historian. She's Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego; her books include "Plate Tectonics: An Insider's History of the Modern Theory of the Earth," cited by Library Journal as one of the best science and technology books of 2002. A few years ago, she tired of the Bush administration's insistence that "most" scientists disagree with the notion of global warming, so she did what a real scientist does --- she read every single piece of science written on the subject to see what "most" scientists said about it.

Not one of them called it a "theory." Her conclusion:

"No scientific conclusion can ever be proven, absolutely, but it is no more a 'belief' to say that Earth is heating up than it is to say that continents move, that germs cause disease, that DNA carries hereditary information or that quarks are the basic building blocks of subatomic matter. You can always find someone, somewhere, to disagree, but these conclusions represent our best available science, and therefore our best basis for reasoned action."

Her new book, written with science journalist Erik Conway, is about the absence of reasoned action --- and not just when the issue is global warming. The real shocker of this book is that it takes us, in just 274 brisk pages, through seven scientific issues that called for decisive government regulation and didn't get it, sometimes for decades, because a few scientists sprinkled doubt-dust in the offices of regulators, politicians and journalists. Suddenly the issue had two sides. Better not to do anything until we know more.

Truth in science is a process: research, followed by scientific writing, followed by peer review. In this way, mistakes are corrected, findings refined, validity confirmed. But the interests of scientists on the payroll of, say, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco wasn't truth. "They were not interested in finding facts," Oreskes and Conway write. "They were interested in fighting them."

Here's the absolute stunner --- some of the scientists who were on the payroll of tobacco companies turn out to be the very same scientists now working for oil and coal companies to create confusion about global warming.

Why you may ask, would scientists who once had impressive reputations pose as "experts" on topics which they have no history of expertise?

Frederick Seitz and Fred Singer --- the most visible of the tobacco-causes-cancer and man-causes-global-warming deniers --- were both physicists. Long ago, Seitz helped built the atomic bomb; long ago, Singer developed satellites. Both were politically conservative. Both supported the War in Vietnam and politicians who were obsessed with the Soviet threat. Both were patriots who believed that defending business had something to do with defending freedom. And both were beneficiaries of the strategy that John Hill, Chairman and CEO of the Hill & Knowlton public relations firm, laid out for tobacco executives in 1953: "Scientific doubts should remain." The way to encourage doubt? Call for "more research" --- and fund it.

You can imagine what this did to media coverage in our country. As early as the 1930s, German scientists had shown that cigarettes caused lung cancer. (No one smoked around Hitler.) By the early 1960s, scientists working for American tobacco companies agreed --- nicotine was "addictive" and its smoke was "carcinogenic." But the incessant call for more research and "balanced" journalism kept the smoking controversy alive until 2006, when a federal judge found the tobacco industry guilty under the RICO statute (that is, guilty of a criminal pattern of fraud.) Fifty years of doubt! Impressive.

"The tobacco road would lead through Star Wars, nuclear winter, acid rain and the ozone hole, all the way to global warming," Oreskes and Conway write. The lay reader may want to read the tobacco stories, skim the middle chapters, and then re-focus on global warming, the subject of the book's second half. There you can thrill to the argument that the sun is to blame. Revel in the attacks on environmental scientists (they're all Luddites, and some are probably pinkos). See politics trump science. (The attack on Rachel Carson, who first alerted us to the dangers of DDT, is especially potent. In a novel, Michael Crichton had a character say, "Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler....It was so safe you could eat it.")

Fifty-six "environmentally skeptical" books were published in the 1990s --- and 92% of them were linked to a network of right-wing foundations. As late as 2007, 40% of the American public believed global warming was still a matter of scientific debate. (It's not just Americans who are now addled. Just today, in the New York Times, I read that "only 26 percent of Britons believe that `climate change is happening and is now established as largely manmade,' down from 41 percent in November 2009. A poll conducted for the German magazine Der Spiegel found that 42 percent of Germans feared global warming, down from 62 percent four years earlier.")

I'm just dancing on the surface of this book's revelations. There's so much more, and it's all of a piece --- as the director of British American Tobacco finally admitted, "A demand for scientific proof is always a formula for inaction and delay, and usually the first reaction of the guilty."

Well said, as far as it goes. When I finished "Merchants of Doubt," I felt a little more strongly about that guilt. I try to have compassion for the failings of others, hoping that they might have compassion for my failings, but I have trouble thinking that these scientists and the CEOs who hired them were misguided or confused or even blinded by the incessant need for profit. I now think there really is such a thing as Evil. In their book, Oreskes and Conway do a great public service --- they give us their names of the villains and tell us their stories.​