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Politics of Global Warming

Free episodes:

Pressure is growing. A relentless climate movement is starting to win big, unprecedented victories around the world, victories which are quickly reshaping the consensus view. - Bill McKibben
LINK: Climate fight won't wait for Paris: vive la résistance | Environment | The Guardian

TEXT: "In the third piece in the Guardian’s major series on climate change, Bill McKibben describes how relentless climate movements have shifted the advantage towards fossil fuel resistance for the first time in 25 years. But he argues triumph is not certain – we must not rest till the industry is forced to keep the carbon in the ground. You can read previous pieces here Bill McKibben"
 
It is our great collective misfortune that the scientific community made its decisive diagnosis of the climate threat at the precise moment when an elite minority was enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and intellectual power than at any point since the 1920s - Naomi Klein
LINK: How will everything change under climate change? | Environment | The Guardian

TEXT: "The second in amajor series of articles on the climate crisis and how humanity can solve it. In this extract taken from the Introduction to This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein, the author calls the climate crisis a civilisational wake-up call to alter our economy, our lifestyles, now – before they get changed for us. You can read the first extract here. Naomi Klein "
 
Go into all previous Global Warming/Climate Change threads on this chat site - and you will see 'the playbook' being modeled down to word-for-word quotes. It's eerie how wholesale the language was used over-and-over again.

“Keep it short, keep it simple, keep it funny”

March 11, 2015
LINK: “Keep it short, keep it simple, keep it funny” | Schatzie's Earth Project

TEXT:
  1. Deny the problem
  2. Minimize the problem
  3. Call for more evidence
  4. Shift the blame
  5. Cherry pick the data
  6. Shoot the messenger
  7. Attack alternatives
  8. Hire industry friendly scientists
  9. Create front groups
"Morano is clearly overcompensating for something. Ahem. This guy has ruined so many decent people’s lives, and he takes pleasure in it, which is the sign of a sociopath and a narcissist.

"He makes me wish there was a hell. But, hey, I can take his advice…"
 
If enough of us decide that climate change is a crisis worthy of Marshall Plan levels of response, then it will become one By Naomi Klein, Friday 6 March 2015
LINK: Don't look away now, the climate crisis needs you | Naomi Klein | Environment | The Guardian

TEXT: "The Guardian is embarking on a major series of articles on the climate crisis and how humanity can solve it. In the first, an extract taken from the Introduction to THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING by Naomi Klein, the author argues that if we treat climate change as the crisis it is, we don’t just have the potential to avert disaster but could improve society in the process."

 
Last edited:
Oligarchy and Climate Change: A Catastrophic Coincidence
By Naomi Klein, The Guardian UK 09 March 15
LINK: Oligarchy and Climate Change: A Catastrophic Coincidence

TEXT: "The second in a major series of articles on the climate crisis and how humanity can solve it. In this extract taken from the Introduction to This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein, the author calls the climate crisis a civilisational wake-up call to alter our economy, our lifestyles, now – before they get changed for us."
 
We could radically cut fossil fuel emissions and shift to renewable energy. So why don’t we?
LINK: We could radically cut carbon pollution and shift to renewables. So why don’t we?

TEXT: "My mind keeps coming back to the question: What is wrong with us? I think the answer is far more simple than many have led us to believe: we have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have been struggling to find a way out of this crisis.

"We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe—and would benefit the vast majority—are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets. That problem might not have been insurmountable had it presented itself at another point in our history. But it is our great collective misfortune that the scientific community made its decisive diagnosis of the climate threat at the precise moment when those elites were enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and intellectual power than at any point since the 1920s."


From “How Everything Will Change Under Climate Change,” Naomi Klein’sGuardian story about why humanity has failed to change course when it comes to climate change
 
A CLIMATE SEA CHANGE: Global resistance is beginning to erode the fossil fuel industry in a visible way—but the fight is far from over
LINK: The mantra of the climate movement: fossil freeze. Solar thaw. Keep it in the ground.

TEXT: "Forget sea level rise for a moment—this is a sea change, happening in real time before our eyes, as the confidence in an old order starts to collapse.

"Last September the members of the Rockefeller family—the first family of fossil fuels—announced that they were divesting their philanthropies from coal, oil, and gas for reasons ‘both moral and economic.’ As the head of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund put it, ‘We are quite convinced that if John D Rockefeller were alive today, as an astute businessman looking out to the future, he would be moving out of fossil fuels and investing in clean, renewable energy.’ This is the rough equivalent of the Pope appearing at his Vatican window in saffron robes to tell the crowd below he’s now a Hare Krishna, or Richard Dawkins showing up at Lourdes in a bathing suit.”


From “Vive la résistance,” Bill McKibben's Guardian piece on the climate movement's steadily-building momentum (at long last)
 
As permafrost melts, more methane-fueled explosions are pockmarking Siberia's landscape.
LINK: As permafrost melts, more methane-fueled explosions are pockmarking Siberia's landscape

TEXT: "Siberia, already known for unwelcoming terrain, now has even more explosive craters than scientists thought. Called pingos, these massive holes form when natural gas builds up beneath the ground—and then ignites. Boom.

"The region's recent warmer-than-usual summers have been melting permafrost, resulting in thawing and rotting organic materials that release the highly flammable methane. Having first detected three pingos last summer, scientists (and the area's reindeer herders) are now finding dozens of them.

"As a potent greenhouse gas, the methane burped up from below isn't doing our climate any favors, but so far pingos aren't releasing enough of the gas to worry scientists too much. Even so, do you think the earth may be trying to tell us something?"
 
Sorry for the language in the headline, but Senator Ted Cruz does embarrass himself. Big time. :rolleyes:

Idiot Ted Cruz Shut Down by NASA Director on Climate Change Research -
March 13, 2015
LINK: Idiot Ted Cruz Shut Down by NASA Director on Climate Change Research

TEXT: "
Senator Ted Cruz tried to catch NASA administrator Charles Bolden in a chart trap and it blew up in Cruz’s face. When Cruz tried to corner Bolden into saying that either NASA was appropriately funded or Earth science studies, which for Cruz was code for climate change/global warming research, Bolden shut that line of thinking down.

"Administrator Bolden said to Cruz: 'We can’t go anywhere if the Kennedy Space Center goes underwater and we don’t know it – and that’s understanding our environment. As Senator Nelson said, it is absolutely critical that we understand Earth’s environment because this is the only place that we have to live.' "


Sen. Ted Cruz First Q&A at NASA Budget Hearing

TEXT: "Published on Mar 12, 2015: March 12, 2015"
 
The Kochs Are Dodging a Climate-Science Funding Investigation - March 13, 2015
LINK: The Kochs Are Dodging a Climate-Science Funding Investigation

TEXT: "Billionaires Charles and David Koch said they will not cooperate with a Senate-led investigation into whether or not they funded climate-change-denying research, reported Al Jazeera America.

"Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer-Calif., Edward Markey-Mass., and Sheldon Whitehouse-RI sent a letter of inquiry to Koch Industries Inc. requesting documentation concerning their alleged funding of climate research. Koch general counsel Mark Holden replied and denied any cooperation with the Senate investigation. “In reviewing your letter, I did not see any explanation or justification for an official Senate Committee inquiry into activities protected by the First Amendment,” said Holden. Holden also said that the inquiry violated the Kochs’ First Amendment right to engage in public policy debates.

"This attempted investigation comes shortly after Greenpeace found that Wei-Hock Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics accepted money from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. In studies funded by that money, Soon asserted that climate change was natural and not man-made. Greenpeace found that Soon has received more than $1.2 million from the fossil-fuel industry to promote bad science. However, the total amount of Koch contributions to scientists is still unclear. “For years, we at Greenpeace have been working to make public the secret paper trails that show what everyone already knows: Climate science deniers – #fakexperts – are few and far between, and most of them are paid by companies most responsible for global warming to downplay the problem,” said Greenpeace.

"The Koch money network is massive and far-reaching. The Kochs’ lack of transparency only adds suspicion. With the amount of money they pump into conservative causes, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn they spent large amounts of money on climate-denying research."
 
Kochs Say No to Dems' Probe Into Climate Research Funding
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, MARCH 10, 2015
LINK: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/201...-us-koch-industries-climate-science.html?_r=0

TEXT: "WASHINGTON — The industrial conglomerate run by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch is refusing to provide Democratic lawmakers with information on whether it has paid for climate change research. Last month, three Democratic senators sent 100 letters to an assortment of fossil-fuel companies and organizations seeking information on whether they have backed research into global warming and other environmental topics. Koch Industries Inc., which includes refining, chemical and pipeline companies, was among the recipients.

"But in a March 5 letter obtained by The Associated Press, Mark V. Holden, Koch's senior vice president and general counsel, wrote that such information treads on First Amendment rights. "To the extent that your letter touches on matters that implicate the First Amendment, I am sure you recognize Koch's right to participate in the debate of important public policy issues and its right of free association," Holden writes.

"The brothers have donated heavily to conservative causes and candidates while criticizing the Obama administration's efforts to combat global warming. n January, the political machine backed by the brothers told allies that spending across its conservative network would approach $1 billion ahead of 2016's elections. That sum from Freedom Partners would dwarf expected spending from official GOP committees and many of the hopefuls expected to seek the Republican party's presidential nomination in 2016.

"A spokesman for Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts said in a statement emailed Tuesday to the AP that "companies that are supporting legitimate, scientific inquiry should have no concerns about responding." The investigation by Markey and Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island was triggered by documents obtained and released by Greenpeace that revealed Wei-Hock Soon, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, received $1.2 million from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade without disclosing any conflict of interest in his scientific papers. Soon attributes global warming to variations in the sun's energy rather than burning of fossil fuels, which the majority of scientists say is the cause.

"In a statement issued by the Heartland Institute, Soon said he would be happy to comply with any disclosures at scientific journals and called the effort a shameless attempt to silence his scientific research."
 
Climate Denying Scientist Received Millions From Industry
TEXT: "Published on Mar 13, 2015: Dr. Wei-Hock Soon is a leading name in the denial of climate science. Recent documents, however, reveal that many of his peer-reviewed articles were funded by those who would benefit most from the denial of climate science, such as Exxon Mobil and the American Petroleum Institute."
 
Maher Destroys I***t on Climate Change: What Do You Have Against Listening to Scientists?
TEXT: "Published on Jan 24, 2015: Bill Maher last night (Feb. 23, 2015) tackled Republican climate denial and asked what exactly they have against listening to the overwhelming consensus of over ten thousand climate scientists. He brought up a study showing those thousands of scientists agree on manmade climate change, compared to two who don’t. Bret Stephens argued that climate fear mongering has been going on for a while, but Maher dismissed that as another Republican talking point. He brought up that study and asked, “Doesn’t that persuade you? The idea of scientific consensus? Don’t you think scientists know more about science than we do?” Stephens shot back that scientists don’t know that much about public policy. Maher said it’s “hubris” to spit in the face of so much scientific consensus, while Stephens insisted, “Consensus should not rule science.” "
 
Conservative Pundits Demand Bill Nye Stop Bullying Them on Climate Change
TEXT: "Published on May 12, 2014: When Bill Nye appears on CNN's Crossfire to discuss climate change, I wonder if he was expecting CNN host S.E. Cupp and her fellow Conservative guest from the Heritage Foundation to call him a science bully..."
 
'The Road to Paris' Climate Series: The Significance of COP21 with Secretary Kerry
TEXT: "Streamed live on March 12, 2015: 'The Road to Paris' Climate Series: The Significance of COP21
Please join us on Thursday, March 12th, 2015 from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. for a public address by Secretary of State John F. Kerry on the importance of the 2015 Conference of the Parties (COP21) climate change negotiations.

"As the annual COP21 international climate negotiations draw near, and as the world experiences symptoms of climate change including increased precipitation, sea level rise, and heat waves, the next few months are crucial. Reducing climate pollution and transitioning to a clean-energy economy will require a global effort. Many are looking to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an international treaty, to deliver that outcome.

"As the United States and key partners around the world embark on the road to Paris, the progress achieved between now and December is key to whether the world rises to the challenge of curbing climate change. Secretary Kerry will speak about the US government's climate efforts, place climate negotiations in a global context, and outline why climate change is a priority for the nation's chief diplomat."
 
Op-Ed
Why fee and dividend is better than cap and trade at fighting climate change - March 5, 2015

LINK: Why fee and dividend is better than cap and trade at fighting climate change - LA Times

TEXT: "California is leading the nation in taking action on climate change. AB 32, passed in 2006, established carbon pricing in the state with a system called cap and trade.

"Simply put, this system caps carbon emissions from large polluters by selling a set number of emission allowances at state auctions. The number of allowances sold declines annually until California's emissions goals are achieved. Businesses can trade their surplus allowances to those that find it difficult to reduce emissions. The money the state collects from the auctions goes toward other emission-reducing measures mandated by AB 32, including sustainable energy projects and rebates for electric cars and solar panels.

"In a March 5 Op-Ed article on fee and dividend carbon pricing, the United States was identified as having the highest per capita CO2 emissions in the world. In fact, many countries have higher per capita CO2 emissions, but of the top six carbon emitting countries or regions (U.S., China, Russia, India, Japan and the European Union), the U.S. has the highest per capita emissions.

"What AB 32 set in motion has begun to reduce California's emissions. But California alone can't solve climate change. The U.S. has the highest per capita carbon emissions in the world. Between what we emit at home and what is emitted abroad in the making and shipping of goods we consume, Americans are responsible for close to 30% of global carbon dioxide. Although China and the U.S. have recently set mutual targets, for years the lack of a national commitment to reduce emissions prevented other big polluters from reducing theirs. And unless global emissions decrease, California will suffer catastrophic effects of climate change along with the rest of the world.All of this points to an urgent need for a national climate policy. California would like that policy to include its cap and trade program as the centerpiece. But despite the program's successes so far, this method of pricing carbon does not provide the best model for federal legislation.

"One reason is that cap and trade does not address secondary consumption, the emissions that are generated offshore for goods we consume. If we ignore those emissions, we cut our ability to reduce our totals by half.

"Another reason is politics. The effectiveness of California's program is dependent on careful implementation and oversight that entailed the construction of a sizable administrative infrastructure within the California Air Resources Board. On the national stage, Republicans in Congress would never allow the increase in the size of government necessary for an effective federal cap and trade program.

"The complexity of cap and trade is also a barrier to scaling up the program without reducing its effectiveness. Getting the details wrong can mean the difference between success and failure. The European Union's program is a case in point: It hasn't adequately reduced emissions partly because the cap was set too high and attempts to remedy the problem haven't worked yet.

"There is no time for that sort of trial and error if we are to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. Instead, we need a price on carbon that we know will work and that can be implemented effectively and quickly.

"There is a simple solution that will bring down emissions quickly without increasing the size of government, and without cumbersome regulation, both of which are anathema to Republicans. It's called a carbon “fee and dividend” plan.

"It works like this: A fee is placed on carbon-based fuels at the source (well, mine, port of entry). This fee would start at $15 per ton of CO2 emitted and increase steadily and predictably each year by $10. Within a decade, clean energy would be cheaper than fossil fuels, giving entrepreneurs and investors an incentive to back clean energy sources.

"All the revenue realized from the fees would be evenly distributed to all Americans to help pay for increased costs of goods and services. And while cap and trade puts more of the burden of increased costs on lower-income Americans who spend a greater share of their income on energy, fee and dividend protects the less well-to-do. Because they use less energy on an absolute basis, their equal dividend share will more than cover their added costs.

"Fee and dividend would also include a border adjustment, so that importers from countries that do not adopt similar carbon pricing would pay their fees at our border. Economically, this ensures a level playing field for U.S. companies. On the emissions side, it ensures that secondary consumption is accounted for, and encourages all countries to place similar fees on carbon.

"Fee and dividend is a policy that climate scientists and economists agree is a good first step to reduce catastrophic effects of climate change. California would benefit because the rapid decrease in emissions would be good for the state's pollution problem and would make costly future AB 32 regulations unnecessary.

"And it scales easily. As more nations adopt the system, worldwide demand will bring green technologies to mass market faster, driving down costs and making the transition to a green economy easier for everyone.

"But the biggest advantage of enacting carbon fee and dividend is that it's the quickest way to bring down emissions so we can stabilize, then start restoring, our climate for our grandchildren."

Noelle Sedor is a member of Citizens' Climate Lobby in Oakland.
 
How ALEC's Latest Actions Are Harming Our Planet
TEXT: "Published on Mar 17, 2015: Brendan Fischer, Center for Media and Democracy / ALECexposed joins Thom. ALEC is the Koch brothers' affiliated group that's brought America such hits as voter suppression ID laws and stand your ground shoot first measures. So what's the corporate lobbying juggernaut up to now - and how are the group's latest actions harming our planet?"
 
Some perspective. There is such venom directed at Gore by the Right that one can get a fun-house-mirror sensation - when in fact life moves on and is lived in real terms. Gore is not a joke, however much the Right seeks to nullify him.

The New Optimism of Al Gore

By JOHN SCHWARTZMARCH 16, 2015
LINK: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/17/science/the-new-optimism-of-al-gore.html?_r=2

TEXT: "NASHVILLE — Al Gore wants to make a point about cellphones, and he has a helpful set of slides on his laptop. “Do you want to see that?” he asks, and starts to turn the MacBook around. “It’s not two hours — don’t worry.”

"Mr. Gore knows he is The Guy With the Slides, the man who will talk about the environment until you can no longer remember the color of the sky. He long ago mastered the self-deprecating gestures that let you know that he knows what you are thinking. And then he shows you the slides anyway. Slides have been very good to the former vice president of the United States, almost president, environmental activist and now successful green investor. His slide show on the threat of climate change, presented in the movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” won an Academy Award. His efforts to spread the word about global warming earned him, along with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a Nobel Peace Prize. His was a dire call to strenuous and difficult action.

"Over the last year, however, the prophet of doom has become much more a prophet of possibility — even, perhaps, an optimist. Still an object of derision for the political right, Mr. Gore has seen support for his views rising within the business community: Investment in renewable energy sources like wind and solar is skyrocketing as their costs plummet. He has slides for that, too. Experts predicted in 2000 that wind generated power worldwide would reach 30 gigawatts; by 2010, it was 200 gigawatts, and by last year it reached nearly 370, or more than 12 times higher. Installations of solar power would add one new gigawatt per year by 2010, predictions in 2002 stated. It turned out to be 17 times that by 2010 and 48 times that amount last year. “I think most people have been surprised, even shocked, by how quickly the cost has come down,” Mr. Gore says in his office in an environmentally friendly building in the prosperous Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville.

"He sports a style that might be called Southern business casual: a blazer and dress shirt, bluejeans and cowboy boots. At age 66, he is also trimmer than he was during his bearish, bearded period after the 2000 election, thanks in part to a vegan diet he has maintained for two years. In this city? Home of heavenly meat-and-three platters? He smiles and says proudly, “There are 10 vegan restaurants in Nashville now.” Over an hour and a half, he delivers an endless stream of facts and trends from around the globe. Every minute in Bangladesh, two more homes get new rooftop solar panels. Dubai’s state utility accepted a bid for a solar power plant with a cost per kilowatt-hour of less than six cents. “Wow,” he says, his eyes wide. “That just set everybody on their ear.”

"Such changes, he says, represent a sharp break with the past, not a slow evolution. That is the point of those slides on his laptop. In 1980, one shows, consultants for AT&T projected that 900,000 cellphones might be sold by 2000. In fact, there were 109 million by then. Today there are some seven billion. “So the question is: Why were they not only wrong, but way wrong?” he says. He presses a button, and up pops an old photo of a young Al Gore with a helmet of hair and an early mobile phone roughly the size of one of Michael Jordan’s sneakers.

"The same kind of transformation that turned those expensive, clunkers into powerful computers in every pocket is happening now in energy, he says, with new technology leapfrogging old infrastructure. “It’s coming so fast,” he says. “It’s very, very exciting.” All of this means, he adds, that the worst effects of climate change can be blunted. “We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he says. “We’re going to win this.” He pauses and repeats for effect, part preacher and part TED talk. “We’re going to win this. “The only question is how long it takes.”

"He is pleased to see the Obama administration becoming more active on climate issues. President Obama’s advocacy of climate change action was overshadowed by the push for health care legislation, a disappointment for Mr. Gore and other environmentalists. “He did not use the bully pulpit in quite the way many of us would have wanted in his first term,” Mr. Gore says. But since Mr. Obama’s re-election, his stronger voice on global warming, tougher carbon emission regulations and major climate agreement with China have the former vice president smiling. “He’s doing a terrific job on it now,” he says.

"Mr. Gore is continuing to spread the word. Last month, at the end of an optimistic talk about climate change at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he and the singer Pharrell Williams announced a Live Earth concert to be held on all seven continents on June 18. The concert will include a moment, Mr. Williams told those at the forum, when “we are literally going to have humanity harmonize all at once.”

"In the meantime, Mr. Gore will keep his frenetic schedule of training programs around the world. He has met with large groups in Australia, Indonesia, Brazil, India and elsewhere to present local versions of his climate change slide show. Those who attend, in turn, make the presentation to their own countrymen, spreading the word far more broadly than the documentary ever did. “The work of the trainees is not the sort of thing you see on the front page of the newspaper, but they are reaching networks of colleagues and friends in a most powerful way,” said Don Henry, a professor at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute and former head of the Australian Conservation Foundation. “Those people are out there changing the world.” Those presentations are exhaustive — and exhausting, says Orin Kramer, a New York hedge fund manager and friend of Mr. Gore. He attended a training program with some 600 people that was scheduled to run from 8:30 in the morning until 5 p.m. “I assumed there’s going to be a 40-minute warm-up” by Mr. Gore, he says, and then the rest of the day’s activities would be led by assistants.

"Instead, “he stands up there in front of this group of people for eight and a half hours and 164 climate slides,” Mr. Kramer says. Many members of the audience were scientists who asked pointed questions, citing specific studies; Mr. Gore answered study with study, point for point. “He knew more about the academic literature than any of the academics in the audience,” Mr. Kramer says. “He basically out-nerded all the other nerds in the room.”

"At the same time, Mr. Gore is a less visible leader of the environmental movement in the United States. While he participated in the enormous march before the climate summit in New York City in September, he was not a focus of coverage. But his voice is still being heard, said Reed E. Hundt, a close friend of Mr. Gore who served as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission during the Clinton administration. “Give me the top three global leaders in opinion shaping climate change,” he says. “If you don’t put Gore in that group, I’d be surprised.” But being the lone voice, he adds, means “being a prophet without honor.” “Nobody wants that job,” Mr. Hundt says. “When you go from being the one guy that says this and that and the other to being the first among equals, to being part of a group of like-minded people, that’s called success.”

"Mr. Gore has also become very rich. He co-founded Generation Investment Management, a firm that takes positions in companies that manage themselves along principles of sustainability, including the effects of climate change. He also sits on the board of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which invests heavily in green start-ups. He sold his cable channel, Current TV, to Al Jazeera America in 2013 in a deal that earned him a reported $100 million. (He and his fellow shareholders suedAl Jazeera last year over the deal, alleging fraud and breach of contract.) His success in the business world has surprised many people, Mr. Kramer says. “I didn’t think of him as a business guy — I’m sure nobody did,” he says, adding that “he is a phenomenally deep student of critical forces that ultimately change society.”

"This success has also been the subject of howls from those who find much to dislike about Mr. Gore. His old foes eagerly take aim when his name comes up. Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, who has called climate change “the greatest hoax,” now heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. When asked his view of Mr. Gore, he issued a lengthy diatribe against the former vice president’s “alarmism campaign.” Through a spokeswoman, he said in part, “Al Gore’s immense wealth is largely due to his shameless and incessant promotion of the liberal global warming agenda.” He added that the federal climate policies Mr. Gore endorses “would infuse his business ventures with large sums of taxpayer dollars and set him up to become the first climate billionaire.” Mr. Inhofe also referred to a challenge he issued to Mr. Gore in 2007 to reduce the carbon footprint of his Nashville mansion and extensive travel.

"When Mr. Gore is asked whether he will respond to Senator Inhofe’s comments, Mr. Gore calls him a “nice man.” As the first words are read to him, he chuckles, but his smile grows tense. As the statement ends, he sighs and says, “Where to start?” He lets out a breath. “The most powerful advocate for solving the climate crisis is not me, but Mother Nature,” he says. “The reality of the climate crisis is overwhelming, and more and more people see it and feel it every day.”

"As for the senator’s challenge, Mr. Gore says he does not remember the exchange, but describes the ways he has reduced the environmental impact of his home. He buys electricity from a utility that generates its power from wind and solar sources and has 32 solar panels on his home, as well as insulating windows and LED light bulbs. There are 10 geothermal wells under the driveway. “I do walk the walk, and don’t just talk the talk,” he says.

"Is participating in the green economy a conflict of interest? “I think that having a consistent outlook in my advocacy and in the way I invest is a healthy way to live,” he says. Much of what he makes, including all salary from his early stage investing work as a partner at Kleiner Perkins and hisNobel Prize money, goes to his advocacy group, the Climate Reality Project. “I never imagined when I was younger that this would become the principal focus of my life,” he says. “But once you pick up this challenge, you can’t put it down. I can’t. Don’t want to.”

"Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, says Mr. Gore has become a symbol of climate change, which is both good and bad. He energized Democrats on climate issues, but alienated many conservatives, with the eager help of groups like theHeartland Institute and its allies like Mr. Inhofe, who demonize Mr. Gore as part of their campaign to undercut the scientific consensus on the human role in global warming.

“Al Gore cannot ever reinvent himself from the fact that he became one of the country’s most polarizing political leaders,” Dr. Leiserowitz says. “Even as he is trying to explain climate change, he is reminding people, amplifying the conservative response around him.” Mr. Gore has learned to live with the scorn. “Anyone who carries this banner is going to get shot at,” he says. “And I could say it’s an honor to be the object of such ire from those who are so on the wrong side of history,” he adds, laughing. “It doesn’t feel like a great honor,” he says. He spreads his arms. “I’m certainly no longer surprised by it.” Another pause. “Let them have at it.” "
 
Good points made. The crux of much is when does science dictate public policy.

Climate Science Is Not Settled: We are very far from the knowledge needed to make good climate policy, writes leading scientist Steven E. Koonin
By STEVEN E. KOONIN Sept. 19, 2014
LINK: Climate Science Is Not Settled - WSJ

TEXT: "The idea that "Climate science is settled" runs through today's popular and policy discussions. Unfortunately, that claim is misguided. It has not only distorted our public and policy debates on issues related to energy, greenhouse-gas emissions and the environment. But it also has inhibited the scientific and policy discussions that we need to have about our climate future.

"My training as a computational physicist—together with a 40-year career of scientific research, advising and management in academia, government and the private sector—has afforded me an extended, up-close perspective on climate science. Detailed technical discussions during the past year with leading climate scientists have given me an even better sense of what we know, and don't know, about climate. I have come to appreciate the daunting scientific challenge of answering the questions that policy makers and the public are asking.

"The crucial scientific question for policy isn't whether the climate is changing. That is a settled matter: The climate has always changed and always will. Geological and historical records show the occurrence of major climate shifts, sometimes over only a few decades. We know, for instance, that during the 20th century the Earth's global average surface temperature rose 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Nor is the crucial question whether humans are influencing the climate. That is no hoax: There is little doubt in the scientific community that continually growing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, due largely to carbon-dioxide emissions from the conventional use of fossil fuels, are influencing the climate. There is also little doubt that the carbon dioxide will persist in the atmosphere for several centuries. The impact today of human activity appears to be comparable to the intrinsic, natural variability of the climate system itself.

"Rather, the crucial, unsettled scientific question for policy is, "How will the climate change over the next century under both natural and human influences?" Answers to that question at the global and regional levels, as well as to equally complex questions of how ecosystems and human activities will be affected, should inform our choices about energy and infrastructure.

"But—here's the catch—those questions are the hardest ones to answer. They challenge, in a fundamental way, what science can tell us about future climates.

"Even though human influences could have serious consequences for the climate, they are physically small in relation to the climate system as a whole. For example, human additions to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by the middle of the 21st century are expected to directly shift the atmosphere's natural greenhouse effect by only 1% to 2%. Since the climate system is highly variable on its own, that smallness sets a very high bar for confidently projecting the consequences of human influences.

"A second challenge to "knowing" future climate is today's poor understanding of the oceans. The oceans, which change over decades and centuries, hold most of the climate's heat and strongly influence the atmosphere. Unfortunately, precise, comprehensive observations of the oceans are available only for the past few decades; the reliable record is still far too short to adequately understand how the oceans will change and how that will affect climate.

"A third fundamental challenge arises from feedbacks that can dramatically amplify or mute the climate's response to human and natural influences. One important feedback, which is thought to approximately double the direct heating effect of carbon dioxide, involves water vapor, clouds and temperature.

"But feedbacks are uncertain. They depend on the details of processes such as evaporation and the flow of radiation through clouds. They cannot be determined confidently from the basic laws of physics and chemistry, so they must be verified by precise, detailed observations that are, in many cases, not yet available.

"Beyond these observational challenges are those posed by the complex computer models used to project future climate. These massive programs attempt to describe the dynamics and interactions of the various components of the Earth system—the atmosphere, the oceans, the land, the ice and the biosphere of living things. While some parts of the models rely on well-tested physical laws, other parts involve technically informed estimation. Computer modeling of complex systems is as much an art as a science.

"For instance, global climate models describe the Earth on a grid that is currently limited by computer capabilities to a resolution of no finer than 60 miles. (The distance from New York City to Washington, D.C., is thus covered by only four grid cells.) But processes such as cloud formation, turbulence and rain all happen on much smaller scales. These critical processes then appear in the model only through adjustable assumptions that specify, for example, how the average cloud cover depends on a grid box's average temperature and humidity. In a given model, dozens of such assumptions must be adjusted ("tuned," in the jargon of modelers) to reproduce both current observations and imperfectly known historical records.

"We often hear that there is a "scientific consensus" about climate change. But as far as the computer models go, there isn't a useful consensus at the level of detail relevant to assessing human influences. Since 1990, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, has periodically surveyed the state of climate science. Each successive report from that endeavor, with contributions from thousands of scientists around the world, has come to be seen as the definitive assessment of climate science at the time of its issue.

"For the latest IPCC report (September 2013), its Working Group I, which focuses on physical science, uses an ensemble of some 55 different models. Although most of these models are tuned to reproduce the gross features of the Earth's climate, the marked differences in their details and projections reflect all of the limitations that I have described. For example:

• The models differ in their descriptions of the past century's global average surface temperature by more than three times the entire warming recorded during that time. Such mismatches are also present in many other basic climate factors, including rainfall, which is fundamental to the atmosphere's energy balance. As a result, the models give widely varying descriptions of the climate's inner workings. Since they disagree so markedly, no more than one of them can be right.

• Although the Earth's average surface temperature rose sharply by 0.9 degree Fahrenheit during the last quarter of the 20th century, it has increased much more slowly for the past 16 years, even as the human contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen by some 25%. This surprising fact demonstrates directly that natural influences and variability are powerful enough to counteract the present warming influence exerted by human activity.

"Yet the models famously fail to capture this slowing in the temperature rise. Several dozen different explanations for this failure have been offered, with ocean variability most likely playing a major role. But the whole episode continues to highlight the limits of our modeling.

• The models roughly describe the shrinking extent of Arctic sea ice observed over the past two decades, but they fail to describe the comparable growth of Antarctic sea ice, which is now at a record high.

• The models predict that the lower atmosphere in the tropics will absorb much of the heat of the warming atmosphere. But that "hot spot" has not been confidently observed, casting doubt on our understanding of the crucial feedback of water vapor on temperature.

• Even though the human influence on climate was much smaller in the past, the models do not account for the fact that the rate of global sea-level rise 70 years ago was as large as what we observe today—about one foot per century.

• A crucial measure of our knowledge of feedbacks is climate sensitivity—that is, the warming induced by a hypothetical doubling of carbon-dioxide concentration. Today's best estimate of the sensitivity (between 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) is no different, and no more certain, than it was 30 years ago. And this is despite an heroic research effort costing billions of dollars.

"These and many other open questions are in fact described in the IPCC research reports, although a detailed and knowledgeable reading is sometimes required to discern them. They are not "minor" issues to be "cleaned up" by further research. Rather, they are deficiencies that erode confidence in the computer projections. Work to resolve these shortcomings in climate models should be among the top priorities for climate research.

"Yet a public official reading only the IPCC's "Summary for Policy Makers" would gain little sense of the extent or implications of these deficiencies. These are fundamental challenges to our understanding of human impacts on the climate, and they should not be dismissed with the mantra that "climate science is settled."

"While the past two decades have seen progress in climate science, the field is not yet mature enough to usefully answer the difficult and important questions being asked of it. This decidedly unsettled state highlights what should be obvious: Understanding climate, at the level of detail relevant to human influences, is a very, very difficult problem.

"We can and should take steps to make climate projections more useful over time. An international commitment to a sustained global climate observation system would generate an ever-lengthening record of more precise observations. And increasingly powerful computers can allow a better understanding of the uncertainties in our models, finer model grids and more sophisticated descriptions of the processes that occur within them. The science is urgent, since we could be caught flat-footed if our understanding does not improve more rapidly than the climate itself changes.

"A transparent rigor would also be a welcome development, especially given the momentous political and policy decisions at stake. That could be supported by regular, independent, "red team" reviews to stress-test and challenge the projections by focusing on their deficiencies and uncertainties; that would certainly be the best practice of the scientific method. But because the natural climate changes over decades, it will take many years to get the data needed to confidently isolate and quantify the effects of human influences.

"Policy makers and the public may wish for the comfort of certainty in their climate science. But I fear that rigidly promulgating the idea that climate science is "settled" (or is a "hoax") demeans and chills the scientific enterprise, retarding its progress in these important matters. Uncertainty is a prime mover and motivator of science and must be faced head-on. It should not be confined to hushed sidebar conversations at academic conferences.

"Society's choices in the years ahead will necessarily be based on uncertain knowledge of future climates. That uncertainty need not be an excuse for inaction. There is well-justified prudence in accelerating the development of low-emissions technologies and in cost-effective energy-efficiency measures.

"But climate strategies beyond such "no regrets" efforts carry costs, risks and questions of effectiveness, so nonscientific factors inevitably enter the decision. These include our tolerance for risk and the priorities that we assign to economic development, poverty reduction, environmental quality, and intergenerational and geographical equity.

"Individuals and countries can legitimately disagree about these matters, so the discussion should not be about "believing" or "denying" the science. Despite the statements of numerous scientific societies, the scientific community cannot claim any special expertise in addressing issues related to humanity's deepest goals and values. The political and diplomatic spheres are best suited to debating and resolving such questions, and misrepresenting the current state of climate science does nothing to advance that effort.

"Any serious discussion of the changing climate must begin by acknowledging not only the scientific certainties but also the uncertainties, especially in projecting the future. Recognizing those limits, rather than ignoring them, will lead to a more sober and ultimately more productive discussion of climate change and climate policies. To do otherwise is a great disservice to climate science itself.

Dr. Koonin was undersecretary for science in the Energy Department during President Barack Obama's first term and is currently director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. His previous positions include professor of theoretical physics and provost at Caltech, as well as chief scientist of BP, where his work focused on renewable and low-carbon energy technologies.
 
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