American denial of climate change hit bottom this month. Hurricane Sandy was the most powerful instance yet of mundane weather trumping abstract science to make people face the truth. “It’s Global Warming, Stupid!” screeched the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek, above a photo of a flooded street. Rising sea levels just moved from future threat to present danger. And as the Pentagon had earlier this year emphasized climate change as a national security issue, so the CIA has just released its own grim assessment of coming “climate surprises” with “global security implications serious enough to compel international response.” In his post-election acceptance speech, President Obama warned of “the destructive power of a warming planet.”
So perhaps this unprecedented problem will finally be meaningfully addressed by the president and Congress, with new emphasis on green energy, carbon taxes, anti-fracking legislation, elimination of subsidies to oil and gas companies, rejection of new pipelines, and so on. Climate prophet Bill McKibben is in the midst of a 21-city “Do the math” tour, drawing thousands of supporters, all demanding that carbon dioxide be left in the ground. Fossil fuels are choking the planet, and a critical mass of Americans are waking up to it.
Comments
It has truly been as you say: "difficult it has been to launch a real discussion of the causes of global warming,". This discussion is needed but global warming alarmists have behaved so badly. Calling the un-alarmed things like deniers, stupid, anti science, and worse is not productive. Worse yet their staking out of the definitions of the terms doesn't help. The phrase "global warming" is just that. Our climate changes. Whether we are to blame is foolishness. Whether we need to improve our behavior remains on the table. Indeed, whether a warming climate is reason to be alarmed remains to be seen.
This comment has been removed.
Terry, if you are indeed in Nevada, go look at Lake Meade's water level, and then let's have a conversation about our increasing impact on the enviroment.
Deny if you wish, but the Earth isn't flat, and the holocaust did happen.
It won't happen because there is no way to make money for private industry doing this. Unless you're talking about government contracts. The government can't even fund NASA. The government can't even fund our infrastructure needs, can't fund our National Park System. C'mon.
The writing has been on the wall for a while. Humans have neither the discipline, nor the ability, to decrease carbon emissions sufficiently to ward off global warming. Geo-engineering solutions (or attempts at solutions) are inevitable - almost surely the introduction of reflective sulfites into the atmosphere will be tried. It is a cheap and feasible solution, if not the ideal solution. Foreign Affairs magazine had a very good article about this a couple of years ago.
Excellent, thought-provoking article. The public conversation around this topic is sure to be a cacophony of competing voices, yielding endless opportunities for controversial interventions and recriminations going every direction.
It's too late. Imagine this.Take a glass of iced tea on a July afternoon. Sit in the sun with it and take a small sip every now and then. No matter how hot it is your drink will remain cold as long as there is ice in it. Once the ice has completely melted the tea will rapidly warm up. The ice absorbs the heat as it melts. Now consider the ice caps and what will happen when they're gone. As a side effect earth's albedo will probably decrease meaning less solar radiation will be reflected back into space.
Speaking as a person born in 1939 this is why I believe the current global warming hysteria is just so much hokum. Back in the day nearly every home in America had a coal burning furnace. There were smokestacks everywhere, not just at power plants and heating plants but just about every factory large and small had a smokestack. All of these industrial sites were burning either coal or a particularly noxious fuel known as Bunker C which is a petroleum product with the consistency of crude oil straight from the ground. Steamships burned Bunker C fuel. Locomotives burned coal and some experimented with Bunker C. None of the above had any environmental components whatsoever, nor did cars which burned oil almost as fast as they burned gasoline. This situation was the norm for well over a hundred years and didn't begin to change until about the mid 1950's. During this period the weather patterns were essentially the same as they are today and compared to the bad old days the environmental conditions today border on antiseptic. p.s. The CIA has decided to get out of the climate change business. Too much money for no discernible return.
This comment has been removed.
Uh, you do understand that the world's population today is four times what it was in 1939, right. In 1939 there were roughly 25 million cars registered in Americans, today there are over 250 million. In 1939 there were only a few thousand cars in China, today there are 220 million. In 1939 virtually no US homes had air conditioning, today it is commonplace....
You may, based on your personal beliefs think "...the current global warming hysteria is just so much hokum...", but those who rely on science, rather than feelings, have hard evidence. While we perhaps can debate exactly what's causing the warming, the facts are inescapable.
Whoops!
The more we look at the evidence of global warming, the faster the changes come and the more we will need a mix of every solution: Solar, wind, geothermal, solar thermal, tidal and nuclear power -- likely in addition to sea gates and sea walls and forms of geo-engineering.
But the best way to mitigate the effects of climate change now is to be more energy-efficient so we can leave fossil fuels in the ground. We have the technologies to do this. And bringing it to every home and business will be the economic engine of this century. It's time to move on this -- and move fast. http://greentechadvocates.com/
This comment has been removed.
Is this doomsday clock the same as the population doomsday clock and the nuclear doomsday clock and the food doomsday clock?
This comment has been removed.
It's likely to late to do anything about it. So is it really wise to replace all carbon based energy with clean energy. Essentially make everthing way more expensive to stop climate change? maybe better to adapt to it.
Alas, this problem should have been addressed long ago. But the arrant stupidity of the Bush administration did not allow this to happen. Such troglodytes as Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma set policy, and they continue to drag their heels to this day. And we're all paying for their short-sightedness.
The scary thing is there are people on this forum who not only deny climate change, they even deny Sandy was a hurricaine. Just brick stupid. As you say, we end up being the victims of their willingness to believe anything Breitbart and Fox tell them.
Also a couple of points:
The full moon will make storm surges worse, as high tides along the Eastern Seaboard will rise about 20 percent higher than normal (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57541877/sandy-loses-hurricane-status-still-big-threat/)
The reason $damages are going up and more devastating is because we are more densely populated in high risk areas. (How far BELOW sea level is NO?)
A storm surge is really caused by one thing. When a storm is approaching land, it starts to encounter shallow water. The water tends to pile up. The shallower the water is, for longer distance, the more vulnerable an area is. It doesn’t help that New York City is surrounded by shallow water, which puts it at higher risk for potentially record-breaking storm surges on Monday night that could top 11 ft. (3.4 m) (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/29/science/earth/shallow-waters-and-unusual-path-may-worsen-surge.html?ref=us)
The exact same storm hitting Charleston, S.C. will have a completely different surge potential than if it were hitting Miami, Galveston, New Orleans, or New York City (NYC). The stage of the normal lunar tides makes a large difference as well (Sandy made landfall exactly at high tide).And in terms of human impacts, a landfall on or near a major city will certainly be worse than an identical landfall near a more rural stretch of coastline. Places like New Orleans, NYC, and Tampa are both low-lying AND heavily populated. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/sandy-packed-more-total-energy-than-katrina-at-landfall/2012/11/02/baa4e3c4-24f4-11e2-ac85-e669876c6a24_blog.html)
It doesn’t help that New York City is surrounded by shallow water, which puts it at higher risk for potentially record-breaking storm surges on Monday night that could top 11 ft. (3.4 m)Read more: http://science.time.com/2012/10/29/landfall-why-new-york-city-could-get-the-worst-of-sandys-wrath/#ixzz2DMywNn5d A storm surge is really caused by one thing. When a storm is approaching land, it starts to encounter shallow water. The water tends to pile up. The shallower the water is, for longer distance, the more vulnerable an area is
Read more: http://science.time.com/2012/10/29/landfall-why-new-york-city-could-get-the-worst-of-sandys-wrath/#ixzz2DMyXoEGL
when those surges meet the shallow water along the coast, the waves pile up and spill over, as Pat Fitzpatrick of Mississippi State University told the New York Times:Read more: http://science.time.com/2012/10/29/landfall-why-new-york-city-could-get-the-worst-of-sandys-wrath/#ixzz2DMyQUMsO
when those surges meet the shallow water along the coast, the waves pile up and spill over, as Pat Fitzpatrick of Mississippi State University told the New York Times:
It doesn’t help that New York City is surrounded by shallow water, which puts it at higher risk for potentially record-breaking storm surges on Monday night that could top 11 ft. (3.4 m).
Read more: http://science.time.com/2012/10/29/landfall-why-new-york-city-could-get-the-worst-of-sandys-wrath/#ixzz2DMy7wApd
when those surges meet the shallow water along the coast, the waves pile up and spill over, as Pat Fitzpatrick of Mississippi State University told the New York Times:
It doesn’t help that New York City is surrounded by shallow water, which puts it at higher risk for potentially record-breaking storm surges on Monday night that could top 11 ft. (3.4 m)
Read more: http://science.time.com/2012/10/29/landfall-why-new-york-city-could-get-the-worst-of-sandys-wrath/#ixzz2DMxqtyLi
when those surges meet the shallow water along the coast, the waves pile up and spill over, as Pat Fitzpatrick of Mississippi State University told the New York Times:
It doesn’t help that New York City is surrounded by shallow water, which puts it at higher risk for potentially record-breaking storm surges on Monday night that could top 11 ft. (3.4 m)
Read more: http://science.time.com/2012/10/29/landfall-why-new-york-city-could-get-the-worst-of-sandys-wrath/#ixzz2DMxqtyLi
and some data
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/23/crowdsourcing-the-wuwt-extreme-weather-reference-page/#more-74418
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/october-2012-sea-surface-temperatures-and-anomalies-along-sandys-path-were-not-unusual/
Thanks for the links. Glad to see people really working to bury their head in the sand. I'd posit you and they would be better served putting your energies into a reality based endeavor, but your only likely to get hurt. Stupid is as stupid does, etc.
BTW, the source of "facts" for both of your articles who is a blogger whose wor" is universally discredited. It's not just junk science, it's falsified.
http://uknowispeaksense.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/bob-tisdale-wilful-ignorance-personified/
http://wottsupwiththat.com/tag/bob-tisdale/
But whatever helps you sleep.