Global Warming
We can observe rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; warming, acidic oceans; retreating glaciers; record breaking droughts; massive forest fires; unrecoverable species extinction; permafrost thaws, severe storms, fisheries collapse, arctic melt. These are the results of using the atmosphere as a dump for burning fossil fuels. The national science academies of all the G8 nations, including the United States, along with the science academies of China, India, and Brazil, issued a remarkable joint statement calling on world leaders to "acknowledge that the threat of climate change is clear and increasing".
Bush ignored that. Instead his staff edited reports to get the results he wanted. The White House deliberately censored climate science. Detailed accounts are in Mark Bowen's book Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming. Conservative media (which includes most US media) stayed on message and spread this Republican misinformation. Often in denying the science, they attack Al Gore as if that somehow is a valid argument.
Ex-EPA Chiefs blame Bush on Global Warming
A real conservative would want to mitigate any possible damage that we might be causing, but there is considerable denial, and the damage to the environment is worse than simply warming. Instead they are spreading disinformation.
New Cracks Appear in Greenland Glacier
Scientist to Congress: Oil Execs Commit High Crimes
http://www.truthout.org/article/scientist-congress-oil-execs-commit-high-crimes (6/23/2008)Ed Pilkington,
The Guardian UK, says: "James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer."
George Monbiot is alarmed at
Hansen's
report.
The U.S. based Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), prepared a lengthy report in 2006 showing that "ExxonMobil has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science. From Al Gore's Assault on Reason
"The United States, having failed to defeat Kyoto, may be in the process of doing something even more damaging: ruining the chances of reaching a post-Kyoto agreement." ...from Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert.
The IPCC. has released its 2007 report. You can watch a video from MIT AGS (Alliance for Global Sustainability meeting presentation lasts about 45 minutes).
If you are really interested in what we know about climate change, go to realclimate.org.
3564 articles about climate change from The Guardian. Compare with US press coverage.
Al Gore's Nobel prize acceptance speech (12/11/07)
House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming
The Stern Report warns that we cannot wait to mitigate damage.
Download a report on climate change.
Global Warming Nears "Dangerous" Level
http://freepage.
Remember 350 parts
per million: Bill McKibbon (12/28/2007)
One degree and we're done for
http://freepage.
Global Temperature Highest in Millennia
http://freepage.
Coal Will Be Top Enemy in Fighting Global Warming
http://freepage.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Climate Change: a window to act.
The Earth today stands in imminent peril ...and nothing short of a planetary rescue will save it from the environmental cataclysm of dangerous climate change. Those are not the words of eco-warriors but the considered opinion of a group of eminent scientists writing in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. 19 Jun 2007 Six scientists from some of the leading scientific institutions in the United States have issued what amounts to an unambiguous warning to the world: civilization itself is threatened by global warming. They also implicitly criticize the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for underestimating the scale of sea-level rises this century as a result of melting glaciers and polar ice sheets... That is why, they say, planet Earth today is in "imminent peril".
Arctic spring's 'rapid advance' 18 Jun 2007 Spring in the Arctic is arriving "weeks earlier" than a decade ago, a team of Danish researchers have reported. Ice in north-east Greenland is melting an average of 14.6 days earlier than in the mid-1990s, bringing forward the date plants flower and birds lay eggs.
U.K. has the second warmest winter since records began 01 Mar 2007 The U.K. experienced the second warmest winter on record this year with mean temperature touching 5.47 degrees Celsius, according to the Met Office. January was also the second-warmest January on record with a mean of 6 degrees Celsius... The office has been maintaining national records of temperatures since 1914.
Netherlands experiences warmest winter on record 01 Mar 2007 The winter of 2006-2007 was the warmest since measurements began in 1706, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) said on its website Wednesday. The average temperature this winter was 6.5 degrees Celsius, much higher than the average temperature of 3.3 degrees for the winter months, said the KNMI.
Shanghai has warmest winter on record 01 Mar 2007 Shanghai, China's largest city, has experienced its warmest winter since records began in 1873, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday. The average temperature over the past three months was 8.1 degrees Celsius (46.6 Fahrenheit), 2.6 degrees warmer than the previous average, Xinhua quoted the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau as saying.
Taiwan sees 2nd warmest winter of last 30 years: CWB 03 Mar 2007 As the spring season has come, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said that Taiwan experienced warmer than average temperatures this past winter. Taiwan's average temperature between this past December and February in the flatlands was 19.49 degrees Celsius, some 1.45 degrees higher than the annual winter average of 18.04 degrees, the CWB said.
Climate Change Impact More Extensive than Thought 02 Mar 2007 Global climate change is happening faster than previously believed and its impact is worse than expected, information from an as-yet unpublished draft of the long-awaited second part of a United Nations report obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE reveals. No region of the planet will be spared and some will be hit especially hard.
The Weather Channel
National Geographic on the movie, An Inconvenient Truth
algore.com (see his Nobel Prize acceptance speech)
Report from the Connecticut Fund for the Environment.
Some Like it Hot. RECENTLY, NAOMI ORESKES, a science historian at the University of California at San Diego, reviewed nearly a thousand scientific papers on global climate change published between 1993 and 2003, and was unable to find one that explicitly disagreed with the consensus view that humans are contributing to the phenomenon. As Oreskes hastens to add, that doesn’t mean no such studies exist. But given the size of her sample, about 10 percent of the papers published on the topic, she thinks it’s safe to assume that the number is “vanishingly small.” ...ON FEBRUARY 16, 2005, 140 nations celebrated the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. In the weeks prior, as the friends of ExxonMobil scrambled to inoculate the Bush administration from the bad press that would inevitably result from America’s failure to sign this international agreement to curb global warming, a congressional briefing was organized....
Global Warming Hits Tipping Point
Reviewed by Charlene JonesWestern Siberia is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could
dramatically increase the rate of global warming. Researchers
recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost
spanning one million square kilometers-the size of France and Germany
combined-is melting for the first time since it formed 11,000 years
ago at the end of the last ice age. British and Russian scientists
report that the melting permafrost is releasing hundreds of millions
of tons of methane, which is 20 times more potent than the carbon
dioxide currently driving the worldwide warming crisis.
The Telegraph (UK) news about Siberia's forest fires
Junketing Judges: A Case of Bad Science
Eric Schaefferhttp://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060406X.shtml
Last fall, after two judges attended a six-day seminar at Yellowstone National Park sponsored by a lobbying group, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Clean Air Act does not require regulating carbon dioxide emissions that are heating up the planet at an unprecedented rate. Eric Schaeffer wonders, "Just how far will corporate lobbyists go to tilt governmental decisions in their favor?"
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/25351/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1546824,00.html
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg18725124.500
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article362549.ece
Bibliography
With Speed and Violence: Fred Pearce speculates on many possible non-linearities in climate change. Beacon Press 2007.
The Bridge at the End of the World: Gus Speth (2008)
Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning: George Monbiot
The Next One Hundred Years: Jonathan Weiner
The Creation, An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, E. O. Wilson
Censoring Science: Inside the political attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming. Mark Bowen.
Hell and High Water: Joseph Romm
IPCC report (January 2007), dissed by US media, "says global warming will happen faster and be more devastating than previously thought".
Connecticut Fund for the Environment on Global Warming.
American Meteorological Society
See Environment also
Get a free book from Consumer Reports.
http://www.ecobridge.org/content/g_evd.htm
Be part of the "Virtual March on Washington" that allows individuals to sign up and express their commitment to stop global warming. See the warning at the Global Warming Action Network.