Paul Krugman: Gore Derangement Syndrome

There's something about Al Gore:

Gore Derangement Syndrome, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: On the day after Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize, The Wall Street Journal’s editors couldn’t even bring themselves to mention Mr. Gore’s name. Instead, they devoted their editorial to a long list of people they thought deserved the prize more.

And at National Review Online, Iain Murray suggested that the prize should have been shared with “...Osama bin Laden, who implicitly endorsed Gore’s stance.” You see, bin Laden once said something about climate change — therefore, anyone who talks about climate change is a friend of the terrorists.

What is it about Mr. Gore that drives right-wingers insane?

Partly it’s a reaction to what happened in 2000, when the American people chose Mr. Gore but his opponent somehow ended up in the White House. Both the personality cult the right tried to build around President Bush and the often hysterical denigration of Mr. Gore were, I believe, largely motivated by the desire to expunge the stain of illegitimacy from the Bush administration. ...

The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view, is that he keeps being right. In 1992, George H. W. Bush mocked him as the “ozone man,” but three years later the scientists who discovered the threat to the ozone layer won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2002 he warned that if we invaded Iraq, “the resulting chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam.” And so it has proved.

But Gore hatred is more than personal. ... For the truth Mr. Gore has been telling about how human activities are changing the climate isn’t just inconvenient. For conservatives, it’s deeply threatening.

Consider the policy implications of taking climate change seriously. ... It’s in the interest of most people (and especially their descendants) that somebody do something to reduce emissions of ... greenhouse gases, but each individual would like that somebody to be somebody else. Leave it up to the free market, and in a few generations Florida will be underwater.

The solution to such conflicts between self-interest and the common good is to provide individuals with an incentive to do the right thing..., either by requiring that they pay a tax on emissions or by requiring that they buy emission permits, which has pretty much the same effects as an emissions tax. ... Climate change is ... global. ... So dealing with climate change ... also requires international negotiations in which the United States will have to give as well as get.

Everything I’ve just said should be uncontroversial — but imagine the reception a Republican candidate for president would receive if he acknowledged these truths at the next debate. Today, being a good Republican means believing that taxes should always be cut, never raised. It also means believing that we should bomb and bully foreigners, not negotiate with them.

So if science says that we have a big problem that can’t be solved with tax cuts or bombs — well, the science must be rejected, and the scientists must be slimed. For example, Investor’s Business Daily recently declared that the prominence of James Hansen, the NASA researcher who first made climate change a national issue two decades ago, is actually due to the nefarious schemes of — who else? — George Soros.

Which brings us to the biggest reason the right hates Mr. Gore: in his case the smear campaign has failed. He’s taken everything they could throw at him, and emerged more respected, and more credible, than ever. And it drives them crazy.

Comments

[NLS]

Right on, again, write on. It amazes me how the talk radio folks still do nothing but antagonize and try to pass it off as some analysis or something balanced. Then they group everyone into the same liberal bin, pit this person against that person, and make a big deal out of stupid shit like an advert in a newspaper or private plane rides. So predictable and so effective. And that's not what's terrible. What kills this nation is good people holding onto every last word and excuse these people make.

Al Gore should be respected.

[Jim in Chicago]

I diaried this over at Daily Kos for those who would like to read additional discussion (65 comments so far): http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/14/232615/78

[Gil]

Surely there must be some way to use scientific methods to determine to what sort of climate change is happening? Likewise, surely there must be some way to tell which climate information is geniune and which is personal opinion? If there aren't straightforward ways to determine what sort of climate change is going on then it's going to descend into a tit-for-tat argument similar to evolution versus creationism.

[prostratedragon]

Does Krugman ever nail this down! What ties them in a little ball about Gore, about the climate issue, and about the combination.

Weirdest and best show since the Clintons refused to curl up and die, while health care costs shot out of control. Even better.

Say, I hear Valerie Plame Wilson's book is out in a few weeks.

[anne]

The ignoble conservative tradition continues from the winning of the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King to Al Gore, to the attempts to besmirch Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. I was told yesterday at breakfast about the Wall Street Journal belittling of Al Gore, and understood the ever-hysterical conservative tradition continues.

[Robinia]

As hard as the corporate media culture works to convince us that US citizens have no attention span past the last 15 minutes (for anything but fear of terrorists, Paris Hilton, and baseball stats)....

It turns out that there is some measurable "long run" in which we are not yet all dead, and at least many of us are paying attention...... and that some of us even actually remember when somebody is persistently correct over time. We may even tend to trust such an individual to be correct in future.

In fact, most of us are actually quite interested in whether or not there is an earth on which our progeny can live, more interested in that than, say, in free-market ideological theorems and right-wing constructions of governmental evil.

Real people need to take real action about climate change, to topple the ridiculous stance of such media contortionists as the WSJ. Do a bit right now while you are thinking about it-- visit http://www.stepitup2007.org to get connected to fast and easy ways to register your sane opinion on the idea of not destroying our children's habitat in order to be ideologically consistent with right-wing poobahs' declarations of received truth.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/opinion/15mon2.html?hp

October 15, 2007

Temporary Victory on Clean Air

Last week's record-breaking consent decree requiring American Electric Power, the nation's largest utility, to pay $4.6 billion to clean up its act represents a satisfying, if delayed victory for the Clinton administration and other plaintiffs who brought the suit eight years ago. More than anything, though, it is a victory for millions of people downwind of the company's plants who have been forced to breathe dirty air.

But before people start jumping for joy, they should know that the Bush administration, while claiming some credit for this settlement, is still actively trying to undermine the very law on which it was based.

The law in question is a key provision in the Clean Air Act called "new source review." It says that companies that significantly upgrade a plant in order to generate more power must also install state-of-the-art controls to deal with the increased pollution. The utilities have long resented this law, which requires costly investments, and Vice President Dick Cheney targeted it for extinction in his infamous energy report in 2001.

Various courts, including the Supreme Court, have upheld the law. Even so, the administration has paid little attention and is still doing everything it can to torpedo the law by administrative means. The most recent assault is a proposed rule that would exempt plants from having to install new controls as long as their hourly rate of emissions does not increase as a result of any plant upgrade — even if total emissions skyrocket because the upgrades enable a plant to run longer and harder.

The A.E.P. settlement stems from an enforcement action brought in 1999 by the Clinton administration and nine state attorneys general, including New York's Eliot Spitzer, against A.E.P. and six other utilities in the Midwest and South. The case was joined by 13 advocacy groups. Under the settlement, the company, which bitterly resisted the original suit, has agreed to install $4.6 billion in new pollution-control measures at 16 existing plants. The investments will sharply reduce the company's emissions of sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain, and nitrogen oxide, which contributes to urban smog....

[anne]

The efforts of modern conservatism as set down in this Administration and reflected in the Wall Street Journal are efforts to subvert every principle for which Al Gore stands, from environmental protection to abhorrence of needless war and colonization. Here is a modern conservatism in which the Administration can forbid government scientists to mention polar bears, lest we care about polar bears, and we wonder that the Journal abhors Al Gore and the United Nations scientists who share the Nobel Peace Prize.

[John]

When I hear that you and Gore have moved into a modest 4 beadroom home and read by candle light to minimize CO2 and other outputs, I will seriously listen to you.

[btgraff]

"read by candle light to minimize CO2... "

Ummm.... burning candles produces CO2 - and paraffin comes from petroleum rather than something that is part of the natural carbon cycle (like, say, beeswax).

[calmo]

John needs to see your credentials that show beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are not a hypocrite...which is why I'm a typin this from the Library...
Ah John, I'm reading this by LEDs powered by a generator connected to my improvised bicycle...in preference to burning that fossil fuel product you mentioned.
So, does this mean you are one of the majority that don't vote because all the "electable" (I love it) candidates are rich swine?
Ok, last thing 4 (four) bedrooms is "modest" on account of you having the idea that 3 (three) children is "modest"? It just seems like a high estimate to me, but I'm still willin to talk to some rich snobs, you know?
You figure the sliming of Gore is merely an extension of his exclusion from those bedrooms in the media house? I think this is Krugman's message...of course PK might be living in one of those fancy pants 4 bedroom houses...

[Jim Manzi]

You quote Paul Krugman as saying that:

"Leave it up to the free market, and in a few generations Florida will be underwater."

Assuming "a few" menas, say, <5, I challenge any credible scientist to demonstrate the truth of this statement.

[anne]

"Leave it up to the free market, and in a few generations Florida will be underwater."

"Leave it up to modern conservatives, and in a few generations Florida will be underwater."

Thank you, Paul Krugman and Al Gore and James Hansen.

[Curt Olson]

Mr. Krugman should know a lot about derangement syndromes. He displays Bush Derangement Syndrome in every word he writes. He is criticizing the right for displaying the same sort of partisanship he oozes from his pen every day.

The reason the left is globbing onto Al Gore is because it is another way to get in a jab at George Bush. To liberals, everytime Al Gore wins another prize or award is a hearty fuck you to our commander in chief, who every liberal knows stole two elections even though he is an absolute idiot, and will never be smart enough to win an Oscar or a Nobel Prize.

Mr. Krugman will will really lose it next year when Hillary is defeated in a narrow electoral loss by his new arch enemy Rudy Guliani.

[ken melvin]

Righties get their science from the book of Ignoramus.

[anne]

Simply notice the language, and understand what rightists have amounted to. Language has long shown just what modern conservatism has been coming to, and is finally arrived at.

[Ken]

just curious. how many times do those on the left have to be correct before they are no longer considered mentally imbalanced or for heavens sake "radical"

Apparently to be a good little patriot all I have to do is ignore the world's most prominenet scientists, ignore mercenaries gunning down civilians, trust the govt that diliberately mislead the country into war and sign off on torture or whatever Fox considers to be the politically correct.

Sorry but I wont be a good german and make sure my falgpin sits on the state approved position on my lapel!

[evagrius]

looks like juandos XX has been nipping a bit too much.

And Mr. Olson,

what could be partisan about environmental change and the need to acknowledge it?

[calmo]

Well Jim Manzi, I challenge you to a nit-pickers duel.
Would you sink the entire column on the basis of "a few" meaning "I challenge any credible scientist to demonstrate the truth of this statement.Can we see your license/credentials that qualifies you for ascertaining what is and what is not credible...esp after this post?

[Daniel]

With the arctic now approaching ice free summers the great northern powers are staking out ocean bottom to drill for more hydrocarbons. It's as though our future is being written by Max Sennett.

[Squeezed]

Gil,
There is near universal agreement among scientists that climate change is being driven by human activitities. I cannot think of a single dissenting scientist who is regularly published in peer-reviewed journals (the ultimate test of scientific validity). Most of the dissent comes from glorified meteorologists funded by the petroleum industry.

[Arne (not anne)]

"Surely there must be some way to use scientific methods to determine to what sort of climate change is happening?"

Not really.

If I determined the age of each child in a classroom and then repeated two weeks later, I would be unable to show with any statistical confidence that they had gotten any older. Climate is far more complicated.

[jfb2252]

Replying to Manzi, here are two abstracts of papers discussing what may happen to Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The first gives a mechanism whereby Greenland could contribute several meters of sea level rise in the next century (five generations). The second, six months old, reviews the current state of the data and the uncertainties within.

The question for me is not whether one can "demonstate the truth of the statement." It is whether the preponderance of the evidence suggests that modest efforts, say the revenue neutral Dingell carbon tax proposal extended to 15 years ($10/ton to start and $10/year rise), are prudent when compared to the trillion+ dollar loss a 3-7m sea level rise would cause the US.

Science 12 July 2002:
Vol. 297. no. 5579, pp. 218 - 222
DOI: 10.1126/science.1072708

Research Articles

Surface Melt-Induced Acceleration of Greenland Ice-Sheet Flow

H. Jay Zwally,1* Waleed Abdalati,2 Tom Herring,3 Kristine Larson,4 Jack Saba,5 Konrad Steffen6

Ice flow at a location in the equilibrium zone of the west-central Greenland Ice Sheet accelerates above the midwinter average rate during periods of summer melting. The near coincidence of the ice acceleration with the duration of surface melting, followed by deceleration after the melting ceases, indicates that glacial sliding is enhanced by rapid migration of surface meltwater to the ice-bedrock interface. Interannual variations in the ice acceleration are correlated with variations in the intensity of the surface melting, with larger increases accompanying higher amounts of summer melting. The indicated coupling between surface melting and ice-sheet flow provides a mechanism for rapid, large-scale, dynamic responses of ice sheets to climate warming.

Science 16 March 2007:
Vol. 315. no. 5818, pp. 1529 - 1532
DOI: 10.1126/science.1136776
Review
Recent Sea-Level Contributions of the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets
Andrew Shepherd1 and Duncan Wingham2*

After a century of polar exploration, the past decade of satellite measurements has painted an altogether new picture of how Earth's ice sheets are changing. As global temperatures have risen, so have rates of snowfall, ice melting, and glacier flow. Although the balance between these opposing processes has varied considerably on a regional scale, data show that Antarctica and Greenland are each losing mass overall. Our best estimate of their combined imbalance is about 125 gigatons per year of ice, enough to raise sea level by 0.35 millimeters per year. This is only a modest contribution to the present rate of sea-level rise of 3.0 millimeters per year. However, much of the loss from Antarctica and Greenland is the result of the flow of ice to the ocean from ice streams and glaciers, which has accelerated over the past decade. In both continents, there are suspected triggers for the accelerated ice discharge—surface and ocean warming, respectively—and, over the course of the 21st century, these processes could rapidly counteract the snowfall gains predicted by present coupled climate models.

[worker]

Don't any of you academics find it unusual that the standard line of climate change people is "the science is resolved". Doesn't it strike you as a bit absurd that the science regarding global atmospheric changes over millions of years is resolved, implying there is nothing more to learn and we can cease serious inquiry now. Meanwhile, no one can give us a 5 day forecast with any accuracy.

I believe in emissions tax as an efficient fund-raising mechanism, because there are many externalities not priced into energy consumption, some of which are probably related to global warming. Even if we are not 100% convinced, we should be able to agree to price in some % probability now.

More people should be skeptical of global warming science now that it has become so highly politicized. There is an anti-human group of environmentalists (who wish to retard humankind's growth and impact on nature) that contrasts with conservationist oriented environmentalists (who wish to conserve nature for future humans). The latter group has an ulterior motive for creating disaster scenarios that force a reordering of society around their goals.

Meanwhile, I doubt any of the scientists studying this problem will be getting future grants if they don't produce studies confirming the political consensus.

[calmo]

thank you jfb2252 for showing us nit-pickers the way.

[jfb2252]

Replying to Worker

Weather is local. Small changes magnify over time in fine grained weather models to the point of numerical instability - one will never be able to predict weather at 14 days.

Climate is regional and global and integrated over years. The basic science of atmosphere, land and ocean are individually well known after centuries of study. Coupling between them is not so well known but improving after forty years of study (since satellites went up) with more data. [Weather forecasts have improved dramatically over that same time span, BTW.]

Anyone reading an economics blog should know that it is possible to make predictions on annual or quarterly integrals of activities that one could not possibly make for daily activities. This is the difference between climate and weather.

One can track not only the the industrial revolution but also the start of agriculture, including rice cultivation, in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, BTW.

[worker]

Let me add, that few of the politicians (Dingell and Gore's original BTU tax excluded) arguing for climate change legislation are honest enough to tell voters the cost of what they are proposing.

Instead they hide costs through inefficient fraud ridden mechanisms like CAFE standards and cap + trade schemes. A carbon tax at the point of energy consumption is the cleanest mechanism for reducing output, but

Too bad our partisan system is so locked into stupidity.

Cutting corporate income tax rates while increasing energy taxes could be the solution that reduces carbon output while maintaining productivity and corporate investment.
This would especially be true if tax were high enough to significantly reduced demand for oil, cratering price and rducing the producer's surplus that is currently going to Iran, Venezuela and Saudia Arabia.

[Patricia Shannon]

It is a fact of physics that certain gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and water vapor, create a greenhouse effect, because they have an effect like the glass in a greenhouse. They allow infrared rays to pass through from the sun. These rays are converted to heat when they hit the earth. These gases act as insulators to the resulting heat.

It is a fact of physics that human activity is causing these gases to increase.

Therefore we should expect the earth to heat up, absent some kind of negative feedback mechanism. Unfortunately, most feedback mechanisms are turning out to be positive, causing an acceleration of warming.

To expect that the earth will not warm up is like expecting your car not to get hot when it has been sitting in the sun.

[worker]

jfb2252,

I'm not sure that comparing climatology to economics forecasting inspires more confidence in climatology.

As my (somewhat revisionist) understanding of US history goes, economic forecasting in the late 20's to early 30's was really quite terrible. Policy actions based on economic models of the day were quite detrimentalm even counterproductive to the goal of increasing wealth.

I wonder whether economics in the 1920's was more or less mature as a science than climatology today?

Worker

[anne]

JFB:

"Anyone reading an economics blog should know that it is possible to make predictions on annual or quarterly integrals of activities that one could not possibly make for daily activities. This is the difference between climate and weather.

"One can track not only the the industrial revolution but also the start of agriculture, including rice cultivation, in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, BTW."

Thank you as well for the references, and please add any other articles you would suggest reading. Andrew Revkin of the New York Times has written on research about the thickness of the Antarctic ice sheets.

[Patricia Shannon]

On the morning after Gore co-won the Nobel Peace Prize, the first NPR report I heard repeatedly stressed that he shared the award with U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. If that were all, I would have chalked it up trying to be fair. But they also had a big commentary claiming that for Gore, since he is a politician, it is all about politics. This went on for several minutes.

Now, NPR is in the middle of their pledge drive. If I had been planning on making a pledge that morning, I would have changed my mind. I expect I wasn't the only one, because the next time they covered the story that morning, it was a news report, not a smear campaign.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/science/earth/16melt.html?ex=1336968000&en=1101ef1c7ee4217e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

May 16, 2007

Analysis Finds Large Antarctic Area Has Melted
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

While much of the world has warmed in a pattern that scientists have linked with near certainty to human activities, the frigid interior of Antarctica has resisted the trend.

Now, a new satellite analysis shows that at least once in the last several years, masses of unusually warm air pushed to within 310 miles of the South Pole and remained long enough to melt surface snow across a California-size expanse.

The warm spell, which occurred over one week in 2005, was detected by scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA and the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Balmy air, with a temperature of up to 41 degrees in some places, persisted across three broad swathes of West Antarctica long enough to leave a distinctive signature of melting, a layer of ice in the snow that cloaks the vast ice sheets of the frozen continent. The layer formed the same way a crust of ice can form in a yard in winter when a warm day and then a freezing night follow a snowfall, the scientists said.

The evidence of melting was detected by a National Aeronautics and Space Administration satellite, the QuickScat, that uses radar to distinguish between snow and ice as it scans the surfaces of Greenland and Antarctica....

[Arne (not anne)]

'the standard line of climate change people is "the science is resolved". '

While jfb provides some nice science in response, what we have here is obscuring the real issue by setting up a false target. Climate science may not be precise or 'resolved', but it can answer the question of whether humankind has an appreciable impact on climate.

[Patricia Shannon]

Worker, why the comparison with economics forecasting of 80 years ago with climate forecasting of today?

The forecasts on climate change for some years have have turned out to be optimistic in terms of what has actually happened.

If the frozen methane in the oceans melt, we are in big trouble, maybe to the point of mass extinction, including the human race. Besides the greenhouse effect of these gases, they are flammable.

[Bruce Webb]

The highest point in Florida is 345', the vast bulk of the state is less than 100', and a 3 to 7 meter rise in sea level would be devastating. You can look these things up you know. They have these Intertuby things and some places actually deliver credible data.

(Second map on page)
http://geology.com/state-map/florida.shtml

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/science/21arctic.html

September 21, 2007

Scientists Report Severe Retreat of Arctic Ice
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

FAIRBANKS, Alaska — The cap of floating sea ice on the Arctic Ocean, which retreats under summer's warmth, this year shrank more than one million square miles — or six Californias — below the average minimum area reached in recent decades, scientists reported Thursday.

The minimum ice area for this year, 1.59 million square miles, appeared to be reached Sunday. The ice is now spreading again under the influence of the deep Arctic chill that settles in as the sun drops below the horizon at the North Pole for six months, starting Friday.

The findings were reported by the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., and posted online at www.nsidc.org.

While satellite tracking of polar sea ice has been done only since 1979, several ice experts who have studied Russian and Alaskan records going back many decades said the ice retreat this year was probably unmatched in the 20th century, including during a warm period in the 1930s. "I do not think that there was anything like we observe today" in the 1930s or 1940s, said Igor Polyakov, an ice expert at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

The ice retreat has been particularly striking this year. The Alaskan side of the Arctic Ocean has stretches of thousands of square miles of open water; the fabled Northwest Passage through the islands of northern Canada was free of ice for weeks; and the sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans north of Russia was nearly clear a week ago, with one small clot of ice around a group of Siberian islands.

Mark Serreze, a senior researcher at the snow and ice center, said it was increasingly clear that climate change from the buildup of greenhouse gases was playing a role in the Arctic warming, which is seen not only in the floating ice but also in melting terrestrial ice sheets, thawing tundra and warming seawater....

[anne]

While my understanding is too little, I believe that the issue in sea level rise is not the melting of ice on water, but the melting of ice sheets on land. The melting of ice on water in the arctic is a reflection of warming patterns that threaten the Greenland ice sheets and run-offs from land ice that will raise sea levels.

What Paul Krugman is arguing is the obvious need for market interference for accepted social objectives such as protection of the environment. However, what was and should be obvious is continually called to question in recent years in a pretense that extreme market freedom is inevitably a social benefit while markets are being interferred with continually by free market advocates.

[Lee A. Arnold]

Any questions about climate science, results, etc., should be posted AFTER READING the "Summary for Policymakers" of the IPCC 4th Assessment Report, released earlier this year and available here:

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_SPM.pdf

You simply have no excuse for ignorance. It pretty much covers the basics in this comment thread. It's quite beautiful to look at. And anyone who thinks the "hockey stick" was disproven, should see page 3!

Ouestions about climate methods and models are covered in the "working group reports" for the 4th Assessment. A list of those which are already available in PDF is on the IPCC main page, here:

http://www.ipcc.ch/

The full "4th Synthesis Report" will be published after the middle of November. It is the complete study. The outline of topics that it will cover, is here:

http://www.ipcc.ch/activity/ar4outline.htm

It should be pointed out that ALL of these are censored before being published -- by government representatives from the United States, China, and Saudi Arabia in particular.

Again, this is the FOURTH major report. The entire 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report, commonly referred to as the "TAR," is available here:

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/

[anne]

Lee Arnold:

Please explain what the "censoring" of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report entails. I know the scientific analysis is politically discussed, but how do such discussions lead to alteration? The IPCC panel as such consists of scientists, if I understand properly. Are scientific understandings significantly altered in the final report or only interpretations?

[jfb2252]

I concur with Lee Arnold. Read now the "Summary for Policymakers" from each of the three working groups, totalling under 60 pages, or wait six weeks for the overall summary, to be agreed by all the diplomats.

http://www.ipcc.ch/

Anne is correct that the concern is melting of ice sheets on land, not the floating ice sheets, when one is interested in sea level rise. Water level in a glass doesn't change when a floating ice cube melts.

[jfb2252]

Anne, I suspect Lee Arnold is referring to the process needed to attain concensus in the final summary report. The long main report from each working group is a concensus scientific report. A speaker I heard recently who was involved in drafting the WG I summary for policymakers suggested there was some self-censorship by the scientists in compiling that summary. The overall summary is as much a political document as a scientific one and must be agreed by the diplomats. Why is this good? Because the government representatives take ownership of the final document in achieving their concensus.

[anne]

That is an interesting and encouraging response, so that studies are available as such but meaning is negotiated. I am reminded though that countries least able to afford protection against climate change avents as likely little represented in negotiating. While I have been much impressed with China's recent responses to severe weather, I know at the same time of the lack of reasonable or possible response in several poorer countries.

Also, though I have not read the study, I know the World Bank has been of questionable effect on environmental protection issues in poorer countries.

[Lee A. Arnold]

Anne, it is a bit more blatant, and recently led to a minor row. Here are some of the news reports from last April, just prior to the release of the Summary for Policymakers. In fact ALL of the past IPCC reports were altered by the participating governments, and the scientists have been obligated not to talk about it, although it has occasionally been mentioned, upon which they attempt to put a good face on it, at the threat of not being allowed to participate further. This break in the wall was unusual. I think it may accelerate, though.

REUTERS:
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL0649942120070406?sp=true

USA TODAY:
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2007-04-06-global-warming-report_N.htm

[hari]

It's amazing how intelligent species - like us - can become totally stupid when dealing with nature and its decay by man!

I was born on an ISLAND - South Pacific - +70yrs ago!
I was also educated in the Bay Area when Eisenhower was in WH.....

Mangroves have disappeared from the shores and inland water ways - my favourite sea crabs and mangrove fish have become extinct....and so on and on ....

Some of you guys seem to me to be only happy to dissuade your intelligence to simply oppose or don't accept any evidence - unless one foggy morning the straits of Florida disappears!

Now, let me tell you what an uneducated indigenous islander would say to some of your arguments: why don't you be our guest and come and find out the TRUTH! Seeing is believing - ain't it, my good friends!

I'll, of course, accept the argument Gore is a politician, and you can't trust what politicians say nowdays, and so on.... OK! He may also be simplifying the problem inorder to make believers out of (you) non-believers on climate change!

In my humble opinion, the more serious problem is the consequence of sea levels rising - without any given notice or whatnot! We, who're born with tide water under our feet, know when that tide starts behaving differently or indifferently...innundating law lands and destroying crops!

Here, in EU, the type of discourse you guys seem to prefer cannot be easily anticipated nor are the denizens ignorant that man is, in fact, changing his own climate! Willy nilly even my osters from Brittany are no longer SAFE!
Due to their culture and civilization, Europeans are more sanguine and perhaps a bit more realistic when it comes to judging man's cruelty - not only to fellow man! - but also to nature with its rsulting degradation.

I collect wine - right now there's a serious problem with harvests all across the mediterranean. Either grapes are ripening too early or draught is literally traking the juice out of them! 2007, they say, will NOT be a good year!

Norwegian peace prize is also given for a reason - to focus on mankinds current and historical dilemma!

[anne]

Thank you, Lee and JFB.

I will be more attentive to the blend of study and policy negotiation from here, since I am especially reminded about the importance of negotiation for the sakes of poorer countries. China can negotiate for its own sake, while Mozambique is another matter or even Bangladesh. I am considering problems of selective and limited World Bank responsiveness here.

[The Baron]

I wouldn't want to take away from the climate change debate, or Mr. Gore's contribution to it, however, I am somewhat amazed that he was given the prize for "Peace".

The prize in Literature, certainly, possibly even the prize in Economics, as GW, either unchecked, or as the results of man's efforts to counteract it, will most certainly have huge effects on global economies. But what does "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change," have at all to do with "who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses?"

I can see, maybe, some argument along the lines that he is trying to prevent the future global resource wars, but even that is pretty much a stretch.

[anne]

Thank you, Hari. Please set down references to readings about the South Pacific islands as they come to you.

[Patricia Shannon]

Baron,

It is not just "future" resource wars. There are vicious wars in Africa now that are caused, or at least aggravated, by effects on agriculture that global warming is already having.

Computer simulations of the effect of global warming show that, in general, countries that will be hurt the most are poor countries who have contributed least to the problem.

[The Baron]

Patricia, I don't doubt that, or want to lessen the importance of the facts. I just still have a hard time figuring out how raising the awareness of GW contributes to world peace as stated in Alfred Nobel's will.

As I stated, I think that the implications of the Summary Report have much higher correlation to the stated reasons for the prize in Economics, and I would wholly concur that "An Inconvenient Truth" qualifies for the prize in Literature, almost exactly to the terms in dear Al's will. Though for some reason many associate that prize with fiction works, literature does not have to be fiction.

[anne]

As Martin Luther King understood that the issue of peace was intimately linke to the issue of equity, to the issue of poverty, so United Nations scientists are wholly understanding of the extent to which resouce equity is daily a factor of peace. Through Africa, I can point to the extent to which resource competition has increasingly become a bar to or threat to peace.

Understand Sudan or Somalia ecologically or environmentally, and there is a different understanding than conventional for us.

[The Baron]

Quick correction, the "Nobel" prize for Economics, is not in-fact a "Nobel" prize. However, "In February 1995, it was decided that the economics prize be essentially defined as a prize in social sciences, opening the economics prize to great contributions in fields like political science, psychology, and sociology." Sounds like a winner to me.

[anne]

The Nobel Prize was not not not to Al Gore alone but to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations and to Al Gore. As we wantonly destroy the environment of Iraq, where are 4.7 million displaced Iraqis to live and how are they to live and what right have to to assume there can be peace simply given the environmental degradation wrecked in Iraq alone?

[anne]

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=FA0C1FF7395F0C7A8CDDA90994DC404482

October 9, 2004

Peace Prize Goes to Environmentalist in Kenya
By PATRICK E. TYLER

Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan woman who started an environmental movement that has planted 30 million trees in Africa and who has campaigned for women's rights and greater democracy in her home country, was announced the winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

She is the first African woman to win the peace prize since it was first awarded in 1901. Last year, the prize also was awarded to a woman, Shirin Ebadi, in recognition of her work promoting the rights of women and children as a lawyer in Iran.

The Nobel committee chairman, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, announcing the 2004 prize here, said Dr. Maathai ''represents an example and a source of inspiration for everyone in Africa fighting for sustainable development, democracy and peace.''

In choosing her as the peace prize laureate, the Nobel committee stretched the traditional bounds of the prize to include environmental advocacy. Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite who established the prize in his will in 1895, decreed that the prize should go ''to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.''

Asked if the committee had expanded a prize that already recognizes human rights advocacy and peacekeeping, Professor Mjoes, a physician and former president of the University of Tromso, replied, speaking in Norwegian, ''It is clear that with this award, we have expanded the term 'peace' to encompass environmental questions related to our beloved Earth.'' In his prepared statement, he added, ''Peace on earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment.'' ...

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/10/opinion/10maathai.html?ex=1260421200&en=f309c3f579a920ed&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

December 10, 2004

Trees for Democracy
By WANGARI MAATHAI

Nairobi, Kenya

WHEN I was growing up in Nyeri in central Kenya, there was no word for desert in my mother tongue, Kikuyu. Our land was fertile and forested. But today in Nyeri, as in much of Africa and the developing world, water sources have dried up, the soil is parched and unsuitable for growing food, and conflicts over land are common. So it should come as no surprise that I was inspired to plant trees to help meet the basic needs of rural women. As a member of the National Council of Women of Kenya in the early 1970's, I listened as women related what they wanted but did not have enough of: energy, clean drinking water and nutritious food.

My response was to begin planting trees with them, to help heal the land and break the cycle of poverty. Trees stop soil erosion, leading to water conservation and increased rainfall. Trees provide fuel, material for building and fencing, fruits, fodder, shade and beauty. As household managers in rural and urban areas of the developing world, women are the first to encounter the effects of ecological stress. It forces them to walk farther to get wood for cooking and heating, to search for clean water and to find new sources of food as old ones disappear.

My idea evolved into the Green Belt Movement, made up of thousands of groups, primarily of women, who have planted 30 million trees across Kenya. The women are paid a small amount for each seedling they grow, giving them an income as well as improving their environment. The movement has spread to countries in East and Central Africa.

Through this work, I came to see that environmental degradation by poor communities was both a source of their problems and a symptom. Growing crops on steep mountain slopes leads to loss of topsoil and land deterioration. Similarly, deforestation causes rivers to dry up and rainfall patterns to shift, which, in turn, result in much lower crop yields and less land for grazing.

In the 1970's and 1980's, as I was encouraging farmers to plant trees on their land, I also discovered that corrupt government agents were responsible for much of the deforestation by illegally selling off land and trees to well-connected developers. In the early 1990's, the livelihoods, the rights and even the lives of many Kenyans in the Rift Valley were lost when elements of President Daniel arap Moi's government encouraged ethnic communities to attack one another over land. Supporters of the ruling party got the land, while those in the pro-democracy movement were displaced. This was one of the government's ways of retaining power; if communities were kept busy fighting over land, they would have less opportunity to demand democracy.

Land issues in Kenya are complex and easily exploited by politicians. Communities needed to understand and be sensitized about the history of land ownership and distribution in Kenya and Africa. We held seminars on human rights, governing and reducing conflict.

In time, the Green Belt Movement became a leading advocate of reintroducing multiparty democracy and free and fair elections in Kenya....

[anne]

Martin Luther King thought peace extended to standing with striking sanitation workers in Memphis, others thought not. I think so, and I think peace and resource equity is everywhere related. Look about.

[Patricia Shannon]

Baron,

I was not contradicting your view that global warming is an economics issue. I was pointing out that it is not irrelavant to receive it in the peace category. Maybe the Noble people felt that the economics prize should go to the application of economic theory, rather than to someone whose work is important to the economy.

[jfb2252]

Nice official essay on the history of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Over-simplified summary: Peace is whatever the majority of the small group of Norwegians who award the prize believe appropriate. This changes roughly with generations.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/articles/lundestad-review/index.html

[worker]

Read the IPCC reports I and IV quickly and will go back. Thanks for forwarding the link. They are good.

Like I said, as a person of the right, I believe the science justifies taking policy action (while needing to consider the cost/ benefits of each policy step). I can believe this without making environmental doomsday/ armageddon scenarios my pagan religion. And by virtue of chaos theory, i'm not convinced any of our policy actions will make a lick of difference in the avg temperature 50 years from now (and thought the ref to chaos theory in the reports was glossed over).

By virtue of his doomsdayism, Gore (i think incorrectly) becomes tied in the mind of many right wingers to the luddite anti-human part of the environmental movement that opposes most modernity- the people who oppose carbon, but also all alternatives (eg. no nuclear, salmon killing hydro, bird killing wind turbines, solar on federal lands). This segment of environmentalists is far more virulent than the "Christian right" in its desire to impose its values on society, but generally receives a pass from favorable mainstream media. Everyone on the right and left should be afraid of them, unless you're already into veganism.

Fighting global warming is like the fighting a War on Drugs- something that will drag on forever, guaranteed by its definition to never produce victory. Hundreds of billions will be squandered by ill-informed or corrupt bureaucrats, but many partisans will find nice gubmint jobs where they can tell us peasants how to live (no barbecuing or wood burning fires, please). And no cost benefit analysis will be done henceforth from such Declaration of War, because this is now "a moral issue". But all pursued in the name of science. Instead of putting millions in prison, we'll put many more out of work or into poverty. And, I suspect the scientific/ academic research that the entrenched political constituency will fund to be limited to those studies with conclusions that can not in any way threaten their status-quo.

Have any of you ever seen a reasonable government funded study of the harms of marijuana smoking? if so, please forward.

[hari]

Anne -

Because of the vastness of the SouthPacific region they've successfully established a central institution called SouthPacificRegionalEnvironmentProgramme - based in W Samoa.

http://www.sprep.org/

[James Killus]

Paul Krugman, Al Gore, and global warming. If there was ever a posting to provoke wacko nutjobs, this is it. In fact, I'm surprised that the response so far has been so tepid. Come on, guys! You're not trying! Where are the claims that global warming science is part of a communist plot hatched after the fall of the Soviet Union to destroy the economies of the West?

As for those of you demanding that a precise timetable be given before you do anything, I direct your attention to all the great land opportunities on flood plains and hurricane zones. I understand that there is some excellent real estate now available in New Orleans, and no one has any idea when the levees will break again, so this is a slam dunk, right?

And to those sneering at anyone who believes that the global climate is changing while also driving or using electricity, I'm sure that you yourselves never, ever exceed the speed limit, so we can dispense with all traffic laws, right? Which is to say that most people understand that there are places where voluntary action is not only not enough, but actually places those engaging in it at a disadvantage in society. I'll bet you understand why we have laws for those sorts of things, but you're pretending now to not understand that principle. Maybe you think this is clever, but it actually just makes you look stupid and coarse.

Oh, and Baron, it's their prize, they can give it to whomever they wish. If you're going to complain, you might revisit the one that went to Kissinger, first, but I'm thinking that this is just another way to carp at Al Gore and Paul Krugman.

While tasty when grown in clean water, carp tend to have small bones and fish that live in muddy waters can acquire a muddy flavor. --FromWikipedia, footnote 1

[BJ Feng]

There is still much debate on what is the truth. Rather than rehashing, just go to

http://climatechangefacts.info/index.htm for a good summary.

The problem is that this warming is hardly at the upper end of temperature ranges in Earth's history. What is usual and what is unusual? We do not live on a static planet that will never fluctuate a few degrees in temperature and never harm humans in the process. Just think back to the Little Ice Age and the harm it did to humanity then. Theories are that the Viking civilization was destroyed because the Earth got much cooler. Greenland, which was actually green, froze over, and the Vikings simply melted away as a civilization because their homeland could no longer sustain them. When looking back only a few hundred years which includes both the Little Ice Age and a larger cooling period, it would indeed seem that we've gotten a lot hotter, but look back further still and you can see we're no where near the upper ranges of what this planet has experienced before. There have been times where the ice caps have completely melted, and no, it wasn't do to human interference.

My biggest problem are the so called (non) solutions that extremists banter about. The extremists I mention don't want nuclear energy, they don't want more hydro, they don't even want more solar or wind power because it could hurt that particular environment. They simply do not want us to consume energy which is impossible and unrealistic. It's easy to deny everyone else energy. Take Al Gore as he flies around in his chartered planes and heats up his multiple homes, using far more energy than the rest of us can even imagine, all the while telling us that we should be responsible. Well I am going to follow Al Gore's example, no, I will vow to use far less energy than Al Gore, which shouldn't be very hard. By simply doing what I do every day, I am improving upon the example of Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore. I pollute far less than Al Gore and I can be proud of my actions as a true ultra-environmentalist by bettering the standard set by Al Gore. My fellow Americans, I call upon you to save the Earth by polluting less than Al Gore, if we do just that, surely we'll be able to stop Global Warming! I've changed my mind, I will continue to be a Global Warming activist and do my part by consuming less energy than Al Gore, the standard bearer and Peace Prize winner. Hey, when do I get my Nobel Prize?

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/world/africa/15worldbank.html?ref=world

October 15, 2007

World Bank Neglects African Farming, Study Says
By CELIA W. DUGGER

The World Bank, financed by rich nations to reduce poverty in poor ones, has long neglected agriculture in impoverished sub-Saharan Africa, where most people depend on the farm economy for their livelihoods, according to a new internal evaluation....

[Please read this critical article and linked World Bank study and understand better why peace and resource equity are so related. Keep in mind "the 700 million people of southern Africa and 47 countries an 1000 differing ethnicities and 7 distinct colonial histories."

Thanks again to Hari.]

[Patricia Shannon]

worker says...
Read the IPCC reports I and IV quickly and will go back. Thanks for forwarding the link. They are good.

Like I said, as a person of the right, I believe the science justifies taking policy action (while needing to consider the cost/ benefits of each policy step). I can believe this without making environmental doomsday/ armageddon scenarios my pagan religion. And by virtue of chaos theory, i'm not convinced any of our policy actions will make a lick of difference in the avg temperature 50 years from now (and thought the ref to chaos theory in the reports was glossed over).

By virtue of his doomsdayism, Gore (i think incorrectly) becomes tied in the mind of many right wingers to the luddite anti-human part of the environmental movement that opposes most modernity- the people who oppose carbon, but also all alternatives (eg. no nuclear, salmon killing hydro, bird killing wind turbines, solar on federal lands). This segment of environmentalists is far more virulent than the "Christian right" in its desire to impose its values on society, but generally receives a pass from favorable mainstream media. Everyone on the right and left should be afraid of them, unless you're already into veganism.

I find this typical of the right. Make up some supposed group of people, or greatly exaggerate their numbers, and make them the enemy, thereby showing that your side is right. I have been an environmentalist for many years, and I don't know anybody like you are talking about. We are greatly concerned because of what has actually happened, is still happening, and is likely to happen. The right says individuals should plan for their individual futures (true, but I can guarantee you that plans don't always work), but they think we shouldn't deal with environment until we have mass starvation because of it. For somebody people who post here, that wouldn't matter as long as a few people, including themselves, get rich as a result.

You also ignore the influence of those Christian extremist who believe the end of the world is coming soon, so it doesn't matter what we do to the earth, because we won't need it anyway.

[anne]

Remember, now, what is important in the tradition of ever-hysterical conservative attack on Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, what is important now is to ridicule and attack Al Gore. That is what is important to carry forward conservative tradition of attacking Rachel Carson to Al Gore.

[Patricia Shannon]

Hari,

Thank you for your comment from real-life.

It amazes me how many people can believe things that are directly contradicted by their own experience.

I have read the statement "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

I would say "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man with cataracts is king. The two-eyed man is stoned as a heretic."

[Patricia Shannon]

B J Feng,

How do you think people are going to know about the problem, much less be motivated to change, w/o people like Gore? A few years ago, I kept careful track of NPR news mentions of several items, including global warming, to check out the impression I was getting. There was a total blackout on any mention of anything to do with the subject. When a hurricane expert was asked about the causes of hurricanes, any knowledgable person would expect a mention of the rold that warm water plays, but he was apparently not allowed to mention even that, and gave some vague answer. When the oil companies, which contribute to NPR, finally admitted that global warming cause by humans is happending, NPR finally started reporting on it.

If someone has hypothermia, they need to be warmed up. But that doesn't mean it is healthy to be boiled.

[Jim in Chicago]

Let's keep this simple: We're standing in a burning building. Gore, scientists, and other sane people say we have to put the fire out. "Conservatives" (i.e., the people who don't want to conserve anything) say the building is not on fire.

[piglet]

"He (Krugman) is criticizing the right for displaying the same sort of partisanship he oozes from his pen every day."

Oh the old "partisanship" scam. Maybe this is feeding the trolls, but since I hear this sort of "criticism" quite frequently, here's the answer:

Krugman criticizes the Republicans not for their partisanship but because they are wrong. They are wrong about Iraq, wrong about Global Warming, wrong about health care, wrong about SCHIP, wrong about tax cuts, wrong about energy conservation, wrong about torture, ... just about everything they do and say.

If you have ever read one of Krugman's columns and not realized that this is what he is saying: they are wrong, terribly wrong! They are promoting wrong policies, hurting us, the nation, the world - then I don't know what therapy should be prescribed to you.

[worker]

"I find this typical of the right. Make up some supposed group of people, or greatly exaggerate their numbers, and make them the enemy, thereby showing that your side is right."

I don't think strawmen are limited to the political right. Don't you leftists do this with "evangelical Christians"? I doubt most of these people are as dumb and dangerous as you've set set them up to be.

[wogie]

I don't know as a fact that CO2 from industrialzation is causing climate change -- but I have to give a lot of weight to the evidence of experts that contend that is the case. However, there is also evidence offered by some that the global warming is caused by intensifying solar radiation (click my name for URL). However, the consequences of the experts being right are too devastating to ignore. The usual approach to risk and uncertainty is to insure against the risk -- in this situation insurance is curbing greenhouse gases, particularly CO2. We must do this

Nevertheless, the opposing "evidence" does give pause.

[jfb2252]

http://www.europhysicsnews.com/full/06/article8/article8.html

is a seven year old article about an accelerator-driven nuclear power option which is safer than any option which requires a critical reactor AND can be applied to transmute nuclear waste into shorter-lived isotopes. The idea first came to prominence when Carlo Rubbia, Nobel laureate in physics and former director of CERN, began pushing it soon after he stepped down at CERN. The SNS accelerator at Oak Ridge could drive a demo project if all of the basic physics it's doing were stopped. SNS could be duplicated for a gigabuck and another gigabuck spent on the demo power projectif you want to keep the basic science going. Has any government stepped up to the plate in the fifteen years since Rubbia started pushing? Unfortunately not. Is any private firm going to invest, given regulatory constraints? Not soon.

[jfb2252]

I do not find OISM to be a credible organization, Wogie. Have you looked at the bios of the "faculty"? None have done any original work related to earth or atmospheric sciences. One is dead. I can't find any relevant refereed scientific work on the web site.

[Patricia Shannon]

I deny that the greenhouse effect of the glass on my car is what is what causes the inside of my car to get hotter than the temperature outside the car. It's actually caused by conservatives blowing hot air into my car.

[anne]

"However, there is also evidence offered by some that the global warming is caused by intensifying solar radiation."

Though I know little, I believe that this argument, among other eaoteric arguments, has repeatedly been to have no significance. I believe there is an authoritative website that tracks such arguments. When I have a moment, I will search for the reference.

[anne]

No; I do not know what the address might be, but others will. There is a scientist's website that tracks arguments on climate change and has done so for years. I should have at least saved the address, but will ask a friend.

[Patricia Shannon]

It is greenhouse gases that keep our planet from the temperature extremes of the moon, where the temperature during the day is above the boiling point of water during the moon's day, and -173 C (-343 F) at night. That is, the boiling point of water on earth. On the moon should be lower.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus

Venus has an extremely thick atmosphere, which consists mainly of carbon dioxide and a small amount of nitrogen. The atmospheric mass is 93 times that of Earth's atmosphere while the pressure at the planet's surface is about 92 times that at Earth's surface—a pressure equivalent to that at a depth of nearly 1 kilometer under Earth's oceans. The density at the surface is 65 kg/m³ (6.5% that of water). The enormously CO2-rich atmosphere, along with thick clouds of sulfur dioxide, generate the strongest greenhouse effect in the solar system, creating surface temperatures of over 460 °C.[15] This makes Venus's surface hotter than Mercury's, even though Venus is nearly twice Mercury's distance from the Sun and receives only 25% of Mercury's solar irradiance. Because of the lack of any moisture on Venus, there is no relative humidity on the surface, creating a heat index of 450 °C to 480 °C.

Studies have suggested that several billion years ago Venus's atmosphere was much more like Earth's than it is now, and that there were probably substantial quantities of liquid water on the surface, but a runaway greenhouse effect was caused by the evaporation of that original water, which generated a critical level of greenhouse gases in its atmosphere.

460 degrees C = 860 F

[Lee A. Arnold]

Anne, it is the blog RealClimate:

http://www.realclimate.org/

always well worth checking in upon, and the solar radiation arguments are evaluated on their "sun-earth connections" page here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/climate-science/sun-earth-connections/

as they are in the IPCC report already referenced, and which people really ought to read before spreading more misinformation.

[Lee A. Arnold]

With regard to Paul Krugman's column, it is remarkable that the conservative Right in the U.S. has moved to extreme emotional reactions on so many fronts, and so quickly as to be simultaneous. I agree that the reason is, they have been proven wrong on factual issues in economics, science, and domestic and foreign policy, and they are running out of survivable political positions -- except for tax cuts, where it is still easier to hide the fact that they ALSO haven't worked as advertised.

The conservatives also continue to swallow a load of self-serving propaganda, and that never bodes well for one's relationship to reality. For example, to counter General Sanchez's ringing damnation of the Administration, today the Post reports that al Qaeda in Iraq are nearly eliminated -- although it has been known, all along, that AQI was never big to begin with. That too, was Administration propaganda. So today's news is virtually worthless.

Another real problem now for the sour-and-shrill conservatives is that they are forcing themselves into an untenable psychological position. What is their new attitude on global warming? Okay, okay, it may be happening, but: WE CAN'T FIX IT! This attitude is directly opposed by the U.S. public's general optimism on affecting the future. (It is also refuted by economics, which really doesn't have much to say on the ultimate effects of climate mitigation.) Conservatives forget the primary lesson of Ronald Reagan, which is to put a happy face on their nonsense.

[anne]

http://www.realclimate.org/

Thanks to Lee; this is an important reference. I need to collect more such science reference sites, and will do so.

[James Killus]

No BJ, the site that you have pointed to is a climate change denial site. It is the equivalent of a paid advertisement from the oil and coal industry.

Oh, and if you do even just a little bit of checking, you'll find that the climate of Greenland from roughly 800 to 1300 AD was pretty much the same as it is today, which is to say that it wasn't entirely covered by a glacier, and you could do a little farming in the far south (especially if you raised sheep and other grass eaters), but the idea that "Greenland was green back then" is just another advertising slogan, like those meant to convince you that the right deodorant will help you get girls. That may have a germ of truth, but regular bathing is better. Or at least so opines this atmospheric scientist.

[anne]

James has it just right, simply looking at a couple of lines of "Climate Change Facts" will tell any thinking reader the site is all phony; professionally phony like the phony evolution denial sites. The only reason to refer anyone to such a site is for deception on deception.

But, as Patricia pointed out in complaining about public radion I was startled months ago to hear a discussion of the science of the "Creation Museum" and find myself listening to music a lot more and public radio news a lot less ever since.

[anne]

There is another site by scientists that tracks scientific deception or stifling by this Administration, and I will ask about that as well. But, the point about climate change deniers as evolution deniers is to subvert even an approach to truth and is terribly destructive. Such destructiveness of the very foundation of science is unconscionable.

[Jazgar]

WHAT??!! Feng pointed us to a climate change denial site? I'm SHOCKED! And there I was feeling all happy because the polar bears weren't in trouble at all. They were just going to be adopted by fairy princesses who would swoop down on their enchanted winged horses and cart them off to a magical polar bear forest... Now I'm really bummed. Shame on you Feng!

Well, still, I'm sure Feng is right that there is no racism in America and that those nooses in Jena were simply the work of mischievous pixies trying to stir up trouble among us mortals for a few laughs. Oh those wacky pixies...

[anne]

What makes Paul Krugman so unique among columnists, as Molly Ivins, was that they simply could not be false. Neither could learn of a Creation Museum, presumed to be of science, and treat the museum with other than deserved derision for there is no science there.

Brad DeLong portrayed another supposed apologist for Iraq who is no apologist only regrets that George Bush is President and not George Washington. But, the columnist all this time can still pretend that we went to war to protect America from a threat that could not have existed. The problem was the war was not done well, for the empty minded columnist no matter the evidence. The problem was the war was not done well, for the empty souled columnist no matter that there was no moral reason for war.

[wogie]

jfb2252

No I didn't check the credentials. I was impressed by the graph of the trend in shrinking glaciers compared with trend in greenouse gas. I suppose one could claim the numbers are phony. Do you know of anyone with credentials that has refuted them? Not trying to antagonize here, but curious. I do tend to question the common view on just about everything, but in the climate change case the consequences are such we cannot wait for absolute proof.

[anne]

Jazgar:

"And there I was feeling all happy because the polar bears weren't in trouble at all. They were just going to be adopted by fairy princesses who would swoop down on their enchanted winged horses and cart them off to a magical polar bear forest..."

I will sleep happily this night. Remember, as I love rembering, this is the Administration that ordered government biologists not to mention polar bears. Twice, for proper emphasis.

[anne]

Proofs in science are on a gradient of probability, and especially so with the complexity of climate change. I will ask after the question, since I know too little to answer on my own. However, Andrew Revkin have been reporting on climate change for the New York Times for years, and always leaves referrals and has addressed the research whihc I likely have record of.

Never does Revkin assert there is definiteness in climate research, because there is not but much is obviously known and more all the time.

[anne]

Please ask the question again carefully, so I can search my files, or is the question simply a research trail on the realtion historically between emissions and ice sheet melting?

[anne]

http://environment.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19526141.600&print=true

July 25, 2007

Huge Sea Level Rises Are Coming – Unless We Act Now
By James Hansen

I find it almost inconceivable that "business as usual" climate change will not result in a rise in sea level measured in metres within a century. Am I the only scientist who thinks so?

Last year I testified in a case brought by car manufacturers to challenge California's new laws on vehicle emissions. Under questioning from the lawyer, I conceded that I was not a glaciologist. The lawyer then asked me to identify glaciologists who agreed publicly with my assertion that sea level is likely to rise more than a metre this century if greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow: "Name one!"

I could not, at that moment. I was dismayed, because in conversations and email exchanges with relevant scientists I sensed a deep concern about the stability of ice sheets in the face of "business as usual" global warming scenarios, which assume that emissions of greenhouse gases will continue to increase. Why might scientists be reticent to express concerns about something so important?

I suspect it is because of what I call the "John Mercer effect". In 1978, when global warming was beginning to get attention from government agencies, Mercer suggested that global warming could lead to disastrous disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet. Although it was not obvious who was right on the science, I noticed that researchers who suggested that his paper was alarmist were regarded as more authoritative.

It seems to me that scientists downplaying the dangers of climate change fare better when it comes to getting funding. Drawing attention to the dangers of global warming may or may not have helped increase funding for the relevant scientific areas, but it surely did not help individuals like Mercer who stuck their heads out.

I can vouch for that from my own experience. After I published a paper in 1981 that described the likely effects of fossil fuel use, the US Department of Energy reversed a decision to fund my group's research, specifically criticising aspects of that paper....

[anne]

Oh my, there is so much....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/science/earth/17glacier.html?hp

July 17, 2007

Glaciers in Retreat
By SOMINI SENGUPTA

ON CHORABARI GLACIER, India — This is how a glacier retreats.

At nearly 13,000 feet above sea level, in the shadow of a sharp Himalayan peak, a wall of black ice oozes in the sunshine. A tumbling stone breaks the silence of the mountains, or water gurgles under the ground, a sign that the glacier is melting from inside. Where it empties out — scientists call it the snout — a noisy, frothy stream rushes down to meet the river Ganges.

D.P. Dobhal, a glaciologist who has spent the last three years climbing and poking the Chorabari glacier, stands at the edge of the snout and points ahead. Three years ago, the snout was roughly 90 feet farther away. On a map drawn in 1962, it was plotted 860 feet from here. Mr. Dobhal marked the spot with a Stonehenge-like pile of rocks.

Mr. Dobhal's steep and solitary quest — to measure the changes in the glacier's size and volume — points to a looming worldwide concern, with particularly serious repercussions for India and its neighbors. The thousands of glaciers studded across 1,500 miles of the Himalayas make up the savings account of South Asia's water supply, feeding more than a dozen major rivers and sustaining a billion people downstream. Their apparent retreat threatens to bear heavily on everything from the region's drinking water supply to agricultural production to disease and floods.

Indian glaciers are among the least studied in the world, lacking the decades of data that scientists need to deduce trends. Nevertheless, the nascent research offers a snapshot of the consequences of global warming for this country and raises vital questions about how India will respond to them.

According to Mr. Dobhal's measurements, the Chorabari's snout has retreated 29.5 feet every year for the last three years, and while that is too short a time to draw scientific conclusions about the glacier's health, it conforms to a disquieting pattern of glacial retreat across the Himalayas....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/opinion/04homer-dixon.html?ref=opinion

October 4, 2007

A Swiftly Melting Planet
By THOMAS HOMER-DIXON

Toronto

THE Arctic ice cap melted this summer at a shocking pace, disappearing at a far higher rate than predicted by even the most pessimistic experts in global warming. But we shouldn't be shocked, because scientists have long known that major features of earth's interlinked climate system of air and water can change abruptly.

A big reason such change happens is feedback — not the feedback that you'd like to give your boss, but the feedback that creates a vicious circle. This type of feedback in our global climate could determine humankind's future prosperity and even survival.

The vast expanse of ice floating on the surface of the Arctic Ocean always recedes in the summer, reaching its lowest point sometime in September. Every winter it expands again, as the long Arctic night descends and temperatures plummet. Each summer over the past six years, global warming has trimmed this ice's total area a little more, and each winter the ice's recovery has been a little less robust. These trends alarmed climate scientists, but most thought that sea ice wouldn't disappear completely in the Arctic summer before 2040 at the earliest....

[calmo]

Ok, now that James, keen environmental scientist and more, is looking for reasonably neutral sites/sources there is the report that Mars is heating up too:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming_2.html
And dang if that Russian doesn't think it will start cooling in a couple of decades.
He doesn't seem to have any connections to the Oil industry or the Republican party...you figure he has to wait for the report on Venus's global warming to clinch the argument?
How many years of "steep temperature declines" before we fess up and admit we didn't burn enough fossil fuels to keep us warm enough?
So far I like the idea of conserving what we have as if it were a limited resource...as if there were generations to follow, that might find them handy, you know?

[James Killus]

Ah calmo, a little searching will tell you that the Mars experst think that southern Mars is heating up because of dust storms, just as orange groves burn the smudge pots to keep the ground warm at night (the smoke blocks the direct radiation into space.

As for Venus, well, golly, surely you're aware of my interest in the divine planet of love.

The best way to spot whether or not someone knows something about the science of greenhouse gases is to ask them if they've ever heard the terms "adiabatic lapse rate" and "radiative equilibrium." The folks at realclimate.org pass that test. Most others, including National Geographic, don't.

But I do agree that it's better to leave oil and coal in the ground for those that follow us to have some to play with. As I can tell you from memories of my youth, there's few things funner than scrabbling around on a coal pile.

[BJ Feng]

There's nothing wrong with being cautious, but the solutions have to be examined. The solutions are the most important aspect and what I find most lacking. First of all, we have to ask will the solution work? If we all stop driving cars, what effect will that have on Global Warming? And here's where we get into difficulty because the climate is so complicated and the models so inaccurate that there's no clear answer. What will it take to stop or reverse Global Warming? Again, that can't be answered because the Earth seems to be undergoing a natural warming period and we don't know how much of the warming is due to mankind. We also can't accurately say which part of human activity causes what part of the warming. Is it the carbon? Is it the particle soot? Is it the methane? How much of each do we have to reduce?

Because cause and effect hasn't been figured out yet, we get these generic calls to stop using energy or simply to stop polluting. But this is simply not possible. Global Warming activists have to come up with an alternative if they are to be taken seriously. Why are they not screaming for nuclear energy? Given the shrieks and rhetoric, I would be demanding that nuclear plants be constructed on every street corner if I were them. And you want to replace fossil fuel, fine, but does corn based ethanol make any sense? If this is such a serious situation, then they should demand that the best alternative be put into place. It seems that Brazil has a cheaper and more viable alternative, but then there would be no handout for the corn farmers. You're talking about saving the planet, but somehow there's still room for a subsidy to corn farmers? And what? There's a tariff on foreign alternative fuels? Gee, excuse me if I don't take these Global Warming activists seriously. Sure you can blame it on Bush as usual, but it seemed to me that there was very little of the usual screaming and hysteria, and almost no analysis as to if this was the best way to go.

So the Global Warming activists can't say how much of the warming is due to human activity, and can't tell us what it would take to reverse whatever harm we've done. They have no firm guidelines as to what we're supposed to do other than to just stop whatever it is we're doing. Fine, I'm stopping, I like riding my Wal-Mart purchased bike anyway.

These criticisms should be taken to heart. We need some sort of coherent answer on what will work and what we can do. Just as there is no consensus on Global Warming, there is no consensus on what should be done. If Global Warming activists want us to follow, they first have to find a direction to lead us. Which way dude?

[calmo]

Thanks James for the response (and continuation of my education) an esp from that informed link, the concluding statement runs:There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on Earth…
which is itself ironic in that the argument is not that Earth is not warming, but that the cause (according to "people" (this Russian)) has a lot to do with the sun not being the constant source of energy some assume. So the author here himself "rushes to claim", yes?
I was totally swayed until that point...and then I knew he had vested interests...a mindless Gore sychophant thru and thru. [So fun to "rush to claim" --try it an see!]
Were the dust storms just coincidental phenomena brought about by the same solar irregularities (according to the Russian) that have caused the various Ice ages? Could the "regional" (dusty) affects also be (part of) "global" affects?
Izit harder to believe that the Sun has some variation in it's radiant power (people still mull over the non-solar causes of the Ice Ages, yes?) than to believe that despite a couple of hundred years of burning fossil fuels, humans are still pipsqueaks in the global warming problem?
It does smell like we may be over-estimating our size/weight/place in the cosmos here...which accounts for sideways glances at other planets...like Venus, something of a favorite with you and I've bookmarked your SF novel and as soon as I'm off the painkillers for some dental repairs, I'm into it.

[James Killus]

calmo, the best climate modeling results so far have been obtained using a combination of solar variation and greenhouse gas effects. However, there is nothing particulaly mysterious about solar variations, and we have some fair data series on it, what with the satellites and all.

Which is to say that "it's all very complicated" is not an argument; it's a call to study the complications--if someone is being honest. Scientists love complicated stuff, which is why it's a good idea to listen to the actual scientists and not those who claim to speak for them.

There was a time when there was considerable scientific doubt as to the magnitude of greenhouse gas effects on the thermal balance of the Earth; that time has passed. Now the scientific debate is on the effects of the temperature rise. But when the phrase "we've never seen anything like this before" keeps coming up, don't expect that everything is going to turn out just swell. Sometimes the end result of "it's very complicated" is "and then all hell breaks loose."

[anne]

"What will it take to stop or reverse Global Warming? Again, that can't be answered because the Earth seems to be undergoing a natural warming period and we don't know how much of the warming is due to mankind."

Notice the hateful conservative lunacy which includes first setting down a phony science site for refenercer to prove that there is no global wamring. Second, when the reference site is shown to be a fraud, the hateful conservative lunacy becomes shamelessly ignorning the uncovering of the conservative fraud and asserting there is a natural global warming occuring which is another hateful conservative fraud.

We have conservative fraud on conservative fraud, always mired in falsity and hateful ignorance. Always rationalize the harming of others is the modern hateful conservative aim.

[anne]

"What will it take to stop or reverse Global Warming? Again, that can't be answered because the Earth seems to be undergoing a natural warming period and we don't know how much of the warming is due to mankind."

The words of shameless hateful conservative lying and finding ever new ways to lie. That is what conservatives are about, lying and lying again. Let us return now to the phony global warming denialist references. Lies on lies on lies. No mistakes here, no stupidities, but profound hatefulness designed to lie and cover lies by new lies each time lie are uncovered.

Conservatives are about lying.

[anne]

Remember that the lunatic liars on global warming are the liars who drove us to the moral and strategic perversity of war and occupation in Iraq and who are lying about Iraq still. There is no limit to such perversity, turning from the health of children to the wanton destruction of war and occuption displacing millions and destroying hundreds of thousands of lives to the subversion of science.

[hari]

My adoptive country - SWEDEN - is laughing! Why?

Because forecasts by climate scientists show that their winter might become more berable in future, as mean winter subzero temps rise!

Some venture capitalists are already planning a new RIVIERA on inland BalticCoast of Sweden - facing Finland.

Can you consider/think about median winter temp in middle or upper Sweden -30C or lower during my life experience.

PaulKrugman is not a journalist - and ALL you guys know it!
What'd some of you've said, if the Economic Price was issued to same Krugman - for his critical work on trade economics?

In my opinion, it's NOT unlikely he will sooner than later!