Photo: George Monbiot
Every newspaper should have someone like George Monbiot on hand. He's the affable and intelligent UK based Guardian columnist (and the author of Heat - How to stop the planet burning) who keeps readers up to date on the depressing ramp up of human instigated climate change. Furthermore, he often provides a political context to the powerful international denial lobby including its ties to the fossil fuels industry which underpin a number of think tanks. And our rightfully furious George is willing to call for resignations when it makes sense - as he did with a few leading lights at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who've placed their political ambitions ahead of the safety of the planet.
The UK it should be added is one of the few countries in the world where policies of adaptation and mitigation are built into the functions and considerations of every government agency and department at the national and local level. Climate change is not just the prerogative of the environment ministry there. Montbiot comes out of a culture where all of the three major political parties are heading into a spring election agreed that the overheating of the Earth's atmosphere by fossil fuels emissions has catastrophic consequences for future generations.
That kind of consensus does not exist on this side of the pond. Canada, where I live and work, has been reconfigured into a petro-state living off the sales of dirty oil that is belched from the noxious Alberta tar sands and then exported into energy addicted American market. One leading scientist I spoke to dares not express his opinion publicly of late because he is hoping that Ottawa will reverse its recent decision to curtail funding for academic research into the long term trends in weather and atmospheric patterns.
Climate change denial is the official Canadian government policy and it is reflected here in both the news coverage in the corporate driven media and in the prominence given to the two leading skeptics of climate science, columnists and pundits Margaret Wente and Rex Murphy. I have no doubt these two media machers perform their jobs without the benefit of the assistance of a lobby.
My complaint is that that there is nobody in my country like George Monbiot with an equivalent public perch to counter the nay sayers on global warming. The few scientists willing to stick their necks out with rebuttals in the media lack the ability to respond in language that the public can understand. My suspicion is that this imbalance is a widespread phenomenon across North America and beyond. Monbiot has, for instance, complained of the passivity of British climate scientists in face of recent attacks on their research.
This of course makes the job of the emergency planners who need to keep on top of possible droughts, flooding and extreme weather doubly difficult, especially if their political masters belittle climate change as a possible source for those concerns.
It may be said that someone of George Monbiot's talents comes in short supply. In the past he made himself available for talks outside the UK to articulate a pro-science perspective on climate change. But his reluctance to fly, because of the role that air travel plays as a major generator of greenhouse gases, has restricted his availability overseas. But, we cannot always rely on an outsider.
The challenge for consumers of news about climate change is that scientists are contributing all the time to a large body of arcane knowledge that is inexact and a work in progress. Scientists are, for instance, debating the timing and scale of rising sea levels and glacier melting, not if they will happen at all with global warming. For non-specialists it can be downright confusing.
But there is enough data on hand, remarks economist Jeffrey Sachs to demonstrate the urgency of a global strategy to deal with climate change. "Large scale use of oil, coal and gas is threatening the biology and chemistry of the planet," he wrote recently.
As recounted by Monbiot, the current scandal involving hacked emails at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia reflects more the typical efforts of a science prima donna -- that is unit head Phil Jones -- to maintain his august reputation to the point of suppressing new data that challenged his flawed 20 year old paper on local heating and urbanization.
And it is true the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change representing the work of thousands of the world's climate scientists, erroneously reported the disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers within three decades - a nonsensical claim considering the enormous 30,000 square kilometer land mass in question - 300 years is the more likely time frame if global warming continues unchecked, experts have told the Guardian.
Monbiot is calling for the resignation of the head of that organization, Rajendra Pachauri for covering up that error. In one delicious Guardian column he wrote about how the current IPCC head - an economist, not a climate science incidentally -- was the choice of George Bush and ExxonMobil to replace a bona fide scientist Robert Watson whose outspokenness on global warming was not of their liking.
Science is too important to be left to the pundits and politicians.
Photo: Wikipedia - CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
Paul,
Where have you been? Don't you get newspapers in Canada?
Did you take Chemistry nor Physics?
1) Server hackers recently revealed emails pointing to rigging of charts & temperature data by your friends.
2) Some of your "expert" buddies admitted rigging the data and charts.
3) If you had any Chemistry/Physics background, you'd know the heat of fusion of water is many many times that of the specific heat of a mere gas, any gas, even CO2; so CO2 is not nearly the player in the Green House Effect necessary for your Global Warming theory to work.
4) Quite the opposite is happening, the world has been in a global cooling cycle for about 10 years; please note the record snow fall in D.C. (5') shutting down the Marxists, temporarily at least.
5) In the long run, atmospheric CO2 numbers are on the decline. How do you know? Ask yourself where did all the coal, petroleum and natural gas deposits come from? Answer, from plants and animals. Where did the animals get that carbon? From plants. Where did the plants get it? From the atmosphere. So, all carbon deposits originated from atmospheric CO2. Additionally, limestone (calcium carbonate) was formed when carbolic acid (formed when rain water absorbed atmospheric CO2) combined with calcium deposits in the soil. So, all limestone was created from atmospheric CO2. I think you'd have to agree that there used to be quite a lot more CO2 in the Earth's earlier atmosphere, that is present today. Did the world burn due to overheating & destroy all life when CO2 was so much greater? No. In fact there was greater plant and animal diversity then, then now.
As a matter of fact, more specie are dying today than ever before, both plant and animal. Why are the rain forests disappearing? Why are the deserts growing at a predictable geometric rate? Because there is a shortage of plant food (CO2) in the air. The Sahara is only 4,000 years old, and growing. You see, much to the contrary of your political Global Warming methodology, there is a shortage of CO2. Other than the production of concrete from limestone, none of that limestone locked CO2 will ever return to the air. If it were not for man burning carbon, that carbon would not be available for plants and animals. Only man is capable of returning locked away CO2 to the plants that need it.
What we have with your proven phony Global Warming hoax is a political agenda to tax and destroy free enterprise and the American system as we know it.
Hillary spoke at the Climate Change Conference, promising $100B U.S. tax payer dollars/year, to be turned over to the U.N. Marxists. Pelosey made the same promise, neither of which have to authority to bind U.S. citizens to such self destruction.
Your buddy Hugo was salivating at the thought of U.S. dollars to help him run his country further into Marxism. He claimed the U.S. had destroyed the climate and it was only fair that the U.S. pay the Marxist dictatorships around the world for such damage. Strange, I seem to remember the China Olympics where it was impossible to see the stadium, until after the factories were shut down for several months. I seem to remember the USSR & its incredible environmental disasters, like Chernobyl.
Even now, your political allies in the U.S. are claiming anything, or everything, or nothing, is Global Warming. We can't let the facts get in the way of a good scam on U.S. taxpayers, and unlimited taxation possibilities.
The plan is in; pass the Cap and Trade Bill soon to enter the Senate. Start with an estimated $5/gal "carbon tax" and squeeze the carbon cap down each year. Here in CA the AQMD has been experimenting with a Cap and Trade system for over a decade. In '07, the permit to produce 1 ton of diesel particulate (carbon), which was issued at no charge to the original CA business, was later sold to another CA business needing more credits. What did it sell for? $5? $100? $500? No, $1,250,000.
If your globalist friends get their way, no airplane could take off for less than $2M. Concrete will be only a fond memory. No American will have a job, much less a car, much less a home, much less freedom.
Great scam that Global Warming. To bad the facts got in the way. Too bad Americans, at least the older ones, studied Chemistry and Physics.
What's next?
Paul,
Dare you print, or allow an ordinary person to print, the other side of the story? The real info is missing form the so called debate. Dare you be the first to allow FACTS to surface? Are you a real journalist (the old definition of one of seeks the truth via investigation)? Or, are you a new journalist (one who seeks only to support their position by supposed facts, really only opinions)? We shall see.
Paul,
Where have you been? Don't you get newspapers in Canada?
Did you take Chemistry nor Physics?
1) Server hackers recently revealed emails pointing to rigging of charts & temperature data by your friends.
2) Some of your "expert" buddies admitted rigging the data and charts.
3) If you had any Chemistry/Physics background, you'd know the heat of fusion of water is many many times that of the specific heat of a mere gas, any gas, even CO2; so CO2 is not nearly the player in the Green House Effect necessary for your Global Warming theory to work.
4) Quite the opposite is happening, the world has been in a global cooling cycle for about 10 years; please note the record snow fall in D.C. (5') shutting down the Marxists, temporarily at least.
5) In the long run, atmospheric CO2 numbers are on the decline. How do you know? Ask yourself where did all the coal, petroleum and natural gas deposits come from? Answer, from plants and animals. Where did the animals get that carbon? From plants. Where did the plants get it? From the atmosphere. So, all carbon deposits originated from atmospheric CO2. Additionally, limestone (calcium carbonate) was formed when carbolic acid (formed when rain water absorbed atmospheric CO2) combined with calcium deposits in the soil. So, all limestone was created from atmospheric CO2. I think you'd have to agree that there used to be quite a lot more CO2 in the Earth's earlier atmosphere, that is present today. Did the world burn due to overheating & destroy all life when CO2 was so much greater? No. In fact there was greater plant and animal diversity then, then now.
As a matter of fact, more specie are dying today than ever before, both plant and animal. Why are the rain forests disappearing? Why are the deserts growing at a predictable geometric rate? Because there is a shortage of plant food (CO2) in the air. The Sahara is only 4,000 years old, and growing. You see, much to the contrary of your political Global Warming methodology, there is a shortage of CO2. Other than the production of concrete from limestone, none of that limestone locked CO2 will ever return to the air. If it were not for man burning carbon, that carbon would not be available for plants and animals. Only man is capable of returning locked away CO2 to the plants that need it.
What we have with your proven phony Global Warming hoax is a political agenda to tax and destroy free enterprise and the American system as we know it.
Hillary spoke at the Climate Change Conference, promising $100B U.S. tax payer dollars/year, to be turned over to the U.N. Marxists. Pelosey made the same promise, neither of which have to authority to bind U.S. citizens to such self destruction.
Your buddy Hugo was salivating at the thought of U.S. dollars to help him run his country further into Marxism. He claimed the U.S. had destroyed the climate and it was only fair that the U.S. pay the Marxist dictatorships around the world for such damage. Strange, I seem to remember the China Olympics where it was impossible to see the stadium, until after the factories were shut down for several months. I seem to remember the USSR & its incredible environmental disasters, like Chernobyl.
Even now, your political allies in the U.S. are claiming anything, or everything, or nothing, is Global Warming. We can't let the facts get in the way of a good scam on U.S. taxpayers, and unlimited taxation possibilities.
The plan is in; pass the Cap and Trade Bill soon to enter the Senate. Start with an estimated $5/gal "carbon tax" and squeeze the carbon cap down each year. Here in CA the AQMD has been experimenting with a Cap and Trade system for over a decade. In '07, the permit to produce 1 ton of diesel particulate (carbon), which was issued at no charge to the original CA business, was later sold to another CA business needing more credits. What did it sell for? $5? $100? $500? No, $1,250,000.
If your globalist friends get their way, no airplane could take off for less than $2M. Concrete will be only a fond memory. No American will have a job, much less a car, much less a home, much less freedom.
Great scam that Global Warming. To bad the facts got in the way. Too bad Americans, at least the older ones, studied Chemistry and Physics.
What's next?
Climate change has been somewhat clarified especially in developing countries through education of the population. Instead developing countries or in poor countries the problem has not begun to be discussed. And do not forget that these countries hold the most important forest areas that slowly begin to disappear forever. And America is the example that anything is still the biggest polluter who does not want to do something concrete in this area. No matter how we struggle we are some countries with high share in climate change, who do not like.