The Climate Crisis

This Week in the Battle for the Future

This past week, Dreaming Up Daily received an email from Marc Morano, Communications Director of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) Majority Staff, demanding correction of an unspecified report here on the Science Magazine article claiming that no peer reviewed articles by climatologists dispute the existence of the Climate Crisis. In other words, that the people who are conducting specific research on the aspects of the climate all agree that the Climate Crisis exists, which implies that if fossil fuel greenhouse gases continue unabated, it will get much worse.

The email cites alleged flaws in the original article by Naomi Oreskes, and failure to address them in the author's recent oped piece. But the charges the Republican flack makes repeat the arguments in the Wall Street Journal article (debunked in detail here) that prompted Oreskes oped. It also distorts the National Academy of Sciences, claiming it had refuted climate crisis evidence when in fact it said plainly that "most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."

What's going on here? Why do these Republicans feel compelled to politicize a critical problem that should be the business of all humankind to address?

It's a mystery, maybe. But sometimes the crime is committed by one of the usual suspects. For instance, last week, Bonner Cohen , a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, claimed on C-Span that (as reported by Think Progress): the “vast majority” of climatologists are “agnostic” on global warming. Bonner explained that meant they weren’t convinced “there is a causal relationship between emissions of greenhouse gases and [warming] the climate.”

Such a statement is mind-boggling. To question evidence or methodology of some study, even to distort studies by selective use of statistics and graphs, is all pretty standard technique. But to state with a straight face such a huge lie--nobody would get away with that in high school debate. Not only Oreskes study but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes it clear to everyone (including TIME, Newsweek, ABC News, etc.) that most if not all climatologists are dead convinced--even those who were skeptical a decade ago. But apparently this is how this country is being run, and the world's future is being destroyed.

And indeed, (Think Progress reports), when a caller to C-Span's National Journal challenged Cohen to name one--just ONE--climatologist who wasn't convinced the Climate Crisis is real, he couldn't do it. He went from asserting a VAST MAJORITY to being unable to name ONE.

As for the "usual suspects," when Think Progress claimed that Cohen's group was "paid by the fossil fuel industry to distort the facts about global warming and other environmental issues," the group claimed libel, though Think Progress claims that Cohen himself admitted to fossil fuel industry related financing, on the air.

Meanwhile...

The huge ice cap that covers Greenland is melting faster than ever before on record, three times faster than just five years ago. The consequence is already evident in a small but ominous rise in sea levels around the world, a pace that is also accelerating, the scientists say.

The most powerful typhoon to hit China in 50 years killed more than a hundred people, demolished 50,000 homes and displaced a million and a half people. Winds topped 170 mph. It was the second killer typhoon in a week. The previous one killed 80 people.

The "Dead Zone" in the Pacific off the northern U.S. coast is larger than originally thought. Oregon State University scientists looking for weather changes that could reverse the situation aren't finding them, and they say levels of dissolved oxygen critical to marine life are the lowest since the first dead zone was identified in 2002. It has returned every year. The Dead Zone starves oxygen from the water and has led to the dieoff of crabs and fish. Scientists have linked the phenomenon to the Climate Crisis.

But if Climate Crisis deniers and their enablers in big money energy and the decadent right wing Republican party are fighting furiously against dealing with problems that are destroying the future, others are taking action without them. The Washington Post is the latest to report this:

With Washington lawmakers deadlocked on how best to curb global warming, state and local officials across the country are adopting ambitious policies and forming international alliances aimed at reducing greenhouse gases.

The initiatives, which include demands that utilities generate some of their energy using renewable sources and mandates for a reduction in emissions from motor vehicles, have emboldened clean-air advocates who hope they will form the basis for broader national action.

This has the additional benefit of putting pressure on big companies to seek federal mandates because dealing with separate regulations in various places can be more expensive. Still, state and local experiments can test what works best, at least in the short run. It's still a process fraught with danger and frustration, without the national leadership to build a consensus of seriousness, so that there is accountability, and attempts to paper over regulations that are designed to be ineffective with clever names can be stopped before they start.

It's way past time to get serious about this, beyond greed and politics.