Ahead of IPCC report, fossil-fuel groups organize climate denial campaign

[xchrom]

http://grist.org/news/ahead-of-ipcc-report-fossil-fuel-groups-organize-climate-denial-campaign/

?w=250&h=213
If only they would shut up.


Watch out: A tsunami of stupidity is due to crash over the world next Friday.

That’s when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will release a summary of its big new climate assessment report, the first since 2007. But that’s not the stupid part.

A global campaign funded by fossil-fuel interests has been steadily building to discredit the report. That’s where the stupidity comes in. From The Guardian:

Organisations that dismiss the science behind climate change and oppose curbs on greenhouse gas pollution have made a big push to cloud the release of the IPCC report, the result of six years of work by hundreds of scientists.

Those efforts this week extended to promoting the fiction of a recovery in the decline of Arctic sea ice.

[Kolesar]

1. Expect to see these Republican statements in the comments section at the Cleveland Plain Dealer soon

I remember: "Polar bears will evolve back into grizzly bears".

The Republicans at DU won't be so bold as to print that stuff here, though.

[Botany]

2. the more CO 2 in a body of gas the more heat that body of gas will hold

fill a 2 liter plastic jug with O2 and the same type of jug with CO 2 and put them
in a sunny window and then take their temperatures in 30 minutes and see
which one is warmer.

[malaise]

3. Adding another link

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/20/arctic-sea-ice-decline-melting-summer
<snip>
The Arctic is on course for an ice-free summer within the next few decades, as scientists on Friday declared that sea ice in the region had fallen to one of the lowest annual minimums on record.

On 13 September, the expanse of frozen water in the Arctic fell to 5.10 million square kilometres (1.97 million square miles), the sixth-lowest such measurement on record, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said in a statement. The annual minimum was not as extreme as the collapse of sea ice last year, which smashed through all records. But it was still well below the average of the last three decades.

"The overall trend is still decidedly downwards," the NSIDC director, Mark Serreze, said in a statement. "The pattern we've seen so far is an overall downward trend in summer ice extent, punctuated by ups and downs due to natural variability in weather patterns and ocean conditions."

[Berlum]

4. "We want Planet Earth to fail. That is why we lie to you. Smirk." - Republicons, Inc. (R)

"As soon as everything is totally f*cked, JeeBus will come back and SAVE rich liars and the Proletarian Suckers who swallowed their propaganda. We figure." - Republicons, Inc. (R)

[FarCenter]

5. A fundamental problem with previous IPCC reports was the optimistic projection of carbon use

They were basically accepting the fossil fuel industry's projection of future use of fossil fuels.

But production has not achieved the projected levels over the last decade. As less economic deposits are extracted at higher and higher cost, usage of hydrocarbon fuels will begin to decline over the next decade or two.

Carbon pollution will be significantly curtailed by $500/barrel oil.

[Nederland]

6. Actually the IPCC under estimated CO2 levels

Regardless of scenario:

[FarCenter]

8. 2008 is the beginning of a world wide recession

Global growth has been a lot slower since 2008.

In the US, CO2 emissions in 2009 were below 1995.

http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/name,32870,en.html

The easy to reach oil fields and the thick coal seams are gone. Deepwater and arctic oil fields are what remain to be developed and thin coal seams are more costly to produce.

By mid-century, fossil fuels will be largely uneconomic.

[Nederland]

7. The new report will have something for everyone

Environmentalists will point to the section where the confidence in human's role in climate change rises from 90% to 95%.

Skeptics will point to the sections that address the pause in global warming and the one that backtracks on the connection between extreme weather events and CO2 levels.

I imagine both sides will have enough evidence to claim 'victory' in some way.

[FarCenter]

9. "Meanwhile, in the Antarctic, sea ice extent reached a record high on September 18, tied with last"

Meanwhile, in the Antarctic, sea ice extent reached a record high on September 18, tied with last year’s maximum.

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/