"Climate change is here — and worse than we thought" - James Hansen, WP blog post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/climate-change-is-here--and-worse-than-we-thought/2012/08/03/6ae604c2-dd90-11e1-8e43-4a3c4375504a_story.html"When I testified before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988 , I warned of the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet. I painted a grim picture of the consequences of steadily increasing temperatures, driven by mankinds use of fossil fuels.
But I have a confession to make: I was too optimistic.
My projections about increasing global temperature have been proved true. But I failed to fully explore how quickly that average rise would drive an increase in extreme weather.
In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, which will be published Monday, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present."
snip
Serious stuff. Deadly serious.
limpyhobbler
(8,244 posts)dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)and again every decade after that.
Naturally, making money triumphed.
That is what pisses me off so much...there was time, at several points, to make the right decision.
Kablooie
(18,605 posts)patrice
(47,992 posts)their priorities, when they threaten to throw this presidency in the trash, and ask themselves how much time we have left to get it wrong, before we get it right.
Even if we yield all criticisms of this President, climate change poses the single urgent priority that must be addressed BEFORE we can do anything substantive about many of our other problems.
The facts and urgency of climate change pose real doubts about whether, as some say, President Obama is a corporatist for corporations' sakes, or for some other higher priority reason. Do we really think these studies were unknown to Barack Obama before he became President? Am I the only one who recalls Senator Kerry's words, in the 2004 campaign, on the real threat to America's security being environmental, not, by implication, terrorism, because we have functional responses to that? I believe Lawrence Wright was also writing that at about the same time.
I see Barack Obama with young leaders and with children and consider how the facts of global climate change explain a great deal about the Obama Presidency that has so vexed so many others on what calls itself "the Left".
What chance of the following would we have under a Romney presidency, or if not then, then after what ever length of a period of social upheaval?
There is still time to act and avoid a worsening climate, but we are wasting precious time. We can solve the challenge of climate change with a gradually rising fee on carbon collected from fossil-fuel companies, with 100 percent of the money rebated to all legal residents on a per capita basis. This would stimulate innovations and create a robust clean-energy economy with millions of new jobs. It is a simple, honest and effective solution.
silvershadow
(10,336 posts)inmo it's too late for us to have any impact whatsoever. I was 5 years old in 1970 and didn't believe my Dad when he told me not to worry about stuff like that. He was wrong, and I was right. At age 5. I still remember our conversations and there were many. Those that are alive today will be lucky to die a so-called "natural" death. I am expecting widespread global calamity continue to unfold in my lifetime and I'm almost 50.
patrice
(47,992 posts)than you do and also has a professional reputation as a scientist on the line when he publishes?
Perhaps you know that an opinion is not the same thing as actually knowing something based upon specific information.
I too have known for some time, and have been active on the issue for a couple of decades, but I also know that no matter how strongly I feel I might know something, without the right amount of appropriate essential information, there's at least as much of a probability that I am also wrong, no matter how strongly I feel that I am right.
silvershadow
(10,336 posts)having said that, just the anecdotal stuff I've witnessed scares the crap outta me.
patrice
(47,992 posts)silvershadow
(10,336 posts)when my nerves literally are shot, not just figuratively.
patrice
(47,992 posts)Keep a wide perspective; that helps.
6502
(249 posts)I am about the same age as you, silvershadow.
I have a friend who grew up in the same area. He refuses to accept the word of the scientists. Worse he refuses to accept what is now our shared experience.
I ask him sometimes if he remembers "snow-days"?
He does.
Notice how we have heard about them less and less until now they are rare, if not gone.
He still refuses.
I know how you feel.
silvershadow
(10,336 posts)groups. A man of the cloth, with advanced degrees from a theological college in Missouri, a state which is able to grow plants from the East Coast as well as the west. He spoke like he was in jr. high school. You could never tell he had advanced degrees, and he deflected rather than respond to *any of my points. It was all God, guns and gays with him, but mostly how we Democrats, and I quote, passed a law that ushered in abortions to this country. He never acknowledged that it was the supreme court was even involved.
We never got to the climate stuff (I assume he is a dominionist). His lack of knowledge of even rudimentary stuff about how our government works was breathtaking, and I told him so, several times, with examples. I swear the man is unhinged. He will likely be the next one in a batman suit.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)The result should not be surprising.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)My Boomer parents tell me that winters like that one used to be common. It hit -40F one January morning that winter (air temp, not wind chill) it has not gotten that cold since.
NickB79
(19,224 posts)Yeah, Minnesota got a lot of snow in 2010-2011, but the coldest it got down here in the Twin Cities was -20F in the suburbs for a couple of nights. That's Missouri weather, not Minnesota weather!
magical thyme
(14,881 posts)we miss the last opportunity. Our backs are against the wall now.
Doing something may fail.
Doing nothing will fail.
Nambe
(8,522 posts)I am old now, but I was raised as traditional as my Full Blooded Mother and Grandfather could manage in those times. I was kidnapped by the white government and sent to an Indian school in Salem, Oregon to learn English and pray to Jesus. My elders have known the truth all along. The Sun and the Earth took billions of years to create me and our conquerors were here to kill the creator.
Please think about this. I respect most of you here at the DU.
I am now ready to die in peace with the beautiful planet falling around us. Don't drive an electric car and use a reusable grocery bag to save the planet, do it to show your love and respect for what is dying. You won't regret it.
nilram
(2,886 posts)m(_ _)m
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)I know this.
Today I know I have always known this, at some gut level, even as a child when Igot into trouble over and over for asking the "wrong" questions.
My beautiful sons know this. Truly, they do.
We alternate between rage and mourning.
Nambe, truly my heart feels pain for what was done to you and to my great grandmother.(kidnapped and taken to an indian school in Oklahoma)
I suffer a loss that can never be fixed..not knowing who my family was. I will never know,as she was given a white name.
Your words of wisdom regarding our planet are well spoken,my thanks to you
tex-wyo-dem
(3,190 posts)"Our conquerors were here to kill the creator"...so true words.
Our downfall will be caused by the primary lizard-brain, ego-driven quality that man has possessed throughout the ages...GREED. Greed for power and wealth...it is the one thing that has caused all the pain and suffering, and the one thing that will end humans on this planet.
Nambe
(8,522 posts)"The end is near." Our grandchildren will have to drink gasoline 9 mo of the year. I rebelled in the face of my tree hugging, cat loving father and mother. Then I went to University and found the truth for myself. The only life I can find peace in now is with my father and the traditional Mayan tribes that know of Mis Taat. Life is good and so busy here. The creator has come to be with us as she dies.
Human addiction to machines that pollute and the materials that destroy is a stronger addition than sex or drugs. Civil disobedience at extremes is required and quite frankly, is expected. "The end really is near".
No particular day or year, it is a slow train coming.
All of you here are dedicated to helping the creator evolve in some way. My parents have followed DU for years from near and far.
I love all of you for what you see and try to do. So did my late mother and Mis Taat still does.
Thank you,
My love and love's peace
Laura
FedUpWithIt All
(4,442 posts)This is a lonely path. But we're walking it. Thank you for the post.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Do it as well to show love and respect for what is living, and for that which was never born and so can never die.
Honor all that is, as it is, mindfully and with reverence. Make peace in your heart with your own existence and all that exists within you and around you.
All my relations.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)They just banned the science on Global Climate Change in NC !!
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)Right? Right?
tex-wyo-dem
(3,190 posts)You know, amegeddon, the apocolype...where all the true believers get raptured away to meet their maker with 72 virgins or whatever and the rest of us sinful heathen liberals remain behind to suffer.
Don't laugh...I'm quite sure many a deranged radical xtian really want an event like this to happen. Problem is that they envision some sort of quick, catastrophic happening, but climate change will be relatively slow and painful on all of us...and noticeably devoid of any horsemen or the return of Jesus.
triplepoint
(431 posts)Last edited Sat Aug 4, 2012, 03:37 AM - Edit history (1)
and yet, the planet raping continues. We so deserve and worked so hard for this extinctive event horizon....
bhikkhu
(10,711 posts)which correlates pretty closely with fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions. While I watch the economic news and appreciate good numbers, like the last jobs report, in the back of my mind I always remember that bad numbers are good too - as nothing but recession has caused any overall reductions in greenhouse gases.
In any case, the global economic growth numbers have slowed to perhaps 1.3%, which is beginning to look like a steady-state economy, which could transition to a sustainable no-growth economy. If we haven't gone too far already, and if climate change doesn't wreck things in transition.
elias7
(3,990 posts)tex-wyo-dem
(3,190 posts)Suicide model. The idea that our economies have to constantly experience growth to be considered healthy is foolish. But this is no different from what humans have been doing from the beginning of time...ever expanding territory, warring with each other to gain power and wealth, taking from our environment rather than living in balance. Our modern economic models to this day have adopted this "no limits", "manifest destiny" idea, because greed rules our psychology and capitalism can't survive without it.
Of course, this ever expanding economic model works so far in part due to our exponentially increasing population, which is the real suicide model.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)the premise of capitalism., that "growth" was unsustainable.
This was back in the early 70's.
"They would not listen, they're not listening still."
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)...is either insane or and economist.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)this particular issue. We would have other issues, but not this one.
Of course we don't accept limits though. If we did, we wouldn't fly, since we can't with only our arms. If we did, we wouldn't be able to travel hundreds of miles in a few hours, since we can't with only our legs. If we did, we wouldn't have put a robot on Mars.
Human civilization(one of the more successful engines of limit breaking growth) is like a corporation that has acquired the ability to write the legislation that governs said corporation.
Uncle Joe
(58,272 posts)This is not a climate model or a prediction but actual observations of weather events and temperatures that have happened. Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.
(snip)
Such events used to be exceedingly rare. Extremely hot temperatures covered about 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent of the globe in the base period of our study, from 1951 to 1980. In the last three decades, while the average temperature has slowly risen, the extremes have soared and now cover about 10 percent of the globe.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/climate-change-is-here--and-worse-than-we-thought/2012/08/03/6ae604c2-dd90-11e1-8e43-4a3c4375504a_story.html
Thanks for the thread, NRaleighLiberal.
Lint Head
(15,064 posts)What I always have to do is say it's "climate change" which will warm the earth in some places and heat it up in others. There is a difference between weather and climate. The warnings go back to the seventies and even further. Wouldn't it have been wonderful if the world had gotten together and addressed it then. We would be ahead of the game. Too bad it always has to be a disaster before anyone is convinced. Corporations will never use their money for the better good of us all until their bottom line is impacted by a disaster or a crime.
longship
(40,416 posts)DU doesn't get better than this. It is an exemplar of the best we have here. I want more here.
R&K on that basis alone. Will revisit later to see where this goes.
on edit:
The WaPo response?
My response to WaPo:
Why doesn't WaPo listen to the scientists on this? Why is the WaPo so mathematically challenged that they do not understand statistical arguments? More people need to listen to the actual climate scientists and less to people like Inhofe. The two are not equal propositions.
Even if Hanson is wildly exaggerating, his previous predictions have been conservative, given that he understated what actually happened. That conservatism is why listening to what the science informs may be so important with something like global climate. The upside is we may save humankind. The downside is that global warming is a hoax, but we now have a much more effective and sustaining energy cycle.
It is a win/win scenerio.
janlyn
(735 posts)This is one of the reasons republican law makers want to lessen or change what our children are learning !
Case in point (the texas board of educations abhorrence with teaching critical thinking skills)
If our government and other governments around the world,dumb down their populace,then they think they can get away with ignoring it...
Problem is,that the signs of global climate change are happening faster than they hoped,so now they have to try another tack..
such as North Carolina's bill just past to ban sea level rise scientific Data!!
The flat earthers are alive and well.
Speck Tater
(10,618 posts)He ends by stating there's still time to do something about it.
Sorry. That train has left the station. It's too late. We are already locked in to a catastrophic amount of warming and it's too late to do anything about it now. It's time to kiss globalization goodbye and return to small, local economies in the few areas that will still support human life. (Assuming we're lucky enough to have any spots left on the planet where life can survive.)
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)Nothing whatsoever. NOTHING. Sorry, but just the facts, Jack.
Speck Tater
(10,618 posts)But once the positive feedbacks kick in (which they have) the process is running away. Realistically, do you really think that politicians are going to take the unprecedented radical steps it would take to reverse the process in time? Frankly, no matter how many of us get involved, it's just not going to happen. Industrial civilization is doomed for sure, and the human race itself may just be headed for extinction as well.
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)For God's sakes, man. Humanity is NOT going to go extinct. You see? This is the kind of attitude that helps no-one but the very people we're fighting against. This is one more part of the reason why we're having problems getting things done, when we could be sitting down and telling people, "Look, no, humanity is not going to go extinct, nor is Earth going to turn into Venus. We are, however, in serious danger of losing much of our polar ice, and the flooding of many coastal cities that will surely come with it, as well as more weather extremes of all kinds, and the fact that hundreds of millions of people could die from famine in many parts of the world.", or something like that. No overtly rosy outlook like that of many skeptics(both genuine and fake), nor none of this equally naive gloom-and-doom, humanity-going-extinct or Earth-turning-into-Venus garbage.
I apologize for coming off as a little harsh but I, too, realize, just how serious this problem is, as well as being rather angered at the fact that our governments continue to sit on their hind quarters and stall. And if you think for one second I'm being too optimistic, I seriously doubt that many, or even most of the world's coastal cities having to be relocated and hundreds of millions, maybe even one or two+ billion dying from famine, perhaps somewhat exacerbated by wars and domestic violence, is any sort of optimistic, but rather, a reality-based scenario of what is most likely to happen(3-5*C increase), and I am taking EVERY factor into account here, including the possibility of methane and other local, regional, and global feedbacks.
Speck Tater
(10,618 posts)And I really, really, really hope you're right. But there's a chance your wrong. And fpr Gpd's sake man, typing what you believe in underlined bold does not actually change anything.
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)Perhaps maybe, maybe truly extinct, in the more distant future(1-2 millenia from now, in the absolute worst case, and that's being highly pessimistic!). But not so much in the near-term(2100-2300), and this kind of thing isn't really helping us.
I am more than happy to acknowledge that we are in serious trouble, but we have to lay off on the extinction of humanity language because it's only going to convince many to stick their head in the sand.......
Imagine if one day, the Euro finally hits the floor and breaks apart. Person A tries to lay out a rational explanation of what we may and perhaps will, mostly likely have to deal with in the coming years, and also how we can prepare for it, while Person B runs around screaming about WWIII, Mad Max, and the end of civilization. Who do you think more people are going to really listen to? The one screaming about Doomsday or the one who's trying to rationally inform us of what is going on and how we should try to prepare?
The truth is, I was once a skeptic, albeit not quite a 'denier' per se, and this is what turned me off to climate research and discussion for a while, and it was thanks to people like Peter Sinclair who helped me realize the facts, by not going so overboard with extreme scenarios while laying out the facts and saying what needed to be said.
I do understand your pessimism here, and frankly, there likely will be terrible consequences to deal with by the end of this century, major global feedbacks or not. What we need to do is try as much as possible not to scare people off, while the same time, telling the story that needs to be told; certain human activities are damaging the environment, our atmosphere and ice caps above all, and that something has to be done, ASAP.
I do hope we can succeed, of course. The longer we wait, the worse things will get, I think everyone here can agree with that.
Faygo Kid
(21,477 posts)Today on vacation we went out for an ice cream, and saw two of the sweetest little girls - both under 5 - you would ever meet. What kind of world will they face? The tea partiers yell about debt (although I don't think they really care), but the most important thing is that they are leaving their grandchildren a dead planet. But that's OK with them, because they watch Fox News and listen to that eminent scientist, Rush Limbaugh.
I am lucky to be a Boomer. My generation will coast into retirement and death before the full impact of climate change hits.
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)On the other hand, we will only be doomed if we keep resigning ourselves to such a fate(have you seen all those people claiming that humanity is actually going to go extinct for sure? Nuts! ), and allow nothing to change. Rather, instead of resignation, we need to not only accept that things are indeed going downhill, but that we can, and should, continue to fight for our world, as we have been. If we continue on the correct and moral path, we WILL succeed(though I fear, as most do, that the longer we wait, the worse it'll get).
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)It seems like sometime around 2005 or 2006 a screw came loose in the climate. It seems ever since then we have been in bizzaro world.
Myrina
(12,296 posts)I was there this morning to refill water bottles and the spigots are dry. One gentleman was standing there in amazement - said he's been going to the spring for 25 years and has never seen this. One idiot suggested that the city "turned it off so they can tax it" and his equally-idiot wife said "How can it run out? It comes from under the ground!"
I took my dog for a walk in the woods near the spring & saw the skinniest, saddest looking doe foraging for anything green ... I don't think people have begun to realize the toll this is going to have on our wildlife.
Charles II
(3 posts)Of the states most severely affected by the recent drought, and their political representatives. No surprise, it turns out that the global-warming denying republicans are elected at a 2:1 ratio over Dems. The people in these states vote for the people who enable global warming.
State Dem House Rep House Dem Sen Rep Sen
Kansas 0 4 0 2
Nebraska 0 3 1 1
Oklahoma 1 4 0 2
Missouri 3 6 1 1
Arkansas 1 3 1 1
Ill 8 11 1 1
Ind 3 6 0 2
Colorado 3 4 2 0
Georgia 5 8 0 2
Total 24 49 6 12
Canadian 2
(20 posts)Punishing you for masturbating while a teenager?