I can appreciate why it's best not to sound alarmist while reporting on global warming. I can also say there's a climate crisis and it's genuinely insane to ignore the increasingly terrifying evidence.
New research suggests average global temperatures were higher in the past decade than over most of the previous 11,300 years, a finding that offers a long-term context for assessing modern-day climate change.
The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, aims to give a global overview of Earth's temperatures over the past 11,300 years -- a relatively balmy period known as the Holocene that began after the last major ice age ended and encompasses all of recorded human civilization.
Consider this chart from the researchers' report:
As NBC News' science team explained, similar climate studies have reached similar conclusions, but reports have generally focused on temperature trends over the last two millennia. This new report goes back to the last ice age, showing the trend over 11,000 years.
I suppose the right's response will be varied. Some will say there's a communist conspiracy to manipulate the data by those determined to destroy the free-enterprise system. Others might try to suggest there's a remarkable coincidence, and that the sharp, unprecedented spike occurred naturally.
And then there will be a third group of conservatives who'll concede that global warming is real and the science is credible, but to address the crisis might hurt our short-term economy, and therefore, it's better left ignored, consequences for humanity be damned.
Pushing back in the other direction will be President Obama's newest administration nominees: Gina McCarthy, an expert on federal air quality law who's been nominated to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, and physicist Ernest Moniz, who's been tapped to lead the Department of Energy. If both can overcome Republican opposition in the Senate, they'll have major responsibilities in shaping a climate policy, including regulatory powers that can combat the crisis without congressional input.
Brad Plumer made the case this week that McCarthy may Obama's "most significant" second-term nominee, and Rebecca Leber had a good item detailing Moniz's background.
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Don't forget those who will admit that the climate is changing and that human activity is the cause, but will say the China and India are most of the problem and that if we try to do anything, it won't matter because China and India won't do anything, so we might as well just keep polluting too.
The fact that the right wing argument changes its basis so freely depending on the audience, but always leads to the same conclusion (drill, baby, drill) is pretty conclusive proof that they are arguing backwards from their desired outcome rather than forwards from any analysis of the facts.
And China while no saint is at least not ignoring it or going in the opposite direction. They understand that green is good for the environment and the economy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/apr/12/china-green-plans-america
Eeeeek We're all going to die!!! Again!!!
Seriously. This just another sequester hype. It's getting really old, and is just another example why the left should be ignored. Did you know they found camel remains in the Arctic? http://boingboing.net/2013/03/06/paleobiologists-unearth-camel.html
The "I want mine now, and to hell with what happens in the future" crowd of the American right almost certainly realizes that climate change is real, but they just don't give a damn.
@#1.3 What's worse is they sell their denialism to susceptible members of society who endlessly parrot their talking points for them regardless of continued revelation and confirmation.
Should the time come when we finally get serious about solutions, overcoming the anger and baselessness of the parrots denialist arguments will continue to slow the implementation of necessary lifestyle changes.
Well color me disappointed. I was expecting a better class of numbskullery from the Shooter.
Each of the 12 years in this century has been in the fourteen hottest since they started keeping global records in 1880. But hey, it's all just another big silly librul made up thing.
Shooter, they found camel remains in the Arctic because of tectonic plates shifting. Alaska is full of long-gone mangroves because it was once tropical. Millions of years worth of tectonic shifting moved our modern world around a bit. This is science and this is fact. Try to break free from Fox news and view Discovery channel once in a while. You might learn why climate change explains extremely cold weather in odd places (RWNJs seem to love to point out cold places and snicker at "global warming" when it's actually changes in climate itself that causes extremes in weather patterns). Open up that tiny mind and let some science in. C'mon, I know there is room in there....
Shorter Shooter:
Why do you all keep insisting that we address problems that will affect our grand kids! There used to be camels in Northern Canada fer chrissakes!
That was so rich in irony, I just now stopped chuckling. How's that ignoring thing working out for you?
LOL
MissyCheeks: "C'mon, I know there is room in there...."
Science cannot approve of any room in shooter's mind.
1.9 - There you go, thinking that Blankman actually understands "science". LOL.
Shooter once again reminds us what a waste his mind is.
Progressives can be such suckers for trolls- whether it is the media transfixed by the GOP antics, or contributors who refuse to put trolls on ignore. It's not hard- just click the exclamation point on their note.
.
As for the third world CO2 question: EPA law gives the Executive branch the authority to regulate pollutants with fines, and CO2 has been recognized since 2009 as a pollutant. Further, the Supreme Court has recognized EPA authority to fine on the basis of CO2 production.
This means that the President, TODAY has authority to institute fines on foreign CO2 production, and can do it through tariffs on products from those countries increasing their CO2 production.
Obama can take this step.
Will Obama take this step? To do so, he would have to give his EPA chief the kind of backing he denied Lisa Jackson. Because if Gina McCarthy took these steps, she would face enormous heat not just from outside the administration, but inside it.
I don't need climate change to explain that. I grew up with news reports of the coldest place in the USA being in Arizona.
Actually, this is one for the resident geek set -- look up the history of Maverick, Arizona. Ghost town now, but it used to routinely have nights colder than any town in Alaska.
11,300 years? How can that be? All good Americans know the earth is only 5,780 years old!
/snark
To state the obvious observation by others, if we should be ignored then why keep posting here Shooter? Of course your post here was so full of ignorance and arrogance as to make any even partially rational things you have posted in the past irrelevant. Others have explained why remains of various tropical plants and creatures have been found in near polar regions.
The bottom line is simple, human activity is demonstrably impacting our climate in a negative way. The changes we have already wrought will probably not have enough of an impact for me to worry about in my lifetime, but I have children and grandchildren and it will most certainly impact them in very real and direct ways. Even if I didn't have children, I care enough about mankind as a whole to believe that we have an obligation to do what we can to leave a liveable planet behind when we are gone.
The republican approach to everything seems to be get what you can while you can and to hell with the future. If there is a choice between short term economic gain and the environment, economic gain always wins out in their little, selfish minds. That is what we are fighting against.
Craig, your analysis of the rightwing approach to everything explains why they don't do investment. They aren't about to spend money in order to make money. They are of the same mind as those little kids who couldn't wait 15 minutes for two marshmallows, but instead ate their one now.
If shooter had actually read the full report on finding the camel bones he would have learned that the camels ranged that far north because global warming and glacial melt allowed forests to grow that far north, so I guess the answer in shooters mind would be that when lower latitudes become deserts we can all move to the arctic.
The problem with people like shooter is they can not grasp that the world they live in is one of constant change. They believe yesterday was just like today and tomorrow will be the same. They never heard of Pangea.
Just today there was a letter to the editor in my local paper, denouncing the measurement of CO2 levels eons ago because there was no one around to measure it.
Seriously, that is representative of the depth of thought for the typical climate change igit. I literally laughed out loud at the breakfast table.
Give the guy a break. He is just repeating what acknowledged climate expert Steve Doocy told him on Faux and friends.
It is almost like a template when you see a letter like that . I see them in my local rag and they reveal by the structure and understanding that the writer is a Faux
Newsopinion viewer. Just repeated talking pointsWhat amazes me is why the paper prints those letters.
"What amazes me is why the paper prints those letters."
They print them because the MSM is infested with corporate whores and moral cowards who will not hesitate to allow those on the right to spout malicious misinformation in the name of "presenting both sides".
Well yes, I know that. Obviously. But if I stop being amazed by it, then I will have stopped caring that the truth matters. So I hope to be continually amazed at people who shoot their mouth off with 2-Dimensional depth of thought.
Let's all continue to be amazed and grateful for it.
Well, I see no reason to be grateful for the way this blog allows such people to spread malicious misinformation.
When we refer to the Republicans we should use the term oil and coal corporations, not "the right"...Rachel has depicted how the NRA is cover for gun corps...and how tobacco used a similar ploy to manipulate public sentiment and honest discussion, but until the Bush/Dick administration the energy interest influence had not been so obviously partisan and anti science.
You left out the group who will just look at this data and laugh because the earth is only 6000 years old, and their forefathers rode dinosaurs, and the only reason dinosaurs aren't around today is that Noah couldn't fit them on the ark.
Not to mention that according to Sen. Inhofe - "G-d promised Noah not to destroy the Earth again".....Yep, gotta love the G-d Squad, they're conveniently overlooking that whole part about "stewardship of the Earth".
God is not destroying the earth again, he will leave that up to us.
I wonder if there is any real type of government that would be best. Since every type of government that has ever existed has become corrupt in some nature by uncaring, corrupt and manipulating people. When you have all these people just for their own selfish interests, instead of taking into consideration for what would be right for all people, they spin off into a destructive nature that literally destroys everything. Their greed cannot be quenched and they just keep taking and taking. They will deceive you at every turn just to get what they want. They crave power just so they can bully you around and ignore all the people just so they get want they want. They will use any excuse even to the point of using religion where they are only hypocrites. They are so arrogant enough that they feel they can crush anyone who gets in their way. It actually is pretty sad that they have become so corrupt, because in reality it is the senselessness of it all and just blatant lack of thought of caring about what they are really doing and causing. It is even sad to the point that when people come together to peacefully protest against these things or say this is not right to do are ignored. And these rampant corrupt people will just keep continuing down that path until everything is ruined and destroyed to the point that not a living thing can even exist. Well if an earlier species than us existed 340,000 years that went extinct, we eventually can do the same thing eventually, especially as our knowledge increases and we don’t so easily learn any real lessons throughout history.
At about the 1500 year mark, there are suddenly those gray jaggedy marks.
Where do they come from? Data that is not available before then?
At about the same time, temperatures seem to have been dropping more steeply. Why was that?
Then suddenly - boink! - at the 300 year mark. What happened about then? Oh yeah - Industrial Revolution.
Where do big volcanoes fit into that graph?
The graph is a composite of two research projects. The extended one is by Dr. Marcott whose data come from a variety of sources, ice cores, sea floor cores, coral reefs, etc. The shorter one with the jagged lines is from updates on Dr. Mann's original work showing the famous hockey stick effect and much of that comes from actual temperature measurements.
The drop in temperatures prior to a few hundred years ago was the normal progression of temperatures. From what I understand, because of the way the earth is oriented towards the sun and because of volcanic eruptions causing cooling by increasing reflectance of energy from the sun, the world was in a cooling pattern. But thanks to the Industrial Revolution, that cooling pattern was overpowered by the increase in greenhouse gases. Absent the increased greenhouse gases, I gather that we would still be in a cooling pattern, but instead we are going too far and much too rapidly in the other direction.
see www.realclimate.org for a broad review of all the developments as they occur.
I suppose I sympathize the most with the third type of Republican response, but I have a different formulation. Global warming is real and it is (mostly) man made. Because the best, most realistic solution is technology, we need a rapidly expanding economy to continue to fund R&D. A gas tax, carbon tax or cap and trade system would slow the economy, thus slowing down the pace of technological solutions.
I do favor government funding for alternatives (yes, more Solyndras, please), but making oil and gas more expensive in order to reduce short term CO2 output makes little sense to me. Innovation requires a strong economic engine.
Re: #6
Well maybe not exactly like Solyndra --- because they went out of business.....
Yes, I know. Heh. I was just using Solyndra, as a synechdoche for the program of which it was a part, as a way of implying that it's worth risking the occasional failure if it gets us the sort of overall results that the green energy research funding had.
In reality, we really do not have an energy shortage at all, if you really think about it. We already have other forms of energy that can easily take care of our needs. The only problem is the greedy rich bastards will not let you do it unless they can charge an arm and a leg for that energy. The actual ultimate energy only takes pennies on the dollar to produce and do you actually think they want you to have that source of very abundant energy and totally renewable. This has been too much of a major con game all along.
A mature, established industry can always put off a competitor for a long time by just undercutting them (at best) or blocking them (at worst) by leveraging the established business' status as essential -- the upstart can't replace them in the near term, so you have to suck up to the old reliable, no matter how much it sucks.
That deprives the newcomer of a profitable market, which in turn costs them investment money, which in turn keeps them from developing seriously competitive technology, tooling, distribution channels, etc.
A Pigovian tax on carbon need not be at all contractionary, by the way. Just replace some other tax with it, or send monthly rebate checks to the populace. I like the latter because it makes the carbon tax very popular (thus hard to get rid of) and at the same time addresses inequality.
Solyndra was put out of business by China. They subsidize their solar panel industry and dumped thier product on US markets.
Well looking at it 2011 was a good year for an accelerated Global Warming to start. It would be nice if the increase in temperature effects would just be a linear movement, but with all the factors of weather that occur on earth that can become compounded too easily. When you think about the amount of energy in the weather that is to the power of 2. Which means if you have a value of 10 that becomes a factor of 100 in amount of energy or 100 becomes 10,000 as a factor of energy and that is a lot of kick in a very bad storm and outright devastating. Plus the increase of droughts causing food shortages and all the other bad things that come with Global Warming.
http://www.upworthy.com/some-strange-things-are-happening-to-astronauts-returning-to-earth?g=2&c=ufb1
Awesome video of the earth from space
Here is a link the NOVA series with some jaw dropping science showing the earth's systems and man's influence on them as discovered by the multitudes of satellites in orbit. The program states, "Its not what we think it might be or what we wish it would be but what we actually know as fact."
http://video.pbs.org/video/2334144059
The real irony of NOVA is that it is funded by the David H. Koch foundation. Isn't David Koch one of the infamous Koch brothers, whose fortune was made by their father who invented the refining process that makes gasoline out of petroleum?
I saw that NOVA program, and I kept wondering whether David Koch ever watches the program he sponsers.
Corporations fund PBS for prestige and tax write offs. Agendas are funneled through Pox Ooze. The science still stands.
That was a pretty cool video. Gave me some ideas too.
I'm sure the visuals are spectacular. I see that this is in part funded by David Koch, so I am skeptical as to the honesty since I believe it is he who funds a lot of anti science stuff, too.
to look back in time you need to take core samples of polar ice. the scientist that have done that can measure the levels of co2 trapped in the ice samples. they have determined that about 250 years ago co2 levels started to rise dramatically. that coincides with mans expansion to america and many other places in the world. the first thing man did was cut down trees, use the wood for homes, heat, or cooking. when clearing fields for farming if the wood wasn't needed it was burned. that releases co2 into the atmosphere. this activity came to a peak about 150 to 100 years ago. of course in some south american countries it still continues today. it would not be a huge leap to guess that we have lost 60 to 70% of our trees in the usa. other countries have done the same or worse. of course the naysayers will say that planting trees is not the answer. but since we all know that trees covert co2 to oxygen it can only help. do countries need to do a better job with carbon emissions? sure! do we, sure! but i would like to see a study done on volcanos. in the last few years we have had some huge eruptions. especially the one in iceland. when the smoke prevents aircraft from flying almost 3000 miles away how much co2 and other gases are being released. it has to be a huge amount. so in closing i believe that planting as many trees as we can will help. i do not believe, however, that it is the total answer.
Volcanos typically spill out volcanic ash which blocks the sun on more severe cases which would cause a ice age.
We have a very good idea of how much CO2 was released by the Icelandic eruptions. It was less than the reduction in CO2 from grounded aircraft.
These are not particularly large eruptions. If you want to see large eruptions, look up "flood basalt."
i wonder what they will say about this in the southern baptist churches, where republican orthodoxy and limbaughian intolerance (am i repeating myself?) has been elevated to dogma over the past thirty years.
They will say that "G-d promised Noah no more destruction", but the heathens need to come back to G-d, stop aborting their fetuses and gay marriage is ruining the nation....C'mon you know the rant....
Conveniently leaving out the fine print: "with water."
Earth, Wind, and Fire are still backstage.
"God said fire comin' judgment day,
He said all mankind gonna pass away.
Brothers and sisters don't you know?
You're gonna reap just what you sow."
If that doesn't describe global warming, it comes pretty close.
What this tells me is that I am convinced daily that my decision not to have children was a good one. For those who do have children, we are leaving them a world in which they will perish after struggling with abbreviated lives.
Some like it hot.
What concerns me the most about these reports and the numbers they are reporting is that they are numbers that are reached by consensus...and they are almost always a global average. The average means over land and water. Since water heats up and cools down slower than land, what we have to watch is the global temperature over land. In most reports, if you take away the water's temperature, you will see predictions ranging from 11º to 22º increases over land, which in turn means Nebraska and Iowa will look like the Sahara.
We haven't even explored the other side of Earth yet, What could be over there, an identical planet, with identical people doing the same identical things? Well, tell them to stop messing around, and get to work.
Sure the presence of man is wrapped up in why this is happening, but it's more complicated than just the idea that we've been burning more stuff since the industrial revolution. The further we get from acting as a part of the natural order, and the closer we get to acting like we're as separate from it as many western deists think their singular god is from it, the more of the planet turns to desert, or as they like to say, dust. Deserts are areas where carbon is not caught up in green growing things and the soil it creates. Go to TED and watch how easy it is to reverse this process, and turn bare earth back to verdant landscape. We can reverse global warming by reversing desertification. It's that simple.
Maybe not quite that simple, but dedesertification certainly has a major role to play.
Conservatives speak for the national death wish .
The right wing has already entered the fray with extensive analysis of why both Marcotte and Mann's two studies are fatally flawed. Their objections have been shot down numerous times by real statisticians and real climate scientists, but that isn't about to stop them. As Nathan mentioned, they start with the desired result and then work backwards.
There is a famous cartoon that applies in this situation. A series of equations on the right of the blackboard is joined to a series of equations on the left of the blackboard by "And then a miracle occurred." The right wing no longer can deny that actual warming is occurring (melting ice caps), but they insist that there is no connection between what we are doing and ecological disaster.
Lets hope that the new appointments to Dept. of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency will block the Keystone XL pipeline. There has been a rumor that the Obama Administration will okay that pipeline because it is likely to cause only minimal risk to the environment. If the Canadian tar sands are developed and all that carbon is pumped into the environment, many scientists say it will be curtains for the planet earth. The negative effects may not happen for 25 or 30 years. By that time I will be dead, and I have not children or grandchildren. I just hope Obama will think of Malia and Sahasa (sp?).
The latest issue of Discover magazine, pg. 16 has a short paragraph about research into microbes that can produce methane. "Across a range of applications, microbial factories just might introduce efficiencies that the industrial revolution never could achieve."
If renewables could get the kind of funding that is going into fracking and off shore drilling, we could solve our energy problems forever. But the third problem Steve mentioned above, the economic short term desire for profits and the earth be damned, is blocking it.
We would be well on our way toward solving global warming if the big money was taken out of politics.
We all pick and choose our personal favorite cause-abortion rights-gay marriage-low taxes-small government.
If we all banded together to solve the root cause of the resistance to solving these problems we would then could advance our personal favorite issues in a democratic system.
Big money influence in politics is the root cause of our dysfunctional democracy. Solve it and you can then work on solving the other issues.
Yah, think?
I live in the Gulf of Mexico. BP and Nalco Sunk that oil and our Gulf is turning into a DEAD ZONE. People are sick, Many will die due to the effects of 2 Butoxyethanol, Methane and PAH's.
Benzine contamination is rampant. Dolphins and the sea life are dying and yes Oil is washing up onto the beaches that is not safe to touch, much less swim in and eat from. Just from the Vapors, people are getting sick. We never see this in Main Stream Media.
The consequences of the draconian use of all of the Corexits, that sunk that oil' are dire. Not only is it toxic to humans but to our ecosystem, wildlife and fish.
Our elected officials for the most part, here in the south are all tied to big oil and thus turn a blind eye to the people. Bayou Corne is a salt dome and has been the dumping grounds for a very long time it is getting ready to blow. Daily it gets larger and larger and the people who have lived their all their lives must move due to the dangers.
They were not compensated fairly, nor have the families of the 11 men who gave their lives on the Macando Rig. Where is Bobby Jindal Gov of Louisiana. NO ONE HAS SEEN HIM IN MONTHS. And reasearching him, I discovered that he recieved lots of monies in 2008 from Edison Chouest Offshore Marine.
They are all tied into big oil and it is only getting worse down here.
This has become a nightmare and it is " Profits before People."
Our Elected officials here in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana are totally UNAPPROACHABLE and the Oysters have collapsed along with shrimping.
Thanks for Listening,
Trisha Springstead.
Thanks for sharing the information Trisha.
It's convenient for nay sayers to cloud the conversation with disputes over the cause of global warming, it may be a natural cycle, but the fact remains it is happening, and we probably can't stop it. The conversation should be focused on how we are going to live with it. Any body who has seen lake mead recently can clearly see that there is a huge problem with real consequences looming, if the Sierra mountains don't receive adequate snow fall the agriculture in the central valley will fail and all the produce that gets shipped to the states east of the Rockies will dissapear from the stores, what is shooter going to eat then?
The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, aims to give a global overview of Earth's temperatures over the past 11,300 years -- a relatively balmy period known as the Holocene that began after the last major ice age ended and encompasses all of recorded human civilization.
we have to get the gulf cleaned up or we are dead ...the entire world is feeling the effects of the gulf mess it is raining oil and corexit as far away as Russia as reported monday ...when is the media going to jump on this and get something one before the gulf blows up and takes half the world with it .
Earth is dealing with the human overpopulation issue.
Here is more from the REAL Coastal Warriors and Gulf Friend Maureen Dauphine
http://www.scribd.com/doc/129477364/The-Gulf-Oil-Spill-Effects-on-Human-Reproduction-Shrimpers-and-Sea-Life
This oil spill is going to impact the whole world, loop current was stalled all in the name of the almighty dollar.
It is possible to dramatically reduce green house gases if The United States were to lead the world in that direction. It is also possible for us to be well out of the recession, if our government were able to responsibly appropriate funds for developing an infrastructure that will help us cope with any climate change scenarios and pave the way for the growth of technology and the jobs of the future.
The reality of the moment is that The corporate world we live in benefits from high unemployment, an increase in the poor working class and pervasive ignorance through out the societal spectrum of the planet.
The solution is an active movement to curtail the corporate giants influence by expanding conscious social interaction. To the extent that red America can become purple is the extent to which sanity can come back to The United States.
Young people people in the urban world need to develop a social consciousness like the 60s, when urban youth saw the merit in challenging the rural southern racism. The baby boomers, who are now senior citizens and lived during a challenging time should also plan to retire in red America so that a little bit of reason may be present in the dialogues of rural town councils.
Overall I do not see significant changes unless there is a higher consciousness in the corporate world and or a higher consciousness of Rural America. Greed will always trump doing what is right, presently. So the only other option is the raising of social consciousness in the rural parts of America to counter ignorance and hatred.