Running On Empty

My wife started a novel a year or so ago. It had at its basic premise that the world was being consumed by wild fires, the reasons for which were somewhat obscure. Today this prophesy has in part come true, except the disasters are worse than she imagined and the reasons are well known. The southwest has been burning for the past two months. Wildfires have consumed huge areas in the State of Arizona and are still burning out of control.  Thousands of fire fighters have been employed along with hundreds of helicopters and tanker planes. The cost to the state and municipalities could do much resolve or at least ease their budget shortfalls. But the wild fires are just one aspect of the disaster. We had the Mississippi rivere flooding on its lower reaches flooding farmland and homes and only through extreme measures not being the worst flood in history. Right now the upper reaches of the Missouri river in Iowa and Nebraska also flooding. Wildfires aren't just confined to Arizona, Colorado and the northwest. Texas ans the south East are suffering huges areas of prolonged drought. The year 2011 has been declared the most disastrous year in recorded history. Tornadoes have killed hundreds of people this year and destroyed hundreds of homes. What is going on here?

Tim Oats, Director of Research at Cambridge Assessment, one of the biggest exam boards in Europe recently stated in an interview with Jessica Shepherd, writer for the Guardian.co.uk, that Climate Change should not be taught in the National Curriculum in the United Kingdom. This is a slippery slope and has political implications. The majority of the scientific community agree on climate change as to the fact that it is real and humans play a significant part in causing warming. Any suppression of this information can only be seen as political. Politics has no place in education. So far in the United States I haven't heard of this effort yet but it fits right into the extreme right wing efforts to suppress the teaching of evolution. Climate change is a vital message that children need to hear. It ties into the message of sustainability which is vital to the coming generations. To allow teachers to pick and choose subjects that they disagree with is a path to disaster. Leave religion and politics out of schools.

I know that we had tornadoes in the 1940s because I lived in the tornado belt in Kansas City. I even saw one out the back door of our home as a teenager as it happened within ten miles and witnessed the destruction first hand. Has global warming increased their numbers of violent storms? Perhaps; perhaps not. What does seem clear is that the intensity, violence and even size of these killer storms has increased. We are recording 100 year, and even some storm events that are greatest in recorded history, in terms of tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, and unusually hot weather and drought more frequently. Weather is random and it isn't possible to link any specific natural phenomenon to our spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Data on warming comes from all over the world, but the trend is certain and clear. The atmosphere is warming. Many statistical studies prove that Al Gore didn't cause it.

Over the past few years the public has become more and more skeptical of the use of fossil fuels by humans as a cause of global warming. The cause of this change is a highly effective lobbying campaign and enormous amounts of money spent on conservative Congressional candidates, plus conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, and Citizens United, funded in part by the notorious Koch Brothers, Tea Party supporters, one of the largest companies in the country, and owners of many oil wells. The graph clearly shows that this campaign to discredit climate science has been very effective.

Sadly, climate scientists haven't the money or the organization to counter this campaign. The truth is that the climate science is true and our consumption of fossil fuels and emission of Carbon Dioxide are a significant cause of climate change, namely global warming.

This chart from a Gallup Poll illustrates how politics clouds the judgement and influences the beliefs of the public at large. The downward trend starting in mid 2010 among the Independents and Democrats is encouraging but the upward trend of Republicans is disheartening.

In its first session the 112TH CONGRESS has crafted a bill to amend the Clean Air Act to prohibit the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from promulgating any regulation concerning, taking action relating to, or taking into consideration the emission of a greenhouse gas due to concerns regarding possible climate change, and for "other" purposes. That "other" is so vague as to be laughable if the rest of this proposal weren't so ridiculous. If it becomes law the country stands to set back the passage of a rational energy policy many years.

There is an organization camped out in Copenhagen that calls itself the Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC). Its director, Bjorn Lomborg, author of Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It calls himself an ‘environmental skeptic’. He is an adjunct Professor of the Copenhagen Business School. The Consensus Center is comprised primarily of economists. Climate scientists were oddly absent from this group. They have come up with a list of 15 “fixes” for Global Warming. Actually there are really only eleven, as three are about taxing C02 in certain amounts and two are about reducing black carbon. Their professed goal was to suggest action “that actually does good.” The list left me somewhat dismayed, because it totally ignored what I consider one of the most important issues, one which is almost never discussed. Want to guess what it is?…

Here's how. Sign up to blog, write, lecture and make a nuisance of yourself telling people that global warming and climate change are a hoax perpetrated by Al Gore and President Obama. The Oil companies will pay you big bucks. Exxon Mobil is spending enormous amounts of money to hire people to do just that. It's sad but true.

You see it time and time again. Stories about climate change are always overwhelmed by deniers about ten to one. If nothing else, they are organized. One is tempted to tell them, "Fine. Keep on polluting and using fossil fuels and don't worry. We can't do anything about it any way. PS, I hope you don't own sea shore property that disappears because of climate change. Yes, it's all Al Gore's fault because he is becoming a billionaire on his movie, An Inconvenient Truth...

The tiny town of Coldwater Kansas once again proves that Kansas is in the forefront of the state of denial. From passing laws prohibiting the installation of wind turbines in the Flint Hills to forcing schools to teach Creationism, Kansas carries the banner for denial of anything that has happened since the dark ages. The tiny Western Star newspaper, "The Official Newspaper of Coldwater, Kansas," has written an open letter in a two page spread to Al Gore. Why they think he would read it is a mystery...

An unsettling and unfortunate trend is developing with regard to global warming. A survey by the Pew Research Center shows a rapid decline in the number of Americans who believe there is solid scientific evidence that the world has been warming over the past several decades, falling from 71% to 57% in only 18 months. A survey by Rasmussen Reports found that US voters who believe that global warming is due to natural causes now outnumber those who believe that it is caused by human activity. From Monbiot.com, published in the Guardian, 11/01/2009. What in the world is going on? …