Jack Layton climate change denier | The Hill | Blogs | Toronto Sun

Jack Layton climate change denier | The Hill | Blogs | Toronto Sun

Brian Lilley has an interesting opinion of Jack Layton. The following can attest to that:

Jack Layton is a climate change denier.

Sure the NDP leader has spoken out in favour of Kyoto and demanded action on climate change at Copenhagen. Layton may have had his party produce private members bills trying to force the government to take action on greenhouse gases but in his heart of hearts Jack Layton wants your carbon footprint to go up and up.

You may now tilt your head slightly to the right and say, "huh?"

Lilley points to Layton's recent call to kill the heating tax arguing that such a move will cause carbon emissions to go up. He's right, that will likely happen if the tax is killed.

1) Jack Layton is not a climate change denier, nor am I -obviously-2) Killing the tax is a good idea. People should not have to struggle to stay warm for the sake of the planet.

The argument being put forth by Lilley is a fallacy. Accepting climate change does not mean agreeing to the method for dealing with the issue.

I have no idea what side Lilley stands on. It seems to be one of delusion.

Environmentalist Going Too Far

Punish climate change deniers - thestar.com

Rene Ebacher thinks that Harper's neglect of the environment is worthy of criminal charges:

By avoiding its responsibility to fight climate change, the government of Canada is guilty of letting millions of people suffer around the world. Stephen Harper and his “climate change denying” friends and acolytes in the business industry, should be tried under the International Criminal Court and condemned as environmental criminals.

The hyperbole being used by Ebacher is exactly the type of thing that isn't going to win the environmental movement many friends. Little explanation is given in to how the ICC would go about punishing Harper and those in the business industry. They'd have to prove that Harper and his business friends polluted the environment and thus lead to the suffering of millions. A rather curious idea as we are responsible in one way or another.

The ridiculously low amount of money promised by the Canadian government to help Pakistan makes me think of those people who buy “carbon offsets” so that they can leave their guilt at the door when they board a plane and fly all over the world.

Those dramatic events in Pakistan, in China and the fires in Russia, show us that we have to act promptly on reducing our carbon emissions. Governments around the world have to declare a “planetary state of emergency” to deal with the effects of climate change.

The events in Pakistan and Russia are of concern but here we find the all too common fallacy used by environmentalists and climate change deniers alike. Using a short-term event to explain a long-term event. There's no evidence, as far as I know, perhaps I am wrong, that these events are tied to climate change.

Radical environmentalists need to be called out for what they are. Fucking insane. They do nothing to advance the cause.

A dark ideology is driving those who deny climate change | Robin McKie | Comment is free | The Observer

A dark ideology is driving those who deny climate change | Robin McKie | Comment is free | The Observer

A good insight into the politics and motives of climate change deniers:

Life can be hard in Moscow. The Russian capital is sweltering in temperatures that reached a record 37.7C last week. Vast stretches of peat bog surrounding the city have dried out and caught fire covering Moscow with choking smog. The changing of the horse guard in Cathedral Square was cancelled as sentries wilted in traditional woollen uniforms. Elsewhere, more than 2,000 Russians – many drunk – drowned trying to cool off in lakes and rivers and at least 10 million hectares of crops have been ruined. States of emergency have been declared in 23 regions.

Nor is Russia alone. New York has baked in a thick tropical heat and humidity that is gripping eastern America. Public cooling centres have been set up while black-outs are common. In the Arctic, sea ice coverage continues to dwindle while a report last week revealed that levels of phytoplankton – tiny marine plants that are the foundation of the oceans' food chain – are plummeting, victims of global warming.

Our world is starting to sizzle as rising levels of greenhouse gases trap more and more of the sun's heat in the lower atmosphere – a point that was confirmed on Wednesday when the Met Office reported that sensors from around the world were showing that 2010 would be the hottest, or just possibly the second hottest year on record.

Either way, the news surprised many people, despite those tales emanating from New York and Moscow. A freezing UK winter and the collapse of the Copenhagen climate talks – along with the damaging leak of "climategate" emails from the University of East Anglia – had persuaded many that global warming was a dead issue. If only.

In fact, that record rise in global temperatures, far from appearing unexpectedly had been predicted. Last January, the Met Office announced that it believed this year would, indeed, be a record scorcher. Given that Britain was then coated in thick snow, the prediction was brave.

It was accurate nevertheless. Western Europe and eastern America may then have been going through a grim, cold winter but other areas – including Asia and western America – were experiencing unexpectedly hot weather. The overall trend was a warming one. Few took notice, however, and the Little Englander's myopic view of the world – that only local events matter – continued to dominate newspaper columns and blogs. Global warming was nonsense, they insisted.

Thus the deniers got it wrong while climate scientists got it spectacularly right. Indeed, we should note just how prescient the latter have been. In 1999, the Met Office's head of climate modelling Peter Stott – working with Oxford University's Myles Allen and other meteorologists – published a paper in Nature on the likely impact of greenhouse gas emissions. Using temperature data from 1946 to 1996, the paper estimated future global temperatures and included a graph of a range of predicted outcomes for 2000 to 2040 with a dotted line indicating the most likely path. Crucially, for the year 2010, that dotted line showed there would be a rise of 0.8C since the Second World War– which is exactly what we are experiencing today.

So scientists not only predicted how hot this year was likely to be six months ago, they forecast a decade ago just how much the world would heat up 10 years later. Bear this in mind when deniers tell you climate science is a conspiracy or the work of charlatans. They are talking rubbish.

Such precision is encouraging for it indicates climate scientists know what they are talking about, though at a deeper level, the news is disturbing – for it is clear that few people are actually listening to this message. Why? What lies behind scientists' failure to get their warning over? Most answers have concentrated on the difficulty of explaining science – riddled as it is with uncertainties and qualifications. And to some extent, these explanations are correct. Atmospheric physics and meteorology are complex. However, there is a second, more sinister explanation, one that forms the focus of Merchants of Doubt, by US academics Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, which is to be published this month by Bloomsbury. This analysis of right-wing politics and its impact on science shows how a handful of individuals have managed to obscure the truth on issues that range from the dangers of smoking to global warming. These right-wing libertarians include such scientists as Fred Seitz and Fred Singer – who both worked on the Cold War projects such as the US hydrogen bomb project and who helped set up institutions like the US's Heritage Foundation and Marshall Institute.

Funded by corporations and conservative foundations, these outfits exist to fight any form of state intervention or regulation of US citizens. Thus they fought, and delayed, smoking curbs in the '70s even though medical science had made it clear the habit was a major cancer risk. And they have been battling ever since, blocking or holding back laws aimed at curbing acid rain, ozone-layer depletion, and – mostly recently – global warming.

In each case the tactics are identical: discredit the science, disseminate false information, spread confusion, and promote doubt. As the authors state: "Small numbers of people can have large, negative impacts, especially if they are organised, determined and have access to power."

In Britain, links between deniers and big business are less obvious. Yet it is clear lessons have been learned and tactics copied. Consider these examples: the leaking of the "climategate" emails and the wild over-reaction to the mistaken insertion of a paragraph in the IPCC's last climate assessment, that suggested wrongly that Himalayan glaciers are melting rapidly. Both created a furore with the former revealing "a massive fraud" that represented "the final nail in the coffin" for the theory of global warming, deniers argued.

This claim was later shown to be nonsense, though it took three inquiries to establish the point. The overall effect, however, was the spread of confusion among the public and an increase in doubt about climate change. And given that the email leak involved a specific act of computer hacking, one must conclude this was the specific goal of that electronic "break-in".

In this way, scientists' warnings – that without action the world will get at least two degrees hotter this century – have been obscured by a small group of ideologues who believe individual liberties are more important than any other cause. Our planet may burn, millions may die, and cities such as Moscow and New York may smoulder, but at least we will be free of petty regulation and bureaucracy. It seems a stiff price to pay.

I do have one problem with this article, it's a point that comes up often. The confusion of weather and climate. Environmentalists need to avoid using heat waves as a way to prove their point about climate change. They should be well aware that the denialists use cold weather to prove their point. Even David Suzuki is guilty of doing this, it needs to stop.

Stephen H. Schneider, climate change expert, dies at 65

Stephen H. Schneider, climate change expert, dies at 65

By T. Rees Shapiro
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Stephen H. Schneider, 65, an influential Stanford University climatologist who parlayed his expertise on the dangerous effects of greenhouse-gas emissions into a second career as a leader in the public dialogue -- and debate -- on climate change, died July 19 in London.

His wife, Stanford biologist Terry Root, wrote in an e-mail to colleagues that her husband had died after an apparent heart attack on an airplane en route to London from Stockholm.

Dr. Schneider wrote books and more than 400 articles on human-driven global warming and its wide-ranging effects, such as a recorded rise in ocean temperature and the increasing potency and frequency of hurricanes. He conducted research on the near-irreversible damage of greenhouse gases on the ozone layer and theorized how a nuclear war might affect the climate.

The founder and editor of the magazine Climatic Change, Dr. Schneider was part of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former vice president Al Gore for international research on global warming. He advised every president from Nixon to Obama.

"No one, and I mean no one, had a broader and deeper understanding of the climate issue than Stephen," said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University. "More than anyone else, he helped shape the way the public and experts thought about this problem -- from the basic physics of the problem, to the impact of human beings on nature's ecosystems, to developing policy."

One of Dr. Schneider's strongest talents as a scientist was finding vivid ways of describing the harm of global warming. He often appeared on television as a climate expert, including the HBO program "Real Time With Bill Maher."

He once told Maher's viewers that humans were to blame for global warming because of our use of the atmosphere as a "sewer to dump our smokestack and our tailpipe waste."

Carl Pope, chairman of the Sierra Club Foundation, said Dr. Schneider "had the ability to connect the dots in a way that laypeople could understand."

In the late 1970s, Dr. Schneider emerged as one of the early supporters of the theory that man-made industrial gasses were damaging the ozone layer and leading to a slow but steady rise in the temperature of Earth's atmosphere.

His passionate views on the climate debate occasionally attracted vitriol from extremist groups. An FBI investigation recently found he was named on a neo-Nazi "death list," and Dr. Schneider said he received hundreds of hate e-mails a day.

"What do I do? Learn to shoot a magnum? Wear a bulletproof jacket?" Dr. Schneider said. "I have now had extra alarms fitted at my home, and my address is unlisted. I get scared that we're now in a new Weimar Republic where people are prepared to listen to what amounts to Hitlerian lies about climate scientists."

Nonetheless, Dr. Schneider said he believed it was important for scientists to communicate with the public and spread their understanding of climate data and findings.

"If we do not do the due diligence of letting people understand the relative credibility of claimants of truth, then all we do is have a confused public who hears claim and counterclaim," Dr. Schneider said in a recent interview with Climate Science Watch. "When somebody says 'I don't believe in global warming,' I ask, 'Do you believe in evidence? Do you believe in a preponderance of evidence?' "

Stephen Henry Schneider was born Feb. 11, 1945, in New York. He was a graduate of Columbia University, where he also received a doctorate in mechanical engineering and plasma physics in 1971.

He worked as a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., for more than 20 years before joining the Stanford faculty in the mid-1990s.

Besides his wife, a complete list of survivors could not be determined.

Despite the fact that a recent study found that 97 to 98 percent of climatologists believed in global warming, Dr. Schneider acknowledged that the debate in the forum of public opinion was more divisive.

"I've been on the ground, in the trenches, for my entire career," Dr. Schneider wrote in his 2007 book, "Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save Earth's Climate." "I'm still at it, and the battle, while looking more winnable these days, is still not a done deal."

Climate scientists often struggle in communicating to the public, Schneider was the exception. We lost a good man. Rest in peace.

Report: Oceans' demise near irreversible | The Kennebec Journal, Augusta, ME

Report: Oceans' demise near irreversible | The Kennebec Journal, Augusta, ME

Scientists Involved in Climategate exonerated

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/08/science/earth/08climate.html?src=mv

From Justin Gillis:

A British panel on Wednesday exonerated the scientists caught up in the controversy known as Climategate of charges that they had manipulated their research to support preconceived ideas about global warming.

But the panel also rebuked the scientists for several aspects of their behavior, especially their reluctance to release computer files supporting their scientific work. And it declared that a chart they produced in 1999 about past climate was “misleading.”

The new report is the last in a series of investigations of leading British and American climate researchers, prompted by the release of a cache of e-mail messages that cast doubt on their conduct and raised fresh public controversy over the science of global warming.

All five investigations have come down largely on the side of the climate researchers, rejecting a number of criticisms raised by global-warming skeptics. Still, mainstream climate science has not emerged from the turmoil unscathed.

Some polls suggest that the recent controversy has eroded public support for action on climate change, complicating the politics of that issue in Washington and other world capitals. And leading climate researchers have come in for criticism of their deportment, of their episodic reluctance to share data with climate skeptics, and for not always responding well to critical analysis of their work.

“The e-mails don’t at all change the fundamental tenets of the science,” said Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado. “But they changed the notion that people could blindly trust one authoritative group, when it turns out they’re just like everybody else.”

The researcher at the center of the controversy was Phil Jones, a leading climatologist who had headed the Climatic Research Unit of a British university, the University of East Anglia. He had stepped down temporarily pending results of the inquiry, but was reinstated on Wednesday to a job resembling his old one.

The university solicited and paid for the new report, which climate skeptics assailed. “This is another example of the establishment circling the wagons and defending their position,” said Myron Ebell, director of energy and climate change policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington.

The Climatic Research Unit, often referred to as C.R.U., has played a leading role in efforts to understand the earth’s past climate. Embarrassing e-mail messages sent by Dr. Jones and other scientists were purloined from a computer at the university in November and posted to the Internet, prompting a round of accusations.

Some of the scientists were forced to admit to poor behavior, such as chortling about the death of one climate skeptic. But were the researchers guilty of any scientific misconduct?

“On the specific allegations made against the behavior of C.R.U. scientists, we find that their rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt,” said the new report, led by Muir Russell, a retired British civil servant and educator.

The University of East Anglia welcomed the findings on Wednesday, declaring that an unjust attack on its scientists had been found spurious. Dr. Jones — who had said he considered suicide after the e-mail messages emerged — issued a more muted statement, saying he needed time to reflect. “We have maintained all along that our science is honest and sound, and this has been vindicated now by three different independent external bodies,” Dr. Jones said.

Last week, the second of two reviews at Pennsylvania State University exonerated Michael Mann, a scientist there who was also a focus of the controversy.

The latest report was by no means a complete vindication. Echoing the findings of an earlier report by a parliamentary committee in London, the reviewers criticized the scientists at the Climatic Research Unit for consistently “failing to display the proper degree of openness” in responding to demands for backup data and other information under Britain’s public-record laws.

On one of the most serious issues raised by the e-mail messages, the Russell panel did find some cause for complaint, but it did not issue the robust condemnation sought by climate skeptics.

The issue involved a graphic for a 1999 United Nations report, comparing recent temperatures with those of the past. Dr. Jones wrote an e-mail message saying he had used a “trick” to “hide” a problem in the data. After the e-mail messages came out, Dr. Jones said he had meant “trick” only in the sense of a clever maneuver.

The Russell panel concluded that the data procedure he used was acceptable in principle, but should have been described more fully, and his failure to do so had produced a “misleading” graphic.

The issue involved an effort to reconstruct the climate history of the past several thousand years using indirect indicators like the size of tree rings and the growth rate of corals. The C.R.U. researchers, leaders in that type of work, were trying in 1999 to produce a long-term temperature chart that could be used in a United Nations publication.

But they were dogged by a problem: Since around 1960, for mysterious reasons, trees have stopped responding to temperature increases in the same way they apparently did in previous centuries. If plotted on a chart, tree rings from 1960 forward appear to show declining temperatures, something that scientists know from thermometer readings is not accurate.

Most scientific papers have dealt with this problem by ending their charts in 1960 or by grafting modern thermometer measurements onto the historical reconstructions.

In the 1999 chart, the C.R.U. researchers chose the latter course for one especially significant line on their graph. This technique was what Dr. Jones characterized as a “trick.”

The recent season of controversy included close scrutiny of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that produces a major review of climate science every few years.

The Russell panel found little reason to question the advice that the British scientists had given to the climate panel, or the conclusions of that body. The panel declared in 2007 that the earth was warming and that human activity was the major reason.

However, small errors in the 2007 report keep coming to light. A review issued earlier this week by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency found several, including a case in which the panel overstated the potential impact of global warming on fish catches.

The Netherlands agency also found that the climate change panel had tended to emphasize the negative effects of global warming while playing down positive ones, like greater tree growth in northern climates. It recommended better balance and a greater emphasis on fact-checking.

“The idea that these things could be perfect is a fallacy,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher at Columbia University. Christopher B. Field, an ecologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science and a leader in the United Nations climate body, said he foresaw an opportunity “to really do a better job in characterizing what we know and what we don’t know” in the group’s next report, due in 2014.

Yet another evaluation of the panel’s work is under way, with results due in August.

Dr. Pielke, who is largely persuaded by the mainstream consensus on climate change, has criticized both climate skeptics and the scientific community for the tone of their debate.

“It has been dominated for a number of years by people at the poles — the most activist scientists emphasizing alarm, versus the most ardent skeptics saying we don’t have to do anything,” Dr. Pielke said. “This recent controversy has opened the eyes of a lot of people to a much richer tapestry of views on climate policy that are out there, which I think is a good thing.”

There is No Debate Now Sit Down and Shut the Fuck Up

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/evidence-for-a-consensus-on-climate-change/

From Justin Gillis:

Many debates about global warming seem to boil down to appeals to authority, with one side or the other citing some famous scientist, or group of them, to buttress a particular argument. The tone is often, “My expert is better than yours!”

Against this backdrop, some analysts have been trying for several years to get a firm handle on where climate researchers come down, as a group, on the central issues in the global-warming debate: Is the earth warming up, and if so, are humans largely responsible?

Now comes another entry in this developing literature. William R.L. Anderegg, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University, and his fellow authors compiled a database of 1,372 climate researchers. They then focused on scientists who had published at least 20 papers on climate, as a way to concentrate on those most active in the field. That produced a list of 908 researchers whose work was subjected to close scrutiny.

The authors then classified those researchers as convinced or unconvinced by the evidence for human-induced climate change, based on such factors as whether they have signed public statements endorsing or dissenting from the big United Nations reports raising alarm about the issue. Then the authors analyzed how often each scientist had been published in the climate-science literature, as well as how often each had been cited in other papers. (The latter is a standard measure of scientific credibility and influence.)

The results are pretty conclusive. The new research supports the idea that the vast majority of the world’s active climate scientists accept the evidence for global warming as well as the case that human activities are the principal cause of it.

For example, of the top 50 climate researchers identified by the study (as ranked by the number of papers they had published), only 2 percent fell into the camp of climate dissenters. Of the top 200 researchers, only 2.5 percent fell into the dissenter camp. That is consistent with past work, including opinion polls, suggesting that 97 to 98 percent of working climate scientists accept the evidence for human-induced climate change.

The study demonstrates that most of the scientists who have been publicly identified as climate skeptics are not actively publishing in the field. And the handful who are tend to have a slim track record, with about half as many papers published as the scientists who accept the mainstream view. The skeptics are also less influential, as judged by how often their scientific papers are cited in the work of other climate scientists.

“We show that the expertise and prominence, two integral components of overall expert credibility, of climate researchers convinced by the evidence” of human-induced climate change “vastly overshadows that of the climate change skeptics and contrarians,” Mr. Anderegg and the other authors write in their paper.

Climate-change skeptics will most likely find fault with this research, as they have with similar efforts in the past. For starters, Mr. Anderegg’s dissertation advisers are Christopher Field and Stephen H. Schneider, two of the most prominent advocates of the mainstream view of climate change; Dr. Schneider is a co-author of the new paper.

The climate dissenters have long complained that global-warming science is an echo chamber in which, they contend, it is hard to get published if one does not accept the conventional wisdom that humans are heating up the planet. So they argue that it is circular reasoning to claim a broad scientific consensus based on publication track records. The mainstream researchers reject that charge, contending that global warming skeptics do not get published for the simple reason that their work is weak.

In this long-running battle over scientific credibility and how to measure it, the Anderegg paper analyzes a particularly large database of climate researchers, and therefore goes farther than any previous effort in attaching hard numbers to the discussion.

Not that I actually expect the denialists to go away. They are, as the article points out, likely to find "flaws". Regardless, hopefully those who still had doubts on the consensus will be convinced.

Climate Change Denialism is based on "Faith"

http://www.summitdaily.com/article/20100612/LETTER/100619966/1078&ParentProfile=1055

From Peter Miesler:

"A few years back we had AGW “skeptics” boldly placing bets that Earth's climate was cooling. Unfortunately, a visit to the authoritative NASA GISS website shows warming. But, do we hear any “skeptics” saying: Oh wait a minute, perhaps my assumptions are wrong? Why not? What should we think of the anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming “Skeptical” community when they refuse to look at anything that disagrees with their mindset? Isn't intellectual integrity about a desire to learn and be able to admit one was wrong and that new information justifies reorienting one's thinking?

One of the most outspoken proselytizer of obstinate denial is Lord Christopher Monckton, who has been spending years demeaning every aspect of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) science. Recently, PhD. John Abraham decided to examine Monckton's claims. The result is a presentation titled “A Scientist Replies to Christopher Monckton: Abraham v. Monckton.” At: www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/.

Abraham rigorously sticks to examining the issues. He acknowledges Monckton's skills and admits: “After listening to his comments, and viewing his presentation, any reasonable audience might feel that climate risks are not as serious as we've been led to believe … If you believe him you'd have to conclude that: The world is not warming; sea levels are not rising; ice is not melting; polar bears not threatened; oceans is not heating; no ocean acidification; scientists are lying, (and) there is a conspiracy.”

Abraham then proceeds down the list of Monckton's claims. While examining these claims and graphs, it becomes obvious Lord Monckton is a liar performing political theater rather than scientific critique.

Ultimately, the question we are left with is this: Are global warming skeptics capable of responding to data and factual arguments or is it ultimately only a faith-based position they cling to … rather than an exercise in genuine skepticism about the data?

To answer the question, it is faith-based. I refuse to call them climate change "sceptics". They are not engaging in scepticism the way true sceptics would define it. As examining claims using the scientific method.

It is likely that you can give rebuttals to any argument presented by the denialists and they will still insist on remaining denialists. Like any anti-science movement, no amount of evidence will ever win out over willful ignorance.

Carly Fiorina doesn't understand what climate change is

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/06/carly-fiorina-calls-climate-change-the-weather/1

Carly Fiorina is a clueless idiot who confuses weather with climate:

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, now the frontrunning GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate in California, calls climate change "the weather" in a TV campaign ad.

She criticizes Democrat incumbent Barbara Boxer for describing climate change, in 2007, as "one of the very importanta national security issues."

Fiorina, whose candidacy is endorsed by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, replies: "Terrorism kills—and Barbara Boxer is worried about the weather."

Ok, so Sarah Palin is also pretty stupid as well, not that you needed to be reminded of that. Anyway, short-term chaotic weather patterns should never been confused with long-term climate change.

Same Old Deniers

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2010/05/29/warming_deniers_hark_back_to_aids_skeptics_of_80s/

Today's climate change deniers remind professor of biochemistry at Tufts University School of Medicine Larry Feig of the AIDs deniers of yesteryear:

" Global warming deniers take solace in the fact that some established atmospheric scientists (albeit an extremely small proportion of the total) support their cause. This reminds me of the 1980s, when a few prominent virologists, spearheaded by the National Academy of Sciences member Peter Deusberg, contradicted the vast majority of biomedical scientists by claiming that the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, was not the cause of AIDS.

Just like global warming skeptics and the right-wing media today, these scientists insisted that the public was being duped by those with a self-serving agenda and that vast amounts of money were being wasted on a flawed hypothesis. They prepared a slick video to support their argument that sounded convincing at the time to lay audiences (search the Internet for “HIV = AIDS: Fact or Fraud?’’). Even non-scientists viewing this video today can appreciate that the ideas it expresses have been completely discredited.

Fortunately, the opinion of the majority of scientists won out, and AIDS is now a highly treatable disease rather than the death sentence it was in the 1980s. Hopefully, a similar successful outcome will prevail in preventing the long-term effects of global warming."

Who wants to be many of these might be the same people and groups?

Scientists as PR Experts?

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/05/st_essay_sciencepr/

Scientists aren't known for being PR experts that has to change:

"On the final day of last winter’s meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a panel convened to discuss the growing problem of climate change denial. It went poorly. Rather than brainstorming methods for changing public perception, the speakers wasted three hours trying to find someone to blame. Was it an anti-global-warming campaign by the coal industry? Journalists trying to make their stories appear “balanced”? The Climate-gate emails from the University of East Anglia?

But those are the wrong questions. What the scientists should have been asking was how they could reverse the problem. And the answer isn’t more science; it’s better PR. When celebrities like Tiger Woods or Tom Cruise lose control of their image, they don’t waste time at conferences. They hire an expert. What the climatology community needs is a crackerjack Hollywood PR team.

Climate scientists know people don’t believe them; they just haven’t responded well. “They have to do a better job than the other side,” says Kelly Bush, founder and CEO of ID, the entertainment industry’s largest independently owned PR firm. Bush’s clients include Patrick Stewart, Dustin Hoffman, Ellen Page, and comeback king Pee-wee Herman.

Bush says researchers need a campaign that inundates the public with the message of science: Assemble two groups of spokespeople, one made up of scientists and the other of celebrity ambassadors. Then deploy them to reach the public wherever they are, from online social networks to The Today Show. Researchers need to tell personal stories, tug at the heartstrings of people who don’t have PhDs. And the celebrities can go on Oprah to describe how climate change is affecting them—and by extension, Oprah’s legions of viewers.

“They need to make people answer the questions, What’s in it for me? How does it affect my daily life? What can I do that will make a difference? Answering these questions is what’s going to start a conversation,” Bush says. “The messaging up to this point has been ‘Here are our findings. Read it and believe.’ The deniers are convincing people that the science is propaganda.”

In a handful of cases, nonprofits are trying to do what scientists won’t. A group started by high-profile blogger Anil Dash, Expert Labs, is helping the White House with outreach to scientists, and Dash is operating from the same playbook as Bush. “We need to make the narrative more compelling. Scientists risk their lives and fortunes to do something that is, in many cases, an act of faith. They’re heroes. It’s a beautiful thing,” Dash says. “Imagine the impact if a scientist said, ‘I’ve been working in climate science for 20 years, and it breaks my heart that people don’t believe in what I do.’”

This kind of talk unsettles scientists. “Scientists hate the word spin. They get bent out of shape by the concept that they should frame their message,” says Jennifer Ouellette, director of the Science and Entertainment Exchange, a National Academy of Sciences program that helps connect the entertainment industry with technical consultants. “They feel that the facts should speak for themselves. They’re not wrong; they’re just not realistic.” By and large, Dash says, “scientists have withdrawn from the sphere of public culture. They have contempt for the lighthearted fun of communication.”

It didn’t even occur to the AAAS panelists that someone might find that here’s-the-data-we’re-right attitude patronizing—and worthy of skepticism. “Until scientists realize they need us, we can’t help them,” Bush says. “They have to wake up and say: ‘I recognize it’s not working, and I’m willing to listen to you.’ It’s got to start there.” Science increasingly must make its most important cases to nonscientists—not just about climate but also evolution, health care, and vaccine safety. And in all of those fields, the science has proven to be incapable of speaking for itself. It’s time for those with true passion to get over the stigma, stand up, and start telling their stories."

Fighting Back

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_15176317?source=rss&nclick_check=1

"A few years ago, Ben Santer, a climate scientist with Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, answered a 10 p.m. doorbell ring at his home. After opening the door, he found a dead rat on his doorstep and a man in yellow Hummer speeding away while "shouting curses at me."

Santer shared this story last week before a congressional committee examining the increasing harassment of climate scientists, and the state of climate science.

After the online posting in November of 1,073 stolen e-mails from climate scientists, including some from Santer, the threats took a more ominous turn," Santer told members of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, chaired by Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass. Skeptics of climate change have dubbed the e-mail incident "Climategate."

"The nature of these e-mail threats has been of more concern," Santer said. "I"ve worried about the security and safety of my family."

In the already-heated debate over the cause of and "” to a diminishing extent "” the existence of global warming, the stolen e-mails ratcheted up the rhetoric. And while skeptics of human-induced climate change have tried to use the e-mails to discredit established climate science and to derail policies such as the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions or cap-and-trade initiatives, climate scientists are fighting back.

They penned a consensus letter earlier this month, testified before congressional

committees to explain why they"re certain human activity is dangerously warming the world, and they"re openly airing what they call the growing harassment of climate change researchers.

In the written version of his testimony, Santer mentioned concerns "about my own physical safety when I give public lectures."

Santer is accompanied by bodyguards at some conferences, Stephen Schneider, a prominent climate scientist with Stanford University, said earlier this month. Santer and the lab declined to discuss details about security for Santer, saying it would be inappropriate to do so. Schneider, who testified at the congressional hearing, told the committee he"s a veteran at fielding abusive e-mails. A typical one, he said, accuses him of being a "Communist dupe for the United Nations," and states that "you"re a traitor and should be hung.—

The threats escalated after the publication of the hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia in England. On blogs, talk shows and other forums, people heatedly discussed the content of certain e-mails, and Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., has requested a criminal investigation of 17 climate scientists, including Santer and Schneider, whose correspondences were among the stolen e-mails. Inhofe believes human-induced global warming is a hoax and that there is no scientific consensus on the matter.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., also wrote the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which produces reports widely regarded as the most authoritative assessments on climate change, requesting that the 17 scientists be banned from contributing to the panel"s next report.

Those hacked e-mails revealed some climate scientists involved in a pattern of stonewalling, discussing ways to conceal data that didn"t agree with their findings, and deriding skeptics of global warming. In one e-mail, Santer wrote that when he next encountered a certain climate skeptic at a scientific meeting, ``I"ll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted.—

In an interview with Associated Press about the e-mail, Santer said, "I"m not surprised that things are said in the heat of the moment between professional colleagues. These things are taken out of context.—

Two independent investigations by British academic panels, however, found no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct in the e-mails" contents, nor did an Associated Press analysis of all the e-mails.

The hacked e-mail incident was followed by the discovery of several embarrassing errors in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. In light of the errors, this month a review of the IPCC report began in Amsterdam, conducted by a 12-person panel selected by the Inter-Academy Council. The council is independent of the United Nations, which publishes the IPCC report.

Schneider and other climate scientists note that only a handful of errors were found, and that the report"s conclusion is solid that human activity is very likely the reason for the rise in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century.

While four scientists at the Washington D.C. hearing detailed why most climate scientists fear the ecological and economic consequences of a buildup of greenhouse gases, a fifth scientist offered a counterpoint.

William Happer, a physics professor at Princeton University, expressed far less concern about the heat-trapping threat of carbon dioxide from human activity and said scientists on the other side of the debate also face intimidation.

"Indeed, we read testimony by Dr. James Hanson (of NASA) in the Congressional Record that climate skeptics are guilty of "high crimes against humanity and nature,—‰" Happer said. "There are many similarly intimidating statements made by establishment climate scientists and by like-thinking policymakers "” you are either with us or you are a traitor."

Happer called for the creation of a "B-team" of scientists given steady funding to investigate other possibilities besides human-caused warming for the Earth"s changing climate. He said the approach is intended to establish a group of scientists to play a "devil"s advocate" role.

The Department of Defense, the CIA "and many others routinely establish robust team B"s; that is, groups of experts who work full time, sometimes for several years, to challenge the establishment position," Happer said. "This has given us much better weapons systems and intelligence."

Happer said he believes increased carbon dioxide levels may only cause an inconsequential rise in temperatures and that plant life will flourish with more atmospheric carbon dioxide. He concurred when one congressman asked if he was in a "minority position" among scientists in asserting that climate change doesn"t pose a serious threat.

"Oh yes, I certainly agree," Happer said. "And in many cases in the history of science the minority has been right."

But Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, detailed the science that reinforces most climate scientists views. Cicerone at the hearing described a 1 degree Fahrenheit rise since 1979 documented by NASA and other agencies. Declassified U.S. Navy data and satellite data show Arctic ice sheet thickness has declined 50 percent in 50 years, he said, and sea levels are now rising 3.2 millimeters per year. He said the average ocean surface temperature "has increased significantly since 1980," which scientists say lead to more extreme weather events.

"The year 2009 was the warmest on record for the entire world south of the equator," he added.

It was in response to the attacks on conclusions embraced by the majority of climate scientists and the escalating threats that Schneider and others decided to cast aside their usual scientific reserve and publicly speak out.

On May 7, Science published a letter signed by 255 National Academy of Sciences members "” including 32 from Northern California "” decrying the political assaults on climate scientists.

Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo applauded the climate scientists" emerging outspoken position.

"I support our scientists one hundred percent for speaking louder and clearer to the American public about the seriousness of this issue," Speier said. "If sea level rise continues unchecked, it will put major parts of the Bay Area underwater."

Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said that with trillions of dollars at stake by shifting to a lower-carbon economy, especially within industries reliant on fossil fuels, there are "lots of sharp elbows" in the debate.

The institute is regarded as a conservative Washington D.C. think tank, although Ornstein defies the stereotype. But he noted that even among his colleagues skeptical about some climate science data, "they"re not going to deny there"s climate change going on." And they"re "getting brickbats" from those "who basically think it"s all a hoax."

He also supports climate scientists stepping into a more public role in explaining their science.

"You"ve got to find a way to make powerful a point, that there really is a common set of facts, and those who don"t support that common set of facts are truly outside any kind of mainstream," Ornstein said."

I do not condone intimidation on either side. I think however, that these climate change deniers who resort to threats of violence do so because deep down they know the don't have an argument against the science. There only hope is to use fear to silence the opposition.

Climate Change Doubts in Britain

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/science/earth/25climate.html

LONDON — Last month hundreds of environmental activists crammed into an auditorium here to ponder an anguished question: If the scientific consensus on climate change has not changed, why have so many people turned away from the idea that human activity is warming the planet?

I wager that it has to do with the misinformation being spread by the denialists who can easily convince a public that doesn't understand the science.

Nowhere has this shift in public opinion been more striking than in Britain, where climate change was until this year such a popular priority that in 2008 Parliament enshrined targets for emissions cuts as national law. But since then, the country has evolved into a home base for a thriving group of climate skeptics who have dominated news reports in recent months, apparently convincing many that the threat of warming is vastly exaggerated.

A survey in February by the BBC found that only 26 percent of Britons believed that “climate change is happening and is now established as largely manmade,” down from 41 percent in November 2009. A poll conducted for the German magazine Der Spiegel found that 42 percent of Germans feared global warming, down from 62 percent four years earlier.

And London’s Science Museum recently announced that a permanent exhibit scheduled to open later this year would be called the Climate Science Gallery — not the Climate Change Gallery as had previously been planned.

“Before, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this climate change problem is just dreadful,’ ” said Jillian Leddra, 50, a musician who was shopping in London on a recent lunch hour. “But now I have my doubts, and I’m wondering if it’s been overhyped.”

Perhaps sensing that climate is now a political nonstarter, David Cameron, Britain’s new Conservative prime minister, was “strangely muted” on the issue in a recent pre-election debate, as The Daily Telegraph put it, though it had previously been one of his passions.

And a poll in January of the personal priorities of 141 Conservative Party candidates deemed capable of victory in the recent election found that “reducing Britain’s carbon footprint” was the least important of the 19 issues presented to them.

Politicians and activists say such attitudes will make it harder to pass legislation like a fuel tax increase and to persuade people to make sacrifices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“Legitimacy has shifted to the side of the climate skeptics, and that is a big, big problem,” Ben Stewart, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said at the meeting of environmentalists here. “This is happening in the context of overwhelming scientific agreement that climate change is real and a threat. But the poll figures are going through the floor.”

The lack of fervor about climate change is also true of the United States, where action on climate and emissions reduction is still very much a work in progress, and concern about global warming was never as strong as in Europe. A March Gallup poll found that 48 percent of Americans believed that the seriousness of global warming was “generally exaggerated,” up from 41 percent a year ago.

Here in Britain, the change has been driven by the news media’s intensive coverage of a series of climate science controversies unearthed and highlighted by skeptics since November. These include the unauthorized release of e-mail messages from prominent British climate scientists at the University of East Anglia that skeptics cited as evidence that researchers were overstating the evidence for global warming and the discovery of errors in a United Nations climate report.

Two independent reviews later found no evidence that the East Anglia researchers had actively distorted climate data, but heavy press coverage had already left an impression that the scientists had schemed to repress data. Then there was the unusually cold winter in Northern Europe and the United States, which may have reinforced a perception that the Earth was not warming. (Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a United States agency, show that globally, this winter was the fifth warmest in history.)

Asked about his views on global warming on a recent evening, Brian George, a 30-year-old builder from southeast London, mused, “It was extremely cold in January, wasn’t it?”

A response like that demonstrates the misconceptions and ignorance some people have towards what climate change is.

In a telephone interview, Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist at the World Bank and a climate change expert, said that the shift in opinion “hadn’t helped” efforts to come up with strong policy in a number of countries. But he predicted that it would be overcome, not least because the science was so clear on the warming trend.

“I don’t think it will be problematic in the long run,” he said, adding that in Britain, at least, politicians “are ahead of the public anyway.” Indeed, once Mr. Cameron became prime minister, he vowed to run “the greenest government in our history” and proposed projects like a more efficient national electricity grid.

Scientists have meanwhile awakened to the public’s misgivings and are increasingly fighting back. An editorial in the prestigious journal Nature said climate deniers were using “every means at their disposal to undermine science and scientists” and urged scientists to counterattack. Scientists in France, the Netherlands and the United States have signed open letters affirming their trust in climate change evidence, including one published on May 7 in the journal Science.

In March, Simon L. Lewis, an expert on rain forests at the University of Leeds in Britain, filed a 30-page complaint with the nation’s Press Complaints Commission against The Times of London, accusing it of publishing “inaccurate, misleading or distorted information” about climate change, his own research and remarks he had made to a reporter.

“I was most annoyed that there seemed to be a pattern of pushing the idea that there were a number of serious mistakes in the I.P.C.C. report, when most were fairly innocuous, or not mistakes at all,” said Dr. Lewis, referring to the report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Meanwhile, groups like the wildlife organization WWF have posted articles like “How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic,” providing stock answers to doubting friends and relatives, on their Web sites.

It is unclear whether such actions are enough to win back a segment of the public that has eagerly consumed a series of revelations that were published prominently in right-leaning newspapers like The Times of London and The Telegraph and then repeated around the world.

In January, for example, The Times chastised the United Nations climate panel for an errant and unsupported projection that glaciers in the Himalayas could disappear by 2035. The United Nations ultimately apologized for including the estimate, which was mentioned in passing within a 3,000-page report in 2007.

Then came articles contending that the 2007 report was inaccurate on a host of other issues, including African drought, the portion of the Netherlands below sea level, and the economic impact of severe storms. Officials from the climate panel said the articles’ claims either were false or reflected minor errors like faulty citations that in no way diluted the evidence that climate change is real and caused by human activity.

Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, successfully demanded in February that some German newspapers remove misleading articles from their Web sites. But such reports have become so common that he “wouldn’t bother” to pursue most cases now, he added.

The public is left to struggle with the salvos between the two sides. “I’m still concerned about climate change, but it’s become very confusing,” said Sandra Lawson, 32, as she ran errands near Hyde Park.

Defending the Science

http://www.tgdaily.com/sustainability-features/49672-scientists-defend-climate-change-research-in-open-letter

Scientists are fighting back against the recent wave of climate scepticism:

"More than 250 US scientists, including 11 Nobel laureates, have published an open letter defending climate change research.

The letter, which appears in Science, follows increasing hostility to climate change science in the wake of the release of hacked emails from the University of East Anglia and errors made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The scientists, all members of the US National Academy of Sciences, accuse their opponents of "McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them."

Much of the controversy stems from a lack of scientific understanding on the part of the general public, they say.

"There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything," says the letter.

"When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action."

Well-established theories which have not been successfully challenged can be spoken of as facts, they say - and climate change falls into this category. Heat-trapping gases are indeed warming the planet, and most of this increase is due to human activity."

A Greener Capitalism

http://trueslant.com/jeffmcmahon/2010/04/29/capitalism-climate-change/

Does capitalism need to adapt to the demands of the Earth? Jeff McMahon thinks so:

“Flocks of environmentalists and economists will alight in Vancouver this evening for a weekend of striving toward a more sensible capitalism.

The De-Growth conference hopes to achieve a “viable economic, social and ecological system” that’s kinder to both workers and to the earth, but these are no Molotov-hurling Bolsheviks. They’re just looking for sustainable capitalism.

That means shrinking the economies of the developed world. Which will be hard to do. In a political campaign, that’s not a platform to stand on, it’s a plank to walk.
And I wonder whether we have the power to engineer the economy quite that radically. It may only have the power to engineer us.

A favorite bloody example is that messiness in 18th Century Europe, when aristocrats were losing their heads. It might have seemed as if people were ecstatic with notions of liberté, egalité, fraternité, but those also just happened to be values the economy needed to expel the last vestiges of feudalism and get the capitalist orgy underway.

You can’t have the fishmonger’s son growing up believing he’s destined to become a fishmonger, not when there are jobs opening in new factories, in whole new industries. Whose destiny would it be to operate the steam engine? The nuclear power plant? The silicon chipmaker?

And so democracy became all the rage, along with its values–the liberty to work in a factory instead of a fishmarket, the equality to be replaced by another worker the day you depart, the fraternity to take your lumps until 5 and show up again at 8.
The economic system fueled the ideas, according to this venerable argument, not the other way around.

You see what I’m getting at, don’t you–just as feudalism proved too inflexible for industrialization, capitalism appears too inflexible for sustainability. And sustainability increasingly appears necessary for survival. Democracy and capitalism get along famously well, as America has demonstrated, and nothing can stop them.
Except the planet.

It’s the developed democracies of the New World, those built from scratch on capitalism, that are having the most difficulty adapting to climate change.
You know what’s been happening in the United States: we’re going nowhere. Canada has said it’ll do whatever the U.S. does, perhaps confident that the U.S. will never do anything. Yesterday, Australia reneged on its promise to reduce emissions a measly 5 percent, putting off any action until at least 2012.

Totalitarian China and socialist Europe have been making more significant strides, but China in particular is careful not to make any sudden moves that might disrupt its young romance with capitalism.

The United States has only seriously considered a capitalist solution to climate change–a carbon market–and even that monied enterprise appears impossible without huge payoffs to coal, oil, agriculture–all the dirty practices that got us into this mess.

But we can best see America’s stalemate by examining our capitalists:
The Competitive Enterprise Institute produced a documentary on climate change last year, “The Truth About Global Warming,” which argued that there’s no need to worry about climate change because people adapt to higher temperatures.

Their evidence? Temperatures have risen in U.S. cities in the last 35 years, but heat-related deaths have declined. The video quotes Patrick J. Michaels of the capitalist CATO Institute saying, “The more frequent heat waves are, the fewer people die. That’s because they adapt.”

They sure do. They adapt by turning on their air conditioners. Heat-related deaths have declined in U.S. cities since the early 1970s largely because more people have air conditioners, and secondarily because cities do a better job of rescuing people who don’t.

How do we know that? From a study conducted in 2003 at the University of Virginia by none other than Patrick J. Michaels of the CATO Institute.

Offered a dark cloud, capitalists can’t help but mine the silver from the lining.
As it gets warmer, people will buy more air conditioners! As they turn on more air conditioners, they will use more power, consume more fossil fuels, emit more greenhouse gases. As they emit more greenhouse gases, it will get warmer. As it gets warmer, people will buy more air conditioners!

It’s a win, win, win for industry…. Until the ice caps melt, the sea levels rise, the rivers dry up, farms and cities wither. But even those dark clouds have silver linings. Markets will flourish for imported water, fresh food, higher ground, as the demand for each increases.

This is just how capitalism works. It capitalizes. But we may be verging upon the moment of history when we see that it’s a finite system: not a loop but a long, dusty road to a dead end. You can make a lot of money extracting carbon from the ground and putting it into the air… until atmospheric carbon begins to threaten our survival.
The people who are trying to solve this problem are not just trying to save polar bears, they’re trying to save human beings, and by embracing carbon markets they’re trying to save capitalism. (For this they’re called socialists.) From the UN to the White House to Vancouver, people are trying to shift the forces of capitalism away from finite fossil fuels, before its too late, and unleash them on renewable energy.
I think they might fail. But I also think it’s worth a try. It’s might be our only shot.

I have more faith that the sold-out politicians in Congress can do it than the idealistic activists and academic economists presently gathering in Vancouver, precisely because those politicians are invested in capitalism. If anyone can make progress profitable, it’s the big whigs who lunch with the fat cats.

But it might be the case that no one can do it, that the economic system steers us and we only think we steer it. If so, neither can we get rid of it.

The protestors at the Copenhagen Climate Talks found themselves in an awkward position: they wanted to solve climate change, but they were bodily assaulting the only global effort to accomplish that. Their message was incoherent, their behavior reinforced the incoherence, but one prevalent theme I could discern was anti-capitalist.

In the beginning, there was Naomi Klein: “Finally we’re seeing the movement and it’s focused on these false solutions, these market based solutions–the insanity, after what we’ve just witnessed, of handing over the most pressing, challenging, horrifying crisis to the very same people that created that crisis, that gambled away people’s jobs and homes and pensions.”

At the rally, with 40,000 demonstrators gathered in the city center, there was Vandama Shiva: “The time is past for big capital to make more money. The earth must make the change. The earth must make the rules.”

Klein was in the clouds, I thought at the time, but Shiva was on to something. We might have a moment to use capitalism, the very engine of our social organization, to forestall more undesirable consequences. But if capitalism fails to adapt–and it’s failing so far–change will come whether we like it or not via the earth.

When change comes, it will bring corresponding political ideas, and we’ll embrace the emerging ideology. We’ll believe we thought of it ourselves. We’ll do its dirty work by lopping the heads off of air conditioner salesmen (in all their various forms).
But we will no more control the future in that moment than Robespierre’s Reign of Terror controlled industrialization. We’ll be the steered, not the steering.

In Vancouver this weekend, ecological economist Dave Batker will ask the question, “What’s the economy for, anyway?” And like many smart people who pose questions, he’ll have an answer:

“Using Gifford Pinchot’s idea that the economy’s purpose is ‘the greatest good for the greatest number over the longest run,’ Batker compares the performance of the U.S. economy with that of other industrial countries in terms of providing a high quality of life, fairness and ecological sustainability, concluding that when you do the numbers, we come out near the bottom in nearly every category.”

Tell us something we don’t know. Like, how do we turn this supertanker around?
Treehuggers and eggheads aren’t going to shrink the world economy from the Vancouver Library. Likewise, no raggle taggle mass of protesters is going to overthrow capitalism by rallying in Copenhagen, especially when they identify themselves largely through commodity preferences–hemp clothes, folk music, natural toothpaste. No army will do it either, if the massive red armies of the Soviet Union and China failed.

But the earth can do it. The earth can do it by creating conditions warm enough to disrupt markets. And look: she’s on the march.”

The key is moving towards a green capitalism that values the use of renewable resources and punishes those who deplete the Earth’s resources for gain.

Weather vs. Climate

http://www.mauiweekly.com/page/content.detail/id/501390/Global-Warming-Baloney.html?nav=9

Debra Lordan addresses the weather vs. climate confusion that some people have:

““It’s April and it’s freezing Upcountry today. So what’s with this global warming baloney?”

I have overheard much confusion about local weather and global climate change.
According to the experts at NASA, the difference between weather and climate is a measure of time. Weather consists of the short-term minute- to month-long changes in the atmosphere. Climate is how the atmosphere behaves over relatively long periods of time—the average weather over time and space. Some scientists define climate as the average pattern of weather in a region over 30 years.

For example, after looking at rain gauge data, you can tell if an area was drier than average during the summer. If it continues to be drier than normal over the course of many summers, then it would likely indicate a change in the climate.

To add to the confusion, there are shorter-term climate variations related to El Niño, La Niña, volcanic eruptions and other changes in Earth’s complicated systems.
An easy way to remember the difference is that climate is what you expect—like a warm summer—and weather is what you can get—like a hot, muggy day with thunderstorms.
Research and the memories of old folks seem to indicate that the climate is changing.
When you kids hear stories from your grandparents about trudging to school through waist-deep snow, they may not just be berating you for needing to be driven everywhere. You may have never experienced the extreme conditions your grandparents suffered, because changes in recent winter snows indicate that the climate has changed since those ancient folks were your age.

OK, so it never snows here in Kīhei, but if summers seem hotter and drier lately, then the recent climate may have changed.

Although global warming refers to an average planetary temperature increase of a degree or so, that doesn’t mean the thermometer in our back yard is going to read a degree higher. That’s why “climate change” rather than “global warming” may be an easier concept for us on a daily basis.

I know it’s a challenge. We don’t like change, because then we have to change. And we especially don’t like climate change, because our economy, our homes and our wardrobes are already set up for the status quo.

So, just as one day of cold does not an ice age make, neither does it relegate the term “global warming” to the status of processed luncheon meat.
Misunderstandings don’t change a thing. Only action will.”

German Climate Sceptics

http://www.news24.com/SciTech/News/Germans-sceptical-of-climate-20100427

Climate chance scepticism is on the rise in Germany:

Climate change is showing no signs of slowing despite a severe winter in Germany that helped reduce public concerns about the threat of global warming, Germany's leading meteorologist said on Tuesday.

Wolfgang Kusch, president of the German Meteorological Service (DWD), said it was a mistake to interpret the harsh winter of 2009/10 as a sign climate change is abating. A German opinion poll recently found fears of climate change falling sharply.

"Despite fluctuations, temperatures are still moving in one direction - higher," he said. "Climate researchers have to look at least 30-year periods when talking about trends... At the same time the last decade was the warmest in Germany in 130 years."

Scepticism about climate change has been growing in Germany, one of the world's four largest industrial countries, after an unusually long and cold winter in northern Europe.

An opinion poll by the Infratest institute in Der Spiegel magazine found 42% of Germans are concerned about climate change, down from 62% in 2006. A third do not think the climate change research is reliable and a quarter believe Germany will actually profit from climate change.

Profiteers

Scientists say global warming could upset weather patterns, bringing flooding to low-lying areas throughout the world and disrupting agriculture in many regions, not least in the poorer, developing world.

DWD officials said on Tuesday rising temperatures in Germany could indeed turn out to be a boon for local farmers. They said the average annual temperature in Germany has risen by 1.1C over the past 130 years.

By the end of the century, the DWD expects temperatures in Germany to increase by 2C to 4C. The findings have particular ramifications for farmers, said Paul Becker, a DWD board member in charge of the climate and environment unit.

"The northern European agriculture sector will be one of the profiteers of climate change," Becker said. "The temperature rise will expand their growing possibilities considerably."

Becker said rising temperature will lead German farmers to plant various types of corn that mature at warmer temperatures. As winters grow milder, farmers could also plant various types of cereals. That will lead to a higher income for farmers.

"The decisive factor will be whether there will be enough water available," Becker said.”

There is an unfortunate confusion between weather and long-term climate.

Changing the Menu

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/fedele-bauccio/combating-climate-change_b_546373.html

There are many habits that we can change to make a positive impact on the environment including changes to our diet:

•“Minimize food waste and take only what you will eat (food sitting in landfills emits harmful methane gas).

•Eat more seasonal and regional foods since they are less likely to have been air-freighted to you. It can be as simple as topping a sandwich with grilled onions rather than out-of-season tomatoes.

•Limit beef and cheese consumption (since the ruminant animals these foods come from emit methane gas).

•If it's processed or packaged, try to skip it. This kind of food takes a lot of energy to produce, and often, the packaging is wasteful.”

Honestly, I have yet to adjust my own habits to these recommendations. Nonetheless, it is something to strive for.

Canada: Government Inaction

http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Where+climate+change+leaders/2917736/story.html

On Canada’s political leaders’ inaction on climate change:

“Andrew Weaver first has to stifle a laugh when he's asked about the state of political leadership in this country on confronting climate change.

Weaver is a doctor of climatology and heads the climate modelling group at the University of Victoria. "There is a void federally in terms of any significant leadership, that's pretty clear," he says when he regains composure.

The laugh as much as the statement sums up the general view in environmental circles. Environmentalists say there is political leadership in some quarters on the climate-change issue, albeit tentative and insufficient to meet the looming challenge, however it tends to fade the higher you get on the political ladder until at the top, occupied by Stephen Harper's Conservative government, it practically disappears altogether.

"From a climate-change perspective, Canada is now pretty much the worst country in the industrialized world," said Graham Saul, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada, the local branch of the global network of 500 environmental activist organizations.

"What we see in Canada is a leadership in government that is actually going backwards on the issue."

Climate Action ranks Canada second to last among countries surveyed on its global climate performance index, just ahead of Saudi Arabia and last among the world's 10 top greenhouse-gas emitters. But then Canada is only among the worst of a deplorable lot; the organization left the top three spots on its ranking vacant because "none of the countries analyzed is contributing sufficiently on a practical level to the goal of avoiding dangerous climate change."

The general dearth of global leadership was epitomized by the failure of last year's United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen to agree on concerted, meaningful greenhouse- gas curbs.

The Harper government's first action on climate change after it was elected four years ago was to flatly renounce Canada's commitment to meet the Kyoto Protocol for emissions reduction. That move reflected the prevailing Conservative ideological view that the climate-change threat is overblown, but was at least more up-front than the Liberals were while in government, when they did little until too late as Canadian emissions steadily increased until it was gobsmacking obvious that there was no hope of meeting the Kyoto target.

After fudging around on the issue for some years, the government has most recently set a target of a 20-per- cent greenhouse-gas reduction by 2020. Environmentalists maintain that this is gravely insufficient, that it should be at the very least 25 per cent and more properly 40 per cent to adequately counter the climate-change threat. "It appears that the government's strategy is to do as little as possible," said Saul.

The government counters that it is doing as much as is reasonably possible in the country's best interest.

"The primary consideration in framing our strategy for climate change and the environment has been economic reality," said federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice recently. "It's all very easy to toss around targets, but we've done the analysis. Some of the targets that people are pushing cannot be achieved without inordinate economic costs and our government is not prepared to take those costs on."
The stirrings of climate-change leadership among the federal opposition are noted, but these, too, are generally judged too feeble by environmentalists. This week, an NDP sponsored Climate Change Accountability Act was passed by the House of Commons with the minority-government members voting solidly against and the three opposition parties unanimously in favour. It sets a reduction target of 80 per cent by 2050 and calls on the government for a regular accounting of its climate-change action.

The same day, a Liberal-sponsored motion was passed, again by combined opposition vote, calling for a national action plan on climate change and a first ministers conference devoted to the issue within 90 days. "The country has to move forward on climate change and at the moment we're not. We need action now," said Liberal environment critic David McGuinty in putting the motion.

But while it's encouraging to see the Liberals, the only viable national governing alternative, gathering their hind legs on the issue, it is noted that the Liberal position today is far less progressive and courageous that the party's Green Shift policy, under previous leader Stéphane Dion, which boldly proposed an escalating carbon tax. The policy was scrapped by current leader Michael Ignatieff when he took over after the Liberals' disastrous finish in the 2008 election when they suffered their lowest vote share in more than a century.

"The Liberals under Michael Ignatieff have really refused to get their teeth into the climate-change question. They've refused to take a position on any target up to now, literally this week," said David Martin, climate and energy co-ordinator for Greenpeace Canada. The 80-per-cent target looks ambitious, he said, but 2050 is a long way off. "What's missing is a medium-term target, which is really where the rubber hits the road."

The Liberals were understandably spooked by the pasting they took running on a carbon tax in the last election, but the environmental view is not that the policy was bad, but rather that it was defeated by poor salesmanship and the extenuating circumstance of the concurrent global financial meltdown that posed a more immediate and palpable threat to Canadians than Arctic ice melt.

"It was a combination of the effectiveness of the Conservative campaign and Mr. Dion's ineffectiveness in communicating his plan," said Sierra Club Canada director John Bennett. "He's a great guy and he was an effective environment minister in his time, but he just couldn't articulate the position clearly enough."

Some provincial governments have led where federal governments have feared to tread since the climate-change issue arose. Both Quebec and British Columbia have grasped the political nettle of carbon taxing and won subsequent elections.

In 2006, the Quebec Liberal government imposed a tax of just under one cent a litre on petroleum companies, too little, it is estimated, to make much discernible impact on consumption, but nevertheless groundbreaking in North America. Gordon Campbell's B.C. Liberal government, which tends to be of more conservative bent than the federal Liberal Party, followed two years later with a significantly bolder policy that put an escalating tax on greenhouse-gas emissions and imposed a 2.4-cent tax - now raised to 3.6 cents - on gasoline at the pump.

The carbon tax was a major issue in last year's B.C. election in which the Liberals were elected in majority for a third term, in large thanks to environmentalist support that swung over from the provincial NDP, which uncharacteristically opposed the tax. "You could argue that the reason the B.C. government is in place is precisely because they gained the environmental vote," said Weaver.

A number of factors are cited that discourage high-level political leadership on climate change, or enable its abdication: insufficient public pressure on politicians, the complexity of the issue and the seeming remoteness of the climate threat, the prevalence of economic considerations at election time, the fragmentation of the environmental vote among four opposition parties and North American political culture in general.

Environmentalists note that the Harper government was elected with a mere 36 per cent of the popular vote, which means nearly two thirds of Canadians voted for parties - the Liberals, the NDP, the Bloc Québécois and the Greens - with more progressive climate change policies than the Tories. "Part of the problem is that we get governments supported by not much more than a third of the population," said Weaver. "Clearly some sort of electoral reform is called for."

Another problem, he suggests, is that the full benefits of climate change action in the present day lie in a distant future on a political time scale. "It's fundamentally about generational equity, doing something for future generations. It's not something they'd be doing for themselves in their political lifetime. It's about the effects down the road."

North Americans, including Canadians, are generally more resistant to big-government intervention, said Matthew Branley, the Pembina Institute's climate change director. "There tends to be more cultural acceptance of that in some European countries and this explains to some extent why we've done so much less."

Polls persistently show that a strong majority of Canadians are environmentally disposed and conscious of the global warming threat. A recent Harris-Decima survey for Toronto's Munk Centre found two-thirds of Canadians agree that climate change is the planet's defining challenge. "But there hasn't really been enough of a public outcry," said Earth Day Canada president Jed Goldberg. "It's one thing to say that you have a concern about something, and another to scream and yell about it. In the absence of some kind of real public pressure on the government, I don't think there's going to be a whole lot of response."

He acknowledged that it is to be fully expected that economic worries will trump environmental concerns as tends to be the case at election times. "It's human nature that you react to the issue that has the most direct impact on you. If people are losing jobs, if they're squeezed financially and don't how they're going to make their rent or mortgage payments, then that becomes their primary concern and everything else becomes secondary."

While he is brutal in his take on today's Conservative administration, Saul praises former Tory prime minister Brian Mulroney for pushing the Americans to deal with acid rain two decades ago, unlike the Harper government which maintains Canada must realistically be in lockstep with the U.S. on climate policy.

"Mulroney actually started doing things. He went to Washington and said that we have a problem and in Canada we're doing x, y and z and we need you to do a, b and c. He didn't just sit on his hands and wait for the U.S. to show leadership. He started action at home then went down there and said, 'You need to come with me.' That's what leadership looks like."

Good policy should make for good politics, though that's not necessarily the case as the Liberal experience in the last election showed, said Désirée McGraw, co-founder of the Al Gore Climate Project in Canada who lectures on climate diplomacy at McGill University.

"When you have the right policy, you need to get the politics and the communications around it. That's where leadership comes in. It's not just about polls or reacting to where people want you to go. It's about leading people to where we need to go. Right now I see some at the sub-national level, some in the private sector, but it's disjointed and uneven. I certainly don't see it in government, which is where it counts."”

I don’t agree that action in the government is where it counts. They have proven themselves to be unreliable and there’s nothing to say that revolutionary action in the business world could lead to improvements in Canada’s climate position. What needs to be done is to unite the major businesses in their efforts to combat climate change so that it is no longer ‘disjointed and uneven’. Business can send a message to government that something must be done on climate change. Not the other way around.

Many Canadians Sceptical on Climate Change

http://www.straight.com/article-317681/vancouver/its-time-clear-your-climate-change-confusion

Rebeka Ryvola writes on the troubling fact that many Canadians remain sceptical towards man-made climate change and the campaign of misinformation that has led to this perception:

“Our climate is warming at unprecedented rates, but Canadians are not moved to take action. Climate change is causing everything from species extinctions and rising sea levels to ocean acidification and water and food shortages. Yet, we continue to live our lives like nothing is wrong. We are not acknowledging the role we are playing in creating these threats to humankind and the Earth.

The reason for this inaction is a scary one: many Canadians do not believe that current climate change is human-caused. Even the most apparent climate-change impacts are being brushed aside, chalked up to mere natural processes. This way of thinking exists because the fossil-fuel industry has expended huge amounts of money and effort to fabricate the “other side” of the climate-change controversy.

The scientific research behind the climate change is real and indisputable among the world’s experts. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change leads the way in amassing research done by scientists all around the globe. The reputable IPCC prides itself on processing research and providing an understanding of climate change and how it is altering our Earth. The IPCC is open to all contributions of valid research and yet no research has been presented which refutes that we are rapidly altering our atmosphere.

On the one side of the debate is the IPCC and many other well-intentioned organizations standing for fast action against human-induced climate change. On the flip side, we have various scientists and organizations operating out of fossil-fuel industry pockets. These “climate skeptics” are able to paint a very convincing picture of a scientific disagreement on the causes of climate change. The oil and gas giants have good reasons to be funding massively misleading campaigns of trickery: their money is made extracting and selling harmful fossil fuels. They depend on public consumption of their product. In one case, a fossil fuel-funded “scientific” organization, the Information Council on the Environment, spent $500,000 on a campaign to “reposition global warming as theory (not fact)”. Climate misinformation campaigns permeate media all around us; newspapers, television, and the Internet all present us with a false two-sided climate debate.

Since most of us are not scientists ourselves, it is difficult to know what exactly we should be asking of the information that comes our way. The idea that the climate skeptics are on a level playing field with peer-reviewed scientific research is ludicrous. The IPCC and the majority of the globe’s scientists devote their life to tireless work that broadens our understanding of the world we live in. The skeptics, deniers, and oil-funded scientists have a shady agenda of deception. When we see how wildly unbalanced the two “sides” are, it becomes obvious that a valid scientific disagreement does not exist.

Now is the first time in history that we can use our technology and intelligence to predict what the future of our Earth will look like—and, without serious change, this future does not look good. The scientific consensus is that we are rapidly sliding down a slippery slope. We have evidence that shows us we need change and we have the technology required to make it. It is time to make critical decisions that will impact all future generations.

You are now aware that climate misinformation campaigns exist. Take it upon yourself to question your sources. Challenge, research, and think critically about all that is presented to you. Once we see past the phony skeptics, we can begin to make lifestyle adjustments. We can start to vote with our dollar, and demand our politicians lead the way. We need to see clearly for each other, for the future, and for all the other living things on Earth that are waiting anxiously for us to determine their fates.”

Canadians need to take the time to research climate change, to see the evidence themselves. Otherwise, many will continue to buy into the testimony of one scientist motivated by contributions from organizations who have an interest in perpetuating the climate sceptic movement.

Misleading Polls and the Result of Balance in the Media

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/18/opinion/main6409392.shtml

Mark Hertsgaard writes on how a misreading on polling data and media misinformation is affecting the American government’s reaction to climate change:
“Mark Twain famously said that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. He could just as easily have included polls.

Advocates across the political spectrum habitually cite polls to "prove" that the public holds a certain view of a given issue, even when the truth is more complicated or even contradictory. This appears to be happening with the climate issue. As the Obama administration and Congressional leaders prepare to introduce new climate legislation, mainstream media have given fresh prominence to deniers' claims of fraud and rampant error on the part of climate scientists. Meanwhile, surveys by Gallup and other leading pollsters are being spun as evidence that the deniers are gaining ground among the public, which is supposedly divided over whether to take action against rising temperatures and the droughts, storms and sea-level rise they trigger.

A closer look, however, suggests that public opinion has changed very little. What has changed is the message coming from the media, key parts of which have reverted to their longstanding posture of scientific illiteracy and de facto complicity with the deniers' disinformation campaign.

This abuse of polling data has a long pedigree. As a young reporter in the 1980s researching the book On Bended Knee, I watched the Reagan White House use polls to make fools of the mainstream media and the Democratic Party. Reagan's advisers were forever citing polls supposedly demonstrating that the Gipper was wildly popular and thus that anyone who criticized him was taking a political risk. The truth was rather less flattering. Yes, Reagan was personally popular--most Americans thought he was a nice guy--but that had been true of almost all presidents.

Ask Americans about Reagan's policies, however, and many were indeed unhappy with his trickle-down economics and bellicose foreign policy. Nevertheless, most news organizations and Congressional Democrats swallowed the White House spin and pulled their punches. As a result, Reagan escaped sharp and sustained criticism from the opposition party and the press for most of his presidency.

Today, a similar gullibility and misreading of polls is playing into the hands of climate change deniers.

The campaign to deny the science behind man-made climate change, which seemed to be losing steam a year ago, has resurged in recent months, thanks to high-profile media coverage of stolen e-mails from a British climate unit and of trivial errors in the Fourth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page are no longer the only major outlets trumpeting such charges. The New York Times, whose veteran climate reporter, Andrew Revkin, retired in December, has subsequently run two front-page stories suggesting that the science behind climate change may not be settled after all.

The Times's February 9 article "U.N. Climate Panel and Its Chief Face a Siege on Their Credibility" quoted not a single mainstream climate scientist in support of its headline, noted Joseph Romm of the Center for American Progress, whose new book, Straight Up, blasts the media and deniers alike for misrepresenting climate science. Robert Brulle, a communications expert at Drexel University, accused the Times of becoming "an echo-chamber for the climate disinformation movement." The deniers' agenda has been further advanced by unquestioning coverage of polls by Gallup, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, and other survey groups that claim to demonstrate growing public skepticism about climate change. Gallup's poll, released on March 11 and publicized internationally by Reuters, said that 48 percent of Americans now regard fears of climate change as "generally exaggerated."

All this has led environmentalists and climate deniers to assume that getting strong climate legislation through Congress will be even harder this year than last, when the weak Waxman-Markey bill barely passed the House before languishing in the Senate. Dig deeper, though, and this assumption crumbles like day-old coffee cake.

Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University professor who has been surveying Americans' views on climate change since 1995, says that, in fact, Americans remain overwhelmingly convinced that man-made climate change is happening and must be confronted. "The media is sensationalizing these polls to make it sound like the public is backing off its belief in climate change, but it's not so," argues Krosnick, who delivered a paper on the subject at an American Meteorological Association briefing in Washington a day after the Gallup poll was released. Krosnick says that Americans' views have remained quite stable over the past ten years and that in November 2009--the very time the media were full of stories about the stolen British e-mails--a whopping 75 percent of Americans said they believed that global temperatures are going up.

Krosnick, whose academic specialty is the wording of survey questions, suspects his colleagues at Gallup and elsewhere have gotten misleading results because of the way they worded their questions: their phrasing ended up testing whether Americans believed in the science of climate change rather than the phenomenon of climate change. "Most people's opinions are based not on science but on what they experience in their daily lives," Krosnick told me. "So our surveys ask people if they have heard about the idea that temperatures have been going up over the past 100 years and if they agree with this idea."

The 75 percent of Americans who answered yes to that question amounts to "a huge number," says Krosnick--a far higher level of agreement than pertains on most political issues. Where climate change deniers have had an effect, he adds, is in reducing, to 31 percent, the number of Americans who think all scientists agree about climate change. "But most Americans have thought that [scientists don't all agree on climate change] for the entire fifteen years I've been polling on this issue," adds Krosnick--further tribute, it seems, to the media's longstanding habit of giving a handful of deniers prominence equal to the vast majority of scientists who affirm climate change.

Even if Krosnick is right that ordinary Americans' opinions have not changed much, it would be a mistake to conclude that the recent polls and media coverage have had no political effect. As the Reagan example illustrates, the public can hold one opinion--that Reagan's policies were unwelcome--but that opinion may have little practical effect if the governing elite in Washington believes something different. "It's not just a question of the media mischaracterizing the public's views about climate change," says Krosnick. "It is also that, because of this perception, legislators may turn against voting for climate bills they believe would be good for the country."

An assumption of lackluster public support for strong climate action may explain recent Obama administration retreats on the forthcoming climate bill. In an apparent effort to entice a few Rust Belt Democrats and less doctrinaire Republicans to back the Senate bill being co-sponsored by Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry, Connecticut independent Joseph Lieberman and South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, the White House has endorsed an Energy Department request for an estimated $36 billion in new loan guarantees for nuclear power plants as well as a resumption of offshore oil drilling along the Atlantic and Alaskan coasts.

More nuclear plants would do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while resumed drilling would actually increase them, but the administration evidently believes that such is the price of attracting the sixty Senate votes needed to overcome the predictable Republican filibuster.

"I've worked on energy issues in Washington for seventeen years, and I've never seen such strong opposition from the polluters as we face now," says Anna Aurillio, director of Environment America's Washington office. "They're putting unprecedented amounts of money and effort into this fight because they know that if we get a bill through Congress, this president will sign it." At press time, the specifics of the Senate bill had not yet been released, but the battle to make the bill match rather than dodge the science of climate change will clearly be titanic.

It will not be won if the deniers' narrative--that climate science is dubious and Americans don't really want action--is allowed to stand. Now is the time for journalists to get the story right and for ordinary citizens to speak out, loudly, to stiffen lawmakers' spines. Says Aurillio, "We need sixty senators to be convinced by the public, not the polluters, to do what's necessary to solve this problem.””
The problem with relying on members of the media for coverage of scientific issues is that they strive to take a non-bias approach. In non-scientific cases this is perfectly acceptable. The problem though is that science is not concerned with bias. The sceptics do have a right to free speech, of course. It is then the duty of the members of the media to inform the people that the arguments of the sceptics are not supported by science. It is not being biased. It is telling the truth based on evidence.

Poor Outlook for Climate Change Legislation Under Obama

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0419/1224268630412.html

Don’t count on the U.S. making progress on a climate change bill anytime soon:
“The author of a book on climate change says the US is unlikely to pass legislation this year, writes Frank McDonald , Environment Editor

NOT EVEN a “watered down” version of the climate change and energy Bill before the US Senate is likely to be passed this year because of “entrenched opposition from deniers and sceptics”, according to American author Howard Friel.

Friel, who spoke at a Trinity Week event in Trinity College Dublin on the theme What will the world be like in 10 years’ time? said in an interview with The Irish Times that he had also lost faith in President Barack Obama’s ability to set the climate agenda in the US.”

Anyone who actually expects Obama to make effective progress on climate change is overly optimistic. The healthcare debate showed just how easy it is to work up the oppositions and fill their minds with imaginary fears. Both sides of the aisle agreed there were problems with the healthcare system but the division was so deep that it led to fierce debate. Imagine then, the opposition that will be born as a result of a government proposal to combat a threat many believe to be a hoax. I haven’t lost faith in Obama on climate change, I’m not sure I had it in the first place.