Category: Climate Change

Florida’s Charlie Crist Running for Governor Again

On By Norbert HauptIn Climate Change, Political1 Comment

Gov_charlie_cristCharlie Crist is a former Republican governor of Florida. As it turns out, he is the only governor I have ever personally met, not just by a handshake in some reception line, but by a meeting in the governor’s office with him and the lieutenant governor, lasting about 15 minutes back, in 2007, shortly after he had been elected. I was there with a lobbyist and a few other executives. I liked the guy then, and I like him now.

Crist didn’t run for re-election for governor in 2010, and instead ran for the U.S. Senate. He lost against Marco Rubio, the tea-party candidate. After that, he became an Independent.

Now Crist is a Democrat, and running against Gov. Scott he is showing a lead of about four points.

Regarding his view on climate change, according to SaintPetersBlog:

“I’m not a scientist either but I can use my brain and I can talk to one,” said Crist, arriving for a 25-minute presentation by Professor Jeff Chanton of the Florida State University Earth and Atmospheric Science Department.

Too many Republican politicians who wield enormous power, both by their office and their stature and therefore access to the media, keep claiming they are not scientists.

Sen. Rubio and Gov. Scott, you have been elected by your constituents to do the right thing for your local area and your country. As a Florida politician, you should be keenly interested in climate change, anthropogenic or not, and study it with fury and dedication. The water will reach your children’s knees sooner or later, no matter whether your ideological direction today was aligned with reality or not. Go to your universities and talk to your scientists. It’s your job to educate yourselves. It’s your job to do the right thing for your country. It is not your job to look over your shoulders and dodge tough decisions so you can get elected again.

Real leadership will show when you make the tough calls. Real leaders get re-elected. They don’t have to play word games.

Then there is House Speaker John Boehner from Ohio who similarly said earlier this year that he was “not qualified to debate the science over climate change.” Boehner also spoke in Ohio on June 26, 2013, stating that 95% of Ohio’s electricity depended on burning coal. I am sure Ohio coal workers were happy to read that their Speaker of the House was standing up for their jobs. It turns out, however, that both the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio and the Energy Information Administration say that coal generates about 78% of the electricity in Ohio.

When prominent politicians make statements that are completely wrong and utterly misleading to corroborate their own political agendas it is not just shameful, it hurts our country and insults our intelligence. Either Boehner didn’t know the facts, or he lied.

If he didn’t know the facts, the does not know what he is talking about, and I don’t trust him. If he knew the facts, he is a liar, and I don’t trust him.

Somehow I digressed from discussing Florida politics to Ohio politics. Returning to Florida:

If I were a Florida voter, I’d vote the Charlie Crist. He shows experience, intelligence, credibility and a willingness to seek advice and do the right thing. And it’s not because he is a Democrat now.

 

Humanity’s Elephants in the Room

On By Norbert HauptIn Atrocities, Climate Change, Economy, Nature, Political, Religion, Science, SlaveryLeave a comment

Korean Concentration Camps

The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea estimates that North Korea holds as many as 120,000 people in its system of concentration and detention camps, and that 400,000 people have died in these camps from torture, starvation, disease, and execution.

Some reports indicate that they also practice generational imprisonment:

Many prisoners of the camp were born there under North Korea’s “three generations of punishment”. This means anyone found guilty of committing a crime, which could be as simple as trying to escape North Korea, would be sent to the camp along with that person’s entire family. The subsequent two generations of family members would be born in the camp and must also live their entire lives and die there.

— Source Wikipidia

See this Wikipedia article for more details and links.

If you are unlucky enough to be born the grandchild of a person who tried to escape the country, you will serve slave labor for your entire life. Imagine the world-view you would have under those circumstances?

And we, in 2014, allow this to go on, while the baby face dictator gets media coverage.

Bees are Dying

In North America alone, the National Agriculture Statistics Service reported that there were 2.44 million honey-producing hives in the United States in February 2008, down from 4.5 million in 1980, and 5.9 million in 1947. This is also happening in similar proportions in Europe and the rest of the world. We don’t exactly know what is causing it, but we suspect pesticides. Our agriculture depends on bees to a large degree, and entire crops are in peril without sufficient numbers of bees available.

Overfishing the Oceans

Faced with the collapse of large-fish populations, commercial fleets are going deeper in the ocean and father down the food chain for viable catches. This so-called “fishing down” is triggering a chain reaction that is upsetting the ancient and delicate balance of the sea’s biologic system.

A study of catch data published in 2006 in the journal Science grimly predicted that if fishing rates continue apace, all the world’s fisheries will have collapsed by the year 2048.

— National Geographic

Anthropogenic Climate Change

97% of climate scientists agree that human activity is causing climate change.  We are pumping CO2 into the atmosphere at rates that will result in global warming to a degree that the ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica will melt, causing a rise of sea levels and overall changed in weather, resulting in droughts and many other climate related disasters, all within the next 100 years.

Most of the educated world agrees with this assessment. In the United States, however, there is a strong movement of “climate deniers” particularly in the conservative population that is well-funded by the oil and coal industries, putting the general consensus in question. Since the U.S. is by far the largest polluter in the world, this strong anti-climate-change sentiment has global implications. One of the arguments of deniers is that since China and India are just starting to pump pollution into the air, whatever we do will not offset that, so we might as well not even try. A significant percentage of the U.S. population seems to have bought into this philosophy.

We didn’t want to face that smoking was dangerous to our health, until the first generations of smokers started dying early in the millions in the 1960s and 1970, so the inevitable evidence eventually came and changed our attitude. This will happen with climate change, but the nature of the problem is much more calamitous in the event that climate scientists are right. We could ruin the planet for centuries or millennia – before it can recover again.

We are playing a big-stakes game of dice. Our conservatives are not even willing to hedge their bets – they’re betting the planet in exchange of jobs and profits.

Mass Extinction

Human beings are currently causing the greatest mass extinction of species since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. If present trends continue, one half of all species of life on earth will be extinct in less than 100 years, as a result of habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species,
 and climate change.

— Source Link Here

Depletion of Fossil Fuels

Oil companies are making record profits, and did so during the hard years of 2007, 2008 and 2009. Right now, the United States has surpassed Saudi Arabia as the largest oil producer in the world. Oil companies are raking it in while they can, because they know the gravy train is coming to an end. The International Energy Agency announced in 2006 that the world had hit “Peak Oil” meaning that oil production worldwide had hit the maximum. Going forward from Peak Oil, it will be harder and more expensive to extract and deliver oil, and new supplies will lag behind new demand.

The evidence for is, of course, is the price we are now paying at the pump, which is more than twice what it was just five years ago. The free market speaks the ultimate truth here. Oil is in more demand than can be fulfilled.

There is a lot of controversy about the Peak Oil theory. People argue that the Peak Oil crowd does not know what they are talking about. So, for a moment, let’s put aside all studies and all science, and especially all American politics.

It took about 450 million years to make all the oil in the world. Oil is basically the end-result of millions of years of sunshine (solar energy) being trapped in organic material, mostly plants. The earth is not making any more of the stuff at an appreciable rate. About a hundred years ago we started using it up by burning it and as ingredients for manufacturing, and we have made a measurable dent in our supply. If you trust the doom-sayers, we have about 20 years of oil left at the current consumption. Some say 20 to 50 years. Wild and crazy optimists say 100 years. But it’s limited, very limited, and we will run out.

The question is not if Peak Oil is real. The only question we may ask is if it really happened in 2006, or if it’s still off in the future, perhaps in 2016 or 2026.

I once calculated [see formula here] that roughly every day we are using up as much fuel as it took nature 5,000 years to create.

We. Will. Run. Out. Of. Oil.

When the time finally comes, perhaps centuries hence, our descendants will have figured out how to make do without it. But there are legitimate uses of fossil fuels in reasonable amounts, and they will wish we had not squandered it to make plastic grocery bags or plastic forks for one time use; or for teenagers to drive to the mall. Fossil fuels are a limited resource, and when they are all gone, we’ll have to wait another 450 million years to get more, and haul them here from another planet with life on it.

Our strategy is pretty weird, isn’t it?

Slavery

There are more people in slavery today than any time in previous history. Slavery has many faces. Keeping people trapped in sweatshops in Bangladesh so we can buy cheap shirts at the mall in the United States is a form of slavery. Holding young girls as sex objects is a form of slavery. Bringing laborers from Pakistan to work in construction in Dubai and taking away their passports is a form of slavery.

We are making it possible and we let it happen by our willingness to consume the products of the various forms of slavery – at Wal-Mart and all the other retail stores in our neighborhoods. Go to the mall and try to find a shirt made in the United States, and you will recognize what I mean.

Wars over Religion

It’s 2014 and we are still bickering and shooting each other over whose god is right and whose is wrong. It’s been going on for thousands of years, and we’re still willing to die for stuff written in books in the bronze age or in medieval times. I know people in and from Israel, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. They are all good human beings, people who only want to make their lives and the lives of their children better. That’s what everybody wants. If we just stopped bringing gods into the picture, we’d all get along just fine.

The gods are propped up by those that get fat off of them. The religious leaders wearing Rolexes and driving Bentleys. The politicians who build palaces. The kings who tax the rest of their countrymen. And the whole religious food chain below them, all the way down to the basket that’s passed down the rows of pews on Sunday morning.

I say we just abolish religion and save humanity in the process. But I am naïve.

 

 

Politician Brandon Smith Makes Moronic Statement

On By Norbert HauptIn Climate Change, Crack-Ups, ReligionLeave a comment

The most moronic statement I ever heard a politician make about climate change – here is Kentucky State Senator Brandon Smith:

As you (Energy & Environment Cabinet official) sit there in your chair with your data, we sit up here in ours with our data and our constituents and stuff behind us. I don’t want to get into the debate about climate change, but I will simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There are no factories on Mars that I’m aware of.

— Sen. Brandon Smith

If you don’t believe this is what he actually said, hear for yourself:

I can’t even figure out what his statement is supposed to mean or what his point is.

On Earth, the average temperature is about 58 degrees F, the average temperature on Mars is  -80 degrees F. Depending on the time of day and the direction of the sun, Mars temperatures can reach a high of 70 degrees F and a low of -225 degrees F. The atmosphere on Mars is of an entirely different chemical composition and density. Mars has a different mass and size than Earth, and has no molten core and thus no magnetic field. This results in lethal levels of high energy radiation at the surface.

This man is a senator sitting on the bench of some hearing, so he looks important. There are people in our country that think he knows what he is talking about. People listen to him. He has power over people’s lives.

He sounds really smart when he says the doesn’t “want to get into the debate about climate change.”

Yes, I don’t think I’d want to get into a scientific debate if I were Brandon Smith.

 

Apple and Corporate Responsibility

On By Norbert HauptIn Business, Climate Change, EconomyLeave a comment

Apple has been, for a while now, the most valuable company on the planet, with a market cap of $469 billion as of today. The next largest is Exxon/Mobil with $417 billion, followed by Google with $408 billion.

The National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) is a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. and an Apple shareholder. At the company’s annual shareholder meeting, NCPPR’s general counsel Justin Danhof wrote in a statement before the meeting:

“We object to increased government control over company products and operations, and likewise mandatory environmental standards. This is something [Apple] should be actively fighting, not preparing surrender.”

Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO responded that environmental efforts also make economic sense. “We do a lot of things for reasons besides profit motive. We want to leave the world better than we found it.”

Anyone had a problem with that? They should sell their Apple shares.

“Get out of the stock,” Cook suggested.

Danhof’s proposal was voted down by shareholders.

Here is a company that takes no shit from pseudoscience promoters. Apple has a long way to go to clean up its act, but with this statement, my respect for Cook has just jumped up a few notches.

Event Horizon of U.S. Conservative Talking Heads

On By Norbert HauptIn Climate ChangeLeave a comment

The conservative media have been full of chatter lately, casting doubt on the reality of climate change, because it’s been very cold in the Midwest in January and February.

The fact is, the global temperature in January was the fourth warmest on record, 1.17°F warmer than the 20th century average.

Climate Change
[photocredit: mediamatters.org]
A tiny percentage of the world’s surface is the small circle in the United States that had colder than average temperatures in January. This appears to be the entire event horizon of our conservative talking heads. Have they no concept of the term “global?” Do they ever leave Missouri?

Maybe they should watch Al Jazeera more often.

 

Scientists and Our Illustrious Politicians

On By Norbert HauptIn Climate Change, ScienceLeave a comment

Climate Science
[click for picture credit – by Brian Merchant in Vice]
According to an article by Brian Merchant in Vice, in the last two years there were 2258 peer-reviewed articles by 9136 scientists. Out of all those scientists, 0.01 percent do not think climate change is anthropogenic. They are represented by the dark sliver on the top of this pie chart. The consensus regarding this detail of climate science is overwhelming, unlike many other hot and contested scientific topics of our age, like for example genetics.

Yet, the article goes on to state that 17 out of 22 Republican members of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, or 77 percent, are climate deniers [meaning they think that human activity has nothing to do with the fact that our climate is changing at a catastrophic pace].

Where do we find these people that we put on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology?

Remember Paul Broun from Georgia, a medical doctor, is on that committee. That’s the illustrious congressman who has dismissed evolution, the Big Bang theory and embryology as “lies straight from the pit of hell.” How did this man get a medical degree? I would certainly not want to go to him to get treated for any problem. I’d be afraid he does not believe in disease and tries to bleed me to health.

I would love to meet Broun in a backyard barbecue party and ask a few questions about science.

What does it say about the intellectual prowess of our nation when we elevate guys like that to congressional seats of power over science and funding for science?

With such powerhouses in Congress responsible for funding and strategic scientific direction, it will only take a couple of decades before we’re woefully behind other nations in scientific achievement.

To grow new limbs, we will need to go to China to buy those medical services, because in the United States our religions keep us too hung up about cloning. Just remember, the longevity pills are going to be really expensive when you can only buy them from one company in China.

If we want to continue to lead the world, we need to keep the yoke of religion away from science and politics.

Icebreakers and News Post Comments

On By Norbert HauptIn Climate Change, Crack-Ups, Environmental Protection, Science1 Comment

Every time I venture down into the comments area of a news post or YouTube video I soon regret it. Everyone has an opinion. Sometimes I learn, but most of the time I am just amazed.

New Year’s Resolution: Never read the comments to a news post.

Here is a sample of comments to this article in Yahoo News:

Icebreaker Story
[click to enlarge]

Carbon Dioxide hit 400 Parts per Million Yesterday

On By Norbert HauptIn Climate ChangeLeave a comment

Concentrations of carbon dioxide, the primary global warming pollutant, hit 400 parts per million in our atmosphere yesterday for the first time in human history. Over the past 150 years we have modified the composition of our atmosphere at an unprecedented rate. Every day we add 90 million tons of global warming pollution into our sky. Climate scientist Jim Hanson calculated that the accumulated anthropogenic global warming pollution in the atmosphere now traps enough extra heat energy every day to equal the energy of 400,000 Hiroshima-scale nuclear weapons.

But none of this is real, according to a tiny minority of fossil-fuel moguls who fund obfuscation campaigns to continue to enrich themselves, at the cost of mankind’s welfare.

The 400 PPM is there, we can measure it. It’s real. Where is it coming from if not from my tailpipe, I ask?

And so I drive to work.

Book Review: Denying Science – by John Grant

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Climate Change, Religion, Science, Three StarsLeave a comment

Just today I saw a headline that a baby died due to whooping-cough (pertussis), a highly contagious bacterial disease. The parents refused to vaccinate the child.

We have had vaccines for whooping-cough for about 100 years, saving millions of people. Parents refuse vaccinations based on the pseudoscientific notion raised fairly recently by a flawed study that vaccines cause autism. By not vaccinating their children, parents not only jeopardize the lives of their own children, but since this particular disease is wildly contagious, they are endangering the lives of all others that come in contact with their possibly infected children.

This can happen because strong denial of science permeates our society, partly due to religious fervor, partly due to ignorance, and mostly due to the targeted, planned and well-funded obfuscation campaigns by corporations that have something to gain, and individuals and politicians who are whores to their causes.

I read the book Denying Science, by John Grant, which raises many questions about the subject.

DenyingScienceIs anthropogenic global warming just scaremongering by climatologists to protect their jobs?

Is evolution just a theory?

Does it make sense to cut off the external genitals of baby girls in Africa to protect them from evil?

Do vaccinations cause autism?

Does homosexuality cause AIDS?

Science is complicated, science is hard. You have to pass calculus before they even let you in. You can’t  take Physics 101 until you take at least two semesters of calculus, and many people never even come near any calculus in all their lives.

Science is hard, and therefore most people know little or nothing about it. So when some “learned” priest comes around and tells us that the earth is really only 6000 years old – he must know, and we believe. If a congressman who is also a medical doctor spouts off that “evolution is lies from the pits of hell” his Texas constituents cheer.

The fact is, most of us don’t have enough qualifications to argue these points, and it’s difficult to have command of the information required to debate any of these subjects convincingly. Many of us feel ill-equipped, or plain stupid.

John Grant, in Denying Science, gives us facts, background, common sense and political insight into a variety of topics that our leaders and politicians purposely obfuscate – first to keep us stupid and confused, and second to keep making money. The book is full of valuable information, the bibliography alone is seven pages long, providing a reading list for a lifetime.

Anyone with a scientific mind but not enough time to learn about evolution, medicine, history, climatology, vitamins, smoking, human sexuality can read Denying Science for assistance.

Here is a random excerpt from page 263:

Nuclear power’s risks also seem trivial when set alongside the annual casualties incurred by coal mining. More than half of the world’s mining deaths occur in China; in recent years the figure for that country alone has been running into the thousands, according to official figures that may well be underestimates. (Some reckonings put China’s annual death toll from mining accidents as high as 10,000.) Also capable of taking a huge toll are sludge spills. The sludge or slurry is liquid coal waste left over after mined coal has been washed to remove impurities; these impurities typically include mercury, arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, thallium, nickel,  and selenium. The usual method of dealing with the sludge is to dam it into reservoirs while someone tries to think of a way of dealing with it. When the dams burst  the results can be horrific. In one famous incident in 1966 a sludge spill at Aberfan, Wales, killed 144 people, including 116 children who’d been in classes at the local school.

Ask the Koch brothers what they think about the mercury, arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, thallium, nickel, and selenium floating around in our environment, seeping into our water tables, and they’ll tell you, often through their congressmen marionettes that those things occur naturally in our world – we got it out of the earth, didn’t we? – and therefore we should not worry about them.

But here I go spouting off, rather than sticking to my book review.

Rating: ***

Man-Made Global Warming

On By Norbert HauptIn Climate Change, ReligionLeave a comment

ScientistsA 2010 report published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that an estimated 97 or more percent of all actively publishing climatologists in the world are convinced that the current global warming is man-made.

Before the industrial revolution, atmospheric CO2 levels were about 280 parts per million, which falls within the average range of an inter-Ice Age warm period, and this lasted for more than 20 million years, ten times the entire span of the rise of humanity from our ancestors in the savannahs of East Africa.

Since 1850, due to the burning of fossil fuels, atmospheric CO2 is over 390 ppm and rising rapidly. This is not a coincidence, as the vast majority of the experts in this field, notably climatologists, believe. But that’s not sufficient for the thinkers in our United States government.

Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) told in a hearing of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee in 2009:

The Earth will end only when God declares it’s time to be over. Man will not destroy this Earth. This Earth will not be destroyed by a Flood. I do believe that God’s word is infallible, unchanging, perfect.

That sentence, idiotic as it is in content, is at least grammatically correct. Here is Sarah Palin at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference on April 8, 2010:

…none of this snake oil science stuff that is based on this global warming, Gore-gate stuff came down where there was revelation that the scientists, some of these scientists were playing political games.

Palin apparently is saying, if I can decipher this, that there are a few bad apples in the blue pie slice above, and that therefore global warming must not be real?

Here is Sarah Palin, held up by John McCain as the nation’s foremost political expert on energy, answering a question while speaking off the cuff at a town hall meeting, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Sept. 17, 2008:

Oil and coal? Of course, it’s a fungible commodity and they don’t flag, you know, the molecules, where it’s going and where it’s not. But in the sense of the Congress today, they know that there are very, very hungry domestic markets that need that oil first. So, I believe that what Congress is going to do, also, is not to allow the export bans to such a degree that it’s Americans that get stuck to holding the bag without the energy source that is produced here, pumped here. It’s got to flow into our domestic markets first.

Sadly, Palin and Shimkus, and Imhofe, and some of their colleagues in congress are apparently successful in dumbing down the American public. A Pew Research Center survey in October 2010 stated that just 44 percent of Americans believe that scientists agree that the earth is getting warmer due to human activity. Somebody please show them the chart above! It won’t be Hannity or O’Reilly doing us the favor.

But then, there are many people who also believe that the earth was created 6,000 years ago.

Chevron CEO Watson in AP Interview

On By Norbert HauptIn Business, Climate Change, Energy2 Comments

Climate change activists decry Chevron CEO Watson’s statements in an interview by AP for shirking responsibility for climate change:

AP: Do fossil fuel producers bear the responsibility for curbing greenhouse gas emissions?

WATSON: We have the responsibility to deliver our energy in an  environmentally sound fashion. The greatest advancements in living  standards in recorded history have taken place in the modern hydrocarbon  era.  I don’t think that’s coincidental. Our leaders have to make a  decision. Do they want that to continue or do they have a better  solution for us? So it’s not my call.

I tend to agree with Watson. It really ISN’T the responsibility of the oil companies to do something about climate change. Their job is to maximize shareholder return by exploring and selling petroleum products to retail customers. What makes us think that Chevron or the other oil companies are going to take steps that will erode their business?

It’s a silly thought.

It is the responsibility of all of us, and our political leaders eventually, to find scalable and effective alternative energy sources. In the same interview Watson also states that the only other scalable energy source is nuclear. That may be the case right now, but it will change, as pressure to find other sources increases. It’s a copout to just say nothing else is scalable. Oil wasn’t scalable either when it was first found. Governments subsidized oil heavily in the early years, just like they subsidize wind and solar now.

Many years ago, when the tobacco companies were still a strong in the U.S., and smoking ads were still allowed, it wasn’t the tobacco companies that curbed smoking in our country. Their job was to produce and sell tobacco. It was the public, it was public education and health awareness that curbed smoking. If somebody had told us then that smoking would not be allowed in any public building or work place anymore, we would not have believed it. But it happened, because it was healthy and good.

Curbing the use of fossil fuel will also happen, and it won’t be initiated by the oil companies. Get used to that.

Chevron is not shirking responsibility for climate change. It’s not responsible for it. It’s just that its product has many problems, including generation of greenhouse gases as it gets burned, but last and not least, that there is only a limited amount of it on earth. Despite Watson’s statements that oil will be around for generations, it is going to run out, we just don’t know exactly how soon.

It is we, the people, that are responsible.

The Greenland Ice Sheet

On By Norbert HauptIn Climate Change, Energy, Environmental Protection, SustainabilityLeave a comment

Photo by Hannes Grobe, AWI

This is the village of Ittoqqortoormiit in Greenland, photo by Hannes Grobe. Not much growing going on. No wonder the people paint their houses colorfully. Things would be pretty bleak otherwise.

Greenland is the largest island in the world, located in the North Atlantic.

Greenland B

It is mostly covered by an ice sheet, which melts back in the summers and is replenished in the winters.

Greenland A

If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt completely, the sea level around the world would rise by 23 feet. Hundreds of coastal cities around the world would be abandoned. The rice-growing river deltas of Asia would be under water. Here in the U.S., most of Florida would be gone, Manhattan would be largely under water, and many of our great cities like Boston, Washington, Houston, Seattle, San Diego, Los Angeles,  San Francisco and Honolulu would be severely affected. I cannot imagine that civilization as we know it would be able to continue.

I think it’s safe to say that if we cannot mobilize and motivate ourselves to save the Greenland ice sheet we probably cannot save our civilization.

The U.S. climate change obfuscation movement still argues that it’s not humans that are changing the climate. It’s nature all by itself, and therefore we can just go on burning fossil fuels without worry.

According to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers based on U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data, U.S. coal mining was responsible for 154,000 direct jobs and over 400,000 indirect jobs in 2008.

Interestingly, the same people in the U.S. Congress arguing that global warming is a hoax are also the ones that call it immoral that we leave debt to our descendants.

What is more immoral?

  • Not to curb coal burning and jeopardize some of the 550,000 jobs dependent on coal?
  • Directly cause the annihilation of all major U.S. coastal cities, displacing over 100 million people all within the current century?

I am sure it is hard to transition from a fossil fuel economy to a renewable energy economy. It too will create jobs, it’s not like the jobs go away, they are being moved around.

But it is harder to relocate 100 million people when our cities are flooded.

The only counter-argument the deniers have is that it’s not humans that are causing the warming, it’s nature alone. We just have to deal with the results.

Is it worth the bet?

I agree that it is immoral to leave impossible levels of debt to future generations.

I think that it is more immoral to trash the global ecosystem so far that sea levels rise by dozens of feet, if it indeed is avoidable.

I do not think it is immoral to transition jobs from fossil fuel burning to renewable energies, even if it comes with a short-term cost. It is an investment in our children’s future.

I agree we cannot do this alone. We need China, Russia, India, Brazil and Indonesia to go along with it. Note that I didn’t include Europe on that list. It seems there are very few deniers left in Europe. Somehow they “got it” already.

Maybe it’s because they’re all socialists, though.

Is There Proof that Climate Change is Human-Made?

On By Norbert HauptIn Climate Change, Commentaries, Nature, Political, Science1 Comment

A few weeks ago I posted a movie review on Chasing Ice. A reader posted the following comment:

I’ve seen this documentary, they are beautiful and astonishing videos, everyone should see how glaciers calve in time-lapse. These videos document how glaciers calve but they are not evidence that CO2 is the cause. Suggesting that they are calving faster than ever before, or that they will never regrow, or that this has never happened before is pure bunk.

Still, everyone should see these videos, they are compelling.

The comment is complimentary enough, but it appears to discredit the content of my post entirely. Several things have happened here that warrant some contemplation:

  • The movie Chasing Ice simply documents facts, in this case receding of glaciers. The movie does not imply this is man-made, nor it is trying to be proof of such. The movie is a documentary showing the years of relentless, dangerous, painstaking work by a dedicated leader and an entire team of assistants.
  • In my post reviewing the movie I also didn’t offer it up as proof, but I did make insinuations appealing to the reader’s common sense. The commenter, I hope, was trying to discount me, not the creators of the movie.
  • I must have been provocative enough to elicit that response, and I take that as a positive outcome.

It occurred to me that it is very easy to discredit the hard, sometimes life-long work of dedicated people with very simple, general statements. This happens a lot when an “expert” gets on television and debunks some study, outcome, book, opinion or sometimes life-work.

In this particular case, the commenter is right. The movies showing glaciers receding at a rapid rate are not evidence that CO2 is the cause. Suggesting that they are calving faster than ever before, or that they will never regrow, or that this has never happened before, is not quite pure bunk in my opinion, but the commenter is right.

We know that only approximately 11,000 years ago there was so much ice bound over land in the northern hemisphere that glaciers reached down to Minnesota and Montana in the United States, and the Bering Straight was dry so people could walk from Asia to America. Yes, these glaciers are not here today, and the oceans are high again, so it certainly has happened before (we don’t know quite exactly how fast).

However, we do know that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is now higher than it has been for 80,000 years, with the possible exception of very short spikes during major volcano eruptions.

The vast majority of climate scientists do agree that humans are the cause of the high CO2 levels in the atmosphere. I am too old now to go back to school for five more years for a Ph.D. in a climate science so I can personally contribute scientifically to this debate. I also don’t personally know anyone who actually has such an education. Therefore I must rely on what I can read about both sides of the argument, discuss the topic with as many people as possible, and come to a conclusion based on all this personal analysis.

Can a climate scientist then pick up my post that results from this study and burn a huge hole in it in just a few sentences? Yes, sure, and there is nothing I can do about it.

However, there are some interesting and telling voices out there:

Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth.

— Øystein Dahle, former Vice President of Exxon for Norway

Of course, we all know that half the Republican members of Congress do not believe that global warming is real, or that, if it is, it’s caused by human activity.

Fly over any part of the world today and look down. Or check out a YouTube made from the international space station using time-lapse photography:

Do you see the massive scars humans left on the planet? Do you think that humans could make those scars and not leave the equivalent scars in the atmosphere?

The burning of fossil fuels on this planet started in earnest about 100 years ago and is now happening on such a massive scale that we’re predicting that we’ll run out of oil and gas in 20 years, 50 years, 100 years, 200 years? Whatever. We’ll run out very soon, on a geological time scale.

  • Do I have personal experience as a climate scientist? No.
  • Do I have evidence that man is causing global warming? No.
  • Do I have proof that the high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere come from our burning of fossil fuels? No.
  • Do I have proof that there is no god? No.
  • Do I have proof that there is a god? No.

Let me just bring in the philosophical concept of Occam’s Razor, which speculates that if there is a problem, the simplest solution or answer is the most likely one to be right:

If it walks like a duck, if it looks like a duck, it if quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.

I’ll go with that for a moment, and starting with January 1, 2013, let me turn the tables:

  • Prove to me that the high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere does not come from human activities.
  • Prove to me that human activities are not the major cause why our glaciers are melting at an unprecedented speed.
  • Prove to me that we could not stop this process and turn things around to get the balance back into the atmosphere that was there in 1800, by simple changes on how we live and travel.

Those on the high horse of “it’s immoral to leave this debt to our children” ought to join me in the conviction that it is more than immoral to leave a broken planet to our children, it’s criminal. Quite frankly, if we break the planet enough, the debt simply won’t matter.

Happy New Year!