Mario Piperni dot Com

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Here’s one of the better summaries of what the current climate change hullabaloo is all about.

Historically, we know that the climate has warmed and cooled slowly, going from Ice Ages to warming periods, driven, in part, by changes in the earth’s orbit and hence the amount of sunlight different parts of the earth get. What the current debate is about is whether humans — by emitting so much carbon and thickening the greenhouse-gas blanket around the earth so that it traps more heat — are now rapidly exacerbating nature’s natural warming cycles to a degree that could lead to dangerous disruptions.

Correct. As a recent Newsweek story pointed out, just last summer, NOAA, NASA, the Pentagon, the National Science Foundation and the Department of State released a report which found that “global warming over the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases” and that “these emissions come mainly from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas) with important contributions from the clearing of forests, agricultural practices, and other activities.”

The problem, as Friedman puts it, is that climate change science is “up against formidable forces — from the oil and coal companies that finance the studies skeptical of climate change to conservatives who hate anything that will lead to more government regulations to the Chamber of Commerce that will resist any energy taxes.”

Ok, so what can climate scientists do to combat the mountain of disinformation put out there by skeptics and deniers?  How about this?

Although there remains a mountain of research from multiple institutions about the reality of climate change, the public has grown uneasy. What’s real? In my view, the climate-science community should convene its top experts — from places like NASA, America’s national laboratories, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, the California Institute of Technology and the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre — and produce a simple 50-page report. They could call it “What We Know,” summarizing everything we already know about climate change in language that a sixth grader could understand, with unimpeachable peer-reviewed footnotes.

At the same time, they should add a summary of all the errors and wild exaggerations made by the climate skeptics — and where they get their funding. It is time the climate scientists stopped just playing defense.

I love it. Produce a concise report easily understood by laymen and promote it like mad. Let it state every lie or faulty conclusion made by skeptics and let them go on the defense for a change. Brilliant.

And for those who choose to still be skeptical, here’s an argument I would like to think might get some to rethink their positions.

Even if climate change proves less catastrophic than some fear, in a world that is forecast to grow from 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion people between now and 2050, more and more of whom will live like Americans, demand for renewable energy and clean water is going to soar. It is obviously going to be the next great global industry.

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At what point does the madness end?

A resolution from the legislators of South Dakota…

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the House of Representatives of the Eighty-fifth Legislature of the State of South Dakota, the Senate concurring therein, that the South Dakota Legislature urges that instruction in the public schools relating to global warming include the following:

(1) That global warming is a scientific theory rather than a proven fact;
(2) That there are a variety of climatological, meteorological, astrological, thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics that can effect [sic] world weather phenomena and that the significance and interrelativity of these factors is largely speculative; and
(3) That the debate on global warming has subsumed political and philosophical viewpoints which have complicated and prejudiced the scientific investigation of global warming phenomena; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Legislature urges that all instruction on the theory of global warming be appropriate to the age and academic development of the student and to the prevailing classroom circumstances.

Astrological? Can there be any doubt that insanity has gripped republicans and conservatives with a force unseen before?

This blogger has got it right.

The senate of SD did pass a bill removing most of the crap above, but still left in the part about how global warming isn’t real because it is just a theory…like the theory of gravity, of the theory of relativity…you know just theories. One could only hope that they abandon all reason, and go out daily to test the “theory” of gravity by throwing themselves off high places.

In all honesty, if this is the best our leaders can muster, we have very little hope of making it as a species…I suggest you all start doing things on your own and/or get new leaders.

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No one better represents the idiot side of the Republican party than James Inhofe. His incessant lies, distortions and complete misrepresentation of climate change science places him alone in a special class of ignoramuses. Here’s his latest bit of insanity.

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) today asked the Obama administration to investigate what he called “the greatest scientific scandal of our generation” — the actions of climate scientists revealed by the Climategate Files, and the subsequent admissions by the editors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).

Senator Inhofe also called for former Vice President Al Gore to be called back to the Senate to testify.

“In [Gore's] science fiction movie, every assertion has been rebutted,” Inhofe said. He believes Vice President Gore should defend himself and his movie before Congress.

Just prior to a hearing at 10:00 a.m. EST, Senator Inhofe released a minority staff report from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, of which he is ranking member. Senator Inhofe is asking the Department of Justice to investigate whether there has been research misconduct or criminal actions by the scientists involved, including Dr. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University and Dr. James Hansen of Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Science.

Real Climate does a nice job of dismissing the IPCC criticism with an approach that an Inhofe could never possibly ever understand.  They use logic, truth and science.

Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who currently runs the Department of Energy, gives his thoughts on the matter.

“…the main findings of IPCC over the years, have they been seriously cast in doubt? No. I think that if one research group didn’t understand some tree ring data and they chose to admit part of that data. In all honesty they should have thrown out the whole data set. But science has a wonderful way of self-correcting on things like that. What the public doesn’t understand is that as you go forward there will be these things and they will self correct.”

[...]

“If you look at the climate skeptics, I would have to say honestly, what standard are they being held to? It’s very asymmetric. They get to say anything they want. In the end, the core of science is deeply self checking.”

Salon’s Andrew Leonard sums it up nicely.

At this point, you just to have to choose your reality. I will choose Steven Chu and endlessly self-checking, self-correcting science over James Inhofe every single day.

Yep. It’s really a simple case of science over stupidity.

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Here is the final word on climate change brought to you by Republican Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer.

“It’s a hoax. It’s nonsense. It’s a bunch of green folks who think they know how to live better than you do. Man-made global change is nonsense.”

“I don’t think there’s any chance for climate change legislation and as long as I’m alive, I’m going to fight it like hell.”

How come Republicans get all the brilliant, charismatic politicians?  Not fair.

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As I’ve noted before, I have a distinctly low tolerance for those who would deny science’s findings that man is a major player and cause of global warming.  Those who would deny this science on the basis of their politics are, in the words of one pundit, “the sort of low-hanging fruit that are best described as root vegetables.”

You know, the sort of low-hanging fruit that one finds on Fox News at just about any hour of the day…the ones who think they’re so very clever in bringing up global warming in the middle of a cold spell in winter.  The ones who still refuse to understand that weather and climate are not the same thing.

The ones like this bozo who just don’t get it (or more likely, don’t want to get it)…
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A snowfall on a frigid January morning falls into the classification of weather and is no more a negation of global warming as is a hot humid August day an indicator of rising temperatures.  Weather is now. Climate is simply weather over the long term and it is this which climatologists study.

For the record:

Weather is “the conditions in the atmosphere in a certain place during a certain time. Weather is always changing.”

Climate is “what the weather is generally like over long periods of time, such as years or decades in a particular area. A place that has little rainfall has a dry climate, and a place that has high temperatures has a hot climate.”

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So Republican’s lead fool and climate change denier took his big trip to Copenhagen to tell the world how global warming is nothing but a hoax.  It apparently turned out to be a wasted trip of nothingness.

Sen. Jim Inhofe flew across the Atlantic and — on little sleep — braved the snow, the cold and the dark to deliver his skeptical message at the international climate conference.

What he found when he got here: a few aides and a single reporter.

[...]

But Inhofe’s aides eventually rustled up a group of reporters, and the Oklahoman — wearing black snakeskin cowboy boots — held forth from the top of a flight of stairs in the conference media center.

“We in the United States owe it to the 191 countries to be well-informed and know what the intentions of the United States are. The United States is not going to pass a cap and trade,” he said. “It’s just not going to happen.”

A reporter asked: “If there’s a hoax, then who’s putting on this hoax, and what’s the motive?”

“It started in the United Nations,” Inhofe said, “and the ones in the United States who really grab ahold of this is the Hollywood elite.”

One reporter asked Inhofe if he was referring to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Another reporter — this one from Der Spiegel — told the senator: “You’re ridiculous.”

Inhofe ignored the jab, fielded a few more questions, then raced to the airport for the nine-hour flight back to Washington.

Summary of Inhofe’s trip…

After Inhofe left, some reporters were still a bit confused about what had happened and who he was.

“His name is Inhofe,” a German journalist told a Japanese reporter, “but I don’t know if it’s one or two f’s.”

Perfect.

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One of conservative’s often used reasons for slamming global warming is debunked with intelligence and fact.
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Whatever Will and Inhofe are, they’re not stupid men…and yet they propagate a story which they must know is a lie or at the very least, terribly misleading.  What does that say about their capacity for intellectual honesty?  Not much.

(Climate Change video series:  The Scientific Debate, Those Hacked Emails)

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I was going to post the second part of the Climate Change video series by potholer54 (see Climate Change – The Scientific Debate for part 1 in the series) but then I came across Sarah Palin’s op-ed piece in the WaPo calling for President Obama to boycott the climate change conference in Copenhagen.  Her reason?  ClimateGate.

With the publication of damaging e-mails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point. The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue.

“Climate-gate,” as the e-mails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia have become known, exposes a highly politicized scientific circle — the same circle whose work underlies efforts at the Copenhagen climate change conference. The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won’t change the weather, but they would change our economy for the worse.

The e-mails reveal that leading climate “experts” deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to “hide the decline” in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals.

Palin is wrong on every count here. She has no idea what she is talking about and has simply found a convenient way to make herself a part of a front-page story.  The dimwit knows as much about climate change as she does about foreign policy, domestic policy or just about any other policy – little or nothing.

Palin and others on the right believe they have found vindication in declaring that global warming is either a hoax or that man has no role in the changing temperatures by distorting the meaning of the stolen emails.  In video 6 of his series, potholer54 deals with ClimateGate.  If anyone can watch this and honestly still believe that Palin or Limbaugh or Inhofe have a case, then they simply are not interested in truth. Little surprise there.
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What is wrong with people?

Two of the scientists involved in “Climategate” – the e-mail hacking incident at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, UK – have been emailed death threats since the contents of their private e-mails were leaked to the world. No further information can be revealed about these particular threats at present because they are currently under investigation with the FBI in the United States.

Many other CRU scientists and their colleagues have received torrents of abusive and threatening e-mails since the leaks first began in mid-November 2009. Tom Wigley, previous Director of CRU and now at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, US, has been horrified by the e-mails he and other colleagues have received. “They are truly stomach-turning and show what sort of venomous monsters we are up against,” he told environmentalresearchweb.

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I’ve been debating global warming for years and the one thing I’ve discovered is how little so many actually know about a phenomena which has been at the top of the news for the last 20 years.  We tend to get our information in bits and pieces from whatever sources we use to get informed.  For the most part, many don’t really care to know the actual facts and prefer to piggyback onto the views of their favorite teevee personality.

And with that intro, I introduce potholer54, a science writer who has produced a number of intelligent and informative videos on climate change.  Over the next few days, I’ll showcase his climate change video series which, if nothing else, should give you a sound understanding of the facts and a deeper appreciation of what is at stake. It avoids propaganda and politics and gets to the core of the debate.  Enjoy.
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