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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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What difference does it make who is right.If we just use clean energy and clear up the water and the air we all will profit!