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Democratic Rep. Ed Markey has an idea I like.

“An iceberg four times the size of Manhattan has broken off Greenland, creating plenty of room for global warming deniers to start their own country,” Markey said in a statement. “So far, 2010 has been the hottest year on record, and scientists agree arctic ice is a canary in a coal mine that provides clear warnings on climate.” [...]

He said it was “unclear how many giant blocks of ice it will take to break the block of Republican climate deniers in the US Senate who continue hold this critical clean energy and climate legislation hostage.”

Scientific studies link human activity with the phenomena of shrinking sea-ice and yet deniers deny.  There are many things in life you can be wrong about and still recover from.  These include investing in a bad stock or choosing a wrong spouse.  While each has it’s own unique period of recovery, the fact remains that you can lick your wounds and move on if you so chose.  Climate change unfortunately does not grant one that same luxury.  Choosing to do nothing about a warming planet and melting ice caps is a decision which carries fatal and irreversible consequences.

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A good little article on how climate change got to be the controversial issue it is today.

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. [...]
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.”

…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.

Few issues piss me off as much as this one so let me make my thoughts clear. If you are a climate change denier then regardless of what views you might hold on any number of other issues, you are undeniably a fool, a jackass, a simpleton, a moron, a dolt, an imbecile and an idiot. And if that wasn’t redundant enough for you, let me add this: you really are a stupid human being.

I’ve had enough with debating these ignoramuses on this issue.  If they still don’t get it given the wealth of data, information and expert opinion available, then they obviously lack the intellectual capacity or honest conviction to ever understand.  The powers that be, in the U.S. and across the world, need to understand this and just get the job done.  Pass comprehensive legislation that deals with this issue in a serious manner and let the denier’s grandchildren thank you somewhere down the road.

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And yet fools deny…

International scientists have injected fresh evidence into the debate over global warming, saying that climate change is “undeniable” and shows clear signs of “human fingerprints” in the first major piece of research since the “Climategate” controversy.

The research, headed by the US National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration, is based on new data not available for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report of 2007, the target of attacks by skeptics in recent years.

The NOAA study drew on up to 11 different indicators of climate, and found that each one pointed to a world that was warming owing to the influence of greenhouse gases, said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at the UK’s Met Office, one of the agencies participating.

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There will be no climate-change legislation this year. Who is to blame?

Douthat:

Cap-and-trade’s backers are correct to point the finger rightward. If their bill is dead, it was the American conservative movement that ultimately killed it. Climate legislation wasn’t like health care, with Democrats voting “yes” in lockstep. There was no way to get a bill through without some support from conservative lawmakers. And in the global warming debate, there’s a seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the conservative movement and the environmentalist cause.

Klugman goes further.

So it wasn’t the science, the scientists, or the economics that killed action on climate change. What was it?

The answer is, the usual suspects: greed and cowardice.

If you want to understand opposition to climate action, follow the money. The economy as a whole wouldn’t be significantly hurt if we put a price on carbon, but certain industries — above all, the coal and oil industries — would. And those industries have mounted a huge disinformation campaign to protect their bottom lines.

Look at the scientists who question the consensus on climate change; look at the organizations pushing fake scandals; look at the think tanks claiming that any effort to limit emissions would cripple the economy. Again and again, you’ll find that they’re on the receiving end of a pipeline of funding that starts with big energy companies, like Exxon Mobil, which has spent tens of millions of dollars promoting climate-change denial, or Koch Industries, which has been sponsoring anti-environmental organizations for two decades.

Or look at the politicians who have been most vociferously opposed to climate action. Where do they get much of their campaign money? You already know the answer.

By itself, however, greed wouldn’t have triumphed. It needed the aid of cowardice — above all, the cowardice of politicians who know how big a threat global warming poses, who supported action in the past, but who deserted their posts at the crucial moment.

There are a number of such climate cowards, but let me single out one in particular: Senator John McCain.

There was a time when Mr. McCain was considered a friend of the environment. Back in 2003 he burnished his maverick image by co-sponsoring legislation that would have created a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions. He reaffirmed support for such a system during his presidential campaign, and things might look very different now if he had continued to back climate action once his opponent was in the White House. But he didn’t — and it’s hard to see his switch as anything other than the act of a man willing to sacrifice his principles, and humanity’s future, for the sake of a few years added to his political career.

Alas, Mr. McCain wasn’t alone; and there will be no climate bill. Greed, aided by cowardice, has triumphed. And the whole world will pay the price.

Conservatives did to the climate change issue what they did to health care reform – lie and distort to the point of manipulating public opinion to be what they needed it to be.  It really is as simple as that.

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This should be a concern for every thinking American.

Today, 47 senators voted that the earth is flat.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, convinced Sen. Harry Reid that there should be a vote to “disallow” the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific finding that global warming represents a danger to human health. This scientific finding, supported by essentially all climate scientists other than those financially seduced by the dirty energy industry, is the key underpinning for any approach to addressing the global warming crisis.

Yet, 47 senators voted yes on the so-called Murkowski Amendment.

What kind of country elects 47 senators who deny basic science?

It amazes me that there is still a supposed ‘debate’ on this issue.  The energy industry has done an amazing job of buying out weak-minded politicians and spending their millions to sow the seeds of doubt.  Backed by a mostly conservative media, the sheep meekly follow along and lacking the intellect to critically think it out, scream out ‘HOAX!!’ in blind unison.

According to these fools, the world’s climate scientists are all wrong but Rush Limbaugh is right.  The top scientific academies of one hundred nations are wrong but James Inhofe is right.  Really, how pathetically stupid can some people be?

What kind of country elects 47 senators who deny basic science?

The type of country where guys like the one below get elected to the highest government institutions in the land.  That type of country.

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This is exactly the point I’ve been making for over a year.  Simply having an opposing view on an issue should not automatically give it equal weight.  When you have the world’s entire scientific community on one side versus Exxon paid shills on the other, the choice should be clear.  And if it is not and you still have your doubts about climate change being real or not, then you’re an ignorant fool.  Period.  This is one issue where we can argue the details but not the overall principle.

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There are a number of reasons to distrust oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens, not the least being his funding of Swiftboaters in their malicious smearing of John Kerry. That said, I believe his concern for clean and alternative energy development is real.

T. Boone Pickens, the legendary oil investor and, more recently, a devout champion of ending America’s reliance on fossil fuels, said on Tuesday that he’s confident the Obama administration’s hotly-anticipated climate change bill will be announced soon by Sen. Harry Reid.

“[Natural gas is] the only resource we have in America that will move an 18-wheeler other than diesel, and we’re importing the diesel,” Pickens said. “It’s cleaner, cheaper, abundant and ours. We’re fools not to do this.”

Pickens added that he’ll support the legislation — provided it includes the natural gas credits he called for. Pickens is pushing tax credits of $65,000 for the purchase of natural-gas powered trucks.

“I don’t know the other parts of the bill,” Pickens said. “But I will be for the bill. I will just have to accept the other parts because this is too important for the security of America.”

The test for Pickens will be what he says when the climate change bill makes it to the Senate floor and his Republican buddies try to obstruct it because…well, because that’s what a Party of No does.

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Climate change is the perfect example of what happens when every issue becomes politicized.  The latest Gallop poll reveals the following discouraging graph.

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The New Republic asks why the change in public perception.

So why the rise in skepticism? Was it those Climategate e-mails? All those news stories harping on a few small errors in the IPCC’s report? Sure, it’s possible that both episodes could’ve affected public opinion, even if neither was significant on the merits. Still, it’s interesting to look at the crosstabs of the poll, as Josh Nelson does, and note that skepticism about global warming is almost exclusively on the rise among political conservatives. Two years ago, for instance, 50 percent of conservatives believed climate change was already happening—that’s now down to 30 percent.

I’d guess it’s just as likely that political dynamics are a big driver here, as opposed to, say, a handful of e-mails from East Anglia. After all, climate change has become increasingly identified as a Democratic cause—in no small part because it’s one of Barack Obama’s main agenda items. And, on the flip side, you have key Republicans like John McCain and Charlie Crist facing primary challenges and edging away from what was once a signature issue for them. Energy issues have become far more partisan of late, which could explain the sharp uptick in skepticism over the past year and a half.

There are two main observations to be drawn from this.  One is, as noted above, that climate change is identified as a liberal cause.  Republicans have been successful in poisoning the minds of their followers to the point where any issue which has a liberal or Democratic backing is perceived to be wrong and perverted by conservatives.  No facts are necessary to back up their claims.  Simply state a lie enough times and shout it out from the highest mountain and the sheep will follow.  We’ve seen the same type of ploy being used in the health care debate.

The second observation to be made is that industry lobbyists (i.e. Exxon) have the necessary money and resources to skew any topic just enough to plant a seed of doubt in the minds of many.  The tobacco industry did the same in the 70s when they downplayed the harm caused by nicotine.  We see it in the power of the religious right who have lambasted science to the point where half the population discounts evolution.

Republican’s mentor of propaganda, Nazi Joseph Goebbels said is so well.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

This technique has become the Republican trademark.  It was used effectively during the Bush years to sell the Iraq invasion and it is equally effective now in their role as minority party.

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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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