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Post by HAL on Oct 4, 2019 19:19:56 GMT
Something not so funny on the news today.
Trump is pushing the biofuel production. Not for any Earth-saving reason, but because it will help the grain farmers.
So, a couple of posts back we have a worry that food will not keep up with the population.
And here we have food being diverted to make fuel for cars.
Guess some people's priorities are not in the best interest humanity.
Gotta keep those big ol' gas guzzlers turning.
HAL.
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drwu
Full Member
Posts: 209
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Post by drwu on Oct 4, 2019 19:56:11 GMT
Something not so funny on the news today. Trump is pushing the biofuel production. Not for any Earth-saving reason, but because it will help the grain farmers. So, a couple of posts back we have a worry that food will not keep up with the population. And here we have food being diverted to make fuel for cars. Guess some people's priorities are not in the best interest humanity. Gotta keep those big ol' gas guzzlers turning. HAL. Well....Trump doesn't believe in any of that 'science stuff'.....it's all 'fake news'.
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Post by swamprat on Oct 5, 2019 1:30:44 GMT
This assessment was published almost 6 years ago. Would be interesting to see it updated to now! Even though I knew our current President is a denier, I did not realize climate denial financing was considered a "conservative" movement. Shame on us! Meet the Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement Nearly a billion dollars a year is flowing into the organized climate change counter-movement
By Colin Schultz | smithsonian.com | December 23, 2013
T he overwhelming majority of climate scientists, international governmental bodies, relevant research institutes and scientific societies are in unison in saying that climate change is real, that it's a problem, and that we should probably do something about it now, not later. And yet, for some reason, the idea persists in some peoples' minds that climate change is up for debate, or that climate change is no big deal.
Actually, it's not “for some reason” that people are confused. There's a very obvious reason. There is a very well-funded, well-orchestrated climate change-denial movement, one funded by powerful people with very deep pockets. In a new and incredibly thorough study, Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle took a deep dive into the financial structure of the climate deniers, to see who is holding the purse strings.
According to Brulle's research, the 91 think tanks and advocacy organizations and trade associations that make up the American climate denial industry pull down just shy of a billion dollars each year, money used to lobby or sway public opinion on climate change and other issues.
“The anti-climate effort has been largely underwritten by conservative billionaires,” says the Guardian, “often working through secretive funding networks. They have displaced corporations as the prime supporters of 91 think tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations which have worked to block action on climate change.”
“This is how wealthy individuals or corporations translate their economic power into political and cultural power,” he said. “They have their profits and they hire people to write books that say climate change is not real. They hear people to go on TV and say climate change is not real. It ends up that people without economic power don't have the same size voice as the people who have economic power, and so it ends up distorting democracy."
Last year, PBS talked to Brulle about his investigation into the climate change countermovement. The project, says Brulle, is the first part of three: in the future he'll turn a similar eye to the climate movement and to the environmental movement. But for now, the focus is on the deniers.
Now, what you can see in the movement itself is that it has two real roots. One is in the conservative movement itself, in that you see a lot of conservative foundations that had been funding the growth of the conservative movement all along now appear as funding the climate countermovement. You also can see dedicated industry foundations that come in to start funding the climate countermovement.
So it’s kind of a combination of both industry and conservative philanthropies that are funding this process, and what they did was they borrowed a great deal of the strategy and tactics that came out of the tobacco industry’s efforts to prevent action on the health impacts of smoking.
What you see is the tactics that this movement uses were developed and tested in the tobacco industry first, and now they’re being applied to the climate change movement, and in fact, some of the same people and some of the same organizations that were involved in the tobacco issue are also involved in climate change.
Here's where the money is coming from:
The climate denial movement is a powerful political force, says Brulle. They've got to be, too, to outweigh in the public's mind the opinions of pretty much every relevant scientist. Brulle:
"With delay and obfuscation as their goals, the U.S. CCCM has been quite successful in recent decades. However, the key actors in this cultural and political conflict are not just the “experts” who appear in the media spotlight. The roots of climate-change denial go deeper, because individuals’ efforts have been bankrolled and directed by organizations that receive sustained support from foundations and funders known for their overall commitments to conservative causes. Thus to fully understand the opposition to climate change legislation, we need to focus on the institutionalized efforts that have built and maintain this organized campaign. Just as in a theatrical show, there are stars in the spotlight. In the drama of climate change, these are often prominent contrarian scientists or conservative politicians, such as Senator James Inhofe. However, they are only the most visible and transparent parts of a larger production. Supporting this effort are directors, script writers, and, most importantly, a series of producers, in the form of conservative foundations. Clarifying the institutional dynamics of the CCCM can aid our understanding of how anthropogenic climate change has been turned into a controversy rather than a scientific fact in the U.S. " www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/meet-the-money-behind-the-climate-denial-movement-180948204/?fbclid=IwAR27o9LAQVNtvFI7Q9T0mt-AkNlUW4HSzPdOmS0Ym2p2QvVsYSlshF753dQ#yhiBukAYcJPDfIUC.01
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Post by swamprat on Oct 5, 2019 23:39:27 GMT
Turkish Scientist Sentenced to Prison for Publishing Paper Linking Pollution to Cancer Jordan Davidson | EcoWatch | Oct. 02, 2019
A child plays under the heavy smoke of factories in Dilovasi, Turkey on Nov. 7, 2006. BULENT KILIC / AFP / Getty Images
A Turkish food engineer, columnist and human rights advocate was sentenced to 15 months in prison last week for publishing an environmental paper that linked pollution to a high incidence of cancer in Western Turkey, according to Science Magazine.
The court in Istanbul found that Bülent Şık, former deputy director of the Food Safety and Agricultural Research Center at Akdeniz University, had disclosed classified information when he published the results of his study in a Turkish newspaper in April 2018. Amnesty International described the sentenced as "a travesty of justice," as Agence-France Presse reported and Phys.org published.
"Bülent Şık fulfilled his duty as a citizen and a scientist and he used his right to freedom of expression," his lawyer, Can Atalay, said in his closing statement, as Science reported.
Şık carried out his study with several other scientists from 2011 to 2015 to test whether soil toxicity, water pollution and food had a link to the high rates of cancer in Western Turkey.
The study, which was commissioned by Turkey's Ministry of Health, found dangerous levels of pesticides and heavy metals in various food and water samples from several provinces in western Turkey. Water in a few residential areas also tested positive for unsafe levels of lead, aluminum, chrome and arsenic pollution, according to Science.
Şık published his findings in the newspaper Cumhuriyet after three years of lobbying the government to take action, but realizing his pleas were falling on deaf ears.
The study "clearly revealed the extent to which water resources were contaminated by toxic materials," said Şık to reporters after the verdict, as AFP reported. "The court ruling shows that the results of a study that directly concerns public health can be hidden. This is unacceptable."
Şık was unapologetic about his actions, even though offering an apology would have allowed him to avoid jail time.
"[H]iding data obtained from research prevents us from having sound discussions about the solutions," Şık said in a statement to the court provided to Science by his lawyer. "In my articles, I aimed to inform the public about this public health study, which was kept secret, and prompt the public authorities who should solve the problems to take action."
Environmental groups have pointed out that Turkey has put economic growth ahead of safety as it has ignored environmental regulations during a boom in industrial growth, as AFP reported.
Şık's report singled out the industrial zone around Dilovasi, about 50 miles away from Istanbul and home to several chemical factories, as having cancer rates well above the international average.
"The case against Bülent Şık has been, from the start, a travesty of justice," said Andrew Gardener, Amnesty International's Turkey researcher to the AFP. "Instead of pursuing a whistleblower through the court, the Turkish authorities should be investigating this important public health issue."
"What is quite striking in this case is that the Ministry of Health did not argue that what Bülent Şık published was not true," said Milena Buyum, a senior campaigner on Turkey at Amnesty International in London, as Science reported.
She added that the government's argument that the information was confidential suggests there is a real danger to health.
www.ecowatch.com/turkey-scientist-pollution-cancer-2640818406.html?rebelltitem=2&fbclid=IwAR1t07WBTx50iLDmwCUn7mIErkTAvQzs_A4IhqlhR6n3mORD7_ohPp6oPa8#rebelltitem2
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Post by HAL on Oct 6, 2019 22:34:55 GMT
'Money doesn't talk, it swears' Bob Dylan.
The whole thing is so simple at it's base it is almost a joke.
Just ask yourself, 'who will lose out if the oils stops being pumped and burned ?'
I don't mean all of it, just the majority.
Saudi Arabia will go bust. They have nothing else. But they have rich friends who also will get stung if it was allowed to happen. Most of the middle east will suffer the same, as will many other countries.
So, the rich, who control the armies, will not allow common sense to prevail.
Our generation(s) may be the last who can live fairly easily on this planet. The mass movement of peoples to get to more livable areas, areas that are already occupied by others, will mean everything will turn very ugly.
I recon I may have about five years left. Not so sure I want to be around much longer.
HAL.
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Post by swamprat on Oct 10, 2019 16:06:35 GMT
esa
Observing the Earth
Can Oceans Turn the Tide on the Climate Crisis? 8 October 2019
Sea roughness key to carbon flux. Pixaby/dimitrisvetsikas196, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
As we pump more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the world is warming at an alarming rate, with devastating consequences. While our vast oceans are helping to take the heat out of climate change, new research shows that they are absorbing a lot more atmospheric carbon dioxide than previously thought – but these positives may be outweighed by the downsides.
Covering over 70% of Earth’s surface, oceans play an extremely important role in our climate and in our lives.
The recent IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere highlights how we all depend on oceans and ice, and how they are intrinsic to the health of our planet – but stresses the many ways in which they are being altered by climate change.
It states, for example, that through the 21st century, the global ocean is projected to transition to unprecedented conditions where seawater temperatures rise as they remove more heat from the air and undergo further acidification as they take in more atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Over the last 50 years, oceans have absorbed over 90% of the extra heat in the atmosphere caused by greenhouse gases from human activity, but oceans also help cool the planet by absorbing carbon dioxide.
However, exactly how much atmospheric carbon dioxide oceans are absorbing has been a matter of some debate – until now.
Estimating the size of the oceanic carbon sink depends on calculating upward and downward flows of carbon dioxide at the sea surface and, in turn, this flow is governed largely by turbulence – the relative movement and mixing of air and water at the sea surface.
It was previously estimated that around a quarter of the carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere ends up in the ocean.
To gain a more accurate figure on this downward flow, researchers used new knowledge of the transfer processes at the sea surface along with data from the Surface Ocean Carbon Dioxide Atlas, which is an ongoing large international collaborative effort to collect and compile measurements of carbon dioxide in the upper ocean.
Carbon dioxide flow between atmosphere and ocean. University of Exeter College of Life and Environmental Sciences
Measurements from satellites were also critical to their results, which have been published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles.
Lead author of the study David Woolf from Heriot-Watt University in Scotland, UK, said, “Our research shows that three Gigatonnes of carbon a year are being drawn down into the ocean, which is about a third of the emissions caused by human activity.
“Importantly, we now know this with unprecedented accuracy – to within 0.6 Gigatonnes of carbon per year – and conclude that the earlier figure of around a quarter underestimated the role of the ocean in its ability to sequester carbon.
“We were able to do this research also thanks to satellites developed by ESA, such as SMOS, the MetOp series and Copernicus Sentinel-3 that give us measurements of salinity, surface wind speeds and sea-surface temperature.”
In terms of helping to counteract climate change, this new discovery may sound like a good thing, but warming ocean waters are leading to issues such as sea-level rise through thermal expansion and continental ice melt and the more carbon dioxide that dissolves into the oceans, the more it leads to ocean acidification – a serious environmental problem that makes it difficult for some marine life to survive.
Jamie Shutler, from the University of Exeter said, “These results give us a much better idea of ocean carbon uptake, but this increased rate of uptake implies more rapid ocean acidification, which is already having a detrimental effect on ocean health.
“We need to maintain the best measurements from space, and from in situ, to support modeling predictions, so that important climate-policy decisions can be made to preserve the health of our oceans and planet.”
ESA’s Craig Donlon, added, “These new results are important to understand how the ocean is regulating climate and we are thrilled to see that the ocean flux research project through ESA’s Science for Society programme is pioneering the application of unique Earth observation datasets to gain critical insight into the delicate Earth system balance.”
www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Can_oceans_turn_the_tide_on_the_climate_crisis
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Post by swamprat on Oct 24, 2019 21:33:49 GMT
Extreme heatwaves pose spreading threat 18 Oct 2019
by Tim Radford
Air conditioners could put a massive strain on the electricity grid during more intense heatwaves. Image: Jan Tik via Flickr. CC-BY 2.0
Scientists in the US have added a new dimension to the growing hazard of extreme heat. As global average temperatures rise, so do the frequency, duration and intensity of heatwaves.
And that’s not the only factor to worry about. By mid-century, the area straddled by those bands of extreme heat could increase by 50% – if nations attempt seriously to contain climate change.
But if humans carry on burning fossil fuels in ever-greater quantities and felling more and more reaches of tropical forests, the most dangerous and extreme heatwaves in future could cover areas 80% bigger than at present.
“As the physical size of these regions increases, more people will be exposed to heat stress,” warns Bradfield Lyon, associate research professor in the Climate Change Institute and School of Earth and Climate at the University of Maine, US.
Lyon, lead author of a new study in the Environmental Research Letters journal, says: “Larger heatwaves would also increase electrical loads and peak energy demand on the electricity grid as more people and businesses turn on air conditioning as a response.”
Climate scientists have warned repeatedly that higher average temperatures must mean ever hotter extremes.
By the century’s end, under some climate projections, three out of four people on the planet could be exposed to potentially dangerous heatwaves.
Double punch
In some regions, the double punch of high heat and very high humidity could make conditions intolerable, and scientists in the US recently counted 27 ways in which high temperatures could claim lives.
In principle, extremes of heat are already a threat not just to public health, but also to national economies. Researchers in Australia have already started to count the cost.
Until now, the interest has focused on the highest temperatures by day and by night, the number of days of sustained heat, and the frequency with which extremes might return.
But the new dimension – the increased area oppressed by extreme heat – presents unexpected challenges for city authorities and energy utilities.
“If you have a large contiguous heatwave over a highly populated area, it would be harder for that area to meet peak electric demand than it would be for several areas with smaller heatwaves that, when combined, are the same size,” says one of the report’s other authors, Anthony Barnston, chief forecaster at Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society.
This article first appeared at Climate News Network
Tim Radford, a founding editor of Climate News Network, worked for The Guardian for 32 years, for most of that time as science editor. He has been covering climate change since 1988.
physicsworld.com/a/extreme-heatwaves-pose-spreading-threat/
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Post by nyx on Oct 24, 2019 21:59:38 GMT
In the Middle Tennessee area, we had 100 days near 100 F with no rain during this past summer.
This fall also has been above average in heat and dry.
I think the weather service called our September the worst ever on record.
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Post by swamprat on Oct 24, 2019 23:52:00 GMT
While everyone should be aware by now that they have been lied to, the consequences of this deception will be devastating for our civilization. Every action we now take is critical to survival. This is a crime against humanity. Scientists reveal how the fossil fuel industry misled the public about climate change October 21, 2019, via University of Bristol
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
An international group of scientists show that fossil fuel corporations have, for decades, denied the public's right to be accurately informed about climate change by funding efforts to deceive people about the dangers of their product. A report illustrating how the industry "polluted the information landscape," and how the damage could be undone is published today [Monday 21 October].
The report entitled, "America misled: how the fossil fuel industry deliberately misled Americans about climate change," by academics from the universities of Bristol, UK; George Mason, U.S. and Harvard, U.S., summarizes more than a decade of peer-reviewed research, and has been published to help inform policymakers, journalists, and the public.
The report includes what the fossil fuel industry knew versus what they did, the arguments they used to seed doubt in the public, the techniques they used to create those arguments, and some strategies for combating them.
The key points in the report are:
1. Internal corporate documents show that the fossil fuel industry has known about human-caused climate change for decades. Its response was to actively arrange and fund denial and disinformation to suppress action and protect its status quo business operations.
2. As the scientific consensus on climate change emerged and strengthened, the industry and its political allies attacked the consensus and exaggerated the uncertainties.
3. The fossil fuel industry offered no consistent alternative explanation for why the climate was changing—the goal was merely to undermine support for action.
4. The strategy, tactics, infrastructure, and rhetorical arguments and techniques used by fossil fuel interests to challenge the scientific evidence of climate change—including cherry picking, fake experts, and conspiracy theories—come straight out of the tobacco industry's playbook for delaying tobacco control.
5. Informing the public about how these arguments are deceptive not only begins to correct the misconceptions, but also will make it harder for future campaigns to use these misleading tactics to confuse the public.
Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Chair in Cognitive Psychology in the School of Psychological Science and Cabot Institute for the Environment at the University of Bristol, said: "Disinformation about climate change has a straightforward purpose—to block action on climate change. In America, it has largely succeeded, with policies to mitigate climate change blocked or delayed for decades."
Professor John Cook, at the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, added: "Exposing and explaining the techniques used to mislead are key to inoculating the public from further industry-funded disinformation."
Geoffrey Supran, Research Associate in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University, explained: "For 60 years, the fossil fuel industry has known about the potential global warming dangers of their products. But instead of warning the public or doing something about it, they turned around and orchestrated a massive campaign of denial and delay designed to protect profits. The evidence is incontrovertible: Exxon misled the public. Like all bad actors, they should be held accountable."
Later this week [Wednesday 23 October], the People of the State of New York will face Exxon Mobil Corporation in court. While the legal proceedings are complicated, the academics state they are underpinned by a simple truth: for decades, ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel corporations funded efforts to deceive the American people about the dangers of their product.
More information: 'America misled: how the fossil fuel industry deliberately misled Americans about climate change' by John Cook, Geoffrey Supran, Stephan Lewandowsky, Naomi Oreskes, Ed Maibach: www.climatechangecommunication … 0/America_Misled.pdf
m.phys.org/news/2019-10-scientists-reveal-fossil-fuel-industry.html?fbclid=IwAR3Z7Y96cfkomZKflpJgmDU1JCbclkMguSclR01gvYIE9NRgoq-RtOOhUp8
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Post by nyx on Oct 25, 2019 1:22:43 GMT
And the Amazon keeps burning.
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Post by swamprat on Oct 25, 2019 15:20:40 GMT
Flooding set to increase in Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river basin 25 Oct 2019
(Image courtesy: iStock/Supratim-Bhattacharjee)
Warming of 1.5 °C is often portrayed as a “safe” limit but the consequences of climate change don’t distribute themselves evenly around the world. For some regions even 1.5 °C of warming will have serious consequences. A new study shows that 1.5 °C of warming will bring significant increases in extreme precipitation events and flooding to the highly populated Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Basin.
The Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river system covers a wide area through Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India and Nepal. Monsoon rains between June and September dominate the system. In 2017 monsoon flooding produced record river levels, resulting in around 1200 deaths and severe loss of crops and infrastructure. Will events like the 2017 floods become more common with 1.5 °C of warming?
Previous studies used high-emission scenarios to look at the impact of warming on this region. But no-one had investigated the impact of a low-emission scenario aimed at stabilising the climate at 1.5 °C or 2 °C of warming. Some climate drivers, such as aerosol emissions, are likely to be different under a low emissions scenario and could produce a differing precipitation response to similar levels of warming under a high-emissions scenario. To investigate this further, Peter Uhe from the University of Bristol, UK, and colleagues combined a high-resolution flood hazard model for the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna region with climate model simulations for 1.5 °C and 2 °C of warming.
All but one of the models analysed show a significant trend in increasing rainfall in the region, with the trend being stronger for extreme rainfall. Flood hazard also increases. For floods with a 1 in 5 year probability the flood area under 1.5 °C of warming is estimated to increase between 7 and 25% compared to present day.
“Bangladesh will be particularly vulnerable to the more frequent floods because it is flat and very low lying and a large portion of the county is a flood plain,” explains Uhe, whose findings are published in Environmental Research Letters (ERL).
More severe floods (1 in 20 year and 1 in 100 year probability) also increased in frequency and extent under the 1.5 °C and 2 °C warming scenarios. The percentage increase in area was not as great as for the 1 in 5 year floods but the waters were deeper. This is partly because of the topography of river valleys, with the more frequent floods spilling out onto the flatter valley bottom, whilst more severe floods tend to create deeper waters because they are spatially constrained by the steeper valley sides.
“These floods could become more dangerous by impacting areas that are not often flooded, which may be less prepared,” says Uhe.
Even under low emission scenarios and just 1.5 °C of warming, the research shows that there will be an increase in extreme precipitation events for this region, and a greater likelihood of flood events like the one seen in 2017.
“People living there may have to change how and where they build, and their farming practices,” says Uhe. “Bangladesh, for example, has a large amount of flood defences along the Brahmaputra river and these could be modified to adapt to future flood risk. However, these measures will not remove the flood risk completely.” Preparing and adapting will be vital.
physicsworld.com/a/flooding-set-to-increase-in-ganges-brahmaputra-meghna-river-basin/
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Post by swamprat on Nov 6, 2019 16:35:23 GMT
More than 11,000 scientists issue fresh warning: Earth faces a climate emergency A new study identifies six key areas for critical changes, including addressing the planet’s swelling population.
By Denise Chow | Nov. 5, 2019
An international consortium of more than 11,000 scientists is backing a study with a dire warning: Earth is facing a climate emergency.
The new study of how human activities have impacted the planet over the past four decades declares that harmful greenhouse gas emissions are rapidly rising, that governments are making insufficient progress in tackling the crisis, and that scientists have “a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat.” The findings were published Tuesday in the journal BioScience.
The research, led by ecologists William Ripple and Christopher Wolf at Oregon State University, identifies six key areas in which governments, businesses and members of the public can make critical changes, including addressing the planet’s swelling population, which has been a contentious topic in the climate debate.
The authors say family planning services and other social justice efforts that promote full gender equity should be enacted to help stabilize the world’s population, which is increasing by approximately 80 million people per year.
“Lots of scientists have steered away from talking about population because it’s controversial,” said Steve Easterbrook, director of the University of Toronto’s School of the Environment, who was one of the study’s signatories. “The policy recommendations the study makes about gender equity and making family planning available to bring down the birth rate — these are completely consistent with studies of what we need to do in response to climate change. I’m glad to see it given more prominence than it normally gets.”
The study says countries should replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources while also investing in technologies to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Governments should also end subsidies to fossil fuel companies and wealthier countries should support poorer nations in transitioning to cleaner energy sources.
In addition, nations need to sharply reduce emissions of potent pollutants such as methane, soot and hydrofluorocarbons, which are human-made compounds that are commonly used in air conditioning, refrigeration and aerosols, the study finds. The researchers say that reducing these short-lived pollutants could slow the planet’s short-term warming trend by more than 50 percent over the next few decades.
Climate change mitigation efforts should focus on protecting and restoring ecosystems such as forests, coral reefs, savannas and wetlands, which naturally absorb and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, they added.
The study also says people should eat mostly plant-based food, which will improve health and lower greenhouse gas emissions from livestock, and economies should prioritize carbon-free initiatives and sustaining ecosystems, rather than focusing on GDP growth and the pursuit of affluence.
The study is based on 40 years of data that show how human activities have affected the planet, including changes in fossil fuel consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, rates of deforestation and global surface temperatures. The authors warn that climate change is intensifying faster than most scientists predicted and is “threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity.”
Urgent action is needed, the researchers caution, “to avoid untold suffering due to the climate crisis.”
The report’s signatories include scientists from 153 countries, known together as the Alliance of World Scientists.
“I was concerned that we are now making the environment a political issue, and the environment should not be seen as a partisan issue,” Leslie Duram, a professor of geography and environmental resources at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, said of her motivation to endorse the study’s findings. “I want us all to realize that we, as human beings and inhabitants of this planet, need to come together to take action to help preserve the environment.”
The study does highlight some progress that has been made, such as a 373 percent increase in solar and wind energy consumption per decade since 2000. But the authors point out that in 2018, solar and wind energy use was still 28 times smaller than fossil fuel consumption.
The new study reiterates many of the same findings as seminal reports from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but does emphasize the need to address the planet’s swelling population, which has been a contentious topic in the climate debate.
Easterbrook said that part of his motivation to sign the study was to support the recent youth-led movements calling for climate action.
“There have been plenty of people willing to criticize these kids that perhaps they don’t understand the science, but it’s increasingly clear that a lot of the youth leading these protests understand the science much better than any of us,” he said. “It was important for us scientists to say: yes, the situation is that dire.”
www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/more-11-000-scientists-issue-fresh-warning-earth-faces-climate-n1076851?fbclid=IwAR3keBMUgLeOeJ5tuJrFZR_cySd1OhW_kZL2lP0A3xBtM22U0TX1Db-tgsY
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Post by swamprat on Nov 7, 2019 2:11:38 GMT
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Post by swamprat on Nov 8, 2019 15:50:39 GMT
To be absolutely fair, here is another view..... Judith Curry retires, citing 'craziness' of climate science Scott Waldman, E&E News reporter Climatewire: Wednesday, January 4, 2017 Judith Curry, one of climate science's most vocal critics, is leaving academe because of what she calls the poisonous nature of the scientific discussion around human-caused global warming. Curry, 63, is retiring from her tenured position as a professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She's instead going to focus on growing her private business, Climate Forecast Applications Network, which provides insights into climate and weather risks for agriculture and energy companies. The climatologist, who distinguished herself in the field decades ago with research into the Arctic and the causes of the climate feedback that have shaped the region, writes a blog called Climate Etc. It is by turns academic and inflammatory. There she occasionally mocks what she calls "climate alarmists" who say time is almost out unless humanity weans itself off fossil fuels. In her blog and on Twitter, she has also criticized some of the scientists, including Pennsylvania State University climatologist Michael Mann and Harvard University climate historian Naomi Oreskes, who have become leading voices for climate action. She has testified in front of Congress, boosted by politicians who use her work to argue that environmental regulations and a scaling down of fossil fuel use will be ineffective. Her work is frequently invoked by climate skeptics and denialists. Congressional Democrats, displeased with her conclusions, have investigated the source of her funding. Curry actually believes, along with the vast majority of climate scientists, that humans are warming the planet, and was even an outspoken advocate of the issue during the George W. Bush years. She was among the first to connect global warming to hurricanes, for example, publishing an influential study in Science in 2006. But where she breaks with the majority opinion is over just how much humans are actually causing global temperatures to rise. Where many scientists say that humans are the primary cause of warming, Curry believes natural forces play a larger role. She also believes that uncertainty around climate models means we don't have to act so quickly and that current plans would do little to mitigate warming. She also questions the assertion made by a majority of climate scientists who believe humans have significantly contributed to climate change. In the Obama years, she has become a contrarian of sorts, often criticizing those who rely on climate models to prove that humans are warming the planet at an unprecedented rate. In announcing her retirement, Curry wrote about what she called her "growing disenchantment with universities, the academic field of climate science and scientists." She said a deciding factor for leaving the ivory tower was that "I no longer know what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the CRAZINESS in the field of climate science," adding that research and funding for it are highly politicized. In an interview with E&E News, Curry said she would like to see a greater focus on the uncertainties of climate science and a better exploration of them through scientific debate free of politics. "Once you understand the scientific uncertainties, the present policy path that we're on doesn't make a lot of sense," she said. "We need to open up policy dialogue to a bigger solution space. So I'm just looking to open up the dialogue and to provoke people into thinking." Curry, in general, believes that the policies undertaken by the Obama administration won't do much to reduce global warming levels. That has made her the target of scientists who accuse her of aiding the climate denialists who oppose the environmental regulations of the last eight years and are eager to dismantle them under President-elect Donald Trump. Curry is not convinced that Trump will damage the climate science field, which she said has gone in the wrong direction under Obama. "Once we get over this little bump of activism, if the Trump administration will put us on a slightly reassuring and saner footing, that will allow all this to die down," she said. "We can always hope." Curry's departure from academe will weaken the field of climate science, which needs people to ask hard questions that differ from the mainstream, said Roger Pielke Jr., a professor at the University of Colorado who previously worked with Curry and recently switched fields from climate science to sports governance after facing intense pressure of his own. Curry has consistently been willing to stick out her neck to ask questions that other scientists avoid for reasons of political expediency, he said. Purposely choosing a "different song sheet to sing off of" has earned her an unfair level of criticism, Pielke said. "If you only look at her academic career, absent the glossy overlay of the climate debate, you would say this is a pretty distinguished academic who had a pretty successful career," he said. "The facts that she was excoriated by her peers, smeared and so on just illustrates having a tenured position isn't a guarantee of academic freedom." Certainly, neither Curry nor Pielke has sat on the sidelines during the wars over climate science. Both have been accused of aggressively attacking those who critique their work. In an interview, Curry accused Mann and Oreskes of inciting what she says is a vocal minority of scientists who pressure anyone with a conclusion that breaks from the notion that extreme action is needed now to mitigate the worst consequences of human-caused global warming. For his part, Mann said climate science would be stronger without Curry. He said she routinely engaged in character attack, "confusionism and denialism" and eroded scientific discussion. "She has played a particularly pernicious role in the climate change denial campaign, laundering standard denier talking points but appearing to grant them greater authority courtesy of the academic positions she has held and the meager but nonetheless legitimate scientific work that she has published in the past," he said. "Much of what I have seen from her in recent years is boilerplate climate change denial drivel." Curry has no plans to simply shrug off the fight, after publishing 186 articles and two books, and she intends to use her blog as a place to advise young scientists trying to navigate the field. She said she is looking forward to life after academe by taking her skill set into the real world, and using climate modeling to better prepare companies as well as developing nations. In her final media interview as an academic, Curry touched on where climate science is now headed and what she feels it needs to thrive in the future. "Where is the academic discussion of climate science at this current point? Is it just so polarized that we're never going to come back from it?" The point is, and I don't know how big it is, is what I would call the nerdy middle. These are the people who focus on one little piece of the puzzle and they just focus on their own research and they feel vaguely uneasy about all this noise and all this stuff going on and they stay out of the public debate and they acknowledge as a scientist, "I really can't say anything about this because my research is just one little narrow piece and I haven't taken the time to critically evaluate some of the big issues that are out there in the public arena." I don't know how big that pool of scientists is, but I think it's pretty big. As it becomes more polarized, we need to protect the nerdy middle, just let them get on with their work. So I'm worried that what I would call the activism, especially on the alarm side, is growing. The people on the other side tend to be the more hardcore scientists anyways who are just sticking to the science and they see how people like me are treated, so they are not going to go there. "What does climate science need in the coming decades to get to where you want to see it?" We've lost a generation of climate dynamicists. These are the people who develop theories and dig into data on the system and really try to find out how the system works. We've ceded all that to climate models, and the climate models are nowhere near good enough. The climate models were designed to test sensitivity to CO2. They don't even do a very good job at that, all the issues related to the sun/climate connections, decadal to millennial scale, circulation and oscillation in the ocean and the deep carbon cycle in the ocean. Some of these things we fundamentally don't know enough about. We need a new infusion from math and physics into our field to shore up the dwindling climate dynamics. This is what worries me. You just need to cut the funding 80 to 90 percent, everybody go away and then start over with a new generation of math and physicists. I don't think it's that bad, but it is pretty bad. It's the older generation that tends to more skeptical. They come from the old school of climate dynamics and the real fundamental fluid dynamics. It's really hard mathematically; if you're going to major in atmospheric science or climate science, there are lots easier paths to take than that hardcore fluid dynamics path. So we're breeding a generation of climate scientists who analyze climate model outputs who come up with sexy conclusions and get published in Nature like, 'We won't be able to grow grapes for wine in California in 2100.' That kind of stuff, it gets headlines, it gets grants. It feeds our reputation. It's cheap, easy science. It's fundamentally not useful because it rests on inadequate climate models, especially when you're trying to look at regional climate change. I call that climate model taxonomy. This is where the field is going; we've lost a generation of climate dynamists, and that's what worries me greatly. "In the next few years, four to eight or even longer, what do you want to see in the field of climate science; what are you hoping happens? You do believe humans are changing the climate, correct?" Yes, but how much they're changing the climate, we don't know. Yes, they do contribute to climate change; very few people would question that. The question is, how much relatively to natural variability? Because we don't understand natural variability that well, we don't have a convincing answer for that. Better understanding of natural variability, particularly show our climate connections, but even how volcanoes both above ground and underwater influence the climate, particularly the long-term ocean oscillations and how the chaotic ocean interacts with chaotic atmosphere. That's reasonably complex, and we don't understand that. We need to go back to basics to get the fundamental interactions between the ocean and atmosphere correct, because this, to me, is what's driving the whole thing. In climate modeling, all the eggs were put in one basket, and we've gotten as far as we're going to get along that particular path. We need to start over with a new path for climate modeling. "Do you feel people are simplifying your work to justify inaction, or to use it to attack people they don't agree with politically? I saw Larry the Cable Guy refer to you the other day on Twitter in a conversation with a New York Times climate reporter. It was him saying, "We don't know what's happening, so what are we going to do about it?" That's not an inappropriate use of my work. We don't really understand what's happening, and it's a wicked problem. The one thing we know is that the commitments we've made, in Paris, will probably prevent about two-tenths of a degree of warming by the end of the 21st century. What is the point of that? You have to fundamentally ask, are we facing risks in the 21st century, and if they're really bad risks, what you're proposing isn't going to help, so now what? Nobody's asking the now what to reduce vulnerability to extreme weather events and to rising sea level, trying to address those problems in ways that don't rely on humans actually changing the climate, because it doesn't seem like that is going to work at least on the time scales of the 21st century, and this is even if you don't believe the climate models. We need to rethink this problem. I'm intensely interested in trying to help developing and undeveloped countries deal with their climate vulnerabilities, but throwing money at their leaders with massive levels of corruption and where the money gets distributed to friends and relatives and never accomplishes anything. We've seen that over and over again in some of these countries. My way of looking at it is that the evidence that we do have leads me to think that things are not as bad as what they're predicting. However, if they are right — and they could be, I acknowledge that — if they are right, the policies we've put into place are woefully inadequate. I can hope that the more pragmatic people that Trump is appointing will come up with more pragmatic ways of dealing with the vulnerabilities that we do have to climate change, whether it's caused by humans or it's caused naturally, and how we should deal with the potential risk of a lot of warming from humans. www.eenews.net/stories/1060047798
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raf
New Member
Posts: 26
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Post by raf on Nov 8, 2019 16:10:32 GMT
I don't think climate change is a myth. But I don't think we can stop it either. Not without cooperation from every industrialized country on the globe.
I think it is best that we use our knowledge base to figure out how to live with the changing times. Instead of economically gutting the western democracies while the likes of India, Russia, Mexico & China blithely ignore their own horrendous issues while claiming 3rd world status exemptions.
It is as much of political problem as it is a climate problem. Not likely to be solved, so we had better figure out ways to live with it.
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