GLOBAL WARMING 101

I recently had the opportunity to write about the basics of global warming, so I thought that I might as well share what I came up with. Global warming causes a lot of misconceptions and much confusion in many minds. So here's my claim to clarity.

Global warming is real, confirmed as caused by human activity and irreversible by the international scientific community, and universally denied by the politicians and the corporations who get rich off it and the international public opinion who’s unable to take responsibility for such a crime.

What remains in debate (or should, at least) is the extent of the impact (for the scientists) and how we all move on from here (for us, the people).

Environmentalists are not nutty. They will find that civil disobedience is made necessary because of the collusion between the powers that be and the corporations which causes most of legal actions and suing to fail. Most of them are cultured, informed and moderate people who (naively ?) believe that people do nothing because they don’t know what’s going on, and devote a lot of energy to popularization and explanations. However, the media are not interested in cultured, informed and moderate people, they are interested in sensationalism and extremists. The “nuts” are those who, like Greenpeace, understand that and, like Mike, agree to play the media’s game.

Same goes for best selling fiction books about burning topics. Publishers are not interested in cultured, informed and moderate characters who believe that people do nothing because they don’t know what’s going on, they are interested in sensationalism and extremists. So they ask their writers to be hard on the documentation so that they’re credible, but soft on the problematics so as the readers feel disturbed but only pleasantly, that is, not enough to refuse to buy the book or drop it and march in the streets. I have selected a link to a scrutiny of Crichton’s novel "State of Fear" (which I haven't read yet) by a panel of global warming specialists (below).

I voted for Nader in 2000, silently commended his candidacy in 2004, always thought that Mike’s next should be about global warming and still feel that a third party must emerge in order to pull these issues to the forefront where they belong. But Mike chose another strategy and he knows better, so I followed him. Besides, he will surely deal with global warming when he discusses the handling of Katrina in F9/11 1/2. There’s no escaping this issue and he knows it. But he also probably knows that there’s not a chance in the world he can use it as his main soap box and win.

His chapter entitled "Nice Planet, nobody home" in Stupid White Men is not specifically about global warming, more like an introduction to America’s specific environmental neurosis. He first states his refusal of the basic American environmental PC kit and goes on to explain why by investigating, beyond the righteous and useless recycling, about the car culture he knows well and, still beyond, about the consumption based culture and its consequences (air conditioning on ozone, poisoned food) and the effects of the deregulation policies. In Dude, there’s also a delicious little sci-fi parable entitled “Oil’s well that ends well” that focuses specifically on the madness of an all oil-based civilization. He imagines that he meets his great-granddaughter, Anne Coulter Moore, and that she asks him questions like : “When you were young, were people really so stupid to think that there was enough oil to last forever ? Or did they just not care about us ?”

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Now here are a few links that should allow you to form your own opinion on the topic :

General - Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/

from

http://www.ipcc.ch/

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been established by WMO and UNEP to assess scientific, technical and socio- economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. "


The Consensus : on which points ? and which validity ?

“The skeptic attitude to consensus usually starts with "there is no consensus". That's wrong, and they usually retreat from it to "but consensus science is meaningless", and/or "consensus has nothing to do with science". The latter is largely true but irrelevant. The existence of the consensus doesn't do a lot to determine what science is done; it doesn't prevent contrary lines being explored. But the consensus view does come into the tricky interface between science and policy, and science and the media. “

The main points that most would agree on as "the consensus" are:

”1. The earth is getting warmer (0.6 +/- 0.2 oC in the past century; 0.1 0.17 oC/decade over the last 30 years (see update)) [ch 2]
2. People are causing this [ch 12] (see update)
3. If GHG emissions continue, the warming will continue and indeed accelerate [ch 9]
4. (This will be a problem and we ought to do something about it) “

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=86


Certainties and uncertainties

“We find model versions as realistic as other state-of-the-art climate models but with climate sensitivities ranging from less than 2K to more than 11 K. Models with such extreme sensitivities are critical for the study of the full range of possible responses of the climate system to rising greenhouse gas levels, and for assessing the risks associated with specific targets for stabilizing these levels.”

http://www.climateprediction.net/sc...rst_results.pdf


How much does Katrina relate to global warming ?

According to two studies (Emanuel Kerry’s of the MIT and Peter Webster’s of the Georgia Institute of Technology), the number of hurricanes hasn’t changed, but their force and intensity have increased. Webster’s article is now available online due to the seriousness of what happened in New Orleans :

Changes in Tropical Cyclone Number, Duration, and Intensity in a Warming Environment –

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conte...l/309/5742/1844


Michael Crichton : the truth and the dictates of best-selling :

According to the scientists who scrutinized his novel, “The issues Crichton raises are familiar to those of us in the field, and come up often in discussions. Some are real and well appreciated while some are red herrings and are used to confuse rather than enlighten.”

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74



Hope it’s been useful.