How bad it gets depends on how much longer we fail to act and how much
longer Congress and others hide behind ignorance, political ideology and
religion to deny reality.
November 20, 2010 By Peter Gleick
http://www.alternet.org/story/148928/unavoidable_climate_change_weve_passed_
the_point_of_no_return?page=entire
It's too late. The world has missed the opportunity to avoid serious,
damaging human-induced climate change. For a variety of reasons ranging
from ignorance to political ideology to commercial self-interest to inertia
to intentional misrepresentations and misdirections on the part of a small
number of committed climate deniers, the United States and the rest of the
world have waited too long to act to cut the emissions of damaging
greenhouse gas pollutants. We are now committed to irreversible long-term
and inevitably damaging consequences ranging from rapidly rising sea
levels, far greater heat stress and damages, disappearing glaciers and
snowpack, more flooding and droughts, and far, far more.
For over two decades, there have only been a few people and groups that
have argued against climate change, and very few of these have done so in
good faith (though there is no denying that they've been effective).
Sometimes they have tried to hide behind scientific "uncertainty" to mask
their anti-climate-change arguments. But the fundamental science has long
been irrefutable, and so recently, we've seen all pretense of caring about
science thrown out the door by elected officials such as Congressman John
Shimkus (vice chairman of the Republican Party's Congressional campaign
committee and vying to become chair of the influential House Energy and
Commerce Committee), who simply rejects climate change by turning to the
Bible to refute the science or as justification to ignore it.
"The earth will end only when God declares it's time to be over. Man
will not destroy this earth," Shimkus said. "I believe that's the
infallible word of God, and that's the way it's going to be for his
creation."
Here, in a nutshell, is the best argument against global climate change:
There isn't one.
No scientific body of national or international standing rejects the
findings that humans are changing the climate. Indeed, every single
legitimate scientific organization and society that works on atmospheric,
climatological, meteorological, geological, hydrological, ecological,
physical, chemical, and biological sciences supports the scientific
findings of human-induced climate change. All of them. Here are a few
examples.
For reasons well described by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their book
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on
Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, the media has also failed to
distinguish between correct and incorrect, because it is far easier simply
to describe this as a debate between equals. Like the argument about the
health consequences of tobacco, it is inevitable that reality will
ultimately win over fantasy and that the truth about the seriousness of
climate change will become widely accepted. But as I argue above, that
inevitability will come too late, leading to another inevitability:
unavoidable, severe climate impacts to all of us (or to coming
generations).
Worse, the misrepresentations continue. At Wednesday's Congressional
climate hearing of the House Committee on Science and Technology, some of
the nation's top climate scientists once again (as they have over and over
for decades) explained to a few Congressmen about the nature of climate
change, while climate-confusers such as Patrick Michaels (a perennial
fixture in the decades-long effort of the fossil fuel industry and
conservative "think tanks" to confuse Congress and the public about the
science of climate change), came up with novel (but alas, scientifically
discredited) arguments about why humans are not largely responsible for
changing the climate. As a journal article noted a few years ago, in a
funny, albeit dry academic style: "...the observations upon which PM
[Patrick Michaels] draws his case are not good enough to bear the weight of
the argument he wishes to make."
The new Congress will almost certainly see more science pushed out by
ideology and hearings characterized by cherry-picking of witnesses and
selective use of climate deniers rather than mainstream scientists.
As a result, in twenty more years, the Earth will be even hotter, sea
levels will be higher and rising faster, water and food resources will be
increasingly stressed, extinction rates will accelerate, and our forced
expenditures for climate adaptation will be far, far greater than they
would otherwise have been.
For example, at the request of three separate California state agencies,
the Pacific Institute recently completed a comprehensive assessment of the
vulnerabilities of the California coast to accelerating sea-level rise
(using scenarios of sea-level rise that may turn out to be far too low).
There is already over $100 billion in infrastructure (housing, airports,
wastewater treatment plants, schools, hospitals, roads, power plants) and a
population of nearly 500,000 people at risk of increased coastal flooding,
and we estimated that adaptation costs just to protect existing
infrastructure will run around $15 billion, plus high annual costs to
maintain these protections. Other major areas and populations simply cannot
be realistically protected and will have to be abandoned, with people
forced to move over time. And this is just one small piece of the coming
threats for one small part of the country. How bad it ultimately gets
depends on how much longer we fail to act and how much longer Congress and
others hide behind ignorance, political ideology, and religion to deny the
reality of climate change.
[Dr. Peter Gleick is president of the Pacific Institute, an internationally
recognized water expert and a MacArthur Fellow. This post originally
appeared in Gleick's City Brights blog at SFGate.]
the_point_of_no_return?page=entire
It's too late. The world has missed the opportunity to avoid serious,
damaging human-induced climate change. For a variety of reasons ranging
from ignorance to political ideology to commercial self-interest to inertia
to intentional misrepresentations and misdirections on the part of a small
number of committed climate deniers, the United States and the rest of the
world have waited too long to act to cut the emissions of damaging
greenhouse gas pollutants. We are now committed to irreversible long-term
and inevitably damaging consequences ranging from rapidly rising sea
levels, far greater heat stress and damages, disappearing glaciers and
snowpack, more flooding and droughts, and far, far more.
For over two decades, there have only been a few people and groups that
have argued against climate change, and very few of these have done so in
good faith (though there is no denying that they've been effective).
Sometimes they have tried to hide behind scientific "uncertainty" to mask
their anti-climate-change arguments. But the fundamental science has long
been irrefutable, and so recently, we've seen all pretense of caring about
science thrown out the door by elected officials such as Congressman John
Shimkus (vice chairman of the Republican Party's Congressional campaign
committee and vying to become chair of the influential House Energy and
Commerce Committee), who simply rejects climate change by turning to the
Bible to refute the science or as justification to ignore it.
"The earth will end only when God declares it's time to be over. Man
will not destroy this earth," Shimkus said. "I believe that's the
infallible word of God, and that's the way it's going to be for his
creation."
Here, in a nutshell, is the best argument against global climate change:
There isn't one.
No scientific body of national or international standing rejects the
findings that humans are changing the climate. Indeed, every single
legitimate scientific organization and society that works on atmospheric,
climatological, meteorological, geological, hydrological, ecological,
physical, chemical, and biological sciences supports the scientific
findings of human-induced climate change. All of them. Here are a few
examples.
For reasons well described by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their book
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on
Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, the media has also failed to
distinguish between correct and incorrect, because it is far easier simply
to describe this as a debate between equals. Like the argument about the
health consequences of tobacco, it is inevitable that reality will
ultimately win over fantasy and that the truth about the seriousness of
climate change will become widely accepted. But as I argue above, that
inevitability will come too late, leading to another inevitability:
unavoidable, severe climate impacts to all of us (or to coming
generations).
Worse, the misrepresentations continue. At Wednesday's Congressional
climate hearing of the House Committee on Science and Technology, some of
the nation's top climate scientists once again (as they have over and over
for decades) explained to a few Congressmen about the nature of climate
change, while climate-confusers such as Patrick Michaels (a perennial
fixture in the decades-long effort of the fossil fuel industry and
conservative "think tanks" to confuse Congress and the public about the
science of climate change), came up with novel (but alas, scientifically
discredited) arguments about why humans are not largely responsible for
changing the climate. As a journal article noted a few years ago, in a
funny, albeit dry academic style: "...the observations upon which PM
[Patrick Michaels] draws his case are not good enough to bear the weight of
the argument he wishes to make."
The new Congress will almost certainly see more science pushed out by
ideology and hearings characterized by cherry-picking of witnesses and
selective use of climate deniers rather than mainstream scientists.
As a result, in twenty more years, the Earth will be even hotter, sea
levels will be higher and rising faster, water and food resources will be
increasingly stressed, extinction rates will accelerate, and our forced
expenditures for climate adaptation will be far, far greater than they
would otherwise have been.
For example, at the request of three separate California state agencies,
the Pacific Institute recently completed a comprehensive assessment of the
vulnerabilities of the California coast to accelerating sea-level rise
(using scenarios of sea-level rise that may turn out to be far too low).
There is already over $100 billion in infrastructure (housing, airports,
wastewater treatment plants, schools, hospitals, roads, power plants) and a
population of nearly 500,000 people at risk of increased coastal flooding,
and we estimated that adaptation costs just to protect existing
infrastructure will run around $15 billion, plus high annual costs to
maintain these protections. Other major areas and populations simply cannot
be realistically protected and will have to be abandoned, with people
forced to move over time. And this is just one small piece of the coming
threats for one small part of the country. How bad it ultimately gets
depends on how much longer we fail to act and how much longer Congress and
others hide behind ignorance, political ideology, and religion to deny the
reality of climate change.
[Dr. Peter Gleick is president of the Pacific Institute, an internationally
recognized water expert and a MacArthur Fellow. This post originally
appeared in Gleick's City Brights blog at SFGate.]
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