Because here it is, another comprehensive report, this time sponsored by the UN, that global climate change is real, it’s caused in large part by human activity and it’s likely to get worse much faster than we expected:
A major new United Nations report shows global scientists are more convinced than ever that human activity is causing climate change, the Toronto Star has learned.
The rate of warming between now and 2030 is likely to be twice that of the previous century, it says.
And it concludes that most of the global warming since the middle of the last century has been caused by man-made greenhouse gases.
The report, to be released in Paris Feb. 2, should all but end any debate on climate change and compel governments and industries to take urgent measures to deal with it, scientists say.
Should all but end debate? Compel governments and industries to take urgent measures? I wish that were true.
(cont.)
Instead we are likely to be fed the same old tired strategies of “voluntary” emissions controls and market based approaches where one bad actor can buy another good actor’s emission credits in some sort of perverted global trade in — well, in gas. Methane, carbon dioxide, ozone, etc.
Ever wonder why these are the favored approaches to deal with carbon emissions by conservative ideologues, Republican politicians and energy industry spokespeople? Because everyone knows that 1) if emission controls are “voluntary” than you need not volunteer. If you don’t volunteer profits won’t be affected. And 2) a market to control emissions is unlikely to be established on a global basis. We couldn’t even get the relatively meager restrictions of the Kyoto Protocol adopted by many of the worst offenders. What makes anyone think we could get every country on earth to accept a grand, comprehensive market in global emission trading? Corporations would just move their factories that emit greenhouse gases to countries that don’t participate in the “market” on CO2 emissions, etc.
Meanwhile, as the multinational corporations dependent on continued burning of fossil fuels fight their delaying action against the diminution of their unholy revenue streams, global temperatures (and the consequences thereof) will just keep accelerating:
“Discernible human influences now extend to other aspects of climate, including continental average temperatures, atmospheric circulation patterns and some types of extremes.”
It is “very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent.” Storm tracks will move from the tropics toward the poles.[…]
Rebutting one of the main arguments of climate change skeptics, it says observations of temperature increases and shrinking ice cover, “support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years” was caused by solar flares or other natural events.
Eleven of the past 12 years have been the hottest in Earth’s recent history, it says.
My guess, this won’t make much difference to the see no evil, hear no evil, feel no evil climate change crowd. They have already been brainwashed by corporate propagandists and conservative blowhards like the inimitable Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and their brethren in the Mighty Right Wing Wurlitzer that global warming is either 1) a fairy tale by environmentalist crazies to scare the kiddies or 2) actually a good thing!
My other guess is that the climate changes we are already witnessing (e/g., rising seas, droughts, loss of fresh water resources, more extreme storms, increases in disease and loss of species) will occur sooner and at a more rapid rate than even the scientists are predicting.
But then I’m just one of those half glass empty, socialist-fascist-pinko, terrorist-loving, America-hating folks who have been right about so many things over the last few years (Iraq, Bush’s lies, the indiscriminate use of torture, the loss of our most fundamental constitutional rights, the unreliability of electronic voting machines, et cetera). Based on my qualifications I don’t deserve to have my voice added to those who belong to the media elites. Hell, I don’t live inside the Beltway, and wouldn’t know who officially belongs to the Gang of Five Hundred without a cheat sheet. I couldn’t navigate my way around a formal Georgetown cocktail party even if I had a map. I’m a nobody posting on a blog, forgawdsakes! I’m not allowed to matter.
And the trouble is, neither do those climate scientists who work for the IPCC and prepared this report. They know they are right. We know they are right. But the punditocracy? They’re still are having too much fun playing the It’s a Controversy! game. And as long as they and their corporate bosses insist on presenting this issue as uncertain, still a matter for debate, or worse, merely a liberal talking point, the longer it will take to start doing anything constructive to save our planet.
So here’s my suggestion. Pick out your favorite media hack (look for one here, here, here and here) , and if you have a spare copy of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” available that you’ve already shown to every family member, friend and neighbor you could, offer send it to them. Indeed, tell them they can keep it free of charge just so long as they promise to watch it one time. Sure, it’s a small idea that has .00001% chance of changing the mind of one of these “Masters of the Universe.” But like the slogan for the NY Lotto says: Hey, you never know.
