NPR helpfully weighs in on climate change and the upcoming election. Even though a certain party has had super-majority control of the Congress and the Executive branch for the past 2-years (and done nothing on energy/climate policy), NPR blames the real boogeymen and women: GOP candidates not-yet-elected and, of course author George W. Bush. Their arguments, aside from being of the typical straw man variety, go back to the age-old meme: if only the knuckledraggers and flat-earthers would get with the program and accede to the demands of the enlightened (NY Times John Broder summarizes that argument, dutifully). From NPR, which is known for impartial analysis:
The more carbon that gets released into the atmosphere, the higher the average temperature rises.
That’s a scientific fact.
Human activities, such as driving, flying, building and even turning on the lights, are the biggest contributor to the release of carbon.
That too, is a fact.
And yet the majority of Republicans running for House and Senate seats this year disagree.
Ken Buck, the GOP senate candidate in Colorado admits he’s a climate change denier. Ron Johnson, who leads in the polls of Wisconsin’s senatorial race, has said that “it is far more likely that [climate change] is just sunspot activity or something just in the geologic eons of time where we have changes in the climate.”
And when Christine O’Donnell, the Republican candidate for Senate in Delaware, was asked whether human activity contributes to global warming, she said, “I don’t have an opinion on that.”
Conservatives in Congress are turning against the science behind climate change. That means if Republicans take control this November, there’s little hope for climate change policy.
Today’s climate change denial trend isn’t new. Years ago, when President George W. Bush was in the White House, scientific data on climate change was censored, and some scientists and top-level policymakers resigned in protest.
Scientific Findings Dismissed
For 10 years, Rick Piltz worked as a senior official for the Global Change Research Program — the main governmental office that gathers scientific data on climate change carried out by U.S. researchers.
“It was an office where the world of science collided with the world of climate politics,” Piltz tells NPR’s Guy Raz.
In the spring of 2001, Piltz was putting together a major report for Congress. The report would include clear evidence that tied carbon emissions to a rapid shift in global temperatures.
Piltz says his team was told “to delete the pages that summarized the findings of the IPCC report. To delete the material about the National Assessment of climate change impacts that had just come out.”
The IPCC, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is the international body that collects climate research from countries around the world. The National Assessment was a similar report that covered research from U.S.-based scientists. In both cases, the result was conclusive: Climate change was happening and human activity was speeding it up.
But the Bush White House didn’t buy it.
“The expertise had come together to make pretty clear and compelling statements, and to say that you didn’t believe it was to say that you didn’t want to go along with the preponderance of scientific evidence,” Piltz says.
The science was being politicized. Over the next four years, almost every report Piltz and his team put out was heavily edited. References to climate change or carbon emissions were altered or even deleted.
By 2005, Piltz couldn’t take it anymore. He resigned and told his story to The New York Times.
A Conservative Who Spoke Up — And Paid The Price
It’s a big deal for Republicans in Congress to say they believe that humans are heating the planet.
“People look at you like you’ve grown an extra head or something,” says Rep. Bob Inglis, a Republican from South Carolina.
Inglis has represented South Carolina’s 4th District for the last 12 years, but this one will be his last.
In June, Inglis lost the primary bid to Tea Party-backed Republican candidate Trey Gowdy, who accused him of not being conservative enough.
For the longest time, Inglis says, education, health care issues and the environment have been Democratic issues, while taxes and national security have been Republican issues. Inglis says that’s not right.
“As a Republican, I believe we should be talking about conservation, because that’s our heritage. If you go back to Teddy Roosevelt, that’s who we are.”
Inglis paid the price for speaking out about the importance of conservation and climate change.
He admits he may have “committed other heresies,” such as voting for TARP and against the troop surge. “But the most enduring problem I had, the one that really was difficult, was just saying that climate change was real and let’s do something about it.”
Inglis, who also voted no on cap-and-trade, tried to make climate change palatable for conservatives. He proposed a revenue-neutral tax swap: Payroll taxes would be reduced and the amount of that reduction would be applied as a tax on carbon dioxide emissions — mainly hitting coal plants and natural gas facilities.
Inglis also tried to connect the issue of climate change with the issue of national security. “We are dependent on a region of the world that doesn’t like us very much for oil. We need to change the game there.”
Inglis even stressed the need to hold the oil and coal companies accountable for their environmental practices.
Accountability, he says, “is a very bedrock conservative concept — even a biblical concept.”
Even though Inglis won’t be coming back to the Hill to serve another term, he hasn’t lost hope in climate change policy. The choice, Inglis says, is clear.
“Do we play to our strengths? Or do we continue to play to our weakness — which is playing the oil game.”
Tackling Climate Change Takes Both The Left And The Right
Bill McKibben, scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont and the founder of 350.org, says it is a tragedy that conservatives are turning their back on the science behind climate change.
“On this issue maybe more than most, we need that interplay of liberal and conservative,” he says. “Liberals are good at sort of pointing the way forward in kind of progressive new directions and conservatives are good at providing the anchor that says human nature won’t go along with that. That back and forth has been very useful.”
If Republicans take control of the House this November, McKibben says, he doesn’t see a future for climate change policy.
“Look, the Democrats — with a huge majority — couldn’t pass climate change legislation even of a very, very weak variety this year, so I doubt there’ll be any action over the next two years.”
That is, unless conservatives decide to team up with liberals.
“We desperately need conservatives at the forefront of the fight,” McKibben says. “The sooner that conservatives are willing to accept the science, the reality, the sooner we can get to work with their very important help in figuring out what set of prescriptions, what combination of market and regulation will be required in order to deal with the most serious problem we’ve ever stumbled into.”
The more carbon that gets released into the atmosphere, the higher the average temperature rises.
That’s a scientific fact.
NO, IT IS NOT.
1950-1980 was period of the fastest acceleration in CO2 emissions ever recorded, and yet global temperatures were either falling or stagnating !
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CO2-Arc.htm
JDN,
Thanks for that, it was Thoreau who said those words, but the sentiment was not new at the time.
PS I h8 iPad, it’s not gd fr comments.
The exhaust fumes from a powerplant are usually almost invisible, except for all the water vapour that makes up the white plume.
Some powerplants, under public pressure to not show a plume, actually heat up the flue gas to get rid of the white plumes, thereby lowering the total efficiency of the plant and consequently increasing the fossil fuel use.
Ironic huh.
Ben D. says:
October 24, 2010 at 3:30 am
“[…]method of anecdotal incidences are truth, I think its more fun to just call you a third grader, explain to everyone else why you are, and then move on. ”
You might not be so far away from the truth here. The IPCC has some young talents.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/2010/10/even-younger-senior-author.html
To say that there is no such thing as a greenhouse effect is an argument that gives sceptics a bad name, as Owen rightly points out.
Fortunately, there is a greenhouse effect and this contributes to warming the Earth and making out planet habitable. When people say that there is no such thing, they mean that they don’t understand it.
The term ‘greenhouse effect’ may not be the most appropriate since it confuses Enneagram to devise his own theory based on panes of glass. This is not how it works.
Most of the light and heat radiation emitted by the Sun is able to pass unhindered through the atmosphere to warm the Earth. The Earth in turn warms and emits radiation back into space. However, because the Earth is cooler than the Sun, the Earth’s radiation has a different spectral distribution, peaking in the infra-red rather than in the visible part of the spectrum. However, the atmosphere is opaque to some infra-red wavelengths, notably between 5 to 7 microns because of water vapour and between 14 to 16 microns because of CO2. Radiation trying to escape in these bands is thus initially ‘trapped’, close to the Earth’s surface, and that produces a warming effect.
The proportion of atmospheric CO2 may be very small but ii is still sufficient to attenuate a beam of radiation at 15 microns to extinction over a transmission path of 100 metres.
This effect can be demonstrated in an laboratory or in the field.There is no point in saying that it doesn’t happen because it can be shown to happen. Indeed, it is one of the few tenets of global warming theory that can actually be validated.
The New Yorker had an interesting piece on the sausage making that failed to pass any “climate change legislation” this year.
As the World Burns
How the Senate and the White House missed their best chance to deal with climate change.
… environmentalists and congressional aides who work on climate change were critical of the White House. Many of them believe that Obama made an epic blunder by not pursuing climate change first when he was sworn into office. The stimulus failed to reduce unemployment to an acceptable level. The health-care law, while significant, only raised the percentage of people with insurance from eighty-five per cent to ninety-five per cent. Meanwhile, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is already above the level that scientists say risks causing runaway global warming. According to the argument, Obama was correct when he said during the campaign that placing a price on carbon in order to transform the economy and begin the process of halting climate change was his more pressing priority.
No diagnosis of the failure of Obama to tackle climate change would be complete without taking into account public opinion. In January, the Pew Research Center asked Americans to rank the importance of twenty-one issues. Climate change came in last. After winning the fight over health care, another issue for which polling showed lukewarm support, Obama moved on to the safer issue of financial regulatory reform.
Alan McIntire says:
October 23, 2010 at 8:10 pm
“The more carbon that gets released into the atmosphere, the higher the average temperature rises. That’s a scientific fact.”
……One can believe that, and still believe the effects of CO2 are overrated. For instance, the temperature can increse with each additional doubling by a factor of 1/10
The net increase after n doublings would be 1.111111…….”
Whilst I am with Alan McIntire on this, what amazes me most about this so called ‘science’ is the certainty with which proponents state their case given that there is all but any evidence supporting the case.
I would join issue with the statement “The more carbon that gets released into the atmosphere, the higher the average temperature rises. That’s a scientific fact.” As far as I see it, this is a proposition upon which the jury is still out. May be it is true that the more CO2 that gets released in the atmosphere, the higher the average temperature, but may be that is not true.
The reality is that we do not know enough about the workings of the atmosphere and its effect on temperatures to make such a bold statement. And the proof of this is that between 1940s and 1970s, temperatures did not rise (they fell) notwithstanding a substantial rise in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. We do not know why the expected rise in temperatures did not occur. The explanation is natural variation. Some may argue aerosols but that is simply supposition upon which their is no empiral proof.
For the last decade,temperatures have not risen (may be they have even fallen when one takes into account poor homogenisation/adjustment and UHI) notwithstanding a rise in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Again, we do not know why the expected rise in temperatures did not occur and this is put down to natural variation.
The reality is that there is only poor correlation betwen CO2 levels and temperature. On a geological scale the planet has been very warm when CO2 levels were low and very cold when CO2 levels were gigh. Sometimes temperatures fell as CO2 levels rose. Sometimes temperatures rose as CO2 levels fell. For the main part the rise in CO2 lags behind rises in temperatures (but sometimes predates it). During the instrument period (say 1800s to date), there is little correlation between CO2 levels and temperatures. In fact, the only period when there is some correslation would be between the 1970 and late 1990s. There is simply too much which we have yet to be able to explain.
In my opinion natural variation is nothing more than shorthand for ‘we do not know or understand what processes are at work and how these impact on temperature.’ Until we can explain each and every rise and fall in temperature and identify what drove the rise or the fall and how that driver works, we cannot make bold assetions. Any assertion about what will happen when x occurs needs to be framed cautiously.
“James Evans says:
October 24, 2010 at 1:03 am
“Human activities, such as driving, flying, building and even turning on the lights, are the biggest contributor to the release of carbon.
That too, is a fact.”
Isn’t that completely false? I thought human activity was responsible for about 4% of C02 produced.”
I’m astonished it took so long for anyone here to pick that up. To me that is the simplest weak point, in that it’s flat wrong. I don’t trust the figures to better than an order of magnitude, but according to a New Scientist article a couple of years ago the annual flux of CO2 is about 27 GT from human activities and 429 GT from natural processes. Some “fact”!
THE LOGARITHMIC EFFECT
The Earth isn’t covered completely in cloud because it can only hold a certain amount of water vapor before it condenses out and fails back to Earth as rain/snow/hail etc.
As regards carbon dioxide, it’s fairly well known to scientists that there is a logarithmic effect concerning carbon dioxide and trapped heat. It really wouldn’t matter if carbon dioxide concentration doubled or in fact went up 20 times – it wouldn’t trap any more radiation in the particular absorption wavelengths concerned than the existing concentration of carbon dioxide does. There’s an optimum level where further amounts make no difference – bit like your loft insulation – a depth of 60cms won’t save any more heat loss than 30cms – which is about the optimum level.
That fact alone should really knock the “carbon dioxide = global warming” debate on the head. According to new research from Bristol University http://bristol.ac.uk/news/2009/6649.html ; “new data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now”.
Carbon dioxide makes up 0.0385% of the atmosphere – and man’s contribution to that is about 3%, that works out at 0.001155 ppm of man-made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is an insignificantly small number and is unworthy of consideration in climate calculations.
The most common illustration by the global warming propagandists of carbon dioxide is of chimneys and cars belching carbon dioxide, which rises into the upper atmosphere and forms a layer of carbon dioxide above the Earth. This portrays the carbon dioxide as forming an impenetrable layer that is turning the atmosphere into a gas chamber. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
richard verney says: October 24, 2010 at 4:32 am
I would join issue with the statement “The more carbon that gets released into the atmosphere, the higher the average temperature rises. That’s a scientific fact.” As far as I see it, this is a proposition upon which the jury is still out. May be it is true that the more CO2 that gets released in the atmosphere, the higher the average temperature, but may be that is not true.
It is a matter of opinion rather than the fact.
1950-1980 was period of the fastest acceleration in CO2 emissions ever recorded, and yet global temperatures were either falling or stagnating !
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CO2-Arc.htm
Owen criticizes:
Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. What Enneagram is saying is that, since the 15 micron band — the only place where the CO2 spectrum makes any difference, given the dominance of water vapor — has a frequency orders of magnitude lower than the molecular collision rate at normal surface pressures, and since it is essentially saturated within the first half-dozen meters above the surface at 15 degrees C, the only effect of increasing or decreasing CO2 will be to raise or lower by a meter or so the height at which this IR is saturated, thermalized, and dispersed by convection.
Next question?
Wijnand says:
October 24, 2010 at 4:05 am
Love the irony! Suppressing water vapour plumes by burning more fossil fuel!
Almost as funny/depressing as installing wind farms that over their short lives increase CO2 emmissions (from build materials and efficiency decrements on stand by conventional back up. Or using arc lights powered by diesel generators to get feed in tariffs from PV panels – tho’ that is anecdotal.
hats off to the Law of Unintended Consequences, such as biofuels increasing tropical slash & burn,and killing the poor by driving up food prices…. I laugh only so I shall not weep. (or get very very angry)
As an aside to Owen, who may be new to this blog, there are lots of threads etc explaining the physics of CO2 absorption/reemission of photons of certain IR frequencies , and the theoretical warming of the bottom of the atmospheric column that would result to continue the long run radiation balance. Most folk here know all this. Its the results in the real world that are less clear, and the feedbacks in the models which are queried.
Ben.D:
“…What happened to the good trolls? I like to spank trolls from time to time, but you are no fun. Don’t tell me that I scared them away. I know I am ugly, but come on…”
A good deal of effective troll spanking occurs on James Delingpole’s blog on the Daily Telegraph (UK). I respectfully suggest that you take a look, and join in (unless you’re already involved) – it’s addictive.
It is fair to say that, over geologic time scales, C02 follows temperature somewhat, but is not correlated directly to it.
Mostly wagging its tail with temperature change, it on occasion will sit down and refuse to budge.
One very eye-opening example is between 120,000 BP to 113,000 BP where, in the Vostok Ice Core, C02 remained stable while temperature fell 5 C. This is repeated verbatim between 238,000 BP to 231,000 BP.
C02 is the dog along for the hike, running back & forth, but is clearly not the master.
I listen to NPR here in South Africa, via satellite radio.
I am always amused at the self-righteous tone that the station projects – all the presenters are SO pc, squeaky clean and patronising!! And so utterly BORING. The only programme worth listening to is Prairie Home Companion. Why not make it a music station – then it would be worth listening to!
Bomber_the_Cat says October 24, 2010 at 4:11 am:
“To say that there is no such thing as a greenhouse effect is an argument that gives sceptics a bad name, as Owen rightly points out…. This effect can be demonstrated in an laboratory or in the field.There is no point in saying that it doesn’t happen because it can be shown to happen. Indeed, it is one of the few tenets of global warming theory that can actually be validated.”
That’s all very well and good, but there are a plethora of other natural phenomena that effect global climate (clouds, oceans, seasons, etc) and to exclude virtually all of these from the warmist argument is preposterous and ludicrous.
It is just ridiculous to assert that CO2 (aka the very deceptively-named “carbon”) is solely responsible for anything as complex and unpredictable as “climate change.”
You don’t have to be a scientist or particularly a “climate scientist” to deduce what a crude and unsophisticated argument it is.
We need to defund these political organs …
You yanks worry about public funding for a piddly little radio station.
You should be grateful you don’t live in the UK and have to fork out £3 billion pa of taxpayers money for the Biased Broadcasting Corporation.
NPR? Isn’t that the progressive media group that now recommends psychiatric treatment for those guilty of Thought Crimes? I kinda feel bad for Juan Williams as he actually seems to be a fairly decent chap. For a progressive. lol.
Anyone can see money and the quest for power not science is driving AGW ideology. Carbon dioxide is the chosen villain not because of its infrared absorption properties; it was chosen because it’s the signature of human activity. Oxidation of hydrocarbons releasing heat and controlled to produce work is one of the primary human activities to assure survival. CO2 is ALWAYS produced when hydrocarbons are oxidized.
Politicians and bureaucrats see classification of CO2 as a pollutant as their road to riches. Now they can regulate, tax, ban, permit etc. and collect money for their efforts. Bureaus are NEVER satisfied they continually push for tighter standards; if parts per billion are good parts per trillion have to be better. True there are many compounds and entities that MUST be kept out of the environment at every turn; CO2 is simply not one of them.
We are seeing CO2 equated with soot, temperature records manipulated, climate model scenarios floated as doomsday fact….all for what? If you believe it’s for the children, for the environment, to stop pollution, to stop climate change or to save the earth you’ve been had.
It’s about controlling everything and every person because whoever has the most power and money wins…………………..
Back when I used to listen to Glenn Beck, before he went crazy, he talked about being interviewed by NPR for something. Beck mentioned how NPR was fishing for a sensationalist story and when they could not get one, they stopped the interview. That told me all I need to know about NPR. That was before Glenn Beck had his own TV show on CNN Headline News. I don’t remember exactly when, but it was between 2000 and 2002. (Of course, Glenn went on to Fox News and now I rather pound sand than listen to him.)
Need any more proof? Juan Williams is a strong liberal, but a sensible one because he regularly appeared on Fox News. It is my theory those decisions caused the NPR management to look for an excuse to fire Mr. Williams. I say that because every liberal always calls Fox News “Faux News” and hates Fox with a passion. (I never understood why the liberals just didn’t ignore Fox like I do. Half the ratings come from liberals having a fit about Fox.) Mr. Williams finally gave that excuse when he had the audacity to say something that may be considered disparaging about a religion not Christianity. Make no mistake: If Mr. Williams said he was nervous around right-wing Christians, he would still have a job at NPR; but because he said he was nervous around Muslims like most Americans are, that was his great sin.
Why is it too much to ask that our news be objective? I’ve long known that NPR was one of the worst news sources there is.
It was through my own experience that I distrusted the AGW messengers.
After all,these messengers where the same people who happened to be wrong about every other agenda they had pushed.
Many non learned folk, including me, can only really make a judgement based on the political aspect of AGW and not the science to be honest.
The fact that the ‘cure’ to AGW being proposed by the usual suspects,just so happened to fit into their world view stank of opportunism.
Even though a certain party has had super-majority control of the Congress and the Executive branch for the past 2-years
=======================================================
This is how they get away with blaming.
They have controlled Congress for four years, not two.
Bomber_the_Cat says:
“The proportion of atmospheric CO2 may be very small but ii is still sufficient to attenuate a beam of radiation at 15 microns to extinction over a transmission path of 100 metres.”
How much attenuation are you talking about? You can do the same thing with a beam of white light if you set the power output low enough or the threshold of the detector high enough.
Why do the folks at NPR and the EU and the UN IPCC, and many other places, find it incomprehensible that Copenhagen and the like have not succeeded in bringing about the great, comprehensive, economic and socialist changes designed to save the World?
Think about it, “what” are they actually trying to achieve? “It” has very little to do with climate, weather, CO2, or alternative energy. How many Nuclear Power Plants have they (not China) built in the past 20 years? Climate just seems to be something they’re “Shouting About” today.
“What” they are about is “Social and Political and Economic Change”; they’re NOT about saving the planet for us and our grandchildren; they’re about taking the planet for themselves.
Oooooooh well! Tomorrow is another day, right Scarlet?