That is the gist of a story today at CNN by Sally Kohn titled:
The imminent threat to the U.S. that gets ignored.
Of course, it is a puff piece designed to dovetail with the NYC Climate March, they use the Statue of Liberty as an example of something imminently threatened by climate change.
h/t to CTM
She writes:
As thousands of people are expected to join the People’s Climate March this Sunday, September 21, in New York City — calling on world leaders and businesses to take serous and urgent steps to reduce global warming — the threat that climate change poses to the United States is both direct and undeniable.
The rise in mega-storms like Superstorm Sandy is already hurting coastal towns and our economy, while the rise in temperatures is causing droughts in the Great Plains and Southwest. Scientists have shown these effects will only increase.
Meanwhile, though American intelligence agencies continue to emphasize that they have not detected any imminent threat nor specific planning by ISIS to attack US soil, we are nonetheless marshaling our full political will and military muscle to “denigrate and destroy” this enemy.
Why aren’t we attacking climate change?
…
Unlike ISIS, where the possibility of a future threat was enough to justify action, we absolutely know that climate change will strike America — and that, unaddressed, the severity of that threat will only grow. It’s a crisis we absolutely can solve –but first we have to acknowledge there is a crisis and act accordingly.
Really? While Kohn wrings her hands over future landmark inundations,, this New York Times opinion piece Climate Realities admits that:
“climate change is essentially unobservable by the public”
In the case of using New York to freak out about sea level rise and the Statue of Liberty, I’ve already shot down this lamest of lame arguments:
Even if we believe that sea level will accelerate to 2 or 3 times that rate (as some proponents would have us believe), we are still looking at thousands of years into the future. At a 3x rate, we are looking at 7846 years into the future.
Imminent threat? I think not.
Of course the whole freak out in NYC seems to be a common theme with alarmists, as I’ve said before:
Freaking out about NYC sea level rise is easy to do when you don’t pay attention to history
Based on the 2.77 millimeters per year (call it 3 mm) of current sea level rise as shown by that Battery Tide gauge, in the 344 years (1660-2004) the sea level would have risen by:
344 years x 3 millimeters/year = 1032 millimeters or 1.032 meters.
Clearly, New Yorkers have been able to stay well ahead of that 1 meter rise since the city was founded.
But, what about that “imminent threat’, which is greater?
For me, worrying about some ISIS fanatic lopping off heads is a far more clear and present issue than worrying about some fanatic telling me climate induced sea level rise is going to take away the Statue of Liberty in my lifetime.
Your priorities, Ms. Kohn, are skewed and irrational.
What Ms. Kohn has to also deal with is another reality. DECELERATION of the rate of sea level rise in the face of global ice spiral meltdown.
Exactly! Why worry about ISIS? Because our leaders refuse to do the one thing that will keep us safe – SEVERELY limit visas for persons from certain threat countries, or for persons who have travelled to those countries. Instead of dropping million dollar bombs on tents we need to focus on climate change. Above all BOYCOTT Communist China goods, recycle EVERYTHING and think for yourselves – think independently.
To be fair, it included this:
Here’s a link to the article.
If it doesn’t agree with their view, why include it. CNN is very scripted in this regard and thus probably does agree with what they believe. Thanks for posting this or I would have missed it not being a viewer of any of the national opinion broadcasts.
Deduct Groundwater extraction for irrigation.
Groundwater abstraction is about “one fourth of the current rate of sea level rise of 3.3 mm per year.”
Here is the paper’s abstract
If that groundwater extraction claim was anywhere near true then all of the rivers would be running bank full and higher.
Consider California, check many of their rivers where they reach the sea. Instead of high rivers they are either dry river beds (Los Angeles) or under pressure to release sufficient reserves to maintain river flow for fishes.
No matter where groundwater is extracted, there is zero signs of it running to the sea. Another fool ‘estimate’ based on someone’s imagination and extrapolation without direct observations or measurements.
But some are. The Missouri River at through Kansas City has a slowly rising bottom due to channelizing caused by the attempts to manage the river through dredging and the construction of levies. The Missouri is managed, in part, in order to have enough dept so that barges can be used to move grain and other large bulk commodities. Indeed, most rivers are managed through the use of large impoundments, diversion to human use and hydropower. Flow metrics at the point where a river empties into the ocean contains zero useful information about the climate.
Not if most extracted groundwater is used for agriculture, because such would evaporate instead of going to a river. And the amount that goes into rivers wouldn’t necessarily raise them by a great amount even if they were raising the sea level by a small amount. That’s just a SWAG on your part.
Very good, that is something I have wondered about for years. I once calculated that all the irrigation water we use, if it went directly into the oceans would account for 2+mm/year SL increase.
All the water injected in the formation for Hydraulic Fracturing either remains in the formation or is re-injected into deep saltwater disposal wells.
So if it weren’t for Fracking we’d all be living in a ‘water world’ right now. Thank Goodness for Fracking. /sarc
Channelization, sedimentation but not increased water flow. I lived near the bank in New Orleans for years; water flowing to the sea is not discernibly different nor are levels or water tracked by the Army Corps of Engineers rising.
For groundwater extraction to increase sea level that water must reach the sea. Humans draining drainage systems dry or near dry also do not help increase sea levels.
As I mentioned before; groundwater extraction raising sea levels are back of the envelope estimates without direct observations or verifiable evidence.
As rogerknights says, most of the the water extracted by irrigation methods evaporates. The water cycle is not as simplistic as you seem to think. The water that is extracted through irrigation is absorbed into the atmosphere and falls as precipitation somewhere else in the world.
The recharge rate of groundwater is very slow, in the order of 1 mm/year, and the abstraction rate far exceeds the recharge rate – that’s why wells run dry. Land subsistence in the southwest US is in excess of 1 to 3 meters – this happens because the water in the soil and substrate helps support the surface and when it is removed the surface subsides. A drop of 1 meter for an area of 1 hectare is representative of a loss of 1 cubic kilometer of groundwater. This movement of groundwater is the equivalent of 1.1 cubic kilometers of ice melting in Greenland, Antarctica or the glaciers in the Himalayas. This excess moisture either is taken up in the production of carbohydrates by plants, and returned to the atmosphere as water vapour after it is consumed, or it evaporates into the atmosphere (5 – 50% depending on the irrigation method). Either way it gets into the atmosphere returns to the surface as precipitation. Any way you look at it this excess water returns to the ocean through the hydrological cycle. Eventually, as seawater recharges the groundwater, the water table returns to equilibrium, but this can take in excess of 1 million years, depending on the porosity of the substrate.
Mike Tremblay,
A hectare is 100 metres square, so ten thousand square metres.
A drop of one metre, I suggest, is an indication that something like ten thousand cubic metres has gone.
A cubic kilometre is a thousand metres cubed, so a thousand million cubic metres.
Pesky things those swarms of zeroes!
I agree that most of the extracted water evaporates, exactly as you say.
I have no idea about ground water recovery time-spans; they may be many hundreds of thousands of years, as you say. I simply don’t know.
Auto
In response to Sally Kohn, I’ll say, you’re kidding right?
Seeing into the mind of a “climate activist” is a glimpse into insanity.
Maybe three options here: Insanity, naivety or good old greed.
When you’re talking about a hard-core “climate activist”, insanity is not far from the truth. Once I sat beside a “climate activist” on a flight from Vancouver to Houston. She claimed to have never met someone who didn’t believe the AGW dogma. I reminded her that if she only associates with people of like views, what should she expect.
Just last year we had this bit of sea level rise disaster. It really is worse than we thought.
WUWT – 3 July 2013
New study using GRACE data shows global sea levels rising less than 7 inches per century
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/03/new-study-using-grace-data-shows-global-sea-levels-rising-less-than-7-inches-per-century/#comment-1353166
Why aren’t we attacking climate change?
– With the slightest bit of common sense, the answer to this question becomes quite obvious …
Please, someone, get aerial photography of these rallies for positive proof of their failure.
Here’s one… looks like maybe 500 people?
https://twitter.com/ANIMALNewYork/status/513709107581575169/photo/1
There must be lumps developing in the oceans and seas, as here in Sydney Harbour and down in Tasmania, tide gauges cut into the sandstone in the 1820 and 1840’s are still useable today. After 200 years, the water seems to have got absolutely nowhere.
Forget the “could be rising”..,,,,,,,, “could”, that sound reliably sciency !
The rate of sea level rise at Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour is 0.65mm/year.
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.shtml?stnid=680-140
There are lunar cycles of various periods up to about 1500 years that change the distributionof water on the planet. Without truely complete and Very Long Term water depth everywhere on the planet (including the middle of the oceans…) we cannot say “sea level is rising” and say “water is just redistributing”. It is the same “averaging” problem as temperatures, really. Too little data and too sparse a sample area to know what is happening. So take a few rising areas of tides (maybe even over hundreds of years) and you get a rising sea level. Just ignore the places that are not rising, or falling.
The lumps are in the brains of those who swallow the fabricated SL rise. The NYC tidal gauge records subsidence, not a general rise in world sea level.
When will the news media stop misleading the public about climate change like this?
When?
Rhetorical question, I’m sure, but this won’t stop until the forces of evil that are promoting this garbage are driven out. I’m guessing over the next 2 – 3 generations when people start putting more value on accuracy than on emotion.
Well, I can dream, right?
I have hope for the near future machine intelligences un-learning all the nonsense humans learn in K-12 and college. Every complex close-coupled non-linear phenomenon is currently “explained” in the media and in education with absurd linear thinking. Climate and economics both suffer from the same “experts” spouting utterly flawed theories and “facts” that cannot be validated using the scientific method. When climate science is based on computational fluid dynamics and hard empirical evidence, not proxies … it might be considered actual science. We’re a long way from that quality level.
Only when sheeple stop responding to the articles, which would require an increase in relative intelligence of the readership.
In other words…ain’t gonna happen…at least not in my lifetime.
When people stop believing that tripe
The irony is that exactly by allowing Western oil companies to be nationalized by savage cultures in Arabia, and now fed money due to such protests shutting down nuclear, fracking and coal, they get more money to fund jihad. The correlation is direct.
She’s generally right but specifically wrong. It’s global cooling and the start of the mini ice age that will start killing people this winter before ISIS crosses the southern border next summer.
Perhaps her name is really Sally Con. Although can showing your ignorance be labeled as a con or just ignorance?
A con is always based on ignorance and greed.
Ignorance on the part of the mark, and greed on the part of the con.
“The rise in mega-storms like Superstorm Sandy… blah blah….”
The only reason that called it a Superstorm, was because it wasn’t strong enough to be called a hurricane !
Sandy was the coincidental combination of 2 separate events. An ordinary continental storm and a late season minor hurricane combined to tear up the affected region rather well.
Period.
“An ordinary continental storm and a late season minor hurricane combined to tear up the affected region rather well.
Period.”
Again, as in the 1950s
“… marshaling our full political will and military muscle to “denigrate and destroy” this enemy.”
Sally should borrow a dictionary and look up ‘denigrate.’
Obama’s phrase was ‘degrade and destroy,’ inane enough without being misquoted.
A good verbal ‘denigration’ evidently works in academia and the media. Perhaps she is simply projecting the usual tactics that she deploys vs. her usual ideological opponents.
For 20000 years the earth has been coming out of an Ice Age and the sea has been rising with at least 4 rapid unexplained spurts. The most extreme of these occurred some 14000 years ago when the sea came up 50 feet in just 250 years a rate 20 times what we see today and when CO2 was at most 250ppm. The evil vile haters of man kind that are members of the climate change religion are perhaps a greater threat than ISIS but only if they are successful pushing their insane political agenda. They must be stopped.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
Documenting.
No need to get all violent and attack global warming. Let’s just give Sally the Global Thermostat and she can dial it to whatever the temperature needs to be. I’ll trust her to set the global temperature at something nice and cozy with gentle rain every 3-4 days, no more nasty superstorms, just the right amount of ice at the poles for polar bears and penguins, and barbeque summers for all. Oh, and 4 inches of snow during the week before and after Christmas.
Wait… what? We can’t do darn thing about global temperature? There is no Global Thermostat she can fiddle with? Sorry Sally. I guess we’ll just have to live with what we get.
P.S. The Canadians are going to be really sore and possibly might even say something impolite when they find out Sally can’t get a little Global Warming going for them. They’ve been waiting a long time for some Global Warming.
P.P.S. What a maroon!
It’s true, we in Canada would welcome some warming. And while Canadians are rarely impolite, I think we could muster up a strongly worded email. And if she doesn’t change her ways, why, we could send another.
You make me smile. Let’s all send her one.
LOL that reminded me of one of my favorite red green show segments
http://www.theconservativevoices.com/media/cat/humorous/canadians-are-weird-r723
Would that be mustang Sally or muskeg Sally ?
Funnily I was just talking about young British jihadists fighting battles abroad and then returning to the UK with anger to terrify & stoke up fear in the general population.
– Yet the BBC gives them a platform on the airwaves to spread terror and also refuse to air anyone challenging them.
– I was talking about the Eco-jihadists on their New York climate demonstrations… and the BBC’s policy of none-false-balance which means skeptics are excluded.
(they know the concept of none-false-balance is a logical fallacy cos paradoxically when the police say an incidence of child balance didn’t occur the BBC don’t say “an authority has given it’s view, so it shouldn’t be challenged by outsiders”, rather they do allow the concerns of the public to be addressed)
How long will it take before the divergence between reality and climate predictions become so great that the whole catastrophe meme is tossed into the trash can of failures? I’m becoming ever more pessimistic.
The lack of warming and many other failures don’t even exist in the minds of these ideologues. They apparently inhabit a parallel world where sea levels are rising at an ever increasing rate (false), temperatures are continuing to rise (false), storm Sandy was a “superstorm” of unprecedented violence (she didn’t even qualify as a hurricane at landfall), Do the checks and balances built into the system even work any more? Certainly, the media aren’t doing their job, but neither are law makers.
How can the checks and balances built into science work when there is collusion, bullying, suppression and intimidation on a massive scale? How can it work when half the world is in thrall to this ludicrous meme? To come out against it is like being against mom and apple pie, to be marginalised as someone who is against all that is good and noble. No wonder the human races marches on in deluded step.
And it’s not just a problem with science either. The founding fathers thought that having separate institutions for legislation and the executive would allow a balance of power where neither one could gain dominance over the other, while an independent judiciary would ensure the rule of law and the constitution are respected.
But the whole system only works if the people in these posts do the jobs they were supposed to do. But what if the legislature allow excessive power by the executive due to some misguided beliefs, or the judges don’t strike down breaches of the constitution. How can these checks and balances then work as intended? The answer is they can’t.
It is the people who are the weakest links. It is the people who ensure failure of supposedly robust systems. That’s why nothing will change.
You identify why the UN WMO sponsored the Weather reports from 2050. They picked a time far enough out, to get beyond the negative ocean phases, whereby temps might be rising again. Plus in 2050, they figure no one alive then, will be bothered to ridicule them if they are wrong.
Why don’t we take up a collection so we can send Ms. Kohn to Iraq and evangelize ISIS with her gospel of climate salvation?
Thread win
That’s an empty-headed idea.
or…
She’d probably lose her head with that idea.
Oops…
I don’t think what CNN broadcasts is of any importance. Almost nobody is watching, except the people stuck in airports or hospital waiting rooms.
For example:
Live + Same Day Cable News Daily Ratings for Thursday, September 18, 2014
Total Day P2+ (000s) 25-54 (000s) 35-64 (000s)
FOXN 1,163 236 461
CNN 361 94 148
MSNBC 299 61 126
CNBC 143 37 49
FBN 43 13 20
HLN 197 73 112
http:/
/tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2014/09/19/cable-news-ratings-for-thursday-september-18-2014/305000/
oops typo : “incidence of child balance” I meant “incidence of child abuse”
I note also that these eco-jihadists are dogmatic fundamentalists who hold the rest of the world to hostage, usurp democracy and try to demean & disempower anyone who dares challenge their point of view
“while the rise in temperatures”
What rise?
It’s just more propaganda, brock.
From CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/21/opinion/climate-change-march-avaaz/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
“…time is short. The world is rushing towards a series of potentially catastrophic feedback loops and tipping points in the climate system, which could see the support system of life itself irrecoverably disrupted. From the release of gigantic amounts of arctic methane gas, to the rapid carbon acidification of our oceans, to apocalyptic flooding, the continued warming of our planet is the greatest challenge our species has faced…
“The stakes seem too gargantuan to grasp, but it’s this leap in consciousness that’s required for our survival. Our civilization is built on a fragile, delicately interdependent, and unsustainable relationship with the natural world. We can’t afford to underestimate the massive footprint that humans have on this planet. One quarter of the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere came from our industries. Our oceans are acidifying 10 times faster than at any point in earth’s history. We are stretching the limits of this world…
“…Getting to 100% clean will require a massive battle against the oil and coal industry and their pocket politicians whose subsidies, profits and influence are all at stake. But this change is possible – we now have the alternative energy technology we need to replace fossil fuels. In May, Denmark published a plan to get to 100% clean by 2050, at a cost of less than 20 Euros per Dane per year. Countries as diverse as Norway and Uruguay are already nearly at 100% clean. Even China, the world’s biggest carbon emitter, is rolling out renewables faster than anywhere else on Earth.
“The question is not whether we will make this breakthrough, but whether we do so before it is too late. The clock is ticking, the increase in temperature rising steadily towards the 2 degrees Celsius mark – the red line that both scientists and governments have said poses unacceptable risk of the unthinkable…”
Three points to note: (brackets are mine)
1. Ricken Patel is (a respected climate scientist and) the founding Executive Director of Avaaz (the respected PR agency and haven of climate science), one of the organizers of the People’s Climate March. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely his.
2. No comments are allowed on this article.
3. Sally Kohn has no scientific credentials whatsoever and (unlike her fellow journalists) has never had the “imminent threat” of a jihadist’s knife at her throat.
You can contact CNN here
http://edition.cnn.com/feedback/
Call it in: 404.827.1500 option 1
Feedback for CNN.com Home Page:
http://edition.cnn.com/feedback/show/?s=cnnhomepage
How do they get away with saying such insanity even though their own bible (IPCC reports) explicitly rules out these exact things? There is no runaway feedback loop in the pipeline, there is no gargantuan outcome. Is the IPCC a skeptic group now to? 😉
…. and ransom money is funelled to them via the renewables subsidy mafia
Just in case you are interested…. See the march on live streaming video here :-
“Watch as the People’s Climate March takes over #NYC with our live #webcam at #ColumbusCircle! Starting today at 11:30 am EDT, thousands of individuals will join together to fight against climate change and demand the reduction of global warming pollution. Be a part of the historic event at : ….”
http://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/columbuscircle
Goodness!!!!! What a…………….tiny…………..crowd.
They got flags!
Oh no. not our most sacred jingoistic icon (damn the French!).
Warmists in general and this woman in particular make Chicken Little look like a pragmatist.
“Your priorities, Ms. Kohn, are skewed and irrational.”
As are the priorities of most of the supporters of the CAGW by CO2 concept.
Thanks, A. You said it very well.
“Your priorities, Ms. Kohn, are skewed and irrational.”
In a couple of hundred years or so, we can ask the Dutch to come back to NY.
This is redundant once you’ve observed that Ms. Kohn works for CNN, which currently stands for “Can’t get Noticed Nohow”.
Several people call it Constant Negative News or Communist News Network.
“Climate Naysayer Nannies”
In the spirit of CNN …
BREAKING NEWS … BREAKING NEWS …
http://gridironrats.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/The-sky-is-falling.jpg
“Why worry about ISIS when the danger of Climate Change is so much more clear and imminent?
The Statue of Liberty is still here the World Trade Center is not, that’s the difference.
+1 – BINGO best comment!
Brilliant. 🙂
Here is a nice photo and info of land subsidence from the USGS water school.
http://water.usgs.gov/edu/earthgwlandsubside.html
As far as CNN goes, may their ratings sink like that of CNBC, or this statue…
http://sciencefictionruminations.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/statue_planet.jpeg
Planet of the Apes! The Apes did it.
The Apes of the Planet.
That always drove me buggy. The one thing I always wanted to do was climb up that arm, but they would never let me because the arm was so delicate (esp. after the 1905 incident). So that dang arm is the one thing left standing?! Hmph!
This is exactly why I say that most advanced and prosperous societies fail by committing suicide. People get complacent and comfortable, and risk averse for things that actually matter. They focus and obsess over trivial and insignificant things and issues, and deliberately ignore actual, violent, and existential threats like ISIS and such. This continues until the existential threats get powerful enough to come along and eat you. It’s insane, but it appears to be very much a common thing with humans, and dooms us to periodic backslides. It’s also not even required that there is an existential threat, people will commit societal suicide by doing things like abandoning cheap energy and other industrial advancements and deliberately allowing the society to revert to energy poverty and starvation. Insanity.
I note that she picks up on the decline in support for climate change from Republicans between 2006 and 2009, and comments on Tea Party views of climate change being that there is no solid evidence that the earth is warming as if it is bad. Given that we are approaching 2 decades of no warming and currently 52 explanations from the ‘settled science’ team as to why that is, the correct position would be to have doubts about catastrophic warming. Her praising of the Democrats support for the cause shows that this is a case of political ideology(warmists) versus science(sceptics). Science will win in the end since unlike in other areas where dumb political decisions have been made contrary to science, this one is being played out in public with no control over the outcome. You can only fiddle the temperatures for so long before a frozen public will suggest that it really isn’t warming anymore.
CNN has this great story as well…
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/21/opinion/climate-change-march-avaaz/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
And time is short. The world is rushing towards a series of potentially catastrophic feedback loops and tipping points in the climate system, which could see the support system of life itself irrecoverably disrupted. From the release of gigantic amounts of arctic methane gas, to the rapid carbon acidification of our oceans, to apocalyptic flooding, the continued warming of our planet is the greatest challenge our species has faced.
….
But none of this is grounds for despair. The solution to the nightmare of runaway climate change is crystal clear, and beautiful. We need to shift our societies and economies off dirty energy and on to 100% clean, sustainable energy, within a generation. This goal is entirely achievable. Already, 22% of the world’s electricity comes from clean energy and the sector is growing fast — we just need to put our foot on the accelerator.
Now I’m worried. No accelerator on the Earth…
Maybe the 19th century predictions that NYC would eventually be buried in horse manure were correct after all.
Re: Imminent danger: The pair of threats of ISIS and Global Warming are cousins. Their grandmother is ignorance, their mother incompetence. The great-grandchild will be economic catastrophe, with DNA to perpetuate ignorance..
The US is about to be overwhelmed by servicing the debt accumulated over the last two presidencies. Reaction to the two threats is going to exacerbate the problem: more borrowing for a clumsy, wasteful response to ISIS, and a body blow to the US economy for the useless reduction of its carbon footprint.
Two things are on the horizon, a near-certain Republican black eye and a possible Democrat victory.
First, the next president almost certainly will be a Republican, perhaps himself another progressive. His mere presence, to say nothing of possibly favorable economic and monetary policies, is going to kick off a massive economic recovery while the Federal Reserve steps back from buying down interest rates with fresh money. Prices will soar because Dubya and Obama baked it into the cake. It’s called inflation, which is not just a rise in prices, but instead an expansion of the money supply that causes a general rise in prices. Enough expansion has already happened, and Obama has the pedal to the metal. Prices, though, have been held in check by a strangled economy in perpetual recession, causing a snail’s pace in the velocity of money and no place to invest but to buy one another’s stock. Rising prices and rising interest rates are going to overwhelm the economy in the next administration. They will force another round of wage and price controls, hammering on the speedometer of a runaway train, turning the brief recovery into another, deeper recession.
The next problem is a mere possibility, but so threatening that avoidance measures are needed now. The political threat of Obama’s ambivalent, nonwar/war strategy is that it might just accidentally bear fruit. His air strikes could slow the territorial advance of Obama’s offspring, ISIL, long enough for the Arabs slowly to leave the on-deck circle to protect their own interests. Air strikes will drive ISIL to ground in place, perhaps long enough for the armies of Iraq, the Kurds, Free Syrians, Saudi Arabia, and maybe even the Turks, aided with US close air support, arrive to purge the ISIS-held villages and cities.
The combination of events could result in decades more of the ignorant leading the ignorant, of unvetted, progressive leadership, while the US spirals ever closer to a banana republic.
Whatever the medication to mitigate this disaster, and whenever it is administered, it has to begin with a dose of competent, public teaching. Fat chance. The media to carry the message, and the person to deliver it, may be unborn.
It goes deeper. It’s leftist cowardice that has manifested itself as denial throughout history. If the climate would only take a hostage or post a ranting manifesto they would deny that also. Pathetic.
Why worry about Climate Change when the danger of “planned parenthood” is so much more clear and present? We are talking about human lives, right? Their universal frame is notoriously selective.
“Climate change is essentially unobservable by the public.”
Exactly. If you ask an alarmist what effect 150 years of unrestrained CO2 ‘pollution’ has had on them personally they will practically blow a gasket in exasperation because “the effect is everywhere!”, but if you ask them to actually point to something tangible in their own life that ‘all this warming’ has done; not newspaper articles, not theory, not somewhere 10000 miles away, not sometime in the future but now, today, personally and in a strongly negative and easily measurable way, they will struggle because climate change is essentially unobservable because the change is so small as to be nearly undetectable.
Energy cost more. Freedoms are fewer. Now. In 150 years……………?
You’re comment is so ridiculous that I’m not sure if trying to be funny or just trolling or what.
“Energy costs more?” Everything around you represents energy. Your car, your house, your computer, your phone, your tv, the street, the food you eat. Do we have more stuff today than people did 150 years ago or less? More obviously. Several orders of magnitude more. Without energy, most of us would spend almost all our time growing and harvesting food. So we might have some food (and a log cabin we built, and firewood that take tremendous energy to cut to keep us warm), but we would have almost nothing else. It’s not possible for energy to continuously grow and in cost and for everyone to have more of it. The two are fundamentally connected. More energy per person, more stuff per person. Therefore, taking everything into account, energy MUST be cheaper (simple math) in order to ever allow each one of us to have more and more of it (energy per capita).
“Freedoms are fewer?” Fewer than 150 years ago? Really? Never mind this is a complete non sequitur to anything to do with CO2, but blacks and women might disagree for starters. But let’s follow the CO2 trail for fun anyways. If the US was the bastion of environmental purity and didn’t use oil and produce CO2, then how free do you think people in US would be without a capable military (for example) or how free wold a nation be where 90% of the population is out farming in the fields and have no radios, no TV, no phones, no cars or trains, or computers, or modern medicine. Are you more free with all your ‘free time’ to sit in front of a computer and order goods from amazon with the click of a button, or are you more free if you have to work 16 hour days so that you and your family don’t starve to death?
Sea level rise by nearly 1/2 meter in 150 years?? Sorry, but I don’t buy that.
The coastal cliff-undercuts in southern Turkey are exactly on sea level (the Med has no tides).
The coastal cliff-undercuts in the Philippines were exactly on the mid-tide level.
Is someone trying to tell me that these cliffs are rising EXACTLY in step with sea level rise??
In addition, the Romo-Greek ports of Ephasus, Miletus and Phaestos, on the Anatolian coast, are either at sea level, or slightly above sea level. Again, is the land conveniently matching sea levels?
Ralph
What is mostly ignored is that land can go up and down as well as sea level.
I am still baffled at the premise of climate science that we live in a static world, a world where nothing changes except what they are looking at. Talk about a God-complex.
In the end the land and sea will do what it does, ruthlessly, without favor or judgement, at times beneficially for humanity, and other times disastrously.
So it seems Ms Kohn is an apologist for ISIS and their terrorism. “ISIS is not as bad as the weather of the future”
=======================================================================
Hmmmm….so a radical group that is gaining in strength and will behead you now if you don’t believe what they do (atheist are not exempt) is a lesser threat than a computer generated fantasy?
Sure. I’ll buy that.
(Is CNN owned by the TWC?)
…”will behead you now if you don’t believe what they do…”
I am guessing you do not believe in what they do, but are you personally fearful of getting beheaded? I do not believe in what they do and have no fear of getting be-headed along with probably 99.9% of America.
A nation or group can argue the purpose of their war is of higher morality but they can never argue their methods of war are of higher morality. Put another way, is getting limbs blown off as collateral damage by a drone better than being be-headed?
Alx,
#1) I gather you were lucky and not one of the 2900+ Americans killed in Manhattan on 9-11-2001 because they DIDN’T KNOW to be concerned. But, now is different. We have been forewarned. And for those who don’t learn, as it is said: history often repeats itself.
#2) Morality has a sense of cause and effect – – which perhaps has been lost on you. If you punch me, I am entitled to punch back. If you kill one of my fellow Citizens, I and others have a right to retaliate.
#3) If YOU ignore your fellow American’s slaughter by throat cutting – – it is still encumbent on others to see to it that the killers are punished and don’t cut more throats. And if it takes drones & bombs to help straighten out a society that effects such evil – – then innocents near them must be warned – – but then the retaliation for evil is again moral and must proceed.. BTW, clouds are really a very insignificant issue. A significant issue is a societal group that adhere’s to the belief that others must agree with their ideology or face beheading.
The real question is, why have a “war” at all? The “war on coal”? What justifies that? A computer model? A Hockey Stick? A Homer Simpson look-a-like? (That last was a joke, Sal.)
Am I personally fearful that an ISIS member or a priest or a Rabbi or a Baptist will behead me on in front of my house?
No.
But of that group, which do you think would be more more likely to do so?
I live in a country where I can tell you that Jesus Christ is lord and that God raised him from the dead and you can tell me that he was just a nice Jewish boy who went into his Father’s business or even that he never lived at all. Neither one of us could call on the Government to behead or otherwise silence the other.
Are you opposed to such freedom?
ISIS is.
They may not have crossed our borders yet, but they want to. The USA is “The Great Satan” after all.
CO2 crossing borders? Not a threat.
That’s why CNN ignored the march… money & mouths & all that…
This is how nations and empires fall – internal decadence and incompetence, massive failures of leadership, a petulant refusal to face real risks, instead squandering massive resources on unimportant matters.
Well, it has been an “imminent” problem for the past 20-odd thousand years. That was when you could walk into Japan from the continent. The four islands were all connected.
Those bloody cavemen! They caused global warming!
Ask not what you can do for your country, but what BS you can promote for your Party agenda.
When I saw this headline, I gawped at the total disconnection from reality.
As far as I can tell, Climate Change (TM) hasn’t killed anyone.
IS has killed hundreds.
Then I saw that the story was about the threat to America. Dead Iraqis and Syrians don’t count.
Yes, a couple of Israeli/Americans have probably been killed. (The “beheading” videos look like fakes, but that doesn’t mean the men are still alive.) But no, stock anti-American rhetoric notwithstanding, IS is not going to somehow sneak its entire force into Mexico, without the Mexicans noticing, and then come storming across the border.
IS may or may not have started as a CIA/Mossad operation (we will probably never be certain either way) but it did arise from the attempt to overthrow Assad. The US, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Qatar, etc., funded, armed, and trained Syrian rebel groups. (Many, if not most, of whom were not Syrians but foreigners.) IS made use of that assistance to move into Iraq. After Iraq was destroyed and then had a divisive, sectarian constitution imposed, it was ripe for such a group to make a big splash.
And, so as not to mitigate the insanity of the policy, more funding, arms, and training is to be poured into the “moderate” Syrian rebels (the so-called “Free Syrian Army”) even though (1) the “moderate” rebels have made a non-aggression pact with the IS, (2) the “moderate” rebels sell weapons to the IS, and (3) many “moderate” rebels have joined the IS.
Supporting the Goverment which actually is fighting against the IS (i.e. the Assad regime) seems to be a big no-no.
But still, it all helps to keep everyone in a state of fear so they won’t protest at what the Governments are doing.
I’ve noticed that people who don’t believe a word of what the MSM says about Global Warming will often suck up all the lies and propaganda about foreign dangers, and those who have a well-informed scepticism towards the latter will often totally fall for the former, so peddling both types of scare story maximizes the effectiveness of the booga-booga.
To Sally: You say the answer is SIMPLE and I agree. I just think your choice of answer is quite off track. You cite (1) the GOP as increasingly skeptical of near-crisis climate science and (2) that ISIS only offers “a clear and distant enemy”.
But you offer no data to support the self-indulgent nature of your claim. Yes, there’s a great deal of general concern about: (i) temperature rise, (ii) polar bears, ice melt and sea level rise, (iii) an asserted preponderance of scientists who support the climate folly vs skeptics; etc., etc. I’m a scientist by training and career. I prefer real data to polls of people (as though polling represents science). Science is made of sturdier stuff than polls and votes are not taken to validate its conclusions. Rather, a carefully integrated practice of multiple experiments and analyses are relied upon. And analysis is to be believed only upon verification with observation (i.e., data)
Moreover, Republicans and Tea Party loyalists, who tend to respect the efforts of our written and quite-carefully-created Constitution, should be accorded common civility, rather than just ignorant dismissal based on politics and/or our skepticism of hokey analytical vs observed, real world, science.
So I challenge you: back up your uncivil braying with some solid data – – not theoretical and faulty computer model output. Meanwhile I have started to do the same and offer 3 pieces of information on the 3 items in my 2nd paragraph, here: http://www.slideshare.net/MarkS181/ppt-reference-total-climate-article-ppt .
We can do the world a huge favor, by staging multiple “data debates” to expose the real facts. We can do this by both side selecting and agreeing on 2 dozen claims of anthropological climate crisis and devoting 25 separate 90-minute, pro vs con debates, with each side providing no less than 10 charts of experimental data proving their points. To keep the politics balanced, the debate audience would be politically balanced and both CNN & Fox would be requested to carry the 2 dozen broadcasts. A guest panel of 6 would help with comments and pointed questions; it too would be politically balanced.
I don’t claim to be a major thought center on climate change, but I’d be willing to try to help recruit some Presenters who are. Let’s treat America to some wisdom on this subject and then let the folks interested enough to listen, then express their sentiments.
I am concerened neither with ISIS or Climate change.
When hoardes of ISIS military start invading us from the middle east in solar powered canoes, maybe then I will become concerned with both.
Or maybe not, a cloudy day would completely foil the invasion.
This type of “yellow” journalism is why I never watch CNN. It is totally irrevelant and is losing viewership in droves.