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.
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.