Opinion: Climate-change solutions depend on open dialogue
By Thomas Hayden
Katharine Hayhoe is a busy woman. As an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, she studies the regional impact of climate change. As a Christian, she volunteers, sharing her science with church and public groups. And as the mother of a young child – well, enough said.
So it’s not surprising she was frustrated when a chapter about climate science she wrote for an upcoming Newt Gingrich book was casually dumped by the Republican presidential primary candidate in the lead up to the Iowa caucuses. “Nice to hear that Gingrich is tossing my #climate chapter in the trash,” she wrote in a message to her Twitter followers on Dec. 30. “100+ unpaid hrs I cd’ve spent playing w my baby.”
What happened? The 2012 Republican primary season happened, that’s what. In a year when contenders could be leading in the polls one week and down in single digits the next, the list of policy positions candidates can’t afford not to hold has grown. To the traditional litany of taxes (no way), guns (absolutely) and abortion (never), add a new Republican litmus test: climate change (not even if the science says it’s so).
Throughout the Great Winnowing, Republican primary candidates have been rushing to distance themselves from the scientific consensus on climate change – that it’s happening, it’s a problem, and humans are the cause. They’re not simply rejecting specific climate policies. Just acknowledging the vast, well-documented evidence that humans are changing the planet’s climate has apparently become forbidden.
That has any number of prominent Republicans worrying their party has become antiscience. But it also raises a deeper question: If we can’t even agree on observable, verifiable facts, how are we supposed to govern ourselves in a democracy?
Thomas Hayden teaches science communication and environmental sustainability at Stanford University. He is a trained scientist and has worked as a journalist for Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report and other publications.
The obvious conflict between unbridled business concern and the environment is the only apparent reason for this pattern of ignoring scientific evidence for any number of challenges facing our planet. There is a great deal of misplaced good intention in our world. Many are convinced that saving the whales, the spotted owl or whatever is the answer. The problem with that narrow focus is that the planet will be fine when we are made extinct by overpopulation and lack of resources. There seems to be no room at anyone’s table for the big picture.
Thomas Hayden your are grossly dishonest and a liar. Your writing for the Democratic National Committee and your corruption as a pretend scientist show your moral bankruptcy. I also say KO Hayhoe, Niss. super mom, who also maasquerades as Al Gore’s shill for man made global warming.
The global boogyman being used to unite the world in totaliarianism as the Martians never appeared, will fail as real science and commom sense prevail.
How is it that republicans can call a presidential election won by barely 3 points a “Mandate”, yet call an opinion of 90% of experts in climatic science impossible and unbeleivable?
Thank you for supporting my point, Earl.
BP, because 90% don’t. It is an artificial construct and is meaningless like so much of the data used to support their point of view.
Dumbfounded, you should try some real science sites like NewScientist.com… just to see some real parts of the world around you. Meanwhile, I have nominated your original post to MoronWatch.net as a contender in their yearly “Best Of” contest under Climate Change. Good Luck.
I’m not making a judgement whether mankind is to blame for our current warming trend. But I find it hard to believe that with the evidence having been collected showing that the planet has gone through this cycle numerous times before over the billions of years it has existed it is not at all possible that it is happening again. But if you prefer to live on a flat planet that has a sun that revolves around it, be my guest!
If you can’t prove or disprove a position, it is always best to resort to name-calling and attacking the messenger. That certainly shows an active intellect. And thank you for your nomination.
I suppose it is a coincidence that the NewScientist.com website has an advertisement for Chevron?
I did a search on that site for “global warming”, the result was: “Eleven of the world’s most influential science academies warned world leaders that the threat of global climate change “is clear and increasing” and that they must act immediately to begin addressing its causes and consequences.
The stark warning came on Tuesday in an unprecedented joint statement from the heads of the science academies of Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and the US.
The statement, issued ahead of the G8 economic summit in Gleneagles, UK, in July, outlines the strong evidence for global warming.
“The evidence comes from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and from phenomena such as increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers, and changes to many physical and biological systems,” the statement says, adding that most recent warming is likely to have been caused by human activity.
Major put-down
That the US National Academy of Sciences, the key scientific adviser to Congress, has signed the document is seen as a major put-down to the global warming naysayers in the Bush administration, which has refused to sign up to the Kyoto protocol to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
Following a meeting in Washington DC between President George Bush and UK prime minister Tony Blair on Tuesday, Bush conceded that climate change is a “major long-term problem” and cited US research into hydrogen-powered cars and low-pollution coal as moves already under way to help combat it. But there was no change to his opposition to the Kyoto protocol.
Nevertheless, Blair intends to make tackling climate change a central plank of the G8 summit he will be hosting. “We need to be thinking about how we move beyond a situation where there are huge emissions of greenhouse gases from present energy consumption,” he said.
Environmental group Friends of the Earth welcomed the joint statement but complained that it lacks targets and a timetable for action. “G8 countries must accept their historic responsibility in creating the problem, and show genuine leadership through annual reductions in emissions,” says Catherine Pearce, climate expert at Friends of the Earth.”
Thanks for the tip.
Hello skeptics. Have you posted any legitimate scientific research papers that contradict the current knowledge on the subject of antrhopogenic climate change?
He thinks he can scare you with $3 words. Too bad he can’t spell them.
;-)
Bongobot,
Here’s two you seem to ignore.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/08/26/lawrence-solomon-science-now-settled/
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/09/02/lawrence-solomon-our-cosmic-climate/
They are intended to be read sequentially, then no doubt you will issue a stern rebuke to CERN and tell us how they really aren’t “scientists”.
“will fail as real science and commom sense prevail.”
Excellent, I love new, real science.
You don’t happen to have any links to this scientific research by chance, do you?
Lots of rhetoric, little substance.
Bongobot,
Try this one on for size…
http://accelconf.web.cern.ch/accelconf/IPAC10/papers/frymh02.pdf
any of you folks know what is being sprayed out of those jet planes?
and how it is affecting us here on the ground
Yes.
Nothing other than water vapor.
Ah yes, the chem trail conspiricy! I learned about it by remote viewing after going to my numerologist who just recently went through an alien abduction. Blame it all on Obama!
I read that paper when it first came out.
It does not refute anthropogenic climate change.
Did you actually read it? Read the abstract again. It doesn’t do what you think it does. The paper is just about the start of the project. Notice that there is not a ‘conclusions’ section. Or ‘discussion’ because the project just started.
Maybe you overlooked the fact that in order for the findings of this paper to attribute changes in climate to the changes in cosmic rays, cosmic rays would have to be observed to have decrease over the past few decades.
Which they haven’t, they have increased (slightly)
This paper supports the fact that, ‘it isn’t the sun’. It also does not deny antrhopogenic contributions to climate change. It actually strengthens antrhopogenic climate change.
Skeptic fail.
You people are really entertaining.
f
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2012/feb/09/us-weather-radar-picture
THAT’S FOR YOU BONGO…
Pretty cool. Too bad they didn’t use images that filtered out clutter echos.
But this is relevant how?
Bongobot,
We’ve been through this before, and you know that your argument is not with me, but rather with your own alleged “scientists” like Mann, Jones et al who eagerly sacrificed their careers and credibility on the altar of anthropogenic global warming. In an effort to “hide the decline” they fraudulently manipulated data, conspired to cover their crimes and then lied about it when discovered. They did this not on behalf of advancing science but to further their own self interests and reap windfall profits in some Al Gore (the sex-crazed poodle) inspired carbon credit trading scheme which was intended to wring trillions of dollars from developed countries like US! As is evidenced by these articles, they also vigorously and vociferously attempted to quash REAL research being done by the Danes so as to discredit their theories and promulgate their own IPCC BS… all in all, a very sad day for “real” science.
The power-hungry left recognizes that if you control carbon, you control life. Knowing this, proponents have displayed no shame in using phony science, citing spurious data, intimidating critics and fabricating convenient lies in pursuit of what they see as a noble and glorious goal, the redistribution of trillions of dollars, and not a little into their own pockets. You might as well try to defend two other progressive icons, Bernie Maddoff and John Corzine. Your side lost because you cheat, and like your mother said, “Cheaters never prosper!”
Yo Honky your 2nd paragraph sounds just like how Nixon and the Dirty Tricksters
operated.
Old as I am, my memory fails me; did Nixon’s dirty tricks include “Truth Squads” and Media Matters’ news manipulation and intimidation of rival news outlets? Obama’s learned his lessons well.