Deep Politics Forum

Charlie Prima Wrote:It's so sad that you either don't know the difference between Science and Science Fraud, or know it's fraudulent and promote the lies and half-truths for some other purpose.

You're simply posting to nay-say, without any evidence. I got my degrees and training at what is rated as the second or third best university in the US, precisely on the relevant subjects involved [including a minor in clinical psychology - so I know the mechanisms of denial in detail]. I know it is somewhat popular for some in the 'research' orbit on JFK to be Anthropogenic Climate Change deniers. Look who you are in bed with and who is funding the few [3-5%] of scientists speaking against the consensus. The Koch Bros. are the biggest funders of those Climate Change denial scientists, followed by right-wing 'endowments' that fund pro-war; pro-oligarchy; pro-corporatism; anti-democratic ideas and activities. This is an exact parallel to what was done funding pro-cigarette voodoo science by the Tobacco lobby. The science is undeniable and firmly established in the scientific literature at this point, and has been since the 1950s when Rachael Carson wrote The Silent Spring. Many laughed at her then...but few are now. In that short time period, the situation of Environmental destruction and climate change has exponentially increased with the increase in technology and population growth of humans. The Native Americans noted back about 500 years ago that the European invaders besides being genocidal and filed with hate, were out of balance with and estranged from Nature - and correctly predicted they would destroy themselves due to these attitudes. One of many wise Native Americans was Chief Seattle. I would suggest you consider his words.

Chief Seattle > Quotes


Chief Seattle quotes:

"The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth."
― Chief Seattle, The Chief Seattle's Speech


"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect."
― Chief Seattle
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"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children"




"The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."
― Chief Seattle





"The earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected.

Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. We did not weave the web of life, we are merely strands in it. Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves."
― Chief Seattle

"Continue to contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. When the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses all tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle? Gone. And what is to say good-bye to the swift and the hunt; the end of living and the beginning of survival."
― Chief Seattle


"If all the beasts were gone,
men would die
from a great loneliness of spirit,
for whatever happens to the beasts
also happens to the man.
All things are connected.
Whatever befalls the Earth
befalls the sons of the Earth."
― Chief Seattle



"Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. "
― Chief Seattle


"All things share the same breath - the beast, the tree, the man. The air shares its spirit with all the life it supports."
― Chief Seattle




"When the green hills are covered with talking wires and the wolves no longer sing, what good will the money you paid for our land be then"
― Chief Seattle




"Earth does not belong to us; we belong to earth.
Take only memories, leave nothing but footprints."
― Chief Seattle




"When the Earth is sick, the animals will begin to disappear, when that happens, The Warriors of the Rainbow will come to save them."
― Chief Seattle




"All things are connected.
Whatever befalls the earth
Befalls the sons of the earth.
Man did not weave the web of life,
He is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web,
He does to himself."
― Chief Seattle




"Tribe follows tribe, and
nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of
nature, and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but
it will surely come, for even the White Man ... cannot be exempt from the common destiny."
― Chief Seattle, The Chief Seattle's Speech




"Like a man who has been dying for many days, a man in your city is numb to the stench."
― Chief Seattle






"There is no death. . . Only a change of worlds."
― Chief Seattle




"This We Know. All Things Are Connected"
― Chief Seattle




"The earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves."
― Chief Seattle




"The Earth does not belong to man; Man belongs to the Earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."
― Chief Seattle




Native Peoples worldwide have throughout time and even today are much more in contact with environmental realities and environmental justice/ethics than the out-of-touch city-dwellers and befoulers of their own bed 'civilized' humans can ever be. I suggest you read Derrick Jensen threads on this Forum - of the need to dismantle much of what passes for 'civilization' if we and other species are to survive

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Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks

Anonymous billionaires donated $120m to more than 100 anti-climate groups working to discredit climate change science

How Donors Trust distributed millions to anti-climate groups

Climate sceptic groups are mobilising against Obama's efforts to act on climate change in his second term. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120m (£77m) to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.
The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of thinktanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarising "wedge issue" for hardcore conservatives.
The millions were routed through two trusts, Donors Trust and theDonors Capital Fund, operating out of a generic town house in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC. Donors Capital caters to those making donations of $1m or more.
Whitney Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust told the Guardian that her organisation assured wealthy donors that their funds would never by diverted to liberal causes.
The funding stream far outstripped the support from more visible opponents of climate action such as the oil industry or the conservative billionaire Koch brothers. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images"We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise," she said in an interview.
By definition that means none of the money is going to end up with groups like Greenpeace, she said. "It won't be going to liberals."
Ball won't divulge names, but she said the stable of donors represents a wide range of opinion on the American right. Increasingly over the years, those conservative donors have been pushing funds towards organisations working to discredit climate science or block climate action.
Donors exhibit sharp differences of opinion on many issues, Ball said. They run the spectrum of conservative opinion, from social conservatives to libertarians. But in opposing mandatory cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, they found common ground.
"Are there both sides of an environmental issue? Probably not," she went on. "Here is the thing. If you look at libertarians, you tend to have a lot of differences on things like defence, immigration, drugs, the war, things like that compared to conservatives. When it comes to issues like the environment, if there are differences, they are not nearly as pronounced."
By 2010, the dark money amounted to $118m distributed to 102 thinktanks or action groups which have a record of denying the existence of a human factor in climate change, or opposing environmental regulations.
The money flowed to Washington thinktanks embedded in Republican party politics, obscure policy forums in Alaska and Tennessee, contrarian scientists at Harvard and lesser institutions, even to buy up DVDs of a film attacking Al Gore.
The ready stream of cash set off a conservative backlash against Barack Obama's environmental agenda that wrecked any chance of Congress taking action on climate change.

The Lessons of Easter Island By Jared Diamond, Ph.D. http://away.com/features/easterisland.html
In just a few centuries, the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism. Are we about to follow their lead? Among the most riveting mysteries of human history are those posed by vanished civilizations. Everyone who has seen the abandoned buildings of the Khmer, the Maya, or the Anasazi is immediately moved to ask the same question: Why did the societies that erected those structures disappear? Among all such vanished civilizations that of the former Polynesian society on Easter Island remain unsurpassed in mystery and isolation.
Easter Island, with an area of only 64 square miles, is the world's most isolated scrap of habitable land. It lies in the Pacific Ocean more than 2,000 miles west of the nearest continent (South America), 1,400 miles from even the nearest habitable island (Pitcairn). Its subtropical location and latitude at 27 degrees south, it is approximately as far below the equator as Houston is north of ithelp give it a rather mild climate, while its volcanic origins make its soil fertile. In theory, this combination of blessings should have made Easter a miniature paradise, remote from problems that beset the rest of the world.
Giant Statues, Thriving Population
Easter Island's most famous feature is its huge stone statues, more than 200 of which once stood on massive stone platforms lining the coast. At least 700 more, in all stages of completion, were abandoned in quarries or on ancient roads between the quarries and the coast, as if the carvers and moving crews had thrown down their tools and walked off the job. Most of the erected statues were carved in a single quarry and then somehow transported as far as six miles, despite heights as great as 33 feet and weights up to 82 tons. The abandoned statues, meanwhile, were as much as 65 feet tall and weighed up to 270 tons.
The Dutch Admiral Roggeveen, onboard the Arena, was the first European to visit the island on Easter Sunday 1722. He found a society in a primitive state with about 3,000 people living in squalid reed huts or caves, engaged in almost perpetual warfare and resorting to cannibalism in a desperate attempt to supplement the meager food supplies available on the island. During the next European visit in 1770 the Spanish nominally annexed the island but it was so remote, under populated and lacking in resources that no formal colonial occupation ever took place. There were a few more brief visits in the late eighteenth century, including one by Captain Cook in 1774. An American ship stayed long enough to carry off twenty-two inhabitants to work as slaves killing seals on Masafuera Island off the Chilean coast. The population continued to decline and conditions on the island worsened: in 1877 the Peruvians removed and enslaved all but 110 old people and children. Eventually the island was taken over by Chile and turned into a giant ranch for 40,000 sheep run by a British company, with the few remaining inhabitants confined to one small village.
For at least 30,000 years before human arrival, a subtropical forest of trees and woody bushes towered over a ground layer of shrubs, herbs, ferns, and grasses. The earliest radiocarbon dates associated with human activities are around 400 to 700 A.D., in reasonable agreement with the approximate settlement date of 400 estimated by linguists. The period of statue construction peaked around 1200 to 1500, with few if any statues erected thereafter. Densities of archaeological sites suggest a large population; an estimate of 7,000 people is widely quoted by archaeologists, but other estimates range up to 20,000, which does not seem implausible for an island of Easter's area and fertility. Eventually Easter's growing population was cutting the forest more rapidly than the forest was regenerating. The people used the land for gardens and the wood for fuel, canoes, and houses and, of course, for lugging statues. As forest disappeared, the islanders ran out of timber and rope to transport and erect their statues.
Disappearing Forests, Scarce Food
People also found it harder to fill their stomachs, as large sea snails and many seabirds disappeared. Because timber for building seagoing canoes vanished, fish catches declined and porpoises disappeared from the table. Crop yields also declined, since deforestation allowed the soil to be eroded by rain and wind, dried by the sun, and its nutrients to be leeched from it. Intensified chicken production and cannibalism replaced only part of all those lost foods. Preserved statuettes with sunken cheeks and visible ribs suggest that people were starving.
With the disappearance of food surpluses, Easter Island could no longer feed the chiefs, bureaucrats, and priests who had kept a complex society running. Surviving islanders described to early European visitors how local chaos replaced centralized government and a warrior class took over from the hereditary chiefs. By around 1700, the population had dwindled to one-quarter, then one-tenth of its former number. Around 1770 rival clans started to topple each other's statues, breaking the heads off. By 1864 the last statue had been thrown down and desecrated.
As we try to imagine the decline of Easter's civilization, we ask ourselves, "Why didn't they look around, realize what they were doing, and stop before it was too late? What were they thinking when they cut down the last palm tree?" I suspect, though, that the disaster happened not with a bang but with a whimper. Any islander who tried to warn about the dangers of progressive deforestation would have been overridden by vested interests of carvers, bureaucrats, and chiefs, whose jobs depended on continued deforestation. Our Pacific Northwest loggers are only the latest in a long line of loggers to cry, "Jobs over trees!" The changes in forest cover from year to year would have been hard to detect. Only older people, recollecting their childhood's decades earlier, could have recognized a difference.
Learn and Live
By now the meaning of Easter Island for us should be chillingly obvious. Easter Island is Earth writ small. Today, again, a rising population confronts shrinking resources. We, too, have no emigration valve, because all human societies are linked by international transport, and we can no more escape into space than the Easter Islanders could flee into the ocean. Corrective action is blocked by vested interests, by well-intentioned political and business leaders, and by their electorates, all of whom are perfectly correct in not noticing big changes from year to year. Instead, each year there are just somewhat more people, and somewhat fewer resources, on Earth. It would be easy to close our eyes or to give up in despair. But there is one crucial difference. The Easter Islanders had no books and no histories of other doomed societies. Unlike the Easter Islanders, we have histories of the pastinformation that can save us. My main hope is that we learn from the fates of societies like Easter's.
Jared Diamond, Professor of Physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine, is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies. He is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Fellowship, and has conducted wildlife research throughout the world.

How do we know humans are the primary cause of the warming?

A large body of evidence supports the conclusion that human activity is the primary driver of recent warming. This evidence has accumulated over several decades, and from hundreds of studies. The first line of evidence is our basic physical understanding of how greenhouse gases trap heat, how the climate system responds to increases in greenhouse gases, and how other human and natural factors influence climate. The second line of evidence is from indirect estimates of climate changes over the last 1,000 to 2,000 years. These estimates are often obtained from living things and their remains (like tree rings and corals) which provide a natural archive of climate variations. These indicators show that the recent temperature rise is clearly unusual in at least the last 1,000 years. The third line of evidence is based on comparisons of actual climate with computer models of how we expect climate to behave under certain human influences. For example, when climate models are run with historical increases in greenhouse gases, they show gradual warming of the Earth and ocean surface, increases in ocean heat content, a rise in global sea level, and general retreat of sea ice and snow cover. These and other aspects of modeled climate change are in agreement with observations.

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Climate Model Indications and the Observed Climate

Simulated global temperature in experiments that include human influences (pink line), and model experiments that included only natural factors (blue line). The black line is observed temperature change.
Global climate models clearly show the effect of human-induced changes on global temperatures. The blue band shows how global temperatures would have changed due to natural forces only (without human influence). The pink band shows model projections of the effects of human and natural forces combined. The black line shows actual observed global average temperatures. The close match between the black line and the pink band indicates that observed warming over the last half-century cannot be explained by natural factors alone, and is instead caused primarily by human factors.

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800,000 Year Record of Carbon Dioxide (CO[SUB]2[/SUB]) Concentrations

Carbon dioxide concentration (parts per million) for the last 800,000 years, measured from trapped bubbles of air in an Antarctic ice core. The 2008 observed value is from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii and projections are based upon future emission scenarios. More information on the data can be found in the Climate Change Impacts on the U.S. report.
Over the last 800,000 years, natural factors have caused the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO[SUB]2[/SUB]) concentration to vary within a range of about 170 to 300 parts per million (ppm). The concentration of CO[SUB]2[/SUB] in the atmosphere has increased by roughly 35 percent since the start of the industrial revolution. Globally, over the past several decades, about 80 percent of human-induced CO[SUB]2[/SUB] emissions came from the burning of fossil fuels, while about 20 percent resulted from deforestation and associated agricultural practices. In the absence of strong control measures, emissions projected for this century would result in the CO[SUB]2[/SUB] concentration increasing to a level that is roughly 2 to 3 times the highest level occurring over the glacial-interglacial era that spans the last 800,000 or more years.

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Energy from the Sun Has Not Increased

Global surface temperature (top, blue) and the Sun's energy received at the top of Earth's atmosphere (red, bottom). Solar energy has been measured by satellites since 1978.
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The amount of solar energy received at the top of our atmosphere has followed its natural 11-year cycle of small ups and downs, but with no net increase. Over the same period, global temperature has risen markedly. This indicates that it is e
xtremely unlikely that solar influence has been a significant driver of

How do we know the Earth's climate is warming?

Thousands of land and ocean temperature measurements are recorded each day around the globe. This includes measurements from climate reference stations, weather stations, ships, buoys and autonomous gliders in the oceans. These surface measurements are also supplemented with satellite measurements. These measurements are processed, examined for random and systematic errors, and then finally combined to produce a time series of global average temperature change. A number of agencies around the world have produced datasets of global-scale changes in surface temperature using different techniques to process the data and remove measurement errors that could lead to false interpretations of temperature trends. The warming trend that is apparent in all of the independent methods of calculating global temperature change is also confirmed by other independent observations, such as the melting of mountain glaciers on every continent, reductions in the extent of snow cover, earlier blooming of plants in spring, a shorter ice season on lakes and rivers, ocean heat content, reduced arctic sea ice, and rising sea levels.

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The Global Surface Temperature is Rising

Global annual average temperature measured over land and oceans. Red bars indicate temperatures above and blue bars indicate temperatures below the 1901-2000 average temperature. The black line shows atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration in parts per million.
Global average temperature is one of the most-cited indicators of global climate change, and shows an increase of approximately 1.4°F since the early 20[SUP]th[/SUP]Century. The global surface temperature is based on air temperature data over land and sea-surface temperatures observed from ships, buoys and satellites. There is a clear long-term global warming trend, while each individual year does not always show a temperature increase relative to the previous year, and some years show greater changes than others. These year-to-year fluctuations in temperature are due to natural processes, such as the effects of El Ninos, La Ninas, and the eruption of large volcanoes. Notably, the 20 warmest years have all occurred since 1981, and the 10 warmest have all occurred in the past 12 years.

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U.S. Surface Temperature is also Rising

Annual surface temperatures for the contiguous U.S. compared to the 20[SUP]th[/SUP] Century (1901-2000) average. Calculated from the U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN version 2). More information: U.S. Surface Temperature Data, USHCN v2.
Surface temperatures averaged across the U.S. have also risen. While the U.S. temperature makes up only part of the global temperature, the rise over a large area is not inconsistent with expectations in a warming planet. Because the U.S. is just a fraction of the planet, it is subject to more year-to-year variability than the planet as a whole. This is evident in the U.S. temperature trace.

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Sea Level is Rising

Annual averages of global sea level. Red: sea-level since 1870; Blue: tide gauge data; Black: based on satellite observations. The inset shows global mean sea level rise since 1993 - a period over which sea level rise has accelerated. More information: Coastal Sensitivity to Sea Level Rise (USGCRP) andClimate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis.
Global mean sea level has been rising at an average rate of approximately 1.7 mm/year over the past 100 years (measured from tide gauge observations), which is significantly larger than the rate averaged over the last several thousand years. Since 1993, global sea level has risen at an accelerating rate of around 3.5 mm/year. Much of the sea level rise to date is a result of increasing heat of the ocean causing it to expand. It is expected that melting land ice (e.g. from Greenland and mountain glaciers) will play a more significant role in contributing to future sea level rise.

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Global Upper Ocean Heat Content is Rising

Time series of seasonal (red dots) and annual average (black line) of global upper ocean heat content for the 0-700m layer since 1955. More information: BAMS State of the Climate in 2009.
While ocean heat content varies significantly from place to place and from year-to-year (as a result of changing ocean currents and natural variability), there is a strong trend during the period of reliable measurements. Increasing heat content in the ocean is also consistent with sea level rise, which is occurring mostly as a result of thermal expansion of the ocean water as it warms.

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Northern Hemisphere Snow Cover is Retreating

Average of monthly snow cover extent anomalies over Northern Hemisphere lands (including Greenland) since Nov 1966. Right: Seasonal snow cover extent over Northern Hemisphere lands since winter 1966-67. Calculated from NOAA snow maps. FromBAMS State of the Climate in 2009 report.
Northern Hemisphere average annual snow cover has declined in recent decades. This pattern is consistent with warmer global temperatures. Some of the largest declines have been observed in the spring and summer months.

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Glacier Volume is Shrinking

Cumulative decline (in cubic miles) in glacier ice worldwide. More information: Global Climate Change Impacts in the U.S.
Warming temperatures lead to the melting of glaciers and ice sheets. The total volume of glaciers on Earth is declining sharply. Glaciers have been retreating worldwide for at least the last century; the rate of retreat has increased in the past decade. Only a few glaciers are actually advancing (in locations that were well below freezing, and where increased precipitation has outpaced melting). The progressive disappearance of glaciers has implications not only for a rising global sea level, but also for water supplies in certain regions of Asia and South America.

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U.S. Climate Extremes are Increasing

Enlarge above graph. Annual Climate Extremes Index (CEI) value for the contiguous United States. Larger numbers indicate more acive climate extremes for a year. More information: CEI.
One way climate changes can be assessed is by measuring the frequency of events considered "extreme" (among the most rare of temperature, precipitation and storm intensity values). The Climate Extremes Index (CEI) value for the contiguous United States is an objective way to determine whether extreme events are on the rise. The figure to the left shows the the number of extreme climate events (those which place among the most unusual of the historical record) has been rising over the last four decades.

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Charlie Prima Wrote:What you say is true. Scientists do respond rationally to market forces.

They say whatever they are paid to say, or they find another line of employment.

I'm glad you've taken this first step toward understanding how the world actually works.

Now examine the big picture of carbon taxation, and who pays for the "science" to establish that tax structure.

Do nothing. Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the sea level rise...

Quote:Native Peoples worldwide have throughout time and even today are much more in contact with environmental realities and environmental justice/ethics than the out-of-touch city-dwellers and befoulers of their own bed 'civilized' humans can ever be. I suggest you read Derrick Jensen threads on this Forum - of the need to dismantle much of what passes for 'civilization' if we and other species are to survive

The Sioux and other tribes have just set up a "spirit camp" to give a face to their struggle against the Keystone pipeline.

Story and video below:

http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/0...akota.html