New Study Links Current Events to Climate Change

[morningfog]

The relentless, weather-gone-crazy type of heat that has blistered the United States and other parts of the world in recent years is so rare that it can't be anything but man-made global warming, says a new statistical analysis from a top government scientist.

The research by a man often called the "godfather of global warming" says that the likelihood of such temperatures occurring from the 1950s through the 1980s was rarer than 1 in 300. Now, the odds are closer to 1 in 10, according to the study by NASA scientist James Hansen. He says that statistically what's happening is not random or normal, but pure and simple climate change.

"This is not some scientific theory. We are now experiencing scientific fact," Hansen told The Associated Press in an interview.

Hansen is a scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and a professor at Columbia University. But he is also a strident activist who has called for government action to curb greenhouse gases for years. While his study was published online Saturday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, it is unlikely to sway opinion among the remaining climate change skeptics.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/study-ties-global-warming-recent-year-heat-16931315#.UB52Q6PwRFs

[Berlum]

1. "Shit, now I'll have to cook up more lies for tomorrow's show." - Rush Payola Puss Limbaugh (R)

"Why do these scientists keep coming up with facts? It makes my job harder, having to always cook up phonyass lies about the climate to please my Republican 1% Payola Masters who lard my ass pockets with $60 million a year, and to feed bullshit to the smelly RepubliPROLES out there in radio land. Those suckers need a steady supply of lies about THE HEAT & THE DROUGHT and the real reasons, to keep them from believing their own senses."

- Rush Payola Puss Limbaugh (R - Draft Dodger)

[longship]

2. They are not skeptics; they are deniers!

A skeptic goes with the evidence. A denier holds their opinion in spite of evidence.

So, ABC News, get your shit right. James Hansen is a skeptic, a scientist. He was brought to his conclusions solely by the facts, not some arbitrary ideology. That's how science works.

Now Hansen's paper will be reviewed by other climate scientists. And if a concensus forms around his findings, it too will become part of the facts of climate change. Just the fact that he is sticking his neck out like this is a shocking revelation. Climate change deniers would be well advised to pay attention.

Everything we are seeing about climate change the last couple of years indicates that it is proceeding at a pace nobody had predicted. The deniers were calling Al Gore an alarmist. Well, Gore misstated some projections in his talk, but the reality is nonetheless alarming by itself.

We are now in uncharted territory where the climate models don't seem to work well. They understate the changes.

We may be fucked, and we may have no way at the current time to predict it.

[Berlum]

3. The Republican approach to the facts