The Climate Change Deniers Have Won - Guardian/Observer [View all]

[WillyT]

The climate change deniers have won
Scientists continue to warn us about global warming, but most of us have a vested interest in not wanting to think about it
Nick Cohen - The Observer
Saturday 22 March 2014 13.30 EDT


Smoke billows as an area of the Amazon rainforest is burnt to clear land for agriculture. Photograph: Nacho Doce/Reuters

<snip>

The American Association for the Advancement of Science came as close as such a respectable institution can to screaming an alarm last week. "As scientists, it is not our role to tell people what they should do," it said as it began one of those sentences that you know will build to a "but". "But human-caused climate risks abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes."

In other words, the most distinguished scientists from the country with the world's pre-eminent educational institutions were trying to shake humanity out of its complacency. Why weren't their warnings leading the news?

In one sense, the association's appeal was not new. The Royal Society, the Royal Institution, Nasa, the US National Academy of Sciences, the US Geological Survey, the IPCC and the national science bodies of 30 or so other countries have said that man-made climate change is on the march. A survey of 2,000 peer-reviewed papers on global warming published in the last 20 years found that 97% said that humans were causing it.

When the glib talk about the "scientific debate on global warming", they either don't know or will not accept that there is no scientific debate. The suggestion first made by Eugene F Stoermer that the planet has moved from the Holocene, which began at the end of the last ice age, to the manmade Anthropocene, in which we now live, is everywhere gaining support. Man-made global warming and the man-made mass extinction of species define this hot, bloody and (let us hope) brief epoch in the world's history.

If global warming is not new, it is urgent: a subject that should never be far from our thoughts. Yet within 24 hours of the American association's warning the British government's budget confirmed that it no longer wanted to fight it.

David Cameron, who once promised that if you voted blue you would go green, now appoints Owen Paterson, a man who is not just ignorant of environmental science but proud of his ignorance...

<snip>

More: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/22/climate-change-deniers-have-won-global-warming

*****************************************************************

Bonus...

It is staggering that as far back as 1971 – and even further, climate scientists were warning about the impact of human activity on Earth’s climate. As Isaac Cordal sees, still no action.

Sarcastically, sci-fi writer Scott Westerfeld proposed this:

“Plot idea: 97% of the world’s scientists contrive an environmental crisis, but are exposed by a plucky band of billionaires & oil companies.”

Kajsa Li Paludan @KajsaPaludan

Politicians debating #GlobalWarming. Sculpture by @isaacordal #climatechange #environment #art #greenart #sculpture

10:23 AM - 17 Mar 2014

Found: http://my.firedoglake.com/elliott/2014/03/22/have-the-climate-deniers-won/