62 Percent of Americans are now Radical Environmentalists.

That’s the only conclusion I can reach after reading Rick Santorum’s piece at Red State.

After admitting a tepid support for air and water and parks, Mr. Santorum contrasts his “good stewardship” with ”radical environmentalism,” which “has a blind devotion to the promotion of a radical agenda that ignores the interests and property rights of people.  Global warming became the litmus test of this movement.”

So. Radical environmentalism promotes a radical agenda and the basis of that radical agenda is: Global warming. Also, Watch out! RADICALS!

Anyway.

According to recent polling, approximately 62% of Americans answered Yes to the question: “Is there solid evidence that the average temperature on Earth has been getting warmer?”

And, as of last March, 52% of Americans believe that the cause of those increased temperatures is “pollution from human activities.”

We are swimming in Radical Environmentalists. What’s a Santorum to do?

more from Kate Sheppard.

as the Politics has shifted, the dangers have remained the same

It wasn’t that long ago that Americans on both sides of the political spectrum understood that burning fossil fuels was bad for the Earth. Coal and gas were understood as the root cause of climate change, they polluted our drinking water and our oceans and our skies. As a result, the idea that we should consume fewer hydrocarbons was widely accepted, the science of climate change was accepted, and moving towards a diversified, clean, home-grown energy portfolio was a plan everyone got behind.

But something else was also happening in that time of climate harmony. It was understood that alongside decreased consumption would come decreased production. We were running out of cheap sources of oil and gas in the United States anyway.

Fast forward to today. Consumption of coal and gas are still root the cause of climate change, they are still polluting our drinking water and our oceans and our skies. The science behind climate change has only gotten more sound. And yet, the bi-partisan acceptance that we should move to a clean energy future has eroded. Heck, even President Obama is calling for increased production of oil and gas. So what changed?

Technology. We could all get along on energy when we all thought we would be producing less. Now we can get a whole lot more of that out of the way, expensive hydrocarbon bounty that was just not worth it in the past–the “unconventional sources.” And if we can recover more oil, if we can successfully drill deeper and further and in more remote places, if we can continue to make money off oil and gas, then the arguments against consuming fossil fuels become much less impressive.

So the argument shifts, the new era of technology makes energy security and energy jobs and domestic production the holy grail of the political energy sector, on both sides of the aisle, and relegates what has not changed, the very real and potentially catastrophic environmental threat of continued dependence on fossil fuels, to the background.

For a clear, thoughtful, reminder that we are indeed reverting, read America’s Fossil Fuel Fever, by Michael T. Klare, at The Nation.

Advocates of the new techniques claim that the environmental risks are overshadowed by the greater benefit of economic gain and national security. “Even while the environmental argument rages,” Yergin wrote in the Washington Post in October, “oil sands are proving to be a major contributor to energy security” by lowering the nation’s dependence on Middle East oil. Increased domestic production, he adds, is generating jobs and reducing the nation’s dollar outlays for imported petroleum.

These arguments have great appeal and are attracting support. But they are deeply flawed. While highlighting some benefits to the nation’s security and well-being, they overlook detrimental outcomes of equal or greater significance.

The most important, of course, is the impact of these trends on global warming. By shifting the emphasis from renewables to fossil fuels, we can expect a significant increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—from the consump-
tion of oil and gas and from its production. The consumption aspect is well understood: all fossil fuels contain carbon and this carbon is released when the fuels are burned, so any increase in fossil fuel use will result in increased GHG emissions. But the production aspect requires closer attention. All drilling activity requires energy, which produces GHGs; producing unconventional oil and gas, however, usually requires far more energy than drilling for conventional fuels and so emits a correspondingly greater amount of GHGs.

Santorum’s Stewardship: For Our Benefit, Not for the Earth’s

Yesterday, Rick Santorum reaffirmed that he does not believe in the science of global warming. Well, he actually said the following:

I for one never bought the hoax. I for one understand just from science that there are one hundred factors that influence the climate. To suggest that one minor factor of which man’s contribution is a minor factor in the minor factor is the determining ingredient in the sauce that affects the entire global warming and cooling is just absurd on its face.

Clearly, he understands the science of global warming.

That Santorum does not acknowledge the accepted science of climate change should not surprise anyone. It certainly does not surprise TRC. Even though it takes a serious ability to tune out the massive weight of evidence in support of climate change, it’s a pretty common feat in today’s GOP. It should be noted, however, that Rick Santorum’s position on climate change is 100% at odds with the Catholic Church’s position on climate change. I don’t mention this because Santorum must always conform to the teachings of his church, but it does seem relevant as the candidate makes much over his Catholicism.

But, again, Santorum’s rejection of climate science is not news. Something else that he said at the same event, though, is a bit more shocking:

We were put on this Earth as creatures of God to have dominion over the Earth, to use it wisely and steward it wisely, but for our benefit not for the Earth’s benefit…We are the intelligent beings that know how to manage things and through the course of science and discovery if we can be better stewards of this environment, then we should not let the vagaries of nature destroy what we have helped create.

This kind of language gives TRC the willies. This is, essentially, a license for human behavior to take whatever shape it wants, regardless of the consequences. Santorum mentions the oft quoted dominion over the earth biblical command, which can be interpreted several ways, one of which is that we need to be good stewards to all creation. If he had mentioned the good stewardship and moved on, well, such comments wouldn’t have merited TRC’s attention. But that’s not what Santorum is presenting here. This language represents dominance and human arrogance on a level that is down right scary.

Santorum claims on the one hand that he understands science enough to know that climate change is a hoax, and on the other that the purpose of science is to benefit humans against the vagaries of nature. That is a prescription for a very bad future.

TRC Regrets its acknowledgment of the WSJ Op-Ed on Climate Denial

Sorry about that.

I’m not quite sure what possessed me to open the pages of TRC to the opposition argument on climate change presented by the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page. The editorial, signed by 16 scientists, makes a terrible argument against climate change. I guess I was just feeling that day like that was a reasonable thing to do.

Of course it isn’t. I stated in that post that there is nothing new in their argument, and nothing that has not been thoroughly discredited. But still. If you want more proof, Bad Astronomy takes down the boldest of the mis-information pieces.

Needless to say, the Wall Street Journal op-ed page won’t be represented here as an open and fairly treated source. Because they are unwilling to do the same. It is no surprise that they posted a global warming denialist editorial. It is actually a surprise that they won’t publish science-based reality in the same pages.

An editorial page that does not open its arms to the opposition makes them hacks. We all know that the WSJ op-ed page is an obvious supporter of Republican and Conservative politics, which is fine. We all have our biases. But I actually did not think that the WSJ was willing to stoop to such embarrassment for the purpose of political absurdity. Shit. If the NY Times will publish Robert Bryce-the fossil fuel funded “expert” on a mission to oppose any environmentally friendly energy development, you can find a place for reality.

So, when I heard that the WSJ accepted an op-ed piece signed by 16 scientists (4 of whom are climate-related) that based itself on claims that have been scientifically refuted over and over, and then turned around and rejected an op-ed signed by 255 scientists from the field in support of the accepted science of climate change, I regretted my decision to post fairly about their published ‘scientific’ editorial. WSJ, I tried to give you the benefit. What a terrible decision.

From Forbes:

The most amazing and telling evidence of the bias of the Wall Street Journal in this field is the fact that 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences wrote a comparable (but scientifically accurate) essay on the realities of climate change and on the need for improved and serious public debate around the issue, offered it to the Wall Street Journal, and were turned down. The National Academy of Sciences is the nation’s pre-eminent independent scientific organizations. Its members are among the most respected in the world in their fields. Yet the Journal wouldn’t publish this letter, from more than 15 times as many top scientists. Instead they chose to publish an error-filled and misleading piece on climate because some so-called experts aligned with their bias signed it. This may be good politics for them, but it is bad science and it is bad for the nation.

The letter, from Science Magazine.

WE ARE DEEPLY DISTURBED BY THE RECENT ESCALATION OF POLITICAL ASSAULTS ON SCIENTISTS in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action. For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet.

The opposition argument: No Need to Decarbonize, say 16 scientists

TRC works daily on behalf of and cares greatly about the future of this planet and its human and non-human inhabitants. As a result, TRC take seriously the dangers inherent in pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in volumes that we do. We believe the scientific community when it says: climate change is real, and we are causing it. The results stand over and over. This is our position.

But not everyone agrees. In fairness to the science of climate change, TRC feels it is worthwhile to post this editorial from the WSJ, signed by 16 scientists, arguing against the need to take drastic action on climate change.

Titled No Need to Panic on Global Warming, the op-ed is a cool and considerate argument that there is no evidence in the science that points towards a need to decarbonize our global economy. There are many problems in the argument presented here, in my opinion, but I will note that the main reasons this group of scientists do not want to take action boils down to very familiar arguments: CO2 is good for the planet, scientists are strong-armed by the alarmists into submission, and the benefits of carbon-free investment are not worth the costs.

Here’s some excerpts.

• The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere’s life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.
• Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.
• There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to “decarbonize” the world’s economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.
• A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.

The most dangerous climate argument: Look at the Numbers, then Just Give Up.

Robert Samuelson can’t see the forest because he’s only looking at the oil (that was a boreal forest/tar sand joke). In an op-ed at the Washington Post, Samuelson has decided that Obama’s decision to reject Keystone XL is insane. Actually, that it was an act of “national insanity.” His arguments are unconvincing, or at least unoriginal, but worth spending a second or two on. Here are the four key arguments:

1. “Getting future Canadian cooperation on other issues will be harder.” Seriously? You think Canada is suddenly going to spur its allied relationship with the US? Somehow, I doubt that.

2. “It threatens a large source of relatively secure oil.” How? You just said that this oil will be developed, so, not really.

3. “Combined with new discoveries in the United States, [this oil] could reduce (though not eliminate) our dependence on insecure foreign oil.” Probably not. Anytime there is an oil-based argument for reducing our dependency on foreign oil, it’s not going to happen. History is very clear on this. The only solution to reducing foreign oil consumption is reducing oil consumption.

4. “Obama’s decision forgoes all the project’s jobs.” I guess I can’t argue with this. But can continue to ask, at what cost are we willing to take jobs? That’s not a decision, but it’s an important question.

These, though are the small potatoes in comparison to the dangerous defense of Keystone XL that Robert Samuelson makes. The above arguments are just the easy Republican talking points that flutter in the breeze of political rhetoric. Here is the real danger in arguing for Keystone XL:

First, we’re going to use lots of oil for a long time. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that U.S. oil consumption will increase 4 percent between 2009 and 2035. The increase occurs despite highly optimistic assumptions about vehicle fuel efficiency and bio-fuels. But a larger population (390 million in 2035 versus 308 million in 2009) and more driving per vehicle offset savings….Second, barring major technological breakthroughs, emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, will rise for similar reasons. The EIA projects that America’s CO2 emissions will increase by 16 percent from 2009 to 2035. (The EIA is updating its projections, but the main trends aren’t likely to change dramatically.) Stopping Canadian tar-sands development, were that possible, wouldn’t affect these emissions.

This argument is numbers based, and sounds reliable and hard to dispute. But don’t be fooled, this is scary business. It acknowledges that there is a reason to worry about greenhouse gas emissions, but disregards that worry because it is all inevitable. Variations of this argument are everywhere, and they cast aside climate change with a simple brush of the hand. It says, simply, “you cannot do anything about emissions, so do not try; instead, since we are already knee-deep in the muck, why not sink up to the neck.”

And such carelessness needs to be identified. Especially when, on the same day, the scientists are telling us how bad it is.

Teaching Denialism as Science, or putting our heads deeper in the sand.

How long, as a nation, are we going to fight battles over whether non-science can be taught in the science classroom? It’s tiresome. If you don’t want to “believe” science, that’s your decision and no one can take your right away to not “believe” in science. Fine.

But you still can’t decide what is science, how science works, and what it finds. The scientific process is how science operates, and what it finds is what should be taught in the classroom. Anything else is religiously or politically motivated and should not be allowed to impact education. This has long been fought over regarding evolution, and evolution continually wins out over creation/ID in the science classroom. Because one is science and one is not.

Unfortunately, this is no longer just a conversation about evolution.

Although scientific evidence increasingly shows that fossil fuel consumption has caused the climate to change rapidly, the issue has grown so politicized that skepticism of the broad scientific consensus has seeped into classrooms.

Texas and Louisiana have introduced education standards that require educators to teach climate change denial as a valid scientific position. South Dakota and Utah passed resolutions denying climate change. Tennessee and Oklahoma also have introduced legislation to give climate change skeptics a place in the classroom.

Mandating science teachers to teach opposition shows how far the denial industry can reach in this country. There’s no other reason that states would require teaching climate change DENIAL. Teaching denial to accepted scientific findings as a valid scientific stance makes a mockery of science education, decades of scientific research, the peer-review process, and reality. Denialism has no business in the classroom. Teachers do not teach denial of creationism. They teach evolution as the strongest scientific understanding of biology.

Meanwhile, in a whopping demonstration of misunderstanding how science operates, legislatures (in areas that will be least affected by climate change, by the way) are passing resolutions denying climate change. Because that is how you respond to science. Science finds something we dislike, so our state government will deny it even exists. Screw you, peer-review! Screw you professional experts!

A true triumph for intellectual honesty.

There is room for debate in science, in the public square, and in the halls of government. But when it comes to education, there is no room for putting our heads in the sand and ignoring the fundamental understanding of science to the detriment of our future.

An hour well spent: Sens Franken and Whitehouse Colloquy on Climate Change.

Do you have an hour to spare for your education? Watch this video. Granted, two Democratic senators spending an hour on the Senate Floor discussing climate science may sound boring, but trust me, its pretty much the most important lesson to be learned i.e. the future of our species. If you treat the science fairly, you have no choice but to recognize. You can doubt if you want, but you cannot deny.

Just put it on in the background, absorb reality, and celebrate science with a senatorial colloquy.

how do those climate models work?

Computer modeling used in climate science is an easy target for the global warming deniers. And it is not hard to see why. The actual climate and its interactions with earth and all its various systems is extremely complex. Modeling those relationships in a computer, well, how can that possibly tell us much of anything? Especially when the models that exist often disagree.

That’s a good question. And one that TRC is not qualified to answer. But there are people out there who are qualified, and understanding how the evidence for global climate change comes about is important for those of us who argue that the evidence for global climate change cannot be denied.

And with that goal in mind, TRC recommends an article from Science Line: The future’s not straightforward: neither is modeling it. The piece is a conversation with Anthony Del Genio, from NASA’s Goddard Institute who currently works on the Cassini mission, and presents a clear, comprehensible look at how computer modeling of climate change (on earth and on Venus) works. It’s worth a look.

Although each new model is more sophisticated than the last, their initial results may actually look worse. Newly proposed models don’t usually agree with each other, Del Genio says, because they’re created by different groups of scientists who all have their own ideas on how to accommodate new factors. Climate change denialists use those discrepancies between the present 14 to 18 models to claim that they shouldn’t be trusted at all, but Del Genio — who doesn’t see how anyone can deny the reality of human-induced climate change based on the evidence — stresses that the disagreements over modeling are a natural part of the scientific process.
…
What we do know, Del Genio says, is that the Earth is warming in response to increases in greenhouse gas emissions. All the models predict higher temperatures in the future, but there is a debate about how much it will warm up and what that warming means.
No matter how sophisticated models get, the predictions will remain uncertain. Predictions always are. “We all envy Ebenezer Scrooge in a way,” Del Genio says. “He had the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. We wish we had the Ghost of Climate Yet to Come to show everyone what we think the world is going to be like if we continue along the current path…But we don’t have that.”

The Worst Piece of Anti-Climate Journalism Ever. Period.

TRC would like to congratulate Louis Woodhill, contributing author at Forbes, for just making it in a nick of time to be awarded the prize of “worst piece of science comprehension and most ridiculous rhetorical strategy in journalism” award. This does of course allow that what contributing author at Forbes Louis Woodhill does is journalism and not just blather, and we grant that is a stretch.

If you want your brain to explode, read Even the Warmists Don’t Believe in Global Warming. It’s a riotous good time. For an individual with a degree in mechanical engineering, one would think Mr. Woodhill would have a better understanding of how science operates. Alas. We cannot understand that which our paychecks depend on us not understanding.

It is worth going through the whole essay, piece by piece. It is not every day one reads the worst piece of Climate Change journalism ever.

First, the climate is indeed changing: One feature of the manifested universe is the impermanence of all things. Poetic.

Then Woodhill asks of that change: Overall, is it good or bad? We can’t say. We don’t even have a conceptual framework that would allow us to answer that question, or even to adequately describe how the climate is changing. “Climate” is an abstraction, and all abstractions are untrue (or at least incomplete).

Sorry, this is wrong. The Climate is an actuality. It is a thing, and it can be described and observed. Granted, it is very, very complex, and difficult to make prescriptions for, but it is NOT an abstraction. It is only an abstraction to those of us lucky enough to have air-conditioners and in-door heating, roofs over our head, and money to move when we need to.

But even this is a point that is understandable, though incorrect. What’s next?  Is human activity causing the climate to change? We don’t know, and there is no way, even in principle, that we can know. It is difficult enough to determine the “what” of climate change. To determine the “why”, we would need to do controlled experiments. And, for this, we would need another planet, identical in every way to our own earth, which we could use as a “control”.

Wrong. In fact, even in principle, this is wrong. There is no understanding of human activity that does not affect the climate, the ecosystem, the entire natural systems of the earth. By doing anything, human activity changes the climate. But I presume the point Mr. Woodhill is making is that we cannot control experiments to understand if burning fossil fuels is actually changing the climate. Again, wrong. It is the most basic level of physics, understood for at least 150 year: carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and greenhouse gases capture heat. The more carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere, the more heat that carbon will hold. If Mr. Woodhill can somehow change physics, I am sure the world would love to hear it. Accepting this will do you no harm. It can be argued that warming the earth won’t be so bad, but it can’t be argued that burning fossil fuels, thus increasing (by a LOT) the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will not increase the temperature. How much is open to argument, that it is happening is not. That is just science.

Of course, why should we trust science? “Science” consists of nothing but theories that have not yet been disproved by evidence, but which, in principle, could be so disproved. (some nonsense about Relativity being challenged) If something is “settled”, it is not science. It is religious dogma, and an assault upon freedom of thought and inquiry.

Well, that was easy. Why bother arguing against the science, only to throw science as an entire endeavor for understanding anything overboard with one crazy notion?

From here things really get strange. But don’t the climate scientists’ computer models prove that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are causing climate change? No. First, no computer model can ever prove anything (see the definition of “science” given above). Second, we do not have the capability to model a system as complex as the earth.

Really? No computer model can ever prove anything? I assume Mr. Woodhill realizes that computer modeling is an integral part of many facets of science and is not the creation of climate scientists who are pushing an agenda to make people give up their freedoms. Because, if no computer model can every prove anything, well, that changes everything.

After deciding no computer model can prove anything, the contributing author at Forbes goes on to discredit climate computer models, which, based on his previous argument is a complete waste of time.

So what do we know about the earth’s climate? Apparently, nothing. We don’t know what is really happening to the earth’s “climate”. Even if we did, we could not be sure why it was happening. And, we have no way of knowing whether the change was good or bad for mankind as a whole.

All our best efforts, brightest minds, and exact calculations, decades of study, decades of observation, all amount to a big fat goose egg. No one knows anything.

Wait, but then, why do “progressives” (who are the villain in this essay) keep pushing the coming climate catastrophe? In the world that Mr. Woodhill lives in, progressives pushing climate change want the world to surrender our freedom and move to a centrally planned world economy managed by experts, “just in case”. How could we be so wrong, so terribly anti-freedom, so blind to reality?

Two points about this: first, it’s not going to happen. The Progressives will have to content themselves with extracting a few billion dollars per year from taxpayers to fund cushy “research” and “advocacy” jobs, and to hold climate change conferences like the one that just concluded in Durban. Second, the climate change advocates obviously don’t believe in climate change themselves.

It’s so obvious. Well. I guess that settles it. It’s not real, and even those of us who think it is real KNOW it is not real. Easy-Peezy.

And now for the nail in the coffin. How does Mr. Woodhill know we believers don’t really believe it? Because we are unwilling to accept the wonderful potential of, wait for it…GEOENGINEERING!! Yes, that’s right. If we thought climate change was real, we would re-make the entire interactive nature of earth and its climate with technology! Because that is the real simple solution. Not, you know, changing human activity. It’s much simpler to  alter the fundamental systems of nature!

Mr. Woodhill goes on, but I can’t go on. From here, contributing author to Forbes Loius Woodhill (remember, he has a BS in mechanical engineering, oh oh, it all comes together) goes on to sing the praises of geoengineering as a resolution to our problem that is not real, is not believed by people who believe it, is not proven by science, because science can’t prove anything, because the earth is complicated, because humans are incapable of understanding the change inherent in the universe.

The worst piece logic ever created, arguing for the most complicated and expensive resolution to a problem that apparently doesn’t exist. Congratulations, Mr. Woodhill. I didn’t think it possible.