Rob Horowitz: Time to Take Action on Climate Change
Tuesday, August 07, 2012
A comprehensive study now being released by the Berkley Earth Surface Temperature Project should go along way to persuading people who continue to doubt the science that underlies climate change that it is sound.. The project is headed by Richard Muller, a former so-called climate skeptic prominently quoted for years by opponents of action on climate change. It concludes that the earth’s temperature has increased 21/.2 degrees over the past 250 years, with 60% of that increase occurring over the past 50 years, and that “essentially” all the increase is caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
In n recent opinion piece published in the New York Times, Muller a Professor of Physics at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote “I hope that the Berkley Earth Study will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes” Given that Muller was one of the few credible scientists still expressing skepticism and that these findings, which can be read at www.BerkeleyEarth.org, are so definite, this may well completely settle the issue in the scientific community. For example, Muller’s study examines the issue of the variation of the sun’s light as a result of sunspots as a potential cause of the temperature changes, an alternative theory often cited by skeptics, and demonstrates that the data does not support it.
This groundbreaking new study from an unimpeachable source has important political implications. The Oil Companies and others who oppose any action on climate change have been effective in raising doubts about the science of climate change. Today, a majority of Republicans either don’t believe climate change is happening or believe that it is occurring, but is not caused by human activity. Advocates of action on climate change can use the new findings to move the debate from ‘whether there is a problem’ to 'what do we do about it'.
This will take an aggressive public education campaign to disseminate these findings and to engage the people who shape public opinion—journalists, opinion leaders and public officials-in an ongoing conversation about them.
Public opinion will not change overnight. But to move from a scientific consensus that climate change is a real problem to a political consensus that reflects this view, a persistent effort to aggressively push back on the doubts that have been raised about the reality of global warming is essential. .This is the first step to laying the groundworkfor the sweeping and politically difficult actions that will be required to achieve a solution.
Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.
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Comments:
paul zecchino
8:24am on Tuesday, August 07, 2012
Yet another 'study' from an obvious leftist-agenda group, burped up with the tediously predictable goal of scaring citizens into surrendering their remaining liberty and wealth to the Elites.
Global Warming is a fiction, a ruse concocted to implement global taxation and control of all human activity.
If your dream is to have a thousand psychopathic goons tromping thru your home, place of work, and life every day, telling you what to do, writing you up for endless imaginary infractions, then by all means, please support this tiresome sham.
Even the Brit who cobbled up this scam has recently come out against it, urging his fellow EU members to stop punishing citizens with higher taxes and restricted liberties on flimsy grounds of 'fighting global warming'. What caught his attention? The gas company, who socked him with a bill for his share of the 'carbon footprint' hoax.
Want to stop Leftist utopians in their tracks? Bill them for their dreams of a genocidal police state.
Paul Vincent Zecchino
Manasovietskiya Ortova, Florida
07 August, 2012
Captain Blacksocks
10:47am on Tuesday, August 07, 2012
It's very hard to say for sure if global warming is a natural cycle or man-made. The earth is 5 billion years old, so a trend any less than 10,000 years is pretty meaningless. A lot of these "unimpeachable studies" point to a few decades of weather data. That is like a millisecond in the life of the earth. Europeans have been saying it colder, Americans have been saying its hotter. If there is a big carbon polluter in the world, it's now China -- our favorite trading partner and massive violator of human rights. Closely followed by India. Are we going to regulate them too?
Russ Hryzan
11:23am on Tuesday, August 07, 2012
This is just more leftist garbage from a biased and unreliable source. I'll stick to factual data and not some California teacher's Op-Ed piece for my decision-making material, thanks. Even the best and well-educated meteorologists and other scientists openly admit and agree that warming and cooling happens in cycles, and that this has happened before and will happen again, and can't be conclusively attributed to "global warming".
Want to lower pollution and emissions? Quit beating up American businesses who have already done incredible things to lower pollution and emissions, and look at the world's #1 polluter, China! Want to stop emissions, stop buying cheap Chinese goods!
Russ C
2:43pm on Tuesday, August 07, 2012
"Given that Muller was one of the few credible scientists still expressing skepticism..."
Rob, all credible scientists express skepticism (and believe that man made climate change is the greatest challenge of our generation).
"an alternative theory often cited by skeptics..."
At this point, let's call these folks what they are, climate change deniers, contrarians, and anti-environmentalists. No amount of data will change their minds.
Russ C
3:35pm on Tuesday, August 07, 2012
In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, which will be published Monday, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.
This is not a climate model or a prediction but actual observations of weather events and temperatures that have happened. Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change...
These weather events are not simply an example of what climate change could bring. They are caused by climate change. The odds that natural variability created these extremes are minuscule, vanishingly small. To count on those odds would be like quitting your job and playing the lottery every morning to pay the bills.
-- James E. Hansen
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/climate-change-is-here--and-worse-than-we-thought/2012/08/03/6ae604c2-dd90-11e1-8e43-4a3c4375504a_story.html
David Beagle
3:37pm on Tuesday, August 07, 2012
Maybe if there was more visible proof to the average person it might be more believable. Most folks can't tell the difference of one tenth of one degree over fifty years. How many people can travel to distant lands to see stranded polar bears or ice shelfs the size of Rhode Island falling into the ocean. Was there an epidemic of respitory disease due to man made pollutants that got missed? How about the benefits? Won't fewer poor, elderly, lame and minorities have their heat shut off if this warming thing is true? Won't growing seasons be longer, thus ending hunger as we know it?
Russ C
5:24pm on Tuesday, August 07, 2012
"Won't growing seasons be longer, thus ending hunger as we know it?"
Unfortunately no.
Food price crisis feared as erratic weather wreaks havoc on crops
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/22/food-price-crisis-weather-crops
paul zecchino
9:47am on Wednesday, August 08, 2012
Russ C -
Thank you for so well illustrating why increasing numbers of informed citizens are rejecting the Globaloney scam.
Your post is comprised of moralizations and name calling - we're 'deniers', and thus by your false logic, because we deny a lie, we are somehow bad and that somehow 'proves' Globaloney exists.
It doesn't.
Calling names, changing the sujbect, dissembling and insulting yet again and garnishing the entire illogical fact-free dog's breakfast with heavy liberal moralizing - "we are liberals, the anointed, we are good, all others are bad" - is an old stupid trick popularized by 60s radicals.
Alinsky and his pals knew they were meritless thugs, and today their actions have proved it.