You can see a whole page of stupid: Bill Moyers has the complete list of climate change denialists in congress, complete with quotes from each one, organized by state. What yahoo is representing your state?
And in case you’ve always wondered how much money it would take to buy the government in our democracy, it looks like all it takes is a few tens of millions of dollars. No wonder no one in government is speaking out against Saudi human rights offenses — that’s pocket change.
All told, 170 elected representatives in the 114th Congress have taken over $63.8 million from the fossil fuel industry that’s driving the carbon emissions which cause climate change. They deny what over 97 percent of scientists say is happening — current human activity creates the greenhouse gas emissions that trap heat within the atmosphere and cause climate change. And their constituents are paying the price, with Americans across the nation suffering 500 climate-related national disaster declarations since 2011.
Ugh.
This brings up a real Monday morning gloom thought: if Jeb Bush or worse is the next POTUS, carrying even more of these clowns into office with him and putting Cthulhu-knows-what sort of wingnuts on the Supreme Court, the U. S. is truly fucked.
As feckless and cowardly as the U. S. Democratic party is, its candidates are infinitely preferable to the alternative in almost every case. Vote and contribute, people, even if you have to hold your noses when you do.
I must be a bigot, to be so surprised that South Dakota has 0 denialists. Surrounded by all those other denialist states, I presumed S.D. would cave. It is S.D. that Minnesotans make all the jokes about, eh? I just laughed too hard at Fargo and didn’t realize Fargo is just a (dark)Comedy, not a Documentary.
But I am so happy that my home state (MA) is also in the Zero Denialists camp. Yaahoo!!
I am ill-at-ease with those who approach the matter of climate change as an either/or scenario. Is human activity contributing to the processes we observe? Beyond any reasonable doubt. Is human activity a major component of these processes? Possibly but not adequately quantified. Is human activity the only factor or even the only significant factor in these processes? Almost certainly not; the natural world is a extremely complex set of interlocking systems. Before one side can shout down the other, it would behoove us to first identify as completely as possible all relevant factors and then approach the even more difficult task of quantifying them. Flinging rhetoric about gains nothing.
Peterh: Is human activity a major component of these processes? Possibly but not adequately quantified.
You do realize that these studies have been done, don’t you?
* Could the Sun be contributing to current climate change, as it has in the past? No, because the Sun’s output is measured as flat or slightly declining over this period.
* Could changes in Earth’s orbit or inclination be contributing? Yes, and they are; they are pushing gradually in the direction of cooling.
* Could the increase in greenhouse gases be due to volcanoes? No, because human activities emit more than 100 times as much CO2 annually. Also, volcanoes increase the atmosphere’s content of aerosols, which have a cooling effect.
* Could the CO2 be mainly from another natural source? No; isotope analysis demonstrates that the extra CO2 comes from fossil fuels.
Anyone who really wants to study the problem can find out these things without much effort. You write of the futility of “flinging rhetoric around.” If the Denialists had anything but rhetoric — I mean valid evidence for their view — they would have published it long ago and saved the world a lot of trouble. They have no valid evidence, so they have continued blowing smoke. It grows tiresome.
@ 3 peterh
Obvious concern trolling, containing naked assertions backed up by nothing.
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Oh, indeed? How are you qualified to make this judgement?
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Bulletin to climate scientists! Peterh has uncovered an important truth you’ve been totally missing!
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Ah, the old “we don’t know everything, therefore we know nothing” gambit. Sorry, but that old pig won’t fly here. Why don’t you try something more recent from denier land? Try “There’s been no warming for 15 years!” That would at least provide some fresher meat to chew on.
Peterh, #3:
What exactly are you suggesting? It sounds a bit like “More study is needed, no rash action please”, i.e. do nothing and wait for the scientists to get back to us. Unfortunately that is also a not too unreasonable a description of the past few decades and doesn’t really go anywhere except more study and more waiting, plus some token efforts at climate change mitigation.
Even if we ignored the fact that most of the recent warming has apparently been caused by us and assumed that some natural factor/s was/were the main cause of climate change, so what? Natural variations are a wee bit difficult to control and while the planet is warming we need to turn down whetever dials we can control.
So even if nature was to blame we’d still have reduce greenhouse gas emissions to reduce warming and probably even start geoengineering to counter it. The net result would be much the same, so I’d advise for more study but against more waiting. Sure, more science will help us fine-tune our approach but we already have plenty of data to go on.
PeterH, As most of the people on this board are scientifically literate, I would suggest you go peddle stupid someplace else.
We know with 100% certainty that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that greenhouse gasses warm the planet.
We know the increase in CO2 in both the atmosphere and the oceans (causing acidification) is anthropogenic.
We know that the other major forcings would either be neutral over the past 50 years or would be cooling the planet.
We know the warming we are seeing looks like it is the result of a greenhouse mechanism–especially since the stratosphere is warming even as the troposphere cools.
The science is sufficiently certain for us to be very sure we are in deep shit. The only question is how deep.
Might I suggest that you consult some actual scientists on this matter, or at least contact the denialist mothership so you can update your woefully pathetic talking points?
@Peterh:
Is human activity a significant contributing factor to climate change? Undoubtedly yes: We’re taking large carbon reserves out of the Earth’s crust – carbon that’s been out-of-circulation for millions of years – and pumping much of it into the atmosphere. We know that CO2 and CH4 are greenhouse gasses and that a significant portion of the carbon we’ve pulled out of the ground is existing as one of these compounds.
We don’t need to know the effect of all the “relevant factors” to 12 digits of precision to reach the conclusion that, at the very least, we need to slow down significantly. (Though we have identified and studied the most important “relevant factors” to a high degree. The research has been done, the results are largely in, and it’s not what we might want to hear)
Man, peterh, you’re asking questions from the early 1990s and act as if no science had been done since then at all.
Really, youshould be ashamed. Go here.
Extremely gradually, though: the next ice age would begin 50,000 years from now, with a glacial maximum in 100,000 years.
More interesting to me than the 56% of climate change deniers would be the apparent 44% who aren’t. Where are they? Why haven’t they been able to get together with Democrats to create a majority for action on climate change?
its like some people do not understand what science is and how it works.
No one here I am pretty sure takes any of the talking points doubts as stated here as serious questions any longer. I personalty don’t believe the questioner does either it is just a debating tactic because the one thing I do think for sure is that the deniers live in their heads in the world of belief in ideas often disconnected from the world of reality outside of their little wants and desires.
uncle frogy
I suspect we have more climate change denialists in Nebraska, but it’s possible they simply haven’t said anything about it.
Someone earlier mentioned the cooling effect of volcanic aerosols, which triggered one of my “pet peeves” about denialist denials. To quote the site linked in the OP:
Yes deny the SCIENCE by blaming The Liberals for spreading lies couched as science. Atmospheric pollution is not a single, mutually exclusive, chemical. And if you’re ‘old enough’ Rep. Brooks, our coal power plants put out more than just Electricity and CO2, there was also that nasty black stuff called Soot, and sulfer dioxide, both of which have a cooling effect. And Liberals didn’t just drain that idea, they convinced TPTB to institute “scrubbers” to clean that soot out of the exhaust of the power plants. So we reduced air pollution and Liberals rested on their laurels for a bit, until it became clear that it was an Inconvenient Truth than CO2 was Greenhousing a Climate Change, not in the good direction.
To be picayune: He said, “If the evidence is there
to prove it, then so be it.”Science does not use evidence to prove, evidence can only support a conclusion. Contrary evidence can be used to disprove a previous conclusion. Got that, Rep.? I hope so, you are leading me down a slippery slope of what Reps really are. “Reps have no opinion of their own, they rigorously transmit the opinion of the people they represent, with no judgement of their own.” The slippery slope leads me to dislike 56% of the population of this country.
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twas brillig (stevem)@13,
That’s a bit confused. Soot has a warming effect: it raises albedo (I nearly typed libido – AFAIK, it has no effect on libido, apart from those with a fetish for Dick van Dyke and fake Cockney accents) and so increases heat absorption. The “global cooling scare” claim is simply a lie. You can read about the actual situation in the 1970s here and here. Concern about pollution from coal power plants focused on “acid rain”: the result of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide emitted by coal burning and dissolving in water to form sulphuric and nitric acids. That’s what the scrubbers removed, largely solving the problem of acid rain.
Tribalism. And comment 12.
Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
No, you’re just fucking inexcusably ignorant. The scientific consensus is clear: human activity is responsible for essentially all the warming that has taken place over the past century, because nothing else has changed to the extent necessary to make much difference. FFS educate yourself.
Not just the U.S.
re @14:
Thanks for clarifying my confused babble@13. I was misattributing the cooling effect to simple “soot”, by confabulating it with the cooling effect of SO2 (sulfur dioxide). And I did not mention the side-effect of sulfur aerosols –> Acid Rain. Then, neglecting to say: how cleaning soot, also removes the SO2 from the exhaust. yada yada yada.
Some current Geo-Engineers (Terraformers) are proposing we spray megatons of sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere to counteract all the CO2 we’re also putting there; IE let Cooling effects cancel the warmers. With little blips of hesitation; that the slightest error of magnitude could be totally catastrophic.
Feh, these are just the people they could find quotes from. You can’t tell me that Idaho has only one out of four congressdouches who deny climate change. All that ever comes out of here are rubber stamp Republicans. (only exceptions: Butch Otter, Patriot Act Disapproving Republican; Walt Minnick, Doomed Democrat Republican; Bill Sali, Super Dickhead Republican)
Yes, by all means, let’s dither for another few dozen years, the climate will wait. Wouldn’t want to take positive action and improve society for nothing.
Literally!
(Man, it feels good to use that word right)
Just checked the numbers for my state… you’d think that the representative for eastern Long Island would be a bit more concerned about the Hamptons getting flooded. But no…
A bit more on the “Global Cooling” meme:
The denialists try to make this sound as if scientists have no clue about climate. Actually, if you read the scientific literature of the time (as opposed to Time and Newsweek), it is clear that scientists were well aware of what was causing the lack of warming–sulfate aerosols from burning of dirty fossil fuels. However, far from a consensus, there was a lively debate as to the severity of the cooling threat. As it turns out, the scientists who were concerned about cooling significantly underestimated the warming due to CO2. So, far from being evidence against the current consensus, this actually favors it. It’s not just a red herrring, it’s an own goal against the denialists.
Nick Gotts @14:
Decreases albedo, surely.
A lot of these nuts represent my state, North Carolina. Before 2010, this would have been unthinkable, but in 2010 an anti-tax, anti-regulation, basically anti-people shitstain named Art Pope, who made his fortune stiffing workers in the low-end retail business, essentially bought the NC legislature and stuffed it with his obedient little yes-people. Whether Pope is a climate change denialist or not, I do not know. But climate change denial is so deeply embedded in the yes-people that he chose (and the people that voted for them) that it was a foregone conclusion that his representatives in the legislature would also be climate change denialists (and civil-rights denialists and teacher union denialists and fair pay denialists and environmental degradation denialists and …).
@johnharshman
Presumably, most of those 46% have only shifted from “climate change isn’t real” to “”climate change is real, but it’s a net positive for humans” or “climate change is real but it’d be too expensive to do anything about it.”
microraptor
there after to end up saying yes climate change is real and humans are a major cause and the major cause was liberal policies of regulation and taxation. If we had just let the hand of the market free range all our problems would have been solved. It was government standing in the way of free market that was(is) at fault.
uncle frogy
Surprise. All the listed climate change deniers are Rethuglicans. What hive mind?
One of the things that drives me bonkers about quotes like this is that this was *40* years ago, which means many/most of the people supposedly talking about global cooling are *dead*. You don’t get to treat current scientists as if they were the same people as those dead scientists merely because you apply the “left-wing” label to them all. All “left wing” means in this context is “people who don’t see the world the way I do”.
Rob Grigjanis@24,
Um, yes. thanks. A near-inevitable consequence of starting by saying ’twas brillig’s comment was confused!
peterh:
Next time try googling before you make claims refuted 5 years ago.
twas brillig@18,
See Rob Grigjanis@24! Yes, the geoengineering proposal to loft sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere is highly dangerous, but not so much because they could over-compensate (because the aerosols don’t stay up that long), as because (a) it could completely fuck-up rainfall patterns, notably the Asian monsoon, (b) it would do nothing to help halt ocean acidification and (c) if the program was disrupted, we’d get all the staved-off warming in one big lump! The only geoengineering-type solutions that would actually be a good idea would be to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it in some stable form/place – and no-one knows how to do that on the required scale. As of now, geoengineering proposals are basically a way of distracting attention from the urgent need to cut emissions.
I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you!
that it is only 56%. I would have guessed upwards of 75% at least. I’m guessing there are a fair number of the remaining 44% who take the peterh approach of non-denial denials.
Why aren’t Americans up in arms, pitchforks and torches against this institutionalized bribery that the law allows?
Seriously, they get money and you can’t even jail them!?
@Nick Gotts #32
I also heard a proposal a while back about enriching antarctic seas with iron in Summer months as a fair bit of the phytoplankton are iron limited at that time. I haven’t read anything on that in a long while, so it may be dated.
@ 23 a_ray_in_dilbert_space
The AMS has a good paper on the actual state of warming vs. cooling in published science of the period. It clearly shows the preponderance of peer-reviewed work in those days predicted an imminent warming trend.
skylanetc
As someone who was around at that time, I remember the “Greenhouse Effect” as it was then called was definitely a thing at the time. It was much more of a concern than cooling. The impending ice stuff seemed to be very fringe or journalistic sensationalism over science that said we should be in cooling phase and headed for an ice age in umpteen thousand years. I think there is also lot of conflation of fears of a “nuclear winter” after a major nuclear war (remember, this was during cold war) with the idea that climate scientists were predicting cooling or even an impending ice age. The cynic in me suspects that this conflation is deliberate.
Grewgills@35,
Chucking large quantities of a key nutrient into an ecosystem (assuming you could actually chuck large enough quantities to make a difference) sounds dodgy to me: some organisms will benefit, others may get crowded out, and longer-term effects are hard to predict. The proposal also requires that the carbon fixed by the phytoplankton actually stays fixed.
@Nick #38
I heard this in a chemical oceanography course way back in the 90s, so it is dated. My memory of it was that large numbers of common phytoplankton were(are?) iron limited. I’m not sure what effect seeding iron would have on overall assemblages, ie whether the winners would be different or whether the same winners would just reproduce in greater numbers. I’m also not sure if that would simply mean more zooplankton, more small fish, etc on out the web that could cancel out any carbon fixed. This was early 90s and so relatively early on in the discussion of what could be done to mitigate what was just beginning to be understood as global climate change. People were still talking about seeding the upper atmosphere with sulphates.
Google results from “iron seeding antarctic“. Looks like they have run some experiments with mixed results.