Are people starting to “get” global warming. Maybe, at least according to the poll below. Sad to say, this is what passes for ‘good news’ in climate change.
(Yale/CCC) — A large majority of Americans believe that global warming made several high profile extreme weather events worse, including the unusually warm winter of December 2011 and January 2012 (72%), record high summer temperatures in the U.S. in 2011 (70%), the drought in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 (69%), record snowfall in the U.S. in 2010 and 2011 (61%), the Mississippi River floods in the spring of 2011 (63%), and Hurricane Irene (59%).
I’m less optimistic. Let’s stipulate for example we have a run of really extreme weather. Say, the 2010 Russian heat wave stacked on the 2005 Atlantic storm season and the 2011 southwest drought all in one 12 month span. George Will or some other undeserving fossil will assure readers it’s all part of the natural cycle, and probably use the word “polemic” in one or more lecturous screed. Wingnut and fossil fuel friendly sites will trumpet that profound insight — why can’t professional climate scientists be as analytical and as intellectually honest as Mssr. Will? — and then note it snowed somewhere while fat-al-gore was visiting, ha! Congress and the WH will 1) do less than nothing if the GOP holds the power, or 2) just the other side of nothing if the dems are in charge.
And wingnut foot soldiers? Ahh yes, the fundies. Despite the disinformation thrown up elsewhere, they’ll be quietly scared shitless by everyone from their pastor to the next Tim LeHaye that the freak weather is proof the end is nigh. A proven winner for last minute tithes drives and Amazon preorders the nation over.
Sorry. But that’s what I think will happen.
Cynicism or realisism? Chicken or egg?
Use the word polemic or write something that is all polemic and nothing else?
Will happen? That is what ishappening. Yeah, you’re projecting into the future based on behavior you have seen in the past, and I am afraid you’re absolutely correct. Even worse will be when the next few years are not as bad due to La Nina going away. Texas and other SW states will get rain again after El Nino forms, and the deniers will crow about the climate returning to normal, ignoring the obvious: the new normal is several degrees above the old normal.
When the next El Nino goes away and the ocean starts to release captured heat 2010 will become the second hottest year on record. Despite that, Andrew Watts and his crowd will still tell people the climate is cooling, evangelical preachers will trumpet the signs of the Apocalypse as they pass their collection plates, and the majority of Americans will continue their daily routines as if nothing is wrong.
…And we’s all goan die. Praise Gaia, and pass the carbon credits.
“The Day After Tomorrow” is gonna play out. It will be apocalyptic.
@docsarvis #3
Here in Australia, we get the opposite. 10+ years of record droughts during El Nino conditions were pushing more and more people to accept that there were problems with the environment, if not that anthropogenic climate change was real (coal lobby here is crazy powerful).
Since then, there have been 2 La Nina years, resulting in record breaking floods up and down the east coast. Climate change deniers jumped all over it, claiming that the floods are proof it was all a hoax and that the climate scientists were doomsayers during the drought to ensure they keep getting research funding.
When El Nino hits again, the increased temperatures and decreased rainfall will likely be crippling. IPCC projections are for Australia’s food production capacity to decrease by between ~50 and ~80% over the next century. AND WE’RE STILL ‘DEBATING’ IT. -_-
At least we don’t have too many armageddon worshipping fundies out here.
Yeah sure, but I don’t like Al Gore so climate change can’t be true. It’s just so obvious I don’t know how you can deny it
Of course, we’ve known about Human Induced Rapid Global Overheating (HIRGO) as I call it since Svante Arrhenius and Joseph Fourer ie. the 19th century.
Gore was a real late comer who merely popularised – and,sadly, politicised – the issue.
At some point the realityof HIRGowillbecome undeniable.
We’ll have no more glaciers where they used to be. The Arctic will be ice free regularly in summer. Deserts will spread, seas will rise and extreme heatwaves, droughts, floods and so forth will be too common, too widespread and too severe to be shrugged offand ignored as just natural anymore.
I wonder when we’ll reach that stage.
How long it will take.
How much more damage will be done by then and how late we’ll delay acting seriously for.
Irony is, by delaying action now, the Deniers are costing themselves and us all so much more later – when many of them will be dead or dying.
It will cost so much more (in many senses of “cost”) and the measures we’ll have to take will have to be much harsher & more drastic.
All because we didn’t act earlier when we could have spared ourselves and or our children and world so much. It’s depressing and infuriating and makes me glad I’ve no kids of my own.
Aaarggh! Typos, sorry. That’s :
For clarity.