CON GAMES: The Graying Of The Green Thing

March 30th, 2008 at 10:19am Michael Conniff 2

In the midst of one of the panels here at the Aspen Environment Forum, a wizened professor from the University of Alaska took the microphone proffered for questions from the environmental cognoscenti and said that a bear had just been shot and killed at Fort Yukon, Alaska, 250 miles from the shore. He said to his knowledge no bear had ever before been killed that far inland in that part of Alaska.

If I were making this up, I would say there was an audible murmur or perhaps even an angry hum as the choir in Aspen, brought together by the Aspen Institute and National Geographic magazine, ingested the significance of this single environmental tragedy. Not so: there were no murmurs, no guttural evidence of existential angst anywhere to be seen or heard in the audience at the Aspen Environment Forum.

The choir absorbed the news—one more damning fact about climate change—and continued on with the session. Were they oblivious to the news? Not at all…but they did know there was not a damn thing they could do about it. The bear was out of the barn.

And there, in a microcosm, is the graying of the macro world of environmental activism. In the panel “How Much Time to Act on Climate Change?” the conclusion was (a) there is no time; (b) no one has really figured out what to do about it; and (c) about 40 percent of people in the United States—the tipping point of the populace—is dazed and confused about the issue at best.

“We have no more time,” said United Nations Foundation president Tim Wirth. “We have to act immediately….. It is absolutely essential to have the appropriate policy framework around this.”

“We need to act by about 1980,” said Lara Hansen, chief scientist of the World Wildlife Fund’s International Climate Change Program. “We’re substantially behind the clock.”

Even with Al Gore’s green Oscar conveniently on the mantle, the environmental movement proper has arrived at a moment in time when so much needs to be done so soon that nobody quite knows what to do next, despite Wirth’s sweeping seven pillars of action that include a price on carbon, an international framework, better regulation, research and development, adaptation, and population control.

“The windows of opportunity…are rapidly closing,” Hansen said. “We need everybody out there doing everything.”

Cathy Zoio, the chief executive officer and executive director of the Alliance for Climate Protection, is the one who came up with the 40 percent number of those polled in the United States who don’t quite know what to think about climate change. Like Hansen, who suggested “doing everything,” Zoio posited a world where green SWAT teams go door to door, “neighborhood by neighborhood,” to retrofit a recalcitrant infrastructure.

To do everything is, of course, to do nothing, door to door or not. In such a fashion has the environmental movement shifted from trying to convince the world that climate change is real, to actually trying to do something about it. The best the panel could serve up was putting a price on carbon, according to the Goldman Sachs Inc. senior investment strategist Abby Joseph Cohen, and more better regulation. Beyond those two big-issue kahunas, there’s literal another tsunami out there waiting to hit.

So why has the green issue faded from the Presidential primaries as the field has narrowed to three? As a political issue, climate change is stuck in the limbo of acolytes feeling hybrid cars and newfangled lightbulbs are the key, even as the reality sets in that we are doing way too little way too late.

If a bear falls in the forest, can anybody hear?

Entry Filed under: Environment, Politics, Aspen, Colorado, Con Games, Pitkin County, Garfield County, Eagle County, The West, United Post

4 Comments Add your own

1. reckless G | March 30th, 2008 at 5:12 pm

Nice post Michael, timely and obviously very important.

The problem is that the only green that currently matters in America is the kind that can be stuffed into the pockets of the corporate fatcats pulling the strings in Washington DC. The indication that this will change with the next administration is nil, which is why it isn't seriously discussed by either party's campaign.

It doesn't make any difference how many of us drive hybrids, build green, or turn our lights off for an hour one day a year. It's going to take massive government involvement to address this issue in any way that could possibly matter.
2. alpha6 | April 1st, 2008 at 11:44 am

Conman...you are being conned.

Report: Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling (Daily Tech – February 26, 2008)

Excerpt: All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously. A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year time. For all sources, it's the single fastest temperature change every recorded, either up or down. […] Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on. No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

Forget Global Warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age (Canada's National Post – Feb. 25, 2008)

Excerpt: Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966. The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average." China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them. And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past. The ice is back. Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year. […]Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as "a drop in the bucket." Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to "stock up on fur coats." He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon. The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased. It's way too early to claim the same is about to happen again, but then it's way too early for the hysteria of the global warmers, too.

Arctic Sea Ice Sees 'Significant Increase' in Size Following 'Extreme Cold' (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation -CBC – February 15, 2008)

Excerpt: There's an upside to the extreme cold temperatures northern Canadians have endured in the last few weeks: scientists say it's been helping winter sea ice grow across the Arctic, where the ice shrank to record-low levels last year. Temperatures have stayed well in the -30s C and -40s C range since late January throughout the North, with the mercury dipping past -50 C in some areas. Satellite images are showing that the cold spell is helping the sea ice expand in coverage by about 2 million square kilometres, compared to the average winter coverage in the previous three years. "It's nice to know that the ice is recovering," Josefino Comiso, a senior research scientist with the Cryospheric Sciences Branch of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, told CBC News on Thursday. […] Winter sea ice could keep expanding. The cold is also making the ice thicker in some areas, compared to recorded thicknesses last year, Lagnis added. "The ice is about 10 to 20 centimetres thicker than last year, so that's a significant increase," he said. If temperatures remain cold this winter, Langis said winter sea ice coverage will continue to expand.

Ice between Canada and Greenland reaches highest level in 15 years (Greenland’s Sermitsiak News – February 12, 2008)

Excerpt: Minus 30 degrees Celsius. That's how cold it's been in large parts of western Greenland where the population has been bundling up in hats and scarves. At the same time, Denmark's Meteorological Institute states that the ice between Canada and southwest Greenland right now has reached its greatest extent in 15 years. 'Satellite pictures show that the ice expansion has extended farther south this year. In fact, it's a bit past the Nuuk area. We have to go back 15 years to find ice expansion so far south. On the eastern coast it hasn't been colder than normal, but there has been a good amount of snow.'

New Peer-Reviewed Study Shows Arctic COOLING Over last 1500 years

(Study published in Climate Dynamics, and the work was conducted by Håkan Grudd of Stockholm University’s Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology - Published online: 30 January 2008)

Excerpt: “The late-twentieth century is not exceptionally warm in the new Torneträsk record: On decadal-to-century timescales, periods around AD 750, 1000, 1400, and 1750 were all equally warm, or warmer. The warmest summers in this new reconstruction occur in a 200-year period centred on AD 1000. A ‘Medieval Warm Period’ is supported by other paleoclimate evidence from northern Fennoscandia, although the new tree-ring evidence from Tornetraäsk suggests that this period was much warmer than previously recognised.” “The new Torneträsk summer temperature reconstruction shows a trend of -0.3°C over the last 1,500 years.”

Antarctic Summer Thaw 'Later Than Normal' (AccuWeather Global Warming News – February 6, 2008)

Excerpt: Actually, the summer thaw down there was later than normal, and NASA believes that La Nina might have something to do with that. Usually, the breakup of fast ice around the Antarctica Peninsula occurs in early to mid-December, but this area was solidly frozen well into January. By the way, according to the Polar Research Group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the current southern hemispheric sea-ice area is at 2.9 million sq/km, which is about 400,000 sq/km greater than the normal level expected for this time of year, or slightly above-normal. Based on the latest trend on the chart, it appears that the southern hemispheric sea-ice area could be right at normal by March.

Global warming sceptics bouyed by record cold (UK Telegraph – February 26, 2008)

Excerpt: Global warming sceptics are pointing to recent record cold temperatures in parts of North America and Asia and the return of Arctic Sea ice to suggest fears about climate change may be overblown. According to the US National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), the average temperature of the global land surface in January 2008 was below the 20th century mean (-0.02°F/-0.01°C) for the first time since 1982. […]Asked about the Arctic ice cover, Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, told the Post the Arctic winter had been so severe, the ice has not only recovered but was actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than the same time last year. "

GLOBAL WARMING? IT’S THE COLDEST WINTER IN DECADES (UK Daily Express – Feb. 18, 2008)

Excerpt: NEW evidence has cast doubt on claims that the world’s ice-caps are melting, it emerged last night. Satellite data shows that concerns over the levels of sea ice may have been premature. It was feared that the polar caps were vanishing because of the effects of global warming. But figures from the respected US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that almost all the “lost” ice has come back. Ice levels which had shrunk from 13million sq km in January 2007 to just four million in October, are almost back to their original levels. Figures show that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than is usual for the time of year. The data flies in the face of many current thinkers and will be seized on by climate change sceptics who deny that the world is undergoing global warming. […] Central and southern China, the USA and Canada were hit hard by snowstorms. Even the Middle East saw snow, with Jerusalem, Damascus, Amman and northern Saudi Arabia reporting the heaviest falls in years and below-zero temperatures. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan snow and freezing weather killed 120 people.

Report: Sun's 'disturbingly quiet' cycle prompts fear of global COOLING (February 8, 2008 - Investor’s Business Daily)

Excerpt: Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined. And they're worried about global cooling, not warming.

Solar data suggest our concerns should be about global cooling – (By Geologist David Archibald of Summa Development Limited in Australia – March 2008 Scientific Paper)

Excerpt: Solar Cycle 24: Implications for the United StatesExcerpt: I will demonstrate that the Sun drives climate, and use that demonstrated relationship to predict the Earth’s climate to 2030. It is a prediction that differs from most in the public domain. It is a prediction of imminent cooling. […] The carbon dioxide that Mankind will put into the atmosphere over the next few hundred years will offset a couple of millenia of post-Holocene Optimum cooling before we plunge into the next ice age. There are no deleterious consequences of higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are wholly beneficial.

Report: Too Much Ice = Polar Bears Starving? (Scientist Philip Stott’s Global Warming Politics – February 15, 2008)

Excerpt: Apparently, according to a report, Svend Erik Hendriksen, a certified weather observer in the Kangerlussuaq Greenland MET Office, who is responsible for all the weather observations at Kangerlussuaq Airport (near to Sisimiut), says that the cause is too much sea ice: “Several polar bears located (at least 6) close to Sisimiut town on the West coast ...Too much sea ice, so they are very hungry...Error number 36 in the movie An Inconvenient Truth Al Gore says the polar bear need more ice to survive... Now we have a lot of ice, but the polar bear is starving and find their food at the garbage dumps in towns. It's also influence the local community, polar bear alerts, keep kids away from the schools and so on.... The first one was shot at February 1st.” Sadly, that “first one” is the poor female hung out in the newspaper photograp.

Report: Solar Activity Diminishes; Researchers Predict Another Ice Age - Sunspots have all but vanished in recent years. (Daily Tech – February 9, 2008)

Excerpt: In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov predicted the sun would soon peak, triggering a rapid decline in world temperatures. Only last month, the view was echoed by Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. who advised the world to "stock up on fur coats." Sorokhtin, who calls man's contribution to climate change "a drop in the bucket," predicts the solar minimum to occur by the year 2040, with icy weather lasting till 2100 or beyond. Observational data seems to support the claims -- or doesn't contradict it, at least. […] Researcher Dr. Timothy Patterson, director of the Geoscience Center at Carleton University, shares the concern. Patterson is finding "excellent correlations" between solar fluctuations, a relationship that historically, he says doesn't exist between CO2 and past climate changes.

Greenland climate not varying from ‘natural climate variabilty’ (Greenie Watch - Dec. 2007)

Excerpt: RECENT PAPER ON THE HISTORY OF GREENLAND ICE MASS Showing that, although the Greenland melt has increased during the 1992-2006 period, the melt was even higher in 1900s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. So there is no indication that the current melt is above natural climate variability. Of course people who look just on the 1990 to 2007 period "see" great melting acceleration and influence of carbon dioxide and anthropogenic climate change.

Scientist predicts 'Coming of a New Ice Age' (Winningreen February 2008 ) (By Gerald Marsh. retired physicist from the Argonne National Laboratory and a former consultant to the Department of Defense on strategic nuclear technology and policy in the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton Administration.)

Excerpt: Contrary to the conventional wisdom of the day, the real danger facing humanity is not global warming, but more likely the coming of a new Ice Age. What we live in now is known as an interglacial, a relatively brief period between long ice ages. Unfortunately for us, most interglacial periods last only about ten thousand years, and that is how long it has been since the last Ice Age ended. How much longer do we have before the ice begins to spread across the Earth's surface? Less than a hundred years or several hundred? We simply don't know. Even if all the temperature increase over the last century is attributable to human activities, the rise has been relatively modest one of a little over one degree Fahrenheit — an increase well within natural variations over the last few thousand years. […] NASA has predicted that the solar cycle peaking in 2022 could be one of the weakest in centuries and should cause a very significant cooling of Earth's climate. Will this be the trigger that initiates a new Ice Age? We ought to carefully consider this possibility before we wipe out our current prosperity by spending trillions of dollars to combat a perceived global warming threat that may well prove to be only a will-o-the-wisp. [See also the U.S. Senate Report released December 20, 2007, “Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007”

Taken from the following site, but actual articles are from those referenced.

http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?2bedc079-41fc-4718-a326-4c5a52013898
3. alpha6 | April 1st, 2008 at 12:04 pm

I have linked the whole article for your reading pleasure. In an effort to keep things readable on this post I have taken only the last few paragraphs. The whole article is worth reading to gain a realistic perspective on the "global warming" project.

The deceit behind global warming

By Christopher Booker and Richard North

...All this frenzy has rested on the assumption that global temperatures will continue to rise in tandem with CO2 and that, unless mankind takes drastic action, our planet is faced with the apocalypse so vividly described by Al Gore in his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth.

Yet recently, stage five of the story has seen all sorts of question marks being raised over Gore's alleged consensus. For instance, he claimed that by the end of this century world sea levels will have risen by 20 ft when even the IPCC in its latest report, only predicts a rise of between four and 17 inches.There is also of course the harsh reality that, wholly unaffected by Kyoto, the economies of China and India are now expanding at nearly 10 per cent a year, with China likely to be emitting more CO2 than the US within two years.

More serious, however, has been all the evidence accumulating to show that, despite the continuing rise in CO2 levels, global temperatures in the years since 1998 have no longer been rising and may soon even be falling.

It was a telling moment when, in August, Gore's closest scientific ally, James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was forced to revise his influential record of US surface temperatures showing that the past decade has seen the hottest years on record. His graph now concedes that the hottest year of the 20th century was not 1998 but 1934, and that four of the 10 warmest years in the past 100 were in the 1930s.

Furthermore, scientists and academics have recently been queuing up to point out that fluctuations in global temperatures correlate more consistently with patterns of radiation from the sun than with any rise in CO2 levels, and that after a century of high solar activity, the sun's effect is now weakening, presaging a likely drop in temperatures.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/04/eaclimate104.xml
4. Star Eagle | April 2nd, 2008 at 4:43 pm

Very interesting Alpa,

And, you may be right as, I am sure you know back in the 70's "they" were calling for a hot spell followed by a long cold winter (Ice Age). That may be the formula yet.

What makes it so damn difficult is that what is usually called for also is wild fluctuations in the climate also, such as tornado's at earlier times of the year, stronger hurricanes with longer seasons etc.

Then you have the added weirdness that in the case of hurricanes just when everybody over here was wacking out about Katrina and how bad next year was going to be... nothing! Well, nothing over here anyway. It just so happened that the next year Asia got their butts kicked by typhoons like never before (or so they said).

Ah.. the weather, you know what they say almost everywhere. And they do talk about it most everywhere. And then usually the conversation usually ends with "can't change it". Ah.. the good old days.