Planetsave

The science of climate change is not really the question at hand anymore. Of course, there is always more to learn, but that highly accelerated climate change is real and that humans are the main cause of that are no longer questionable facts to the large majority of the scientific community. What is questionable is whether or not we will address the issue, or to what degree we will address it, and how much our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, etc. will have to pay the price for our late and limited action.

Of course, outside of the scientific community, many climate change deniers and so-called “skeptics” continue to trick the media and act as if those fundamental issues of climate science are not resolved. As a concise response (with relevant links) to some of the most popular claims put forth by the anti-science climate change deniers, here is a list of 7 myths regarding climate change science.

For more in-depth coverage of a few of these topics, read Dr. Joseph Romm’s “The year climate science caught up with what climate scientists have been saying for years” or follow the links included for each myth.

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Michael Mann, the somewhat infamous climate scientist from Penn State, shouldn’t be so infamous after all, we find out yet another time!

“An academic inquiry into the so-called ‘climategate’ email scandal has concluded that a well-known U.S. scientist [Mann] did not directly or indirectly falsify data in his research,” according to Mike De Souza of the National Post.

The investigation made it very clear (as other peer-reviewed analyses have done) that Mann’s “trick,” so horribly taken out of context and demonized by anti-science media and followers, was nothing unscientific, misleading or to be concerned about.

“They were not falsifying data,” said the report. “They were trying to construct an understandable graph for those who were not experts in the field. The so-called ‘trick’ was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field.”

Furthermore, the report went on to praise Mann for how he dealt with this greatly unfounded skepticism and criticism of his scientific work. “The report praised Dr. Mann for his ‘composure’ and ‘forthright response’ to all questions, finding no evidence that he had attempted to hide or destroy information, emails or data from his research. It also cleared him of allegations of misusing any privileged or confidential information he had access to as an academic scholar.”

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It’s time to get angry. This is what John Kerry, not exactly the most extreme guy, is saying to us. Is it the best solution?

This is what Kerry told advocates of climate legislation recently:

“I want you to go out there and start knocking on doors and talking to people and telling people this has to happen. You know, if the Tea Party folks can go out there and get angry because they think their taxes are too high, for God’s sake, a lot of citizens ought to get angry about the fact that they’re being killed and our planet is being injured by what’s happening on a daily basis by the way we provide our power and our fuel and the old practices that we have. That’s something worth getting angry about.” (emphasis mine)

As part of my Bachelor’s thesis in sociology and environmental studies, about 6 years ago, I studied the history of the environmental movement in great depth. Since then, I have been keeping my eye on things, on the bigger picture, as I work in different fields — natural and organic foods, city planning and sustainable development, alternative transportation, and, now, online journalism with a green tint.

The underlying question, consistently, is: “How do we avoid, or — worst case scenario — deal with, huge environmental collapse?”

The issues have only gotten bigger (see: Global Warming in the Arctic — Much Worse than We Thought!, Greenland Ice Sheet Melting Faster than Ever and Oceans Absorbing CO2, Preventing Climate Change — Good, Right? No). But we seem to be going down the same road consistently, despite all the amazing efforts of people trying to turn this car around (and transform it into something green-friendly). The environmental movement, perhaps bigger than ever, still seems on the brink of failure.

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A new Minnesota stakeholder report identifies 38 solid waste reform recommendations that could dramatically reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions.

A report submitted December 31 to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) outlines 38 ways the state could achieve a 20-year reduction of 52.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions through changes in solid waste policy and practices.

Coordinated by the Minnesota Environmental Initiative (MEI), a nonprofit organization, the report contains 22 consensus recommendations from a roup of stakeholders and another 16 with majority support in the group. Read the rest of this entry »

New research out of the UK shows definitively that reducing greenhouse gases can save millions of lives around the world. The research makes use of case studies to demonstrate the co-benefits of tackling climate change in four sectors: electricity generation, household energy use, transportation, and food and agriculture.

The studies were commissioned by the NIEHS, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in part to help inform discussions next month at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen.
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Google Inc. is joining forces with space agencies around the world and the conservation organization Group on Earth Observations (GEO) to monitor deforestation rates using satellite imagery. Among the space agencies working on the program are NASA, the ESA, and the national space agencies of Japan, Germany, Italy, India, and Brazil.

The GEO is a global partnership of 80 governments and more than 50 organizations. Internet company Google currently collects satellite images for use in its Google Earth application, and will be providing satellite images to the project.

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This week The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) revealed that last month was the second hottest land and ocean temperature on record for the month of September. NOAA’s records date back to 1880. In the 100 plus year history, only September 2005 showed warmer temperatures.

This is a concerning trend, considering the 2 warmest months of September (the last month of summer) out of 129 years of record keeping, have been felt in the last 4 years. Scientists, researchers, and leaders in government and industry use NCDC’s monthly reports to help track trends and other changes in the world’s climate.

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Communities of all sorts are being disturbed by the fires in California. As another result of climate change, bird communities are expected to see some big changes in other ways, according to a new report released on September 1.

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An expert advisory committee this week released recommendations on restoring Minnesota’s dwindling moose population, whose decline one expert said is related to gradual warming of the state’s climate. “The moose, of course, is not an animal that deals very well with heat,’’ panel chairperson Rolf Peterson of Michigan Technological University said. “We wouldn’t even be here today if it wasn’t for climate change.’’

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We can’t expect much from the oil industry, but Greenpeace’s newest finding is as ugly as it gets.
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