Here Comes the Sun

Good Times Santa Cruz ^ | Tuesday, 07 July 2009 | Bruce Willey

[artichokegrower]

…. and all is not right Just a few days after the official start of summer, while much of the nation sweltered under a heat wave, the House narrowly passed what was largely regarded as a “landmark” climate change bill. The Waxman-Markey Bill, which would limit carbon dioxide pollution and require the use of renewable energy is due to take effect two and a half years from now—despite what would seem an existential urgency for all humankind in the most dire terms possible. With their heads in the sand and their sunburned asses in the air, 212 congressmen voted against the bill including 44 Democrats. (Only eight Republican members of the House voted for the bill, but let’s applaud their bravery.) Yet for most climate scientists, the bill is an utterly, undeniably watered down version of what needs to be done—about as effective as fighting a forest fire with a wet towel—and will do little to halt what we are doing to the planet. Nonetheless, it is a start.

Sitting outside in Big Pine near the melt waters of the Palisade Glacier, the Sierra Nevada’s biggest piece of ice, I read the transcripts from the House decision on the Internet. While I read the arguments coming from the floor of the House, I pondered my split second of geologic time on this earth sandwiched between a thin crust separating me from the hot magma below and the thin, delicate atmosphere protecting me from the coldness of space, the searing atomic rays of the sun. I also mused how much the Palisade Glacier has shrunk since first walking on it twenty years ago. At the rate it’s going I’ll be lucky to depart this earth with a shred of ice left.

One thing, though, about the climate change debate stood out loud and clear. Representative Paul Broun of Georgia stated that climate change is nothing but a “hoax perpetrated out of the scientific community.” His remarks were met with a loud applause. This, coming from a state whose capital city gets the not-so-flattering moniker “Hotlanta.” Well, Mr. Broun and others, wait till your Southern climate is more like Panama without the ocean influence. It will come far sooner than you think if MIT scientists are correct in surmising that Illinois will be more like East Texas, New Hampshire like South Carolina. The climate is rapidly sliding south.

Despite the overwhelming consensus among the climate science community that humans have, and are, contributing to climate change, the impulse within the media, within our elected officials, within ourselves even, is to find an ever-dwindling fringe voice of global warming skeptics, or contrarians. The truth, to put it simply, is too much to take—even though we know that many of these climate contrarians are funded directly or indirectly by the oil industry and other carbon-based industries.

But you don’t even need the world’s top climatologists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who have been issuing dire warnings that life on earth is being adversely affected by warming for years now, to understand the reality of the situation. Just step outside to witness the rapid melting of glaciers and polar ice caps, small islands being swallowed by rising seas, or the fact that the last nine out of 10 years were the hottest on record since 1860. The harbingers are here and they are way scary.

We need to realize sooner rather than later that the threat from terrorism is nothing in comparison to the global terror of a warming planet. That the real Jihad doesn’t issue forth from a Madrassa or training camp in Pakistan but from a coal-fired smokestack, from the rear of our cars, from our way of life. And by this implication we are all terrorists on a suicide mission, carbon strapped to our bodies like bombs.

James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, testified in 1988 before congress that he was 99 percent sure that human-induced global climate change was happening. Since then his language and urgency have matched the threats caused by dangerous carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. (If Hansen’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he is the same scientist who made headlines after he accused the Bush Administration of suppressing scientific research on global warming. “It seems more like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the United States,” he said, regarding the muzzling he has received by his government employer.)

Hansen more recently called on chief fossil fuel executives to be “put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature.” He also called (in a recent New Yorker article) freight trains carrying coal, “death trains.” Our language and consciousness addressing the problem must change too, in accordance with the problem. If we don’t, the next generation will look back on this critical time in our planet’s history and see the Sen. Broun’s, the ExxonMobiles, the Hummer owners, all those who stood by and did nothing, in the same way we look back at Nazi war criminals.

Maybe if the language of global warming were as precise and hardboiled as the facts, we would be more apt to act. Maybe it would be more difficult to create a false sense of security, a protective barrier between the overwhelming scientific evidence and our need to be sheltered from such a dire predicament. There’s simply too much at stake to be in denial. And to those that voted against the climate change bill, applaud yourselves. Each clap is the thunder of global terrorism writ large on our very survival, our precious lives.

[artichokegrower]

An opinion from one living on the far left coast in the "Nuclear Free" city of Santa Cruz

[Westbrook]

What a tool.

CO2 is NOT a pollutant!

There would be NO vegetation, ergo NO LIFE, without it!

[Always Right]

CO2 is NOT a pollutant!...There would be NO vegetation, ergo NO LIFE, without it!

Well.....Liberals consider life a pollutant too.

[Richard Axtell]

"Maybe if the language of global warming were as precise and hardboiled as the facts, we would be more apt to act."

Maybe if there were ANY facts supporting the existence, much less the C02 human initiated cause of "Global Warming" this author's overheated argument would be something more than just hot air. It isn't, though.

[kindred]

The man believes the fables and myths of the leftist liberal politicians and their hired junk science so call global warming experts, though the rest of the world knows better.
Liberals are such fools, they will believe anything as long as it is not true and they can profit in some way, it seems to me. This explains the lack of interest by those who know better than the chicken little liberal experts of the world who use their brains to think before speaking.

[Minn]

Just a few days after the official start of summer, while much of the nation sweltered under a heat wave

And just which portion is that? Certainly not the east or Midwest. And if you can point out a region with warm weather, is that any different than the last 500 years or so?

[tet68]

Far left?
This guy is in the stratosphere!

We need to realize sooner rather than later that the threat from terrorism is nothing in comparison to the global terror of a warming planet. That the real Jihad doesn’t issue forth from a Madrassa or training camp in Pakistan but from a coal-fired smokestack, from the rear of our cars, from our way of life. And by this implication we are all terrorists on a suicide mission, carbon strapped to our bodies like bombs.

[Libertarian4Bush]

just registered there and commented. you gotta register and login off the main page.

[Minn]

It's hard to imagine a more hyperbolic, poorly reasoned column.

You should save this little gem in a drawer somewhere, Mr. Willey. Then, 30 years from now when no islands at all have sunk into the sea (just like none have today; you really need to do some research); when Hotlanta still has its nick name due to it's nightlife not its weather; when James Hansen and Al Gore have replaced Chicken Little and The Boy Thad Cried Wolf in parables told to children about stupid alarmists and their stupid theories, you can laugh about what an alarmist fool you were in your younger days.

[PreciousLiberty]

Clearly delusional. For instance:

"Just step outside to witness the rapid melting of glaciers and polar ice caps, small islands being swallowed by rising seas, or the fact that the last nine out of 10 years were the hottest on record since 1860."

Many glaciers are growing, however glaciers aren't a good measure of the global temperature, they're generally more influenced by local microclimates.

As to "polar ice caps", note that the last three years were the first since 2004 for total sea ice to rise above a "zero" anomaly, and the trend for the last three years is up:

And the "nine of the last ten years were the warmest":

Note several excursions to a zero degree temperature anomaly, including last month...

[WVKayaker]

[WVNan]

Guess this nutjob didn’t see the report of frost on Prince Edward Island last night or the night before. First time on record of frost there in July.

[Interesting Times]

Meanwhile, the Earth continues its decade-long cooling trend...

[Signalman]

James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, testified in 1988 before congress that he was 99 percent sure that human-induced global climate change was happening.

I wonder if Hansen and Paul Ehrlich are buddies.

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[artichokegrower]

High today in Santa Cruz, CA 75

July 9 record high for Santa Cruz 90 (1981)

Not exactly a heat wave out here

[mware]

Heck when I went over to my aunts house this morning for coffee it was 58 degrees. I live in southern new jersey.

[WVNan]

We have not yet reached short-sleeve weather. It’s July for crying out loud, we’re freezing here.

[FreepShop1]

even though we know that many of these climate contrarians are funded directly or indirectly by the oil industry and other carbon-based industries.

So Rep. Broun (R-GA) is a tool of the massive Georgia oil industry? Huh? Is FreeRepublic funded by Exxon Mobil? What about the Nobel Laureates who have called AGW a fraud. Are they shills for Big Oil too? Where's the proof? As with their phony "studies" (like the "MIT" one which consisted of nothing more than 2 grad students), they have no proof of a conspiracy to "silence the truth". They have been caught with their hands in a trillion dollar cookie jar. They are losing. And they don't like it one bit.

[FreepShop1]

the next generation will look back on this critical time in our planet’s history and see the Sen. Broun’s, the ExxonMobiles, the Hummer owners, all those who stood by and did nothing, in the same way we look back at Nazi war criminals.

Tell me how this is not incitement to violence, or murder. What did we do to "Nazi war criminals"? We killed them. Bruce Willey has just threatened a Congressman, oil executives, and people who drive Hummers with violence. If he was a conservative doing this, he would be under Federal investigation.