NY Times - Al Gore - "We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change"

[TomCADem]

The climate deniers, of course, would probably reject a novel by Ernest Hemingway as great literature if they found a typo on their copy. Likewise, they seize on isolated errors by individual scientists to reject the reality of climate change out of hand. Here is Al Gore putting the current assault on climate change science in perspective:

We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy — the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century.

But what a burden would be lifted! We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands. We could instead celebrate the naysayers who had doggedly persisted in proving that every major National Academy of Sciences report on climate change had simply made a huge mistake.

I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.

[Subdivisions]

1. Link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28gore.html?hp

[Minimus]

2. Just today I overheard a couple of women discussing all of the snow

and saying it just proves global warming is a myth.... I had to bite my tongue because I did not want to get thrown out of the salon before getting my manicure.

Idiots!

[eleny]

3. "Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, ...

... neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm."

My favorite quote from the article.

[Uncle Joe]

4. It's an excellent read, I believe Al touches all the bases.

Thanks for the thread, TomCADem.:thumbsup:

[TomCADem]

6. Yet, the Corporate Media Is Trying To Portray Established Science As In Dispute

It is like the evolution versus creationism "controversy." There is no controversy. Just a bunch of nuts with an inordinate amount of media coverage.

[Uncle Joe]

9. I believe that's because the corporate media have a major conflict of interest to overcome.

Exxon and much of the established fossil fuel industry's profits are at stake and the corporate media in turn benefits from those profits in the form of selling commercials and advertising.

I believe the tide will turn as to corporate media coverage of fact and fiction when sustainable industries outstrip fossil fuel industries in commercial and advertising purchases or when mega shit hits the fan, I hope it's the former.

The vast majority of the corporate media aren't leaders when the path conflicts with own their perceived self-interest, at best they're reluctant followers, if not out right obstructionists.

That's why scientific consensus and studies; confirming human influenced global warming climate change far outstrip news media coverage both in quantity and confidence.

Just follow the dollars, because the corporate media sure does.

If the fossil fuel industry had any vision, they would consider them selves energy companies first and oil/coal industries second or third and they would use their financial resources to fund alternative, sustainable energy in a big way.

There is no reason oil companies can't convert to solar or coal companies to wind.

[Raine]

5. They can believe whatever they want

it doesn't change things, we'll see whose right in a few years. If wishes came true I would wish Gore was wrong to but ... I remember wishing my mother's cancer would go away ... she died.

[Arkana]

7. It is a crying shame that this man was never President.

[daleo]

8. You can wish smoking didn't cause cancer and heart disease

You can nitpick scientific studies to help sustain your wishes.

But sooner or later you have to face the facts. Same with global warming.