Carbon-dioxide concentrations hit their highest level in 4m years

[RandomGuy]

[redacted]

Your quote didn't say who "Emanuel" was.

Kerry Emanuel registered as a Republican as soon he turned 18, in 1973. The aspiring scientist was turned off by what he saw as the Left’s blind ideology. “I had friends who denied Pol Pot was killing people in Cambodia,” he says. “I reacted very badly to the triumph of ideology over reason.”

Back then, Emanuel saw the Republican Party as the political fit for a data-driven scientist. Today, the professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Ins ute of Technology is considered one of the United States’ foremost authorities on climate change—particularly on how rising carbon pollution will increase the intensity of hurricanes.

In January 2012, just before South Carolina’s Republican presidential primary, the Charleston-based Christian Coalition of America, one of the most influential advocacy groups in conservative politics, flew Emanuel down to meet with the GOP presidential candidates. Perhaps an unlikely prophet of doom where global warming is concerned, the coalition has begun to push Republicans to take action on climate change, out of worry that coming catastrophes could hit the next generation hard, especially the world’s poor.

The meetings didn’t take. “[Newt] Gingrich and [Mitt] Romney understood, … and I think they even believed the evidence and understood the risk,” Emanuel says. “But they were so terrified by the extremists in their party that in the primaries they felt compelled to deny it. Which is not good leadership, good integrity. I got a low impression of them as leaders.” Throughout the Republican presidential primaries, every candidate but one—former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who was knocked out of the race at the start—questioned, denied, or outright mocked the science of climate change.

Soon after his experience in South Carolina, Emanuel changed his lifelong Republican Party registration to independent. “The idea that you could look a huge amount of evidence straight in the face and, for purely ideological reasons, deny it, is anathema to me,” he says.

[RandomGuy]

Inglis, who left Congress in 2011, recalls the challenge his son, Rob, threw down to him a decade ago before he was to vote in his first election. He said, “I’ll vote for you, Dad, but you’ve got to clean up your act on the environment.’ ”

Inglis had never given much thought to the issue of climate change. As a by-the-books conservative, he says, “I accepted that if Al Gore was for it, I was against it, until my son challenged my ignorance on the subject.” Inglis spent the next few years educating himself on climate issues. He joined the House Science Committee and accompanied climate scientists on research trips to Antarctica and the Great Barrier Reef, where he saw firsthand the damages wrought by rising carbon pollution and warming temperatures. “I got convinced of the science,” he says, and, in 2009, Inglis cosponsored climate-change legislation with Republican Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona. The bill proposed an idea that had strong backing from environmentalists, including Gore, as well as prominent conservative economists. It would create a tax on carbon pollution but use the revenue to cut payroll or income taxes.

Inglis would pay dearly for his support of the so-called carbon-tax swap. The following year, he lost his primary election to a tea-party candidate, Trey Gowdy. And Inglis knows his position on the climate was the reason. “The most enduring heresy was saying, ‘Climate change is real and we should do something about it.’ That was seen as a statement against the tribal orthodoxy.”

[RandomGuy]

When you say 4M years your not trying to say 4 Million years are you?

Indeed I am.

This thread is primirily about the kinds of people who simply reject science outright.

You fit right in.

[RandomGuy]

Last month, 21-year-old Republican Kevin Croswhite, a senior at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wis., who grew up in nearby Salem (both towns lie within in the district of Rep. Paul Ryan, the 2012 GOP vice presidential candidate) attended one of Inglis’s events—and was sold.

Croswhite has considered himself a conservative Republican since high school. As an economics major, he is a big believer in data: scientific, economic, and demographic. He is persuaded that his party’s rejection of the data on climate change will damage it politically.

“The country’s going to become more educated, and that’s not going to break our way, as a party, if we are denying what 90 out of 100 scientists say,” Croswhite argues. “If the scientific community is generally accepting of something, you need to trust that.”

[boutons_deux]

Unreliable Sources: How the Media Help the Kochs and ExxonMobil Spread Climate Disinformation

This six-part series, "Unreliable Sources: How the Media Help the Kochs and ExxonMobil Spread Climate Disinformation," do ents that the press routinely cites climate contrarian think tanks without reporting their ties to the fossil fuel industry.

Part 1: A Glaring Lapse in Climate and Energy Coverage

One of my morning rituals is half-listening to NPR's "Morning Edition" while I'm getting ready for work. But on January 3, when a story came on about the fate of the wind industry's production tax credit, I snapped to attention. It was good news. Congress's eleventh hour "fiscal cliff" agreement had left the tax credit in place for at least one more year.

The NPR story featured a spokesman for a small Iowa wind project who explained how the tax credit benefits rural communities. For balance, it also included a naysayer: Thomas Pyle from the American Energy Alliance, who wanted Congress to kill the subsidy.

"It's not that the subsidies for the wind industry in and of themselves are bad, but it is part-and-parcel of a larger problem, and that is, is that the federal government is notoriously bad at energy policy," Pyle said. "They have been for decades, and we think it's time for them to step aside."

But who is Thomas Pyle and what is the American Energy Alliance? The story didn't say.

It turns out that the American Energy Alliance is a front organization for the oil and gas industry. Pyle, AEA's president, is a former lobbyist for the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association and Koch Industries, the Wichita, Kansas-based coal, oil and gas conglomerate owned by the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch (pronounced "coke"). Koch Industries is the second largest privately held company in the country.

Digging a little deeper, I learned that AEA is the political arm of the Ins ute for Energy Research, where Pyle also serves as president. From 2006 to 2010, IRE received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the oil and gas industry's trade association, the American Petroleum Ins ute; ExxonMobil; and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, a philanthropy controlled by Charles Koch.

OK, but didn't Pyle say the federal government should stop subsidizing all energy? That sounds pretty evenhanded, right? In fact, as aggressive as Pyle and his benefactors are about undermining their compe ion, they are even more vehement about protecting themselves--and they know full well their friends in Congress wouldn't dare touch oil and gas subsidies. Indeed, legislation introduced last May to pull the plug on the billions in annual tax breaks and subsidies the oil, gas and coal industries enjoy died a quick death.

Obviously there wasn't enough time to explain all that in a four-minute news segment. But at the very least the reporter should have identified Pyle as an oil and gas industry spokesman. I emailed the reporter later that day to point that out. I got no response.

Why Don't Reporters Follow the Money?

Twenty-five years after NASA scientist James Hansen testified at a Senate hearing that scientists know with a 99 percent certainty that burning fossil fuels--not natural climate variations--is warming the planet, there are many reasons why Congress has yet to take significant steps to curb U.S. carbon emissions. The hundreds of millions of dollars oil, coal, auto and manufacturing industries have donated to federal candidates is certainly a factor. So are the hundreds of millions of dollars they've spent to lobby them once they're elected.

etc

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elliot...comm_ref=false

[MannyIsGod]

My God...

There has been bad weather for all of history, and so much worse than anything we have experienced in decades. CO2 is not the cause of worse weather.

My point is that history is known. Just because we have more channels on the TV telling us of more disasters that they didn't previously cover, doesn't mean we have more disasters.

But... believe as you want, student from the University of Indoctrination.

I suppose you have scientific proof that weather patterns are worse due to CO2...

I have plenty of scientific proof CO2 has significantly changed climate patterns and continues to significantly changed climate patterns. You know this.

[TeyshaBlue]

My God....

Are you a scientist or something?

[DarrinS]

[FuzzyLumpkins]

You understand that Y2K was overcome by massive amounts of code being rewritten in the late 90's right?

That the point was we did something about it rather then pretend like its not a problem. That's what you do for a living so you should understand that.

[TeyshaBlue]

You understand that Y2K was overcome by massive amounts of code being rewritten in the late 90's right?

That the point was we did something about it rather then pretend like its not a problem. That's what you do for a living so you should understand that.

I don't understand the ins and outs of coding vis a vis Y2k, but we didn't rewrite jack at the company I worked for. Zero problems. IT did camp out at the server annex that night tho.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

I don't understand the ins and outs of coding vis a vis Y2k, but we didn't rewrite jack at the company I worked for. Zero problems. IT did camp out at the server annex that night tho.

It depended on the code that was written from place to place. The need for it differed from place to place. At USAA and other financial ins utions, they had a massive undertaking to correct it.

My point was that the problem did not just go away. There was a lot of effort put into it not becoming a problem. Memes and t-shirts serve to obfuscate.

[DarrinS]

You understand that Y2K was overcome by massive amounts of code being rewritten in the late 90's right?

That the point was we did something about it rather then pretend like its not a problem. That's what you do for a living so you should understand that.

It was the most overblown scare ever.

[TeyshaBlue]

I told you I didn't understand the ins and outs! Smarty McSmartypants.

[DarrinS]

But the killer bees are coming, so there's that.

[TeyshaBlue]

It was the most overblown scare ever.

Don't tell the survivalists. That could still come in handy.

[MannyIsGod]

Do you think Y2k and CO2 concentrations are comparable?

[DarrinS]

Do you think Y2k and CO2 concentrations are comparable?

In terms of exaggerated threat, yes.

[RandomGuy]

In terms of exaggerated threat, yes.

http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/show...=1#post4668020

Do tell us what you have concluded on the subject and why.

[MannyIsGod]

In terms of exaggerated threat, yes.

Anthropogenic climate change due to CO2 has already larger price tag in damages than anything Y2K so how can you make this claim? I'm not even bringing up the worst that is yet to come but if you simply look at individual aspects you can't even compare them.

This goes without even mentioning the fact hat Y2K had no where near the type of scientific backing that CO2 related climate change does. There was no physical science basis for Y2K.

I'm interested if what you are basing this comparison off of. Care to share?

[Homeland Security]

The white jeebo male in America has entered his Spenglerian winter. He has no energy left to do anything but deny and pretend.

[Homeland Security]

I won't live to see 2150, but I'll bet the 500 million or so people alive then will be on average much happier subjectively even though their world is somewhat less hospitable.

Of course the math is wrong in that statement because it fails to take into account the 6 billion or so dead people who are unable to be happy or unhappy about their being dead.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

In terms of exaggerated threat, yes.

This is completely unfounded. The entire banking industry recoded their databases as did most every other major industry. Just because nothing happened does not mean that it was overblown. Perhaps the effort put into migrating to uncompromising code over several years worked?

This is akin to us curbing world CO2 emissions and then when the cycle returns to it's natural oscillation, you saying that it was overblown.

We identified a problem and acted on it. That is proper decision making.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

I told you I didn't understand the ins and outs! Smarty McSmartypants.

Don't make me channel boutox!!!!

[Wild Cobra]

Might.

Not sure I want to bet my children's lives and livlihoods on "might".

I would prefer not effing with things until we were a bit more certain about the ultimate effects.

LOL...

Oh m7y God.

We had such hotter temperatures back then, with no industrialization. Just how do you think man is going to control Mother Nature?

[Wild Cobra]

I have plenty of scientific proof CO2 has significantly changed climate patterns and continues to significantly changed climate patterns. You know this.

Yes Manny, I know about your proof. Your proof is on the lines of Correlation equals Causation.

LOL...

LOL...

LOL...

You have to do better than that.