What climate change looks like... so far

"Referring to the fires, the drought, and the storms, Jonathan Overpeck, a professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona, told the Associated Press, “This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about.” He also noted, “This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level.”

Or, at least, what it looks like right now. One of the most salient—but also, unfortunately, most counterintuitive—aspects of global warming is that it operates on what amounts to a time delay. Behind this summer’s heat are greenhouse gases emitted decades ago. Before many effects of today’s emissions are felt, it will be time for the Summer Olympics of 2048. (Scientists refer to this as the “commitment to warming.”) What’s at stake is where things go from there. It is quite possible that by the end of the century we could, without even really trying, engineer the return of the sort of climate that hasn’t been seen on earth since the Eocene, some fifty million years ago..."

Elizabeth Kolbert, Is the Heat Wave of 2012 What Climate Change Looks Like? : The New Yorker

Greenpeace co-founder: "Thank goodness we came along

 & reversed 150 million-year trend of reduced CO2 levels in global atmosphere. Long live the humans." He's serious.

"Moore is the author of the book, “Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist,” in which he exposes the green movement and explains why he left the organization.
Moore told Climate Depot: “Plants grow much faster when CO2 is higher, the optimum concentration is between 1500-2000 ppm so there is a long way to go before plants are happy."

Prison Planet.com » Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore: ‘Thank goodness we came along & reversed 150 million-year trend of reduced CO2 levels in global atmosphere. Long live the humans’

Guardians of Mother Earth

"Native Americans’ drive to protect the earth is of course steeped in history. Alfredo Acosta Figueroa, now 77 and a descendant of the Chemehuevi Tribe, recalled in a phone interview a 113-day peaceful occupation he led to protest The Ward Valley Nuclear Waste Dump, leading to the government’s 1998 decision to abandon its plans for radioactive waste disposal.


“We were placed here on Earth to be the guardians of Mother Earth,” he said.

Many Native Americans revere the inter-connectedness of the natural world. You can’t take action in one part of the environment and have no repercussions elsewhere, says Bob Gough, a descendant of the Lenape Tribe in Canada who is secretary of the Intertribal Council on Utility Policy, a non-profit representing 15 tribes in the Upper Great Plain states. “We are all related,” so “you behave differently” and treat resources as part of a big family, he said..."

Native Americans and a Changing Climate | The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media

Bjorn Lomborg on global warming

He says "global warming is real, important and manmade, but" ...



@JeanKazez had an interesting exchange yesterday about Lomborg with @ChrisMooney. She says he may well be a "loon" but still offers a more complex alternative view than those on offer from most climate science deniers. He's not in fact a denier, exactly, he just questions whether climate change is really the most important challenge we face.

Asked where else to turn for "diversity" in Environmental Ethics she says:

e.g. Rauch (pro-GE), Schmidtz (market & hunting solution to wildlife loss), discuss economics & tech solutions a lot

 Note also the site Climate Debate Daily, "a new way to understand disputes about global warming." http://climatedebatedaily.com/

The Global Warming Reader, by Bill McKibben

One of our texts in Environmental Ethics at MTSU, Fall '12.

"This is a book for all of us: students, activists, Earthlings. Edited by perhaps the most widely-respected writer on the environment today, GWR is a comprehensive resource that collects seminal texts and voices on climate change from the phenomenon's discovery in the late 19th century to the present. What is happening to our planet—and what can we do about it?"

The Global Warming Reader, by Bill McKibben

Here's 19 essays by Bill McKibben at Orion ~ http://is.gd/XXBCO1 

Fostering progress on a finite planet

"[This is] the perfect moment for a burst of bottom-up progress, driven by the extraordinary efficiency and impact that can come from using the Web and other communication tools to connect an idea, expertise, or design with a glaring need. I’ve seen the potential in a host of arenas, from environmental education to disaster preparedness.

There’s been a long-running race between the potency of human beings and our awareness, but the fast-expanding “knowosphere”—the interlaced, light-speed, super-cheap fabric of information and discourse enveloping the physical planet—can propel awareness into the lead for good…." Andrew Revkin

30 Ways to Foster Progress on a Finite Planet - NYTimes.com