If you haven’t heard, the IPCC released the summary for policy makers (PDF) for it’s Fourth Assessment Report on climate change. Although the full report is not yet out, here are a few highlights from what they say.
The understanding of anthropogenic [caused by humans] warming and cooling influences on climate has improved since the Third Assessment Report (TAR), leading to very high confidence that the globally averaged net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming, with radiative forcing of +1.6 [+0.6 to +2.4] W m-2.
And:
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level.
And:
Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. This is an advance since the TAR’s conclusion that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations”. Discernible human influences now extend to other aspects of climate, including ocean warming, continental-average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patterns.
I could go on, but you no doubt get the point. While natural variations in climate are still at play and cannot be denied, scientific consensus is that humans are affecting the global weather in terrible ways.
Do you think this will affect the U.S. policy of ignoring climate change and pretending it has nothing whatsoever to do with humans? That would be difficult, but our fearless leaders intend to spin and fight it any way they can. To wit:
Despite a strongly worded global warming report from the world’s top climate scientists, the Bush administration expressed continued opposition Friday to mandatory reductions in heat-trapping “greenhouse” gases.
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman warned against “unintended consequences” — including job losses — that he said might result if the government requires economy-wide caps on carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.
But Democrats didn’t take that sitting down.
“Although President Bush just noticed that the earth is heating up, the American public, every reputable scientist and other world leaders have long recognized that global warming is real and it’s serious. The time to act is now,” said Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, who with GOP Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine crafted one of a half-dozen competing bills to address global warming.
Rep. Edward Markey, a senior Democratic member of House panels on energy and natural resources, said that “for those who are still trying to determine responsibility for global warming, this new U.N. report on climate change is a scientific smoking gun.”
Yet Dubya and his oil whore cronies jumped at the first opportunity to spin it.
The White House issued a statement less than four hours after the report’s release defending Bush’s six-year record on global climate change, beginning with his acknowledgment in 2001 that the increase in greenhouse gases is due largely to human activity.
It said Bush and his budget proposals have devoted $29 billion to climate-related science, technology, international assistance and incentive programs — “more money than any other country.”
Bush has called for slowing the growth rate of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which averages 1 percent a year, but has rejected government-ordered reductions. Last week he also called for a 20 percent reduction in U.S. gasoline consumption over the next 10 years.
Um… Liar! And planet hater! And environmental destroyer!
That’s a healthy dose of selective memory and creative history, don’t you think?
Especially in light of this little tidbit:
Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world’s largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.
Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
[. . .]
The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI’s board of trustees.
I should note that, as I pointed out already, the full report has not been released yet, and still:
On Monday, another Exxon-funded organisation based in Canada will launch a review in London which casts doubt on the IPCC report. Among its authors are Tad Murty, a former scientist who believes human activity makes no contribution to global warming. Confirmed VIPs attending include Nigel Lawson and David Bellamy, who believes there is no link between burning fossil fuels and global warming.
Sounds like Don Quixote, doesn’t it? What with all the tilting at windmills and all… spending loads of money and burning plenty of resources to discredit a report that isn’t even fully available yet. But that’s big oil and Bush and the general conservative movement: treat science as the enemy, discredit it when possible, use natural resources like they’re in endless supply despite the harm to the environment, and leave the problem to future generations to suffer through and try to solve.
Punxsutawney Phil—the groundhog of Groundhog Day fame—emerged from his stump-shaped shelter this morning and didn’t see his shadow, traditionally signaling an early spring.
Sun-worshipping humans might welcome the news, but for groundhogs and other hibernating animals, a longer winter could be a blessing.
A recent trend toward increasingly mild winters is disrupting normal hibernation patterns for many high-latitude and high-elevation species—and in some cases it may be a matter of life or death.
From marmots in the Rocky Mountains to bears in the Moscow Zoo, animals are spending less time napping. The change may be placing some species fatally out of synch with their environment.
When animals hibernate they’re able to conserve the energy stored in their fat during periods when food is scarce. So when they are abnormally active, they risk using up their stored energy before they can replace it.
In England the warmest winter on record has left young hedgehogs at risk.
Probably confused by changing climate patterns, hedgehog mothers gave birth relatively late in the year. As a result, their pups did not have time to put on sufficient weight to hibernate successfully and are now starving.
And dormice, small rodents known for their six-month-long siestas, now hibernate five weeks less than they did two decades ago, Italian scientists report.
For some species a long winter sleep may already be a thing of the past.
Researchers in Spain recently announced that European brown bears have stopped hibernating altogether in the northern Cantabrian Mountains.
The article goes on to spell out a great many horrors being visited upon the wildlife kingdom by climate change. With the IPCC report—as if it hadn’t been clear before then—we have very few doubts remaining as to the role humans play in making this planet less hospitable to all life.
When will the denial end and the action begin? I fear it will be too late.