Global Warming or Climate Change?
Deniers fancy themselves sharp cultural sleuths ferreting out Orwellian linguistic games in the back and forth between “Climate Change” and “Global Warming”. See if you think so after watching this.
Video gurus weigh in. I keep getting a mismatch in the audio during the segment between about 4:30 and 6:00. It doesn’t happen when I play it locally on my HD, and it doesn’t seem to happen during other parts of the vid.
??
Gah, I was so unprepared for this piece of crap argument when I was talking with a coworker a couple years ago.
He says, the change from “global warming” to “climate change” was done by the scientists to account for the cool periods in the climate. Now, it doesn’t matter if the Earth cools or warms, it is all “climate change”. How convenient for those scientists, right? They are never wrong now in their prediction that we are affecting the climate!
I replied that I didn’t know why the two different terms existed and that climate change possibly refers to the increased storms/drought that occur due to warming.
I’m much more prepared now to come back with actual facts against the denier’s “common sense” assumptions. I can give hard evidence that papers have been published in the past that used “climate change”. I can confidently claim that the entire argument doesn’t even address the science at all, but attacks the words used, a feeble argument at best.
At first, I thought I could change my own lifestyle and donate to renewable energy causes, etc. Now, I realize that it is my civic duty to be thoroughly educated on this issue in order to make the right votes for public office positions, and to write engaging letters to those public positions. I also need to be educated enough to confidently present the facts to those close to me. It has been a bit like a self-study academic course, but very fulfilling.
Elsewhere:
* The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has projected that the United States will lead the world into catastrophic global warming over the next twenty five years, with “…rapid sea level rise, extreme famine, desertification, and ecological collapse on land and sea.” http://www.grist.org/article/2010-12-21-eia-projects-climate-catastrophe
I’m struggling to doubt that is true. Look at the chaos and destruction from ‘just’ 390ppm and +0.8C – now we appear committed to 450 and over with +2C and higher.
There are too many determined morons, too many self-interested liars, too many delusional, Dunning-Kruger-afflicted peacocks who are intent on dragging all of us over the precipice.
If someone can persuade me otherwise, I’d be very grateful. :/
otter-
there was never a time in history when those of us who can read and think have been so called to step up. We need you.
BlueRock –
Pessimism is not useful now. We have to keep pressing the fight, because winning this one is the only option.
Trust me, I’m not throwing in the towel – but I do have low days and high days with all of this and need to vent occasionally. Pretty obvious which way today has swung. :/
Many confrontational ordeals, including enough breakthroughs to remain optimistic, led me to believe that much of this opaque political debate occurs beneath the surface within religious communities. By exaggerating the concept of a universe created solely for the benefit of man, “think tanks”, such as the Heritage Foundation, imply that a true Christian cannot accept climate science. Extremists interpret biblical passages that support their position – as they ignore those that don’t such as “I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and rich produce. But you came and defiled my land and you made my inheritance detestable.” Jer. 2:7.
This is a trailer for 12 DVD set from the Cornwall Alliance (direct ties to Heritage Foundation and Big Oil funding)….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to1naH2A7GU&feature=player_embedded
A larger number of motivated moderate Christians would be a powerful force….
http://www.creationcare.org/
I can’t remember where I first read about this Orwellian word/thought debate but one factor I’d read then and I’ve not seen recently is that warming refers to temperature and the perception there of while what’s really happening on the planet is heating which refers to the sum total of heat energy in a system. Hope I’m not condescending to a highly scientifically literate crowd here but not everyone, myself included fully understands thermodynamics. A more accurate term though maybe not as palatable would be “Global Heating” and I’m sure deniers would jump on it with more of their baseless claims.
In the simplest terms science has for some time fully understood the Greenhouse effect and that additional CO2 in the atmosphere is preventing a small portion of heat from the sun from reflecting back into space as it had prior to the relatively recent CO2 rise. That heat is accumulating but but not necessarily being accounted for by global temperatures which are rising but not as much as some models would have predicted. The problem at this point is that we can’t entirely account for all of that additional heat here on earth. It’s a big planet and we can’t fully measure the deepest parts of the ocean and there is a lot of deep ocean out there. The other issue is that heat and warmth perhaps counter-intuitively to some, are not the same thing and that much of the heat has been directed towards latent heat. The energy required to melt ice into water at 0 deg C 333.55 (kJ/kg) uses significantly more of that heat than is required to raise that water 1 deg C (4.187 kJ/kg) and an even greater portion of heat is consumed (2,270 kJ/kg) when turning liquid water into water vapor. So while the earth is undoubtedly warming up and the consequences while not fully understood will on aggregate be negative to very negative the deep ocean and latent heat content of the planet could produce effects that are truly earth transforming. I believe the key to winning this debate is in spreading scientific literacy.