Park Williams PhD: Fingerprints of a Megadrought
August 17, 2021
Park Williams is Professor of Geography at UCLA, and is lead author of an influential study of Western US paleoclimate showing a repetitive occurrence of long periods of aridity – termed Megadroughts.
The period we’re in now already qualifies as a medium strength Megadrought, the only variable is how long it continues. This drought is also super charged by more than a 1 degree C rise in global temperatures in the last century.
Longest mega drought pattern in the last 1200 years lasted a century. Just sayin..
New Book: Mike Mann on the New Climate War
December 17, 2020
I’ve been reading an advance copy of Mike Mann’s new book, The New Climate War, which will be out in January.
Anyone wishing to have as up-to-date summary of the battle over climate as possible, could hardly do better than this book. Dr. Mann’s narrative is urgent, insightful, and accurate, and I know that because I’ve been following closely nearly every step of the story as he tells it.
Dr. Mann has been one of my key mentors on all aspects of climate science, and with his long time, hard-won experience (see below) as a target for climate deniers of all stripes, he has the perspective to bring the big picture into sharp focus.
A renowned climate scientist shows how fossil fuel companies have waged a thirty-year campaign to deflect blame and responsibility and delay action on climate change, and offers a battle plan for how we can save the planet.
Recycle. Fly less. Eat less meat. These are some of the ways that we’ve been told can slow climate change. But the inordinate emphasis on individual behavior is the result of a marketing campaign that has succeeded in placing the responsibility for fixing climate change squarely on the shoulders of individuals.
Fossil fuel companies have followed the example of other industries deflecting blame (think “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”) or greenwashing (think of the beverage industry’s “Crying Indian” commercials of the 1970s). Meanwhile, they’ve blocked efforts to regulate or price carbon emissions, run PR campaigns aimed at discrediting viable alternatives, and have abdicated their responsibility in fixing the problem they’ve created. The result has been disastrous for our planet.
In The New Climate War, Mann argues that all is not lost. He draws the battle lines between the people and the polluters-fossil fuel companies, right-wing plutocrats, and petrostates. And he outlines a plan for forcing our governments and corporations to wake up and make real change, including:
- a common-sense, attainable approach to carbon pricing- and a revision of the well-intentioned but flawed currently proposed version of the Green New Deal;
- allowing renewable energy to compete fairly against fossil fuels
- debunking the false narratives and arguments that have worked their way into the climate debate and driven a wedge between even those who support climate change solutions
- combatting climate doomism and despair-mongering
With immensely powerful vested interests aligned in defense of the fossil fuel status quo, the societal tipping point won’t happen without the active participation of citizens everywhere aiding in the collective push forward. This book will reach, inform, and enable citizens everywhere to join this battle for our planet.
How Delusional is Lamar Smith?
December 1, 2015
Citing unnamed, (ie nonexistent) “experts”, Inquisitor Lamar Smith of the House Science Committee engages in hallucinatory arm waving in attempting to convince Miami residents that the water around their ankles is completely normal.
Office of Lamar Smith, Chairman, House Committee on Science, Space and Technology:
Dec 1, 2015Press ReleaseWashington, D.C. – Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today released the following statement after President Obama delivered a speech this morning before the U.N. climate change conference in Paris blaming climate change for recent flooding in Miami, Florida. The president stated, “You go down to Miami and when it’s flooding at high tide on a sunny day, the fish are swimming through the middle of the streets, there’s costs to that.”
Chairman Smith: “The president’s statement that Miami flooding is linked to climate change is entirely false and in fact disputed by meteorologists at the National Weather Service. The experts have reported that the lunar cycle and wind patterns are to blame for unusually high floods in Miami, not climate change. The fact is there is little evidence that climate change causes extreme weather events. The president is ignoring the facts and misleading the American people in order to advance his extreme climate change agenda.”
2000 years of sea level: Kemp et al
New Video: What is Right? Climate as a Moral Question.
October 14, 2015
Pope Francis’ visit to the US catalyzed the growing sense across the country, and across the globe, that climate change is, above all, a moral issue.
More and more scientists have realized that speaking to this moral dimension is far more persuasive than speaking the language of science and fact, as compelling as those are. Most people simply respond better to an issue that is framed in moral terms.
The emerging story of what Exxon knew, and when they knew it, shows that the differences have never really been about the science questions – even the major oil companies knew the basic science truths 4 decades ago. They simply made a moral decision that the lives of the next ten thousand generations of human beings were not as important as their own profits, and we are now witnessing the early impacts of that decision.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 