Now is exactly the time to talk about climate change — and all the other systemic injustices that turn disasters like Harvey into human catastrophes.
Evacuees wade down a flooded section of Interstate 610 as floodwaters from Tropical Storm Harvey rise in Houston on Sunday, Aug. 27, 2017.
Photo: David J. Phillip/AP
Now is exactly the time to talk about climate change, and all the other systemic injustices — from racial profiling to economic austerity — that turn disasters like Harvey into human catastrophes.
Turn on the coverage of the Hurricane Harvey and the Houston flooding and you’ll hear lots of talk about how unprecedented this kind of rainfall is. How no one saw it coming, so no one could adequately prepare.
What you will hear very little about is why these kind of unprecedented, record-breaking weather events are happening with such regularity that “record-breaking” has become a meteorological cliche. In other words, you won’t hear much, if any, talk about climate change.
This, we are told, is out of a desire not to “politicize” a still unfolding human tragedy, which is an understandable impulse. But here’s the thing: every time we act as if an unprecedented weather event is hitting us out of the blue, as some sort of Act of God that no one foresaw, reporters are making a highly political decision. It’s a decision to spare feelings and avoid controversy at the expense of telling the truth, however difficult. Because the truth is that these events have long been predicted by climate scientists. Warmer oceans throw up more powerful storms. Higher sea levels mean those storms surge into places they never reached before. Hotter weather leads to extremes of precipitation: long dry periods interrupted by massive snow or rain dumps, rather than the steadier predictable patterns most of us grew up with.
The records being broken year after year — whether for drought, storm surges, wildfires, or just heat — are happening because the planet is markedly warmer than it has been since record-keeping began. Covering events like Harvey while ignoring those facts, failing to provide a platform to climate scientists who can make them plain, all while never mentioning President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accords, fails in the most basic duty of journalism: to provide important facts and relevant context. It leaves the public with the false impression that these are disasters without root causes, which also means that nothing could have been done to prevent them (and that nothing can be done now to prevent them from getting much worse in the future).
It’s also worth noting that the Harvey coverage has been highly political since well before the storm made landfall. There has been endless talk about whether Trump was taking the storm seriously enough, endless speculation about whether this hurricane will be his “Katrina moment” and a great deal of (fair) point-scoring about how many Republicans voted against Sandy relief but have their hands out for Texas now. That’s politics being made out of a disaster — it’s just the kind of partisan politics that is fully inside the comfort zone of conventional media, politics that conveniently skirts the reality that placing the interests of fossil fuel companies ahead of the need for decisive pollution control has been a deeply bipartisan affair.
In an ideal world, we’d all be able to put politics on hold until the immediate emergency has passed. Then, when everyone was safe, we’d have a long, thoughtful, informed public debate about the policy implications of the crisis we had all just witnessed. What should it mean for the kind of infrastructure we build? What should it mean for the kind of energy we rely upon? (A question with jarring implications for the dominant industry in the region being hit hardest: oil and gas). And what does the hyper-vulnerability to the storm of the sick, poor, and elderly tell us about the kind of safety nets we need to weave, given the rocky future we have already locked in?
With thousands displaced from their homes, we might even discuss the undeniable links between climate disruption and migration — from the Sahel to Mexico — and use the opportunity to debate the need for an immigration policy that starts from the premise that the U.S. shares a great deal of responsibility for the key forces driving millions from their homes.
But we don’t live in a world that allows for that kind of serious, measured debate. We live in a world in which the governing powers have shown themselves all too willing to exploit the diversion of a large-scale crisis, and the very fact that so many are focused on life-and-death emergencies, to ram through their most regressive policies, policies that push us further along a road that is rightly understood as a form of “climate apartheid.” We saw it after Hurricane Katrina, when Republicans wasted no time pushing for a fully privatized school system, weakening labor and tax law, increasing oil and gas drilling and refining, and flinging the door open to mercenary companies like Blackwater. Mike Pence was a key architect of that highly cynical project — and we should expect nothing less in Harvey’s wake, now that he and Trump are at the wheel.
We are already seeing Trump using the cover of Hurricane Harvey to push through the hugely controversial pardoning of Joe Arpaio, as well as the further militarization of U.S. police forces. These are particularly ominous moves in the context of news that immigration checkpoints are continuing to operate wherever highways are not flooded (a serious disincentive for migrants to evacuate), as well as in the context of municipal officials tough-talking about maximum penalties for any “looters” (it’s well worth remembering that after Katrina, several African-American residents of New Orleans were shot by police amid this kind of rhetoric.)
In short, the right will waste no time exploiting Harvey, and any other disaster like it, to peddle ruinous false solutions, such as militarized police, more oil and gas infrastructure, and privatized services. Which means there is a moral imperative for informed, caring people to name the real root causes behind this crisis — connecting the dots between climate pollution, systemic racism, underfunding of social services, and overfunding of police. We also need to seize the moment to lay out intersectional solutions, ones that dramatically lower emissions while battling all forms of inequality and injustice (something we have tried to lay out at The Leap and which groups, such as the Climate Justice Alliance, have been advancing for a long time.)
And it has to happen right now – precisely when the enormous human and economic costs of inaction are on full public display. If we fail, if we hesitate out of some misguided idea of what is and is not appropriate during a crisis, it leaves the door wide open for ruthless actors to exploit this disaster for predictable and nefarious ends.
It’s also a hard truth that the window for having these debates is vanishingly small. We won’t be having any kind of public policy debate after this emergency subsides; the media will be back to obsessively covering Trump’s tweets and other palace intrigues. So while it may feel unseemly to be talking about root causes while people are still trapped in their homes, this is realistically the only time there is any sustained media interest whatsoever in talking about climate change. It’s worth recalling that Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord — an event that will reverberate globally for decades to come — received roughly two days of decent coverage. Then it was back to Russia round-the-clock.
A little more than a year ago, Fort McMurray, the town at the heart of the Alberta boom in tar sands oil, nearly burned to the ground. For a time, the world was transfixed by the images of vehicles lined up on a single highway, with flames closing in on either side. At the time, we were told that it was insensitive and victim-blaming to talk about how climate change was exacerbating wildfires like this one. Most taboo was making any connection between our warming world and the industry that powers Fort McMurray and employed the majority of the evacuees, which is a particularly high-carbon form of oil. The time wasn’t right; it was a moment for sympathy, aid, and no hard questions.
But of course by the time it was deemed appropriate to raise those issues, the media spotlight had long since moved on. And today, as Alberta pushes for at least three new oil pipelines to accommodate its plans to greatly increase tar sands production, that horrific fire and the lessons it could have carried almost never come up.
There is a lesson in that for Houston. The window for providing meaningful context and drawing important conclusions is short. We can’t afford to blow it.
Talking honestly about what is fueling this era of serial disasters — even while they’re playing out in real time — isn’t disrespectful to the people on the front lines. In fact, it is the only way to truly honor their losses, and our last hope for preventing a future littered with countless more victims.
Until recently, we haven’t had a hurricane landfall the US in 42 months, as I recall. If we look at the history of hurricanes, we see well back into the 1800s there were major hurricanes that hit the U.S. No fossil fuels at that point.
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E23.html
If we look at the ice core data, we find that climate change has happened for thousands of years, long before man or fossil fuel.
In the 1920s experts were promoting global warming. See pics of the news paper articles in this post.
https://ibankcoin.com/flyblog/2017/09/06/reminder-experts-warning-us-global-warming-since-1930s/
In the 50s, global warming was promoted
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/us-weather-bureau-1950-global-warming-alarm/
Then cooling, cumulating with the mid 70s hype/promotion about global ice age. The National Academy of Science in a report claimed the temps had warmed until 1940 then declined. Snips of the actual article that appeared in this posting.
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/1970s-ice-age-scare/
Then from 1988 to 2014, Global Warming was being promoted. That is until the climategate emails were released.
Now we are headed back to Global Cooling according to science. Some have privately said that the Hurricanes are because of Global Cooling upcoming ice age. Others say that as we head into the global cooling/ice age, the atmosphere will show extreme fluxuations going in, with us finally arriving at the cooling phase 2020 to 2027. Then the screaming headlines and articles will be Man Caused Global Cooling!!
If The Intercept happens to be around in 2050, I predict after years of promoting global ice age, new activists and new journalists will be pushing global warming again.
Yes there is climate change. I has been happening for 10s of thousands of years if not longer. Climate cycles, up, then down, whether humans are on the earth of not.
http://www.longrangeweather.com/global_temperatures.htm
This shit is so tired.
I hope you’re cutting and pasting it because it’s not worth the effort to type all this bs. Every single scientific proposition you’ve made here is false.
E.g.; “Climate cycles, up, then down…”? Climate is riding a bike on a hilly road? Try “Temperatures cycle”. Of course, your point would still be 100% wrong.
Why do you people insist on promoting a falsehood like climate change or global warming or whatever ya’ll are referring to it as these days? THAT, I’m afraid, is a big lie and thus you base your articles on lies to start with. Climate change has to do with the sun. It has nothing to do with man’s actions. You are confusing climate change and pollution. I just wish someone with an IQ higher than a raisin would start reporting on this stuff.
Thank you for this, Naomi. I was just talking online with a man of goodwill who is furious we are talking about climate change when there are dead to be buried and survivors to care for. I understand where he’s coming from – he’s been through hurricanes, I’ve been through cyclones – but as I said to him, what will our sympathy and support mean if it isn’t accompanied by geniune reassurance that we are doing everything we can to prevent or at least lessen the effects of severe weather events in future? It would be the equivalent of saying ” There you go. Good luck with the next one because you’re on your own and we don’t much care. We can only care in short doses for short periods of time, then it’s back to business as usual.”
Thank you for mentioning migration too. Why we still think it’s ok to shunt inequality from place to place amazes me almost as much as liberals who think supporting high immigration and open borders is the ultimate in humanitarianism. Doing all we can to make home a safe, healthy place for all is humanitarianism – not patting ourselves on the back because we let a lucky few come here and live a better life. How can it still be the case that there is such a thing as emigration for a better life?
Ok how many people in this discussion are willing to give up all the things they get from fossil fuels?
Sound off if you are ready and willing or have!
It will make a difference.
It’s been 10 years already?!?
If we wait until the crisis is over, the issue of Climate Change will be buried in the back pages once more and the Climate Change deniers will have won again. Katrina in 2005; Sandy in 2012 and now Harvey; but did anyone know about the once in five thousand year flood that hit Nashville in 2010? It wasn’t a hurricane but after three days half the city was under water and like Harvey, they had to open the dams upstream to prevent them from breaking open completely, adding to the damage. Nashville was lucky; the Cumberland is not the Mississippi and only two were killed; but it could have been far worse; it was what former Vice President Al Gore has called a “rain bomb.” So, people who live away from the coasts are not immune; everyone is in danger from climate change. WHEN YOU MELT THE POLAR ICE CAPS THE WATER HAS TO GO SOMEWHERE.
Katrina was an engineering failure, not a ‘rain bomb;’ and Sandy was a storm surge problem, also not a ‘rain bomb.’
500/1,000 year storm/floods is pretty nonsensical. There are no 500+ year storm/rainfall records to consult…otherwise, literally no one has any idea.
On the off chance that someone reading these comments actually does not know whether to go with the assertions made in the article or with the barrage of pseudo-science on display in the comment section, bare in mind that nearly every nation on earth apart from the US has come together to confront the emerging horror of human-caused climate change, a horror well understood by nearly all the world’s scientists, save those on the payroll of the industries most responsible for causing it. Billions of dollars are being spent to create the illusion of uncertainty about climate change; the rest of the world understands that this is insane and looks on in horror as we stamp out the last fading chances of a world we can live on. If you need sources, look to the bibliography of Klein’s book This Changes Everything. There is nothing partisan about sheer survival.
I live the global warming crowd. They were exposed as frauds when the globe was not warming as they guessed. They were clever renaming the cause climate change. Lol the climate changes and will always change. Duh. Now to the joke of all scientists agree. That’s like saying 13 intelligence agencies all agree. Oh wait fraud there too. If weather has only been accurately recorded for 100 years please explain the weather in 1212bc oh right your going to say the Industrial Age is what to gauge it on. Hmmm please go back to your pseudo science
Can anyone tell me how measuring global temperatures for the last 150 years is a statistically significant data set when the earth is 4,500,000,000 years old? How can we possibly trust such a small set to make such big arguments?
Rotting leaves each fall produce more CO2 than human beings and their machines.
One volcano eruption makes human CO2 contributions look like a bucket full of rocks on a gravel road. It’s more rational to blame trees and magma for Global Warming than to blame humans. Tax them.
Ignorance can be offset through honest reading and education: “Greenhouse gas emissions from volcanoes comprise less than one percent of those generated by today’s human endeavors.” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcanoes-or-humans/
I Would respectfully like to inquire if you would give up this belief that co2 is
the cause of the rapid climate change we are experiencing if over the next 4 years it gets colder and colder? The sun is going to sleep so to speak and its output is falling off. Your persistence in spouting this easter bunny belief in anthropomorphic climate change is a distraction. We pollute this is true but it doesnt change the climate. Lets stick to honest reporting of facts. No major hurricaines for several years ( they are caused by hot atlantic waters remember), more snow pack on Greenland ( did you know that?), there is a flotilla of ships sailing to the north pole to prove the loss of sea ice right now ( they will be turned back because they will be blocked by too much ice this summer ( will you write about it?) Respectfully there is a movement a foot to tax carbon to save the world but it is based on a fabrication.
Thank you – a rare voice of sanity
See any interview with John Casey on Youtube for an insight into the calamity that mankind faces as the cooling . Crops will be lost bringing famine, and there will also be more earthquakes and volcanic activity.
Tough times lie agead
This is a fully incoherent article. At least have some dots before you begin to connect them. Only the loony left can lap up these contrived indignancies.
“There is a lesson in that for Houston. The window for providing meaningful context and drawing important conclusions is short. We can’t afford to blow it.”
The window is not short as it exists every time we look up toward the heavens and witness a blurred geoengineered sky.
What is climate change denial? The definition of denial is a statement saying that something is not true or not correct. Those in power know they are geoengineering our skies as a last ditch effort to forestall the inevitable damage caused by their abuse of our planet, therefore they are not deniers but blatant deceivers.
Naomi, why is it that you and The Intercept do not address this issue as it currently exists rather than as something in the future? See http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/
There are comments on this thread under the name(s) ‘Dane Wigington’ and ‘Dane’ that are NOT legit, but rather being posted by an imposter. I just spoke with Dane Wigington of GeoengineeringWatch(dot)org, and he stated that ‘any comment anywhere that is not on his own site’, is not from him. Whoever is doing this – stop it.
All vital and rant: no facts, no historical data, no logic, therefore, Ctl Alt Delete.
Sorry this is a weather event, not climate which is measured over hundreds or thousands of years. Please read Roy Spencer’s blog to get a balanced view of climate change and please educate yourself.
It’s readily apparent, even from so sparse a comment as two short, simplistic sentences, that certainly ONE of the people commenting around here who needs an education about what the hell they’re talking about.
One big whopper is right here:
“…climate which is measured over hundreds or thousands of years.”
-chuckle- Yeah, humanity formerly thought that, oh, a hundred years ago. Now, we know better.
YES this is a weather event – as was Katrina & Storm Sandy…..and the cause is climate change.
I like your dance around the truth – Donald Trump needs a new spin doctor – you should apply.
GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE . . . and the cause is debatable?
If you close your eyes it’s dark – there is no sunlight??
Arctic ice melt is causing albedo feedback that will take us over 2C possibly within a decade, its going to be game on – getting our act together globally or we’re stuffed
Come off it lady . It is no one’s fault. This is just another bite for Politics to weather the storms.
Harvey may have been geoengineered to be worse than it should have been.
The climate change argument is being used as a smokescreen by the military-industrial complex to cover up what they’ve been doing to the climate for decades and even people as smart as Naomi Klein are falling for it.
Stan,
Shut up about geoengineering! You have no proof of it.
On the other hand, we have undeniable proof that AGW is real.
Stop falling for the fossil fuel monopoly propaganda, and stop parroting it.
You said, “you have no proof”.
All we need do is have enough common sense to see the geoengineered lines in the sky for what they are, which is evidence that the elites know they have sacrificed our planet to the realm of irrational greed.
Do you remember when you were young ever seeing square clouds in the sky?
Do you remember when you were young ever seeing endless grid lines throughout the sky?
Do you remember when you were young actually seeing a truly blue sky?
Do you remember when you were young and not constantly living under a strange haze of white sky?
Do you ever look at the old movies and ask how come we do not have a sky that looks like that anymore?
Do you remember when you were young and it was easy to identify the North Pole in the sky?
Why do we let ourselves be lied to when the truth is no more than a glance away?
https://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=3
There is proof on this comment section if you take the time to read them and the links, and this has absolutely nothing to do with fossil fuels. Do research, I linked the truth of Geoengineering from the NYT, Al Gore, John Brennan, and a City counsel meeting with experts. There is so, so much more, but you have to do your own research.
You say there’s no proof on geoengineering, then refute this, and I have a lot more too, from sources you support:
https://www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/2016-speeches-testimony/director-brennan-speaks-at-the-council-on-foreign-relations.html
There’s a paragraph you may miss, because of you skepticism on the matter. Here’s the paragraph from the above CIA government news;
“Another example is the array of technologies—often referred to collectively as geoengineering—that potentially could help reverse the warming effects of global climate change. One that has gained my personal attention is stratospheric aerosol injection, or SAI, a method of seeding the stratosphere with particles that can help reflect the sun’s heat, in much the same way that volcanic eruptions do.”
There’s your PROOF! (mic drop)
Sad when sheep follow poor logic.
My goodness! Naomi had valid arguments when Bush was in office. She softened up with Obama. Now she’s gone off the deep end with Trump in the White House. This climate change thing has been long disproven but HAS been proven to be nothing but religion.
Get a grip, woman! Use your powers of deductive reasoning to understand what ‘powers that be’ are behind this CO2 scam and climate change claptrap. It’s as though you decided to do a complete 180° and support the very organizations that are screwing us, the very ones you wrote articles against in the past. What’s with you?
I always wonder where people get these crazy ideas that somehow they can shit in their own house forever and never have it fill up with crap. But then I remember that most people are “out-of-sight-out-of-mind” morons who can’t think their way out of a paper bag, much less grasp the concept that their own garbage builds up, day after day, and the more toxic it is, the worse the problem it creates.
I also wonder how it is that such a great number of people have ZERO scientific or technical awareness – until, of course, I look at how the ultra-rich have since forever fought the masses becoming fully educated.
The people who now claim that humanity isn’t altering the global climate will, if humanity should survive to reflect upon it, be considered at least as bad as those German citizens who gave power to Hitler even after it was clear what his intentions were – likely much worse; they are (will be) responsible for the deaths of untold millions.
Your analogy like views – lack a sense of scale.
True, because the deaths caused by AGW and ACD will actually be untold hundreds of millions.
My Goodness! You’re such a bird brained propaganda parrot for the fossil fuel monopoly! The irony of your willfully ignorant, scientifically illiterate rant escapes you. Get a grip indeed!
The bottom line is that our masters use whatever means they find readily available – be it flood, terror attack or earthquake, to tighten the noose. You can quibble all you want about the specific devastation brought on by climate change and the implications for the various species, but the fact is that the Right Wing has decided that no event is off limits when it comes to exploiting the populace and the planet. Trump is a clear example of that.
Paul, you said, “…our masters use whatever means they find readily available…”
Yes, like every time they do the budget and totally screw the masses to further enrich the controlling class.
Many of you seem to be missing the point. Naomi Klein is saying that as we spend our time and the media spend their time ignoring climate change out of respect too the victims, the bad guys are preparing to use the “shock” of the disaster to implement policies of privatization and austerity. They have no qualms about using this tragedy to their own ends.
We should be prepared to fight these policies and not shy away from speaking truth about settled science.
All of you arguing against the existence of climate change really are screaming into a hurricane.
Go Naomi!
“the bad guys are preparing to use the “shock” of the disaster”
This is exactly what Naomi’s doing. She even managed to do a little branding with her “Shock Doctrine” mention at the end.
PS – “Settled science” doesn’t exist. That’s contradictory in terms. No real scientist regurgitates that nonsense.
You’re right, the whole idea of science is based on the fact that it is never quite settled. Details change and sometimes entire theories can be disproven with new evidence.
However some ideas after years of peer review and challenge can gain the status of fact. Evolution, gravity,relativity. Even these theories sometimes need tweaking. I would not go so far as to say that man made climate change has reached the status of the aforementioned scientific theories however I would say that the scientific consensus is certainly headed in that direction.
If you disagree with the direction this debate is going, publish a paper in Nature or one of many other peer reviewed magazines. If you’re evidence is clear and can be reproduced science will embrace it. Until then I’m gonna go with consensus. I look forward to you proving us wrong.
“You’re right”
I know. You should have stopped right there.
Evolution and gravity are not fact. They are still theories…the best ones we have, but theories nonetheless.
General Relativity is constantly being upheld, but it alone doesn’t account for the spooky actions of the quantum universe.
Gravity, in fact, is the least known of the four fundamental forces.
Evolution is still missing a few pieces.
Those latter two things are referred to as ‘theories’ precisely because they involve processes that are still too complex for people to understand. ‘Scientific consensus’ about those theories doesn’t magically transform them into facts. To achieve the status of ‘fact,’ a much higher threshold must first be met.
Your last paragraph is ridiculous.
In science, a theory is as good as a fact. But you are not a scientist, so how would you know that?
Oh, that’s right, willful ignorance. Thanks for proving your scientific illiteracy!
“In science, a theory is as good as a fact.”
No, it simply isn’t. That’s the most dangerously ridiculous conflation I’ve seen yet regarding scientific understanding.
“Thanks for proving your scientific illiteracy!” Oh the irony…
“Evolution and gravity are not fact.”
Wrong.
Both are facts. Theories are the constructs that describe their mechanisms- Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection in one case and Newton’s Theory of Gravitation (superceded by Einstein’s Relativity) in the other. Theories explain the facts and can be used to make predictions about the facts. That populations of organisms evolve is beyond question. That objects are attracted to each other through their gravity is also established fact.
Likewise, rising global temperature is established fact, not theory. The record of measurements is readily available. That CO2 has ‘greenhouse’ properties is a physical fact that can be verified by measuring its absorption and emissions spectra. The theory explaining climate change may debatable, the facts aren’t. You are confused.
Ok I see you’ve decided to create your own definitions of ‘fact’ and ‘theory’.
You’re really going to have to get past your cognitive dissonance to understand that facts and theories are two very different things. Regardless of how you choose to conflate the two, facts are used to support theories. Facts cannot be superseded, as you suggest. Theories CAN be superseded (re: your own example of Newton’s theory of gravity).
It’s a fact that plants grow. It is not a fact that ‘if you plant them, they will grow’.
One is an undeniable truth (fact), the other is an estimated guess (theory).
You are Orwellianly confused.
There is a reason this area is called Flash Flood Alley. Thrall Texas in 1921 had over 45 inches of rain and was the record for rain fall in the US till 1978 when Medina Texas over 48 inches of rain. I live on ancient flood deposits hundred of feet deep that are thousands of years old brought down by floods.
One thing to remember is a flood like this is catastrophic for one species. You plow a field and it’s catastrophic for every species but two.
In our typically species-centric world view we talk about how catastrophic global warming is going to be because of how devastating it will be for humans. But on a planetary basis global warming will benefit far more species than it will harm.
If you want to really think about global disasters it is the destructive capacity of humans. Of all the land surface of north America around 85% of it is been disturbed past the point where it can recover on a human time scale. This means and Iowa soybean filed has a lower species diversity than spots in Greenland or Antarctica. Look at all the flood waters around Houston is the water clear or muddy? one inch of top soil may take over a thousand years to be created and most places here in central Texas have lost 2 or more feet of top soil. Functional forests and grassland can’t be restored once the soil is gone.
We can fix global warming if we were smart enough to do it in 50 to 100 years but the real destruction will take 10-20 millennia to fix.
If you want to make the argument that “global warming” is good for the biosphere of the planet because it will likely take out humans, then make that point.
This is completely false: “But on a planetary basis global warming will benefit far more species than it will harm.”
We’re causing the Sixth Great Extinction Event. Sure, life will (likely) recover, but we, and the life we have known here will not. Better to stop this extinction event if we can. You aren’t helping.
I was not making the point about humans. The point is the damage we have done so far hugely dwarfs and problems we will see with with global warming. We make the big deal about global warming without being objective about the effects and ignore a far greater threat all for self centered reasons.
All of Alaska has about 12 species of trees, Indonesia is about the In same area and there are 100s of tree species per sq kilometer.
the 48 states has about 28,000 plant species Mexico with about 1/3 the land area has 78,000 and if any one could ever count them all there might be double that number in Columbia. The great majority of all those tropical and subtropical species will see the expansion of habitat.
Now many of the areas warming is permafrost with low number of plant and animal species per gram of soil. In the same volume of soil the tropics can have million of species more. There are 1,500 species of bamboo none of them grow. So the the biggest gains in planetary species diversity will be in the soil.
The Sixth great extinction is due to habitat destruction and not global warming.
“The Sixth great extinction is due to habitat destruction and not global warming.”
A false statement but fixable:
The sixth great extinction event is due to both habitat destruction, including global warming.
There, FIFY.
Further, counting bacteria and yeasts among “species diversity” is a rather crappy way to run a tally of the biota, given their short lifespans, high reproductive rates, ease of gene transfer and frequency of genetic mutation. Preference should be given to multicellular animal genomes that will otherwise vanish forever, never to be seen again, primarily due to human hubris; they don’t deserve to go down, we do.
What climate change ? According to Trump the Chump it doesn’t exist . It’s fake news !!
Maybe it’s time to talk about geo-engineering:
http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/engineered-climate-cataclysm-hurricane-harvey/
It’s long past time for The Intercept to take this on, with all its ramifications, including H.A.A.R.P.
Please.
It’s time to talk about the geo-engineering propaganda, drummed up by the fossil fuel monopoly to deflect attention away from the fact that the burning of fossil fuels IS the geo-engineering that has proven to be the cause of AGW and the sixth great die-off on Earth.
Finally people are talking about it here! :-D
We cannot solve Climate Change without the inclusion of the UN military geoengineering program (AKA Solar Shield). Doesn’t anyone look up at the sky anymore, it everywhere, and geoengineering has been in the works since the 1940s. It’s been ramped up beyond belief in the last 5 years, but people are too busy on their phones updating their Facebook status’s & texting. Anyone over 30 remember when they were young, the deep blue sky, now turned white? Anyone remember when the Sun was yellow not white? Anybody remember seeing grid patterns in our skies almost daily, when we know there’s designated flight paths? We can’t pollute the Earth to save it, total insanity with Global ramifications. Climate Change data is being manipulated, it’s 10 times worse than they say. Anyways, here’s some truth for the skeptics from the horses mouth.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/magazine/is-it-ok-to-engineer-the-environment-to-fight-climate-change.html
Al Gore on Ellen 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WbXK_Twm5I
Former CIA Chief John Brennan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8OFllOka8Y
On July 15th, 2014, citizens from Northern California rallied to create the largest attendance ever at the Shasta County Supervisors chambers (400+, chairman Les Baugh confirmed this attendance record at the start of the meeting). The primary purpose of this meeting was to present information that proves there is a very dire heavy metal contamination and UV radiation issue across the Shasta County region (and the world). A list of 10 experts presented data to the board to confirm the legitimacy of the concerns being addressed. At the end of the presentation, the board voted unanimously to investigate the heavy metal contamination and passed resolutions accordingly. The video below documents the events of this landmark day in the fight to expose the crime of global geoengineering;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4WhYKP83zo
If you really care about Climate Change, geoengineering by our Governments & military using aerosols in or stratosphere to block the suns rays that are raining down on our fragile planet. Aluminum, barium, sulfur dioxide (they got this idea from how volcanoes block the sun) on or forests, oceans, & us. If you care at all, check my links “fully”, do research, correlate all known info between climate change and geoengineering. Oh, geoengineering is also used to control weather, so some of these storm are man-made (HAARP).
We will never stop CC without talking about geoengineering, it’s futile.
While you bring up valid points, pretending to be someone you are not not only loses credibility in what you say but also risks the possibility of discrediting Dane and all that he has worked so hard for. His first and foremost position is to be factual and credible.Knock it off.
My apologies Wanda, I never meant to impersonate, but bring his name up so it’s seen by peeps who are curious to look into the name, but did it in the wrong way. I would never want to discredit Dane or lose credibility for myself, he’s a huge inspiration for me and my own research. I listen to his show every Saturday , and watch the skies everyday. Let’s just forget I used his name, and focus on the content I provided. I will post for now on with the name I’ve chosen. Just trying to inform the best I can with hopes that sites like this will do they’re job and actually research what we’re talking about. Proof goes back to the 1940s, journalist should start there.
Oh, I encourage everyone to try to find the “Iron Mountain” transcript by the UN: https://archive.org/details/ReportFromIronMountain.
Anyways, I really appreciate you pointing that out Wanda, Nice to see some on the supporting side who sees/knows what is going on. Cheers!
I do believe in global warming but this isnt it.
This isnt unusual weather.
Its just the worst its been in
500 years.
Meaning it happened this bad 500 years ago.
And it will again.
Plus this isnt HOW global warming effects us.
Educate yourself on a topic before you speak. Science is 100% certain this has nothing to do with global warming.
Your mistake strengthens those who claim global warming is a myth.
They hold this up as proof that climate change activists are loons.
Because this IS wrong.
NEVER risk our credibility.
Its too important.
Next time ask professionals and experts first.
Theyd have told you this is normal from a larger perspective.
“Science is 100% certain this has nothing to do with global warming.”
This earth scientist is 100% certain YOU haven’t a clue what the hell you are talking about.
Yeah I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s not even debatable. Climate change intensified this storm. Warmer seas= more intense storms. They said Sandy was a 1 in 500 year event as well. So in less than a decade we’ve had at least 2 1 in 500 year storms. And extend that out two years and there’s Katrina, another event they claimed was once in a lifetime occurrence. It seems we can expect one of these 1 in 500 year weather disasters every other year or so. Something isn’t adding up here, it’s time to stop the denialism.
“Something isn’t adding up here”
Right…it’s your own math. You’re citing annual/biennial (strong but not uncommon) storms as being “500 year storms,” which is nonsense.
PS – Warmer seas don’t guarantee more intense storms. There are several other factors involved.
Yeah! and steel frame skyscrapers didn’t just free fall into their own footprints for the first time ever from office fires! Please see rememberbuilding7.org and ae911truth.org Truth shall set us free! 9/11 Truth is most powerful and will be most powerful in motivating The People in overthrowing disaster capitalism and the status quo. We’ve all been lied to. Enough is enough is enough!
Here is the congressional testimony of four prominent climate scientists that call into question the mean by which consensus opinion on global warming was achieved and is maintained irrespective of contradictory data derived from scientific method
Curry Christy Mann & Pielke go at it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3_sHu34imQ
By “prominent climate scientists”, it’s clear you mean “sellouts to the ultra-rich who have ulterior motives that haven’t been revealed yet.”
As an earth scientist since 1995 (presently out on disability leave), I share that we in the earth science community have for some several decades now had a joke expression among ourselves, of which there are a few versions, that goes something like this:
“99.7% of Earth Scientists believe that anthropogenic climate change is underway right now and 99.7% have no idea why that percentage is so small.”
You can swap out the numeric percentage for whatever 90%+ you care for, and “believe” for “know”, “understand”, etc, and “anthropogenic climate change” for “global warming”, etc, and “no idea why” for “can’t believe that”… You get the idea.
The scientific data is overwhelmingly on the side of whatever version of, “yeah, it’s real” you care to articulate.
The scientific argument against is nonexistent.
So far, ALL nay-sayers of which I am (or have been) aware (over, what, 22+ years now) have been shown to be either funded by carbon-pollution sources or are individuals who aren’t actually experts in the areas in which they have some complaint.
The articulations I have heard against AGW being active right now are literally laughable.
Further, claims by the same “fossil fuel” interests that there’s a lot of money being made by scientists who “promote” the “idea” of AGW are flat out lies; a very significant fraction of earth scientists have been made unemployed by the likes of GWBush and his successors, another significant fraction are under employed, and the rest are eking out middle-class lives, virtually none with any prospects of becoming “rich.” And anyone who thinks otherwise is either grossly un- or misinformed, an outright liar, or, perhaps, certifiably insane.
Here is a simple challenge of the veracity of your expert opinion: Provide proof that Curry, Christy, Mann, & Pielke are either funded by carbon-pollution sources or are individuals who aren’t actually experts in the areas in which they have some complaint. Absent that proof, I will just discount the rest of your post as equally false.
Gee Karl, if you are a living breathing human you may want to start defending your self instead of being a helpful idiot! One day you will find climate change at your doorstep too! But I suppose you’ll just blame the weather or what ever and never know any different. Well, most of us are critical thinkers and always consider cause and effect. You ought to try it some time.
@John
It might be helpful if you applied some of that alleged critical thinking to the congressional testimony provided by Curry, Christy, Mann, & Pielke (see link above). Personal attacks fall largely into the domain of those whose comments have as little substance as your own.
Where is your link to congressional testimony where climate scientists prove AGW is not real? I can’t find it anywhere. Probably because it just not exist.
I never said that there was congressional testimony wherein climate scientists prove AGW is not real?
Good Article Naomi, thank you.
We will hit the tipping point in 3-5 years. The rate of rise (temperature) will no longer be linear but, insted will start as an upward curve.
Keeling measured the co2 concentration at approximately 200ppm in the mid 50’s.
Now, we are at nearly 400ppm today.
A 100% increase in a short period of time.
The half-life( decay rate) for co2 is about 40 years.
Total and complete Emission reduction to the point of zero must happen today in order to see the rate of rise level out in 20 years before, we can see any stability in the Earth’s temperature and, it will take 40 years before we can see a reduction in the Earth’s temperature.
Total emissions, rate of co2 ppm increase and, half-life decay rate, along with projected temp increases would make a great topic for your next article or a series of articles.
Bring in the experts do digest the information before expanding it into an on going topic.. like a series of articles.
The goverment won’t do anything.
The sad point is alot of people don’t understand how much thermal energy is required to heat water or, the potential that water truly has in retaining such vast amounts of energy only to be released( in the form of rain) at a later time resulting in more flooding
Just a few degrees difference…say from 88 degrees to 91 degrees would increase the amount of rain fall from 50 inches in 72 hours to over 80 inches in the same time period.
Big difference!
So what will the water temp in the Gulf of Mexico be in 20 years if nothing is done today?
I would like to see you take that point and keep drilling it into the peoples awareness. Keep pushing your point.
Change must come from the bottom up because, it will never come from the top down.
Keep it up Naomi! …Mark
No, Naomi, now is the time to talk about and ‘expose’ the Disguised Global Capitalist EMPIRE that is the underLYING cancerous CAUSE of global warming, climate destruction, never-ending and always-expanding wars, vast inequality, racism, Wall Street looting, drone assassinations, deceitful dual-party Vichy government, domestic oppression, massive poverty, etc., etc., etc.
All these, ‘issues’, ‘symptom problems’, dumped ‘negative externality costs’, conditions, and our entire “ailing social order” [late/great Zygmunt Bauman], et al. are actually caused by this EMPIRE.
WakeTF-up people.
Liberty, equality, democracy, and justice
Over
Violent (and dual-party Vichy disguised)
Empire,
Alan MacDonald
We don’t merely have a “Big Money”/Citizens United problem, or a domestic tyranny and NSA SPYING problem, or an NDAA Secret Detention problem, or a corrupt unSupreme Court problem, or a gun/fear problem, or an MIC problem, or an ‘Austerity’ problem, or an EXPANDING WARS problem, or a ‘drone assassinations’ problem, or a vast income & wealth inequality problem, or a Wall Street ‘looting’ problem, or a Global Warming and environmental death-spiral problem, or the world’s largest political prisoner problem, or a crappy un-healthy insurance problem, or shitty over-priced and exclusive educational access problem, or, or, or … ad nauseam — but what we REALLY have is a hidden VEMPIRE cancerous tumor of GLOBAL EMPIRE which is the prime CAUSE of all these underlying, related, and mere ‘symptom problems’ —- but not even the most progressive voices in the alternative media agree or dare raise a United Voice against this dangerous EMPIRE —- and which is why Kerry, Obama and the DGE they ‘front-for’ is scared shitless that RT TV’s message of pointing the finger at the real Disguised Global Empire is so dangerous to their global facade of supposed US freedom, democracy, equality, and justice, all of which is such an obvious bullshit disguise of the real DGE.
Nice rant.
One little error here:
” but not even the most progressive voices in the alternative media agree or dare raise a United Voice against this dangerous EMPIRE”
Well, a TINY voice, but the most progressive voices out there (of which I am a part) ARE raising voices against it. Note the now broken-apart group that founded this place: http://TheTroyPress.com
That place broke up because, ultimately, post 2016 POTUS election, some there wanted to go on a rampage against their political foes while the people who ran the place knew that that was a fruitless exercise and attempted to keep the attacks limited to within the quite reasonable terms of service. … That didn’t work and the group splintered. … However, the idea is correct; we need to build our own progressive media and stick it to the ultra-rich who are for the moment in control and who bring about all the ills you can imagine….
Keep ranting! And Keep On Organizing! :-) We need to inform people about this insanity. A HUGE fraction of us, left, right and center, are propaganda victims.
Get a grip!
We need to talk so we can repeat all the good it did talking after Katrina…???
Now seems more like the time to have a genuine revolution, starting with removing from power and decision-making all multimillionaires and billionaires who deliberately pump money into climate change denial, and every CEO of any fossil fuel multinational and their paid lackeys… sorry, lobbyists.
It’s a war, a very real war, of 99.5% of us versus a few f***ers who would rather kill most of the planet than live in an equitable, sustainable society.
Calm down…you’re turning into a brownshirt.
No, he’s not; “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.” John F. Kennedy
IDK if we’re there yet or not, but the time to act in a very serious way on Global Climate Change (read: stopping the fossil fuel pollution to our atmosphere) has long passed and we don’t have much time left to address the problem. We are causing the 6th great mass extinction and are likely taking ourselves down with it. At what cost to prevent that? Is that a hero’s action, or a villain? I say hero! Act now, avoid a violent revolution!
Yes, he absolutely is.
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Take off your tin foil storm trooper hat…and polish that crystal ball; it’s giving you some blurry visions.
This isn’t about hate, Ace, this is about SURVIVAL.
If anyone posting here is a brownshirt, I strongly suspect it’s you.
Keep telling yourself that… The hate is strong with you.
Please, read that quote and call MLK an idiot…I know you want to.
If you knew anything at all about history, then you would know the brown shirts defended and promoted fascism, just like you are doing. The hate is all yours.
“If you knew anything at all about history, then you would know the brown shirts defended and promoted fascism”
No shit….that’s why I mentioned it. Because you and Art are prime examples doublespeaking fascist wolves in antifascist sheep’s clothing.
Now prove it by telling us all what you think is wrong with this quote:
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Time to start calling a spade, a spade. And also time for all the deniers to take off their side blinders and look at reality and realize that global warming/climate change can no longer be denied.
It is and always will be just a theory.
For anyone taking the bait on the Republicans that voted against the Sandy relief bill Dec 2012 ” Obama Sand aid bill filled with holiday goodies unrelated to storm damage” $150 M Alaska fisheries,$41M US military bases, including Guantanamo Bay ,Cuba $5.2 M justice $ Kennedy Space. $3.5HL sec $ 2M Smithsonian Inst in DC ,. This is what happens when bills are packed with pork
Statistically speaking, that’s how it’s done in the USA; votes are bought through pork / special inclusions on bills. So, your talking point is extremely hollow; you’d have to show that these same legislators consistently voted down pork, and we all know, they didn’t.
This is a complete fabrication. I don’t know what the source is for you information but the information is false. The Sandy relief bill passed in 2012 was simple. All it did was increase the borrowing authority of FEMA. The later bill passed in 2013 did not include any of the items you mention. The text of both bills are available publicly. Read the text.
Thanks for that – I didn’t have time to look it up; glad someone here set that record straight! …I’ll try and remember this because Patty’s assertion isn’t all that rare.
lol
Harvey has NOTHING to do with climate change.
Harvey is weather doing what its ALWAYS DONE.
Youre like a Christian after 9/11 wanting to talk about violence.
For the rest o& the world, 9/11 was business as usual.
Tragic, like every day is tragic.
You just lived in a bubble, oblivious to the darkness that befalls others.
Harvey may be new to YOU but its nature doing what it always does.
What it did 500 years ago.
What it did 50 years after that.
And 50 years after that
And 50 years after that.
And it WILL happen again, in time. Hell, it happened in old testament days when one village was the known world.
(of course noahs arc is fiction but such flooding had been experienced for the story to he conjured up)
Are you daft?
Look, i realize climate change is inevitable. In 200,000 years, Earth will do another ice age.
Hopefully other planets will be options by then.
But Harvey has nothing to do with it.
Wrong. It’s not normal to have 500-year floods every decade or so.
it’s happening more often than that, now
Yes, the hurricane did come out of the sky….
What claptrap. Have you been sitting on this article since 2005, waiting out the longest hurricane-free period in US history? Every statistic shows that extreme weather events have trended down over the last 80 years. Fewer hurricanes, fewer tornadoes, fewer droughts, etc. Even the claim about heat waves is only from temperature adjustments, as the heat waves are nothing compared to the Dust Bowl 30s and the heat of the 1950s.
Yes, in the little us bubble you live in. Islands disappearing? Antarctic ice melts? Happened before– got proof, got photos??
Roch, even card-carrying AGW alarmist scientists will not stand with you on your concern for ice melting on the Antarctic ice shelves. That is normal and natural. If the ice on the shelves did not melt and break away, that would mean it was spreading to the temperate zones, which would mean a new ice age was underway. Ice on the Antarctic shelves melting is no more an indication of a warming Antarctica than ice melting in your glass is an indication that your freezer is broken.
Moreover, all temperature data shows downward-trending temperatures in the Antarctic and increasing snow and ice on the interior of Antarctica.
You are confusing your Arctic and your Antarctic. Very different things are happening at the top vs the bottom of the world.
What a troll. Have you been sitting on your climate denial for the past 40 years? Every single thing you’ve said is false. And the Dust Bowl? Completely caused by humans. So there’ s a poor example to whatever point you thought you were making.
“Hurricane Harvey now the biggest rainstorm in the history of the continental US.”
Facts disturbing your BubbleWorld?
Hah, your spewing regurgitated talking points from Trump’s EPA team.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/30/tropical-storm-harvey-climate-change-conservatives-donald-trump
PR monkey.
You obviously don’t know much about the science behind climate change. I recommend you start your education by visiting the Arctic and asking the folks who live there what unprecedented changes they have to deal with.
The conclusion you espouse requires cherry-picking the data. While the frequency of extreme weather events over time hasn’t changed much, the severity of tropical storms in certain areas has.
http://www.factcheck.org/2015/04/the-extreme-weather-warming-connection/
Really, when one fully considers the effect human progress has had on the planet – we’ve destroyed entire habitats and species while transforming great areas of land for our purposes – and how many resources we’ve already (often literally) burned through, it’s no stretch of the imagination to reason that human industry has had drastic consequences.
It’s simple. We’re overloading a natural system, throwing the entire thing out of balance by being the only species on the planet that doesn’t put as much back into the cycle as we take out of it.
Thank you for pointing out what is should be obvious but apparently isn’t. There’s been an 11 year drought in Hurricanes and all the while we’ve been hearing about every year being hotter than the last.
So 11 years without a hurricane means nothing and when another one finally shows up it’s proof of manmade global warming? Thank goodness there are some people with common sense who can see through this opportunistic nonsense. Let me guess… we’re at a “tipping point” again right? We’re doomed… but there’s “still time” if we listen to Al Gore and tax the weather?
It was the Enron blowout gusher that caused a lull in tropical storms for the Gulf States.
When oil covers water, it inhibits evaporation. Now that the surface of the Gulf of Mexico no longer has that oil on it, expect to see much more intense storms from here on out.
In fact, Texas already had a 500 year storm for two years in a row before Harvey, which is now considered to be a millennium storm.
Of course, just mentioning Al Gore in the pejorative as a scam artist discredits anyone as a scientifically illiterate fossil fuel monopoly propagandist.
Objectively, that’s nonsense. While the US temperature record is different to the world’s, it’s not true that the 30s were warmer than recent years. It was close, but no.
The whole premise of the article is ridiculous. Texas, Louisiana, Florida and the whole eastern coastal United States have been hurricane ally since the founding of the country. The only thing “extreme” are leftists pushing prosperity killing schemes to flatter their bloated egos.
Evidently! If that is so obvious why do some pursue making profits at the detriment of everyone else? Actually very little regulations for zoning in Houston were the delight of the developers! And so the overbuilding without healthy safety valves. So nothing “left” here– your heart is on your left side, tear it out! If your toilets flush somewhere, you have clean water, and you have roads to drive on, thank the left– it is called the “General Welfare” by will of the Constitution.
There is no climate change. There is no desaster in Houston. Best weather ever.
(just a suggestion for the next Trump-tweed)
If one can count to six, one may be sure that scientists who claim that Harvey is unprecedented are excitable people with no sense of geologic time.
When, a few hundred years from now, whatever is left of homo sapiens is circling the drain of the Sixth Extinction, some among our race might reasonably and convincingly assert, as they do today, that nothing new is afoot.
The Sixth Extinction may correlate with high CO2 and methane levels lately but that does not mean that excess carbon CAUSED the Sixth Extinction. Acidified oceans and the rapid die off of animal and vegetable life should be regarded as nothing more than another cyclic event that keeps repeating itself, in the same way that spontaneous combustion happens again and again.
The globe has come this way before. So please, Ms Klein, quit the scare talk. There were, may I remind you, five massive die-offs in earlier times, and yet here we are.
The problem is not the globe, the problem is mankind. “Yet here we are”… but “there we won’t be”. THAT’s the problem if people go on accepting the unacceptable and nothing is done to stop climate change. And if nothing is done to neutralize the evil people who govern us worldwide.
“And if nothing is done to neutralize the evil people who govern us worldwide.”
Amen.
If you think your enemy is anyone who isn’t ultra-rich, you’re probably wrong; the poor sod you think is your enemy is most likely just another propaganda victim.
What you might discover realize or know about ignorant people is that ignorant people never aced stats. Ignorant people cannot explain the bell curve, the relevance of 3 standard deviations and the 5%ers out of bounds. Ignorant people do not know the correlation of relavance, or the significance of the mean. Ignorant people cannot extrapolate data for the delta of change nor identify the variables that account for the greatest degree of differences.
TIME. Ignorant people do not see a series of events sufficiently to compare them to other series of events because ignorant people can only compare singular isolated events as if they exist on their own independent of everything around them. Yet IGNORAMUSES have it in their minds that they are sufficiently capable of seeing everything that qualifies them to make pronouncements as gods.
The worst thing about IGNORAMUSES is that these many are complete idiots who will hit the brick wall and cause the deaths of millions or more and, if they live thru the catastrophe they enabled, will look up dazed and confuded and muddle some moronic trash like “Well, i guess i mighta been wrong”.
The planet cannot afford moronic ignoramuses in positions of power and authority of our planet.
What you did not say about ignorant people is that they want to look smart by keeping everyone dumber than them by dissing Education and Science.
Most people don’t think in geologic time.
But if measuring geologic time helps you dismiss the deaths of billions of individual people as largely irrelevant or completely natural, you should try a little experiment.
Go out and shoot a bunch of people. If you survive, explain to anyone who will listen, “They were all going to die anyway. Don’t be so excitable. Where’s your sense of geologic time?”
The difference between inevitable and acceptable is as great as the difference between alive and dead.
That’s dumb. Global mass extinctions occur every hundred million years or so, as a result of some massive catastrophic event. If one happens within hundreds of years of the industrial revolution, it’s ridiculous to take it as coincidence.
Check out some real stories and solutions at ClimateMonologues.com and an entertaining history of climate change science at MelteseDodo.com. I wrote a parody of “The Yelllow Rose of Texas” – in 2002: “Oh, the yellow rose of Texas is burnin’ to a crisp. Then floods came through and drowned it. The strange ironic twist is it’s burnin’ Texas oil that’s makin’ Texas fry, and the dough the oilman’s makin’ – it won’t be worth a pie!” Wrote that in 2002. Time for the oil companies and the Koch Brothers to once and for all stop their disinformation campaign about climate change.
For some reason I assume The Intercept would have journalists that lay out all sides rather than this sort of bottom feeding fear mongering. This article is clearly designed to lay blame solely on the right, when it is clear that both sides destroy civil liberties, allow pollution, and militarize the police.
In the future, maybe you could put forward ideas rather than pumping out short sighted blame for issues that are clearly nuanced and debateable.
come again?
I concur Sir. This article is an opinionated hit piece on anyone who dares question global warming. I was hoping for better when I decided to become a monthly supporter of The Intercept.
Maybe, but Houston prides itself on deregulation of the real-estate industry as much as possible.
Regulations are pesky and costly. But they do save lives.
They are doing the same thing in Dallas: real estate developppers are filling in all the previous unsafe easements with 2–story dwellings at great risk for everyone. In time.
Plano county hospital dumps patients at Parkland so they can keep their taxes down for health spending!
We know!
Nuanced? Debateable?
“Both sides destroy …”? Really?
No, they don’t. The ONE side is the ultra-rich, and they control “both parties”, the Democrats (mostly) and the Republicans (completely) – perhaps that’s the “both sides” you’re clattering about. The OTHER side is the rest of us, We, The People, and no, we’re not destroying civilization, except insofar as we’re propaganda victims, worn out from economic strife, worn down from lack of adequate health-care, etc. Sure, we could fight more effectively, and had better do so, but that doesn’t make us to blame for the destruction.
It’s worth pointing out that the Gulf of Mexico is going to be warming up for the next 50 years at least. If we institute a crash program to get off fossil fuel entirely in 50 years, it’ll still keep warming for 50 years after that before reaching a new equilibrium, at best. So that’s 100 years of warming – in the best case scenario, i.e. that of a rapid transition to renewable energy. If you accept climate science, that’s the conclusion.
If you don’t accept climate science, well, that means you might as well be living in the 18th century.
Some might say this is too gloomy of a view, and we need to inspire people to make positive change – but let’s start with our current reality, and move on from there. What “preventing a future littered with countless more victims” really means, then, is that you have to build infrastructure to prepare for the inevitable climage changes at the same time as you are replacing fossil fuels with renewables.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/04/fema-governors-climate-change/
Now, this is also the politically smart thing to do – and also explains why fossil fuel politicians refuse to take climate change into account in disaster planning – i.e., it means having to admit the science is correct. Which in turn means that replacing fossil fuels with renewables is also the right thing to do.
At the end of the day, don’t underestimate the cynicism and greed of the fossil fuel and associated financial industry. They know global warming and climate change is coming; but they also believe they’ll be able to move to the higher ground, to those parts of the planet that are least affected, at least during their lifetimes. And if that means sacrificing Houston and other Gulf Coast cities, well, that’s the price of doing business. Just don’t cut off their oil money flow; they’ll need that money to buy their fortress and pay the guards to keep the zombies out. . .
Really, this is not a good strategy; there really isn’t any place to hide. Eventually, the zombies get over the walls.
The Science is correct, everyone uses Science for survival. Anyone that says other or poohpoohs Science is a Liar!
“It’s worth pointing out that the Gulf of Mexico is going to be warming up for the next 50 years at least.”
…not worth much. There are many more factors that go into formation of hurricanes, e.g. upper wind shear, dry fronts, cold fronts, El Nino vs La Nina, moving pressure boundaries….
If you’re going to reduce the science to ‘ warmer gulf temperatures equal more hurricanes,’ you may want to stop chiding people for utilizing 18th century pseudoscience.
A warmer Gulf of Mexico DOES mean stronger, more powerful storms, and more that don’t peter out just before making landfall, so we can forgive photosymbiosis since they weren’t presenting a scientific paper; the thrust of their assertions are correct. (Most of your assertions are not correct. For example, it makes no difference if the Pacific is in El Niño or La Niña as to whether storms in the Gulf strenghten, weaken, or even enter the Gulf.)
Your attempt to nay-say doesn’t change facts.
You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about. If you DO live on a coast, you’ve remained vulnerably ignorant. If not, you’re just parroting reductive propaganda.
Hurricane formation relies on much more than warmer gulf waters. 2 years ago, the gulf was warmer than ever, and yet only 2 hurricanes formed…in a season that was predicted to be one of the most active ever. Upper wind shear destroys hurricane formation, various fronts contribute to stalling/dissolving/deflecting, and here’s a tidbit about El Nino/La Nina:
“Hurricanes result in considerable damage in the United States. Previous work has shown that Atlantic hurricane landfalls in the United States have a strong relationship with the El Niño-Southern Oscillation phenomena. This paper compares the hist orical record of La Niña and El Niño events defined by eastern Pacific sea surface temperature with a dataset of hurricane losses normalized to 1997 values. A significant relationship is found between the ENSO cycle and U.S. hurricane losse s, with La Niña years exhibiting much more damage.”
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/lanina/
Educate yourself before others embarrassingly do it for you.
FUNNY!
Here’s a fun-filled fact: Hurricanes that strike the US Gulf of Mexico Coast and its Atlantic Coast do not, and never have, originated in the Gulf, they originate off the coast of Africa.
ZERO hurricanes formed in the Gulf 2 years ago – shows how much you actually know.
Trying to play games with the fact that the Earth is a system and everything within it affects everything else to some or another degree isn’t going to shield you from the criticism that your attack on photosymbiosis was completely full of fecal material, which was the whole point. You’re not here to discuss the ins and outs of earth science, you’re here to try to sow seeds of confusion and disbelief in the fact that humans are altering the climate to our own detriment and that of much of the rest of the biosphere in a lame attempt to prevent us from doing anything useful about it.
Further, your analysis of the excerpt you provide is funny. In the case of La Niña and El Niño, that someone has found a connection between ATLANTIC landfalls didn’t speak to the question of GULF landfalls, and in any event, it’s immaterial to the point really at hand; you’re a denier of the fact that humans movement of carbon that was formerly sequestered into the active (“short term”) carbon cycle is causing changes that harm surface life as it exists today and is causing acidification of our oceans, and thereby threatening ocean life as well.
We’ve had more than enough of your kind. If humanity survives to be able to reflect on this period, people like you will be considered the worst of our kind.
You even more clearly demonstrate that you have NO idea what you’re talking about.
Hurricanes absolutely do form in the gulf. Your most glaring recent example is Harvey.
Tropical depression > tropical storm > hurricane. Hurricanes form in and out of the gulf. Hurricane Harvey only FORMED WHEN IT WAS IN THE GULF OFF THE COAST OF MEXICO/TEXAS.
So aside from your red herring and gish galloping, you haven’t disputed the factors that actually contribute to hurricane formation; and you even managed to set up a poor straw man in your second sentence.
“Hurricanes that strike the US Gulf of Mexico Coast and its Atlantic Coast do not, and never have, originated in the Gulf, they originate off the coast of Africa.”
1.) Hurricanes absolutely do form in the Gulf of Mexico…which you’re clearly denying. Don’t be a climate denier.
2.) No one claimed that US Atlantic landfalls originate in the Gulf…(though some have)
3.) You’re completely ignoring/misreading the fact that El Nino/La Nina DO affect Atlantic formation (which you argue is responsible for all US Gulf/Atlantic Coast hurricane landfall); thereby completely undercutting your own point).
In case you’d still like to remain obstinate, here’s another link that correlates El Nino to ALL US hurricane formations. http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/elnino/
Again, you very clearly have no idea what you’re talking about. If you DO live on a coast, you’ve remained vulnerably ignorant. If not, you’re just parroting reductive propaganda.
Hurricane formation relies on much more than warmer gulf waters. 2 years ago, the gulf was warmer than ever, and yet only 2 hurricanes formed/made landfall…in a season that was predicted to be one of the most active ever. Upper wind shear destroys hurricane formation, various fronts contribute to stalling/dissolving/deflecting, El Nino/La Nina/El Viejo, etc.
Warmer Gulf surface temps alone do not equal more hurricanes.
Cut out the gish gallop and doublespeak, and stop denying climate science.
Boy, you’re desperate!
Too bad nobody’s falling for your claptrap, especially your claim that someone other than you is the victim of propaganda. We know better.
Sweet non-answer. I’m glad you got to show everyone all yer smartz about climate…When you’re done playing around, chime in.
I’m not paid to comment here, unlike you apparently, and I have a “real life.” Besides, nothing I could ever say to you about climate change will have any effect on you – you’re not here to discuss that anyway, you’re here to disrupt, confuse, and waste people’s time – and I have plenty of faith in the intelligent people who come along…
Yeah that’s nice doublespeak…peppered with some spicy deflective ad hominem nonsense.
The reason that nothing you could ever say about climate change could have an effect on me is because everything you say about hurricanes is either a flat out lie or complete pseudoscientific nonsense/ignorance. Your credibility is sapped.
When you can successfully refute the most basic meteorological data that strangles your entire point, I’ll start to believe you’re not some troll/sock puppet/propagandist/ignoramus.
The New York Times now wants to lift maybe $10 trillion worth of petrochemical refining and manufacturing, subsea exploration tech, offshore production, and presumably the undersea pipelines that connect them to offshore deep-sea Gulf wells from Corpus Christi to Baytown–and move it “to a different location like the Eastern Seaboard” so that metrosexuals can have an economy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/business/energy-environment/harvey-energy-industry-texas.html
the 500 year flood is going to now happen with increasing frequency every few years and it will absolutely destroy the gulf coast. Dead trees, blowing over, poisoned soil from the mix of bacteria and pesticides and pc’s. The entire area will become a mud pattie. sinkholes. road and bridge collapses. Skyscrapers FALLING OVER.
It is going to be hell and insanity will go from denial to finger-pointing. Vote republican so they can take the blame for what they have done.
Houston is 50 to 100 feet above sea level. If Houston had good/smart drainage infrastructure, no one would be talking about Houston right now.
“In short, [Naomi Klein] will waste no time exploiting Harvey, and any other disaster like it, to peddle ruinous false solutions, such as — connecting the dots between climate pollution, systemic racism, underfunding of social services, and overfunding of police.”
Sorry, Naomi, much as I love you, you’ve got it wrong. Let’s take this one particular point you make:
“It’s also a hard truth that the window for having these debates is vanishingly small. We won’t be having any kind of public policy debate after this emergency subsides”
Yes, it’s true that “we” won’t be having any kind of public policy debate AFTER this emergency subsides, but no, the hard truth is that there is no window for “having these debates” in the main stream media whatsoever.
Earth Scientist here, since 1995 and informal social justice warrior since birth. Virtually all your points are spot on, but it’s high time we recognize that we need to organize outside the main stream and take over the main stream with political force that cannot be beaten. We MUST stop attacking people who don’t agree with us and start winning them over, one person at a time; if they’re not ultra-rich, they’re PROBABLY not really your enemy, just a propaganda victim…
I don’t have all the answers, but ONE of the answers is that we need to use the internet to organize beyond the reach of the power of the ultra-rich to silence us.
YOU, Naomi, have a bigger voice than most of us; I URGE YOU to help us all organize at a grass-roots level. We MUST realize that the Democrats are about 80% or more sell-outs to the ultra-rich and are NOT a savior. Lets put our efforts into building true progressive efforts such as the Green Party, and if there are any others, fine, them too. But aside from party, we need to recognize that voting for the lesser-evil for decades is what got us into this mess. Hillary scoffed at progressives and said, “where are they going to go?!” She learned better, didn’t she?! But putting Trump in office is no answer, it should have been Bernie and we must FORCE better candidates. Let us not take a candidate like Hillary being forced down our throats against our will as somehow OK.
FIGHT THE ULTRA-RICH!
And, by the way, that’s exactly why Hillary lost; she was seen as the choice of the ultra-rich and instinctively, I think, many either let her lose or decided to, as Michael Moore put it, throw the only Molotov cocktail that was laying around at the establishment – Trump.
“Democrats are about 80% or more sell-outs to the ultra-rich and are NOT a savior. “
That reminds me of what I wrote yesterday to a certain “Ella Free”, who gives a platform to Stasi Zersetzung perps. My message was censored by American Patriots, but the point of that message was this: Thousands of American torture subjects need to stop deluding themselves about the true nature of the degenerate American national character, and stop looking up to the very people torturing them for relief.
By the way, Art, have you ever heard of Zersetzung? It’s being used on some of your neighbors, and it moves climate change a couple of notches down on their list of priorities.
Um, Art? Bernie endorsed Hillary Clinton, explicitly, at a convention where his staff muzzled Sanders supporters with his approval. Bernie then “unity” toured with DNC chairman-elect Tom Perez.
Your Earth Scientist cred is no better than your delusional politics.
It’s certainly true that Bernie could have been a better standard bearer, but he told us in advance what to expect, and he has a position in the Senate today that’s useful. So you can stuff your attitude – and your remarks about me – out the same pie hole they originated from.
No, it didn’t come out of the blue….it was formed off of the coast of africa most likely, just like the majority of hurricanes. This idiot is just forgetting about Carla in 1961 and the Galveston hurricane in 1900. Both had devastating flooding as well. Were they caused by climate change as well?
No major tornados in US for three years. Nothing at all this year. No fires or drought in California. Temp at high 80’s in August. In 2011 it was 118. No more Oil Fracking earthquakes. No more 6 or 7 huricanes up coast. Beef prices so high there is no caw flutuence or tree sawers. and so so much more. We R safe. i am beatrice. Just an Americanvet from the south. My great great grandfather died at Peachtree protecting Lincoln, but thats another story. Why do you think the boys made down those tracks… sherman and lincoln fouht with them… God Bless Carl Sandburgh. And my Great Grandfather at fourteen walked at the end with Lincoln in Richmond. How many blacks new what a white man or a town was…. and yet the knew him and what he had done for them and they would touch him in the streets.
Hi Gary. May I ask … do you usually read the Intercept, or did someone encourage you to read this specific article and comment on it. I’m curious to know.
I am discussing the politics of the hoax. Since the American people are unconcerned about global warming http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/americans-largely-unconcerned-about-climate-change-survey-finds_us_563906d8e4b079a43c04de2d and therefore elected Trump, it is safe to say that this was a MYOB election.
Notice that implementing policies is purely a political process that has nothing to do with science. The warmists failed to make their case to the American people and therefore cannot get their disastrous policies implemented anymore. Indeed, a lot of them will be done away with.
Now, as for the hoax, it will collapse because it isn’t supported by the data http://manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2016/12/13/some-predictions-for-the-future-in-the-climate-game .
Geoengineering and weather derivitives markets are the newest money makers for those with money!
When our biosphere implodes due to climate change, just remember while you’re drowning from ocean rise, that it’s all the media’s fault for not bringing in Geoengineering into the conversation and ignoring the proof. Polluting the Earth to save the Earth is insane!
You won’t be able to hide this anymore when the MSM TV starts talking about the Solar Shield. It’s already in NYT, Washington Post, Ellen with Al Gore, among many other MSM outlets. Only a matter of time. I’ll come back to talk to you then Naomi.
Better look at those links I gave you and educate yourself, ’cause when they do start talking about it on TV, you will have no idea what is really happening. All you’ll hear is the angle being pushed by the military Industrial Complex, but they WILL use the term “Solar Shield”. At that point you’ll start talking about it, and probably you will support it, without really knowing what those aerosols contain, and what they’re doing to the Biosphere.
Climate Change is a lot worse than you know, extremely worse. If you don’t look into these issues that effect us all, you’re part of the problem, and why most people disregard the news as fake. Keep suppressing, I like the Barbara Streisand Effect.
Oh, I see you let a “Climate Skeptic” post their bullshit, why? You can easily debate them with facts and make them look uninformed a stupid.
Me however, you/no-one can debate me, because I’m on the Climate Change side and I have links to credible MSM and people like Al Gore, John Brennan, NYT, among so many others about Geoengineering. If someone were to see the links I gave in my first post, it would change the conversation and open some eyes to new developing facts.
You like the Echo-chamber you have right now, letting Climate Skeptics rant their BS to feed your ego and publicly shame them. My links and info is truth, being ignored, and you don’t know how to respond to it, because it comes from the very sources you support. The Irony!
I’m done now, I’ll come back to your articles when the “Solar Shield” hit’s the TV. Your ignorance is astounding!
Q. How do you kill off billions of people without destroying the planet without a nuclear or biological war and with minimal blame?
Gladio : Chaos is the best way. Desorganize. Destroy. To be sure they don’t look, do stupid things in order to have everybody’s attention on you. In the meantime…. Very important: don’t educate people, they have to stay naive and poor.
Please look up John Coleman the weatherman for a million years. There is no climate change. I thought this was an honest news source? I guess I’ll go elsewhere.
One hurricane hits and all of a sudden it’s all due to climate change? Please. It is a massive fraud, a wealth redistribution scheme and an excuse for government to regulate everything. Weren’t most of the coastal towns already supposed to be inundated with water? Whatever happened to all those false predictions by peddlers such as Al Gore who’s carbon footprint is over 50x the average person’s? Send all the money you want to them; they’re unable to affect so much as a single rain drop.
One hurricane? You may have a form of mathematics dyslexia. It can be treated. Find a friendly kindergarten teacher and ask for help. Soon you will be zooming right past your onesies and twosies and be on to a rich world of abstract thinking.
Anytime there’s a mass shooting, politicians exploit the situation to call for more gun laws.
Anytime somebody leaks intel which sheds a negative light on government actions, politicians exploit the situation to call for laws which infringe on free speech (see Wikileaks).
Anytime a natural catastrophe occurs, politicians exploit the situation to call for more regulatory control and funding, which gives them the power to decide which energy companies succeed or fail.
“Never let a good crisis go to waste.” – Rahm Emanuel
Actually he is paraphrasing from John Templeton who probably got it from and even earlier source. His most famous saying is, “Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism, and die on euphoria.” He later added that the best time to buy is during points of “maximum pessimism.”
Yes, and reasonably something should be done. In a healthy world it is simply called Learning and Prevention!
Yeah,governments are going to stop hurricanes and other natural weather phenomenon from forming. Just send them more money. lol
It’s also time to ask why the city has no formal planning and zoning process that protects the residents from random unmanaged development.
The New England School of Community Relations is now offering coursework toward a degree in how to rescue your neighbor from the roof a flooded house.
Wow! Bad science and even worse social policy. Venezuela could use a consultant like you. Oh, wait…
“But first, let us know when facts, logic, and/or reason will play a role in what you think and post.”
K, I guess Al Gore is a liar, so is John Brennan, NYT, and a California City Council meeting with experts. These are FACTS by the very people who we all listen to on Climate Change. I gave the links, but obviously no-one is opened-minded to research this. This is called selective journalism, which is is seen a lot on FOX and CNN.
I thought The Intercept was different, independent, and open to new factual evidence. I must of gotten you confused with Glen Greenwald. Think I’ll just stick to his articles as not to be subjected to half-truths.
I see by the comments, you’re only selecting a chosen few to comment. That’s a big problem with journalism these days, an Inconvenient Truth. Nineteen Eighty-Four & Brave New World is really here, Google is a great example of that.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act – George Orwell.
PS: My email name is exactly what you’re doing.
It’s infrastructure first, climate second
The Dutch waterworks (our greatest achievement) total cost was 15 billion US dollar (inflation adjusted). And though the Netherlands is a small country, I assume that its size is comparable with the Houston area. Saving Houston with infrastructure that will cost the American tax payer 15 billion US dollar is not a lot if you compare it with the military industry yearly budget.
In other words, Why talk about the weather when talking about Houston and not about the money that is spend by the US on unwinnable wars in the Middle East first?
“”Now is the Time to Talk About Climate Change.””
Had you stopped talking about it? I hadn’t noticed.
On the one hand, you have people blaming natural disasters on supernatural retribution for our collective sins.
On the other hand, you have climate change deniers, who blame abortion.
People who find that the ice melting, big mountains coming down in Switzerland and Texas under water are terrible events must know that these catastrophies only show the first image of our future: with the climate warming and the sea rising on the whole planet, billions of people will loose everything and have to move like in Houston now. And die of starvation and disease. Bilderberg criminals find this ok: one billion slaves are enough for them. People like Trump are not sorry at all, quite the contrary. They want to be alone with much less people.
Trump was never invited to Bilderberg. By contrast Hillary and Barack were ( Westfields Marriott, Chantilly, VA, June 2008).
He’s running into these establishment headwinds for the very reason that he’s a non-initiate.
If you’re the altruist you insinuate to be, you’ll root for Trump.
Trump and his ‘boys” are evil puppets, and these evil puppets are installed. By whom? Think twice. Absolut no differences between Clintons, Bushes, Baracks, Trumps, Pences,Sessionss, etc., even Macrons. The long term goal of the real powerful behind is a reduction of the world population – and a maximum of confort for few. The suffering of others let them absolut cold. They will go on like this as long as Mankind does’nt open eyes and react.
And BTW, the Georgia Guidestones call for half a billion slaves, not a billion.
Climate Change is real, I said in my last post. Added some relevant concerns to the conversation, and proof from people like Al Gore, John Brennan, NYT.
My comment was censored. If we can’t have this conversation about Climate Change in relation to Geoengineering, our planet IS doomed. FACT. Please Editor, consider publishing my last comment, and let’s open up a truthful conversation. I gave MSM, Al Gore, John Brennan, and a City Council Meeting which the motion was passed. Are these people liars? Al Gore? Come on, we shouldn’t be stifling facts, because we don’t agree. I want to help fight climate change like anyone else.
To the climate deniers: It’s all real, take a look around you, open your eyes. Why the hell is this even being debated.
“In a World of deciet
So right, Naomi.
But it wont happen.
Wallstreet thieves want America to be destroyed so that wallstreet thieves can MAKE A DEAL to print money to loan and enslave. Also to allow their wealthy predators to make deals to buy public property and services and make Americans pay pay and pay more while losing losing and losing more.
Climate change? The oilco thieves wont have it.
ask Dr. Grier, UNACKNOWLEDGED
Naomi, people like you really believe if the USA gives $4 trillion away to countries in the Paris Accord, your weather problems will subside – never going to happen. By the way, if the USA can’t figure out how to pony up $50 Billion to build a wall between the US and Mexico – where is the world is the USA suppose to find $4 trillion to just handout – then expect the other countries to do their part. No thanks. We are still coming out of an Ice Age – and unless you can document weather for the past million years, you have no clue if what we have now is normal.
Climate Change is real, but we can not have a proper conversation or solution without including the geoengineering issue in our skies. Without that inclusion, there’s nothing we can do to stop the biosphere’s destruction.
People need to look up more, instead of at their screens. The Sun is white, it used to be yellow, grid pattern aerosols form planes, sky used to be a deep blue, now it’s blueish white. Aerosols contain aluminum, Barium, Sulfer Dioxide. This is all adding to the devastation of Climate Change and it will accelerate it. Some links for the Geoengineering-skeptics, from mainstream media, the poster boy of global warming, AL Gore, and Former CIA Chief John Brennan, and a Government Council meeting with experts from Aviation, Climate scientists, Vets, Civilians, and Military.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/magazine/is-it-ok-to-engineer-the-environment-to-fight-climate-change.html
Al Gore on Ellen 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WbXK_Twm5I
Former CIA Chief John Brennan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8OFllOka8Y
On July 15th, 2014, citizens from Northern California rallied to create the largest attendance ever at the Shasta County Supervisors chambers (400+, chairman Les Baugh confirmed this attendance record at the start of the meeting). The primary purpose of this meeting was to present information that proves there is a very dire heavy metal contamination and UV radiation issue across the Shasta County region (and the world). A list of 10 experts presented data to the board to confirm the legitimacy of the concerns being addressed. At the end of the presentation, the board voted unanimously to investigate the heavy metal contamination and passed resolutions accordingly. The video below documents the events of this landmark day in the fight to expose the crime of global geoengineering, all experts are identified with labels in the
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4WhYKP83zo
If you want to hear the added truth to Climate Change, these links are from the horses mouth admitting it, but people keep continue not to believe it is not happening, because it’s an “Inconvenient Truth” that no MSM talks about, including “The Intercept”.
Wow! What a shockingly bad, and horribly biased article. And I’m a believer in human caused climate change. TI sinking to a new low. No editors working today? Glenn must be face-palming.
“… how unprecedented this kind of rainfall is.”
Citation, please. Do some research before you make (or rely on) statements like these. Or did you know it wasn’t true and were simply content to use is as a springboard for your ridiculous tirade?
Citation please.
Kindly list all incidents of greater inundation in Texas.
And no, you may not use the bible as a reference.
I’m not making the claim that this storm is further evidence of climate change, Naomi is.
I am a civil engineer with training in hydrology. While records are still very incomplete, this event is almost certainly to be unprecedented and has come closer to the theoretical physical limit for rainfall intensity (called the PMP) than any event on the records anywhere in the US.
Uh, the first P in PMP is “probable”, it’s an estimate, with uncertainty. It is in no way a “theoretical physical limit”. With your hydrology background you of course know that PMP replaces the MPP (which means “maximum possible”), when the MPP was exceeded too often. So this time they have it right? Pull the other leg.
So when was the last “unprecedented” storm? Are they more frequent? Always getting worse? Are you simply being “fooled by randomness”?
Then what are you trying to say, you have no point.
Perhaps I quoted the wrong text. It was hard to choose. Attributing a single weather event to climate change is confusing weather with climate. They’re different.
Both the size of the storm( a direct corollary of increased heat) and the fact that it is part of a pattern of increased frequency, a frequency currently evident in many places on the planet tell us that global warming is producing a dramatic increase in devastating weather events as predicted by climate scientist for decades.
To dismiss it as weather and not part of a pattern that must be fully discussed by the media and other public forums, while it has our attention, seems to me to miss a rather important boat.
“… the fact that it is part of a pattern of increased frequency”
This is the part you, and Naomi, need to support with data.
In my memory, it’s been quite a while since a major storm hit the US. Is the frequency increasing world-wide and I’m merely stuck in my US bubble? Possibly, but I won’t take your assertion without something to back it up.
Using this storm as evidence of climate change makes as much sense as Sen. Jim “Snowball” Inhofe bringing a snowball to the Senate floor, claiming that below freezing temperatures and snow in February is proof that climate change does NOT exist. Both claims are simply foolish.
Trotting out climate change as the cause this individual “extreme” event, and further that it is proof of all things bad things being the fault of the right-wing, it undermines real efforts to make progress on climate change.
Why are there so many morons commenting on this website… Intercept is superb journalism far above the mindless fools commenting here. I’m certain they are just commenting on the headline as there is no way they read the article and had a clue what the author was trying to state in this piece. Why don’t you all just go back to Breitbart, the man you all worship is back there again churning out all the shit you like to eat.
It’s difficult to take Ms. Klein seriously, after she sided with Koch brothers backed organizations and opposed the carbon tax initiative during the last general election here in Washington state.
WELL SAID NAOMI, I have been hoping that someone with a voice would bring up this point. The cost of climate change on the back end as far as natural disasters, displacement, wars, etc. is far and away many more times as a costly as taking action now. The longer we wait to start talking about this seriously, and putting some good regulations into law. These “once in a lifetime” events are going to be annual catastrophes with enormous repercussions worldwide. The most unfortunate thing is that it has already started, and we are still debating whether or not it’s actually happening… We have a long, long way to go, and time has already pretty much ran out.
No, “we” are not debating whether or not it’s actually happening; the ultra rich have a few stooges – imbecilic thinkers – they’ve convinced to “carry water” for them in a desperate effort to fool those of us with brains or at least slow us down and consume our valuable time, distracted with know-nothing idiots who aren’t in power anyway.
The ultra-rich will not willingly let us do a damned thing about climate change (or social justice), so we have to take power and force them. No More Stolen Elections! (Bernie won that damned primary, you can be sure!) Demand PAPER ONLY ELECTIONS with proper re-count procedures and with EXIT POLLING THAT STATISTICALLY PROVES the elections are sound. (We have in the past argued that other country’s elections were fraudulent on those grounds, time we apply the science to our own elections.)
We MUST take control over the ultra-rich, or they’ll be the end of a great many of us, and certainly to a large fraction of the beauty of the world we (used to) have.
climate: before the cock crows today you will deny me three times
climate denier: whuuuuu????!!
“greenhouse gas reduction: I’m waiting for the groupon”
it’s foolish to deny the climate
that’s because it’s not nice to fool mother nature, hans.
Warmists don’t want to consider climate change. They feel it is settled science and use term ‘denier’ to attack all that disagrees with them, a horrible antisemitic label transposed in the most cynical, hateful way. This doesn’t sound like consideration at all, but pig-headed dogma. Warmists refuse to debate the science, and instead, hold to the bizarre non-mathematical belief that time-series and regression analysis on climate can even yield settled science … which it cannot.
Furthermore, we have been ‘considering’ climate change for a long time, and with comical results:
“Scientists Ponder Why World’s Climate is Changing: A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable.”
– New York Times 1971
It is really crass to blame a hurricane on warming, it has no scientific basis and is just a free gift to the financial capitalists that want to step up a trillion dollar carbon trading floor.
Science has made leaps and bounds toward understanding how the atmosphere and the planet works. 1971 should never be the standard for anything.
CO2 is the serotonin of climate ‘research.’ You’ve made no progress.
It doesn’t help when temp data is faked and massaged either.
The data is not faked! Truly, you are an outright liar, so desperate!
Climate data is faked with regularity, most recently in Australia:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/bureau-of-meteorology-opens-cold-case-on-temperature-data/news-story/c3bac520af2e81fe05d106290028b783
Nice. Link went right to a subscription page. I need to be open-minded about this, though I believe the evidence for anthropomorphic climate change is overwhelming. Maybe you could copy and paste the text for us. Because “Opens cold case” doesn’t sound convincing at all.
Leroy
You can Google the string:
opens cold case on temperature data
Or Google:
Bureau of Meteorology data 2017 tampered
Indeed. There is no such thing as Global Warming. It is ACD you speak of. Go look up the definitions and know what you are talking of.
Between Climate hysterias and statue hysterias, the progressive left comes ever more to resemble 17th century Danvers, MA.
Suggest on in silly ways, no one cares! Left is where your heart is– cut it out!
rather than come up with clever-but-doomed solutions to global warming
we might better try to reason with the global culture organism that hates us and is constantly trying to destroy human life
the answer might be surprising.
however in Solaris by Stanislaw Lem humans were ultimately unable to communicate with the larger global intelligence, and were left awash in memories and radioactive rainfall
Yes; we know: It’s “weather” when it doesn’t fit your agenda, “climate” when it does.
God forbid you should have actually had to have graduated from college as a prerequisite for writing a piece like this.
Just because you disagree with the conclusions doesn’t mean the method’s faulty. But if you’re still confusing the disparate concepts of ‘climate and ‘weather’, I can see how you could make the error.
Regardless of how you view “climate change”, “fossil fuel industry”, we all share in the responsibility of searching for ways to diminish our dependency on fossil fuels.
The other point NK makes is the change in attitudes for building along fragile coastlines. Sandy gave a good window on changes of building codes, raising the living spaces above “sea level” in prone areas. She also mentioned what the Dutch have done at great expense but at great long term savings in lives and property. Apparently we don’t have that kind of view in the US. And, that can get us into deep trouble. Too much short term thinking to merge with the same as our financial system……no long term views when it comes to our physical infrastructure funding, laws and social long term good.
In the long galactic timetable our existence is so short term as to amount to a kind of “nothingness” but in our hugely expectations short term lives we want to make the best of a lousy situation. We need better politicians and a public willing to make the necessary changes for the good of all….money wise, and society wise.
Some parts of Houston have dropped in elevation significantly over time (e.g., since the 1930s, its Brownwood neighborhood has descended 8 feet lower to sea level.
The storm that is dropping so much rain over East Texas right now is doing so because it’s surrounded by high pressure ridges hundreds of miles away in every direction that are not allowing it to move off and dissipate (as others most commonly do).
Don’t expect progressive leftists–who can’t even do soft sciences (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/upshot/clinton-has-solid-lead-in-electoral-college-trumps-winning-map-is-unclear.html)–to understand that.
All the evidence suggests it’s right-wingers who are oblivious to science.
“Because people predicted an election wrong, they are therefore wrong about everything else.”
Lemme guess, did you predict a Romney landslide in 2012? If so, you need to simply stop talking. Because everything you say now has absolutely no merit, by your own logic. Cool, bye!
No, I forecasted a Romney loss. Obama was clearly the more popular of the two. I was never for Romney in any state role, and so it wasn’t like I was hoping he’d win either. It was just a race between two Planned Parenthood and health care insurance mandate and gun control supporters. And I voted for neither of them. I think I voted Constitution that year.
Not rocket science. It is to progressive leftists though.
It feels warmer.
*By co-incidence I was in the Tampa (gulf coast side Fl.) area a few days before hurricane Harvey made landfall.. . and the surface water temp. along the Florida gulf coast was uncomfortable to the touch. The near windless air temp. was breathtaking and the humidity was almost overwhelming.
Of course, this is merely an observation Ms. Klein … but I can tell you with high confidence the sky was ‘blue’ (i.e. where Harvey came from) and ‘now’ may not be the time to talk about it with the levers of power in Trump’s administration.
Trump is on the job, right now, you’ll have to come back ltr.
p.s. furthermore, I believe Trump can twitter out of the blue in Mar-a-largo and cause a hurricane in Washington D.C.
It sounds positively Venusian, bah.
_‘Next year or the year after, the Arctic will be free of ice’_
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/21/arctic-will-be-ice-free-in-summer-next-year
Mark your calendar.
And when it doesn’t what then? How about you tell no force Al Gore and the rest of the elite to downsize to a 800sq ft tiny house create with no man made materials. Right they are not the problem.
The Houston flood disaster: A social crime of the American oligarchy
29 August 2017
Catastrophes such as Hurricane Harvey are the product of a half-century of neglect of America’s social infrastructure, accompanied by a fantastic accumulation of private wealth at the very apex of society.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/29/pers-a29.html
The rap sheet keeps growing.
the system is cleverly interwoven
even those who resist MUST create greenhouse gasses
global culture itself is an organism designed to eliminate humans
“Ah, look at this moron holding a snowball saying climate change doesn’t exist- that not how it works! SCIENCE SAYS SO”
“Ah, look, a non-record flood in Texas which floods fairly often. TOTALLY CLIMATE CHANGE.”
You know… People might take your gloom and doom BS more seriously if you didn’t make a mockery of yourself so often.
When the debate is actually about climate and not taxes – let us know.
But first, let us know when facts, logic, and/or reason will play a role in what you think and post. Then we’ll inform you that something that is presently being controlled by myths, prejudices, and/or emotions is being talked about so that you can start off posting misinformed opinions, and then be schooled until you’re somewhat informed.
You know… The rallying cry of “um, but logic and science” doesn’t work when you don’t actually understand the topic enough to make your own comments about it.
“You don’t know nuffin – but I can’t refute that the “debate” isn’t actually a tax scheme subscription – so clearly you’re dumb and wrong”.
Yea, you’re really using that logic and/or reason there buddy.
the human species will as usual destroy their habitat, this time on a global scale
there is zero historical evidence that this can be prevented
thankfully, the universe is expanding … put that tool in your toolbox, hans.
an expanding universe lifts all boats
Great article and paying homage I’d like to draw attention to the last sentence, what an excellent choice of words I must say.
Sometime a week or 2 ago, was the 15th anniversary of the 2002 catastrophic flooding in central Europe (Germany, Czech Republic, Poland area). Images remembering the events were all over their news that week.
Furthermore, when historians examined historical records after the fact, they found that such floods were somewhat cyclical – one coming every 130-150 years or so. Some of the oldest bridges like Charles Bridge built between 1357-1402, survived largely undamaged this time, because it had seen multiple similar such events and was build/rebuilt to handle them (unlike the more modern structures).
These events are in no way unprecedented, and sometimes have cycles much longer than human lives.
Using these types of events to advance a political agenda is despicable.
Not unprecedented? You might want to check with the National Weather Service on that. . .
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/08/27/catastrophic-flooding-underway-in-houston-as-harvey-lingers-over-texas/
Must be fake news? A massive conspiracy theory? Despicable manipulation of public opinion by the Cultural Marxists? FFS.
News that doesn’t agree with you is not necessarily “fake”, but it isn’t necessarily the whole story either. What may be “unprecedented” in the history of Houston (founded 1836), is not necessarily “unprecedented” historically.
Seizing on a single event as “proof” of a larger, long term trend is not just “wrong” from the perspective of “politicizing the victims”, it’s flawed from a scientific point of view. No matter how right you might be about something like climate change or inequality, the ends do not justify the means …
No one says it didn’t happen FFS – it’s just that if it happened 200+ years ago in America, would you know about it? No.
In Europe these things have happened and continue to happen in cycles that long out last humans. These events are very rare, but normal.
As for the BS comment below that “trying to stop pollution is political” – it takes a special kind of idiocy/conceit to think anyone not willing to sign their paychecks over to Green Peace or Al Gore somehow doesn’t give a damn about pollution. I suggest you actually talk to (note: “to” not “at”) people who disagree with you – you might learn something (at the very least, the inane drivel will stop).
Trying to stop pollution of the earth’s atmosphere, tut tut. What a despicable, selfish political agenda!
Here’s a good article on climate trends in Houston:
http://theweek.com/articles/720740/hurricane-harvey-americas-climate-future
Now you can absolutely be sure that the average surface temperature of the Gulf of Mexico, 50 years from now, will be warmer than it is now – that is guaranteed. So these storm patterns are going to get worse, not better. And that means there is a major need to build the kind of infrastructure that can resist such storms. For example, pull out of the flood plains, build elevated structures, etc. This is infrastructure on the scale of the Dutch effort to prevent the sea from coming in and will cost trillions of dollars.
But the Trumpsters and the fossil fuel executive and shareholders don’t want to do this, because then they’d have to admit that fossil-fueled global warming and climate change is real, and then there would be political pressure to move all the fossil fuel subsidies over to the renewable energy sector, and then the fossil fuel industry would go the way of the whale oil and kerosene lamp industry, and they wouldn’t realize their expected return on investment. . .
Hopefully you understand that hurricane formation involves more factors than warm gulf waters.
Practically all of Houston is a flood plane… are you suggesting that all of Houston’s structures be elevated or evacuated?? Also, Houston’s flooding was due to rain, not sea surge…so a trillion dollar Dutch seawall project would have prevented none of this.
Flooding would not have happened if Houston had proper drainage infrastructure.
Here is an example of responsible reporting on the subject that Naomi Klein would do well to study so she can learn how to write a responsible article. It provides historical context, interviews and facts. Imagine that! Instead of making shrill claims about what other media outlets are not doing, Klein would better serve readers by actually doing some reporting.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/08/hurricane-harvey-climate-change-global-warming-weather/
Here is are examples of respectful ways to comment, for instance:
Thank you for this article Mrs. Klein.
I would like to add the following …
And nothing in the National Geographic article refutes anything related to global climate change that Ms. Klein references.
So what exactly are the inaccurate or irresponsible claims Ms. Klein makes in the piece? Please be specific. Thanks in advance.
First of all, it condradicts her assertion that no one is covering this angle. Secondly, the National Geogaphic article makes clear that, in the view of that reporter, it is very likely that the hurricane has been exacerbated by climate change. Then the article actually bothers to explains why it’s making such an assertion by citing studies and interviewing experts. Compare that to Klein’s article; she categorically assers it is the result of climate change, but does not bother to explain or provide any data. This is the superficial, sloppy journalism which seems to be the hallmark of The Intercept
Klein does not assert that no one is covering this angle. She writes that there is too little talk about climate change:
“What you will hear very little about is why these kind of unprecedented, record-breaking weather events are happening with such regularity that “record-breaking” has become a meteorological cliche. In other words, you won’t hear much, if any, talk about climate change.”
By now anyone can “categorically assert it is the result of climate change”, this is so well-known, but citing sources is good practice (maybe the latest IPCC report).
Thank you for your reasoned response, however, as someone deeply concerned about climate change, I believe this notion that statements are so obvious that they don’t need any proof is one of my major objections about The Intercept. Even the statement that this is not being covered is not documented by Klein. It is bad journalism and engenders groupthink and echo chambers.
Exactly! Truth is the new hate speech. What odd times we live in, the propaganda machine is in full swing on all MSM. I now consider TI to be MSM., so I’ll take the bookmark out of my “Independent” folder and move it to my “MSM” folder.
Important statements that are not being covered is bad journalism (I’m not the only one who thinks this way). Naomi’s editing actions and pandering to the few who share your exact views and omitting the one’s you don’t is a form of fascism (Look it up). You won’t though, because feelings before facts (or disregarding links that are factual from people like AL Gore, John Brennan, and the NYT) is the new news.
I’m saying all this being just as concerned as everyone else about Climate Change. I just noticed and brought up some proven documented facts by people who are on top of the climate change issue, and Naomi either didn’t look at the links (which is my guess), or disregarded it entirely when the buzzword “geoengineering” was posted. Look up “Solar Shield to combat Climate Change”, it’s in the NYT. The last line of the article is “We are already living in a test already”. These people are telling us to our faces, yet people refuse to listen…no wait…I mean the complacent/dumbed-down groupthink sheep.
I just spoke to Dane Wigington and he said this comment (above) is NOT from him, but rather someone posing to be him – an imposter. Any comments appearing ‘anywhere’ other than on his own site, are not legit.
Whoever you are, stop it.
Dane Wigington imposter – why? Send people to investigate on their own to the geoengineeringwatch.org site. You do not help the momentum of awareness by pretending. As Cori says, STOP IT!
I am very concerned about climate change, but do not share your concerns about The Intercept. A scientific approach would make the articles unreadable for many. Providing/repeating history and full context would make the articles too long for many. It may be best to leave those decisions to the authors.
Quite often commentators have their own agenda and attack the journalist. However, if you see only sloppy journalism here, maybe The Intercept is not suited for you.
Be careful your attitude leads down a slippery slope. Be critical of everyone, especially well-intentioned journalists who see the world in black and white and refuse to document his or her story.
“You have changed the climate of the world.It will produce drought and floods and deprivation.”
bit.ly/2wNq1LI
The more we slow down global warming, the worse nuclear winter will be. We just want to scream it louder and louder… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU5LMG3WFBw
Promising “maximum penalties” for looters — within the vast empire of prosecutorial discretion — scarcely astonishes me. I mean, a lot of people who stay behind risking death in the hurricane are afraid of looters, so you might say they are putting lives in danger at best.
What astonishes me is buried deep in the details – the gold Louisiana police badge for a deputized Blackwater mercenary. Police should be serving the public, not a private command. Pull that one out and explain it, tell us how many more there are like that, and you will excavate your lead.
Please, Naomi, let’s call it what it is: GLOBAL WARMING! Thank you.
This claim is beyond stupid. It’s beyond unintellectual. It’s beyond unscientific and irrational. It is anti-rational, anti-intellectual. It’s ambulance-chasing, plain and simple.
Be consistent. That is not a plea, it is a prerequisite for rational thought and rational discourse.
So are you claiming that these storms are “more common” or “more severe” now?
That could not possibly be simpler to prove untrue. This is the first major hurricane to hit the US since Katrina… a record-breaking lull in the historically active Atlantic Hurricane cycle. And the lull occurred while Global Warming Alarmists constantly insisted that the world was hotter than ever. Of course, the data was showing that the temperature was actually NOT heating up during those years, that there was a pause of 16 years during which the temperatures did not rise. So NOAA and other “scientists” dependent on the Global Warming dole cooked the books and “revised” the temperature readings to show what they wanted them to show.
So Naomi, in those 12 years, did it ever occur to you to write an article pointing out that the “scientific” warming models and predictions had ALL been wrong, that none of their dire warnings were materializing, and that perhaps we should reconsider our dogmatic faith in something as vast and ridiculous as anthropogenic global warming?
No, you didn’t, because it’s all about FAITH for the Left and the Global Warmers. 12 years without a major hurricane does not constitute evidence for them. But a hurricane (which the earth has ALWAYS had), when it FINALLY arrives, does. Yeah, that’s sound logic.
A few simple questions for you Global Warmers:
– If Anthropogenic Global Warming is causing these “severe storms”, why is it so easily demonstrable that these storms have existed at equivalent frequency and severity since pre-industrial times?
– If warming is real, how come you can only “prove” it by manipulating the data post-hoc?
– If “greenhouse gases” create warming, how come there is such a poor correlation between atmospheric carbon levels and temperature in the fossil record?
– If man causes warming, how did Earth manage to come out of multiple ice ages before man even invented the wheel?
Accusing practicing scientists of being faith-based in their approach to their work is a lot like accusing theists of being reason-based in their belief.
And here’s a tip for you: hyperbolic rants are NOT persuasive.
Hyperbolic rants like this article? I couldn’t agree more strongly.
You and everyone who supports the AGW fantasy would do well to do yourself a favor and seek out alternative viewpoints. The bromide that “98% of Scientists agree…” is: 1) False. 2) Ad Populum (appeal to the masses) fallacy 3) Ad verecundium (appeal to authority) fallacy.
A key hallmark of any faith, like belief in God, is that no evidence presented against it is considered by adherents to be sufficient or even valid. And they see everything around them as evidence FOR it. Because they WANT it to be true.
That is exactly the situation with the AGW myth. This hurricane– which is a natural occurrence which has demonstrably occurred hundreds of times throughout pre-industrial history– is evidence of Global Warming to those in the cult. But 12 years without a major hurricane is not even admissible as evidence against the AGW hypothesis. Do you not see the hypocritical inconsistency? Perhaps you think I’m speaking too loudly.
By the way, people who are defensive and who hold unexamined viewpoints always hear the words of their opponents as loud and hyperbolic. Challenge your own beliefs. Seek out alternate viewpoints, especially regarding this AGW crock. You’ll find that the oft-repeated lie that only oil companies and those they pay are AGW “deniers” is false, and is in fact an example of the most common logical fallacy of the intellectually lazy, ad hominem.
We would all be better off if we cared more about believing what’s correct than “proving” what we believe. If you take that attitude, which scientists SHOULD but often don’t (which the history of science amply demonstrates), then you have nothing to lose when you seek alternative viewpoints or discuss things with people with whom you disagree. If your belief is proven wrong, you lose nothing. Rather, you gain knowledge you didn’t have before.
No. You missed my point. Hyperbolic rants like yours are not persuasive. Or are you, for some reason, exempt from your requirement for “rational thought and rational discourse,” terms you set yourself in your first screed.
As for rational thought, are we to accept your premise that practicing scientists, en masse, rejected the scientific method and peer review process in favor of a mass conspiracy that preserves the mere appearance of science while undermining us all?
As for rational discourse, well, where is yours? Reading your words, I pick up the condescension loud and clear. The disparagement and scorn is also quite apparent. If you want to “discuss things with people with whom you disagree” for the purpose improving understanding, I recommend a more respectful tone. As a wise man once said to me, “If your statement sounds like it would naturally end with the words ‘your Honor,’ then you are on the right track. If, on the other hand, your statement sounds like it naturally ends with the words, ‘you idiot,’ you will probably fail to convince anyone.” Think about it.
My state of Vermont was devastated by Tropical Storm Irene; you are right that it wasn’t a hurricane, but the points Ms. Klein makes in the article are equally applicable to what happened to us in Vermont: massive rainfall flooding watersheds as a result of a slow-moving storm that had collected a record amount of moisture from the Atlantic on the way north.
Similarly, New York was devastated by Hurricane Sandy, which again caused much more damage because of the higher sea level and the extra moisture carried by the storm.
You seem to be basing your estimate of how many storms there have been on TV coverage of urban devastation. Not all storms hit urban centers (fortunately). And you perhaps don’t care about New York or Vermont, so those didn’t make an impression on you. Nevertheless both storms happened, caused substantial devastation, and were after Katrina.
All that drivel has been dealt with decades ago, it’s not ever worth addressing. It falls into the same category as “HIV doesn’t cause AIDS” – yes, people claimed that the HIV virus infection was only ‘correlated’ to the AIDS disease symptoms and didn’t cause it (Peter Duesberg at UC Berkeley, for example).
Scientists proved this was false, just as scientists have proved that the massive fossil CO2 emissions drive global warming – because atmospheric CO2 traps infrared radiation that would otherwise escape to space. This warms the surface, more water vapor evaporates, water vapor also warms the surface – that’s global warming. And this warming causes changes in atmospheric and oceanic circulation and precipitation and ice sheet melting – that’s climate change. The whole history of the discovery is detailed here, in Spencer Weart’s “Discovery of Global Warming”
http://history.aip.org/climate/
That’s assuming you’re actually interested in the science, and aren’t some fossil fuel industry PR monkey out trolling for pay.
In that case, I expect you will take advantage in coming years of great property values along the coast.
Surely there will be many lovely properties available from excitable people who are scared off by all this baseless climate change talk. I guess every cloud has a silver lining.
That would certainly be a great opportunity to “put your money where your mouth is.” If you are going to bet, bet big..! I hope it goes well for you.
Ed: It is not condascension to point out the fallacies being used to make points in the article and in favor or AGW. I also find it fascinating that you do not find Ms Klien’s ambulance-chasing to be in poor taste. I do. People in Texas are suffering mightily and Global Warming Alarmists are already using it to further their agenda, and doing so hypocritically as I pointed out above.
Do I believe it’s a conspiracy? I would answer that with “Do you know many university scientists?” I’ve known a good few. 100% of them were concerned (often consumed) by getting funding for their work. How much funding is there for “Climate Change Deniers”? Those who contradict their colleagues on this are ostracized, attacked, and defunded. It is not “deniers” who are on the take, it is AGW proponents. Is it a conspiracy? Well, I do believe that smart people are capable of making alliances to push an agenda. And when those people are the ones in control of the media, scientific journals, and purse strings, they can heavily influence research and the message the public believes. If you don’t believe that happens, look into the history of how the USFDA came to recommend carbohydrates as our primary source of calories, or how the truth about calcium scoring scans vs coronary stents was kept from the public for years. Science follows money. To disbelieve this is naive.
The Greenhouse Theory as summarized above is a quaint little fantasy that has the advantage of simplicity and ease of visualization. However, it fails to take into account the hundreds or thousands of known and unknown feedback mechanisms of our climate systems. And it does not at all account for the extra-planetary forces which are unknown and probably unknowable due to our time frame. Climate Scientists cannot explain the massive fluctuations of the past nor can they predict the future. They don’t know why we had ice ages, why we came out of them, or why we had warm spells. The IPCC’s predictions (as well as Al Gore’s) have been laughably inaccurate time after time.
We believe Newton and Einstein because their theories are demonstrably extremely accurate. That’s science and good reason. Why do you believe “Climate Scientists” who are consistently wrong, and who rely on a manufactured image of consensus (ad populum, ad verecundiam) to make you believe their claims?
There are quite a few climate heretics out there who have the guts to go against the grain. Some are Nobel Laureates, others are simply very good and honest scientists. Go read or listen to their arguments. If you do that and you still believe the Anthropogenic Global Warming story, fair enough. But I believe the vast majority of rational people will reject Global Warming alarmism if they investigate it for themselves.
And to MGR, two responses: 1) I live 20 feet above sea level. 2) Yes the sea level is rising because we are still coming out of the last ice age, glaciers are melting, and the continents are still rebounding from the crushing weight of 2 mile thick glaciers which are now gone.
Hi, You make a number of demonstrative statements but you do not source them. Climate scientists, notably world-wide, not just in America, and in an extremely high level of agreement, do.
Science is a matter of observation, proposing a theory or model to explain these observation, testing and observing and then refining that theory further. It is ongoing process, ie. the scientific method.
However, 99 out of 100 climate scientist agree with the general model of global warming due to heat-trapping gases in atmosphere along with natural phenomena. The importance of human activity is on the rate of change. The problem of course is that adapting takes time and when the rate of change is too fast, as in global warming, species, like ours, die off rather than adapt.
The consensus on global warming/climate change is based on a wide range of observation and analysis from ice core samples, fossil records to information from NSAS satellites. All these different observations supporting the core theories.This information, again world-wide, is peer reviewed by dedicated people who have spent decades learning and studying in this field and usually in the field, ie. researching on the ground in the arctic, on the seas, etc. Not exactly armchair theorists.
Is every theory perfect. Of course not. The whole process is one of constant refinement and adjustment, but the consensus has been growing over decades and becomes ever more accurate.
I have no idea who you are. Which is fine. And of course you have opinions, strongly held. Also fine. But then, everyone has opinions. Nothing special about that. What is important to me is what they are based upon. Further, peer review is a necessary adjunct to the scientific method meant to hold the innate failings of human intellect in check. Who peer reviews your theories, for example?
You disparage all the climate science that has been done. Fine. That’s certainly an opinion. You make statements. Fine again. But what is your source? Where is your research? Why should anyone take what you say at Others, believe the earth is only 3000 years old. These are also opinions and they are of course welcome to them but they are not compelling to me.
And the bottom line, for me, is that even regardless of the accuracy of climate change models, unbridled human behavior is trashing the earth; the seas becoming acidic as a result of being a carbon sink, and filled with plastic, coral reefs dying, loss of species diversity, deforestation, etc. The list is long and horrifying. Even animals have enough sense not to shit where they live. Human beings have not seemed to grasp that. We just keep shitting and dumping and leave the mess for someone else. This “masters of the earth” bullshit is really getting old. Like I mentioned, when Mother Nature wiggles her little finger, continents fall. Living in a tree house is not going afford much protection.
You suggest that we ignore all destruction and just keep doing what we are doing? That’s an opinion too, but in my opinion, it is utterly insane. So, sorry, you are welcome to your opinion but for me it is utterly not compelling.
Thank you for the reply by the way. It takes time, I know. I appreciate the effort.
Sorry: I said “Why should anyone take what you say at Others, believe the earth is only 3000 years old.” Poor editing.
Just to be clear: “Why should anyone take what you say at face value? Some people still believe the earth is flat. Others, believe the earth is only 3000 years old.” Etc…
Right. Because no one’s been talking about climate change (really, “global warming,” but you can’t use that term anymore, because the globe ISN’T warming – man, talk about Inconvenient Truths!).
The science of vostok and greenland core sampling for Co2 will set you free. It’s a shame the funding was cut. So it appears that Naomi and the other science deniers are on the Al “Osteen” Gore train.
In order to read the following with the proper inflection and accent, please watch the following video.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mcb2lion5qs
Oh you evil carbon sinners! Put your credits into the basket here at the global carbon trading church of what’s happening NOW! Naomi, you sinner, you have born into the originial sin of carbon addiction! Can I get an AMEN Naomi? But you can be healed, Yes Naomi, because of your carbon evils, our earth mother Gaia, peace be upon her, has visited a great evil storm onto the land! But you can be forgiven Naomi, if you preach the global gospel of sin by carbon and procreation you will recieve unto you a Chevy Volt Naomi, Gaia be praised, now go forth Naomi and preach the global jihad against ANY who disagree with YOUR interpretation of the data! The earth must be cleansed Naomi!!! Use shower, use the train, use the zyclon gas Naomi, right away!aNow give Naomi! Give until it hurts! The great spaghetti monster Gore needs your credits and your allegiance Naomi, worship Naomi at the feet of those you must obey! Only then will you be cleansed of your carbon sinning!!!
-the end
So yeah, you people are all science denying baying at the moon idiots.
Again read the Co2 core data that NASA didn’t publish Naomi, and learn that your religious dogma is all wrong.
Amen.
The comparison to charismatic Pentecostal Christianity is hilariously apt.
Because the ‘garbage in – garbage out’ model that was the basis of the global warmingnistas failed to produce tangible results based on their computer model predictions, as the earth is actually cooling, the global warming cult has re-branded their cause as ‘climate change’. Hint: This too is a fail as the climate is always changing. It always has and it always will. Implementation of taxes will not change that. However, it will fatten the banck accounts of a handful of those with a vested interest in pushing this fraud.
The Earth is absolutely not cooling. Both 2015 and 2016 were record years.
“Weh ehehll, it’s floodin’ down in Texas; awwll of the telephone lines are down.”
-Stevie Ray Vaughn
Texas Flood
1980
Deadliest Hurricanes
Hurricane Year Category Deaths
1.Galveston, Tex. 1900 4 8,000
2.Lake Okeechobee, Fla. 1928 4 2,500
3.Katrina (La./Miss.) 2005 3 1,800
4. Florida Keys/S. Tex. 1919 4 600
5. New England 1938 3 600
6. Florida Keys 1935 5 408
7.Audrey (SW La./N. Tex.)1957 4 390
8.NE U.S. 1944 3 390
9.Grand Isle, La. 1909 4 350
10.New Orleans, La. 1915 4 275
11. Galveston, Tex. 1915 4 275
The number of deaths is not a measure of the strength of the hurricane, it is a measure of preparedness. Any argument based on deaths is a distraction.
We could move everyone to mountain tops and there would be no hurricane or flooding deaths in coastal areas. That would not mean the hurricane are less severe.
Searching for and believing in irrelevant arguments is a sure sign of fossil fuel derangement syndrome – the inability to face reality when that reality requires a reduction then elimination of the use of fossil fuels.
Brent, I would be curious to know how you view Gender. Are you prepared to say that the Gender of Homo Sapiens is a scientific fact?
I ask because it seems to me that most of the same people who would argue that Anthropogenic Global Warming is a scientific fact that is supported by 99% of scientists and canNOT be debated; they are most often the same people who would argue that human gender is not a fact, but rather a social construct and a choice.
I find it so entertaining to hear Leftists congratulating themselves on being more scientific than the Right.
Matt,
I accept your bait and will attempt to escape your trap with my answer.
Before doing so, though, I want to say: Leftists of the World (who I would like to be counted among/to the left of), behold Matt Whisnant. He is a smart, capable debater, the kind of Rightist that’s healthy to have around, that fosters real debate, that we can sharpen our ideas against. And here’s the first lesson he teaches me; he’s a person, a thinking person, he really believes what he says. At the same time, he is absolutely wrong. This is so important to see because it’s easy to dismiss as definitionally “them,” as inhuman those idiotic, offensive, dangerous things we so often see “them” say and so not see a shred of ourselves in it. Because that doesn’t look like “us.” Or the idealized “us.” But he looks like “us.” He’s sincere and thoughtful, like “us.” Without that shred, we lose sight of the fact that we’re all a fallible human community on a spectrum of impressions and ideas, some of which need to be reworked (like many of Matt’s) but admitting we need to do so won’t fundamentally invalidate us as people. Am I making sense? For me, looking at Matt makes me feel safe (sorry Matt to meta-trigger your certain love of Lukianof’s 2015 Atlantic piece) to examine my failings because it seems less existentially dangerous to do so, to engage in reassessment. Matt needs to reassess, but not to hate himself and shut up. For me, the failings of the Left are more foundationally disappointing, hurt me deeper and make me angrier. The condescension and rhetorical nastiness, the militarism, the rampant Dem hypocrisy, blood drunk at the altar of financial neoliberalism, that’s what isolated us from those who most needed us, those necessary recipients of collective social action that we lost the confidence of and voted for Trump – in a big way, I feel responsible for that. And I so I think we could use some objective self-reflection. Maybe no one else needed to hear this, but it helps me to remind myself that things like this exist; some of Matt’s ideas are rotten, but he’s OK – and that makes it easier to look at myself clearly – if some of my ideas were rotten, it’d be OK.
Anyways.
Let’s start here: Sex = Male/Female. Gender = Masculine/Feminine. This might bait, as Matt hopes, the Cartesian dualists among us into thinking that OK, Masculine/Feminine seems like a more messy kind of thing, so it’s probably a function of the mind, subject to all sorts of cultural influences, like the political expediency that lives in Matt’s, unlike male/female, which seems like function of the body. But that, of course, is not true, there is no mind/body problem because it’s one thing, matter becomes imagination blah blah blah. And that’s all true. Here’s a good intro into some of the neuroendocrine control systems that affect gendered behavior (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3046257/pdf/nihms247776.pdf). One easy point is, however, that brains may cause behaviors A or B (or a spectrum, an alphabet, of behaviors) but it is certainly a social construct to call A feminine or B masculine and mean anything more A travels with the female sex and B the male, because those are biologically in charge of each other. (Also, there are some situations in which But, Matt, I would like to say, as I worry you don’t understand, imagination also becomes matter. The brain is incredibly plastic and the social and ideological environment it’s exposed in formative years to makes drastic, physical changes. And thus, the cultural ideas, which far exceed the biological ideas, of gender, in complexity, feedback into the physical system and do very much affect physical change. I can provide you an ungodly plethora of citations if you so desire, Matt, but I imagine you won’t disagree with several generations of research into learning and memory, LTP and so on. If you do, that would be a dramatically boring performance of intuiting the truth that I expect you’re better than. This is a scientifically nuanced situation that someone professing your level of innate truth-o-philia shouldn’t pose as if were a binary. (ha). Nature and nurture, Matt, are both real.
As the Earth becomes warmer, extreme weather events will become more common. I just summed up Klein’s scientific basis for her entire article in one sentence. Climate change is an existential threat.
Pregnant women are advised not to eat fish caught from the river that runs through my hometown because of mining mercury contamination. That’s a non-partisan, non-existential, tangible consequence of pollution.
If you want to change minds and inspire action, most people are going to respond to reality rather than philosophy.
To date, this claim has not been proven to be true. Furthermore, the majority of climate models do not make this claim.
Warmer–>greater potential energy–>stronger weather events. If you really want to nit pick on a minor point, instead of “will” I should have said, “are more likely.” My point here is about how we should frame arguments against pollution and environmental degradation. If you want to debate the science of climate change I suggest you start your own thread.
The author of this article and you are both making false claims concerning the effects of climate change.
I posted this link below:
https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/
Educate yourself
From your source: “Anthropogenic warming by the end of the 21st century will likely cause tropical cyclones globally to be more intense on average…” Will give you more details once you start your own thread.
The authors of that report concluded:
That NOAA link is to information posted under the Trump admin. Given his orders to stop and suppress any evidence relating to climate change, I’m doubtful as to it’s veracity. Do you have some non-American sources that might be more reliable?
There is no evidence that the link that I provided does not accurately reflect the aggregate professional opinion of its cited sources. I am one of the few people on this thread that has provided sources at all. If you have doubts, do your own research.
It’s not exactly nitpicking. Assuming that the increase in temperature (potential energy) is true, there are two quite different paths to dissipate that energy: a small number of larger events, or a larger number of small events. The greater amount of available may make the larger events more probable, but does not make them certain. It’s not that many years ago, for example, that the National Hurricane Service predicted an increase in the number of major hurricanes in the Caribbean only to see exactly the opposite occur. Further, a lot of weather is driven by differences in temperature, pressure, relative humidity, etc, not just absolute values for those variables.
The so-called climate models do make this claim. Moreover they’re predictively useless, as the planet is actually not even getting warmer.
Models don’t “make claims,” people do, and the majority of climate scientists expect, albeit without gold-standard proof, that extreme events will become more common.
Hurricanes happen EVERY year. Until Harvey, this was a VERY CALM season. “Climate Change” has/had nothing to do with it. Historically, there is usually one severe hurricane every few years or so.
Thank you Ms. Klein, for this and all your efforts. Spot on. Thank you also for the insight of the “shock doctrine.” It has obviously become the modus operandi of those in power.
As Ms. Klein has pointed out, increasingly extreme weather, growing beyond anything we have seen before, is a fundamental prediction of every global warming model.
Beyond the ongoing devastation in Houston, there is also startling evidence just now that the world’s permafrost is melting even faster than predicted. This is no small worry because melting permafrost releases trapped methane (and there is a shit-load of it) into the atmosphere. Like carbon, methane is a heat-trapping gas only more so and thus will only accelerate warming and the resulting climate effects.
Whether we believe that global warming is a natural occurrence; volcanoes, sun-spots, aliens, etc., or is caused primarily by our collective human activity that is dumping heat-trapping gases, like carbon and methane, into the atmosphere, reducing that output is certainly both prudent and, more significantly, under our control. Not even to mention that green technology is the growth industry for livelihoods and careers for many now and into the future, while at the same time fossil fuels have no economic future and exist primarily for the wealth of a very few. There really is no excuse.
Would one argue that global warming is happening anyway due to natural causes and therefore it is reasonable, through human activity, to accelerate that? Instead of bailing water out of a leaking boat, we should be bailing it in.? How would you define stupid..?
Should stupidity be the guiding light for human civilization? If that is the contention, then by all means, let’s just continue doing what we are doing and hope for the best. Of course, as most of us have experienced, “burying one’s head in the sand” is a great way to get kicked in the ass and when “Mother Nature” wiggles her little finger, continents fall.
A long time ago, well before his ignominious fall, Bill Cosby did a comedy routine about Noah and the ark that we might well keep in mind. When Noah asked “God” whether an ark was really necessary, “God” replied: “How long can you tread water..?”
Not so funny when it’s actually happening. No..?
Global warming is an equal-opportunity destroyer and there really is no place to run. As for the wealthy elite who imagine that they can buy their way to safety and simply ride it out, I have one word for you, stark-raving-barking-mad. Of course, people who are insane are usually the last to know.
Perhaps the earth itself is the ark. And if not, perhaps we should treat it as such regardless. After all, this is the only earth we have and it will continue serenely on, albeit perhaps sadly, even without us.
This statement is undeniably false. Historical climate data does not suggest that global warming has resulted in an increase in extreme weather.
We can certainly hope you are correct. But should we do nothing and simply hope for the best? You might wish to hedge your bet.
For me though, what you are implying seems a lot like whistling past the graveyard, thus I will decline.
There is a tremendous amount of money already invested in carbon trading schemes and the like by some of the wealthiest investors on the planet including George Soros and Warren Buffet. The very idea of carbon trading was presented to Al gore by Ken Lay, the head of Enron. Lay was found guilty of 10 counts of securities fraud for cooking the books at Enron which, in turn, caused the company to go bankrupt. Due to Ken Lay’s pretrial death, the Lay estate was “unjustly enriched with the proceeds of fraud that would otherwise be subject to forfeiture and distribution to victims of the crimes for which Lay was found guilty.”
Check this video out:
Professor Bob Carter – The Faux “97% Consensus” – 10th ICCC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NinRn5faU4
At the 4:50 mark, Professor Carter speaks to the amount of money that has already been positioned in global markets to capitalize off of the global warming scare. Many of these transnational investors have also been lead proponents of globalization (via the violent mean enabled by the Bush Doctrine) along with its corresponding Free Trade Agreements (e.g. NAFTA and TPP).
You are totally wrong! And mean to boot!
At first I thought that ‘now’ is a little late to start discussing climate change, but Klein’s arguments are sound.
Klein mentioned “the hugely controversial pardoning of Joe Arpaio” and that is enough of an excuse for me to refer to an article that goes into some detail on what this man actually did:
https://static.currentaffairs.org/2017/08/wait-do-people-actually-know-just-how-evil-this-man-is
People in that Arizona county that voted 6 times for him.
It is quite obvious that Harvey the Hurricane happened because Mr. Trump exited the Paris Climate Agreement. Hell hath no fury like a hurricane scorned, and exiting the climate agreement was probably the last straw. I expect hurricanes to attack the Gulf Coast in unprecedented numbers. Mr. Trump, it’s time to take a stand. You are either with us or you are with the hurricanes.
Thank you! I needed a smile this morning
I feel you. Case in point: Hurricane Carter was predisposed to violent rages when scorned by women.
Excellent point, Benito. Trump is also culpable for the heat vented at anti-Trump rallies, as well as the fossil fuels burned by operatives who travel the world seeking prostitutes who claim to have been paid by Trump to pee on beds where Obama once slept.
i think you missed it Benito, this is all a false flag operation to institute world socialism, the hurricane never happened . . stick to the facts next time!).
Wasn’t the flooding in 1935 worse? 16 feet?
As if an exploding world population would not have an influence on the environment.
The only policy would be culling the human species…..
Naomi is welcome to propose a selection program !
nobody is denying that the increase in population is affecting the severity of climate change, but the main problem is fossil fuel emissions, for some reason science deniers like to focus on anything but the solution.
What a disgusting comment.
You can ask conservationist biologists what the term culling actually means. It is a technique indispensable for the survival of a certain animal population.
Alright, you can start with yourself.
Why isn’t Donald picking-up on this. At least a Tweet that Climate Change is hoax would suit him.
If he doesn’t that implicates that Donald is well aware of Climate Change.
This is another example of Klein’s demagoguery. Here is a link to the dates for category 4 and above hurricanes https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/screen-shot-2017-08-27-at-12-36-35-pm.png “Serial disasters” are a natural happening. Weather was never predictable. To argue weather was benign and predictable during the Little Ice Age but now it is deadly and unpredictable is a fool’s tale
Thank you for speaking out.
Well, the president of the USA thinks there is no global warming and he has advisors on his end
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsUrbwlRjfI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPHyV0fwLNs
He still maintains that these are just anomalous weather patterns. So just get a boat house or life raft and relax already.
I was waiting for the sky is falling stories to start. You should be ashamed of yourself for trying to capitalize on this tragedy while people are still being rescued.
I lived through the hurricane swarms of 2004/2005 in Florida. “Experts” at the time said this was the new norm. You know what happened? Nothing. Nada. We haven’t seen a hurricane since then. We may get one this year. Or it may be another five years from now.
Here are the facts for “journalists” who can’t/won’t put boots on the ground:
– We who live on the gulf coast have been living with these beasts forever. We learned hurricane tracking in elementary school! My worst one was Fredrick in 1979. 1979!!! Not last week. We were without power for two weeks. Hurricane Ivan in 2004… didn’t loose a single utility.
– It is not uncommon to get flooding here anytime because we live in a swamp (like Houston!). When you get onshore flows out of the gulf, they are loaded with water that has to go somewhere. I’ve seen 20+ inches of rain here that had nothing to do with a hurricane. BTW. Tropical storms are usually a larger flooding risk.
– The fact Harvey lost steering has got nothing to do with man-made climate change. Tropical storms are pushed and pulled by high and low pressures. This was a freak occurrence where the stormed stalled out right after landfall. I remember a storm of some –> 20 years ago<— which went back and forth along the coast before it decided to come inland. Start monitoring tropical weather and you'll get a clue on how these things can wobble all the way from West Africa to Texas.
– Natives of the gulf coast don't care about your climate change bellyaching. There are hurricanes. They attack. You get your ass kicked or maybe not. You move on to the next hurricane season.
It sucks for Houston, but they'll get through it. I speak from experience. Do you?
P.S. Only the left can ever dream of "managing" the climate on this rock. How delusional, but quite revealing of their mentality. It's all about power.
Naomi writes an article and the trolls have a block party. I hope y’all brought sausages.
The warmer the gulf waters, the stronger the storm. That’s why there are no Christmas hurricanes. Super storms like Carla formed during a time when big energy ran government. The population has doubled since Carla. We cannot assume we can have double the population burning the same amount of carbon fuels and not impact our climate.
Storms like Carla were happening long before, for centuries.
There was actually 20x more ‘greenhouse gas’ during an ice age in the Ordovician. Atmospheric CO2 is at a relative minima on the timeline today.
Earth to leftists: Earth is not a greenhouse. Armospheric physics are not a terrarium with a plastic lid.
earth to libertate; scientists know more about science than you do. the conditions 500 million years ago did not put human civilization at risk, since there wasn’t one. some areas of texas have received a year’s worth of rain in a week.
Earth to pretzelattack: Most scientists are in the middle of the bell curve just like pretzelattack who is clueless about pseudonyms. History of Science is littered with theoretical casualties of consensus.
The areas of Texas that received a year’s worth of rain in a week did so because the system dropping it is trapped between high pressure ridges that keep it from moving elsewhere. It requires a little thought on your part.
Certainly a rhetorical two-step there, homes.
NOW? This is what is happening to the entire world. The criminal treacherous dis-information campaigns to discredit and ridicule the science warning us of the effects and causes of climate change perpetuated not by some fuzzy collection of companies and policy makers but by INDIVIDUALS with a personal agenda (usually monetary gain). Those people need to be held accountable, named , shamed and if i had my way exiled on a rapidly sinking island to be the first to fucking die of this “global warming fake news conspiracy they talk about”. I will add that the people who fell into that trap and followed and supported them also need to be held responsible. I’m not sharing with these assholes, they literally tried to murder the planet and by extension, me. This is goddamn personal.
Thank you for writing this article. You make some very strong points and I, living in Alberta and seeing the effects of climate change relate deeply with these issues, and lack of debate and poltics on these issues. Keep up the good work.
But ‘no one could have predicted that there was going to be unprecedented flooding’ according to one of the elected idiots that ignored the scientists who were predicting EXACTLY that two days before Harvey hit. His tirade against the general who was perplexed as to why the evacuation orders were never given when there was time to implement the ones updated to address the problems that cropped up in the last evacuation continued on with ‘if you’d told the residents of x community that they were going to be flooded, they’d laugh in your face’, though he carefully avoided that a big reason for that is the deliberate, criminally dangerous campaign to discredit exactly the scientists who were predicting that because if people came to believe that global warming is real, and a danger to Houston, New Orleans, New York, Los Angeles, and pretty much all of Florida, it would be bad for the funders of Texas politicians.
Evidently their Democrat mayor didn’t fully appreciate tropical storm 2001’s deadly Allison, which was a mere fraction of the precip. forecasted for Harvey.
Yet another Democratic mayor has some splainin to do.
You do not evacuation 6 million people. 90% of the people who died as a result of Hurricane Rita, died during a 2 million person attempted evacuation. Trump has scheduled his Katrina moment by meeting Texas Govenor Abbot in Corpus Christi.?
Instead you’re trying to do it now.
Allison taught everyone at City Hall where the obvious places to start with alerts are. Not a peep.
Ever hear of hurricane routes, or are those just decoration? The mayor had three days.
And why can’t the president meet with Abbott in Corpus?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba_Emergency_Response_System
odd that cuba a 3rd world country can evacuate but the richest country in the world can’t….
Ah, yes, the infamous ‘people died during a chaotic, poorly planned evacuation’ so let’s not invoke the evacuation plans that were drawn up specifically to avoid those sorts of deaths argument.
Do you also think no one should go to a hospital, have a blood transfusion, get on an airplane, or any of the other things that were dangerously deadly once, because, hey, you know, that scientists looked at the dangers, learned where things went wrong, and then figured out ways to prevent that doesn’t make a difference, people died of doing those things before.
Let’s see how Houston’s socialism dabblers do without A/C.
You certainly are hollow, with nothing to say but mean!
what socialism dabblers? you see all these pictures of people wading through flooded streets, without power, and all you can think of is socialism.
You’re comment makes zero sense. What does socialism have to do with this hurricane?
Texas once had category 4 hurricane, Carmen. Harvey was category 3. Yucatan and Cuba routinely get hit with category 5 hurricanes.
We should do something about poverty, natural disasters and transitioning away from fossil fuels, but I’m not too worried about climate change just yet.
http://www.americasbestonline.net/index.php/pages/top10hurricanes.html
Harvey made land as a Category 4.
Do you believe that it is a worse accident for you if your car is hit by a motorbike going 50 miles an hour than it would be to be hit by a garbage truck doing 40?
No?
Well, that’s the sort of reasoning you’re doing by looking at the windspeed (Category rating) rather than the rainfall accumulations.
And given that this is the THIRD 1,000 year rainfall event in Texas in recent years, maybe you should start worrying about climate change (which is what is turning 1,000 year events into normal events) NOW. After all, there’s probably a 1,000 year event that would effect you personally.
Nothing new about that poster’s logic here.
Thank you for your thoughtful article. These are frustrating times; the predictions of years ago are coming to fruition and the powerful are still pretending that we don’t see exactly what is going on!
One is not a conspiracy theorist.
HAARP and the studying of electromagnetic waves and their effects on the ionosphere; Plasma, the 4th state of matter and it current and possible use in and for the future market place. The # of satellites currently in orbit by all nations and what they all actually do do.Last I knew over 1300 were in orbit.How much electromagnetic waves are being constantly pulsated to the earth every minute of our day through our atmosphere and what is it actually doing to the gases? Your phone,tv, wifi, towers,all communications world wide, know one seems to talk about this…
The most ice melt in the Arctic took place in a five year span between 1998 and 2003…and ironically is when our cell phone industry and other huge technologies in the business world all increased the use of electromagnetic waves through our atmosphere…and one thing they do do is create heat on cellular and molecular structures.
The Army/Navy have published a report on the effects of these electromagnetic radio waves on our atmosphere yet getting a copy of this report has not been obtained. This was done and completed at the HAARP in Alaska prior to it’s closure by the Army/Navy research team a few years ago.
To write about this topic of climate change/global warming/ man made pollutants (which do definitely effect our environment) with really not more than general statements and/or opinions ect., makes the article and the topic less of any real value to the reader or the cause , if one does exist. My question would be what is really going on here.Is it man made or natural shift(s) of nature;Have even heard the 9.0 earthquake in the Indonesia Sea back in 2004 actually tilted the earth 1/2 degree on axis, and this was reported by scientists…could this change added to the changes we are currently seeing?
I do not chose sides on this topic only looking for answers.
Called ACD. Thanks.
Can you elaborate on ACD….
It’s called burning too many fossil fuels that put heat-trapping CO2 in the atmosphere.
You really think that this is all it is? Do you know what our military complex does and other countries do and what their and our scientists do and create in all their research and experimentation’s? Why are theses military areas kept under lock and key from the public? We are told it is all on the fossil fuel industry( and the chemical industries..and they really do not tell us all,read Sharon Lerners article in the Intercept.) But to me there is much more than this over simplified rational explanation…it’s to easy…to me there is more …methane and the future of methane hydrates as another future energy source….Look for other for other possible sources of climate change/global warming than just the obvious. We as consumers of the products and creators of these products are always looking for new ways to re invent the wheel, so to say, and with it comes a cost…Be a little open minded that it may just not be the obvious…like all the cows creating concentrated methane gas that are twice as harmful as co2.
1. All weather events are “historic” in nature
2. “Unprecedented” weather has been continuously occurring around the planet since day 1.
3. The predictions coming from climate consensus have been constantly wrong for more than half a century.
4. Consensus opinion does not equate as scientific fact.
5. Computer generated climate models have consistently overestimated changes in global temperatures.At best, they demonstrate the bias of those who rely on them to garner consensus opinion
6. The debate surrounding global warming has been mostly politicized by its advocates – as can be evinced from the very nature of the language they employ when facing legitimate scientific skepticism; for example: skeptics are labeled “deniers’ even before the debate begins. The same type of labels are employed as a preemptive tactic by advocates when defending claims of systemic racism, white privilege, immigration, homosexuality, gender preference etc.
I’m guessing you’re not big on numbers, facts, statistical analysis, research, data, you know, sciency stuff.
It’s so much easier to have one’s mind made up ahead of time, eh?
> 4. Consensus opinion does not equate as scientific fact.
that statement is either false or the word ‘fact’ is meaningless as you’re using it. scientific consensus is all we can ever have. that’s the most that science can ever give us. to reject a solid scientific consensus is to reject science. the only legitimate scientific “debate surrounding global warming” is conducted among scientists, and 97% of scientists in climate related fields have agreed that climate change is occurring and that it’s caused (to a significant degree) by human behavior. if you want to dispute the consensus, you must debate the scientists in peer-reviewed journals. anything you say here regarding the science of climate change is meaningless. as non-scientists, the only rational choice we can make is to trust the consensus
It is the role of science to incorporate all observable data into a TESTABLE hypothesis. If a particular hypothesis fails to accurately provide predictable results, then it is necessarily subject to revision. Again, the results predicted by computer generated climate models have grossly exaggerated the rate of change of global warming for decades.
Among the 97% you gratuitously cite, many take issue with the degree in which humans are contributing to global warming. As far as the peer review process is concerned, many credible climate scientists have pointed out its potential for bias in favor of the prevailing consensus. Scientists who are most established in their field of expertise are most likely to have their work favorably reviewed and published. Publishers are reluctant to publish inter-disciplinary studies by lesser renowned scientists especially when they are lengthy and challenge consensus opinion. This problem is further exacerbated by the fact that publishers are highly prone to having controversial studies reviewed by scientists who are all ready on record has having endorsed consensus opinion.
> If a particular hypothesis fails to accurately provide predictable results, then it is necessarily subject to revision. Again, the results predicted by computer generated climate models have grossly exaggerated the rate of change of global warming for decades.
is it the scientific consensus that predictions have been “grossly exaggerated”? reaching agreement on observations is part of the scientific method. reaching agreement on whether observations confirm or disprove a hypothesis is part of the scientific method. if the current consensus is that global warming is occurring, then it is necessarily true that the observations have been judged to be consistent with the hypothesis. once again, you cannot dispute the consensus opinion outside the proper forums. to do so is what is correctly called science denial
> Among the 97% you gratuitously cite, many take issue with the degree in which humans are contributing to global warming.
how many is ‘many’? you’re the one being gratuitous. there is nothing gratuitous about the 97% number. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveys_of_scientists%27_views_on_climate_change
to challenge the existence of the consensus is the only valid argument you can make in a forum like this. if you want to give that a try, go ahead. if there is a consensus among scientists, the consensus opinion is “scientific fact“. if you don’t accept it, you’re rejecting science
> As far as the peer review process is concerned, many credible climate scientists have pointed out its potential for bias in favor of the prevailing consensus.
‘potential’ for bias? this just seems like desperation. i can’t imagine any reason to suspect that scientists would have a bias in favor of a theory that global warming is occurring and is caused by human activity. it makes ZERO sense. what makes a lot of sense is that those whose power or profits are threatened by the hypothesis will have a very strong bias against it
False! Current observation has proven that most climate models are deeply flawed as they have consistently exaggerated the rate of change in global warming by at least 50 %. There is no debate is on the question of whether man is contributing to global warming, rather the debate is focused on the degree to which man is contributing to global warming. To this end:
1. The degree of change in global warming must be established,
2. The rate of change must be established, and
3. All natural processes effecting climate change must be accounted for
before it can be determined to what degree human activity is contributing to global warming
Please watch this interview with Judith Curry:
https://www.corbettreport.com/interview-1261-judith-curry-explains-climate-modeling-to-the-layman/
the opinion of any particular scientist doesn’t matter; it’s only the consensus opinion that matters. is the consensus that the effect of human activity on climate change is negligible? or that it can’t be estimated with sufficient confidence? if so, let’s see a link
Apparently, you did not listen to the interview. Dr.Curry speaks to the weakens of the consensus opinion in her professional capacity as an American climatologist and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Given this failure, I am not inclined to list numerous other sources whose resumes as just as impressive and whose skepticism also compelled them to testify before Congress.
sorry:
Dr.Curry speaks to the WEAKNESS of the consensus opinion…
> Dr.Curry speaks to the weakens of the consensus opinion in her professional capacity as an American climatologist and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
great, she’s one of the 3%. you don’t seem to be able to grasp the point that the consensus is all that matters. 2% of scientists don’t believe in (human) evolution. should we all go listen to one of them?
as i said, as a scientist, it’s perfectly legitimate for dr. curry to challenge the consensus. but it’s only other scientists who can have an opinion on the value of her arguments. and if other scientists have examined her arguments, then the consensus has taken them into account (they have been rejected)
You are soooooo right– there is no such thing as Global Warming, it is ACD. All your 6 points fully support ACD;-)
Not sure what you mean by “Unprecedented”, especially since you give no citation. Marriam-Webster defines unprecedented as, “having no precedent,” (that’s called sourcing, try it some time). If there is precedent, please provide it.
Furthermore, how do you define day 1?
If you knew anything about science you would understand the concepts of citing sources and clearly defining your terms.
In spite of the fact that you have correctly put “unprecedented” in quotes, you have apparently failed to recognize that the author of this article was the source of the term (hence the quotation marks you snide fuck):
If, in the future, you decide that you want to elicit a serious response from me, I suggest that you abandon you arrogant attitude and learn to read for comprehension.
Ditto RMD, droug. As promised here is my response to you on your own thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming#Extreme_weather
“The number of storms forming in the Atlantic over the past decade or so has been close to normal”
–The Washington Post, 2016
_”2015 Hurricane Season: One of the Least Active in Decades?”_
“The 2015 Atlantic hurricane season may be one of the least active in decades, according to an initial forecast issued Thursday by Colorado State University.”
-The Weather Channel
_”Atlantic hurricane season weakest in decades”_
“[2014‘s] Atlantic hurricane season is shaping up to be one of the weakest in decades with only five named storms formed in the region so far this year.”
-CBS News
_”Atlantic hurricane season, one of slowest in decades, draws to a quiet close”_
“Saturday marked the end of one of the slowest Atlantic hurricane seasons in recent memory, with Mother Nature churning out the fewest number of hurricanes since 1982, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Only 13 named storms formed in the Atlantic basin this year [2013], with only Ingrid and Humberto reaching hurricane status. Still, neither became major hurricanes.”
-NBC News
_”Atlantic hurricane season, one of slowest in decades, draws to a quiet close”_etc…
As if the only cyclonic storms affecting earth, our one planet, are in the Atlantic. You might want to expand your thinking to include to other oceans, unless you believe only that which happens in the USA matters. These other oceans can’t be relevant since they’re over there somewhere.
Two examples of a very busy decade over t/here.
“Western Pacific Tropical Cyclone Activity Sees Record Year to Date” –
– weatherdotcom Aug2015
“Cyclone Fantala Just Became the Indian Ocean’s Most Powerful Storm on Record
JOHN METCALFE APR 20, 2016
The third record-breaking storm in under a year might owe its ferocity to human activity.”
– CityLab
There weren’t proportionally twice as many in the Pacific, but nice wishful thinking there, Joy.
yeah yeah, keep cherrypicking and coming up with knowledge free assumption. if that is true, and i don’t trust anything you claim as fact without checking, why would there have to be? and what qualifies you to judge?
just a thought… “Owning the weather in 2025″:
http://alicon.net/owning_the_weather.pdf
Thank you Naomi Klein.
When confronted with willful shameless ignorance, a quick review of history suggests denial and tribalism override all else.
Look at the US. We have the world’s largest fairytale industry, abetted by the largest propaganda / advertising industry.
The change to the rule forbidding the military from directing propaganda at domestic US populations …that now allows it. A systems that takes our tax dollars and actively disseminates othodoxy, militarism, fund the use of psy ops, pays for full time ‘communications’ campaigns, TV, Web, Print, Radio, white papers, articles, editorials, adverts, promos, ‘documentaries’ extolling the awesome gidgets and glorious appendages that make the machine work.
That’s why I appreciate independent news organizations and the talented, principled people like yourself, who bring sorely needed perspective.
Klein won’t touch on the massive Zersetzung torture campaign going on right under her nose, just like Greenwald. Another chicken-shit American Journalist.
you have your chicken shit opinion and place to post it, Stan.
How’s about you contributing to the equation and doing some original work?
Part of the solution ? or part of the problem?
We are all standing here, breathless, waiting for your superior wisdom to be shared with us.
Please do not shame us into too long a wait!
The climate deniers’s comments below fixate on the arguments of 2% of the scientists that call global warming a hoax to the absolute exclusion of the human buzzards that descended to the kill in the Katrina debacle in order to reap benefits for themselves to the detriment of the citizens. IT IS the time for ” informed, caring people to name the real root causes behind this crisis — connecting the dots between climate pollution, systemic racism, underfunding of social services, and overfunding of police. We also need to seize the moment to lay out intersectional solutions, ones that dramatically lower emissions while battling all forms of inequality and injustice.” Choices made to ameliorate Houston’s wounds will be tantamount to votes in whether we elect continued privatization, free markets, corporatization, authoritarianism, “oligarchy” – or – democratic socialism.
Climate science has not yet discovered the link between hurricanes and global warming and there is definitely no climate science consensus here. So to say that the intensity of this one hurricane is related to global warming is premature and may even prove to be false.
Yea, you could try facts and use actual science… Or… you could ask them what they propose we do about it – because the answer is always TAXES.
We can’t predict single storms, but hey let me tell you what the ocean level will be 100 years if you don’t subscribe to a specific tax scheme design to keep specific people and countries in power.
Yup, a couple of big problems with science ..Unpredictability & Doubt,
It’s a shame Science is not the same as Economics, which seems to do a great job predicting and Trusting confidence
You are stupid to say that thinking we will believe you and even more so if you believe it! Science makes you survive. Even buy milk, shoelaces or toothpaste based on science!
@Roch; please read the post I was replying to..
Then remember; what the use of irony to mock or convey contempt is called ..sarcasm
Economics has not been very good at prediction – actually over history quite terrible. Some parts of science has neither – mainly the sciences based on statistical analysis. Unfortunately this includes medical science which bases almost everything on statistical studies.
However, the atomic bomb works, the Saturn 5 went to the moon, bridges generally don’t collapse, and this computer I am typing on will send this message. All these systems are based on physics, mathematics, and chemistry. These areas, called the hard sciences, have the ability to predict quite accurately.
Climate science actually uses the methods of physics and mathematics to make predictions. In essence, use of simulations, super computers,the mathematics of force, energy, momentum, temperature, pressure, etc. We can expect the predictions of climate science to be accurate.
i’m going to listen to every major science organization in the world, over you. a casino can’t predict the result on a single play on a slot machine, but they can predict they will profit at the end of the year. but hey, if gravity somehow results in raising your taxes, that means gravity is a plot by world science, right?
No credible scientist will link a single weather event to global warming.
Karl, it’s with great despair that I have to ask you to look up the definitions of “climate” and “weather.” Nothing about today’s weather, tomorrow’s weather, or yesterday’s weather will ever be incontrovertibly linked to climate change. But the climate is changing. And as part of that change, we see more extreme weather events. How many Katrina type event do you remember from the 90s, for example? Perhaps you weren’t born then. Climate history must be a confusing subject when you only have yesterday and today as your reference points.
it makes single severe weather events more likely. you’re using the same argument the tobacco companies used to claim cancer isn’t linked to cigarette smoking.
The connection is blatantly obviuos to anyone who bothers to look – warmer ocean temperatures at the surface and beneath the surface, plus more water vapor in the atmosphere. That in turn is caused by buring fossil fuels, which puts extra CO2 into the atmosphere, where it warms the surface, causing water vapor levels to increase, warming the oceans. . . Hence, stronger hurricanes. More flooding. It’s well understood.
You’re arguing with people who deny reality for whatever reason (don’t want to give up their opulent unnatural lifestyles, make money from fossil fuels, hate environmentalists and/or leftists who they consider environmentalists, want to think that they can do whatever they want and refuse to recognize that their actions are environmentally harmful, etc.). If that’s what you want to do, have fun. I certainly have no patience for it.
Blatantly obvious? Maybe to the layman…
From the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory:
Global Warming and Hurricanes
2. Global Warming and Atlantic Hurricanes
E. Summary for Atlantic Hurricanes and Global Warming
In summary, neither our model projections for the 21st century nor our analyses of trends in Atlantic hurricane and tropical storm counts over the past 120+ yr support the notion that greenhouse gas-induced warming leads to large increases in either tropical storm or overall hurricane numbers in the Atlantic. One modeling study projects a large (~100%) increase in Atlantic category 4-5 hurricanes over the 21st century, but we estimate that this increase may not be detectable until the latter half of the century.
Therefore, we conclude that despite statistical correlations between SST and Atlantic hurricane activity in recent decades, it is premature to conclude that human activity–and particularly greenhouse warming–has already caused a detectable change in Atlantic hurricane activity. (“Detectable” here means the change is large enough to be distinguishable from the variability due to natural causes.) However, human activity may have already caused some some changes that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of the changes or observation limitations, or are not yet confidently modeled (e.g., aerosol effects on regional climate).
https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/
There are two models currently being argued in the field of climate science as to how global warming impacts the frequency and intensity of hurricanes.
1) Model A – Hurricane activity is almost solely based on the temperature of the surface of the tropical Atlantic. This model suggest that in the later 21st century the eastern coasts of the USA will be massively ravaged.
2) Model B – Hurricane activity is based upon the relative temperature of the tropical Atlantic vs. the temperature of the worldwide tropical sea surfaces. This model predicts hurricane activity will not change much.
But neither model predicts much change in 2017. If model A is correct we would know by about 2030 if people living from Maine to Texas should pack their bags and move.
http://www.hurricanescience.org/science/science/climate/futurehurricaneactivity/
What you write is surely correct, but the natural variability in the number and intensities or hurricanes and typhoons each year make it difficult to make a good case for this by observation. It is not like the hockey-stick graph of global temperature change.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/26/global-hurricane-activity-at-historical-record-lows-new-paper/
“So to say that the intensity of this one hurricane is related to global warming is premature and may even prove to be false.”
While Klein is indeed saying that, she is also saying more than that. She is asking “why these kind of unprecedented, record-breaking weather events are happening with such regularity that “record-breaking” has become a meteorological cliché.”
It’s valid to combine what we know about extreme weather causality with a preponderance of evidence like this to try to come up with an explanation. And it’s time for us to worrying whether climate-change causality is airtight. The stakes are high enough now that maybe we should just go ahead and take some action anyway.
It astonishes me that despite modernity, we live among so many incurious and consequently ignorant people.
Chryons march across tv broadcasts informing us of missing persons, fluctuations in the stock market, of tweets by a lunatic and defective corporate products.
Yet coastal flooding and climate change –no less connected than two ears on someone’s head — remains a taboo. One is true, the other depicted as imaginary.
Not because of political sensitivity or lack of evidence, but simply because the implications are too apocalyptic to consider.
The fucking Secretary of State acknowledged the reality of climate change in his capacity as CEO of one of the largest fossil fuel country in the world several years ago (and after funding climate change denial for decades).
Nightly news show vids of a biblical flood and still no one mentions climate change.
How can these clowns pretend to read the news yet remain so incredibly and loudly ignorant?
It is just astonishing.
“Anyone that doesn’t believe in my tax scheme is ignorant.”
Right up there with “everyone I don’t agree with is a Nazi”. The nerve of people to claim “but science” while treating climate gloom and doom like a religion is excessive.
Connect the dots.
Dot One — Melting ice caps.
Dot Two. — Rising sea levels.
Dot Three — Coastal flooding.
Which one of these three dots would you like to dispute?
There are no melting ice caps, nor rising sea levels, nor coastal flooding outside of normal historic variation.
NASA earth observatory: after analyzing 20 y of scientific data …farther inland and at higher temperatures in the past two decades…”
Discuss, disagree, if you must, but do not think us stupid enough to believe your obvious lies!
Which is to say, the icecaps melt, the oceans rise and coasts flood.
In short, you acknowledge the changing climate.
Good for you!
with respect, Milton, the noise readers are selected for just those incurious traits.(Chomsky) and their willingness to receive large sums to say stuff.
Six media corporations decide what is broadcast.
And they have no obligation to do anything but say stuff for those paying large sums to have it be said.
In court, Fox declared their first amendment right entitled them to lie…. and they do.
Curious. In so many walks of life accountability matters.
When it comes to informing the public… not at all.
Warmed by fresh fecal deposits, ignorant folks get sleepy-minded listening to authoritas tell ’em what’s what.
But science … is what you use everyday to survive! Get real!
As someone, who is not a climate change denier, I find this article insulting and amazingly shallow. Frankly it is embarrassing that this passes for journalism, but it seems all to typical of The Intercept, which does not miss an opportunity to peddle ideoglogy at the expense of actually doing the hard work of reporting. Is Ms. Klein simply too lazy to interview one person or quote one study? We’ve had weather events that are more cataclysmic that this in the past, every thing from the dust bowl, to the Little Ice Age. The point is she is entitled to ask the question and raise points, but to suggest she is all-knowing and can place this at the foot of human-caused climate change without presenting facts is scary. Do your job, show don’t tell.
Around Ten years ago , she wrote The Shock Doctrine.
http://www.infoshop.org/amp/NaomiKlein-TheShockDoctrine.pdf
Read Part 5; “Shocking Times; The Rise of the Disaster Capitalism Complex”
I’m talking about the article at hand. Are the readers of The Intercept so uncritical and feeble minded that they accept articles that make sweeping assertions without the most basic research? Again, I am NOT a climate change denier, but a concerned reader.
Which assertions are you referring to that require basic research?
The consequential coincidences during and after natural disasters?
The heart rendering media coverage of heroic rescuers?
The ever-changing and refining theories and facts made possible by the continuing improvements in technology that measure and store data?
Thanks Naomi.
After reading the article and the comments, it is disheartening that there are so many climate change deniers who pick and choose which science they trust, whether it’s the scientific principles which make their car go or airplane fly, yet disregard the ones that point to the possibility of our own extinction. What idiotic hubris that is. Speak up, people.
None of your models work.
Scientifically illiterate wing nut assessing the validity of climate models. lmao!
They have eyes yet see nothing but what they want.
The idea that ‘Socialists’ are effectively conspiring to take over the world in 2017 has to be one of the most hilariously absurd theories in modern times, even if it obviously grows out of the historical usefulness of ‘red scare’ propaganda politics in fighting anything that upsets capital interests.
If seeking to ‘prove’ anthropomorphic climate change is really a vast conspiracy of the scientific community far beyond any kind of mundane industry-research group nonsense that’s come before, at least come up with a more plausible villain that the Shadowy Order of Global Pinkos.
Oh well, que the indignant howls of protest from the oddly serial-posting contingent of avid Intercept readers who despise the Intercept…
The emblems of Fabian Socialism are both the Turtle (slogan: “When I strike, I strike hard.”), and the Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.
No, I am a Kazakh. I follow the Hawk.
It is time to expose the bastards who play God with our weather by manipulating it. This is were YOU the reporters must do your work!
Because it can’t move laterally, sandwiched between two high pressure ridges on both its west and east.
If only progressives understood more about their physical world.
TOO LITTLE TOO LATE
these OVERPOPULATED areas will suffer like Haiti has
the storms will poison the water, place mud everywhere, sink roads, cause bridges and railroad foundations to crater, clog up the drainage systems, put sewage everywhere, destroy vegetation and produce and farmland, make disease – lots of it.
too little too late. The dummies in charge of the sacredness of life have opted to allow America Mainstreet to go to ruin in favor of their palaces in the sky in nyc where the wallstreet thieves The US economy is hooked on poison and ruination because the thieves demand growth and ever increasing profits for ever increasing loans and ever increasing profits. The thieves will print the money to pay the armies to kill the protesters and then bill the remaining protesters.
JC warned you 2017 years ago.
Yes, and Perry family made their fortunes in overdeveloping that area!
Yes, the US has to develop a social policy for childbearing. Other than war and conflict and poor healthcare to cull the masses.
Beg to differ, that jc is the problem.
A 47 year low for hurricanes. Just 4 hurricanes on domestic shores in seven years:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2016/07/12/us-hurricane-drought/86990408/
Al Fatso Gore’s dustcovers are inundated with multiple hurricanes churning. So which is it? Lowest number of hurricanes in 47 years, “Climate Change,” avg., “Climate Change,” predicted more which never occurred, “Climate Change.” Leftist bozos.
A hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Who would’ve thought.
No it is ACD.
You conveniently talk about hurricanes on the shore but that doesn’t mean we didn’t have an active hurricane season, just that they failed to hit our shores. http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/737379/why-so-many-hurricanes-earthquakes-2016-italy-americas-japan
Are we the only country on the planet and does the fact that the hurricanes do not hit land negate them? http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/737379/why-so-many-hurricanes-earthquakes-2016-italy-americas-japan
Shocking.
Naomi Klein would stoop to climate opportunism. Shocking.
She must have been saving this article up for 12 years since that is the last time we had a major hurricane make landfall in the US. This is by far the longest major hurricane drought in US history, over a hundred years. The longest stretch prior to this was SIX YEARS. When records are set in the “wrong” direction they are completely ignored, not even mentioned as a matter of fact.
Somehow all that is forgotten and we are back to the “new normal” of massive storms beating us down every day. See! It’s proven!
Intellectually bankrupt. Shameful. Dishonest. Anti-science.
People don’t trust this science for a reason, and that is primarily because the media cannot cover it honestly. There are many scientists who work honestly and have plenty of nuance about the uncertainties here, we never hear from them. Instead we are fed heaping helping spoonfuls of this claptrap.
They are not doing politics. They are doing propaganda. Politics is the social debate, the collective conversation which is the way we create a civil society.
For another view, read this climate scientist on why Houston is just one of those things and not related to global warming http://www.drroyspencer.com/2017/08/why-houston-flooding-isnt-a-sign-of-climate-change/?utm_content=buffer9fbfa&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
So, the 84 mm of sea level rise measured by nasa https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/ is responsible for houses being flooded up to their eaves? And climate change is NOT responsible for the dearth of hurricanes hitting the Gulf Coast for the past decade, but it IS responsible for this huge hurricane? Oh, and by the way, it technically did come “out of the blue,” being that it was, like, a storm, and all?
Naomi Klein committed so many scientific whoppers in her opening paragraph. In terms of hurricanes, the US has been in a lull for quite a few years. Go to https://ourworldindata.org/natural-catastrophes/ and look at the chart of US hurricane landfalls since 1900. There’s no pattern of increasing activity. If global warming was causing hurricanes you’d see it on the chart. In fact, there has been a slight decrease (see the sloping horizontal line).
Naomi — don’t write about climate science because you know nothing about the subject.
Glenn — keep your writers in check so they only write about what they are qualified to talk about.
“Never let a good crisis go to waste” – Rahm Emmanuel. Naomi Klein is working straight from the Chicago communist playbook. Shameful.
Pretty ironic that this article comes on the same day where a new scientific study proved that the temperatures during the Medieval era was hotter than it is today.
Ignore the ClimateGate e-mails. Ignore the manipulated historical temperature data. Ignore the evidence proving CO2 has a lagging relationship to temperature. Ignore the fact that not once have the global warming crazies predicting the temperature accurately even two years into the future. Ignore Al Gore’s hockey stick graph and exponential warming (spoiler alert….it didn’t happen!). Ignore the fact that the global warming “scientists” predicted that New York City would be under water at this point in time. Ignore the fact that hurricanes and tornadoes are well below average in frequency over the last five years.
Just put your blinders on and believe the “scientists” who’s paychecks only keep coming if they find global warming.
I swear people like Naomi must still believe in the Easter Bunny. Do the research yourself and stop regurgitating political talking points.
Characteristic of so-called climate change deniers, cherry picking the data to argue their point. Never mind that the overwhelming preponderance of evidence links the accelerating rate of global warming and intensity of storms to humanity’s maltreatment of the environment. Unlike religion, where one is free to postulate any kind of universe one wants, science provides a mechanism for separating the truth from the bullshit.
It is ok to believe whatever you want. Just kindly refrain from passing off beliefs for truth.
Is this cherry picking? IPCC AR5:
“Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin”
Communist is: WethePeople in order to form a more perfect union, provide for common defense and general Welfare of the UnitedStates… note the pesky WE, PEOPLE, UNION, COMMON, DEFENSE, GENERAL WELFARE, PROVIDE…are communism ad nauseum– for the commons! King George would be proud of you.
You are right, there is no global warming but ACD it is and it is. If you go to the dentist or doctor, or drive a car– you use science well every day.
And good science is not about predicting exact temperatures as some simpletons seem to believe.
EasterBunny? Grow up!!
You can’t forecast the basics.
That has nothing to do with it. It is a false presumption on your part.
The interesting thing about reality is that she doesn’t care if you believe in her or not, she’ll kick her arse just the same.
The evidence supporting climate change vastly outweighs the evidence against. That’s not called a conspiracy, it’s called peer-reviewed consensus. Believe it or
Actually, Climate models have UNDERSTATED the temperature rise.
As for your epigraph, Rahm is as far from a Communist as you can get, with his support for charter schools, targeting teacher’s unions, presiding over a police department that used torture, and coordinating the nationwide crackdown on Occupy. (His opposition to our immigration laws is laudable, but I think it’s more for political points and cheap labor, not a genuine concern for human rights.) And doesn’t he owe his reelection to Republicans, who funded and backed to avoid the spectre of Mayor Jesus “Chuy” Garcia?
The obvious conclusion is that the fossil fuel industry is responsible, fiscally and legally, for a limited portion of the damages caused by such extreme weather events. Just to sum up the main factors involved in hurricane strength and intensity:
(1) Sea surface temperatures (which have been rising in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, and whose rise is a long-standing prediction of climate models).
(2) Subsurface ocean temperatures (which have been rising in the same manner, as climate models predicted)
(3) Levels of water vapor in the atmosphere (which have also been rising in accordance with long-standing climate model predictions. For example:
Robust Responses of the Hydrological Cycle to Global Warming, 2006, Held & Soden
What that means is that the fossil fuel industry and its financiers can be held legally responsible for a portion of the costs arising from such hurricane damages. Some say this means 5% of the damages, others say 50% of the damages – that can be sorted out in the courts. But the fact that they knew about the risks, and lied about that knowledge, makes them cupable:
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/Exxons-own-research-confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming
In reality, this is only going to get worse over the next century, since the ocean catches up more slowly to the fossil fueled warming trend – so 50 years from now the Gulf of Mexico will be a good deal warmer than it is now, even if we manage to get off fossil fuels by then. Practically this means retreating from the coastal flood plains and building a lot of new infrastructure on higher ground. And who better to pay a good chunk of that bill than the fossil fuel industry and its financiers?
Somebody finally said it… “a desire not to “politicize” a still unfolding human tragedy, …” or maybe even an induced timidity as a result of bullying by a very loud minority. We can hope that by the time effects show up on a weekly basis, journalists will be able to report the actual news again. I’ve been looking through news sites and yes, there’s all this “unprecedented” and “never seen before” and “off the charts” mention but few will say the words. It’s like we’re about to be struck by a giant comet and everybody’s all “no one can say for sure!”
What a shameless ad for a book. This is modern journalism – disaster capitalism.
Idiot.
Nah. She coined the term and she is demonstrating exactly how it works. You find a disaster, feign compassion, fundraise, and repeat. She’s a shameless hypocrite profiting off of the things she criticizes, better known as a liar, cheat, or con-artist.
She’s a psychopathic capitalist wolf dressed in progressive sheep clothing. At least, that’s how she’s acting in this context.
Dear Ms. Klein,
You are operating under the serious misapprehension that a large enough majority of the American people who aren’t scientifically illiterate who could even begin to grasp the reality or scientific consensus underlying anthropogenic climate change, much less that there is some sort of majoritarian consensus and/or will among the governing American political, business and media elites sufficient to actually convince people of that reality.
And even if you could and did convince enough of the American people to actually demand that our political, business and media elites take meaningful action to ameliorate what can be ameliorated at this point, the vast majority of Americans aren’t prepared to sacrifice or change anything about their “American way of life” and/or their “freedom and liberty” to live an over-consumptive highly wasteful and polluting “lifestyle” that they outsource to the rest of the planet directly and indirectly.
I mean seriously, unless Americans suddenly up and decide out of the blue to throw out the entirety of the US Congress, and about half of the legislatures of the 50 states (particularly red ones), and replace them with younger scientifically literate humanists who care about something other than profits, and then scale up something about 5 times as big as the space race to rebuild America’s energy/travel/manufacturing infrastructure, and reform our eating and consuming habits to something clean, green, renewable and centered around anti-consumption, then not only will most Americans be well and truly fucked, but billions of other humans on the planet. That horse has left the barn so to speak.
So long as “capitalism” is the central organizing principle of nation-states and culture, billions of us quite simply have no future as a species. And we might take most of the other species with us.
Frankly I’m thankful I won’t be around to see what happens in 50 years, because I don’t have much faith in American leadership to be quite frank. We’re too enamored of our own myths about ourselves and our culture to ever be able to comprehend much less deal with what’s coming.
Unfortunately plenty of ‘socialist’ countries are just as reliant on fossil fuel exports for their income as the ‘capitalist’ countries are. Norway, Venezuela, Brazil, Iran, China, etc. are thus just as culpable as the United States, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Indonesia, Australia, India, etc.
The only fix is for everyone on the planet, regardless of political ideology, to get off fossil fuels and replace them with renewables. As to what kind of political-economic system can best accomplish that transition in the least amount of time? Hell if I know. But that’s what has to happen.
I agree with your first paragraph, and it infuriates me when people bring economics into environmental discussions. This has nothing to do with the movement of little green pieces of paper. Modern human lifestyles are the problem, not how humans organize their economy. (That said, there’s no chance for a solution under capitalism.)
As to replacing fossil fuels with renewables: yes, and the “renewables” need to be human muscles. All technology causes some environmental harm, and while solar panels as a source of electricity aren’t as bad as burning coal, they still require mining; while electric cars charged by solar panels are much better than consuming and burning gasoline, they still require highly toxic batteries. Etc. We need to greatly reduce our population and to live a lot more simply and naturally, while ALSO switching to renewables. Only doing the latter would still lead down the path to environmental and ecological ruin, just as Democrats are just not quite as bad as Republicans.
Amazing how quickly global warming crazies go from fake science to attacking capitalism. Everyone knows global warming “science” is a front for world socialism.
The cigarette companies have their scientists who show that smoking cigarettes really isn’t that harmful. The vaccine industry has their scientists who find no correlation between vaccines and autism. The world socialists and communists have their scientists who show manmade global warming.
There is no “consensus”. That’s a political talking point that idiots who didn’t do well in science regurgitate without investigating.
If you seek the truth, do the research yourself. It’s not that complicated. Follow the scientific arguments of both sides as far you can. Understand what one side is saying. Then, learn the arguments of the other side. See which makes sense. Learn the science yourself. Only idiots who are afraid of debate use terms like “scientific consensus”. The only consensus is among scientists whose paychecks depend on finding global warming.
Monsanto would tell you that there’s “scientific consensus” that genetically modified food is perfectly healthy. The military would tell you there’s expert consensus that overseas wars save American lives. Any industry can pay scientists and experts to “prove” what they want you to believe.
Wake up and do the research yourself. Manmade global warming isn’t even science to begin with. It’s computer models. Computer modelling is NOT science.
> Learn the science yourself. Only idiots who are afraid of debate use terms like “scientific consensus”.
only idiots understand science the way you do. if you are able to learn the science, then you are able to publish your findings and have them peer reviewed. that’s the only way to know if your thoughts are correct. science is a conversation among scientists. scientific consensus and scientific truth are synonymous. all we can ever have is the consensus. it could turn out to be wrong, but to reject a strong scientific consensus – which exists regarding climate change – is the essence of science denial. to reject it based on one’s private research is pure idiocy
Computer modeling isn’t “science”? Of course not, but it’s one tool among many used to study the climate. World socialism? Hey: 1952 called and they want their Red Scare paranoia back. If climate change is not real, then why do the armed forces of all NATO nations, including the USA, as well as China, Russia, India…basically everyone, plan for the global impact of climate change? Why are corporations like Exxon planning for it? (Hint: because it’s real)
Friend, when reality catches up with you, you’re in for a rude awakening.
Peace.
Seemingly written by someone without a clue as to the use of computer modeling to generate hypotheses about nature. A chaotic system with many levels of nested feedback is indeed difficult to model, but attempts to understand the current extinction seem at least worthwhile. Science is indeed about generating models, computer or otherwise, to account for observations and to make predictions. So far most of the predictions have been UNDERestimates. And there is far more money to be made shilling for big oil–why are there so few with any real credentials?
Mr. Bryan? You stated, and I quote, “The cigarette companies have their scientists who show that smoking cigarettes really isn’t that harmful.” Did you know that many of those, such as Fred Singer, are also disbelievers in AGW?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer#Second-hand_smoke
And thank you for proving my point about the stupidity of the average science illiterate American.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-determine-the-scientific-consensus-on-global-warming/
I have. Thank you again for demonstrating how insufferably ideological and ignorant some Americans are.
But I love how you’ve shoe horned all Frank Luntz’s talking points into your little missive.
If only posters like rrheard understood the difference between weather and climate.
I’m well aware of the difference between weather and climate, it’s the AGW denying crowd that doesn’t.
Well put.
*yawn*
Wake me when they’re dodging laser guided bombs, missiles, 31 different flavors of “moderate rebels”, chemical weapons, and “friendly” forces that execute you on the spot on their way to “liberating” your town.
In short, Tuck Fexas.
Hey, native born “Texan” here. I am NOT offended.
Lived there for 27 years before wising up and getting out because I got tired of hearing Texans say fuck the world and giggle at all the dead people at Vietnam and Latin America.
“Fuck Texas” is A-OK with me.
I do have sympathy for the less fortunate — even some who did not give a shit that the USA tortured me for a very conservatively estimated decade — just to be accurate, if not precise.
But fuck the “rugged individualists” and “libertarians” of Texas; they should receive no federal bailouts. They don’t want them anyway. That’s why they voted for Trump.
It’s their money.
And their contaminated water supply.
Drink up, libertarians. I’m sure you’ve got the intestinal fortitude to digest it without any help from Yankee, “cosmopolitan” taxpayers.
It’s called a flood, Stan. If the northeast had weather, it might know first-hand.
Whoa! Are you denying people in Manhattan have never seen a flooded subway?
After reading that comment and seeing the Great Orange Froggy on CNN’s BS Hour earlier today, I have to lower the bar again. It seems Americans’ intelligence deteriorated has even further after I left your country.
It seems Americans’ intelligence deteriorated
haseven further after I left your country, along with my grammar and typing chops.I wonder if it would be effective and memorable if climate activists brought up the last climate crisis each time another appears? Bring up Fort McMurray today, saying that we’re somewhat holding off on talking politics about Harvey until the rescues are completed. And also encourage something like a donate-today, talk tomorrow that sets a very soon timeline to talk about Harvey. Do this every time there is a new crisis, and that might help turn individual climate events into a story that sticks.
Get a grip. There hasn’t been a major (cat 3 and up) hurricane to hit the US in over 9 years. And that’s the longest period since records have been kept. If that’s climate change you should be happy about it.
Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good global warming conspiracy theory.
the planet was warmer during the MWP than it is today, facts not feelings, snowflake
3 simple questions
a. How long have records been kept?
b. How long ago was the second longest period between hurricanes?
c. Besides the random periodic incidents of hurricanes making land fall, what are other variables that strengthen your assertions?
not my job to keep you factually informed but the latest peer reviewed research indicates that “warmer” assertions are based on completely doctored data, fake research for political purposes, so what’s your agenda?
Um,…..nope. Nice try though.
I live on the NW side of Houston. My home is at a slightly higher location than many other parts of the city. Despite that, I’m surrounded by tornado and flood warnings. Dams that might flood me out. Trying to find an emergency shelter that won’t turn me away. Desperate people trying to get food at stores that stay open for 5 hours a day.
Now, racist Trump wants to come here and do what? Strut around doing his Il Duce poses followed by his Cabinet members that worship his every move? Trump says that climate change is a “Chinese conspiracy”. What does this accomplish? Does the Weather Channel still say that climate change is total bs? If yes, that makes Jim Cantore totally ridiculous.
Harvey is climate change happening right now. If you live elsewhere, you’d better hope and pray that this never happens to you.
Are you going to cry, Tom?
Typical comment from a no nothing self righteous idiot.
Actually the founder of the Weather Channel says it’s bullocks… thought you should know.
Move to Berkeley Tom… it’s safer if for climate change storm troopers.