Sign At A BP Gas Station, The Onion’s Take on BP, & Bill Maher On Climate Change Denial

And from The Onion, “Massive Flow of Bullsh*t Continues to Gush From BP Headquarters“:

As the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico entered its eighth week Wednesday, fears continued to grow that the massive flow of bullshit still gushing from the headquarters of oil giant BP could prove catastrophic if nothing is done to contain it.

The toxic bullshit, which began to spew from the mouths of BP executives shortly after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in April, has completely devastated the Gulf region, delaying cleanup efforts, affecting thousands of jobs, and endangering the lives of all nearby wildlife.

“Everything we can see at the moment suggests that the overall environmental impact of this will be very, very modest,” said BP CEO Tony Hayward, letting loose a colossal stream of undiluted bullshit. “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean, and the volume of oil we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total volume of water.”

Click here for the rest of the article.

Not many articles I read on climate change make me laugh out loud, but this column of Bill Maher’s from The Huffington Post sure did. It’s called “New Rule: Al Gore Must Come Out With a Sequel to His Film and Call It An Inconvenient Truth 2: What The F**k Is Wrong With You People?”:

A bunch of depressing new surveys reveal that people in droves are starting to believe that global warming is a hoax — and this time, it’s not just us. People are always accusing me of hating America and calling it stupid, so tonight I’d like to take a few moments to hate England and call it stupid. Because now English people don’t believe in global warming either. I thought the English were smarter than that. The home of Newton and Darwin. I can’t believe we let these people build our exploding oil platforms.

Even scarier is why people have stopped thinking global warming is real. One major reason pollsters say is we had a very cold, snowy winter. Which is like saying the sun might not be real because last night it got dark. And my car’s not real because I can’t find my keys.

You really need to go to THP and read his whole rant – click here to do just that!

On Facing The Truth About Climate Change

Via “Nothing New Under The Sun“:

Sometimes facing up to the truth is just too hard. When the facts are distressing it is easier to reframe or ignore them. Around the world only a few have truly faced up to the facts about global warming. Apart from the climate ‘sceptics’, most people do not disbelieve what the climate scientists have been saying about the calamities expected to befall us. But accepting intellectually is not the same as accepting emotionally the possibility that the world as we know it is heading for a horrible end. It’s the same with our own deaths; we all ‘accept’ that we will die, but it is only when death is imminent that we confront the true meaning of our mortality.

– Clive Hamilton, Requiem for a Species: why we resist the truth
about climate change
(Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2010), viii.

These are the opening words of Hamilton’s new book. In case you hadn’t picked it up from the title, it’s no exercise in optimism. Hamilton believes that we have largely missed our opportunity to respond in time to climate change and now all we can do is minimise the damage and salvage what we can. However, reaching that conclusion involves a willingness to face the full scale of the threat rather than watering it down through a variety of coping mechanisms. (Click here to read the rest of Byron Smith’s article on his blog.)

Another reason it is difficult for those of us in North America to face the truth about climate change is that our system is working desperately to save the old way.  Big Oil and Gas want to keep us either in denial or overwhelmed by this issue. The result of both is the same –  inaction. That’s why ads like the following from Natural Resource Defense Council are important. They start to lift the veil of denial and addiction we are struggling under:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXJZbsRYQpY&feature=player_embedded]

To take action on climate change, go to my “Action not Apathy” page for some steps to take.  Even baby steps in the right direction are better than continuing down the wrong path.

Many “Scientists” Who Deny Climate Change, Aren’t Scientists At All

Peter Sinclair, who makes the excellent and informative “Climate Crock of the Week” videos, has just published one entitled “Climate Change: Meet The Scientists”. Watch it, and be informed:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZzwRwFDXw0]

Click here to view more of Sinclair’s videos on YouTube, or go to his website at Greenman studio.com.

“Climate Change and The Integrity of Science”

The following letter, signed by 255 members of the National Academy of Science, appears in the current issue of the journal Science. It underlines the severity of the crisis that we are facing, and also the importance of taking action now.  Please take the time to read the letter, and share it!  Thanks to Callan Bentley for making the text available on his blog, MountainBeltway.Wordpress.com.

Climate Change and the Integrity of Science

We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action. For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet.

Scientific conclusions derive from an understanding of basic laws supported by laboratory experiments, observations of nature, and mathematical and computer modeling. Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. This process is inherently adversarial—scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation. That’s what Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, and Einstein did. But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of “well-established theories” and are often spoken of as “facts.”

For instance, there is compelling scientific evidence that our planet is about 4.5 billion years old (the theory of the origin of Earth), that our universe was born from a single event about 14 billion years ago (the Big Bang theory), and that today’s organisms evolved from ones living in the past (the theory of evolution). Even as these are overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong. Climate change now falls into this category: There is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.

Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientific assessments of climate change, which involve thousands of scientists producing massive and comprehensive reports, have, quite expectedly and normally, made some mistakes. When errors are pointed out, they are corrected. But there is nothing remotely identified in the recent events that changes the fundamental conclusions about climate change:

(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.

(ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

(iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth’s climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.

(iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.

(v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.

Much more can be, and has been, said by the world’s scientific societies, national academies, and individuals, but these conclusions should be enough to indicate why scientists are concerned about what future generations will face from business-as-usual practices. We urge our policy-makers and the public to move forward immediately to address the causes of climate change, including the unrestrained burning of fossil fuels.

We also call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them. Society has two choices: We can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act in the public interest to reduce the threat of global climate change quickly and substantively. The good news is that smart and effective actions are possible. But delay must not be an option.

P. H. Gleick,* R. M. Adams, R. M. Amasino, E. Anders, D. J. Anderson, W. W. Anderson, L. E. Anselin, M. K. Arroyo, B. Asfaw, F. J. Ayala, A. Bax, A. J. Bebbington, G. Bell, M. V. L. Bennett, J. L. Bennetzen, M. R. Berenbaum, O. B. Berlin, P. J. Bjorkman, E. Blackburn, J. E. Blamont, M. R. Botchan, J. S. Boyer, E. A. Boyle, D. Branton, S. P. Briggs, W. R. Briggs, W. J. Brill, R. J. Britten, W. S. Broecker, J. H. Brown, P. O. Brown, A. T. Brunger, J. Cairns, Jr., D. E. Canfield, S. R. Carpenter, J. C. Carrington, A. R. Cashmore, J. C. Castilla, A. Cazenave, F. S. Chapin, III, A. J. Ciechanover, D. E. Clapham, W. C. Clark, R. N. Clayton, M. D. Coe, E. M. Conwell, E. B. Cowling, R. M Cowling, C. S. Cox, R. B. Croteau, D. M. Crothers, P. J. Crutzen, G. C. Daily, G. B. Dalrymple, J. L. Dangl, S. A. Darst, D. R. Davies, M. B. Davis, P. V. de Camilli, C. Dean, R. S. Defries, J. Deisenhofer, D. P. Delmer, E. F. Delong, D. J. Derosier, T. O. Diener, R. Dirzo, J. E. Dixon, M. J. Donoghue, R. F. Doolittle, T. Dunne, P. R. Ehrlich, S. N. Eisenstadt, T. Eisner, K. A. Emanuel, S. W. Englander, W. G. Ernst, P. G. Falkowski, G. Feher, J. A. Ferejohn, A. Fersht, E. H. Fischer, R. Fischer, K. V. Flannery, J. Frank, P. A. Frey, I. Fridovich, C. Frieden, D. J. Futuyma, W. R. Gardner, C. J. R. Garrett, W. Gilbert, R. B. Goldberg, W. H. Goodenough, C. S. Goodman, M. Goodman, P. Greengard, S. Hake, G. Hammel, S. Hanson, S. C. Harrison, S. R. Hart, D. L. Hartl, R. Haselkorn, K. Hawkes, J. M. Hayes, B. Hille, T. Hökfelt, J. S. House, M. Hout, D. M. Hunten, I. A. Izquierdo, A. T. Jagendorf, D. H. Janzen, R. Jeanloz, C. S. Jencks, W. A. Jury, H. R. Kaback, T. Kailath, P. Kay, S. A. Kay, D. Kennedy, A. Kerr, R. C. Kessler, G. S. Khush, S. W. Kieffer, P. V. Kirch, K. Kirk, M. G. Kivelson, J. P. Klinman, A. Klug, L. Knopoff, H. Kornberg, J. E. Kutzbach, J. C. Lagarias, K. Lambeck, A. Landy, C. H. Langmuir, B. A. Larkins, X. T. Le Pichon, R. E. Lenski, E. B. Leopold, S. A. Levin, M. Levitt, G. E. Likens, J. Lippincott-Schwartz, L. Lorand, C. O. Lovejoy, M. Lynch, A. L. Mabogunje, T. F. Malone, S. Manabe, J. Marcus, D. S. Massey, J. C. McWilliams, E. Medina, H. J. Melosh, D. J. Meltzer, C. D. Michener, E. L. Miles, H. A. Mooney, P. B. Moore, F. M. M. Morel, E. S. Mosley-Thompson, B. Moss, W. H. Munk, N. Myers, G. B. Nair, J. Nathans, E. W. Nester, R. A. Nicoll, R. P. Novick, J. F. O’Connell, P. E. Olsen, N. D. Opdyke, G. F. Oster, E. Ostrom, N. R. Pace, R. T. Paine, R. D. Palmiter, J. Pedlosky, G. A. Petsko, G. H. Pettengill, S. G. Philander, D. R. Piperno, T. D. Pollard, P. B. Price, Jr., P. A. Reichard, B. F. Reskin, R. E. Ricklefs, R. L. Rivest, J. D. Roberts, A. K. Romney, M. G. Rossmann, D. W. Russell, W. J. Rutter, J. A. Sabloff, R. Z. Sagdeev, M. D. Sahlins, A. Salmond, J. R. Sanes, R. Schekman, J. Schellnhuber, D. W. Schindler, J. Schmitt, S. H. Schneider, V. L. Schramm, R. R. Sederoff, C. J. Shatz, F. Sherman, R. L. Sidman, K. Sieh, E. L. Simons, B. H. Singer, M. F. Singer, B. Skyrms, N. H. Sleep, B. D. Smith, S. H. Snyder, R. R. Sokal, C. S. Spencer, T. A. Steitz, K. B. Strier, T. C. Südhof, S. S. Taylor, J. Terborgh, D. H. Thomas, L. G. Thompson, R. T. TJian, M. G. Turner, S. Uyeda, J. W. Valentine, J. S. Valentine, J. L. van Etten, K. E. van Holde, M. Vaughan, S. Verba, P. H. von Hippel, D. B. Wake, A. Walker, J. E. Walker, E. B. Watson, P. J. Watson, D. Weigel, S. R. Wessler, M. J. West-Eberhard, T. D. White, W. J. Wilson, R. V. Wolfenden, J. A. Wood, G. M. Woodwell, H. E. Wright, Jr., C. Wu, C. Wunsch, M. L. Zoback

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: petergleick@pacinst.org

To read this article in journal Science, click here (subscription required).

EU Urges Canada to Address Climate Change: “There is A Real Threat To Our Survival”

Once again, Canada under Prime Minister Stephen Harper (whose father was an oil company executive)  is shown up as an international laggard in acting on climate change.  The President of the European Union, José Manuel Barroso is now calling Harper on his government’s inaction on this crucial issue:

Canada shouldn’t keep waiting for the rest of the world to act on climate change before making its own changes, the president of the European Union Commission said Wednesday as he prepared to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Brussels.

“We should not lose momentum regarding climate change negotiations,” José Manuel Barroso told Canadian reporters during an hour-long briefing.

“With Canada, I’m not going to give lessons to one of our partners. What we want is for everybody to move.

“What we don’t want to see, frankly speaking, is that someone does not move because the others don’t move.”

Barroso said the matter is pressing enough to require immediate political action, despite the economic toll that might result from measures to reduce carbon emissions, which a large body of research has linked to global warming…

“In Europe, we believe, according to science, that there is a real threat to our survival as a civilization. And for the future of our planet and the quality of life of our children … I think we have to move.”

Click here to read the full story on CBC.ca.

However, the good news is that the three opposition parties – NDP, Liberal, and Bloc Quebecois – are working together to pass Bruce Hyer’s private member’s bill, Bill C311 “The Climate Accountability Act”.  Despite the Conservative’s attempts to derail the bill, it is going for its third and final vote in the House of Commons this afternoon.  To encourage the three parties to continue to support the bill today, click here. Once it has passed in the House, it will also have an uphill battle in the Senate.  But that’s a battle for another day!

This picture sums up Harper’s approach to climate change:

“Miss-Information” Contest Between Americans for Prosperity and Reason Foundation

In this video brought to you by Greenpeace, organizations compete to see who will be crowned the biggest misinformer about climate change:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br-pkXiKngY]

For more information, go to PolluterWatch.com, to meet the “influence peddlers, blowhards, and hacks hurting America’s clean energy future”.

Rachel Maddow Exposes Fake “Controversies” Cooked Up by Political Right

You gotta love MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, a Rhodes scholar with a Ph.D. in politics from Oxford.  Maddow grew up in California, but has a Canadian connection, as her mom is from Newfoundland! In this excerpt, “Let them eat fake”  from April 2, she exposes the bold-faced lies that are being propagated by the political right in America, specifically with regard to “climate-gate” and the ACORN scandal. Lest Canadians feel superior, don’t forget we have the Sun Media Corporation, and the Heartland Institute (to name just a few) north of the border feeding the public dubious “facts” on a regular basis.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9KjQUSZXqE]

Operation Rock the Boat, and Other Climate Change News

What is going on in the climate change world these days?  I did some surfing and found some of the most interesting postings – hope you enjoy!

Although April Fool’s Day was last week, this April 1st posting from Real Climate is worth reading.  It discusses the “consensus view” of climate scientists that the Northern Hemisphere will be warming as spring approaches, as well as the response – including “scientific diagrams” –  of skeptic and author “Micheal Crikey”.  And don’t miss the comments section!

A “consensus view” amongst climate scientists holds that the Northern Hemisphere will be warming this month, as spring is coming. This is thought to be due to the Earth’s orbit around the sun and the inclination of the Earth’s axis, tilting the Northern Hemisphere progressively towards the sun throughout March and April and increasing the amount of solar radiation received at northern latitudes.

In a new novel, State of Euphoria, bestselling author Michael Crikey uncovers major flaws in this theory and warns against false hopes for the arrival of spring.

This is not merely fiction: Crikey underpins his thesis with numerous scientific diagrams. He presents measurements from over a dozen weather stations in the Northern Hemisphere where temperatures show a cooling trend in March. He further cites scientific results which show that in some places, snow and ice have increased in the past weeks, counter to climatologists’ claims that they should be melting away in the spring sun. He further argues that even the average temperature of the Northern Hemisphere has not increased steadily; during one week of March, it showed a slight cooling despite the increase in solar radiation.

“This casts a grave shadow of doubt on the theory of the seasons”, says Crikey…Click here to read the full article at Real Climate.

From Climate Progress: An Insider’s View of Climate Science, Politics, and Solutions, Joe Romm’s posting on The War Against Carbon Starts Now is the first in a new series Romm is launching about the kind of serious action on decreasing global warming emissions that people can push for at a local and state/provincial level — and even at a national and global level — without waiting for politicians. Part 1 discusses how the Carbon War Room (CWR) is starting to focus on lowering the carbon footprint of the worldwide shipping industry. The Carbon War Room is an exciting nonprofit initiative founded by Sir Richard Branson and several other world-class business leaders to harness “the power of entrepreneurs to implement market-driven solutions to climate change”. The CWR’s operational approach, Romm writes, is to:

“bring together successful entrepreneurs in collaboration with the most respected institutions, scientists, national security experts, and business leaders to implement the change required to avoid catastrophic climate change.”

The Carbon War Room has “identified 25 battles across 7 theaters that are material to winning the war against climate change. Each battle accounts for over 1 billion tons (or more than 2%) of global anthropogenic CO2e emissions annually.”   The figure above represents CWR’s “Theaters and Battles,” with filled in green circles representing an “Op in Progress” and the dotted circles a developing Op.  For instance, one area CWR has already start on is shipping, a too-neglected sector that has huge emissions and but only medium-sized market barriers, which they are addressing with Operation Rock The Boat“… Click here to read the full story at Climate Progress.org.

From Colin  Beavan, AKA “No Impact Man”, some thoughts on environmentalism 2.0:

1. Happier planet = happier people.

2. You make a difference.

3. Our culture is broken.

4. The personal is political.

5. Economic growth ≠ Life satisfaction growth.

6. Jobs are paramount but we should work to make our planetary home better not worse.

7. The concept of zero sum game is for people with zero sum brains.

8. There is a better, happier system out there.

9. If thine eyes (or thine economic system) offends thee, pluck them (or it) out.

10. It’s not about having less. It’s about having more. The question is: more of what?

Go to NoImpactMan.typepad.com to read the complete list.

And for a visual, here’s “60 Seconds of Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions: Actual Volume of Gas in Real Time”. For more images of our global warming emissions, check out “Carbon Quilt: Making Sense of the World’s Carbon Footprint” (thanks to Laurie for the link!).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1vbtnExw_g&feature=player_embedded]

Greenpeace Report: Koch Industries Spending Millions on Climate Science Denial

A new report by Greenpeace shows that Koch Industries, one of America’s largest corporations, has become a “financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition.” The report outlines how the company has spent over $48.5 million since 1997 to fund the climate denial machine.

Most Americans have never heard of Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the country, because it has no Koch-branded consumer products, sells no shares on the stock market and has few of the disclosure requirements of a public company. Although Koch intentionally stays out of the public eye, it is now playing a quiet but dominant role in a high-profile national policy debate on global warming.

Greenpeace goes on to say:

This private, out-of-sight corporation is now a partner to ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and other donors that support organizations and front-groups opposing progressive clean energy and climate policy. In fact, Koch has out-spent ExxonMobil in funding these groups in recent years. From 2005 to 2008, ExxonMobil spent $8.9 million while the Koch Industries-controlled foundations contributed $24.9 million in funding to organizations of the ‘climate denial machine’.

This report focuses on activities by Koch Industries and its affiliates, as well as the family—and company—controlled foundations which fund organizations that spread inaccurate and misleading information about climate science and clean energy policies. Included is research on the company and the Koch brothers, two of the top ten richest people in the United States.

Check out this new “Polluter Harmony” video that shows the match between Koch industries and American Senator Blanche Lincoln:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtFN8MTjHd0&feature=player_embedded]

Click here to download the Greenpeace report.

Click here to read Brendan DeMelle’s article on The Huffington Post.

James Cameron Takes on Global Warming Deniers

James Cameron, whose eco-epic Avatar has passed another of his movies, Titanic, to become the highest grossing movie of all time, is fed up with the global warming deniers. At a recent press conference, Cameron said:

I want to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with these boneheads… Anybody that is a global-warming denier at this point in time has got their head so deeply up their ass I’m not sure they could hear me.  Look, at this point I’m less interested in making money for the movie and more interested in saving the world that my children are going to inhabit. How about that? I mean look, I didn’t make this movie with these strong environmental anti-war themes in it to make friends on the right, you know…But you know they’ve got to live in this world too. And their children do as well, so they’re going to have to be answerable to this at some point.”

And as for the crazed right-wing ranter Glenn Beck, who in the past has called Cameron “the AntiChrist”, Cameron had this to say:

He’s dangerous because his ideas are poisonous…I couldn’t believe when he was on CNN. I thought, what happened to CNN? Who is this guy? Who is this madman? And then of course he wound up on Fox News, which is where he belongs, I guess.

At Global Green USA’s 7th Annual Pre-Oscar Party, Cameron called for a mobilisation to tackle climate change, of a scale similar to that of World War II.

While Cameron may lack some diplomatic skills, it is refreshing to hear honest push back against the denial machine and a call to action from someone with Cameron’s ability to grab the spotlight. Check out this video on the vision that prompted Cameron to make Avatar:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geNv6FUK0HU]

Links:

Avatar’s Release to be Environmentally Themed, Thanks to Climate DeniersTreeHugger.com