A Post I Really Don’t Want to Write … On Climate Change

I really don’t want to write about climate change. I have a lot – A LOT – of work to do. And I can ignore most of the hateful comments I get on the subject. However, some comments have been thoughtful and respectful, and since this is an important issue, I feel I must reply to those. I’ll answer some points posed in the comments by reader Mike (below), and I hope the commentators will find their questions and thoughts on this answered.

 

As an aside, I read all comments on my blog. Even if I don’t have time to answer them – and I don’t have a lot of spare time – I recognize that you write in, and I appreciate your comments.

 

Also, I can’t spend any more time on this issue. Too much urgent, immediate stuff is piling up. So consider this my last word on the subject – you can write what you want in the comments. As you’ve probably noticed, we don’t censor the comments except for foul language (or the lawyer may remove some for potential slander or libel).

 

First, I hope Mike and the rest of you realize that my life would be easier if I went along with the “climate change is a crock” meme. The financial publishing industry and our readers tend to be very conservative, and mainstream conservatives are beating the denialist drum – for now. But I don’t want to shy away from the hard truths. I’m not going along with something even if it’s easier if I don’t think it’s true.

 

Second, I wish those who are climate change skeptics would decide on whether A) the world is cooling or B) the world is gradually warming, but humans have nothing to do with it and C) even if we are warming the globe, it’s too late/expensive to stop it anyway. I receive email saying all these things.

 

Mike’s questions are numbered, with my XX replies …

 

1. Is Global Warming (GW) Happening? Check the records, and you’ll see it has been cooling for a decade.

XX Sean’s reply. No. That’s a lie you’ve been told. In fact, four independent statisticians corralled by The Associated Press were given temperature data from NOAA’s year-to-year ground temperature changes with which to interpret trends. They found no declines over the last 130 years.

See:http://lonestaricon.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=239:global-cooling-claims-false-statisticians&catid=34:nationwide&Itemid=68

XX And, also according to NOAA, “The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record.” I don’t blame you for being confused. The lie about “global cooling” has been repeated in The New York Times (http://mediamatters.org/blog/201002100042) and other mainstream media outlets.

2. Is GW bad? Look at history (like you do with stocks/economies). The middle age warm period was excellent for agriculture, food production.

 

XX Sean’s reply: You have to decide if your case is the world is cooling or warming up. Anyway, the Medieval Warming Period certainly took place in Europe and North America. By looking at other regions of the world during the same time period (which is done by testing ice core samples), scientists say that climate patterns opposite to those occuring in the North Atlantic and European region were happening elsewhere. Still, the world on average was probably warmer. The bad news is it’s getting a lot warmer.

XX Anyway, it appears that the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries are likely the warmest period the Earth has seen in at least 1200 years (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html), since Hannibal marched elephants over the Alps (another really warm time period). So, that’s the Medieval Warming Period on steroids.

 

3. If #1 is deemed true, then ask yourself is it CAUSED by CO2? You’ll find that CO2 is a lagging indicator. It follows warming by 800 years. As temps increase, the ocean (a huge CO2 sink) releases CO2. Try warming Coke to see what I mean.

 

XX You are partially right on CO2, and also wrong. See

http://www.grist.org/article/co2-doesnt-lead-it-lags/

 

XX Speaking of the oceans, do you know that all that CO2 is turning the oceans acidic? Every day, the ocean removes nearly 30 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, that chemical reaction creates carbolic acid. This is bad news for shellfish and corals, and could disrupt the food chain of the oceans. The oceans are 30 percent more acidic than they were just 250 years ago. That shift is 100 times faster than anything Earth has had during the last 200,000 years.

 

4. If you still believe, ask yourself, is it man-made - Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW)? You’ll find that the vast majority of the greenhouse gases are water vapor, not CO2. You’ll find that a volcano in one eruption released more GHG than man since the invention of the combustion engine.

 

XX Water vapor IS the most abundant naturally occurring greenhouse gas, yes, and accounts for 60% to 70% of the natural greenhouse effect. But we’re conducting the universe’s biggest science experiment on ourselves by adding a lot of manmade greenhouse gases to the mix.

 

XX As for volcanoes – I’m sorry, but you’re repeating a tired lie that the deniers put out there simply because reporters are too lazy to google the truth. The fact is, scientists conservatively estimate that a total global release of 3-4 x 10E12 molecules/year from volcanoes. This is a conservative estimate. Man-made (anthropogenic) CO2 emissions overwhelm this estimate by at least 150 times. -volcano.und.edu. See also http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/education/gases/man.html

 

XX Finally, plants breathe carbon dioxide the way we breathe oxygen; increased carbon dioxide, in the absence of other changes, will increase growth. Many commercial greenhouses use this principle. Unfortunately, higher temperatures that plants are not adapted to, more violent storms, disruptions in water supplies, and increased insect populations will destroy far more plant life than increased CO2 can encourage.

 

5. If you still believe in it, what can man do that will be EFFECTIVE at turning the tide of this warming? In the cost effective manner, the answer is nothing.

 

XX So, we’re all doomed and we should give up? Sorry, that’s not an effective answer for me. I have children.

 

6. Don’t listen to me, do your own research, just as you go onsite at mining locations to do your own research. You’ll find that AGW is a hollow movement.

 

XX A hollow movement filled with the creamy nougat of scientific consensus (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686) and backed by just about every scientific agency in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change) that isn’t being funded by coal companies.

 

XX Also, no scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion since the American Association of Petroleum Geologists adopted its current position in 2007.

XX Finally, let’s say that 95% of scientists believe the earth is millions of years old. Just because a few say it’s only 6,000 years old doesn’t make “two sides to an argument.”

 

XX As a recent letter to Congress from 18 leading U.S. scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society, states:

“Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science. … If we are to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change, emissions of greenhouse gases must be dramatically reduced.”

XX So, my question to you, Mike, is do you really think all these scientists are willing dupes of the shadowy liberal-fascist “global warming industry”?

7. BTW, don’t fall prey to the Hegelian Dialectic, anyone can pose options and then paint one in such a scary manner that you are forced to take the other. It is a political and debating trick for suckers, don’t be suckered in by this technique (e.g. the embedded video).

 

XX My point in posting the video was that it makes what is my central argument: While no one can be certain about the future, the risks of not doing anything about potential climate change are just too big.

 

Mike, I thank you for writing in respectfully, and I hope you think I answered you respectfully. Again, I don’t think we’re going to convince each other on anything.

 

MORE OF SEAN’S THOUGHTS ON CLIMATE CHANGE

 

Oh, ye gods, are you still reading? You must have better things to do. Nonetheless, here are the rest of my thoughts, because I’m not going to talk about this freakin’ subject again.

 

I believe the evidence is heavily stacked that the climate is changing, and that human actions are at least partly to blame.

 

The short-term potentiality of climate change affecting your life is remote. On the other hand, the likelihood that your house is going to burn down or flood is very remote, yet collectively we invest billions a year to protect from such things through insurance. The likelihood of catastrophic effects from climate change over the long term is much higher, yet there’s a reluctance to do much about it.

 

Why are people reluctant? Because they are confused; they are confused by a mainstream media that insists there are two sides to the climate change story.

 

Let’s be blunt. The people on FOX are lying to you. They know they are lying. They are paid well to lie. As Upton Sinclair said, “”It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

 

Denialists have no interest in facts except as weapons in an ideological struggle. They don’t even care if “facts” are correct or not since their intention is not to establish that something is true or false, but rather to win a battle in an ideological war. If they can stump you or confuse you with a lie, that works just as well for their purposes as does the truth.

 

Here is a fact: Arctic ice is thinning — even FOX News admits that. In fact, ice in the Arctic and Greenland may be in “runaway melt mode,” according to FOX.

 

That’s a map of what happened to the Arctic ice over 4 years. And that’s not the worst of the problem. The worst bit is that ice that existed for thousands of years is melting, and it’s being replaced by ice that only lasts for the winter.

Meanwhile, in the Antarctic, big glaciers are breaking up much faster than anyone thought possible. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18383-major-antarctic-glacier-is-past-its-tipping-point.html

 

This has many bad, lasting effects on the planet.

 

Increased CO2 production also increases acidification of the oceans, which could eventually destroy the global food chain as we know it. The only ones who benefit from this are jellyfish. So, I’m thinking that perhaps the jellyfish should be the new symbol of the Fox News/Rush Limbaugh crowd.

 

So let’s talk science. The fact is, all scientifically sound organizations are unequivocal on climate change. For example …

 

• The editor of Science magazine states that nine out of 10 scientists agree that global climate change is a real threat.
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration states on its web site: “A large body of evidence supports the conclusion that human activity is the primary driver of recent warming. This evidence has accumulated over several decades, and from hundreds of studies.”
• And then there’s the National Geographic Society, which says: “Through the burning of fossil fuels and other GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions, humans are enhancing the greenhouse effect and warming Earth. Scientists are already seeing some of these changes occurring more quickly than they had expected.”
• Finally, a newly released year-long scientific review of the evidence for global warming has concluded that the evidence is even stronger than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change maintains. The IPCC was established by the World Meteorological Organization, which I’m sure FOX will tell you is another hippie/fringe group.

 

I could list more scientific, unimpeachable sources. Here is the upshot of the scientific consensus …

• The “coming decade” (2010 to 2020) is poised to be the warmest on record, globally.
• The coming decade is poised to see faster temperature rise than any decade since calculations began in 1960.

Certainty on this or any other important issue is impossible – no one can know the future. But the evidence is lining up that climate change is a real threat.

So how do people get confused? Well, let’s start with a chart recently published in Nature. Each point represents a ten-year centered mean. The black line is one of the generally accepted scientific forecasts for temperature. The green line is data from scientists who say that fluctuations in the ocean could delay the effects of climate change. But you can see where both lines converge in about 15 years

So in a best-case scenario, we’ll see a delay. That may be what is going on now. In the medium-case scenario, temperatures will rise pretty evenly. As you might expect, the FOX News/Denialist crowd has seized on the green line as proof that climate change is a crock.

 

Now do you see why people get confused?

 

Are there worse-case scenarios? Yes. The US Naval Research Lab and NASA recently predicted that surface temperatures will rise at a rate 50% greater than that predicted (see “Major study predicts rapid warming over next few years — nearly 0.3°F by 2014“).

 

So why are so many people duped by global-warming denialists? And make no mistake, the professional deniers are well-paid liars, hacks with a political agenda who get you to act against your own best interests and the interests of your children.

 

I know…the Himalayan mountain data was incorrect, but it was scientists checking other scientists who found the error. Also, some hacked emails taken out of context can now cast doubt on thousands of peer reviewed papers on the hard truth behind global warming.

 

But here’s my take: People who buy the denialist argument have been mislead by people in the pay of coal companies who want to keep polluting the way they have been without consequence. And even if you think global warming is a crock, there is no denying that burning coal still puts enormous amounts of mercury, uranium and other heavy metals into the atmosphere.

 

Coal as it comes out of the ground contains (on average) a little over 1 part per million of uranium and 3 parts per million of thorium plus several parts per million of almost every other toxic metal such as mercury, lead, arsenic, etc. Result: 12 billion tons of coal burned worldwide every year puts thousands of tons of these toxic substances in the air. This pollution makes 1 in 4 fish caught in North America unfit to eat, due to mercury contamination.

 

As an aside, this is one reason why I’m a big proponent of nuclear power. It causes less uranium pollution than coal. A lot less.

 

But back to climate change. Many smart, honest, intelligent people have fallen for the denialist campaign for political reasons. They have been mislead by people who deny climate change simply because Al Gore and liberals believe it. That’s the kind of political polarization that is killing our country.

 

There is another group of denialists — people who can’t distinguish between weather (lots of snow in a particular winter) and climate.

 

The talking heads on FOX are smart enough to figure this out — they’re just paid well to say the opposite, and that’s why they do. When they can’t find crackpots to confuse the issues for them, they just make things up.

 

I’ve done my investigations and come to my own conclusions. But even if you disagree with my conclusions, that doesn’t make the recommendations in my book any less worthy. It’s not like I say “move to higher ground — Climate Change is gonna get ya.”

 

The recommendations I give in my book are to prepare you, your family and your portfolio for big emergencies – a potential energy crisis, food crisis, water crisis, pandemic, breakdown of the power grid, “ordinary” natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes, and “run-of-the-mill” disasters like fires and floods.

Climate change is just one of many bad things that can happen, and as I’ve said, it’s not an immediate threat. There is plenty of scary stuff to be worried about in the short term, and you should be preparing for that.

 

The good news: Research by some scientists who model internal ocean-driven fluctuations of temperature suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming.

 

The bad news: If they’re wrong, we’re so screwed. And even if they’re right, then global warming will ACCELERATE rapidly at the end of that 10-year period.

 

Just don’t say I’m holding my position because I’m in league with “well-paid” climate change hoaxers. The big money – the REALLY BIG money is to be made denying climate change. That’s because Exxon and other oil and coal companies will hand you a big fat check if you’re any kind of scientist and you’re willing to deny climate change. Exxon does this even though it says it would stop doing it.

 

Here’s a list of well-paid climate shills and those who pay them. I don’t know how they sleep at night. On the other hand they might sleep well, swaddled up in blankets of money. As for me, I figure that if I die tomorrow, I want to settle accounts as someone who tells the truth as I see it, not as a liar.

 

Are you still confused about climate change? I don’t blame you. But now you aren’t confused about where I stand.

Now, can I get back to the business of helping people make money? It’s really what I would prefer to do.

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