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An insurgent movement is pushing Democrats to back an ambitious climate change solution.
If the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is to be believed, humanity has just over a decade to get carbon emissions under control before catastrophic climate change impacts become unavoidable.
The Republican Party generally ignores or denies that problem. But the Democratic Party claims to accept and understand it.
It is odd, then, that Democrats do not have a plan to address climate change.
Their last big plan — the American Clean Energy and Security Act — passed the House in 2009 but went on to die an unceremonious death before reaching the Senate floor. Since then, there’s been nothing to replace it.
Plenty of Democratic politicians support policies that would reduce climate pollution — renewable energy tax credits, fuel economy standards, and the like — but those policies do not add up to a comprehensive solution, certainly nothing like what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests is necessary.
Young activists, who will be forced to live with the ravages of climate change, find this upsetting. So they have proposed a plan of their own. It’s called the Green New Deal (GND) — a term purposefully reminiscent of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s original New Deal in the 1930s — and it has become the talk of the town. Here are Google searches from the past few months:
The Green New Deal, explained by David Roberts, Energy & Environment, Vox, Dec 21, 2018
Hat tip to the Stop Climate Science Denial Facebook page.
Alternate Version: Sierra Nevada snowpack infographic (large)
Warming winters and dwindling Sierra Nevada snowpack will squeeze water resources in parts of California by Michon Scott, NOAA's Climate.gov, Dec 19, 2018
The Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO play an important role in monitoring, analysing and communicating observed changes in Australia's climate.
This fifth, biennial State of the Climate report draws on the latest monitoring, science and projection information to describe variability and changes in Australia’s climate. Observations and climate modelling paint a consistent picture of ongoing, long term climate change interacting with underlying natural variability.
These changes affect many Australians, particularly the changes associated with increases in the frequency or intensity of heat events, fire weather and drought. Australia will need to plan for and adapt to some level of climate change. This report is a synthesis of the science informing our understanding of climate in Australia and includes new information about Australia’s climate of the past, present and future. The science underpinning this report will help inform a range of economic, environmental and social decision-making and local vulnerability assessments, by government, industry and communities.
Click here to access the State of the Climate: 2018 report.
Climate Feedback asked a team of climate scientists to review the popular video, Climate Science and the Myths of Renewable Energy - FOS Steve Goreham posted by Friends of Science on YouTube, July 1 2017.
Six scientists analyzed the article and estimate its overall scientific credibility to be 'very low'.
A majority of reviewers tagged the article as: Biased, Flawed reasoning, Imprecise/Unclear, Inaccurate, and Misleading.
Review Summary
This video of a talk by author and speaker Steve Goreham, posted by the YouTube channel “Friends of Science” has been viewed over 250,000 times and has been widely promoted by Youtube recently. In it, Goreham claims that climate change is not dangerous, and is not caused by humans.
Scientists who reviewed the talk found that it was comprised of a litany of common myths about climate science. Goreham misrepresents global temperature data, the physics of the greenhouse effect, and the factors controlling sea level rise, among many other things, as explained below by scientists.
Popular “Friends of Science” video promoted by Youtube presents long list of climate myths, Edited by Scott Johnson, Climate Feedback, Dec 21, 2018
Hat tip to the Stop Climate Science Denial Facebook page.
Posted by John Hartz on Sunday, 23 December, 2018
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