Planet Earth
30 Years Ago Climate Change Became News And Both Sides of Politics Took It Seriously
June 23, 1988 marked the date on which climate change became a national issue.
In landmark testimony before the US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, James Hansen, then director of NASA’s Institute for Space Studies, stated that:
“Global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause-and-effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming…In my opinion, the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now.”
Hansen’s testimony made clear the threats posed by climate change and attributed the phenomenon to human exploitation of carbon energy sources. Its impact was dramatic, capturing headlines in The New York Times and other major newspapers.
(New York Times)
As politicians, corporations and environmental organizations acknowledged and began to address this issue, climate change entered into the political arena in a largely nonpartisan fashion.
Yet despite decades of public education on climate change and international negotiations to address it, progress continues to stall. Why?
One reason for the political inaction is the gaping divide in public opinion that resulted from a deliberate – and still controversial – misinformation campaign to redirect the public discussion on climate change in the years following Hansen’s testimony.
James Hansen testifying to Congress in 1988 (AP Photo/Dennis Cook)
Just as predicted
Four years after Hansen testified to Congress, 165 nations signed an international treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
They committed themselves to reducing carbon emissions to avoid dangerous disruption of the Earth’s climate system, defined as limiting future temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius.
The signatories have now held 25 annual UNFCCC conferences dedicated to developing goals, timetables and methods for mitigating climate change, the most consequential of which are encompassed in the Paris Agreement of 2015.
But as of today, not one single major northern industrial country has fulfilled its commitments under the Paris treaty, and the nonprofit Climate Action Tracker has rated the United States’ plan to achieve the Paris goals critically insufficient.
There have been more than 600 congressional hearings on climate change, according to my calculations, and numerous attempts to pass binding limits on carbon emissions.
Despite those efforts, the United States has yet to take meaningful action on the problem – a discrepancy compounded by President Donald Trump’s decision last year to withdraw from the treaty altogether.
In the three decades since Hansen’s testimony, the scientific certainty about the human causes and catastrophic effects of climate change on the biosphere and social systems has only grown stronger.
This has been documented in five Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports, three US National Climate Assessments and thousands of peer-reviewed papers.
Yet CO2 levels continue to rise.
In 1988, atmospheric CO2 levels stood at 353 parts per million, or ppm, the way to measure the concentration of CO2 molecules in the atmosphere. As of June 2018, they have reached 411 ppm, the highest monthly average ever recorded.
The effects of these increased concentrations are just as Hansen and others predicted, from disastrous wildfires in the western US and massive hurricanes associated with historical flooding to extended droughts, rising sea levels, increasing ocean acidification, the pervasive spread of tropical diseases and the bleaching and death of coral reefs.
Massive gap on public opinion
Future generations will look back on our tepid response to global climate disruption and wonder why the world did not act sooner and more aggressively.
One answer can be found in the polarization of public opinion over climate change in the United States.
The latest Gallup Poll shows that concern about climate change now falls along partisan lines, with 91 percent of Democrats saying they are worried a great deal or fair amount about climate change, while only 33 percent of Republicans saying the same.
(The Conversation/Gallup/CC-BY-ND)
Clearly, a massive gap between Republicans and Democrats has emerged regarding the nature and seriousness of climate change.
This partisan divide has led to an extreme political conflict over the need for climate action and helps to explain Congress’s failure to pass meaningful legislation to reduce carbon emissions.
Polarizing public opinion
The current political stalemate is no accident. Rather, it is the result of a well-financed and sustained campaign by vested interests to develop and promulgate misinformation about climate science.
My scholarship documents the coordinated efforts of conservative foundations and fossil fuel corporations to promote uncertainty about the existence and causes of climate change and thus reduce public concern over the issue.
Amplified by conservative media, this campaign has significantly altered the nature of the public debate.
These findings are supported by recent investigative news reports showing that since the 1970s, top executives in the fossil fuel industry have been well aware of the evidence that their products amplify climate warming emissions.
Indeed, industry scientists had conducted their own extensive research on the topic and participated in contemporaneous scientific discussions.
The American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade group, even circulated these research results to its members.
By 1978, a senior executive at ExxonMobil had proposed creating a worldwide “CO2 in the Atmosphere” research and development program to determine an appropriate response to growing evidence of climate change.
Unfortunately, that path wasn’t taken. Instead, in 1989, a group of fossil fuel corporations, utilities and automobile manufacturers banded together to form the Global Climate Coalition.
The group was convened to prevent the US adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions. In its public statements, the coalition’s official position was to claim global warming was real but that it could be part of a natural warming trend.
The corporate drive to spread climate misinformation continued beyond fighting Kyoto. In 1998, API, Exxon, Chevron, Southern Co. and various conservative think tanks initiated a broad public relations campaign with a goal of ensuring that the “recognition of uncertainties of climate science becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom.’”
While that coalition disbanded in 2001, ExxonMobil reportedly continued to quietly fund climate misinformation, funneling donations through conservative, “skeptic” think tanks such as the Heartland Institute, until 2006, when the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists exposed its funding scheme.
ExxonMobil – the nation’s largest and wealthiest company – continues to work with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a self-described public-private partnership of corporations and conservative legislators, to block climate change policies.
Holding fossil fuel companies responsible
ExxonMobil’s conduct – promoting uncertainty about climate science it knew to be accurate – has generated public outrage and led New York’s attorney general to initiate an investigation into whether the company has illegally misled the public and its investors about the risks of climate change.
This trend in litigation has expanded, and there are now several ongoing climate litigation suits.
While important, lawsuits cannot fully address the larger issues of corporate social and political responsibility to acknowledge and address climate change.
Just as Congress investigated efforts by the tobacco industry to dupe the public into believing its products were harmless in the 1990s, I believe a full and open inquiry is needed now to unmask the vested interests behind scientific misinformation campaigns that continue to delay our efforts to mitigate a global threat.
At a minimum, the US needs to change the system of hidden funding, in which companies such as ExxonMobil or the Koch brothers use pass-through organizations to camouflage donations to climate denial efforts.
Current US tax rules for nonprofit organizations, including climate-denying think tanks, do not require them to reveal their donors, enabling them to support large-scale political activities while remaining unaccountable.
American voters deserve to know who is behind climate disinformation efforts, and revising nonprofit reporting laws is a good place to begin.
In my view, the central concern here is nothing less than the moral integrity of the public sphere. The Declaration of Independence states that governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
But when vested interests with outsize economic and cultural power distort the public debate by introducing falsehoods, the integrity of Americans’ deliberations is compromised.
So it is with the fossil fuel industry’s efforts to distort public discourse on the urgent subject of climate change.
If corporations and public relations firms can systematically alter the national debate in favor of their own interests and against those of society as a whole, then democracy itself is undermined.
I believe Congress can and should act to investigate this issue fully. Only then can we restore trust and legitimacy to American governance and fulfill our society’s moral duty to address climate change at a scale commensurate with its significance.
Robert Brulle, Professor of Sociology, Drexel University.
This article was originally published by The Conversation. Read the original article.
You may like
-
Climate change kicked off a new Great Migration
-
Global warming will not cause the Apocalypse
-
All climate change models show that disaster is approaching rapidly. But why?
-
ESA launches space mission to measure Earth’s climate change
-
The apocalypse is in doubt: the current climate change was milder than the previous
-
Global warming is now visible! The sea has swallowed two islands in Indonesia
Planet Earth
Polar vortex: “wild” winter is coming in the US, Northern Europe and East Asia after the 16th of January
In the upper atmosphere above the North Pole, experts saw a rapidly swirling vortex of cold air that could bring severe frosts to the United States, Northern Europe and East Asia. Serious cold snap and snowy weather are expected after January the 16th.
Snowfalls and a cold snap hit South Korea since the start of 2021, hitting historic snow maximums and temperatures. In the country, for the first time since 1964, television and newer communications are sending people cold snap warnings:
winter in South Korea. very cold my friend. enjoy the snow while drinking hot bitter coffee. pic.twitter.com/WcycIEpf2y
— Dhard (@Dhardyant1) January 6, 2021
The situation is similar in Japan, where a new snow storm hit historic highs:
On January 7, the thermometer In Beijing dropped to -20 degrees Celsius, breaking the 1966 record. In other regions of China, the temperature is also not sugar, and you can only move around in special uniforms:
The cold even reached Taiwan, where the temperature in some areas dropped below freezing point, snow poured down and people realized that rice terraces can be used as a ski jump:
Even more snow went to Spain, where on January 6, 2021, a temperature of -34.1 ° C was recorded – the lowest on record. After that, a snow storm hit the country, which has not been seen for 80 years:
The same thing happens in Canada and in the northern states of the United States:
I’m not too sure. But this is the current situation out there. Has not stopped blowing in over 24 hours!! pic.twitter.com/J69zeiHW01
— Amy Montague (@AmyMontague4) January 8, 2021
It seems that after a stratospheric warming, the subpolar vortex began to split:
I wrote in the December 21, 2020 blog our #PolarVortex (PV) model is predicting a major sudden stratospheric warming in early January and then again third week of January. Based on latest model forecasts there really does seem to be two distinct polar warming events in January. pic.twitter.com/vcMCPztoAh
— Judah Cohen (@judah47) January 8, 2021
The vortex itself is a standard phenomenon. However, this time experts were surprised at his movement. It is possible that in the near future it will be divided into two parts.
Scientists associate the strange behavior with the changed climate in the Arctic, which has become warmer. From September to December, the amount of ice cover decreased significantly.
The polar vortex is a low-pressure region located in the stratosphere and filled with cold air. When the jet stream of air that holds the vortex weakens, the low pressure area moves south.
As the ice shrinks, more moisture will move inland. It will turn to snow, so snowfalls are expected. Snow, in turn, reflects heat, leading to a cold snap.
Planet Earth
Hospital in Naples was evacuated after a new, huge sinkhole appeared
Eyewitnesses said they heard a loud crash at dawn when a huge hole in the ground formed outside the Ponticelli Ospedale del Mare hospital in eastern Naples.
Early in the morning of January 8, 2021, a sinkhole occurred in the parking lot of a clinic in Naples. The depth of the formed cavity is about 20 meters, the total area of the hole is about 2,000 square meters.
No casualties were found at the scene; firefighters say the sinkhole “affected an area of about 500 square meters” and engulfed several cars parked near the hospital.
As the press writes and as a little can be seen from the videos, rescuers and firefighters were running around the pit together with the governor of the area. But who should be there in the forefront are Italian geologists, since Naples stands in the very center of the volcanic system known as the Phlegrean Fields.
If the surface collapsed, moreover – the surface reinforced with concrete and reinforced from below with some kind of communications, then we are talking about serious soil deformations caused by the activity of magma.
Italy has been in doubt since the summer of 2020, because swarms were observed there in very atypical places in May, and according to the forecasts of old Italian seismologists, who had witnessed many strong earthquakes, it should have boomed in the August region.
Fortunately, nothing bad happened to Italy and there was no big earthquake. But, since there are swarms, it means that something is being prepared, the magma is gathering strength.
Following this particular sinkhole event – an obvious sign that a major earthquake in Italy is already very close.
Planet Earth
A new great pandemic cycle has begun (again) in China
In the first months of 2020, the whole world with a certain fright followed the events unfolding in China, where people fell on the streets during the day and astronauts wandered, and in the evening crematoria began to smoke. And now, with the onset of December, the cycle seems to be repeating itself.
Shunyi area in Beijing, where the authorities announced “wartime status” the day before. As you can see in the videos, thousands of people are lined up in the queue for mandatory testing:
Shunyi District in Beijing has declared 'wartime status' with two villages completely sealed off.
— Things China Doesn't Want You To Know (@TruthAbtChina) December 28, 2020
The video shows thousands of people in a queue for mandatory testing in the neighboring district of Chaoyang, which includes the east side of downtown Beijing.
December 26-27, 2020 pic.twitter.com/sLR8Br5rJU
我觉得北京忽然封城绝对有猫腻
— 娑婆世界 (@qingshanlan02) December 27, 2020
年前 需要各一大批韭菜。哪个吸血鬼也需要血啊。 还有 以后所谓的核酸检测就可以代替警察了。对付怕死的屁民绰绰有余。有的脑残还代替警察吆三喝四呢。
过年最乱。北京城需要武汉病毒保护。 pic.twitter.com/cCrBkzxbTr
Dalian city, where “wartime” is also declared. Neighborhoods are blockaded, people are walled up in entrances, familiar characters of George Lucas roam the streets:
大连金州。所有小区全封。
— 娑婆世界 (@qingshanlan02) December 28, 2020
武汉鬼片再现。
多么诡异 ! pic.twitter.com/b556OQYPjw
#中共國疫情
— 澤讓秋措141913 (@niepanxinglai) December 27, 2020
12月27日,大连金州各小区单元楼全部封闭⋯⋯ pic.twitter.com/01wdNGkyLs
Chinese ‘rescuers’, before performing a combat mission:
我现在看到这种 方队像机器人一样 嗷嗷喊。就反胃。
— 娑婆世界 (@qingshanlan02) December 27, 2020
大连消防坚决打赢消毒战役!
天天就是一个“打”的思维。可见多么弱。
这国被中共毁的透透的了。
谁来救救孩子和后代啊。 pic.twitter.com/MV7EJpfFzF
Chengdu City:
There have been 7 new confirmed cases in Chengdu in the past few days. In response, the city has declared 'wartime mode' with compulsory testing, travel restrictions, and the potential for mandatory lockdowns.
— Things China Doesn't Want You To Know (@TruthAbtChina) December 9, 2020
December 8, 2020
Chengdu, Sichuan Province pic.twitter.com/b9ADT2AcXg
Daluo Port, Yunnan – tourists came for adventure and they received the ‘time of their life’ after leaving the ramp:
云南打洛口岸。
— 娑婆世界 (@qingshanlan02) December 28, 2020
你的祖国欢迎你。一切费用自理。 外国籍免费。
到底谁不把中国人当人?
中国人在国外隔离检测都免费。只有在中共国是自费。
而外国人在本国免费。在中共国也免费。属于全球免费。而中共国除了中国人不免费。其余国家全免费。
那些跪舔的粉qu 多么自豪。连qu都是二等qu。 pic.twitter.com/S1CCQfL48H
If something happens in Beijing, it does not mean that tomorrow the same will happen everywhere. However, the trend towards such dynamics is observed and, as the practice of the first wave of the pandemic has shown, all countries and people, to one degree or another, have taken into account the ‘Chinese experience’.
Therefore, one must think that everything will now be in peace, as in spring – a new global round of the fight against the Covid has begun in China, a new great pandemic cycle!
Ancient papyrus “Book of the Dead” and hundreds of other artifacts found in Egypt
Four friends were scared by a Bigfoot-like creature
Loud booms, glowing rings and asteroids: The Earth’s magnetic field began to periodically disappear
New Physics: Mysterious radiation pointed to the verge of discovering a “ghost” particle that makes up dark matter
There are many mysteries in the Sahara Desert but scientific and archaeological expeditions are prohibited
“Humanity behaves like a cancer”: experts on why aliens should destroy us
Covid-19: The Great Reset -Pandemic targets declared
Peruvian court names Gates, Soros and Rockefeller as “creators” of the COVID-19 pandemic
“An unpleasant truth”. Japanese futurist predicted new pandemics
In China, three UFOs attacked a “rocket” and it exploded with incredible effects (VIDEO)
DO NOT MISS
Aliens among us: could Mars be the cradle of life on earth?
The hypothesis that life originated on Mars and only from there was brought to Earth can be called unusual, but...
“Guardians” of governments and people: World elite have found a way to rule nations
This week, the Vatican entered into a partnership agreement with a certain “Council for Inclusive Capitalism”. On December 8 and 9,...
US official: “Roswell wreckage was from an alien flying saucer”
What Major Jesse Marshall, who was in charge of investigations at the scene, reveals in his diary – He denounces...
On December 4, many UFOs appeared at night over the pyramids of Giza in Egypt
Something strange happened in the sky above the pyramids of Giza, on the night of December 3, when luminous objects...
Astronomers have recorded more than a thousand mysterious round spots. What could they be?
Astronomers at Australia’s ASKAP radio telescope complex have reported that they have discovered strange circles of radio emission in space. According...
Trending
-
Aliens & UFO's4 weeks ago
“Humanity behaves like a cancer”: experts on why aliens should destroy us
-
Underworld4 weeks ago
Covid-19: The Great Reset -Pandemic targets declared
-
Conspiracy Theories1 week ago
Peruvian court names Gates, Soros and Rockefeller as “creators” of the COVID-19 pandemic
-
Fact or fiction3 weeks ago
“An unpleasant truth”. Japanese futurist predicted new pandemics
-
Aliens & UFO's3 weeks ago
In China, three UFOs attacked a “rocket” and it exploded with incredible effects (VIDEO)
-
Paranormal4 weeks ago
People of the shadow: what do the mysterious shadow creatures want from us
-
Apocalypse & Armageddon3 weeks ago
Everyone is waiting for the beginning of the Apocalypse from the New Year while an Israeli mystic warns of a “new plague” approaching
-
Science & Technology4 weeks ago
TikTok Simulation Theory: Kids Believe They Live In Simulation