Climate Change

Climate change, also sometimes referred to as global warming, refers to observed changes in global climate. Overall the global average temperature has risen, with strong evidence pointing to excessive carbon emissions as the major factor influencing this change.

Despite the evidence, a campaign of misinformation exists that has successfully cast doubt as to not only whether the change is caused by humans, but also as to whether climate change exists at all. The campaign of misinformation has been so successful that if you get stuck debating the issue with someone who has been exposed to it, agreeing to even the most basic facts may be impossible.

Climate Change Exists
Though the evidence is so massive as to be incontrovertible, it is still important to make the case that climate change exists in the first place because Republicans deny it is happening.

Global Temperature Rising
Numerous sources have used large amounts of data to confirm temperatures are increasing worldwide (NOAA uses data from over 7,500 points in the U.S. for some studies). The increases are much higher and much faster than increases that have occurred in the past. Some denialists claim that temperatures during the decade 2000-2009 did not rise; this claim, however, is firmly disproven by evidence. The decade 2000-2009 was, in fact, the warmest on record with nine of the ten hottest years since 1880 occurring after the year 2000. The first part of 2012 set numerous heat records, helping to fuel massive wildfires in Colorado. Carbon dioxide emissions and temperature increases continue to outpace predictions.

In 2011 Texas experienced its worst single-year drought in history, causing billions of dollars in damage to its economy. Russia's hottest year since 1500 occurred in 2010, twice as many record hot days are being recorded as record cold days, and the length of summer heatwaves in western Europe have doubled and frequency of hot days tripled since 1880, with the 2000-2010 decade being the warmest in roughly a millennium. The water cycle's intensity has increased over the past half-century, affecting salt-content of water. Such changes have been observed - and predicted - for decades. Scientists confirming climate change come from a variety of fields, including physics.

Melting Glaciers and Ice Caps
The world's glaciers, which supply water for much of the planet's population, and the world's ice caps are melting. Though some conservatives deny the planet is warming, the ice tells a different story. Put water in a freezer and it freezes. Take it out of the freezer and put it in warmer air and it melts. The most ardent denialists insist the planet is not warming, but if they have an explanation as to how ice is melting they have yet to offer it.

We have observed ice loss in the Great Lakes of the United States over the past 40 years. Arctic sea ice levels reached record lows in 2007, with their second-lowest recorded level occurring in 2011.

Russia evacuated an Arctic research station in 2013 after the ice beneath it melted. Russia has faced increasing difficulty deploying its floating research stations because of climate change; they began deploying these stations in 1937.

China is now able to use new shipping routes north of Russia because of melting ice.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions
It is widely believed humans influence climate change through greenhouse gas emissions. The gases, notably carbon dioxide, are emitted through the burning of fossil fuels and biomass. While the gases do occur naturally, the fact is their concentration has increased dramatically to unnatural levels because of human intervention. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were 285 parts per million as recently at 1880; today it is at 390 parts per million and continues to increase at an accelerating pace.

Human "Insignificance"
When denialists say that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is too small to be a problem, they are ignoring reality. Though it is true that the amount itself seems insignificant, small amounts of any substance or chemical can severely alter something's function or composition. Salt water only contains 30-50 parts salt per thousand, making it 0.3 - 0.5% salt. That small amount seriously alters its properties; most life can no longer use that water, and it has a much higher potential to rust metal it comes into contact with. On your own body, a cold sore in your mouth might take up less than 1% of your mouth's surface area...but it has obvious effects on your mouth. A headcahe only affects a small part of your head, so apparently Republicans think headaches are not problematic. A virus is microscopic but leads to other issues if it infects you. The idea that small amounts of carbon dioxide don't matter is simply idiotic.

In the picture of traffic in Beijing on this page, the particulate matter level is over 500 micrograms per cubic meter. 500 micrograms converts to a mere 0.0005 grams. As is clear from smog pictures, that miniscule amount of air pollution has an enormous effect.

Tar Sands
An increasing amount of oil comes from Canadian tar sands through an environmentally destructive process that results in massive amounts of wastewater that is literally toxic enough to kill birds who land on it. This water is stored in ponds as large as 50 square kilometers that can be seen from space, and some have leaked into rivers and caused unusually high cases of cancer downstream.

Oceanic Changes and Coral Reefs
In the 20 years before 2013, 44% of coral reefs in Florida died. Carbon dioxide levels in the ocean have risen, which in turn has altered the pH of the water, causing this problem. This damage to reefs also has impact on humans economically, harming fishing and tourism industries.

Observed Effects on Humans
A variety of climate change's effects have already been observed. Among them is the rapid warming of Canadian winters; the increase in 2.5 degrees Celsius over the past 50 years is three times the world average. This increase threatens skating and hockey - two major pastimes essential to Canadians' identity. Unusually warm weather has hurt winter business at Columbia Sportswear, whose sales are strongly weighted towards winter apparel.

Record levels of air pollution have resulted in higher rates of asthma and heart attacks, notably in California's Central Valley. Asthma is now the number one chronic childhood disease, with both the number of and severity of attacks becoming more severe, especially in areas of high pollution near coal power plants. Sea level rise is accelerating in the Northeastern United States, increasing vulnerability to flooding and deterioration of remaining natural areas.

Coral reefs are also dying, which harms both tourism industries and the food chain which both humans and animals in the wild are dependent on.

As the Arctic melts and methane is released, the cost to the economy could reach $60 trillion in the coming decades.

"Denialgate"
In early 2012 the Heartland Institute, a libertarian group dedicated to misinformation about climate change, suffered a security breach when a scientist leaked confidential documents. In addition to showing plans for securing funding from wealthy conservative activists, the leaked documents also discuss creating an "alternative" K-12 academic curriculum that would be "effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science."

The documents reveal the Institute pays writers for the sole purpose of "undermining" official and scientific documents about climate change, pays thousands of dollars per month for people to "regularly and publicly counter the alarmist message," and to strengthen its already-existing presence in the media, including the influential Forbes magazine. Major corporations funding this include Koch Industries (second largest private company in the U.S.) and Exxon-Mobil (world's most valuable company - and obvious tie between Heartland and the oil industry). General Motors also supported Heartland for two decades, but pulled its support in the wake of this controversy.

Despite the serious implications of allowing big money and corporate sponsors to sow confusion about the scientfic process, the so-called "liberal media" has invested very little time or resources to the story. It should also be noted that although the Heartland Institute used stolen, leaked documents from the "Climategate" scandal to further its interests, it has threatened to sue people who use its stolen, leaked own documents - a rather hypocritical stance. Heartland itself also compared climate scientists and those who support science to the Unabomber, Fidel Castro, and Charles Manson. Similar disinformation campaigns against renewable wind energy are now in the works as well.

"Climategate"
In late 2009 (very conveniently right at the time of the Copenhagen Summit), a series of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia were stolen and made public by denialist hackers. Numerous quotes from the e-mails were taken out of context and the scientists' names were intentionally slandered to generate skepticism of climate change science. The use of "Climategate" by denialists continues to this day.

A significant quote that denialists point to on a regular basis, "I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline," has purposefully been taken out of context. The supposed "decline" in global temperatures actually refers to tree ring measurements. The "trick" involves adding in real temperatures (as stated directly in the quote) from measuring instruments to the tree ring data. More information about the tree ring issue - which scientists have been open and (gasp!) even numerous published articles about - is available at FactCheck's "Climategate" discussion.

Despite the facts, the "liberal media" made a big deal out of the e-mails and public controversy provoked official investigations into the matter. Both major investigations from the United States Commerce Department and British House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee found no wrongdoing. The "liberal media" barely reported those findings, and conservatives continue to use the fake scandal to fuel their campaign of misinformation.

Made-Up Controversy
There is almost no controversy at all in the scientific community about climate change. Republican and conservative political groups, as well as oil companies and other large corporations, have created a great deal of fake science. Because the "liberal" media likes to portray all sides of a story, this fake science and climate change skepticism receives an disproportionate share of attention. Far-right politicians also repeat themselves over and over in support of such skepticism, which gives it the appearance of legitimacy when combined with the fake science. Some TV weather reporters also openly dismiss climate science in an effort to confuse viewers.

As this page shows, 11% of scientists in all fields who have also published disagree that climate change is man-made. Among published scientists in the field of climatology (obviously, those scientists best suited to discuss the issue) the number plummets from an already-low figure of 11% down to a mere one percent. This interactive history analyzes papers rather than scientists themselves and finds those which explicity support the consensus position dramatically outnumber those who explicitly reject it.

Terrorism Against and Execution of Environmentalists
Environmentalists often receive death threats in their line of work, with the number of murders rapidly rising in recent years. Hundreds of activists, community leaders, investigators, and members of other relevant parties have been killed while defending land or forest rights in the past decade. In Brazil alone, more than one thousand have been killed over the past two decades.

Sunspots
Scientists and experts who know what they're talking about agree sunspots do not have enough of an effect to cause current climate changes. Further, based on the recent and current amount of sunspot activity, global temperature should be going down instead of up. However, because sunpost activity has gone down and temperature has gone up (while in the past it was the opposite of this) then it can easily be concluded that sunspots have little to no effect on climate change.

Religion
Using religion as a reason that climate change does not exist is merely a way to advertise yourself using faith. It's an excuse used to avoid responsibility. By saying that God would not allow us to suffer and that we are too insignificant to change God's creation, you are essentially saying children never have to clean up their messes (referring to the idea people are God's children) and that children are incapable of making a mess in the first place.

This anti-science God-excuse is reflected by prominent conservatives, including John Shimkus, under consideration to lead the Energy and Commerce Committee in the U.S. House. Further reflecting a fundamental ignorance of climate change science, Shimkus uses Biblical passages to imply Earth "will not be destroyed by a flood" - even though nobody is saying it will be.

Continuing News

 * 4/4/2016 - Last Month Was The Hottest March In The Global Satellite Record, And The Arctic Is Still Sizzling
 * 3/10/2016 - Nansen Breaking Up with Antarctica
 * 3/8/2016 - America’s year without a winter: The 2015-2016 season was the warmest on record
 * 3/4/2016 - Florida mayors press presidential debate moderators for climate airtime
 * 3/4/2016 - See an American town that's about to be completely lost to climate change.
 * 3/2/2016 - Climate Deniers’ Favorite Temperature Dataset Just Confirmed Global Warming
 * 3/1/2016 - Arctic Sea Ice Growth Could Be Lowest On Record Again
 * 2/23/2016 - Study Shows Education And Facts Don’t Actually Matter To Republican Climate Deniers
 * 1/25/2016 - Recent High Temperature Records Were Almost Certainly Caused By Global Warming
 * 12/30/2015 - Freak storm pushes North Pole 50 degrees above normal to melting point
 * 11/3/2015 - Is Antarctica Gaining or Losing Ice? Hint: Losing.
 * 5/12/2015 - Sea Level Rise Is Happening Faster Than Anyone Thought
 * 5/11/2015 - Climate Science Deniers Unable To Comprehend Scientific Study
 * 12/30/2014 - Anchorage, Alaska never saw a day below zero in 2014
 * 5/12/2014 - Christian Post Writer Says Extreme Weather Is Not Climate Change, But A Sign Of The End Times
 * 2/7/2014 - Amid Epic Drought, South America’s Largest City Is Running Out Of Water