Global Warming: Where's the heat? (Part 1)

Remember that old Wendy's commercial: Where's the beef? Well, lately a similar question has arisen: where's the heat? The warmest year on record was 1998, so each of the last 16 years has not been the warmest year on record. Some people love to claim the earth has been cooling since that time.

For example, this article in the Wall Street Journal, claims that the climate is less sensitive to CO2 emissions than previously believed and that's why the Earth has not warmed as much as predicted. The author, Judith Curry, says her work shows the likely impact of continuing our emissions is only about one more degree of warming over the rest of this century. How I wish it were true!

DeSmogBlog debunks this claim. They show her science is weak at best, arriving at a range of potential temperature changes that match the IPCC's. However, by looking at a smaller number of studies, she gets a lower median figure, and hence less warming to be predicted.

Now here's a prediction you can count on. This denier is not an independent thinker, but has financial reasons to hold these opinions. According to the DeSmogBlog post:

• Curry recently participated in a forum held by the discredited, fossil-fuel funded George Marshall Institute, which advocates outright climate denial and has denied the link between tobacco and cancer in the past.
• Her consulting company has received funding from the fossil fuel industry since 2007, at her own admission.
• Her work has been repeatedly criticized by reputable scientists including those at RealClimate and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

This is typical when you look deeper. Those denying climate change are from a small group. They support each other, and they benefit from the industries that are spewing carbon into the atmosphere at greater and greater rates.

Now, I'm not a scientist. I've tried to look deep into the science and although I'm convinced, the actual physics of atmospheric change are beyond my ability. What it comes down to is which climate models you trust, and I think a basic psychological attitude toward the world.

I don't much like the labels "denialist" or "warmist". They tend to shape people into narrow categories for the purpose of denying the strength of their arguments. (Mea culpa: I just did that to Judith Curry.) But this is something of a debate between two groups: one says climate change (global warming, I use the terms interchangeably) is real and present and we need to deal with it; the other says it either isn't here, isn't serious, or needs to be dealt with through a strong economy.

People in the latter camp tend to see global warming as a ploy by big government to tax more, restrict personal choice more and generally interfere with the pursuit of happiness. And all these fears may be to some extent justified. Except that it's not a ploy.

We are the government. The government is our collective will. In a truely functioning democracy individual citizens would have a lot more power. Unfortunately in a modern democracy, the need to raise money to get elected gives the rich a disproportionate voice in influencing our elected representatives. But government action is needed to change the economy to support renewable sources of energy and move away from carbon based energy sources. That may mean changes in tax regimes.

One reason that I am pessimistic about change happening is that no politician is ever going to be elected by promising less. And I really think that the only good solution will be for us to consume less, have less personal mobility (cars) and pay more for most of the things we like to do. I also believe that we in the industrialized countries have a much greater burden to make change than the poorer countries. Not just because we got rich through the tonnes of carbon we've put into the atmosphere over the last century, but because it needs to be done now and we are the ones who can afford best to do it.

Guns guns guns

There's an old Guess Who song titled "Guns, guns, guns" that is more about hunting than people killing people, which is what I want to write about. Nonetheless, Burton Cummings was as keen an observer of the US as any Canadian. In "American Woman" he sings "I don't need your war machines / I don't need your ghetto scenes..."

When I was in high school in the US, one of my friends said that Canadians had no culture, we just sang about the US. And there's no doubt that it's true to a degree. A famous Canadian politician said "Living next to the United States is a little like sleeping with an elephant. You always wonder if they will roll over on you." So we must be concerned about what happens in the US.

Canada is unique. Not only do we have a small population compared to our neighbour, but a huge majority of our population lives within 100 miles of the US border. We have US TV beamed straight into our homes. We share a language with the US. We watch US movies. We read US books (well, the declining percentage of us who read for pleasure). We are affected by the US in more ways than we can count.

And we are affected by US gun violence. Since it's very difficult in Canada to buy a handgun, most handguns are smuggled in from the US. It's a credit to the Canadian Border Services Agency that there are not more. But not only Canada, but Mexico, and many other nations suffer from the outflow of guns from the US. If any nation was responsible for exporting something to the US that killed as many citizens as its own guns, the US would declare war. Over the last 10 years, around 10,000 people per year die as a result of gun homicides in the US. That's 3 World Trade Centers terrorist attacks EVERY YEAR.

I'm not going to claim Canada is free from crazy people killing others with guns. Far from it. We have gang shootings, we have mass shootings at schools, and we have murders and suicides. Some of these are with illegal guns from the US; some are from legally owned guns; some are from illegal guns that could have been legally obtained in Canada. But they happen at a much lower rate. In Canada in 2006, there were only 8100 victims of violent crime involving a firearm. That's ALL crime, not just homicide. So that includes robbery where there were no shots fired; threatening with a firearm, etc. In Canada there were 190 homicides by gun in 2006; in the US there were 10,225!

Why is the US so gun crazy? I like to read the comments on on-line articles to get some sense of what people think. This is absolutely unscientific. There are vast differences of opinion and they tend to clump together. But there are some people who claim that they are willing to go into armed revolt if there is a move by the government to restrict weapon ownership. The constitution's second amendment gives American citizens the right to bear arms. The interpretation of this clause has been debated thoroughly, but just let me point out it includes the phrase "a well regulated militia." Were I a judge on the Supreme Court, I not would think that this allows every yahoo to own a military assault rifle. But there is something deep in the American psyche that believes in both individualism and the ultimate use of violence to resolve disputes.

Call me a left wing nutcase (I often claim that I stand slightly to the left of Fidel Castro), but to me, the key evil in this clause relates also to the growth of the corporation. I believe that gun manufacturers are the group that fuels and pushes the belief in firearms as necessary to life as food and Jesus. Gun manufacturers are profiting from the sale of every firearm, legal and illegal. Gun manufacturers are fueling and profiting from the Mexican drug war, gang wars, and crazy survivalists. Great fortunes were earned in Canada through the export of alcohol to the US during the time of Prohibition. Fortunes are being earned today through the sale of marijuana. And in the US, fortunes are being earned by exporting guns around the world. Follow the money!

I read a blog post about how the US should be up in arms over a proposed treaty to limit small arms. The author is a complete nutcase, in my humble opinion (I'm sure he would think the same about me), who also denies climate change as a leftist conspiracy. But I'm heartened by the fact that the UN is making some motion to recognize that internal US policy has a killing effect around the world despite the fact that this is not likely to go anywhere.

I think we should be treating the US as a pariah nation that allows its citizens to kill each other at genocidal rates and exports its killing tools around the world. It's about time that the world stood up and pointed at the US and cried "shame!" No doubt people will continue to kill each other over love, hate, greed, and ignorance, as they have done since the beginning of time. Perhaps the first tool use was to kill someone with a rock. But putting guns in the hands of more people is insane. It's about time for the US people to amend the second amendment to clarify and restrict gun ownership. This will involve finding a way to get guns off the street and out of the hands of citizens. And, it's about time for the US to stop exporting its killing tools to the rest of the world.

No new climate deal in sight

Oh, so the US thinks there will be no new climate deal until 2020. Methinks that's a little late.

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20111122-714059.html

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--A week before international climate negotiations are scheduled to start, the U.S. has signaled it does not expect the world's economic powers to reach a legally binding agreement to cut greenhouse-gas emissions until 2020.

An ongoing stalemate between China, which has resisted agreeing to legally binding emissions cuts, and the U.S., which has said it only will agree to binding emission cuts if China does, is widely expected to continue at climate talks sponsored by the United Nations that are scheduled to start Monday in Durban, South Africa

 Nero fiddles while Rome burns. There is something seriously wrong with this scenario. By 2020 it will be too damned late! That's nine years away! Last year was the worst year ever for CO2 adding to the atmosphere. And we will get worse. How many heatwaves and droughts and needless deaths will there be in nine years? Nine years is a long time, even by geological standards.

We're screwed.

That's why they call me the Voice of Doom.