North America inaction on climate change
Anyone wanting to understand how politics gets its bad name should read this New York Times’ article covering the climate bill debate in the US Senate this week. The one that was rejected on Friday, an outcome welcomed with unadulterated glee by a number of denier sources.
Many of the leading 100 good men and women of the United States proved that you never lose the ability to be a child through their squabbling, bullying and obstructions to critical political debate. Senator James Inhofe, of Oklahoma, ‘Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee’ led the political denial of the problem. Read his rebuttal of the climate tax bill. (It’s not a climate tax bill, of course, but the ‘Climate Security Act’. That’s rhetoric at work, on both sides one could argue). He refused to take questions. He refused to talk science. Take a look at what they get up to:
Strange, then, that a Republican manoeuvre forced debate to stop for a reading of the entire 492-page document. That sounds to me more like a tactic of a bruised and petulant teacher who fears his student knows more than he does. Mind you, that politicians can resemble both arrogant headmasters and kindergarten kids in the blink of an eye is nothing new for followers of British politics, and the jeering and cheering that supports the name calling in the Houses of Commons.
Matthew Nesbit at Framing Science brought attention to research released this week in the journal Environmental Politics that illustrated the widening gap between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of climate change. The report is worth reading in full. While 73% of Democrats believe warming is due to human activities, only 42% of Republicans think the same (and declining).
However, together that is over 50% of all partisan votes, so why did the Climate Security Act get only 48 votes in the Senate? As reported, neither Obama or McCain voted (here’s Obama’s reasoning, and McCain’s) . Andy Revkin over at DotEarth referred to a previous interview he had conducted with John McCain to reflect upon McCain’s assertion that:
democracies don’t do well with this kind of long-term, looming threat.
What, then, is the damage to the planet of the US neo-con ambition of exporting democracy to the rest of the world? Maybe it’s just North American democracy; picked up this week by DeSmogBlog was Canada’s inaction on climate change:
Sloughing off a court decision which held that a proposed Imperial Oil (i.e. Exxon Canada) oilsands project is an environmental hazard in the waiting, the Conservative Cabinet of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper gave a green light to the development yesterday.
In response to which, Canadian papers tucked the story into the business pages - in those cases where you could find any coverage at all.
All is not lost, however, at least in this week’s repoting. Coverage from RealClimate and the New Scientist on the solving of a scientific problem that has given climate change deniers some grist for their mill. The issue was this:
Average global temperatures have steadily risen during the 20th century – the graph of increasing temperature is an image frequently used to illustrate man-made climate change. But the graph does not climb steadily: a number of dips and rises occur over the century.
One of these, late in 1945, is more pronounced than the others. The cause of the 1945 dip has so far remained a mystery, something highlighted by people who doubt that climate change is caused by human fossil-fuel burning. They say it is proof that burning fossil fuels cannot explain changes in the climate during the 20th century, given that fossil fuels were being burnt throughout.
The reason, however, when you read the articles, was human error in the data collection, rather than climatic reasons. That is, different buckets were used between European and US ships when collecting sea water, than this made a difference to its temperature. But, as RealClimate points out, the deniers will jump onto anything, and claimed even this (the incorrect use of buckets back in the 1940s) was enough to warrant a shaking of the very foundations of contemporary climate science.
It isn’t of course. But, back to the Senate, not even the environmental lobby were behind the Climate Security Act.
Although I’ve criticised the DotEarth blog in the past for some overexuberance in promoting a balance-as-bias view (too much space for too few deniers remaining), this entry by Andy Revkin provides an overview of what could, and must, happen next if North America is to get out of the sticky mess it’s got itself into. World leaders? No more.
