Greenpeace and guitar makers unite to save forests
This article is about the movement in guitar industry trying to save forests. I play the guitar and I own 2 guitars. This is why I'm interested in this article. I have never considered that guitars sacrifice the forest. I suggest most of guitarists do not think about it very much. Buying the guitar, I only focus on the sound the guitar is making, not environmental issue. This movement will arouse attention of environmentally friendly guitars.
----------------------------------- By Ayala Ben-Yehuda
LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Sustaining the supply of natural materials isn't a new idea in the musical instrument industry, which depends on old-growth wood to achieve the best tonal quality.
"The paradox is that musicians as a group tend to be pretty progressive and ecologically savvy and concerned -- until it comes down to their guitar," C.F. Martin & Co. head of artist and public relations Dick Boak says. "They don't want to take the chance that they won't have the absolute best tone. It requires a little bit of education and it requires them to see the product."
Some of the most sought-after woods come from trees that can take hundreds of years to develop their acoustic characteristics. Through the years, instrument companies have developed everything from clarinets that can be ground up and recycled into new ones to Martin acoustic guitars and Gibson Les Pauls sourced from responsibly managed forests.
But a collective effort by Martin, Gibson, Fender, Taylor, Yamaha and others to preserve their supply of old-growth wood from clear-cutting -- in which all trees within a designated area are removed -- is beginning to bear fruit.
The industry heavyweights have partnered with Greenpeace on its Music Wood campaign, with an initial focus on Sitka spruce, a key material in guitar and piano soundboards.
SPRUCING UP
After meeting with Greenpeace and the instrument makers last summer, Sitka spruce supplier Sealaska agreed to a preliminary audit of its logging practices. A full assessment by third parties accredited by the Forest Stewardship Council is set to take place in summer 2008, and if Alaska-based Sealaska decides to implement their recommended reforms and apply for full FSC certification, it will be on the road to more selective logging and consideration of surrounding habitats before it cuts.
Greenpeace started Music Wood after it traced clear-cutting of Alaskan spruce to a variety of industries, particularly home construction in Japan. "Instrument-making is a very small percentage of the problem," Greenpeace forest campaign director Scott Paul says. But the companies' leadership on the issue "can have really significant implications on the ground," since Music Wood supporters "are arguably the highest-end and highest-profile consumers of any (tree) species coming from this forest."
Paul says Sealaska's own numbers showed that, without significant changes, "they would be out of their old-growth within 15 years," and credits the company with showing "a lot of leadership and a lot of willingness to explore" sustainability solutions.
Boak puts the level of threat to old-growth woods like this: "If 1 is totally plentiful and 10 is completely unavailable, I think spruce is a 6, and I'd put mahogany at 7.5 and ebony at 8." Demand from China and political pressure within certain countries to restrict rare-wood exports after decades of mismanagement means "the price will go up and they will become rarer and rarer."
Natural Resources Defense Council senior resource specialist Debbie Hammel says that just a fraction -- less than 5 percent by some estimates -- of the continental United States' old-growth forest is still standing, forcing buyers of certain woods to look to other regions and countries such as Russia.
"We do believe that marketplace demand has a lot of potential for directing the market in a more sustainable direction," Hammel says.
NEW PRODUCTS
Still, instrument makers say it isn't widespread consumer demand for green instruments that's been driving their eco-friendly measures. Martin's Boak says the company required all 750 authorized Martin dealers to stock its sustainable wood acoustic guitars after it found some dealers unwilling to take a risk on them.
Thirty percent of Martin's total manufactured units are made of high-pressure laminate, a material made of eucalyptus and fast-growing domestic woods. Yamaha once manufactured a popular snare drum and guitar from bamboo, which replenishes itself quickly. But the company that supplied the bamboo parts went out of business, Yamaha Drums product manager Jim Haler says.
Boston-based First Act, which built an environmentally friendly electric guitar for Guster's Adam Gardner, is rolling out its Bambusa line of electrics to instrument stores this year. The $399 guitar, currently available via firstact.com and at the company's retail store in Boston, is made of bamboo and covered with a water-based finish, rather than traditional polyurethane.
Rather than a reaction to diminishing wood supply, First Act marketing VP Jeff Walker says that "this is more of a charge led by our head of product development for guitars, who was seeking alternative ways to come out with an exciting new product."
Not until many years ago, people were captured within the framework that the environment was a medium through which humans can use as external aid to expansion(I cannot find the person's name who argued this...) They saw the world through promethian view, ignoring human and environmental interactions and cared only about producing and accumulating the wealth.
However, I guess that spell is broken now. According to the article, many business executives are beginning to see the importance of sustainable economic growth and they are going to invest in clean energy solutions.
This article made me think of Schnaiberg's "managed scarcity synthesis" and "ecological synthesis". I am glad that those people see the envrionmental problems through Schnaiberg's view- to minimize ecological disruptions and maintain a "sustained yield of resources".
This is not the first time that I've seen business' movements to contribute to environmental protection and sustainable growth. I hope that the number of "eco-friendly" businesses and industries increases.
In the 21st century, the winner will be the one who cares about the earth. Just change your paradigm!
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A Strong Economy Is a Green Economy by Frances Beinecke
ISSUE: Spring 2008, view from NRDC | February 29, 2008
Right now, everyone in Congress is discussing stimulus packages to turn around the economy. The question is, what do we want to stimulate? I think the best investment we can make is in a clean, green energy future that will help stave off the worst effects of global warming.
Business executives I've met with are beginning to see significant economic opportunities in tackling global warming. Equity fund managers call on NRDC experts to discuss investments in clean energy solutions, and we have talked to Fortune 500 executives who want to advocate national policies that will bring cleaner fuels to market. In the next 20 years, $3 trillion will be invested in power plants, refineries, and other energy infrastructure in the United States; more and more utilities, manufacturers, and investment firms want to redirect that money away from dirty, outdated equipment and into the latest clean tech. Put $3 trillion into global warming solutions, and America could become the worlds sustainable energy leader.
Of course, you'd expect me to say that. But in December 2007, a group of financial analysts at McKinsey & Company released a report that examined the cost and market potential of 250 technologies for reducing global warming; it concluded that we can reduce greenhouse gases at little or no net cost to the economy. In July 2007, the Environmental Protection Agency did an economic analysis of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. The study's bottom line: reducing global warming pollution will have an imperceptible effect on economic output overall. This is remarkable news. We can stave off the biggest environmental and humanitarian crisis without disrupting economic growth.
These studies don't even account for the benefits of cleaner air, lower childhood asthma rates, and reduced dependence on repressive oil regimes. Clean energy solutions will pay significant dividends to consumers and businesses alike. But market barriers stand in the way. Why would investors--who hate uncertainty--put money into capturing carbon emissions from coal plants when America hasn't enacted a limit or price on carbon pollution? A federal cap on carbon emissions, along with smart incentives, can move emerging technologies out of the lab and into the marketplace. The longer we wait, the more costly it will be to bring about climate solutions. The time to start a clean energy revolution is now. The faster we get started, the sooner we can begin creating jobs in America and protect our natural resources from destructive energy development.
3. It is spring. It is very warm. Warm weather is very nice for many people. But that strange warm weather will accur many problem. How slove the problem? On the world, all most of contries promise Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol is the international plan to reduce climate change pollution. 166 countries have agreed to work within the Kyoto Protocol. I think the fitst world responsible worldclimate. They had a wealth from the third by the improvement natual. So the first worlds have to do more duty.
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4.What is climate change? The burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas releases a number of gases. We burn fossil fuels when we drive our cars, use coal-fired electricity, fly in planes or consume products. Some of the gases released from burning fossil fuels are greenhouse gases, which act like a blanket around the earth, trapping heat and warming the earth's atmosphere. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most common out of several greenhouse gases. Industrialised countries have released huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, and have caused a human induced change in the earth's climate.
For more climate change science see the United Nations website, CSIRO's frequently asked questions and climate basics from Climateprediction.net.
How do we solve climate change? Climate change is a global issue that will affect all of us. If we work together and take immediate action we can stop dangerous climate change. Industrialised countries need to reduce greenhouse pollution by 20% by 2020, and by 80% by the middle of the century, if we are to combat climate change.
The key ways to avoid dangerous climate change are:
Set legally binding targets to reduce our climate change pollution Switch to renewable energy sources, like solar and wind power, and move away from dirty coal.
Set energy efficiency targets to ensure we use energy wisely.
Shift from private cars to public transport.
Stop broad scale land clearing.
We have the technology to reduce our greenhouse pollution. Our government needs to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and legislate targets to reduce our greenhouse pollution for this potential to become reality.
For more information on the action we need to take to combat climate change, see
The most important environmental issue of these times is the warming of the planet. According to this article, it seems that some people from politics and business have taken global warming seriously. However there are many more people who believe that ignoring is the best way to solve the environmental problems like global warming.
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Isn't it true that the global warming scare is really just a hoax perpetrated by environmentalists who want to attract more funding and liberals who want to promote big government?
A. No, it is not true. This argument surfaces every now and then during discussions of global warming, often supported by some random and isolated bit of outdated information, but it is a ridiculous claim.
Scientific Consensus on Global Warming Worldwide, every major scientific agency or institution that studies climate, oceans or the atmosphere agrees that the global climate is warming rapidly and the primary cause is greenhouse gas emissions related to human activity. Even a short list would include such notable organizations as:
National Academy of Sciences (NAS) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) The Royal Society of the UK (RS) Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
The Politics of Global Warming The idea that global warming is a hoax picked up some support in the political realm in July 2003, when U.S Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla), former chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, concluded a long speech on the Senate floor with these words: “With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it.” Even in 2003, Inhofe’s claims couldn’t stand up to much scrutiny. Today, the senator would find it even harder to rally political support for the notion that global warming is a hoax. When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its report on The Physical Basis of Climate Change in February 2007, 113 nations immediately endorsed its conclusion that human activity is responsible for the acceleration of global warming since the beginning of the Industrial Age. In January 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives created a new Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, and Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate have introduced legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions significantly over the next few decades.
Business and Industry Acknowledge Global Warming It’s not only the majority of scientists and politicians who accept the reality of human-caused global warming. Leading businesses across all industries also acknowledge the problem of global warming. The U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an unprecedented alliance between corporate executives and environmental groups that launched in January 2007 has proposed a federal cap-and-trade program that would cut greenhouse-gas emissions 60 percent to 80 percent by mid-century. Even more telling, perhaps, are the positions taken by some oil companies. BP, the largest oil company in the UK and one of the largest in the world, has this to say about global warming: “There is an increasing consensus that climate change is linked to the consumption of carbon based fuels and that action is required now to avoid further increases in carbon emissions as the global demand for energy increases.” And Shell Oil says: “Shell shares the widespread concern that the emission of greenhouse gases from human activities is leading to changes in the global climate.”
Conclusion To make the case that global warming is a hoax, someone would have to believe that environmentalists and political liberals control businesses and industries worldwide as well as the legislative bodies and scientific institutions of every developed nation in the world. That would be a hard case to make.
Satellite Makes First Ever Observation Of Regionally Elevated Carbon Dioxide From Manmade Emissions
Wherever we go, we cannot live without air. However, we cannot seriously realize how important air is. This article tells about emissions of extra carbon dioxide (CO2) from all over the world. Because of all people's free ride, we have experienced climate change. Even though it is not too difficult to live in the earth right now, we may not know when it comes. We have to highlight the importance of cutting emissions from manmade gases. ------------------------------------- ScienceDaily (Mar. 23, 2008) — Using data from the SCIAMACHY instrument aboard ESA's Envisat environmental satellite, scientists have for the first time detected regionally elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide – the most important greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming – originating from manmade emissions.
More than 30 billion tonnes of extra carbon dioxide (CO2) is released into the atmosphere annually by human activities, mainly through the burning of fossil fuels.
According to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this increase is predicted to result in a warmer climate with rising sea levels and an increase of extreme weather conditions. Predicting future atmospheric CO2 levels requires an increase in our understanding of carbon fluxes.
Dr Michael Buchwitz from the Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP) at the University of Bremen in Germany and his colleagues detected the relatively weak atmospheric CO2 signal arising from regional ‘anthropogenic’, or manmade, CO2 emissions over Europe by processing and analysing SCIAMACHY data from 2003 to 2005.
As illustrated in the image, the findings show an extended plume over Europe’s most populated area, the region from Amsterdam in the Netherlands to Frankfurt, Germany.
Carbon dioxide emissions occur naturally as well as being created through human activities, like the burning of fossil fuels (oil, coal, gas) for power generation, industry and traffic.
"The natural CO2 fluxes between the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface are typically much larger than the CO2 fluxes arising from manmade CO2 emissions, making the detection of regional anthropogenic CO2 emission signals quite difficult," Buchwitz explained.
"This does not mean, however, that the anthropogenic fluxes are of minor importance. In fact, the opposite is true because the manmade fluxes are only going in one direction whereas the natural fluxes operate in both directions, taking up atmospheric CO2 when plants grow, but releasing most or all of it again later when the plants decay. This results in higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations in the first half of a year followed by lower CO2 during the second half of a year with a minimum around August.
"That we are able to detect regionally elevated CO2 over Europe shows the high quality of the SCIAMACHY CO2 measurements."
Buchwitz says further analysis is required in order to draw quantitative conclusions in terms of CO2 emissions. "We verified that the CO2 spatial pattern that we measure correlates well with current CO2 emission databases and population density but more studies are needed before definitive quantitative conclusions concerning CO2 emissions can be drawn."
Significant gaps remain in the knowledge of carbon dioxide’s sources, such as fires, volcanic activity and the respiration of living organisms, and its natural sinks, such as the land and ocean.
"We know that about half of the CO2 emitted by mankind each year is taken up by natural sinks on land and in the oceans. We do not know, however, where exactly these important sinks are and to what extent they take up the CO2 we are emitting, i.e., how strong they are.
"We also don’t know how these sinks will respond to a changing climate. It is even possible that some of these sinks will saturate or turn into a CO2 source in the future. With our satellite measurements we hope to be able to provide answers to questions like this in order to make reliable predictions," Buchwitz said.
By better understanding all of the parameters involved in the carbon cycle, scientists can better predict climate change as well as better monitor international treaties aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, such as the Kyoto Protocol which addresses the reduction of six greenhouse gases.
Last year, European Union leaders highlighted the importance of cutting emissions from these manmade gases by endorsing binding targets to cut greenhouse gases by at least 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. --------------------------------------------- http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080318110330.htm
I agree that the rapid pace of climate change and environmental degradation is a direct result of the growth of the human population. In the 19C, the world population just under 2 billion, now almost tripled that, 7 billion. At the same time, as normal person living arban area, we have a consume pattern that seriously effected to the earth. So, sustainable consume way is more requested than birth control. In this article, we can see how well organized policy and harmonized with economic situation to dealing with climate change in Europe. But, there is more people and more developing country in asia. I think we should except drastic reforms and policies which can be regulated each person.
----------------------- Europe's environment chief Stavros Dimas says the EU's leaders are still committed to ambitious CO2 cuts of up to 30% by 2020, despite the appearance of back-tracking at last week's European summit.
Mr Dimas said it was natural for national leaders to debate the precise details of how the cuts would be implemented - but that did not suggest a weakening of overall resolve. Green groups gave a shudder last week when they heard Europe's big players - especially Germany - were looking for a climate deal that would protect some of the most polluting industries and allow the continued manufacture of gas-guzzling luxury cars.
But in an interview for BBC News, Commissioner Dimas said necessary concessions made to protect jobs would not jeopardise Europe's 2020 targets on CO2.
He admitted that Europe's industries were involved in ferocious lobbying to win favourable terms from the regime of carbon cuts.
And he agreed that Europe's goals would seem even more ambitious when emissions from international aviation and shipping, which are currently not included in the targets, were taken into account.
Minimum standards
Mr Dimas supported Gordon Brown's plan for lower VAT levels on energy-saving products.
"I support it. I think it's a good idea. I hope that after a good reception at the European Council it will materialise," he said. "It will be good for fighting climate change, and good for consumers to have the possibility to purchase environmentally friendly products at cheaper prices. " Mr Dimas said that the VAT proposal was part of a broader study of green fiscal measures. "It could be a lowering of VAT or giving a subsidy for insulation, or an interest free loan, to retrofit existing buildings. The Commission will work up proposals which will be simple and effective. And the adoption by the European Council of the UK proposal is very positive and promising."
He said he expected the measure to be agreed in time and was confident that the Commission would iron out difficulties of definition over energy-saving products.
He also said that he personally sympathised with a plea made on the BBC recently by the former Shell boss Sir Mark Moody-Stuart.
In a Green Room article he urged the EU to set minimum standards for car efficiency in the same way they set minimum standards for fridges.
That would mean big polluters like Porsche or Rolls-Royce would have to radically change the way they make their cars or be banned from sale.
Mr Dimas said there was a clear ethical case for this argument - but that Europe had to protect its own industries too - and would stick by the current policy of asking manufacturers to produce 130g of CO2/km across the fleet. (Roger Harrabin, BBC environment analyst) ------- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7308036.stm
3. Global warming seems to become more serious as time goes by. One example of the situation is this, the change of spring's arrival time. Many scientists said that alarm clock of plants and animals is running fast and it will make problems in maintenance of the environment.
Recently, by Korean press I heard that the bee will extinguish soon in Korean peninsula. The problem is that bee has very important functions in our nature, which means pollination. So, we can predict that the extermination of bees will trigger the lost of many plants and vegetable. To prevent the arrival of this miserable future, we should know how the problem is serious and what we should do for our future.
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WASHINGTON - The capital's famous cherry trees are primed to burst out in a perfect pink peak about the end of this month. Thirty years ago, the trees usually waited to bloom till around April 5.
In central California, the first of the field skipper sachem, a drab little butterfly, was fluttering about on March 12. Just 25 years ago, that creature predictably emerged there anywhere from mid-April to mid-May.
And sneezes are coming earlier in Philadelphia. On March 9, when allergist Dr. Donald Dvorin set up his monitor, maple pollen was already heavy in the air. Less than two decades ago, that pollen couldn't be measured until late April.
Story continues below ↓ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- advertisement
Pollen is bursting. Critters are stirring. Buds are swelling. Biologists are worrying.
"The alarm clock that all the plants and animals are listening to is running too fast," Stanford University biologist Terry Root said.
Blame global warming.
The fingerprints of man-made climate change are evident in seasonal timing changes for thousands of species on Earth, according to dozens of studies and last year's authoritative report by the Nobel Prize-winning international climate scientists. More than 30 scientists told The Associated Press how global warming is affecting plants and animals at springtime across the country, in nearly every state.
Click for related content What causes Earth’s seasons? Even kids can help monitor warming Why do birds sing? It's all in the brain
What's happening is so noticeable that scientists can track it from space. Satellites measuring when land turns green found that spring "green-up" is arriving eight hours earlier every year on average since 1982 north of the Mason-Dixon line. In much of Florida and southern Texas and Louisiana, the satellites show spring coming a tad later, and bizarrely, in a complicated way, global warming can explain that too, the scientists said.
Biological timing is called phenology. Biological spring, which this year begins at 1:48 a.m. ET Thursday, is based on the tilt of the Earth as it circles the sun. The federal government and some university scientists are so alarmed by the changes that last fall they created a National Phenology Network at the U.S. Geological Survey to monitor these changes.
The idea, said biologist and network director Jake Weltzin, is "to better understand the changes, and more important what do they mean? How does it affect humankind?"
There are winners, losers and lots of unknowns when global warming messes with natural timing. People may appreciate the smaller heating bills from shorter winters, the longer growing season and maybe even better tasting wines from some early grape harvests. But biologists also foresee big problems.
This article is about global warning and the potentials states are making to solve the acceleration of this problem. The writer however suggests the misunderstanding of the cause to global warning and the policies set by governments to be less effective in solving the actual problem. The denial of global warming is causing more trouble and a bad influence to the environment as a whole.
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By Alexander Cockburn
Global Warming: the Climate of Fear
Although the world’s climate is on a warming trend, there is zero evidence that the rise in carbon dioxide levels has anthropogenic origins. For daring to say this I have been treated as if I have committed intellectual blasphemy.
In magazine articles and essays I have described in fairly considerable detail, with input from the scientist Martin Hertzberg, that you can account for the current warming by a number of well-known factors having to do with the elliptical course of the Earth in its relationship to the sun, the axis of the Earth in the current period, and possibly the influence of solar flares. There have been similar warming cycles in the past, such as the Medieval Warming Period, when the warming levels were considerably higher than they are now.
Yet from left to right, the warming that is occurring today is taken as man-made, and many have made this opinion the central plank of their political campaigns. For reasons I find very hard to fathom, the environmental left movement has bought very heavily into the fantasy about anthropogenic global warming and the fantasy that humans can prevent or turn back the warming cycle.
This turn to climate catastrophism is tied into the decline of the left, and the decline of the left’s optimistic vision of altering the economic nature of things through a political program. The left has bought into environmental catastrophism because it thinks that if it can persuade the world that there is indeed a catastrophe, then somehow the emergency response will lead to positive developments in terms of social and environmental justice.
This is a fantasy. In truth, environmental catastrophism will, in fact, play into the hands of the sinister-as-always corporate interests. The nuclear industry is benefiting immeasurably from the current catastrophism. Last year, for example, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission sped up its licensing process, and there is an imminent wave of new nuclear plant building. Many in the nuclear industry see an opportunity to recover from the adverse publicity of Chernobyl in the story about carbon dioxide causing climate change.
More generally, climate catastrophism is leading to a re-emphasis of the power of the advanced industrial world, through its various trade mechanisms, to penalize Third World countries. For example, India has just produced an extremely cheap car, the Tata Nano, which will enable its poorer citizens to get about without having to load their entire family onto a bicycle. Greens have already attacked the car, and it won’t take long for the World Trade Organization and the advanced powers to start punishing India with a lot of missionary-style nonsense about its carbon emissions and so on.
The politics of climate change also have potential impacts on farmers. Third World farmers who don’t use seed strains or agricultural procedures sanctioned by the international ag corporations, major multilateral institutions, and banks controlled by the Western powers, will be sabotaged by attacks on their “excessive carbon footprint.”
Here in the West, the so-called “war on global warming” is reminiscent of medieval madness. You can now buy indulgences to offset your carbon guilt. If you fly, you give an extra 10 quid to British Airways; B.A. hands it on to some non-profit carbon-offsetting company, which sticks the money in its pocket and goes off for lunch.
But what is truly sinister about environmental catastrophism is that it diverts attention from hundreds and hundreds of serious environmental concerns that can be dealt with – starting, perhaps, with the nitrous oxide emissions from power plants. Here in California, if you drive upstate you can see the pollution from Los Angeles all up the Central Valley, a lot of it caused, ironically, by the sulfuric acid droplets from catalytic converters! The problem is that 20 or 30 years ago, the politicians didn’t want to take on the power companies, so they fixed their sights on penalizing motorists, who are less able to fight back.
Emissions from power plants could be dealt with now. You don’t need to have a world program called “Kyoto” to fix something like that. The Kyoto Accord must be one of the most reactionary political manifestos in the history of the world; it represents a horrible privileging of the advanced industrial powers over developing nations.
The marriage of environmental catastrophism and corporate interests is best captured in the figure of Al Gore. As a politician, he came to public light as a shill for two immense power schemes in the state of Tennessee: the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Oak Ridge Nuclear Laboratory. Gore is not, as he claims, a non-partisan green; he is influenced very much by his background. His arguments, many of which are based on grotesque science and shrill predictions, seem to me to be part of a political and corporate outlook.
In today’s political climate, it has become fairly dangerous for a young scientist or professor to step up and say: “This is all nonsense.” It is increasingly difficult to challenge the global warming consensus, on either a scientific or a political level. Academies can be incredibly cowardly institutions, and if one of their employees were to question the discussion of climate change he or she would be pulled to one side and told: “You’re threatening our funding and reputation – do you really want to do that?” I don’t think that we should underestimate the impact that kind of informal pressure can have on people’s willingness to think thoroughly and speak openly.
One way critics are silenced is by accusing them of ignoring “peer-reviewed science.” Yet oftentimes, peer reviews are nonsense. As anyone who has ever put his nose inside a university will know, peer review is usually a mode of excluding the unexpected, the unpredictable, and the unrespectable, and forming a mutually back-scratching circle. Through the process of peer review, of certain papers nodded through by experts and others given a red cross, the controllers of the major scientific journals can include what they like and exclude what they don’t like. Peer review is frequently a way of controlling debate, even curtailing it.
Since I started writing essays challenging the global warming consensus and seeking to put forward critical alternative arguments, I have felt like the object of a witch-hunt. One individual who was once on the board of the Sierra Club has suggested I should be criminally prosecuted. A series of articles on climate change issues I wrote for The Nation elicited a level of hysterical outrage and affront that I found astounding – and I have a fairly thick skin, having been in the business of making unpopular arguments for many years.
There was a shocking intensity to their self-righteous fury, as if I had transgressed a moral as well as an intellectual boundary and committed blasphemy. I sometimes think to myself, “Boy, I’m glad I didn’t live in the 1450s,” because I would be out in the main square with a pile of wood around my ankles.
This experience has given me an understanding of what it must have been like in darker periods to be accused of being a blasphemer, of the summary and unpleasant consequences that can bring. There is an element of witch-hunting in climate catastrophism. That is clear in the use of the word “denier” to label those who question claims about anthropogenic climate change. “Climate change denier” is, of course, meant to evoke the figure of the Holocaust denier.
In my forthcoming book, A Short History of Fear, I explore the link between fear-mongering and climate catastrophism. For example, alarmism about a population explosion is being revisited through the climate issue. Population alarmism goes back as far as Malthus, of course; and in the environmental movement there has always been a very sinister strain of Malthusianism. This is particularly the case in the U.S. where there has never been as great a socialist challenge as there was in Europe. I suspect, however, that even in Europe, what remains of socialism has itself turned into a degraded Malthusian outlook. It seems clear to me that climate catastrophism represents a new form of the politics of fear.
I think people have had enough of peer-reviewed science and experts telling them what they can and cannot think about climate change. Climate catastrophism, the impact it is having on people’s lives and on debate, can only really be challenged through rigorous open discussion and through a “battle of ideas,” as the conference I spoke at in London last year described it. I hope my book is a salvo in that battle.
Alexander Cockburn is a columnist for The Nation and a co-editor of the political newsletter CounterPunch.
A very down to earth* kind of guy. I'm an environmental sociologist interested in establishing material and organizational sustainability worldwide. I'm always looking for interesting materials/technologies, inspiring ideas, or institutional examples of sustainability to inspire others to recognize their choices now. To be fatalistic about an unsustainable world is a sign of a captive mind, given all our options.
*(If "earth" is defined in a planetary sense, concerning comparative historical knowledge and interest in the past 10,000 years or so anywhere...) See both blogs.
8 comments:
Minha Lee
Greenpeace and guitar makers unite to save forests
This article is about the movement in guitar industry trying to save forests. I play the guitar and I own 2 guitars. This is why I'm interested in this article. I have never considered that guitars sacrifice the forest. I suggest most of guitarists do not think about it very much. Buying the guitar, I only focus on the sound the guitar is making, not environmental issue. This movement will arouse attention of environmentally friendly guitars.
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By Ayala Ben-Yehuda
LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Sustaining the supply of natural materials isn't a new idea in the musical instrument industry, which depends on old-growth wood to achieve the best tonal quality.
"The paradox is that musicians as a group tend to be pretty progressive and ecologically savvy and concerned -- until it comes down to their guitar," C.F. Martin & Co. head of artist and public relations Dick Boak says. "They don't want to take the chance that they won't have the absolute best tone. It requires a little bit of education and it requires them to see the product."
Some of the most sought-after woods come from trees that can take hundreds of years to develop their acoustic characteristics. Through the years, instrument companies have developed everything from clarinets that can be ground up and recycled into new ones to Martin acoustic guitars and Gibson Les Pauls sourced from responsibly managed forests.
But a collective effort by Martin, Gibson, Fender, Taylor, Yamaha and others to preserve their supply of old-growth wood from clear-cutting -- in which all trees within a designated area are removed -- is beginning to bear fruit.
The industry heavyweights have partnered with Greenpeace on its Music Wood campaign, with an initial focus on Sitka spruce, a key material in guitar and piano soundboards.
SPRUCING UP
After meeting with Greenpeace and the instrument makers last summer, Sitka spruce supplier Sealaska agreed to a preliminary audit of its logging practices. A full assessment by third parties accredited by the Forest Stewardship Council is set to take place in summer 2008, and if Alaska-based Sealaska decides to implement their recommended reforms and apply for full FSC certification, it will be on the road to more selective logging and consideration of surrounding habitats before it cuts.
Greenpeace started Music Wood after it traced clear-cutting of Alaskan spruce to a variety of industries, particularly home construction in Japan. "Instrument-making is a very small percentage of the problem," Greenpeace forest campaign director Scott Paul says. But the companies' leadership on the issue "can have really significant implications on the ground," since Music Wood supporters "are arguably the highest-end and highest-profile consumers of any (tree) species coming from this forest."
Paul says Sealaska's own numbers showed that, without significant changes, "they would be out of their old-growth within 15 years," and credits the company with showing "a lot of leadership and a lot of willingness to explore" sustainability solutions.
Boak puts the level of threat to old-growth woods like this: "If 1 is totally plentiful and 10 is completely unavailable, I think spruce is a 6, and I'd put mahogany at 7.5 and ebony at 8." Demand from China and political pressure within certain countries to restrict rare-wood exports after decades of mismanagement means "the price will go up and they will become rarer and rarer."
Natural Resources Defense Council senior resource specialist Debbie Hammel says that just a fraction -- less than 5 percent by some estimates -- of the continental United States' old-growth forest is still standing, forcing buyers of certain woods to look to other regions and countries such as Russia.
"We do believe that marketplace demand has a lot of potential for directing the market in a more sustainable direction," Hammel says.
NEW PRODUCTS
Still, instrument makers say it isn't widespread consumer demand for green instruments that's been driving their eco-friendly measures. Martin's Boak says the company required all 750 authorized Martin dealers to stock its sustainable wood acoustic guitars after it found some dealers unwilling to take a risk on them.
Thirty percent of Martin's total manufactured units are made of high-pressure laminate, a material made of eucalyptus and fast-growing domestic woods. Yamaha once manufactured a popular snare drum and guitar from bamboo, which replenishes itself quickly. But the company that supplied the bamboo parts went out of business, Yamaha Drums product manager Jim Haler says.
Boston-based First Act, which built an environmentally friendly electric guitar for Guster's Adam Gardner, is rolling out its Bambusa line of electrics to instrument stores this year. The $399 guitar, currently available via firstact.com and at the company's retail store in Boston, is made of bamboo and covered with a water-based finish, rather than traditional polyurethane.
Rather than a reaction to diminishing wood supply, First Act marketing VP Jeff Walker says that "this is more of a charge led by our head of product development for guitars, who was seeking alternative ways to come out with an exciting new product."
Reuters/Billboard
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http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/33410
Jee-Hyun SONG
Just change your paradigm!
Not until many years ago, people were captured within the framework that the environment was a medium through which humans can use as external aid to expansion(I cannot find the person's name who argued this...) They saw the world through promethian view, ignoring human and environmental interactions and cared only about producing and accumulating the wealth.
However, I guess that spell is broken now. According to the article, many business executives are beginning to see the importance of sustainable economic growth and they are going to invest in clean energy solutions.
This article made me think of Schnaiberg's "managed scarcity synthesis" and "ecological synthesis". I am glad that those people see the envrionmental problems through Schnaiberg's view- to minimize ecological disruptions and maintain a "sustained yield of resources".
This is not the first time that I've seen business' movements to contribute to environmental protection and sustainable growth. I hope that the number of "eco-friendly" businesses and industries increases.
In the 21st century, the winner will be the one who cares about the earth. Just change your paradigm!
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A Strong Economy Is a Green Economy
by Frances Beinecke
ISSUE: Spring 2008, view from NRDC | February 29, 2008
Right now, everyone in Congress is discussing stimulus packages to turn around the economy. The question is, what do we want to stimulate? I think the best investment we can make is in a clean, green energy future that will help stave off the worst effects of global warming.
Business executives I've met with are beginning to see significant economic opportunities in tackling global warming. Equity fund managers call on NRDC experts to discuss investments in clean energy solutions, and we have talked to Fortune 500 executives who want to advocate national policies that will bring cleaner fuels to market. In the next 20 years, $3 trillion will be invested in power plants, refineries, and other energy infrastructure in the United States; more and more utilities, manufacturers, and investment firms want to redirect that money away from dirty, outdated equipment and into the latest clean tech. Put $3 trillion into global warming solutions, and America could become the worlds sustainable energy leader.
Of course, you'd expect me to say that. But in December 2007, a group of financial analysts at McKinsey & Company released a report that examined the cost and market potential of 250 technologies for reducing global warming; it concluded that we can reduce greenhouse gases at little or no net cost to the economy. In July 2007, the Environmental Protection Agency did an economic analysis of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. The study's bottom line: reducing global warming pollution will have an imperceptible effect on economic output overall. This is remarkable news. We can stave off the biggest environmental and humanitarian crisis without disrupting economic growth.
These studies don't even account for the benefits of cleaner air, lower childhood asthma rates, and reduced dependence on repressive oil regimes. Clean energy solutions will pay significant dividends to consumers and businesses alike. But market barriers stand in the way. Why would investors--who hate uncertainty--put money into capturing carbon emissions from coal plants when America hasn't enacted a limit or price on carbon pollution? A federal cap on carbon emissions, along with smart incentives, can move emerging technologies out of the lab and into the marketplace. The longer we wait, the more costly it will be to bring about climate solutions. The time to start a clean energy revolution is now. The faster we get started, the sooner we can begin creating jobs in America and protect our natural resources from destructive energy development.
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http://www.onearth.org/article/a-strong-economy-is-a-green-economy
1. Hea joung Lee
2. About change climate
3. It is spring. It is very warm. Warm weather is very nice for many people. But that strange warm weather will accur many problem. How slove the problem? On the world, all most of contries promise Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol is the international plan to reduce climate change pollution. 166 countries have agreed to work within the Kyoto Protocol. I think the fitst world responsible worldclimate. They had a wealth from the third by the improvement natual. So the first worlds have to do more duty.
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4.What is climate change?
The burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas releases a number of gases. We burn fossil fuels when we drive our cars, use coal-fired electricity, fly in planes or consume products. Some of the gases released from burning fossil fuels are greenhouse gases, which act like a blanket around the earth, trapping heat and warming the earth's atmosphere. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most common out of several greenhouse gases. Industrialised countries have released huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, and have caused a human induced change in the earth's climate.
For more climate change science see the United Nations website, CSIRO's frequently asked questions and climate basics from Climateprediction.net.
How do we solve climate change?
Climate change is a global issue that will affect all of us. If we work together and take immediate action we can stop dangerous climate change. Industrialised countries need to reduce greenhouse pollution by 20% by 2020, and by 80% by the middle of the century, if we are to combat climate change.
The key ways to avoid dangerous climate change are:
Set legally binding targets to reduce our climate change pollution
Switch to renewable energy sources, like solar and wind power, and move away from dirty coal.
Set energy efficiency targets to ensure we use energy wisely.
Shift from private cars to public transport.
Stop broad scale land clearing.
We have the technology to reduce our greenhouse pollution. Our government needs to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and legislate targets to reduce our greenhouse pollution for this potential to become reality.
For more information on the action we need to take to combat climate change, see
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http://www.cana.net.au/documents/real_way_forward.pdf
Nuri Na
Is Global Warming a Hoax?
The most important environmental issue of these times is the warming of the planet. According to this article, it seems that some people from politics and business have taken global warming seriously. However there are many more people who believe that ignoring is the best way to solve the environmental problems like global warming.
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Isn't it true that the global warming scare is really just a hoax perpetrated by environmentalists who want to attract more funding and liberals who want to promote big government?
A. No, it is not true.
This argument surfaces every now and then during discussions of global warming, often supported by some random and isolated bit of outdated information, but it is a ridiculous claim.
Scientific Consensus on Global Warming
Worldwide, every major scientific agency or institution that studies climate, oceans or the atmosphere agrees that the global climate is warming rapidly and the primary cause is greenhouse gas emissions related to human activity. Even a short list would include such notable organizations as:
National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS)
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
The Royal Society of the UK (RS)
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS)
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
The Politics of Global Warming
The idea that global warming is a hoax picked up some support in the political realm in July 2003, when U.S Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla), former chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, concluded a long speech on the Senate floor with these words:
“With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it.”
Even in 2003, Inhofe’s claims couldn’t stand up to much scrutiny. Today, the senator would find it even harder to rally political support for the notion that global warming is a hoax.
When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its report on The Physical Basis of Climate Change in February 2007, 113 nations immediately endorsed its conclusion that human activity is responsible for the acceleration of global warming since the beginning of the Industrial Age.
In January 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives created a new Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, and Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate have introduced legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions significantly over the next few decades.
Business and Industry Acknowledge Global Warming
It’s not only the majority of scientists and politicians who accept the reality of human-caused global warming. Leading businesses across all industries also acknowledge the problem of global warming.
The U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an unprecedented alliance between corporate executives and environmental groups that launched in January 2007 has proposed a federal cap-and-trade program that would cut greenhouse-gas emissions 60 percent to 80 percent by mid-century.
Even more telling, perhaps, are the positions taken by some oil companies.
BP, the largest oil company in the UK and one of the largest in the world, has this to say about global warming:
“There is an increasing consensus that climate change is linked to the consumption of carbon based fuels and that action is required now to avoid further increases in carbon emissions as the global demand for energy increases.”
And Shell Oil says:
“Shell shares the widespread concern that the emission of greenhouse gases from human activities is leading to changes in the global climate.”
Conclusion
To make the case that global warming is a hoax, someone would have to believe that environmentalists and political liberals control businesses and industries worldwide as well as the legislative bodies and scientific institutions of every developed nation in the world. That would be a hard case to make.
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http://environment.about.com/od/faqglobalwarming/f/gw_faq_hoax.htm
Keonhwa Sung
Satellite Makes First Ever Observation Of Regionally Elevated Carbon Dioxide From Manmade Emissions
Wherever we go, we cannot live without air. However, we cannot seriously realize how important air is. This article tells about emissions of extra carbon dioxide (CO2) from all over the world. Because of all people's free ride, we have experienced climate change. Even though it is not too difficult to live in the earth right now, we may not know when it comes. We have to highlight the importance of cutting emissions from manmade gases.
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ScienceDaily (Mar. 23, 2008) — Using data from the SCIAMACHY instrument aboard ESA's Envisat environmental satellite, scientists have for the first time detected regionally elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide – the most important greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming – originating from manmade emissions.
More than 30 billion tonnes of extra carbon dioxide (CO2) is released into the atmosphere annually by human activities, mainly through the burning of fossil fuels.
According to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this increase is predicted to result in a warmer climate with rising sea levels and an increase of extreme weather conditions. Predicting future atmospheric CO2 levels requires an increase in our understanding of carbon fluxes.
Dr Michael Buchwitz from the Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP) at the University of Bremen in Germany and his colleagues detected the relatively weak atmospheric CO2 signal arising from regional ‘anthropogenic’, or manmade, CO2 emissions over Europe by processing and analysing SCIAMACHY data from 2003 to 2005.
As illustrated in the image, the findings show an extended plume over Europe’s most populated area, the region from Amsterdam in the Netherlands to Frankfurt, Germany.
Carbon dioxide emissions occur naturally as well as being created through human activities, like the burning of fossil fuels (oil, coal, gas) for power generation, industry and traffic.
"The natural CO2 fluxes between the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface are typically much larger than the CO2 fluxes arising from manmade CO2 emissions, making the detection of regional anthropogenic CO2 emission signals quite difficult," Buchwitz explained.
"This does not mean, however, that the anthropogenic fluxes are of minor importance. In fact, the opposite is true because the manmade fluxes are only going in one direction whereas the natural fluxes operate in both directions, taking up atmospheric CO2 when plants grow, but releasing most or all of it again later when the plants decay. This results in higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations in the first half of a year followed by lower CO2 during the second half of a year with a minimum around August.
"That we are able to detect regionally elevated CO2 over Europe shows the high quality of the SCIAMACHY CO2 measurements."
Buchwitz says further analysis is required in order to draw quantitative conclusions in terms of CO2 emissions. "We verified that the CO2 spatial pattern that we measure correlates well with current CO2 emission databases and population density but more studies are needed before definitive quantitative conclusions concerning CO2 emissions can be drawn."
Significant gaps remain in the knowledge of carbon dioxide’s sources, such as fires, volcanic activity and the respiration of living organisms, and its natural sinks, such as the land and ocean.
"We know that about half of the CO2 emitted by mankind each year is taken up by natural sinks on land and in the oceans. We do not know, however, where exactly these important sinks are and to what extent they take up the CO2 we are emitting, i.e., how strong they are.
"We also don’t know how these sinks will respond to a changing climate. It is even possible that some of these sinks will saturate or turn into a CO2 source in the future. With our satellite measurements we hope to be able to provide answers to questions like this in order to make reliable predictions," Buchwitz said.
By better understanding all of the parameters involved in the carbon cycle, scientists can better predict climate change as well as better monitor international treaties aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, such as the Kyoto Protocol which addresses the reduction of six greenhouse gases.
Last year, European Union leaders highlighted the importance of cutting emissions from these manmade gases by endorsing binding targets to cut greenhouse gases by at least 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080318110330.htm
Hyeseon Jeong
EU 'committed' to stiff CO2 cuts
I agree that the rapid pace of climate change and environmental degradation is a direct result of the growth of the human population.
In the 19C, the world population just under 2 billion, now almost tripled that, 7 billion. At the same time, as normal person living arban area, we have a consume pattern that seriously effected to the earth. So, sustainable consume way is more requested than birth control.
In this article, we can see how well organized policy and harmonized with economic situation to dealing with climate change in Europe. But, there is more people and more developing country in asia.
I think we should except drastic reforms and policies which can be regulated each person.
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Europe's environment chief Stavros Dimas says the EU's leaders are still committed to ambitious CO2 cuts of up to 30% by 2020, despite the appearance of back-tracking at last week's European summit.
Mr Dimas said it was natural for national leaders to debate the precise details of how the cuts would be implemented - but that did not suggest a weakening of overall resolve.
Green groups gave a shudder last week when they heard Europe's big players - especially Germany - were looking for a climate deal that would protect some of the most polluting industries and allow the continued manufacture of gas-guzzling luxury cars.
But in an interview for BBC News, Commissioner Dimas said necessary concessions made to protect jobs would not jeopardise Europe's 2020 targets on CO2.
He admitted that Europe's industries were involved in ferocious lobbying to win favourable terms from the regime of carbon cuts.
And he agreed that Europe's goals would seem even more ambitious when emissions from international aviation and shipping, which are currently not included in the targets, were taken into account.
Minimum standards
Mr Dimas supported Gordon Brown's plan for lower VAT levels on energy-saving products.
"I support it. I think it's a good idea. I hope that after a good reception at the European Council it will materialise," he said.
"It will be good for fighting climate change, and good for consumers to have the possibility to purchase environmentally friendly products at cheaper prices. " Mr Dimas said that the VAT proposal was part of a broader study of green fiscal measures. "It could be a lowering of VAT or giving a subsidy for insulation, or an interest free loan, to retrofit existing buildings. The Commission will work up proposals which will be simple and effective. And the adoption by the European Council of the UK proposal is very positive and promising."
He said he expected the measure to be agreed in time and was confident that the Commission would iron out difficulties of definition over energy-saving products.
He also said that he personally sympathised with a plea made on the BBC recently by the former Shell boss Sir Mark Moody-Stuart.
In a Green Room article he urged the EU to set minimum standards for car efficiency in the same way they set minimum standards for fridges.
That would mean big polluters like Porsche or Rolls-Royce would have to radically change the way they make their cars or be banned from sale.
Mr Dimas said there was a clear ethical case for this argument - but that Europe had to protect its own industries too - and would stick by the current policy of asking manufacturers to produce 130g of CO2/km across the fleet. (Roger Harrabin, BBC environment analyst)
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7308036.stm
1. Gowoon JUNG
2. Global warming hastens arrival of springtime
3. Global warming seems to become more serious as time goes by. One example of the situation is this, the change of spring's arrival time. Many scientists said that alarm clock of plants and animals is running fast and it will make problems in maintenance of the environment.
Recently, by Korean press I heard that the bee will extinguish soon in Korean peninsula. The problem is that bee has very important functions in our nature, which means pollination. So, we can predict that the extermination of bees will trigger the lost of many plants and vegetable. To prevent the arrival of this miserable future, we should know how the problem is serious and what we should do for our future.
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WASHINGTON - The capital's famous cherry trees are primed to burst out in a perfect pink peak about the end of this month. Thirty years ago, the trees usually waited to bloom till around April 5.
In central California, the first of the field skipper sachem, a drab little butterfly, was fluttering about on March 12. Just 25 years ago, that creature predictably emerged there anywhere from mid-April to mid-May.
And sneezes are coming earlier in Philadelphia. On March 9, when allergist Dr. Donald Dvorin set up his monitor, maple pollen was already heavy in the air. Less than two decades ago, that pollen couldn't be measured until late April.
Story continues below ↓
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Pollen is bursting. Critters are stirring. Buds are swelling. Biologists are worrying.
"The alarm clock that all the plants and animals are listening to is running too fast," Stanford University biologist Terry Root said.
Blame global warming.
The fingerprints of man-made climate change are evident in seasonal timing changes for thousands of species on Earth, according to dozens of studies and last year's authoritative report by the Nobel Prize-winning international climate scientists. More than 30 scientists told The Associated Press how global warming is affecting plants and animals at springtime across the country, in nearly every state.
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Even kids can help monitor warming
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What's happening is so noticeable that scientists can track it from space. Satellites measuring when land turns green found that spring "green-up" is arriving eight hours earlier every year on average since 1982 north of the Mason-Dixon line. In much of Florida and southern Texas and Louisiana, the satellites show spring coming a tad later, and bizarrely, in a complicated way, global warming can explain that too, the scientists said.
Biological timing is called phenology. Biological spring, which this year begins at 1:48 a.m. ET Thursday, is based on the tilt of the Earth as it circles the sun. The federal government and some university scientists are so alarmed by the changes that last fall they created a National Phenology Network at the U.S. Geological Survey to monitor these changes.
The idea, said biologist and network director Jake Weltzin, is "to better understand the changes, and more important what do they mean? How does it affect humankind?"
There are winners, losers and lots of unknowns when global warming messes with natural timing. People may appreciate the smaller heating bills from shorter winters, the longer growing season and maybe even better tasting wines from some early grape harvests. But biologists also foresee big problems.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23709253/
GOEUN KIM
This article is about global warning and the potentials states are making to solve the acceleration of this problem. The writer however suggests the misunderstanding of the cause to global warning and the policies set by governments to be less effective in solving the actual problem. The denial of global warming is causing more trouble and a bad influence to the environment as a whole.
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By Alexander Cockburn
Global Warming: the Climate of Fear
Although the world’s climate is on a warming trend, there is zero evidence that the rise in carbon dioxide levels has anthropogenic origins. For daring to say this I have been treated as if I have committed intellectual blasphemy.
In magazine articles and essays I have described in fairly considerable detail, with input from the scientist Martin Hertzberg, that you can account for the current warming by a number of well-known factors having to do with the elliptical course of the Earth in its relationship to the sun, the axis of the Earth in the current period, and possibly the influence of solar flares. There have been similar warming cycles in the past, such as the Medieval Warming Period, when the warming levels were considerably higher than they are now.
Yet from left to right, the warming that is occurring today is taken as man-made, and many have made this opinion the central plank of their political campaigns. For reasons I find very hard to fathom, the environmental left movement has bought very heavily into the fantasy about anthropogenic global warming and the fantasy that humans can prevent or turn back the warming cycle.
This turn to climate catastrophism is tied into the decline of the left, and the decline of the left’s optimistic vision of altering the economic nature of things through a political program. The left has bought into environmental catastrophism because it thinks that if it can persuade the world that there is indeed a catastrophe, then somehow the emergency response will lead to positive developments in terms of social and environmental justice.
This is a fantasy. In truth, environmental catastrophism will, in fact, play into the hands of the sinister-as-always corporate interests. The nuclear industry is benefiting immeasurably from the current catastrophism. Last year, for example, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission sped up its licensing process, and there is an imminent wave of new nuclear plant building. Many in the nuclear industry see an opportunity to recover from the adverse publicity of Chernobyl in the story about carbon dioxide causing climate change.
More generally, climate catastrophism is leading to a re-emphasis of the power of the advanced industrial world, through its various trade mechanisms, to penalize Third World countries. For example, India has just produced an extremely cheap car, the Tata Nano, which will enable its poorer citizens to get about without having to load their entire family onto a bicycle. Greens have already attacked the car, and it won’t take long for the World Trade Organization and the advanced powers to start punishing India with a lot of missionary-style nonsense about its carbon emissions and so on.
The politics of climate change also have potential impacts on farmers. Third World farmers who don’t use seed strains or agricultural procedures sanctioned by the international ag corporations, major multilateral institutions, and banks controlled by the Western powers, will be sabotaged by attacks on their “excessive carbon footprint.”
Here in the West, the so-called “war on global warming” is reminiscent of medieval madness. You can now buy indulgences to offset your carbon guilt. If you fly, you give an extra 10 quid to British Airways; B.A. hands it on to some non-profit carbon-offsetting company, which sticks the money in its pocket and goes off for lunch.
But what is truly sinister about environmental catastrophism is that it diverts attention from hundreds and hundreds of serious environmental concerns that can be dealt with – starting, perhaps, with the nitrous oxide emissions from power plants. Here in California, if you drive upstate you can see the pollution from Los Angeles all up the Central Valley, a lot of it caused, ironically, by the sulfuric acid droplets from catalytic converters! The problem is that 20 or 30 years ago, the politicians didn’t want to take on the power companies, so they fixed their sights on penalizing motorists, who are less able to fight back.
Emissions from power plants could be dealt with now. You don’t need to have a world program called “Kyoto” to fix something like that. The Kyoto Accord must be one of the most reactionary political manifestos in the history of the world; it represents a horrible privileging of the advanced industrial powers over developing nations.
The marriage of environmental catastrophism and corporate interests is best captured in the figure of Al Gore. As a politician, he came to public light as a shill for two immense power schemes in the state of Tennessee: the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Oak Ridge Nuclear Laboratory. Gore is not, as he claims, a non-partisan green; he is influenced very much by his background. His arguments, many of which are based on grotesque science and shrill predictions, seem to me to be part of a political and corporate outlook.
In today’s political climate, it has become fairly dangerous for a young scientist or professor to step up and say: “This is all nonsense.” It is increasingly difficult to challenge the global warming consensus, on either a scientific or a political level. Academies can be incredibly cowardly institutions, and if one of their employees were to question the discussion of climate change he or she would be pulled to one side and told: “You’re threatening our funding and reputation – do you really want to do that?” I don’t think that we should underestimate the impact that kind of informal pressure can have on people’s willingness to think thoroughly and speak openly.
One way critics are silenced is by accusing them of ignoring “peer-reviewed science.” Yet oftentimes, peer reviews are nonsense. As anyone who has ever put his nose inside a university will know, peer review is usually a mode of excluding the unexpected, the unpredictable, and the unrespectable, and forming a mutually back-scratching circle. Through the process of peer review, of certain papers nodded through by experts and others given a red cross, the controllers of the major scientific journals can include what they like and exclude what they don’t like. Peer review is frequently a way of controlling debate, even curtailing it.
Since I started writing essays challenging the global warming consensus and seeking to put forward critical alternative arguments, I have felt like the object of a witch-hunt. One individual who was once on the board of the Sierra Club has suggested I should be criminally prosecuted. A series of articles on climate change issues I wrote for The Nation elicited a level of hysterical outrage and affront that I found astounding – and I have a fairly thick skin, having been in the business of making unpopular arguments for many years.
There was a shocking intensity to their self-righteous fury, as if I had transgressed a moral as well as an intellectual boundary and committed blasphemy. I sometimes think to myself, “Boy, I’m glad I didn’t live in the 1450s,” because I would be out in the main square with a pile of wood around my ankles.
This experience has given me an understanding of what it must have been like in darker periods to be accused of being a blasphemer, of the summary and unpleasant consequences that can bring. There is an element of witch-hunting in climate catastrophism. That is clear in the use of the word “denier” to label those who question claims about anthropogenic climate change. “Climate change denier” is, of course, meant to evoke the figure of the Holocaust denier.
In my forthcoming book, A Short History of Fear, I explore the link between fear-mongering and climate catastrophism. For example, alarmism about a population explosion is being revisited through the climate issue. Population alarmism goes back as far as Malthus, of course; and in the environmental movement there has always been a very sinister strain of Malthusianism. This is particularly the case in the U.S. where there has never been as great a socialist challenge as there was in Europe. I suspect, however, that even in Europe, what remains of socialism has itself turned into a degraded Malthusian outlook. It seems clear to me that climate catastrophism represents a new form of the politics of fear.
I think people have had enough of peer-reviewed science and experts telling them what they can and cannot think about climate change. Climate catastrophism, the impact it is having on people’s lives and on debate, can only really be challenged through rigorous open discussion and through a “battle of ideas,” as the conference I spoke at in London last year described it. I hope my book is a salvo in that battle.
Alexander Cockburn is a columnist for The Nation and a co-editor of the political newsletter CounterPunch.
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http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=821
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