The most e-mailed article in the NYT yesterday wasPaul Krugman’s “Who Cooked the Planet?”
He calls 2010 the year in which all hope of action to limit climate change died, and notes that ironically the first half of this year has been the “hottest such stretch on record.” He blames the pipeline of funding from the big energy companies to anyone who can be bought to refute findings all legitimate scientists unanimously support – that the climate is warming, and the consequences will be dire.
...photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/rodrigo_suriani/145301371/sizes/o/
Also on the most e-mailedlist is Thomas L. Friedman’s “We’re Gonna Be Sorry.”
Friedman says, “Fasten your seat belts. As the environmentalist Rob Watson likes to say: “Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and physics. That’s all she is.” You cannot sweet-talk her. You cannot spin her. You cannot tell her that the oil companies say climate change is a hoax. No, Mother Nature is going to do whatever chemistry, biology and physics dictate, and “Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats 1.000,” says Watson. Do not mess with Mother Nature. But that is just what we’re doing.”
Sometimes I feel my daily life resembles those people on the Titanic who cheerfully chipped off a bit of iceberg to chill their mixed drinks. But actually most days I feel more sympathy with the liner’s band that kept playing their instruments to the end because that is what they knew how to do and they felt it served some kind of purpose.
If you want to know what scientists have carefully projected for the Midwest, check out my post, Climate Change in My Back Yard—– Everything I have read since my article ran in Madison’s Isthmus last Janary, continues to validate that article and is worth taking note of we ice our drinks and make our music.
For better or worse, we have a access to a lot more information about what is actually happening than the passengers on the Titanic had.
Here are some good links to learn more about the climate change that we are experiencing.
Climate Progress is dedicated to providing the progressive perspective on climate science, climate solutions, and climate politics. In 2009, Time magazine named him one of the “Heroes of the Environment″ and “The Web’s most influential climate-change blogger.”
2. DOT EARTH
This is Andrew C. Revkins science-based blog in the NYT tracking relevant developments, trends and ideas about how humans are shaping climate and the web of life.
3. SKEPTICAL SCIENCE
This website gets skeptical about global warming skepticism. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer reviewed scientific literature say?
4. GREEN
Another NYT blog. This one is specifically about energy and the environment. How are climate change, scarcer resources, population growth and other challenges reshaping society? From science to business to politics to living, our reporters track the high-stakes pursuit of a greener globe in a dialogue with experts and readers.
5. THE PEW PROJECT ON NATIONAL SECURITY, ENERGY AND CLIMATE
Though our legislators aren’t taking climate change seriously, our military is. Learn how climate change is impacting military calculations.
6. GRIST
This is a great place to learn how to talk to a climate skeptic with helpful responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming.
Photo credit for sun photo:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rodrigo_suriani/145301371/sizes/o/
Categories: BLOG Roundups
Digging in the Driftless 
Thanks for this post. I’m going to go check out the article in NYT.
Glad to hear it. It’s not a cheerful topic but it is the world we live in. As a journalist, I’ve always wanted to stay informed and pay attention to the sources of what I’m reading or hearing.
I had a college professor decades ago who said, always ask yourself:
Who is telling me this, and why do they want me to believe it?
I definitely apply that filter to climate change info.
The motives of the climate change scoffers seem so very self-serving and transparent. Sigh.
Hi, Denise, I just looked at the Friedman column. Referring to the ending paragraph, corporations don’t have grandchildren, they only have profits. I have for many years refused to buy my gas from Exxon-Mobil because of their climate change obfuscation. I think Friedman’s exasperation – his failure to really write much of a column: what is there to say in the face of such stupidity? – speaks volumes.
Have you read Bill McKibben’s new book Eaarth? His thesis is that we are already past the tipping point, that real warming is locked in for the next century, all we can do is learn to live with (adapt to) it. His 350 org. of course has been trying to mobilize the public (along with Al Gore’s group), but to no real effect that I can discern. That public-spirited group we elect each year gets bought off by big corporations about as fast as they get elected.
I think a better approach at this point is to “adapt in place” as advocated by Sharon Astyk. Are you familiar with her? Her blogsite is http://scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook/. She has also written several books, of which I have read her Depletion and Abundance, which I thought rather good.
I suppose most people just don’t want to think of the life-style changes that would be required to reverse the climate change momentum that has built up, just like most people’s eyes glaze over if someone starts talking about peak oil and the changes that will bring.
We have just reached a point where we have developed an unsustainable society and we don’t want to face up to it because most of us like our laid-back, easy-energy way of life. There are just too many deeply vested interests in our current society that are unwilling to change.
Thanks, Dennis
You’ve given me a lot of good sources to check out. It it hard to believe that we can avoid some serious changes in our current life styles (and it doesn’t look like many of them will be voluntary on the societal scale). Short-sited decisions from the personal to the international are coming home to roost.
One additional item, I ran across this article this morning on how climate science predictions have been quite accurate. Click on the URL http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/01/climate-change-robin-mckie
The article is from the Guardian. You might want to ignore the comments that follow; they are hardly worth reading.