The Coming Climate Change War

Current global warming is real, it is man-made, and its consequences will be profoundly negative over time. The significant loss of polar ice, damage to the coral reefs, increased flooding along coastlines and other waterways, more frequent heatwaves, and an increased risk of forest fires are among the most likely consequences as the earth continues to warm.

A lone polar bear on a shrinking island
of ice- a symbol of climate change.

Theory and empirical data support these predictions, unequivocally.

That reality, however, is being cynically weaponized by an unqualified chattering class that seeks partisan advantage, even at the risk of war.

Reactions to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on climate change exemplify this problem…

Read the Medium story by Kent Kroeger - “The Coming Climate Change War.”

She Tried To Report On Climate Change. Sinclair Told Her To Be More ‘Balanced'

Sinclair Broadcast Group executives reprimanded and ultimately ousted a local news reporter who refused to seed doubt about man-made climate change and “balance” her stories in a more conservative direction.

Suri Crowe in Virginia on Thursday, April 19, 2018.

Her account, detailed in company documents she provided to BuzzFeed News, offers a glimpse at the inner workings of a media giant that has sought to both ingratiate itself to President Donald Trump and cast itself as an apolitical local news provider — a position the documents undermine.

In one 2015 instance, the former news director of WSET-TV in Lynchburg, Virginia, Len Stevens, criticized reporter Suri Crowe because she “clearly laid out the argument that human activities cause global warming, but had nothing from the side that questions the science behind such claims and points to more natural causes for such warming.”

Read the BuzzFeed News story - “She Tried To Report On Climate Change. Sinclair Told Her To Be More ‘Balanced’.”

On grief and climate change

I am the daughter of a father born on the floor of a displaced persons’ camp after a Holocaust that almost wiped out his entire community. I am also the daughter of a mother born in freedom, peace and civility whose privilege informed a deep gratitude and joy for life. The dual gift of these legacies inform me every day. I know that tragedy and trauma are often man-made. That showing up and personal fortitude are often forged in the fire of recovery and renewal. I take these lessons into account when I am wracked with grief about climate change.

Dumbo Feather’s publisher and editor-in-chief,  Berry Liberman.

The arctic ice shelf just cracked off, meaning a trillion ton of ice has now entered our oceans. We are in strange and frightening territory of our own making. The weather is our only compass and it is wild and vengeful in places where peoples are the most vulnerable. Issue 52 of Dumbo Feather, and the content we’ll be sharing online over the next eight weeks, is an attempt to have a purposeful conversation about how we can collectively remain engaged and active in campaigning for the renewal of our eco-systems which are crashing and destabilising all around us.

Read the piece by Dumbo Feather’s publisher and editor-in-chief, Berry Liberman - “On grief and climate change.”

Counterflow: Alternative Facts and Global Warming

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. But no one is entitled to their own facts.

Installed capacity values for 2015 (left column in each pair) and
those used in the Jacobson studies (right column in each pair). The 100%
wind, solar, and hydroelectric studies propose installing technologies
 at a scale equivalent to or greater than the entire capacity of the existing
electricity generation infrastructure. The other category includes coal,
natural gas, and nuclear, all of which are removed by 2050.

IMHO, the facts are that climate change is happening, is man-made, and is a threat to mankind. 

How much of a threat, and how imminent the threat, are things we can talk about.

The big question is what to do about it. There are some who peddle the false hope that we can fix climate change on the cheap.

No. Climate change is not going to be fixed on the cheap. Sugarcoating the requisite effort isn’t doing us any favors.

Which brings us to the widely publicized 2015 claim by four academics from Stanford University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Berkeley that we can power the entire economy at “low cost” with just wind, water and solar (WWS) resources, using electricity and hydrogen as the delivery systems. The study was led by Stanford’s Mark Jacobson, so let’s call them the Jacobson Group.[1]

Read the story by Steve Huntoon on RTO Insider - “Counterflow: Alternative Facts and Global Warming.”

President Trump: climate policy and the environment with Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben on Radio National.

What exactly is Donald Trump's stance on climate change?

Before the 2016 election, the president-elect described man-made climate change as a 'hoax'.

His position appears to have softened, but with a cabinet full of climate change-doubters, environmentalist Bill McKibben is concerned that efforts to combat climate change could be about to take a big step back.

Listen to today’s Radio National interview with Bill McKibben by Hamish Macdonald - “President Trump: climate policy and the environment with Bill McKibben.”