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… I just remember crying about it …

Quote of the Day — 14 February 2011 (Valentine’s Day)

“I remember when I was 7 and my dad showed me the front page article of the Miami Herald about climate change. And it said something about how in 75 years … the world was going to end. Now I’m sure the Miami Herald didn’t print that, but as a 7-year-old, that’s what I understood and I just remember crying about it.”

… “I think it’s important to recognize that you didn’t always have the knowledge in the past generations that we do today … And I like to think that if they did have the knowledge, then maybe they would have made different choices.”

— Kelly Greenman
— “A Climate ‘Policy Wonk’ in the Making
— by Richard Harris
— NPR Morning Edition

www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89567328
www.npr.org

… so gobsmackingly big …

Quote of the Day — 13 February 2011

It turns out, to get on a trajectory to hit 450 ppm, we’re going to need to turn off most of our fossil fuel energy, end deforestation, and build about 11.5 new terawatts of clean energy capacity by 2033 (30 years out from the 2003 baseline). Woo!

That’s a lot of sh*t to build! As I said, it’s “the equivalent of America’s massive industrial build-up for WWII, only across the entire globe, for 40 years straight (at least), against a faceless enemy.”

Of course we have no idea what the actual mix will end up being. There’s no predicting innovation, much less politics. But the one thing we do know is that the task ahead is enormous, so gobsmackingly big that the smart money is almost certainly on failure. If we want a chance at success we’re going to have to rethink a lot of our assumptions about consumption, economic analysis, policy design, and political strategy.

In a situation where doing too little is so likely and doing too much is virtually impossible, we’re going to have to be climate hawks. That means leaning forward, biased ever toward action, choosing opportunism over optimization and the resilient over the efficient. Every second we dither, the climb gets steeper.

— David Roberts
— “The gobsmackingly gargantuan challenge of shifting to clean energy
Grist

www.grist.org/article/2011-02-11-gobsmackingly-gargantuan-challenge-of-shifting-to-clean-energy
www.grist.org

… lake size is an excellent indicator …

Quote of the Day — 10 February 2011

” Lake size is sensitive to both climate change and human activities, and therefore serves as an excellent indicator to assess environmental changes. Using a large volume of various datasets, we provide a first complete picture of changes in China’s lakes between 1960s–1980s and 2005–2006. Dramatic changes are found in both lake number and lake size; of these, 243 lakes vanished mainly in the northern provinces (and autonomous regions) and also in some southern provinces while 60 new lakes appeared mainly on the Tibetan Plateau and neighboring provinces. Limited evidence suggested that these geographically unbalanced changes might be associated primarily with climate change in North China and human activities in South China, yet targeted regional studies are required to confirm this preliminary observation. … ”

— ” Hundreds of lakes dry-up and vanish in China
climatesignals.org, 08 Feb 2011

climatesignals.org/2011/02/hundreds-of-lakes-dry-up-and-vanish-in-china
climatesignals.org

… inevitably other scientists find out …

Quote of the Day — 7 January 2011

” As the climate science continues to strengthen, and as the observational data around the world continue to accumulate, those who deny the reality or severity of human-induced climate change are getting increasingly desperate. As evidence piles up and as our weather worsens, their positions get weaker and weaker and their claims that the climate isn’t changing, or isn’t changing because of human actions get harder to support, their voices get more strident, and their language and vitriol get uglier.

Climate deniers cannot make a case against human-caused climate change without desperately manipulating, misrepresenting, or simply misunderstanding the science. …

…the Heartland Institute tried a trick, called “cherry picking” – where someone carefully selects one piece of data to prove a point while ignoring or hiding all of the other data points that refute it. That’s a bad, dishonest no-no. Scientists destroy their reputations when they do this (since inevitably other scientists find out)… ”

— Peter Gleick
— “Misrepresenting Climate Science: Cherry-Picking Data to Hide the Disappearance of Arctic Ice
The Huffington Post

www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/misrepresenting-climate-s_b_819367.html
www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick
www.huffingtonpost.com

… a geological age of our own making …

Quote of the Day — 31 January 2011

” … Perhaps earth scientists of the future will name this new post-Holocene era for its causative element — for us. We are entering an age that might someday be referred to as, say, the Anthrocene. After all, it is a geological age of our own making. The challenge now is to find a way to act that will make geologists of the future look upon this age as a remarkable time, a time in which a species began to take into account the long-term impact of its actions. The alternative may be to leave a legacy of irresponsibility and neglect of the biosphere that could eventually manifest itself in the fossil record as just one more mass extinction — like the record of bones and footprints left behind by the dinosaurs. * …”

— Andrew Revkin
— Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast, 1992
— “Earth is Us
Dot Earth
New York Times

dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/earth-is-us
dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com

… two minutes closer to midnight …

Quote of the Day — 30 January 2011

” Experts assessing the dangers posed to civilisation have added climate change to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats to humankind.
As a result, the group has moved the minute hand on its famous “Doomsday Clock” two minutes closer to midnight…

… “Whether it’s a threat of the same magnitude or slightly less or greater is beside the point,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a geoscientist from Princeton University, US.

“The important point is that this organisation, which for 60 years has been monitoring and warning us about the nuclear threat, now recognises climate change as a threat that deserves the same level of attention,” he said. …”

— Molly Bentley
Climate resets ‘Doomsday Clock’
BBC News

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6270871.stm
news.bbc.co.uk

… why they politicized it …

Quote of the Day — 29 January 2011

” … The bitter irony is, Republicans — unlike the Innovationeers — understand this perfectly well. They know that if climate change is real and widely understood, the case for substantial government action will be undeniable. That’s why they politicized it in the first place. (If you think this dispute is really about science, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.) Now that they’ve succeeded in making it “divisive,” the Obama administration is running from it, hoping to back their way into ambitious policy with happy talk about innovation.

It’s not going to work. We won’t act with the scope, scale, and speed necessary unless the threat of climate change is widely understood to be real and urgent. Admittedly, nobody yet knows how to make that happen — climate change is a devil of an issue for creatures with our cognitive machinery. It’s going to be a long struggle. But giving up is not the way to win that struggle. …

… it’s vital, for the long game, to keep climate on the table. People take their cues from their leaders. If Obama drops it, it sends a signal to Republicans that they can force him to back down. It sends a signal to Democrats that it’s safe to dodge this fight. It sends a signal to the public that it’s not a real problem.

If you think there’s an existential danger facing the country, you say so. That’s part of what it means to be a leader. ”

— David Roberts
— “For the last time: no, clean energy is not a substitute for climate change
Grist

www.grist.org/article/2011-01-28-clean-energy-not-substitute-for-climate-change
www.grist.org

… any mistake made by climate scientists …

Quote of the Day — 28 January 2011

Self-proclaimed “skeptics” will pounce upon any mistake made by climate scientists with the zeal of sharks smelling blood in the water. Yet mistakes by a fellow skeptic like Dr. Lindzen are passed over in silence, and his erroneous conclusions are promoted and propagated.

Skepticism, in its true sense, means examining all evidence with an equally critical eye. A true skeptic should also look for mistakes made by those on his side; and if he encounters them, he should acknowledge and correct them.

— Dana Nuccitelli
— “A case study in climate science integrity
guardian.co.uk

… call this “Skepticgate” …

Quote of the Day — 27 January 2011

I say it’s time to give the skeptics a taste of their own medicine. Borrowing a term first tweeted by Andy Revkin of the New York Times, let’s officially call this “Skepticgate” – a new synonym for the cynical, profit-motivated efforts of the Kochs and Exxons of the world to keep the public disinformed about the real and present dangers of unabated fossil fuel consumption.

— Kelly Rigg
— “Skepticgate: Revealing Climate Denialists for What They Are
The Huffington Post

www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-rigg/skepticgate-revealing-cli_b_814013.html
www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-rigg
www.huffingtonpost.com

… without a strong advocate at the White House …

Quote of the Day — 25 January 2011

Carol M. Browner, the White House coordinator for energy and climate change policy, will leave the administration shortly, officials confirmed Monday night. Her departure signals at least a temporary slowing of the ambitious environmental goals of President Obama’s first two years in the face of new Republican strength in Congress….

…Ms. Browner is known as a savvy navigator of the bureaucracy and a strong voice for environmental protection in a White House that was focused more on health care and the economy. Her departure leaves the administration’s other major environmental and energy policy makers without a strong advocate at the White House.

But in the face of Republican skepticism about climate change and strong opposition to environmental regulation, the administration will be spending more time defending the modest policy gains of the past two years than advancing new proposals.

Scott Segal, an energy expert at Bracewell & Giuliani, a law and lobbying firm in Washington, said Ms. Browner’s leaving might be a sign that the administration would be more sensitive to the concerns of business.

— John M. Broder
— “Director of Policy on Climate Will Leave, Her Goal Unmet
The New York Times

www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/us/politics/25browner.html
www.nytimes.com