Facing Climate Change Challenges

I am about to show you, on one simple chart, the essence of how giga-liar denialists have lured some of you into buying their toxin. At just a glance, you'll see why they claim "there's been no warming for 17 years."  And when you sane-conservatives out there grasp how it was done, you will spit and swear at the hijackers of your movement.

But first:

Recently observed on the Pacific coast: a spike in methane bubble plumes. Researchers have seen an increase in the release of methane gas, released from frozen methane hydrates deep in the ocean.  The warming ocean is releasing greater quantities of this powerful greenhouse gas. Note: this is the only aspect to climate change that I deeply fear across the near future, because the effects might possibly be runaway and nonlinear. And if they are, there will be no place for denialists to hide.

== Climate Change Challenges ==

Here's the chart that makes utter-clear how deceitful and stunningly evil are Ted Cruz and Rupert Murdoch and every single shill who used the "no warming in the last 17 years" talking point.  

Did none of you ask: "why SEVENTEEN years specifically?"  Of course you didn't. But the explanation for that specificity is easy. Just look at the chart. 

They chose precisely seventeen in order to peg the "before" comparison on 1998, the hottest year in human history....

... that is, till this year.  And yes, El Nino years like 1998 are spikes.  But a sapient person would look at the chart and let its overall trend lines speak...

...then listen to the brilliant men and women who have successfully modeled climate on six Planets. And those other brainiacs who transformed the old 4 hour weather report into a 14 day wonder. They are smarter than you and me and a whole lot more honest than your cavalcade of liars, on Fox. And they all are deeply worried.

Oh I can't let this go. Look at that 1998 peak again and again, knowing that those who deliberately used "seventeen years" as the before marker for their slopes aren't just arguing.  They are knowing liars who should be repudiated as evil men, not worthy of being considered for political power.

== Did a lurid sci fi flick predict? ==

A cold blob in the Atlantic: Oh the world is heating up all right, especially the oceans, exacerbated by an El Nino year. (In fact, by one measure, this wicked El Niño is the strongest ever recorded.) 

And yet there is one glaring – and frightening – exception. In the North Atlantic Ocean south of Greenland and Iceland, the ocean surface has seen very cold temperatures for the past eight months.  If that region sounds familiar, it should be.  That’s where the “gulf stream” or North Atlantic Conveyor current terminates and plunges to the depths, so that more warm water can keep heading north to keep Europe temperate. (Rome is at the same latitude as Chicago.)

In the garish-exaggerating movie The Day After Tomorrow the disaster was based on exactly this climate scenario… that greenhouse warming sends so much melted freshwater from Greenland that it ends the Gulf Stream's salinity-driven conveyor.  In fact, no one expects results that are movie-sudden. “But if the trend continues, there could be many consequences, including rising seas for the U.S. East Coast and, possibly, a difference in temperature overall in the North Atlantic and Europe.”

More? Watch Greenland melt!  Freshwater pouring into the N. Atlantic at prodigious rates that are actually changing salinity in the North Atlantic, potentially shutting down the Atlantic Conveyor and putting Europe into an Ice Age.  While sea levels rise everywhere. Right. Ignore the folks who know stuff.

(Oh, but again, it could be movie-sudden, if the methane in hydrate ices starts flooding upward, in a torrent of greenhouse bubbles.  And you'd willingly risk that?)

Go look at the map in this article. Those who would dismiss this as “just coincidence” are the same crazy delusionists who deny there’s any meaning in the steady    or the fact that all the humans who can parse the Navier Stokes Equations and make fine gas-vapor predictive models (can you?) agree that we’re endangering our grandchildren and ought to start behaving like adults, gifted with reason and foresight.

== And so many pieces, coming together ==

Among the dozens of consequences that our loony neighbors and crazy uncles desperately ignore?  Revivied ancient diseases. Scientists who discovered a prehistoric virus called Mollivirus sibericum in the Siberian permafrost plan to give the virus its first wakeup call since the last Ice Age (after first verifying that it can't harm humans and animals, thankfully). It's hoped the study could shed insight into ancient dormant viruses that could, it's feared, get another chance at spreading as permafrost retreats due to climate change. 

Alaska’s huge wildfires not only are correlated with climate change, and help to drive it.  They may also presage release of permafrost gases that make things much, much worse.... as ocean acidification may bring us to a tipping point, releasing methane-hydrate ices. The U.S. Navy is scurrying to prep for an ice-free Arctic.  The American West is baking. 

Scientists say California, in its third year of severe drought, hasn’t been this dry in 500 years. And August smashes global heat records as a giant El Nino builds in the Pacific. As oceans warm, some marine species, such as lobsters, are pushing their boundaries poleward. 

Even if nations stick to the pledges they've already made to battle climate change by cutting emissions, the earth would still heat up by more than 6 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, according to new climate models.

Should all of this make any sane-conservative look up? There are such beings, even today!  They mostly dwell, nowadays, in the US military, where officers cannot afford delusion. A conservative temperament cannot trump science, not when you have a nation and civilization to defend. And so, the US Navy is desperately planning to deal with 12 new Russian bases rimming the often ice-free Arctic, as Chinese fleets have started patrols... 

== And the capper that always sends them fleeing ==

These days I always finish my climate jeremiads with a simple chant: 

Ocean acidification,  ocean acidification,  ocean acidification,  ocean acidification,  ocean acidification...

It is blatantly happening, accelerating and can only conceivably be caused by human generated CO2. And not one denialist-cultist I have met has ever been able to answer. Fox supplies no nostrums or counter-incantations, because none are possible. 

Instead, denialists always, always change the subject, pointing suddenly offstage shouting "squirrel!" Then running away, with hands over ears shouting "scientists are commies!"

Try it on your crazy uncle.

== And finally... ==

Let me finish with something positive... indeed, something that moved me close to tears.

Three elephant bulls’ lives were saved when, after they were shot with poisoned arrows, they made their way to a place they remembered could help them: the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (DSWT).  Even more interesting, while the one elephant who led the others to DSWT had never been a resident at the sanctuary, he knew other elephants who had. Suggesting real communication and memory.

Amazing in so many ways. But we've seen it at sea, too, where whales will flee whaling ships but approach other types of vessels, in hope that kindly humans will cut away tangled fishing nets.  

It suggests that many creatures in nature see us for what we are... sometimes killers! But also sometimes helpers. Always powerful! But maybe -- as I depict happening in EARTH and in the Uplift Series -- capable of choosing to be powerful for good.

For now, Earth has only one protector, who might save her from savagely rapacious and shortsighted humanity.  That savior will be calmly logical and far-seeing, courageously science- (and science fiction)-loving humanity.

Animals believe in our potential.  Shouldn't we?

                                      

Looking ahead...Signs of change

The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at UCSD held "The Physics of Free Will" a panel discussion on August 6^th. Astrophysicists Brian Keating, Andrew Friedman and David Brin discussed what modern physics – including “entanglement” and the time-history of inflation and the Big Bang -- has to say about the concept of free will, including perspectives from the foundations of quantum mechanics, cosmology, and speculations about the role of of conscious observers in the cosmos.  Now the whole event is available on YouTube!

Stay tuned for a smorgasbord of cool items. But first...

Is Science Broken? No. But some science journalists are deeply dishonest

“Is Science Broken?” Certainly there are those who proclaim that from the rooftops, seizing on every anecdote of misbehavior by individual researchers as evidence that science itself cannot be trusted to keep its own house. Elsewhere, we discuss the varied reasons for a “war on science.” But certainly some problems originate within. Over at Five-Thirty-eight, a recent article by Christie Aschwanden describes why some of the very same statistical methods that were developed to separate cause-effect from mere coincidence make it very hard to prove particular conclusions – especially in social science. The essay is worthwhile and offers up some cool interactive demos of statistical tradeoffs… 

… and yet, the author unwittingly exemplifies her own complaint, to a stunning degree, in her very first example, an interactive that purportedly shows how the same data can be manipulated to show either democrats or republicans are better for the economy. Either or neither.  How interesting that she would have chosen that as her first case.  And how convenient, since that lesson is the one readers will take away.

In this case, the tendentious effect is easily exposed, as the “party effects on the economy” graphic only lets you compare raw, yearly figures for GDP or employment or inflation, when these all react sluggishly to changes in policy, especially if it takes six years to drag the nation out of a pit the previous administration created. It is the direction and rate of change of those metrics that actually reflect outcomes from policy moves. For example, if one party takes inherited surpluses and leaves the nation diving into steepening deficits, and the next one starts to pull us out of the dive, it is idiotic or else deeply dishonest to make Total Current Debt the metric.

Even more telling is the second derivative of economic factors like public debt. The rate of rate of change has much more immediate effects, far more blatantly attributable to a party’s policies during its span in power… as I show here. And when you use such metrics all ambiguity vanishes. One party is responsible and effective while the other is absolutely and always devastatingly harmful.  

Let’s give the author the benefit of the doubt.  Perhaps she is simply finger-wagging scientists, while falling for mistakes they’d catch as freshmen.  

== Looking ahead -- signs of change ==

See this: 13 ways that Science Fiction's Vision of the Future is Closer than You Think -- with innovations in space habitation, teleportation, touch screens, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, autonomous cars... and more!

The next candidate for “flying car”? The Terrafugia TF-X is – or maybe will be -- capable of vertical take-off, thus negating the need for a runway. Wings furled, it’ll squeeze into a standard single garage, thus negating the need for a hanger. Riiiiight. 

While the Tricorder X Prize tools along toward creating an inexpensive – Doctor (McCoy) in a Box… the Chinese firm Baidu hopes to provide a service letting folks anywhere interact with AI and assess 520 different diseases, representing upwards of 90 percent of the most common medical problems nationwide. 

Take a look at: Twenty-five fascinating mega projects taking place across the globe, including the Panama Canal expansion, the Three Gorges Dam, the underwater Marmaray Tunnel in Turkey, Jubail Industrial City in Saudi Arabia, Liuchonghe Bridge in China and other bold projects!

Six people shut themselves inside a dome in Hawaii and plan to stay for a year. It's a mission funded by NASA to explore what it's like to send manned missions into deep space.

Artificial photosynthesis could power homes in a few years, mimicking plant-based photosynthesis by using solar energy to convert water into hydrogen. If cheap nickel catalysts can be used… and 22% efficiency holds up… then toss it onto the pile of potential game-changers. Ah, but that pile had better be producing, big-time, soon. 

Because. The latest report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has determined that globally, July was the hottest month since record keeping began in 1880. And ocean acidity -- which CAN only have one cause -- is rising.  See the shrinking of Arctic ice through years of National Geographic maps. The Himalayan glaciers that slake the thirst of a third of the world’s population are rapidly retreating. And the denialist cult keeps getting more frantic.

Just a few years ago, one of the cult incantations was that solar and sustainables were “pipe dreams.” Now? The world now gets over 1% of its electricity from solar power! Currently, global solar capacity is 178 gigawatts Crossing the Threshold The world now gets over 1% of its electricity from solar power. Currently, global solar capacity is 178 gigawatts. The U.S. now ranks second worldwide in wind power…

One of the major talking points of opponents of sustainable energy is that if you include fixed manufacturing costs, solar and wind are not competitive with fossil fuels. These opponents used this rhetoric to stymie investments in sustainables R&D during the first decade of this century.  But rates of efficiency have been skyrocketing and costs plummeting.  One of the big solar module manufacturers, Trina Solar, said costs had fallen 19 per cent in the past year alone(!), and would continue to fall by at least 5 per cent to 6 per cent a year in coming years as efficiencies were improved.  This study shows that renewables turn out already to be cheaper than fossil fuels.

== and... ==

Researchers from MIT revealed they've produced a "better, cheaper, more user-friendly" printer that can print using 10 different materials at the same time. "Multifab" self corrects by watching its own actions. They claim it can scan case around an iPhone you place in the printer

Building materials from CO2? 

We keep reporting “possible game changing” technological breakthroughs. This one sounds a bit less plausible than some.  Yet potentially cool. Imagine that the trend toward using carbon fiber as a construction material – from planes and ships to cars and even buildings – creating a huge demand for the stuff.  Now envision that we get the carbon feedstock from Carbon Dioxide taken out of the air.  Hmm, well breaking oxygen bonds takes real energy. And a team at MIT thinks they have the problem licked, using lithium. Their novel electrochemical process sequesters carbon in the form of a versatile building material. 

Alas, even if this works, it would only put a dent in atmospheric CO2, as shown in this appraisal, which shows “that capping global warming at 2 degrees Celsius requires removing 1.8 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere yearly from now until 2100—a tall order that exceeds the capabilities of current technology.” 

  

Boston Dynamics is at it again, creating robots that walk with creepy-amazing skill through natural obstacle courses… only this time it’s a biped!  

Batteries for a new age? MIT and Samsung researchers have developed a new approach to achieving long life and a 20 to 30 percent improvement in power density (the amount of power stored in a given space) in rechargeable batteries — using a solid electrolyte, rather than the liquid used in today’s most common rechargeables. The new materials could also greatly improve safety and last through “hundreds of thousands of cycles.”  

Researchers at CERN find that within about one part per million, antimatter and matter behave in the same way with respect to gravity. And have the same charge-to-mass ratios. Okay, check that off my list of worries.

Finally...a recent typhoon hit Taiwan with winds that lifted a 747 off the ground. 

Moving the Goalposts: Part II

Last time, I laid down seven fundamental points that you folks should arm yourselves with, and then sally forth to help save your planet. Rhetorical weapons that are far more confrontational and in-yer-face than the denialist cult is used to hearing from us science-loving egghead types.

And that's fine.  They are waging war against not only science, but our children's future. They think enlightenment types are wimps, with our "facts" and our "evidence" and "reason."

It's time, indeed, to prove that we aren't wimps, but just slow to anger. As our side has been slow to anger in every other phase of the American Civil War.  Slow, but ponderously determined, once roused.

And now... let's reiterate and expand upon the biggest and most important of the seven points. The paramount proof of insanity. Get up to them, nose-to-nose, and ask:

         WHY WON’T YOU NEGOTIATE? 

To you and your fellow denialist cultists, it is all-or-nothing!  Either you bravely hold the line and allow zero measures, even teensy ones, to increase energy efficiency… or else those dang smartypants libruls and sciencey types will shut down every power plant and deliberately ruin the economy, forcing us all to shiver in the dark and starve!   

Um.  Find me the librul or scientist who wants any of that? One. Just one. Even one? If you have spouted that poison, could you at least cite a single actual example?

Okay. I admit. There are a few crazy lefties who might push for more puritan measures than the average citizen or scientist would accept. But who is crazier? Them? Or guys like you who are comfy portraying all blue types and scientists as raving PETA-Greepeace-starve-in-darkness-EarthFirsters?

== TWODA ==

I’ve long spoken of Things We Ought to be Doing Anyway — measures that we could be negotiating, that will do us all good, even if 99% of scientists prove to be wrong and cretins like James Imhof prove to be right. 

Win-win investments in energy efficiency would save consumers billions, even if climate change is a ruse!  Measures that would also help a lot, if it isn’t.  

One example?  The new CAFE auto mileage standards that a briefly-democratic Congress passed in 2009, after 26 years of GOP delays, has resulted in far better cars, many billions more in consumers’ pockets, and healthy auto companies. Oh, and countless fewer barrels of oil sent up as smoke.

But you won’t think about TWODA.  You refuse to sit down and negotiate, because negotiation itself is declared to be a vile sin, by your cult. (I do not exaggerate: look up Tom DeLay and his GOP-must-never-negotiate rule. Newt Gingrich saw his political career destroyed because he dared to negotiate with Bill Clinton, in the miracle year, 1995.)

Let me make that point double-underlined for emphasis. You… and I mean you members of the denialist-ailesheimers cult… refuse to put anything on the table, not even capitalist-friendly measures that would promote energy efficiency and lower emissions through market forces, in ways that do no harm to the economy and that would be win-wins for all…

… well, they would be win-wins for all except just one group of folks. 
    Your masters. The coal barons and petro-sheiks who do not want efficiency or lower-emission energy -- for obvious reasons.  They are the only folks who would not benefit from such a win-win… and they just happen to co-own the very same “think tanks” and advertising agencies and cable propaganda outfits that furnish your daily fix of science-hating outrage.

Anyone with two neurons left to use in independent thought would look at that fact and go “Huh! That IS rather suspicious! The only beneficiaries of Doing Nothing and Denialist Delay just happen to be the guys feeding me the propaganda I suckle every day.”

But you won’t do that. Nor even glancingly consider the thought that maybe… just maybe… you have been the one who’s led astray.

== A perfect example ==

Ah... Keystone XL.  The Great Cause of Today's Right!  The one and only positive and assertive item on the Republican agenda.  Let me reiterate, it is the only positive thing on the GOP wish list. (Infrastructure repair? Putting half a million US men and women to work fixing failing bridges that will have to be repaired anyway? Absolutely not! That would make the economy look good under a democrat!)

Ah, but what is the real motive for Keystone XL?  To feed more oil into a glutted US market? Nope. Now, pay close attention --

Canadian shale oil already has plenty of pipelines to US refineries. There are seven already.  Seven.

The sole purpose of Keystone XL is to take the very worst type of nasty shale sludge-oil right over our most precious aquifer, then bypass our refineries, taking the stuff to gulf ports so that Canadian petro moguls can sell it to China. We will get not one drop, not a cent, and very few jobs. So... um.... What possible incentive do we have to do this? That is, other than that those petro moguls own Congress?

It's like asking questions about "climate grants" or George Soros toppling foreign governments. (See part one.) The worst thing about Keystone XL is how incurious are the GOP ground troops, who will nod at any mantra spun out by the puppeteers. 

Hey, go ahead and be conservative!  We need conservatives!  But lobotomization? Why would you put up with what's been done to you?

== The Keystone Irony ==

The final thought about Keystone.  Congressional Dems have made it clear, repeatedly. Keystone is NOT on our top priority list." In other words... although we hate it and think it's stupid and corrupt and dangerous, there are some ways that we can nvision stepping aside and letting it happen. If good safeguards are in place. And, above all, if you offer something, in return.

Pause and consider how far politics have fallen, that even the possibility of getting this pipeline -- again, the only positive-assertive thing on the Republican agenda -- by negotiation, compromise and horsetrading, absolutely never occurs to them. They don't even bring it up. The thought is alien.

And that is why I say politics -- the art of negotiating our way into the future as adults -- is dead in the U.S., as it is always killed, during each phase of our civil war.  And it is the deliberate assassination of politics that is the true treason of the re-ignited Confederacy.  And the reason Goldwater and buckley are spinning in their graves.

== Assigning blame? ==

Why has so much money and clever-cynical manipulation kept denialism active?  Remember those "threatened assets" in coal and oil that the Bank of England report called doomed?

The Kochs and their royal petro-sheik partners have to play out the clock, in order to unload those assets favorably. You'll know when they have finally succeeded in finding Greater Fools to buy their mines and oil wells etc., when suddenly, Fox pundits proclaim: "who, me?  I never denied human caused climate change! I was only keeping them durn' scientists honest!"

You denialists? That's what you'll claim, too. Just as you now claim you always knew tobacco was bad! And you never supported the insane Drug War. Only, this time it won't work.  

We'll remember. Because the tort lawsuits for this one will make the Big Tobacco judgements look like nothing.  And half a billion refugees will take their lawsuits waaaaay down the blame ladder. Below Rupert Murdoch (who will wind up pumping gas at a Shell station) and below James Imhofe and below Sean Hannity...


...all the way to you. And when that day comes, don't look at us neighbors to stand by you. We who tried for decades to wake you up. Those climate refugees will get your house.  And rightfully so.

== And finally... when is religion relevant in politics? ==

... let's turn to the dominionists who make up a majority of the prospective Republican candidates for presidency, in 2016. (See their stances on climate change.)  May I offer a thought?

Now, normally, our value system proclaims that a person's private religious beliefs should not be politically pertinent.  But there comes a point when that reflex is absurd, even stupid. And this is one area where liberals are the ones who are dead-asleep. So let's make the wake-up call explicit.

Anyone who openly admits that they pray for the Book of Revelation scenario to come true soon, is explicitly stating they want 90% of Americans to die in horrid agony, then be consigned to perpetual damnation-torment...

...followed by the permanent end of all democracy and human ambition, and abolishment of the United States of America. 

Those things are utterly explicit consequences of the events that such people openly proclaim praying for, and no softening or denial is even remotely possible.

 At which point we have to admit that religious beliefs become relevant, especially when such a candidate is asking to be given a button for nuclear weapons.

Moving the Goalposts -- Refusal to Negotiate

Impoverishment?  The latest denialist buzzword for refusal to negotiate

The key trait - if you want a job at Heritage or Fox or one of the outfits stoking the New American Civil War - is agility. The incantations that keep GOP ground troops fiercely loyal must be constantly refreshed. It's a lot like the tactics used by the brilliant confederate cavalry general Nathan Bedford Forrest, or Persian horse archers who harried the Roman legions of Crassus. Keep changing direction! Never let your lumbering foe grapple with you, bringing to bear his devastating advantage in artillery -- called "facts."

Elsewhere we've seen how the climate denialist movement has dodged and weaved, with roots in the same advertising firms that declared: "tobacco is good for you" and "cars don't cause smog," and "what Love Canal?"

When it came to global warming, we first saw: "You scientists were predicting an Ice Age in the 1970s!" (A complete lie. There was one paper; the actual consensus at the time was seen in the flick Soylent Green, already deep concern about warming.)

What was the next incantation? It went -- "What warming? Glaciers are growing!"

This fell apart when clear satellite images were augmented by the stunningly beautiful and frightening film, Chasing Ice. And if you have not seen it yet, don't you dare call yourself an open-minded citizen.  I am serious. You are a dogmatic fool, if you cannot bring yourself to spend a dollar and 80 minutes seeing what's actually going on... and how Heritage and Fox lied to you.

Oh, but did I mention agility? As those smartypants science lovers ponderously brought facts to bear, the confederate cavalry did a sudden swerve to: "Of course it's getting warmer! Climate is always changing...naturally! But there's no evidence that humans are causing it."

This time, the sciencey types were quicker... as they got better in earlier phases of the Civil War. Charts of the extremely mild and stable Holocene Era, in which humanity was able to build civilization in a very calm and mild period... have been devastating the "it's always changing" hypnosis chant.  Anyway, if climate is "changing" away from Holocene Era stability, then it's time to take things really seriously, take reasonable precautions, maybe get ready.  Possibly even follow expert advice.

One might imagine this would corner General Forrest, at last. Oh, but never underestimate the agility of the panderers and pushers of Ailes-heimers disease.

== Moving the goal posts ==

There is nothing lower than a cheater... except a cheater who tries to pretend he never cheated.  The process I described, above, is called "moving the goal posts." And many of you out there have participated in this calumny. 

In fairness, it also happens all the time on the far left! Take the recent indignation over President Obama's "glacial" one-year transition toward rescinding the policy known as "don't ask, don't tell."  Those who decried that U.S. military policy toward gay service members were right to call the policy obsolete.  These goal posts needed moving! 

Still... does progress demand amnesia? That these very same activists  wanted and praised "don't ask, don't tell," as a huge reform over the discrimination that came before? Let me reiterate: "You adored "Don't ask, Don't tell," back in the 1990s.  Sure, push forward, but must you be so grouchy and bereft of memory or perspective?

This sort of thing happens all the time, on the left. Only with this difference. That shifting immediate goals can often be part and parcel of making necessary progress. It is the churlish refusal to admit that there's been progress, that makes this dishonest and a bit of a cheat.

Goal-moving cheaters on the right have no such excuse. For the Fox-crowd, it is simply a way to shift to the next propaganda lie, as soon as the last one proves untenable. Moreover, if you do this, it proves you are not a climate "skeptic," because genuine Skeptics ask questions with a receptiveness to getting actual answers.

They set a standard by which they would be willing to change their minds. Want an example? Richard Muller of UC Berkeley was a climate change gadfly for years, and a hero to denialists... until the mound of accumulating evidence rose to a level where he announced "all right, I am satisfied. Human activity is changing the climate and we need to adjust policies to mitigate the harm." 

At which point folks at Heritage and Fox who had been lionizing Muller abruptly denounced him as a member of the lemming-herd, "grant hugging" conspiracy of pointy-headed science conformist drones.*

== A huge, glaring example ==

For years, politicians wanting to block legislation on climate change have bolstered their arguments by pointing to the work of a handful of scientists who claim that greenhouse gases pose little risk to humanity. Faux “academic” institutions like Heritage and AEI have put forward offers of major grant money (originating with the Kochs and others) for eminent scientists to defect and become denialist shills. Very few have accepted, but here is one example.

“Documents show Wei-Hock Soon, a scientist who attributes global warming largely to variations in the sun’s energy, has accepted more than $1.2 million from the fossil-fuel industry but failed to disclose that in most of his scientific papers. He has often appeared on conservative news programs, testified before Congress and in state capitals.”

“Historians and sociologists of science say that since the tobacco wars of the 1960s, corporations trying to block legislation that hurts their interests have employed a strategy of creating the appearance of scientific doubt, usually with the help of ostensibly independent researchers who accept industry funding.”

Oh, be proud.

== The goal posts move again! ==

So what's the latest incantation? The new climate-denialist incantation making the rounds is "impoverishment." And it goes to the heart of the American red-blue divide.

Even if we suppose that the scientists and the 99% of folks who actually know stuff turn out to be right -- that polluting human industry is rapidly changing the climate we all rely upon -- we should still do absolutely nothing about it!

Why? 

Because the only option being offered by the smartypants types is to forsake all power, all industry, trash our standard of living, and thereafter sit and shiver in the dark...

...until the final days of Armageddon end it all, so why suffer, when it's all gonna get used up, anyway?

Yep, that's what we want -- impoverishment. 

Amid the fastest rising prosperity the world has ever seen, with ever-greater fractions of the world's children going to school and coming home to electric lights, a fridge and sanitation, we "lib'ruls and libertarians" want to end all that progress and instead make everyone squat in chill-dimness.

Uh-huh. Riiiiight.

In fact, there are maybe a few thousand frenzied Earth-Firster types who want exactly that.  Dismal, fanatical cretins who remind us that the left contains some loonies, too. A ratio and a level of craziness almost one percent of what we see on today's mad right. (Yes, that numerous and that crazy!)

You conservatives out there -- (and I know there are many of you in my community, who are wise enough to come here now and then, despite the pain) -- please dig this now, carefully. And I look you in the eye as I tell you the bald truth...

... that when you claim us blue-sciencey types want "impoverishment" you are not only spreading an outright lie. You also thus make clear that you know no scientists.  Most of us, in fact, quite like modern comforts. Heck we invented most of the ones you like best.

In fact, almost no one is asking for "impoverishment" or to "shiver in the dark." That incantation is an excuse for what the Kochs and Saudis and carbon barons really want, which is utter refusal to negotiate.

== The absolute crux matter in climate change ==

I lay it on the line. This is not about whether or not there's warming.  This isn't even about whether or not humans are causing some, or all of the change in Earth's climate. Those are all distractions. 

The matter at stake here is purely and absolutely this --

--  refusal to even discuss practical, interim, moderate measures that we might take, just in case the warnings prove correct.

Think about it. If you received a warning about any other danger -- from lung cancer to an approaching asteroid -- you would take at least some reasonable, modest precautions early, just in case the worried experts turn out to be right. Even while seeking a second, third, fifth, hundredth opinion, you would heed advice and do something. You might cut down your smoking, or have NASA send out some investigating probes. You would at least support taking further tests and widening their scope.

But that is diametrically opposite to what's happened re: climate change. While demeaning science and moving goal posts, the right's adamant position has been to never put anything on the table. No increases in climate research. (Funds were slashed under the Bushes, satellites cancelled and NASA forbidden to look Earthward.)  No investments in energy efficiency.

Let's make this perfectly clear. Instead of draconian "impoverishment," most of what we need to do falls into the category of TWODA - or Things We Ought to be Doing Anyway... efficiency measures that would help us all, by saving billions off our energy bills even if it turns out that all the smart people are wrong about climate change.

Now ask yourselves this. Who, in their right minds, would oppose TWODA?

Only one group of individuals on this planet are benefiting from the relentless delaying tactics. From a propaganda campaign to rile up millions of Americans -- and Australians and Canadians -- to oppose even a hint of negotiation over moderate, just-in-case precautions that would also lower all our energy bills. Care to guess who those people are?

Why the very same carbon barons who own Heritage and AEI, who own Fox, and who get rich by delaying energy efficiency and tapping into your wallet, every single day.

=========

Addendum: 

*I love the "grant-hugging" bit! Have you ever seen Heritage or Fox back up this incantation-assertion - as journalists do - by listing the "climate change grants" that are supposedly bribing thousands of the smartest folks on the planet into conforming with a lib'rul party line?

Hint, no such list is possible, Indeed, many of the finest experts need no such piddling, five-figure "climate grants." They are already hugely well-funded, doing weather analysis and billion dollar, ten day forecasts that insurance, agriculture and other industries pay vast sums for. Oh, another funny thing; as we just saw in the case of Wei-Hock Soon, Heritage and AEI offer major grant bribes for any prominent scientist to come over and say whatever the Kochs and Saudis want them to say. Only a few, second rate takers, so far. So much for "Grant-hugging."

I reiterate, the folks who are dissed by folks as being clueless are the very same geniuses who can parse the Navier-Stokes equations and create brilliant cellular gas-vapor models, that transformed the old 4 hour joke of a "weather report" into today's ten-day miracle forecast..... can you do that?)

I know those folks. Plus others who have successfully modeled the climates of six planets!  They are smarter people than me and smarter than you too. 

Signs of change in the air

Will the consequences of human-generated climate change be worse than expected?  That is the dire forecast according to an article, Why Global Warming Will be Far Worse, Far Sooner, than Forecasts Predict, covering several ways that the IPCC reports have been -- if anything -- too conservative by far.  

Interestingly, this insight is being circulated by 
many of the folks whom I call "awakened conservatives" (ACs), who oppose the recent plunge of the Republican Party into bottomless hatred of science. (As evidenced by the ongoing howler-antics of all GOP members of the U.S. House Science Committee, and by their recent blocking of the creation of a harmless-inspiring-unpaid post of "U.S. Science Laureate." Said one of them - “It would give scientists an opportunity to pontificate, and we’re opposed to it.” Yes, he actually said that.)

This should be a matter for internal struggle and redemption within conservatism, whose principles ought to be in no way compatible with a War on Science. Lifelong conservatives such as Gregory Benford and Jerry Pournelle fear that conservatism in general will suffer an irrecoverable blow to its reputation, if 99% of scientists and nearly all the evidence prove to be right and civilization starts suffering from devastating climate shifts.  If Rupert Murdoch's hidden purpose had been to undermine a sound, fiscally prudent conservatism, by associating with with anti-science mania, he could not have done a better job.

== Science forges on ==

Changes on a larger scale....The interstellar winds streaming through our solar system have switched directions over the last forty years, flowing from a different direction than previously observed. This may give astronomers insight into the dynamics and structure of the galaxy and interstellar clouds.

This year's solar maximum is shaping up to be the weakest in 100 years and the next one could be even more quiescent.  "It's the smallest maximum we've seen in the Space Age." About every 11 years, the sun goes through a cycle defined by an increasing and then decreasing number of sunspots. Solar Cycle 24 has been underway since 2011 and its peak was expected in 2013, but there have been fewer sunspots observed this year compared with the maximums of the last several cycles. A small Cycle 24 also fits in with a 100-year pattern of building and waning solar cycles. Scientists don't know exactly what causes this trend, but there were weak solar cycles in the beginning of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Physicists to test if universe is a computer simulation. Are there signatures that we could detect?

So cool. JPL aimed the Curiosity rover's MAST camera at the sun just in time to catch the moon Phobos performing an annular solar eclipse. (The only kind on Mars; but still it's terrific.)

NuSTAR, NASA's black hole hunter, catches its first ten supermassive black holes.

==Uplift and Evolutionary Changes==

Did long lives -- and the advent of grandparents  --  make humans human? An article in Slate takes a look at the stunning changes that occurred in the Upper Paleolithic 30,000 years ago, when a significant fraction of humans began living past thirty years. A revolution that (by the way) is discussed in Existence.

Animals have to be really smart to survive in the rapidly changing world humans have wrought upon them. And in fact, a new study from the University of Minnesota found, some species appear to be evolving bigger brains to keep up.  University of Minnesota biologist, Emilie C. Snell-Rood, offers evidence suggesting that humans may indeed be driving evolution. As we alter the places where animals live, we may be fueling the evolution of larger animal brains.  They predicted - and found -- that urban populations would show greater cranial capacity than rural populations -- and that cranial capacity would increase over time in urban populations.

Related to my recent scientific articles in the volume PATHOLOGICAL ALTRUISM… A Brazilian stroke victim can't stop helping others after developing pathological generosity. Related to my short story, The Giving Plague (free on Kindle).

A comprehensive compendium lists mutational processes that drive tumor development in 30 of the most common cancer types.

A major cause of sickness among people already hospitalized? Malnutrition! Giving nutritional supplements was shown to decrease hospitalization length by 21%. A simple procedure could save billions of lives, reports Kurzweil's Accelerating Intelligence.

Animals with GEARS!  I'm getting lots of emails comparing this to my g'Kek creatures in BRIGHTNESS REEF. But of course Keith Laumer in RETIEF'S WAR showed us a world where most life used wheels and gears but in nature such things are very rare above bacteria. But this little critter has a cool partial gear arrangement!

==Miscellaneous==

Mass hysteria  is blamed for the symptoms shared by teenage girls that helped stoke the Salem Witch Trials.  In fact, it happens more often than you might think. An article in The Atlantic, What Witchcraft is Facebook? suggests there are signs that social media can make these events worse.

Adam Spencer on Why I Fell in Love with Monster Primes: an inspiring TED talk by a handsome fellow who has an enthralling riff on BIG prime numbers.

The poetry of James Clerk Maxwell (really!)  

And finally, Japanese ingenuity changes plastic into oil.  This video is in Japanese with subtitles.  I could use more facts and details. I would wager that the process is more difficult than he makes it out to be… but still. Watch and be inspired to help make it so.