This is a re-posting from NWF’s blog, Wildlife Promise.
Global warming deniers have been feverishly pushing emails stolen by hackers from the accounts of climate scientists. Their argument? If any climate scientist ever discussed the best way to sort through mountains of climate data, then global warming isn’t happening. If that sounds like a bizarre conspiracy theory with no connection to fact or reality … well, welcome to the world of global warming denial.
There’s only one group of people more upset about the hacked emails than the deniers: The climate science community. The National Wildlife Federation’s Dr. Amanda Staudt just responded to the ginned-up controversy and didn’t mince words:
The latest attack on climate science is simply another attempt to distract from the reality that the world is warming more than ever and the buildup of heat-trapping pollution in our atmosphere is higher than it’s been in 15 million years.
While opponents want to draw attention to decade-old emails, here is what is happening right now to the planet:
- Temperatures this decade have been higher than any other decade on record, and one degree (F) higher than average temperatures in the 20th century.
- Ocean temperatures worldwide this summer were hotter than ever previously recorded.
- Stable sea ice in the Arctic melted to its lowest recorded levels this summer, declining more than 60% since the 1980s and 1990s.
- Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere for 2009 (387 parts per million) are the highest they have been in about 15 million years.
- Globally, 8.7 billion tons of carbon were emitted in 2008 from burning coal, oil and natural gas, a 41% increase from 1990.
Please take a moment to tell your senator that we need clean energy & climate legislation now more than ever.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Bravo!
And here, also, is what is happening right now to the planet:
Each year, the products of a single company, when used, generate over one TRILLION pounds of CO2, according to a fairly straightforward estimate. Indeed, the number is probably much greater than that.
That company? ExxonMobil.
(By the way, they have another one of their PR-vertisements on the FRONT PAGE of The New York Times, again, today, while Andy’s article mentions Dante and so forth … an interesting front page today, I must say.)
Is one TRILLION pounds a lot?
Well, according to the estimate, the amount of CO2 generated via ExxonMobil’s products in a single year weighs more than the entire human species living on Earth today — that’s right: more than all 6.8 billion of us added together.
Heavy!
Be Well,
Jeff
Just wanted to say thank you to Climate Progress for your existence and for the best explanations I have seen regarding hackemail gate.
Unfortunately, this episode has been an opportunity for the usual professional deniers to get an unbelievable amount of free publicity for their absurd claims. For the most part, the media does not have the desire or ability to show how absurd this whole thing is.
One thing I would like to know though. What was the content of the emails that were asked to be deleted? This is the issue that the supporters of AGW interviewed by the media have the most difficulty with. According to Gavin at Realclimate.org, they were never deleted but it still begs the question of what emails we are talking about. Last night, they have the science guy on CNN arguing with I believe McIntire and the science did not do a good job addressing this issue. I think I could have done a better job as a layman.
We all know that none of this changes reality, but unfortunately perception is reality when it comes to the general public’s understanding of these issues. The vast majority do not have the time or the persistence to dig deeply into these issues and understand them.
I get it that people do not want all their emails released to the public or even necessarily their friends. These emails could have been embarrassing while at the same time have nothing to do with covering up or trying to distort scientific data.
Oh btw, one of the emails apparently called McIntire a “moron”. Maybe that is the kind of thing they wanted to suppress.
ARCTIC SEA ICE RAPIDLY DISAPPEARING (From the News Journal, Nov., 29, 2009)
Winnipeg, Manitoba– The permanent Arctic sea ice that is home to the world’s polar bears and usually survives the summer has all but disappeared, a researcher said Friday.
University of Manitoba Arctic researcher David Barber said experts around the world believed the ice was recovering because satellite images showed it expanding, but the thick, multiyear frozen sheets have been replaced by thin ice that cannnot support the weight of a polar bear.
“Polar bears are being restricted to a small fringe of where this multiyear sea ice is. As we went further and further north, we saw less and less polar bears because this ice wasn’t even strong enough for the polar bears to stand on,” said Barber..
He said the Hudson Bay sea ice, which the bears used to hunt the seals they consume to fatten up for the winter, isn’t appearing until weeks later than it used to.
Barber said permanent ice, which is normally up to 30 feet thick, was easily pierced by the research ship.
The team finally reached what it thought was stable ice, only to watch a crack apear just as researchers were preparing to descend onto the floe.
“As I watched, over the course of five minutes, the entire multiyear ice floe broke up into pieces. This floe was 10 miles across,” said Barber, who holds the Canada research chair in Arctic science at the University of Manitoba.
Multiyear sea ice used to cover 90 percent of the Arctic basin, Barber said. It now covers roughly 19 percent.
The findings, to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, shocked experts. Although northern sea ice hit a record low in 2007, researchers believed it was recovering because of what appeared on Satellite images. But the satellites the experts relied on were misleading….