According to broad international agreement, a global warming increase beyond 2°C is unacceptable (1). Because of the physics of the climate system, we must ensure that global emissions of greenhouse gases peak and start to decline rapidly within a decade in order to have a reasonable chance of meeting the 2°C goal (2). Humankind has waffled and delayed for decades; further delay risks serious consequences for people and the ecosystems on which we rely.

Because the potential consequences of climate change are so high, the science community has an obligation to help people, organizations, and governments make informed decisions. Yet existing institutions are not well suited to this task. Therefore, we call for the science community to develop, implement, and sustain an independent initiative with a singular mandate: to actively and effectively share information about climate change risks and potential solutions with the public, particularly decision-makers in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

So begins an important letter in Science (subs. req’d) by Thomas E. Bowman, Edward Maibach, Michael E. Mann, Richard C. J. Somerville, Barry J. Seltser, Baruch Fischhoff, Stephen M. Gardiner, Robert J. Gould, Anthony Leiserowitz and Gary Yohe.

Here’s the rest:

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SciAm “horrified” by “the co-opting of the poll” by users of “the well-known climate denier site, Watts Up With That”

Memo to media, science museums, homo ‘sapiens’: Enough with the online polls!

Just how weak is the case of the anti-science disinformers?  In his written testimony for the recent House hearing on climate science, leading science denier Patrick Michaels of the pro-pollution Cato Institute, devoted two pages to the most unscientific ‘evidence’ possible — an online poll.

Michaels, who recently said Big Oil funds some 40% of his work, based a key part of his testimony on the ‘results’ of an online poll by Scientific American that was gamed by the deniers themselves, as SciAm has documented.

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“They slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night, and they’re experts on climate change.”

Yesterday morning, at a House hearing on climate change, Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) mocked his Republican colleagues for refusing to acknowledge the truth and danger of global warming.  ThinkProgress has the story and video.

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What should I say to a group of people who don’t follow the climate issue closely but are interested in the issue and what they might do?

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China Studying Cap-And-Trade System to Help Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions

China, the world’s biggest polluter, is studying a cap-and-trade system to help cut greenhouse gas emissions, said an official at a state-run research center.

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AFP is the powerful tea party astroturf group that helped sweep a wave of Republican climate deniers into Congress earlier this month, serving the economic interests of AFP’s founder David Koch, the right-wing billionaire pollution scion. Brad Johnson explains how AFP’s President blurted out the truth that their policy director had been attempting to conceal.

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For decades, progressives have worked to cut the cost of clean energy through R&D and deployment programs that pro-pollution, anti-science conservatives have bitterly fought.  This year, conservatives defeated the most promising effort to generate the funds needed to make massive clean energy investments — a federal climate and clean energy jobs bill.

Is there any hope in this new political environment for enacting a clean energy deployment plan that would promote jobs, security, and broad-based economic growth in 2011?  Bracken Hendricks, Lisbeth Kaufman, Ken Berlin, Monty Humble, Reed Hundt, Alex Kragie, and Gerry Waldron offer one up in this CAP cross-post.

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