James Powell, Executive Director, National Physical Science Consortium, has produced an excellent YouTube video summarizing the evidence for anthropogenic global warming
Powell is a former college and museum president. “President Reagan and later, President George H. W. Bush, both appointed Powell to the National Science Board, where he served for 12 years.”
Great for sending to any septics you may know:
Related Posts:
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Very nice. He just needs a good music track in the background.
That should be “skeptics,” not “septics.” But I know where you’re coming from.
[JR: Nah....]
Hey Joe, a bit OT but Peter Sinclair has some new Crock of the Week videos up, just in case you didn’t know yet.
[JR: They are coming!]
I kind of like the “septics” typo. It’s apt. Anyone who still doubts the evidence has sh** for brains.
I definitely know a few good festering, gangrenous septic deniers I can send this link to. :-)
Watching South America and Russia this week , I am again reminded of this :
” While fluctuations take longer in these systems, they often are greater in magnitude. That is, under normal circumstances fluctuations tend to be short and small. When a drastic transition approaches, conditions fluctuate between greater extremes, and the fluctuations take longer to pass. ”
http://www.livescience.com/environment/090902-change-signals.html
I’d like to translate that into Spanish. Powell’s blog does not include contact info to get the raw files (so I can fix the captions). Powell, please contact me. My email is my first dot last name, on google (that is, gmail).
Jameson Quinn:
Dr. Powell is currently Executive Director of the National Physical Science Consortium. Here’s their contact page:
http://www.npsc.org/ContactNPSC/contactnpsc.html
Glacier Once Stuck to Sea Floor, Breaks Loose
The reason Columbia Glacier began floating may have been because it was receding so fast that its extension into the water began floating before it was able to break off into an iceberg, the study suggests.
http://www.livescience.com/environment/glacier-once-stuck-to-sea-floor-breaks-loose-100716.html
A nice compilation of evidence that Earth is, indeed, warming as one would expect in an Interglacial. The evidence of human causation is somehow missing, however. Or is the showing of increasing concentration of carbon dioxide supposed to encourage the linkage through the processes of pro hoc ergo propter hoc?
I’m pretty sure Mr. Quinn will make an excellent translation so that Spanish speakers will get the message. The big question is whether anyone can translate this into Stupid so that speakers of that language will get it..
Schadow: I think maybe you missed the bit where he points out that increasing global warming gases causes global warming. Duh.
Well done
explains the basics about global warming in simple terms to those who do not understand the truth.
Schadow: You can’t prove a negative. Perhaps aliens from Venus are preventing greenhouse gasses from warming the earth, and aliens from Mars are shooting a heat ray at the earth to counteract the Venusian cooling. But as the video explains, to replace the anthropogenic theory, that requires two unknowns. You need one explanation for why greenhouse gasses are not warming the planet as predicted, and another for why the planet is still warming.
It’s raining and the grass is wet. I can’t “prove” that there’s not an invisible roof and invisible sprinklers. But…
Why are u so angry? U really like to smash us and think we are a bunch of like minded robots. We certainly have the right to disagree, but I am amaxed at your anger and being upset by the zinger after the sentence about Regan and Bush.
We need a fair, sensible, common sense approach to an energy bill. No kickbacks, no lobbying and no pork.
Everyone working together needs to come to a common ground on the global warming issues and work together to accomplish what needs to be done.
Currently, A simple sentence describes your delima:
“Garbage In, Garbage Out”
Is Youtube now a denier site, or are they taking money from denier groups to feature their videos? I went to view the video directly on YouTube, because none of my Republican friends will read a link from Climate Progress. Guess what the first four “related videos” are on YouTube?
“Lord Monckton Questions Global Warming Science”
“Climategate: the Fraud of ‘Global Warming’ and ‘Climate Change’” by Marc Morano
“Global Warming: Where is the Evidence?” with John Christy
“Evidence CO2 does not cause dangerous Global warming”
No, I don’t think I’ll be sending along that link.
I would like to find a similar video by a religious leader to send to my evangelical friends.
Bill (“a similar video by a religious leader…”), it’s not a video, but:
http://bit.ly/hayhoeslides are the slides from Katharine Hayhoe’s presentation.
(her husband’s a pastor, and they co-authored the book A Climate For Change)
especially
http://temagami.tosm.ttu.edu/khayhoe/climate_slides/images/Slide50.jpg
Bill Waterhouse @ 17.
There are several places to check for evangelicals who believe that global warming is manmade and that God demands we act to prevent suffering.
J. Matthew Sleeth is good and I seem to recall some video savvy. (I believe he’s an emergency room doc and evangelical leader so he knows how to bridge science and faith. His messaging skills far exceed those of most “liberals” (sigh) and scientists (double sigh), Stephen Schneider and a few others excepted.
The Evangelical Climate Initiative should have something as well. They’re at odds with the old guard – Dobson types – so will be an alternative voice for evangelical (conservative, I assume) Christians.
My own experience is that most Christians are not as conservative as their power hungry leaders. There are many who parrot the talking points until they’re in a situation where it is clear their views are hurtful.
The best messaging strategy I’ve encountered for people who are uninformed or skeptical, but not hard line deniers, is to lead with solutions and the opportunities they present (clean energy, modern technologies for efficiency and low-carbon energy, and the jobs that are created by new industries) and lead into the moral responsibility to act.
Sorry I don’t have time to research the specifics.
Thanks Joe for another great post.
Coincidentally, John Cook has just put up a post dealing with the objections of Shadow.
See the link below for details:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/10-Indicators-of-a-Human-Fingerprint-on-Climate-Change.html
John Cook’s site deals only with the science and is a great resource.
On the politics front it gets more absurd and depressing all the time. Not only will the US Senate fail to pass a bill to reduce greenhouse emissions, but here in Australia we are likely to elect a global warming denier as our next Prime Mininter!
We sure live in a crazy world.
Schadow: I admire your facile command of Latin phrases. I picture you hitting yourself in the finger with a hammer ( and I apologize for enjoying the mental picture). I see you finding the experience unpleasant, if not down right painful. However , your commitment to disregarding obvious cause and effect impels you to take the hammer and draw a bead on the next finger. Just before you crush yet another digit someone reminds you of what happened the last time, to which you reply “post hoc ,ergo propter hoc”. Your Latin is flawless. Nonetheless, the following sequence goes WHAM, Then “OUCH”, but your dedication to Latin phrases is unflinching, so you take aim at yet another finger. This time lots of people implore you to at least consider the idea of cause and effect, but you stare them all down and say again “post hoc, ergo propter hoc”. You then crush another finger to prove your point. You might consider finding yourself a good book on the rules of logic, and reading up on some of the finer points of this particular logical fallacy, before you end up with no fingers or toes.
He needs to follow this up showing what the consequences are…
Excellent video. Very compelling logic throughout.
Before you think this video will convince a single denier remember the following:
1. “Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still”.
2. “The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it”.
The biggest problem right now seems to be lack of interest, at least here in the UK. AGW is not a subject that can be brought up in polite company without everyone thinking you are some sort of negative, the end-of-the-world-is-nigh doomer. The BBC hardly ever mention the subject any more. They love reporting floods in China, wildfires in Australia and the like but rarely make the connection to AGW.
The ongoing battle with the deniers is just about the only thing keeping AGW in the news. Without them it would be like playing a game of football where everyone insisted on playing for the same side. We need them!
People just don’t feel threatened by AGW. Even “fast” changes (ice melt, glacier retreat, sea level rise, etc) happen over decades and people just can’t feel fear over these timescales, even if they get the problem at an intellectual level. Without tangible fear populations will not provide politicians with a mandate to act.
How do we get the population at large engaged?
At the 6:00 mark he had one of my glacier graphs, so the rest must be great. Tomorrow it will be time to head back into the field to check the mass balance of 12 glaciers.
Upresidented fires in russia & floods in china ….will the US act on GW?
4 ballmerboy,
And don’t forget that right-wing or libertarian stink tanks are often involved.
For the sources of the charts in the video, see
http://www.jamespowell.org/VideoSources/videosources.html
Jim.
Fantastic video link Joe, thank you. Thank you to everyone with the additional links (esp. Stephen Spencer – that fingerprint on global warming page is excellent – and Jim with the sources of the charts).
It would certainly be a very good educational video for anyone looking at the issue from the perspective of an open mind – however most of the people who don’t believe it (at this point) probably don’t fall into the open mind category. ;-) Awesome video nevertheless.
Re @24 – I take it back. Apparently we are getting on with it in the UK and will have reduced CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/53636
Fantastic. The only question in my mind is why bother? The UK emits just 2% of global CO2 and the entire saving by 2050 will be wiped out by growth in CO2 in China http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/prc.html and India http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/ind.html over just the next few months.
Not surprised the government is keeping quiet about it. I expect Cameron will can the whole thing shortly as part of his public sector / deficit reduction programme, as soon as he has finished upsetting Pakistan http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/pakistan-withdraws-from-terror-talks-in-cameron-protest-2040849.html
James Powell has done a great job. I’ve been trying to think how to get this to more people. My only idea so far is to get lots of people to read the commentary onto exact copies and post them on YouTube as well. For example, would Steven Hawking do it? Sir David Attenborough? President Carter? Desmond Tutu? Prince Charles? Lady Gaga? The Pope? You get the idea. We need people whose voices will get attention from a wide audience (all respects James!), not just us.