Year 4, Month 1, Day 19: Cupidity And Stupidity

USA Today’s Wendy Koch (no relation, I hope) tells us about the NCA Report:

Climate change is already affecting how Americans live and work, and evidence is mounting that the burning of fossil fuels has roughly doubled the probability of extreme heat waves, the Obama administration said Friday.

“Sea level is rising, oceans are becoming more acidic, and glacier and Arctic Sea ice are melting,” says a draft of the third federal Climate Assessment Report, compiled by more than 240 scientists for a federal advisory committee. “These changes are part of the pattern of global climate change, which is primarily driven by human activity.”

The 400-page report, required by a 1990 U.S. law, comes as 2012 set a century-plus record for hottest year in the United States. As Americans grapple with such extreme weather, President Obama has called for a national conversation on climate change.

“We can’t wait to have that conversation. The science is in. Now we just have to act,” says Juanita Constible, science and solutions director for The Climate Reality Project, a non-profit begun by former vice president Al Gore to educate the public on climate impacts.

Midway through the article she writes this about the report:

Despite skepticism about the problem’s severity and causes by some members of Congress and a few scientists, it says the evidence tells an “unambiguous story: The planet is warming.” Among its findings:

Let’s try again and see if e can get our definitions right. Sent January 12:

Congressional ignorance on the issue of climate change shouldn’t be dignified with the term “skepticism.” Genuinely skeptical lawmakers respect evidence and expertise, and recognize that reality-based policies need to be based (unsurprisingly) on reality, rather than on electoral exigencies or political posturing. Genuine skeptics would be more likely to doubt those Washington insiders who insist, ignoring the facts, that addressing a profound and imminent threat to our civilization is somehow something we ought to delay — again, and again, and again.

Let’s reserve the term “skeptic” for those few politicians who owe their allegiance to verifiable data rather than to their corporate sponsors in the fossil fuel industries. The National Climate Assessment paints a sobering picture of a climate-transformed America in which economic and humanitarian devastation is the face of our future. Congressional aversion to responsible action is not skepticism, but a toxic mix of greed and folly.

Warren Senders