2011 NYT’s Front Page Story – “For Many Species no Escape as Temperature Rises,”…boring right? ….last week’s news. This week as the US eastern seaboard digs out, yet again, from a massive snowstorm, last week’s news that many scientists predict we are on track to loose between 20-50% of all species in the next 100 years, is quickly forgotten.
We are told that a person born in a developed country, today, has a 
life expectancy of 100 years. So, while humans may not be facing emanate extinction, 1 out of 2 plant and animal species may no longer be here at the end of that person’s life. Mass Extinction, News Flash! Once again, as we rush to get our kids off to school, ourselves to the office, and dinner on the table, these alarm bells are falling on deaf ears. Or we hear them and then tuck it away somewhere, as it is just too “big” to get our arms around.
Any Raffi fans out there? Maybe your children still listen to his songs, “Baby Beluga”, “Banana Phone?” A recent article by Raffi reminds us that climate change is THE crisis, the greatest threat on earth, the cumulative that has no partial remedy. As Raffi so eloquently states, “the young have the strongest moral claim on climate action. It’s their future on the line. And they may hold the key to inspiring an emotional tipping point for critical mass.” If they can’t galvanize us and inspire us, than what is it going to take? Give the kids in your life a hug today, tell them you care, and you will do what it takes to make the future brighter for them.
Looking for some inspired action, a start to a new family campaign? Follow our adventures, as we take the Rodale “Plastic Free Challenge” in early February, better yet, Join us! Stay tuned for updates!
According to the world’s best-known climate change mouthpiece, 2010 was the hottest year on record.
Wrong. It’s yet another example of a political activist with a Ph.D. donning a magician’s cape to try pull one over on the audience.
Last week NASA’s chief temperature trickster, James Hansen, issued a press release claiming, “Global surface temperatures in 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest on record.”
Don’t mean to sound like the kid in the front row that informs the cheap magician of a playing card protruding from beneath his shirtsleeve but, “I see the ace up your sleeve, Hansen.”
First, the facts. We’ve only possessed the ability to precisely measure the temperature with thermometers since the early 1800s, which interestingly coincides with the end of the Little Ice Age and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Since then the temperature on the planet has only warmed .7 degrees Celsius (or slightly more than a degree Fahrenheit), with most of that warming occurring before 1940. In fact, according to the National Climatic Data Center, the warmest decade on record was the 1930s, with twenty-two of the now 50 states recording their highest temperature ever during those years. Thirty-eight states recorded their all-time highs before 1960. Likewise the hottest year on record was 1934. Even Jim Hansen’s NASA unit has been forced to acknowledge this. Period.
Second, we know from proxy data (ice core samples, tree rings, historical writings, etc.) that Earth’s temperature was significantly warmer over most of the past 10,000 years by up to 4 degrees Fahrenheit. Certainly the SUV can’t be blamed for that.
Third, the current temperature data collection system is horribly rigged. Government temperature gurus are using significantly less data—or even estimating data—from cold places like Canada and Siberia. They’re also relying on more temperatures from thermometers placed in highly urbanized (artificially warmer) locations, as well as taking more readings from the oceans. Thus, overall global temperatures are being skewed upward. That’s exactly what NASA did again this year.
If they relied solely on satellite data, which accurately covers the entire planet, 2010 would not top the list. Why NASA of all places, refuses to use space age technology to measure the global temperature is absurd.
By the way, even Phil Jones, head of the defamed UK Climate Research Unit, admitted following the release of the Climategate emails there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995.
The bottom line is our global temperature databases are so seriously screwed up, and the people crunching the numbers so tilted politically to the left, that climate trends and annual rankings can no longer be presumed accurate.
As for Hansen, in a recent blog posting he’s now calling Americans “the barbarians” of the planet who are run by a “fossil-money-democracy that now rules the roost.”
Hey, Hansen. For your next trick how ‘bout disappearing?