It’s time to clear up your climate change confusion

By Rebeka Ryvola

Our climate is warming at unprecedented rates, but Canadians are not moved to take action. Climate change is causing everything from species extinctions and rising sea levels to ocean acidification and water and food shortages. Yet, we continue to live our lives like nothing is wrong. We are not acknowledging the role we are playing in creating these threats to humankind and the Earth.

The reason for this inaction is a scary one: many Canadians do not believe that current climate change is human-caused. Even the most apparent climate-change impacts are being brushed aside, chalked up to mere natural processes. This way of thinking exists because the fossil-fuel industry has expended huge amounts of money and effort to fabricate the “other side” of the climate-change controversy.

The scientific research behind the climate change is real and indisputable among the world’s experts. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change leads the way in amassing research done by scientists all around the globe. The reputable IPCC prides itself on processing research and providing an understanding of climate change and how it is altering our Earth. The IPCC is open to all contributions of valid research and yet no research has been presented which refutes that we are rapidly altering our atmosphere.

On the one side of the debate is the IPCC and many other well-intentioned organizations standing for fast action against human-induced climate change. On the flip side, we have various scientists and organizations operating out of fossil-fuel industry pockets. These “climate skeptics” are able to paint a very convincing picture of a scientific disagreement on the causes of climate change. The oil and gas giants have good reasons to be funding massively misleading campaigns of trickery: their money is made extracting and selling harmful fossil fuels. They depend on public consumption of their product. In one case, a fossil fuel-funded “scientific” organization, the Information Council on the Environment, spent $500,000 on a campaign to “reposition global warming as theory (not fact)”. Climate misinformation campaigns permeate media all around us; newspapers, television, and the Internet all present us with a false two-sided climate debate.

Since most of us are not scientists ourselves, it is difficult to know what exactly we should be asking of the information that comes our way. The idea that the climate skeptics are on a level playing field with peer-reviewed scientific research is ludicrous. The IPCC and the majority of the globe’s scientists devote their life to tireless work that broadens our understanding of the world we live in. The skeptics, deniers, and oil-funded scientists have a shady agenda of deception. When we see how wildly unbalanced the two “sides” are, it becomes obvious that a valid scientific disagreement does not exist.

Now is the first time in history that we can use our technology and intelligence to predict what the future of our Earth will look like—and, without serious change, this future does not look good. The scientific consensus is that we are rapidly sliding down a slippery slope. We have evidence that shows us we need change and we have the technology required to make it. It is time to make critical decisions that will impact all future generations.

You are now aware that climate misinformation campaigns exist. Take it upon yourself to question your sources. Challenge, research, and think critically about all that is presented to you. Once we see past the phony skeptics, we can begin to make lifestyle adjustments. We can start to vote with our dollar, and demand our politicians lead the way. We need to see clearly for each other, for the future, and for all the other living things on Earth that are waiting anxiously for us to determine their fates.

Rebeka Ryvola is a global resource systems undergraduate student at the University of British Columbia who runs an environment and science blog called EnviroSphere for the Ubyssey, UBC’s student newspaper.

Comments

37 Comments

Stryder

Apr 19, 2010 at 5:04pm

Money talks, BS baffles brains, Money & BS convinces fools.

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reality check

Apr 19, 2010 at 5:39pm

You poor, naive little thing! It would appear that you take DeSmugBlug seriously. There are many people with vested interests on both sides of the debate. The oil-interests are well-known, but perhaps more insidious are those who scare well-intentioned people, and make millions on carbon-trading, "green" energy, speaking tours and book sales.

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jk

Apr 19, 2010 at 6:55pm

Rebeka, if you are looking for truth, you have a long way to go.

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Naive

Apr 19, 2010 at 7:06pm

You do a great job of summarizing IPCC and Greenpeace press releases. Maybe you should go do something more than a cursory look at the evidence before launching a me-too blog that does nothing more than appeal to the authority of the IPCC.

Here let me help you out for your next blog topic, explain to us what kind of scientist deletes and loses his raw data?

Or if that's no good, maybe you can tell us how the divergence problem of the tree rings can be accurately explained?

How bout the loss of the chinese weather stations?

Maybe the fact that Nasa has eliminated all the cold weather stations over the last 20 years from the statistics?

Anyway keep up the good work.

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Orkneygal

Apr 19, 2010 at 8:08pm

The overwhelming paleoclimate evidence from around the globe is that the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was synchronous, world wide and much warmer than today.

However, the MWP deniers will never admit the existence of the MWP because it means that their religious-like belief in AGW is exposed for the steaming pile of junk science that it truly is.

In total, climate change is complex and not well understood.

But this part is simple.

If the world was warmer when CO2 levels were lower, CO2 cannot be the earth's temperature regulator.

A thousand years ago, the Earth was warmer than it is today; before the social and industrial advances that have made modern people the healthiest and most prosperous in history. MWP deniers want us to believe that plant friendly and life giving CO2 is a bad thing to better advance their meglomanical desire to both boss around the developed world and further impoverish the poor while pocketing a lot of taxpayer money along the way.

Taxing carbon is not the answer to the ever changing climate.There is only one answer to changes in climate that has ever worked for humanity.

That is adaptation.

One of the many links to the overwhelming Paleoclimate evidence of the global nature of the MWP is below.

http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php

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Harry Braun

Apr 19, 2010 at 8:33pm

The New York Times ran an article about the American Petroleum Institute in April of 1998. It outlines a very specific and detailed plan by oil and gas industry representatives to invest millions of dollars in an effort to undermine support for the Kyoto Protocol and discredit the scientific consensus opinion that greenhouse gases are causing the planet to warm.

http://www.euronet.nl/users/e_wesker/ew@shell/API-prop.html

The draft plan, titled “Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan,” concedes that opposition to the protocol is not shared by the public or a vast majority of scientists worldwide. “There has been little, if any, public resistance or pressure applied to Congress to reject the treaty, except by those ”˜inside the Beltway’ with vested interests,” it notes.

Read: Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan

http://harryhammer.wordpress.com/2010/03/15/global-climate-science-commu...

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viga01

Apr 19, 2010 at 8:39pm

It is always interesting to see so many climate deniers jumping on misinformation, personal attacks, as soon as someone post something about climate change.

Environmental groups do write books, reports and organize tours because there are environmental issues. And not there are environmental issues because environmental groups write books... But there is not limit in the logic of climate deniers.

Oil companies make profit extracting oil, which cause green house gases when oil is burned. It is quite logical that to protect their industry and profits, they will try to slow down any regulations.

Who use tree rings to find out about the temperatures? Climate scientists didn't use them neither to prove global warming. They used thermometers since 1880, as far as I know. Some tried to use tree rings them when thermometers data were not recorded. This has nothing to do with the current raise in temperatures. The global warming from the past 100 years is obvious and data are public. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/

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Birdy

Apr 19, 2010 at 8:41pm

The IPCC doesn't actually care about the environment. Leading UN member countries are responsible for massive amounts of intentional climate manipulation, leading the way in weather manipulation and geoengineering.

Google "popular mechanics silver iodide rockets"
Read the CFR document titled "The Geoengineering Option"

Let's say I agree with you Rebeka. Let's say I follow your plan to "take action" by "voting with my dollars" Please tell me, how do my dollars convince the US to shut down HAARP? Also, why do you not speak up about the government's role in screwing with nature? Why do all these alleged environmentalists continue to blame normal citizens for the state of the planet and say it's our responsibility? As if democracy was genuine and we are responsible for the actions of our leaders?

Yes climate change is real, no my light bulbs are not the culprit. Yes we're polluting the earth, but no, taxing me to death and turning the pollution into a tradable derivative won't make it better.

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Morty

Apr 19, 2010 at 9:23pm

Yes, climate change is real. Yes, your light bulbs likely are part of the problem. Want it simple? Each decade for the last several has been, until the next, the hottest in recorded human history. Similarly, atmospheric CO2 levels are at their highest in known history. We know from its observed chemical properties that CO2 is a powerful insulator in very small concentrations. We also know that industry and other human activity adds CO2 to the atmosphere in rather large quantities. There will never be a complete smoking gun—nature doesn't work that way—but the anthropogenic explanation for climate change is by far the best in terms of how it fits the available data. That's why the world's scientific community is, outside of a few industry-supported voices, pretty much unanimous in agreeing that climate change is due to human influences.

The fact that you can use Google does not make you more knowledgeable than those who have spent the careers studying the climate, and calling them names in no way diminishes their work. If anything, the vocal opposition to any effort to make our planet more livable shows just how sucessful industry lobbies have been at undermining public understanding of the issue. Forget, for a minute, about climate change; are you telling me it's not worth reducing our consumption of fossil fuels for a myriad of other reasons? If we reduce our consumption of oil we reduce air pollution, which in turn reduces heart and lung disease, which in turn reduces health care costs. We make our cities cleaner, improving our quality of life. We reduce traffic, making it easier to get goods to market. We spur—force—investment in the research and development of new technology. Finally, we extend our domestic reserves of oil and gas, and reduce our dependence on foreign sources, improving our national security. Those are bad things?

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Cassandra22

Apr 19, 2010 at 9:33pm

God, the deniers are so moronic and tiresome. How often can they trot out their medieval warm periods, and their "CO2 is plant food", and their "climate gate", and their blah blah blah? And yes, they are "deniers". True skeptics, including most real scientists, at least demonstrate some intellectual integrity. These people are for the most part demonstrable liars or pitiful nitwits.

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