How sad it is living today knowing that the runway behind us won’t do any of us any good.
Society and it’s leaders knew what we were doing forty, fifty years ago.
Sure the exact pace of disruptions was full of uncertainty, but the fundamental message was clear,
slow down or destroy the foundations of our society.
Recently in South Carolina and California we are seeing what the future holds in store for us
with even worse awaiting our children’s lives.
And still Republican/libertarian climate science deniers keep getting ever more shrill and hostile in their refusal to see what’s happening in the real world, instead satisfying themselves with keeping their heads full of egomaniacal faith-based fairytales and making enemies of anyone who dares disagree with their disastrous fantasy.
Read it and weep.
The Opinion Pages
Exxon’s Climate Concealment
By NAOMI ORESKES | OCT. 9, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/opinion/exxons-climate-concealment.html
The same thing has happened with climate change, as Inside Climate News, a nonprofit news organization, has been reporting in a series of articles based on internal documents from Exxon Mobil dating from the 1970s and interviews with former company scientists and employees.
Had Exxon been upfront at the time about the dangers of the greenhouse gases we were spewing into the atmosphere, we might have begun decades ago to develop a less carbon-intensive energy path to avert the worst impacts of a changing climate. Amazingly, politicians are still debating the reality of this threat, thanks in no small part to industry disinformation.
Government and academic scientists alerted policy makers to the potential threat of human-driven climate change in the 1960s and ’70s, but at that time climate change was still a prediction. By the late 1980s it had become an observed fact.
…
Exxon (which became Exxon Mobil in 1999) was a leader in these campaigns of confusion. In 1989, the company helped to create the Global Climate Coalition to question the scientific basis for concern about climate change and prevent the United States from signing on to the international Kyoto Protocol to control greenhouse gas emissions. The coalition disbanded in 2002, but the disinformation continued. Journalists and scientists have identified more than 30 different organizations funded by the company that have worked to undermine the scientific message and prevent policy action to control greenhouse gas emissions.
These efforts turned the problem from a matter of fact into a matter of opinion. When the Exxon chief executive, Lee Raymond, insisted in the late 1990s that the science was still uncertain, the media covered it, business leaders accepted it and the American people were confused. ...
oops, guess that should have gone under politics, oh well.
Science, did someone say science?
Deadly Worldwide Coral Bleaching Episode Underway--Earth's 3rd on Record
By: Bob Henson , 12:47 PM GMT on October 09, 2015
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=3151
Earth is entering its third worldwide coral bleaching event of the last 20 years--a disturbing example of how a warming planet can harm vital ecosystems--NOAA announced on Thursday. NOAA also released an eight-month outlook that projects even more bleaching to come in 2016. The only other global-scale bleachings in the modern era of observations happened in 1998 and 2010. Global bleaching is defined as an event that causes bleaching in each of the planet’s major coral-reef areas. "We may be looking at losing somewhere in the range of 10 to 20 percent of the coral reefs this year," NOAA coral reef watch coordinator Mark Eakin said, in an interview with Associated Press. Florida started getting hit in August. The middle Florida Keys aren't too bad, but in southeast Florida, bleaching has combined with disease to kill corals, Eakin said. It has also hit Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic and is about to hit Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, he said, adding, "you kill coral, you destroy reefs, you don't have a place for the fish to live."
The current global bleaching is the culmination of regional problems that began in mid-2014, when very warm conditions emerged in several parts of the tropics. Hawaii is one of those areas: as Jeff Masters reported in July, Hawaii experienced its worst bleaching on record in 2014 when record-warm ocean temperatures caused 50 - 70% of the corals sampled in Northeast Oahu's Kneʻohe Bay to bleach. Another hard-hit area was the coral-rich Papahnaumokukea Marine National Monument, which extends hundred of miles northwest of the main Hawaiian Islands. “Last year’s bleaching at Lisianski Atoll was the worst our scientists have seen," said Randy Kosaki, NOAA’s deputy superintendent for the monument. “Almost one and a half square miles of reef bleached last year and are now completely dead." This year, the same warm waters that have fed record numbers of tropical storms and hurricanes have laid the foundation for additional bleaching in and near Hawaii. "Hawaii is getting hit with the worst coral bleaching they have ever seen, right now," Eakin said. "It's severe. It's extensive. And it's on all the islands." In one part of northwestern Hawaii, "the reef just completely bleached and all of the coral is dead and covered with scuzzy algae."
while the beat goes on . . .
Imagine that, pass thousands and thousands of regulations, make it so you have attorneys running the big business and the country. And you have a company that employees thousands of scientists and engineers covering up the truth. What the hell did you expect would happen? The lawyers to tell the truth and do what is morally right?
Imagine that, pass thousands and thousands of regulations, make it so you have attorneys running the big business and the country. And you have a company that employees thousands of scientists and engineers covering up the truth. What the hell did you expect would happen? The lawyers to tell the truth and do what is morally right?
The morally correct action would have been for Exxon's executives to release their scientists' findings and work toward renewable energy as a long-term investment. But I don't expect that. I expect capitalists to act on their greed even when it means condemning millions of people to short, hard lives and ruining the environment for future generations. The saddest part is these greedy bastards have convinced people that their ways are best for everyone and rallied popular support for their immoral values.
I agree with you. But you have to wonder if the powers behind the political machine here in America that more or less controls the world, wants it any other way. The simple answer is geothermal energy. But power in control would have no way of controlling that energy source around the world.
What about the simple matter of scientists having a right to have there papers and information honestly represented?
Perhaps my point is,
It’s one thing to come up with every conceivable bias driven argument in the world to support one’s doubts.
It’s quite another to deliberately and repeatedly LIE about the work and information of bonafide experts
in critically important scientific fields.
Yet, today’s Republican/libertarian tribe, seems to have adopted the strategy of complete disregard for fealty to integrity and the pursuit of, not truth, but ever clearer understanding and appreciate of this marvelous Earth of ours.
Curiously about our one and only home-planet, desire to understand the web of complexities that she lives by,
(yes our planet is a living organism, even if many can’t comprehend the concept)
Here’s what I’m talking about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSRgKKoLLiQ
sense of stewardship towards the land that supports us -
all of that has become foreign to the new self-obsessed Republican/libertarian types.
Instead they have found their God-given dogma,
and to hell with everyone who doesn’t buy into their self-indulgent pipe-dream.
Egomania rules.
Reminds me of an awesome poem:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103175352
Excerpted from 'The Drunken Driver Has The Right Of Way' by Ethan Coen.
Crown Publishing Group/Random House.
The loudest have the final say,
The wanton win, the rash hold sway,
The realist's rules of order say
The drunken driver has the right of way.
. . .
The guiltiest feel free of guilt;
Who care not, bloom; who worry, wilt;
Plans better laid are rarely built
For forethought seldom wins the day;
The drunken driver has the right of way.
The most attentive and unfailing
Carefulness is unavailing
Wheresoever fools are flailing;
Wisdom there is held at bay;,
The drunken driver has the right of way.
De jure is de facto's slave;
The most foolhardy beat the brave;
Brass routs restraint; low lies high's grave;
When conscience leads you, it's astray;
The drunken driver has the right of way.
. . .
. . .
Mike, full disclosure 
Since the retyping introduced edits and additions I figure I should post that over here too…
"Exxon’s Climate Concealment", so what?
http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2015/10/exxons-climate-concealment-so-what.html
A couple days ago I started a thread over at the CFI Forum titled "Exxon’s Climate Concealment" with
an introduction and the following quote:
…
…
_______________________________________
One comment it received is worth mentioning over here: "Imagine that, pass thousands and thousands of regulations,
make it so you have attorneys running the big business and the country.
And you have a company that employee thousands of scientists and engineers covering up the truth.
What the hell did you expect would happen?
The lawyers to tell the truth and do what is morally right?"
________________________________________
To which I responded:
What about the simple matter of scientists having a right to have their papers and information honestly represented?
My point is, it’s one thing to come up with every conceivable bias driven argument you can dream up to support one’s doubts.
It’s quite another to deliberately and repeatedly LIE about the work and information of bonafide experts
in critically important scientific fields.
Yet, today’s Republican/libertarian crowd seems to have adopted the strategy of complete disregard for integrity
and the pursuit of, if not truth, an ever clearer understanding and appreciation of the ways of this marvelous Earth of ours.
Curiously about our one and only home-planet, desire to understand the web of complexities that she lives by,
(yes our planet is a living organism, even if many can’t comprehend the concept).
Dear Republican/libertarian why no sense of concern or stewardship towards the land and oceans that supports us?
What's with all the self-obsession and building bubble-chambers of science-fiction concocted by self-certain dilettantes?
How can people possibly move into the future by shielding ourselves from down to Earth facts and observation?
Instead Republican/libertarian types offer us nothing but some self-certain God-given dogma,
and to hell with everyone who doesn’t buy into their destructive self-indulgent pipe-dream.
Egomania rules.
Reminds me of a poem that nailed it:
Mike, For the record,
I make no conclusion about your actual persuasion -
but since your words parrot their propaganda lines I feel quite comfortable drawing conclusions
based on those words, regarding those ideas. :kiss:
I hear what you are saying, but the best ideas sometimes only work as ideas, not in real life. Russia is a good example of the government taking over the farming. Didn’t work out so well.
As far as scientists having the rights to their papers. They have all the rights to their papers, unless they gave up that right. No different than me, I cannot talk about certain items because of security clearances that I have agreed to. Myself I find it harder and harder to tell the difference between Republican and Democrat. There is the talk and vote on the party line. But we really do not know how they really voted. They are allowed to vote one way and then have their vote recorded for the record another way.
It was not that long ago that Snowden proved that department heads were lying to congress and the public. Many of the politicians were very upset and was going to go after the departments. They sure in the hell did by increasing the budgets. It all seems to be one lie after another lie coming out of DC. That is why Trump is doing so well. We are all fed up with who ever in the hell is calling the shots in DC.
As far as scientists having the rights to their papers. They have all the rights to their papers, unless they gave up that right.
I said nothing about that kind of right.
I said they and the public and our leaders have a right to expect their scientific studies/paper to be honestly represented.
Malicious misrepresentation should be unacceptable.
I agree with you. Good point.