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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsKrugman: Loading the Climate Dice
Loading the Climate Dice
By PAUL KRUGMAN
<...>
Making things much worse, of course, is the role of players who dont have the best will in the world. Climate change denial is a major industry, lavishly financed by Exxon, the Koch brothers and others with a financial stake in the continued burning of fossil fuels. And exploiting variability is one of the key tricks of that industrys trade. Applications range from the Fox News perennial Its cold outside! Al Gore was wrong! to the constant claims that were experiencing global cooling, not warming, because its not as hot right now as it was a few years back.
How should we think about the relationship between climate change and day-to-day experience? Almost a quarter of a century ago James Hansen, the NASA scientist who did more than anyone to put climate change on the agenda, suggested the analogy of loaded dice. Imagine, he and his associates suggested, representing the probabilities of a hot, average or cold summer by historical standards as a die with two faces painted red, two white and two blue. By the early 21st century, they predicted, it would be as if four of the faces were red, one white and one blue. Hot summers would become much more frequent, but there would still be cold summers now and then.
<...>
But thats not all: really extreme high temperatures, the kind of thing that used to happen very rarely in the past, have now become fairly common. Think of it as rolling two sixes, which happens less than 3 percent of the time with fair dice, but more often when the dice are loaded. And this rising incidence of extreme events, reflecting the same variability of weather that can obscure the reality of climate change, means that the costs of climate change arent a distant prospect, decades in the future. On the contrary, theyre already here, even though so far global temperatures are only about 1 degree Fahrenheit above their historical norms, a small fraction of their eventual rise if we dont act.
The great Midwestern drought is a case in point. This drought has already sent corn prices to their highest level ever. If it continues, it could cause a global food crisis, because the U.S. heartland is still the worlds breadbasket. And yes, the drought is linked to climate change: such events have happened before, but theyre much more likely now than they used to be.
- more -
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/23/opinion/krugman-loading-the-climate-dice.html
By PAUL KRUGMAN
<...>
Making things much worse, of course, is the role of players who dont have the best will in the world. Climate change denial is a major industry, lavishly financed by Exxon, the Koch brothers and others with a financial stake in the continued burning of fossil fuels. And exploiting variability is one of the key tricks of that industrys trade. Applications range from the Fox News perennial Its cold outside! Al Gore was wrong! to the constant claims that were experiencing global cooling, not warming, because its not as hot right now as it was a few years back.
How should we think about the relationship between climate change and day-to-day experience? Almost a quarter of a century ago James Hansen, the NASA scientist who did more than anyone to put climate change on the agenda, suggested the analogy of loaded dice. Imagine, he and his associates suggested, representing the probabilities of a hot, average or cold summer by historical standards as a die with two faces painted red, two white and two blue. By the early 21st century, they predicted, it would be as if four of the faces were red, one white and one blue. Hot summers would become much more frequent, but there would still be cold summers now and then.
<...>
But thats not all: really extreme high temperatures, the kind of thing that used to happen very rarely in the past, have now become fairly common. Think of it as rolling two sixes, which happens less than 3 percent of the time with fair dice, but more often when the dice are loaded. And this rising incidence of extreme events, reflecting the same variability of weather that can obscure the reality of climate change, means that the costs of climate change arent a distant prospect, decades in the future. On the contrary, theyre already here, even though so far global temperatures are only about 1 degree Fahrenheit above their historical norms, a small fraction of their eventual rise if we dont act.
The great Midwestern drought is a case in point. This drought has already sent corn prices to their highest level ever. If it continues, it could cause a global food crisis, because the U.S. heartland is still the worlds breadbasket. And yes, the drought is linked to climate change: such events have happened before, but theyre much more likely now than they used to be.
- more -
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/23/opinion/krugman-loading-the-climate-dice.html
July 2009:
House passes landmark climate change billhttp://www.reuters.com/article/2009/06/26/us-climate-usa-congress-idUSTRE55O4R120090626
September 2009:
Boxer, Kerry Set to Introduce Climate Bill in Senate
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/09/28/28climatewire-boxer-kerry-set-to-introduce-climate-bill-in-43844.html
October 2009:
Kerry-Boxer clean energy bill: Chairmans mark and EPA analysis released
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-10-23-kerry-boxer-clean-energy-bill-chairmans-mark-and-epa-analysis
November 2009:
Boxer Statement on Committee Passage of S. 1733 The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Majority.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=c512ac4d-802a-23ad-4884-2b95a8405efe
Unfortunately, by the time the bill got to the full Senate, it was attacked, kill the bill attacked, from all sides. Close = no bill.
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Krugman: Loading the Climate Dice (Original Post)
ProSense
Jul 2012
OP
ProSense
(116,464 posts)1. Kick for
inconvenient truth.