TV Meteorologists Should Say It Loud and Clear: Climate Change Is Here

[Iwillnevergiveup]

Article by Amy Goodman.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/tv_meteorologists_say_it_loud_and_clear_climate_change_is_here_20150225

[montanacowboy]

1. 1000 Recs

This drives me nuts too, they stand there and report these unbelievable weather occurances just like, oh well.....

Tell the fucking truth, cowards all of them

[Iwillnevergiveup]

2. Absolutely!

Here's an example of what you're talking about.

SNIP.......

" The public depends on broadcasters for most of their news and information, even in this Internet age. How could a drought in California be related to Niagara Falls freezing over thousands of miles away? People aren’t stupid. The daily deluge of sensational weather reporting must include explanations of the deeper changes occurring to our entire planet."

SNIP........

[JayhawkSD]

3. I think not.

While there is no doubt that the heat energy if the planet is increasing, nor that the cause of it is human endeavor, no one weather event can definitively be attributed to climate change, and television weather people should not be attempting to make that connection.

They are in the entertainment business, actually, more than they are in the information business. They are selected for their looks and their delivery style. Their skill set is limited to providing the "best guess" as to what will happen in the local weather over the next few days, and doing in a sufficiently charming manner that people will watch their television station instead of some other one.

[Fred Sanders]

4. Fox could not have said it better themselves. "I think, not"

[ffr]

5. I think it's more matter-of-factish.

We may not like to hear how news meteorologists are selected and their purpose, but Jayhawk's comments have a lot of truth.

[Binkie The Clown]

7. No single lung cancer event can be attributed to smoking.

So go ahead and smoke.

That's a major problem right now. Scientists are being too cautious, putting their career safety above the survival of the human race. I know, science is all about avoiding absolutes and leaving room for later revision, but right now it's a matter of survival, and we really can't afford for scientists to be so cowardly cautious in their pronouncements.

[AverageJoe90]

8. Can't argue with that.

And unfortunately, it doesn't help that there has been a lot of this gloom-and-doom craziness floating around the 'Net these past several years or so, propagated by wannabe Cassandras, who either do this so as to draw attention to their own theories and propositions(John Michael Greer is a good example, and so, dare I say it, is a certain one of our longtime fellow DUers), or, in some cases, have truly gone off the deep end.

In fact, there are some things out there, that, contrary to popular belief, that we may not have been cautious enough about; temperature sensitivity may be one these(it's often assumed by not a few that there will be an increase in temps of about 3*C if we double Co2 this century, whereas the current readings post-1980 wouldn't even support 2*C doublings if hypothetically taken by themselves, and isn't likely to go much beyond 2*C, even with this probable future warming spell in mind.).

[ffr]

6. I think the key word here should have been "had" not "have."

Our window of opportunity to change the harm we've done to the planet's ecosystems and weather has since sailed. To say "we have the means to limit climate change and build a more prosperous, sustainable future," I think is naive. We had that opportunity decades ago, but collectively we lack the willpower to make the hard, painful, and meaningful changes necessary. Instead we find ourselves increasing our already unsustainable population without any restrictions, placing more stress on a finite ecosystem that is clearly breaking down.

In the coming decades humans will pay a heavy toll for our inaction, far beyond any toll we would have, just as foregoing loan payments only makes future payments worse. I fear those of us in their 20s will inevitably witness more worldly death and chaos than we could have ever imagined possible and certainly the opposite of futuristic global utopian visions. Humans may survive. The what extent, is the question.

The debate over climate change is over. The U.N.‘s Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report, written by 800 scientists from 80 countries, that summarized the findings of more than 30,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers and concluded:

“Human influence on the climate system is clear; the more we disrupt our climate, the more we risk severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts; and we have the means to limit climate change and build a more prosperous, sustainable future.”

[AverageJoe90]

9. " I think is naive. " That's an awfully big gamble there, ffr. You willing to bet on it?

I sure as hell wouldn't, primarily because whatever actual solid evidence does exist, is telling us that not only is it not "naive" in any sense, but that it's imperative that we DO act on that. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that believing that we can only throw in the towel and giving in is basically the same as giving the deniers ammo to propagate their own brand of B.S., just as any other brand of fearmongering(in fact, I betcha, if anything, they'll be pulling the very same basic "we are powerless to stop it" schtick in 20 years, that the doomers are now, even if for a totally different reason, and that, I *will* bank on).

I fear those of us in their 20s will inevitably witness more worldly death and chaos than we could have ever imagined possible and certainly the opposite of futuristic global utopian visions.

Many folks said the same thing when the Cold War started ramping up.....and unlike most short-term climate change scenarios, global thermonuclear war had a very real (if not terribly large) chance of actually thoroughly destroying all of civilization as we once knew it: at least with climate change, we, as a whole, would have time to prepare for and brace against even the worst, but nuclear war wouldn't have given us that chance. I may be no rose-colored glasses optimist myself: there will be many problems for decades to come, but, looking back at history, none of the direst predictions of the Cold War ever came to pass, and there's no reason to believe the same won't be true of climate change either, at least for the time being, anyway.

[ffr]

10. I'm not sure I follow how my statement is a gamble.

We humans will never find consensus on what we have to do to avoid climate change. While I admire your spirit of 'can do,' the fact of the matter is that without consensus, in other words, without the RWNJs getting on board, you'll be rowing in one direction and they'll be rowing in the other direction, collectively going nowhere. And even if we got every RWNJ in this country to change, we are but one nation. Convincing other nations to row in the same direction is statistically improbable. There are too many nations with too many different cultural, religious, and political problems of their own.

In the meantime, the world's human population marches on, ever increasing, ever placing more demands on systems that are unsustainably stressed beyond there limits, adding children that will want children of their own. It's a never ending cycle. I've seen where people equate it to a cancer or a virus, only we're the cancer.

So no, it's not a gamble to say we're fucked. It's a statistical certainty that I'd sadly take your bet on. There's virtually no chance you have of winning. And if you think we humans can make substantive changes to how we consume, pollute and multiply, to overt not only climate change disaster, but ecosystem disaster, you need only look around at what we're dealing with. Find consensus if you can, but you can't.

In the time it took me to write this, the world's human population just grew the size of a decent sized township. Those babies may live 70 - 80 years. In 20 years, those babies will be having more babies of their own, assuming there are still natural resources to sustain a world's human population estimated to be about 8.7 billion people strong... and growing.

I'll row with you, as I am doing now by making the changes to reduce, reuse and recycle, but there's no way we're going to get everyone else to do the same. Not a chance. Things are going to get worse and that trend is going to accelerate until there is balance. I give us about 15 years before the shit really starts hitting the fan.

[AverageJoe90]

11. You seem so sure of yourself.....no offense, but that's what it looks like.

So no, it's not a gamble to say we're fucked. It's a statistical certainty that I'd sadly take your bet on.

Then where's the evidence for that? That's the thing: there's a bit(well, okay, more than a bit, actually) of a dearth of evidence to support that, and yet, there's a fair bit of evidence that DOES exist saying that this isn't really the case.

Hey, I'll at least give you some credit for making those life changes you mentioned, but just giving up and giving in is practically the worst thing we can do, regardless of the unsubstantiatable opinions of a few doomer hipsters out there.