A little perspective on climate change

[rlegro]

Next time an anti-science conservative claims climate change is all a hoax and a term only recently made up by liberals, tell him to watch a few midnight movies, like I did tonight.

On the channel I tuned in they were showing a science-fiction movie from 1957: "The Land Unknown," starring Jock Mahoney. His character leads a team of naval researchers studying Antarctica during the International Geophysical Year. It's mostly a low-budget B-picture, but it has its moments, as when a helicopter carrying the researchers crashes in a deep valley that is not only tropical but features Mesozoic-era dinosaurs.

At one point, Mahoney's character explains to the other stranded researchers that much of Antarctica had warm, tropical weather millions of years earlier, before "climatic change" brought sub-zero temperatures. Later, they find a small, furry mammal and Mahoney's character explains how, in 50 million years, it may climb down out of the trees and begin walking on two legs and -- millions of years after that -- will evolve into a humanoid creature. Yes, in the "land unknown" of the mid-50s, popular entertainment actually discusses <shudder!> evolution!

Yes, it must be true: In trying to scare the world into ceding control over to them, today's liberals obviously invented a time machine, went back to the 1950s and convinced Hollywood profiteers to inject future scientific consensus into some of those old drive-in movies, inculcating our youth with sensationalist propaganda. Before, that is, the liberal conspiracy traveled to the 1960s and faked Barack Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate.

Land unknown, indeed.

[immoderate]

1. "Climate denial" is a more recent term than climate change.

I don't know the movie you mention, but I grew up watching The Range Rider on TV. Global warming was not disputed science in the '50s and '60s. It was not until the '70s that the oil companies got their opposition organized. It was a redirection of former tobacco lawyers.

A good source for this info is Merchants of Doubt by Noemi Oreskes. If you haven't seen it there's good video on YouTube, such as:

--imm

[rlegro]

5. Thanks for the vid reference

Will take a look at that when I have a few free minutes. It's long been clear that that the anti-science crowd depends wholly on sowing not only doubt but misapprehension about how science is supposed to work -- science is, namely, quite dependent upon uncertainty, as is the universe itself. But from chaos comes synergy and understanding, gradually. Sad thing is the merchants of doubt seem able -- with their vast resources and un-nuanced rhetoric -- to undo years or decades of research with a sly slew of 30-second commercials. Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) should animate us toward greater understanding, which is how it has often been when the nation was prosperous and well educated. Now, however, FUD results in paralysis of policymaking. Heck, the House of Representatives just voted to order the Defense Department not to take climate change into consideration in any of its studies or preparations -- real head-in-the-sand stuff. So while insurance companies are already factoring sea rise and temperature rise and stronger storms into their financial model, the US government is told once again to sit on its ass. Proof right there that the conservative animus isn't about climate change or environmental quality being an anti-business issue, but rather is about a means of political control -- foolish short-term control, but nevertheless.

Jock Mahoney went on in the early '60s to star in "Yancy Derringer" on TV and two Tarzan films. Oldest actor (then in his mid 40s) ever to play the part of the jungle king, and he was quite buff in his loincloth. Amazing durability.

[immoderate]

7. Yeh. Yancy Derringer was, if anything, even cooler than the Rider.

His shadow, Pahoo, with the shotgun, and their knife handling was great schtick!

--imm

[rlegro]

8. P.S.

Re your comment on tobacco industry attempts to subvert science, another major such attempt was by the petroleum industry, which tried to refute hard science showing that lead in gasoline was causing a massive environmental disruption and a health threat. This recently was well depicted in an episode of the current "Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey" re-boot series on Fox.

[immoderate]

9. Yeah. Saw that. Seems like the usual suspects.

I have not heard Oreskes mention this in her lectures.

--imm

[Schema Thing]

2. The climate change theory we talk about now

warming induced by human activity affecting the atmosphere- is a theory well over 100 years old.


It was a good, workable theory at it's inception; basically the logic went like this:

We have found that the earth is kept at it's mean temperature by virtue of the atmosphere made up of CO2, among other things. Hmmm, we are starting to burn CO2 much more than ever in history, due to industrialization. Doublehmmmm, I wonder if we will begin warming the earth as we add CO2 and other gasses to the atmosphere?


Sure, it was worth looking for reasons that wouldn't happen, because, damn, it's a big problem. But sadly, the theory has just been proven more accurate with every bit of data since.

[rlegro]

3. I didn't mention

... in my original post that a real-life incident was the basis for the science-fiction movie. In '47, a scientific expedition to Antarctica was surprised to discover a region that was much warmer than the surrounding continent. Not so warm as to be tropical, but still. I also didn't mention how, when I took a meteorology class at the University of Wisconsin in the late '60s, a couple of the key research professors there, nationally or even world-renowned, remained skeptical that trends toward global warming were mostly caused by human activity. The point is, the post-WWII period contained a lot of unsettled or raw science, but also a huge amount of investigatory fervor. This is how we discovered that DDT was killing off eagles even if it was handy for controlling mosquitoes; how we learned phosphates were aging lakes and streams rapidly due to their huge nutrient input, and more. Over time those UW climate scientists came to get, as it were, religion on the global warming issue. They were characteristically cautious as scientists in their research, until they came to a point where caution no longer made sense. And now here we are, in a time where the lack of 100 percent verity in scientific study (an impossibility, due to the inherent nature of scientific inquiry) is cause for many on the right (egged on by corporate interests) to disbelieve quite nomative conclusions.

[NickB79]

4. Have you seen this science video from 1958?

And FYI, whereas he says man is releasing 6 billion tons of CO2 annually when this video was made, we're up to almost 30 billion tons today.

[rlegro]

6. Thanks for that

Haven't seen that particular documentary but it rings true of that era, when science was up on a high pedestal and the horrors of WWII and the atomic age got people to thinking. How did we ever lose our way so badly? Or is it just that people are now so determined to ignore bad news and live in the moment? Or are marketed and educated to think that way?