The Precautionary Principle Cautions Us to Be Cautious

Have you heard of present-day trolls? (Not the kind that used to lurk under fairytale bridges, but certainly similar.) It's the term used for people who, for fun or money perhaps (I don't think anyone knows their motives for sure), show up in the Comments section of practically every blog, anywhere in the world, at all hours of the day and night, that mentions global warming and climate change — to cast aspersions on those who are concerned about the climate change emergency.

You can tell the trolls by the way they spew things like, "Where's your PROOF?" or "What's your evidence?" when the rest of us are trying to discuss solutions (and the evidence is so accessible, it's completely disingenuous that they keep asking us to track it down and present it to them — a time-wasting manoeuvre they like to use that came to light during the Hackergate thing).

So, to the trolls, a cautionary tale about caution. The "precautionary principle" doesn't insist on 100% proof or complete evidence (although the people already impacted by climate chaos must really wonder about the audacity of skeptics and deniers to keep questioning the existence of global warming).

The precautionary principle says that if there's a chance of harm, we'd better slow down or stop — not keep going with something harmful until we know absolutely, totally, utterly, perfectly, entirely, wholly, fully, thoroughly, unreservedly, definitely, certainly, positively, unconditionally, categorically, unquestionably, undoubtedly, completely and 100% that the suspected cause is indeed the cause.

Sober, intelligent and educated people don't play Russian roulette with their children's future. They just don't.

p.s. The trolls haven't found Compassionate Climate Action yet. Not sure if that means my blog is really small potatoes — or that they can't argue with compassion.

Here's a video from the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment (IonE) that explains all the reasons for caution and the precautionary principle. The only thing I disagree with is their call for low-carbon technology. If we don't get off carbon (ie, all fuels, aka The End of the Burning Age) and get to zero-carbon technology, well... let's just say that wouldn't be a cautious approach to avoiding climate catastrophe.

Countering Denier-ese? Read Hoggan's Climate Cover-Up

I laughed out loud when I read a comment at Real Climate.org the other day. Steve315 said:

Maybe this is a bit rude, and I'd be the first to admit that I don't know a whole lot about the science, but comment #1 looks sorta nutty to me.  

As in, "Just blather something about peak oil and scenarios and things and yada yada yada and maybe someone will believe it." That's sort of the problem, I think. Amateurs like myself have a hard time distinguishing legitimate science and sciency-sounding words and things.

[F]or those looking to confirm their ignorance and their prejudices that the whole thing is rubbish, then they can look at our first comment and say, "Hell yeah! The peak oil and the thing and the whatever! (burp)"

And I think he's exactly right. The Denial Machine is well oiled — and well heeled. They have spent a lot of money to know exactly what sorts of things to say and how to say them in order to confuse insert-percentage-of-people-here insert-percentage-of-time-here. (You know, focus groups and psychologists and stuff like that.)

James Hoggan's Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming is the antidote. It reads like a mystery novel; I couldn't put it down! I have followed the denial machine fairly well (as a non-scientist trying to understand this issue, I've had to also understand the "tricks" — oops, apparently that's a very bad word these days — of the deniers), but Hoggan's research has got to the bottom of many, many things.

Such as why most of the climate scientists are so quiet about the climate change emergency. Turns out that the deniers have a nasty little habit of lawsuits, both threatening them and going through with them.

My husband, who as you know does have a science background and who does understand the issue, spends 8 to 18 hours every day synthesizing the climate change research. So he actually read the 1000 or so hacked emails of Hackergate, and what he discovered is that the deniers have been extremely nasty to the scientists, with threats and attacks on their character and a constant stream of challenges, which, because the scientists are employed by public institutions, they must respond to. In other words, not only have the professional and amateur deniers caused humanity to lose 15 to almost 20 years of valuable response time, but they've also been wasting the valuable time of climate scientists.

Hoggan is a public relations professional, and he has pegged the tactics, strategies and yes, tricks of these paid deniers — and managed to write about them, with co-author Richard Littlemore, in an eloquent fashion.

Here's someone else who shows us the deniers' tactics through parody. Sussex will be desert before the climate deniers accept reality, by Mark Steel, in The Independent (UK), 16 December 2009:    

It must drive you mad being a climatologist. You spend your life measuring carbon emissions, and monitoring glaciers and studying lumps of moss from Siberia, and then you hear someone on a radio phone-in yelling, "How can they say the world's getting hotter? I mean at night, it's colder than what it was in the day, so it's got colder, not hotter. They must think we're mugs."

Then a series of articles will appear in which it's claimed: "A new study by Professor Zbygnewsk of Cracow proves sea levels have gone back down so everything's fine", before it turns out he's a Professor of Latin dancing, and has a history of solvent abuse.

Or there'll be letters in the Daily Telegraph that go "Dear Sir: May I recall the carefree days when one would enjoy the sport of sailing to Greenland to melt icebergs with a blowtorch. Alas, these days I fear this too would be frowned upon by the climate change fascists. One dreads to think what these paragons of political correctness will try to ban next."

Or, rather than waste time fooling about with analysis, the scientists could read the front page of yesterday's Daily Express, that declared "100 reasons why global warming is natural. No proof that human activity is to blame." And there inside were the reasons, as outlined by Jim McConalogue of the "European Foundation". Number one was, "There is no scientific proof." So the retort to all the studies from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, NASA, the Royal Society, all 928 papers on the matter in the journal Science and every major scientific institution, is: "Yeah, but there's no proof."

You'd expect number two to be: "Because it's all, like, made up and stuff." Then number three would be, "Dur, whatever", and number four, "I've already TOLD you in number ONE." Instead there's number 30: "Global warming is the argument of flat-earthers." How is that relevant, I wonder. Maybe number 42 was: "My brother-in-law says it's getting warmer and you don't want to trust him."

I gave up at around 40 so maybe the rest was genius, but more likely it went on: "58. It's claimed global warming is making some species die out, but there's still loads of rabbits."

The issue that's boosted the disbelievers is the discovery of messages, sent to scientists, encouraging them to tweak their statistics in favour of proving climate change. Which was unhelpful and crazy, but doesn't disprove the sackfuls of evidence that climate change is carbon-related, any more than it would disprove the existence of gravity if it was discovered Isaac Newton had shouted: "We want to prove this theory beyond all doubt so chuck the apple as hard as you can."  

But also, the people who insist this incident proves all the evidence is unreliable, are similar to creationists who pick up on flaws in the detail of Darwin's theories, without necessarily applying equal rigour to their theory, that light was created before the Sun, and Eve didn't notice she was naked until she was persuaded to eat an apple by a talking snake. Because many prominent climate change sceptics seem by coincidence to be in the pay of the energy industry.

So the Heartlands Institute received $676,000 from Exxon Oil, to discredit the idea of climate change. Patrick Michaels, often presented as an expert who disputes the link between carbon emissions and climate change, has received over $100,000 from energy companies to put their case.

So when they inform us they've discovered there's no proof of climate change, and the planet's just going through its natural cycle, it's as meaningless as if a spokesman for Fairy Liquid was introduced by Patrick Moore on The Sky at Night, and said: "The orbit of Neptune seems to confirm that a bottle of Fairy Liquid washes up to 40 per cent more dishes than any other brand."

[I think those of us not living in the UK might miss something in that last paragraph.]

They're not all paid by Exxon. The genius with his 100 top global-warming denying tips seems to be doing it for free. But he is a member of Conservative Right, and that's the clue for the other motive of these people. For them, climate change threatens the free market. How can oil companies make their maximum profits if they have to worry about making the planet fizz into oblivion? It can't be true because it mustn't be true.

So no matter how much evidence there is they'll carry on disputing it. Sussex will be desert and Guernsey will disappear, and they'll tell us: "If sea levels are rising the obvious answer is to build roads over them. After all, it's not the roads that are rising is it?"

"It can't be true because it mustn't be true." That says it all, doesn't it? That explains deniers and their denial. "It can't be true because it mustn't be true." It takes a courageous person to accept that something is true when they don't want it to be.

You can purchase Hoggan and Littlemore's book online or at your local bookstore. Encourage your library to get a copy. We should all be reading it. And learning how to interpret — and respond to — Denier-ese.

3 Days to Copenhagen - For Shame ... Shame on the Lot of Them

Vultures play an important, nay, a vital role in the web of life. As scavengers who clean up corpses left behind by predators, by disease and by old age, vultures are among the "caretakers" who maintain the health and beauty of the natural environment.

Climate change deniers play a very dangerous and damaging role in the web of life. They are scavengers who first go around killing so that they can have something to pick on. They are not caretakers — they rape and pillage and to hell with the consequences. They don't maintain anything but their own worldview, and their sick, sadistic lies are killing the health and beauty of the natural environment. It is so very obvious that deniers want their children and grandchildren (and mine) to roast in the hell that they are creating on Earth — otherwise they would not have wasted the last 15 to 20 years — they would be enjoying the fruits of their investments in renewable energy by now.

Let us be very clear. To call these evil people vultures would be a gross insult to the vultures. (My post tomorrow will explain what we now know about the possible impacts of "business as usual" global warming and why the obfuscating of the deniers is a true sin and a crime.)

This post, then, is my very clumsy, but sincere, effort at offering a tribute to Professor Phil Jones, now resigned head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK. Dr. Jones was picked on and attacked for years by the climate change deniers, who have now hacked him, eaten him up and spit him out. (In this case, it's no coincidence that "hack" has a double meaning.) As vultures, climate change deniers suck. Dr. Jones, I will light my vigil candle on Saturday for you.

When I explained the Hackergate situation on Day 10, I never imagined that the evil deniers would win this oh-so-obvious smear campaign when they still have found no improprieties in the hacked emails (despite all their hysteria). My sadness knows no bounds, just as their evil knows no bounds.

Climate change deniers and idiots make me want to believe in a hell, so that they can burn there. I have reached the limit of my compassion ... alas, it is not as boundless as I thought (and hoped) it was six months ago when I began this blog.

No, the climate change deniers and idiots do not deserve my compassion. They have made victims of Phil Jones and so many other serious and dedicated climate scientists; of much of Africa, the Arctic, and the Pacific Islands; of the pine forests in northern British Columbia in Canada, and of the beautiful cedars in my front yard. They have threatened my (yes, my) food security and the water sources for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. They have foreclosed on the future of all the children — of all species — living today. They have committed the very worst kind of murder: progenycide — the genocide of future generations — knowingly, willingly, deliberately, eyes wide open and with smug smirks on their faces, like this is some kind of game instead of a deadly planetary emergency.

They do not deserve forgiveness, for they know what they do. The deepest shame on them all. I send out my compassion to their children and grandchildren.

10 Days to Copenhagen - Hackers and Deniers/Skeptics, Beware!

We've blown your cover.

All this talk of hacked emails had me daydreaming today about what hackers would find if they hacked into my emails ... snore. They sure wouldn't find much to amuse them.

Instead, I got into the fray a couple of days ago at Grist, when someone named Phil asked, "For God's sake, why don't you folks discuss the content of these emails?"

He was, of course, talking about the hacked emails that skeptics and deniers somewhere will have paid good money for — and in which they are now revelling. I asked Phil to consider (a) that scientists are human beings with human frailties, and (b) that there are far more important things to be discussing. (Like carbon feedbacks, or getting to the Age of Renewable Energy, or going veg to reduce methane emissions and buy us some time in the Arctic.)

However, my husband spent a large part of yesterday going through all the hacked emails (not just the juicy, cherry-picked ones) and he discovered something that no one else is talking about.

Here's what Dr. Peter Carter has to say about the hacked emails:

Of course, the emails are very different in their full context and for sure there are a few (very few) containing emotional content that has no place in professional correspondence. We all know, however, that the email story coming just before the UN Copenhagen Climate Conference is part of an orchestrated campaign to deny the scientific reality of catastrophic global climate change.

The amazing thing that comes out of reading these emails is the steady stream of harassment that our top climate change scientists are subjected to by the aggressive campaign of the skeptics/deniers.

The scientists at Hadley are being continually forced to spend an inordinate amount of their time in defending their science from totally unfounded claims that appear on climate change blogs and get reported in the media. As this is a battle over complex computer models based on masses of scientific research, the climate scientists are at a huge disadvantage to prove that the statements of the deniers on the models are wrong.

The scientists spend a great deal of their out of work time educating public audiences on the climate change facts to counter the denial disinformation campaign. The scientists, as a result of all this, operate under a high degree of personal stress. The harassment includes threats of civil litigation and they are also subjected to personally insulting emails on their work. In other words, there is an aggressive campaign that has been constantly waged for years, against the scientists and the science. I would not be surprised if some of the scientists have been at nervous breaking point at times.

Reading the emails, it comes across so clearly that these scientists are trying hard to protect the future of humanity from global climate catastrophe (inevitable if greenhouse gas emissions don't fall) and the deniers don't care one bit that their campaign has already condemned to death and suffering countless millions of the most climate change vulnerable and innocent. In my mind, the deniers are a bunch of .... Oops.

I have been critical of the reluctance of the IPCC scientists to tell the full extent of the terrible risks that the world is facing. Now I know the reason for their reluctance.

So, take that, you accursed hackers and deniers! We're really starting to find out what a rotten bunch of bastards you are (I'm no longer afraid to say it). How about you having a little compassion for the scientists who are doing their best to help us all understand the grave situation we're in? How about you holding in your hearts some compassion for all the children, of all species, and all future generations? Oh, sorry, I forgot. You don't have hearts.