Check it out EM, a 1997 review of a little noted book Global Spin. I share it because it's an early look at where the politicizing of climate science actually started. That's followed by a video of the 2007 China-U.S. Climate Change Forum discussing the challenges of communicating climate science and hearing from people across the globe. I finish with a bit of information from NOAA's just released (three hours ago) Global Analysis - Annual 2016 and another from the World Meteorological Organization's 2011-2015 report. You can deny this stuff all you want, yet it remains unavoidable. Learn from this historic perspective.
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Review : Fat cats’ dirty tricks
By Hugh Warwick, December 13, 1997 | NewScientist.com
Global Spin - https://www.uow.edu.au/~sharonb/global.html
THIS week, politicians returning from Kyoto may ask their spin doctors what they really decided about global climate change. Many of the world’s largest multinational corporations, meanwhile, will be calculating whether their investment has paid off.
They have been fighting hard to prevent any serious action being taken at Kyoto. Using their immense financial muscle, they are working to undermine the successes of the environmental movement. By coopting a handful of dissident scientists, these corporations and their front groups create the impression that the apparently hardening certainties of global climate change are foundering in a sea of unknowns—despite the consensus among the 2500 climate scientistsof the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In her excellent Global Spin (Green Books, £10.95, ISBN 1870098676), Sharon Beder traces the rise of this backlash: the funding of think-tanks, the promotion of the “Wise Use” Movement and the creation of an artificial grass-roots movement sometimes dubbed “astro turf”. But perhaps the most insidious technique outlined in Global Spin is the use of the law against individuals who voice their concerns.
While more than 90 per cent of those sued are vindicated, the Strategic lawsuits against public participation, SLAPPs, are an effective way to remove individuals and groups from a campaign.
While more than 90 per cent of those sued are vindicated, the Strategic lawsuits against public participation, SLAPPs, are an effective way to remove individuals and groups from a campaign.
Much of Beder’s book paints a gloomy picture for the green community. But there is cheer to be found. Frank Mankiewicz, head of one of the world’s largest PR firms, is quoted: “The big corporations, our clients, are scared shitless of the environmental movement.” Maybe Kyoto will see the David of green concern get one over on the Goliath of the corporate lobby.
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Global Spin
The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism
by Sharon Beder
Published by:
Green Books, UK, October 1997, 2nd edition – May 2002
Scribe Publications, Australia, October 1997, revised edition – March 2000
Chelsea Green, US, February 1998, 2nd edition - 2002 (out of print)
Sogei Shuppan Publishing, Osaka, Japan, Japanese translation, 1999
2nd edition: 336 pages; 234 x 153 mm; references, bibliography, index
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August 21, 2007
August 21, 2007
Uploaded on Aug 21, 2007
This panel discusses the challenges facing scientists, politicians and the media in communicating to the public the complex facts about the climate crisis, and facilitating a national discussion about the problem and its solutions. The China-U.S. Climate Change Forum was organized by the Berkeley China Initiative, which is forging closer ties between U.C. Berkeley and China by bringing together key experts on important international and bilateral issues. Growing concern over climate change makes this topic an obvious choice for the first of this series of annual events. This panel will highlight the mutual vulnerability of China and the U.S. to climate change, and the indispensable role of scientific...
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State of the Climate - Global Analysis - Annual 2016
Global Temperatures
With the contribution of eight consecutive high monthly temperature records set from January to August, and the remainder of the months ranking among their five warmest, 2016 became the warmest year in NOAA's 137-year series.
Remarkably, this is the third consecutive year a new global annual temperature record has been set. The average global temperature across land and ocean surface areas for 2016 was 0.94°C (1.69°F) above the 20th century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F), surpassing the previous record warmth of 2015 by 0.04°C (0.07°F). The global temperatures in 2016 were majorly influenced by strong El Niño conditions that prevailed at the beginning of the year.
This marks the fifth time in the 21st century a new record high annual temperature has been set (along with 2005, 2010, 2014, and 2015) and also marks the 40th consecutive year (since 1977) that the annual temperature has been above the 20th century average. To date, all 16 years of the 21st century rank among the seventeen warmest on record (1998 is currently the eighth warmest.) The five warmest years have all occurred since 2010.
Overall, the global annual temperature has increased at an average rate of 0.07°C (0.13°F) per decade since 1880 and at an average rate of 0.17°C (0.31°F) per decade since 1970. ...
Global Precipitation
As indicated by the Global Percent of Normal Precipitation and Precipitation Percentiles maps below and as is typical, many stations were wet for the year, while many stations were dry. Also, as discussed below, extreme precipitation and drought events occurred across the world. ...
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The global climate 2011-2015: heat records and high impact weather
The World Meteorological Organization has published a detailed analysis of the global climate 2011-2015 – the hottest five-year period on record - and the increasingly visible human footprint on extreme weather and climate events with dangerous and costly impacts.
The record temperatures were accompanied by rising sea levels and declines in Arctic sea-ice extent, continental glaciers and northern hemisphere snow cover.
All these climate change indicators confirmed the long-term warming trend caused by greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide reached the significant milestone of 400 parts per million in the atmosphere for the first time in 2015, according to the WMO report which was submitted to U.N. climate change conference.
The Global Climate 2011-2015 also examines whether human-induced climate change was directly linked to individual extreme events. Of 79 studies published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society between 2011 and 2014, more than half found that human-induced climate change contributed to the extreme event in question. Some studies found that the probability of extreme heat increased by 10 times or more. ...
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