#7 EM Debate - How about, An Essay Concerning Our Weather?

EM, I've been working with your next sentences and your concern for economy prosperity, (as though that justifies ignoring physical realities).  You got me to thinking how Republicans, and you, are approaching all this from way off in deep right field.  That would be, lost in the financial world as though that's all there was to understand or master about the world we live in.  Me, on the other hand, though I've learned to recognize the reality and need to deal with and accommodate the financial world, I appreciate a higher reality holds sway.

Being a handyman, I'm constantly reminded that dealing with the reality at hand demands remaining skeptical of my own pre-conceptions.  For me it's easy to remain extremely skeptical of the Republican "ever increasing growth and profits" mindset, instead I've found more security (and prosperity) in abiding by down to Earth realities.  Such as, it's not how much you earn, it's how much you spend, and such truisms.  

I bring all this up because I'd like to share an essay of mine, three decades in the writing.  I'm hoping it might help you get Earth's physical realities vs. human economic desires, into a more realistic perspective.  Here I'm reposted it December 17, 2015 version.  Enjoy.
___________________________________________________

Twenty years ago I came across a cartoon by Mike Keefe in the Denver Post that captured an attitude I had found all too pervasive among my fellow Americans: the attitude of entitlement and detached disregard for understanding how our global climate system operates.

It inspired me to write an essay describing my understanding of our planet’s climate system, and it was published in the November/December 1995 issue of the Humanist magazine. Rereading it recently, I noticed some minor errors but the basic story remains as accurate today as it was back then. Since anniversaries are a good time to reflect on history and how far we’ve come (or not), I wrote a twenty year reflection which the Humanist printed in their recent Nov/Dec 2015 issue.  This is a slightly altered version and I've included a many links to further information.

I thank Mike Keefe for the permission to use his cartoon.

I think it’s worth recalling where our understanding of climate change was twenty years ago.  Though there were fewer media outlets back then, they were more objective and for the most part offered straightforward climate science information. After all, it’s not that tough a story to summarize, even if the details get devilishly difficult.

By ’95 we had learned that weather is the product of climate conditions and that Earth’s climate conditions fluctuated. We knew that CO2 and other greenhouse gases were a major regulator of those fluctuations.

At the same time we were also being forced to confront the reality that it was our own burning of fossil fuels and the machines behind our modern marvels and lavish lifestyles that were increasingly belching “gaseous insulation” into our atmosphere.

Part 5b - Debating ClimateDepot fan: of politics and environmentalism

In this installment I'm taking another bite out of WillH's last comment.  It's only the next sentence, since he continues getting personal and rather than be reduced to calling him names or some such nonsense, I'd rather explore his words in more detail.  Admittedly, I'm also hoping I'm not the only one getting something out of this.

WillH - 10/26/15

Will H writes: .. (see 5a) … "Concerning Our Failure to Appreciate the Weather"  I did read your article. You seem to be primarily into the politics of AGW and are an environmentalist. …"

________________

"Primarily into the politics" ?  What does that even mean?  Do you have a rational explanation?  What are you yourself doing if not "politics"?  You certainly aren't contributing to the science.  What about your pal ClimateDepot's own Mr. Morano,  that alpha political operative, Mr. Swift Boat himself, he doesn't know anything but power-politics and slashing his way through a campaign.

WillH, it is your side that's deliberately politicizing climate science and scientists right to explain their science in a complete and clear manner.  It's politics that's out-screaming their rational message with manufactured scandals and misrepresenting what climate scientists have actually been saying and doing.

Then you crank it up another notch branding me an "environmentalist."

Ah what a fantastically contrived Republican attack tactic that one is.  Hate the environmentalist, the tree hugger, the people who care about this planet from which we evolved and upon which we depend for our sustenance and quality of life.

Why despise the people who recognize that humans and society are dependent on a healthy biosphere, clean air and water and space to move?  Why hate the people who want to slow down the relentless destruction of the very resources that all of us and most especially our children depend on?

Why all the self-destructive paranoia and contrived hatred for everyone who believes differently than the Republican/libertarian mindset?  What's with using every advantage modern science has to offer when it comes to your profits and comforts - but then ridiculing, attacking and ignoring those segments of the same solid scientific community who's information is inconvenient for your self-centered expectations?  It's childish and ultimately self destructive... and that we are really doing this to ourselves is beyond comprehension to me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Will, as for my essay, 

Concerning Our Failure to Appreciate the Weather

By Peter Miesler • 20 October 2015 • The Humanist

http://thehumanist.com/magazine/november-december-2015/up-front/concerning-our-failure-to-appreciate-the-weather

Allow me to run through my main points.

To begin with, it was a reflection on "An Essay Concerning Our Weather" written in 1995, which itself was my reflections on the previous couple decades of weather/climate/scientific/political history.

The first essay was inspired by a cartoon in the Denver Post by Mike Keefe, this revisit was built around the cartoon with speculation on what was going through the cartoonist's mind.  I'm gratified to have Mike assure me I got it.

used with permission from Mike Keefe

I explain the basic outline of what's understood about our climate system and what increasing our atmospheric greenhouse gases, (read global insulation), will be doing to our planet.  The Keeling Curve is certainly not politics, nor is the paragraph describing our planet's changing CO2 levels and likening it to one of our climate engine's regulators.

Then a brief outline of, what for that time, were a foreboding string of extreme, even unprecedented, weather events over the previous couple decades.

This led to our Great Dilemma back in 1995 -