News packed days.
Unfortunately most people don't care
and the media is doing little to change that.
That's why I'm thinking, Jeez someone should be bearing witness.
For
the record after I posting the text of an article, I send the authors an
email with a link. Response has been supportive, no one has asked me to
remove my reproductions of their work and I'm encouraged to continue,
so, here it is.
I'm starting to think this may turn into a running feature,
at least while the DenialGate things is running hot. A select
collection of timely
articles. With the passage of months, it'll become a record of
these events as they unfolded. The following is highlights from an LA Times editorial:
====================================================
LA Times Editorial ~ February 20, 2012
The culture wars {...} The latest skirmish,
by contrast, is centered on a scientific issue that has nothing to do
with religious teaching: climate change.
{...} Heartland
Institute in Chicago, one of many nonprofits that spread disinformation
about climate science in hopes of stalling government action to combat
global warming, reveal that the organization is working on a
curriculum for public schools that casts doubt on the work of
climatologists worldwide.
Heartland officials say one of the
documents was a fake, {...}. According to the New York Times, the curriculum would
claim, {...} "whether humans are changing the
climate is a major scientific controversy."
{...}
On
one side of the "controversy" are credentialed climatologists around
the globe who publish in reputable, peer-reviewed scientific journals
and agree that the planet is warming and that humans are to blame; on
the other are fossil-fuel-industry-funded "experts" who tend to have
little background in climatology and who publish non-peer-reviewed
papers in junk magazines disputing established truths. These are
quickly debunked, but not before their findings have been reported by
conservative blogs and news outlets, which somehow never get around to
mentioning it when these studies are proved to be badly flawed.
{...} battle over classroom instruction {...} won't go on for decades, {...} impacts {...} already patently obvious.
Seven
of the 10 warmest years since global record-keeping began in 1880 have
occurred in the 21st century. {...} Pennsylvania State University professor Michael Mann's
"hockey stick" graph, which shows that temperatures in the latter half
of the 20th century soared to their highest level in 1,000 years, {...} validated repeatedly.
Last
year set a record for the most climate-related disasters in the United
States costing more than $1 billion in damage each — drought-fueled
wildfires in Texas, Hurricane Irene, and Mississippi River flooding were
among the 14 cases.
{...}
Sophisticated climate models show {...} going to get a
lot worse.
It's bad enough {...} gambling our children's futures {...}
doing so little {...} fight this problem.
Let's not ask their teachers to lie to them about it too.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-climate-20120220,0,3564279.story
{selections are unaltered, my emphasis & formatting}:
Fox News found to be a major driving force behind global warming denial (via Skeptical Science)