Yup, "our" weather as in, you break it, you own it. Republicans believe it's okay to deny observable facts - They believe it's their personal "Free Speech Right" to fabricate lies and malicious nonsense, then insist their cynical misdirections are reputable facts. Which they most certainly are not - as any good-faith full spectrum examination makes clear. They refuse to listen to any corrections and thoughtful explanations, they slander honest, accomplished and respected scientists with hysterical claims, sans all serious evidence. Since arguing the facts of the matter is a loser for them, they derail discussions with character assassination attempts on all who dare defend climate scientists against the outlandish paranoid machinations of fiction reporters - all this rather than rationally listening to what scientists have to teach.
Of course, taking our changing global environment seriously does demand changing the way we think and do things. It demands growing up and recognizing we have a huge population on a warming planet with shrinking resources and we no longer have the luxury of behaving as though Earth was still a limitless cornucopia. Since I'm still not getting the time I need to write, I want to share an article from last year where I try to describe our failure of vision and curiosity when it comes to addressing humanity's most fateful "geophysical experiment." (some touch up editing 12/24)
Reposted from
http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2015/12/our-failure-to-appreciate-our-weather.html
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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 Nov/Dec 2015 issue. This is a slightly altered version and I've included 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 global warming induced 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 because they regulated how much of the sun's incoming heat was retained within Earth's climate system.
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.
