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Recently we saw the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) 5th report on climate change ( http://www.ipcc.ch/ ). While some agree with it - most scientists do (1) - others - like the industry lobby- completely rubbishes it like this one:

http://www.naturalnews.com/042304_UN_climate_change_report_selectiv...

Some scientists - supported by the industrial lobby too don't agree with it. They say: The UN-promoted theory about the missing warming being hidden somewhere in the ocean is really an admission that its climate models do not accurately simulate natural internal variability in the system.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/16643-top-scien... ( this report is definitely written by the Industry lobby and the Republican lobby).

It is known that 'dark money' supports climate change denial effort. A Drexel University study finds that a large slice of donations to organizations that deny global warming are funneled through third-party pass-through organizations that conceal the original funder. 

( http://drexel.edu/~/media/Files/now/pdfs/Institutionalizing%20Delay...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=dark-money-funds-c... )

An interesting blog by a science communicator says scientists have been framed and global warming hasn't been slowed down like the skeptics and deniers say! Read it here: http://talkingscience.weebly.com/1/post/2013/12/you-have-been-frame...!

The author of this blog made some very good points.

And this blog on SA

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-risks-as-conclusi...

says:

Climate Risks as Conclusive as Link between Smoking and Lung Cancer

U.S. scientists say the evidence linking rising levels of greenhouse gases and global warming is as strong as the link between smoking and lung cancer.
And this one:

Climate Deniers Intimidate Journal into Retracting Paper that Finds They Believe Conspiracy Theories

The paper was sound but a libel threat apparently exerted pressure on management at Frontiers in Psychology, suggesting a blow to academic freedom
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-deniers-intimidat...
Are we in the 21st century or in the ancient times when people of science were attacked by everybody?

However, this topic really is all confusing to a layman with so much of contradictory news making the rounds.

Well, who should we believe when so many  reports and articles flooding the media with contradictory arguments?

The studies are still going on and nobody knows for sure the real causes for the climate change at the global level. But still local changes can effect you!

I will try to help you in coming to your own conclusion

Okay, imagine these two situations:

(1)You are on a holiday and go to a forest. You feel happy and relieved for getting out of the smoke you are inhaling in your city. You can breathe easily now,   feel relaxed and more energetic. Your young son and old mother get relief from their asthmatic conditions.  You can see the pollution markers - lichens- growing everywhere. You don't see them in your city! You see several unknown birds singing and chirping in a forest. The water tastes so different and sweet. This is a fact. I myself faced this situation and most of you must have been too. Now want to know the reason why? Because you get clean and fresh natural air in this place. You get pure water  in the forest. The Nature is untouched by human beings here. Well, almost!

(2) Now you return back from your holiday tour. You are in your home city. You definitely feel the heat difference, the air quality, and the resultant mood difference. You don't see several birds here. You will notice the smog, the thick black  water flowing down the road after a spell of rain  different as compared to the brown or transparent water you saw in the forest or a water fall you loved there. You feel breathless and you again start hearing the wheezing sound while your  mother  tries to breathe. Your water tastes rancid! Why? Because we are interfering with Nature and polluting it in the city! You can smell some chemicals in the air while rain starts coming down slowly? Acid rain? Exactly!

So?! Do you think I am lying when I say climate science is relevant or  scientists are lying when they say climate change is happening?

Climate change is not only happening at the global level, but also at the local level, effecting each and every living being on this planet.

It is happening alright and  the proof is before you! Forget about the IPCC report or what others say contradicting it. Feel the difference for yourself and come to your conclusions. And then help save the planet.

"Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten."

- Cree proverb

What’s the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions, if in the end, all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true? - Nobel Laureate Sherwood Rowland ( On climate science predictions) - just because the models are not very accurate?


References:
1. https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

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Views: 1105

Replies to This Discussion

Air Pollution Intensifies Pacific Storms
Pollution from China's coal-burning power plants has increased the strength of storms in the Pacific Northwest by 10 percent over the last three decades
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/air-pollution-intensifies...

I got a message from a person complaining this:
Paul Stregevsky

Technical Writer—Word, Government

The U.S. Coast Guard understands that the Arctic is warming. In 2010, the Coast Guard held a workshop in Alaska to determine what kinds of R&D it would need to allow it to meet its mission after the ice melts. I summarized the workshop in an article.

But Homeland Security's public affairs people wouldn't let me write that the Coast Guard believes that the Arctic is warming! They didn't want to offend climate skeptics.

So this paragraph, from my draft:

"Today, the Arctic’s most populous mammals are seals, otters, and other aquatic natives. But as global warming melts the ice, these four-legged residents will be eying more two-legged visitors. American energy companies are turning north to find scarce fossil fuels; in 2010, Shell applied to build a well to explore for oil in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea. By 2030, new routes will open for trade ships; cruise ships will follow. To protect American citizens and American interests, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will turn to its military maritime arm, the Coast Guard."

became this:

"In the near future, the Coast Guard will face challenges posed by increased commercial shipping, resource exploration, and recreational activity in that part of the world," says DHS program manager Theo Gemelas, who oversees two Centers of Excellence at the Department's Science and Technology Directorate (S&T). The Coast Guard's research planners are examining the future capability and technological needs of its operators. To ensure that tomorrow's Arctic guardians will get the tools they'll need, the Coast Guard must devise innovative solutions today.

Why will the Arctic soon see increases in commercial shipping, resource exploration, and recreation? Homeland wouldn't say.

You can read my article, or what remains of it, at at http://www.dhs.gov/coast-guards-arctic-agenda-heats .
http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=121217&type=mem...
And my reply to him:

Paul, the exact reason you gave is why I do independent work refusing to accept funds or anything form anybody. I will say what I want to say no matter what on my own network. And tell everybody who try to interfere to get lost ( I told this to bigwigs in the sci-art arena, who tried to cajole me into deleting some of the facts on art's role in the progress of science. I came out of the group, became completely independent. That made people read my blogs more than the ones written by people who are trying to make sci-art a religion asking people to blindly follow it without asking questions.)
I am sure there are people who would want to publish the exact facts you want to convey. Try them. How about an independent blog? I would like to add the words you mentioned on my network too.
Need we show more reasons to the world to tell them why skeptics and deniers are ahead of us?

Costs of Climate Change May Prove High for Future
Our descendants will pay a higher price for greenhouse gas build-up as real costs are updated over time
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/costs-of-climate-change-m...

Soot and Smog Put China's Babies at Risk
China’s smoke-belching coal plants and heavy traffic may be signs of a bustling economy but health experts fear the country’s dirty air is hurting its infants

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soot-and-smog-put-chinas-...

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865601423/Anti-science-ruins-the...

My view: Anti-science ruins the climate debate

How the temperatures are raising in the US:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2014/04/22/happy-h...

Volcanoes That Act as Air-Conditioning for a Warming World
Many small eruptions over the past decade or so have helped restrain climate change
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/volcanoes-that-act-as-air...

On Valentine's Day, Indonesia's Mount Kelud blew its top and coated villages up to 500 kilometers away with ash. At the same time, the eruption injected a small but consequential amount of sulfur dioxide 28 kilometers up into the stratosphere. Tiny droplets of sulfuric acid then reflected away incoming sunlight, helping to cool the planet. Such “small” eruptions—along with others at places like Manam, Soufrière Hills, Jebel at Tair and Eyjafjallajökull, to name a few of the 17 between 2000 and 2012—have helped slow the pace of global warming, according to work published in Nature Geoscience.

Climate change and assessing financial risk

The growing global cost of natural disasters, including extreme weather events, has prompted the insurance sector to change how it operates.
 
Rowan Douglas, CEO of global analytics at insurance broker the Willis Group, spoke at a seminar this month (3 April) entitled ‘Agriculture growth, jobs, food security and climate: Taking action in response to IPCC’. He says the industry has undergone a paradigm shift over the past twenty-five years in how it assesses risk.
 
He is calling for an integrated approach combining science, policy and finance when modelling responses to climate change.
http://www.scidev.net/global/climate-change/multimedia/q-a-climate-...

The number and size of wildfires in the western United States has steadily risen over the last three decades, according to a new report.

Between 1984 and 2011, the number of large, uncontrolled burns jumped by seven each year. The area of scorched land also expanded by 355 square kilometers each year.

The finding, based on national wildfire database, appeared April 17 in Geophysical Research Letters. The authors, led by geographer Philip Dennison of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, say that the trend could continue due to ongoing climate change that will raise temperatures and spur more severe droughts.
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/surge-seen-number-u...

Analyzing thousands of breeding bird surveys sent in by citizen scientists across the western United States and Canada over 35 years, wildlife researchers report that most of the 40 songbird species they studied shifted either northward or toward higher elevation in response to climate change, but did not necessarily do both.

This means that most previous studies of potential climate change impacts on wildlife that looked only at one factor or the other have likely underestimated the effects of environmental warming, say research wildlife biologists David King at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Sonya Auer of the University of Glasgow, U.K. Their study appears in the current issue of Global Ecology and Biogeography.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113126683/wildlife-response-t...

Will you help the environment?

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113126672/ask-yourself-will-y...

CO2 Makes Growing Seasons Longer
Elevated greenhouse gas levels, not just rising temperatures, are extending annual plants' life cycles
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/co2-makes-growing-seasons...

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