Réchauffement climatique

[Chitah]

Y a t-il réchauffement climatique ? Peut-être mais cela n'a rien de nouveau ni d'extraordinaire car la Terre a connu des phases successives de refroidissement et de réchauffement.

Et voici l'argument massue que je sors toujours : http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20…rs-warming.html

En plus ça fera travailler l'anglais de tes élèves!

Une autre source : http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192

[LaFéeC]

Patrice Drevet s'installe dans le sud (ouin) et signe son nouvel ouvrage :

Dans un style simple et direct, toujours accompagné d'une note d'humour qui est sa marque personnelle, Patrice Drevet raconte, dans ce livre, quels étaient les climats du passé, explique les bouleversements des phénomènes météo auxquels nous assistons aujourd'hui, simplifie les formules scientifiques et, surtout, décrypte pour nous les conséquences du réchauffement de la planète engendré par la folie d'une société de consommation paroxysmique. ses conseils de bon sens, ses recommandations d'homme averti nous donnent l'envie de réagir concrètement et de devenir les défenseurs actifs de notre environnement, seule solution pour permettre à nos enfants et à nos petits-enfants de vivre heureux sur la Terre, pendant encore quelques milliers d'années…

Dans le midi libre du jour, Drevet affirme que Borloo lui aurait répondu (au sujet du réchauffement) "mais c'est pire que ce que l'on pense".

[José]

Patrice Drevet s'installe dans le sud…

Manifestement, il ne craint pas la chaleur.

[Dardanus]

Manifestement, il ne craint pas la chaleur.

Voyons, c'est pour mieux étudier son sujet : son bon sens l'a averti qu'il trouverait plus de chaleur dans le Sud.

[LaFéeC]

Manifestement, il ne craint pas la chaleur.

Avec un peu de chance et une bonne canicule

[pankkake]

Faut-il lutter contre la pollution ? Certes, mais c'est sans rapport avec l'évolution du climat.

Voilà un point important. La pollution, ça pue, pas besoin d'invoquer la fin du monde.

[Phil]

Faut-il lutter contre la pollution ? Certes, mais c'est sans rapport avec l'évolution du climat.

Le problème des alarmistes, c'est qu'ils nous parlent du CO2 comme presque seul polluant (alors que c'est un gaz totalement inoffensif). On ne parle jamais des engrais ou des pesticides qui seraient utilisés pour produire des biocarburants ou des effets néfastes des infra sons émient par les éoliennes.

[miniTAX]

Une autre source : http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192

Tu ne dois pas l'avoir lu alors

[miniTAX]

Voyons, c'est pour mieux étudier son sujet : son bon sens l'a averti qu'il trouverait plus de chaleur dans le Sud.

S'il était moins ignorant du sujet, il saurait que le Sud, aussi chaud qu'il soit n'est qu'à 15°C. Pas vraiment ce qu'on appelle de la chaleur. Comparé à la Floride (23°C), il lui faudrait encore attendre 12 siècles à ce rythme.

[xavdr]

Imaginons un bref instant qu'un parent d'élève français traîne devant les Tribunaux Administratifs le directeur de l'école ou du rectorat qui encouragerait ou soutiendrait les enseignants à faire voir aux élèves le film d'Al Gore.

Hmm, vous non plus ?

Ben… faudrait essayer. Le film est partisan et contient des erreurs, des ommissions scandaleuses, etc. Il affirme un faux consensus. Au besoin il faudra peut-être attendre la cours de justice européenne pour que le droit français soit dit au lieu d'être glueusement évacué par des énarques juges administratifs partisans de la tecnostructure militante et non de la véracité du droit. La partialité systémique des tribunaux administratifs est légendaire, même si cela s'attenue au fil des ans.

[xavdr]

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-…6-959290,0.html

Deux commentaires :

- Sur ce que la période du 12-14 sept 2001 a permis de mesurer : tout à fait instructif mais pas en terme de température brute. La température brute dépend trop fortement de la météo. Ce qui est plus intéressant c'est le différentiel entre jour et nuit qui est beaucoup plus stable au sein d'une saison.

- Sur l'obscurcicement : Dominique Dhombres se fout du monde. Il cite des données du début des années 1990 en laissant entendre que cela traduirait une tendance liée à l'activité humaine alors que le début des années 1990 est marquée par les éruptions majeures du volcan Pina Tubo. Les mesures satellites de la NASA qui sont en principe beaucoup plus précises et homogènes que les extrapolation locale et temporaire donnent une stabilité de l'épaisseur optique de l'atmosphère entre 1980 et 1990 avec deux gros pic au début des années 1980 et des années 1990 du à deux éruptions volcaniques puis une réduction régulière de l'épaisseur optique de l'atmosphère depuis 1993. Il y a plusieurs hypothèses émises : absorption progressive de certains résidus volcaniques, compensation sécrétées par les microplanctons qui semblent aténuer les variations de (leurs) températures via l'émission d'aérosols, évolution des technologies et des émissions humaines…

[José]

La NASA a examiné la réduction de l'extension du glacier marin artique. L'étude conclue,après avoir fait la différence entre glacier pérenne et glacier saisonnier, que la première cause de cette diminution est… le vent.

NASA Examines Arctic Sea Ice Changes Leading to Record Low in 2007

10.01.07

PASADENA, Calif. - A new NASA-led study found a 23-percent loss in the extent of the Arctic's thick, year-round sea ice cover during the past two winters. This drastic reduction of perennial winter sea ice is the primary cause of this summer's fastest-ever sea ice retreat on record and subsequent smallest-ever extent of total Arctic coverage.

A team led by Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., studied trends in Arctic perennial ice cover by combining data from NASA's Quick Scatterometer (QuikScat) satellite with a computing model based on observations of sea ice drift from the International Arctic Buoy Programme. QuikScat can identify and map different classes of sea ice, including older, thicker perennial ice and younger, thinner seasonal ice.

Between winter 2005 and winter 2007, the perennial ice shrunk by an area the size of Texas and California combined. This severe loss continues a trend of rapid decreases in perennial ice extent in this decade. Study results will be published Oct. 4 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The scientists observed less perennial ice cover in March 2007 than ever before, with the thick ice confined to the Arctic Ocean north of Canada. Consequently, the Arctic Ocean was dominated by thinner seasonal ice that melts faster. This ice is more easily compressed and responds more quickly to being pushed out of the Arctic by winds. Those thinner seasonal ice conditions facilitated the ice loss, leading to this year's record low amount of total Arctic sea ice.

Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. "Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.

"The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century," Nghiem said.

The Arctic Ocean's shift from perennial to seasonal ice is preconditioning the sea ice cover there for more efficient melting and further ice reductions each summer. The shift to seasonal ice decreases the reflectivity of Earth's surface and allows more solar energy to be absorbed in the ice-ocean system.

The perennial sea ice pattern change was deduced by using the buoy computing model infused with 50 years of data from drifting buoys and measurement camps to track sea ice movement around the Arctic Ocean. From the 1970s through the 1990s, perennial ice declined by about 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) each decade. Since 2000, that amount of decline has nearly tripled.

Results from the buoy model were verified against the past eight years of QuikScat observations, which have much better resolution and coverage. The QuikScat data were verified with field experiments conducted aboard the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy, as well as by sea ice charts derived from multiple satellite data sources by analysts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Ice Center in Suitland, Md.

The new study differs significantly from other recent studies that only looked at the Arctic's total sea ice extent. "Our study applies QuikScat's unique capabilities to examine how the composition of Arctic sea ice is changing, which is crucial to understanding Arctic sea ice mass balance and overall Arctic climate stability," Ngheim said.

Pablo Clemente-Colon of the National Ice Center, Suitland, Md., said the rapid reduction of Arctic perennial sea ice requires an urgent reassessment of sea ice forecast model predictions and of potential impacts to local weather and climate, as well as shipping and other maritime operations in the region. "Improving ice forecast models will require new physical insights and understanding of complex Arctic processes and interactions."

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingat…t-20071001.html

[Taranne]

MSNBC.com 'Print this'sponsored by

——————————————————————————--

Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine

By Sharon Begley

Newsweek

Aug. 13, 2007 issue - Sen. Barbara Boxer had been chair of the Senate's Environment Committee for less than a month when the verdict landed last February. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies. Those who doubt the reality of human-caused climate change have spent decades disputing that. But Boxer figured that with "the overwhelming science out there, the deniers' days were numbered." As she left a meeting with the head of the international climate panel, however, a staffer had some news for her. A conservative think tank long funded by ExxonMobil, she told Boxer, had offered scientists $10,000 to write articles undercutting the new report and the computer-based climate models it is based on. "I realized," says Boxer, "there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."

If you think those who have long challenged the mainstream scientific findings about global warming recognize that the game is over, think again. Yes, 19 million people watched the "Live Earth" concerts last month, titans of corporate America are calling for laws mandating greenhouse cuts, "green" magazines fill newsstands, and the film based on Al Gore's best-selling book, "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Oscar. But outside Hollywood, Manhattan and other habitats of the chattering classes, the denial machine is running at full throttle—and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion.

Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry," says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. "Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress."

Just last year, polls found that 64 percent of Americans thought there was "a lot" of scientific disagreement on climate change; only one third thought planetary warming was "mainly caused by things people do." In contrast, majorities in Europe and Japan recognize a broad consensus among climate experts that greenhouse gases—mostly from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas to power the world's economies—are altering climate. A new NEWSWEEK Poll finds that the influence of the denial machine remains strong. Although the figure is less than in earlier polls, 39 percent of those asked say there is "a lot of disagreement among climate scientists" on the basic question of whether the planet is warming; 42 percent say there is a lot of disagreement that human activities are a major cause of global warming. Only 46 percent say the greenhouse effect is being felt today.

As a result of the undermining of the science, all the recent talk about addressing climate change has produced little in the way of actual action. Yes, last September Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a landmark law committing California to reduce statewide emissions of carbon dioxide to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent more by 2050. And this year both Minnesota and New Jersey passed laws requiring their states to reduce greenhouse emissions 80 percent below recent levels by 2050. In January, nine leading corporations—including Alcoa, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, Du Pont and General Electric—called on Congress to "enact strong national legislation" to reduce greenhouse gases. But although at least eight bills to require reductions in greenhouse gases have been introduced in Congress, their fate is decidedly murky. The Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives decided last week not even to bring to a vote a requirement that automakers improve vehicle mileage, an obvious step toward reducing greenhouse emissions. Nor has there been much public pressure to do so. Instead, every time the scientific case got stronger, "the American public yawned and bought bigger cars," Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey congressman and physicist, recently wrote in the journal Science; politicians "shrugged, said there is too much doubt among scientists, and did nothing."

It was 98 degrees in Washington on Thursday, June 23, 1988, and climate change was bursting into public consciousness. The Amazon was burning, wildfires raged in the United States, crops in the Midwest were scorched and it was shaping up to be the hottest year on record worldwide. A Senate committee, including Gore, had invited NASA climatologist James Hansen to testify about the greenhouse effect, and the members were not above a little stagecraft. The night before, staffers had opened windows in the hearing room. When Hansen began his testimony, the air conditioning was struggling, and sweat dotted his brow. It was the perfect image for the revelation to come. He was 99 percent sure, Hansen told the panel, that "the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now."

The reaction from industries most responsible for greenhouse emissions was immediate. "As soon as the scientific community began to come together on the science of climate change, the pushback began," says historian Naomi Oreskes of the University of California, San Diego. Individual companies and industry associations—representing petroleum, steel, autos and utilities, for instance—formed lobbying groups with names like the Global Climate Coalition and the Information Council on the Environment. ICE's game plan called for enlisting greenhouse doubters to "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact," and to sow doubt about climate research just as cigarette makers had about smoking research. ICE ads asked, "If the earth is getting warmer, why is Minneapolis [or Kentucky, or some other site] getting colder?" This sounded what would become a recurring theme for naysayers: that global temperature data are flat-out wrong. For one thing, they argued, the data reflect urbanization (many temperature stations are in or near cities), not true global warming.

Shaping public opinion was only one goal of the industry groups, for soon after Hansen's sweat-drenched testimony they faced a more tangible threat: international proposals to address global warming. The United Nations had scheduled an "Earth Summit" for 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, and climate change was high on an agenda that included saving endangered species and rain forests. ICE and the Global Climate Coalition lobbied hard against a global treaty to curb greenhouse gases, and were joined by a central cog in the denial machine: the George C. Marshall Institute, a conservative think tank. Barely two months before Rio, it released a study concluding that models of the greenhouse effect had "substantially exaggerated its importance." The small amount of global warming that might be occurring, it argued, actually reflected a simple fact: the Sun is putting out more energy. The idea of a "variable Sun" has remained a constant in the naysayers' arsenal to this day, even though the tiny increase in solar output over recent decades falls far short of explaining the extent or details of the observed warming.

In what would become a key tactic of the denial machine—think tanks linking up with like-minded, contrarian researchers—the report was endorsed in a letter to President George H.W. Bush by MIT meteorologist Richard Lindzen. Lindzen, whose parents had fled Hitler's Germany, is described by old friends as the kind of man who, if you're in the minority, opts to be with you. "I thought it was important to make it clear that the science was at an early and primitive stage and that there was little basis for consensus and much reason for skepticism," he told Scientific American magazine. "I did feel a moral obligation."

Bush was torn. The head of his Environmental Protection Agency, William Reilly, supported binding cuts in greenhouse emissions. Political advisers insisted on nothing more than voluntary cuts. Bush's chief of staff, John Sununu, had a Ph.D. in engineering from MIT and "knew computers," recalls Reilly. Sununu frequently logged on to a computer model of climate, Reilly says, and "vigorously critiqued" its assumptions and projections.

Sununu's side won. The Rio treaty called for countries to voluntarily stabilize their greenhouse emissions by returning them to 1990 levels by 2000. (As it turned out, U.S. emissions in 2000 were 14 percent higher than in 1990.) Avoiding mandatory cuts was a huge victory for industry. But Rio was also a setback for climate contrarians, says UCSD's Oreskes: "It was one thing when Al Gore said there's global warming, but quite another when George Bush signed a convention saying so." And the doubters faced a newly powerful nemesis. Just months after he signed the Rio pact, Bush lost to Bill Clinton—whose vice president, Gore, had made climate change his signature issue.

Groups that opposed greenhouse curbs ramped up. They "settled on the 'science isn't there' argument because they didn't believe they'd be able to convince the public to do nothing if climate change were real," says David Goldston, who served as Republican chief of staff for the House of Representatives science committee until 2006. Industry found a friend in Patrick Michaels, a climatologist at the University of Virginia who keeps a small farm where he raises prize-winning pumpkins and whose favorite weather, he once told a reporter, is "anything severe." Michaels had written several popular articles on climate change, including an op-ed in The Washington Post in 1989 warning of "apocalyptic environmentalism," which he called "the most popular new religion to come along since Marxism." The coal industry's Western Fuels Association paid Michaels to produce a newsletter called World Climate Report, which has regularly trashed mainstream climate science. (At a 1995 hearing in Minnesota on coal-fired power plants, Michaels admitted that he received more than $165,000 from industry; he now declines to comment on his industry funding, asking, "What is this, a hatchet job?")

The road from Rio led to an international meeting in Kyoto, Japan, where more than 100 nations would negotiate a treaty on making Rio's voluntary—and largely ignored—greenhouse curbs mandatory. The coal and oil industries, worried that Kyoto could lead to binding greenhouse cuts that would imperil their profits, ramped up their message that there was too much scientific uncertainty to justify any such cuts. There was just one little problem. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC—the international body that periodically assesses climate research—had just issued its second report, and the conclusion of its 2,500 scientists looked devastating for greenhouse doubters. Although both natural swings and changes in the Sun's output might be contributing to climate change, it concluded, "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on climate."

Faced with this emerging consensus, the denial machine hardly blinked. There is too much "scientific uncertainty" to justify curbs on greenhouse emissions, William O'Keefe, then a vice president of the American Petroleum Institute and leader of the Global Climate Coalition, suggested in 1996. Virginia's Michaels echoed that idea in a 1997 op-ed in The Washington Post, describing "a growing contingent of scientists who are increasingly unhappy with the glib forecasts of gloom and doom." To reinforce the appearance of uncertainty and disagreement, the denial machine churned out white papers and "studies" (not empirical research, but critiques of others' work). The Marshall Institute, for instance, issued reports by a Harvard University astrophysicist it supported pointing to satellite data showing "no significant warming" of the atmosphere, contrary to the surface warming. The predicted warming, she wrote, "simply isn't happening according to the satellite." At the time, there was a legitimate case that satellites were more accurate than ground stations, which might be skewed by the unusual warmth of cities where many are sited.

"There was an extraordinary campaign by the denial machine to find and hire scientists to sow dissent and make it appear that the research community was deeply divided," says Dan Becker of the Sierra Club. Those recruits blitzed the media. Driven by notions of fairness and objectivity, the press "qualified every mention of human influence on climate change with 'some scientists believe,' where the reality is that the vast preponderance of scientific opinion accepts that human-caused [greenhouse] emissions are contributing to warming," says Reilly, the former EPA chief. "The pursuit of balance has not done justice" to the science. Talk radio goes further, with Rush Limbaugh telling listeners this year that "more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not likely to significantly contribute to the greenhouse effect. It's just all part of the hoax." In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 42 percent said the press "exaggerates the threat of climate change."

Now naysayers tried a new tactic: lists and petitions meant to portray science as hopelessly divided. Just before Kyoto, S. Fred Singer released the "Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change." Singer, who fled Nazi-occupied Austria as a boy, had run the U.S. weather-satellite program in the early 1960s. In the Leipzig petition, just over 100 scientists and others, including TV weathermen, said they "cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes." Unfortunately, few of the Leipzig signers actually did climate research; they just kibitzed about other people's. Scientific truth is not decided by majority vote, of course (ask Galileo), but the number of researchers whose empirical studies find that the world is warming and that human activity is partly responsible numbered in the thousands even then. The IPCC report issued this year, for instance, was written by more than 800 climate researchers and vetted by 2,500 scientists from 130 nations.

Although Clinton did not even try to get the Senate to ratify the Kyoto treaty (he knew a hopeless cause when he saw one), industry was taking no chances. In April 1998 a dozen people from the denial machine—including the Marshall Institute, Fred Singer's group and Exxon—met at the American Petroleum Institute's Washington headquarters. They proposed a $5 million campaign, according to a leaked eight-page memo, to convince the public that the science of global warming is riddled with controversy and uncertainty. The plan was to train up to 20 "respected climate scientists" on media—and public—outreach with the aim of "raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom' " and, in particular, "the Kyoto treaty's scientific underpinnings" so that elected officials "will seek to prevent progress toward implementation." The plan, once exposed in the press, "was never implemented as policy," says Marshall's William O'Keefe, who was then at API.

The GOP control of Congress for six of Clinton's eight years in office meant the denial machine had a receptive audience. Although Republicans such as Sens. John McCain, Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee spurned the denial camp, and Democrats such as Congressman John Dingell adamantly oppose greenhouse curbs that might hurt the auto and other industries, for the most part climate change has been a bitterly partisan issue. Republicans have also received significantly more campaign cash from the energy and other industries that dispute climate science. Every proposed climate bill "ran into a buzz saw of denialism," says Manik Roy of the Pew Center on Climate Change, a research and advocacy group, who was a Senate staffer at the time. "There was no rational debate in Congress on climate change."

The reason for the inaction was clear. "The questioning of the science made it to the Hill through senators who parroted reports funded by the American Petroleum Institute and other advocacy groups whose entire purpose was to confuse people on the science of global warming," says Sen. John Kerry. "There would be ads challenging the science right around the time we were trying to pass legislation. It was pure, raw pressure combined with false facts." Nor were states stepping where Washington feared to tread. "I did a lot of testifying before state legislatures—in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Alaska—that thought about taking action," says Singer. "I said that the observed warming was and would be much, much less than climate models calculated, and therefore nothing to worry about."

But the science was shifting under the denial machine. In January 2000, the National Academy of Sciences skewered its strongest argument. Contrary to the claim that satellites finding no warming are right and ground stations showing warming are wrong, it turns out that the satellites are off. (Basically, engineers failed to properly correct for changes in their orbit.) The planet is indeed warming, and at a rate since 1980 much greater than in the past.

Just months after the Academy report, Singer told a Senate panel that "the Earth's atmosphere is not warming and fears about human-induced storms, sea-level rise and other disasters are misplaced." And as studies fingering humans as a cause of climate change piled up, he had a new argument: a cabal was silencing good scientists who disagreed with the "alarmist" reports. "Global warming has become an article of faith for many, with its own theology and orthodoxy," Singer wrote in The Washington Times. "Its believers are quite fearful of any scientific dissent."

With the Inauguration of George W. Bush in 2001, the denial machine expected to have friends in the White House. But despite Bush's oil-patch roots, naysayers weren't sure they could count on him: as a candidate, he had pledged to cap carbon dioxide emissions. Just weeks into his term, the Competitive Enterprise Institute heard rumors that the draft of a speech Bush was preparing included a passage reiterating that pledge. CEI's Myron Ebell called conservative pundit Robert Novak, who had booked Bush's EPA chief, Christie Todd Whitman, on CNN's "Crossfire." He asked her about the line, and within hours the possibility of a carbon cap was the talk of the Beltway. "We alerted anyone we thought could have influence and get the line, if it was in the speech, out," says CEI president Fred Smith, who counts this as another notch in CEI's belt. The White House declines to comment.

Bush not only disavowed his campaign pledge. In March, he withdrew from the Kyoto treaty. After the about-face, MIT's Lindzen told NEWSWEEK in 2001, he was summoned to the White House. He told Bush he'd done the right thing. Even if you accept the doomsday forecasts, Lindzen said, Kyoto would hardly touch the rise in temperatures. The treaty, he said, would "do nothing, at great expense."

Bush's reversal came just weeks after the IPCC released its third assessment of the burgeoning studies of climate change. Its conclusion: the 1990s were very likely the warmest decade on record, and recent climate change is partly "attributable to human activities." The weather itself seemed to be conspiring against the skeptics. The early years of the new millennium were setting heat records. The summer of 2003 was especially brutal, with a heat wave in Europe killing tens of thousands of people. Consultant Frank Luntz, who had been instrumental in the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994, suggested a solution to the PR mess. In a memo to his GOP clients, he advised them that to deal with global warming, "you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue." They should "challenge the science," he wrote, by "recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view." Although few of the experts did empirical research of their own (MIT's Lindzen was an exception), the public didn't notice. To most civilians, a scientist is a scientist.

Challenging the science wasn't a hard sell on Capitol Hill. "In the House, the leadership generally viewed it as impermissible to go along with anything that would even imply that climate change was genuine," says Goldston, the former Republican staffer. "There was a belief on the part of many members that the science was fraudulent, even a Democratic fantasy. A lot of the information they got was from conservative think tanks and industry." When in 2003 the Senate called for a national strategy to cut greenhouse gases, for instance, climate naysayers were "giving briefings and talking to staff," says Goldston. "There was a constant flow of information—largely misinformation." Since the House version of that bill included no climate provisions, the two had to be reconciled. "The House leadership staff basically said, 'You know we're not going to accept this,' and [senate staffers] said, 'Yeah, we know,' and the whole thing disappeared relatively jovially without much notice," says Goldston. "It was such a foregone conclusion."

Especially when the denial machine had a new friend in a powerful place. In 2003 James Inhofe of Oklahoma took over as chairman of the environment committee. That summer he took to the Senate floor and, in a two-hour speech, disputed the claim of scientific consensus on climate change. Despite the discovery that satellite data showing no warming were wrong, he argued that "satellites, widely considered the most accurate measure of global temperatures, have confirmed" the absence of atmospheric warming. Might global warming, he asked, be "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people?" Inhofe made his mark holding hearing after hearing to suggest that the answer is yes. For one, on a study finding a dramatic increase in global temperatures unprecedented in the last 1,000 years, he invited a scientist who challenged that conclusion (in a study partly underwritten with $53,000 from the American Petroleum Institute), one other doubter and the scientist who concluded that recent global temperatures were spiking. Just as Luntz had suggested, the witness table presented a tableau of scientific disagreement.

Every effort to pass climate legislation during the George W. Bush years was stopped in its tracks. When Senators McCain and Joe Lieberman were fishing for votes for their bipartisan effort in 2003, a staff member for Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska explained to her counterpart in Lieberman's office that Stevens "is aware there is warming in Alaska, but he's not sure how much it's caused by human activity or natural cycles," recalls Tim Profeta, now director of an environmental-policy institute at Duke University. "I was hearing the basic argument of the skeptics—a brilliant strategy to go after the science. And it was working." Stevens voted against the bill, which failed 43-55. When the bill came up again the next year, "we were contacted by a lot of lobbyists from API and Exxon-Mobil," says Mark Helmke, the climate aide to GOP Sen. Richard Lugar. "They'd bring up how the science wasn't certain, how there were a lot of skeptics out there." It went down to defeat again.

Killing bills in Congress was only one prong of the denial machine's campaign. It also had to keep public opinion from demanding action on greenhouse emissions, and that meant careful management of what federal scientists and officials wrote and said. "If they presented the science honestly, it would have brought public pressure for action," says Rick Piltz, who joined the federal Climate Science Program in 1995. By appointing former coal and oil lobbyists to key jobs overseeing climate policy, he found, the administration made sure that didn't happen. Following the playbook laid out at the 1998 meeting at the American Petroleum Institute, officials made sure that every report and speech cast climate science as dodgy, uncertain, controversial—and therefore no basis for making policy. Ex-oil lobbyist Philip Cooney, working for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, edited a 2002 report on climate science by sprinkling it with phrases such as "lack of understanding" and "considerable uncertainty." A short section on climate in another report was cut entirely. The White House "directed us to remove all mentions of it," says Piltz, who resigned in protest. An oil lobbyist faxed Cooney, "You are doing a great job."

The response to the international climate panel's latest report, in February, showed that greenhouse doubters have a lot of fight left in them. In addition to offering $10,000 to scientists willing to attack the report, which so angered Boxer, they are emphasizing a new theme. Even if the world is warming now, and even if that warming is due in part to the greenhouse gases emitted by burning fossil fuels, there's nothing to worry about. As Lindzen wrote in a guest editorial in NEWSWEEK International in April, "There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe."

To some extent, greenhouse denial is now running on automatic pilot. "Some members of Congress have completely internalized this," says Pew's Roy, and therefore need no coaching from the think tanks and contrarian scientists who for 20 years kept them stoked with arguments. At a hearing last month on the Kyoto treaty, GOP Congressman Dana Rohrabacher asked whether "changes in the Earth's temperature in the past—all of these glaciers moving back and forth—and the changes that we see now" might be "a natural occurrence." (Hundreds of studies have ruled that out.) "I think it's a bit grandiose for us to believe … that [human activities are] going to change some major climate cycle that's going on." Inhofe has told allies he will filibuster any climate bill that mandates greenhouse cuts.

Still, like a great beast that has been wounded, the denial machine is not what it once was. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, 38 percent of those surveyed identified climate change as the nation's gravest environmental threat, three times the number in 2000. After ExxonMobil was chastised by senators for giving $19 million over the years to the Competitive Enterprise Institute and others who are "producing very questionable data" on climate change, as Sen. Jay Rockefeller said, the company has cut back its support for such groups. In June, a spokesman said ExxonMobil did not doubt the risks posed by climate change, telling reporters, "We're very much not a denier." In yet another shock, Bush announced at the weekend that he would convene a global-warming summit next month, with a 2008 goal of cutting greenhouse emissions. That astonished the remaining naysayers. "I just can't imagine the administration would look to mandatory [emissions caps] after what we had with Kyoto," said a GOP Senate staffer, who did not want to be named criticizing the president. "I mean, what a disaster!"

With its change of heart, ExxonMobil is more likely to win a place at the negotiating table as Congress debates climate legislation. That will be crucially important to industry especially in 2009, when naysayers may no longer be able to count on a friend in the White House nixing man-datory greenhouse curbs. All the Democratic presidential contenders have called global warming a real threat, and promise to push for cuts similar to those being passed by California and other states. In the GOP field, only McCain—long a leader on the issue—supports that policy. Fred Thompson belittles findings that human activities are changing the climate, and Rudy Giuliani backs the all-volunteer greenhouse curbs of (both) Presidents Bush.

Look for the next round of debate to center on what Americans are willing to pay and do to stave off the worst of global warming. So far the answer seems to be, not much. The NEWSWEEK Poll finds less than half in favor of requiring high-mileage cars or energy-efficient appliances and buildings. No amount of white papers, reports and studies is likely to change that. If anything can, it will be the climate itself. This summer, Texas was hit by exactly the kind of downpours and flooding expected in a greenhouse world, and Las Vegas and other cities broiled in record triple-digit temperatures. Just last week the most accurate study to date concluded that the length of heat waves in Europe has doubled, and their frequency nearly tripled, in the past century. The frequency of Atlantic hurricanes has already doubled in the last century. Snowpack whose water is crucial to both cities and farms is diminishing. It's enough to make you wish that climate change were a hoax, rather than the reality it is.

With Eve Conant, Sam Stein and Eleanor Clift in Washington and Matthew Philips in New York

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/page/0/

[Taranne]

Réponse de Robert Samuelson:

Samuelson: A Different View of Global Warming

By Robert J. Samuelson

Newsweek

Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - We in the news business often enlist in moral crusades. Global warming is among the latest. Unfortunately, self-righteous indignation can undermine good journalism. Last week's NEWSWEEK cover story on global warming is a sobering reminder. It's an object lesson of how viewing the world as "good guys vs. bad guys" can lead to a vast oversimplification of a messy story. Global warming has clearly occurred; the hard question is what to do about it.

If you missed NEWSWEEK's story, here's the gist. A "well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change." This "denial machine" has obstructed action against global warming and is still "running at full throttle." The story's thrust: discredit the "denial machine," and the country can start the serious business of fighting global warming. The story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading.

The global-warming debate's great un-mentionable is this: we lack the technology to get from here to there. Just because Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to cut emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 doesn't mean it can happen. At best, we might curb emissions growth.

Consider a 2006 study from the International Energy Agency. With present policies, it projected that carbon-dioxide emissions (a main greenhouse gas) would more than double by 2050; developing countries would account for almost 70 percent of the increase. The IEA then simulated an aggressive, global program to cut emissions based on the best available technologies: more solar, wind and biomass; more-efficient cars, appliances and buildings; more nuclear. Under this admitted fantasy, global emissions in 2050 would still slightly exceed 2003 levels.

Even the fantasy would be a stretch. In the United States, it would take massive regulations, higher energy taxes or both. Democracies don't easily adopt painful measures in the present to avert possible future problems. Examples abound. Since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, we've been on notice to limit dependence on insecure foreign oil. We've done little. In 1973, imports were 35 percent of U.S. oil use; in 2006, they were 60 percent. For decades we've known of the huge retirement costs of baby boomers. Little has been done.

One way or another, our assaults against global warming are likely to be symbolic, ineffective or both. But if we succeed in cutting emissions substantially, savings would probably be offset by gains in China and elsewhere. The McKinsey Global Institute projects that from 2003 to 2020, the number of China's vehicles will rise from 26 million to 120 million, average residential floor space will increase 50 percent and energy demand will grow 4.4 percent annually. Even with "best practices" energy efficiency, demand would still grow 2.8 percent a year, McKinsey estimates.

Against these real-world pressures, NEWSWEEK's "denial machine" is a peripheral and highly contrived story. NEWSWEEK implied, for example, that ExxonMobil used a think tank to pay academics to criticize global-warming science. Actually, this accusation was long ago discredited, and NEWSWEEK shouldn't have lent it respectability. (The company says it knew nothing of the global-warming grant, which involved issues of climate modeling. And its 2006 contribution to the think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, was small: $240,000 out of a $28 million budget.)

The alleged cabal's influence does not seem impressive. The mainstream media have generally been unsympathetic; they've treated global warming ominously. The first NEWSWEEK cover story in 1988 warned THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT. DANGER: MORE HOT SUMMERS AHEAD. A Time cover in 2006 was more alarmist: BE WORRIED, BE VERY WORRIED. Nor does public opinion seem much swayed. Although polls can be found to illustrate almost anything, the longest-running survey questions show a remarkable consistency. In 1989, Gallup found 63 percent of Americans worried "a great deal" or a "fair amount" about global warming; in 2007, 65 percent did.

What to do about global warming is a quandary. Certainly, more research and development. Advances in underground storage of carbon dioxide, battery technology (for plug-in hybrid cars), biomass or nuclear power could alter energy economics. To cut oil imports, I support a higher gasoline tax—$1 to $2 a gallon, introduced gradually—and higher fuel-economy standards for vehicles. These steps would also temper greenhouse-gas emissions. Drilling for more domestic natural gas (a low-emission fuel) would make sense. One test of greenhouse proposals: are they worth doing on other grounds?

But the overriding reality seems almost un-American: we simply don't have a solution for this problem. As we debate it, journalists should resist the temptation to portray global warming as a morality tale—as NEWSWEEK did—in which anyone who questions its gravity or proposed solutions may be ridiculed as a fool, a crank or an industry stooge. Dissent is, or should be, the lifeblood of a free society.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20226462/site/newsweek/page/0/

[Punu]

Article intéressant.

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-…6-964318,0.html

Produits à valeur sociétale ajoutée

LE MONDE | 08.10.07 | 14h29

Lorsque l'on a une chemise et un coeur, il faut vendre sa chemise pour aller voir l'Italie, recommandait Stendhal. Demain, pourrons-nous acheter une chemise pour sauver Venise des dégâts du temps ? Les projets solidaires prennent une dimension nouvelle avec l'avènement d'un concept nouveau appelé à un grand avenir, qui pourrait donner aux entreprises américaines pionnières en la matière une avance décisive : les innovations de produits ou de services à valeur sociétale ajoutée.

Comme souvent, c'est en tournant notre regard outre-Atlantique que nous apparaît une préfiguration parlante de ce qui sera demain une offre économique à part entière. Alors même que les Etats-Unis persistent dans leur posture de ne pas ratifier le traité de Kyoto au motif qu'il serait "pourri pour l'économie américaine", les entreprises prennent le pouvoir face à un Etat démissionnaire. De quoi s'agit-il ? Tout simplement de transformer l'aspiration croissante des citoyens de plus en plus sensibilisés aux nouveaux équilibres de la planète en un business profitable à grande échelle, qui permet à chacun d'agir par sa consommation en payant au passage joyeusement son écotaxe.

A l'instar de la marque transversale RED lancée par Bono, le très médiatique chanteur de U2, de nombreuses innovations, mariant valeur produit et valeur ajoutée citoyenne, en particulier environnementale, sont annoncées outre-Atlantique, y compris chez les plus grands fabricants de produits du quotidien. Elles seront sur le marché dans les douze prochains mois. General Electric, qui avait lancé le concept d'"éco-imagination" dont une série de produits sont issus (comme les ampoules à basse consommation, les moteurs d'avion consommant 22 % de kérosène en moins, les moteurs hybrides des locomotives…), vient d'annoncer, fin juillet, qu'il commercialisait une "Green Card", dans la foulée de celle expérimentée par VISA, et avant l'arrivée de celle de la Bank of America. La Green Card est une carte de crédit qui, en lieu et place des traditionnels points de fidélité, compense le coût environnemental en CO2 des achats, par des investissements pro-environnementaux.

"Doing good is good for business." Le marketing de la générosité est certainement une offre économique profitable, une immense opportunité de création de valeur, de croissance et d'emplois et c'est assurément un moyen considérable pour défendre des causes solidaires. Mais ce n'est pas seulement un nouveau business modèle qui va s'imposer par la création de nouveaux produits ou de nouveaux services. Ce qui se joue, c'est aussi un renversement qui fait du consommateur l'acteur principal du mariage de la responsabilité et du business.

Déjà, le Consumer Information Lab de l'université de Californie à Berkeley est en train de développer une technologie qui permettra aux possesseurs de téléphone portable de scanner le code barre des produits. L'acheteur aura toute l'information nécessaire au creux de sa main pour se forger une appréciation basée sur des critères sociaux, environnementaux et de santé. Fort de cette technologie, le futur consommateur aura la possibilité de juger des standards de qualité d'une marque sur le lieu de vente et prendre ainsi des décisions d'achat instantanées en étant mieux informé.

Pendant ce temps, trop de sociétés européennes et françaises continuent de séparer la dimension "commerciale" de la dimension "corporate" : aux produits la fonction destructrice de la consommation de masse, aux entreprises la fonction réparatrice (parfois pur alibi, d'où l'accusation de green-washing) de la responsabilité sociale (ou sociétale). D'un côté, des produits qui polluent destinés aux consommateurs, et de l'autre un rapport annuel de développement durable destiné aux stakeholders (les actionnaires, les leaders d'opinion, les journalistes et les salariés).

Agir en entreprise responsable, dans le cadre de ce qu'on appelle le développement durable, est devenu incontournable pour toute entreprise qui se veut citoyenne face au regard exigeant de ses publics. Allouer une partie de ses résultats à une oeuvre culturelle, humanitaire, environnementale est devenu monnaie courante. Ce n'est pas négligeable. Mais, une fois de plus, c'est le pragmatisme américain qui paiera.

En effet, le système qui consiste à ajouter de la valeur sociétale au produit est totalement vertueux : non seulement il est efficace, mais il est démultiplicateur d'efficacité. Il est efficace parce qu'il repose sur la libre décision microéconomique de chacun et non sur la logique de l'impôt supplémentaire pour tous. La carotte est toujours plus agréable que le bâton. Mais, surtout, il est démultiplicateur d'efficacité car les moyens de promotion des produits, en particulier publicitaires, sont colossaux.

Là où les moyens de communication corporate étaient plus que limités (puisque ciblés) et les moyens de communication gouvernementaux souvent faibles, débarque une communication commerciale puissante qui amplifie la prise de conscience de l'enjeu tout en contribuant à y répondre.

Il est urgent de ne pas attendre. Quelques entreprises françaises l'ont compris, comme SFR, qui permet à ses clients de transformer leurs points de fidélité en euros reversés au profit d'une association humanitaire, EDF qui propose le kWh équilibre, une électricité produite uniquement à base d'énergie renouvelable. De même, rendons hommage à Philippe Houzé, entrepreneur visionnaire, qui a lancé très tôt la marque Monoprix Vert sur le modèle anglo-saxon. Mais il est vital que les entreprises françaises et européennes repensent leur logique d'innovation : les produits à valeur sociétale ajoutée n'ont pas seulement de l'avenir, ils sont notre avenir.

Nicolas Bordas, président de TBWA France

[miniTAX]

En effet, le système qui consiste à ajouter de la valeur sociétale au produit est totalement vertueux : non seulement il est efficace, mais il est démultiplicateur d'efficacité. Il est efficace parce qu'il repose sur la libre décision microéconomique de chacun et non sur la logique de l'impôt supplémentaire pour tous. La carotte est toujours plus agréable que le bâton. Mais, surtout, il est démultiplicateur d'efficacité car les moyens de promotion des produits, en particulier publicitaires, sont colossaux.

Seul petit grain de sable, c'est une vaste arnaque qui repose sur un gros mensonge. Ce sera considéré comme tel dans une génération, comme nous considérons maintenant ceux qui à l'époque de l'invention du chemin de fer, avait prédit que le voyage en train allait émasculer tous les mâles.

Les croisades morales avec des alibis catastrophistes ont toujours existé et ont toujours foiré. Ce n'est pas demain que ça va changer.

[Chitah]

Seul petit grain de sable, c'est une vaste arnaque qui repose sur un gros mensonge. Ce sera considéré comme tel dans une génération, comme nous considérons maintenant ceux qui à l'époque de l'invention du chemin de fer, avait prédit que le voyage en train allait émasculer tous les mâles.

Tututut, à l'époque, on disait. A l'époque, s'étaient élevées des voix pour dire qu'en disant cela, on confondait vitesse élevée (70, pour l'époque, était élevé) et accélération élevée, qui effectivement pouvait provoquer des nausées.

Des gens parlaient déjà de l'erreur fondamentale de la confusion entre vitesse et accélération, c'est bien loin d'une crainte mystique telle que tu la décris.

[h16]

Tututut, à l'époque, on disait. A l'époque, s'étaient élevées des voix pour dire qu'en disant cela, on confondait vitesse élevée (70, pour l'époque, était élevé) et accélération élevée, qui effectivement pouvait provoquer des nausées.

Des gens parlaient déjà de l'erreur fondamentale de la confusion entre vitesse et accélération, c'est bien loin d'une crainte mystique telle que tu la décris.

Oh, il y avait aussi tout un quarteron de scientifiques qui prédisaient qu'un train ne pourrait jamais dépasser telle ou telle vitesse car dans un tunnel, la compression d'air provoquée par le passage du véhicule provoquerait la mort des passagers.

Des catastrophistes, il y en a toujours eu bien plus que des gens qui essaient simplement de faire avancer le schmilblick.

[POE]

Des catastrophistes, il y en a toujours eu bien plus que des gens qui essaient simplement de faire avancer le schmilblick.

Et pourtant, il avance !

[h16]

Et pourtant, il avance !

Oui, ce qui permet de rester un minimum optimiste…

[Punu]

L'article était intéressant car :

- sachant que "you can't beat the market" ;

- il permet néanmoins, plutôt que de ne rien proposer aux gens con-cernés par le réchauffement et de laisser de facto place nette aux constructivistes, d'offrir une solution libérale.

[miniTAX]

Al Gore, prix Nobel de la paix 2007, avec le GIEC.

Nous vivons une drôle d'époque post-moderne. Nobel, grand aventurier de la science doit se retourner dans sa tombe.

http://fr.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20071012/tts…-ca02f96_1.html

[0100011]

Al Gore, prix Nobel de la paix 2007, avec le GIEC.

Nous vivons une drôle d'époque post-moderne. Nobel, aventurier de la science doit se retourner dans sa tombe.

http://fr.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20071012/tts…-ca02f96_1.html

Faudrait juste éviter de trop l'énerver : il pourrait ressortir sous forme de zombie avec des batons de dynamites dans les mains. Un zombie déjà ça fait peur alors un zombie piégé…

[Phil]

Il fallait bien battre Arafat

[Bastiat]

Quel farceur ce réchauffement climatique.

http://www.20minutes.fr/article/187595/Sci…-aussi-haut.php

"La hauteur, mais aussi le volume du Mont-Blanc ont considérablement augmenté, car la neige s'est agglutinée sur le sommet au cours des deux dernières années", a indiqué à l'AFP un des experts, Philippe Borrel.

[Plan Nanar]

Quel farceur ce réchauffement climatique.

http://www.20minutes.fr/article/187595/Sci…-aussi-haut.php

C'est bien la preuve ! Quand l'air se réchauffe, il y a plus de vapeur dans l'air, donc il neige davantage sur le Mont Blanc. Et sur le Groenland aussi.

On ne te laissera point prouver qu'il n'y a point de réchauffement, c'est fait pour ça.

Le Premier rapport au Club de Rome a été ridicule parce que tout le monde a bien vu que ses prévisions étaient fausses. Les écolos, ils ont retenu la leçon : ne rien dire qu'on puisse prouver faux dans les années à venir.

[DoM P]

C'est bien la preuve ! Quand l'air se réchauffe, il y a plus de vapeur dans l'air, donc il neige davantage sur le Mont Blanc. Et sur le Groenland aussi.

On ne te laissera point prouver qu'il n'y a point de réchauffement, c'est fait pour ça.

Le Premier rapport au Club de Rome a été ridicule parce que tout le monde a bien vu que ses prévisions étaient fausses. Les écolos, ils ont retenu la leçon : ne rien dire qu'on puisse prouver faux dans les années à venir.

En fait, l'explication officielle, c'est que ce sont des neiges d'été, en grande quantité, bien sûr, à cause du RC, qui ont causé cette hausse du niveau des neiges.

Les neiges d'étés seraient "collantes", tandis que celles d'hiver, balayées par les vents, ne resteraient pas au sommet.

[h16]

Quand la température augmente, c'est le RC.

Quand la température diminue, c'est le RC.

Quand il fait beau, c'est le RC.

Quand il fait moche, c'est le RC.

Quand ma tante en a, c'est le RC.

On ne peut pas se tromper : ça marche à tous les coups !

[DoM P]

Quand la température augmente, c'est le RC.

Quand la température diminue, c'est le RC.

Quand il fait beau, c'est le RC.

Quand il fait moche, c'est le RC.

Quand ma tante en a, c'est le RC.

On ne peut pas se tromper : ça marche à tous les coups !

Ah non, je ne peux pas te laisser dire ça : Quand ta tante en a, c'est Tchernobyl, pas le RC

[h16]

Oui, mais Tchernobyl, c'est parce que les employés avait bu une petite bière de trop … parce qu'il faisait trop chaud. C'est le RC !