28 February 2010

The Two Most Powerful Images of Climate Change

Posted by Dan Satterfield

Almost EVERY email I get from those who think climate change is a hoax or a conspiracy to take their gun has a mention of Al Gore in the first paragraph. Usually in the first sentence! It’s actually helpful. Nothing I say or write will make any difference, so I can use my time to better purposes.

Click image to read the NYT Op ed. by vice President Al Gore.

Click image to read the NYT Op ed. by vice President Al Gore.

Has Al Gore helped or hurt getting the message out?

Without doubt he has helped. His movie an Inconvenient Truth is very accurate and powerful. The hatred he engenders is proof positive of that. It is one of the two most powerful images of climate change.

I am lucky to have met Al Gore in the White House when he was Vice President. I was invited along with other TV mets. to a weekend seminar on climate change. I told my wife afterwards that I thought he had missed his calling. He loves science far more than politics. I could tell and I still think so.

Mr. Gore (Vice President Gore I should say) has written a very good piece today in the Sunday New York Times. It is well worth a read. He has citations with it.

The other most powerful image of climate change is also just as hated and for the same reason. Here it is below.

Micheal Mann et. al Reconstruction of global temps over the past 1000 years. Click image to read the paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

Micheal Mann et. al Reconstruction of global temps over the past 1000 years. Click image to read the paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

A quick search on the web will find hundreds of web sites calling it fraudulent and bogus. So much so that congress ask that the mot prestigious science body in America to investigate and issue a report.

They did.

In short: Good Science.

It is probably the most investigated scientific conclusion in the past 50 years. Every time it passes with flying colors.

It is a vivid picture of the dramatic warming of the last century. It also dispels in once glance the so called medieval warm period that some people have tried to use to claim the warming is natural. (It would not matter at all if there was one or not, but the warming was likely localised to the Northern Hemisphere.)

A picture is worth a thousand words and that is why it is such a hated piece of good science. So much so that Senator Laughing Stock is wanting to put Dr. Mann in jail.

What strange times we live in. Galileo would understand it well I think. Recant Mr. Mann and they will just sentence you to house arrest for the rest of your life!

It’s a bargain too good to pass up!