Bloomberg Businessweek: "It's Global Warming, Stupid"

[KingOrfeo]

This week's cover story.

Yes, yes, it’s unsophisticated to blame any given storm on climate change. Men and women in white lab coats tell us—and they’re right—that many factors contribute to each severe weather episode. Climate deniers exploit scientific complexity to avoid any discussion at all.

Clarity, however, is not beyond reach. Hurricane Sandy demands it: At least 40 U.S. deaths. Economic losses expected to climb as high as $50 billion. Eight million homes without power. Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated. More than 15,000 flights grounded. Factories, stores, and hospitals shut. Lower Manhattan dark, silent, and underwater.

In an Oct. 30 blog post, Mark Fischetti of Scientific American took a spin through Ph.D.-land and found more and more credentialed experts willing to shrug off the climate caveats. The broadening consensus: “Climate change amps up other basic factors that contribute to big storms. For example, the oceans have warmed, providing more energy for storms. And the Earth’s atmosphere has warmed, so it retains more moisture, which is drawn into storms and is then dumped on us.” Even those of us who are science-phobic can get the gist of that.

Sandy featured a scary extra twist implicating climate change. An Atlantic hurricane moving up the East Coast crashed into cold air dipping south from Canada. The collision supercharged the storm’s energy level and extended its geographical reach. Pushing that cold air south was an atmospheric pattern, known as a blocking high, above the Arctic Ocean. Climate scientists Charles Greene and Bruce Monger of Cornell University, writing earlier this year in Oceanography, provided evidence that Arctic icemelts linked to global warming contribute to the very atmospheric pattern that sent the frigid burst down across Canada and the eastern U.S.

If all that doesn’t impress, forget the scientists ostensibly devoted to advancing knowledge and saving lives. Listen instead to corporate insurers committed to compiling statistics for profit.

On Oct. 17 the giant German reinsurance company Munich Re issued a prescient report titled Severe Weather in North America. Globally, the rate of extreme weather events is rising, and “nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America.” From 1980 through 2011, weather disasters caused losses totaling $1.06 trillion. Munich Re found “a nearly quintupled number of weather-related loss events in North America for the past three decades.” By contrast, there was “an increase factor of 4 in Asia, 2.5 in Africa, 2 in Europe, and 1.5 in South America.” Human-caused climate change “is believed to contribute to this trend,” the report said, “though it influences various perils in different ways.”

Global warming “particularly affects formation of heat waves, droughts, intense precipitation events, and in the long run most probably also tropical cyclone intensity,” Munich Re said. This July was the hottest month recorded in the U.S. since record-keeping began in 1895, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The U.S. Drought Monitor reported that two-thirds of the continental U.S. suffered drought conditions this summer.

Granted, Munich Re wants to sell more reinsurance (backup policies purchased by other insurance companies), so maybe it has a selfish reason to stir anxiety. But it has no obvious motive for fingering global warming vs. other causes. “If the first effects of climate change are already perceptible,” said Peter Hoppe, the company’s chief of geo-risks research, “all alerts and measures against it have become even more pressing.”

BTW, Mayor Bloomberg endorses Obama.

 

[KingOrfeo]

And from George Lakoff:

Yes, global warming systemically caused Hurricane Sandy -- and the Midwest droughts and the fires in Colorado and Texas, as well as other extreme weather disasters around the world. Let's say it out loud, it was causation, systemic causation.

Systemic causation is familiar. Smoking is a systemic cause of lung cancer. HIV is a systemic cause of AIDS. Working in coal mines is a systemic cause of black lung disease. Driving while drunk is a systemic cause of auto accidents. Sex without contraception is a systemic cause of unwanted pregnancies.

There is a difference between systemic and direct causation. Punching someone in the nose is direct causation. Throwing a rock through a window is direct causation. Picking up a glass of water and taking a drink is direct causation. Slicing bread is direct causation. Stealing your wallet is direct causation. Any application of force to something or someone that always produces an immediate change to that thing or person is direct causation. When causation is direct, the word cause is unproblematic.

Systemic causation, because it is less obvious, is more important to understand. A systemic cause may be one of a number of multiple causes. It may require some special conditions. It may be indirect, working through a network of more direct causes. It may be probabilistic, occurring with a significantly high probability. It may require a feedback mechanism. In general, causation in ecosystems, biological systems, economic systems, and social systems tends not to be direct, but is no less causal. And because it is not direct causation, it requires all the greater attention if it is to be understood and its negative effects controlled.

Above all, it requires a name: systemic causation.

Global warming systemically caused the huge and ferocious Hurricane Sandy. And consequently, it systemically caused all the loss of life, material damage, and economic loss of Hurricane Sandy. Global warming heated the water of the Gulf and Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, resulting in greatly increased energy and water vapor in the air above the water. When that happens, extremely energetic and wet storms occur more frequently and ferociously. These systemic effects of global warming came together to produce the ferocity and magnitude of Hurricane Sandy.

The precise details of Hurricane Sandy cannot be predicted in advance, any more than when, or whether, a smoker develops lung cancer, or sex without contraception yields an unwanted pregnancy, or a drunk driver has an accident. But systemic causation is nonetheless causal.

Semantics matters. Because the word cause is commonly taken to mean direct cause, climate scientists, trying to be precise, have too often shied away from attributing causation of a particular hurricane, drought, or fire to global warming. Lacking a concept and language for systemic causation, climate scientists have made the dreadful communicative mistake of retreating to weasel words. Consider this quote from "Perception of climate change," by James Hansen, Makiko Sato, and Reto Ruedy, Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

...we can state, with a high degree of confidence, that extreme anomalies such as those in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 were a consequence of global warming because their likelihood in the absence of global warming was exceedingly small.

The crucial words here are high degree of confidence, anomalies, consequence, likelihood, absence, and exceedingly small. Scientific weasel words! The power of the bald truth, namely causation, is lost.

This no small matter because the fate of the earth is at stake. The science is excellent. The scientists' ability to communicate is lacking. Without the words, the idea cannot even be expressed. And without an understanding of systemic causation, we cannot understand what is hitting us.

 

[unregistered]

 

[naughtycakes]

Bloomberg leaves his legacy to future generations:

Mommy...my tummy hurts!

Ohhh poor lil' kid...did you bloomberg today?

What?

This is possibly the stupidest thing I've ever read.

It doesn't make any sense, and it's not clever at all.

 

[KingOrfeo]

What?

This is possibly the stupidest thing I've ever read.

It doesn't make any sense, and it's not clever at all.

"Clever" seems to mean something different in vetteworld. Dude thinks this sort of lameassery is clever.

 

[Disgustipated]

What?

This is possibly the stupidest thing I've ever read.

It doesn't make any sense, and it's not clever at all.

He'll claim his humor is too sophisticated for your ignorant brown ass.

 

[phrodeau]

For a guy who doesn't drink, he sure nails the Foster Brooks bit.

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[phrodeau]

You should take a lesson, I don't smoke either.

Well, aren't you Mister Smug.

 

[bra_man69]

Why don't you post what the idiot said and not some hack bullshit article it about here this is from his editorial
Our climate is changing. And while the
increase in extreme weather we have
experienced in New York City and around
the world may or may not be the result of it,
the risk that it might be

He doesn't even know king dumb ass.
You post shit and leave out the part that kills your point of view.
That is liberal thinking right there why we don't know but fuck we gotta do something.

 

[blobfish]

What baffles me is why the climate is even a political issue. It can be objectively proven or disproven, so it's not opinion. Gay marriage? Some people like it, some don't. Some people want state-run healthcare, some don't. But climate change is nobody's opinion, yet the politicians use it as a political issue, despite having little or no understanding about it. I probably know more about climate change than most people in Congress, and I don't know shit about climate change.

 

[bra_man69]

What baffles me is why the climate is even a political issue. It can be objectively proven or disproven, so it's not opinion. Gay marriage? Some people like it, some don't. Some people want state-run healthcare, some don't. But climate change is nobody's opinion, yet the politicians use it as a political issue, despite having little or no understanding about it. I probably know more about climate change than most people in Congress, and I don't know shit about climate change.

It's a new way to try and control people.
at one time you could grow grapes in UK can't now it's to cold.

 

[Sean]

Why don't you post what the idiot said and not some hack bullshit article it about here this is from his editorial
Our climate is changing. And while the
increase in extreme weather we have
experienced in New York City and around
the world may or may not be the result of it,
the risk that it might be

He doesn't even know king dumb ass.
You post shit and leave out the part that kills your point of view.
That is liberal thinking right there why we don't know but fuck we gotta do something.

I don't know king dumb ass, either. What country does he rule?

 

[Sean]

It's a new way to try and control people.
at one time you could grow grapes in UK can't now it's to cold.

You better tell these people:
http://britishfood.about.com/od/faq/f/wine.htm

 

[bra_man69]

You better tell these people:
http://britishfood.about.com/od/faq/f/wine.htm

Read up on how the Romans was able to grow grapes in northern England.

 

[Sean]

Read up on how the Romans was able to grow grapes in northern England.

You said it was too cold to grow grapes in England. You're full of shit.

 

[bra_man69]

You said it was too cold to grow grapes in England. You're full of shit.

I know what I said you idiot.

 

[Busybody]

What?

This is possibly the stupidest thing I've ever read.

It doesn't make any sense, and it's not clever at all.

DUMB ASS

Its brilliant

Be happy you have a TOLERABLE LOOKING CUNT and are somewhat useful

 

[Busybody]

BloomHole

is teh same turd who said it must be an ANTI OBAMA HEALTHCARE guy who wanted to blow up TIMES SQUARE

 

[Busybody]

THE BLOOMBERG SYNDROME: In January of 2011, when New York had just dug itself out from under a couple feet of white powdery global warming, Victor Davis Hanson wrote:


New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was a past master of lecturing about the cosmic while at times ignoring the more concrete. Governing the boroughs of an often-chaotic New York City is nearly impossible. Pontificating on the evils of smoking, fatty foods, and supposed anti-Muslim bigotry was not only far easier but had established the mayor as a national figure of sensitivity and caring. He was praised for his progressive declarations by supporters of everything from global warming to abortion.

But Bloomberg’s carefully constructed philosopher’s image was finally shattered by the December 2010 blizzard and his own asleep-at-the-wheel reaction. An incompetent municipal response to record snowfalls barricaded millions in their borough houses and apartments, amid lurid rumors of deliberate union-sponsored slowdowns by Bloomberg’s city crews.

* * * * *

Quite simply, the next time your elected local or state official holds a press conference about global warming, the Middle East, or the national political climate, expect to experience poor county law enforcement, bad municipal services, or regional insolvency.

His namesake news service has seen all bad economic news since January of 2009 as occurring “unexpectedly,” but nobody else should be surprised by Bloomberg’s shtick this week, or that his cosmic rhetoric belies an incompetence in regards to more down to earth matters.

On the other hand, as Jonah Goldberg wrote today, Bloomberg is making baby steps of a sort: “Well, at least he didn’t blame Sandy on some guy with a political agenda who doesn’t like the health care bill or something.”

 

[mercury14]

It's a new way to try and control people.
at one time you could grow grapes in UK can't now it's to cold.

You didn't address his point.

 

[unregistered]

 

[rosco rathbone]

I'm surprised that it took this long to make this thread. No one even bumped the old glowball warming thread to discuss Sandy. GW denialism exhaustion on the GB??

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I'm surprised that it took this long to make this thread. No one even bumped the old glowball warming thread to discuss Sandy. GW denialism exhaustion on the GB??

People got the whole increase of energy cost thing, then there was the controversies over the data and the models and then there is Perg's pedantic repetition and sincere "discrediting" of anyone or thing who would dare counter the orthodoxy...