By Jeb Bladine • President / Publisher • 

Jeb Bladine: Resolve combined with apprehension

My cousin’s husband is Northern California regional coordinator for the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a non-partisan advocacy organization with 366 active chapters worldwide. I’ve enjoyed a few exchanges with him about the CCL’s national policy initiatives, and expect more in the future.

For Harold and thousands more who passionate about climate change issues, this is a week of great apprehension combined with strengthened resolve.

Whatchamacolumn

Jeb Bladine is president and publisher of the News-Register.

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First, they are witnessing today’s inauguration of President Donald Trump, who in 2012 proclaimed, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive.” President Trump regularly debunked global warming throughout his 2016 campaign, and his recent claim to gaining a newly-open mind on the topic is being met with some skepticism.

Perhaps that skepticism comes from reading a December Mother Jones magazine chronology entitled, “Every insane thing Donald Trump has said about global warming.”

Secondly, those people and millions more are reading newly-released reports that 2016 produced the highest overall Earth temperatures on record, and a third consecutive year of increase for the first time in the modern era. That would be the source for their strengthened resolve.

Whatever President Trump might think, those people believe the scientific community that considers global warning a grave threat to the natural world and human life.

Nonbelievers can say it’s inconsequential that planetary warming has been risen just one-half-plus degree Fahrenheit since 2013. They can blame recent warming on the 2015-16 Pacific Ocean phenomenon of El Niño. Scientists, however, consider that global half-degree a huge change over three years, with rapid melting of sea ice, rising ocean levels and coastal flooding.

Reports this week say that Fall 2016 temperatures were 20 to 30 degrees higher across wide stretches of the Arctic Ocean — “ridiculously off the chart,” said Gavin Schmidt of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Ground level temperatures, one element of the scientific analysis, increased in about 90 percent of the 5,000-plus cities tracked worldwide in the AccuWeather database. In 2016, according to that data, McMinnville’s mean average temperature increased 1.7 degrees, compared to 2.1 in Portland and 2.6 in Salem.

But looking north toward the ice, those increases were 6 degrees in Bethel, Alaska, 10.5 degrees in Berens River, Canada, and 11 degrees in Arctic Village, Alaska.

Bottom line: Next week, I suspect I’ll hear something about apprehension and resolve from cousin-in-law Harold. And we all will begin to see how treatment of climate change issues unfolds in the Trump Administration.

Jeb Bladine can be reached at jbladine@newsregister.com or 503-687-1223.

Comments

Don Dix

Jeb -- Here's an oddity for your conversation with your cousin -- if the 'warmists' actually believe the numbers they produce, why did HadCRUT use only 25% of data submitted by Russian meteorologists?
Russia makes up 12.5% of the Earth's land mass, yet over 40% of Russia's territory was not included in global temperature calculations.
The answer lies here -- the data gathered by those Russian stations do not substantiate the global warming theory, so they are conveniently not included in the HadCRUT average.
From this view, the greatest talents of the AGW crowd is manipulating the past readings and then moving the goalposts to fit the agenda.

Don Dix

Other questions for Harold -- What is the desired average temperature of Earth?
Why is there no use of Bolivia temps? With Bolivian cities like El Alto (pop. 950,000) could it be the elevation of the country does not fit into the AGW theory? El Alto is over 13500 feet and one of the fastest growing urban centers in the country.
Just wondering how Harold could explain these anomalies.

Jeb Bladine

Don, I got behind on looking at things ... but response to your posts is in progress!

Jeb Bladine

Don -- Here is first part of response to your questions from a very real Harold:
“I trust the overwhelming consensus of climate scientists, and the validation of their conclusions by every single National Academy of Science of every government that has an Academy.
"I'm not a scientist. But those sound to me like the kind of denial myths that have been promoted by fossil fuel dollars dedicated to spreading doubt. This kind of dis-information campaign has been effective in luring otherwise well-meaning citizen non-scientists into doubting the science of global warming. We saw the same tactics from the tobacco industry, and some of the same companies and individuals who sowed doubt about the link between smoking and cancer are now promoting doubt between fossil fuel combustion and other human activities and global warming. There are many dozens of independently verified scientific evidence threads that support the consensus view. As far as the 'desired temperature' goes, I'd say that we might aim for the average temperature that Earth maintained for the 800,000 years preceding the Industrial Revolution: that is about 1 degree C. cooler than today's average."

Jeb Bladine

And here is Harold's "part 2:"
"I sometimes answer questions like this with a narrative:
"If a doctor tells you that your child has cancer, you might find yourself doubting the diagnosis. Your doctor would likely urge you to get a second opinion. If that concurs, and you were still unsure, you might seek a third opinion, or a fourth, etc. At what point do you accept the diagnosis of multiple doctors? In the case of climate change, we're up to 97-plus percent who agree that it's happening, humans are causing it, and that we need to act quickly. That's like 97 doctors in the room with you agreeing that your child has cancer.
"One of the funny things about this is that moving to a clean energy economy is one of the smartest things we could do for purely selfish reasons, from jobs and economic growth to improved public health and a cleaner environment."

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