Timeline Take 2

This week brings the conclusion to the time line of political events as outlined in the Kevin Armitage, "State of Denial" paper. The timeline continues with the backlash from this IPCC report... 

Bad America! (source: http://giphy.com/)

 

1989- oil companies joined together to form the Global Climate Coalition (GCC). This lobbied against climate change legislation and started a media campaign against it, being helped in their efforts by a small group of scientists who received the funding for their reseach papers (BIAS!!!!)

1990- The US flatly rejects the IPCC report

1992-  'Earth Summit' held in Rio de Janeiro. Over 150 states signed the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). Negotiations at this summit included targets for emission reductions and the economic inequality between industrialized and developing countries, calling for developed countries to pay a disproportionate amount towards combating climate change.

1992 - Appeal from 1,700 of the leading climate scientists stating plainly that "human beings and the natural world are on a collision course" and begging for action to be taken. This statement recieved little attention in the US.

1995 - Second IPCC report held a stronger stance on climate change staring that there is a "discernable human influence on global climate", this drew widespread media attention however the right wing politics critised the report and the Clinton administration put relatively little effort into the global warming issue.

1997 - UN Nations Kyoto Conference on Climate Change - the conference nearly broke down due to the issues about power relationships between wealthy contries. The conference was 'saved' by the arrival of the US Vice president, Gove , who pushed through a comprimise that stated industrialized countries would cut emissions by 5.2%. Developing countries would be exempt from these cuts. The Clinton administration strongly disagreed with this and thus didn't push the treaty and America became omitted from reducing emissions - this furthur gave other countries excuses to continue with unsustainable practices

2000- McCright and Dunlap's paper was published, finding that 71% of the documents sampled by the right-wing politicans attempted to discredit the scientific evidence for global warming.

2001- the administration of George W. Bush rejected any significant reduction in CO2 emissions and thus publically renounced the Kyoto protocols.

2002 - National Academy of Sciences conclused that abrupt climate change is possible and global climate events could be alot closer than expected. US National Secruity released a report speculating the most extreme cases of climate change and hypothesised cases such a nuclear showdown of dwindling fresh water supplies and famine.

2004 - (August) Bush administration released a report that stated that CO2 was the most plausablie explanation for climate change. (this was kept pretty underwraps)

2005 - The New York Times confirmed the continuation of the Bush strategy of "denial" despite    the aforementioned report.

The paper finishes it's analysis in 2005 hence why the timeline stops here, but as we can see right-wing politics really ups it's game in their denial strategy. It seems as the evidence for global warming as caused by humans increases the back lash against environmentalism also increases. The campaign against global warming shows politicians manipulating data and in some cases even funding research to provide the evidence they need.

It's no wonder the citizens of the United States are so confused about global warming when there are so many mixed messages coming at them! In the ideology of balanced reporting, major influential media publications such as The New York Times would report climate change with equal coverage of the peer reviewed science and the reports of scientists who don't believe in the whole affair. Only in America!

 (source: http://giphy.com/)

~A Brief Interlude~

I was expecting my next post to be a continuation of the timeline of the United States resistance to the belief in global warming, followed by a few happy months worth of blog posts worth of change and what the US is now doing to support the issue. However something has come to my attention in the news that shows even in this fine year of 2014 the US are looking to take yet another step back in their stance on global warming.

The 2014 midterm elections has shown a storm in the Republicans control in the Senate. With things looking up for the Republicans, things aren't looking promising for the environment. At best the new congress now could seem disengaged from serious climate change issues, when now more than ever a decision needs to be reached. At worst the new Congress could actively oppose the environment and waste no time in their "pro-energy, pro-growth" agenda.

Senator James Inhofe (who features in my next timeline) is an Oklahoma Republican. His views on global warming are certainly interesting and to summarize his stance on the issue of global warming, I think we should all just reflect on the title of his 2010 book, "The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future". Yep. This is the man who's most likely going to be leading the Environment and Public Works Committee when the Republican party takes control next year. So I can't even imagine what this will mean for the global warming issue.

Hopefully Obama can save the day though, stating "Congress will pass some bills I cannot sign" meaning that not all hope is lost. He might here be referring to the Keystone XL pipeline bill that Republicans will be pushing - this issue has been delayed for quite some time as it is a massive project to increase shipments of oil from Canada to the US.

Fingers crossed the Republicans show mercy for the environment, only time will tell!

Two Steps Forward One Step Back

A paper I have found particularly interesting in the subject of the US and climate change has been this one. As part of the paper they include several dates of events and whilst reading it I found myself being able to piece together quite a nice timeline of events that does seem to summarise political skeptisism of global warming in the States reasonably well. This week is going kick off with the promising start that was made for the US, and only dables breifly in some of the backlash towards global warming - whereas next week will be more representative of the denial of global warming that the paper and the idea for this blog rests on. For the sake of this blog I'm going to use this paper to create that timeline myself right here.


(Apologies for my poor computer skills, at least it's handmade and authentic)

 



The timeline show's a progression towards the acceptance of human actions as the main factor in global warming, with the White House's support shown clearly in the quote from George H. W. Bush. The end of this timeline show's where political lobbying has taken an effect and the caution mentioned in the IPCC report shows a significant step backwards especially with the backlash that follows in US politics. This IPCC report is where I'll kick off next week with an in depth look the backtrack in support from the US government and where this all really starts to go wrong!

A Quote

"I've been involved in a number of fields where there's a lay opinion and a scientific opinion. And in most case's, it's the lay community that is more exercised, more anxious... But, in the climate case, the experts -  the people who work with the climate models every day, the people who do ice cores - they are more concerned. they're going out of their way to say, 'Wake Up! This is not a good thing to be doing'"

Robert Socolow, 2005

Theoretical Physicist

The Rise of the Cool Skeptics

Off the back of that documentary (see previous post) Channel 4 received 758 calls and emails, with those in favour of the documentary outnumbering those complaining about it by six to one. With the documentary receiving that support in this country, one that I personally believe to be quite well scientifically grouded, it made me wonder the effects of global warming denial in America - somewhere that can often give the impression, despite being one of the world leaders, to be a bit behind the times.

I want to start just by looking at the general attitudes of American citizens toward to issue of global warming. To do so, I went to Gallup, an American research based company, famous for their public opinion polls. Their most recent poll towards the attitudes towards global warming was posted on April 22 of this year. I'll use this graph to briefly explain the three categories that the American citizens can be split into...

Concerned Believers: these attribute global warming (correctly) to human activity and contribution, they believe CO2 is driving the greenhouse effect.

Cool Skeptics: These are at the other end of the spectrum. They are not worried about the effect that humans are having on global warming and attribute the changes to natural causes (alike The Great Global Warming swindle)

Mixed Middle: Lie somewhere between the two groups

Alarmingly we can see in this graph the trends don't go exactly the way we want! The number of people not caring about global warming is increasing and the number of believers has decreased, however it has just reached the percentage it was at 14 years ago, showing no real progress. Over the next few weeks we will be exploring the reasons behind the "Cool Skeptics" stemming back from the 1970s and I'll be able to piece together a political timeline for America, in terms of global warming, for an easily accessible summary of the last 30 years!

The Great Global Warming Swindle

On the 8th March, 2007, 2.69 million people tuned into Channel 4 to watch a documentary called "The Great Global Warming Swindle". Being only 13 at the time, I was not one of them. However having heard of it's controversial standing I decided to follow suit and watch it - and that's where this blog starts!

Hi, I'm Ellie! Admittedly I'm not a geographer but for the sake of this blog I'm going to try my hardest to be. I'm a Natural Sciences student in my third year at UCL, as part of my degree I look at the social and communicative aspect of science which is the aspect of global warming I would like to examine in this blog, and this is where the documentary comes into play!

If you have a spare 76 minutes, I would recommend a watch of "The Great Global Warming Swindle" (featured below) however, if you don't, I'll briefly summarise it for you.

 

The British documentary undermines the key focus of the global warming argument - that increased CO2 is driving global warming. It tells the tale of how "many" scientists don't believe that humans are the cause of global warming and that the scientific basis for climate change is crumbling. The documentary then goes on to argue that the whole global warming debacle is a political activist movement and it acts to "kill the African dream to develop" aka the whole idea of global warming prevention is a method to stop the development of developing countries. It assures the audience with direct quotes from climate scientists of their vested interest to create a state of panic to drive money into their departments. The change in climate is explained away with the science that climate change always occurs periodically and we just happen to be going through a period of increase and this is simply a natural change.

This all seems absurd but the documentary is so cleverly edited and convincing it even had me doubting my beliefs!! (It didn't, but I can very much appreciate how a non-scientist would be convinced by the programme.)

This documentary is where the idea for my blog started - with the idea that some people don't believe in global warming at all or don't feel it's an issue that needs to be dealt with. I want to focus on one country in particular - The United States of America. This is one of the top world contributors to CO2 output (coming only second to China). I want to explore the initial idea of denial of climate change within America (the science vs the media aspect), explore the current government approaches to reducing their CO2 output and the general stance of America as a major player in the CO2 emission game. I will do this though the use of academic papers and hopefully some more fun mediums! I'm not sure where this blog is going to take me, but feel free to come along for the ride as we explore global warming across the pond!