Guest Column
Outdoor Leaders Praise Passage of Climate Bill
By Mark Menlove and Peter Metcalf, Guest Writer, 7-01-09
The passage of the Waxman-Markey Climate bill is a historic, bold step in the right direction in terms of embracing innovative and sustained business practice.
Hailed globally as a “sea of change in U. S. policy on climate,” this legislation will reshape energy policy by capping greenhouse gas emissions for the first time, boost production and investment in renewable electricity, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and tend to our cherished natural resources. Concurrently, the bill will create jobs here in the United States and help businesses and communities hardest hit by these new changes.
We commend our forward thinking leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives and say job well done.
As members of the outdoor community, our lifestyles and businesses are direct links to “indicator activities” such as climbing, paddling, mountain biking, hiking and backcountry skiing – all of which connect people to the landscapes and ecosystems threatened by a changing climate. While the economic downturn has provided challenges in our business environment, it has also brought into sharp focus the interconnection between thriving public lands, a healthy climate and the nation’s future financial security.
The millions of people and thousands of leading edge businesses that make up the outdoor community know from our experiential activities and market ventures that innovation and embracing change are the keys to success. Furthermore, common sense dictates that conservation education, access to healthy public lands and sustainable recreation will help offset the burdens and challenges we face collectively with the many-decade venture of protecting climate.
Clearly, the financial contribution of the active outdoor recreation economy is not to be underestimated. A 2006 study by the Outdoor Industry Association shows active outdoor recreation contributes more than $730 billion to the US economy, supports nearly 6.5 million jobs nationally and provides $49 billion in annual tax revenue.
As the climate bill moves to the Senate and onward, we trust that aside from fixing climate and revolutionizing how we power our world, an added benefit might be the revived connection between Americans and our lands and waters. We encourage the Senate to follow the House’s lead and make sure that taking care of public lands part of their mix. Not only is taking care of our natural resources, quite simply, the right thing to do, but healthy lands provide a business climate that generates real ROI. Thriving, accessible environments are a direct and tangible benefit to all of us.
The two of us have spent countless days in the mountains and have staked our professional lives to the passions we pursue outdoors. We know the forethought, planning and will power behind a first ascent of a previously unclimbed peak or a safe descent of a steep, avalanche-prone slope. We can only imagine the grit and courage it must take as a legislator to wrestle with such an overwhelming issue and we offer heartfelt thanks to Congress for leading the way.
As we move forward, we acknowledge the criticism this bill faces, yet believe that all worthy objectives require belief to pursue the goal, doubt it can be achieved and effort to ensure it. As members of the outdoor community we echo our colleagues’ sentiments and extend our encouragement as the climate bill heads to the Senate.
Mark Menlove is a founder of Outdoor Alliance a coalition of national member-based organizations representing the interests of climbers, mountain bikers, paddlers, hikers and backcountry skiers. He is also the Executive Director of Winter Wildlands, a national organization that supports human-powered snow sports and winter ecosystem protection.
Peter Metcalf is CEO and founder of employee-owned Black Diamond Equipment Ltd. Based in Salt Lake City, Black Diamond is a global manufacturing leader in climbing, mountaineering and snow sports recreational products with offices in Basel,Switzerland and Zhuhai, China.
New West welcomes guest columns of all kinds. Send your submission to editor@newwest.net
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I'd disagree with number two....if I had a trust fund and immortal knees, I could go for eight months of powder and two months of golf every year. I keep thinking what it would be like around here with Lake Missoula and two miles deep of snow.
And if we really were globally warming, shouldn't we see some sort of increased precip showing up somewhere across a pretty broad landscape?
If you get into an Ice Age, and do get those thousands of feet of ice and the great continental ice sheets that we are told places like New England are still rebounding from, that compression of the earth's crust from the weight, will that process over time unleash volcanism if only due to shifting pools of magma being squeezed here and there?
I will put in with the cynics, the disbelievers. The geologic history is there, to be seen, only a book price away. Buy a Roadside Geology of ---(Name your state)---and go see the evidence. We have those old time river channels in Eastern Oregon that were filled with lava not that long ago, and then the surrounding hills have been eroded away by the millennia, and now the lava, basalt, filled river channels are long, very long, rim rocks of lava....
There is just too much out there to be analyzed more than we have to this point. I would like to think we are the big dogs of it all, but I don't think we have the ability to change climate. We can change how climate reacts to things we do, but are we changing the climate, or just changing how it responds to micro site modifications???
I was on a river trip up the Willamette this week one afternoon, and it appears you can plainly see the Missoula Flood deposits in the river banks. Pretty interesting. Damned interesting. And then some academics on the trip started in on how many Missoula floods there were, and the frequency. Even more interesting. The one constant is change, and in that light, climate change, or weather changes, or periodic climate anomalies are going to happen. I guess we live with. Our ancestors certainly did, even without cell phones and satellite generated data.
And I do remember having to take a class called Physical Science in college, which is science for dummies (history majors are science challenged but can read really boring stuff without complaint) and I recall that warm air hold more water than cold air, due to molecular activity and space as heat expands air. And if you cool water saturated air just a little bit, a lot of water becomes precipitation. So global climate change will make the air more water laden, and more of the earth's water will be in the atmosphere. Or so I would think. It would follow that really cold climate change the water gets stored as ice, and maybe the air gets drier worldwide.
But the Al Goreaphiles don't think many know even the smallest bits of how it all works, and thus they can work their PR magic for global climate change. I think most of it is about having good measuring tools today, and not so good ones when records were first being taken. I also wonder about all the concrete in the air in hot climates, the heat absorbed being moved to the atmosphere by fossil fuel created refrigeration, which is about removing heat and putting it in the atmosphere which also creates more heat in the process, and around and round and round we go, and the heat ends up outside, and we stay inside because it is too hot outside.. Did anyone ever kind of think that it is all sort of relative, and in the long term, we are but a blip on the time record, and whatever we do, good or bad, will only be relevant to academics sometime in the far future?
I like the talk about the peer reviewed science, as opposed to the always questionable anecdotal record. But history is about anecdotal record, whether oral or written. History comes from interviews, from oral histories, from ledgers, journals, diaries, and newspaper, book, all mass media. So when you note your source, anyone reading should know the source was a church death record and it said a child was killed and eaten by a wolf or a horse or a duck, makes no difference, that is what the record shows. It is not a cross examined court record. But when you add them all up, and take an average of anecdotal record, there is a grain of truth there. Maybe not the "truth" as something that can be blind tested for, which can be repeated by experiment, and can be foiled by further experiment. But the truth as someone saw and reported it, or was reported to someone who wrote it down as the gospel. One track is history, and the other science. We do need both. History indicates wolf/human interactions with lethal results for both. More often the wolf, if only for defensive strategy. And that strategy determined by experience. Collective human experience. In the book on Russian wolves in history, there is a folk tale about the wolf that is essentially "I don't hate the wolf because he is a wolf. I hate the wolf because he killed my plough horse." Or add any other life important to rural survival a predator might kill. That is where the crux of the argument will always fall, and for the people who don't have a plough horse at risk, you don't have a dog in the fight, as it were. The wolf will never kill your plough horse because you have a diesel tractor with which to mow your lawn and bring you the comfort of living on the savannah without the mess of ungulate hoof prints and poop piles as by product of grass clipping. But you might get a cougar that comes to eat the deer that eat your roses and clean up the windfall apples and any stray cats some kind person from down town dumps on your place. Crazy as all this sounds.
I will bet people get tired of skiing, snow boarding, snow shoes, etc. Or being cold, having chapped lips in the dry air.
Too bad equatorial property is always at risk politically from some tin horned dictator looking to score at will and have the dough to attract a lot of like minded creeps. A friend asked me if his brother in law's beachfront property in Honduras is safe. How the fug would I know? Carpetbaggers are usually not well represented in their area of rapacious concern.
I won't be here...or there. My age is just like the glacier creeping up on the coast line. My turn to fall into the morass, the gyre, is coming up faster than I ever imagined. One day at a time. The islamists will have to take care of it. If the North Koreans let them.
The thing I don't understand is why you doubters choose to willfully ignore what climate science tells us. There are thousands of scientists whose job it is to study the climate, and they're scared! See: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2009/02/new_research_from_mit_scientis.html
Chris
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."
You can google up "Global Warming Petition Project" and "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide"
"The Earth has never seen such a rapid warming" is demonstrably false. Basically Junk Science.
The pundits and political types work in the area of political science. Talk about an oxymoron!! political....the workings of politics, and science, picked and chosen to fit whatever political goal is wanted. Nothing scientific about it. Bribes, graft, nepotism, lies, more lies, and damned lies. The science part of political science. The best you can buy.
I have no idea what heating does to the planet. I do know that it allowed man to develop a big brain, and then ideas, and shit!! look at all the trouble it has caused. We need to go back to eating vast quantities of meat, caves and fires, and shivering a lot. Even then, we will probably kill off the most desirable food sources. That forces you to become a farmer and grow crops. How fun is that compared to trying to stick a spear in something that would like a piece of you?
This Clark Kent deal to save the planet while the Daily Planet fails on several fronts is just funny. Humor. Ha ha ha funny. I am a lot more afraid of some Iranian mullah looking for Paradise and discovering there are not 70 virgins in either Pray or Emigrant. Here comes the bomb. Or was that the bomb?
We need to worry about taking care of our citizens. Finding food, shelter, medical care and a job for a bus load of people. A very, very large bus load of people. All this dance about climate is a diversion from the first job a caring nation gave government, and that is to take care of those who cannot take care of themselves.
I sit and watch as Oregon closes the Blind School, the Deaf School, releases killers from the State Hospital, early released violent criminals from jail, and career property crime types after not even so much as a slap on the wrist. Nothing anyone can do about it. Democrats control both houses and the elected Administration in state government. All those problems were created by liberals, and have to be solved by liberals. If they can't it will be regime change time.
I was in Portland, and the number of people sleeping on the sidewalks was appalling. Our country is a failure on the human aspect, and no amount of posturing about climate change or global warming feeds one person, fixes one kid's teeth, gains us another school day in the school year. We need to focus on the real need for government, and that is not about climate models and predictions. I am old enough to have been through this hoohah about global climate change when the fears were cooling. And I am here to tell you, cooling is a big deal. In the past several millions of years, the cooling part is 90% of the time, and the warming part is 10%.....I would think that it will be a lot harder to take care of the population in a colder world than a warmer one. And, the warmer one will forestall the cooler one for thousands of years, one would hope. Not that I will be here.
It is 88 out right now. Lovely summer evening. I think about these days in December when the ice is breaking off limbs in the night, each one sounding like a rifle shot, and some hitting the ground hard enough to be felt in the house. I think about these wonderful summer nights in February when the winds howl, and the blue norther cold seeps through the core of the house only to meet Mr. Natural Gas Furnace and the Hot Airs...love that fossil fuel!!!! comes in a pipe. Nothing to split, pile, stoke. It knows when my footsies are getting a little cool, and poof!, the warm air comes rushing out. Could it get any better? I love the climate we have. And I guess I will have to live with the climate I have, because that is the climate I got. Giving all my treasure to government to punish me for using fossil fuels and fouling the air won't sit well. Not while China air flop finds ground in my backyard.
Pretty lame, argument, though, considering that a lot of the PhD's have no climatology experience (only about 1% do) and a bunch of the names were stuck on there without the knowledge of the owner of that name.
In essence, you sir, are lying.
And you don't understand Global Warming/Global Climate Change, but you have an opinion. Just like everyone has an ahole, everyone has an opinion. Your's just isn't worth anything.
99.5% of climate experts know global climate change is real, that the science has been reviewed, re-reviewed and reviewed some more and there are no errors or assumptions. The data is right there, except for people like Mickey, that think a college class in chemistry and reading Watts' page makes them some sort of expert.
Except for the conspiracy theories. Those are constant.
Global cooling - 5% of the climate change published articles in the 70's. The rest of the climatology dealt with real issues or global climate change. You're another liar, bearbait.
Tighten your tinfoil hat, guys. You're in for a lot of trouble otherwise.
And then refer me to the body of evidence otherwise, if not true.
Nice way to show some more ignorance.
Global Climate Change is indicated by the rapid RATE of change in temperatures that is unprecidented.
Do I need to define "rate of change" or "unprecidented" they are big words and big concepts. "Rate of change" can involve math, so we might have to get out the big numbers calculator for you.
You seem to be able to type the big numbers, but not understand them.
Do you realize how many species are going extinct because of global climate change? And I'm not talking about polar bears. Loss of habitat for insects, amphibians and other small animals has wiped out species all around the globe. Species that were several millions of years old.
But it's OK, as long as you get to stay warm, dry and cooled in the summer.
Given that there are over 2 million "scientists" in the country at any given time, a measly 30k bunch of "skeptics" that haven't published in any peer reviewed journals hardly counts as anything more than a smokescreen to hide the real intentions.
This is nothing different than the attempts to worm Creationism into public schools by making it seem that there is some sort of real scientific debate about the subject. There isn't. These guys won't debate, they have no new information, they don't do the science and they're often paid shills of energy corporations.
Think about it, the conspiracy theory that bearbait alleges would be so massive that is would collapse on itself. These are not just a few scientists making up numbers, these are major organizations, research universities, entire governments that participate in the ongoing debates and lectures around the world. Thousands of real climatologists gather on a regular basis to review findings, throw out bad data, analyze new data and they are extremely competitive with each other. They attack each others' hypothesis, they force repetition of experiments (at massive costs, sometimes) and they nitpick worse than a bunch of grandmothers.
Be skeptical, but don't be dumb. The data is there, it is real, it has been reviewed by the top minds of our generation. We face rising sea levels, disappearing natural resources, mass extinctions and a threat to the human race that isn't going to happen like 9/11.
Climate change shouldn't be about politics. There is nothing political about the science itself, but there is a lot of politics in the dissembling of the false information, such as what you and bearbait have attempted.
So I am correct, and the global climate change is a change within this cycle of ice ages and interglacials. Thank you. That is my point. This unprecedented rate of change has not been evident in any previous cycle within this particular interglacial period. An anomaly. They do happen, no? Is an anomaly worth ruining our economy over? And could all this turn the other way in a heartbeat with a Krakatoa type eruption and the resulting likeness of a nuclear winter. That is Yellowstone, no? Or Crater Lake in Mt. Mazama? Indications are that eruptions like that result in cold winters and short summers. But anomalies. The exceptions to the rule.
Descartes said that he could doubt it all, even his own existence, but by doubting he proved that he did exist. I don't doubt that there can be a rapid change in a cycle, and we could be in one. But the recent decade is not one that indicates global warming, or so I have read. Global temperatures have decreased. I have a problem with historical temperature readings if only because of the technical nature of the equipment and its innate problems with accuracy. I also have a problem with sites where temperatures have been taken over time. Any urban area is suspect due to the abnormal amount of heat that is expelled by air conditioning. The boxes are cool, and to be so, the outside ambient temperature has to be increase by some amount over the climate contribution.
I have watched Sno-tel sites, where snowfall amounts are measured, be overgrown with trees, and then the site has to be moved, which ends the real accuracy of that site for measurement. The damned trees hold snow and sublimate it, change wind patterns and move the snow, and are heat producers by their living, breathing being, and their color is an absorber of heat, not a reflective surface, and that will change the snow measurement.
As far as how glaciers work, all I have to operate from is a limited knowledge of geology and where glaciers were. We do know that much of North America was glacier covered not that long ago, and the "memory" of the granitics of New England are still reclaiming their pre-glacier mass, not unlike a pillow regaining its form after being sat on by a fat guy. That, too, is being measured. So is there an inertial deal with glaciers, by which they get to a certain size, and then begin to move, which produces friction and heat, and melt water, which causes them to move faster, melt more water, which melts more glacier? The old wipe your ass on a hoop deal. The more you go around, the shittier it gets. Nothing to do with climate except that frozen water is heavy, and lots of it heavier. I did see that years ago, an attempt to reclaim a couple of airplanes that landed on a snow field in Greenland, and were buried many feet deep in snow, but were recovered after 50 years, and there was an attempt to fly one off the glacier that failed. But gee, I was born when they were left there, and didn't think I was that old when they found them buried under tens of feet of perpetual snow field. That showed me you can build a glacier pretty fast with a source of wet air and a latitude to cool it to snow and in the warm season, reflect the sun's energy instead of absorbing it. If you can grow them fast, why can't they go away fast? And why would that be a disaster?
Essentially, I am a contrarian. My nature, I guess. And I won't go along with the crowd on speculation. Never flipped a house and made a pile of money. Even when the smart set was making loads of dough. My contrarian ways have served me well. So you don't have to worry about me stepping in your footprints on the cowpath of global climate change. I am over the ridge looking for something cooler, and being afraid of finding it.
I appreciate how smart you are, Jay, even though you have some problems with spelling. A good intern can take care of that. I have a daughter who is dyslectic, but smart. She had this job years back, in which she had over 50 people working for her. I asked how in the hell she could write reports and the like, due to her inability to spell. No problem, Dad, I hired two Stanford English majors just to take care of that aspect of the job.
All you need is to have someone proof read your not so elegant prose, which would give you a wider audience, one which perhaps would more appreciate your rapier wit and sense of self.
But really, bearbait, you could have left it at "I'm a contrarian" and the rest of the personal garbage could have been left at the door for all of the facts and information you actually presented. You have no case, except you do have an onion on your belt. Probably because it was the fashion at the time.
And Mickey, are you curious about how wrong you are, or are you just spamming because you're also a contrarian, just a more clueless one? If you were to ask: "OK, so why is the satellite data not showing warming?" I might actually think you had an inkling of honesty. Instead you're making factually challenged statements that make you look like a redneck with a speech impediment.
Humans have increased atmospheric CO2 by 25-30% in the last 150 years. From 280ppm to 380ppm and has pushed above 500ppm. Nature was balanced at 280ppm for a long time, according to ice cores, and that environment is what allowed a grand diversity of life to flourish, including humans.
But I suspect you aren't curious, you're trolling. You've found these nifty facts and figures and you're going to hold on to them no matter what evidence is presented to you.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/
The experts say your hypothesis is bunk.
One set of experts > 95% of all climatologists. Your experts are sociologists and psychologists and liars.
The denialists have lost, Mickey. You can stick with liars like Hanson's "boss" that wasn't even in the same department, or you can understand the real science. I see you still want to play with the liars.
Good try, though, Mickey.
Natural water vapour + natural atmospheric long wave absorption would maintain the planet at a 33 deg C baseline. Assuming that water vapour counts for 98% of the warming, and CO2 changes account for the other 2%, (which is an assumption made in IPCC documentation in the 90's) it calculates out to +0.7 deg C with a doubling of the CO2 absorption.
What are we seeing today? A 0.7 deg C increase from the beginning of the industrial age.
This is a simplistic proof, but again, most climatologists have been using the 98%/2% figures for a long time and they've matched expectations.
Wow. Math.
Then, expressing anthropogenic contribution of each "greenhouse" gas as a percentage: Water Vapor=.001%, CO2 3.225%, CH4=18.338%, N20=4.933%, CFC's&misc;.=65.711%
Then, multiplying each "greenhouse" gas effect with human contribution we get: Water Vapor=.001%, CO2=.117%, CH4=.066%, N20=.047%, CFC's&misc;.=.047%
Then adding up all anthropogenic greenhouse sources, the total human contribution to the greenhouse effect is around .28%.
Drastic measures such as driving 30% less, reducing winter heating 30%, Paying 20% to 50% more for everything, even if imposed equally on all countries would reduce total human greenhouse contributions by less that .035%. Which is much less than the natural variability of the Earth's climate system.
So where did you get your madeup numbers? I think I know, but I don't want to use that kind of word on this blog.
Or you're just another denialist that thinks being against the mainstream scientists is something to be proud of. I think you're just dumb, myself. I've proven you wrong at every turn, the majority of experts agree with my position, and you're starting to bore me with your repetitive use of debunked arguments.