The following is an excerpt from Jan-6-2013 when Anthony Leiserowitz was talking with Bill Moyers about a Global Warming Gallup world poll, the first every scientific quality survey conducted in 130-plus countries around the world.
ANTHONY LEISEROWITZ: "... It's a remarkable scientific achievement. And
one of the things that it taught us right from the very beginning that
to be honest surprised me, four out of ten people on planet Earth have
never heard of climate change.... Forty percent. And in fact, when you
look in particular countries, even countries that are kind of poster
child countries for climate change like Bangladesh, it rises to
two-thirds of people have never heard of climate change. In some
countries it's 75 percent have never heard of climate change....
Currently we are scheduled, unless we change direction to go through the
two-degree mark. And in fact, we're heading on towards three degrees,
four degrees and perhaps even six degrees centigrade warmer than in the
past. As you go things get much, much worse. And in fact, let me just
use a simple analogy.
Because people often will say, "Wow, you know, four, five degrees, that
doesn't sound like very much. I mean, I see the temperature change more
from night to day." But it's the wrong way to think about it. I mean,
think about when you get sick and you get a fever, okay. Your body is
usually at, you know, 98.7 degrees.
If your temperature rises by one degree you feel a little off, but you
can still go to work. You're fine. It rises by two degrees and you're
now feeling sick, in fact you're probably going to take the day off
because you definitely don't feel good. And in fact, you're getting
everything from hot flashes to cold chills, okay.
At three you're starting to get really sick. And at four degrees and
five degrees your brain is actually slipping into a coma, okay, you're
close to death. I think there's an analogy here of that little
difference in global average temperature just like that little
difference in global body temperature can have huge implications as you
keep going. And so unfortunately the world after two and especially
after three degrees starts getting much more frightening, and that's
exactly what the scientists keep telling us. But will we pay attention
to those warning signs?
BILL MOYERS: What do you think?
ANTHONY LEISEROWITZ: I think we are entirely capable of responding to
those warning signs, absolutely. When this country and when this planet
puts their minds to do something, they absolutely can do this. And in
fact, I often go back to a great old quote by Henry Ford who said,
"Those who think they can and those who think they can't are both
right."
This is within our power. We have waited however a long time to really
engage this issue and to get started. And unfortunately, and this is
actually a core American value, it goes back to the founding of this
country and it goes back to Benjamin Franklin, one of the leading lights
of that time, who said - and every American knows this - "An ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure."
A little action now is going to forestall much greater-- the need for
much greater action later. And that's exactly the nature of this
problem, is that if we delay-- if we wait until we've reached three and
four degrees, it's too late. At that point the climate system is locked.
It's a massive system. The heat is already in earth's system, it's
absorbed in the oceans, it's being absorbed by the ice systems.
It's in the atmosphere, there is no magic vacuum cleaner that's going to
suddenly pull the CO2 out and bring our temperatures back to what we
consider normal. So that's why it's so imperative that we begin taking
these actions now to forestall the worst effects that are going to
happen decades to come.
BILL MOYERS: So what ounce of prevention could be taken in this new
year, 2013, that would make you think we might be on the right path?
ANTHONY LEISEROWITZ: It's not like we haven't already gotten started.
California has done tremendous work already to take action on climate
change.
If it was a country it would be one of the leading countries in the
world. There are mayors all over this country that are doing tremendous
things, companies that are changing their systems and getting the CO2
and its emissions out of their processes because they find it actually
makes them more efficient and profitable in the process, citizens all
over this country that are doing what they can individually and are
starting to engage the political system to demand change.
We're not starting from ground zero, okay. But what we haven't had is
the ability to come together as a country and clarify the choice that's
in front of us and to really help the broad set of country, those six
different Americans I was talking about, engage with this issue and
recognize that we as a country and as a planet are facing a fundamental
threat, a fundamental challenge to the way of life that we have now and
the kind of life that we want to hand on to our children.
Until we start with that conversation it's very hard for me to see how
we ultimately lead to the national policies that are going to be
required, much less the international policies that are also going to be
required. So I think whereas in the past we've treated this as an
issue, that we learned about from climate science and that has basically
been a few set of political leaders that have tried to impose solutions
on this country, on our states, at the world from the top-down, what we
have not down is build the bottom up to meet them halfway.
And until we have that bottom-up demand for this issue because it's
going to affect every one of us, it absolutely is going to affect us
either directly or indirectly through economics, through disease,
through foreign challenges in faraway places, the world is now one
planet. We are all interconnected in fundamental ways. And so these
issues are rising the most deep questions about what it means to be a
human being, and what is the right relationship that we have-- and again
not just to the planet but to our fellow human beings. Because our
choices now are going to have collectively huge implications for the
lives of our fellow travelers within the human family on this planet as
well."
- ~ -
Scientists underestimated global warming says a new study, reports Jeremy Hance at Mongabay. Not only is the Arctic warming eight times
faster than the rest of the planet, but failure to account for
temperature gaps has led global datasets to underestimate the rise of
temperatures worldwide. By adding in new temperature data from
satellites over the rapidly-warming Arctic, scientists report that the
world's climate has not slowed in warming, as it previously appeared to
some, but is warming as rapidly as predicted, with the Arctic currently
facing the brunt of it.
The Ross Ice Shelf, a raft of ice the size of France, could collapse quickly,
triggering a dramatic rise in sea levels. Bill Moyers asked Kumi Naidoo
how long we have to change our ways and save the Earth, he replied that
the Earth is not in danger, the Earth as it was created will recover
over time and endure. It is the human beings who will disappear. Naidoo
said, “For some of the people it is too late but if we act in the next
five to 10 years the largest part of the planet’s inhabitants will
survive. If we don’t act it will be too late.”
" There are forces larger than human
forces. These forces are absolute, with no mercy. And if you don't
learn, you are just going to suffer the consequence."
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