CLIMATE CHANGE RESOURCES:
While looking over the latest edition of Scientific American to arrive at her door Molly came across an article entitled 'Conservative Climate' (Scientific American, April 2007, pp16-19). The article is all about how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting in Paris on February 2, 2007 perhaps understated the effects of future climate change. The IPCC has continued to issue reports about their deliberations, the latest being 'Confronting Climate Change' on Feb. 27th. This report goes further than the initial report in that it addresses policy recommendations while the original report addressed only the scientific issues.





What Molly found most interesting about the article was how the SciAm report contrasted with numerous articles in what I call the "trash-con" press soon after the original report was issued in February. The trash-con press is basically those propaganda organs that "pretend" to a conservative view while, in actuality, trying desperately to make as much money as possible by catering to the lowest intelligence level and most violent emotions amongst the "conservative audience". You know-hang me high!, the "lib-conspiracy", the Papal infallibility of America, the etc.,etc.,etc.. These people give conservativism a very bad name. Just like every family every political position has its "trash relatives" in the family skeleton closet. Anarchism has its primmies, post-leftists and insurrectionists. Leftism has its unrepentant Stalinists. The difference is that you can add up the audiences of the anarcho-nuts and the Jurassic commies, and their combined audience multiplied by 10,000 wouldn't equal the audience of the trash-con publications. As the old saying goes, like Coca-Cola, Christ on the cross and syphilis these buggers are everywhere.





What Molly remembers in particular is that publications like the National Post and the Winnipeg Sun devoted "insults"(no better term is available) to the idea that there was "disagreement" amongst the scientists represented in Paris. The SciAm article points out where this disagreement came from ie from the delegations from China (more coal !) and from Saudi Arabia (more guess what !). Neither country is exactly famous for freedom of scientific inquiry.
So...in addition to the two reports mentioned above which can be accesssed from their websites so that you can see the original rather than some distorted version in the press Molly has decided to present the following resources for her readers. In our Links section the websites of the sponsoring organizations have been included in some cases rather than the original text given here. In all cases the text or page is readily accessible from the website in our 'Scientific Links' section:

1. Global Warming Facts and Our Future from the Marian Koshland Science Museum
2. Woods Hole Research Center, a site devoted to research on global sustainability.
3. Global Climate Change Resources from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
4. Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, a report produced for the Treasury of Great Britain.

5. Global Warming by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the US government.

As the astute reader can see none of the above are frothing, drooling ideologues fantasizing about the end of civilization and how they will direct other people's lives in that Gotterdamerung. These are resources that point towards the best of the worldwide scientific consensus on this matter, and they may be helpful in judging just how far from reality trash-con publications on this matter are.

Molly