Os negacionistas cá do burgo e outros tópicos sobre o aquecimento global

1. Que os há, cá no burgo, os negacionistas, não haja dúvida. Aliás, confesso, tenho-os em certa linha de conta - em termos relativos - já que a posição mais geral é de ignorância (ignorância militante: não sei, não quero saber...), ou recusa de tomar um compromisso, com o receio de escolher o lado errado do debate - poderiam, é certo, informar-se, mas isso não é o "modo português" de fazer as coisas.
   
   
   
   

   Isto vem a propósito de uma nota saída no Blasfémias, sobre o comportamento do gelo da Antárctica - (agradeço ao FD a chamada de atenção): Antartic Ice video « BLASFÉMIAS. Segundo ela, o que refere, demonstraria a inanidade dos Al Gores deste mundo. O Blasfémias, presumo eu, considera ser de estrita coerência ideológica defender a tese dos negacionistas financiados pela Exxon (vejam aqui).
   
   
   
   

   O que se pode invocar, em contrário, é cientificamente fundado, como é bom de ver:
   
   
   
   

   Antarctica is Cold? Yeah, We Knew That RealClimate (referido nos comentários à nota do Blasfémias);
   
   
   
   

   State of Antarctica: red or blue? RealClimate (referido nos comentários à nota do Blasfémias);
   
   
   
   

   How to cherry pick your way to Antarctic land ice gain:
   
   
   
   

   "The article then transitions into a discussion of sea ice so smoothly, you barely even notice they're no longer talking about land ice. Many discussions of Antarctic ice melt fail to distinguish between land ice and sea ice which are two separate phenomenon. Antarctic land ice is falling. Antarctic sea ice, on the other hand, is increasing. This is partly due to less ocean heat rising to melt sea ice and partly due to cyclonic winds caused by the ozone hole (more on this in an upcoming post). It's important to note that sea ice is increasing despite the Southern Ocean showing pronounced warming."
   
   
   
   

   Enquanto isso, no polo oposto (ver figura colocada por Krugman no seu blogue, e referida abaixo):
   

   Arctic sea ice has thinned by more than 40% in five years, Nasa satellites show Environment guardian.co.uk,
   
   
   
   

   "The Earth is going thin on top. A new study has revealed that the Arctic Ocean's permanent blanket of ice around the North Pole has thinned by more than 40% since 2004. Scientists said the rapid loss was "remarkable" and said it could force experts to reassess how quickly the Arctic ice in the summer may disappear completely. They have called for more research to pin down the causes of the change, which they say is probably down to increased melting and shifts in the way the ice moves around. The study, based on satellite measurements, is among the first to estimate the thickness of the Arctic ice, rather than just its surface area."

   Quanto ao que se diz no Blasfémias sobre o "Global Warming Petition Project" ver aqui (em climateprogress.org - excerto a seguir) e aqui - em www.realclimate.org:

   "The story grudgingly notes “The National Academy of Sciences and most major scientific bodies agree that global warming is caused by man-made carbon emissions. But the Politico apparently doesn’t know the difference between the National Academy of Sciences and the widely discredited Global Warming Petition Project (aka the “Oregon Petition”), since it gives the latter more ink."






2. Sobre as causas do facto da ciência estar na defensiva (nomeadamente, nesta matéria) ler ‘Unscientific America’: A Review RealClimate
   
   
   
   

   "‘Unscientific America’ explores how we’ve come to the point we’re now at, examining the historical factors behind the diminishing prominence of science and scientists in the popular culture of the U.S. since its heyday in the years following WW II. The authors uncover more than enough blame to go around. They find fault with the media, both in how it portrays science and scientists (e.g. the icon of the ‘mad scientist’), and in the decreasing news coverage devoted to issues involving science and technology. They find fault in the way policy makers often abuse science (cherry-picking those particular scientific findings which suit their agenda), and in the behavior of corporate special interests who, in areas such as our own area of ‘climate change’, have often deliberately manufactured false controversy and confusion to dissuade the public from demanding action be taken [...]".





3. 
   
   
   

   No entretanto, Paul Krugman, o mais recente Nobel de Economia, não tem dúvidas quanto à posição correcta na questão das alterações climáticas (e àquilo que é necessário fazer):
   
   
   
   

   Scary picture - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com (figura referida acima);
   
   
   

   Economist's View: Paul Krugman: Betraying the Planet,
   
   
   

   "Indeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday’s debate, it was the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change is nothing but a “hoax” ... “perpetrated out of the scientific community.” ... Mr. Broun’s declaration was met with a round of applause from his Republican colleagues.
   
   
   

   Given this contempt for hard science, I’m almost reluctant to mention the deniers’ dishonesty on matters economic. But in addition to rejecting climate science, the opponents of the climate bill made a point of misrepresenting ... studies of the bill’s economic impact, which all suggest that the cost will be relatively low.
   
   
   

   [...] Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is."
   
   
   
   

   Op-Ed Columnist - An Affordable Salvation - NYTimes.com,
   
   
   
   

   "The 2008 election ended the reign of junk science in our nation’s capital, and the chances of meaningful action on climate change, probably through a cap-and-trade system on emissions, have risen sharply [...]"
   
   
   
   

   Climate change fantasies - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com,
   
   
   
   

   "A while back I wrote about anti-green economics — the insistence, by opponents of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, that the economic cost of cap-and-trade would be immense and unsupportable. [...] the costs of cap-and-trade are very, very low. The point is that we need to be clear about who are the realists and who are the fantasists here. The realists are actually the climate activists, who understand that if you give people in a market economy the right incentives they will make big changes in their energy use and environmental impact. The fantasists are the burn-baby-burn crowd who hate the idea of using government for good, and therefore insist that doing the right thing is economically impossible."
   

   Temperature trends - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com;
   

   Another note on short-term pseudo-trends - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com.