Notas III: E continua... desabafos, leituras a fazer, exemplos a seguir, e mais evidências

Há sempre muito para dizer sobre isto, mas confesso que para mim é mais fácil despejar o que vou lendo, e quem quiser, que faça o seu trabalho de casa, lendo aquilo que achar que deve ler.

O tom ressaibado do comentário tem a ver com o facto, de muita gente, alinhar as suas convicções nesta matéria do aquecimento global, não em termos do que os factos e o processo científico (digo, deliberadamente, processo científico) nos vão confirmando, mas em função das suas simpatias ideológicas.

Margaret Tachter (ver abaixo) prova que a aceitação da responsabilidade humana nas alterações climáticas não deveria decorrer de ser de direita ou de esquerda - é tão irónico ver intelectuais de direita, do centro-direita, e mesmo da esquerda democrática, portugueses, caírem na mesma tipo de cegueira ideológica de que acusavam, com razão, os intelectuais comunistas e afins, em tempos idos. Existe, contudo, uma diferença: estes tinham mais desculpas das que têm aqueles agora (a qualidade dos memes criados pela história e pela experiência dos países comunistas era superior à dos memes criados, nos dias que passam, pela extrema -direita norte-americana, e pelos serviços de marketing da Exxon e quejandas).

Artigo de Marty Weitzman:

Very Scary Things - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com: "Very Scary Things So I’m working on a climate-related project, and reading Marty Weitzman on extreme uncertainty (pdf). Weitzman directs us to the example of the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, when temperatures rose about 6 degrees C over 20,000 years, and there were mass extinctions. Meanwhile, I know from Joe Romm that serious climate modelers have marked up their estimates lately, and are predicting a rise of more than 5 degrees under business as usual."

Evidências:

Freakout-nomics - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com: "If you think conservatives are freaking out over the growing prospects that health care reform will, in fact, happen, wait until you see the freakout over climate change. You see, a snowy winter in the northeast United States was supposed to have proved the climate skeptics right, after all. But a funny thing happened while they were celebrating: globally, this is shaping up as the warmest winter on record"

Australia has hottest-ever summer|Climate Ark: "Western Australia has sweated through its hottest ever summer, recording average temperatures just shy of 30 degrees Celsius, officials said on Monday. Weather officials said the giant, dusty state roasted at an average of about 29,6 Celsius during the southern hemisphere summer, 0,2 degrees over the previous high in 1997-1998. The state capital Perth also endured its driest summer since records began in 1897, with just 0,2 millimetres of rain falling in December, January and February. State-wide information is only available since 1950."

New research sheds light on Antarctic ice melting|Climate Ark: "Jane Ferrigno is the lead author of that new report. She says scientists have known for a while that some of the peninsula's ice shelves are breaking up. Ms. JANE FERRIGNO (Geologist, U.S. Geological Survey): That started at least a decade ago in the northern part of the peninsula, but we looked at all the ice fronts on the peninsula from north to south. In the southern area, we're finding that all the ice fronts are retreating. In the northern part of the peninsula, the majority of ice fronts are retreating, and that's something we neither expected but we're highly interested in finding that out. RAZ: At a peninsula, the area where this research was focused on, is sort of like a canary in the coal mine, right? I mean, what does it tell us about larger trends? Ms. FERRIGNO: The fact that the ice shelves are changing on the peninsula is a significant signal that global change, climate warming, is affecting the ice cover of Antarctica. It's affecting first the area that's towards the north, that's slightly warmer, but the effect of the warming has traveled from the northern part of the peninsula to the southern part of the peninsula, where it's colder. Our next concern is to see exactly what's happening in the continent itself. We've seen some changes there, but we need to look closely and see what else might be happening. RAZ: Give us a sense of how much ice has been lost over the past, say, 10 years. Ms. FERRIGNO: I think I'll go back 20 years, and in the last 20 years, I would say at least 20,000 square kilometers of ice has been lost, and that's comparable to an area somewhere between the state of Texas and the state of Alaska. RAZ: So about the size of the state of Texas in terms of ice has been lost in the past 20 years."

Tempestade na Madeira é "mais um sinal de um mundo que está em mudança" - Local - PUBLICO.PT: "Portugal “vai viver muito as alterações climáticas” e a violenta tempestade na Madeira é apenas mais um sinal de uma tendência global, defende António Baptista, director do centro norte-americano de Ciência e Tecnologia para a Observação de Margens Costeiras." “Não é possível voltar ao passado nas zonas costeiras. É preciso antecipar agora, tomar as medidas necessárias para ter zonas saudáveis, que permitam aos animais ser saudáveis e aos homens também. Não há ambiguidade ou dúvida. É profunda e irreversível a mudança”, afirma. “Pode discutir-se qual é a grandeza das mudanças climáticas a nível global, mas não há dúvida de que os gases com ‘efeito de estufa’ estão a aumentar de forma espetacular. (...) A questão agora não é julgar a sociedade pelo que fez para que chegássemos a isto, mas olhar para o futuro e perceber o que fazer para gerir melhor os recursos”.

Citação:

Galileo, Semmelweis, and YOU! : denialism blog: "To wear the mantle of Galileo, it is not enough to be persecuted: you must also be right. --Robert Park"

As diferenças:

A 21st century catastrophe - Climate Change, Environment - The Independent: "In April 1989 Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister, gave her Cabinet a seminar on global warming at No 10 and one of the speakers was the scientist and green guru James Lovelock. A reporter asked him afterwards what would be the first signs of global warming. He replied: 'Surprises.'"

Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming: "There has been a shift in the climate debate over recent months. It seems people are talking less about the science and more about the alleged actions of a small group of climate scientists. Senator Inhofe is an extreme example with his recent attempt to criminalize 17 leading scientists. These accusations are largely based on stolen private emails that are being quoted out of context and/or without understanding of the science involved. Unfortunately, this is shifting the focus away from the most important element of the climate debate: the scientific reality of global warming. The empirical evidence that global warming is happening and that humans are the primary cause has been and continues to be observed, measured and documented in the peer-reviewed scientific literature."

James Inhofe, Senate’s top skeptic, explains his climate-hoax theory | Grist: "Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), one of the world’s most vociferous climate skeptics, is practically giddy these days. He’s argued since 2003 that global warming is a massive “hoax” being played on the American people, and now he believes he’s got more backing than ever before for his claim, from “Climategate” emails to errors in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to the recent blizzards in Washington, D.C. (He gleefully hyped an igloo built by his grandkids as “Al Gore’s new home.”)"

Ciência:

ambio: Debate sobre clima no Contraditório

Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions: "A new skeptic argument has emerged that upon close inspection, is a polar opposite to the scientific reality. This week, scientists who published a 2009 paper on sea level rise retracted their prediction due to errors in their methodology. This has led some to claim sea levels are no longer predicted to rise. This interpretation was helped no doubt by the unfortunate Guardian headline 'Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels'. However, when you read the article and peruse the peer-reviewed science on future sea level, you learn that the opposite is the case."