It’s official: 2014 was the hottest year in recorded history. According to both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the year 2014 was the hottest ever measured, based on records going back to the year 1880, The Washington Post reported with further links.
It now surpasses all past scorchers, including 1998, 2005, and 2010. Indeed, except for 1998, says NASA, the 10 hottest years recorded have all occurred since the year 2000.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about the new record is that it occurred even though 2014 was not an El Niño year, of the sort that usually powers the already up-trending global average temperature to new highs.
As sure as night follows day the the well “oiled” climate change skeptics / deniers try to water down the message for example in the Mail Online the headline reads : Nasa climate scientists: We said 2014 was the warmest year on record… but we’re only 38% sure we were right. As if it would make any difference if by some rounding or other statistical error the record was higher or lower by .001 of a degree. The fossil fuel industry funded deniers just want to create the image as if the science was actually not sure.
To understand why there is a war on science perpetrated by governments relying on the very same people who denied tobacco smoke causing cancer now denying that climate change has anything to do with human activity especially burning fossil fuel you have to understand how capitalism works. Corporations making exorbitant profits from our addiction to fossil fuel (like nicotine) just buy scientist in order to defend their bottom lines.
A must read is Naomi Klein : This Changes Everything – Capitalism vs The Climate.
Here you find out how the fossil fuel industry has spend millions of (petrol, gas and coal) dollars to create a well “oiled” industry of so called “Think Tanks” and PR companies that lie, manipulate the public, influence policy and buy politicians.
The good news is that we know the solutions. We have the technology to wean us off our fossil fuel addiction. There is still a brief window of time before global warming spins out of control. We can live within the bounds of nature on our planet of finite resources and finite capabilities to deal with our pollution.
The bad news is that it requires collective action not allowed under our present neoliberal, free market, private profit driven capitalistic system. The disciples of this ideology in their hubris rather attempt to change nature with their geoengineering fantasies by for instance trying to put iron into our oceans to change the acidity or pump sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to partially block the sunlight. How much easier, cheaper and safer it would be to change our ecocidal and genocidal economic system which is man made and therefor can be changed.
Instead our governments in this case Australia
accelerates coal mine projects in the face of study that finds it should stay buried as George Monbiot points out in the Guardian.
Our rulers responsible for this are criminals. That is what you call someone who leaves his baby in a car in the scorching sun till it is dead some hours later just to go to the casino. It is called manslaughter. No different to cooking the planet and killing our children’s children 40-50 years down the track. That is what science tells us that millions will perish if we don’t change our ways.
But rather than listen they declare war on science.
We voted for them. May be for our children’s children sake we should be more careful with our vote next time.
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