Over the final days of the campaign, CJR is running a series of pieces under the headline “Ask Obama This” and “Ask Romney This,” suggesting themes and questions that reporters and pundits can put to the presidential candidates. Previous installments have posed questions about a short-term plan for the jobs crisis; about housing; and about the Middle East, China, and Africa.
At the third and final presidential debate on Monday night, moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS News passed up what was probably the media’s last chance on a big stage to ask the candidates what they’d do, domestically and internationally, about climate change.
We know a fair amount about Barack Obama and Mitt Romney’s views on a related issue—energy policy—that they’ve made a central part of their campaigns. Each man supports an “all of the above” plan, but that shared rhetoric belies important differences in the subtle ways that Obama tilts toward renewables while Romney tilts toward fossil fuels. Even within this area there are many unanswered questions, of course. Both men support developing more nuclear power, for instance, but neither has talked enough about the serious economic and technical hurdles facing the industry. Still, voters have had a chance to learn about the distinctions between Obama and Romney on this front.
But the candidates have kept their exchanges about energy policy entirely within the frame of economic growth and job creation—avoiding almost any discussion of the general environmental and public health consequences of their respective platforms, and talk of climate change in particular.
Back in April, Obama told Rolling Stone that he was going to “very clear” about the need to take “take further steps to deal with climate change,” and Romney disavowed any intention to address the phenomenon during the Republican primary. But since then, there’s been next to nothing. In early September, the candidates responded to a set of questions from the group ScienceDebate.org, including one about climate change. Romney threw in some skeptical words about the science, yet both he and Obama said they want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—the president through a combination of regulation and investment in clean-energy technology, and Romney through an embrace of nuclear power and a focus on economic growth.
Unfortunately, that’s about as far as either candidate has been willing to go to explain his strategy. Neither Obama nor Romney “mentioned the words climate change or global warming during three presidential debates that spanned more than four hours. And their running mates ignored the issue too,” Politico’s Andrew Restuccia reported on Tuesday, in a piece that quoted a ClimateSilence.org representative noting that this is the first time climate change has gone unacknowledged in the debates since 1984.
As Suzanne Goldenberg, who covers the environment for The Guardian, put it in the lede of her story Tuesday:
The Pentagon ranks it as a national security threat and, left unchecked, climate change is expected to cost the US economy billions of dollars every year—and yet it has proved the great unmentionable of this election campaign.
The candidates’ speechlessness is unconscionable. Romney needs to explain how the free market, left to its own devices, would ever lead to the kind of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that are called for. And now that the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed the first-ever carbon pollution standards for new power plants and introduced strict new fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles, Obama needs to explain what, if anything, he’ll do to help get international efforts to address climate change back on track.
Schieffer had every reason to ask about the problem in the third debate. Earlier in the day, Michael Levi, the energy and environment expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, explained why:
Those who aren’t seized with the importance of dealing with climate change on its merits should still be concerned: U.S. allies around the world care about what the United States does. Europe remains fixated on the issue, and might reconsider carbon tariffs on the United States down the road. Scores of countries in Asia and Africa care deeply about what climate change will do to their safety and prosperity—and the United States is battling with China for their allegiance. Do the candidates think that these concerns matter? How would they deal with them?
Unfortunately, as Levi suggested, the debates’ moderators seem to view climate change as a “special interest issue.” Candy Crowley, who presided over the second encounter, caught a bunch of flak from media-gazers for saying, in CNN’s post-debate coverage: “Climate change. I had that question. All of you climate change people. We just, you know, again, we knew that the economy was still the main thing so you knew you kind of wanted to go with the economy.”
Schieffer, who’s now punted as well, might say the same thing: “Oh, national security and violence in the Middle East, and Islamic extremism were the main thing.” That sounds reasonable to a point—or at least, reflective of a common media mindset. But these debates are each an hour and half long. The notion that five minutes could not be spared for climate change is ridiculous. Obama and Romney won’t be returning to the debate stage, but the rest of the press corps has a few weeks left to try to rectify that oversight.
News on climate:
PBS Frontline has a doc on the media war by the science denying hack army:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/10/pbs-climate-of-doubt/
And it's worth reviewing scientific american's three part, Pew Center on Global Warming sponsored series in the wake of Frankenstorm Sandy:
Part 1
Storm Warnings: Extreme Weather Is a Product of Climate Change
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=extreme-weather-caused-by-climate-change
"So are the floods and spate of other recent extreme events also examples of predictions turned into cold, hard reality?
Increasingly, the answer is yes. Scientists used to say, cautiously, that extreme weather events were "consistent" with the predictions of climate change. No more. "Now we can make the statement that particular events would not have happened the same way without global warming," says Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo.
That's a profound change—the difference between predicting something and actually seeing it happen. The reason is simple: The signal of climate change is emerging from the "noise"—the huge amount of natural variability in weather."
#1 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sun 28 Oct 2012 at 11:55 PM
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=global-warming-and-the-science-of-extreme-weather
"More moisture and energy in the atmosphere, along with warmer ocean temperatures also mean more intense hurricanes, many scientists say. In fact, 2010 was the first year in decades in which two simultaneous category 4 hurricanes, Igor and Julia, formed in the Atlantic Ocean. In addition, the changed conditions bring an increased likelihood of more powerful thunderstorms with violent updrafts, like a July 23, 2010, tempest in Vivian, S.D., that produced hailstones that punched softball-size holes through roofs—and created a behemoth ball of ice measured at a U.S. record 8 inches (20 centimeters) in diameter even after it had partially melted. "I've never seen a storm like that before—and hope I'll never go through anything like it," says Les Scott, the Vivian farmer and rancher who found the hailstone .
Warming the planet alters large-scale circulation patterns as well. Scientists know that the sun heats moist air at the equator, causing the air to rise. As it rises, the air cools and sheds most of its moisture as tropical rain. Once six to 10 miles (9.5 to 16 kilometers) aloft, the now dry air travels toward the poles, descending when it reaches the subtropics, normally at the latitude of the Baja California peninsula. This circulation pattern, known as a Hadley cell, contributes to desertification, trade winds and the jet stream.
On a warmer planet, however, the dry air will travel farther north and south from the equator before it descends, climate models predict, making areas like the U.S. Southwest and the Mediterranean even drier. Such an expanded Hadley cell would also divert storms farther north. Are the models right?"
I Guess So.
Part 3
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=extreme-future-predicting-coping-with-the-effects-of-a-changing-climate
"Right now, that foresight is more myopia, many scientists worry. So when and how will people finally understand that far more is needed? It may require more flooded basements, more searing heat waves, more water shortages or crop failures, more devastating hurricanes or other examples of the increases in extreme weather that climate change will bring. "I don't want to root for bad things to happen, but that's what it will take," says one government scientist who asked not to be identified. Or as Nashville resident Rich Hays says about his own experience with the May 2010 deluge: "The flood was definitely a wake-up call. The question is: How many wake-up calls do we need?""
Good Question.
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sun 28 Oct 2012 at 11:59 PM
But what turned me on to these articles just now? Read me a grand article on climate feedbacks by the same author also in scientific american - the latest article.
And you should too:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-global-warming-happening-faster-than-expected
#3 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 29 Oct 2012 at 12:03 AM