There are changes in other spheres too which we must expect to come. When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession - as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life - will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease. All kinds of social customs and economic practices, affecting the distribution of wealth and of economic rewards and penalties, which we now maintain at all costs, however distasteful and unjust they may be in themselves, because they are tremendously useful in promoting the accumulation of capital, we shall then be free, at last, to discard. Of course there will still be many people with intense, unsatisfied purposiveness who will blindly pursue wealth - unless they can find some plausible substitute. But the rest of us will no longer be under any obligation to applaud and encourage them. For we shall inquire more curiously than is safe to-day into the true character of this "purposiveness" with which in varying degrees Nature has endowed almost all of us. For purposiveness means that we are more concerned with the remote future results of our actions than with their own quality or their immediate effects on our own environment.

In a report generating substantial media attention this month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) claimed January 2020 was the hottest January on record. In reality, the claim relies on substantial speculation, dubious reporting methods, and a large, very suspicious, extremely warm reported heat patch covering most of Russia.

It appears that the "warmest ever" January might simply have been influenced by Russian temperature data warmed up by waste heat. Maybe the U.S. House of Representatives will start an inquiry into Russian collusion to interfere with global temperature data and climate change legislation - but don't hold your breath.

• Denier weirdness: Russian steam pipes are causing global warming, sez Anthony Watts @wattsupwiththat - December 2013
• Those Russian steampipes are back at WUWT - February 2016
• Tectonic Anthony Watts moves continents using waste heat from little pockets of humanity! - September 2014

...more than 90% of the world's population experiencing a warmer local climate under transient global warming than equilibrium global warming. Relative to differences between the 1.5 °C and 2 °C global warming limits, the differences between transient and quasi-equilibrium states are substantial. For many land regions, the probability of very warm seasons is at least two times greater in a transient climate than in a quasi-equilibrium equivalent. In developing regions, there are sizable differences between transient and quasi-equilibrium climates that underline the importance of explicitly framing projections.

"For a given level of global warming, in a transient climate most land areas are warmer and experience more heatwaves than in an equivalent equilibrium climate with the same global temperature. So, if we were to hold the global temperature constant then most land areas would cool over time." 

This is particularly true in boreal summer where, for almost all land regions of the world, the likelihood of a hot season is significantly higher in a transient climate compared with the equivalent quasi-equilibrium state. Regions with at least a doubling in the probability of hot summers in a transient climate compared with a quasi-equilibrium world of equivalent global warming encompass major cities including New York City, Istanbul, Baghdad, Seoul and Tokyo.

Although this is a global-scale analysis, one could infer that for these densely populated locations, the heat-related impacts of human-induced climate change would be lessened in a stabilized climate compared with a rapidly warming climate at the same level of global warming.

• How fast the planet warms will be crucial for liveability  - article by the lead author, Andrew King, about the paper in Pursuit (The University of Melbourne)

Let me start by saying he is badly conflating three very separate and distinct theories.

• Theory 1) Increasing CO2 increases atmospheric absorption, which affects the overall temperature of the various layers of the atmosphere, and increases downwelling so-called "greenhouse" radiation.
• Theory 2) In the short term, large changes in downwelling radiation change the surface temperature.
• Theory 3) In the long term, small continuing increases in downwelling radiation lead to corresponding small continuing increases in global surface temperature.

Here the spoiler alert: I think that the first two of these are true (with caveats), but we have virtually no evidence that the third one is either true or untrue.

My theory, on the other hand, arose from my being interested in a totally different question about climate—why is the temperature so stable? For example, over the 20th Century, the temperature only varied by ± 0.3°C. 

I have great confidence in what I've written about my theory, for a simple reason. Watts Up With That is the premier spot on the web for public peer-review of scientific theories and ideas about climate. This doesn't mean that it only publishes things known to be valid and true. Instead, it is a place to find out if what is published actually is valid and true. There are a lot of wicked-smart folks reading what I write, and plenty of them would love to find errors in my work.

So when those smart folks can't find errors in what I've written, I know that I have a theory that at least stands a chance of becoming a mainstream view.

I have yet to find any large change, either increase or decrease, which is not related to changing levels of SO2 in the atmosphere, and this is documented in the reference cited.

• Wondering Willis' Original Weather Hypotheses - December 2013
• Wondering Willis Eschenbach's Thunderstorm at WUWT - October 2013
• Denier weirdness: Wondering Willis Eschenbach builds a strawman out of volcanic dust - September 2013
• Wondering Willis as a concerned climate scientist (showing his sexism) - August 2013
• The water vapour penny precipitates, almost, for Willis Eschenbach at WUWT - July 2016
• and many more.

In both California and Australia, people bemoan the loss of eucalyptus trees in fires. But many don't want them removed or even thinned out.

In my opinion, the NOAA/NASA press release (and slideshow) is inconsistently presented. For example, they can't even agree on a common base period for comparisons. Some graphs use 1951-1980 while others compare to 1981-2010 averages to create anomaly plots. NOAA and NASA owe it to the public to present climate data with a consistent climate period for comparison, otherwise it's just sloppy science. NASA GISS has consistently resisted updating the 1951-1980 NASA GISS baseline period to the one NOAA and other datasets use, which is 1981-2010. GISS stubbornly refuses to change even though they have been repeatedly excoriated for keeping it.

That 1951-1980 period just so happens to be the coolest period in the 20th century

The difference between the two analyses is NOAA @ 0.95°C/1.71 ° F and NASA GISS at 0.98 ° C/1.8 ° F

NOAA's U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) has the best quality climate data on the planet, yet it never gets mentioned in the NOAA/NASA press releases. Commissioned in 2005, it has the most accurate, unbiased, and un-adjusted data of any climate dataset.

While the U.S. isn't the world, and the dataset is shorter than the requisite 30 year period for climate data, the lack of warming in the contiguous United States since 2005 shown in the graph above suggests that the data NOAA and NASA use from the antiquated Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN) reflects warmer biases due to urbanization and adjustments to the data.

But here's also something interesting. All of the temperature plots used to represent climate change are highly magnified. This is so variations of one degree or less are highly visible. Unfortunately, these huge variation often scare the public since they perceive them as "massive" temperature increases.

Fortunately, the NOAA online plotter allows adjustment of the vertical axis, and when the vertical axis of the climate data is adjusted to fit the scale of human temperature experience, they look less alarming.

"Climate change" certainly looks a lot less scary when the temperature change is presented in the scale of human experience.

• Anthony Watts has discovered pristine US temperature (and MS Excel) - June 2015
• On Plain Denial: Watts Dismisses His Own Evidence That is Counter to His Viewpoint - March 2013
• Desperate Deniers Part 5 - Anthony "surface station" Watts flunks NOAA temperature chart 101 - January 2016
• Improving the temperature record vs conspiracy theories at WUWT - September 2015
• Desperate Deniers Part 4: Anthony Watts is shame-proof despite all his bloopers about NOAA - January 2016
• Anthony Watts is foxed yet again by temperature anomalies - June 2017
• Update: Anthony Watts Classic: those baffling temperature anomalies - May 2013
• Confirmation bias and anomalous anomalies at WUWT - June 2013
• On GISTemp, baselines and anomalies - June 2013

It's not out of the question that 2019 will end up the second warmest year on record, ahead of 2017. (The temperature anomaly for the rest of the year would have to average 0.87 C for 2019 to equal 2017.)

Human action - most deliberate bushfires occur within or near the most densely populated regions of Australia. Consequently, the majority of deliberate fires occur along the coastal fringe, where climatic conditions are generally milder, and the period of adverse bushfire weather is shorter. Although they have the potential to burn out of control and cause immense damage, overall, the majority of deliberately lit fires are small in area (less than one to two hectares). 

Analysis of a number of different data sources indicates that the highest rates of recorded deliberately lit fires during adverse bushfire weather occur in areas, regions or jurisdictions with highest rates of recorded deliberate fires generally.

A key question for bushfire arson prevention is whether there is a greater risk of deliberate fire lighting during periods of extreme weather conditions. This is a difficult question to answer with any degree of accuracy, as many fires are suspicious but not confirmed as arson incidents, and the intention of those who light fires is rarely known. A range of data shows that as the fire danger rating increases, recorded deliberate fires account for a smaller proportion of all bushfires. The increased risk of accidental and natural fires under more adverse conditions and the absence of definitive data on causal factors means that there is a lack of conclusive evidence to indicate a systematic increase in deliberate firesetting during these peak periods of risk.

If you're reading beyond the headlines about the recent climate change report, you'll quickly hit lots of references to emissions scenarios called Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). I'd heard of these, but they were different from the scenarios used in the previous reports by the IPCC in 2001 and 2007. Here's my summary of these scenarios based on an excellent guide by Graham Wayne at skepticalscience.com

RCPs are scenarios that describe alternative trajectories for carbon dioxide emissions and the resulting atmospheric concentration from 2000 to 2100. They encompass the range of possible climate policy outcomes for the 21st century. By agreeing on a limited set of scenarios, researchers (especially climate modelers) can be more sure they are comparing apples with apples when conducting their research and communicating their results.

The RCPs describe 4 different scenarios based on different assumptions about population, economic growth, energy consumption and sources and land use over this century. Details can be found at skepticalscience.com or the source for much of Wayne's document ie van Vuuren etal (2011).

The scenarios are named after the level of "radiative forcing" that each scenario produces (measured in watts per square metre). While crucial to describing the mechanics of climate change, I've found that an understanding this term is not needed to comprehend the problem of climate change, its scale and its implications.

Notice how concentration continues to increase even after emissions slow and then drop. Carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere and stays there for decades. Even if emissions start reducing in 2020, the concentration continues increasing and starts falling very slowly only after 2050. Understanding this relationship between our emissions today and the CO2 concentration experienced by our grandchildren is key to grokking the problem of climate change.

So now a brief look at each of the scenarios.

This scenario might be described as the best case for limiting anthropogenic climate change. It requires a major turnaround in climate policies and a start to concerted action in the next few years in all countries, both developing and developed.

Global CO2 emissions peak by 2020 and decline to around zero by 2080. Concentrations in the atmosphere peak at around 440 ppm in mid century and then start slowly declining.

Global population peaks mid century at just over 9 billion and global economic growth is high. Oil use declines but use of other fossil fuel increases and is offset by capture and storage of carbon dioxide. Biofuel use is high. Renewable energy (eg solar & wind) increases but remains low.

Cropping area increases faster than current trends, while grassland area remain constant. Animal husbandry becomes more intensive. Forest vegetation continues to decline at current trends.

Emissions peak around mid century at around 50% higher than 2000 levels and then decline rapidly over 30 years and then stabilise at half of 2000 levels. CO2 concentration continues on trend to about 520 ppm in 2070 and continues to increase but more slowly.

Population and economic growth are moderate but slightly lower than under scenario RCP 2.6

Total energy consumption is slightly higher than RCP 2.6 while oil consumption is fairly constant through to 2100. Nuclear power and renewables play a greater role.

Significantly, cropping and grassland area declines while reforestation increases the area of natural vegetation.

In this scenario, emissions double by 2060 and then dramatically fall but remain well above current levels. CO2 concentration continues increasing, though at a slower rate in the latter parts of the century, reaching 620 ppm by 2100.

Population growth is slightly higher peaking at around 10 billion. This scenario assumes the lowest GDP growth of the four.

Energy consumption increases to a peak in 2060 then declines and levels out to finish the century at levels similar to RCP2.6. Oil consumption remains high while biofuel and nuclear play a smaller role than in the other 3 scenarios.

Cropping area continues on current trend, while grassland area is rapidly reduced. Natural vegetation is similar to RPC4.5

This is the nightmare scenario in which emissions continue to increase rapidly through the early and mid parts of the century. By 2100 annual emissions have stabilised at just under 30 gigatonnes of carbon compared to around 8 gigatonnes in 2000.

Concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere accelerate and reach 950 ppm by 2100 and continue increasing for another 100 years.

Population growth is high, reaching 12 billion by centuries end. This is at the high end of the UN projections. Economic growth is similar to RCP6 but assumes much lower incomes and per capita growth in developing countries.

This scenario is highly energy intensive with total consumption continuing to grow throughout the century reaching well over 3 times current levels. Oil use grows rapidly until 2070 after which it drops even more quickly. Coal provides the bulk of the large increase in energy consumption

Land use continues current trends with crop and grass areas increasing and forest area decreasing.

With this information on board I can try to make at least some sense of the forecasts included in the IPCC's latest report. Figure 3 below is a chart showing forecast temperature change under the best (RCP2.6) and worst (RCP8.5) scenario.

If we get it together and emissions peak by 2020 and reduce to zero this century (ie RCP2.6), global temperature could be stabilised at around 1°C above levels in the late 1900's. The IPCC say it is unlikely (<33% probability) that the rise will exceed 2°C.

On the other, hand if we carry on as if there is no problem without even a slow down in emissions growth until late in the 21st century (ie RPC8.5) , the forecast outcome is not pretty. Temperatures are forecast to continue increasing and by 2100 and reach around 4°C higher than late 20th century levels. The likely range of outcomes for 2100 is approximately 3°C to 5.5°C higher.

While these projections are similar to those produced by the IPCC in 2007, the prospect of a +4° or higher world seems more possible or even probable now 5 years later. The colossal impacts and implications of a +4° or +6° world are better understood now than in 2007. The IPCC's Working Group II will release their report on impacts, adaptations and vulnerability in March 2014. I don't expect it to be fun reading.

Working Group I Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Summary for Policymakers (draft 27 September 2013) (pdf)

Wayne, G.P. (2013) The Beginner's Guide to Representative Concentration Pathways, Version 1.0 August 3013 www.skepticalscience.com

van Vuuren, D.P. et al (2011), The representative concentration pathways: an overview. Climatic Change, Vol 109, Issue 1-2, pp 5-31 Springerlink Open Access

jdeboi.com & goCaptainPlanet.com

1. Katrina

Katrina hit when I was a junior in high school, flooding my home, my school, my city— rendering my family, like thousands of other families, homeless 21st century climate refugees. My hurricane experience was unequivocally the most emotionally traumatic, significant, and life-defining experience of my life to date. And the mental scars associated with watching my home and its citizens get swallowed alive by one of the most destructive natural disasters in American history is the reason I decided to study climate change and is the number one reason why I am so passionate about combating the climate crisis.

I could spend hours talking about this subject, but for the sake of holding your attention, I'm going to share just a few particularly vivid memories.

The first is about my father. As the Medical Director of the Intensive Care Unit at Charity Hospital, a public hospital and a long-time sanctuary for less fortunate New Orleanians, he had to remain in the city to keep the hospital running during the storm.

There were 11 patients in the Medical ICU at the time, 9 of whom were on breathing machines- all of them very, very sick. When the levees broke on Tuesday, the day after the eye of the storm passed, water rushed into the city, flooding the hospital and destroying the backup up generators. All of the infusion pumps, defibrillators, monitors, and batteries started to fail.

For four days, they were forgotten; they were left without food, without water, without electricity, air-conditioning,flushing toilets, or any way to communicate with the outside world. At one point my father had to perform surgery on a young man in the back up a pickup truck— without anesthesia— using a flashlight and a scalpel. And while they were struggling to keep their patients alive with limited resources, refugees from the city were coming to the hospital for a safe haven.

Here's a pic of my dad in a Black Hawk with a patient when FEMA finally showed up:

In the interest of time, I'll leave you with a link to the ABC story written about his experience.

Needless to say, I didn't hear from my father for over a week, a horrendously agonizing experience, especially when every news outlet was reporting rampant looting, and chaos, and fire, and deluge. I'll share a few more — I came back to New Orleans for the first time in November (the storm was in August). At the time, the national guard was only allowing first responder type personnel into the city, so my best friend and I had to hide under blankets in the back of her minivan while my father drove through the security checkpoint. We left really early to make sure we could get into the city. It was probably about 4:30 in the morning when we rolled into the CBD, and I pulled my head out from under the blanket for the first time. Here are some imagery bullet points:

• completely unlit skyscrapers; an early morning sky pocked with stars
• thick brown sludge coated every car, plant, surface.
• a desolate, sepia post-apocalyptic war zone; the only sign of life— National Guard trucks
• brown water marks circling every home like the rings of Saturn
• spray-painted neon Xs, a sign the National Guard had searched for bodies
• interiors: mold-infested, black oozy, smelly alien planets

There's one thing that no New Orleanian who returned after the storm will ever forget: the smell. I don't know how to do it justice. It's reminiscent of mildew or some other type of mold, but it had a faintly sweet scent- almost like pine sap. Or spoiled eel sauce- sweet and noxious at the same time. I'll stop there and finish with a conclusion:

Katrina gave me a truly visceral understanding of the destructive capacity of nature as well as the fragility of modern society.

And so senior year of high school when I learned that climate change had the potential to create more frequent and more powerful storms- storms like Katrina- I knew that combatting climate change was my calling.

2. Sandy

After graduating from college, I moved to New York City and started working for a software company. I had been there for about a year when Hurricane Sandy, the second costliest hurricane in US history, hit the East Coast.

If Katrina was my wakeup call, Sandy was the fire the under my ass. This "superstorm" marks my transition from environmentalist to activist.

I'll share a few Sandy stories that really hit home. I lived in Brooklyn, but I evacuated to my office building in SoHo- a trick I learned in New Orleans to prevent cabin fever (which was critical in New York since I lived in a tiny studio). When the lights went out Monday afternoon, I was afraid to be in the building by myself (and technically, I wasn't supposed to be there at all), so I decided to go across the street and stay with a coworker at his uncle's SoHo apartment. As a seasoned hurricane pro, I itched to experience the storm on the ground, and so at 10pm that night, as the storm made landfall on the coast of New Jersey, with sturdy boots and thick parkas my coworker and I ventured out into the city.

Exploring the southern tip of Manhattan as the rain and the wind whipped through man made glassy steel canyons, was oddly reminiscent of my experience entering New Orleans for the first time after Katrina. The streets of Manhattan- streets that never sleep, streets continuously packed with busy bodies, luminous advertisements, pungent smells and sounds— a deluge of stimuli— these streets were desolate; the starry steel skyline— completely black. Eerie to the core.

At that moment I realized a natural disaster had the power to render the world's most vibrant metropolis completely silent, empty, and lifeless.

But even more profound was the following morning's revelation. When we woke up on Tuesday there was no power, no internet, no cellphones, no way to communicate with the outside world whatsoever. We had no idea when the power was going to come back on. And we quickly realized that we had enough food to comfortably feed the group for one or two days, which was especially frightening considering the fact that most of the grocery stores were already empty. There was no leaving the city. The subways weren't running, and very few New Yorkers have cars. Even if we did have a car, it probably would have been easier to walk out of the city given the traffic insanity that would undoubtedly ensue.

And that's when it hit me: 9 million people trapped on a tiny rock without food, running water, electricity, or communication with the outside world. And I experienced, for the second time, the fragility of modern society; self-subsistence is a thing of the past. I felt certain that if all of New York City- not just the southern tip of Manhattan- had lost power for multiple days, the situation could have easily devolved into mass chaos.

Last story. While New York was in a limbo state (no subways or electricity or work), I decided to do some exploring. I walked around the tip of the island and up the west side along the Hudson River. When it was time to head back, I had to cross Lincoln Highway. Cars were barreling down the West Side at 40 mph, blazing through intersections DESPITE THE LACK OF TRAFFIC LIGHTS (which were completely defunct without electricity). The cars were traveling fast enough and the traffic was thick enough that one driver's decision to tread cautiously and politely through an intersection might actually lead to a massive pile up. So who's to blame?

So there I was, playing a very difficult level of human Frogger with no brake [pun intended] in sight. Several minutes later a pool of pedestrians had formed around me- all of us wondering how we might make it across the road to tell the tale. After five minutes, I was fed up (perhaps not realizing that East Coasters weren't accustomed to post-hurricane driving etiquette). I took a bold step into the highway, jabbed the palm of my hand at the windshield of an oncoming car, and stared the driver in the eyes. I felt like Moses parting the waters, and I got my people across. Why did I choose to tell this story?

For a second time I recognized that modern society's resiliency is diminishing while nature's propensity for destruction burgeons.

I was very upset after Sandy (and a little insane in the membrane), and to get some of these intense emotions off my chest, I wrote a letter to the American people:

3. New Orleans

4. I ♥ Science

academic background

• major: physics
• minor: Environmental Analysis

research experience

• organic photovoltaics— here's my senior thesis
• chemical and environmental engineering research at the University of Arizona
• studied lithium-ion battery technology for electric vehicles in the Advanced Technologies Division of Southern California Edison- one of the largest utility companies in the nation

5. Hot Music Festivals

I'll keep this section short. I've had the same eye-opening experience at two very hot (>95° F) music festivals— Electric Zoo in NYC and Coachella in CA. It's blazing hot, lots of kids are on drugs, lots of kids are sweaty, and lots of kids need water. And here's the problem: these stupid effing music fests have 1 or 2 watering holes for thousands of people. The lines in the middle of the day are insanely long- about a 40 minute wait to get to a hose.

Let me say this again: it's 100°F. Lots of kids on drugs. Lots of sweating. HUGE WATER LINE. Everyone's a little bit afraid that the waters going to run out (probably irrational fear, but it's damn hot and the line's damn long), and eventually the bros get tired of waiting. So what do they do? Cut the line. Then guess what happens…fights.

In the water lines at hot music festivals I have witnessed the devolution of humanity, precipitated by the scarcity of a basic necessity: water.

Climate change means more frequent droughts and food shortages. Droughts and food shortages lead to unrest. Period.

6. BP Oil Spill

As a Gulf Coast resident who grew up fishing, hunting, and camping in the Louisiana marshes, BP oil spill, "considered the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry" (wiki), was a heart-wrenching, maddening reminder of dirty energy's detrimental impacts on our region.

The negative implications of the oil spill on Gulf Coast wildlife and communities were overwhelming. I immediately recognized the need to internalize the environmental and health costs of fossil fuels, which are enormous in accidents like this, and when considered, render renewables dirt cheap. So I'll conclude with one poignant question:

Why are we putting the very existence of civilization at risk for a filthy, finite, deleterious, and ultimately, uneconomic form of energy?

Congratulations!

From your recent letter to the editor, I understand that you question the science proving human-caused climate change.

I have an incredible opportunity that could make you more wealthy than Bill Gates.

I meet far too many otherwise intelligent people who refuse to believe in human-caused climate change either because their politics or their religious beliefs lead them to deny it. If this is you, then you are missing out on billions of dollars.

Let me explain.

There is not even a single insurance company in the world which accepts the premise that climate change is fake. Every insurance company is raising rates or even completely pulling out of insurance markets like Florida and the United Kingdom which are known to have high climate risk.

There is a HUGE potential for a disruptive, start-up insurance company to enter those markets and undercut all of their competitors. If you are right about climate change, then you can be richer than anyone else on Earth.

Why are you still working at your menial job?

Are you brighter than the Oracle of Omaha? You are if climate change turns out to be a hoax.

The most successful investors on Earth like Warren Buffett and Prem Watsa became rich by running large insurance companies and investing their corporate treasuries on Wall Street. All of these leading Wall Street wizards made their business decisions based upon the belief that climate change is real and is caused by human activities.

If you are right about your belief that climate change is a massive hoax, then everyone else in the insurance industry is wrong. You know more than the six million Americans working in the insurance industry.

You are truly one in a million.

Your privileged information allows you to undercut your competitors on price and win markets they concede. If you are right, you could beat them all.

You could sell insurance at lower rates along the coastlines of every continent. In this way, you would win all of those insurance markets.

You could beat every insurance industry expert at their game if you're right.

Of course, I should add an important disclaimer.

If you turn out to be wrong, you will likely be jailed like Ex-Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling.

If you are wrong, chances are almost certain that you will commit fraud to reassure investors and the media that your company was right about its bets. You would tell them that your company will remain solvent. It's human nature.

If you turn out to be wrong, your company will become so bankrupt from climate disaster claims that even an insurance bailout cannot save it. The claims will keep coming and will increase in size and volume.

If you are wrong, you will likely need to declare personal bankruptcy. Your mortgage will go unpaid as you languish in jail. No one will want to hire you again when you finally emerge from prison.

Are you willing to bet your freedom and your reputation for the potential to become insanely rich from your climate denial?

Or is this fantasy too hot to handle?

I'm a bit amazed at the weather forecast for the next upcoming week. Could be one of coldest temperatures for an NFL playoff game. Lots of snow coming down? Oh, what about freezing rain and planes skidding off the runway?

When I was a kid, I had to trek a mile in the snow uphill, both ways. (When I left school, I had to walk to the public library to work, thus trekking up the hill again. Gotcha.) It wasn't so bad…

Yet, what about super storm Sandy? Or record hot temperatures in Australia last year?

Just to warp your brain a little more, the earth in 2014 was closest to the Sun…its perihelion…yesterday. Which really doesn't matter because its the Earth's axis tilt gives us our four seasons — not how close we are to a ball of flaming gas. Bet you didn't know that.

Don't think the global warming is causing this? According to NASA, it is. They also say—

This has been the result of the "Arctic oscillation" -- a see-sawing pressure system over the North pole -- that has driven cold air into more southern latitudes.

So, we're on a tilt, close to the sun, yet our weather patterns are like seesawing with a guy who's trying to throw you off because he's just a mean old bitch.

When someone says well, there's no global warming because we're freezing — I really have to ask…are you serious?

To help those who know what's going on, my suggestion today is to rename global warming as global chaos. Already in use by me for more than a year. Keeping calling it warming and I'll make fun of you—

Get the 75 SPF sunscreen and larger than life hats before they goes out of stock. Also get them wool sweaters purchased more because you'll be getting more bone-chilling winters for years to come.

After all, a little chaos is fun. Right?

Compelling arguments for Congressional climate change action were offered by Ernie Cohen in his Nov. 22 letter to the editor, but he omitted the strongest argument: Justice.

Scientists agree carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to stabilize the climate and protect the long-term health and security of future generations, our children and grandchildren. However, cutting fossil fuel usage might hurt short-term interests of some businesses, investors, politicians, utility customers and trade associations.

Those with short-term financial interests in maintaining the status quo pressure Congress not to act, resulting in our children's long-term well-being unjustly compromised.

Is Congress biased against children? Of course, not. But we — parents, grandparents, nurses, doctors, teachers, clergy, firefighters, newspaper editors — must work harder to convince Congress the political will exists for equitable climate change legislation. Without demonstrable public support, Congress hesitates.

Become an activist

How can you persuade Congress that the political will exists? Attend marches to close coal-fired power plants. Protest pipelines. Divest. Or join me as a volunteer with Citizens Climate Lobby. We serve as a counterweight to paid, corporate fossil fuel lobbyists.

By writing letters to the editor, meeting with newspaper editorial boards, and visiting our Senators and representatives, we advocate for legislation for emissions reductions via energy efficiencies, the development of clean energy and other solutions the free market will support.

Our approach is straightforward, administratively easy, transparent, and fair. We want Congress to charge fossil fuel producers a fee based on the amount of emissions their products cause. Justice requires paying for one's pollution.

The government would collect the fees and send rebates to households so it would not be unjustly regressive, or drag the economy down by going into government coffers.

International effort

With an emissions fee, the private sector will shift investments into clean energy. The fee would also apply to imported goods to encourage international cooperation against climate change. Justice requires that nations work together.

CCL members understand that government will only protect us from climate change if we spend time studying the issue and informing our elected officials about optimal solutions. CCL has chapters nationwide, including Bridgeport, Providence and Boston. Please contact us for more information.

The Bible commands: Justice, Justice, you shall pursue. Justice must be pursued both by courtroom judges, and ordinary people, in the short- and long-term, for one's own family and others.

We might add: Justice must be sought in the streets and in the halls of Congress, for those already suffering from climate change droughts, rising seas, health impacts and severe weather, and for those at risk in the future.

Rabbi Judy Weiss of Brookline, Mass., is a member of the Citizens Climate Lobby

WEBLINK: http://www.norwichbulletin.com/article/20131202/OPINION/131209999/0/SEARCH

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I have come to believe that there is a false choice represented in the debate around climate change these days. On the one hand, we are told, we may choose environmental conservation and productive moderation. And on the other, we are told, we may choose social and ecological adaptation along with unfettered development. Either we keep carbon at bay and India and China languish, or we allow the World's populations to continue pursuing prosperity and bear the consequences of its externalities.

This analysis, obscured itself by the juvenile pre-occupation with the debate concerning the validity of global warming, obscures alternative possibilities that might preferably balance our valued commitments. Indeed, we need neither sacrifice ecological conservatism nor global prosperity.

Our attitude to China, as one example, is essentially this: if you want to deliver yourselves from poverty, you must devote yourselves to the production of endless junk that we over here do not actually need. Rather than collaborating to redistribute global resources and to harness the varied powers residing in your people, we'd prefer to relegate them to machine-like tasks for the time being, thereby subsidizing the cost of junk for us with a sacrifice in the meaning of individual lives by them. It is apparent to me that this cannot last; it is merely the most recent in a lineage of eager populations that we have mesmerized with the promise of development for a brief time. Once they have transcended the basic thresholds of industrial and urban life they, like we once did, will inevitably refuse to submit to this lifeless work.

The pollution assumed to inhere in China's development, in short, is unnecessary, but to obviate it would require the rest of the World's proposing an alternative path, one befitting the natural aspirations of a billion people who seek lives as full of opportunity, health, and nominal freedom as ours. Such an alternative would call upon us to sacrifice, but perhaps to sacrifice very little in the way of real freedom, real happiness, or real prosperity. It would mean that we perhaps think of our phones as more than disposable commodities. It would mean that we restrain our pursuit of bigger and bigger homes and cars, not by some arbitrary ascetic devotion but by a respect for what we know to be the limits of incremental gains in happiness. We would need to view the admission of the World's bottom billions into our modern digital community as a far greater realization of value than incessant, and incessantly disappointing, iOS upgrades.

As always, our choices are far more plentiful than the binaries that have ossified our discourse suggest. Those who advocate adaptation and those who advocate conservation ought to commit themselves to a collaborative and dispassionate accounting of the costs associated with different blended approaches, including more radical reorientations of the global economy of the sort that I'm proposing. Creativity, generosity, and imagination — paired with a reckless disregard for scarcity — can unlock a third path around climate and development that I am eager to embrace.

7bn reasons why technology wont fix the environment 

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