Take that, deniers!

The following italicised text is taken from arstechnica.com At the end of this post there is a copy of the letter mentioned.

“Scientific societies warn Senate: climate change is real

A collection of scientific societies has sent an open letter to all US Senators, reiterating their individual statements on climate change, and offering to provide more information as legislation to limit carbon emissions moves forward.

Next week, the US Environment and Public Works committee is scheduled to begin debate on the Senate's version of a bill intended to begin limiting US greenhouse gas emissions, with a vote scheduled for early November. In advance of that hearing, a collection of 18 US scientific organizations has sent an open letter (click for link to letter) to members of the Senate, reminding them that climate change is a real phenomenon, and the best available evidence indicates it's being driven by human activities. The unusually blunt language is coupled with an offer: the US scientific community stands ready to provide assistance to anyone who is looking for further information in advance of taking legislative action.”

Anyone who follows climate change news will know that the always-active denialist movement have redoubled their efforts in recent months, as the scientific warnings have become more and more serious. Also they are doing this because we are approaching the Copenhagen Conference in December (dubbed “the most important meeting in human history” by Bill McKibben) – basically, it’s the denialists’ last chance to fool people - and they’re pulling out all the stops.

They have fooled up to 40% of the American public with their disinformation - curiously enough that is around the same number of the US public who believe that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old. Die-hard deniers like Senator Inhofe (probably the most vociferous US Senator on this subject) and others appear to believe that somehow God is going to ride over the hill, like the US cavalry in a John Wayne movie, to save us all from ourselves! That is both very scary and funny at the same time. A long time ago, when I was having a meeting with a senior local Jersey politician of the time I encountered this attitude. Here’s a link to a post I did on Planet Jersey (message #23) describing the bizarre occurence. This anecdote may amaze you, because what happens behind closed doors can be oh-so-unlike what some of the Jersey public expects our glorious leaders to behave like!

The denialists/inactivists have been very fond, in the past, of releasing misleadingly worded petitions, such as the Oregon petition, the Heidelberg Declaration and the Leipzig Declaration so it’s good to see such an unequivocal statement by the largest and most respected scientific organisations in the USA.

Here are images of the template letter, including the signatories.