From their website
Our mission is to transform progressive ideas into policy through rapid response communications, legislative action, grassroots organizing and advocacy, and partnerships with other progressive leaders throughout the country and the world.
addendum: for those confused, this is political advocacy and its probably not a good idea to post this stuff here unless you want HN to become reddit. Oh, how can it be advocacy if everything is true? Sometimes its not what you say, but what you leave out.
Selecting high quality scientific articles to bolster my political argument doesn't stop my aim being political - it may just mean that I have a convincing argument!
It is fair to be wary, however, of the process of selection in situations like this - these were 10 articles selected from many. Why were they chosen? Was the process of choosing neutral (such as in an independent literature survey) or political in nature?
This is where the nature of the site may give reason to look more closely, especially where they top and tail the actual science with partisan name calling, such as the reference to people concerned with the transparency and reliability of the climate science processes (ie 'Climategate') as the "anti-science crowd".
First of all, any political link that uses sensationalism should probably be avoided.
Second, rehashing of an old issue everyone knows about already (like global warming, or the federal deficit) isn't particularly useful.
Science: Vast East Siberian Arctic Shelf methane stores destabilizing and venting
Nature Geoscience study: Oceans are acidifying 10 times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred
Royal Society: “There are very strong indications that the current rate of species extinctions far exceeds anything in the fossil record.”
Many of us in acadaemia are aware of a perceived phenomenon whereby "fashionable" (for want of a better word) topics get published and/or attract research. From a cynical (yet often accurate) perspective, researchers have become adept at framing their research proposals in the context of the topic du jour. I'm not saying the research is bad, just that funding is easier if you mention buzzwords.
My point is that acadaemia goes through cycles of particular interest in certain topics. The funding gets allocated to it and the journals are more likely to publish research relevant to the "fashionable" topic than other research. Now, I'm not saying the research is flawed; just that if you fund research into environmental change, you're probably going to find a lot of environmental change. If tomorrow you decide to massively fund research into extraterrestrial life, you will see a surge of papers in high-impact journals about that very subject. The environmental change hasn't gone away, it's just that fewer people are trying to publish data about it.
Perhaps for that reason we shouldn't be impressed by the sheer volume of research or the perceived quality of the publishing journals. We shouldn't panic because the number of papers on the subject has increased by several orders of magnitude in recent years. We should get a clear picture of what is going on, ignoring the funding bias, and once we have analysed the data from a balanced perspective and we see that it spells certain doom for all of us, then we can panic. ;)
Better would be to make it direct, from up high: "YOU won't be able to do X because of Y. This must be done now otherwise Z."
If you really want to know, I think that this article and all the other ones about the TSA, politics, and similar topics that are not strictly about startups or hacking should not be here.
You have a zillion places on the internet to discuss that stuff - reddit comes to mind - do you really have to pollute this one too?
The I look and think "Who is screwed?" and how might that impact on our way of life here.
The article is presenting well-cited scientific studies, with summaries and disclaimers where statistical issues have been correctly raised. Together, the article's point is that the "climategate" emails were a distraction that the media followed instead of all of the numerous studies coming out in the same year on the subject.
With that in mind, yes, it may be political advocacy, but no one here has raised any real reason why the research behind them shouldn't be taken seriously. If someone posted a list of articles coming out at the same time that rebutted their findings, I might think differently, but as it is I can't help thinking from observing the response here that the article's point may be truer than even its writers imagined. There's real science here! Discussion about the discussion is a distraction from it. If you think we shouldn't be discussing climate change, show me why you think the research is bogus instead of just telling me "political issues don't belong on HN". It's political because there's a lot of money at stake, not because the science is controversial; and please, if you think I'm wrong about that, show me why. I really, really, really want to be. Other scientific articles are fine on HN, so why not this?
I look away from the glow of this noisy MacBook, and ponder how foolish I am to be typing this on a computer that in only a few distant years from now will no longer work. I know that global ocean temperatures have been rising steadily for the past 100 hundred years -- this is based on maps of world ocean temperatures displayed to the public in the lobby of an Ocean Sciences building that I was able to view years ago.
Yes, Number 1 http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/29/nature-decline-ocean-p... is stunning. Don't stay stunned for too much longer.
Missed a great opportunity for a hockey-stick graph! :)
Climate is one of those things that governments will be able to wash there hands of if everything turns bad, because no one can be 100% sure of causes and the whole climate gate thing the article was referring to.
I don't really expect any drastic action as unless every country acts those who don't will have a big trading advantage, at least in the short term.
This starts at home; and always will do if we want to make a difference.
Reduce your energy usage, buy local produce, install solar (and other sustainable) power. All of these changes can be done for very little additional cost. And if you really care it is the approach to take.
With enough of us doing these things it increases pressure and awareness a lot more than blogging about it etc.
While the final fix rests with the governments, we have to do our bit. Just, we're going to have to do it first.
At the moment "Green" is big business; but it is not so much actual green, as "brand Green". With enough consumers going after more eco-efficient lifestyles it increases the real green market and therefore pressure at a national level.
If everyone in the country went and installed solar panels tomorrow....
