Bad Day For Deniers

What will Rush Limbaugh and KKKate talk about today? Pretty devastating, when you have the deadbeat Bush administration admitting the polar bear is trouble, on top of a new scientific study which "piles on" the evidence of man-made global warming. I thought this quote telling, regarding the phony "debate" that the fringe clings too:

Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne

"The fact is that sea ice is receding in the arctic," said Kempthorne at a news conference. "My hope is that the projections from these models are wrong and that sea ice doesn't further recede. But the BEST SCIENCE available to me currently says that is not likely to happen over the next 45 years."

That's right, not a rogue study, but the BEST SCIENCE AVAILABLE, a fact which doesn't penetrate those who discount with religious fevor. I'm sure there is some NOT SO BEST SCIENCE available to wrap around the denier brain, like a sheath which keeps out any light. Plenty of debate about the effects, the timelines, variations, as we learn more, but those that question the concept are quite simply irrelevant fools.

A new comprehensive study released today, which builds upon past findings, something I'm sure Lorrie Goldstein will fail to do a column on:

A vast array of physical and biological systems - from polar bears in the Arctic to tiny krill in the Southern Ocean - are showing the effect of the world's rising temperature, say scientists who analyzed more than 30,000 sets of data stretching back to 1970.

The study builds on the work of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which last year concluded that human-induced climate warming is "likely" - within 66 to 90 per cent probability - having a "discernible" effect on physical and biological systems.

The new study mined even more data and concludes human-influenced climate change is the main driver of the changes being observed, outstripping the more modest effects of deforestation and other land-use changes.

"Anthropogenic climate change is having a significant impact on physical and biological systems globally," says the team, led by Cynthia Rosenzweig of The Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York.

The team analyzed data from of hundreds of studies published in peer-reviewed journals since 1970 and is the first to "formally" link observed global changes in physical and biological systems to human-induced climate change and greenhouse, says Francis Zwiers, director of climate research at Environment Canada.

Did you know, that as I write this, someone else is blogging about how 2008 will become known as the year global warming was revealed as a fraud? Seriously.