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Jeffrey D. Sachs

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a professor at Columbia University, Director of its Earth Institute, and a special adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. His work focuses on economic development and international aid, was he was Director of the UN Millennium Project from 2002 to 2006. His books include The End of Poverty and Common Wealth.


NEW YORK – For years, climate scientists have been warning the world that the heavy use of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) threatens the world with human-induced climate change. The rising atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, would warm the planet and change rainfall and storm patterns and raise sea levels. Now those changes are hitting in every direction, even as powerful corporate lobbies and media propagandists like Rupert Murdoch try to deny the truth.

In recent weeks, the United States has entered its worst drought in modern times. The Midwest and the Plains states, the country’s breadbasket, are baking under a massive heat wave, with more than half of the country under a drought emergency and little relief in sight.

Halfway around the world, Beijing has been hit by the worst rains on record, with floods killing many people. Japan is similarly facing record-breaking torrential rains. Two of Africa's impoverished drylands – the Horn of Africa in the East and the Sahel in the West – have experienced devastating droughts and famines in the past two years: the rains never came, causing many thousands to perish, while millions face life-threatening hunger.

Scientists have given a name to our era, the Anthropocene, a term built on ancient Greek roots to mean “the Human-dominated epoch” – a new period of earth’s history in which humanity has become the cause of global-scale environmental change. Humanity affects not only the earth’s climate, but also ocean chemistry, the land and marine habitats of millions of species, the quality of air and water, and the cycles of water, nitrogen, phosphorus, and other essential components that underpin life on the planet.

For many years, the risk of climate change was widely regarded as something far in the future, a risk perhaps facing our children or their children. That threat would, of course, have been reason enough to act. Yet now we understand better that climate change is also about us, today’s generation.

We have already entered a new and very dangerous era. If you are a young person, climate change and other human-caused environmental hazards will be major factors in your life.

Scientists emphasize the difference between climate and weather. The climate is the overall pattern of temperature and rainfall in a given place. The weather is the temperature and rainfall in that place at a particular time. As the old quip puts it: “Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get.”

When the temperature is especially high, or rains are especially heavy or light, scientists try to assess whether the unusual conditions are the result of long-term climate change or simply reflect expected variability. So, is the current US heat wave (making this the hottest year on record), the intense Beijing flooding, or the severe Sahel drought a case of random bad weather, or merely the result of long-term, human-induced climate change?

For a long time, scientists could not answer such a question precisely. They were unsure whether a particular weather disaster could be attributed to human causes, rather than to natural variation. They could not even be sure that they could detect whether a particular event (such as a heavy rainfall or a drought) was so extreme as to lie outside the normal range.

In recent years, however, a new climate science of “detection and attribution” has made huge advances, both conceptually and empirically. Detection means determining whether an extreme event is part of usual weather fluctuations or a symptom of deeper, long-term change. Attribution means the ability to assign the likely causes of an event to human activity or other factors. The new science of detection and attribution is sharpening our knowledge – and also giving us even more cause for concern.

Several studies in the past year have shown that scientists can indeed detect long-term climate change in the rising frequency of extreme events – such as heat waves, heavy rains, severe droughts, and strong storms. By using cutting-edge climate models, scientists are not only detecting long-term climate change, but also are attributing at least some of the extreme events to human causes.

The past couple of years have brought a shocking number of extreme events all over the planet. In many cases, short-run natural factors rather than human activity played a role. During 2011, for example, La Niña conditions prevailed in the Pacific Ocean. This means that especially warm water was concentrated near Southeast Asia while colder water was concentrated near Peru. This temporary condition caused many short-term changes in rainfall and temperature patterns, leading, for example, to heavy floods in Thailand.

Yet, even after carefully controlling for such natural year-to-year shifts, scientists are also finding that several recent disasters likely reflect human-caused climate change as well. For example, human-caused warming of the Indian Ocean probably played a role in the 2011 severe drought in the Horn of Africa, which triggered famine, conflict, and hunger, affecting millions of impoverished people. The current US mega-drought probably reflects a mix of natural causes, including La Niña, and a massive heat wave intensified by human-caused climate change.

The evidence is solid and accumulating rapidly. Humanity is putting itself at increasing peril through human-induced climate change. As a global community, we will need to move rapidly and resolutely in the coming quarter-century from an economy based on fossil-fuels to one based on new, cutting-edge, low-carbon energy technologies.

The global public is ready to hear that message and to act upon it. Yet politicians everywhere are timid, especially because oil and coal companies are so politically powerful. Human well-being, even survival, will depend on scientific evidence and technological know-how triumphing over shortsighted greed, political timidity, and the continuing stream of anti-scientific corporate propaganda.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
NIKI< people generally do not change their beliefs and habits until they are forced to change by circumstance. The obese person doesn't lose weight until a heart-attack scare, the heavy drinker doesn't stop drinking until he/she winds up attempting suicide, and the energy-guzzlers don't stop guzzling... and don't try to even understand WHY they are guzzling... until they have to pay a price.

Now, if people were to think proactively, they might see that our energy wastage is based on a number of false assumptions; that our energy use can be cut in half and still maintain a high standard of living. They might also see that changing policy to achieve that goal would require cutting across the bow of a number of powers-that-be, including the military, which would lose its relevance if it was not mucking about in the mideast protecting "our" oil.

Change is scary, and messing up the plans of the rich and powerful is even scarier.

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You're surely in the minority of people who give two shits to change anything..

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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You're surely in the minority of people who give two shits to change anything..

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Still drunk, still miserable I see. How far do you think we would have gotten had the Founding Fathers decided against change?

Lay off the sauce, Jack.

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Sig, essentially what I was referring to. I agree with everything you said, and as you can see, there is a perfect example right here. Hence my snark that the deniers wouldn't bother to read what KPO put up. Sadly...

Just like the fracking/earthquake connection I put up; trying to open the eyes of those determined to stay blind is a waste of time. I put this kind of stuff up for those of us who don't choose to be blind, and assume KPO did the same.

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Did it ever occur to you Niki

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Did it ever occur to you Niki

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Wrong person, Jack.

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Originally posted by Storymark:
Suuuuure, Rappy. Science is just like a collection of mythology.

But your favorite talk radio hosts KNOW ALL.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Let's pretend that you're here for a real discussion, and you tell us... what distinguishes "junk" science from science?

Why don't you start out by defining "science" for us?

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
NIKI< people generally do not change their beliefs and habits until they are forced to change by circumstance. The obese person doesn't lose weight until a heart-attack scare, the heavy drinker doesn't stop drinking until he/she winds up attempting suicide, and the energy-guzzlers don't stop guzzling... and don't try to even understand WHY they are guzzling... until they have to pay a price.

Now, if people were to think proactively, they might see that our energy wastage is based on a number of false assumptions; that our energy use can be cut in half and still maintain a high standard of living. They might also see that changing policy to achieve that goal would require cutting across the bow of a number of powers-that-be, including the military, which would lose its relevance if it was not mucking about in the mideast protecting "our" oil.

Change is scary, and messing up the plans of the rich and powerful is even scarier.

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Exactly... and that's why you all hate the rich.

Even though they're only 1% and shouldn't be counted lol....

If the other 99% were doing as bad as you were, then everyone would LOVE MOTHER NATURE, right?

Maybe you're just worse off than most of the 99% since you're the 1 in 1,000,000 bitching, right????

You're surely in the minority of people who give two shits to change anything.......

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." ~Shepherd Book

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Let's pretend that you're here for a real discussion, and you tell us... what distinguishes "junk" science from science?

Why don't you start out by defining "science" for us?

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Exactly... and that's why you all hate the rich.-6IX
You just don't even try to make sense anymore, do ya?-STORY

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No, I'll start by explaining junk science, pertaining to this issue.
Falsifying data, placing temp measuring stations in precarious locations, ignoring data which doesn't fit into hoped for results... stuff like that.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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No, I'll start by explaining junk science, pertaining to this issue.
Falsifying data, placing temp measuring stations in precarious locations, ignoring data which doesn't fit into hoped for results... stuff like that.

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So, you don't have a definition for science?

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I'm not playing that game w/ you

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Seriously, what ARE the odds that the very things which Leftists say need to be stamped out - capitalism, industry, use of fossil fuels, so that wealth can be redistributed across the globe, are almost identical to the AGW crowds demands

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That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

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Credible scientist can have the exact same data and come to completely different conclusions

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Only, in this case, buying into one position will cost us trillions of dollars, and have no real effect on anything

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Even those who buy into global warming admit that to be the case.

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In politics, perception IS reality

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

So, is there ANY data or data analysis, or ANY person that you would trust to do the data analysis for you which would change your mind? If not, there is no point to this dsicussion, because it really isn't about the data.

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