Mitigating and Adapting to Climate Change in N.E. Wisconsin

OF NORTHEAST WISCONSIN j C ELEBRATING 30 YEARS OF WORKING TO PROTECT PUBLIC HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN N ORTHEAST W ISCONSIN i SPRING 2015 Mitigating and Adapting to Climate Change in N.E. Wisconsin Will 2015 Be the Year for Decisive CWAC to Co-sponsor Climate Change Action on Climate Change? Forum with Focus on N.E. Wisconsin Introduction by CWAC President Dean Hoegger On Saturday, During the December 2014 climate talks in Lima, Puru, May 9 , the Catholic bishops from every continent called for an end to Clean Water fossil fuel use. They believe that addressing the causes and Action Council effects of climate change is both a moral and social justice of Northeast issue. They acknowledged that the impacts of a changing Wisconsin will climate will affect the world’s poorest people; those least co-sponsor the contributing to its cause. second annual The bishops’ call for the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics to Door County recognize and act on climate change should bring greater Climate Change urgency to reaching agreement at the Paris talks scheduled Forum at the Stone Harbor Conference Center in Sturgeon for November this year. "As the church, we see and feel Bay. The forum, presented by the Climate Change Coalition an obligation for us to protect creation and to challenge of Door County, is intended to increase awareness of the the misuse of nature. We felt this joint statement had local impacts of climate change and to foster discussion to come now because Lima is a milestone on the way to among community leaders and interested members of the Paris, and Paris has to deliver a binding agreement," stated public on cooperative action to address those impacts. Monsignor Salvador Piñeiro García-Calderón, Archbishop The forum will feature: of Ayacucho. The Paris meeting of the United Nations Climate • Tia Nelson, Executive Secretary, Wisconsin Board of Change Conference will take place from November 30 to Commissioners of Public Lands and Co-Chair December 11 with the objective to achieve a legally binding • Professor Molly Jahn speaking on “Climate Change and universal agreement on climate, from all nations of the and Food Security; Global and Local Impacts of Climate world. The lead-up to the Paris conference includes over 20 Change on Agriculture” U.N. sponsored workshops and events. • Dr. Lee Frelich discussing “The Future of Our Boreal In January, President Obama and Indian Prime Forest in a Changing Climate” Minister Narendra Modi announced that the two countries will work together to fight global climate change. They • Todd Ambs presenting “Climate Change and the Great set goals for policy dialogue and technical work on clean Lakes: What is Happening Now and What Should We energy and lowering greenhouse gas emissions. These talks Expect,” and Matt Reetz explaining “Birds and Climate also placed an emphasis on the countries working together Change: What Should We Expect? to bring about success at the Paris conference. E-mail us at [email protected] for While the Obama administration is working toward a program and registration form. international agreements, including the unprecedented agreement with China in November 2014 for both countries “If we destroy Creation, to cut emissions significantly, the U.S. Congress lacks a similar commitment to addressing climate change, or even Creation will destroy us!” - Pope Francis Continued on page 2... Clean Water Action Council News j 1 recognizing it. When Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) brought of climate scientists believe that the climate is warming, a snowball to Senate proceedings to demonstrate that and that human activities are the major cause, a recent poll climate change is a hoax, it was an example of the lack of by the Pew Institute shows that only 40% of Americans commitment from this Congress. The University of Texas- accept that human activity is the dominant cause of global Austin Energy Poll indicated that half of all Republicans warming. “The single most common myth about climate are still in denial on the issue. Fortunately, the poll also change among Americans is that there’s a lot disagreement indicated that over 86% of Democrats accept climate change among the experts,” says Ed Maibach, director of the Center and other polls indicate that about 70% of all Americans for Climate Change Communication at George Mason recognize that climate change is not a hoax. University. “And the reason why they think there is a lot Join us in this issue’s examination of the effects of of disagreement among the experts is because there was an climate change in northeast Wisconsin. intentional strategy to sow the seeds of doubt.” Part of the problem may be related to the way scientists work. Traditionally scientists have presented their research, Merchants of Doubt Create but then steer clear of advocating solutions to the problems Cloud Over Climate Change that they have uncovered. The scientific community By Charlie Frisk maintains that advocating specific solutions will tarnish their scientific integrity and impartiality. However pseudo- scientists such as Fred Singer adhere to no such ethical “Doubt is our product,” a cigarette executive once restraints, they accept that they are hired guns for industry, observed, “since it is the best means of competing with the and that their job is to be a spokesperson for that industry. ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public. The hired guns end up looking much more like passionate It is also the means of establishing a controversy.” advocates for their message. Although largely discredited today, the tobacco The American news media also contributes to the industry was able to stall legislation for decades by hiring confusion. The American press bends over backwards to pseudo-scientists who maintained that nicotine was not be fair, and part of fairness is presenting both sides of the addictive, and cigarette tar was not a carcinogen. issue. So even if the vast majority of scientists believe that The same ‘doubt’ strategies used by the tobacco industry human activities are contributing to global climate change, and many of the same ‘scientists’ are now being used in the the press grants equal time and space to a few skeptics, the debate over global climate change. The top three global majority of whom are on industry payrolls. Exacerbating climate change sceptics are Bill Nierenberg, Fred Sietz, that problem is Fox News, which makes no attempt at and Fred Singer. Nierenberg and Sietz are both recently impartiality, and only presents the views of the climate deceased, but they are still frequently quoted, and their change deniers. impact lives on. They were all political conservatives, The Internet is also contributing to the problem. philosophically opposed to government regulation, and When I challenge people on certain ‘facts’, I frequently hear advocates of small government. them say, “I heard it on the Internet, so it must be true.” These three physicists have been used by industry Industry spends millions on websites designed to spread to oppose regulation of tobacco, acid rain, dioxins, misinformation about climate change. pesticides, ozone depletion, and global climate change. Why does it matter that the majority of the public is Fred Singer, considered by many to be the ‘granddaddy scientifically illiterate about global climate change and its of fake science’, worked for both the Phillip Morris Corp. causes? One entire political party consists of politicians and the Tobacco Institute. His major research task for who either deny climate change, or if they accept it, refuse the tobacco industry was to refute any research showing a to acknowledge that human activities have anything to do connection between second hand smoke and disease. with it. Today Singer heads up the Heartland Institute, a With climate change threatening to make our world right wing think tank funded primarily by Exxon and a much more hostile place to live, it is imperative that the the Koch brothers. Singer will resort to any strategy in general public put pressure on politicians to deal with the his anti-regulation rhetoric; sometimes arguing that “the problem. Reversing or slowing climate change will require climate has been cooling just slightly” and at other times sacrifices and major changes in the ways we do things. admitting that the climate is warming, but saying that is Until a strong majority is on board for doing something “unequivocally good news because rising CO2 levels and about climate change, nothing positive is going to happen. higher temperatures increase plant growth and make plants more resistant to drought and pests.” Sources: Doubt is Their Product by David Michaels The misinformation tactic is working very well for the Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes, Eric Conway power industry. Although a recent study shows that 97% “The Age of Disbelief”, National Geographic Magazine, March 2015, page 30-47. “Rethinking How We Think about Climate Change”, by Elizabeth 2 i Clean Water Action Council News Kolbert, Audubon Magazine, Sept.-Oct. 2014, page 46-48. Staff photo Climate Change Already Threatens could have the same climate as the Corn Belt by the end of Wisconsin Forests While Some the century. But you can’t grow corn on granite, he noted. Wisconsin Politicians Remain Severe wind events and droughts, by-products of climate change, are already transforming forested regions Unconvinced of Minnesota and Wisconsin. Winds will put species like Guest article by Bill Berry aspen and jack pine at risk. Drought will stress trees and lead to diebacks like those already affecting millions of acres STEVENS POINT – Ah, northern Wisconsin, the land of western U.S. forests. of pines and lofty balsams, as the old Hamm’s Beer song By the end of the century, Wisconsin’s summer extolled.

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