It is the AP that is incorrect about climate change. Not Beto O'Rourke

Mainstream news disinformation alert.

This is the "offending" quote from Beto O’Rourke that AP fact checkers got embarrassingly wrong on how the IPCC warned government leaders on our necessity to wean ourselves off fossil fuels like yesterday.

“This is our final chance. The scientists are absolutely unanimous on this. That we have no more than 12 years to take incredibly bold action on this crisis.”

The Green New Deal and its political supporters such as AOC, Mayor Pete, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and yes Beto O’Rourke, are by no means the only ones on Earth or in the Democratic field that see the urgent necessity of drawing down our greenhouse gas emissions by using the only plan that would keep the world from a catastrophic rise of 1.5C temperature rise. Transitioning rapidly to a green economy.

For those who want to know and understand, decarbonization alone will not save us. No, we have to come up with a way to remove the carbon that is already in the atmosphere. We need mitigation as well. We are in deep shit up to our eyeballs, we need to make sure that climate science is not weaponized in the 2020 elections.

Some scientists believe we have already passed the 1.5 markers that the world agreed to implement when they signed the Paris Climate Accords. We certainly have moved past that threshold in the Arctic. And unfortunately, what happens in the Arctic does not stay there. 

Severe flooding in São Paulo Brazil yesterday. Global oceans at the highest heat content on record and this is exactly what you get. Yes, this is climate change. pic.twitter.com/ZalxzRzeXn

(To be clear, that surge of water in the video is not sea level rise as Sao Paulo is inland, but the result of climate change disrupting worldwide rainfall patterns.)

There are a lot of evil people that want to derail the climate fight for no reason other than the almighty dollar. Every last one of us is viewed as collateral damage and expendable by the Petrol corporations and their GOP supporters.

As Democrats, we must stop the lies used against those who understand that there will be no other opportunity other than now to save ourselves — if we want to stand any chance against a civilization-ending phenomenon that promises nothing but widespread death and misery.  The kids deserve nothing less from us.

A time-lapse of a glacier using one image per day... https://t.co/585yjQg4cE (1/2) pic.twitter.com/j5IA6Mvc6s

The lies have to end, the media has to do their job, the Climate deniers and enablers should face charges of crimes against humanity. And folks, that is not hyperbole. But I could rant forever on climate, everybody here knows that.

Beto is one of a few announced candidates that I am personally interested in finding out more about. The issues along with my hunch of electability will shape my vote. The first debate is in June and I am excited that we have such a pool of talent to draw from.

So it is imperative that this story from the AP gets nipped in the bud now, for the jaw-dropping lie that it is. AP fact checkers, stated that O’Rourke statement was faux news. And they brought “alternative facts” to their story.

O’ROURKE, on global warming: “This is our final chance. The scientists are absolutely unanimous on this. That we have no more than 12 years to take incredibly bold action on this crisis.” — remarks in Keokuk, Iowa, on Thursday.

THE FACTS: There is no scientific consensus, much less unanimity, that the planet only has 12 years to fix the problem.

A report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, drawn from the work of hundreds of scientists, uses 2030 as a prominent benchmark because signatories to the Paris agreement have pledged emission cuts by then. But it’s not a last chance, hard deadline for action, as it has been interpreted in some quarters.

“Glad to clear this up,” James Skea, co-chairman of the report and professor of sustainable energy at Imperial College London, told The Associated Press. The panel “did not say we have 12 years left to save the world.”

But the AP is wrong and so are their sources. The IPCC report concludes that we need a drastic drawdown of carbon by the year 2030. Think Progress shoots down their “fact check” while explaining the awful truth to the AP.  

Last October, the IPCC warned that the world must make sharp reductions in global carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 to keep temperatures from rising above 2°C (3.6°F) to have any plausible chance of averting catastrophic climate change. Environmentalists, including the youth-led Sunrise Movement and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), quickly seized on this time frame as a means of calling for urgent climate action. 

As Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, told ThinkProgress via email, “I judge Beto’s quote as accurate.”

Renewed emphasis on the 2030 time frame has sparked debate, with some arguing the statements made by Ocasio-Cortez and now O’Rourke are exaggerated. But experts say it’s no overstatement

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“Beto O’Rourke correctly interprets last year’s IPCC 1.5 degree report when he said that we have no more than 12 years to take incredibly bold action on this crisis,” Andrew Jones, co-director of Climate Interactive, told ThinkProgress. The U.S. think tank was responsible for generating some of the scenarios for the IPCC report.

What’s more, as an IPCC special report released last year makes clear, 1.5ºC (or 2.7°F) should be viewed as a key threshold for dangerous climate change that humanity should do everything possible to avoid. The higher temperatures get, the more extreme the impacts.

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The AP critique starts out by stating,

“THE FACTS: There is no scientific consensus, much less unanimity, that the planet only has 12 years to fix the problem.”

But O’Rourke did not say, “the planet only has 12 years to fix the problem.” What he said was, “we have no more than 12 years to take incredibly bold action on this crisis” — and for that claim there is a very robust consensus.

In fact, one of the scientists the AP spoke to made this very point: the 12-year time frame is a “robust number for trying to cut emissions.”

What was Mahowald’s concern? The AP writes, “But she said sketching out unduly dire consequences is not ‘helpful to solving the problem.'” Again, that’s not what O’Rourke did or said.

The AP quotes another scientist explaining that the IPCC “did not say we have 12 years left to save the world.” But that’s not what O’Rourke said either.

What O’Rourke asserted was, “we have no more than 12 years to take incredibly bold action on this crisis” — and, as climate experts Mann and Jones explain, that is what the science says.

As to the point that there is “no scientific consensus” behind the claim that bold action to address climate change is needed within the next 12 years, there actually is a strong consensus because that’s how the IPCC process works. The panel of scientists come up with a consensus “Summary for Policymakers” based on a review of the peer-reviewed literature.

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The summary is usually something relatively cautious and understated since each IPCC report must be approved unanimously (or virtually unanimously), line by line, by every government in the world; this includes Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United States under the Trump administration. So it’s hardly inappropriate for a policymaker like O’Rourke to use the word “unanimous” to describe the findings.

In fact, the IPCC report released in October makes the strongest case so far that going beyond 1.5ºC warming is much, much more dangerous than we realized just a few years ago. It shows that as the planet warms from 1.5°C to 2°C, the risks grow rapidly for some very dangerous tipping points, including the irreversible collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet (which by itself would ultimately raise sea levels 20 feet).

When you’re a white haired MAGA hat wearer who decides to troll students at the #climatestrike, it’s maybe time to reconsider your life choices pic.twitter.com/IrjTorMXbE