| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Andres64" |
| Date: |
14 Sep 2007 10:46:41 AM |
| Object: |
OT: Bad news for the Freds of the world... |
Bush aide says warming man-made By Roger Harrabin
Environment analyst, BBC News
The US chief scientist has told the BBC that climate change is now a fact.
Professor John Marburger, who advises President Bush, said it was more
than 90% certain that greenhouse gas emissions from mankind are to blame.
The Earth may become "unliveable" without cuts in CO2 output, he said, but
he labelled targets for curbing temperature rise as "arbitrary".
His comments come shortly before major meetings on climate change at the
UN and the Washington White House.
There may still be some members of the White House team who are not
completely convinced about climate change - but it is clear that the
science advisor to the President and director of the Office of Science and
Technology Policy is not one of them.
In the starkest warning from the White House so far about the dangers
ahead, Professor Marburger told the BBC that climate change was
unequivocal, with mankind more than 90% likely to blame.
The CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere and there's no end point, it just
gets hotter and hotter
Despite disagreement on the details of climate science, he said: "I think
there is widespread agreement on certain basics, and one of the most
important is that we are producing far more CO2 from fossil fuels than we
ought to be.
"And it's going to lead to trouble unless we can begin to reduce the
amount of fossil fuels we are burning and using in our economies."
This is an explicit endorsement of the latest major review of climate
science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Professor Marburger said humanity would be in trouble if we did not stop
increasing carbon emissions.
"The CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere and there's no end point, it just
gets hotter and hotter, and so at some point it becomes unliveable," he
said.
Professor Marburger said he wished he could stop US emissions right away,
but that was obviously not possible.
US backing for the scientific consensus was confirmed by President Bush's
top climate advisor, James Connaughton.
The chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality told BBC
News that advancing technology was the best way to curb the warming trend.
"You only have two choices; you either have advanced technologies and get
them into the marketplace, or you shut down your economies and put people
out of work," he said.
"I don't know of any politician that favours shutting down economies."
'Arbitrary' targets
Mr Bush has invited leaders of major developed and developing nations to
the White House later this month for discussions on a future global
direction on climate change.
It will follow a UN General Assembly session on the same issue.
Last week the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum in Sydney backed
the UN climate convention as the right body for developing future global
policy.
The European Union wants such a policy to adopt its own target of
stabilising temperature rise at or below 2C.
But Mr Marburger said the state of the science made it difficult to
justify any particular target.
"It's not clear that we'll be in a position to predict the future
accurately enough to make policy confidently for a long time," he said.
"I think 2C is rather arbitrary, and it's not clear to me that the answer
shouldn't be 3C or more or less. It's a hunch, a guess."
The truth, he said, was that we just do not know what the 'safe' limit is.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/6994760.stm
--
#1624
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| User: "Al Klein" |
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| Title: Re: OT: Bad news for the Freds of the world... |
14 Sep 2007 01:08:58 PM |
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On Fri, 14 Sep 2007 11:46:41 -0400, Andres64
<andresc64@do.not.excite.com> wrote:
Professor John Marburger, who advises President Bush, said it was more
than 90% certain that greenhouse gas emissions from mankind are to blame.
The Earth may become "unliveable" without cuts in CO2 output, he said, but
he labelled targets for curbing temperature rise as "arbitrary".
I wonder who Bush is going to replace Marburger with, now that
Marburger has outlived his usefulness.
--
Al at Webdingers dot com
"They laughed at Newton, they laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at
Bozo the Clown."
- Carl Sagan
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