| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Captain Compassion" |
| Date: |
27 Jan 2007 11:03:42 PM |
| Object: |
Washington wakes up to global warming |
Washington wakes up to global warming
By MATT CRENSON, AP National Writer
2 hours, 26 minutes ago
NEW YORK - Maybe it's the weird winter weather, or the newly
Democratic Congress. Maybe it's the news reports about starving polar
bears, or the Oscar nomination for Al Gore's global warming cri de
coeur, "An Inconvenient Truth."
Whatever the reason, years of resistance to the reality of climate
change are suddenly melting away like the soon-to-be-history snows of
Kilimanjaro.
Now even George W. Bush says it's a problem.
For years, the president and his supporters argued that not enough was
known about global warming to do anything about it. But during last
week's State of the Union address Bush finally referred to global
warming as an established fact.
"These technologies will help us be better stewards of the
environment, and they will help us to confront the serious challenge
of global climate change," Bush said in proposing a series of measures
to reduce gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years.
Environmentalists and scientists who study the problem say the
nostrums Bush proposed Tuesday night will do little to prevent the
serious environmental effects that the globe faces in coming decades.
Environmentalists favor imposing a mandatory cap on greenhouse gas
emissions tied to a market-based emissions trading system. Several of
the global warming bills that have been introduced to the new
Democrat-controlled Congress would do exactly that. House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) has proposed creating a new
global warming committee to consider the legislation.
"We want the pressure on. The pressure will drive the development of
new technologies," said Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record),
D-Calif., who introduced one of the global warming bills.
Many industry leaders have come to realize that such measures may be
more an opportunity than a hindrance. The day before Bush's speech the
chief executives of 10 corporations, including Alcoa Inc., BP America
Inc., DuPont Co., Caterpillar Inc., General Electric Co. and Duke
Energy Corp., called for mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
"It must be mandatory, so there is no doubt about our actions," said
Jim Rogers, chairman of Duke Energy. "The science of global warming is
clear. We know enough to act now. We must act now."
And a week before the State of the Union address a dozen evangelicals
called action against global warming a "moral imperative" in a joint
statement with scientists from the Centers for Disease Control,
NASA, Harvard and other institutions.
There is still plenty of opposition to action on global warming in
both the evangelical and business communities, but the tide is clearly
turning.
"You're seeing a major political shift that is fairly broad-based,"
said Robert Watson, a scientist at the World Bank and former
chairman of the United Nations scientific panel responsible for
evaluating the threat of climate change.
Scientists have been at the vanguard of the climate change issue for
decades. As early as 1965 a scientific advisory board to President
Johnson warned that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide could lead
to "marked changes in climate" by 2000.
In 1988 the United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change. Though assailed by critics as an overly alarmist
organization, the panel actually represents a relatively cautious
assessment of global warming because it relies on input from hundreds
of scientists, including well-known skeptics and industry researchers.
Every five or six years since 1990, the IPCC has released an updated
assessment of the environmental threat posed by global warming. And
every time, a single memorable and increasingly alarming statement has
stood out from the thousands of pages of technical discussion.
The first report noted that Earth's average temperature had risen by
0.5 to one degree Fahrenheit in the past century, a warming consistent
with the global warming predictions but still within the range of
natural climate variability.
"The observed increase could be largely due to this natural
variability," the scientists concluded.
But by 1995 that possibility had all but vanished: "The balance of
evidence suggests a discernable human influence on global climate,"
the second IPCC report concluded.
Six years after that: "There is new and stronger evidence that most of
the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human
activities."
Since then, scientists have accumulated abundant evidence that global
warming is upon us. They have documented a dramatic retreat of the
Arctic sea in recent summers, accelerated melting on the Greenland and
Antarctic ice caps and the virtual collapse in mountain glaciers
around the globe. They have found plants and animals well poleward of
their normal ranges. They have recorded temperature records in many
locations and shifts in atmospheric and oceanic circulation. Globally,
the planet is the warmest it has been in thousands of years, if not
more.
Emboldened by these discoveries, scientists just in the last month
have issued some dire warnings. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists,
originally formed in response to the dangers of nuclear weapons, cited
the climate change threat in moving its "doomsday clock" two minutes
closer to midnight. And Britain's meteorological agency announced just
three days into the year that 2007 has a 60 percent likelihood of
being the warmest year on record, thanks to the combined effects of
global warming and El Nino.
"You just can't explain the observed changes that we've seen in the
last half of the 20th century by invoking natural causes," said
Benjamin Santer, a U.S. government scientist who was involved in
previous IPCC assessments.
The scientists who will gather in Paris this coming week to complete
the first section of this year's IPCC report are not allowed to talk
about the early drafts that have been circulating in recent months.
But there is little doubt that when the report is released on Friday
it will include references to some of the specific environmental
effects of global warming that have already been observed, and an even
stronger statement about the imminent threat of global warming.
--
There may come a time when the CO2 police will wander the earth telling
the poor and the dispossed how many dung chips they can put on their
cook fires. -- Captain Compassion.
Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS
"Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." -- Will Durant.
"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMverizon.net
.
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| User: "PagCal" |
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| Title: Re: Washington wakes up to global warming |
29 Jan 2007 04:38:10 AM |
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Captain Compassion wrote:
Washington wakes up to global warming
By MATT CRENSON, AP National Writer
2 hours, 26 minutes ago
NEW YORK - Maybe it's the weird winter weather, or the newly
Democratic Congress. Maybe it's the news reports about starving polar
bears, or the Oscar nomination for Al Gore's global warming cri de
coeur, "An Inconvenient Truth."
Did Exxon/Mobil just drop funding for your little dis-information group,
and now you find yourself having to branch out?
.
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| User: "Captain Compassion" |
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| Title: Re: Washington wakes up to global warming |
29 Jan 2007 10:45:36 AM |
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On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 05:38:10 -0500, PagCal <pagcal@runbox.com> wrote:
Captain Compassion wrote:
Washington wakes up to global warming
By MATT CRENSON, AP National Writer
2 hours, 26 minutes ago
NEW YORK - Maybe it's the weird winter weather, or the newly
Democratic Congress. Maybe it's the news reports about starving polar
bears, or the Oscar nomination for Al Gore's global warming cri de
coeur, "An Inconvenient Truth."
Did Exxon/Mobil just drop funding for your little dis-information group,
and now you find yourself having to branch out?
Let me check the ticker........
Nope my Exxon/Mobil stock is still making money.
--
There may come a time when the CO2 police will wander the earth telling
the poor and the dispossed how many dung chips they can put on their
cook fires. -- Captain Compassion.
Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS
"Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." -- Will Durant.
"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMverizon.net
.
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