Posted on 07/08/2012 2:14:45 PM PDT by mdittmar
Twenty years ago, Republican President George Herbert Walker Bush gathered the nations of the world in Rio to confront the challenge of global climate change. Two decades later, the challenge is more real, and the damage of climate change more pervasive, but we are further behind than ever in addressing the issue. With each passing day, the danger and the urgency only grow.
Promises of action from both political parties have been replaced by a conspiracy of silence.
Conventional wisdom tells us that the chances of Congress acting on this issue is rapidly approaching zero. How dramatic and sad that twenty years later, as nations gather for a second time in Rio, we have failed to prove the conventional wisdom wrong.
Thomas Paine described today’s situation well. As America fought for its independence, he said: “It is an affront to treat falsehood with complacence.” Yet when it comes to the challenge of climate change, the falsehood of today’s naysayers is only matched by the complacency of our political system.
In the United States, a calculated campaign of disinformation has steadily beaten back the momentum for action on climate change. Proponents have cowered in the face of millions of dollars of phony, contrived ‘talking points,’ illogical and wholly unscientific propositions and a general scorn for the truth wrapped in false threats about job loss and tax increases.
But the threat we face from climate change is not an abstract concern for the future. It is already upon us, and its effects are being felt worldwide, right now. The examples are palpable in our daily lives.
Last year, many northeastern states experienced some of their wettest summers. Meanwhile, persistent heat and below average precipitation across the southern United States created record-breaking droughts in Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas of greater intensity than the 1930’s “Dust Bowl.”
Every new report that’s published suggests the situation is getting grimmer. Last year, a new assessment found that the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free within this century, likely in the next 30 to 40 years. Think about that for a second. Within a generation — maybe two — kids will grow up learning geography on maps and globes that show simply an empty blue expanse on the top of the world.
And the effects don’t end there. With the melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet alone, global sea levels could rise by as much as 3.26 meters in the coming years. And the Pacific and Atlantic coasts may be in for a 25 percent increase above average levels by century’s end.
Benjamin Strauss, co-author of a new study on topographic vulnerability, said it best: “Sea level rise is like an invisible tsunami, building force while we do almost nothing … We have a closing window of time to prevent the worst by preparing for higher seas.” That’s why, in cities like Boston, officials are actively planning for how to manage 100-year floods that are now arriving every twenty years.
The dangers we face could not be more real. All you need to do is look out your window.
We just had the warmest March on record for the contiguous United States. The naysayers will tell you that one hot year doesn’t prove global warming; but year after year, new records are being set: 2010 was the hottest year on record, and the last decade was the hottest decade since we started recording the weather.
At the Boston Marathon, temperatures hit 89 degrees Fahrenheit, more than 30 degrees higher than average. Official jackets, gloves and coffee? How about hats, sunscreen and Gatorade — and medical tents filled with heat-exhausted runners starting at mile ten of the 26-mile course from Main Street in Hopkinton to Boylston Street in Boston.
In the end, the question is not whether we’re going to pay for climate change. We’re already paying for it. The real question is whether we walk a path that addresses it now in a responsible way and that also helps us break humanity’s addiction to oil, cleans up our environment and creates jobs — or whether we suffer the consequences later on a massive, unpredictable scale in the form of environmental devastation, conflict, famine, poverty and reduced economic growth for decades to come.
Now is the time to confront the conspiracy of silence on climate change. It is time for complacency to yield to common sense, and narrow interests to bend to the common good. Future generations are counting on us. We all herald our mothers and fathers’ “Greatest Generation.” But we should also ask what our kids will say about our generation if we don’t wake up to reality.
U.S. Sen. John Kerry, a Democrat, is the senior senator from Massachusetts.
With what, an audit?
Did he serve in Viet Nam?
Wonderful. First we had to put up with Gore’s nonsense, now we have this clown trying to make something out of nothing and we have to pay for it.
These people belong in a looney bin.
Henny Penny, the sky is falling!
They certainly don’t belong in the Senate,looking forward to November.
Why, how do you do, Mr. Climate Change.
Hope that was timely enough.
OH....STFU, JK
To reverse global warming they need to cancel daylight savings time. That extra hour of sun every day is what is warming the earth.
STFU you commie gigolo bitch
Put on clothes or take off clothes, whatever makes you comfortable!
I happened to see Steve “the rat” Rattner (aka Baraqqi Car Czar) on ABC this morning pimping global warming.
The heat wave must bring out the Dem talking points.
Kerry, being a socialist, is thoroughly implanted in said bin.
On the bright side, he once again is aligning himself with an agenda built upon an unstable foundation.
Amazing! I can tell, just from reading this, that the author served in Viet Nam.
Exactly!
Hope things are going good for you DaleReed.
The time to end communism is NOW! Let’s run these Red’s out of DC!
I agree with that one part. The Left have lied for YEARS about "climate change". By definition, a climate does change over years. However, the temperature trend over 20 years has been a cooling trend.
Does it bother anyone that Al Gore is making money on this lie and is celebrated as a "scientist". He isn't. Neither is Kerry. Both are schemers who have looked for a way to live off the taxpayers their entire adult lives.
I kind of like to “address” taxes and yacht parking spaces there Slick.
booo...
Hey, don’t be so hard on Lurch. Global whining like his IS a serious problem.
Oh, he means....
Let me know when they build the windfarms off of HyannisPort, John, until then, stfu...
Every release of documents has been filtered by him before release.
I’m sure that a few more windmills and Chinese solar panels will fix us right up.
These nitwits don’t understand that even if it were true nothing can be done about it with that silliness.
But if it were up to me, however, we might be able to do something big but it would require some strong action. If we were to build large reservoirs across the United State’s plains (on government land) and fill it from the Great Lakes, the cooling effect of the water might make a difference. I have noticed about a 2 degree drop in temperature when crossing large lakes in Texas. John Connelly proposed something similar in 1964 but for the purposes of getting water for the droughts which crop ever frequently in Texas.
Kin I git me a carbon credit round here?
he's an irrelevant attention whore who has been out of the stoplight tooo long hence his spouting off...
The money quote: “Republican President George Herbert Walker Bush gathered the nations of the world in Rio to confront the challenge of global climate change”
Fbush’s
I'm not sure. If he had, I'm sure that he would have at least mentioned it when he was running for president.
I guess J F’n K won’t be needing his fancy yacht, now that he’s concerned about un-necessary CO2 emissions.
Shirley, you saw the footage from the video camera he took there. There is a record!
Now, as for self-inflicted wounds....
“With each passing day, the danger and the urgency only grow.”
The danger that I John Kerry will lose a sh!tload of my wifes money if this “SCAM” fails.
A 100% tax rate should do the trick.
“The time to address climate change is now”
Your request is hereby granted.
Hear Ye, Hear Ye, Hear Ye!
Anthropogenic global warming, also known as “climate change”, and GorBull Warming is mere enviro-socialist lies designed to further collectivize America and the world.
There you are. Defined and deconstructed.
;-)
Climate change is occurring; climate change has been with us since the beginning of time; mankind has nothing to do with climate change. Yes, we need to plan for climate change, whether it be global cooling or global warming.
The dominating factor in climate change is the Sun's radiant energy. Blaming carbon dioxide emissions is more spurious correlation than science and common sense.
"Why the long face John?"
I’ve heard that JF’nK shot himself in the butt numerous times since he returned “home”.
John Kerry has completely lost his mind? His keepers have not told him the whole global warming hoax is pretty much over? He didn’t receive his share of the Obama green government graft money?
This is just the dumbest scam in history.
But let’s assume climate change is happening, because, well, the climate has always changed. Also, assume the planet is warming, which is what Kerry is really concerned about. No one in the AGW cult is warning of global cooling.
If we are warming, human activity or not, wouldn’t that warming be of great benefit to people living in northern & southern areas? Sure, the tiny Maldives might be under water along with coastal loss, but think of the vast areas of Canada, Russia, & Chile that would be more habitable for humans, plants, & animals. An ice free passage over Canada would be a great benefit for northern trade, too.
Why is it that the AGW cult thinks that the climate is perfect now? Who decides the Maldives must survive even as the Inuit & Siberians freeze? Are coastal areas, already subject to erosion, more valuable than inland solid ground? Is it “fair” that Norway, Sweden, & Finland must suffer icy winters?
Man, we have got to vote these fools out!
Rich people use a lot of bath salts, I hear.
I thought climate was something like the four seasons and weather was what happened during that time.
Yep, six months from now, most of us are going to be cold again and we'll be saying at office coolers "cold enough for you?". Of course, any wintry weather will immediately be seized upon as yet another sign of "global warming".
You’d have to call those people morons, but then, to be a moron you need a brain.
Yeah, I think he got a purple heart for an ingrown toenail. Or maybe it was the wound he got in the *back* while advancing to the rear.
Hmm.. Somehow I remember seeing a recent article about Europe’s weather and how it’s been the coldest and wettest summer ever recorded.
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