Posted on 02/13/2007 5:15:20 AM PST by RWR8189
THERE IS NOW a broad consensus in this country, and indeed in the world, that global warming is happening, that it is a serious problem, and that humans are causing it. The recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded there is a greater than 90 percent chance that greenhouse gases released by human activities like burning oil in cars and coal in power plants are causing most of the observed global warming. This report puts the final nail in denial's coffin about the problem of global warming.
In addition, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has identified a warming climate, and the resulting melting of sea ice, as the reason polar bears may now be threatened as a species. The US Center for Disease Control's National Center for Environmental Health has cited global warming as the largest looming public health challenge we face. And President Bush has himself called global warming a serious challenge that we need to confront.
Indeed, if we fail to start substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the next couple of years, we risk bequeathing a diminished world to our grandchildren. Insect-borne diseases such as malaria will spike as tropical ecosystems expand; hotter air will exacerbate the pollution that sends children to the hospital with asthma attacks; food insecurity from shifting agricultural zones will spark border wars; and storms and coastal flooding from sea-level rise will cause mortality and dislocation.
To confront this challenge, we have reintroduced the Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act. The bill, which has growing bipartisan support, would harness the power of the free market and the engine of American innovation to reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emissions substantially enough and quickly enough to forestall catastrophic global warming.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: THE ULTIMATE "RHINESTONE HERO"
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: THE ULTIMATE "RHINESTONE HERO" Part II
U.S. Sen. John McCain is no War Hero
John McCain: The Manchurian Candidate
McCain Is Booed by Labor Activists
McCain Rides to Kerry's Rescue: "John Kerry is Not Weak on Defense" (Today Show alert)
John McCain SCREAMS AT 9/11 FSA MEMBERS FOR OPPOSING HIS BILL TO GIVE AMNESTY FOR ILLEGALS
A number of articles on McCain. (some the same as above)
McCain/Soros by Rabbi Areyh Spero
Soros' "Reform" (an article about Soros‘ instrumental hand in McCain/Feingold)
Not Child‘s Play [McCain/Schumer bill could effect FR?]
McCain's Letter (McCain aligns with Global Enviro activists)
McCain Looked into Caucusing with Democrats
Climate bill sets stage for debate (Sens. McCain, Obama, and Lieberman join forces)
McCain Still Disliked by Fiscal Conservatives (Club For Growth)
John McCain Goes Left for Money
Sens. Snowe, Collins to head Maine exploratory committee for McCain
I do expect him to be relatively well-informed on the notion of global warming due to his position of power. Also, as some here have said he understands the BS machine of the socialists and communists and understand the impending doom of the global warming freaks in the U.S. and abroad.
Carbon Credit trading bump!
McLame must be reaching for the kook vote right out of the box. It's a little scary.
McCain, Clinton probe melting Arctic
By LIZ RUSKIN
Anchorage Daily News
August 19, 2005
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Sens. John McCain and Hillary Clinton, touring Alaska this week to view melting permafrost and shrinking glaciers, said the evidence is mounting that global warming is real and human activity is significantly to blame.
"The question is how much damage will be done before we start taking concrete action," McCain, R-Ariz., told reporters at the Hotel Captain Cook Wednesday morning. "Go up to places like we just came from. It's a little scary."
Clinton, D-N.Y., said the scientists and Native people she's spoken to on this trip to Alaska and Canada's Yukon Territory make the case with convincing and moving particulars.
"So I don't think there's any doubt left for anybody who actually looks at the science," she said. "There are still some holdouts, but they're fighting a losing battle. The science is overwhelming."
Among those holdouts, though, is Alaska's entire delegation to Congress - Sens. Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski and Congressman Don Young - who did not accompany the senators on their tour.
The Alaskans have opposed mandatory limits on the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, saying they're not convinced that humans are largely to blame.
That would put them outside the scientific mainstream.
The National Academy of Sciences and the academies of 10 other nations issued a statement this summer saying there is strong evidence that significant global warming is under way and that "it is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities."
Whatever the cause, almost everyone agrees the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the world, and the effects in the North can seem dramatic, which is why Clinton, McCain and two other Lower 48 senators came. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the Arctic is the canary in the coal mine of global warming, "crying out to us to pay attention to the impact."
The group flew over Canada's Yukon territory and saw forests decimated by spruce bark beetles - believed to grow profusely because of warm weather.
"It's just heartbreaking to see the devastation," Clinton said.
She was struck by the account of a 93-year-old woman she met at a fish camp they reached by helicopter from Whitehorse, Yukon. The woman told her she'd been fishing there her whole life but that lately the fish have strange bumps on them, growths Clinton said sounded like some sort of tumor.
They also went to Barrow, the northernmost city in the United States, and met with scientists and Inupiaq Eskimo residents concerned about rising sea levels and other changes. The senators headed to Seward Wednesday to see shrinking glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park.
Murkowski doesn't dispute Earth is warming or that emissions play a role, only the size of that role, her spokeswoman, Kristin Pugh, said Wednesday. Murkowski welcomed the senators with a dinner she hosted Tuesday night at the Turnagain home of former Gov. Bill Sheffield. After dinner, Clinton and Murkowski walked back to the Captain Cook along the city's Coastal Trail, Pugh said.
Last year, the Alaska delegation disputed an international report by more than 300 scientists that said "human influences . . . have now become the dominant factor" in global warming.
Young dismissed the "so-called study" as ammunition for fear mongers.
"I don't believe it is our fault. That's an opinion," Young said in November. "It's as sound as any scientist's."
In an interview with KTUU-Channel 2 News this week, Young said the globe is going to change no matter what humans do.
"But to have people come down and talk about we gotta do this, we gotta change that, we don't use Freon anymore, you don't use underarm deodorant, you can't do these kinds of things - you know, that is pure nonsense," Young said.
Murkowski said she got her most definitive answer to date at a Senate hearing last month, when a climate expert told her that "nearly all" the warming in recent decades is due to human activity. She said the degree of human causation is a matter of debate, however, and she wanted more evidence before she could support something like mandatory emission limits, which could slow the economy.
McCain and Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., have sponsored the "Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act," which would require electric utilities and other companies to keep greenhouse gas emissions to what they were in the year 2000.
Stevens, who opposes mandatory limits, has said any such legislation would have to go through him because he chairs the Senate Commerce Committee.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the fourth senator at the Anchorage press conference Wednesday, said he is on the fence about global warming legislation but said he was moved by what he heard on the trip.
"Climate change is different when you come here, because you see the faces of people experiencing it in Alaska," he said. "If you can go to the Native people and listen to their stories and walk away with any doubt that something's going on, I just think you're not listening."
As for Rep. Young's dismissive comments about the issue, "All of us who know Don know that he's just being Don," said Graham.
One of the climate-related questions Alaska's senators are facing is what to do for villages like Shishmaref, which are suffering coastal erosion. Moving them is projected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
McCain, a constant critic of congressional spending, said he thinks American taxpayers will be generous to such villagers, as they are to hurricane victims in Florida.
But, he said, people asking for money to fix a problem should be willing to address the root cause.
"So far, some of my colleagues are not eager to do so," he said.
http://www.sitnews.us/0805news/081905PM/081905_shns_sen_warming.html
That right there completely discredits him. No serious person denies that the globe is warming. Thermometers don't lie, and the measurements show a persistent warming trend. Some reputable scientists are skeptical as to whether human activity is responsible for that warming, but most aren't.
No, you are wrong, a temperature rise of .7 or .6 degrees over a century is not indicative of anything except the fact that the Earth's temperture is not static, it has gone up and down over various periods of time. That't the reason that the Vikings farmed Greenland and were able to sail the treacherous northern seas in those little wooden boats. The only thing certain about the Earth's climate is that it changes. Consensus is not scientific evaluation. You don't take a vote to determine scientific evidence, you prove it, and scientists
have not been able to that.
Read Michael Crichton's State of Fear for a good expanation of the politics of the environment. It is very well documented.
Thanks for making my point. The earth is warming. Even you don't deny it. To deny it is to ignore reality.
Don't be such a kool-aid drinker, a rise of .6 or .7 is statisticly insignificant and indicative of only a natural fluctuation. As a matter of fact the rise seems to have peaked in 1998, and not increased at all since President Bush took office. So, maybe that's Bush's fault, too, like everything else.
The post modern left keeps changing their meta-narrative to fit the circumstances. Now, that the world is possibly experiencing a record cold winter, they have changed the title of their fantasy to "Climate Change".
Really? How are you computing the standard errors to determine that? And how come your standard error estimates are so much higher than every one else's?
and indicative of only a natural fluctuation.
Yes, it could be a natural fluctuation, but that doesn't mean it isn't real, which is what the Czech president seems to be saying.
You are making your error in only reading one side of the story. Do a little reading and don't accept consensus as science. I have a whole file full of articles that refute your global warming meta-narrative, but I think that it would be better if you did your own research before you make up your mind.
The problem with meta-narratives is that they create a truth that fits their overall world view, rather than prove a truth. Like Al Gore claiming that the oceans are going to rise twenty feet and swamp parts of the world. It just flat out not going to happen. The science indicates that the worst cast scenario is less than twenty inches and this was even included in the UN report on climate change. I could go on and on, but you really need to do some research on studies that aren't paid for by socialists.
I have. So have lots of economists and climatologists who aren't leftwing wackos. The evidence points to a strong possibility that human-generated CO2 is causing at least some warming.
There are no serious climatologists who will deny that there is at least some non-negligible probability that global warming is at least partially being generated by humans. All the dissenters have done is show that there is considerable uncertainty regarding that proability. But no one can say with any confidence that that probability is zero.
Others will object that human caused global warming isn't proven. True, but that's beside the point. It can't be proven that human activies aren't causing global warming, either.
We live in the world of uncertainty, so it is simply irrational to wait until we have absolute proof before taking action. The fact is, if human caused global warming is real, it can hurt us regardless of whether it can be proven or not. Hence it is irrational to demand proof before taking action, just as it would be irrational for a doctor to wait for absolute proof before operating on a patient whom he strongly suspects of having a life-threatening condition.
Once you admit that there is some sigificant chance that global warming has a human cause (which everyone admits), it becomes an optimization problem. There are some expected costs associated with warming, and there are costs associated with measures we can take to reduce it. Like with most tradeoffs, neither extreme is likely the optimal solution (corner solutions tend to be rare in the real world). Rather, the optimum is most likely somewhere in between: to take some measures to curtail global warming, but not do everything possible. There are reputable, conservative economists working on this problem as we speak.
Besides, there are certain things that would help reduce global warming that we should be doing anyway for security reasons, such as building more nuclear power plants and start reprocessing nuclear fuel.
Of course, the hysteria of Algore and the rest of the extreme left engage is in equally irrational, but that doesn't mean the opposite extreme is any better.
Consensus is not science, but I think that you will have to admit that most economists state that given the unsettled science of global warming, the economic trade off that would be required to prevent it, are not worth it. Even the UN report stated that the steps that the radical environmentalists are advocating would leave the average person around the world 30% poorer and much less able to cope with any effects of global warming that might occur.
If the left were really serious about green house gases, they would be advocating nuclear power plants and windmills. But the fact remains that as long as China and India are not subjected to the same controls that the socialists want to put on the US, any steps that we would take would be meaningless.
No, everyone does not admit anything about climate change, except that it changes. Here is a statement from a professor at the University of Pennsylvania:
The Earth has been warming for abut 20,000 years. We've only been collecting data on that trend for about 200 years. For most of Earth history, the globe has been warmer than it has been for the last 200 years. It has only rarely been cooler. Those cooler periods have meant things like two miles of ice piled over much of what is now North America. Nothing to be nostalgic for.
The cause of global warming that the Penn prof. supports was developed by a Serbian scientist, and it explains the cyclical nature of the global warming and cooling. The Earth's orbit around the sun is more or less circular, but when other planets align in certain ways and their gravitational forces tug at the Earth, the orbit stretches into a more elliptical shape. Combined with the tilt of the Earth on its axis as it spins, that greater or lesser distance from the sun, plus the consequent difference in solar radiation that reaches our planet, is responsible for longterm climate change.
The prof also suggests that CO2 levels could be influenced by climate change, not the other way around.
I have a whole file of these professors who believe that global warming is a socialist meta narrative aimed at bringing about world socialism.
I see that you are from the University of WA, I assume that you have read Gregoire's executive order on climate change. She states that she based it on the same U.W. climatologists who made a fool of her two years ago, by getting her to declare a drought in Feb.
One of her requirements concerns biodiesel for school buses, but school districts which have already switched to the clean diesel experienced a lot of trouble in the cold weather. The buses started up just fine, but then the fuel thickened and the engines died, leaving kids stranded at school bus stops in freezing weather. Just what we need.
This was supposed to go to you:
I see that you are from the University of WA, I assume that you have read Gregoire's executive order on climate change. She states that she based it on the same U.W. climatologists who made a fool of her two years ago, by getting her to declare a drought in Feb. She's not exactly a quick learner.
One of her requirements concerns biodiesel for school buses, but school districts which have already switched to the clean diesel experienced a lot of trouble in the cold weather. The buses started up just fine, but then the fuel thickened and the engines died, leaving kids stranded at school bus stops in freezing weather. Just what we need.
Yeah. It's just symbolism over substance. This is an issue that needs to be addressed on a national and international level. Token steps like Gregoire's aren't going to do any good.
One of her requirements concerns biodiesel for school buses
Yes, it was stupid. Biofuels are, for the most part, a worthless boondogle that aren't going to do any good.
".....To deny it is to ignore reality."
so weather happens...some like it hot...some don't...sooo what
the he&* 's the issue?!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.