Bush Administration Blames Humans for Global Warming

The Bush administration acknowledged for the first time in a new report that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions will increase significantly over the next two decades due mostly to human activities, but again rejected an international treaty to slow global warming.

The report released by the Environmental Protection Agency was a surprising endorsement of what many scientists and weather experts have long argued -- that human activities such as oil refining, power plants and automobile emissions are important causes of global warming.

The White House had previously said there was not enough scientific evidence to blame industrial emissions for global warming.

"Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing global mean surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise," the administration said in its report.

28 May, 2002

From http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/goldilocks_zone_020528-2.html Part 2 of 2

Kevin Zahnle, an astrobiologist at NASA's Ames Research Center, said our Sun has gotten significantly brighter during its roughly 4.6 billion-year life. It emits 30 to 40 percent more radiation than when Earth was born.

Within the next 5 billion years or so, the aging Sun will have swollen so much that it envelops and vaporizes Earth. In just a billion years, the Sun could be 11 percent brighter than now, turning the planet into an inhospitable greenhouse.

Part 1 of the article is at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/goldilocks_zone_020528-1.html

March 26, 2002

Tree Rings Show a Period of Widespread Warming in Medieval Age

By KENNETH CHANG

new study of old tree rings shows that 1,000 years ago, long before power plants and sport utility vehicles, temperatures across North America, Europe and Asia rose in a period of unusual warmth.

In warm weather, trees thrive and grow a thick ring of wood in their trunks for that year. In cold years, growth slows and the tree ring is thin.

Temperatures were known to be warm in Europe between 900 and 1100, what is known as the Medieval Warm Period. Collecting wood samples in 14 locations that cover a swath of the globe from New Orleans north to the top of Alaska, researchers from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the Swiss Federal Research Institute found evidence that the warm temperatures extended to much of the Northern Hemisphere.

Writing in the current issue of the journal Science, the scientists say the data demonstrate that temperatures naturally rise and fall over the centuries. The scientists, however, add that their data do not argue against the view that artificial emissions - so-called greenhouse gases - have set off the global war ming of recent decades.

"I never intended or meant to imply that that's the case," said Dr. Edward R. Cook, an author of the Science paper and an exper t at Lamont-Doherty on reconstructing climate from tree rings.

Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide from factories and cars trap heat in the atmosphere. Globally, temperatures have risen about 1 degree Fahrenheit over the last century.

Although the climate has repeatedly swung between warm and cold over the Earth's 4.5-billion-year history, the usual interpretation is that the climate has been quite stable since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago.

"This record suggests that the amplitude of natural variability is larger than the other records have suggested in the past," Dr. Cook said.

The data may help scientists refine their climate models to provide better prediction s of future warming.

An earlier reconstruction of temperatures over the past millennium by Dr. Michael E. Mann, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, found a much smaller temperature rise in the Medieval Warm Period, but the different numbers do not necessarily contradict each other.

Dr. Mann's data covered the entire Northern Hemisphere - in addition to tree rings, he included other indicators of past temperature like coral reefs and ice cores from Greenland. Temperatures in the tropics vary much less than those in the higher latitudes, he said.

Because the authors of the Science paper averaged their data over 40 years to smooth out year-to-year fluctuations, their temperature curve does not reflect the most recent warming.

"They've kind of smoothed out of the record," Dr. Mann said. "It doesn't support the conclusion that the medieval warmth was comparable to the latter 20th century warmth."

Rather, the peak temperatures in the Medieval Warm Period are similar to those seen in the first half of the 20th century, and that warming, most scientists agree, was induced naturally, by a brightening of the sun.

We're going through one of those weekly exercises where the media finds a memo or a report and distorts the Hell out of it in order to mount an attack on a Republican President. What else is new?

These news stories are nothing but sound-bite summaries from media liberals who imagine they've found another "smoking gun" with which to bludgeon the President.

There was a time on Free Republic when the first thing people would do with a story like this is go find the actual report and find out what it really says. Not anymore. Now what happens is a stream of "That does it! I'll never vote for the RINO again!" posts from people who have no clue what is in the report beyond the description provided by media liberals who hate Bush. Then will come one post from someone who says, "Umm, I read it and doesn't say that. It says humans are probably causing some of it but we don't know how much. It says we don't know what the effects might be because we don't have enough data. It says policy prescriptions should wait until we know what we're doing." That will be followed by another stream of posts saying, "See, I tol' ya, like father like son, they're all RINO's."

It's really disappointing to see we've come to this: snap decisions made from sound-bite BS cooked up by media liberals whose only purpose was to stick it to Bush in the first place.

So, after reading this article the following question begs to be answered; exactly where was Dubya's head when he agreed place his imprimatur on that POS and forward it to the United Nations?

I don't get it. When Bush first assumed office he did several things right off, things I thought were great: 1)Renounced Kyoto, 2) Rejected the ABM Treaty, 3) Passed the tax cut, 4) Blew off the globalists at the UN conference on small arms, 5) Restored the Reagan Mexico City prohibition about funding foreign abortions, and then after 9-11 issued the "Bush Doctrine".

Just after that, while his polls were in the 80%+ range, he reversed gears.

What's going on? I don't have a clue.

it's pretty clear NOBODY is reading this report carefully.

"Green house gasses are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activity, causing global mean surface temperature and subsurface ocean temperature to rise.While the changes over the last several decades are likely due mostly to human activities, we cannot rule out that a significant part is also a reflection of natural variability"

While current analyses are unable to predict with confidence the timing, magnitude, or regional distribution of climate change,the best scientific information indicates that if greenhouse concentrations continue to increase, changes are likely to occur. The U.S. National Resarch Council has cautioned, however, that "because there is considerable uncertainty in current understanding of how the climate system varies naturally and reaacts to emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, current estimates of the magnitude of future warnings should be regarded as tentative and subject to future adjustments(either upwards or downwards)." Moreover, there is perhaps even greater uncertainty the social, environmental, and economic consequences of changes in climate.

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