Andy Revkin, NYT's climate reporter, brings news of a just-released federal study on climate change which shows "clear evidence of human influences on the climate system."
For a moment I'm shouting, "All right! We're moving past debate and into problem solving."
But ... not to be undone by their own research conclusions, policy officials note that "while the new finding was important, the administration's policy remained focused on studying the remaining questions and using voluntary means to slow the growth in emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide."
There's also this:
Dr. Christy [one of the study's authors] also said that even given what the models projected, it would be impossible to slow warming noticeably in the coming decades. Countries would be wise to seek ways to adapt to warming, he added, even as they seek new sources of energy that do not emit heat-trapping gases.
So, we simultaneously resist admitting this is a big problem and jump right past prevention to adaptation.
I'm guessing this report will spark some change, and it does knock another leg out from the feds' already tottering chair of denial. But it still amazes me that it's so incredibly difficult for us to deal with the problem squarely.
Comments
View as Flat
DianaJardine Posted 2:03 am
03 May 2006
One thing that particularly infuriates me is what is going on with Cape Wind. It embodies both the backdoor/special interest politics of the day and the seeming lack of urgency on global warming. I came across this amusing video from Greenpeace that lampoons Sen. Kennedy for his stance. Pretty good.
Diana
Permalink
jshore Posted 11:17 am
03 May 2006
During this whole process, it has been clear that both Spencer and Christy were strong skeptics on climate change...and certainly not without political biases too. In fact, Spencer now writes a column for the libertarian Tech Central Station in which, in addition to expressing his skepticism about the importance (if not the reality) of global warming, he even recently gave a ringing endorsement for Intelligent Design in a column ( http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=080805I ) entitled "Faith-Based Evolution"! Needless to say, this ain't gonna help him to not look a bit wacko to the rest of the scientific community!
So, this is just a long-winded way of saying that a statement like that coming from Christy ought to be considered a fair bit of progress given where these guys have been coming from.
Permalink
drusca Posted 2:44 am
03 Jun 2006
Global Warming "Debate"?
928
Number of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles about global warming published between 1993 and 2003.
0
Percentage that cast doubt on human-caused global warming.
3543
Number of hard-news stories about global warming published by the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal between 1988 and 2002.
53
Percentage of those that cast doubt.
****
And John Christy is a clown. Just do a Google search on him. He's associated with smug, libertarian, "free market" think tanks like Competitive Enterprise Institute & Cato Institute. He seems to be the "go-to" global warming "skeptic."
An example of Christy's wisdom:
(from John Christy's written testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, 5/17/00)
"It is our great fortune - because we produce so much of it - that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. In simple terms, carbon dioxide is plant food. The green world we see around us would disappear if not for atmospheric carbon dioxide."
To follow up on what a previous poster wrote, there also seems to be a Christian (evangelical) bent to these "skeptics." Christy's "Biographical Sketch" at UAH's Atmospheric Science Department, where he works, says he earned "a Master of Divinity degree from Golden Gate Baptist Seminary (1978) [and] served four years as a bivocational mission-pastor in Vermillion, South Dakota" and "is married to the former Babs Joslin, a fellow missionary whom he met in Kenya."
Additionally, as you can read here on the Grist site, Ross Gelbspan writes that ExxonMobil tried, unsuccessfully, to get the Bush administration to appoint Christy as chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Clash of the Titans
An excerpt from Boiling Point highlights a clash of interests over climate change
By Ross Gelbspan
http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2004/07/21/gelbspan-boiling/
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 4:28 am
03 Jun 2006
So are they right? Do they have a chance of convincing the majority of Americans that environmentalists, especially Friends of Al Gore, consider carbon dioxide a "pollutant"? To my knowledge, in fact, no environmentalist concerned about the causes and consequences of global warming has ever referred to CO2 as either pollution or a pollutant. And it is impossible that anyone would deny that the presence of CO2 is necessary for life on earth, at least for a biosphere that has adapted to a mixed oxygen/carbon dioxide atmosphere.
Permalink
bookerly Posted 10:54 pm
03 Jun 2006
Dear Caniscandida,
Were most of us convinced that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was somehow associated with the 9/11 attacks? You betcha! News reports say that many service people (military) still believe so.
Do we believe we can lose weight without exercise? Be sexy by spending money?
Alas, we do.
Will we wake up or sleep walk our way to disaster? Right now, it looks bad....
patrick
Permalink
bookerly Posted 6:22 pm
04 Jun 2006
Gee, I am confusing myself (sigh). I mean by "most of us", "most Americans", not to be confused with most of the people here. (Whom I hope were not mislead by the WMD).
I don't believe the Democrats were mislead either, they are just cowards who care only about their own jobs.
patrick
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 12:33 am
05 Jun 2006
But although lying, misrepresentation and other forms of deceipt have long been integral, virtually institutional, in the American political system, the Bush administration and their allies, such as CEI and the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, seem to be raising them to ever higher degrees of artistic perfection.
You are right, Patrick, there is great reason to be afraid. The insincere power-hungry demagogue is frightening, and the mob who heed what he tells them is even more frightening.
Permalink
bookerly Posted 9:52 am
07 Jun 2006
While I am critical of both parties, and feel that there are problems with both, it is certainly true that the current administration has reached the bottom of the barrel of truth.
There was a time, when I thought things could not get more corrupt, more dishonest.
Alas, events have proven me wrong.
But as dishonest, cynical, and evil as Bush is, who is really opposing him? Al Gore? Not in office. Clinton, you've got to be kidding.... He plays buddy buddy with the guy.
The Democratic party is silent as it all happens.
I remember the banking scandal under Reagan. It happened in part because of the silence of the Democrats.
Reagan was also when HUD was diverted from building housing for the poor (contributing in many ways to the terrible conditions of the homeless in America). Reagan did it, but the Democrats were either silent of complicent.
And now? They are largely silent and complicent.
Maybe we should call the Democratic Party the SAC, sort of like the GOP, but without teeth.
patrick
Permalink