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Title: Obama left with little time to curb global warming (Extreme Cold Underlines Rapid Global Warming) /rollingeyes
Source:
My Way News
URL Source: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081214/D952LKP00.html
Published: Dec 14, 2008
Author: SETH BORENSTEIN
Post Date: 2008-12-15 00:06:28 by Rotara
Keywords: None
Views: 265
Comments: 14
WASHINGTON (AP) - When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid. Since Clinton's inauguration, summer Arctic sea ice has lost the equivalent of Alaska, California and Texas. The 10 hottest years on record have occurred since Clinton's second inauguration. Global warming is accelerating. Time is close to running out, and Obama knows it. "The time for delay is over; the time for denial is over," he said on Tuesday after meeting with former Vice President Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming. "We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now that this is a matter of urgency and national security and it has to be dealt with in a serious way." But there are powerful political and economic realities that must be quickly overcome for Obama to succeed. Despite the urgency he expresses, it's not at all clear that he and Congress will agree on an approach during a worldwide financial crisis in time to meet some of the more crucial deadlines. Obama is pushing changes in the way Americans use energy, and produce greenhouse gases, as part of what will be a massive economic stimulus. He called it an opportunity "to re-power America." After years of inaction on global warming, 2009 might be different. Obama replaces a president who opposed mandatory cuts of greenhouse gas pollution and it appears he will have a willing Congress. Also, next year, diplomats will try to agree on a major new international treaty to curb the gases that promote global warming. "We need to start in January making significant changes," Gore said in a recent telephone interview with The Associated Press. "This year coming up is the most important opportunity the world has ever had to make progress in really solving the climate crisis." Scientists are increasingly anxious, talking more often and more urgently about exceeding "tipping points." "We're out of time," Stanford University biologist Terry Root said. "Things are going extinct." U.S. emissions have increased by 20 percent since 1992. China has more than doubled its carbon dioxide pollution in that time. World carbon dioxide emissions have grown faster than scientists' worst-case scenarios. Methane, the next most potent greenhouse gas, suddenly is on the rise again and scientists fear that vast amounts of the trapped gas will escape from thawing Arctic permafrost. The amount of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere has already pushed past what some scientists say is the safe level. In the early 1990s, many scientists figured that the world was about a century away from a truly dangerous amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, said Mike MacCracken, who was a top climate scientist in the Clinton administration. But as they studied the greenhouse effect further, scientists realized that harmful changes kick in at far lower levels of carbon dioxide than they thought. Now some scientists, but not all, say the safe carbon dioxide level for Earth is about 10 percent below what it is now. Gore called the situation "the equivalent of a five-alarm fire that has to be addressed immediately." Scientists fear that what's happening with Arctic ice melt will be amplified so that ominous sea level rise will occur sooner than they expected. They predict Arctic waters could be ice-free in summers, perhaps by 2013, decades earlier than they thought only a few years ago. In December 2009, diplomats are charged with forging a new treaty replacing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which set limits on greenhouse gases, and which the United States didn'tratify. This time European officials have high expectations for the U.S. to take the lead. But many experts don't see Congress passing a climate bill in time because of pressing economic and war issues. "The reality is, it may take more than the first year to get it all done," Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said recently. Complicating everything is the worldwide financial meltdown. Frank Maisano, a Washington energy specialist and spokesman who represents coal-fired utilities and refineries, sees the poor economy as "a huge factor" that could stop everything. That's because global warming efforts are aimed at restricting coal power, which is cheap. That would likely mean higher utility bills and more damage to ailing economies that depend on coal production, he said. Obama is stacking his Cabinet and inner circle with advocates who have pushed for deep mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas pollution and even with government officials who have achieved results at the local level. The President-elect has said that one of the first things he will do when he gets to Washington is grant California and other states permission to control car tailpipe emissions, something the Bush administration denied. And though congressional action may take time, the incoming Congress will be more inclined to act on global warming. In the House, liberal California Democrat Henry Waxman's unseating of Michigan Rep. John Dingell - a staunch defender of Detroit automakers - as head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee was a sign that global warming will be on the fast track. Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., vowed to push two global warming bills starting in January: one to promote energy efficiency as an economic stimulus and the other to create a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from utilities. "The time is now," she wrote in a Dec. 8 letter to Obama. Mother Nature, of course, is oblivious to the federal government's machinations. Ironically, 2008 is on pace to be a slightly cooler year in a steadily rising temperature trend line. Experts say it's thanks to a La Nina weather variation. While skeptics are already using it as evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming. The average global temperature in 2008 is likely to wind up slightly under 57.9 degrees Fahrenheit, about a tenth of a degree cooler than last year. When Clinton was inaugurated, 57.9 easily would have been the warmest year on record. Now, that temperature would qualify as the ninth warmest year. --- Associated Press writer Dina Cappiello contributed to this report. Poster Comment: 
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#1. To: Rotara (#0)
I just received this article through my email from Noel Sheppard. He and Marc Morano are looking for responses to publish.
Oops forgot to ping everyone.
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A recent study by the Multinational Council on Climate Research, a Washington-based think tank, found that global warming, the phenomenon that is causing average temperatures on Earth to rise, is actually nothing more than a collective figment of overactive left-wing imaginations across the country. “We were astonished by the results,” said Jacob Harcourt, managing director of the MCCR. “I had always thought the primary cause of global warming to be gases in our atmosphere that trapped the sun’s heat and caused an increase in surface temperatures. Turns out it’s nothing more than a penchant for foreign films and organic food.” The study also found that glacial retreat, extreme weather events, and the melting of polar ice caps is not so much due to emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as it is to an infatuation with universal healthcare, unwavering support of communist governments, and an affinity for high taxes. Although many question the study’s findings, Harcourt insists they are based on sound science. “We did experiments,” he said. “For example, we showed people an assortment of spatial variability charts, and the only ones who were in any way alarmed or somehow interpreted them to mean that subsurface temperatures worldwide are directly impacted by rising atmospheric heat gradients were the people that drove Volvos or had body piercings. It was crazy. We even tried it with a chart called Cumulative Mean Glacial Thickness Change. Same thing.” Experiments also found that listening to hip hop music or even just thinking about France caused the average liberal to remove his or her sweater. By contrast, a control group that was shown clips of Bill O’Reilly immediately reported feeling a chill in the air. “What was really weird—and this is very revealing—is that a chart depicting seasonal oscillations in carbon dioxide measurements, which were directly proportional to temperature increases, correlated almost precisely with people’s wine and cheese intake during those same periods,” Harcourt said. The study pointed out that decades of burning oil, coal and other fossil fuels, which have raised our atmospheric carbon concentration to almost 400 parts per million, mean little when one considers the number of soy lattes consumed and the amount of volunteer work at homeless shelters over those same years. Patty Simmons, one of the study’s participants, said the results opened her eyes. “I grew up in a household with two mothers, and every day they reminded me that the quickest and best way to become a godless nation of gay, socialist, flag burning weenies was carpooling. Now I can see that won’t work, because climate change is all in our heads.” Harcourt said that those suffering most from delusions that the earth’s sea levels are somehow rising, or that permafrost is thawing in polar regions, are welfare mothers and single parents. “The more you hate your own country, or eat tofu, the more likely you are to feel as though the earth’s surface temperatures are increasing in direct proportion to greenhouse gas emissions, and to entertain fantasies of someday reducing your carbon footprint,” Harcourt said. He added: “My six-year-old daughter went trick-or-treating last week and had to put a coat on over her costume because she felt ‘chilly.’ My daughter, by the way, is a solid social and fiscal conservative. So you tell me.”
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams
"I'm sorry, you can't (leave/enter) AmeriKa because your Passport Chip reveals you haven't purchased your Global Carbon Tax Credits."
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams
I would think that was funny but it's too close to reality.
What a delightful disinformation/agitprop pieces - designed to fuel alarmism and further scare people into buying the gloBULL Warming Scam. It uses some of the standard "tricks of the trade": Alarmism designed to sell the unaware on the "urgent need" to do something right now. "The sky is falling!" "The sky is falling!" Note the key word "summer". Also note that no documentary reference is offered. It is much more convenient that way as people cannot then check the source of the assertion. It is normal for the ice to melt in the summer in the Arctic. The reality is that the ice at the Pole Caps is getting thicker. Yes, some ice has broken off and then melted but that does not equate to a global warming trend - not when 90% of the worlds glaciers are getting LARGER. They are? What scientists? This is a common tactic by someone selling a "line". Cite "experts" in the general - or in this case cite an alarming statement by one and then pretend, falsely, that it represents ALL. Otherwise known as the "Fallacy of Division" combined, of course, with "Appeal to Misleading Authority". Again note the use of a generality "some scientists" and then pretending that it is representative of ALL scientists when it is point disputed by other Climatologists etc., .... Unfortunately the environment is such as to intimidate those who disagree from being too vocal. One can read through the article and the tactics are repeated over and over - alarmism, asserting generalities as an authority, etc., ... Logical fallacies all and constructed such as to leave little doubt that is was the intentional use of knowing fallacies.
""I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology...It's importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda...Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated." Bertrand Russel, Eugenicist and Logician
Comrade, you know full well that an effective global government requires a global tax ! You're a witch ! A witch I tell ya !! ;-)
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams
I stayed at a Gaia hotel this weekend, not by choice. They had a copy of Al Gore's IT. I glanced through it out of curiosity. I noticed a graph of current and past temps that looked much like the infamous hockey stick. If the scale was say 1 to 10 they had the medieval warm period bump at about 2 and today's temps at about 8. Are we really supposed to believe that today is that much warmer than the medieval warm period, a time when they grew grapes in northern England and had extensive agriculture in Greenland and Nova Scotia? Then there was the chapter on the receding glaciers. The first one up was Mt. Kilimanjaro of course. I don't think there is one scientist that believes those glaciers are receding from AGW. Deforestation is the known cause. I wasn't really impressed with this eco friendly hotel. You couldn't read a book in the room because there was no light. The only place to put on make-up was the small bathroom vanity. In a room shared by 3 women this was unacceptable. It had some nice features but the drawbacks weren't worth it.
Greenland got its name for a reason. Does Al Gore realize that or that there used to be Orange Groves in South Carolina back in Colonial days?
It is now time for Atlas to shrug.
I don't think Al Gore can see anything passed the $.
YES !
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams
He's truly a p-i-g.
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams
Given that he owns a large chunk of the 'carbon credit' business, I concur. Someone needs to examine his tactics and write a Marketing book. First, generate a crisis. Second, start a business to capitalize on the crisis. Third, Profit! Al Gore, the Underwear Gnome.
It is now time for Atlas to shrug.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss — The Who
#2. To: All, *Agriculture-Environment* (#1)
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss — The Who
#3. To: farmfriend (#1)
Blaspheme Free Zone
#4. To: farmfriend, ALL (#3)
Teaspoon Times
#5. To: All (#4)
#6. To: Rotara (#5)
"I'm sorry, you can't (leave/enter) AmeriKa because your Passport Chip reveals you haven't purchased your Global Carbon Tax Credits."
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss — The Who
#7. To: Rotara, farmfriend, all (#0)
"...n 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb ..."
" Since Clinton's inauguration, summer Arctic sea ice has lost the equivalent of Alaska, California and Texas." (Emphasis mine.)
" Scientists are increasingly anxious, talking more often and more urgently about exceeding 'tipping points.'"
" The amount of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere has already pushed past what some scientists say is the safe level."
#8. To: Original_Intent (#7)
Heretic !!
#9. To: Original_Intent, Rotara (#7)
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss — The Who
#10. To: Original_Intent (#7)
#11. To: mirage, Original_Intent, rotara (#10)
Does Al Gore realize that
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss — The Who
#12. To: farmfriend (#9)
Are we really supposed to believe that today is that much warmer than the medieval warm period, a time when they grew grapes in northern England and had extensive agriculture in Greenland and Nova Scotia?
#13. To: farmfriend (#11)
I don't think Al Gore can see anything passed the $.
#14. To: farmfriend (#11)
I don't think Al Gore can see anything passed the $.
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