Obama and McCain: Silent on Climate Change
Barack Obama and John McCain are ignoring the biggest news event in human history. They aren't alone. Very few media outlets are reporting the news either.
On August 31, NASA released photos showing the North Pole has become an island for the first time in the past 125,000 years. (Please read that line again, look at the NASA image, and let it penetrate.) The summer ice cap at the Arctic is melting so fast that Dr. Mark Serreze, a sea ice specialist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado, said the Arctic may have entered a "death spiral" caused by global warming. For the first time in human history, the ice cap no longer touches neighboring continents. But the presidential campaigns are nearly silent on the unprecedented threat of global warming.
Image by NASA
Where is the maverick McCain, co-sponsor of the first serious piece of climate legislation in the Senate? Where is Obama, famous for speaking the truth even when it isn't popular? Is this the moment to cave under the influence of the "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" lies of the oil and gas industry?
This week I sat in more than one meeting where environmental groups and Hill staffers wondered if we should stop talking about climate change and instead only talk about clean energy, gas prices and green jobs. These things are vital but they don't communicate what is really going on. Will we ever transcend the defensive habits of the Left and work to set the agenda? If McCain and Obama don't address the scale and urgency of global warming, on what basis will we insist that they live up to their campaign commitments and to take bold action next year? We are about to go down, people.
This week, the nation's top intelligence analyst joined Al Gore, Lester Brown, and James Hansen in predicting that climate change will cause havoc, not in fifty years but in the next 10-20. Thomas Fingar, Chairman of the National Intelligence Council and chief author of the United State's intelligence forecast said on Tuesday, September 9, that intelligence agencies accepted the consensual scientific view of global warming, including the conclusion that it is too late to avert significant disruption over the next two decades. The soon-to-be released report predicts that by 2025, droughts, food shortages and scarcity of fresh water will plague large swaths of the globe from northern China to the Horn of Africa. Don't buy real estate in Tucson because Fingar predicts that the U.S. Southwest will face "Dust Bowl" conditions.
We have less than 60 days left before the election. We must demand that the presidential contenders tell us just what they will do to address this crisis if elected and we must push for transformational leadership. Join Energy Action's Power Vote and help get one million young people to pledge to make climate a major consideration when they vote this year. Join 1Sky's Climate Precinct Captains project and help us put a volunteer organizer in every single precinct in the country.
Whatever you do, don't act normal. These are not normal times. Too bad that Obama and McCain are acting like normal politicians.
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Why do conservatives so easily reject all evidence in regard to subjects like climate change? We finally have an answer as to how they can dismiss evidence and continue to argue unfounded opinions.
"A new study out of Yale University confirms ...offering reality-based rebuttals to conservative lies only makes conservatives cling to those lies even harder."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-sweeney/theres-no-arguing-with-co_b_126805.html
http://tinyurl.com/6ckcgf
Or it could be a syndrome of having a "Rightwing authoritarian personality" syndrome as John Dean discusses in his book "Conservatives Without Conscience."
Your reference is the Telegraph, a leftist UK newspaper, not a reputable scientific organ.
This is a better reference: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
The Telegraph contains this quotation: "Measurements on August 26 showed an ice cap of just over two million square miles, confirming the second biggest ice cap melt since records began"
Telling. When did records begin? For the Southerm Hemisphere, 1979! The Northern Hemisphere has no direct satellite observations prior to 1978. The "records" began 30 years ago .... The earth is 4.5 illion years old. Its oceans and crust are thought to be approximately 4.4 billion years old. are thought
Referring to the University of Illinois site: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.jpg and http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.south.jpg
you will note that this last ice season in the Southern Hemisphere was the greatest sea ice cover on record. How can the Northern ice loss be due to 'global warming' if the decline is not global?
The Telegraph also says: "... first simultaneous opening of the routes since the beginning of the last Ice Age 125,000 years ago" without attributation. Google Searching this expression produces 15,200 hits, blogs and newspapers. Search of Google Scholar produces one hit: http://www.acia.uaf.edu/PDFs/Ch14_Pre-Release.pdf, a paper on forests and land management.
Conclusion: This sensationalist statement has no basis in fact.
This article and that upon which it draws are sensationalist distortions.
An authoritative source states there has been no sea route through the North Pole in millenia: "For example, ice-core studies suggest the Greenland ice sheet was smaller in the distant past than it is today, particularly during the most recent interglacial period, 120,000 years ago, when global temperatures were warm."
Secondly, scientists bore into the ice cores at the poles to determine the composition of the various gases in the ice. From this evidence they determine the characteristics of the ice going back hundreds of thousands of years. So the record of comparisan does not just go back to 1979 .
Then NL states a common fallacy of global warming deniers by saying that Antarctica is not losing ice as rapidly as the Northern hemisphere therefore global warming is a fallacy. Scientists know that Antarctica will be the last region on earth affected by warming. According to the IPCC: "Antarctic sea ice extent shows inter-annual variability and localised changes but no statistically significant average multi-decadal trend, consistent with the lack of rise in near-surface atmospheric temperatures averaged across the continent."
"The hole in the ozone layer above the South Pole causes cooling in the stratosphere. This increased circular winds around the continent preventing warmer air from reaching east Antarctica and the Antarctic plateau. The flip side of this is the Antarctic Peninsula has "experienced some of the fastest warming on Earth, nearly 3°C over the last half-century".
http://skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm
Ms. Taylor's argument that neither candidate has addressed global warming is not entirely accureate.
Barack Obama is a Democrat, and Democrats have tried to get tax incentives for renewable electrical energy production passed through the Congress eight times. Each of those eight times they failed to get the 60 votes for cloture in the Senate, so the bills did not pass. However, I believe that Obama was on the "aye" side each of those eight times, while McCain did not vote for any of the bills. At least once, the bill failed by only one vote, so that McCain's failure to jump on board the global warming bandwagon had a really detrimental affect.
"tax incentives for renewable electrical energy production "
When Congress provides a 'tax incentive' to encourage oil companies to produce more oil, the left decries this as a "subsidy".
"McCain's failure to jump on board the global warming bandwagon had a really detrimental affect"
A speculative assertion at best. The bills to which McCain did not add his vote, like the failed Kyoto Protocol, would have done nothing to reduce global CO2 emissions. If failure to reduce global CO2 emissions was the putative detriment you speak of, then McCain's non-vote had demonstrably zero net effect.
Considering just the economic effect of this legislation, which is demonstrably harmful, because they distort financial markets for energy through governmental interference. By preferentially reducing taxes on uneconomic energy sources, government weakens the economy. This is no different than loosening mortgage qualifications guidelines and artificially reducung interest rates at FanieMae or FreddieMac which produced the recent spectacular business failures there or the tax abatements on Oil that so many liberals oppose.
Oil companies do not need a tax incentive to produce more oil. Oil companies get paid for producing more oil in profits.
Most experts and leaders disagree that the Kyoto agreement will do nothing to reduce global co2 emissions. Although a tax subsidy for alternative energies is a distortion of the market, many of the benefits of the alternatives will not be seen or monetized immediately. That is why government plays a role. For example Brazil distorted its market years ago when they legislated that cars must be able to operate on sugar ethanol. Sugar is a much more energy efficient source of fuel than is corn. Brazil has reduced its dependence on foreign oil and made its gas cheaper at the same time. Reduction on foreign oil is also in a country's national security interests.
Giving energy companies subsidies to develop alternative energies has nothing to do with loosening the regulations on financial markets that have caused financial crisis we see now. The crisis in the financial markets is a result of the Republican policies of Laissez-faire capitalism and no regulation. In fact, McCain's economic adviser, Phil Gramm, has been the chief advocate of no regulation on the financial industry for years. Because of the Republican's trust in unregulated markets and protection of profits for capitalists over the interests of the little guy we have the huge meltdown we are experiencing now. Even Bush Fed Chairman Bernanke and Tresury Security Paulson agree we need more regulation.
You are so right. They barely touch on it, and it is nothing short of THE MOST PRESSING PROBLEM for the next president and indeed, the survival of the human race. Of course, if ANYONE is waiting for politicians to make a difference, BOUGHT AND PAID FOR POLITICIANS, don't waste your time. Change must come from the private sector, from every man woman and child on this planet. Regretfully, that does include politicians as well.
They had best stay quiet on warming, since the earth is now cooling. It would be better to spend a little time doing research on the sun and its decreased activity.
You know, as hurricane ike is making a beeline towards me and my family, I wonder how much global warming has added to the destructive power of this storm.
While progressives, enviros, and others have successfully moved the debate about climate change away from "is it happening?" to "how much will it cost to stop it?", they forget the key part of any good economic analysis is the inherent cost of doing nothing.
Wit only a few degrees of climate change, the Southeast of the US will see its agricultural yields decrease 25-35% according to the USDA. The CIA has warned that climate change will cause more world civil unrest and terrorism. Increased heat and longer summers mean more expensive electricity. Meanwhile, economists have estimated that we will receive a return on investment of 10 to 1 or 20 to 1 by investing in technologies which will save the climate.
The economic argument is good, but it needs to be reinforced by the cost of doing nothing, which would be nothing less than disaster.
I do not know how old you are, but WEEKLY EXTREME HURRICANES have never been the norm. WE ARE THE REASON THEY ARE GAINING IN INTENSITY AND FREQUENCY.
Did the CIA also tell you what a few degrees of warming would do to agricultural yields on the Northern plains of Canada and in the steppes of Siberia?
There are already huge sinkholes in Alaska and in the steppes of Siberia where the permafrost is melting. The ground is not stable at all. At the same time, billions of tons of methane are being released.
Really now, to go into a panic over something in nature that hasn't occurred in '125,000 years" is small thinking. 125,000 years is nothing more than an instant in geological time spans. Thinking we can do anything to stop it is like King Cyrus the Great trying to order the tides to not come in.
What you don't understand is the important feedback role the ice cap plays. Without it we face even faster warming and increased likelihood of losing glaciers in greenland-- this will cause massive sea level rise on the scale of several meters.
Maybe not now, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even in your lifetime, but in your childrens' lifetime. Are you going to doom them and millions of other people worldwide? Thanks a lot, redneck.
What you don't understand is the important role the sun plays in our climate. As noneIn2008 already pointed out the sun's activity has greatly decreased in the past month. August was the first month in almost 100 years to have no sun spots. Sun spots have a direct correlation with the temperature on our planet. Which means that we are possibly going into a trend of global cooling. Even the Old Farmes's Almanac has predicted a very cold winter. Cooler temperatures could possible have more harmful affects than the supposed "global warming" you are talking about. Cooler temperatures mean shorter farming seasons, which means less food.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
