When Obama arrives in Copenhagen tomorrow to support Chicago's Olympic bid, he will be showing the world that he is willing to schlep to Scandinavia for an event he considers important. The big question now is: will he do it again on December 7, when Copenhagen plays host to the United Nations summit on climate change, the highest-stakes environmental negotiations in history?
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has already pledged to be there, characterizing the summit as a last chance to pull the planet back from the brink. "I will go to Copenhagen to conclude the deal," Brown told the UN General Assembly. "This is too important an agreement -- for the global economy, and for the future of every nation represented here -- to leave to our official negotiators. So I urge my fellow leaders to commit themselves to going to Copenhagen too."
No word so far on whether Obama will heed the call (remember that George Bush Sr. went to the Rio Earth Summit...). Considering the Obama administration's paltry proposals on emissions cuts, and the total absence of a U.S. plan to help developing countries meet the massive costs associated with a climate crisis they did not create (ask the residents of flooded-out Manila), it's not surprising that the president might want to avoid what promises to be a angry showdown in Copenhagen. Already U.S. negotiators are trying to lower expectations for what the summit can accomplish, an ominous sign.
One thing is certain: if Obama skips Copenhagen in December, after making time to go there to promote the Olympics in October, he will be saying something chilling about his administration's commitment to battling global warming. Now is the time to tell Obama: you'd better go back to Copenhagen.
Joe Scarborough: Thank You, Mr. President
Count me as one conservative who is disappointed that President Obama's hometown will not be hosting the 2016 Olympic Games.
Seems that Obama does not have the US Government and US Industry behind him to support his intentions in Copenhagen
Expectations for Copenhagen Conference are declining.
View our illustration of this story on our blog, Line by Line, which features an artist's drawing for a news story each day.
http://www.blog.imagethink.net/line-by-line/2009/11/16/obama-hobbled-in-fight-against-global-warming.html
That's fine. Except in this case, the stakes are too high. And there's a lot of powerful corporate greed involved and a lot of old rich men who are pretty sure they'll be gone by the time the consequences come to bear.
You are just wrong. All the world's climatologists agree and if you are seriously proposing that the world's climatologists evolved into some secret liberal political society overnight, then you are deluded. Why don't you google "becoming a climatologist" and find out what they typically study and do and who they typically work for. There is no shadow industry that is going to make buckets of money predicting and documenting climate change.
Then where did the $50 Billion go?
The post contends, falsely, "All the world's climatologists agree..." about global warming. All those who are skeptics of the global warming hypothesis are "just wrong." This sounds like the doubters of Copernicus and the tormentors of Galileo. Skeptics are wrong, 'because we say so.'
Pioneering scientists who challenge accepted dogma are often criticized by members of the scientific 'establishment.' Example: Barry Marshall and Robin Warren who proved that stomach ulcers are caused by a bacterium, rather than by stress and stomach acid, the consensus medical opinion at the time. The medical established condemned them. But they eventually won the 2005 Nobel Prize for Medicine. The Committee said they "with tenacity and a prepared mind challenged prevailing dogmas."
Warmists lack a "prepared mind" when it comes to agw study. They refuse to consider, evaluate, examine, study or even think about scientific findings of scientists who 'challenge prevailing dogmas."
Warmists lack a "prepared mind" when it comes to agw study. They refuse to consider, evaluate, examine, study or even think about scientific findings of scientists who 'challenge prevailing dogmas."
/quote
No, in fact, the "work" of deniers like Lindzen and Alan Carlin are taken apart meticulously, one false assertion at a time, BEFORE being declared discredited.
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I thought I understood from the news coverage that he was going back. I cannot imagine, even in this do -nothing and avoid-change -at -all -costs administration that they would not see the tone deafness of not going.
the question is whether they will go with a bill passed and in hand. and that does not look good. Carol Browner is already saying it cant be done.
That's the American/Obama spriit, Ms Browner! Give up before the battle has been joined. G-dknowswe cannot defeat the oldwhitemen in the Senate!
the question is whether they will go with a bill passed and in hand. and that does not look good. Carol Browner is already saying it cant be done.
That's the American/Obama spriit, Ms Browner! Give up before the battle has been joined. Godknowswe cannot defeat the oldwhitemen in the Senate!
it looks really good in the store, but you buy it and take it home, then, finally realize that you
have to put it together yourself. bad enough. yet, upon closer inspection, you do not have the
tools that are required, they did not come with the package, and you are legally prohibited from
obtaining them in any fashion.
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naomi, you and i both know that even IF he goes that he most likely will not
even SAY anything meaningful, much less commit to do or actually do anything
that will affect his corporate bosses profit margins !!
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as you have discussed, even after Katrina, many policymakers in the US still do not
choose to address Global Warming, they slept thru the alarm clock, then they slept
thru the snooze button, now they have just said forget it, its too late !?
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the capitalists ( particularly oil ) would rather pay people to not work, than to risk losing their stranglehold on the population that might loosen if they allowed people to work in an arrangement
involving the conversion of SUV factories into faciliites that would produce the means to provide
mass transportation ( low or high speed rail, solar collectors, ... ) in an employee owned and employee managed scenario.
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You are right in that there is tough opposition and that the powers that be, that operate covertly, under the public radar will fight tooth and nail to preserve their ill-gotten gains...
but to classify Obama as furniture that you have to put together yourself...well...I disagree.
But democracy does imply that you and I are the government...and in that respect...government in general is the furniture and you and I are always the assemblers.
An Obama trip for the climate would have the same affect his trip for the Olympics had - nil.
Some things are bigger even than Obama.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOLkze-9GcI&feature=channel
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dysonf07/dysonf07_index.html
CO2 makes up 0.038 percent of the atmosphere and human activity contrbutes to 4% of that. IPCC goal is to cut the 4% by 50% by 2050 in order to cap the global mean temp. increase at 3.4 degees. Are you kidding! To believe this nonsense is pure folly.
The sun, oceans and water vapor(clouds) are the drivers of climate. We are just along for the ride.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090610154453.htm
And before that, the models have been "good" for quite some time.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080402100001.htm
The fact that milty doesn't understand how "only" 350ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a high upper limit on the survival of the majority of the human species doesn't mean it isn't so. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and legitimate scientists have known it is beyond a shadow of a doubt since the 1950s.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
Combustion of petroleum and coal releases carbon dioxide. Now, less of the Sun's heat is able to leave Earth's atmosphere as infrared radiation. So, milty, since the science proves it cannot be going back into space, and you say the heat is not staying on Earth, not making Earth warmer, will you please explain to everybody, where is all the heat going? Thousands of real climate scientists would LOVE to know!
There is nothing unusual about our climate. CO2 and temps have been higher and lower in earths past and they will be in the future. To think that man is going to have an impact on climate by tweeking a little of this or that is the epitome of hubris. Not to mention the economic devastation. All due to a simple little computer model.
ANY scientist know what the effects of humans interference in the eco balance
of the earth will be is naive, foolish, egotistical ...
very delicate, very delicate, very delicate
Leaving life and death decisions up to a marketplace that is hopelessly focused on short term near sighted profits and the bottom line is foolish. Wall Street in its worshipers will take us all down unless we can make a louder noise.
The sealevels are not rising. Ice floats on water and thus the Northpole melting does not rise sealevels. Moreover, the tundra is melting too, and everything built on the permafrost is sinking - 10metres and more - creating a huge hole in which all the extra water from Greenland's ice can easily be accomodated.
What everyone forgets is a look at the planet as a whole, which has a wobble, like a gyroscope. the wobble turned around the magnetic Pole in the '60's and now is wobbling next t the pole by 7 to 12 degrees. the weather and climate bands still circle the earth in their normal position. Hence the Poles are now in warmer regions and melt. At some point in time, the wobble will return to its original position around the Poles. That will be the moment everyone will scream that an ice age is upon us, with a similar panic reaction as today.
All the focus on CO2 is but a fragmentary look at the entire planet and thus far from scientific, as everyone in science should know. True science looks at ALL parameters, which approach is sorely lacking in all climate models, while the wobble is not even taken into account - glaring mistake, if you ask me.
So you're the only one who knows about this secret wobble? If the poles are now in a warmer region, where has the cold region gone? Where are the new ice caps? You really believe that the rotation of the earth has changed so much since the 1960s that the poles are no longer the cold parts of the earth? Yes, the earth wobbles. No, it does not account for the melting ice caps. A (very) little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
In most of those cases we were able to make a contribution and ameliorate the issue (except Iraq?). Will we be too late to help reverese the effects of GHG? Current science says, "maybe." We can only hope that there is some invention(s) out there just waiting for the right time, the right encouragement.
Maybe, Naomi, Copenhagen (and Obama's attendance) will be that impetus. And just maybe it won't be too late.