It was a rich, if abbreviated exchange.
"President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans," declared Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential hopeful, at the party's convention late last month.
He paused to allow disdainful hoots and laughter to infect the crowd.
"And to heal the planet."
Whether it was meant as a jab at global warming itself, which many conservatives consider a non-issue, or at President Barack Obama's fondness for highfalutin oratory -- or perhaps both -- is unclear, but Romney enjoyed the quip enough that he has since repeated it.
The president offered his reply a few days later, during his speech at the Democratic convention.
"Climate change is not a hoax," Obama said. "More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They are a threat to our children's future, and in this election you can do something about it."
Taken together, this back-and-forth provided a clear, albeit clipped, staking out of ground on an issue that, in the view of many observers, had otherwise fallen off the map in this historic presidential race.
Much more discussion, climate activists say, is needed.
"Nobody is speaking out in a sufficiently loud way," said Bill McKibben, the founder of the climate change advocacy group 350.org. "We just came through a summer that saw the warmest month ever recorded in American history -- July. There's never been any month in any year warmer than that. And as far as I know, that went entirely unremarked by any of our political leaders."
Such is the premise behind a website launched Thursday morning by a pair of organizations hoping to nudge climate change into a more prominent place in the campaign dialog. The site, ClimateSilence.org, argues that both Romney and Obama have shifted, softened or otherwise toned down their public statements on the problem in "a collective descent toward mute acceptance of global calamity."
The site charts a selection of public statements made by both men over the last five years or so, and sets them against a tonal spectrum that ranges from actions, promises or affirmation of the issue on one end, to avoidance, denial and exacerbation on the other.
"It's true that both do talk about climate change from time to time -- Obama more than Mitt Romney, and in a different way," said Brad Johnson, the campaign manager for the climate coverage watchdog group Forecast the Facts, which mounted the site in cooperation with Friends of the Earth Action, an environmental lobby group. "There's a real kind of differentiated gap in how they both talk about it, but it has changed over time," Johnson said. "There's been a real sort of decline in ambition and specificity and seriousness from both candidates."
That's probably not very surprising to many followers of Romney, who has equivocated for years on the issue, depending on his audience and agenda. But Johnson and others argue that even the president has failed to maintain the sense of immediacy and purpose he brought to the issue in, say, 2008, when he declared that "[f]ew challenges facing America -- and the world -- are more urgent than combating climate change."
When asked about these concerns, the White House pointed to a long list of Obama policy initiatives aimed at combating global warming -- from increased fuel economy for cars to historic curbs on power plant emissions and massive investments in clean-energy technology -- and to numerous recent instances where the president has mentioned climate change in public statements.
"President Obama has long focused on ways to develop clean energy as a core economic pillar," Adam Fetcher, a spokesman for the Obama presidential campaign, said in an email. "By advocating for the growth of renewable energy, President Obama has continually called for action that will address the sources of climate change."
The campaigners behind ClimateSilence.org aren't buying that, and they say they want a more robust, more frank discussion of the issue.
"Voters deserve to hear what our presidential candidates propose to do to lead the country on addressing this catastrophic problem," said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth Action, in an emailed statement. "The candidates may differ on approaches to the problem, but anyone who is elected to lead the country, or aspires to do so, should realize that true leadership means a willingness to engage difficult issues, not sweep them under the rug."
If that seems overwrought, it's worth taking note of an ambitious roundup of the very best scientific evidence, issued just this week by Democratic Reps. Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Henry Waxman of California. The report was unequivocal in its conclusion that climate change is not some distant concern, but a clear and very present danger -- and one already contributing to loss of life and substantial economic costs.
"All weather events are now impacted by climate change to some degree because the underlying conditions that give rise to weather have been changed," the report stated. "Climate change has contributed to shattered records and unprecedented weather catastrophes, like those the United States has experienced this summer. It's as if global warming has stacked the deck with extra jokers, making some weather events more frequent and severe and increasing the chances of an event far outside the norm."
I asked Eben Burnham-Snyder, a spokesman for the House Natural Resources Committee, which co-authored the report, whether the tenor of the climate debate in campaign 2012 was off.
"When the GOP standard-bearer uses climate change as a punchline in his convention speech," he said, "then the debate over climate change action is certainly a concern."
Evan Juska: Why the UN Still Matters on Climate Change
Claire Tomkins: The Truth About Subsidies
Add in the fact CHINA weon't be signing a treaty, and your options are minimal at best beyond technology forcing which obama is doing every way he can.
As for evidence: Tropospheric heating and stratospheric cooling. If the heating were due to an external force (the sun) the whole atmosphere would heat up.
CERES satellites measuring outgoing infra red radiation at the top of the atmosphere that is less than incoming radiation by an amount that can only be explained by IR radiation being absorbed in the atmosphere.
The fact that a theory predicting the warming due to CO2 was constructed by Arrhenius and 1896, before the steep rise in CO2. Global warming has proceeded largely as he predicted.
Models constructed 3 decades ago using AGW assumptions have accorded very closely with real life measurements.
If you take the time to understand the underlying science, and have the ability to read scientific papers, you will see that there are mountains of evidence that the measured global warming is anthropogenic.
In fact, no one understands the underlying science of 'climate change'. It is a chaotic system with thousands of variables.
The temperature has been stable for over ten years now in spite of rising levels of CO2. Take a bit of time to do some research yourself.
Study:
Sea levels are rising much faster on the northeast coast of the United States than they are anywhere else around the globe, according to a study released recently in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Florida-based oceanographer Dr. Asbury Sallenger, who led the study, said that rising sea levels are nothing new. What IS new, he said, is the discovery that they are rising an average of three to four times faster between Cape Hatteras, N.C., and Boston, than they are anywhere else on the globe.
A Natural "Cycle?" Well, if it is..... Manhatten's Subways are in big trouble in this cycle.
Another expression from Voltaire that I rather like goes, "Neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy."
Click "Expand Full Thread" to get total context.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Climate-caesar/climate-change-presidential-campaign_n_1907123_190891560.html
and here's where he brags about setting up more than a hundred aliases !
Climate-caesar on Sep 27, 2012 at 14:32:12
“Not really I can set up an alias in 15 seconds.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Climate-caesar/news-corp-climate-change-coverage_n_1912896_191280157.html
Can you even imagine?
This is a "piece of work" we have right now on the Huffington Post.
Candidates who put themselves up for election tip-toe their way, blindfolded through the minefield of an intractable, long-term situation from their view of four-year term in office.
To expect a short-term politician to point out future catastrophe to the electorate, in the sure and certain knowledge that, by doing so, they face electoral oblivion, is expecting a lot...!!!
It takes a brave, far-sighted politician to point the finger despite insurmountable opposition.
From the viewpoint of a European, I'd like to see your next president boldly standing up and stating clearly his/her intention to address climate change, and how he intends to proceed immediately and urgently.
Only when your president says so will all his fawning accolites in other countries follow suit.
Only when your president says so will other countries act in a coordinated manner to address this global problem.
Only when your president persuades his Russian, Chinese, Indian, Brazilian & European counterparts to act on this global problem...
...but he's only there for four years, and he can't do that unless his own country is behind him...
...not holding my breath then...
F&F number 1 - from the UK..
It won't matter much that he's better than Romney if we don't take action that is matched to the challenge.
I don't intend to vote for him unless he is clear and unequivocal about the need for action.
One-eighth the land surface of Arizona, put into solar thermal, could provide base power for the entire U.S. (no other power source required). Just an illustration of the power potential out there.
You're aware that there is an inner exclusion zone around Chernobyl of 750 sqkm and an outer very limited access zone too, aren't you?
You're aware that the Ukrainian/Russian/Belarus authorities don't expect these exclusion zones to be fit for human habitation, the planting of crops, the gathering/foraging of fruits & fungi for at least 5000 years, aren't you?
You're aware that many European countries still have agricultural restrictions in place, where some cereals and animals are still not considered fit for human consumption, aren't you??
A typical Nuclear reactor takes 30 years to become 'carbon neutral' when you take into account the energy and materials used in construction, and further energy is required for the lengthy and expensive decommissioning - and to store all that inconvenient toxic waste for gawdknows how many thousands of years.
The French are adapting and supplementing with renewables, and the Germans & Danes are getting out of nuclear altogether..
...I'd rather follow the renewables path than the dodgy future promised by nuclear...
Not quite as straightforward as 'pick one design and mass produce', I'm afraid...