Harvard Climatologist "Not Counting On This Government" For Leadership - Boston Globe

I AM A climate scientist and an optimist. This may seem like a contradiction, with all the talk of scorching heat waves and bigger, deadlier hurricanes. But it's not. Let's be clear: I am not a skeptic on climate change. In my earth science courses, I teach that burning fossil fuel is raising atmospheric carbon dioxide to levels not seen on Earth for more than 30 million years. In public lectures, I show pictures of what would happen to Florida and the Gulf Coast if half the Greenland Ice Sheet melted, asking people to imagine abandoning New Orleans and Miami. I tell people that, unless we take action to reduce emissions, the question is not whether this is going to occur, but when.

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Unfortunately, I am a little less optimistic today than I was a couple of weeks ago, before testifying at the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. It was Senator James Inhofe's last hearing as chair of the committee, and the focus was on media coverage of global warming. I was invited by the Democratic staff to counter arguments that global warming is a hoax perpetrated on the American people by scientists like me. Inhofe is a climate skeptic. But I still hoped I could help educate our lawmakers -- maybe not Inhofe, but perhaps some of the others. In my opening statement, I explained that global warming is not a partisan issue. America should lead the world and capitalize on an extraordinary business opportunity as we invest in new energy technologies, I said.

Then I watched in horror as Inhofe's witnesses spouted outrageous claims intended to deceive and distort. Two were scientists associated with industry-funded think tanks. They described global warming as a "mass delusion" among the scientific community, sowing confusion by misrepresenting the ice core data that connects carbon dioxide and temperature over glacial cycles, and claiming that "global warming stopped in 1998" -- an anomalously warm year. They even recommended burning as much fossil fuel as possible to prevent another ice age.

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Later that day, Inhofe issued a press release that specifically highlighted my testimony, claiming that I "agreed" with him that the Kyoto Protocol "would have almost no impact on the climate even if all the nations fully complied." In fact, I had interrupted him during the hearing to object to this claim, reminding him that Kyoto was only conceived as a first step, and never as a long-term solution. I later learned that Inhofe's communications director, Marc Morano, was a key figure in publicizing the swift boat veterans' attack on John Kerry in 2004. Morano, it seems, is still up to his old tricks, twisting the facts to support his boss's outrageous claims. This made my visit complete: a glimpse at our government that sees the world only through glasses tinted by special interests, which treats science as a political football, no matter what is at stake.

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http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/12/17/on_a_swift_boat_to_a_warmer_world/

which can't come soon enough for me...

he can be around for the next six years and we hold our majority.

You iz such a pessimizm...

:evilgrin:

There, I'm a pollyanna.

irrelevant right now. As are all his friends. They're trying to hold back evolution (of technology and ideas) and that's not going to stand. As we speak many of the mayors of the large cities in this country are enacting programs for dealing with these issues, as are insurance companies, etc.
I can't wait until these people(?) are beaten back under the rocks they should be living under.

I posted this in Ed & Op, it got a little attention but not much and at least one respondent missed the point saying this was one reason we need to hope the dems hold onto the senate.

Nope, it's up to us not the government.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=251885&mesg_id=251885