Global Warming Denied.

[Guest Stephen Turner]

Report in the Observer 19th June 2005.

NEW U S MOVE TO SPOIL CLIMATE ACCORD. by Mark Townsend, New York.

Extraordinary efforts by the White House to scupper Britains attempts to tackle global warming have been revealed in leaked U S government documents obtained by The Observer. These papers-part of the Bush administrations submission to the G8 action plan for Gleneagles next month-Show how the U S over the past two months,has been secretly undermining Tony Blair's proposals for tackling climate change.

The documents obtained represent an attempt by the Bush Administration to undermine the science of climate change, and show that the U S position has hardened during G 8 negotiations. They also reveal that the White House has withdrawn from a crucial U N commitment to stabilise Greenhouse gas emissions. The documents show that Washington officials 1,removed all reference to the fact that climate change is a "Serious threat to human health and ecosystems. 2, Deleted any suggestion that Global warming has already started. 3,Expunged any suggestion that human activity was to blame for climate change. Among the sentences removed was the following," unless urgent action is taken, there will be a growing risk of adverse effects on economic development,human health,and the natural environment, and irreversible long-term changes to our climate and oceans

Another section erased by the White House adds," Our world is warming. Climate change is a serious threat that has the potential to effect every part of the Globe. and we know that...Mankinds activities are contributing to this warming...

Isnt it nice to know that the future of our planet is in such safe hands..Oh and by the way, as Blair gets nothing from this "SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP" with the lunatic Neo-cons, why in the name of hell-fire does he continue to kiss their butts?

[Guest Stephen Turner]

BTW, the answer to what Blair gets out of this most one-sided relationship, is simple. Power, and money, lots of money, both now, and in the future when he is invited to join the Bush controlled Carlyle Group,Where he can chew the fat with his old Commons rival, John Major. ( lost election May 1997-joins Carlyle july 1997) What a stitch up people!!!!!!!!

[John Simkin]

Bush and Blair are both unwilling to tackle the problem of global warming. This is a problem that will only have a major impact on the lives of people after they have lost power. Anyway, to do anything about this problem is to restrain the activities of multinational companies. That is something they are both not going to do. In fact, they are willing to do all they can to help these corporations to increase its profits (that includes Bush employing people from the oil industry to write reports on the fact that global warming does not exist).

Marx was right when he said that the capitalist system would destroy itself. However, he was wrong about what he thought would replace capitalism. It will not be socialism or communism. It will be nothing at all.

[Guest Stephen Turner]

Of course the only crumb of comfort to be taken from John's analysis, is that those that have brought about this catastophic state of affairs (or their offspring) will burn like everybody else. Now thats what I call Democracy!

[Guest Stephen Turner]

More from the Observer report...

"Many UK officials have become exasperated by the Bush administration's refusal to accept the basic priciple that climate change is happening now,and is due to Mans activities. Earlier this month, the senior science academies of the G8 Nations, including the US National Academy of Science, issued a statement saying that evidence of climate change was clear enough to compel their leaders to take action. Quote,"There is now strong evidence that significant global warming is taking place," they said.

It is now clear that this advice has been completely ignored by Bush and his advisers. "Every year it (Local air pollution) causes MILLIONS OF PREMATURE DEATHS" and suffering to millions more, though respiratory disease" reads another statement removed by Washington. It also appears to be unsympathetic towards the plight of Africa. The documents reveal how Bush has pulled out of financial pledges to fund a network of regional climate centres thoughout Africa,which were designed to monitor the unfolding impact of global warming."Africa, Asia-Pacific and the Arctic are particularly vulnerable to climate change, and are starting to experience the impacts." reads another excert removed by the US.

Still, just so long as Bush and his oil industry cronies get even richer than they already are, it will have all been in a good cause.

[Guest Stephen Turner]

Here's a few facts to really worry you. Unless your a Bushie, then you know there's nothing to worry about.

Global warming in the 20th century is greater than at any time in the last 6,000 years.

7, out of ten of the warmest years in the 20th Century occurred in the 1990's.

Mountain glaciers the World over, are receding at an alarming rate.

Arctic pack ice,lost 40% thickness over the last 30 years.

Global sea level's are rising 3 times faster over the past 100 years compaired with the previous 3,000 Years.

Other signs include, Leathal storms and floods in South America and Europe. Forest fires a hugh increase in Australia and North America,and fatal heat waves across the Globe. And this at a time when Solar cycles should have actually cooled us down......

[Guest Stephen Turner]

Anybody here with an alternative take on this,The scientific evidence is pretty one sided,(About 95%-5% for global warming on the increase, and that its a man made problem.)But if i'm worrying for no reason i'd like to know.

[Mike Toliver]

Stephen -

There are a number of scientists who are doubtful about global warming, though they are (as you note) in the minority. I have some of the websites they use to promote their point of view, if you're interested. I'd post them with this message, but I don't have the information handy.

The difficulty is that ecological processes are hugely complex, and take time to manifest themselves. Is this simply "normal" cyclic behavior? Is it caused by something else? No definitive answer can be given, which is why clowns like Bush and Blair can successfully push their agenda.

People tend to have a rather strange view of science. They think science will give them the Truth - with a capital "T". But science can never do that - all it can do is weigh the evidence from nature and give us likelihoods. In my opinion, as a scientist, you are right to be worried.

[Guest Stephen Turner]

Stephen -

There are a number of scientists who are doubtful about global warming, though they are (as you note) in the minority.  I have some of the websites they use to promote their point of view, if you're interested.  I'd post them with this message, but I don't have the information handy.

The difficulty is that ecological processes are hugely complex, and take time to manifest themselves.  Is this simply "normal" cyclic behavior?  Is it caused by something else?  No definitive answer can be given, which is why clowns like Bush and Blair can successfully push their agenda.

People tend to have a rather strange view of science.  They think science will give them the Truth - with a capital "T".  But science can never do that - all it can do is weigh the evidence from nature and give us likelihoods.  In my opinion, as a scientist, you are right to be worried.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Mike, thank you, any information you can supply would be welcome.(Anecdotal note) As I write this we are in the middle of a heat wave, that has so far lasted well over a week,and villages in Yorkshire have just suffered a major flood,whilst the rest of the country talks about water shortages.Welcome to tropical England

[Guest Stephen Turner]

G8 starts today, any bets on how little, or how much they will agree to cut Global Greenhouse gas emissions. President Bush has already told PM Blair not to expect any favoirs just because of his support in Iraq. So no change there then

Edited July 5, 2005 by Stephen Turner

[John Simkin]

Bush obviously has a PR problem concerning issues like global warming. That helps to explain Bush’s comments yesterday that he now accepts that climate change is a problem. Of course, up until recently, the Bush administration has been claiming that it had doubts about the link between the behaviour of the American people and global warming. Bush’s climate change adviser was Phil Cooney. He called for further research rather than any action being taken. Cooney has recently resigned and been given a high-ranking appointment at Exxon Mobil. Some political observers claim that Cooney (and Bush for that matter) have been working for Exxon Mobil for sometime.

The US media works closely with the Bush administration to keep information about global warming from the American people. A study carried out in 2000 revealed that there were three times the coverage of the subject in the British media compared to what appears in America.

This is reflected in public opinion. In Europe, virtually everyone sees climate change as an urgent and serious problem. However, in a recent ABC News poll only 38% of Americans described it as an urgent problem that required immediate government action. While the US media works closely with Bush he will refuse to take action. As a result he will cause Blair serious problems with the British public.

[Guest Stephen Turner]

Well, sound the fanfare,hang bunting, let joy be unconfined, "Were still not sure of the science,so we wont do anything just yet... As I said we're all gonna burn.

[George Monbiot]

One day we will look back on the effort to deny the effects of climate change as we now look back on the work of Trofim Lysenko, a Soviet agronomist who insisted that the entire canon of genetics was wrong. There was no limit to an organism's ability to adapt to changing environments. Cultivated correctly, crops could do anything the Soviet leadership wanted them to do. Wheat, for example, if grown in the right conditions, could be made to produce rye.

Because he was able to mobilise enthusiasm among the peasants for collectivisation, and could present Stalin with a Soviet scientific programme, Lysenko's hogwash became state policy. He became director of the Institute of Genetics and president of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences. He used his position to outlaw conventional genetics, strip its practitioners of their positions and have some of them arrested and even killed. Lysenkoism governed state science from the late 1930s until the early 1960s, helping to wreck Soviet agriculture.

No one is yet being sent to the Guantánamo gulag for producing the wrong results. But the denial of climate science in the US bears some of the marks of Lysenkoism. It is, for example, state-sponsored. Last month the New York Times revealed that Philip Cooney, a lawyer with no scientific training, had been imported into the White House from the American Petroleum Institute, to control the presentation of climate science. He edited scientific reports, striking out evidence of glacier retreat and inserting phrases suggesting that there was serious scientific doubt about climate change. Working with the Exxon-sponsored PR man Myron Ebell, he lobbied successfully to get rid of the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, who had refused to accept the official line.

Cooney's work was augmented by Harlan Watson, the US government's chief climate negotiator, who insisted that the findings of the National Academy of Sciences be excised from official reports. Now Joe Barton, the Republican chairman of the House committee on energy and commerce, has launched a congressional investigation of three US scientists whose work reveals the historical pattern of climate change. He has demanded that they hand over their records and reveal their sources of funding.

Perhaps most pertinently, the official policy of climate-change denial, like Lysenkoism, relies on a compliant press. Just as Pravda championed the disavowal of genetics, so the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the Daily Mail and the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs champion the Bush team's denial of climate science. Like Pravda, they dismiss it without showing any sign that they have read or understood it.

But climate change denial, like Lysenkoism, cannot last forever. Now, as the G8 communique shows, the White House is beginning to move on. Instead of denying that climate change is happening, it is denying that anything difficult needs to be done to prevent it. The other G8 leaders have gone along with this.

Faced with the greatest crisis humanity has ever encountered, the most powerful men in the world have meekly resolved to "promote" better practice and to "encourage" companies to do better. The R-word is half-mentioned twice: they will "improve regulatory ... frameworks". This could mean anything: most of the G8 governments define better regulation as less regulation. Nowhere is there a clear statement that they will force anyone to do anything to stop destroying the conditions which sustain human life.

Instead they have agreed to "raise awareness", "accelerate deployment of cleaner technologies" and "diversify our energy supply mix". There is nothing wrong with these objectives. But unless there is regulation to reduce the amount of fossil fuel we use, alternative technologies are a waste of time and money, for they will supplement rather than replace coal and oil and gas burning. What counts is not what we do but what we don't. Our success or failure in tackling climate change depends on just one thing: how much fossil fuel we leave in the ground. And leaving it in the ground won't happen without regulation.

They agreed to support energy efficiency, which would be a good thing if it didn't rely on a "market-led approach". Otherwise, they will cross their fingers and place their faith in a series of techno-fixes, some of which work, and some of which cause more problems than they solve. They will study the potential of "clean coal", which so far remains an oxymoron, and accelerate the burial of carbon dioxide, which might or might not stay where it's put. They will promote "carbon offsets" (you pay someone else to annul your sins by planting trees or building hydroelectric dams), which have so far been a disastrous failure. They will encourage the development of hydrogen fuel cells, which do not produce energy but use it, and the production of biofuels, which will set up a competition for arable land between cars and people, exacerbating the famines that climate change is likely to cause. Not bad for six months of negotiations.

We can't blame only the Americans. While Bush's team has been as obstructive as possible, the UK has scarcely been doing the work of angels. Like Bush, Blair will contemplate anything except restraining the people who are killing the planet. While the UK produces 2.2% of the world's greenhouse gases, companies that extract fossil fuels responsible for over 10% of global emissions are listed on the London stock exchange. One of the reasons they find London attractive is that, thanks to our lax financial regulations, they are not obliged to reveal their potential greenhouse liabilities to investors. Far from doing anything about this, Blair complains that our financial rules are "hugely inhibiting of efficient business".

Our problem is that, just as genetics was crushed by totalitarian communism, meaningful action on climate change has been prohibited by totalitarian capitalism. When I use this term I don't mean that the people who challenge it are rounded up and sent to break rocks in Siberia. I mean that it intrudes into every corner of our lives, governs every social relation, becomes the lens through which every issue must be seen. It is the total system which leaves no molecule of earth or air uncosted and unsold. And, like Soviet totalitarianism, it allows no solution to pass which fails to enhance its power. The only permitted answer to the effects of greed is more greed.

I don't know how long this system can last. But I did see something in Scotland last week that I hadn't seen before. At the G8 Alternatives meeting in Edinburgh and the People and Planet conference in Stirling, climate change, until recently neglected by campaigners, stirred fiercer emotions than any other topic. People are already mobilising for demonstrations planned by the Campaign against Climate Change on December 3. I saw a resolve to make this the biggest issue in British politics. If we succeed, the new campaign will crash head-on into the totalitarian system. But as more people wake up to what the science says, it is not entirely certain that the system will win.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1526415,00.html

[Guest Stephen Turner]

Great post from George Monbiot,say's it all really. BTW, we have heard nothing, nada, zip, zilch, zero. from the deniers, can we assume that all members of the Forum accept that Global Warming is happening? And that if we do nothing about it soon, WERE ALL GONNA BURN?

[John Simkin]

Great post from George Monbiot,say's it all really. BTW, we have heard nothing, nada, zip, zilch, zero. from the deniers, can we assume that all members of the Forum accept that Global Warming is happening? And that if we do nothing about it soon, WERE ALL GONNA BURN?

Everybody except Tim Gratz. He believes Global Warming is part of a global communist conspiracy. It is known as the Global Red theory. He knows that Fidel Castro is involved but has not yet found the evidence. He is still waiting for Karl Rove to send him the documents.