While outgoing Chair of the Senate's Environmental and Public Works Committee, Sen. James Inhofe, held a final hearing to bolster the claims of the "global warming skeptics," and to blame the media for "alarmist" stories, designed to frighten the public and to stir changes in public policy,
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1208/p01s03-usgn.htm
you can sense a change in the debate from the stories appearing world-wide in regard to the global warming issue.
Approximately a month ago, British economist, Nicholas Stern, issued a substantive report on global warming, stating that undeterred, warming could shrink the world's economy as much as 20%, while taking preventive action now would cost the world's economy 1% world GDP.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6096084.stm
In India, a nation that stands to be affected dramatically by global warming in the form of severe weather events, such as floods and drought, as well as related disease and poor crop yields, plans are well underway to adapt to these affects. India is quickly preparing infrastructure that will ease adaptation demands as warming contributes to freak weather events. Mitigation through decreased GHG emissions is thought to not be enough. Steps taken now to adapt to the affects of global warming, making plans for irrigation and shifting farmers to crops which will need less water, will reduce future costs of adaptation.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/DEL310961.htm
In Chicago today, a conference was held at the University of Chicago Business School to examine the risks to industries likely to be affected by global warming in the midwest region of the country. "So serious is the issue that 50 leading U.S. investors, including the Illinois State Board of Investment, have joined the $3.7 trillion Investor Network on Climate Risk to examine the financial implications of climate change and actions to reduce risks." Additionally, agricultural and automotive, insurance and power generation, are said to be particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change. They are also, however, in a position to bring to the market products that can begin to minimize those impacts.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/158878,CST-EDT-REF04.article
So while Sen. Inhofe and his parade of "skeptics" scoffed at the "alarmist media," the rest of the world is turning its attention to addressing a global problem that could potentially rival many of its most difficult historical challenges. Mitigation of global climate change through reduction of greenhouse gases and adaptation to the warming that is judged to be inevitable - these are the issues to which the rest of the world begins to attend.
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Comments: 13
You can bet that the new Committee chair will not offer the bully pulpit to a bunch of obscure know-nothings in the pay of Exxon. Inhofe is an ignoramus. That is not that odd for a Senator, but it is unusual that an ignoramus in his position would have no interest whatsoever in actually learning some science. He will be on the back bench for a while- for the rest of his career if I get my wish. In the past few years he has heaped abuse and nonsense on the scientific community to the delight of his Oklahoma oil industry buddies. It is humiliating as an American to see this- worse than Bill Clinton's oval office escapade in my view. Clinton at least was not parading his idiocy before the nation.
Hate would not be too strong a word for what I feel towards Inhofe. He shows all this is wrong with out nation, and he has done incalculable harm to the future of our great grandchildren.
Why are the scientists that say the ice core samples that show a relationship within ice core samples that carbon dioxide and global warming are related.......but the warming always comes before the carbon dioxide levels? Why are we to religionise throough faith that the arm chair scientists that get paid and handed funding for studies when everybody thinks what they say is true, and if they dont keep studying we are doomed? Sounds like religion to me.
Cf. "An Inconvenient Truth," pp. 66-7.
Jeff H.: "Sounds like religion to me."
The real religion, IMHO, are the "record profits" of the oil industry. It's always very funny to hear people accuse the researchers of bias because it will fill their funding coffers. Hilarious!!! How much did Lee Raymond leave Exxon with? Something like a $44,000,000 golden parachute?
Soaring oil prices this past year had more to do with the futures market rising on every destabilizing rant and rave from the President of Iran.
Every day he came out with another statement about wiping Israel off the map or some other hateful diatribe it caused oil prices to climb.
We are now seeing the real agenda of the so called environmentalist. It is anti-capitialism. The new home of communists is to be found hiding behind environmental issues in order to attack capitalism and the United States. Seeing as they have a blind eye turned towards the real causes of rising oil prices, and have no displeasure voiced when we all hear the anti-semetic rants and raves coming from the Iranian midget, I have to conclude that they have an agenda that has less to do with the warming of the planet and more to do with gaining military objectives the Soviets were never able to accomplish in a conventional military standoff.
I guess you haven't had time yet to watch the Amory Lovins video I have been posting the link to all over the place. If you ever do watch it, you will understand how ridiculous your comments are. Here, for your convenience, is the link once again. The video is approx. 35-40 minutes. Enjoy!
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/1/0719/59319
I have no problem with investors and businessmen making money from economic activity. In fact, I have a few bucks of my own invested in solar energy and hybrid vehicle companies. What I have a problem with is Exxon investing large amounts of money in preventing public policies that will address a looming problem, so that they can continue to make money. Nothing is preventing Exxon from investing in solar energy or other renewables, but that particular corporation has preferred to cling to petroleum as the sole answer to humanity's energy challenge. In Fact, Exxon has assured the public that it will be able to vastly increase its output, despite the fact that statistics reveal that it has failed to increase its output in recent years. This failure has nothing to do with environmentalism.
As to climate change being a religious belief, nope it aint. Religion is based on faith, and a conviction that our survival in this world is insignificant compared to our entry into the next. Science is based on evidence, and the conviction that if we destroy our planet, the Big Guy is not going to suddenly make it all better. Do I "believe" that climate change is real, and stems from the burning of fossil fuel,? Well, yeah, but I only believe this because of the evidence. I would definitely PREFER to believe that I can have as big a carbon footprint as I would like to have without causing any problems for my great-grandkids. But the fact that I would like to believe that is not going to make me believe it, because it is a lie.
Then you may have some interest in this development.
Solar Cell Breaks the 40% Efficiency Barrier
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/
rea/news/story;jsessionid=
498FF7E9AF74231604BFF82AE9D8EA27?id=46765
Who gave you the impression that oil and gas weren't "renewables"?
Did the Green God issue and edict some time in the past that the Earth with it's nuclear reacting core should stop cooking dead bugs and plants?
It is also worth noting that we use millenia's worth of accumulated solar energy in the form of fossil fuels every year. Even if recharge were occurring ( it isn't) the rate of recharge would be miniscule compared to the rate by which we exhaust the resource.
Try taking geology 101.
Most hydrocarbons come from oceanic deposits. 'little bugs that die, sink to the bottom, and become part of the sediments. The heat required to refine them comes not from the sun, but from the Earth's core, which is a small "sun" in the middle of our planet. It is a continuous thermonuclear reaction, as is our mother Sun.
Personally I like the exploitation of methane hydrates and oil shale. Here's some articles on methane hydrates. The unique pressure and temperature conditions create vast amounts of "gas-water ice" before it can escape to the atmosphere.
Beware, though, if we accidently release too much of it - it could destroy life on Earth as we know it.
http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html
http://www.ornl.gov/info/reporter/no16/methane.htm
"Estimates on how much energy is stored in methane hydrates range from 350 years' supply to 3500 years' supply based on current energy consumption. That reflects both the potential as a resource and how little we really know about the resource," Langley says.
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/oilgas/hydrates/index.html
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/2558946.html?page=2
A GLOWING PROMISE
According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), 100,000 to 300 million trillion cu. ft. (tcf) of methane exists globally in hydrate form--most of it in the ocean floor. "There's more energy potential locked up in methane hydrate formations across the world than in all other fossil energy resources combined," says Brad Tomer, director of the Department of Energy's Strategic Center for Natural Gas and Oil.
Up to 200,000 tcf of methane is in hydrates in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone. Two Rhode Island-size areas in the Blake Ridge, east of the Carolinas, contain a total of more than 2012 tcf--110 times the country's annual natural gas consumption. Substantial new deposits are still being found, including one in California's Santa Monica Basin that was announced in December.
Your words, not mine.
qrt, joe