Obama's gonna tackle Global Warming!
(David P.)
Dec 14 2008
By SETH BORENSTEIN -- AP
When Bill Clinton took office in 1993,
global warming was a slow-moving environ-
mental problem that was easy to ignore.
Now it is a ticking time bomb that
President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid.
Since Clinton's inauguration, summer
Arctic sea ice has lost the equivalent
of Alaska, California and Texas. The 10
hottest years on record have occurred
since Clinton's second inauguration.
Global warming is accelerating. Time
is close to running out, & Obama knows it.
"The time for delay is over; the time
for denial is over," he said on Tuesday
after meeting with former Vice President
Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for
his work on global warming. "We all
believe what the scientists have been
telling us for years now that this is
a matter of urgency & national security &
it has to be dealt with in a serious way."
But there are powerful political and
economic realities that must be quickly
overcome for Obama to succeed. Despite
the urgency he expresses, it's not at
all clear that he and Congress will
agree on an approach during a worldwide
financial crisis in time to meet some
of the more crucial deadlines.
Obama is pushing changes in the way
Americans use energy, and produce
greenhouse gases, as part of what will be
a massive economic stimulus. He called it
an opportunity "to re-power America."
After years of inaction on global warming,
2009 might be different. Obama replaces a
president who opposed mandatory cuts of
greenhouse gas pollution and it appears
he will have a willing Congress. Also,
next year, diplomats will try to agree
on a major new international treaty to
curb the gases that promote global warming.
"We need to start in January making
significant changes," Gore said in a
recent telephone interview with The
Associated Press. "This year coming up
is the most important opportunity the
world has ever had to make progress in
really solving the climate crisis."
Scientists are increasingly anxious,
talking more often and more urgently
about exceeding "tipping points."
"We're out of time," Stanford Univ.
biologist Terry Root said. "Things
are going extinct."
U.S. emissions have increased by 20%
since 1992. China has more than doubled
its carbon dioxide pollution in that time.
World carbon dioxide emissions have grown
faster than scientists' worst-case scenarios.
Methane, the next most potent greenhouse
gas, suddenly is on the rise again and
scientists fear that vast amounts of the
trapped gas will escape from thawing Arctic
permafrost.
The amount of carbon dioxide in Earth's
atmosphere has already pushed past what
some scientists say is the safe level.
In the early 1990s, many scientists
figured that the world was about a
century away from a truly dangerous
amount of carbon dioxide in the atmo-
sphere, said Mike MacCracken, who was
a top climate scientist in the Clinton
administration. But as they studied the
greenhouse effect further, scientists
realized that harmful changes kick in
at far lower levels of carbon dioxide
than they thought. Now some scientists,
but not all, say the safe carbon dioxide
level for Earth is about 10 percent
below what it is now.
Gore called the situation "the equiv-
alent of a five-alarm fire that has
to be addressed immediately."
Scientists fear that what's happening
with Arctic ice melt will be amplified
so that ominous sea level rise will
occur sooner than they expected. They
predict Arctic waters could be ice-free
in summers, perhaps by 2013, decades
earlier than they thought only a few
years ago.
In December 2009, diplomats are charged
with forging a new treaty replacing the
1997 Kyoto Protocol, which set limits
on greenhouse gases, and which the
United States didn't ratify. This time
European officials have high expectations
for the U.S. to take the lead. But many
experts don't see Congress passing a
climate bill in time because of pressing
economic and war issues.
"The reality is, it may take more than
the first year to get it all done,"
Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff
Bingaman, D-N.M., said recently.
Complicating everything is the worldwide
financial meltdown. Frank Maisano, a
Washington energy specialist & spokesman
who represents coal-fired utilities and
refineries, sees the poor economy as
"a huge factor" that could stop every-
thing. That's because global warming
efforts are aimed at restricting coal
power, which is cheap. That would likely
mean higher utility bills and more damage
to ailing economies that depend on coal
production, he said.
Obama is stacking his Cabinet and inner
circle with advocates who have pushed
for deep mandatory cuts in greenhouse
gas pollution and even with government
officials who have achieved results at
the local level.
The President-elect has said that one
of the first things he will do when he
gets to Washington is grant California
and other states permission to control
car tailpipe emissions, something the
Bush administration denied.
And though congressional action may take
time, the incoming Congress will be more
inclined to act on global warming. In the
House, liberal California Democrat Henry
Waxman's unseating of Michigan Rep. John
Dingell _ a staunch defender of Detroit
automakers _ as head of the House Energy
and Commerce Committee was a sign that
global warming will be on the fast track.
Senate Environment & Public Works Chmn.
Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., vowed to push
two global warming bills starting in Jan:
one to promote energy efficiency as an
economic stimulus and the other to create
a cap-&-trade system to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions from utilities. "The time
is now," she wrote in a Dec. 8 letter to
Obama.
Mother Nature, of course, is oblivious
to the federal government's machinations.
Ironically, '08's on pace to be a slightly
cooler year in a steadily rising temp
trend line. Experts say it's thanks to a
La Nina weather variation. While skeptics
are already using it as evidence of some
kind of cooling trend, it actually illus-
trates how fast the world is warming.
The average global temperature in 2008
is likely to wind up slightly under 57.9
degrees Fahrenheit, about a tenth of a
degree cooler than last year. When Clinton
was inaugurated, 57.9 easily would have
been the warmest year on record. Now,
that temperature would qualify as the
ninth warmest year.
.
.
--
GeekBoy
"(David P.)" <imb...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:54ec74b3-8bdb-4e18...@n2g2000vbl.googlegroups.com...
Blackwater
with terabucks worth of anti-GW obligations AND pull
our economy out of its death spiral. He's gonna have
to choose - and if he doesn't choose "Save the MONEY"
over "Save the Polar Bears" he's gonna be a one-termer
for sure ... assuming he isn't impeached first.
Boingo Bob
"Blackwater" <b...@barrk.net> wrote in message
news:49465306...@news.west.earthlink.net...
Of course you are assuming only Obama thinks green while most of the rest of
the World bypassed America 8 years ago. If Bush hadn't have tried to be his
anti-environmental Daddy, maybe Detroit would've been more competitive.
Not surprised. Leave it to the GOP to be stuck in the 50's with China.
Blackwater
Detroits problems didn't come from not being 'green'. Indeed
trying to be more 'green' would have just bankrupted them
even sooner. Detroits problems stem from moronic management
practices - they were all more concerned with getting rich
quick than selling products consumers wanted.
And the consumers ... they didn't want 'green' per-se, just
CHEAP.
GeekBoy
"Boingo Bob" <slushc...@whelite.net> wrote in message
news:Wpv1l.6901$hc1....@flpi150.ffdc.sbc.com...
Fucking funny. I guess you have never taken a trip to India or China. You
sure don't see black clouds of toxic fumes floating over US cities like you
do China and India.
>
>
Les Cargill
Yup. He's already changed his tune ( which I found
relieving) somewhat. He seems to get it.
He's a bright guy. I am not sure "bright" does a POTUS
any good, though.... we tend to have C students in there....
--
Les Cargill
Les Cargill
> "Blackwater" <b...@barrk.net> wrote in message
> news:49465306...@news.west.earthlink.net...
>> Obama is hardly gonna be able to saddle US industries
>> with terabucks worth of anti-GW obligations AND pull
>> our economy out of its death spiral. He's gonna have
>> to choose - and if he doesn't choose "Save the MONEY"
>> over "Save the Polar Bears" he's gonna be a one-termer
>> for sure ... assuming he isn't impeached first.
>
> Of course you are assuming only Obama thinks green while most of the rest of
> the World bypassed America 8 years ago.
They made noises, then failed to achieve any real progress. At
the very least, Kyoto was doomed from the git-go. And the parts of the
world where people arent' slipping rapidly into poverty are
environmental disasters - they had to effectively *close* Beijing
for months just to host the Olympics.
> If Bush hadn't have tried to be his
> anti-environmental Daddy, maybe Detroit would've been more competitive.
Not on your life. The dealer network alone pretty much guarantees
Detroit's failure.
> Not surprised. Leave it to the GOP to be stuck in the 50's with China.
>
>
"Only Nixon could go to China" - old Vulcan proverb.
--
Les Cargill
Ace Lightning
>Fucking funny. I guess you have never taken a trip to India or China.
>You sure don't see black clouds of toxic fumes floating over US cities
>like you do China and India.
in the 1960s and 70s you did. there were many times i would see
the skyline of New York immersed in an inverted bowl of dirty
brown fumes, with only the tops of a few skyscrapers poking up
out of the murk. (and spending my working hours in that crud would
leave me with burning eyes, a scratchy throat, and a cough that
left the back of my mouth tasting nasty. and when i washed my
face and neck, the washcloth came away grimy.) cities located in
natural basins (like LA and Denver), where moving weather systems
couldn't sweep the mess away, fared even worse. this hardly ever
happens any more.
hot-ham-a...@hotmail.com
So what? I want the temperature to be such that a housefly entering
my house will immediately die because I've got the thermostat at 68deg
F. Who wants to bet that the housefly won't die? Huh? C'mon you Bob
wannabe's.
nys999
@news.west.earthlink.net:
Of course you don't care if the alternative is losing
every US coastal city and any land less than 60 feet
above current sea level.
Blackwater
Don't see nearly as many JOBS here anymore either ...
Scott Dorsey
>
>Fucking funny. I guess you have never taken a trip to India or China. You
>sure don't see black clouds of toxic fumes floating over US cities like you
>do China and India.
When I was a kid, Pittsburgh was a steel town. There were hundreds of
steel mills, coke plants, zinc refineries, and they all just let all
their waste go out into the air. The streetlights came on at noon.
It was weirdly beautiful, with grey smoke clinging to the streets and
towers poking out of the greyness, each with a little flame on top
burning the waste gas off. The sunsets were deeply colored and bright
as flame, and lasted for an hour.
When I was a kid, asthma and emphysema were just normal parts of life
in Pittsburgh. In Donora, about 30 miles out of town, there was one
day an inversion layer that prevented the smoke from the local mills
from rising fast enough, and over six hundred people died. It happened.
It doesn't happen any more, and the reason that it doesn't happen is
because the EPA doesn't let it happen. It took a hell of a lot of
government regulation and intervention in order to clean things up,
and in the process most of the steel industry collapsed. It collapsed,
because people want cheap products and they want them now, and they'll
buy them from China and India if China and India can make them for
less. Doing it properly without destroying the environment costs money.
Beijing and Mumbai are setting themselves up for a disaster just as bad
as Pittsburgh got, on a larger scale. Because although doing it properly
costs money, in the end pollution costs more than doing it right. It's
just a delayed cost.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
(David P.)
>
> When I was a kid, asthma and emphysema were just normal parts of life
> in Pittsburgh. In Donora, about 30 miles out of town, there was one
> day an inversion layer that prevented the smoke from the local mills
> from rising fast enough, and over six hundred people died. It happened.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donora_Smog_of_1948
The Donora Smog of 1948 was an historic
air inversion pall of smog that killed 20 and
sickened 7,000 people in Donora, PA, a
mill town on the Monongahela River
24 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
[...]
===============
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_1952
The Great Smog, also referred to as
the Big Smoke, befell London from
5 December to 9 December, 1952, and
formed an important impetus to the
modern environmental movement.
[...]
Since London was known for its fog,
there was no great panic at the time.
In the weeks that followed, the medical
services compiled statistics and found
that the fog had killed 4,000 people,
most of whom were very young or elderly,
or had pre-existing respiratory problems.
There was relief that Queen Mary, The
Queen Dowager, then aged 85 & suffering
with respiratory problems, was not at
Buckingham Palace at the time of the
incident. Another 8,000 died in the
weeks and months that followed.
[...]
.
.
--
Rohan Hawthorne
> Obama left with little time to curb global warming
> Dec 14 2008
> By SETH BORENSTEIN -- AP
Here is a picture of my shed.
Rohan.