Former U.S Vice President Al Gore called 2009 the 'Gettysburg
for the environment' in a speech in San Francisco Monday.
(AP Photo/Jae C Hong)
Former U.S Vice President Al Gore called 2009 the ‘Gettysburg for the environment’ in a speech at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco Monday, United Press International reports.
“We are radically changing the relationship between the human species and the rest of the Earth”, he said. “This year, 2009, is the Gettysburg for the environment. It is time we have the opportunity to change”.
But not everyone agrees. According to H. Sterling Burnett, Senior Fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas, science has been greatly politicized.
“Environmentalists are trying to control people’s choices and lifestyles by hyping fears of long-term climate threats based on models that don’t reflect reality”, he said pointing to the U.S Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recent decision to regulate CO2.
The scientific review, ordered by the U.S Supreme Court in 2007, was presented last week and suggests that greenhouse gases contribute to air pollution thus endangering public health or welfare. The findings are based on an analysis of six gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride, and concludes that the concentrations of these gases are the result of human emissions. Emission that then’ likely may cause’ an increase in average temperatures as well as drought, more intense storms and flooding.
“This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations”, said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “Fortunately, it follows President Obama’s call for a low carbon economy; this pollution problem has a solution – one that will create millions of green jobs and end our country’s dependence on foreign oil”.
Still, a group of more than 31,000 U.S scientists recently launched the Global Warming Petition Project in order to demonstrate that the ‘claim of settled science and an overwhelming consensus in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming’ is incorrect, saying that no such consensus or settled science exists and that government action on the basis of that hypothesis would damage both human prosperity and the natural environment of the Earth.
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Comments
Carbon dioxide comprises about 380 ppm of the
atmosphere. Human activity contributes only about 3% of the total, or about 10-12 ppm. The idea that this paltry amount of CO2 could cause
catastophic warming is ridiculous. If CO2 causes
warming, what about the 97% of it which is there
naturally? This idiocy has to stop before our
government does something really stupid.
@Peter:
That 3% is actually a very serious problem. It is not the amount of CO2 that's the problem, but rather the rate of change in this amount. There have been times in the Earth's history where CO2 levels were much higher and life flourished from pole to pole, but the changes in CO2 levels occurred over hundreds of thousands of years, giving life plenty of time to adapt to the changing environment. However, this man-made 3% change has occurred over only a few decades, much faster than any natural change, and many lifeforms are extremely sensitive to even small changes like that. This is why we are witnessing massive losses in tropical areas and in coral reefs. The loss of these species is causing a cascade reaction, since other species depend on them.
I agree that the science has become politicized, and that we mustn't jump to conclusions and make bad decisions, but to completely dismiss all evidence of man-made global warming is simply bad science.
I do think the politicization of the climate change debate has done more harm than good. You have a few individuals (Al Gore included) that make outrageous claims and assertions that make folks turn a deaf ear to their arguments. Rather than debating the scientific merits of climate change we find ourselves debating the personalities.
Dan - We didn't go from zero to 3% CO2 in a short period of time. Humans have been burning coal and oil for hundreds of years. There are also natural causes for increases in CO2. The
real kicker is that for the last 10 years the global temperature has been going DOWN, thus not correlating with CO2 increases. Also the "fingerprint" of man-induced global warming has been searched for and not found. And remember, we are still coming out of the last ice age.
Peter,
Ignoring one half of a natural cycle to support your beliefs shows that you are either maliciously deceitful or gullible & pridefully ignorant.
The natural CO2 sources do outgas significantly more CO2 than mankind emits through the burning of fossil fuels, however that is only one side of the natural cycle. The oceans are a net CO2 sink that are currently absorbing 7 billion tons more than they outgas each year. The oceans have also played a major role as a sink for up to 30% of the anthropogenic CO2 produced during the industrial revolution. The terrestrial biomes are also a net sink that are currently absorbing 5 billion tons of CO2 more than they outgas each year.
The cooling of 2007 & 2008 is expected as it is caused by the Southern Oscillation, i.e. La Nina & El Nino. 1997-8 was the strongest El Nino of record. 2008 is the hottest La Nina-influenced year with no El Nino ever recorded. This is why pointing solely to the temperature difference between 1998 and 2008 is not relevant to a discussion of the long-term trend.
Using the 30 year mean, the hottest 28 years of the record are the past 28 in exact sequential order. In terms of the single years, the hottest 23 have been in the past 28 & the hottest 12 have been the past 12. A period of 30 years was chosen because that is the definition of climate and is the span of the reference period that HadCRU (1961-1990) is based on. The HadCRUT3v temperature record covers 1850 - current.
The site wouldn't allow me to post the supporting references for my claims, so here is a second try at posting them; remove the spaces to make the links functional.
http: //earthobservatory. nasa. gov/Library/CarbonCycle/carbon_cycle4.html
http: //www. physicalgeography. net/fundamentals/9r.html
http: //www3. interscience.wiley. com/journal/119087640/abstract
http: //www3. interscience.wiley. com/journal/118839098/abstract
http: //www. physicalgeography. net/fundamentals/7z.html
http: //www. cpc.noaa. gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
http: //www. cru.uea.ac. uk/cru/climon/data/themi/g17.htm
http: //www. cpc.noaa. gov/products/outreach/glossary.shtml#C
Can't figure out why people do not want to clean up this earth.
Jeremiah - You can believe Al Gore if you want to, but there are many very well qualified climate scientists who have looked at ALL the data and have concluded that CO2 plays little or no role in warming. These people are much more qualified to speak on scientific issues than Al Gore or his toady pseudo-scientist James Hansen. These scientists are being completely shut out of the debate. I hope you enjoy paying your soon to be enacted "carbon tax", which will drive
all manufacturing out of the country while doing nothing to affect the climate.
There is an illogical effect coming from all this, as well. I do not remember the exact numbers, but our children under the age of 12 are being scared to death. The last thing anyone should want to do is tell young impressionable minds that they have nothing in their future. That's how you create violence. If you have nothing to lose, then doing whatever makes you happy is the answer. Gore needs to stop this. It might mean money in his pocket but saving the earth, this way, is killing the aims, goals, and potential for the young of this country.
Carbon Dioxide is bubbling out of the tropical ocean, and is being absorbed by the polar oceans. The cold carbon-dioxide rich polar water then migrates to the tropics, where it releases its carbon dioxide back to the air.
Since it takes centuries to complete one cycle, the carbon dioxide we see today from the tropical ocean actually was dissolved a long time ago, during the very cold period called The Little Ice Age.
This means that more carbon dioxide is bubbling out of the sea than is being absorbed at the poles, and so we have a steady increase, due entirely to natural causes. This delayed reaction completely overwhelms and cancels out any increase from human sources, such as the burning of fossil fuels.
One thing we see is that the increase in carbon dioxide from year to year is the same in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. When we see a slowdown or speedup in the North, we see it in the South at the same time. If the changes in carbon dioxide were man-made, however, the South would be about one year behind the North. So we can infer that the rise in carbon dioxide is due to natural, not human, causes.
Just to clear up one possible confusion...
The colder the ocean water is, the more carbon dioxide it absorbs. That's why a soft drink fizzes when you pop it open... it gets warmer and the carbon dioxide comes out in the form of bubbles.
Centuries ago, the world was much colder, on average, than today. Since the ocean was also colder, it absorbed much more carbon dioxide than it does now. So the increase in carbon dioxide we see every year is caused by warming from the Little Ice Age to now, instead of the carbon dioxide causing the warming.
There are hundreds of websites where scientists who are skeptical of the Carbon Dioxide Warming theory, or have alternate theories, can publish their ideas and their research. Some public figures, such as Al Gore, claim, however, that they don't exist, that every scientist believes in his theory, except for 4 or 5 crackpots in obscure places. This has led many people to wonder as to which side of the debate is guilty of scientific fraud.
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