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Well isn't it always, but anyway.........
This was spinning in the background of another thread here, so I thought I'd ask for feedback.
There's concern in many parts of the world over Greenhouse gas emissions.
The US, as the largest cause of the problem, is proving to be the hardest to convince.
Have those of you residing in the US, heard of the Kyoto agreement?
Excerpts from this article follow;
Note.
This is not an Anti USA thread/post, but it IS a very serious issue, which everyone needs to be fully aware of.
This isn't a Hippie Peace, Love and save the whale issue, it's about millions of lives, and what we pass on to future generations.
This was spinning in the background of another thread here, so I thought I'd ask for feedback.
There's concern in many parts of the world over Greenhouse gas emissions.
The US, as the largest cause of the problem, is proving to be the hardest to convince.
Have those of you residing in the US, heard of the Kyoto agreement?
Excerpts from this article follow;
Ten months before Hurricane Katrina left much of New Orleans underwater, Queen Elizabeth II had a private conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair about George W. Bush.
"But it wouldn’t matter how much Britain cut its greenhouse-gas emissions if other nations didn’t do the same. The U.S. was key, not only because it was the world’s largest emitter but because its refusal to reduce emissions led China, India, Brazil, and other large developing countries to ask why they should do so. All this Blair had also said publicly. In 2001 he criticized the Bush administration for withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol. In 2004 he said it was essential to bring the U.S. into the global effort against climate change, despite its opposition to Kyoto.
It was no secret that Bush opposed mandatory emissions limits, but Blair, who had risked his political future to back the deeply unpopular war in Iraq, was uniquely positioned to lobby the president. Bush owed him one. At the same time, Blair needed to show his domestic audience that he could stand up to Bush, that he wasn’t the presidential “poodle” his critics claimed.
To compel Bush to engage the issue, Blair made climate change a lead agenda item at the July 2005 meeting of the Group of 8, the alliance of the world’s eight richest nations. A month before the meeting, which was held at Gleneagles, in Scotland, Blair flew to Washington to see Bush face-to-face. That same day, the national academies of science of all the G-8 nations, as well as those of China, India, and Brazil, released a joint statement declaring that climate change was a grave problem that required immediate action.
On the morning of July 7, the summit was interrupted by the shocking news that four suicide bombers had set off explosions in London, killing 56 people. Blair rushed to the scene, but he returned that night, still determined to secure an agreement.
In the end, however, Bush held firm. Washington vetoed all references to mandatory emissions cuts or timelines, and the climate-change issue was overshadowed by African debt relief, which had been publicized by Bob Geldof’s Live 8 concerts."
"But it wouldn’t matter how much Britain cut its greenhouse-gas emissions if other nations didn’t do the same. The U.S. was key, not only because it was the world’s largest emitter but because its refusal to reduce emissions led China, India, Brazil, and other large developing countries to ask why they should do so. All this Blair had also said publicly. In 2001 he criticized the Bush administration for withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol. In 2004 he said it was essential to bring the U.S. into the global effort against climate change, despite its opposition to Kyoto.
It was no secret that Bush opposed mandatory emissions limits, but Blair, who had risked his political future to back the deeply unpopular war in Iraq, was uniquely positioned to lobby the president. Bush owed him one. At the same time, Blair needed to show his domestic audience that he could stand up to Bush, that he wasn’t the presidential “poodle” his critics claimed.
To compel Bush to engage the issue, Blair made climate change a lead agenda item at the July 2005 meeting of the Group of 8, the alliance of the world’s eight richest nations. A month before the meeting, which was held at Gleneagles, in Scotland, Blair flew to Washington to see Bush face-to-face. That same day, the national academies of science of all the G-8 nations, as well as those of China, India, and Brazil, released a joint statement declaring that climate change was a grave problem that required immediate action.
On the morning of July 7, the summit was interrupted by the shocking news that four suicide bombers had set off explosions in London, killing 56 people. Blair rushed to the scene, but he returned that night, still determined to secure an agreement.
In the end, however, Bush held firm. Washington vetoed all references to mandatory emissions cuts or timelines, and the climate-change issue was overshadowed by African debt relief, which had been publicized by Bob Geldof’s Live 8 concerts."
Temperatures are rising, the Queen learned from King and other scientists, because greenhouse gases are trapping heat in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, the most prevalent of such gases, is released whenever fossil fuels are burned or forests catch fire. Global warming, the scientists explained, threatens to raise sea levels as much as three feet by the end of the 21st century, thanks to melting glaciers and swollen oceans. (Water expands when heated.)
This would leave much of eastern England, including areas near Sandringham, underwater. Global warming would also bring more heat waves like the one in the summer of 2003 that killed 31,000 people across Europe. It might even shut down the Gulf Stream, the flow of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico that gives Europe its mild climate. If the Gulf Stream were to halt—and it has already slowed 30 percent since 1992—Europe’s temperatures would plunge, agriculture would collapse, London would no longer feel like New York but like Anchorage.
This would leave much of eastern England, including areas near Sandringham, underwater. Global warming would also bring more heat waves like the one in the summer of 2003 that killed 31,000 people across Europe. It might even shut down the Gulf Stream, the flow of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico that gives Europe its mild climate. If the Gulf Stream were to halt—and it has already slowed 30 percent since 1992—Europe’s temperatures would plunge, agriculture would collapse, London would no longer feel like New York but like Anchorage.
Just weeks before Katrina struck, Emanuel published a paper in the scientific journal Nature demonstrating that hurricanes had grown more powerful as global temperatures rose in the 20th century. Now, he says, by adding more greenhouse gases to the earth’s atmosphere, humans are “loading the climatic dice in favor of more powerful hurricanes in the future.”
But most Americans heard nothing about Hurricane Katrina’s association with global warming. Media coverage instead reflected the views of the Bush administration—specifically, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which declared that the hurricane was the result of natural factors. An outcry from N.O.A.A.’s scientists led the agency to backtrack from that statement in February 2006, but by then conventional wisdom was set in place. Post-Katrina New Orleans may eventually be remembered as the first major U.S. casualty of global warming, yet most Americans still don’t know what hit us.
But most Americans heard nothing about Hurricane Katrina’s association with global warming. Media coverage instead reflected the views of the Bush administration—specifically, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which declared that the hurricane was the result of natural factors. An outcry from N.O.A.A.’s scientists led the agency to backtrack from that statement in February 2006, but by then conventional wisdom was set in place. Post-Katrina New Orleans may eventually be remembered as the first major U.S. casualty of global warming, yet most Americans still don’t know what hit us.
if global emissions continue on their current trajectory, the ice sheets will not survive, because global temperatures will increase by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. “The last time the earth was that warm, sea levels were 80 feet higher than today,” he says. It will likely take hundreds of years for sea levels to rise the full 80 feet, but the process would be irreversible, and the rises would not be gradual. “You’re going to be continually faced with a changing coastline, which will force coastal dwellers to constantly relocate,” he says.
This article’s smaller, aerial-view illustrations are based on simulations by the National Environmental Trust, a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C. N.E.T. relied on data from the I.P.C.C., the U.S. Geological Survey, and the N.O.A.A. Additional N.E.T. simulations are available at net.org. Philip Clapp, N.E.T.’s president, says, “The U.S. government has never released its own simulations. The Bush administration doesn’t want these pictures in front of the American people because they show that a three-foot sea-level rise plus storm flooding would have catastrophic consequences.”
In New York, it would leave much of Lower Manhattan, including the Ground Zero memorial and the entire financial district, underwater. La Guardia and John F. Kennedy airports would meet the same fate. In Washington, D.C., the Potomac River would swell dramatically, stretching all the way to the Capitol lawn and to within two blocks of the White House.
Since roughly half the world’s 6.5 billion people live near coastlines, a three-foot sea-level rise would be even more punishing overseas. Amsterdam, Venice, Cairo, Shanghai, Manila, and Calcutta are some of the cities most threatened. In many places the people and governments are too poor to erect adequate barriers—think of low-lying Bangladesh, where an estimated 18 million people are at risk—so experts fear that they will migrate to neighboring lands, raising the prospect of armed conflict. A Pentagon-commissioned study warned in 2003 that climate change could bring mega-droughts, mass starvation, and even nuclear war as countries such as China, India, and Pakistan battle over scarce food and water.
This article’s smaller, aerial-view illustrations are based on simulations by the National Environmental Trust, a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C. N.E.T. relied on data from the I.P.C.C., the U.S. Geological Survey, and the N.O.A.A. Additional N.E.T. simulations are available at net.org. Philip Clapp, N.E.T.’s president, says, “The U.S. government has never released its own simulations. The Bush administration doesn’t want these pictures in front of the American people because they show that a three-foot sea-level rise plus storm flooding would have catastrophic consequences.”
In New York, it would leave much of Lower Manhattan, including the Ground Zero memorial and the entire financial district, underwater. La Guardia and John F. Kennedy airports would meet the same fate. In Washington, D.C., the Potomac River would swell dramatically, stretching all the way to the Capitol lawn and to within two blocks of the White House.
Since roughly half the world’s 6.5 billion people live near coastlines, a three-foot sea-level rise would be even more punishing overseas. Amsterdam, Venice, Cairo, Shanghai, Manila, and Calcutta are some of the cities most threatened. In many places the people and governments are too poor to erect adequate barriers—think of low-lying Bangladesh, where an estimated 18 million people are at risk—so experts fear that they will migrate to neighboring lands, raising the prospect of armed conflict. A Pentagon-commissioned study warned in 2003 that climate change could bring mega-droughts, mass starvation, and even nuclear war as countries such as China, India, and Pakistan battle over scarce food and water.
The deniers’ arguments were frequently cited in Washington policy debates. Their most important legislative victory was the Senate’s 95-to-0 vote in 1997 to oppose U.S. participation in any international agreement—i.e., the Kyoto Protocol—that imposed mandatory greenhouse-gas reductions on the U.S.
The ferocity of this resistance helps explain why the Clinton administration achieved so little on climate change, says Tim Wirth, the first under-secretary of state for global affairs, who served as President Clinton’s chief climate negotiator. “The opponents were so strongly organized that the administration got spooked and backed off of things it should have done,” says Wirth. “The Kyoto negotiations got watered down and watered down, and after we signed it the administration didn’t try to get it ratified. They didn’t even send people up to the Hill to talk to senators about ratifying it.”
“I wanted to push for ratification,” responds Gore. “A decision was made not to. If our congressional people had said there was even a remote chance of ratifying, I could have convinced Clinton to do it—his heart was in the right place.… But I remember a meeting in the White House with some environmental groups where I asked them for the names of 10 senators who would vote to ratify. They came up with one, Paul Wellstone. If your most optimistic supporters can’t identify 10 likely gettables, then people in the administration start to ask, ‘Are you a fanatic, Al? Is this a suicide mission?’” (Clinton did not respond to e-mailed questions.)
The ferocity of this resistance helps explain why the Clinton administration achieved so little on climate change, says Tim Wirth, the first under-secretary of state for global affairs, who served as President Clinton’s chief climate negotiator. “The opponents were so strongly organized that the administration got spooked and backed off of things it should have done,” says Wirth. “The Kyoto negotiations got watered down and watered down, and after we signed it the administration didn’t try to get it ratified. They didn’t even send people up to the Hill to talk to senators about ratifying it.”
“I wanted to push for ratification,” responds Gore. “A decision was made not to. If our congressional people had said there was even a remote chance of ratifying, I could have convinced Clinton to do it—his heart was in the right place.… But I remember a meeting in the White House with some environmental groups where I asked them for the names of 10 senators who would vote to ratify. They came up with one, Paul Wellstone. If your most optimistic supporters can’t identify 10 likely gettables, then people in the administration start to ask, ‘Are you a fanatic, Al? Is this a suicide mission?’” (Clinton did not respond to e-mailed questions.)
“Americans are hearing more about reducing greenhouse emissions from BP ads than from news stories in Time, The New York Times, or any other U.S. media outlet,” Alexander says. “This will go down as the greatest act of mass denial in history.”
American television did, however, give prime-time coverage to the latest, and most famous, global-warming denier: novelist Michael Crichton. ABC’s 20/20 broadcast a very friendly interview with Crichton when he published State of Fear, a novel arguing that anyone who bought into the phony scientific consensus on global warming was a modern equivalent of the early-20th-century eugenicists who cited scientific “proof” for the superiority of the white race.
When Crichton was invited to testify before the Environment and Public Works Committee, observers in Britain were floored. “This is fairyland,” exclaims Michael Meacher, the member of Parliament who served as Tony Blair’s environment minister from 1997 to 2003. “You have a science-fiction writer testifying before the United States Senate on global-warming policy? I mean, you can almost see the little boy off to the side, like in the story of the emperor’s clothes, saying, ‘But he’s a science-fiction writer, isn’t he?’ It’s just ludicrous.”
When Crichton was invited to testify before the Environment and Public Works Committee, observers in Britain were floored. “This is fairyland,” exclaims Michael Meacher, the member of Parliament who served as Tony Blair’s environment minister from 1997 to 2003. “You have a science-fiction writer testifying before the United States Senate on global-warming policy? I mean, you can almost see the little boy off to the side, like in the story of the emperor’s clothes, saying, ‘But he’s a science-fiction writer, isn’t he?’ It’s just ludicrous.”
This is not an Anti USA thread/post, but it IS a very serious issue, which everyone needs to be fully aware of.
This isn't a Hippie Peace, Love and save the whale issue, it's about millions of lives, and what we pass on to future generations.