Nbadan
11-08-2004, 03:55 PM
You can't make stuff like this up...
An advisor to President George W Bush has reportedly claimed that global warming is a fallacy created to disrupt the American economy, in an interview on Radio 4. Myron Ebell, from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), claimed that the notion of climate change through man-made emissions was “ridiculous and unrealistic”.
The views of the UK’s chief scientist Sir David King – who stated that global warming posed a bigger threat to the planet than terrorism – were dismissed by Ebell as ‘a ridiculous claim’, and Sir David an ‘alarmist’. The European Commission was also accused by Ebell of targeting the American economy through efforts to develop an international climate change strategy.
Environmentalists responded by calling the CEI spokesperson’s claims “idiocy”.
A statement from the Greenpeace organisation read; “The world's best climate scientists agree the threat is real and growing. It is terrifying that this man is advising the White House on the gravest threat this planet faces. This kind of idiocy would be a mere distraction if it were not for the fact that Bush believes this nonsense. If Tony Blair really regards global warming as a huge threat, like he says he does, he needs to give the President a dose of straight talking the next time they meet.”
Green Consumer Guide (http://www.greenconsumerguide.com/index.php?news=2275)
The majority of voters in Florida, and the majority of voters in the United States, have chosen to embrace ignorance, magical thinking and wilful disregard of what is happening in the world around them.
They chose to disregard 16 years and counting of robust peer-reviewed science and mountains of evidence that things are changing very rapidly in the planet's climate. They chose to look in the other direction as scientific study after scientific study from all over the globe - from Greenland, Ecuador, Antarctica, Europe, Siberia, Nepal, the Southern Ocean, the Arctic Basin, you name it - spelled out a picture of a destabilized natural world
I had hoped that maybe, just mabye, Florida's voters and voters around the country could have taken something out of this year's horrific hurricane season. I'm not saying that these four hurricanes were direct results of climate change. Science doesn't allow us to say that specific point events are directly linked to overall trends. However, the four hurricanes were certainly consistent with projections of what would happen under a more energetic atmospheric regime, and very likely a good look at what the future holds.
But voters in Florida and across America didn't want to hear about it or think about or act on this information. They wanted to stick their fingers in their ears and turn up the CNN/Fox News volume on the teevee a little bit higher and chant " I CAN'T HEAR YOU! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" until the nasty thoughts and unpleasant evidence went away.
They (and we, by a narrow majority) chose to endorse a government that systematically ignores reality when suitable to its political ends. They (and we, by a narrow majority) chose to embrace inertia, inaction and impotence in spite of all we know and all we continue to learn.
Fine. So be it. Let faith-based America learn the costs of its faith-based choice.
An advisor to President George W Bush has reportedly claimed that global warming is a fallacy created to disrupt the American economy, in an interview on Radio 4. Myron Ebell, from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), claimed that the notion of climate change through man-made emissions was “ridiculous and unrealistic”.
The views of the UK’s chief scientist Sir David King – who stated that global warming posed a bigger threat to the planet than terrorism – were dismissed by Ebell as ‘a ridiculous claim’, and Sir David an ‘alarmist’. The European Commission was also accused by Ebell of targeting the American economy through efforts to develop an international climate change strategy.
Environmentalists responded by calling the CEI spokesperson’s claims “idiocy”.
A statement from the Greenpeace organisation read; “The world's best climate scientists agree the threat is real and growing. It is terrifying that this man is advising the White House on the gravest threat this planet faces. This kind of idiocy would be a mere distraction if it were not for the fact that Bush believes this nonsense. If Tony Blair really regards global warming as a huge threat, like he says he does, he needs to give the President a dose of straight talking the next time they meet.”
Green Consumer Guide (http://www.greenconsumerguide.com/index.php?news=2275)
The majority of voters in Florida, and the majority of voters in the United States, have chosen to embrace ignorance, magical thinking and wilful disregard of what is happening in the world around them.
They chose to disregard 16 years and counting of robust peer-reviewed science and mountains of evidence that things are changing very rapidly in the planet's climate. They chose to look in the other direction as scientific study after scientific study from all over the globe - from Greenland, Ecuador, Antarctica, Europe, Siberia, Nepal, the Southern Ocean, the Arctic Basin, you name it - spelled out a picture of a destabilized natural world
I had hoped that maybe, just mabye, Florida's voters and voters around the country could have taken something out of this year's horrific hurricane season. I'm not saying that these four hurricanes were direct results of climate change. Science doesn't allow us to say that specific point events are directly linked to overall trends. However, the four hurricanes were certainly consistent with projections of what would happen under a more energetic atmospheric regime, and very likely a good look at what the future holds.
But voters in Florida and across America didn't want to hear about it or think about or act on this information. They wanted to stick their fingers in their ears and turn up the CNN/Fox News volume on the teevee a little bit higher and chant " I CAN'T HEAR YOU! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" until the nasty thoughts and unpleasant evidence went away.
They (and we, by a narrow majority) chose to endorse a government that systematically ignores reality when suitable to its political ends. They (and we, by a narrow majority) chose to embrace inertia, inaction and impotence in spite of all we know and all we continue to learn.
Fine. So be it. Let faith-based America learn the costs of its faith-based choice.