Bush Environment Advisor re. IPCC Report - "Let's Stop Debating The Science" - IHT

[hatrack]

Can you even fucking BELIEVE this?

WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush's environmental adviser said Thursday that he expected a much-anticipated United Nations' climate report to show that humans are a "very substantial factor" in global warming. The Bush administration has been reluctant to conclude how much humans are to blame.

James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said U.S. officials are looking forward to the release next week of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a respected group of hundreds of scientists whose work is combined to form an assessment of global warming. The last report appeared in 2001.

Connaughton, in response to questions by reporters at the Foreign Press Center, said the report "doesn't create new science," but "it's very clear that it will further reinforce that the earth is warming" and will likely show that "human activity is a very substantial factor in that equation." The United States is urged by critics in Europe, Asia and elsewhere to do more to deal with heat-trapping greenhouse gases that are contributing to the Earth's warming.

EDIT

Connaughton on Thursday defended U.S. efforts on global warming, saying "the United States is responsible for probably half the science that will be contained in that report," which "collects all the science that's out there and then analyzes and summarizes" it. He also responded to questions on Bush's decision to keep the United States out of the Kyoto international treaty to reduce greenhouse gases; Bush says the pact would harm the U.S. economy. "All the countries have moved beyond the debate over Kyoto. In fact, we've moved into a very constructive period over how we implement our shared obligations," Connaughton said. "Let's stop debating the science. Let's get on with the practical action."

Emphasis added

EDIT

Fuck you, James Connaughton. I hope you die of heatstroke. I hope your home is swept away by a Cat-5 hurricane. I hope you contract dengue at work.

[Buzz Clik]

1. Great post, and good analysis.

Connaughton is a lying, manipulative -- and brilliant -- sonofabitch. He knows exactly what he's doing, and he is well informed. His "stop debating the science" comment is just part of his delaying tactic. There is absolutely nothing in Connaughton's policy decisions that would even remotely resemble taking global warming seriously.

Getting him out of his position in 2009 will give us all a breath of fresh air.

[NickB79]

2. Hopefully Rush is with him in that hurricane

Yesterday he commented on his radio show how this new study was coming out, yet Anchorage, Alaska had recieved 74" of show, so global warming must be made up by a bunch of left-wing junk scientists.

I wanted to punch him, or at least call in and correct his pathetic grasp of science. Alaskan winters used to be so cold it was literally too cold to snow; there was no humidity left in the air to precipitate out. Since the air is warmer than normal in winter now, it holds more moisture than it used to. Hence it snows more due to global warming. Stupid prick actually proved the very thing he was trying to disprove and didn't even realize it.

[hatrack]

3. Anchorage is also right next to the ocean, so it's a little different from, say, Fairbanks

Rush's ignorance extends to geography, as well.

[Nederland]

4. Confused

Connaughton said "Let's stop debating the science. Let's get on with the practical action."

What would you prefer, to continue debating the science and do nothing? I see nothing wrong with Connaughton's comments. The time for debating the science behind global warming is over. It's time to start doing something about it.

[hatrack]

6. This is beyond disingenuous. .

For the past six years, this administration has done little but spread distortions, argue scientific uncertainty where there is little to none, muzzle scientific discourse and cut funding for vital climate science research. And now, suddenly, after "debating the science" as Connaughton calls it, they want us all to "move on". I suppose the phrase "not going to play the blame game" will be trotted out after the next Katrina.

Rather than simply cite Bush spending an hour with Michael Crichton upon the publication of his ridiculous novelistic assertion that the whole ball of wax is just a wicked conspiracy rigged by funding-hungry climate researchers, let me give you a few more examples.

1. CBS/AP) A White House official who stirred a controversy by altering government reports on climate change is going back to work for the oil industry. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday that Philip Cooney's departure was long planned and "unrelated in any way" to the furor.

Prior to joining President Bush's Council on Environmental Quality, Cooney was an oil industry lobbyist. On Tuesday, Exxon Mobil announced it had hired Cooney for as-yet-unspecified duties.

Environmentalists attacked Cooney after documents were published showing his alterations overruled language supplied by government scientists and downplayed a link between human activity and global warming.

The administration maintains there's substantial uncertainty about a link. McClellan said the charge that Cooney was just doing the oil industry's bidding is "absolutely false."

EDIT

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/06/15/politics/main702084.shtml

2. Bush - Global climate report is bureaucratic hot air

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush yesterday called a recent report that blames humans for global warming nothing more than a product of government "bureaucracy" and said he would not accept an international accord to reduce heating-trapping emissions.

The report by the Environmental Protection Agency, whose top officials are appointed by the president, appeared to back the view of many scientists who believe that global warming is primarily caused by emissions from automobiles, power plants, and oil refineries.
Until the new report became public, the Bush administration had repeatedly emphasized that there was not enough scientific evidence to link global warming to industrial emissions. President Bush indicated yesterday he was skeptical of the report's conclusions.

"I read the report put out by the bureaucracy," Bush told reporters. Instead, Bush said he would continue to push voluntary efforts and financial incentives for U.S. companies to use new technologies to reduce their emissions.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer later told reporters that there remained "considerable uncertainty" on the scientific causes of global warming.

EDIT

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16267/story.htm

3. Bush 'bending science to his political needs'

The Bush administration is guilty of misrepresenting scientific knowledge and misleading the public, a group of America's most senior scientists claimed yesterday. They said the government had manipulated information to fit its policies on everything from climate change to whether Iraq had been trying to make nuclear weapons.

The open letter from the independent Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) said: "When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions.

"This has been done by placing people who are professionally unqualified or who have clear conflicts of interest in official posts and on scientific advisory committees; by disbanding existing advisory committees; by censoring and suppressing reports by the government's own scientists; and by simply not seeking independent scientific advice." The letter was signed by 60 senior US scientists, including 20 Nobel prize winners, such as the physicists Steven Weinberg and James Cronin and the biologists Eric Kandel and Harold Varmus.

EDIT

The UCS letter was published on the same day as a new report from the National Academies of Science, which expressed serious concern that the US government's plans to deal with climate change could be scuppered by a lack of funds. The US equivalent of Britain's Royal Society, the NAS focused on the Bush administration's latest plans for the environment, coordinated by the US climate change science programme (CCSP). The NAS conceded that the new research plans were a significant improvement on the CCSP's original strategy, which was the focus of much international criticism when it was published in November 2002.

EDIT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1151187,00.html

4. Bush blames lab's funding shortfall on mix-up: Employees rehired before president's visit to tout energy plans

Tuesday, February 21, 2006; Posted: 2:07 p.m. EST (19:07 GMT)

GOLDEN, Colorado (CNN) -- President Bush told workers at a renewable energy lab Tuesday that the government had sent "mixed signals" over the future of its federal funding. On the eve of Bush's visit, the Department of Energy said it had transferred $5 million to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which had funding cut and employees laid off this month due to budget shortfalls.

"I recognize there have been some interesting, let me say, mixed signals when it comes to funding," the president said. (Watch what a laid off worker said about the Bush visit -- 1:10) Bush blamed a budget mix-up for the shortfall at the Golden facility, saying that sometimes when funds are appropriated, "the money may not end up where it was supposed to have gone."

EDIT

According to The Associated Press, 32 workers, including eight researchers, were laid off two weeks ago at the lab. The restoration of funding left lab employees and renewable energy proponents puzzled about the motivation behind the decision. "I'm still questioning why the budget cuts even happened or why the layoffs had to happen in the first place -- like how it can happen two or three weeks later they restore the money to the budget," said Tina Larney, an employee being rehired who works with state and local governments on energy initiatives.

EDIT

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/21/bush.energyfunding/index.html

5. Published on Friday, July 25, 2003 Bush Global Warming Plan a Stall, Say Critics

BROOKLIN, Canada -- The Bush administration announced a new 10-year plan Thursday to study the ”uncertainty” around global climate change--instead of taking action to fix it, scientists and environmentalists say. ”The Bush administration is using the scientific uncertainty around climate change to delay taking concrete actions in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions,” Steven Guilbeault, a political advisor to Greenpeace International, told IPS. ”It's clear to everyone that this is a delaying action,” he said.

Eight years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), involving more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries, agreed that human-produced emissions of greenhouse gases, primarily from burning oil, coal and natural gas, were changing the planet's climate.

EDIT

This selective use of the fact that few things in science are ever 100 percent certain irks Michael MacCracken, an atmospheric scientist who headed U.S. efforts to determine the impacts of global warming from 1993 to 2001.

”This administration appears to have no uncertainty about the safety of genetically modified foods, another new and complex scientific endeavor,” MacCracken told IPS. ”We can't wait until we have perfect knowledge on climate change,” he said.

EDIT

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0725-03.htm

I have lots more where that came from.

So do us all a favor, and fucking spare us your faux amnesia about the last six years and counting. Thanks to this administration, we just pissed away eight whole years that we will never get back. The window for action that might stabilize us somewhere around 450 or 500 ppm is just that much narrower, and given the years and years you've spent on this board saying that it's not really happening, the last thing any of us need is your patronizing hypocrisy.

[phantom power]

5. No wait, let me guess: It's time to move on.

:banghead: