There may still be some who see the multiply disgraced Paul Wolfowitz as an intellectually hardnosed neoconservative who called them as he saw them (despite being egregiously wrong and morally bankrupt in how he saw them), but the more we see of the real person who obtained a lucrative sinecure and inappropriate pay raises for his girlfriend when he was head of the World Bank, the more he looks like any other unprincipled political hack. Take this bit of water carrying for the Bush administration on climate change:
The Bush administration has consistently thwarted efforts by the World Bank to include global warming in its calculations when considering whether to approve major investments in industry and infrastructure, according to documents made public through a watchdog yesterday.On one occasion, the White House's pointman at the bank, the now disgraced Paul Wolfowitz, personally intervened to remove the words "climate change" from the title of a bank progress report and ordered changes to the text of the report to shift the focus away from global warming. (The Independent)
The idea wasn't Wolfowitz's. The World Bank implemented Bush administration climate change denialism before Wolfie got to the Bank in June 2005. He was just following orders. The Bank finances development projects all over the world and many of those projects involve energy. For example, the Bank is helping to develop brown coal (lignite) mining in Kosovo. Burning lignite is especially dirty, but the climate impacts of promoting fossil fuel burning did not figure into the decision, although it is Bank policy to phase out oil and gas investments and extend an existing moratorium on coal mining. There are many other examples:
In February 2006, for example, the World Bank's operating vice presidents gathered to discuss a draft of a progress report, requested by the Group of 8 leading industrialized nations, titled "Climate Change, Energy and Sustainable Development: Towards an Investment Framework." The bank executives endorsed the report, according to minutes obtained by the Government Accountability Project and authenticated by The Times.
But afterward, the summary noted, the office of then-World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz -- a President Bush appointee -- "asked the team to refocus the paper shifting from a climate lens mainly to a clean-energy lens." A note of uncertainty should be injected, a top Wolfowitz aide instructed: "Elaborate on the challenge of mitigating climate change and reducing the vulnerability to the impact of climate change."
"Climate change" was duly removed from the name of the paper, which was issued within months as "Clean Energy and Development: Towards an Investment Framework." (Los Angeles Times)
Meanwhile, the Bank is only now starting to estimate the effects of proposed projects on climate change. We still don't know if the current Bush appointee, Robert Zoellick, will bend over for the administration with the alacrity of Wolfowitz.
The climate may be changing but the Bush administration doesn't seem to be.
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Revere, next weeks NEWSWEEK magazine as I understand it is going to debunk the global warming thing. The editor I am told disagreed with the GW concept in light of current events, but had to agree that 1000 years ago it was much warmer e.g. Greenland.
A few years ago it was acid rain, now they tell us we need it to keep the carbon emissions down. I know that just saying that we are overloading the atmosphere doesnt necessarily mean it is so. You could be right, I could be right but I am sure the truth lies in the middle ground. It was warm enough to farm Greenland 1000 years ago, the water levels were lower and we still managed to bring ourselves forward.
Making an assumption that its GW from G. gases is not based upon solid enough science. I lean towards the Malkovitch thing and its nearly identical to where we were between 1500 and 1000 years ago. Are we adding to something thats already there? I dont know. Or might it be that we have about 3.5 billion more 98.6 toaster ovens running than there were even 40 years ago. Thats a lot of ambient heat. Nature might just take care of that with the BF.
I am not prepared to destroy an economy on the maybe and certainly not because of an "Inconvenient Truth".
Correction spelling "Milankovitch" rather than Malkovitch.
In my opinion, global warming is exactly like H5N1...
...it is happening right before our eyes but we still can't quite believe that it is and is going to happen...
...human nature I guess...must be an evolutionary advantage to this type of thinking somehow.
...kind of like Chamberlain and the rest of the world in the 1930's...
Carbon dioxide absorbs energy coming from the Earth's surface, reducing 'leakage' of energy from the Earth and increasing the Earth's average temperature. This has been known for something like 150 years.
A hundred years ago Arrhenius calculated the probable increase in global temperatures if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere doubled.
By the mid 1960s a steady increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere had been documented and predictions were being made that global temperatures would increase.
Since then, temperatures have increased. This is not surprising as anything else would require a massive hitherto unknown negative feedback mechanism or a major re-evaluation of the laws of physics and chemistry.
If Newsweek manages to 'debunk the global warming thing', in the sense of showing that global warming is not or will not occur, I will be astonished.
By the way, 1000 years ago there was a local warming that included Greenland, not a global warming. It is my understanding that, based solely on the Milankovitch cycles, Earth should currently be cooling.
Well, I suspected that global warming and bird flu would at some point meet, which is why I started another blog, Homage to Arrhenius (http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/climate/ ). Thanks for the heads-up about Wolfowitz and about Newsweek.
Rich-it was fairly widespread from approximately 1300 to 1000 years ago for the warming. In line with the Milankovitch cycle. Because of the idea that it might be global warming and carbon dioxide I wonder if humans just breathing might have a lot to do with it along with cows, pigs etc.
The burn what you got theory is also out there. Coal burning is probably th worst that there is, but it has the most BTU's. The libs wont let us build a nuke and Teddy doesnt want a wind farm unless its someplace other than Nantucket. So everyone is just going to have to sit back and take the ride. Wolfie and the spoils system is just what we have here and at least he had the grace to acknowledge the chick unlike B. Clinton.
The climate is changing without a doubt. I can remember it being hotter'n Hell som 30 years ago and then they said its global cooling, the acid rain, and everything under the sun including Co2 causing that. Its plain and simple. Politics and the planet dont mix. The Chinese are just waiting for us to ratify the Kyoto and then we are done. We have to comply immediately with all the provisions...they get 40 years. Two generations? They account for most of the gas into California now. We have been stable on our emissions there except in winter when that stuff drifts all the way over from China. Hawaii hardly meets the Clean Air Act and all because of our friends out East.
Maybe Wolfie knows that no matter what WE do in the West, its going to be geared in the future by the East. No level playing fields here. We have to allow China to pollute is the message. Even Clinton wasnt stupid enough for that trap.
Tom-Being the boonie man from Canada and one of the most respected here I want you to take a look at the following. Its hugely comprehensive and I wonder why it was so much warmer without humans being around to run cars and refrigerators and etc?
No boys its an agenda. We have been a lot hotter, and a lot colder. Rich and Tom ARE right about one thing and that is our children might face either cold or hot and they will either adapt or not.
You survive climate change one way or the other and you get to write anything you want on the subject and you will be right.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature/
There are several problems with the site Randolph links to, the first being that there is no indication of who John Baez is or why we should take his views seriously. He is almost certainly not a climatologist himself as all the cites he gives (as far as I could see) are from secondary sources, not from original publications.
On a quick scan through, I see inconsistencies. For example, referring to temperatures over the past 1.35 million years, he says "According to this study, after warming up 0.2 C per year [sic] for the last 3 decades, the Earth is now the hottest it's been in the last 12,000 years" whereas the graph 'World temperatures over the past 10,000 years' shows it is now the coolest it has been in 9,000 years. This graph does not have a scale (considered extremely bad form in science) but a quick check with Wilipedia and Realclimate.org shows that the problem is that the last few decades have been omitted. They would have brought the line up at the end, almost off the scale. The warming has been nothing like 0.2 C per year, which again casts doubt on the level of scholarship in this article.
The fact that it has been warmer in the past is, regardless, almost completely irrelevent to the concern about global warming. The problem is not particularly that it is happening, but that it is happening so quickly, Most people living in cities do not realise how dependent human civilization is on agriculture, and how dependent agriculture is on having a reliable climate. Having a good year for growing rice is no good if you are trying to grow wheat, and how many good rice years do you have before you switch production away from wheat? Agriculture just can't respond quickly.
No. People eat plants (sometimes indirectly through animals) which make use of the carbon in the atmosphere. Increasing numbers of people just redirects some of the short-term (less than approx. 100,000 years) carbon cycle through people rather than through other animals, fungi etc. The increase clearly comes from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas and oil (and also some, I understand, from cement-making).
MRK...I remember 30 years ago and it's NOT being Hotter-n-hell. I also remember the old "Smokey the Bear" fallacy in which we would not allow Mother Nature to burn like it should. Now we are catching up with the past and our fires are trememdous and Hotter'n'hell. Sounds like we (humans) should quit screwing with our world.
"Because of the idea that it might be global warming and carbon dioxide I wonder if humans just breathing might have a lot to do with it along with cows, pigs etc."
Oh please. The increase in CO2 levels is due to fossil fuel burning. We know this from shifts in carbon isotope ratios. You say that the AGW hypothesis isn't based on sound science but you're unaware of the basics.
"I am not prepared to destroy an economy on the maybe and certainly not because of an "Inconvenient Truth". "
Why would we have to destroy the economy? Estimates for CO2 reductions by carbon sequestration from power plants have dropped from $50-70/tonne CO2 to $20-25/tonne (using oxyfuel). A tax of $50/tonne, which would make a slew of CO2 reduction measures in-the-money, would be equivalent to ~50 cents/gallon gasoline. You might have noticed the price you pay at the pump going up a lot more than that, and we haven't reverted to flint tools and stone axes as a result.
We've talking 1-3% GDP here (about the same share as advertising in GDP, or the War in Iraq). This is eminently doable with the political will.
Sock-The biggest producer of greenhouse gases on this planet are cows.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/06/010611071759.htm
Humans generate one hell of a lot of it without even getting into their cars.
The increase in Co2 has been verily verified to a major source -termites!
http://www.epa.gov/ttn/chief/ap42/ch14/final/c14s02.pdf
The oceans act as a sink for the overage of the carbon gas and their levels have indeed been rising. Its all about the level playing field though Sock and if we have to comply then everyone should comply. No 40 year progression levels because this is the US and the EU isnt stupid either. They will bail out of their businesses in both and head for China because as they say, "Its the business."
But I think everyone would be immediately dissapointed when the levels still didnt go down. Nope, all thru history when it approached the level of the human population, something wicked this way comes and takes us down a notch or two.
The carbon processes you describe also remain in the ice and boys and girls, brothers and sisters the Co2 levels have been MUCH higher in history and we still managed to pick ourselves up out of the primordial mud to be able to blog. Will I give it to you that Co2 levels are up? Yep. Are humans the big source? Questionable. But the only really human attributable dangerous gas is Co. Carbon Monoxide. Now theres something for sure. You get that from burning carbon based stuff inefficiently. And that one Socky I give to you 100% we are in DEEP trouble on that one. It indeed will do us long before Co2 would because of the effects on heart, lungs, brains, cardiovascular system. Both are bad but Co bonds with hemoglobin I think I read even better than oxygen. So we run around befuddled and literally dying on our feet. I have been trying to find something on the size of human lungs to see if they have increased across the last 100 years or so. Anyone got anything? It would be indicative of adaptation and thats the reason we are here.... Oil will eventually run out. Then what? Not just what? But we make fertilizers out of oil. THEN WHAT? To me in three generations its going to be a self correcting problem. We get dead by starvation? Pollution? Not a big thing on my radar really. Cant eat what didnt get planted or never grew.
Ethanol-Hey, at least we can drink the stuff from the still. Tennessee will become the capitol of the world on that.
We will be pushing old cars and ramming them into each other to establish territory and trading horses for women and food. Peak oil? Shit, more like peak food.
You could be right, I could be right but I am sure the truth lies in the middle ground.
Actually the truth doesn't care what you think.
So I get it you were similarly outraged, if not more so, when you heard that then President Clinton pulled strings to get his mistress, Monica, a job?
So prove your point Jin rather than rattling. Everyone is all ready to jump on the we are all gonna die ship without any verifiable proof. I will give it to you that you There is no tip over point either. Its an unprovable perspective or non-perspective on my part. If indeed we are doing it, then the Earth will simply cull us back via heat, starvation or disease to what it considers to be an acceptable level. It might also take us completely out. Sometimes you just have to say ....
Boats leaving.... Dont miss it.
Ann-sounds like you are in the West or PacWest. 1930 Dust Bowl days saw huge fires in the West back then too. It also saw the HOTTEST temperatures on record as NOAA has reexamined their records for the last 100 years. Prior to this it was supposed to 98. Omygosh.....now we have to redo everything that they established as FACT on the global warming front.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-temp15aug15,1,658…
1968 was monstrously hot in the South Ann, while it was fairly wet in the west. Here is my problem. They are making climatolgical decisions based upon less than 150 years of knowledge. I underline that. Thats a tragically stupid mistake. Are the Co2 levels up? Yep, but are we really causing them or are they secondary causes from say, logging in the PacWest (termite emissions). Rotting wood in the Amazon from clearing? There isnt a climate guy out there that will stake their reputation on it and that includes My Pal AL! He is unable to cite definitively that "this" is the reason and then prove it. There simply isnt enough data. I though err on the side of caution. But I do demand proof and so far all I have seen is supposition supporting a position.
Ever seen what a garbage dump produces? Ants, cows, cars, people, its not going to hurt to bring it in line as much as possible. Ozone is the biggie down South. But I dont ever give someone a pass simply because they live in China for 40 years. Screw that. Enough jobs have left already and the shipping of the stuff back to the US costs one hell of a lot in "carbon footprint". What we need is a reduction in carbon feet, not more emissions standards because we all know they are totally unachievable. Why? Because even the Dems keep raising the limits. Nor is it economical in the face of the world stage. It is if its PROVEN that the ecomaniacs are right. But until then establishing artificial levels that are not realistic are nuts, and thats the reason the jobs will leave. We sign, we die as an economic power.
I am not one that just accepts something just because someone who has a PHd says one thing. I listen to everything out there and quite frankly I am skeptical of anything the Manchurian Candidate and his Inconvenient Truth people come up with as they jet around in private aircraft that generate more than you or I would in two years. Al Baby also has to square up the huge number of shares of Occidental Petroleum he has. Lets not forget Michael "The Hypocrite" Moore who's foundation owns oil stocks, car companies and all sorts of companies he is all over. Pure unmitigated bullshit. Its intimidation tactics and he uses them well. Look up "Shooting Michael Moore"
Ann-If you build a house in forest you have to expect someday maybe that there will be a fire. I wonder about all the dewatering of the acquifers in the west by humans (you are one) and the effects on temps in the rest of the country. If you increase desert upwind, does that increase the temps downwind. Likely but spending a lot of money on it doesnt solve it either. I just cant see a direct circumstance to anything that anyone on either side of the fence can say is really causing the warming. Causality is the question. Now I question it all.
Here is one for you. The Sahara has seen more rain this year than it has in the previous 50.....It was definitively wetter 2000 years ago there. So is it a cycle or bullshit about temperatures rising. It was about 5 degrees hotter only a few thousand years ago....
So can anyone really say what is going on with a certainty. No! Hotter, yes. Hotter'n Hell, yes. Humanity threatening temps? Yep, for the weaker ones. The Earth responds if its threatened. The cull has begun.
BG-I was more outraged that BC sent troops into Kosovo without speaking to Congress. That shit had been going on for years and only when the presidential penis came into question did it bedcome (thats an intentional mispelling) an issue.
This kind of stuff has happened for years in DC. Business as usual BG.
I also was outraged when the Democrats gave BC a pass on lying to a federal investigator, lied on the stand to a federal judge. Hey get all the BJ's you want B. Clinton. But dont lie about it on the stand. All he had to say to the FBI was yep, got it, it was good and I would have said he was an honest guy. But its all about what is, is.
"Is" in the United States had it been a forceable act, would have been a felony under the laws of every state. They call it rape if its not consensual. Outraged? At least Bush went to Congress and got the resolution he needed for Iraq. Aint no one without fault in my book and that includes yours truly. I do try though to keep it as close to the center as possible.
Hijacking the blog for a moment. 7.9 and 7.5 quakes in Peru. Tsunami was generated and evaluations are underway to determine if a Pacific wide warning is warranted. Estimated time to Hawaii is about 8 hours from now.
Advisories on following: http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/
"Sock-The biggest producer of greenhouse gases on this planet are cows."
True but irrelevant. You are a true deployer of the Chewbacca defense.
Let's understand the difference between stock and flows. The increase in *flows* is due to increased fossil fuel burning and deforestation. This has caused a rise in CO2 levels. We *know* this because of the shift in carbon isotope ratios. About half of the anthropogenic CO2 emission have been absorbed, the other half linger in the atmosphere, and will be with us for some time.
"The carbon processes you describe also remain in the ice and boys and girls, brothers and sisters the Co2 levels have been MUCH higher in history"
No. Not in history. Not in the 400,000 prehistoric years of the Vostok ice core.
You really, really, don't know much about the subject, do you?
"It was about 5 degrees hotter only a few thousand years ago...."
Gimmee a cite. I don't see anything approaching a 5 deg C (or even a 5 deg F) increase compared to present in the Vostok or other ice core data.
See also Richard Sale's letter to Pat Lang under 'Sale on Wolfowitz et al'
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/the_athenaeum/2007/07/sale-on-wolfowi.ht…
British Court rules that Inconvenient Truth is a politically motivated film and cannot be shown to English school children. Some points were held in the court but not Al Gores main thrusts and some complete fallacies were noted.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/corporate_law/articl…
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,301067,00.html
Described as pure fantasy here:
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=50e42b47-ca21-47c1-bbb1…
So now we have a problem. It is warmer, but the consensus is as it was ten years ago. There is officially now no consensus. Al Gores film was a targeted political film and not unlike Micheal Moore's first three. Molding of the facts ot achieve a goal, something that the Republicans are good at too.