Comments on: Poll: Global Warming Worries Grow

But CBS/NY Times Survey Suggests Environment Won't Be Major Issue In 2008 Campaign

[frankly6]

The scientific debate is over. The data is overwhelming.

This is not a political issue. It's a survival issue.

It's time for action.

[frankly6]

"Observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases," finds the IPCC's Fourth Assessment. The report catalogs an array of worrisome observations: It appears lakes and rivers are heating up; the seas are becoming more acidic; vegetation is spreading towards the poles; and spring is arriving earlier. Over the past five years, the report notes, "much more evidence" has emerged tying these sorts of ecological changes to human-caused warming.

When you want to build a bridge you rely on the expertise of engineers. When you need an operation you rely on the expertise of a well-trained surgeon. When you want to know about the causes and effects of global warming you look to climate scientists. Not pundits or oil industry hacks.

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Global warming over the past quarter century has led to a fall in the yield of some of the most important food crops in the world, according to one of the first scientific studies of how climate change has affected cereal crops.

Rising temperatures between 1981 and 2002 caused aloss in production of wheat, corn and barley that amounted in effect to some 40 million tons a year - equivalent to annual losses of some #2.6bn.

Although these numbers are not large compared to the world-wide production of cereal crops, scientists warned that the findings demonstrated how climate change was already having an impact on the global production of staple foods. "Most people tend to think of climate change as something that will impact the future, but this study shows that warming over the past two decades has already had real effects on global food supply," said Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, analysed yields of cereals from around the world during a period when average temperatures rose by about 0.7C between 1980 and 2002 - although the rise was even higher in certain crop-growing regions of the world.

[onlyfacts]

Ok, so we are in agreeance... govt=bad.... but wait govt=good and industry=bad... Ok, so everyone=bad. Exactly my point...

DEBATE the SCIENCE! Quit quoting other people's opinion.

[frankly6]

Evidence was also shown that the highest public relations priority for Mr Cooney's former employer, the American Petroleum Institute, was to create uncertainty about warming.

Another Democrat on the panel, John Yarmuth, called Mr Cooney a spin doctor.

James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, also appeared before the committee, complaining that the Bush administration had attempted to prevent him from speaking out about the dangers of global warming.

"Scientific press releases were going to the White House for editing," he said.

"It's very unfortunate that we developed this politicisation of science. The public relations office should be staffed by expert appointees. Otherwise they become offices of propaganda."

[frankly6]

THE Bush administration diluted scientific evidence of global warming, one of its former high-ranking officials has admitted.
Philip Cooney, an oil industry lobbyist now working for Exxon Mobil, conceded during a congressional hearing yesterday that while he was chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality he watered down reports on the adverse effects of man-made emissions on the planet's climate.

"My sole loyalty was to the President and advancing the policies of his administration," Mr Cooney told the house government reform committee. He defended aligning supposedly independent scientific reports with the White House political view on the environment by saying the changes reflected a comprehensive 2001 National Research Council report on the issue.

Documents released by Democrats yesterday revealed that in 2003 Bush administration officials made at least 181 changes to a plan to deal with climate change that were aimed at playing down the scientific consensus on global warming.

There were another 113 changes that made less of the human causes of climate change, and even changes made to herald potential benefits to higher temperatures.

[onlyfacts]

I was waiting for that... again debunked.

It seems that the computer program that Mann et. al. developed to come up with the fact that the climate was about as flat as a table until the end of the 20th Century, when it made this huge spike upward (hence the Hockey Stick motif), will generate a "Hockey Stick" curve from any random data.

Statistician Francis Zwiers of Environment Canada, a government agency, says he now agrees that Dr. Mann's statistical method "preferentially produces hockey sticks when there are none in the data."

[frankly6]

The ideological allies of ExxonMobil virulently attack Mann%u2019s work, as if discrediting him would somehow put global warming concerns to rest. This idie fixe seems to have begun with Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Both have been %u201Csenior scientists%u201D with the Marshall Institute. Soon serves as %u201Cscience director%u201D to TechCentralStation.com, is an adjunct scholar with Frontiers of Freedom, and wrote (with Baliunas) the Fraser Institute%u2019s pamphlet %u201CGlobal Warming: A Guide to the Science.%u201D Baliunas, meanwhile, is %u201Cenviro-sci host%u201D of TechCentral, and is on science advisory boards of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and the Annapolis Center for Science-based Public Policy ($427,500 from ExxonMobil), and has given speeches on climate science before the AEI and the Heritage Foundation ($340,000). (Neither Soon nor Baliunas would provide comment for this article.)

[frankly6]

What do the conservative think tanks do when faced with such an obstacle? For one, they tend to puff up debates far beyond their scientific significance. A case study is the %u201Ccontroversy%u201D over the work of University of Virginia climate scientist Michael Mann. Drawing upon the work of several independent teams of scientists, including Mann and his colleagues, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change%u2019s 2001 report asserted that %u201Cthe increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years.%u201D This statement was followed by a graph, based on one of the Mann group%u2019s studies, showing relatively modest temperature variations over the past thousand years and a dramatic spike upward in the 20th century. Due to its appearance, this famous graph has been dubbed the %u201Chockey stick.%u201D

[onlyfacts]

Wow, a whole 10% and that means there are no valid arguments... Way to dig for it.

[onlyfacts]

So when Democrats put people in key positions that is good. When Rebulicans do it, it is bad. Got it!

[frankly6]

RECENTLY, NAOMI ORESKES, a science historian at the University of California at San Diego, reviewed nearly a thousand scientific papers on global climate change published between 1993 and 2003, and was unable to find one that explicitly disagreed with the consensus view that humans are contributing to the phenomenon. As Oreskes hastens to add, that doesn%u2019t mean no such studies exist. But given the size of her sample, about 10 percent of the papers published on the topic, she thinks it%u2019s safe to assume that the number is %u201Cvanishingly small.%u201D

[frankly6]

ExxonMobil%u2019s connections to the current administration go much deeper, filtering down into lower but crucially important tiers of policymaking. For example, the memo forwarded by Randy Randol recommended that Harlan Watson, a Republican staffer with the House Committee on Science, help the United States%u2019 diplomatic efforts regarding climate change. Watson is now the State Department%u2019s %u201Csenior climate negotiator.%u201D Similarly, the Bush administration appointed former American Petroleum Institute attorney Philip Cooney%u2014who headed the institute%u2019s %u201Cclimate team%u201D and opposed the Kyoto Protocol%u2014as chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. In June 2003 the New York Times reported that the CEQ had watered down an Environmental Protection Agency report%u2019s discussion of climate change, leading EPA scientists to charge that the document %u201Cno longer accurately represents scientific consensus.%u201D

[onlyfacts]

So Bush can have an agenda, but Clinton/Gore can not? Ok,duly noted.

[frankly6]

Another contributor was ExxonMobil lobbyist Randy Randol, who recently retired but who seems to have plied his trade effectively during George W. Bush%u2019s first term. Less than a month after Bush took office, Randol sent a memo to the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). The memo denounced the then chairman of the IPCC, Robert Watson, a leading atmospheric scientist, as someone %u201Chandpicked by Al Gore%u201D whose real objective was to %u201Cget media coverage for his views.%u201D (When the memo%u2019s existence was reported, ExxonMobil took the curious position that Randol did forward it to the CEQ, but neither he nor anyone else at the company wrote it.) %u201CCan Watson be replaced now at the request of the U.S.?%u201D the memo asked. It went on to single out other Clinton administration climate experts, asking whether they had been %u201Cremoved from their positions of influence.%u201D

It was, in short, an industry hit list of climate scientists attached to the U.S. government. A year later the Bush administration blocked Watson%u2019s reelection to the post of IPCC chairman.

[onlyfacts]

Already stated... govt=good, industry=bad.

Do you have another point?

[frankly6]

Some forces of denial%u2014most notably ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute, of which ExxonMobil is a leading member%u2014remain in active denial against overwhelming evidence of global warming. In 1998, the New York Times exposed an API memo outlining a strategy to invest millions to %u201Cmaximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours with Congress, the media and other key audiences.%u201D The document stated: %u201CVictory will be achieved when%u2026recognition of uncertainty becomes part of the %u2018conventional wisdom.%u2019%u201D It%u2019s hard to resist a comparison with a famous Brown and Williamson tobacco company memo from the late 1960s, which observed: %u201CDoubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the %u2018body of fact%u2019 that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.%u201D

[onlyfacts]

Frankly6,

Can you please post more? I am sure that nobody else can find other people's opinion better than you. Do you find that when you argue that is a one way scream fest? Debates are usually give and take.

[frankly6]

EXXONMOBIL%u2019S FUNDING OF THINK TANKS hardly compares with its lobbying expenditures%u2014$55 million over the past six years, according to the Center for Public Integrity. And neither figure takes much of a bite out of the company%u2019s net earnings%u2014$25.3 billion last year. Nevertheless, %u201Cideas lobbying%u201D can have a powerful public policy effect.

Consider attacks by friends of ExxonMobil on the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA). A landmark international study that combined the work of some 300 scientists, the ACIA, released last November, had been four years in the making. Commissioned by the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum that includes the United States, the study warned that the Arctic is warming %u201Cat almost twice the rate as that of the rest of the world,%u201D and that early impacts of climate change, such as melting sea ice and glaciers, are already apparent and %u201Cwill drastically shrink marine habitat for polar bears, ice-inhabiting seals, and some seabirds, pushing some species toward extinction.%u201D Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) was so troubled by the report that he called for a Senate hearing.

[onlyfacts]

Ok, so anything produced by government is good and anything by industry is bad. Got it!