President-elect Obama sent a strong message to delegates of a climate change conference in California this week by delivering a video taped address that unequivocally stated his stance on global warming, and his support for global cooperation.
“Once I take office, you can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations. . . . Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response.”
Read more in this story in the Los Angeles Times.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Yeesh. I’m getting worn out by all the global warming populism shown by our politicians and exacerbated by the press. I’d like some more hard data. It’s hard to really take global warming advocates seriously when there’s so much unresolved disagreement over the underlying data and causes.
Really what I see with Obama and McCain during the election was overt populist dogma for the sake of reaching the larger masses who believe what they’re being told. I’m not convinced.
Let me say right off the bat that sustainability and environmentalism have much to offer us, but if they sacrifice truth for the sake of dogma, then they’ll eventually lose credibility. And that’s bad! I can spout off 10 or 15 different reasons to convert energy production and motorization from oil, and work to prevent pollution, without ever bringing up global warming.
Case in point. You or someone else listed on Planet Geospatial linked to an article about the Maldives’ worry that their islands are threatened with rising ocean levels because of global warming. I Googled the issue and found many articles. None of the several that I read through had ANY hard data about current or historical ocean levels. We’re just meant to assume that the oceans are rising because of global warming. I later found one article interviewing a geologist from Sweden who reviewed the ocean level data and determined that there has been NO ocean level rise around the Maldives in the past couple of decades. It’s the media that’s freaking out the citizens of that country.
Even NASA scientists, with it’s satellite monitoring of ocean surface temperatures, are beginning to change their belief that temperatures are increasing globally. They’re not. Considering sun activity, temperatures might be actually dropping globally.
When we live in an age when a popular movement’s celebrity mouthpiece earns a Nobel prize for a poorly supported documentary, then we know we’ve lost all reason.
Richard,
There’s plenty of hard data out there, and it’s easy to find if you care to look for it.
For example, you mentioned you couldn’t find “hard data about current or historical ocean levels”:
http://www.bodc.ac.uk/data/online_delivery/international_sea_level/
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/
http://www.pol.ac.uk/psmsl/author_archive/jevrejeva_etal_gsl/
http://www.agu.org/revgeophys/dougla01/dougla01.html
And there’s plenty more, that’s just a small subset of a quick Google search. Also be sure to check out realclimate.org for the latest research info.
Richard it’s a lost cause to convince otherwise, here and else where.
People are too gullible anymore and blindly place too much trust in others. They may wake up, by then it will be too late. They will have granted more authority or power to others over their own lives.
People should verify and then trust. Then again, people like Dr Hanson doesn’t want people to verify his claims. Hence, the raw data and alogrithms remain hidden.
Unfortuantely, the small vocal pro-warming minority gets all the news and coverage. While the larger less vocal con-warming gets less news and coverage.
I’ll leave this as a food of thought. The current head of the IPCC, the gentleman from India. From some reports, his qualifications are, zero-nada. He’s a engineer who worked for the railroad industry.
Do check out the links Matt provided, but also, look at many others to balance out your research.
KoS, “small vocal pro-warming minority”? That’s funny. I suppose you’re right if you want to compare the number of climate scientists to the entire world population. But the majority of climate scientists agree that global warming is happening and that humanity is to blame for a significant portion of it.
“Hence, the raw data and algorithms remain hidden.” Really? What’s this then: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_models#Climate_models_on_the_web
“..false skepticism is what we’re talking about. It captures the essence of the attitudes exhibited by those who refuse to accept the science of climate change. Such people consider themselves skeptics, in that they aren’t convinced by the evidence. But of course, a true skeptic is willing to be convinced by the evidence. For whatever reason — ideology, stupidity, stubbornness — such ilk are not only unwilling to accept solid science, but are unwilling to subject their own positions to skeptical or critical analysis. No matter what evidence you supply, it just won’t meet their standards, usually because they consider the entire climatology community corrupt.”
–http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2008/11/what_do_you_call_the_antigloba.php
Matt..let me find previous reports which mentioned the hidden raw data and algorithms. I’ll get back on that. Btw, I was singling out Hansen and what he uses, not all climate models. Hansen is always used as the main player.
As far as the numbers. The majority of scientists don’t agree. If you remember the link I posted a while back, http://www.oism.org/pproject/ There are more signers to this document, than the IPCC. Note the signers to both documents, not all are climate scientists, there are others from different fields.
I really doubt there has been a comprehensive survery done, not a poll, of all climate scientists.
Your last link. A biologists talking about global warming? He’s not a climatologists. But we all are entitled to our opinions.
I will say after reading his blog posting. Nobody in their right mind can doubt climate change. It has always happened and always will. The debate is the man-made causes(if any) and the direction it’s going.
Frankly this is one of the main reasons I’ve doubted the man-made global warming crowd. People started preaching man-made global warming, when that didn’t work they changed the terminology to global warming. Notice the dropping of the man part. And now, since that didn’t work. They have changed the terminology once again, to climate change, dropping global warming all together.
If the science is settled and irrefutable, why the need to change terminology?
Plus why the almost solo focus on CO2? Why isn’t there more talk about the other greenhouse gasses, especially the ones which have a greater impact than CO2.
My belief, CO2 is a way to control or dictate what people can and can’t do with their lives. Since virutally everything we do, made, etc..has a carbon component.
Yes I may be a skeptic, but I’m willing to change my mind. Also, I’ve been lucky in life, the people I’ve meet and know, from big media, to big business and the roller coaster that is DC. I’ve learnt from them, look past the public face of an issue, look at what is going on behind the scenes in those dark, damp places most people don’t want you to see or know about.
For me, it’s been helpful, a good friend works in DC on the hill concering man-made global warming, global warming, or climate change issues. It’s been an eye-opener, but not surprising either.