Bush: Global warming is just hot air

[Guest guest]

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/09/10/bush/index.html

 

Bush: Global warming is just hot air

The planet's getting hotter, ecosystems are going

haywire, government scientists know it -- and still

the president denies there's a problem. Guess which

industry continues to fuel his campaign?

 

- - - - - - - - - - - -

By Katharine Mieszkowski

 

Sept. 10, 2004 | Don't expect President Bush to

discuss global warming -- the world's most serious

environmental problem -- on the campaign trail in the

next eight weeks. The former oilman from Texas doesn't

dare alienate his friends in the fossil fuel and auto

industries, prime purveyors of global warming. Bush

still refuses to admit that burning Chevron with

Techron in our Jeep Grand Cherokees, not to mention

megatons of coal in our power plants, has brought us

19 of the 20 hottest years on record since 1980.

 

" You're talking about a president who says that the

jury is out on evolution, so what possible evidence

would you need to muster to prove the existence of

global warming? " says Robert F. Kennedy Jr., author of

the new book " Crimes Against Nature. " " We've got polar

ice caps melting, glaciers disappearing all over the

world, ocean levels rising, coral reefs dying. But

these people are flat-earthers. "

 

In fact, Bush's see-no-evil, hear-no-evil stance on

global warming is so intractable that even when his

own administration's scientists weigh in on the issue,

he simply won't hear of it.

 

In a report sent to Congress at the end of August,

government scientists argued that the warming of the

atmosphere in recent decades cannot be explained by

natural causes but must include such human sources as

energy consumption and deforestation. It's a

conclusion that a consensus of the world's

climatologists reached years ago but that Bush has

ignored throughout his presidency.

 

When the New York Times quizzed Bush about why his

scientists had shifted their positions on what caused

global warming, he appeared entirely ignorant that

they had. " I don't think we did, " he said. When tipped

off to the paper's coverage of the report, he added:

" Oh, OK, well, that's got to be true. " Maybe he really

doesn't read the newspapers. His aides then assured

reporters that, no, this report wouldn't signal any

change in his policies around climate change.

 

In other words, Bush will continue to delay regulatory

action related to global warming, while pledging to

invest in more study of the issue in the name of

" sound science, " before doing anything about it.

 

" The Bush administration has been playing whack-a-mole

trying to beat back its own scientists on global

warming; every once in a while they miss one, " says

Jeremy Symons, who worked at the Environmental

Protection Agency in 2001, when the president reneged

on his campaign promise to regulate global-warming

pollution -- a move, Symons says, done for " no reason

other than to appease polluters. "

 

" The strength of the science is overwhelming and it's

reflected in this new report, " adds Symons, now

climate change program manager for the National

Wildlife Federation. " It doesn't leave the

administration anywhere to hide about the fact that

it's not doing anything. The science hasn't changed,

but when it comes to policy the Bush administration

still has its head in the sand. "

 

It's a repeat of a situation early in Bush's

presidency, when he asked the National Academy of

Sciences to look into global warming and they found

that it is happening and is likely caused by such

human activities as burning fossil fuels. The

response? The administration just continued to call

for further study and even infamously censored

mentions of the harmful impact of global warming from

a federal environmental report.

 

" Since the first time President Bush has marginally

said global warming could be real, he has delayed,

denied or tried to derail any advancements to address

it, " says Betsy Loyless, vice president for policy for

the League of Conservation Voters, which has endorsed

John Kerry for president in 2004.

 

The Bush administration has refused to allow climate

experts to even participate in climate policy

discussions, asserts Rosina Bierbaum, a former

director of the White House science office. Rather

than consult with its own scientific advisors when

devising a strategy on climate change, the White House

constructed a plan primarily from conversations with

the National Economic Counsel.

 

" I wasn't asked anything, " says Bierbaum, now dean of

the University of Michigan's School of Natural

Resources and Environment. " In fact, I was told to

stop sending weekly science updates to the White

House, as had been the tradition with the previous

administration. "

 

Now that Bush is seeking reelection, he's certainly

not going to bring up global warming, which he's done

so little about. " Bush is not mentioning it because it

goes against the major interest of his supporters, "

says Ross Gelbspan, author of a new book on global

warming called " Boiling Point, " which calls for buying

out coal miners to speed the transition from

CO2-intensive coal to electricity made from renewable

sources. " Bush has given the reins of our climate and

energy policies to the coal and oil industries

completely. "

 

Oil and gas companies have contributed more than $2

million to Bush's reelection effort, making him the

largest recipient of the industry's campaign dollars,

according to the Center for Responsive Politics; and

the coal industry has given his reelection effort more

than $200,000, making the president that industry's

biggest beneficiary too.

 

When you dig into Bush's reelection campaign, you find

that he euphemistically refers to global warming as

" climate change, " and that his 2005 budget includes

nearly $2 billion for scientific research " focused on

reducing significant uncertainties in climate

science. "

 

" His response to everything is we still need more

study, " adds Kennedy. " You're never going to get a

scientist to say there is an absolute certainty that

this consequence is going to happen. You're standing

on a railroad track and a train is coming. A scientist

is not going to say that there is a complete 100

percent certainty that that train is going to hit you,

but it's still a good idea to get off the track. "

 

When Bush does address climate change, he brags about

his programs " Healthy Forests " and " Clear Skies, "

chipper names that mask what they actually do. The

programs allow companies to voluntarily reduce

greenhouse gas intensity, not overall greenhouse gas

emissions.

 

That means that as the economy grows, the ratio of

greenhouse gas emissions to economic output should not

grow as quickly. Yet that phenomenon is already

happening on its own; as the economy becomes more

service-oriented, it's naturally becoming less

CO2-intensive. According to the Government

Accountability Office, emission intensity was already

projected to drop 14 percent between 2002 and 2012.

 

" The core of the Bush policy was a voluntary goal of

reducing emissions 'intensity' by 18 percent by 2012, "

says Aimee Christensen, executive director of

Environment 2004, a political action group. So what

the policy really calls for -- but does not require --

is a mere 4 percent reduction in intensity. What's

lost in the discussion about " emissions intensity, "

says Christensen, is that actual greenhouse gas

emissions will increase 12 percent.

 

Compare that to the targets set by the Kyoto Protocol,

which would have mandated that by 2012 the U.S. return

to emission levels 7 percent below those of 1990, or

the McCain/Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act, which

asked that the U.S. return to year 2000 levels of

emissions. Both those plans would result in actual

reductions, not just intensity reductions. The Bush

administration walked away from the first proposal on

the international stage and opposed the second here at

home.

 

" Clearly, if the White House took a different

position, the McCain-Lieberman plan would have had a

good shot, " says Symons. " If President Bush put half

as much energy into doing something about global

warming as he does to opposing the efforts in

Congress, we may actually have gotten something done. "

 

While the U.S. rests on its voluntary plan for just

slightly reducing the growth rate of its global

warming emissions, it continues to account for more

than 20 percent of the man-made greenhouse gases

produced in the world. " It didn't take 9/11 and the

war on Iraq to begin to make the United States the

pariah in international circles, " says Randy Hayes,

founder of the Rainforest Action Network and director

of sustainability for Oakland, Calif. " Bush's fight

against the Kyoto Protocol, and the U.S. opposing

setting firm targets and timelines for the reduction

of greenhouse gases, did that. "

 

Further evidence that the voluntary Bush program is

not doing much of anything can be found in how few

companies participate in its much ballyhooed Climate

Leaders program. Fifty-six companies got involved,

with fewer than half of those agreeing to set targets

to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. " The bottom

line is, in the absence of a mandatory program you're

not going to have the kind of participation you need, "

says Vicki Arroyo, director of policy analysis for the

PEW Center on Global Climate Change.

 

After all, why should companies participate if they

don't have to? " With this voluntary framework, it just

creates so little incentive for people to do anything,

even if you have a good program in place to help them

do the right thing, " says Christensen.

 

And then there's Bush's Climate VISION program, which

allows industry sectors to set their own voluntary

emissions intensity reduction targets. Not

surprisingly, the industry associations set very

modest goals for themselves. For instance, the

electric power industry pledged to reduce carbon

intensity by 3 to 5 percent within the decade, while

complaining that this would be " very difficult " to

accomplish.

 

With his ideological opposition to forcing industry to

do anything, Bush has focused on funding research

initiatives into new technologies that could help

CO2-intensive industries emit less carbon in the

future -- the far future. For instance, he's

trumpeting his investment in a demonstration power

plant, which would capture and sequester the CO2

emissions under the ground. But concerns about

catastrophic CO2 leaks and possible aquifer

contamination have left some unconvinced. " Certainly,

the verdict is not in on coal sequestration, and until

it is, we're highly skeptical of that, " says Dave

Hamilton, director of global warming and energy

programs for the Sierra Club. Gelbspan is more direct.

" Carbon sequestration is a huge misuse of money that

could be put into renewable energy, " he says. " This

would be a boondoggle for Halliburton and Bechtel. If

you simply use that money to put up wind farms, you'd

be doing the right thing. "

 

Some environmental groups favor government investment

in research to try to make carbon sequestration work

-- but not without corresponding mandatory limits on

C02 emissions. " We're not going to support them in a

separate fashion because that's a way to get

swindled, " says David G. Hawkins, director of the

Natural Resources Defense Council's climate center. So

even if carbon sequestration does show promise,

subsidizing its research and development without also

forcing the coal industry to emit less C02 amounts to

a giveaway to a polluting industry.

 

Bush has adopted the same new-technology-is-our-savior

approach with the auto industry, funding research into

hydrogen fuel-cell cars, while only marginally raising

the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards

that regulate how many miles per gallon cars on the

road must get. He's hyped the promise of hydrogen

fuel-cell cars, which would emit nothing but water

from the tailpipe.

 

But despite his campaign's claim that such cars would

" emit no air pollutants or greenhouse gases, " using

hydrogen could actually end up creating a lot of CO2

emissions, according to Joseph Romm, the author of

" The Hype About Hydrogen: Fact and Fiction in the Race

to Save the Climate, " who was in charge of clean

energy in the Department of Energy in the Clinton

administration. That's because the hydrogen has to be

derived from somewhere and today 95 percent of

hydrogen in the U.S. comes from natural gas -- a

fossil fuel. And since hydrogen is such a diffuse gas

it would take a lot of energy to compress or deliver

it. Even those who continue to be more optimistic

about getting hydrogen from renewable sources in the

future don't see them on the road in large numbers for

decades.

 

While Bush bets on new technologies saving us from

global warming, the atmosphere continues to heat up.

" Climate scientists are divided on whether or not

there is global warming the same way that Americans

are divided about whether or not Ralph Nader should be

president, " says Eban Goodstein, an economics

professor at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore.,

who is founder of the Green House Network, a nonprofit

working to stop global warming. Which is to say,

they're not divided at all. " And without presidential

leadership and given the hold that anti-government

Republicans have, especially in the House, nothing

will happen. "

 

With the topic largely off the table in the

presidential reelection bid, the nation loses not only

more time, but an important chance for the president

to educate the public about the biggest environmental

threat to the country today.

 

" Global climate change is going to require a global

solution, " says Nigel Purvis, an environmental scholar

at the Brookings Institution. " The president is a very

important player on the issue of climate change. The

power of the office to educate the American people

does matter. " But apparently not in the office of this

president.

 

- - - - - - - - - - - -

 

About the writer

Katharine Mieszkowski is a senior writer for Salon

Technology.

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[Guest guest]

The Bush Republicans continue their nonsense, of arguing that global warming

is a " natural " and " cyclic " event, and not the result of human mishandling

of the envrionment. This is a deceptively simple-minded argument, and it

works against many people. The problem with the argument, is that even if

it were true, and I'm not acquainted enough with the science to say one way

or another, global warming poses huge risks for us and the planet, and

should be dealt with any way possible. In other words, it makes little

difference how it comes about, global warming is a potential disaster, and

we must find ways of dealing with it, and that includes curtailing

activities that promote it and worsen it; activities over which humans have

much control. The Republicans don't want to deal with it, because it will

cost everyone money, and " everyone " means Republicans as well as everyone

else.

JP

-

" Frank " <califpacific

<alternative_medicine_forum >

Saturday, September 11, 2004 3:59 AM

Bush: Global warming is just hot air

 

 

>

> http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/09/10/bush/index.html

>

> Bush: Global warming is just hot air

> The planet's getting hotter, ecosystems are going

> haywire, government scientists know it -- and still

> the president denies there's a problem. Guess which

> industry continues to fuel his campaign?

>

> - - - - - - - - - - - -

> By Katharine Mieszkowski

>

> Sept. 10, 2004 | Don't expect President Bush to

> discuss global warming -- the world's most serious

> environmental problem -- on the campaign trail in the

> next eight weeks. The former oilman from Texas doesn't

> dare alienate his friends in the fossil fuel and auto

> industries, prime purveyors of global warming. Bush

> still refuses to admit that burning Chevron with

> Techron in our Jeep Grand Cherokees, not to mention

> megatons of coal in our power plants, has brought us

> 19 of the 20 hottest years on record since 1980.

>

> " You're talking about a president who says that the

> jury is out on evolution, so what possible evidence

> would you need to muster to prove the existence of

> global warming? " says Robert F. Kennedy Jr., author of

> the new book " Crimes Against Nature. " " We've got polar

> ice caps melting, glaciers disappearing all over the

> world, ocean levels rising, coral reefs dying. But

> these people are flat-earthers. "

>

> In fact, Bush's see-no-evil, hear-no-evil stance on

> global warming is so intractable that even when his

> own administration's scientists weigh in on the issue,

> he simply won't hear of it.

>

> In a report sent to Congress at the end of August,

> government scientists argued that the warming of the

> atmosphere in recent decades cannot be explained by

> natural causes but must include such human sources as

> energy consumption and deforestation. It's a

> conclusion that a consensus of the world's

> climatologists reached years ago but that Bush has

> ignored throughout his presidency.

>