{"article":{"id":119761,"heading":"&quot;CLIMATE CHANGE&quot; SCIENCE AND PRES. BUSH","author":"Denny Burbeck","created":"2004-11-24 21:56:27","modified":"2004-11-24 21:56:27","last_modified":"Thu, 25 Nov 2004 04:56:27","article":"<p>Since the '60s, the scientific community  <br>  <br> has been hammering away about the harm  <br>  <br> being done to the atmosphere by the  <br>  <br> burning of fossil fuels. They knew that  <br>  <br> the planet would warm gradually, and  <br>  <br> that it was necessary to start slowing  <br>  <br> down the use of CO-2 producing energy.  <br>  <br> They didn't have any concrete evidence  <br>  <br> of what was in the future but they knew  <br>  <br> it would cause change. Well, that was  <br>  <br> enough to get some legislation passed  <br>  <br> that helped a little. In fact, it helped  <br>  <br> allot in Los Angeles where smog had  <br>  <br> become a huge problem, but major  <br>  <br> changes in US and world use of carbon  <br>  <br> based fuels were difficult to make happen. <br><br> For decades, oil companies and the  <br>  <br> Energy Industry hired scientists to refute  <br>  <br> the claims of global warming. These  <br>  <br> \"company scientists\" gave bogus reports  <br>  <br> and tried to disprove every attempt by the  <br>  <br> real scientific community to bring a  <br>  <br> stronger awareness to the subject and get  <br>  <br> major legislation passed. <br><br> In '96 an oceanographer named Wally  <br>  <br> Broeker discovered the connection between  <br>  <br> ocean circulation and abrupt climate change.  <br>  <br> This was absolutely mind boggling news -  <br>  <br> that the result of global warming would be  <br>  <br> an abrupt (rather than the 10,000 year  <br>  <br> transition as had long been accepted) flip  <br>  <br> into \"ice age type\" weather patterns. This  <br>  <br> new information was slowly being accepted  <br>  <br> in the scientific community, and in '98 he  <br>  <br> was awarded the Nobel Prize for his  <br>  <br> discovery. This fact, that there is abrupt  <br>  <br> climate change coming, jolted the neo-cons  <br>  <br> into running the, then, Gov. George W. Bush <br>  <br> in the Presidential Primary, and they did so  <br>  <br> using any means necessary to guarantee a win  <br>  <br> (push polling Senator McCain, keeping  <br>  <br> democrats off of Florida's voting rolls, etc.).  <br>  <br> When Bush became President he immediately  <br>  <br> turned 180 degrees on his campaign pledges  <br>  <br> and started on his disastrous environmental  <br>  <br> melt down. <br><br> So, in 2001, the scientific community  <br>  <br> decided to do something that could not be  <br>  <br> refuted by anyone. They put together a  <br>  <br> world wide commission of almost 3,000  <br>  <br> experts - The International Arctic Science  <br>  <br> Committee - who came up with several  <br>  <br> possible scenarios from computer models  <br>  <br> of very dramatic changes, to more modest  <br>  <br> climate changes, and averaged the entire  <br>  <br> array to one that they all agree is very  <br>  <br> likely - The Arctic Climate Impact  <br>  <br> Assessment. <br><br> Based on tons of data, these scientists have  <br>  <br> finally finished the report and are releasing  <br>  <br> it to the public, the Congress, and the world.  <br>  <br> The data that they gathered shows an  <br>  <br> alarming rate of warming in the Arctic,  <br>  <br> where the ice cap is diminishing at  <br>  <br> increasing rates due to man's burning of  <br>  <br> fossil fuels, and there is no question about  <br>  <br> that. What will happen in the decades  <br>  <br> ahead is still, of course, unknown.....but  <br>  <br> there is consensus that climate change has  <br>  <br> already begun, and that it will continue, and  <br>  <br> that the rate of change will increase.  <br><br> At some point, the ice caps will melt to a  <br>  <br> level which will shut down the Atlantic  <br>  <br> Conveyor that distributes heat from the  <br>  <br> equatorial region to the poles. At some  <br>  <br> point in the future, the growing season in  <br>  <br> Kansas will likely be reduced to 5 to 10  <br>  <br> weeks a year. This knowledge, rather  <br>  <br> conspicuously, coincides with the right  <br>  <br> wing's blatant dismantling of the Bill of  <br>  <br> Rights and the Democracy of the United  <br>  <br> States.  <br><br> They too, now know what the result of  <br>  <br> their gluttony for profits and their decades  <br>  <br> long neglect of the environment will bring,  <br>  <br> and they are calling in all bets. They didn't  <br>  <br> know about the Atlantic Conveyor (and it's  <br>  <br> sister in the Pacific) and that global warming  <br>  <br> would eventually cause an abrupt climate  <br>  <br> change. That is, quite frankly, very hard to  <br>  <br> understand without proof. But the proof has  <br>  <br> been shown in study after study, and is  <br>  <br> irrefutable - and the right wing knows it. <br><br> President Bush was selected to lead our  <br>  <br> nation in this time of  \"climate change  <br>  <br> awareness\" very likely because of his  <br>  <br> coziness with the oil industry, and the  <br>  <br> energy industry is still unwilling to make  <br>  <br> major changes of their emissions or to  <br>  <br> curtail fossil fuel usage.  <br><br> The current Administration has a despicable  <br>  <br> record on the environment - the worst ever.  <br>  <br> They have rolled back laws, and placed <br>  <br> industry executives in oversight positions  <br>  <br> of the very industries they came from.  <br>  <br> Things have changed. We can now expect  <br>  <br> environmental concerns to be neglected  <br>  <br> even more than before, with the (supposed) <br>  <br> mandate Bush received in the November  <br>  <br> election. <br><br> You may not need to worry yourself about  <br>  <br> this if you can tuck your family away in a  <br>  <br> mansion in the Caribbean or the Cayman  <br>  <br> Islands, like all of President Bush's friends  <br>  <br> will be able to do when food supplies <br>  <br> start dwindling. If not.....perhaps you  <br>  <br> should worry. <br><br> <\/p>\n","contact":"dburbeck@650dialup.com","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"The scientific community, tired of being \r\nrefuted by &quot;corporate scientists&quot;, came \r\nup with the definitive report that cannot \r\nbe dispelled.\r\n","numcomment":0,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2004\/11\/119761.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[]}