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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (16952)	1/25/2007 12:44:59 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Thanks.

To: longnshort who wrote (16952)	1/25/2007 1:41:38 PM
From: Mr. Palau	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

have you sent this to gw yet? he seems to be buying the whole climate change thing, lock, stock and barrel

To: longnshort who wrote (16952)	1/25/2007 7:25:03 PM
From: RMF	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 71588

WHY does EVERYTHING have to be either "Right" or "Left"? Considering how important "Global Warming" COULD be, shouldn't we try and be objective about it and not present it as a "political" issue? Maybe the whole thing is all bogus and we have nothing to worry about. Let's bring ALL these people (scientists) together and find out what's going on.

To: longnshort who wrote (16952)	2/5/2007 2:48:45 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

The latest U.N. report shows the "warming" debate is far from settled. Monday, February 5, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST Last week's headlines about the United Nation's latest report on global warming were typically breathless, predicting doom and human damnation like the most fervent religious evangelical. Yet the real news in the fourth assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may be how far it is backpedaling on some key issues. Beware claims that the science of global warming is settled. The document that caused such a stir was only a short policy report, a summary of the full scientific report due in May. Written mainly by policymakers (not scientists) who have a stake in the issue, the summary was long on dire predictions. The press reported the bullet points, noting that this latest summary pronounced with more than "90% confidence" that humans have been the main drivers of warming since the 1950s, and that higher temperatures and rising sea levels would result. More pertinent is the underlying scientific report. And according to people who have seen that draft, it contains startling revisions of previous U.N. predictions. For example, the Center for Science and Public Policy has just released an illuminating analysis written by Lord Christopher Monckton, a one-time adviser to Margaret Thatcher who has become a voice of sanity on global warming. Take rising sea levels. In its 2001 report, the U.N.'s best high-end estimate of the rise in sea levels by 2100 was three feet. Lord Monckton notes that the upcoming report's high-end best estimate is 17 inches, or half the previous prediction. Similarly, the new report shows that the 2001 assessment had overestimated the human influence on climate change since the Industrial Revolution by at least one-third. Such reversals (and there are more) are remarkable, given that the IPCC's previous reports, in 1990, 1995 and 2001, have been steadily more urgent in their scientific claims and political tone. It's worth noting that many of the policymakers who tinker with the IPCC reports work for governments that have promoted climate fears as a way of justifying carbon-restriction policies. More skeptical scientists are routinely vetoed from contributing to the panel's work. The Pasteur Institute's Paul Reiter, a malaria expert who thinks global warming would have little impact on the spread of that disease, is one example. U.N. scientists have relied heavily on computer models to predict future climate change, and these crystal balls are notoriously inaccurate. According to the models, for instance, global temperatures were supposed to have risen in recent years. Yet according to the U.S. National Climate Data Center, the world in 2006 was only 0.03 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in 2001--in the range of measurement error and thus not statistically significant. The models also predicted that sea levels would rise much faster than they actually have. The models didn't predict the significant cooling the oceans have undergone since 2003--which is the opposite of what you'd expect with global warming. Cooler oceans have also put a damper on claims that global warming is the cause of more frequent or intense hurricanes. The models also failed to predict falling concentrations of methane in the atmosphere, another surprise. Meanwhile, new scientific evidence keeps challenging previous assumptions. The latest report, for instance, takes greater note of the role of pollutant particles, which are thought to reflect sunlight back to space, supplying a cooling effect. More scientists are also studying the effect of solar activity on climate, and some believe it alone is responsible for recent warming. All this appears to be resulting in a more cautious scientific approach, which is largely good news. We're told that the upcoming report is also missing any reference to the infamous "hockey stick," a study by Michael Mann that purported to show 900 years of minor fluctuations in temperature, followed by a dramatic spike over the past century. The IPCC featured the graph in 2001, but it has since been widely rebutted. While everyone concedes that the Earth is about a degree Celsius warmer than it was a century ago, the debate continues over the cause and consequences. We don't deny that carbon emissions may play a role, but we don't believe that the case is sufficiently proven to justify a revolution in global energy use. The economic dislocations of such an abrupt policy change could be far more severe than warming itself, especially if it reduces the growth and innovation that would help the world cope with, say, rising sea levels. There are also other problems--AIDS, malaria and clean drinking water, for example--whose claims on scarce resources are at least as urgent as climate change. The IPCC report should be understood as one more contribution to the warming debate, not some definitive last word that justifies radical policy change. It can be hard to keep one's head when everyone else is predicting the Apocalypse, but that's all the more reason to keep cool and focus on the actual science. opinionjournal.com

To: longnshort who wrote (16952)	6/14/2007 11:59:57 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

It's Not Easy Pleasing Greens Do environmentalists oppose pollution or capitalism? BY COLLIN LEVY Friday, June 8, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT If you want to understand something about the changing nature of environmental politics, have a look at a group of New Jersey nuns. The Sisters of St. Dominic, who generate their own solar energy to reduce their carbon footprint, also own stock in ExxonMobil. In May, they led a shareholder movement to require the global oil giant to figure out how to reduce its own greenhouse impact by September. The story didn't get much attention in the nuns' backyard. But 3,000 miles away in northern California, it created a mini-firestorm. Here's why: Stanford University, which receives a $100 million research endowment for its Global Climate and Energy Project from Exxon to examine climate change--and owns stock in the company--also has a policy of supporting environmentally friendly initiatives. So would the university vote with the nuns at the next shareholder meeting? Or would it seek to protect the value of its investment, not to mention avoid giving offense to a big funder of its research programs, by voting with company executives? After much hand-wringing and "whither academic independence?" talk, Stanford voted against its benefactor and in favor of the nuns' proposal. Instead of indignation, the oil execs offered up a collective shrug. In a statement to the press, Exxon noted that it values its partnership with Stanford and considered the difference of opinion a non-event. The shareholder vote failed anyway, but the episode was revealing. As more big-business money goes to supporting research on alternative fuels, campus eco-warriors are having to rethink their agenda. The recent success of the environmental movement in selling the danger of climate change has forced a once-fringe group to reconsider its relationship to industrial science and capitalism. Indeed, it has to face the possibility that its pet problem may now lead to technological solutions, not the abandonment of industrial society and consumerism (the true dream of many greenies). A particularly telling illustration of this turning point is the falling out between Greenpeace and one of its founders, Patrick Moore. Mr. Moore considers climate change sufficiently dire as to require an embrace of that longstanding bête noire of the green team--nuclear energy. The same fissure is apparent on campus. Stanford and Berkeley have both entered into big-bucks corporate partnerships dedicated to what was once a great environmentalist goal--addressing the problem of energy sufficiency. But instead of celebrating victory, student activists are on the warpath. According to the script, Exxon and BP are supposed to be the "enemy," not the "solution." By lending their imprimatur to such industrial villains, the elite universities are complicit in the "greenwashing" of polluters. These accusations have come with the usual campus antics. In March, two Berkeleyites poured a slimy mixture on the university's steps and advised the community to get used to being soiled by its partnership with "Big Oil." In April, protesters staged a sit-in atop a redwood in the center of campus. Last month they led a march against the new campus institute devoted to researching biofuels. "BP was the straw that broke the camel's back," one student told the San Francisco Chronicle, "and then there was a lot of stuff on the back to begin with, such as nuclear weapons, military recruiters on campus and inadequate wages paid to custodians." All of this is particularly amusing in light of the hype in California last year over a ballot initiative called Proposition 87, also known as the "Clean Alternative Energy Act." Under the act, oil companies, having failed to invest enough in research on alternative fuels, would face a tax on each barrel of oil taken out of California. The money would be used in part to start a research fund for alternative energy technology. Many of the state's environmental glitterati rallied to support the initiative, including honorary resident Al Gore, Julia Roberts and Hollywood gadabout and heir Steve Bing, who pledged more than $40 million of his inherited wealth to the cause. The proposition failed, but the big oil companies launched new alternative fuel research institutes on California campuses shortly thereafter. Instead of gloating, Mr. Bing lashed out at Stanford for participating, publicly taking back $2.5 million of a gift to the school in protest. The outrage of Mr. Bing and others is hard to fathom, but their chief concern seems to be that, between them, the universities and the energy companies have cut the political activists out of control of the investment dollars. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a liberal watchdog group, has set up its own "Project for Integrity in Science" to "scrutinize conflicts of interest" at those schools and other nonprofit associations that receive corporate funding. The basic principle is fine: Transparency in philanthropy is generally a good thing. But the agenda of Mr. Bing and his environmentalist friends seems confused. Are they against capitalism or against pollution? Have they figured out that the two are not (always) the same? Ms. Levy is a senior editorial page writer. opinionjournal.com