Climate Change


The Left The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 Report “Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years. The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture.” See link here National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) “New research into the Earth’s paleoclimate history by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies director James E. Hansen suggests the potential for rapid climate changes this century, including multiple meters of sea level rise, if global warming is not abated.” “This warming is largely driven by increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide, emitted by the burning of fossil fuels at power plants, in cars and in industry. At the current rate of fossil fuel burning, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will have doubled from pre-industrial times by the middle of this century. A doubling of carbon dioxide would cause an eventual warming of several degrees, Hansen said.” See link here National Geographic “In the last century, the planet temperature has risen unusually fast…Scientists believe it’s human activity that is driving the temperatures up, a process known as global warming.” The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) One of the most prominent experts on climate science, Rajendra Pachauri, and Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is criticizing negotiators at the United Nations (UN) climate change conference for not paying enough attention to science. Watch report below Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “The reality is that the IPCC mobilizes the best scientists from all over the world, thousands of them. We function in a totally transparent, objective manner. These are scientists who devote their time without any compensation from the IPCC. The IPCC has a very lean secretariat, it’s a very small body, it’s not a large bureaucracy. We are governed by all the governments of the world, and when we carry out an assessment, at each stage, the draft has to be peer reviewed by experts. We take their comments on-board and then finally, all the governments of the world review our draft and we take their comments into account and come up with a final version. So if you want to invent a system whereby the best and most diverse scientific expertise from all across the globe could be harnessed for getting out an assessment of climate change what would you come up with? The IPCC.” ~ If this video fails to start at the quote highlighted above, it begins at 7 minutes 3 seconds ~ ABC News *“A vast majority of Americans, 85%, now believe that global warming is happening.”* “The vast majority of scientists have determined global warming to be a real threat. So why has it taken so long to convince Americans? Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ross Gelbspan blames a 15 year misinformation campaign by the oil and coal industries.“ Watch full report in video below Discovery Channel “Dr. Oppenheimer is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs at Princeton University and one of the world’s leading scientists studying the potential effects of global warming. His research on the effects of warming on atmospheric chemistry, ecosystems and the nitrogen cycle, ocean circulation and the ice sheets helped inform the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. Dr. Oppenheimer is one of the scientists featured in Discovery Channel’s two-hour special, Global Warming: What You Need to Know With Tom Brokaw.” Open the link below to get some answers by Dr. Oppenheimer http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/globalwarming/boards/boards.html The video below provides a counter to the documentary presented for the right.	The Right Paul Driessen, Author Green Power, Black Death “My big concern with global warming is that the policies being pushed to supposedly prevent global warming are having a disastrous effect on the worlds poorest people” James Shitkwaki, Economist and Author “The rich countries can afford to engage in some luxurious experimentation with other forms of energy. But for us, we are still at the stage of survival…One clear thing that in my view from the whole environmental debate is the point that there is somebody keen to kill the African dream. And the African dream is to develop.” The Congressional Budget Office “Regardless of how the allowances were distributed, most of the cost of meeting a cap on C02 emissions would be borne by consumers, who would face persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline. Those price increases would be regressive in that poorer households would bear a larger burden relative to their income than wealthier households…Job losses in those industries would be likely to impose a fairly large burden on a relatively small number of households; investors’ losses, by contrast, would tend to impose a smaller burden on a much larger number of households.” Verify at pages 1-2 in report. here ________________________________________ Professor Paul Reiter – Pasteur Institute, Paris “We imagine we live in an age of reason, and the global warming alarm is dressed up as science, but it’s not science, it’s propaganda.“ Dr. Tim Ball – Former Professor of Climatology – Winnepeg *“When people say we don’t believe in global warming, I say no I believe in global warming – I don’t believe that human CO2 is causing it.”* Professor Nir Shaviv – Institute of Physics, Hebrew University Jerusalem “A few years ago if you had asked me, I would have told you it’s CO2. Why? Because just like everyone else in the public I listened to what the media had to say. There is no direct evidence which links twentieth century global warming to atherogenic green house gases” Professor Ian Clark, Arctic Paleoclimatologist “You can’t say that CO2 will drive climate, it certainly never did in the past.” (See all of the above statements in documentary below) ________________________________________ Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.” See link here See more about the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine Global Warming Petition Project here ________________________________________ Professor Philip Stott – Emeritus Professor of Biogeography – University of London “Inevitably, the moment politicians put their weight behind something and attach their name to it in some ways, of course, money will flow. The IPCC, like any UN body, is political. The final conclusions are politically driven.” Dr. Roy Spencer, University of Alabama at Huntsville *“Scientists need there to be a problem in order to get funding.”* Professor Paul Reiter – Pasteur Institute, Paris “This claim that the IPCC is the worlds top one thousand five hundred, or two thousand five hundred scientists, you look at the bibliographies of the people and it’s simply not true.” ~ If this video fails to start at the quote highlighted above, it begins at 32 minutes 49 seconds ~ Another example of the potential risk for scientists and their “science” to be up for sale, whether their science is fact or fiction. New York Times, June 2010 “In selling the health care overhaul to Congress, the Obama administration cited a once obscure research group at Dartmouth College to claim that it could not only cut billions in wasteful health care spending but make people healthier by doing so. But while the research compiled in the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care has been widely interpreted as showing the country’s best and worst care, the Dartmouth researchers themselves acknowledged in interviews that in fact it mainly shows the varying costs of care in the government’s Medicare program. Measures of the quality of care are not part of the formula. For all anyone knows, patients could be dying in far greater numbers in hospitals in the beige regions than hospitals in the brown ones, and Dartmouth’s maps would not pick up that difference. As any shopper knows, cheaper does not always mean better. The mistaken belief that the Dartmouth research proves that cheaper care is better care is widespread — and has been fed in part by Dartmouth researchers themselves. Dr. Donald Berwick, nominated by President Obama to run Medicare, called it the most important research of its kind in the last quarter-century. In March, in response to the Congressional Democrats who would have otherwise withheld their support for the health legislation, the administration made a promise. It said it would ask the Institute of Medicine, a nongovernment advisory group, to consider ways of putting the Dartmouth findings into action by setting payment rates that would punish inefficient hospitals and reward efficient ones. In interviews, Dr. Fisher and Mr. Skinner acknowledged that there was no proven link between greater spending and worse health outcomes. In any case, the more-is-worse message has resonated with insurers, whose foundations now help to finance the Dartmouth Atlas. Dartmouth researchers also created a company, Health Dialog, to consult for insurers and others on Dartmouth’s findings. Valued at nearly $800 million, the company was sold to a British insurer in 2007 and still helps to finance the Dartmouth work.” Read full report here