Who Hijacked Our Country

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Climate Change

At a global conference in Kobe, Japan on natural disasters, the U.S. wants to purge all references to climate change, so the Bush administration can keep pretending that global warming isn’t a problem.

So, not mentioning something, deleting all references to it, will make the problem cease to exist? OK, I want to be able to jump 300 feet high, so we will now delete all references to gravity.

Rising sea levels, more droughts and more hurricanes (with more ferocity) will be the result of global warming. For people who want to insist that greenhouse gases have nothing to do with global warming – that it’s strictly a natural/cyclical phenomenon – fine; believe what you want. But global warming is happening – whatever the cause – and it needs to be dealt with.

Much of the world lives in low-lying areas near a coastline. With rising sea levels, future flooding catastrophes – similar to last month’s tsunami – could be triggered by a much smaller earthquake than the December quake that triggered the tsunami.

Jan Egeland, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said “I hope there will be a global recognition of climate change causing more natural disasters.” He also said “there is climate change. That is not really controversial. What is controversial is what causes climate change.”

The main document produced at the conference says climate change is one factor pointing toward “a future where disasters could increasingly threaten the world’s economy, and its population.” Other parts of the document call for strengthening research into global warming and for clear identification of “climate-related disaster risks.”

The U.S. (plus Australia and Canada) wants to delete all references to climate change. This deletion is opposed by the 25-member European Union and by poorer nations whose location and topography make them vulnerable to rising sea levels and intensified storms.


2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sounds rather, "Soviet," doesn't it? Sticking our heads in the sand won't make it go away.

Great blog!

Librarianguish
http://librarianguish.blogdrive.com/

January 26, 2005 at 10:31 AM  
Blogger Craig R. Harmon said...

For people who want to insist that greenhouse gases have nothing to do with global warming – that it’s strictly a natural/cyclical phenomenon – fine; believe what you want. But global warming is happening – whatever the cause – and it needs to be dealt with.It needs to be dealt with how? You are talking about a naturally occurring cycle that has, well, occurred in a natural cycle for many millions of years. Of course it is a problem. No one denies it.

The problem is that you assume that we have the power to avoid it. Fine, avoid the 9.0 suboceanic earthquake. Avoid the tsunami that resulted therefrom. Avoid the Mt. St. Helens eruption.

Ice ages come and ice ages go. In the process much of the earth becomes uninhabitable. Rail against it loudly enough, perhaps the next ice age will blush and change its mind. Unfortunately, nature rarely listens to human protests.

Why destroy the US economy because you believe that by doing so, nature will change its mind and not take the next scheduled nose-dive into ice age?

You envite me to believe what I want but insist that I "do something" about an event about which history shows we can do nothing.

January 26, 2005 at 6:54 PM  

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