Clinton calls climate change biggest threat to civilization
16:18 2006-01-28
DAVOS. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said Saturday that climate change was the most pressing threat to civilization.
Clinton, who was president from 1993-2001, said the issue was of paramount concern.
It "has the power to end the march of civilization as we know it," and could render everything else "irrelevant," Clinton said while he was being interviewed at the World Economic Forum by its founder, Klaus Schwab, AP reported.
V.A.
http://newsfromrussia.com/world/2006/01/28/71984.html
Trajan Octavian Titus said:lmfao, oh really Bill? The greatest threat to civilization is the myth of global warming? Been watching the Day After Tomorrow one to many times have we?
In Mr. Clinton's three biggest threats to civilization global terrorism and an Nuclear Iran didn't even get an honorable mention. Well atleast he didn't say it was Bush... there's always that.
Engimo said:I don't see what's to laugh about. Yes, there may be more imminent threats by way of nuclear proliferation, but if a nuclear holocaust fails to come global warming is going to be a giant, giant problem - one that we need to address now before it is too late.
I concurcherokee said:Clinton calls climate change biggest threat to civilization
I disagree I see human stupidly is the greatest threat.
Extremists and such.
DeeJayH said:I concur
but Climate Change is a serious problem
however it is not a result of Greenhouse emissions
that would be the Stupidity of humans
it is a naturally occuring phase of the planet
If our country still stands, we will also be found guilty of causing the next ice-age
it has been heating and cooling since it was formed
Either we adapt or die. That is survival of the fittest
that is how mother nature weeds out those not worthy of continuing on
Engimo said:I don't see what's to laugh about. Yes, there may be more imminent threats by way of nuclear proliferation, but if a nuclear holocaust fails to come global warming is going to be a giant, giant problem - one that we need to address now before it is too late.
Scarecrow Akhbar said:The Rapist is either trying to resurrect Gore's political fortunes, or he's being the extreme far left patsy so his slut wife can pretend to be a 'centrist'.
That's what it's all about.
The biggest threat to the human race is Hillary Clinton.
Hoot said:What is this? The 3rd grade all over again?
Your posts would have far more meaning and carry far more weight if you could refrain from showing off your bias.
I'm no fan of Bush, but I have never referred to him in such derogatory terms, as I respect the office of the Presidency.
Trajan Octavian Titus said:Ya if Global Warming wasn't the single biggest hoax ever perpetrated against the American people.
Engimo said:Not only did you reply to me in nearly exactly the same way twice, you make unsubstantiated claims both times. On what scientific basis can you say that global warming is a hoax, huh? Are you a closet climatologist?
Science Has Spoken:
Global Warming Is a Myth
by Arthur B. Robinson and Zachary W. Robinson
Copyright 1997 Dow Jones & Co., Inc.
Reprinted with permission of Dow Jones & Co., Inc.
The Wall Street Journal (December 4, 1997)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Political leaders are gathered in Kyoto, Japan, working away on an international treaty to stop "global warming" by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The debate over how much to cut emissions has at times been heated--but the entire enterprise is futile or worse. For there is not a shred of persuasive evidence that humans have been responsible for increasing global temperatures. What's more, carbon dioxide emissions have actually been a boon for the environment.
The myth of "global warming" starts with an accurate observation: The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising. It is now about 360 parts per million, vs. 290 at the beginning of the 20th century, Reasonable estimates indicate that it may eventually rise as high as 600 parts per million. This rise probably results from human burning of coal, oil and natural gas, although this is not certain. Earth's oceans and land hold some 50 times as much carbon dioxide as is in the atmosphere, and movement between these reservoirs of carbon dioxide is poorly understood. The observed rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide does correspond with the time of human release and equals about half of the amount released.
Carbon dioxide, water, and a few other substances are "greenhouse gases." For reasons predictable from their physics and chemistry, they tend to admit more solar energy into the atmosphere than they allow to escape. Actually, things are not so simple as this, since these substances interact among themselves and with other aspects of the atmosphere in complex ways that are not well understood. Still, it was reasonable to hypothesize that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels might cause atmospheric temperatures to rise. Some people predicted "global warming," which has come to mean extreme greenhouse warming of the atmosphere leading to catastrophic environmental consequences.
Careful Tests
The global-warming hypothesis, however, is no longer tenable. Scientists have been able to test it carefully, and it does not hold up. During the past 50 years, as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen, scientists have made precise measurements of atmospheric temperature. These measurements have definitively shown that major atmospheric greenhouse warming of the atmosphere is not occurring and is unlikely ever to occur.
The temperature of the atmosphere fluctuates over a wide range, the result of solar activity and other influences. During the past 3,000 years, there have been five extended periods when it was distinctly warmer than today. One of the two coldest periods, known as the Little Ice Age, occurred 300 years ago. Atmospheric temperatures have been rising from that low for the past 300 years, but remain below the 3,000-year average.
Why are temperatures rising? The first chart nearby shows temperatures during the past 250 years, relative to the mean temperature for 1951-70. The same chart shows the length of the solar magnetic cycle during the same period. Close correlation between these two parameters--the shorter the solar cycle (and hence the more active the sun), the higher the temperature--demonstrates, as do other studies, that the gradual warming since the Little Ice Age and the large fluctuations during that warming have been caused by changes in solar activity.
The highest temperatures during this period occurred in about 1940. During the past 20 years, atmospheric temperatures have actually tended to go down, as shown in the second chart, based on very reliable satellite data, which have been confirmed by measurements from weather balloons.
Consider what this means for the global-warming hypothesis. This hypothesis predicts that global temperatures will rise significantly, indeed catastrophically, if atmospheric carbon dioxide rises. Most of the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide has occurred during the past 50 years, and the increase has continued during the past 20 years. Yet there has been no significant increase in atmospheric temperature during those 50 years, and during the 20 years with the highest carbon dioxide levels, temperatures have decreased.
In science, the ultimate test is the process of experiment. If a hypothesis fails the experimental test, it must be discarded. Therefore, the scientific method requires that the global warming hypothesis be rejected.
Why, then, is there continuing scientific interest in "global warming"? There is a field of inquiry in which scientists are using computers to try to predict the weather--even global weather over very long periods. But global weather is so complicated that current data and computer methods are insufficient to make such predictions. Although it is reasonable to hope that these methods will eventually become useful, for now computer climate models are very unreliable. The second chart shows predicted temperatures for the past 20 years, based on the computer models. It's not surprising that they should have turned out wrong--after all the weatherman still has difficulty predicting local weather even for a few days. Long-term global predictions are beyond current capabilities.
So we needn't worry about human use of hydrocarbons warming the Earth. We also needn't worry about environmental calamities, even if the current, natural warming trend continues: After all the Earth has been much warmer during the past 3,000 years without ill effects.
But we should worry about the effects of the hydrocarbon rationing being proposed at Kyoto. Hydrocarbon use has major environmental benefits. A great deal of research has shown that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide accelerate the growth rates of plants and also permit plants to grow in drier regions. Animal life, which depends upon plants, also increases.
Standing timber in the United States has already increased by 30% since 1950. There are now 60 tons of timber for every American. Tree-ring studies further confirm this spectacular increase in tree growth rates. It has also been found that mature Amazonian rain forests are increasing in biomass at about two tons per acre per year. A composite of 279 research studies predicts that overall plant growth rates will ultimately double as carbon dioxide increases.
Lush Environment
What mankind is doing is moving hydrocarbons from below ground and turning them into living things. We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon dioxide increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with twice as much plant and animal life as that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the industrial revolution.
Hydrocarbons are needed to feed and lift from poverty vast numbers of people across the globe. This can eventually allow all human beings to live long, prosperous, healthy, productive lives. No other single technological factor is more important to the increase in the quality, length and quantity of human life than the continued, expanded and unrationed use of the Earth's hydrocarbons, of which we have proven reserves to last more than 1,000 years. Global warming is a myth. The reality is that global poverty and death would be the result of Kyoto's rationing of hydrocarbons.
Arthur Robinson and Zachary Robinson are chemists at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.
A Treaty Built on Hot Air, Not Scientific Consensus
by S. Fred Singer
Wall Street Journal, July 25, 1997
Yesterday, in opening a White House conference on global warming, President Clinton announced, "The overwhelming balance of evidence and scientific opinion is that it is no longer a theory but now a fact that global warming is real." In support of this contention, the president and other politicians have been busy citing the "2,500 scientists" who supposedly endorse the U.N.'s 1996 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, and thus a forecast of catastrophic global warming.
Actual climate observations, however, show that global warming is mostly a phantom problem. Perhaps that's why Mr. Clinton and Vice President Al Gore harp so much on a "scientific consensus"—which sounds so impressive to nonscientists. Yet science doesn't operate by vote.
How did the IPCC come up with 2,500 scientists? If one were to add up all contributors and reviewers listed in the three IPCC reports published in 1996, one would count about 2,100. The great majority of these are not conversant with the intricacies of atmospheric physics, although some may know a lot about forestry, fisheries or agriculture. Most are social scientists -- or just policy experts and government functionaries. Every country in the world seems to be represented -- from Albania to Zimbabwe -- though many are not exactly at the forefront of research. The list even includes known skeptics of global warming -- much to their personal and professional chagrin.
The IPCC report has some 80 authors for its 11 chapters, but only a handful actually wrote the Policymakers' Summary; most of the several hundred listed "contributors" are simply specialists who allowed their work to be cited, without necessarily endorsing the other chapters or the summary. Contrast these numbers with the nearly 100 climate scientists who signed the Leipzig Declaration in 1996, expressing their doubts about the validity of computer-driven global warming forecasts. It takes a certain amount of courage to do this -- given that it could jeopardize research grants from U.S. government agencies that have adopted climate catastrophe as an article of faith, and managed to convince Congress to ante up about $2 billion a year.
Even some IPCC climate scientists, in the report itself or in a May 16 Science article headlined "Greenhouse Forecasting Still Cloudy," have expressed doubts about the validity of computer models and about the main IPCC conclusion, that "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate" -- whatever that ambiguous phrase may mean. A Dec. 20, 1995, Reuters report quoted British scientist Keith Shine, one of IPCC's lead authors, discussing the IPCC Policymakers’ Summary: "We produce a draft, and then the policymakers go through it line by line and change the way it is presented.... It's peculiar that they have the final say in what goes into a scientists' report." The Science and Environmental Policy Project conducted a survey of IPCC scientific contributors and reviewers; we found that about half did not support the Policymakers' Summary. Parallel surveys by the Gallup organization and even by Greenpeace International produced similar results.
Of course, scientists do accept the existence of a natural greenhouse effect in the atmosphere, which has been known since the 19th century and is not to be confused with any influence from human activity. Another accepted fact is that greenhouse gases have been increasing as a consequence of an expanding world population: carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, for instance, and methane from raising cattle. But the climate warming of the past 100 years, which occurred mainly before 1940, in no way supports the results of computer models that predict a drastic future warming. Even IPCC Chairman Bert Bolin has admitted that the pre-1940 warming is likely a natural recovery from a previous, natural cooling. Most important, though, is the fact -- not mentioned in the IPCC summary -- that weather satellite observations, independently backed by data from balloon-borne sensors, have shown no global warming trend whatsoever in the past 20 years.
The discrepancy between calculated predictions of warming and the actual observations of no warming has produced a crisis for many scientists. Those who believe in global warming keep hoping that proof is just around the corner. Consider this passage from the May 16 Science article: "[M]any scientists say it will be a decade before computer models can confidently link the warming to human activities."
It is ironic that an environmental lobbying group, the Environmental Defense Fund, would admit in a brochure on global warming: "Scientists need to do considerably more work to sort out which [hypotheses] are most likely to be true." The EDF complains, however, that the "skepticism and constant questioning that lie at the heart of science" sometimes "cloud the debate." Perhaps so; but more often they advance the science.
http://www.sepp.org/glwarm/hotair.html
Trajan Octavian Titus said:On the basis that there is no substantiative evidence that backs up the assertion. First the environmentalists in the 70s said that humans were going to bring about another ice age then when that doesn't pan out they say that humans are creating global warming. The fact of the matter is that humans can't cause climate change anymore than they can stop it. The global warming myth is used by socialists and communists to put an end to American econonomic and industrial hegemony by saying that we should enter into the Kyoto accords which would only hurt the industrial output of the U.S. and does not hurt the industries of other leading oil consumers; such as, China and India who are exempt from the stringent industrial regulations due to their "developing nations," status. The hierarchy of socialist dominated academia has created a fake problem to which the only solution is the downfall of U.S. industrial supremacy. The ice caps haven't receded any more than they have through the course of natural events long before the industrial revolution, and mainstream scientists have now come to the conclusion that their original assumption of CFCs and the loss of destroying the ecosystem were fallacious due to other important variables which they failed to take into account; such as, volcanic dust clouds and sediments in the atmosphere which absorve the suns harmful radiation.
Don't take my word for it the scientists have spoken:
At present, our most accurate knowledge about climate sensitivity is base on data from the earth's history, and this evidence reveals that small forces, maintained long enough, can cause large climate change.
Human-made forces, especially greenhouse gases, soot and other small particles, now exceed natural forces, and the world has begun to warm at a rate predicted by climate models.
The stability of the great ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica and the need to preserve global coastlines set a low limit on the global warming that will constitute "dangerous anthropogenic interference" with climate.
Halting global warming requires urgent, unprecedented international cooperation, but the needed actions are feasible and have additional benefits for human health, agriculture and the environment.
Engimo said:Yes, the scientists have spoken 10 years ago. Might I point you to a more recent Scientific American article?
"Most scientists spend their lives working to shore up the reigning world view - the dominant paradigm - and those who disagree are always much fewer in number," says climatologist Patrick Michaels of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, a leading proponent of this view. The drive to conformity is accentuated by peer review, which ensures that only papers in support of the paradigm appear in the literature, Michaels says, and by public funding that gives money to research into the prevailing "paradigm of doom". Rebels who challenge prevailing orthodoxies are often proved right, he adds.
Apocalypse Soon?
No, But This Movie (and Democrats) Hope You'll Think So
By Patrick J. Michaels
Sunday, May 16, 2004; Page B01
On March 13, the Guardian newspaper of London, beating the American networks by nearly eight months, called the U.S. presidential election -- for Sen. John F. Kerry. The Democrat would win, the paper declared, not because of his plan for Iraq, or his proposals for the economy, but because of . . . a movie.
Specifically, a movie about global warming. It's called "The Day After Tomorrow." And if it doesn't actually unseat George Bush, it won't be for lack of trying. It opens on May 28, but this movie is already being vocally touted by none other than former vice president Al Gore, on behalf of MoveOn.org, a liberal Internet advocacy group backed in part by billionaire George Soros that appears to be dedicated to defeating Bush.
Pat Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of the upcoming book "Meltdown: The Predictable Exaggeration of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media" (Cato Books).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28338-2004May14?language=printer
Trajan Octavian Titus said:The climatologist Patrick Michaels says this is what the Philosopher Thomas Kuhn referred to as the "paradigm problem,"
This article explains what the problem is:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,175241,00.html
Go to this sight to find out what many climatolgists have said about the global warming myth:
http://junkscience.com/
Here's a good article by Patrick Michaels on the Day After Tomorrow movie:
Dr. Holdren of Harvard University said:"Michaels is another of the handful of US climate-change contrarians... He has published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill op-ed pieces and indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science."
Peter Gleick said:"Pat Michaels is not one of the nation's leading researchers on climate change. On the contrary, he is one of a very small minority of nay-sayers who continue to dispute the facts and science about climate change in the face of compelling, overwhelming, and growing evidence."
Engimo said:Junkscience.com is not a legitimate site, and Patrick Michaels is not in agreement with the majority of the scientific world. They are both primarily political (and not scientific) outlets that have a clear agenda.
Patrick Michaels
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Patrick J. Michaels (born c. 1942?) is a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, and the state climatologist for Virginia. His professional specialty was the influence of climate on agriculture. He is noted for his views as an opponent of global warming theory and frequently writes and speaks for popular audiences on the topic of climate change. He is a fellow of the Cato Institute and edits the World Climate Report, published by the Western Fuels Association through WFA's Greening Earth Society. His work has been published in Climate Research, Climatic Change and Geophysical Research Letters.
Although Michaels is a noted skeptic and continues to dispute some aspects of global warming theory, he recently accepted the conclusion of the IPCC that there is a human influence on the climate. He continues to maintain, however, that current and future warming will occur at the low end of the range IPCC assessments:
scientists know quite precisely how much the planet will warm in the foreseeable future, a modest three-quarters of a degree (C) [in 50 years]
All this has to do with basic physics, which isn't real hard to understand. It has been known since 1872 that as we emit more and more carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, each increment results in less and less warming. In other words, the first changes produce the most warming, and subsequent ones produce a bit less, and so on. But we also assume carbon dioxide continues to go into the atmosphere at an ever-increasing rate. In other words, the increase from year-to-year isn't constant, but itself is increasing. The effect of increasing the rate of carbon dioxide emissions, coupled with the fact that more and more carbon dioxide produces less and less warming compels our climate projections for the future warming to be pretty much a straight line. Translation: Once human beings start to warm the climate, they do so at a constant rate. [1]
This "linear" view is not accepted by some climate scientists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Michaels
Trajan Octavian Titus said:This is the problem and I can't believe you don't realize it, whenever a scientist comes out against the current paradigm he is ridiculed by the so called "mainstream," scientific community, this is nothing knew it's been happening from the start of scientific exploration, a paradigm shift is a hard thing for the scientific community to accept, because it would mean that they had been wrong all along; it happened when scientists came to the insane conclusions that the world wasn't flat, the sun didn't revolve around the earth, and man descended from monkeys.
Here's a less biased synopsis of Dr. Patricks scientific credentials:
Engimo said:You are wrong. Paradigm shifts in science, if they are grounded in fact, occur instantly. When Albert Einstein published his theory of Special Relativity, despite the fact that it overturned all conventional ways of thinking about the universe and Newton's classical mechanics that had existed for hundreds of years, it was accepted (relatively) overnight. When the mainstream scientific opinion is wrong, they admit it - that's how science works. The mainstream, now, is saying that global warming exists and that it is going to be a problem.
Think about it from a common sense point of view: Even if global warming is not as bad as scientists say it will be, do you really think that the emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere is going to be anything but bad for the Earth? Why not err on the side of caution?
Myth my ass, as a none scientist and irrational mind that is so focused on driving your big ass SUV gas guzzler you merely refuse to see the facts and proofs of global warming. Even this administration of Bush Inc. has admited to the facts of global warming not being merely a phenomenon but fact.Trajan Octavian Titus said:Ya maybe if Global Warming wasn't a myth in the rirst place.
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