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Baxter Pharr of Silverthorne writes:

While the majority of scientists and an increasing number of citizens are recognizing the growing threat of global warming, it seems that some of our politicians are still stuck in the dark ages. Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut has sponsored a bill called The Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007 which aims to reduce the U.S. emissions of greenhouse gasses by 50% by 2050. It appears that Colorado Senator Ken Salazar will support this bill and work to get it enacted into law. Colorado Senator Wayne Allard, however, has responded to the bill by stating: “Due to the global nature of the spread of greenhouse gasses, the US should not implement arbitrary restrictions that will drive industry and jobs to countries that do not have similar restrictions. Until science surrounding global climate is clear, I am unwilling to commit the United States to damaging economic hardships and substantial reductions in our quality of life.”
With only 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. emits about 30% of the world’s greenhouse gasses. While over 150 nations have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, only two industrialized nations (the U.S. and Australia) have refused to do so. While fuel mileage standards have not increased in the last 20 years in the U.S., standards in China and European nations are almost twice as high as ours. In fact, American automakers can’t sell their vehicles to China because we don’t meet their fuel standards! Carbon dioxide concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere are at the highest level (over 300 ppm) in the last 650,000 years. Ten of the hottest years on record (going back to the 1860s) have occurred in the last 12 years. 2006 was the hottest year ever recorded in the U.S. If this isn’t convincing evidence, wait to see the results from the new IPCC report. Please e-mail your elected representative at his website www.allard.senate.gov and tell him to wake up to the reality of global warming. Remind him that politicians who remain dinosaurs are heading for extinction.

This letter has not been edited.

READER COMMENTS

Let Gore pay for it.

evidently some citizens are too ;)

I bet it is only 1% of the American public that is emitting 25% of the greenhouse gasses. Make that 1% reduce their emissions.

What Baxter seems to not realize is that there has been consensus from the scientific community that the Earth is warming. While that may be compelling to some, consensus is not fact, nor is it even a theory at this point, as the data has not been able to successfully demonstrate a static theme. Climatologists and metorologists are not in consensus regarding man-made catastrophic global warming. And I have posted numerous links in the past to demonstrate that.

To talk about surface temperature and quote that 10 of the hottest years in the US were recorded in the last 12 years, is arbitrary at best, as it does not factor in what are called urban hot pockets. Of course with larger buildings of concrete and steel (products that retain heat for greater periods, that is why Denver will be warmer on average in the summer and winter than the plains), does nothing to demonstrate how gasses trap heat.

The ICPP Working Group I is tasked with finding "the correlation between human activity and global warming." Of COURSE they will come to a "consensus" that human's are "very likely to have contributed to global temperature change." But let's do some research shall we?

The released report (the 4th report from working group I) states that since 1960 (which is when they began measuring carbon dioxide in the atomosphere) has grown in the last ten years at a rate of 1.9 compared to 1.4, but does not factor in the rate of increase for the industrial revolution, which would have used coal unfiltered since the early 1900's. Group I's report also discusses ice core samples dating back to 650,000 years (not 1 millionn + years as Al Gore likes to claim when he is interviewed). Yet there are major concernes with ice dating samples and the integrity of those samples. But that is another topic for another time.

As I do not care to bore everyone reading this, the link to report 3 from the IPCC focused a great deal of energy (from 2001 mind you) on aerosol and a non globally uniformed change in temperature, but regional change. For your viewing pleasure, feel free to follow this link: http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/un/syreng/spm.pdf

In the IPCC second summary report, greenhous gasses decreased in the 1990's, yet that is the decade that is most quoted for being the "hottest on record" Here is the link to that report: http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/sarsum1.htm

Unfortunately, the first report is not available in English (how odd is that?). Now, I think that we should do what we can (recycle, utilize and develop more renewable energy, grow smartly in our urban sectors), but in no way do I believe (and I tend to listen to the experts on this, the climatologists) that we will have a catastrophic event that is human induced. History has shown time and again, that nature will adjust, and that climate is cyclical. We have had ice ages and hot climates long before humans inhabitated this earth, and we will long after we are gone (self inflicted or through a different natural event). Hype is used for a reason when referring to Global Warming. Please don't forget that.

The dark ages...hmmm.
Didn't the last warming period occur during the dark ages? And it seems that warming period was followed by what is now called "the little ice age" which ended arounded the 1940s.

The reasons for any climate change are difficult to discern. The one thing that is clear is that regardless of why the climate is changing, or even whether it is changing or not, we should not be putting garbage into the environment. Whether this is CO2 in the air or mercury in the water it is not something that will benefit the planet, and the creatures who must live here. Let's quit arguing about what causes climate change and do something about cleaning up where we live.

I have two comments on Jake's valuable post on global warming.

Jake: "Now, I think that we should do what we can (recycle, utilize and develop more renewable energy, grow smartly in our urban sectors), but in no way do I believe (and I tend to listen to the experts on this, the climatologists) that we will have a catastrophic event that is human induced."

That comment might lead one to believe that the climatologists are in agreement, but that is not the case, and I don't think Jake meant that.

http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/global_warming_worldbook.html

"Climatologists (scientists who study climate) have analyzed the global warming that has occurred since the late 1800's. A majority of climatologists have concluded that human activities are responsible for most of the warming."

While NASA may be wrong about what a majority of climatologists have concluded, I think it's fair to say that a large number of them think that human activity is at least partly to blame.

While the American Association of State climatologists don't reflect the above conclusion, even they do not reject outright the conclusion that human activity is partly at fault:

http://www.stateclimate.org/publications/files/aascclimatepolicy.pdf

I won't quote at length from their report but I will quote their final paragraph:

"Finally, ongoing political debate about global energy policy should not stand in the way of common sense action to reduce societal and environmental vulnerabilities to climate variability and change."

While Jake goes into some detail about the scientific factors, I don't consider myself sufficiently knowledgeable or educated in the science to try to reach my own conclusions rather than rely on what I read and hear.

"With only 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. emits about 30% of the world’s greenhouse gasses. While over 150 nations have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, only two industrialized nations (the U.S. and Australia) have refused to do so" - Baxter

The ecolefties LOVE to throw these numbers around. Let me finish the equation: The US has 5% of the world's population and we use 25% of the energy and we emit the greenhouses gases that accompany that use - AND the USA provides 40% of the world's goods and services of which a LARGE part is FOOD because of the capital & ENERGY intensive agriculture that we have where 3% of our population feeds 300 million Americans and much of the rest of the world. Also, on that abomination called Kyoto - it died under Clinton and would never have been ratified by the Senate and NOT ONE country that has ratified it has been able to comply with it. So it is absurd to use this as any reference on the viability of the Kyoto Protocol. And if China has such great standards - why are they exempted from Kyoto???

What is wrong with it getting a little warmer? Scare mongering works better if you have something to scare with.

I know some seals who are very happy about this warming trend.

What is wrong with it getting a little warmer

Simple John.

In any very complex balanced system, a change is far more likely to have detrimental effects than positive outcomes. A function of the law of entropy no doubt.

Any change, whether it is warming or cooling, is likely to have many effects that would not be welcome. Many systems are very finely balanced, so small changes can have quite dramatic effects. For example less than 0.5 C meant a very large change in the proliferation of a particular fungus, which then resulted in the extinction of a frog species. Similar things may happen to crops and insects or animals on which we depend. If it happened to bees for instance, we would be in a world of trouble.

Since this is a human-caused change, it means that unfamiliar mechanisms might be in play that otherwise would not be, so it is even more likely to have unwanted and unexpected outcomes.

It seems obvious enough that climate data from the mid 1800's to the present is not any kind of accurate representation of the Millions of years this planet has been orbiting the sun. So why is it that people beleive any information derived from such data is accurate?

The real issue with climate change is not what most politicians will make you think...they're main goal is to micro-manage the lives of everyone on the planet...fear mongering about the end of the world only helps them in this respect.

There is no solid evidence that people are the sole cause of global warming (meaning there is no evidence that controling human behavior will slow global warming)...please stop spreading fear among the populace...it just embarasses everyone

Roy,
it isn't being offered as an “accurate representation of the Millions of years this planet has been orbiting the sun”.
It is being offered as a predictive tool to understand what the climate is doing now and what we can expect over the next few hundred years. For that purpose the last few hundred years is very significant.

Of course your politicians hype it up and get it wrong, most of them are lawyers and have no scientific backround at all. Some have never taken a science class since middle-school, let alone have advanced degrees in climate science! What do you expect them to do?
If you want the climate science, then read the science journals or the press releases by the science bodies.

Try these instead:

www.nasonline.org
www.nap.edu
www.sciam.com
www.science.com
www.nature.com

” There is no solid evidence that people are the sole cause of global warming”

This is complete nonsense and huge misrepresentation of what the science is saying.
Nobody is saying that people are the sole cause, but rather that it is human activity that is the significant factor in the current warming episode.
This because we are releasing heat that was previously sequestered in oil, wood, coal, etc and we are also releasing gases (like CO2) that are opaque to infra-red radiation and thus trap significant amounts of heat that we release, and from geothermal activity, and from solar radiation.

The world’s scientific bodies have already weighed in on this issue and every science journal on the planet echoed and published the stance that the evidence is compelling.
This doesn’t mean they are right, but it does mean that there is no reason to withhold conditional acceptance.

I'm sure no politician wants to be like the VP in The Day After Tomorrow, a Hollywood libs wet dream scenario. So laws will be passed. Let's keep watch and make sure they do something good, like actually focusing on cleaning the environment from pollutants. Anything requiring emission scrubbing, biodegradeables, and waste disposal should be seriously considered. Anything requiring carbon allocations, percentage targets or credits for something should be summarily dismissed. Prevent the jerk-off politicians from enacting another shameless power grab.

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