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Climate change implications too dire to ignore
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Also by Claire Rydell:
- Decline in youth turnout an American embarassment (September 26, 2008)
- Climate change implications too dire to ignore (September 12, 2008)
- Editorial Editors' claims insulting (September 10, 2008)
- Elections cannot stop unity (April 17, 2008)
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There is a unique urgency in the right here and the right now. Today, the arduous task of fixing America’s problems seems more crucial than ever. We cannot afford to suffer through another four years of the politics that have bankrupted our economy, led us into Iraq indefinitely and wreaked havoc on our planet. Our country, our fellow citizens and our environment most certainly cannot take another four years of Bush politics. This November, more is at stake than merely our country or the international community. Our planet is in peril, and we need to take action to stop global warming.
The world cannot wait another four, eight or twelve years to combat global warming. If we continue our current habits, the arctic region could have its first ice-free summer before the year 2040. Unless we combat the emission of heat-trapping gases, they could increase an additional 90 percent by 2030. Without action, deaths resulting from global warming will double to reach 300,000 annually within the next 25 years.
As individuals, we can begin to change the world right now. We can drive fuel efficient cars, buy local food and recycle. We can switch to energy-saving light bulbs, unplug our unused electronics and plant a few trees.
As voters, we can start this very minute. Although individual action is important, we also need elected men and women in office to pass environmentally conscious legislation while also encouraging their constituents to go green.
Sen. Barack Obama has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050 through a cap-and-trade system that would auction off pollution credits with the proceeds funding green energy programs. Obama’s plan — which includes creating 5 million new green jobs, converting 25 percent of America’s electricity to renewable sources by 2025 and putting one million plug-in hybrid cars on the road by 2015 — will drastically reduce the amount of oil we import from the Middle East and Venezuela within 10 years.
In addition to these domestic changes, Obama will provide leadership around the world for combating global warming. If the largest industrialized nation in the world is reducing greenhouse gas emissions, other countries will follow.
If we don’t act to stop global warming, we will be left with a planet unrecognizable to future generations. By electing Democrats who will work to combat global warming, this November we can make a positive change in the world.
We cannot afford to sit back and let the environment be ruined for our children and grandchildren. The warming of our planet and the degradation of the natural world are current issues but are also relevant for the future. Four years from now might be too late to make a difference.
I ask each and every one of you to recognize the necessity of protecting the environment sooner rather than later. I encourage you to come and find out how you can help make a difference in your community, country and planet. Come check out the College Democrats at our kickoff meeting this Tuesday, Sept. 16 at 7 p.m. in 3650 Humanities.
Claire Rydell (Claire.Rydell@wiscollegedems.org) is the chair of the College Democrats.
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Not to be rude but if you think that Obama can actually accomplish even 10% of the things you mention you are crazy.
Where do you get your nutjob statistics from? The wholly discredited IPCC?
I AGREE but I fear that soon, Republicans will manage to turn this into some sort of “wimpy democratic issue,” which is VERY scary to me. if the republicans know anything, they know how to appeal to the idiots of america.
Too bad for your argument that the world has been getting cooler for that last 10 years.
Global warming would be a problem.
An ice age would mean the end of civilization, it is overdue - perhaps the extra CO2 delays it? An ice age will cause billions of deaths.
Even another Little Ice Age like the Maunder Minimum would probably result in a lot of starvation. Deaths would be in the millions if not billions.
Claire and UW-MadTown Students, Could we put aside the politics and emotional cries of “crises” and address the hypothesis of Man-Made Global Warming with reason and data? Let’s start with a simple statement of fact: Our planet has been much warmer in the geologic past than it is today. It has also been cooler. The climate has constantly changed over many glacial epics to accommodate these warming and cooling cycles.
The dire global warming predictions that Claire so stridently asserts as facts are based on computer models. These ‘Global Warming’ computer models have not and can not be validated. They are unreliable, by any honest scientific standard of validation. Our best current computer models can not predict the local weather 2 weeks from today with 2 degree celcius accuracy. Yet many advocates of Anthropogenic Global Warming, including the politcally motivated United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN-IPCC), would have us believe that they can predict the temperature in Greenland 100 years from now will be 2 - 4 degrees celcius higher and causing global floods and disasters! You don’t have to have advanced degrees in science and engineering to recognize the intrinsic folly of statements like that.
There are many scientists contesting the hypothesis of Man-Made Global Warming. The fundamental physics are challenged (Ref: “Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics, http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161). The methods currently used to measure CO2 gas in the atmosphere and within ice core records from Greenland and Antarctica are shown to be be erroneous (Ref: 180 YEARS OF ATMOSPHERIC CO2 GAS ANALYSIS BY CHEMICAL METHODS http://www.biomind.de/nogreenhouse/daten/EE%2018-2Beck.pdf ). The correlation of CO2 atmospheric content with ‘global mean temperture’ is challenged and shown to be without merit (Ref: Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide http://www.petitionproject.org/gwdatabase/GWArticle/GWReview_OISM600.pdf ).
Reducing pollution and finding more efficient ways to manufacture and utilize energy is a goal we should all ascribe to. However, strident political assertions of impending disaster based on hotly contested hypotheses, unvalidated computer models, and climatic variables and complexities beyond our current understanding do nothing to support those goals. The politics of imagined “crises” and “disaster” lead to wasted public resources and unanticipated adverse complications. The Law of Unintended Consequences has a way of regularly smiting the Innovation By Governmental Decree League about the head and shoulders. As we are currently witnessing, tax subsidies for grain based ethanol fuel production has lead to higher food prices here in the US and increasing hunger and starvation in undeveloped countries without the financial means to buy the higher prices grains. If you follow Claire’s histrionic urgings, you will get more such wasted time, effort, tax money, and adverse consequences.
More than 31,000 degreed American scientists have signed a petition stating that “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or greenhouse gases is causing, or will cause in the foreseeable future, catastrophic heating of the earths atmosphere….” (Ref: The Glogal Warming Petition Project, http://www.petitionproject.org/ ). Collectively, these Americans urge our government and politicians to reject the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypotheses and any national and international programs or agreements based on them. You should also.
Invictus Maneo
Haven’t you heard?! We’re fighting global cooling now! The earth is headed into another ice age.
We’re at war with Eastasia now, we were never at war with Eurasia, they are our ally.
Wow, it’s funny to see the “Right” have such a knee jerk, violent reaction to the phrase “global warming.”
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all just agree that air polution is bad and clear skies are good? Wasn’t it awful to see Beijing covered in a blanket of man-made gray?
Global warming or not, polution is good for no one.
Burning carbon (especially oil) for power is just stupid. We should be building pebble bed nuclear power plants and run everything on electricity.
One way to fight global warming is to cut population growth. I propose that the US and Canada impose a ten-year moratorium on immigration across the board. The US went from 250 million residents in 1990 to a whopping 300 million in 2005. That 50 million in 15 years! How much is enough?! Our natural resources, including drinking water, are running out.
But no, liberals want more. What a bunch of hypocrites!
Fifteen months ago I wrote a post in which I passed along the claim that painting roofs white would increase the planet’s albedo (reflectivity) so much that temperatures might actually decline to pre-industrial levels notwithstanding higher levels of greenhouse gases. Now we have more evidence from FP Passport:
Stop the climate negotiations. There’s a better answer. Two words: white roofs.
If stats from a paper by Hashem Akbari of the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory are correct, re-roofing 100 global cities could stop 44 metric gigatons from entering the atmosphere — more than all the countries in the world combined emit now.
The articles do not say so, but what would be the problem with whitewashing parking lots? You know, white pavement, black lines for the parking places? That would help, too.
There are, of course, enormous, almost insurmountable problems with this idea.
First, it would be trivially inexpensive compared to forced reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Second, there would be no need to rush through a transformation of the mass consumer economy.
Third, it would be reversable, on the off chance that the climate prediction models are wrong.
Fourth, the lefties will never support it because it does not sufficiently damage capitalism.
Oh well.
“The lefties will never support it because it does not sufficiently damage capitalism.”
Yes, genius, the evil lefties are killing your brilliant white roof idea. Continue absurd amount of air pollution for the sake of uninhibited capitalism (a la China) and solve global warming by painting roofs white. It might work if the sun could make it through the eventual thick cloud of smog (I’m sure you’ll call it a “patriot cloud”).
Hey Chicken Little,
Your right to be worried but you have the problem bass akwards.
My own view is simple: I am far more afraid of Global Cooling and Ice than I am of Global Warming and rising sea levels. I am not certain that we know which is our fate, but I do know I’d rather have higher seas and longer growing seasons than a kilometer of ice.
Incidentally, it went from deciduous trees to a a foot of ice in a couple of years, and to a kilometer of ice in under a hundred years. That’s scary.
Consensus on Global Cooling
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/09/consensusonglobal_cooling.html
So you people (likely 1 uninformed sorry soul) haven’t heard the phrase “climate change,” nor have bothered to watch An Inconvenient Truth. Climate change, or global warming, also postulates that Europe will enter a new ice age as other parts of the earth over heat (the ice caps, for example).
You really don’t sound too smart when you only support a contrarian viewpoint. If you want to debate, you should claim that the temperature isn’t changing and won’t change.
P.S. The contraction for you are is “you’re”
“I propose that the US and Canada impose a ten-year moratorium on immigration across the board. The US went from 250 million residents in 1990 to a whopping 300 million in 2005. That 50 million in 15 years! How much is enough?! Our natural resources, including drinking water, are running out.
But no, liberals want more. What a bunch of hypocrites!”
Hey Einstein, have you even tried to figure out how much of that increase is due to people having babies? And if you really want to be consistent in your argument, shouldn’t you be advocating widespread abortion, teaching real sex ed in schools, and capital punishment for parking tickets?
the eventual thick cloud of smog (I’m sure you’ll call it a “patriot cloud”).
Is THAT what they call it in China? Maybe you should go there and protest. That’ll get you a REAL education.
PS. The Lefties ARE killing off the coastal wind farms - because they ruin the view from their summer mansions at the shore.