GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE: FACT OR FICTION

GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE: FACT OR FICTION

David Phillips is a Vietnam Era Veteran, he is a Democrat Party Activist, and is also the Publisher and Editor of the online political magazine YodasWorld.org

E-Mail Questions or Comments: oneyoda@aol.com

 

Global Climate Change, or Global Warming is a very hot topic (pun intended) and there seems to be a lot of people who are paying millions to make sure you don’t hear the truth.

 

According to the report in April by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group made up of 2,500 scientist from 120 countries, the future holds many perils.

 

The  IPCC’s final report is the clearest and most comprehensive scientific statement to date on the impact of global warming mainly caused by man-induced carbon dioxide pollution.

 

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said, “The poorest of the poor in the world — and this includes poor people in prosperous societies — are going to be the worst hit,” Pachauri went on to say, “People who are poor are least able to adapt to climate change.”

 

The report said up to 30 percent of species face an increased risk of vanishing if global temperatures rise 3.6 degrees above the average in the 1980s and 1990s.

 

Areas in drought will become even more dry, adding to the risks of hunger and disease, the report said. The world will face heightened threats of flooding, severe storms and the erosion of coastlines.

 

Stephen Schneider, a Stanford scientist said, “We can fix this,” by investing a small part of the world's economic growth rate. “It's trillions of dollars, but it's a very trivial thing.”

For the first time, the scientists from the IPCC broke down their predictions into regions, and forecast that climate change will affect billions of people.

 

North America will experience more severe storms with human and economic loss, and cultural and social disruptions. It can expect more hurricanes, floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires, it said. Coasts will be swamped by rising sea levels. In the short-term crop yields may increase by five percent to 20 percent from a longer growing season, but will plummet if temperatures rise by 7.2 degrees.

 

Africa will be hardest hit. By 2020, up to 250 million people are likely to be exposed to water shortages. In some countries, food production could fall by half, the report said.

Parts of Asia are threatened with massive flooding and avalanches from melting Himalayan glaciers. Europe also will see its Alpine glaciers disappear. Australia's Great Barrier Reef will lose much of its coral to bleaching from even moderate increases in sea temperatures, according to the report.

 

The United States, China and Saudi Arabia raised many of the objections to the phrasing of the IPCC report, seeking to tone down the certainty of some of the more dire projections.

 

Lobbyists from oil companies have been shelling out big bucks for scientists who will write reports that rebuke any claims of Global Climate Change.

 

Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar at American Enterprise Institute (AEI), confirmed that the organization had approached scientists, economists and policy analysts to write articles for an independent review that would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC report.”

 

AEI has received more than $1.6 million from Exxon Mobil.

 

Al Gore's “An Inconvenient Truth” noted, there have been no peer-reviewed scientific articles published in recent years that express any doubt that humans are contributing to climate change.

 

Yet more than 50 percent of news media coverage of the issue includes the oil industry's position on the subject.

 

Britain's leading scientists have challenged the U.S. oil company Exxon Mobil to “stop funding groups that attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change.”

The Royal Society, “Britain's premier scientific academy,” examined Exxon's public reporting and found the company “last year distributed $2.9 million to 39 groups that the society says misrepresent the science of climate change.”

 

According to the group, Exxon had promised it would not provide “any further funding to these organizations.”

 

An Exxon spokesman responded that the company had “stopped funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) this year,”

 

The United States already is responsible for roughly one quarter of the world's carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse” gases that scientists blame for Global Warming.

In a 2004 report from the Energy Information Administration the countries who emit the most Carbon Dioxide emissions in percentages:

 

Ÿ The United States  21.9

Ÿ China                     17.4

Ÿ Russia                     6.2

Ÿ Japan                      4.7

Ÿ India                       4.1

Ÿ Germany                 3.2

Ÿ Canada                    2.2

Ÿ U.K.                        2.1

Ÿ S. Korea                  1.8

Ÿ Italy                         1.8

Ÿ France                     1.5

Ÿ Australia                  1.4

Ÿ Spain                       1.3

Ÿ Brazil                       1.3

Ÿ Others                    29.1

 

President Bush has placed many mid-level managers in most of our Government agencies that deal with scientific data that relate to Global Climate Change. Agencies such as the EPA, USGA, NASA, etc., all have people placed by the Bush administration to read all reports and edit the wording to down play any such data.

 

Prior to the Bush administration, all scientific reports were generally peer reviewed before any publication. Bush has done away with all peer reviews and the reports are published after they are edited by Bush personnel.

 

President Bush and his administration have been slow to agree that Global Warming exists and that greenhouse gases created by man are to blame. More and more evidence has become available and he can no longer deny the facts and remain a nay sayer.

 

In a speech a few days ago, President Bush said that the world needs to do more to stop greenhouse gases and slow Global Warming. His speech was made in anticipation of his G-8 meeting in Germany this week. Global Warming will be one of the main focal points at the G-8 summit and this could just be his way of heading off his critics, or maybe he truly has had a change of his views, it’s hard to say. But with his long history of being All Hat and No Cattle, it is hard for anyone to believe what he says, until he backs up his words with actions.

 

Only time will tell on which side of the issue Bush truly stands.