Posted on 01/02/2008 1:02:09 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The overriding environmental issue of these times is the warming of the planet. The Democratic hopefuls in the 2008 campaign are fully engaged, calling for large — if still unquantified — national sacrifices and for a transformation in the way the country produces and uses energy. The Republicans do not go much further than conceding that climate change could be a problem and, with the notable exception of John McCain, offer no comprehensive solutions.
In 2000, when Al Gore could have made warming a signature issue in his presidential campaign, his advisers persuaded him that it was too complicated and forbidding an issue to sell to ordinary voters. For similar reasons, John Kerry’s ambitious ideas for addressing climate change and reducing the country’s dependence on foreign oil never advanced much beyond his Web site.
Times have certainly changed. It is not yet clear to what extent Americans are willing to grapple with the implications of any serious strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: more specifically, whether they are ready to pay higher prices for energy and change their lifestyles to reduce their consumption of fossil fuels.
Polls suggest, however, that voters are increasingly alarmed, and for that Mr. Gore is partly responsible. His film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” raised the issue’s profile. Then came four reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Gore, predicting catastrophic changes in weather patterns, sea levels and food production unless greenhouses gases can be quickly stabilized and then reduced by as much as 80 percent by midcentury.
There is also a growing appetite for decisive action — everywhere, it seems, except the White House.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
So who is going to vote for either of these losers? Both support AMNESTY as well.
Hunter, Paul, Tancredo, Keyes did not raise their hands.
Thompson was the only one who stood up to it.
No doubt we can all learn to ride bicycles again.
Wow, 2ndDivision, now your making up your headlines. I didn’t see anywhere in the article where it said ANY of Republicans said they agreed with Gore.
It said that both Senator McCain and former Governor Huckabee believed in global warming and in the case of Huckabee, wanted to enact carbon caps. That puts both on the Al Gore GW bandwagon.
More proof that this guy is the GOP's Jimma "I'm a Moron" Carter.
All the Repub’s scare me. Seems they all have some liberal in them. Hope it dosen’t come out of the closet once they get in office.
~~Anthropogenic Global Warming ™ ping~~
Must be fun playing around with other people's money all the time.
I joined the Thompson bandwagon earlier in 2007 after reading this WSJ editorial [John Fund]. The guy seems to be the only Republican candidate with a set of stones who also happens to be correct on the issues.
LLS
Red states should be deciding who our nominee is, not purple states or blue ones.
I also don't think there is any dispute that CO2 concentrations have risen in the last little while. Of course we are talking concentration increases in the parts per million increases and not percent.
I think the question is - how great the problem will be? Some models predict some dramtaic shifts in weather and ice etc. but others not quite as severe.
Warming leads CO2, not vice-versa. Increasing C02 isn’t the cause of warming it is the result. Likely changes in the Sun are what has the most dramatic effect on earth’s climate. Oh, and a large volcanic eruption will do wonders too.
Human caused Climate change, short of a full exchange of nukes, is complete BS. BS generated by those who stand to gain economically or politically, and followed by fools.
HerrBlucher is way off. Read my profile for some mainstream accuracy.
Keep reading; it’s in there.
I am a committed Christian, Huckabee talks a good Christian game, and, I believe, has good intentions.
Jimmy Carter was the same, and the result would be the same.
It will be so funny to watch as the same people who clamored for higher CAFE will also be the most vocal when it comes time to bail out AMTRAK.
This is why I fear the solutions to global warming more than the problem itself.
My new “soundbite”:
It’s the S-U-N,
not the S-U-V.
There seems to be a problem relative to what? To data and input that goes back maybe 10,000 years, more often climate recordings that go back a piddly, measly, 200 or so years? This is in the context of a critter (us) that was in CAVES 35,000 years ago, that only started to have written history a few thousand years ago. This is in the context of a world where a mere 125,000 years ago -- the blink of an eye relatively speaking -- sea levels were 25 feet higher and about 3/4ths of what we know as Florida was under water.
This is in the context of a planet where an even more piddling 20,000 years ago, when we were still dragging each other by the hair and doing cave art, sea levels were about 350 feet lower and what we now call Florida was more than twice its present size.
This "there seems to be a problem" is in the context of a world where massive -- and we're talking in the 90 percents -- extinctions have happened at least FOUR times. A planet where dinosaurs were wiped out THREE times, and final and last time 65 MILLION years ago, after dinosaurs had pretty much ruled the planet for 150 MILLION YEARS!!! This is a world on which Neanderthal apparently had a MUCH MUCH MUCH longer reign that we homo sapiens -- many paleontologists think Neanderthal was aroudn for about 150,000 years compared to our being here apparently for a fraction of that ...
THIS in the context of a world where only 500 or so years ago when Juan Cabrillo took his ship up the California Coast, he saw SNOW ALL THE WAY D0WN TO THE WATERLINE on the Big Sur Coast; if that happened today, environmentalists woudl be in a panic over the "destruction" of the freezing temperatures killing so many little creatures, and people like you would fall for it and blame ME and the rest of US for causing it.
Ignorant people are gullible people. I read Al Gore's "Earth in the Balance," every single word. And believe me, I would have been worried and concered by it and maybe even fallen for it if I hadn't, just by coincidence, come off of a science-text binge of several basic (non political) texts on paleontolgy and geological history. Global climate change is real -- it's been happening constantly for millions and millions of years. EVERY SINGLE PROTECTED BEACH AND WETLAND TODAY will be underwater someday. Count on it. Conversely, EVERY SINGLE PROTECTED WETLAND AND ESTUARY will be high and dry someday. Count on it. There's not a damned thing you or I or any other human can do about it.
Here's the TRUTH, hawkaw: Thinking we can analyize CO2's effects on global climate is like thinking we can take a random nano-second out of a day and analyze the week's weather from it. It is absurd. EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING, we do on this planet is temporary.
Well said Finny. Anthropogenic Climate Change just doesn’t pass the giggle test no matter how many computer models are manipulated to say otherwise.
Climates change, they always have and they always will, regardless of human activity.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.