Posted on 07/08/2012 2:14:45 PM PDT by mdittmar
Twenty years ago, Republican President George Herbert Walker Bush gathered the nations of the world in Rio to confront the challenge of global climate change. Two decades later, the challenge is more real, and the damage of climate change more pervasive, but we are further behind than ever in addressing the issue. With each passing day, the danger and the urgency only grow.
Promises of action from both political parties have been replaced by a conspiracy of silence.
Conventional wisdom tells us that the chances of Congress acting on this issue is rapidly approaching zero. How dramatic and sad that twenty years later, as nations gather for a second time in Rio, we have failed to prove the conventional wisdom wrong.
Thomas Paine described today’s situation well. As America fought for its independence, he said: “It is an affront to treat falsehood with complacence.” Yet when it comes to the challenge of climate change, the falsehood of today’s naysayers is only matched by the complacency of our political system.
In the United States, a calculated campaign of disinformation has steadily beaten back the momentum for action on climate change. Proponents have cowered in the face of millions of dollars of phony, contrived ‘talking points,’ illogical and wholly unscientific propositions and a general scorn for the truth wrapped in false threats about job loss and tax increases.
But the threat we face from climate change is not an abstract concern for the future. It is already upon us, and its effects are being felt worldwide, right now. The examples are palpable in our daily lives.
Last year, many northeastern states experienced some of their wettest summers. Meanwhile, persistent heat and below average precipitation across the southern United States created record-breaking droughts in Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas of greater intensity than the 1930’s “Dust Bowl.”
Every new report that’s published suggests the situation is getting grimmer. Last year, a new assessment found that the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free within this century, likely in the next 30 to 40 years. Think about that for a second. Within a generation — maybe two — kids will grow up learning geography on maps and globes that show simply an empty blue expanse on the top of the world.
And the effects don’t end there. With the melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet alone, global sea levels could rise by as much as 3.26 meters in the coming years. And the Pacific and Atlantic coasts may be in for a 25 percent increase above average levels by century’s end.
Benjamin Strauss, co-author of a new study on topographic vulnerability, said it best: “Sea level rise is like an invisible tsunami, building force while we do almost nothing … We have a closing window of time to prevent the worst by preparing for higher seas.” That’s why, in cities like Boston, officials are actively planning for how to manage 100-year floods that are now arriving every twenty years.
The dangers we face could not be more real. All you need to do is look out your window.
We just had the warmest March on record for the contiguous United States. The naysayers will tell you that one hot year doesn’t prove global warming; but year after year, new records are being set: 2010 was the hottest year on record, and the last decade was the hottest decade since we started recording the weather.
At the Boston Marathon, temperatures hit 89 degrees Fahrenheit, more than 30 degrees higher than average. Official jackets, gloves and coffee? How about hats, sunscreen and Gatorade — and medical tents filled with heat-exhausted runners starting at mile ten of the 26-mile course from Main Street in Hopkinton to Boylston Street in Boston.
In the end, the question is not whether we’re going to pay for climate change. We’re already paying for it. The real question is whether we walk a path that addresses it now in a responsible way and that also helps us break humanity’s addiction to oil, cleans up our environment and creates jobs — or whether we suffer the consequences later on a massive, unpredictable scale in the form of environmental devastation, conflict, famine, poverty and reduced economic growth for decades to come.
Now is the time to confront the conspiracy of silence on climate change. It is time for complacency to yield to common sense, and narrow interests to bend to the common good. Future generations are counting on us. We all herald our mothers and fathers’ “Greatest Generation.” But we should also ask what our kids will say about our generation if we don’t wake up to reality.
U.S. Sen. John Kerry, a Democrat, is the senior senator from Massachusetts.
I’ve heard that JF’nK shot himself in the butt numerous times since he returned “home”.
John Kerry has completely lost his mind? His keepers have not told him the whole global warming hoax is pretty much over? He didn’t receive his share of the Obama green government graft money?
This is just the dumbest scam in history.
But let’s assume climate change is happening, because, well, the climate has always changed. Also, assume the planet is warming, which is what Kerry is really concerned about. No one in the AGW cult is warning of global cooling.
If we are warming, human activity or not, wouldn’t that warming be of great benefit to people living in northern & southern areas? Sure, the tiny Maldives might be under water along with coastal loss, but think of the vast areas of Canada, Russia, & Chile that would be more habitable for humans, plants, & animals. An ice free passage over Canada would be a great benefit for northern trade, too.
Why is it that the AGW cult thinks that the climate is perfect now? Who decides the Maldives must survive even as the Inuit & Siberians freeze? Are coastal areas, already subject to erosion, more valuable than inland solid ground? Is it “fair” that Norway, Sweden, & Finland must suffer icy winters?
Man, we have got to vote these fools out!
Rich people use a lot of bath salts, I hear.
I thought climate was something like the four seasons and weather was what happened during that time.
Yep, six months from now, most of us are going to be cold again and we'll be saying at office coolers "cold enough for you?". Of course, any wintry weather will immediately be seized upon as yet another sign of "global warming".
You’d have to call those people morons, but then, to be a moron you need a brain.
Yeah, I think he got a purple heart for an ingrown toenail. Or maybe it was the wound he got in the *back* while advancing to the rear.
Hmm.. Somehow I remember seeing a recent article about Europe’s weather and how it’s been the coldest and wettest summer ever recorded.
You would have a civil war on your hands if you tried to drain the Great Lakes to cool down Texas. Or irrigate the Great Plains, for that matter. Various proposals have been made over the years for large scale water diversions from the Great Lakes, with the result that the Great Lakes states have formed a compact against any such attempt.
John Kerry’s Big Business Buyoff
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/06/03/john-kerrys-big-business-buyof
From what I’ve read, Gore and others have an enormous investment in getting carbon trading off the ground. What it amounts to is another hand in your pocket to be sent to Wall Street and uber wealthy investors.
John Kerry’s Big Business Buyoff
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/06/03/john-kerrys-big-business-buyof
From what I’ve read, Gore and others have an enormous investment in getting carbon trading off the ground. What it amounts to is another hand in your pocket to be sent to Wall Street and uber wealthy investors.
Hey, hey; Ho, ho
Kerry: sign the one-eight-oh
Yeah - liberals don't have access to anyone at the major newspapers - or all the alphabet networks... nope, they're out in the wilderness with nary a friend - confronting the 'conspiracy of silence'...
These people are nuts... How many times has Newsweek or Time had cover stories on the issue? How many times has the Washinton Post trumpeted their bull? Really, these folks are nuts.
Doesn’t it flow over Niagra Falls into the Atlantic Ocean anyway? How is the Great Lakes “drained” exactly? I seriously doubt that piping water into these reservoirs would drastically reduce the amount of water there.
A few hot days and the clowns are out!
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