Free Republic

President Obama hiked alone up a gravel path toward Exit Glacier, gazing at a mass of flowing ice as it melted into the plain below. “How’s this?” he marveled as he surveyed the terrain on a cloudless day. “Beats being in the office.” Mr. Obama is in legacy-building mode here in Alaska, where he has come to talk about the rapidly unfolding effects of climate change and the urgent need to address it. He saw the consequences of global warming during his trek to the glacier, which has receded more than a mile over the past 200 years because of...

On Sunday and Monday, foreign ministers and other international leaders met in Anchorage, Alaska to attend the Conference on Global Leadership in the Arctic. As a sign of the importance the United States placed on the Alaska forum, President Barack Obama attended. He used the conference as a platform for urging swifter action to combat climate change. After the conference, the representatives of the Arctic Council members signed a joint statement affirming “our commitment to take urgent action to slow the pace of warming in the Arctic.”

....Obama gave a doom and gloom speech yesterday at the Global Leadership in the Arctic (GLACIER) conference in Alaska to build momentum for the U.N. climate deal in Paris this December. So far less than one third of countries have submitted plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions by the Wall Street Journal’s count. According to Obama, “Climate change is happening faster than we’re acting” and the world is facing a future of more fires, more melting, more warming, more suffering. But there are at least two major problems with his focus on global warming as he’s presented it in Alaska....

President Obama’s hike up the rapidly melting Exit Glacier today has run into some unfortunate buzzkill: reality.