Reply #14: Don't rely on Shrubbie's sources [View All]

[NMMNG]

They are falsifying and covering up the truth. Here is an article from "The Week" on just that:

Contrary to popular belief, the Bush administration really does have a policy on global warming, said the Houston Chronicle in an editorial. It can be summarized in one neat sentence: “See no warming, hear no warming, speak no warming.” Every other industrialized nation has acknowledged that Earth is heating up due to man-made gases. Just last week, the prestigious National Academy of Sciences and 10 other scientific organizations from around the world warned that global warming is “the greatest danger facing humanity,” and urged nations to reduce industrial and auto emissions before it’s too late. If emissions continue at current levels, scientists say, the planet could heat up by 2 to 10 degrees centigrade by century’s end, with cataclysmic climactic consequences. Already, mountains are losing their snowcaps, polar ice is melting, and sea levels are rising. President Bush, though, is sticking with his global-warming mantra: “We want to know more about it.”

Actually, he doesn’t, said The New York Times in an editorial, and now there’s proof. A White House whistle-blower has released documents showing that an administration official, Philip Cooney, has been doctoring U.S. government reports to weaken the evidence for global warming. In one report, Cooney inserted the phrase “significant and fundamental” before the word “uncertainties,” to create doubt about findings most scientists think are solid. In another, he removed a section about the loss of mountain glaciers—calling it too “speculative.” Cooney isn’t even a scientist. Before Bush hired him as his chief of environmental policy, Cooney led the American Petroleum Institute’s campaign to cast doubt on global warming. This week, after his spin-doctoring became public, Cooney resigned. But the administration is holding firm to its pro-industry position.

It should, said Robert Novak in the Chicago Sun-Times. The world’s preferred solution to global warming is the Kyoto Protocol, which mandates severe reductions in carbon-dioxide emissions. Those limits would send the U.S. economy into a tailspin. The true motive behind Kyoto is “Europeans’ desire to bring U.S. prosperity down to their level,” and Bush knows it. Kyoto’s scientific basis is just as suspect, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Adopting Kyoto’s emissions limits, scientists say, may reduce the anticipated warming by just 1.2 degrees centigrade—at a price tag of $94 trillion. For that kind of money, we could provide clean water to everyone on the planet, wipe out hunger, and get the AIDS epidemic under control. Let’s deal with problems we can actually solve, rather than “devoting limited financial resources” to one that we apparently can’t.

http://www.theweekmagazine.com/article.asp?id=996