The Flint Journal’s John Tomlinson says it’s time to pray for global warming:
At December’s U.N. Global Warming conference in Poznan, Poland, 650 of the world’s top climatologists stood up and said man-made global warming is a media generated myth without basis. Said climatologist Dr. David Gee, Chairman of the International Geological Congress, “For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming?”
I asked myself, why would such obviously smart guy say such a ridiculous thing? But it turns out he’s right.
The earth’s temperature peaked in 1998. It’s been falling ever since; it dropped dramatically in 2007 and got worse in 2008, when temperatures touched 1980 levels.
Meanwhile, the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center released conclusive satellite photos showing that Arctic ice is back to 1979 levels. What’s more, measurements of Antarctic ice now show that its accumulation is up 5 percent since 1980.
Guess who’s not buying it? That’s right: James Hansen, who is in full-on-panic mode. The UK’s Observer reports,
Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark assessment of NASA scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen who last week warned only urgent action by the new president could halt the devastating climate change that now threatens Earth. Crucially, that action will have to be taken within Obama’s first administration, he added.
Soaring carbon emissions are already causing ice-cap melting and threaten to trigger global flooding, widespread species loss and major disruptions of weather patterns in the near future. “We cannot afford to put off change any longer,” said Hansen. “We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead.”
Hansen said current carbon levels in the atmosphere were already too high to prevent runaway greenhouse warming. Yet the levels are still rising despite all the efforts of politicians and scientists.
Only the US now had the political muscle to lead the world and halt the rise, Hansen said. Having refused to recognise that global warming posed any risk at all over the past eight years, the US now had to take a lead as the world’s greatest carbon emitter and the planet’s largest economy. Cap-and-trade schemes, in which emission permits are bought and sold, have failed, he said, and must now be replaced by a carbon tax that will imposed on all producers of fossil fuels. At the same time, there must be a moratorium on new power plants that burn coal – the world’s worst carbon emitter.
The U.S. is the world’s greatest carbon emitter? Really? Not according to the Energy Information Administration, which says China’s CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels passed those of the U.S. in 2006. Not according to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, which also says China passed the U.S. in 2006 (be sure to see the correction at the bottom of this New York Times article, a rare MSM acknowledgement that CO2 is not the dominant greenhouse gas).
But the big, bad U.S. is the chief culprit and will surely retake the CO2-emissions lead soon, yes? Don’t count on it: According to the EIA, “China’s energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide are projected to exceed U.S. emissions by almost 15 percent in 2010 and by 75 percent in 2030. . . . In 1990, China and India together accounted for 13 percent of world carbon dioxide emissions; in 2005 their combined share had risen to 23 percent, largely because of strong economic growth and increasing use of coal to provide energy for that growth. In 2030, carbon dioxide emissions from China and India combined are projected to account for 34 percent of total world emissions, with China alone responsible for 28 percent of the world total.”