President-elect Barack Obama delivered a brief video message Wednesday to the Governors' Global Climate Summit, in which he promised strong action on climate change.
Obama promises “new chapter” in climate leadership
By Eoin O'Carroll | 11.19.08
Barack Obama delivered a brief video message Wednesday to the Governors’ Global Climate Summit in Beverly Hills, Calif., in which he unequivocally affirmed the scientific basis of climate change and vowed to take action on cutting carbon emissions, in spite of the troubled global economy.
The president-elect declined, however, to attend next month’s climate talks in Poznań, Poland. A number of activists, including Greenpeace and 350.org have been urging him to go, arguing that his presence would send a signal that the United States would is willing to join the rest of the developed world in combating global warming. Obama demurred, saying that “the United States has only one president at a time.”
But Obama’s message nonetheless represents a strong departure from the climate policies of his predecessor. For years, the Bush White House challenged the validity of manmade global warming, with many critics claiming that the administration deliberately prevented climate scientists from disseminating their findings.
For Obama, “the science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear.” The president-elect promised a federal cap-and-trade system that would mandate that greenhouse gas emissions be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020, and then reduced an additional 80 percent by 2050. The government, he said, would invest $15 billion annually “to catalyze private sector efforts to build a clean energy future,” a future that includes solar power, wind power, safe nuclear energy, next-generation biofuels, and “clean coal,” whatever that means.
These efforts, he said, would generate five million new green jobs.
Headed by California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the bipartisan governors’ summit brought together environmental officials and activists and oil executives from Europe, India, and China, along with a few governors of other US states, with a goal of drafting a pledge to work together to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
Environmentalists welcomed Obama’s commitment, which is only the second-major policy announcement made by the president-elect (the other, revealed in a press conference and a 60 Minutes interview, was fixing the economy.)
Obama’s official transition website, Change.gov, displays statements from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, the National Wildlife Federation, and the World Wildlife Fund, all praising the address:
“As world leaders gather in the coming weeks in Poland to negotiate a pathway out of the climate crisis, the eyes of the world will be upon America and our newfound resolve to rejoin global efforts,” said the National Wildlife Federation’s Larry Schweiger.
Of course, promising to curb emissions is one thing. Actually curbing them is another matter. Time Magazine notes that the outcome of Obama’s cap-and-trade proposal will depend on the outcome of the current horse-trading in Congress:
For all of Obama’s green intentions, however, he can’t pass carbon cap-and-trade legislation by fiat — that will require Congress. Many congressional leaders, including some Democrats from coal-heavy states, remain doubtful about the benefits of mandatory carbon caps, especially with the U.S. drowning economically. One key signal will be the outcome of the battle for leadership of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. The contenders: Representative John Dingell of Michigan, who has defended Detroit from tougher fuel-efficiency standards and stood in the way of action on climate change, and the challenger, Henry Waxman of California, who scores high marks from environmentalists.
You can watch Obama’s video message here:
<< Schwarzenegger says California must prepare for warming | MainComments
2. Eoin | 11.19.08
Don, you’re right that Obama does not have a scientific background. Neither did any other major-party presidential candidate in recent years (and no, political science degrees don’t count).
As far as I can tell, only three presidents have had some scientific qualifications: Jimmy Carter, who studied physics; Herbert Hoover, who studied geology; and Thomas Jefferson, who studied everything.
But why, exactly, does someone need a background in science to agree with scientific statements? Do I need a degree in biology to believe in evolution?
3. John Wm “Bill” Sutton, PhD | 11.19.08
Re: Comment 1.Don Carlson. Neither does Mr. Carlson show any qualifications (other than political bent)for denying the scientific evidence (analytical and measured data) the climate change produced from steady growth in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere.
4. Tracy Wettig | 11.19.08
Don, have you ever heard of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? Made up of several thousand climate scientists from countries all over the world, it requires that each and every country sign it’s conclusions in order to be accepted. In short, it is a consensus of the world’s leading climate scientists. And they have concluded that the science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear: the climate is warming, and it is anthropogenic. In other words, Don, the climate is warming because you, me and 6.5 billion other people are burning fossil fuels. Now, Don, if you can falsify the science of this report, or if you know any scientist who can, I am sure you will be on all the networks, it will be the biggest story of the century. You do understand that science works via falsification, don’t you, Don? So get to work, prove the climate scientists wrong. I won’t hold my breath.
5. Jake Schmidt | 11.19.08
With the next international climate negotiation set to occur in Poland in just under two weeks, he also signaled that he will restore America’s leadership in international global warming negotiations (as I discussed here: http://switchboard.nrdc.org/ blogs/ jschmidt/ obama_signals_leadership_on_global_warming.html).
With his statement today and his request for a report back from Members of Congress attending the Poland meeting, the President-elect has sent the signal that the delegates have waited so long to hear…the US is back at the negotiation table.
6. Mike Higgins | 11.19.08
Tracy,
The actual number of climate scientists involved with the IPCC is about 100, not several thousand. Dr. Fred Singer, a nationally-known atmospheric physicist at George Mason University explains:
“Let me say something about this idea of scientific consensus. Well, you really shouldn’t go by numbers. I think it’s significant to straighten out misconceptions. One misconception is that 2,500 IPCC scientists agree that global warming is coming, and it’s going to be two degrees Centigrade by the year 2100. That’s just not so. In the first place, if you count the names in the IPCC report, it’s less than 2,000. If you count the number of climate scientists, it’s about 100. If you then ask how many of them agree, the answer is: You can’t tell because there was never a poll taken. These scientists actually worked on the report. They agree with the report, obviously, in particular with the chapter that they wrote. They do not necessarily agree with the summary, because the summary was written by a different group, a handful of government scientists who had a particular point of view, and they extracted from the report those facts that tended to support their point of view.”
See the insightful PBS interview at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/debate/singer.html for more details.
The IPCC is part of the United Nations, which is a political organization, not a scientific organization. That is why the IPCC is called the “Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change.” Their job is to assume that climate change is predominantly caused by humans and develop policy recommendations for governments to enact policies to reduce the amount of CO2 emissions, which they assume is the primary cause of the current global warming trend. Their conclusions are almost entirely derived from computer models. They have been completely unable to support their theory with any empirical evidence.
7. Fred Moolten | 11.20.08
To the foregoing, I would only add that as someone familiar with the science literature, I’m aware that anthropogenic global warming, driven primarily by human carbon emissions (CO2 and to a lesser extent methane) is a universally recognized reality within the literature, based on an enormity of evidence one can find in the journals. The notion that it is controversial is a myth perpetrated by groups or individuals with ideological or political motivations threatened by action to curtail CO2 emissions. Denials can be found in blogs, news media, and statements from political groups, but not in the science journals.
That is not to say that all aspects of anthropogenic warming are noncontroversial. While a large majority of climate scientists estimate current warming trends, if continued, to constitute a serious threat to human, plant, and animal welfare, a few dissenters judge the threat to be minor. The problem is that the response of climate to human actions is so slow (mainly due to the thermal inertia of the oceans) that any delay designed to reach 100 percent certainty will inevitably make it impossible to avoid disastrous climate change if the majority view turns out to be correct. In that sense, we’re compelled to act on the basis of near but not absolute certainty, realizing that our actions, and their cost, may be unnecessary, but that failure to act would be likely ultimately to prove far more costly than action in both economic and human terms.
It is this reality that the incoming administration appears to have grasped, and it signifies that the U.S., long a laggard in responding to an impending climate crisis, is now prepared to assume the leadership role that the rest of the world has hoped it would embrace.
Fred Moolten
8. Matthew B | 11.20.08
It is time for conservatives of all stripes to fully embrace the fight against climate change. The words “conservative” and “conservation” both have the same root(to conserve). Conservatives claim to be against excess and wild living while promoting the autonomy of the individual. As a society we have been living wild for far too long with our gas guzzling cars and the planet is suffering because of it. Curbing this behavior ought to be a conservative instinct. With respect to autonomy, what could be more in the spirit of the hardy yeoman farmer of yore than installing solar panels on your home and removing yourself from the mercy of foreign oil interests?
9. Gerry Porter | 11.20.08
In the past I’ve tried to be an environmentalist by using less of the earth’s bounty. In light of the current financial crisis and our approach to it–panic, that is, I am now convinced that all our efforts to change the environment are relatively trivial. Until the environment undergoes a “Black Swan” (a sudden dramatic change as described by Nassim Taleb), nothing significant will happen.
Disappearance of the Arctic sea ice or the massive changes of ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream are just two examples that would force us to make significant changes akin to the trillion dollar bailout of the financial system. Scientists have warned us of the consequences associated with climate change such as increasingly violent weather and the disappearance of much of Bangaladesh and of London to rising sea levels.
Just as in the financial world, relatively small changes in our environment are easily dismissed. The warnings about the collapse of the financial world have been ignored until now. The warnings about the real world will continue to be ignored until a really significant change happens. When? That’s what we don’t know. But it will happen and then we will have to act in ways that are as absolutely unimaginable as the trillions of dollars now being spent to counter our financial dilemma.
10. TJM | 11.20.08
Frank Singer is a hack who takes money from industry and hops on whatever anti-science bandwagon is current at the time - this includes that smoking does not cause cancer, that CFCs are not destroying the ozone layer, and most recently that increased CO2 is not causing climate change. Is he really an expert in all of these subjects?
11. Mike Higgins | 11.21.08
Regarding Fred’s comment above, “The notion that it [AGW] is controversial is a myth perpetrated by groups or individuals with ideological or political motivations threatened by action to curtail CO2 emissions.”
Perhaps you should consider the conclusions of the Manhattan Declaration, endorsed by hundreds of scientists in May 2008:
“That current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity’s real and serious problems.
That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.
That attempts by governments to inflict taxes and costly regulations on industry and individual citizens with the aim of reducing emissions of CO2 will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate.
That adaptation as needed is massively more cost-effective than any attempted mitigation, and that a focus on such mitigation will divert the attention and resources of governments away from addressing the real problems of their peoples.
That human-caused climate change is not a global crisis.”
http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=54
12. Wayne Brown | 11.23.08
WEB 11 23 08
I’m amazed at how the scientific community has been able to fool us for so long. Here are a few examples: 1. Galileo’s heliocentric universe with its round earth. Drive across the US and it is obvious the world is flat, look up at the sky, all can see the sun, moon and stars are going around us. 2. Newton’s claim that gravity causes objects to fall, we all know, as was claimed before Newton that all objects know that their natural place is on the ground 3. Darwin and all of his followers who look at old bones and look through microscopes and fool us with their evolution theories,and that life has been here for over three billion years. We all know it was created six thousand years ago 4. Einstein and all of his crazy theories about space-time,and a bomb that can destroy a city can be made out of a few pounds of uranium 5. All those crazy physicists who dreamed up quantum mechanics and tell us that without their theories about how small things work we wouldn’t have any of the wonderful things we now take for granted, 6. Watson and Crick and all of their followers who try to convience us that the information that instructs all living things how to grow is stored in infinitly small molicules called DNA, and that it is all done with a four letter code, and that information is nearly the same in man and monkeys, 7.Geologists that try to convence us that the continents rest on plates that are constantly moving around at about two inches a year and that India crashing into China caused the Himalayan mountians to grow nearly 30,ooo feet high.
While flying over the west coast of Greenland over sixty years ago it looked like the ice cap was flowing out through mountian gaps, but we all know ice is too hard and brittle to flow.
My goodness, how easly fooled we all are to believe all that nonsense when we know it was all made up by those conspiring people we call scientists looking for ways to get grant money. Thank goodness,we have a radio talk show host that knows all and does his all with no thought of money to keep us informed of the real truth.
13. Robby S. | 11.24.08
So many arguments for and against the notion of anthropogenic global warming, it can be difficult to get to the truth.
However, proponents of the AGW theory always seem to use scientific consensus as the backbone of their argument and employ scare tactics and ridicule to convince others to join their cause.
Other products of scientific consensus include the fact that the world is flat and the practice of bloodletting. It doesn’t matter how many so-called scientists agree on a topic, it doesn’t make it true. Also, consider their motives. The majority of these scientists rely on government grants for their livelihood and their is financial incentive for them to publish findings in promoting AGW and disincentive to find otherwise.
The sky is not falling. Man is not a miserable sinner. America is not an evil empire. Corporations are not all about greed. God is love.
14. Tom M | 11.24.08
Curious about the Manhattan Declaration, I went to the website cited by Mr. Higgins, above. One hundred fourteen endorsers were “physically present at the conference,” including by my (generous) count 21 people who work in the field of climatology. I was struck by the variety of attendees: writers, a leader from the John Locke Society, economists, physicians, physicists, biologists… wondering what might have attracted them to an international conference, I think I found the answer in the group’s mission statement:
Mission Statement: “ICSC is an international association of scientists, economists and energy and policy experts working to promote better public understanding of climate change science and policy worldwide. ICSC is committed to providing a highly credible alternative to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) thereby fostering a more rational, open discussion about climate issues”.
The group’s first two core principles are: “Global climate is always changing in accordance with natural causes and recent changes are not unusual;” and, “Science is rapidly evolving away from the view that humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ are a cause of dangerous climate change.”
Those who would travel from around the world to a meeting hosted by this group do not really strike me as objective scientific group to be taken seriously.
15. John Fernbach | 11.25.08
Robby - You seem to associate skepticism about climate change with several other political stances that appear, at first glance, to have nothing in particular to do with it. The only common characteristic your positions seem to share is the feel-good factor: the notion that everything is OK in the world, or at least that everything is OK in the United States, so that no big changes of any kinds are needed.
Aren’t you basing your climate stance on wish-fulfillment, basically, when you take this approach? I refer to the way you end your comments:
“The sky is not falling. Man is not a miserable sinner. America is not an evil empire. Corporations are not all about greed. God is love.”
None of these statements has any scientific connection, one way or another, with the question of whether climate change is occurring.
Another problem with these statements is epistomological: How would you KNOW “whether God is love,” “man is not a miserable sinner,” “America is not an evil empire,” etc. - except, maybe, as a matter of having faith in what you want to believe?
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1. Don Carlson | 11.19.08
I have not yet heard what qualifications Mr. Obama has that allow him to have “unequivocally affirmed the scientific basis of climate change,” when so many scientists and common sense deny it. It would seem that the effort on the left to stifle debate about this issue includes an assertion of the president-elect’s non-existent scientific credentials.