Global Warming on 60 minutes

Yes, I saw it. If the present admistration turns out to be wrong on this issue, history will treat it very harshly. Nero fiddled while Rome burned. We fiddled while the World is "catching on fire". A truly runnaway global warming could be catastrophic.

 

I admit to still not knowing what to believe on this issue.

Although I don't doubt for a second that the Bush administration censors all of the scientists and medical people on the Federal payroll who have anything to do with global warming, air and water pollution, dangers from foods and drugs (including genetically engineered foodstuffs), birth control/AIDS prevention---even evolution.

Now they're rolling back the testing protocols for mad cow disease, after promising to, er, beef them up. Shameless.

 

It's getting very hard to find any atmospheric physicists or climatologists who doubt that human-caused global warming is real, and that the possible (verging on likely) consequences will be severe. Note that re-insurance companies, about the most conservative people you can find, are planning how to mitigate losses caused by global warming. As with so many issues the current US government is very much behind the curve on this, and we and our descendants will suffer for it.

 

As discussed on 60 Minutes last evening, there is no question about global climate change. This is discussed weekly in major journals Science, Nature, Bulletin American Meteorological Society, etc.

A key point made on last evening's show is that we are at a "tipping point" with possibly a 10-year window to alter our behavior. Otherwise the anthropogenic (human caused) effect will be near impossible to reverse or mitigate. What is disturbing is that an administration that cloaks itself as "conservative" is in fact, careless and reckless, emphasizing only short-term thinking.

As the Rocky Mountain Institute continues to point out, if you want to double your profit, double your efficiency. The current administration seeks increased profit, but at the cost of increased waste. The current administration encourages the spending of natural capital at an ever increasing rate and is defiant toward any thought of sustainability.

 

I think we might be going through warming and cooling cycles, rather than man-made global warming.

I remember, a couple of decades ago, there was all this hystria about man causing an ice age. Then it was global warming. Now the two seem to have combined. Watching the movie, "The Day After" explained what I was hearing when I hear reporters interviewing reporters, or politicians like Al Gore, talking like he really knows something.

Here is a link for you.
http://www.ncpa.org/newdpd/dpdarticle.php?article_id=2270

I did not see the 60 minutes article. I don't watch much TV.

-Roy

 

I have friend who work in the field (one of them literally). They're concerned about it for sure. It's imporatant to realize that CO2 levels have been much higher in the past (during the cretaceous, 140-65 mybp). What's different now is that the rate of change is much greater. That's the part that's dangerous. Since we don't fully understand the problem we should be cautious, not cavalier.

 

Is this supposed to be an organization free of bias on this issue?

 

I posted this on another thread a couple of weeks ago. i don't think anybody who responeded to me read any of the links (probably because they don't actually link, but you should be able to cut and paste them.

"NASA Confirms Global Warming Impact on Ice Sheets
http://www.scenta.co.uk/scenta/news.cfm?ci....content_view_1

"NASA-led scientists say ocean data ties manmade emissions to warmer Earth"
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7665636/

These articles based on information from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
"Stark Effects From Global Warming
CO2 emissions are causing oceans to warm, ocean chemistry to change, and rainfall patterns to shift"
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/83/i12/8312globalwarming.html
and
"Studies confirm global warming underway"
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.htm...143&sid=5548239

This from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies
"2005 Warmest Year in Over a Century"
http://grounds-mag.com/news/warmest_year_030706/

And these quotes are from the United States Deparetment of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Institution.
"Is the climate warming? Yes."
and
"recent decades appear to be the warmest since at least about 1000AD, and the warming since the late 19th century is unprecedented over the last 1000 years."
and
"Global mean sea level has been rising at an average rate of 1 to 2 mm/year over the past 100 years, which is significantly larger than the rate averaged over the last several thousand years."

And I could go on and on....

 

With apologies rposton, but siting what we thought "a couple fo decades ago" or a "couple of years ago" isn't pertinent. There have been VAST amounts of reasearch done on this subject in the past couple of years (which is in part what the 60 Minutes segmant was about). Also, see the links I referenced in my post above. Scientifically, a couple of years ago is ancient history on this subject.

 

It is good to see "mainstream" tv doing segments like this. I don't think a lot of people really understand what's going on and what's at stake. The slogan shouldn't be "Save the Planet" it should be "Save Ourselves". As more people realize that we're screwing ourselves, not some rare species of beetle that is meaningless in their everydays lives people will start to act and voice their opinions.