Real Leadership on Global Warming

Posted by on August 3, 2006 at 11:43 AM

New York Times' Columnist Bob Herbert writes today that it's "time to aggressively counter the dangerous nonsense" of those who dispute the threat posed by Global Warming.

Examples:

Senator Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), Chair of the Senate Committee on the Environment:

“[M]an-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

Senator Burns (R-Montana):

“You remember the ice age? It’s been warming ever since, and there ain’t nothing we can do to stop it.”

"There ain't nothing we can do to stop it." Great example of someone who doesn't belong in the Senate. That is the lack of leadership being offered by Republicans who are content to ignore evidence, cherry-pick their facts (sounds so familiar...) and continue to serve their special interest friends.

Herbert points out:

You can’t blame any single weather event on global warming. But with polar bears drowning because they can’t swim far enough to make it from one ice floe to another; with the once-glorious snows of Kilimanjaro about to bring down the final curtain on their long, long run; with the virtual disappearance of Lake Chad in Africa, which was once the size of Lake Erie, it may be time to get serious about trying to slow this catastrophic trend.

And, some facts from the article:

  • The first six months of this year were the warmest ever recorded in the United States.
  • This summer, according to the National Climatic Data Center, more than 50 cities in the continental U.S. have set records for high temperature.
  • Of the 21 hottest years ever measured, 20 have occurred within the last 25 years. And the hottest year of this recent hottest wave was last year.
  • "In northern California, it was hotter for longer than ever on record, hitting 110 degrees four consecutive days in the nine-county Bay Area.”
  • In recent years, the U.S. has had more than three times its normal share of extremely hot summer nights. “That is a particularly dangerous trend,” Mr. Borenstein wrote. “During heat waves, like the one that now has a grip on much of the East, one of the major causes of heat deaths is the lack of night cooling that would normally allow a stressed body to recover.”

But there is hope...

Unlike Senator Burns, there are people who understand that there are things we can do to mitigate the worst effects of global warming. We’d better do something fast. We’re no longer waiting for the tragedies predicted to result from extremely high temperatures, extreme weather events, storm surges and so forth. We’re already enduring them.

Remember New Orleans? And the thousands who died from the heat in Chicago and elsewhere in the Midwest in 1995? And, as incredible as it still seems, the 35,000 killed by a monster heat wave in Europe in 2003?

I think the single most effective thing most ordinary Americans could do to become more informed about global warming — and the steps we need to take to fight it — is to go see Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and read his book of the same title.

It would be a shame if it turns out that Americans have been so deprived of leadership for so long that they fail to recognize it when it’s offered to them.


ClimateCrisis.net has information about the Sound Science of An Inconvenient Truth.

Sierra Club has a wealth of information, including a list of 10 ways you can do your part.

Comments - 10 »

Comments are now closed for this entry.