Environmental Issues And The 2012 Presidential Race
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-10-24/environmental-issues-and-2012-presidential-race
In the final days before the presidential election, many voters are still looking for policy differences between President Obama and Governor Romney to help them decide how to cast their ballot. On environmental and energy issues, the candidates have tread carefully. Climate change has barely been mentioned by either the president or Governor Romney. They have, however, clashed on oil and gas subsidies, promotion of alternative energy sources and how energy policy might affect jobs growth. Guest host Steve Roberts talks with journalists about what the two candidates have said - and not said - about energy independence, environmental regulations and climate change.
Guests
Juliet Eilperin
national environmental reporter for The Washington Post and author of "Demon Fish: Travels Through the Hidden World of Sharks."
Coral Davenport
energy and environment correspondent for National Journal.
Keith Johnson
reporter at The Wall Street Journal.
Comments
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Good News, it's getting cooler now!
"Tree-rings prove climate was WARMER in Roman and Medieval times than it is now - and world has been cooling for 2,000 years
•Study of semi-fossilised trees gives accurate climate reading back to 138BC
•World was warmer in Roman and Medieval times than it is now
By Science Reporter
PUBLISHED: 07:22 EST, 11 July 2012 | UPDATED: 17:51 EST, 11 July 2012 "
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2171973/Tree-ring-study-p...
For partisan politics:
Sorry, that argument has already been rebutted:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/medieval-warm-period.htm
For a full list of 'skeptics' arguments:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
partisan politics wrote: "Good News, it's getting cooler now!"
If so, how can you explain this uncommonly warm winter earlier this year? I live in PA, and the average temperatures this winter were in the 40's and 50's--as opposed to the normal upper 20's through lower 40's. We got NO snow, and the snow we did get it didn't stick to the ground. This is an observation--of which a link is not needed.
IndieLady7,
I agree with you on the whole but you have to be careful about referencing short-term periods (one season, one year, etc.) when trying to demonstrate long-term climate trends. This is something climate skeptics do often (remember their comments a few winters ago when the east coast was slammed with snow?). They will single out a short-term cooling trend over a much longer-term warming trend. Also, global warming will actually cause cooling in some areas which is why scientists average temperatures across the planet.
Perhaps you don't like links, but there's much more on this topic:
http://skepticalscience.com/still-going-down-the-up-escalator.html
Why not talk about Gary Johnson and his environmental views? Why is the media so afraid to take a third party seriously? He has the mathmatical potential to win as a person on the ballot in 48 states.
You can look around all you want and find plenty of crazies espousing their climate warming hoaxes. But you should look at those who are respected scientists. The best one to look at is Dr. Richard Mueller, the most famous and respected global warming scientist. The Koch brothers sponsored a study headed by Dr. Mueller. His conclusions are
NY Times op-ed by Richard Muller, BEST’s Founder and Scientific Director, has been published, “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic.”
Here is the money graf:
CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.
You can find his study simply by typing in "Richard Mueller warming" in any search engine.
The issue has been put to bed.
Isn't coal just losing out economically to natural gas?
One of the guests said that cap & trade failed in the Congress because of Democrats. I can't find the vote details on line, but I believe that cap & trade failed because Democrats couldn't convince every single member to vote for it, while Republicans rejected the bill en masse.
In other words, unless Democrats could gain 60 of their own members, the bill was dead, even if a vast majority of those 60 would be willing to back it. The Republican 40 killed that possibility.
Everyone seems to forget that the pollution created by the US or any other country does not stop at the borders or shorelines. . it is a hostile act to everyone living on earth when a country ignores the detrimental effect it has on the world's environment.
So when will the climate change "skeptics" finally wake up and realize where are in some serious trouble of our own making? Thousands of high temperature records broken this year. Massive droughts, ocean acidification as our seas try to absorb the extra CO2 we have been pumping into the atmosphere. Hottest years on record showing up over and over.
And yes the extra CO2 is cause by our activity. This has been determined by radioactive carbon dating of the CO2. And yes the climate has changed in the past due to natural forces, but the change we are seeing this time because of our activity dwarfs those changes.
But don't worry man made climate change deniers, you "won"!!! Our society will NEVER change its ways. The big money wants the status quo, and big money pretty much always gets what it wants in our corporately owned society. It will be full speed ahead right off the climate change cliff into some dystopian hell hole of a world in the not too distant future.
After all saving the environment it will be a "job killer", and in the Orwellian world of American politics a livable environment means nothing compared to the almighty dollar. We all "know" we don't need breathable air, or clean water, or a climate where we can grow food, all we need is banksters selling each other Collateralized Debt Obligations.
To say all this is NOT going to end well is an understatement of almost cosmic proportions.
This is not a source that can be taken seriously when their obvious objective is to PROVE something as being true. Not letting the science speak for itself.
Any objective analysis cannot be derived from a Web site that has this as their header.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/medieval-warm-period.htm
"Skeptical Science"
"Getting skeptical about global warming skepticism"
I am a strong environmentalist. I think the environmental community is going to have to give Pres. Obama some slack before election day. There are certain things he cannot say right now, given his need to win certain swing states like Ohio, where there is some coal mining. There is every reason to believe that, assuming he is re-elected, he will be quite constructive on issues like environmental protection and dealing with climate change. Romney, on the other hand, will be beholden to the Koch brothers and others totally opposed to good environmental policy.
Famine is the most pressing issue as resulting from climate shifts and more unstable weather, all caused by CO2, methane and other human caused combustion spikes. This past season the USA lost most of its corn crop with very limited reserves. Grain crop failures are up due to droughts, flooding, unstable and intensely hot (growth stops at 96F for most grains) spells.
Arab Spring was as much due to increased food prices combined with unemployment under corporate globalism as anything else. Hungry people can never be free. Whereas indigenous culture conflicts and land tenure were the insurgent issues of the 70s and 80s, water and food prices are now the engines of conflict. See Lester Brown at Earth Policy Institute on these urgent issues. Poorer food quality also leads to plagues.
The USA is not in a scientific and nutrition bubble as much as Mitt and Barry might wish it to be. Just yesterday Diane Rehm was told that more than half of our diets will soon be imported, if not already, as fruit and vegetable inspection was discussed. Half the canned mushrooms on your grocery shelf are from China because it's too labor expensive to grow them in SE Pennsylvania as long as slave wages prevail overseas. Here in Belmont I'm trying to empower people to grow their own food but the trend is as steep as Everest.
Mitt Romeny's campaign stated at a recent debate at MIT in Boston that they would basically undo much of the regulation in the Clean Air Act. Why isn't anyone talking about this? I have two kids with asthma - the cost of one of the three medications is $500 - these costs are not calculated in the cost of clean air regulation.
NC-Tom: The fact of Oligarch victory on climate change denial and on the religious status of the "market" confirms facism even without the police state and social authoritarianism (also real conditions). The manufacture of FEAR via media made it all possible. The selfish contrarians behind it are traitors to the 99%. The pendajos who write the propaganda of ignorance here are their snipers.
Water Water Water
Please discuss water - with fracking, with the Keystone Pipeline - how the Republican Nebraska farmers asked for a new route because of their concern to their water sources.
Jim Foster: What is the point of sports model politics when a P-tardy House will continue gridlock in 2013? Voting is presently a very minor part of citizenship responsibility. Cutting the agents of Oligarchy slack is killing us.
We need to include land use in our discussion of energy independence. People who live in communities with sidewalks and mixed uses can walk to schools, stores, and parks. They don't have to get in a car and drive. We need to build communities as we did pre-WWII. That is true energy independence.
Pancake Rankin
Thank you for your post. I would simply add that one of the greatest issues of the very near future will be that of access to clean water. And the preservation of clean water is one reason why the current design of the oil pipeline from Canada to the US has to be rejected and replaced by something that does not put water sources at risk.
In Italy, they're prosecuting scientists for failing to warn of natural disaster. Can we foresee a time when the United States will prosecute politicians for ignoring scientists' warnings of climate disaster?
Jessica Millman wrote:
"We need to include land use in our discussion of energy independence. People who live in communities with sidewalks and mixed uses can walk to schools, stores, and parks. They don't have to get in a car and drive. We need to build communities as we did pre-WWII. That is true energy independence."
I could not agree more. The issue of space agency (the way we chose to use space) is central to energy independence.
annmitchell: Thanks for making all us discussants thirsty.
Electrical generation was our biggest consumer of fresh water but extraction is surpassing it even as the water table is fouled. No wonder the "debaters" have a big tumbler of H2O on their desks. They suffer from dry mouth.
@accountant
"The issue has been put to bed."
Yet not to sleep.
Evidence would SEEM to indicate that there is warming though the evidence is not as conclusive as you say. And the evidence that it is due to man is simply not there. The problem with both assertions is that the sample is too small and the data insufficient. I don't have the energy to get into the details of this on this board. Been there, done that, too many times and the disciples of the Church of the AGW will never be convinced anyway.
One example, however is temperature measurement. When measurements of today are compared to measurements of the early 20th century, for example, you ar comparing apples and tomoatos. Measurements 100 years ago were nowhere near accurate, yet these are used to "sell" AGW.
That is because AGW has never been about the oceans rising, the polar bears, or our "children's future" (funny, they seem to be concerned about the "children's future" with respect to the climate, but not with the debt! Hmmmm. But I digress).
This has always been about control. Control carbon-based fuel and you control the population, whether through "carbon credits", exchanges, whatever.
Since we have extracted and burned more oil in 200 years in comparison to the unrecorded ages that it took for the oil to develop underground, it is a no-brainer that the impact upon the planet is and will be substantial. It's like the heat from billions of internal combustions releasing in a couple if generations what took immeasurable generations to produce. We can't keep consuming our planet without cataclysmic results.
mam2:
It's not that I don't like links. I'm basing my previous comments on observations. You're right. There was a year in which we got slammed with snow and that the effects of climate change is based on the long-term--how we have treated the planted. The point in the matter is that global warming is real, and the environment is in trouble. Over the course of time, man has depleted resources for his own selfish gain--giving little thought to the repercussions of their actions. Pillaging native lands and woodlands for profit and development--thus driving out native wildlife is JUST NOT GOOD!
Jessica/Ferdnam_ I'd be volunteering to build sidewalks and trails but the agents of fear and holy private property require we all continue our car payment tributes to the big banks. We used to observe Russia had no "freedom of movement", but we're kind of paralyzed without our big hunks of steel and plastic. We must go to a track or gym (often paid) to exercise our bodies, confined in a caged zone like protestors from Occupy. I'm not afraid to walk in a storm anymore, though cowards may think I'm taking a risk of being struck.
Whenever the economy turns bad the environment suffers, as people see it as a choice of clean air/water vs jobs. One solution would be green jobs, as Obama promised, but nothing ever seems to come of it.
@ ecgberht
I would agree that there is not yet incontrovertible evidence that climate change is due to human activity. It is still a question mark although there is significant probability that climate change is due to human activity. Not a certainty, a significant probability...
The environmental issue, however, is more than climate change. We have had, here in the US and elsewhere (including my own country), a propensity to use resources (space, water, energy from all sources) in incredibly wasteful ways.
There is a significant risk in that lack of restraint. Contrary to what classical economics was suggesting when I was a student, everything has a price (space, air, water). There are no free goods. Once we emerged from the pre-industrial revolution economies of scarcity, we then suffered from the illusion of inexhaustible supplies of everything... There is great risk in being deluded that we don't need to take care of our planet...
Your guests have said very little about how powerful business groups hold sway over climate change decisions in Washington, e.g. Americans for Prosperity and its "No Climate Tax Pledge".
I think that the money, and a few powerful and very rich campaign-funders are at the root of this silence about climate and environment.
Politicians are afraid to speak their mind in fear of losing elections.
edwards- On green energy it seems like the corporate opponents have gone global in their tactics while us advocates are confined to a domestic bubble.
Observe how international corporate forces utilized a Chinese solar panel price cut to stifle Solyndra and other American projects. You can do the research and pick techological winners but the billionaires can flip the market game board to defeat competition. Then the vultures pick up your breaktroughs for pennies and stow them until the time suits their needs. Visions of sugar plums dance in Romney's head and that is why he seems so spacey.