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U.S. flips on climate stance
Bush administration accepts link to 'human activity'
By Dan Duray
New York Times
WASHINGTON (Feb 3, 2007)
The Bush administration yesterday firmly endorsed a scientific study showing that human activity adds to global warming, reversing the administration's previous hesitation to acknowledge such a link.
The study, the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, concluded with 90 per cent certainty that human activities since 1750 have warmed the planet, largely through carbon emissions. The study, released in Paris, was the culmination of a 6-year project involving over 2,500 scientists from over 130 countries.
U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman later told a news conference that the report was "sound science," even as he insisted that the Bush administration has always accepted scientific studies pointing to man-made climate change.
"As the president has said, and this report makes clear, human activity is attributing to changes in our earth's climate and that issue is no longer up for debate," Bodman said.
Separately, David Hamilton, director of global warming and energy programs for the Sierra Club, said, "The Bush administration's conceding that the findings are true is embarrassingly late."
The IPCC also warned of rising temperatures in coming decades, as well as rising sea levels caused by melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.
Public statements by President Bush and other administration officials over the years have been couched in skeptical terms about whether global warming actually was occurring. More recently, the administration has agreed that global warming was real but questioned whether human activity was causing it. Administration officials often claimed there were "scientific uncertainties" about such a connection.
Bodman's statements cast aside any doubts but he reaffirmed the administration's opposition to mandatory caps on carbon emissions, such as the ceilings established by the Kyoto Protocol, a 1998 U.N. treaty signed by over 160 countries that commits signatory countries to limit carbon emissions. The U.S. is not a signatory.
The U.S., with 4 per cent of the global population, currently contributes a 25 per cent of global carbon emissions.
Bodman repeated administration warnings that such caps could hurt the American economy.
"There is a concern within this administration, which I support, that the imposition of a carbon cap in this country may lead to the transfer of jobs and industry abroad to a country that does not have such a carbon cap, he said.
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-N.V., said yesterday that the administration's new stance meant that it should work more closely with Congress to require the reduction of carbon emissions.
"The world has moved beyond doubt, and now all that remains is to work urgently toward solutions," Reid said.
"America produces by far the most greenhouse gases, and it is time for America to take the lead in combating global warming."
Earlier this week, House committee hearings chaired by Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., revealed what he said was "an orchestrated effort to mislead the public about the threat of global climate change" on the part of the Bush administration.
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some mf'ers are slower learners than others :rolleyes:
the ipcc has determined we have no more than 10 years to reverse our carbon output rate before it is too late to fix the problem. after 10 years the melting of glaciers and ice caps cannot be prevented and when they completely melt off the ocean levels will rise by 40 feet. this will submerge over 60% of florida, half of manhattan and 90% of the netherlands. the great barrier reef, the largest living organism in the world and the only one visible to the naked eye from space, will be completely dead. |
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