A coward on the climate

Our Big-Strong Commander-in-Chief Decider-Guy can't stand to be proven wrong about the gathering threat of global climate change:

BALI, Indonesia — Nobel laureate Al Gore accused the United States on Thursday of blocking progress at the U.N. climate conference, and European nations threatened to boycott U.S.-led climate talks next month unless Washington compromises on emissions reductions.

The former vice president urged delegates to take urgent action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, and told them that the next U.S. president will likely be more supportive of international caps on polluting gases.

"My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali," said Gore, who flew to Bali from Oslo, Norway, where he received the Nobel Peace Prize for helping alert the world to the danger of climate change.

Asked about Gore's charge, Kristen Hellmer, a member of the American delegation in Bali, said: "The U.S. is being open and working very constructively with the other countries that are here.

The inconvenient proof that she is lying:

• European nations at the U.N. conference in Bali, yesterday “threatened to boycott U.S.-led climate talks next month unless Washington accepts” a draft document “suggesting that industrialized nations consider cutting emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent by 2020.”
• The Bush Administration has been caught censoring government scientists on global warming, according to a new U.S. House committee report released Monday, while State says: "President Bush is firmly committed to taking action on climate change at home and abroad."
• The Bush administration's political interference with climate scientists has done lasting damage to the nation's ability to prepare for the challenges of global warming, a former senior associate with the federal climate research program told a Senate panel today.

Let me just give my non-scientific opinion on a couple things:

• It's not the specific temperature of Anchorage or Denver or Honolulu that will affect us, it's the hundreds of years of rainfall patterns that farmers rely on, it's the migration and breeding grounds in nature that will be damaged, it's the loss of life and money that will occur as coastal plains are swept under water.
• Our nation has always met the increasing demands of the future with technological advances. We sent men to the moon, cured cancer, and built faster, more reliable computer chips. Why does anyone think we couldn't make similar advances in the climate and energy fields with brave leaders who encouraged us to have equally bold goals?
  

Have a nice day!