Ignoring the Facts

It is recommended that you read The Climate of Man part III by Elizabeth Kolbert; published in The New Yorker May 9, 2005 as the final installment of a three part series. It is not available online yet but the following link will take you to an informative discussion with Kolbert and to parts I & II.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/?050425on_onlineonly01

Will our species--the only one capable of changing the global climate--be here in a hundred years? Will we be able to alter the way we have always done things in favor of the way we will have to do them in order to ensure the viability of our biosphere? We would like to think the answer is yes. That answer, however, is not a measure of our intelligence as a species, it is a measure of our fortitude and determination to act altruistically on behalf of our greater, communal self-interest. Scientists have been warning us for some twenty precious years that we are on the brink of disaster. The facts are irrefutable and our outlined in over 900 articles in respected scientific journals between the years 1993 and 2003. Of the 900 articles none refuted have the premise that we are witnessing atmospheric warming. Seventy five percent of the papers attributed the warming to emissions generated by human activity the other twenty-five percent were mute on the point. Scientists are not prone to activism do to their questioning nature and we can not look to the scientific community to ring the alarm bells very loudly but ring them they have--such agreement among scientists is unprecedented. Our leaders have heard the message--they are, after all, intelligent people--but they will not make the hard choices for us because they are motivated, in large measure, by the short-term interest of their own political careers. If a change in business as usual is to occur we will have to take individual action. We will have to drive less, support public transit, research and use alternative energy resources, reduce our waste, limit our population growth, hold corporations accountable for their waste, organize to prod our elected representatives to support us with legislation, and demand that the press cover the issue on a daily basis.

It would seem absurd that we should apply such effort to make our lives miserable in a traditional economic sense but if we consider that we are paying for our delay, providing for the future of our grandchildren and doing something of historic proportions it becomes more palatable.
Now that you know what my agenda is I will explain why I have joined the guerrilla campaign. The president bush is really a spokesperson for the Greening Earth Society, which stands in opposition to the scientific data on global warming and employs any tactic to influence public opinion that continued dependence on fossil fuel is good for the environment. He has encouraged business as usual at every opportunity by gutting the EPA and relaxing the enforcement of The Clean Air Act. He never even attempted to come up with an alternative to the Kyoto agreement unless you consider the clean skies initiative to be something other than a ruse. His second term is promising to be even worse for our environment. His administration has manipulated government-sponsored reports on climate change to come to conclusions he agrees with. Sound familiar?

Two things will measure the Bush administration: Its environmental record and its response to the tragedy of 9/11. If he had limited the response to the ousting of the Taliban, the destruction of Qaida, the democratization and rebuilding of Afghanistan we would have shown both strength and wisdom and propelled good will. The president bush, however, thought it was necessary to embark on a world wide war against something as vague as terror, invade Iraq based on misinformation and manipulated data, spend ten times as much as we should have, accomplish less, with greater loss of life for a continuing source of oil which will be necessary for business as usual, the status quo, and the continued employment of those lofty minded actuarial bureaucrats that are the brains of this inarticulate ass. Grandiose behavior in a president is a very dangerous thing indeed but is even more dangerous when it is combined with a willingness to ignore the facts.