Bush Administration finally releases climate report

Today, the Bush administration's Office of Science and Technology Policy finally released a comprehensive report on climate change (see MSNBC article) which concurs with the findings of the IPCC and the vast majority of the scientific community. You can download OSTP's fact sheet, the full report, or the exec summary at OSTP's website. I wonder what the naysayers have to say about this new report from OSTP. Now even the Bush administration has to admit that global warming is real, I wish it wasn't so -- I won't get any pleasure from being right about this. The sad fact is that our President held this report up for 4 years. Not only that, he could have joined the Kyoto Agreement in 2001 and enabled our country to play a global leadership role in doing what is needed to minimize this serious problem. Instead, the world has lost 8 critical years. More damage has been done, it will be more costly and difficult to make the changes needed, and the consequences will be worse and more costly to deal with. On Tuesday May 27, 2008, I was interviewed live on a conservative radio talk show whose host declared that he doesn't believe in global warming. He cited the work of OISM, an obscure medical research lab in Oregon that has been bashing climate change in a program financed by ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and the George C. Marshall Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington whose CEO is a former ExxonMobil executive. OISM spearheads the "Global Warming Petition Project" that has signed up 31000 "scientists" who are climate change naysayers. OISM's director Arthur Robinson along with his son Noah and Willie Soon published an article in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons entitled "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" This journal is published by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, an ultra-conservative political-economic group of medical doctors. You can find out who AAPS and OISM are at Google.com. I stood my ground in the discussion asserting that global warming is caused primarily by human activity and a serious threat to the global environment. The naysayers are so fast to criticize Al Gore, but I think the world would be in a much better place if he became president in 2001. Besides doing a lot more to avert climate change, we wouldn't be in Iraq. I've included pictures of my 8 grandchildren, aged 10 months to 10 years, in this post. I worry about what the world will be like for them in 40, 50, 60 years. I want to ask the naysayers if they have kids, or grandkids. Are they so sure that global warming is a hoax and that all is going to be ok regardless of what we do about energy that they'd put their kids' and grandkids' futures at risk? Do they put that much faith that Dr. Robinson, the OISM, and the 31000 petitioners know better than the OSTP, NAS, and IPCC? They ought to give it some serious thought.

Misleading article on global warming

The May 19, 2008 Sun-Sentinel article entitled "Study blasts global warming fears" on hurricanes and global warming is biased and misleading, and it encourages complacency when urgent action is needed. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/weather/hurricane/sfl-flbstudy0519sbmay19,0,5299587.story

Hopefully the number of Atlantic hurricanes will decrease as reported in a new study by NOAA's Knutson, although the study also predicts the possibility that storms will carry stronger winds and much heavier rains. AP reports, "Knutson acknowledges weaknesses in his computer model" and that it "significantly underestimates the increase in wind strength.. Some other scientists criticized his computer model." http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j9YzbkbPjYwP_3-9wZhTNbMcZSAQD90OGDV80 There is still considerable disagreement among leading climate scientists about what the future may actually hold with regard to hurricanes.

What the article also fails to report is that hurricanes are not all there is to fear about global warming. There is no doubt that sea level rise threatens coastal areas worldwide and is being caused by thermal expansion of the oceans and melting glaciers. Vulnerable South Florida will have to adapt to eroded beaches, flooded waterfront and low-lying property, seawater invasion of coastal wetlands including the Everglades, greater impacts from hurricane-induced storm surges, and, most importantly, saltwater intrusion of the Biscayne Aquifer that supplies most of our fresh water. Should we ignore predicted global increases in droughts, wildfires, heat waves, floods, violent weather, extinctions of many animal, plant and marine species, tropical diseases, and the disappearance of mountain ice sheets and glaciers that feed the world's rivers and provide water needed by billions of people and agriculture? We need to understand that global warming is real and it threatens to change life on Earth in fearful ways. Unless everyone everywhere changes the way energy is produced and used, and does it fast, this will be a far less hospitable world for our children and grandchildren. The media has a responsibility to tell the whole story. Barry N Heimlich, President, Florida Energy Imperative, 3650 North 36th Avenue, #55, Hollywood, FL 33021, 954-963-2428, mailto:FLenergy@bellsouth.net