If global warming is not a problem, what was Bush talking about in this address?

Question

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/06/20010611-2.html

lifesajoy: Really? So because Gore doesn't live like a churchmouse, there's no global warming problem?

Interesting scientific reasoning, there. Go you.

Answer 1

A good question. I find it unlikely that Bush belives there is anything that can be done about the rising temps of the last few decades. Bush probalby saw the Global warming issue as a way to do favors for his friends at ADM with his ethanol gimmick. At the same time that ADM gets to rake in hugh profits and corn farmers warm to the GOP this policy will ensure that millions of 3rd worlders will starve to death because the price of corn and other food products will rise beyond thiere ability to afford them. What puzzles me is the left which usually cares about the worlds poor have no problem with the systematic removal from the worlds food supply billions of bushels of corn from the market in order to make a very few rich and garner votes for the GOP in rural America. None of which will have any effect on global warming or climate change

Answer 2

the Bush administration has decided not to fight the IPCC's substantive scientific conclusions, though Washington's response to the draft does churlishly complain about its "focus on the negative effects of climate change." Back in the day, the administration wouldn't have stopped there. Vice President Dick Cheney would have wasted no time designating all 2,500 IPCC scientists as enemy combatants and shipping them off to Guantanamo.

What caused the policy shift? November's GOP electoral drubbing? Increasing anxiety within the corporate community about the economic impact of climate change? Growing alarm within the military and intelligence communities about the national security impact of global warming?

Whatever the cause, the shift is good news. But don't get too excited because there's bad news too. The administration's grudging admission that maybe, just maybe, there's something to this global warming stuff doesn't mean it is actually going to back a mandatory cap on carbon emissions, which most experts say would be needed to seriously reduce global warming.

Instead, the administration has its own cunning plan to combat global warming. As the president suggested in his State of the Union message, we'll try to shift to alternative energy sources that produce fewer carbon emissions. But if that doesn't work, we'll turn to our secret weapon: We'll reduce the amount of sunlight that hits the Earth by shining giant mirrors back at the sun.

The administration is reportedly lobbying the U.N. panel to include in its report criticisms of the mandatory emissions caps imposed by the Kyoto Protocol (which the White House still hates). And the administration wants to add language noting that space mirrors and other techniques for "modifying solar radiance" could provide "insurance" against global warming. Keep the emissions, deploy the tin foil hats!

The idea is not completely bananas. Some scientists are researching alternative global climate control methods, ranging from the deployment of lots of shiny balloons to the giant space mirrors apparently now favored by the administration. The logic: Just as nomads in the scalding desert wear white robes to reflect the sun's heat away from them, the whole Earth could essentially don a reflective garment to keep from getting too hot. If the mirrors could be constantly adjusted, it would be like having a global thermostat.

But as the IPCC's draft report noted, these technologies are "speculative, uncosted and with potential unknown side-effects." You don't have to be a sci-fi buff to imagine some of those: more space crud, bad stuff happening elsewhere in the galaxy when we start beaming more light up or, creepiest of all, deliberate climate change induced in some regions as a method of political control. (Imagine Cheney controlling the world's thermostat!)

Answer 3

When Gore moves into a nominal size home - and sells the other two - and stops flying in private jets - then I'll believe that there is a global warming issue. He has no need to be living in a 20 bedroom 8 bathroom house. not sure what Bush was talking about - you would need to ask him.

Answer 4

Bush may not be perfect and He says things I don't agree with like:
Islam is a religion of peace (Anybody with a brain knows that's BS)
the main thing to me is not Bush says... it's what the communist leaning liberals are saying that has me worried.
Bush may be wrong about a lot of issues, but he is NOT evil.
Terrorists are evil, and the liberals who are helping them by sabotaging our efforts in the War on Terror are evil. People who are pushing their global warming scientific junk on us are evil... that's who I have a problem with.
I can understand Bush saying a few things because he's under a lot of pressure from liberals to say what they like to hear. I still wish he was stronger and wouldn't give in to the pressure, but I'd rather have him any day than Al Gore or Kerry or Jesee Jackson

Answer 5

Because if he did not address this issue the press, Dem's. and the libs would be all over him. Sad thing is their is no real evidence of global warming being caused by man, even the scientist can't agree on it with all of their studies.

Answer 6

I call it political pandering to the lunatic left wing. But more than that, I call this man-made global warming panic nothing more than JUNK science.

I've posted this before elsewhere, but obvoiously people need a reminder:

Keep in mind we only have climate records for the past 150 years. The U.N. and global warming scientists say that the earth has been steadily heating up over the past fifty years or so. HOWEVER, this ignores a couple facts:

1) The hottest year on record? 1936!
2) During the 1970s, the data of the day showed the earth to be cooling, not warming.

But this is only the tip of the iceburg.

Do we know how scientists opperate?
Scientists are not infallible, and most don't challenge things like (man-induced) global warming or darwinian (macro) evolution because if they did their funds, their lifeblood would dry up. It's all about peer pressure man... Sorry. But the fact remains that human-induced global warming IS bad science.

Let's play numbers, shall we?

Let us say that the population of the world is 6 billion (that is a roughly correct estimate). Now let us say that one-one hundred thousandth of the population are scientists. That would give is 60,000 scientists worldwide. I'm sure we can ALL agree that 60,000 is a GROSS underestimate of the number of scientists worldwide, but this is just for an example.

Now, there is a claimed number of 2,500 scientists that say global warming is man-made and that man can stop it. If we take our 60,000 scientists worldwide and multiply that by .04, or 4%, we get 2,400. This is roughly the number of scientists that have been presented to us.

What does this tell us? Hypothetically, we have JUST over 4% of scientists worldwide telling us that we are to blame for global warming, and that we have to do something about it.

Now, let's be hypothecial and break it down further. Let us say that there are 10 fields of science (again, a gross underestimate), and that each is equally represented among the 60,000. That is 6,000 per field. Applying that to our 2,500, that means there are 250 per field represented. Applying our numbers from earlier, that is again JUST over 4% from each field saying that global warming is man made.

For the sake of argument, let us say our 2,500 is made up of nothing but 2 fields, weather experts and astrophysicists. I'm again sure we can agree that those 2 fields would know more about climate than ANYONE else. That gives us 1,250 from each field. If we have 6,000 in each field, we are STILL only talking about 21% of the "experts" preaching man-made global warming.

Obviously, this is all conjecture. We don't know how many scientists there are worldwide. We don't know how many different fields of science there are. We don't know the specific break-up of scientists per field. We don't know what the qualifications are of the 2,500 "experts" saying global warming is caused by man.

However, this does point out that even if we DID know all of those things, we are still only talking about a FRACTION of true experts trying to cram this theory down our throats.

But this is not all! Let's look at the problems behind the methodology.

There is NO way to ascertain that "global warming" is ANYTHING more than a cyclical climatological phenominon that holds up under scrutingy enough to be declared the 100% truth.

I'm BEGGING people here to just IGNORE the conclusions of the UN report for long enough to examine the methodology behind the report from a pure COMMON FREAKING SENSE perspective.....

We have only got DEFINITE, VERIFIABLE, RECORDED temperature/climate readings for approximately the last 150 years. THATS IT. EVERYTHING ELSE OUT THERE IS ANECDOTAL, AND BY IT'S VERY NATURE CONTAINS INNACCURACY.

There is evidence in the form of satellite photography and imagery that the polar icecaps are shrinking, compared to 20-30 years ago. WHAT IS CONVENIENTLY LEFT OUT OF STATEMENTS LIKE THAT IS THE FACT THAT WE HAVE ONLY BEEN PUTTING SATELLITES IN ORBIT FOR LESS THAN 60 YEARS. So, while those icecaps can be shown to have shrunk, it is deceptive and misleading information to put out there, as we can't really say with ANY DEGREE OF ACCURACY if they have shrunk or grown since, 1930, 1830, 1500, or 5 BC......theres simply no realistic way to verify it.


Examining ice core samples to show differing envrinmental condistions in varying layers of ice? HOW DO YOU ESTABLISH AN ACCURATE TIMELINE FOR COMPARISON? What about the distance between where the core samples are taken? My area got 6 inches of snow last night, and a mere 10 miles away, they had 10 inches....... THE LACK OF A TRUE "CONTROL GROUP" FOR THE EXAMINATION PROCESS MAKES THE WHOLE IDEA INCREDIBLY UNSCIENTIFIC BY IT'S VERY NATURE................


ANYTHING that involves the use of dating via radioactive isotope decay (also called "carbon-12 dating", where they compare levels of carbon-12 and carbon-14 in organic matter)?? How on Earth are they coming up with SCIENTIFICALLY ACCURATE dates of thousands, or tens of thousands of years with this methodology? The "radioactive halflife" of these isotopes is claimed to be 5,730 years.....yet we have only had the technology to detect this sort of radioactive decay for somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 years!!!!!

It also REQUIRES the assumption carbon-14 has always been present in the atmosphere and in all living things IN THE SAME CONCENTRATIONS. ERGO, ANY ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE THAT EFFECTED THE CONCENTRATION RENDERS THE WHOLE DATING METHODOLOGY INNACCURATE!!!! Howevere, since we have No TRULY verifiable, accurate environmental records beyond 150 years or so ago, it is simply assumed that no such event(s) occurred.......

Yet, such flawed methodolgies as I've mentioned above are being used to promote "global warming" is a thing of catastrophic environmental impact, and at the same time DENY that it is potentially a naturally occurring cyclical phenominon....

Answer 7

I don't often find reasons to applaud or defend GW, but I have to say it was very responsible of him to discuss it. Clearly, he has come to understand the lack of understanding of this worldwide, catastrophic situation in his own party...and needed to address it.

Kudos to George...at least on this one...

Answer 8

I'm just waiting for a CO2 tax.

Answer 9

You'll have to ask him that.