Why is the president suddenly changing course on Global Warming?

Question

Today in Yahoo News:

"By setting this goal, we acknowledge there is a problem, and by setting this goal, we commit ourselves to doing something about it," Bush said in a speech that capped two days of talks at a White House-sponsored climate change conference. "We share a common responsibility: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while keeping our economies growing."

What the heck? I thought it was something that wasn't real?

Answer 1

I have seen two interpretations. One is that Americans are very concerned about the problem. That's well known.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070927/ap_on_re_us/environment_ap_poll_8

The Republicans are facing an election, and Bush has rendered the party unelectable. He can't make his war go away, but he can reverse himself on Global warming.

The other is that it's an effort to torpedo the UN effort to get the most polluting countries (Including the USA) to sign an agreement in principle to address the problem. By holding his own conference he hopes to sign weaker agreements with China and India, and ignore the UN effort. Both are probably true. Both require that he leave all the people who bought into his propaganda campaign about how Global Warming isn't real, or isn't caused by people out there twisting in the wind. Let me give you a few quotes from todays news

" "Until recently, said Emil Salim, an economist and member of the Indonesian president's council of advisers, Bush offered "no dialogue on the Kyoto Protocol whatsoever. This time, the members of the Kyoto Protocol are invited to discuss. So from that point of view, there is some improvement," he said in an interview. "But on the other hand, I think it has more to do with the domestic politics, because you have election." "

" Climate analyst Phil Clapp, of the National Environmental Trust, said he believed the meeting had originally been devised to get Mr Bush off the hook at the G8 summit, but had turned into a PR exercise. "

" The EU delegates are not expecting any conclusive outcomes. Indeed, there is nothing on the agenda that suggest one might emerge. "

" "Far from representing a Damascene conversion on climate change by President George Bush, the two-day gathering of the world's biggest polluting nations is aimed at undermining the UN's efforts to tackle global warming, say European sources. "The conference was called at very short notice," said one participant. "It's a cynical exercise in destabilising the UN process." "

"His motive, participants say, is to blunt attempts by Democratic presidential candidates to attack the White House for blocking climate-change initiatives.

He also wants to head off the gathering momentum in Congress to impose the first ever mandatory limitations on emissions for US companies. With 154 coal-fired power stations set to be built in the US over the next 25 years, there is an increasing sense of urgency among US environmental policy makers."

" The omens are not inspiring. On his very first day in office, 20 January 2001, President Bush took up a defiantly ostrich–like stance on the issue of climate change. He ripped up dozens of environmental regulations including rules for less arsenic in drinking water, a ban on snowmobiles in national parks, controls for raw sewage overflow, energy-efficiency standards, and protections against commercial logging, mining, and drilling on national lands including the Arctic Circle.

A month later, he was urged by the Treasury Secretary Paul O' Neill "to become the first President to confirm publicly the linkage between such [greenhouse] gases and global climate change" and to limit emissions.

Instead, Bush reversed a campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, saying in a private letter that doing so would be too costly. He flounced out of the Kyoto protocol on global warming, triggering international contempt that would only be eclipsed by the disaster of his war in Iraq."

" The essential deadlock that has held up stronger international action on climate change — striking an acceptable balance of responsibilities between developed and developing countries — remains unbroken, and there was little evidence that would change before the next major U.N. climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, at the end of the year.

That was in no small part due to the absence of one national leader in particular: U.S. President George W. Bush, who chose not to address the U.N. meeting, though he did attend a dinner for leaders at Ban's request. "

" But the most inspiring words came from a prominent American politician who did show up at the U.N.: California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The green-hued Republican, who backed a 2006 California law to reduce state greenhouse gas emissions 25% by 2020 — exactly the sort of mandatory cut President Bush refuses to consider — told delegates that the time for debate was finished. "The consequences of global climate change are so pressing, it doesn't matter who was responsible for the past," he said. "What matters is who is answerable for the future. And that is all of us." Pointing to California's success in creating two vital new industries — computers and biotech — and the entrepreneurial energy unleashed in the rapidly growing developing world, Schwarzenegger contended that humanity could innovate its way out of the climate change deadlock. That might be a bit simplistic, but when Schwarzenegger called for "action, action, action, action" it was hard to argue with him. "

Answer 2

First of all, many Republicans do. Especially before this year, when many have flip-flopped on the subject due to the emergence of the Tea Party. But look back at the 2008 presidential campaign - almost all of the Republican presidential nominees said they believed humans were causing global warming. McCain, Romney, Giuliani, even Huckabee and Hunter. The list goes on and on of Republican politicians who at least used to acknowledge the reality of global warming. That's changing now, as I said mainly because of the Tea Party. These fundamentalists tend to deny global warming, and Republican politicians can't win primary elections without appealing to the right-wing base, which are the ones who show up to vote in primaries. So this is causing the Republican Party to become more extreme, including denying global warming. This is how I describe the reasoning behind why most Republicans deny global warming: 1) They have an irrational fear of 'big government' and 'environmentalists' 2) They view carbon regulation as 'big government' and favored by 'environmentalists' 3) Therefore they oppose carbon regulation 4) But if humans are causing global warming, carbon regulation is necessary 5) Therefore in order to justify opposing carbon regulations, Republicans tend to deny man-made global warming. As a side note, I'm curious what kind of scientist adsfan claims to be. Because not only is he completely ignorant about climate science, but he can't even get the most basic facts right. The myth is that Greenland was hotter 1,000 years ago, not Iceland. There aren't a lot of scientists who are willing to form conclusions on a subject without doing even the most basic research about it. Maybe he got a degree from one of those online universities.

Answer 3

Bush hasn't changed course at all. He's on the same course he's always been on: admit AGW exists, but make sure nothing is done about it on his watch.

His speech is same-old same-old: no targets for greenhouse gas reduction (either for the US or any other nation), no penalties for missing the non-existent targets, no carbon tax, no treaty, no enforcement. His one and only "big" initiative is to get the government to fund the same kind of projects that the carbon-offset industry is already funding. Big whoop.

He's just putting lipstick on a pig.

Answer 4

Surprise, it's real!!!!!! Wow, that's an amazingly wonderful statement. And that was today, Friday, September 28th 2007??? Cool, here's to Global Cooling for a change.

Answer 5

Bush has acknowledged that humans are the primary cause of the current global warming since 2005. He hasn't done anything about it, and I suspect he's just paying lip service to it now, but he acknowledges that we're the problem

Answer 6

I'm going with cynical pander to voters while simultaneously blunting UN efforts to force real commitment. Gotta protect those interests. The naked expediency of it is breathtaking.

Answer 7

Well, it is real, and possibly a serious danger. About time the U. S. Government got around to doing something about it.

Answer 8

Despite increasing evidence that man-made CO2 is not a significant greenhouse gas and contributor to climate change, politicians and others who wish to control our lives must maintain that it is. Probably no concrete course of action will come out of this "climate change conference".

When President Bush says that "We share a common responsibility: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while keeping our economies growing", it's very clear that no serious efforts will come out of this "climate change conference", bacause the bottom line is that serious efforts to reduce CO2 will lead to lower living standards through higher costs of living. And it will be all for naught because there is little or no relationship between man-made CO2 emissions and climate change.

Our buying into global warming hysteria will allow politicians to do just about anything, upon which they can muster a majority vote, in the name of fighting climate change as a means to raise taxes.

There's an excellent booklet available from the National Center for Policy Analysis (ncpa.org) titled "A Global Warming Primer." Link provided at the bottom.

Some of its highlights are:

"Over long periods of time, there is no close relationship between CO2 levels and temperature."

"Humans contribute approximately 3.4 percent of annual CO2 levels" compared to 96.6 percent by nature.

What about public school teachers frightening little children with tales of cute polar bears dying because of global warming? The primer says, "Polar bear numbers increased dramatically from around 5,000 in 1950 to as many as 25,000 today, higher than any time in the 20th century." The primer gives detailed sources for all of its findings, and it supplies us with information we can use to stop politicians and their environmental extremists from doing a rope-a-dope on us.

If man made global warming alarmists really believed in man made global warming they would not be wasting so much time in Yahoo Answers answering their own questions and trying to prove to others that they are right about this issue. They would be using their time and energies more wisely trying to do something about it. But because they are alarmists and propagandists, they alarm the public and propagate the man made global warming ideology.

Answer 9

He probably heard how much money Al Gore has made over the last years, in regards of the environment. Hey Bush.
Are you jealous?

Answer 10

Bush, like his daddy, are compromisers. There was never a great compromiser in Presidential history. That being said, he probably did it to help reduce criticism that we are doing nothing. I tend to agree with Dana on this, he is probably playing lip service to a certain degree.