Bush Brags He Kept Campaign Promise on Global Warming, Forgets Pledge To Regulate CO2
Bush Brags He Kept Campaign Promise on Global Warming, Forgets Pledge To Regulate CO2
On Larry King Live last night, President Bush suggested that he has followed through on campaign promises to deal with greenhouse gases. He cited his administration’s investment in clean coal technologies:
We have done a lot to deal with greenhouse gases by advancing new technologies. You know, I campaigned against Al Gore. I said we’re going to spend money for clean coal technologies, and we’re in the process of doing that.
Bush neglected to mention that in 2000 he campaigned on a pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions as central compenent of his energy policy. On Sept. 29, 2000, while campaigning in Saginaw, MI, Bush said: “We will require all power plants to meet clean-air standards in order to reduce emissions of…carbon dioxide within a reasonable period of time.â€
Shortly after being elected, Bush announced he was backing off his campaign pledge due to pressure from the oil industry. In a March 13, 2001 letter, Bush said: “I do not believe, however, that the government should impose on power plants mandatory emissions reductions for carbon dioxide, which is not a ‘pollutant’ under the Clean Air Act.†Vice President Cheney said of Bush’s campaign pledge, “It was a mistake because we aren’t in a position today to…cap emissions.”
Last night, Bush brushed off Al Gore’s criticisms of his failure to address global warming, saying, “I guess politics never stops.†He’s right about that.
Sort Comments By: Top Rated | Date
53 Responses to “Bush Brags He Kept Campaign Promise on Global Warming, Forgets Pledge To Regulate CO2”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Think ProgressContact Us
Donate
What pledge on global warming? He does not even aknowledge that it exists!
July 7th, 2006 at 2:44 pmBreaking the CO2 pledge is #8 of the first term Top 10 Bush Flip-Flops.
July 7th, 2006 at 2:45 pmGood thing John “fli flop” Kerry wasn’t elected, because he might fliop flop. George Bush would never do that.
/sarcasm = off
July 7th, 2006 at 2:47 pmOnce… just once… I’d like to see someone interviewing Bush who actually catches him in one of these lies. I won’t hold my breath, though.
July 7th, 2006 at 2:47 pmHard to make a pledge on something Bush does not even accept as fact?! Dubya yesterday should have announced on the Larry King show that he would resign from the presidency, and return to Texas to chainsaw trees and ride his bicycle for the rest of his worthless dumb life!
July 7th, 2006 at 2:48 pmBush has cut and run on the environment.
remember a couple years back during the election when he said he didnt believe in global warming when asked by the press. The problem was Bush didnt get the memo that his administration changed its stance on the issue.
July 7th, 2006 at 2:50 pmOf course Larry King being the great interviewer jumped on it and asked those questions that the public needs answers to.
July 7th, 2006 at 2:51 pmCan’t have clean coal without 30 or 40 miners dying for it — Bush.
July 7th, 2006 at 2:51 pmChimporer gives revigoration to the joke about how you know a politician is lying…
Actions speak louder than words. I’ll believe it when I see it. Until then, I will believe this regime is doing the exact opposite of what they are saying they are doing.
July 7th, 2006 at 2:56 pmWe should all be glad Gore wasn’t able to keep any of his campaign promises.
July 7th, 2006 at 2:58 pmElectricity generated from coal fired power stations will have generated 910 grammes of CO2 to produce 1kWh of electricity and natural gas will have produced 360 grammes of CO2 for each kWh.
That would be 3 tonnes per household per year - time for a change
July 7th, 2006 at 2:59 pmcollect methane from both Bushes orifices
Bush also on Larry King should have announced to Laura and Larry that he cheated on his wife with Jeff Gannon, and wanted to come clean about that to the entire nation, but instead he just sat there and made monkey faces as he lied about everything!
July 7th, 2006 at 3:02 pmGlobal warming is war to Bush - he knows damm well that the desert regions of earth will be inhabital and tropical regions will become deserts - therefore killing billions that what he actually wants
July 7th, 2006 at 3:02 pmOh yeah C-storm had gore won, we would be over our head in national debt, our military would be overextended, and we would be hated and reviled by the rest of the world.
oh wait.
/sarcasm
July 7th, 2006 at 3:03 pmThis is old news, Bush clearly said he wasn’t going to follow up on that promise a LONGGGGGGGGGGGG time ago. Cheney even commented on as you point out. Must be another slow news day at thinkprogress!!
July 7th, 2006 at 3:08 pmOnce again Bush and his amazing magical memory strike again. He selectively forgets anythnig that does not serve his current agenda. Must have been that tainted cocaine he got back in college.
July 7th, 2006 at 3:26 pmBut the danger from North Korea is not the rickety missiles that explode soon after launch. The real threat is the growing stockpile of plutonium that North Korea has been getting. The nuclear weapons manufactured by this plutonium can find their way into a U.S. city by many other, far less technically advanced means than an ICBM — such as smuggled aboard a container ship.
July 7th, 2006 at 3:26 pmSo what has the Bush administration done in its six years to address North Korea’s plutonium stockpile? Most notably, they scuttled the Agreed Framework, the one restraint on North Korea’s nuclear program. Since then, North Korea has restarted its 5 MW reactor at Yongbyon, and is now happily producing an additional 2-3 bombs worth of plutonium every year.
The problem of how to deal with North Korea’s missile test is not a military problem, it’s a policy problem. The U.S. has had ample time to develop a viable policy approach to North Korea’s nuclear program. Instead, the administration has vacillated between a half-hearted engagement policy that was always too little too late, and a hard-line stance based on the vague hope of finding the proper measure of sanctions that will cause the Kim Jong-il to capitulate, if not outright collapse.
When Bush took office in January 2001, he undertook a review of North Korean policy. It was estimated at the time that it might take as long as six months to complete the review and institute the new policy. Instead, it’s been six years, and we’re still waiting.
July 7th, 2006 at 3:28 pmDoodle Bug - And how long did it take for the Bush Admin to kis some East Indian ass and let them carry on with thier nuclear program? Butthole surfers.
July 7th, 2006 at 3:34 pmHERS A GREAT READ SERIOUSLY UNDERMIMES AMERICAN SPYING HA HA HA
And it’s not going to make you any safer
Ha what a great read
July 7th, 2006 at 3:45 pmFunny thing isn’t it that bush lies to cover more lies and not one teevee personality has the will power to be a real journalist and hold his feet to the fire.
July 7th, 2006 at 3:56 pm#18, great post.
July 7th, 2006 at 4:06 pmThis is really the heart of the matter.
Bush had done absolutely nothingto
impede NK from further testing, or plutonium mfg.
Clinton established the ‘agreed framework’ and at
least they didn’t keep making weapons grade plutonium.
Whie we’re spending $300B on a wild goose chase in Iraq,
the real enemy has gained ground on the technology side.
Do you think the dirty bomb scenario will be carried in to the
USA by a North Korean? No, probably an Al Queda operative,
set up with North Korean weapon(s).
Talk about a Nero scenario. I guess it’s somewhat fitting…
all that’s missing is the Grape Leaf crown. (They’re already fiddling!)
well, where i sit, georgie is making lots of sense!
if we can get gas up to about six dollars a gallon, we can start building those nucUlar plants that georgie wants… do i have to remind you all how much cash we make on those mofos!!!
so, its another win-win for my cohorts! we screw you mercilessly for your gas and build nice expensive dangerous nuke plants…hehehehhehe
—-boy, yes, another drink would be nice…can you bring another beach towel over? thanks…
July 7th, 2006 at 4:33 pmhey, progressive chipmunks… here is what i said about global warming. read my words, buy my books, stare at my adam’s apple, and keep pouting :(
July 7th, 2006 at 4:39 pmGlobal warming will kill mostly people in tropical Areas and desserts
lets just say if all the people in the tropics started using CFC and created a massive hole in the polar ozone layers we would soon die too
And by god you would be pissed off so please respect people living in the tropics and desserts dont be ignorant as they are not
July 7th, 2006 at 4:45 pm#25 - Scienti-flip-flopper?
Hmm, quite a resume for ol Michael Oppie:
helped precipitate the negotiations that resulted in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (signed at the 1992 Earth Summit) and the Kyoto Protocol. He is also a co-founder of the Climate Action Network.
http://www.wws.princeton.edu/step/people/oppenheimer.html
So he’s a SUPPORTER of Global Warming? Sounds like the Right using facts to support their argument FALSELY, as usual…
July 7th, 2006 at 5:00 pmi have to agree with ken lay’s comment on this one… it is all about building nuclear plants, once the gas hits a certain level that, i assume, has been worked out by the bush crime family…
the bush crime family wants americans to painfully squirm and die from paying so much for energy. once they do, to a sufficient level, then the trade-off of the dangers of nuclear will lose to the promise of lower prices…
it is simply that base an equation…
July 7th, 2006 at 5:23 pmA Convenient Lie
By John Stossel
When he was in college, atmospheric-science professor John Christy was told, “it was a certainty that by the year 2000, the world would be starving and out of energy.”
That prediction has gone the way of so many others. But environmentalists continue to warn us that we face environmental disaster if we don’t accept the economic disaster called the Kyoto treaty. Lawyers from the Natural Resources Defense Council (another environmental group with more lawyers than scientists) explain: “Sea levels will rise, flooding coastal areas.” And Al Gore’s new movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” depicts a future in which cities are submerged by rising sea levels.
Wow.
But many scientists laugh at the panic.
Christy says, “Doomsday prophecies grabbed headlines but have proven to be completely false. Similar pronouncements today about catastrophes due to human-induced climate change sound all too familiar.”
But the media can’t get enough of doomsday.
The Washington Post reported that because of melting ice caps and glaciers, “The End Is Near!” But melting Arctic ice won’t raise sea levels any more than the melting ice in your drink makes your glass overflow.
MSNBC and the BBC ran stories on the coming calamity from Greenland’s melting glaciers. Unlike Arctic ice, those melting glaciers could raise sea levels. But other reports note that Greenland’s ice has been thickening in the interior of Greenland.
The former vice president’s film shows dramatic film of big chunks of ice breaking off glaciers, but the “calving” of icebergs is a normal, natural process involved in the growth of glaciers into the sea. The movie features some majestic glaciers that existed in the 19th Century that have all but disappeared today — but it doesn’t bother to mention any of the glaciers growing in Norway, New Zealand and even the United States. The U.S. Forest Service reports that the Hubbard Glacier in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest is advancing so rapidly, it threatens to close off a major fjord.
He shows shocking time-lapse photos of ice disappearing from Mt. Kilimanjaro. The ice there has been melting for over a hundred years.
Climate always changes. “An Inconvenient Truth” implies that all serious scientists agree that it is a crisis, and that the United States must immediately reduce carbon dioxide emissions as dictated by the Kyoto treaty the Bush administration so arrogantly refuses to sign — the same treaty the Clinton-Gore administration didn’t even submit to the Senate.
But even advocates of Kyoto admit that if all nations signed the agreement and obeyed it, it would affect global temperatures by less than a tenth of a degree!
To achieve a meaningful reduction in emissions, politicians would have to set drastic limits on driving, air conditioning and all industrial production. I suppose “essential” car use would be allowed, and politicians would decide what is essential. A $10 a gallon tax on gasoline might be a start, and Al Gore could funnel the tax money to the scientist “friends” he repeatedly cites in his movie.
Let’s calm down.
The scary claims about heat waves and droughts are based on computer models. But computer models are lousy at predicting climate because water vapor and cloud effects cause changes that computers fail to predict. They were unable to anticipate the massive amounts of heat energy that escaped the tropics over the past 15 years, forcing modelers back to the drawing board. In the mid-1970s, computer models told us we should prepare for global cooling.
The fundamentalist doom-mongers ignore scientists who say the effects of global warming may be benign. Harvard astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas says added carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may actually benefit the world because more CO2 helps plants grow. Warmer winters would give farmers a longer harvest season.
Why don’t we hear about this part of the global warming argument?
“It’s the money!” says Dr. Baliunas. “Twenty-five billion dollars in government funding has been spent since 1990 to research global warming. If scientists and researchers were coming out releasing reports that global warming has little to do with man, and most to do with just how the planet works, there wouldn’t be as much money to study it.”
And the politicians would have one less excuse to take control of our lives.
July 7th, 2006 at 6:22 pmMIT Professor: Al Gore is wrong. There’s no ‘consensus’ on global warming…
Don’t Believe the Hype
Al Gore is wrong. There’s no “consensus” on global warming.
BY RICHARD S. LINDZEN
Sunday, July 2, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
According to Al Gore’s new film “An Inconvenient Truth,” we’re in for “a planetary emergency”: melting ice sheets, huge increases in sea levels, more and stronger hurricanes, and invasions of tropical disease, among other cataclysms–unless we change the way we live now.
Bill Clinton has become the latest evangelist for Mr. Gore’s gospel, proclaiming that current weather events show that he and Mr. Gore were right about global warming, and we are all suffering the consequences of President Bush’s obtuseness on the matter. And why not? Mr. Gore assures us that “the debate in the scientific community is over.”
That statement, which Mr. Gore made in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC, ought to have been followed by an asterisk. What exactly is this debate that Mr. Gore is referring to? Is there really a scientific community that is debating all these issues and then somehow agreeing in unison? Far from such a thing being over, it has never been clear to me what this “debate” actually is in the first place.
The media rarely help, of course. When Newsweek featured global warming in a 1988 issue, it was claimed that all scientists agreed. Periodically thereafter it was revealed that although there had been lingering doubts beforehand, now all scientists did indeed agree. Even Mr. Gore qualified his statement on ABC only a few minutes after he made it, clarifying things in an important way. When Mr. Stephanopoulos confronted Mr. Gore with the fact that the best estimates of rising sea levels are far less dire than he suggests in his movie, Mr. Gore defended his claims by noting that scientists “don’t have any models that give them a high level of confidence” one way or the other and went on to claim–in his defense–that scientists “don’t know. . . . They just don’t know.”
So, presumably, those scientists do not belong to the “consensus.” Yet their research is forced, whether the evidence supports it or not, into Mr. Gore’s preferred global-warming template–namely, shrill alarmism. To believe it requires that one ignore the truly inconvenient facts. To take the issue of rising sea levels, these include: that the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940; that icebergs have been known since time immemorial; that the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average. A likely result of all this is increased pressure pushing ice off the coastal perimeter of that country, which is depicted so ominously in Mr. Gore’s movie. In the absence of factual context, these images are perhaps dire or alarming.
They are less so otherwise. Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century, and were advancing for several centuries before that. Since about 1970, many of the glaciers have stopped retreating and some are now advancing again. And, frankly, we don’t know why.
The other elements of the global-warming scare scenario are predicated on similar oversights. Malaria, claimed as a byproduct of warming, was once common in Michigan and Siberia and remains common in Siberia–mosquitoes don’t require tropical warmth. Hurricanes, too, vary on multidecadal time scales; sea-surface temperature is likely to be an important factor. This temperature, itself, varies on multidecadal time scales. However, questions concerning the origin of the relevant sea-surface temperatures and the nature of trends in hurricane intensity are being hotly argued within the profession.
Even among those arguing, there is general agreement that we can’t attribute any particular hurricane to global warming. To be sure, there is one exception, Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., who argues that it must be global warming because he can’t think of anything else. While arguments like these, based on lassitude, are becoming rather common in climate assessments, such claims, given the primitive state of weather and climate science, are hardly compelling.
A general characteristic of Mr. Gore’s approach is to assiduously ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always changing even without any external forcing. To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to exploit that fear is much worse. Regardless, these items are clearly not issues over which debate is ended–at least not in terms of the actual science.
A clearer claim as to what debate has ended is provided by the environmental journalist Gregg Easterbrook. He concludes that the scientific community now agrees that significant warming is occurring, and that there is clear evidence of human influences on the climate system. This is still a most peculiar claim. At some level, it has never been widely contested. Most of the climate community has agreed since 1988 that global mean temperatures have increased on the order of one degree Fahrenheit over the past century, having risen significantly from about 1919 to 1940, decreased between 1940 and the early ’70s, increased again until the ’90s, and remaining essentially flat since 1998.
There is also little disagreement that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen from about 280 parts per million by volume in the 19th century to about 387 ppmv today. Finally, there has been no question whatever that carbon dioxide is an infrared absorber (i.e., a greenhouse gas–albeit a minor one), and its increase should theoretically contribute to warming. Indeed, if all else were kept equal, the increase in carbon dioxide should have led to somewhat more warming than has been observed, assuming that the small observed increase was in fact due to increasing carbon dioxide rather than a natural fluctuation in the climate system. Although no cause for alarm rests on this issue, there has been an intense effort to claim that the theoretically expected contribution from additional carbon dioxide has actually been detected.
Given that we do not understand the natural internal variability of climate change, this task is currently impossible. Nevertheless there has been a persistent effort to suggest otherwise, and with surprising impact. Thus, although the conflicted state of the affair was accurately presented in the 1996 text of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the infamous “summary for policy makers” reported ambiguously that “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” This sufficed as the smoking gun for Kyoto.
The next IPCC report again described the problems surrounding what has become known as the attribution issue: that is, to explain what mechanisms are responsible for observed changes in climate. Some deployed the lassitude argument–e.g., we can’t think of an alternative–to support human attribution. But the “summary for policy makers” claimed in a manner largely unrelated to the actual text of the report that “In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.”
In a similar vein, the National Academy of Sciences issued a brief (15-page) report responding to questions from the White House. It again enumerated the difficulties with attribution, but again the report was preceded by a front end that ambiguously claimed that “The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability.” This was sufficient for CNN’s Michelle Mitchell to presciently declare that the report represented a “unanimous decision that global warming is real, is getting worse and is due to man. There is no wiggle room.” Well, no.
More recently, a study in the journal Science by the social scientist Nancy Oreskes claimed that a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge Database for the years 1993 to 2003 under the key words “global climate change” produced 928 articles, all of whose abstracts supported what she referred to as the consensus view. A British social scientist, Benny Peiser, checked her procedure and found that only 913 of the 928 articles had abstracts at all, and that only 13 of the remaining 913 explicitly endorsed the so-called consensus view. Several actually opposed it.
Even more recently, the Climate Change Science Program, the Bush administration’s coordinating agency for global-warming research, declared it had found “clear evidence of human influences on the climate system.” This, for Mr. Easterbrook, meant: “Case closed.” What exactly was this evidence? The models imply that greenhouse warming should impact atmospheric temperatures more than surface temperatures, and yet satellite data showed no warming in the atmosphere since 1979. The report showed that selective corrections to the atmospheric data could lead to some warming, thus reducing the conflict between observations and models descriptions of what greenhouse warming should look like. That, to me, means the case is still very much open.
So what, then, is one to make of this alleged debate? I would suggest at least three points.
First, nonscientists generally do not want to bother with understanding the science. Claims of consensus relieve policy types, environmental advocates and politicians of any need to do so. Such claims also serve to intimidate the public and even scientists–especially those outside the area of climate dynamics. Secondly, given that the question of human attribution largely cannot be resolved, its use in promoting visions of disaster constitutes nothing so much as a bait-and-switch scam. That is an inauspicious beginning to what Mr. Gore claims is not a political issue but a “moral” crusade.
Lastly, there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition. An earlier attempt at this was accompanied by tragedy. Perhaps Marx was right. This time around we may have farce–if we’re lucky.
Mr. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.
July 7th, 2006 at 6:22 pmBreeder nukes were perfected in the seventies. Basically, two pounds of ash are produced for each ten pounds of Plutonium, breed. Plutonium cycle produced about 6 ounces of ash from that ten pounds of fuel. The energy created is equivalent to about 35 kilotons of coal or 22 kilotons of petroleum. For the uninitiated, ash is the crap that has to be fused into glass or tossed into a gutter. France is using the former process, the US, the latter.
July 7th, 2006 at 6:34 pmi am thinking this isn’t going to make ann a happy, blood-drinking, vermin tonight….
hahaha
July 7th, 2006 at 6:50 pmI see, Mr. Cheney. So an empty campaign promise was just a slip of the tongue. A faux pas.
July 7th, 2006 at 7:20 pmI agree with the second article posted by Al Green (RIP). While we must curb our fuel usage and try to come up with renewable resources, like we’ve been saying for the past 30 years, we can’t allow ourselves to become victims of alarmism.
July 7th, 2006 at 7:31 pmTroll Al Green must not know that Lindzen’s claims about Oreskes work are based solely on a thoroughly discredited article by Benny Peiser, whose work is so “sloppy” that it appears to be in fact an ethical transgression. Lindzen has made a joke out of himself with his WSJ op-eds. And, speaking of joke, you must be kidding when you post something by that imbecile John Stossel.
Who are these people? Who are the freaking IDIOTS who would rather believe Stossel and Crichton over literally THOUSANDS of qualified scientists?
July 7th, 2006 at 7:32 pmJason,
Please explain your reasoning for agreeing with Lindzen’s article. Certainly this reasoning can’t be the product of critical thought applied to the best available evidence, so I am wondering how people do arrive at this kind of conclusion.
July 7th, 2006 at 7:36 pmJason,
Let me clarify by asking a more specific question: What alarmism? Can you define the term for me, and then point me to any examples of it? That global warming caused by humans is rapidly changing our climate has been agreed upon within the scientific community for nearly ten years now. Certainly all meaningful debate on this conclusion ended by 2000. So where is the alarmism? It took the MSM until this year to even discover global warming as a major issue, or for that matter to realize that the scientific debate ended a long time ago (and some of them still don’t seem to get it). Has the government done anything at all about it? Imposed energy taxes, CAFE standards, carbon taxes, anything? So we have this huge story, ignored by the press until over 80% of Americans had concluded it was true, and basically denied as even existing by the federal government. I don’t see nearly enough alarmism.
July 7th, 2006 at 7:46 pmBush claims he is solving the global warming problem.
July 7th, 2006 at 7:58 pmSolving indicates there is a problem in need of a remedy.
Bush denies that global warming exists, so there is no problem.
Did he just put his foot in his mouth? Or his head up his ass?
TWO BIGGER, MORE IMPORTANT LIES THAT BUSH TOLD LARRY KING ON JULY 6
Once again, George W. proved himself to be America’s Liar-in-Chief by repeating the same old mantra justifying Gulf War 2.
This time he did it during his taped interview with Larry King. Asked CNN’s TV softball talk show host, “If you had it to do over again, knowing the WMDs weren’t there [in Iraq], you’d still go in?
Replied Dub-ya brashly, “We removed a tyrant [Saddam Hussein], who was a weapon. He was an enemy of the United States who harbored terrorists and who had the capacity, at the very minimum, to make weapons of mass destruction.â€
The published CNN transcript showed how dishonest Bush could be.
First, prior the April 2003 invasion, Iraq did not harbor Al Qaeda terrorists. They entered the country after the attack.
Second, virtually every intelligence expert in America has said that Saddam Hussein was not capable of producing WMDs in 2003 or for years afterwards.
If those two assertions by President Bush weren’t falsehoods, then he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, which is not very comforting when you consider his predisposition to launch preemptive first strikes.
For the truth about Herr Bush and his goose-stepping goons, visit http://www.FreedomCentralUSA.com.
Hugh E. Scott — author, investigative journalist, Vietnam veteran, ex-USAF pilot, lifelong registered Republican, Goldwater conservative, Ronald Reagan fan and rabid neocon-hater with a family history of honorable military service going back to 1776.
July 7th, 2006 at 8:27 pm#34 RealScientist:
The same people who believed that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks
July 7th, 2006 at 8:55 pmBush’s war on the environment:
Pulled out of the Kyoto agreement on global warming, which was agreed upon by 178 other countries.
Proposes to legalize the release of inadequately treated sewage into waterways while cutting funding for water quality investments(32%) and infrastructure (40%).
Doctored the EPA’s Draft Report on the Environment so it wouldn’t include any mention of the overwhelming scientific consensus regarding the global warming threat.
Proposes to remove regulations on mercury pollution.
Proposed weakening the New Source Review regulation of the Clear Air Act. The changes allow older coal-fired power plants and other facilities to avoid installing pollution controls when they expand or repair existing facilities. According to environmental advocates, just 51 of the power plants subject to new source review enforcement helped cause the premature deaths of 5,500 to 9,000 people each year many from respiratory diseases, and could cause 30,000- pollution related deaths over the next 20 years.
Clear Skies allows more than twice as much S02 for nearly a decade longer (2010 - 2018), than the Clean Air Act currently allows. The plan also allows more than one and a half times as much NOx for nearly a decade longer (2010-2018). This act also allows power plants to emit triple the amount of mercury into the environment.
Bush took steps to abolish the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Opened 191 million acres of public lands to increased commercial logging (The Health Forest Initiative). After this, he proposed to reverse a federal regulation to protect 60 million acres of national forest from logging and road building.
Cut $500 million from the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget.
Bush proposed a bill to prevent groups from suing to have an animal placed on the Endangered Species List.
Came out against international efforts to restrict the use of sonar anywhere in the world, especially by the U.S. Navy, even though the sonar poses a threat to ocean wildlife. This decision puts the administration at odds with many European nations as more evidence emerges linking the use of active sonar and the beaching of whales and other ocean mammals.
Revoked rule to reduce the acceptable level of arsenic in drinking water. Proposed to cut $35 million from the national lead poisoning prevention program and refused to regulate mercury (while secretly altering scientific findings as to its danger) through the same tough approach used for other hazardous air pollutants (Bush adopted industry supported rules).
Requested Congress to exempt the Pentagon from environmental laws pertaining to air pollution, toxic waste dumps, and endangered species.
Bush refused to federally fund the continued clean up of a uranium-slag heap in Utah.
Proposes building 63 new nuclear power plants ($4.7 million increase in nuclear power funding), increasing funding in the Coal Research Initiative by $69 million and the Clean Coal Power Initiative by $109 million (60 percent), and seeks to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The AP reports that Bush’s top energy priority as he enters his second term is to open an Alaskan wildlife refuge to oil drilling.
On October 7, 2002, Bush stated “We need an energy bill that encourages consumption.”
Proposes energy industry tax breaks and subsidies costing $23 billion over the next 10 years. Cut funding for renewable energy resources in 2002 by $190 million, by $35.8 million in 2003, by $137 million in 2004, and the 2005 budget will cut overall energy efficiency and conservation by more than $2 million. Proposes cutting solar energy programs by more than $3 million and biomass by $14 million.
Bush pushed the deadline up indefinitely for automakers to develop prototype high mileage cars.
Had his administration manipulate the 2005 cattle grazing report in order to loosen regulations for cattle grazing on over 160 million acres of public lands.
Alcoa, the third largest contributor to the Bush campaign, was allowed by Bush (as governor) to work a loophole into the Texas environmental regulations which allowed Alcoa to emit 60,000 tons of sulfer dioxide each year.
Failed to protect three million acres of the Tongass National Forest from logging. The Tongass has the highest concentration of bald eagles on earth and has already lost 700 square miles to logging with 33 more longing permits pending.
Bush eased field-testing controls of genetically engineered crops.
Eliminated the Wetland Reserve Program. It was designed to encourage and reward farmers for maintaining a wetlands habitat on their property.
Abolished rules mandating energy-saving regulations for central air conditioners and heat pumps.
Bush plans to have nuclear waste stored at the volcanic Yucca Mountain facility.
Proposes cutting core energy efficiency line items for building by $1.5 million and industrial technologies by $35 million (38 percent).
Bush nominated Linda Fisher - an executive for Monsanto - to the Environmental Protection Agency. Monsanto is one of the largest farming and pesticide biotechnology companies in the world.
Bush cut 28% of government funding for researching cleaner, more efficient automobiles.
Cut government funding to research renewable energy sources by 50%.
July 7th, 2006 at 9:31 pmWhy doesn’t Larry King just die? He’s totally useless as anything but a filthy old man with a lot of money.
July 8th, 2006 at 12:29 amWhy doesn’t Larry King just die? He’s totally useless as anything but a filthy old man with a lot of money.
July 8th, 2006 at 12:29 amLindzen?
You must be kidding.
http://www.realclimate.org/ index.php/ archives/ 2006/ 04/ lindzen-point-by-point/
Benny Peiser?
You must be kidding.
http://scienceblogs.com/ deltoid/ 2006/ 03/ peiser_admits_to_making_a_mist.php
http://timlambert.org/2005/05/peiser/
John Christy?
You must be kidding.
He still cannot get over the fact that the MSU, just like the surface data, proves global warming. The guy is a joke.
http://www.ucar.edu/ communications/ newsreleases/ 2003/ wigley2.html
Who else do you have?
Tim Ball who said that global warming stopped in 1940?
http://scienceblogs.com/ deltoid/ 2006/ 07/ tim_ball_global_warming_stoppe.php
Tim Patterson, Bob Carter who lie like other people breath?
http://scienceblogs.com/ deltoid/ 2006/ 06/ an_embarrassment_to_australian.php
http://timlambert.org/2005/04/bobcarter/
Ross McKitrick, who is more creative than the Grimm brothers?
http://timlambert.org/category/science/mckitrick/
Give up. Gore won the debate.
After more than two decades of Lindzen-type denial from wingers and corrupt scientists you are the losers and you know that your days are numbered.
Bush leaves the White House and the next president will regulate CO2, like it or not.
By the way, this is my favorite wingnut attack on Gore which clearly illustrate why
Ann Coulter-fans are just unable of getting the science of global warming:
From the New York Post:
“The final shot of Gore shows him bravely silhouetted against the cosmos, a lone figure tenderly surveying the firmament.”
http://www.nypost.com/movies/66485.htm
David Roberts’ response:
“No. The final shot of Gore does not show him silhouetted against the cosmos. That’s a hurricane, dumbass.”
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/6/4/223644/8563
Jesus.
July 8th, 2006 at 1:06 am• There is an estimated 400 billion tons of methane trapped in permafrost ice.
• An estimated 50% of surface permafrost will melt by 2050, and 90% by 2100.
• Methane is more than 20 times as strong a greenhouse gas as CO2-the sudden release of just 35 billion tons of methane would be like doubling the CO2 in the air.
Massive amounts of methane from melting permafrost ice will soon flood the air-far outpacing human greenhouse gas pollution.
• The effect of methane flooding the air is runaway global warming-this disastrous positive feedback loop has occurred before.
• Ocean bottom ice will start to melt-releasing some of the estimated 10,000 billion tons of methane trapped in it.
• A potential bottleneck for mankind-an existential threat to nations.
• The only solution is biological sequestration-removing the CO2 from the air after it is emitted.
July 8th, 2006 at 2:12 amIt should be a crime for governments to knowingly destroy the ecological balance of planet earth. Countries will continue to destroy the planet until they are threatened with punishment.
July 8th, 2006 at 2:50 amThe same people who believed that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks
Comment by Count Iblis — July 7, 2006 @ 8:55 pm
You mean people like this guy:
“I mean, there was a serious international effort to say to Saddam Hussein, you’re a threat. And the 9/11 attacks extenuated that threat, as far as I-concerned.”
—George W. Bush, Philadelphia, Dec. 12, 2005
July 8th, 2006 at 9:50 am[…] It’s not about the facts, it’s about who wins. Check it out here: Think Progress » Limbaugh Distorts Numbers To Downplay Global Warming Science […]
July 10th, 2006 at 6:31 am[…] The meeting may not be a suprise, but it is an embarrassment for the administration. The agenda will focus on items that Bush pledged he would act on but hasn’t: 1) regulating carbon dioxide and 2) encouraging new, greener technologies. […]
July 31st, 2006 at 3:31 pmWe believe Saddam might have had a hand in 9-11 like
we believe Iran and Syria might have a hand in Iraq right now.
You believe Bush had a hand in 9-11 and America created the
war on terror. Progress is surely the myth we love best.
Cormac McCarthy’s new novel The Road says everything you need
to know about where scientific humanism is going to take us.
In Science We Trust. Pray to Your God!
December 8th, 2006 at 5:16 pmEuropean Union Greenhouse Gas Reduction Methods
Can it be that your server is infected with a virus - I get an Virus warning when I open your site with Firefox - Just for your Info.
March 20th, 2008 at 5:02 pmPanic Attacks When Driving
Can it be that your server is infected with a virus - I get an Virus warning when I open your site with Firefox - Just for your Info.
March 26th, 2008 at 9:20 pmBest Satellite Tv Deal
Hi - just wanted to say good design and blog -
March 30th, 2008 at 12:50 amcomputer debt program reduction
April 9th, 2008 at 2:01 pm