[Rhodes22-list] More on global warming.

[Bill Effros]

Brad,

How does "symbolically" signing a protocol differ from "actually" 
signing a protocol?

How does a "Sense of the Senate" resolution regarding environmental 
issues differ from a "Sense of the Senate" resolution regarding the war 
in Iraq?

Bill Effros

Brad Haslett wrote:
> Rummy,
>
> Expect to hear Bush 43 to acknowledge global warming in the coming 
> State of
> the Union address.  The rumor mill has it that the current carbon swap
> program will be expanded and some type of enhanced carbon tax may be
> forthcoming.  Remember that every news organization will repeat the same
> mantra: Bush pulled us out of Kyoto.  Not true.  Here is the truth.
>
>
> On July 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was finalized (although it 
> had
> been fully negotiated, and a penultimate draft was finished), the U.S.
> Senate unanimously passed by a 95–0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. 
> Res.
> 98),[40] which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States
> should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding
> targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized 
> nations or
> "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". On
> November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the 
> protocol.
> Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol 
> would not
> be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the 
> developing
> nations.[41] The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol 
> to the
> Senate for ratification.
>
> Hmm. No Bush Administration rejection there. There is this bit, later on:
>
> The current President, George W. Bush, has indicated that he does not
> intend to submit the treaty for ratification, not because he does not
> support the Kyoto principles, but because of the exemption granted to 
> China
> (the world's second largest emitter of carbon dioxide[42]). . . . Despite
> its refusal to submit the protocol to Congress for ratification, the Bush
> Administration has taken some actions towards mitigation of climate 
> change.
>
> Regardless, the current administration is starting to embrace the 
> issue. See
> below.
>
> Brad
>
> _______________
>
>  Bush to address global warming in annual speech
>
> By Caren BohanTue Jan 16, 3:27 PM ET
>
> President Bush will outline a policy on global warming next week in his
> State of the Union speech but has not dropped his opposition to mandatory
> limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, the White House said on Tuesday.
>
> "It's not accurate. It's wrong," White House spokesman Tony Snow said
> regarding media reports suggesting that Bush would agree to mandatory
> emissions caps in an effort to combat global warming. Such caps could
> require energy conservation and pollution curbs.
>
> "If you're talking about enforceable carbon caps, in terms of 
> industry-wide
> and nation-wide, we knocked that down. That's not something we're talking
> about," Snow said.
>
> Britain's "The Observer" newspaper reported on Sunday that senior Downing
> Street officials, who were not named, said Bush was preparing to issue a
> changed climate policy during his annual State of the Union speech on
> January 23.
>
> U.S. allies such as Britain and Germany have pressed for a new global
> agreement on climate change to replace the Kyoto Protocol which 
> expires in
> 2012. Bush withdrew the United States from the protocol in 2001, 
> saying its
> targets for reducing carbon emissions would unfairly hurt the U.S. 
> economy.
>
> "We'll have a State of the Union address in a week and we'll lay out our
> policy on global warming," Snow said when asked whether British Prime
> Minister Tony Blair had persuaded Bush to agree to tougher action to 
> combat
> global warming.
>
> Bush has pushed a series of initiatives aimed at encouraging the 
> development
> of alternative energy sources such as hydrogen and ethanol. That theme is
> expected to be emphasized in his speech.
>
> Germany is hosting the Group of Eight summit later this year and German
> Chancellor Angela Merkel plans to make the fight against climate change a
> top issue on the agenda.
>
> Meeting with Merkel at the White House earlier this month, Bush said 
> he was
> committed to "promoting new technologies that will promote energy
> efficiency, and at the same time do a better job of protecting the 
> world's
> environment."
>
> The topic of climate change also came up on Tuesday when Bush met with 
> new
> U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon. Ban raised the subject, according to a U.N. 
> source.
>
> "This is a global problem that calls for global leadership," the source
> quoted U.N. secretary general as telling Bush. According to the 
> source, Bush
> said that those who sign on to protocols like Kyoto need to live by them.
>
> EVOLVING
>
> Bush administration stances on global warming and other environmental 
> issues
> appear to have evolved over the last year, starting with the president's
> 2006 State of the Union address, when he called U.S. addiction to foreign
> oil a serious problem that required more spending on new technologies.
>
> After years of skepticism and calls for more research into the causes of
> global warming, Bush acknowledged last summer that humans exacerbate the
> problem.
>
> His administration also is considering designating polar bears, whose icy
> habitat has been melting in recent years, as an endangered species. That
> could pressure the government to impose tougher measures to avoid global
> warming.
>
> Snow suggested the president was sticking to his emphasis on voluntary 
> steps
> to curb emissions.
>
> "The president believes in doing everything in our power to use 
> innovation
> and the power of innovation to achieve people's goals of having cleaner
> energy and abundant energy," he said.
>
> (Additional reporting by Deborah Zabarenko)
>
>
> On 1/17/07, R22RumRunner at aol.com <R22RumRunner at aol.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> LIVERPOOL LAND, Greenland (Jan. 16) — Flying over  snow-capped peaks and
>> into
>> a thick fog, the helicopter set down on a barren  strip of rocks between
>> two
>> glaciers. A dozen bags of supplies, a rifle and a can  of cooking gas 
>> were
>> tossed out onto the cold ground. Then, with engines whining,  the
>> helicopter
>> lifted off, snow and fog swirling in the rotor wash.
>> Changing  Coastlines
>> When it  had disappeared over the horizon, no sound remained but the
>> howling
>> of the  Arctic wind.
>>
>> "It feels a little like the days of the old explorers,  doesn't it?"
>> Dennis
>> Schmitt said.
>>
>> Mr. Schmitt, a 60-year-old explorer  from Berkeley, Calif., had just
>> landed
>> on a newly revealed island 400 miles  north of the Arctic Circle in
>> eastern
>> Greenland. It was a moment of triumph: he  had discovered the island 
>> on an
>> ocean
>> voyage in September 2005. Now, a year  later, he and a small expedition
>> team
>> had returned to spend a week climbing  peaks, crossing treacherous
>> glaciers and
>> documenting animal and plant life.
>>
>> Despite its remote location, the island would almost certainly have been
>> discovered, named and mapped almost a century ago when explorers like
>> Jean-Baptiste Charcot and Philippe, Duke of Orléans, charted these
>> coastlines.  Would
>> have been discovered had it not been bound to the coast by glacial ice.
>>
>> Maps of the region show a mountainous peninsula covered with
>> glaciers.  The
>> island's distinct shape — like a hand with three bony fingers pointing
>> north  —
>> looks like the end of the peninsula.
>>
>> Now, where the maps showed only  ice, a band of fast-flowing seawater 
>> ran
>> between a newly exposed shoreline and  the aquamarine-blue walls of a
>> retreating
>> ice shelf. The water was littered with  dozens of icebergs, some as 
>> large
>> as
>> half an acre; every hour or so, several  more tons of ice fractured off
>> the
>> shelf with a thunderous crack and an  earth-shaking rumble.
>>
>> All over Greenland and the Arctic, rising  temperatures are not simply
>> melting ice; they are changing the very geography of  coastlines. 
>> Nunataks
>> — "
>> lonely mountains" in Inuit — that were encased in the  margins of
>> Greenland's ice
>> sheet are being freed of their age-old bonds,  exposing a new chain of
>> islands, and a new opportunity for Arctic explorers to  write their 
>> names
>> on the
>> landscape.
>>
>> "We are already in a new era of  geography," said the Arctic explorer 
>> Will
>> Steger. "This phenomenon — of an  island all of a sudden appearing 
>> out of
>> nowhere and the ice melting around it —  is a real common phenomenon 
>> now."
>>
>> In August, Mr. Steger discovered his  own new island off the coast of 
>> the
>> Norwegian island of Svalbard, high in the  polar basin. Glaciers that 
>> had
>> surrounded it when his ship passed through only  two years earlier were
>> gone this
>> year, leaving only a small island alone in the  open ocean.
>> "We saw  it ourselves up there, just how fast the ice is going," he 
>> said.
>>
>> With  27,555 miles of coastline and thousands of fjords, inlets, bays 
>> and
>> straits,  Greenland has always been hard to map. Now its geography is
>> becoming
>> obsolete  almost as soon as new maps are created.
>>
>> Hans Jepsen is a cartographer at  the Geological Survey of Denmark and
>> Greenland, which produces topographical  maps for mining and oil
>> companies.
>> (Greenland is a largely self-governing region  of Denmark.) Last summer,
>> he spotted
>> several new islands in an area where a  massive ice shelf had broken up.
>> Mr.
>> Jepsen was unaware of Mr. Schmitt's  discovery, and an old aerial
>> photograph in
>> his files showed the peninsula  intact.
>>
>> "Clearly, the new island was detached from the mainland when
>> the  connecting
>> glacier-bridge retreated southward," Mr. Jepsen said, adding that  
>> future
>> maps
>> would take note of the change.
>>
>> The sudden appearance of the  islands is a symptom of an ice sheet going
>> into
>> retreat, scientists say.  Greenland is covered by 630,000 cubic miles of
>> ice,
>> enough water to raise global  sea levels by 23 feet.
>>
>> Carl Egede Boggild, a professor of snow-and-ice  physics at the 
>> University
>> Center of Svalbard, said Greenland could be losing  more than 80 cubic
>> miles of
>> ice per year.
>>
>> "That corresponds to three  times the volume of all the glaciers in the
>> Alps,"
>> Dr. Boggild said. "If you  lose that much volume you'd definitely see 
>> new
>> islands appear."
>>
>> He  discovered an island himself a year ago while flying over 
>> northwestern
>> Greenland. "Suddenly I saw an island with glacial ice on it," he 
>> said. "I
>> looked  at the map and it should have been a nunatak, but the present 
>> ice
>> margin
>> was  about 10 kilometers away. So I can say that within the last five
>> years the
>> ice  margin had retreated at least 10 kilometers."
>>
>> The abrupt acceleration of  melting in Greenland has taken climate
>> scientists
>> by surprise. Tidewater  glaciers, which discharge ice into the oceans as
>> they
>> break up in the process  called calving, have doubled and tripled in 
>> speed
>> all over Greenland. Ice  shelves are breaking up, and summertime 
>> "glacial
>> earthquakes" have been detected  within the ice sheet.
>>
>> "The general thinking until very recently was that  ice sheets don't 
>> react
>> very quickly to climate," said Martin Truffer, a  glaciologist at the
>> University of Alaska at Fairbanks. "But that thinking is  changing right
>> now, because we
>> 're seeing things that people have thought are  impossible."
>>
>> A study in The Journal of Climate last June observed that  Greenland had
>> become the single largest contributor to global sea-level rise.
>>
>> Until recently, the consensus of climate scientists was that the
>> impact  of
>> melting polar ice sheets would be negligible over the next 100 years. 
>> Ice
>> sheets were thought to be extremely slow in reacting to atmospheric
>> warming. The
>> 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, widely
>> considered  to be an authoritative scientific statement on the potential
>> impacts of
>> _global warming_ (javascript:;)  , based its  conclusions about 
>> sea-level
>> rise on
>> a computer model that predicted a slow onset  of melting in Greenland.
>>
>> "When you look at the ice sheet, the models  didn't work, which puts 
>> us on
>> shaky ground," said Richard Alley, a geosciences  professor at
>> Pennsylvania
>> State University.
>>
>> There is no consensus on how  much Greenland's ice will melt in the near
>> future, Dr. Alley said, and no  computer model that can accurately 
>> predict
>> the
>> future of the ice sheet. Yet  given the acceleration of 
>> tidewater-glacier
>> melting, a sea-level rise of a foot  or two in the coming decades is
>> entirely
>> possible, he said. That bodes ill for  island nations and those who live
>> near the
>> coast.
>>
>> "Even a foot rise is a  pretty horrible scenario," said Stephen P.
>> Leatherman, director of the  Laboratory for Coastal Research at Florida
>> International
>> University in Miami.
>>
>> On low-lying and gently sloping land like coastal river deltas,
>> a  sea-level
>> rise of just one foot would send water thousands of feet inland.  
>> Hundreds
>> of
>> millions of people worldwide make their homes in such deltas;  virtually
>> all
>> of coastal Bangladesh lies in the delta of the Ganges River. Over  the
>> long
>> term, much larger sea-level rises would render the world's coastlines
>> unrecognizable, creating a whole new series of islands.
>>
>> "Here in Miami,"  Dr. Leatherman said, "we're going to have an ocean on
>> both sides of us."
>>
>> Such ominous implications are not lost on Mr. Schmitt, who says he hopes
>> that the island he discovered in Greenland in September will become an
>> international symbol of the effects of climate change. Mr. Schmitt, who
>> speaks  Inuit,
>> has provisionally named it Uunartoq Qeqertoq: the warming island.
>>
>> Global warming has profoundly altered the nature of polar
>> exploration,  said
>> Mr. Schmitt, who in 40 years has logged more than 100 Arctic 
>> expeditions.
>> Routes once pioneered on a dogsled are routinely paddled in a kayak now;
>> many
>> features, like the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf in Greenland's northwest, have
>> disappeared for good.
>>
>> "There is a dark side to this," he said about the  new island. "We felt
>> the
>> exhilaration of discovery. We were exploring something  new. But of
>> course,
>> there was also something scary about what we did there. We  were looking
>> in the
>> face of these changes, and all of us were thinking of the  dire
>> consequences."
>>
>> Copyright (c)  2007 _The New York Times  Company_ 
>> (http://www.nytimes.com
>> /ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html)
>> 2007-01-16 09:43:21
>>
>> (
>> http://news.aol.com/elections/president/story/_a/obama-takes-first-step-in-presidential/20070116102609990001 
>>
>> )
>> Read the
>>
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