DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

In a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, researchers announced compelling new evidence that human industrial activity is responsible for global warming.

The Chronicle’s Science Editor, David Perlman, who is such a legend that he has journalism awards named after him, summarized the findings in a piece headlined New global warming evidence presented Scientists say their observations prove industry is to blame:

But records show that for the past 50 years or so, the warming trend has sped up — due, researchers said, to the atmospheric burden of greenhouse gases produced by everything industrial, from power plants burning fossil fuels to gas-guzzling cars — and the effects are clear.

“We were stunned by the similarities between the observations that have been recorded at sea worldwide and the models that climatologists made,” said Tim Barnett of the University of California’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “The debate is over, at least for rational people. And for those who insist that the uncertainties remain too great, their argument is no longer tenable. We’ve nailed it.”

The Bush administration responded immediately by re-queuing its broken record: “The science of global climate change is uncertain,” said Bill Holbrook, spokesman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

I could have predicted this round of denials. Just two months ago, the U.S. delegation at the U.N.-sponsored International Conference on Global Warming “executed perhaps its most astonishing act of denial:”

Besides blocking all efforts to conduct substantive discussions, the U.S. allied itself with none other than Saudi Arabia in obstructing efforts to create a system of payments to help poor, low-lying island nations cope with the cost of mitigating damage related to global warming, such as rising sea levels, land erosion and increased storm damage.

A quote from Paula Dobriansky, the head of the U.S. delegation, illustrates just how far up its collective ass the Bush administration’s head is:

“Science tells us that we cannot say with any certainty what constitutes a dangerous level of warming, and therefore what level must be avoided.”

Most kids learn by age three not to touch the stove. They don’t know how hot it is. They can’t say with certainty what constitutes a dangerous level of heat. But they manage their uncertainty much more effectively than Bill Holbrook, Paula Dobriansky or George W. Bush.

The good folks at WorkingForChange point out a new propaganda effort by the federal government, which is not only unethical but possibly illegal:

DISH Network has just announced that under the guise of public interest programming it is adding to its broadcast lineup a 24/7 channel produced by the U.S. Department of Defense that previously was aimed only at U.S. military personnel.

Under U.S. law, the federal government is banned from producing propaganda aimed at influencing the American people. Despite this ban, the television channel which is one hundred percent controlled by the Pentagon, will beam highly produced daily news programs promoting the interests of the Pentagon and paid for by U.S. tax payers into millions of American homes.

Let us not forget that the Pentagon insistently and consistently lied to the American people about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. As a result of this “successful” military public relations campaign, we are now bogged down in a ferociously expensive and increasingly deadly occupation that fans the flames of terrorism in the Middle East.

If you think this is a bad idea, sign the petition.

[A]an obscure section of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act requires that all schools receiving federal funds (virtually all public schools) provide the phone numbers and addresses of high school students to military recruiters.

The Executive Summary of the No Child Left Behind Act mentions recruiting teachers, but not infantry.

According to Environmental Defense,

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) has introduced an unprecedented rollback to our nation’s clean air laws. The misnamed “Clear Skies” bill is a smokescreen that covers up a better, more immediate way to healthier air — the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR). CAIR would reduce pollution from power plants, and only requires final approval from the EPA to go into effect.

Grist Magazine sums up the so-called Clear Skies bill: Bush has new hope that his industry-backed initiative will be voted into law. Just as an intellectual exercise, can you think of any industry that would honestly want more government-backed pollution controls?

Carbon dioxide is at the heart of the issue. Senator Inhofe and your local fossil-fuel-burning electrical utility don’t want any restrictions on CO₂ emissions. According to the NYTimes, Inhofe says global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

I thought the search for WMDs was the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. Regardless, we can deconstruct Inhofe’s statement: either he’s saying the earth is not getting warmer, or he’s saying there’s no harm in it.

There’s no arguing the first point. Even the EPA — which one time stood for Environmental Protection Agency, but now that some of their real environmentalists have resigned in disgust due to the Bush Administration’s rollbacks of hard-earned pollution caps could as accurately be called the Environmental Paving Agency — admits the earth is getting hotter:

Average global temperature has increased by almost 1°F over the past century; scientists expect the average global temperature to increase an additional 2 to 6°F over the next one hundred years.

(If you’re thinking 2° doesn’t sound like much, remember that “at the peak of the last ice age (18,000 years ago), the temperature was only 7°F colder than it is today.”)

The second possible explanation for Inhofe’s disregard for rising temperatures is that he believes no catastrophe is possible. This is, as far as I can tell, his contention. Unfortunately his understanding of the science is lousy. I’m not qualified to refute him, but here’s a group of climate scientists who are, and do. Their point-by-point rebuttal of Inhofe’s recent Senate speech is enlightening.

To make your opinion known, send a letter to your congressperson via the E.D. campaign page: “Clear Skies” Smokescreen

ANWR is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The site’s homepage contains their charter:

ANWR was established to preserve unique wildlife, wilderness and recreational values; to conserve caribou herds, polar bears, grizzly bears, muskox, dall sheep … [and 7 other species]; to fulfill international treaty obligations; to provide opportunities for continued subsistence uses; and to ensure necessary water quality and quantity.

See anything in there about oil drilling? Not unless oil drilling is a “subsistence use.” (I don’t speak Bureaucrat.)

The Bush administration has wanted to open ANWR for oil drilling since before it took office. But in every attempt to win a vote to proceed with his plan to hand over a wildlife refuge to the oil companies, Bush has lost.

Until now. According to a great editorial in the Chronicle,

Though the House has approved drilling, the Senate has always blocked the plan, most recently by a two-vote margin.

There’s a twist this time. Instead of a noisy floor vote, the GOP backers of drilling want to slip a go-ahead for drilling into a much larger budget bill. By doing so, drilling supporters need only 51 votes to win. The budget bill is also immune to filibustering, a key weapon for minority Democrats.

In essence, Bush can’t win the ANWR vote on merit, so he and his oily friends have to resort to backhanded political maneuvering to do something the American people don’t want him to do.

How can I say that drilling in a wildlife refuge is something the citizens don’t want? A poll conducted in late December revealed that 55 percent of Americans said “no” when asked whether oil companies should be allowed to drill in ANWR.

Do I believe so deeply in polls that I consider the above to be irrefutable evidence that Americans oppose drilling in ANWR? No; I’m sure the folks at Zogby could write poll questions that would get 75% of registered Republicans to say that George Bush has all the moral values of a rutabaga. The point is that drilling for oil in ANWR or any other protected land is a complex and sensitive issue that deserves more careful handling than the tactics Bush has resorted to.

How lunatic are the people who want to drill in ANWR? Here’s a guy who claims that “those who are opposed to this plan are, in actuality, supporting the terrorist regimes that plot to destroy this country.” Yeah, that’s me all over. Go Osama!

Take action here: email your representatives about Arctic drilling to make sure they know what you want.