Climate deal a tough sell in US

Run time: 02:37 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDaeC-kS19U   Posted on YouTube: December 18, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: December 18, 2009 By DU Member: Lars77 Views on DU: 552

 
Cletus! Al Jezeera's in Texas! Call the milita!

As the revelations continue regarding the hacked e-mails, the programming used to manage the data, the data-sets that were used and the assertion by the Russians that data was cherry-picked, it will become even harder to sell this to the American Public. We have to care for our environment as best we can. One of the things that limits us in the things we`re able to do to protect our environment is that of limited resources, i.e., money. Until there`s better proof that higher levels of carbon dioxide are detrimental to life on this planet, and until there`s proof that human activity is the driving force behind elevated levels of carbon dioxide it makes more sense to me to spend our monetary resources on activities we know for certain will produce results that are helpful to our environment. What comes to mind is the clean-up of toxic waste sites. We still have them and the focus seems to have moved away from those clean-up efforts.

For proof that increased levels of carbon dioxide cause warming we could begin with data curves that show the change in carbon dioxide precedes the change in temperature and retains a reasonable level of correlation. Although that wouldn`t address the question of causality it would make the argument more credible.

the world is rapidly becoming dangerous place to live for many. For us it's about a slight change in our way of life, or perhaps even a tax if things get really bad.

For people who live in places like the Maldives, it's about the complete and utter destruction of their entire country. There are 300.000 people living in just the Maldives alone. At the moment we are telling them that we aren't quite sure if we want to do anything about this, because despite thousands of scientists telling us what we need to do, we still feel we don't have undisputable evidence. And even if we want to do something about it, they had better cough up a big chunk of the cost, to recoup some of our lost income. After all, we've only been profiting from releasing co2 since the beginning of the industrial revolution over here.

It's kind of like Bill Gates taking a homeless person to an expensive restaurant. Bill has eight courses, the homeless person a bowl of soup. Then Bill suggests they split the bill.

But Americans largely turned their back on New Orleans when Katrina hit, so a few million souls in the pacific aren't even going to register on most peoples radar i guess.