Progress Pond

Today’s Editorials on Global Warming

While PM Tony Blair predicts that “[l]eaders of the G8 richest nations will agree a plan for global action to tackle climate change at next month’s summit at Gleneagles,” and, reports the NZ Herald, “President Bush has refused to admit the growing body of scientific evidence about climate change,” editorials are getting hotter:


Climate Change: Spinning global science


SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD


   “When it comes to global warming, scientific ignorance is bliss: No worries about devastating storms, droughts and dying species, just pleasant forecasts for warm summers. White House officials are happy to spread that joy. … [T]he Bush team will always prefer ‘let’s pretend’ to science about global warming and, probably, other vital subjects where the world’s gains in knowledge are outstripping U.S. progress.”


Time for action, not more hot air


PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER EDITORIAL


   “Challenged by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to help slow global warming, President Bush responded Tuesday that ‘my administration isn’t waiting around to deal with the issue; we’re acting’.

  &nbsp”He’s not acting fast enough for scientists, states and industry. They want more than the weak voluntary measures and calls for more research that Bush has reluctantly offered up for four years.”

COOL BIZ CAMPAIGN (Asahi Shimbun)

   “Men sporting the so-called Cool Biz look-no jacket, no tie-are now seen in greater numbers in Tokyo’s government and business districts. The casual summer fashion, so named by the Environment Ministry, is meant to help businessmen look and feel cool even if the office air conditioner is turned down a notch or two.

   “Under its proposed nationwide movement in the fight against global warming, the government is asking offices around Japan to set their air conditioner temperature at 28 degrees.”


Then there’s the obligatory See?-I-can-be-balanced-like-NPR-too au contrare editorial, this a guest editorial from the Desert Dispatch in Barstow, Calif.:


GUEST EDITORIAL: Governor speaks on global warming


   “‘I say the debate is over,’ Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said of global warming, as reported in the Sacramento Bee. ‘We know the signs. We see the threat. We know the time for action is now.’


   “Actually, the debate is ongoing and lively. As astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas, research scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., wrote in 2001: ‘[M]easurements of atmospheric temperatures … show that no warming has occurred in the atmosphere in the last 50 years. This is just the period in which human-made carbon dioxide has been pouring into the atmosphere and according to the climate studies, the resultant atmospheric warming should be clearly evident’.


   “Californians should not be forced to comply with the faulty policies imposed by a governor who needs better science advice.”

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