The Truth About Denial

[Linnea]

Newsweek has an article this week about the politics and debate on global warming.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/

Aug. 13, 2007 issue - Sen. Barbara Boxer had been chair of the Senate's Environment Committee for less than a month when the verdict landed last February.

"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies.

Those who doubt the reality of human-caused climate change have spent decades disputing that. But Boxer figured that with "the overwhelming science out there, the deniers' days were numbered." As she left a meeting with the head of the international climate panel, however, a staffer had some news for her. A conservative think tank long funded by ExxonMobil, she told Boxer, had offered scientists $10,000 to write articles undercutting the new report and the computer-based climate models it is based on. "I realized," says Boxer, "there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."

Interesting analysis of how this issue - as so many other polarizing issues - has become increasingly political.

[Shirleypal]

Interesting analysis of how this issue - as so many other polarizing issues - has become increasingly political.

Politics is the reason nothing is being done, on the other hand we have to rely on them to solve this major problem, they care more about big oil and us.