WHAT was the most significant event of 2008 from an environmental perspective? According to website grist.org it was the election of Barack Obama to President of the US.
The story by Katharine Wroth and David Roberts lists the top 10 “green stories of 2008” with “Obamania” as number 1 on the basis:
“[Obama] has already assembled a seasoned green team, with Clinton EPA administrator Carol Browner in a new executive office to coordinate energy and climate efforts. Three key positions — energy secretary, White House science adviser, and NOAA administrator — will be occupied by highly regarded professional scientists who have raised alarms about climate change — respectively, Steven Chu, John Holdren, and Jane Lubchenco.
“There will be a champion of environment justice and green jobs, Rep. Hilda Solis, as labor secretary, and a new White House Office of Urban Policy.
“Two close allies, Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman, are in key environmental positions in the House of Representatives, and Dems have 58 or 59 seats in the Senate, where most green legislation has gone to die.”
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Greens do tend towards the red in their political outlook, so it is fitting they should hire a Ms Browner to represent this colour combo.
The last time we a lot of hoopla about green and politics it was California. At the time I thought their economy was doing well. Now http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/entry/california_broke_in_two_months/ will Obama be remembered for “USA Going broke in 2 months”
my green story of the year was to read that Great Southern Plantations share price was 0.18c as of 24/12/08
http://www.great-southern.com.au/Share_Price.aspx
Greens do tend towards the red in their political outlook, so it is fitting they should hire a Ms Browner to represent this colour combo.
Jennifer, is this the sort of comment that you want on your blog?
Well, he has certainly done a job for AGW.
He took his shirt off, & all the girls at the local girls club, [ABC radio 612 Brisbane] were all a twitter for a couple of hours, they just couldn’t stop twittering about it. Shows where their political thinking gets to, hay.
Must have raised their temperature quite a few degrees. Probably put a sipke in world temp, for a day or two.
Observer “Greens do tend towards the red in their political outlook…”.
How do you explain Schwarzeneggar in California, and our premier in British Columbia, Canada? Both are about as right-wing as Atilla the Hun. Left-wingers are supposed to be driven by humanitarian interests as opposed to the corporate bottom line. I find that many Greenies are driven by political ideologies that suit their green agenda, and don’t care which side of the political spectrum it comes from.
For example, a Green Party leader running here in Canada, was asked in a leaders’ debate what she planned to do about people in small coastal towns who would be put out of work by her logging policies. She did not answer the question. Instead she went off on a spin about the benefits of being Green.
I’m afraid there is a lot of truth in the late Michael Crichton’s assessment of environmentalists. He refered to environmentalism as the religion of the urban atheist, and drew a compelling comparison between the Green movement and a typical religious belief system. I don’t think Greens represent any particular political point of view.
I have lost confidence in Obama already. I live in Canada, but we are influenced by him as a person and by the way he thinks. Obama is completely sucked in by Al Gore’s pseudo-science and his climate guru, Stephen Chu seems no better. I can understand Obama being a bit thick about global warming because he’s a lawyer and a layman. Then, again, our own cohenite is a lawyer and he’s well-versed on the subject.
It worries me when a mature man allows himself to come under the spell of environmental activists. I can put up with the trolls around here who drop by from Deltoid and RC, but they are not running the most powerful country in the world.
If you look at how feral Canadians, he he – Aussies, have handled it, young Kev has done OK. Kept the greenies angry, relieved business concerns and moved onto more important things.
Obama will do the same.
Gordon,
Good point – both of your examples might better be described as statists, those who believe that the state, that is government, is expected to play an intrusive role in our lives from the primary assumption that they can control the economy to achieve political ends. Hence the conundrum over the older labelling of politicians as left or right in terms of greenieness. AGW is, after all, the means to establish a totalitarian state based on ecological sustainability rather than on commonsense. (As Vaclav Klaus has discovered recently on his secondment as President of the EU, and what else would one call the rolling circus of the EU Presidency, saying out aloud what one thinks is not appreciated in Brussells – Hitler and Stalin, while absent, can be smug in seeing their policies finally implemented by their useful idiots).
No one can control any economy, much in the same way that no one can control the weather.
However, the delusional among us beg to differ, hence why you and I, and like minded, thoughtful posters here, are denigrated as denialists, or sceptics.
What utter bullshit.
Don’t worry Luke. Louis Hissink is really just George Monbiot in disguise having a laugh
Luke,
A direct hit on the target, as it was meant to be. You are sooo predictable, unlike the weather which isn’t.
Actually you would be quite at home in the EU parliament in Brussells – arrogant, abusive and intolerant to a fault.
Jeremy C,
And I suppose you are Luke’s doppelganger?He has many, some even more stupid than himself, though I doubt you could reach the Olympian heights SJT has set.
Remember awhile back when I said to, “If you guys can take care of Australia, I got California covered.”
That was only a slight boast. The reason I can say that is because there is a built in check on our avaricious State politicians run away spending.
By our State Constitution before the government can raise or create a new tax it must be approved by a two thirds majority vote in a general election. Beleive me when I say there is not a snowballs chance on Kilimanjaro that Arnold Schwarzeneggar will be instituting any carbon tax in California.
Barack Obama and the feds however,,,,, That’s a different kettle of fish.
Help!
No Matter What Happens, Someone Will Blame Global Warming ?!?
Global warming was blamed for everything from beasts gone wild to anorexic whales to the complete breakdown of human society this year — showing that no matter what it is and where it happens, scientists, explorers, politicians and those who track the Loch Ness Monster are comfortable scapegoating the weather.
FOXNews.com takes a look back at 10 things that global warming allegedly caused — or will no doubt soon be responsible for — as reported in the news around the world in 2008.
1. Cannibalism
In April, media mogul Ted Turner told PBS’s Charlie Rose that global warming would make the world 8 degrees hotter in 30 or 40 years. “Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state, like Somalia or Sudan, and living conditions will be intolerable,” he said.
Turner blamed global warming on overpopulation, saying “too many people are using too much stuff.”
Crops won’t grow and “most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals,” Turner said.
2. The Death of the Loch Ness Monster
In February, Scotland’s Daily Mirror reported that 85-year-old American Robert Rines would be giving up his quest for Scotland’s most famous underwater denizen.
A World War II veteran, Rines has spent 37 years hunting for Nessie with sonar equipment. In 2008, “despite having hundreds of sonar contacts over the years, the trail has since gone cold and Rines believes that Nessie may be dead, a victim of global warming.”
3. Beer Gets More Expensive
In April, the Associated Press reported that global warming was going to hit beer drinkers in the wallet because the cost of barley would increase, driving up the price of a pint.
Jim Salinger, a climate scientist at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, said Australia would be particularly hard hit as droughts caused a decline in malting barley production in parts of New Zealand and Australia. “It will mean either there will be pubs without beer or the cost of beer will go up,” Salinger said at a beer brewer’s convention, the AP reported.
4. Pythons Take Over America
Giant Burmese pythons – big enough to eat alligators and deer in a single mouthful – will be capable of living in one-third of continental U.S. as global warming makes more of the country hospitable to the cold-blooded predators, according to an April report from USAToday.com.
The U.S. Geological Survey and the Fish and Wildlife Service investigated the spread of “invasive snakes,” like the pythons, brought to the U.S. as pets. The Burmese pythons’ potential American habitat would expand by 2100, according to global warming models, the paper reported.
“We were surprised by the map. It was bigger than we thought it was going to be,” says Gordon Rodda, zoologist and lead project researcher, told USAToday.com. “They are moving northward, there’s no question.”
5. Kidney Stones
A University of Texas study said global warming will cause an increase in kidney stones over the next 30 years, the Globe and Mail reported in July.
Scientists predict that higher temperatures will lead to more dehydration and therefore to more kidney stones. “This will come and get you in your home,” said Dr. Tom Brikowski, lead researcher and an associate professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. “It will make life just uncomfortable enough that maybe people will slow down and think what they’re doing to the climate.”
6. Skinny Whales
Japanese scientists, who have claimed that the country’s controversial whaling program is all in the name of science, said in August that if they hadn’t been going around killing whales, they never would have discovered that the creatures were significantly skinnier than whales killed in the late 1980s, the Guardian reported in August.
The researchers said the study was the first evidence that global warming was harming whales by restricting their food supplies. As water warmed around the Antarctic Peninsula, the krill population shrank by 80 percent as sea ice declined, eliminating much of the preferred food of the minke whale.
The whales studied had lost the same amount of blubber as they would have by starving for 36 days, but the global warming connection couldn’t be proven because no krill measurements are taken in different regions.
7. Shark Attacks
A surge in fatal shark attacks was the handiwork of global warming, according to a report in the Guardian in May.
George Burgess of Florida University, a shark expert that maintains an attack database, told the Guardian that shark attacks were caused by human activity. “As the population continues to rise, so does the number of people in the water for recreation. And as long as we have an increase in human hours in the water, we will have an increase in shark bites,” he said.
Shark attacks could also be the result of global warming and rising sea temperatures, the Guardian said. “You’ll find that some species will begin to appear in places they didn’t in the past with some regularity,” Burgess said.
8. Black Hawk Down
Although it happened in 1993, the crash of a U.S. military helicopter in Mogadishu that became the film “Black Hawk Down” was blamed on global warming by a Massachusetts congressman in 2008.
“In Somalia back in 1993, climate change, according to 11 three- and four-star generals, resulted in a drought which led to famine,” Rep. Edward Markey told a group of students who had come to the Capitol to discuss global warming, according to CNSNews.com. “That famine translated to international aid we sent in to Somalia, which then led to the U.S. having to send in forces to separate all the groups that were fighting over the aid, which led to Black Hawk Down.”
9. Frozen Penguin Babies
Penguin babies, whose water-repellant feathers had not grown in yet, froze to death after torrential rains, National Geographic reported in July.
“Many, many, many of them—thousands of them—were dying,” explorer Jon Bowermaster told National Geographic. Witnessing the mass penguin death “painted a clear and grim picture” of global warming.
“It’s not just melting ice,” Bowermaster said. “It’s actually killing these cute little birds that are so popular in the movies.”
10. Killer Stingray Invasion
Global warming is going to drive killer stingrays, like the one that killed Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, to the shores of Britain after a 5-foot -long marbled stingray was captured by fishermen, the Daily Mail reported in June.
A single touch can zap a man with enough electricity to kill, the Mail said, and global warming is bringing the Mediterranean killers north.
“Rising sea temperatures may well have brought an influx of warm water visitors,” sea life curator Alex Gerrard told the Mail. “Where there’s one electric ray, it’s quite likely that there are more.”
http://hernadi-key.blogspot.com/2008/12/no-matter-what-happens-someone-will.html