Climate change deniers continue to refuse support for going green at earth's peril

Tar sands risks

Melinda Owens---The naysayers on the issue of man’s contribution on climate change continue to interrupt the progress of moving forward to improve environmental concerns that continue to threaten the earth’s climate.

Rep. Henry Waxman, Democrat of the 33^rd District of California,  asserts there is a  “climate disconnect” between the increasingly warmer earth temperatures and how congressional representatives vote, who reject science and cast their votes against science, as reported by the League of Conservation Voters.

Scientists continue to warn governments and individuals that climate change is seriously impacting weather patterns that produce more powerful storms, record heat waves, water shortages and flooding all over the world.

Check here to see your Congressman’s voting record.

This is an old story, denying climate change, as Republicans asserted that it was either not occurring or not happening as a result of anything done by man.    At the heart of the dissension is a Republican Party strategist named Frank Luntz, who said in a leaked memo,  ‘The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science.’

Jim Jeffords  left the Republican Party in 2001 over the issue of climate change, referring to Luntz’ remarks as “outlandish” and asserting , 'They have a head-in-the-sand approach to it. They're just sloughing off the human health impacts - the premature deaths and asthma attacks caused by power plant pollution,' Jeffords said.

The denials, more than ten years ago, that were initiated years before at the outset of the Repbulican Party’s victory for the Presidency in 2000, meant years of the public’s hearing there were two sides to the climate change debate.    Today that debate continues, even as scientists remind us that the earth will see more and more rapid change in climate conditions that will inevitably create increasingly devastating weather events, even as many congressional members refuse to support efforts to do anything about it.



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Melinda Owens is an environmental activist from the Midwest who has advocated for environmental responsibility for more than 25 years.

Failure to act responsibily part of present weather emergencies

[caption id="attachment_6561" align="alignleft" width="401"] Storm of the century[/caption]

Editor — While many people around the world are focusing on the great storm beginning to hit the Northeastern part of the United States, the really big news is that the major news networks have not done enough to highlight the root causes. In a world where every fact must have an opposite, it seems, as opinion often rules the news, what is that major news?

Vanessa Kritzer, who is Online Campaigns Manager for the League of Conservation Voters, spells out her frustration in a recent press release, underlining the importance of looking at the root causes of our weather conditions. It is that focus that might make the real difference, she explains as she declares:

From record-breaking heat waves and massive wildfires to historic droughts and Superstorm Sandy, we’ve seen with our own eyes the increasing severity and frequency of extreme weather events this past year.

Yet in reporting on these disastrous events, the nightly news programs at the major broadcast networks have largely ignored what is fueling this extreme weather – climate change.

As the effects of climate change cause hardship for families across America, we need better coverage if we want people to connect the dots and demand real action to curb global warming and pollution.

In fact, that's why the organization is circulating a petition for viewers to demand that mainstream media take responsibility and let people know what is happening in the environment at the heart of these disastrous weather events. They are asking that other networks emulate PBS Newshour in its coverage of climate change.

CNN.com today is relating the sequence of details of the present storm, accenting the specific conditions, and letting people know that the same region hit by Hurricane Sandy is getting hit again.  But why is that true and what is the evidence this may continue?

SFGate writes it frankly by observing what many scientists are saying about the future. "Within the lifetimes of today's children, scientists say, the climate could reach a state unknown in civilization."  This phrase alone tells us that there are dangers ahead that will only increase. It also is a reminder of the need to act regarding CO2 emissions. This information comes from the leading scientists, not the off-the-block ones tied to political interests, as is observed in scientific publications and those journals who are focusing on the science as opposed to the miscellaneous political debates.

We should be reminded that in 2006 it was widely noted that then President George W. Bush was denying human-induced climate change. The infusion of politics in the science that many maintain is critical to understand so that people can act responsibility meant delays in that action.

The chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, Sir John Lawton, the chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution in 2005 called climate change deniers in the US "loonies", observing how global warming "is to blame for the increasingly strong hurricanes being spawned in the Atlantic."

In other words, by calling the science opinion, and therefore debatable, has made the situation worse. That's the biggest headline today: how the world failed to act and that the Northeastern part of the United States, and other places, will surely feel the impact of that failure, according to the scientists, who years ago warned of the crisis.