The West takes lead on climate change

[wakeme2008]

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2006-02-27-west-warming_x.htm

Posted 2/27/2006 11:06 PM Updated 2/27/2006 11:23 PM


The West takes lead on climate change
By Patrick O'Driscoll, USA TODAY
DENVER — Half a dozen Western governors impatient for more federal action on global warming are mounting state campaigns to deal with climate change on their own.

Driving their efforts are signs that harmful effects may be occurring in the West: record dry spells, millions of acres of dead forests, warmer winters, dwindling water and catastrophic wildfires. (Related item: Parched New Mexico gets a taste of climate change)

"Under the Bush administration, the United States is ignoring the world's best scientists on climate change," says New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat named in polls as a possible presidential candidate. "The real action ... is at the state and local level."

..more at article...

[Demeter]

1. As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap

You Red-Staters voted for these barbarians, so glad your states are burning up first. Meanwhile, our local economy leads the nation in its death spiral.

[xchrom]

2. i find this interesting -- the title says ''climate change''

that phrase is in fact a republican invention to describe{and discredit} global warming.

''global warming'' is the phrase they use once INSIDE the article.

you have to actually read to know what they are talking about.

[bananas]

3. Are you sure about that?

I thought it was used because for example it would snow in the middle east and people would say, "See? There's no global warming."
So "climate change" referred to how global warming was causing variations in local climates, some places would get colder.

[xchrom]

4. yes i'm sure.

i wish i had a link for it.

but i've read several articles how conservatives adopted that phrase to describe global warming -- i'm going to have see if i can find a link.
i don't bookmark half the stuff i should.

it's that rovian/orwellian attempt to control the conversation -- cast doubt about the effects of global warming -- which contains weather shifting pattern out of the normal in it's description.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. It certainly predates Rove

Recognizing the problem of potential global climate change, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988.

http://www.ipcc.ch/about/about.htm

And that's the premier world authority on it. So you must be looking for Reagan-era influence on the UN.

[xchrom]

6. it's very possible.

i'm still looking for it.

but i am sure it's a republican phrase.

this is stuff i'm slow at.

[bananas]

7. Here's a NASA press release from 1989

I snipped out a paragraph which uses both "climate change" and "greenhouse effect" to refer to the same thing.

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space/browse_thread/thread/e1f1c8af0eb3de13/d2a8512d5a8aa71e?lnk=st&q=%22climate+change%22&rnum=75&hl=en#d2a8512d5a8aa71e

<snip headers>

Paula Cleggett
Headquarters, Washington, D.C. January 23, 1989

Jim Wilson
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

RELEASE: 89-9

NASA SELECTS ATMOSPHERIC SOUNDER FOR EOS SPACE PLATFORM

<snip>

The value of AIRS will be the continuous long-term record it
compiles of climate change. "We can see and measure changes in
global temperature over periods of one or more solar cycles,"
says Dr. Moustafa Chahine, JPL's chief scientist and an
atmospheric physicist. "We will have records of trends in the
greenhouse effect, both in the composition and movement of gases
which cause it and in regional patterns of moisture and air
circulation which may result from it. These are long-term
changes, in contrast to weather patterns and are very subtle."

<snip>

[Lisa]

8. there could be a "snowball effect", as more jurisdictions sign on

The province of BC, in Canada, has just decided to tie its emission reduction targets to Oregon's. (There's a rather conservative government running BC right now, but they've come under some opposition pressure to do something ... so I guess they chose Oregon to emulate, given similar economic and environmental conditions.)

I think that Gov. Richardson makes an excellent point. Strategies to deal with so big an issue won't be effective unless they are implemented at the sub-national level.

[mom cat]

9. K&R