jlf1961
Posts: 14840
Joined: 6/10/2008
From: Somewhere Texas
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Funny thing, when you talk of global warming, climate change, acid rain and other issues, is that today, conservatives scream that it is a hoax, pseudo science or as Donald Trump has claimed, a conspiracy dreamed up by the Chinese.
However, the whole idea is not new.
President Johnson was told about global warming in 1965 by his science advisory panel and blew them off....
President Richard Nixon, R (CA) made the suggestion at a NATO conference in 1969 to establish a hub of research and initiatives of the organization in the civil area, dealing with environmental topics as Acid Rain and the Greenhouse effect. The suggestion of US President Richard Nixon was not very successful with the administration of German Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger. But the topics and the preparation work done on the NATO proposal by the German authorities gained international momentum, (see e.g. the Stockholm United Nations Conference on the Human Environment 1970) as the government of Willy Brandt started to apply them on the civil sphere instead.
So basically, the first people saying that something should be done to stem the problem was an ultra conservative Republican President.
Of course it was President Reagan who negotiated the first international treaty and agreement dealing with the problem, the Montreal Protocol.
So, while conservatives disagreed on the solution to the problem, at one time, they agreed that there was a problem.
But hey, when all but 3 countries (before the US backed out) agreed that climate change is a problem, and that humans have some impact on making the problem worse or improving the situation, and the overwhelming agreement of climatologists (you know the people that actually study the climate as profession, as opposed to scientists from other fields disagreeing with the findings) as well as the majority of the people living on this planet agree that climate change is at least partially influenced by human production of green house gases, and only in the US is it a partisan issue and still hotly debated, then it is the conservatives in the US that are right and the rest of the people on the planet that are wrong.
But then when 8 people tell you that your house is on fire and 2 disagree telling you they are pushing a hoax and your house is not on fire, you only have yourself to blame if it turns out your house burned to the ground.
However, it is an undeniable fact that the hottest years on record have been the last five years.
It is also an undeniable fact that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 has risen dramatically since the start of the industrial revolution and mass global industrialization of the last century, as evidenced by ice cores from the northern and southern ice caps.
It is also an undeniable fact that in accordance with the record hottest years, the polar ice pack in the Arctic has retreated and for the first time the Northwest Passage is navigable most of the year.
It is also undeniable that the last two decades have seen record glacial retreat, and the glaciers that Glacier National Park was famous for are almost gone.
But hey, OJ Simpson got acquitted on the fact a blood saturated leather glove did not fit him, even though every person with a lick of common sense knows that leather shrinks when saturated with a liquid and then dries.
And so, it is entirely possible that with the overwhelming evidence proving climate change and human activity are linked, it is a hoax.
But the real funny fact is that there are alternatives to burning fossil fuels, and yes, I mean bio fuels, that would be carbon neutral (the carbon put in the atmosphere would be offset by growing the plants to make the fuel) and every thing that petroleum is used to make today can be made with bio produced oils.
Even funnier is that the oil industry produced reports on carbon emissions and climate change back in the 1970's and began to study alternatives then.
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Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don't you think?
You cannot control who comes into your life, but you can control which airlock you throw them out of.
Paranoid Paramilitary Gun Loving Conspiracy Theorist AND EQUAL OPPORTUNI
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How American Conservatives have changed. - 
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