That’s My Country
Yes Chris, we take global warming very seriously:
It’s the new climate change dilemma: finding alternatives for oil and gas without doing more harm than good.
In the rush to develop biofuels, forests are burned in Asia to clear land for palm oil, and swaths of the Amazon are stripped of diverse vegetation for soya and sugar plantations for ethanol.
On Friday, a Dutch committee will unveil stringent criteria for growing biofuels in ways that don’t damage the environment or release more greenhouse gases than they save.
Other European countries are working along similar lines and closely watching the Dutch initiative — the first to reach the level of government consideration.
More than a year in the making, the report reflects a heightened awareness of the risks and complexity in efforts to reduce emissions of the gases blamed for global warming.
Yes. We are good.
Cross posted at my own blog.
12 Responses to “That’s My Country”
One of the thing that has been so annoying about having two oilmen at the helm of my country, is the right’s perpetuation of their delusional global warming denial. We should have been at the forefront of the movement to combat climate change, and provided moral, intellectual and technical leadership to the rest of the world, instead of acting like a sulky toddler who is having a tantrum because he has to give half of his dessert to his sister. But, maybe the next president will be progressive enough to face the future head on, and work to save the environment.
In any case, I congratulate the Netherlands for their innovation and initiative- that is exactly what American bureaucrats in conjunction with the brightest climatologists should be working on. Instead we still act like nothings been proven, and we need to study it more.
BTW, spell-check tries to change “biofuels” to “befouls.”
Holly, lol.
Kim: interesting background information. A couple of weeks ago our government said that we would not wait for others any longer. We will do what we thought to be right and hope that others would follow suit from now on. We’re a small country but… we can still play an important role in the world. If this works here, if we make it work, other countries may decide to do as we do as well (and, of course, we can export knowledge and technology if they do).
Of course there a people who deny climate change, but the consensus on ‘the right’ is that the climate is changing, but we don’t really know what’s causing it.
Debate about climate change is driven by emotion and politics less than science. The earth is an enormously complicated system with an almost infinite number of variables and a great deal of information remains undiscovered or puzzling.
We can’t even predict whether or not it’s going to rain tomorrow! We have to use percentages. Yet, curiously, we can predict the weather with a great deal of certainty 100 years from now.
Global warming is going to be the biggest scam perpetuated on the world public in a while. It’s the overpopulation doomsday scenario of the 70′s redux. It’s also a product of the innumeracy of our nation.
Emotion has no place in science or politics.
Michael,
Your country is to be congratulated for looking beyond the immediate ecological cause de jour to investigate the unintended consequences of “green thinkâ€.
Back in the ‘70’s, the crazed liberals of our country determined that DDT might cause cancer in immigrant farm workers who were dunked in it. Although this chemical eradicated malaria and typhus in North America and Europe, our budding eco-friendly contingent pushed for a ban and pressured other countries to do the same.
Now that the scourge of DDT has been removed, the dozens of people who used it improperly are safe from harm. Of course, a million people each year die in Africa due to malaria, but at least they don’t have fear of someday contracting cancer from DDT.
God save us from liberals trying to help.
Hi Holly in Cincinnati
Your speller is right “biofuels” is actually “befouls” more polluting than ordinary fuel. Near CO2 neutral, put the particles is much more dangereus than CO2
Best regards
Greenland Art Review
Kangerlussuaq
Greenland
SEH – thanks for your comment. Spell-check is brainless and mangles words on a regular basis, so I don’t think we can give it credit.
Michael- I do think its easier to get things done in a smaller country that’s a little more homogenous, but you also have to want to get them done, and not just promote fake science to appease wealthy business donors. Another example- after Katrina there was a lot of information about the superior levee system in the Netherlands- an area similar in topography to New Orleans. It was suggested that we build the same thing over here-but that’s as far as it got. I don’t think our government works for its population anymore- its too tied in to special interests to make any needed changes. You can be for big government or small government- but at least make sure whatever size you have works well to solve the country’s challenges. That is no longer happening- but anyway congrats!
God save us from the ignorance of the conservatives, not the actions of the liberals. DDT was not in fact completely banned all over the world. What was banned was indiscriminate spraying for agricultural purposes, not targeted spraying for contgrol of disease vectors such as those mosquitoes that transmit malaria.
As far as the claim that the right simply claims that they don’t know what might be causing global warming, why should I care? The plain truth is that the overwhelming majority of climatologists do agree that human activity is a major contributor to warming, if not the primary cause. They tap dance around this, trying to redefine science, overstate the credentials of those who agree with them, suggest alternative explanations which in fact have already been examined and discounted and just plain lie. Sorry, I’ve reached the point to where I have absolutely no respect for conservatives on this issue.
Do conservatives even care that the information they are so gleefully spreading is a bunch of half truths and outright lies? We are losing our technological edge at the worst possible time because the RR chooses faith over hard science. Give them a third of America and let them live in a wasteland of willful ignorance and Bible verses. Let them preserve their blastocysts and teach their kids intelligent design instead of evolution. Just keep them from holding the rest of us back.
Kim,
They convince themselves that what they say is true. They are so full of themselves that they convince themselves that they know more than the climatologists. In addition they constantly make the argument that a scientist is a scientist is a scientist. When a physicist, statistician or some other specialist opines in their favor they give it as much weight as a thousand climatologists. Take the case of Frederick Seitz. He’s one of the scientists they love to point out because he has some great credentials. But none of them are in climatology. He’s a physicist. Or he was. He became at one point an expert for hire for R.J. Reynolds until they decided he was a liability. When interviewed for a show on the politics of Global Warming his entire answer as to why all of those climatologists were apparently lying about the science was that the majority of them were Democrats. Maybe the CEO of R.J. Reynolds was right when he said in 1989 that Seitz was “…quite elderly and not sufficiently rational to offer advice.”. The examples of questionable claims go on and on.
Jim- Or they say – it just snowed 2 feet in April in the midwest- and we’re supposed to be in the middle of global warming???
I was not raised to be a creationist, so I really do respect it when scientists have 90% concensus on a subject. But, you are right about how they’ll promote any source, no matter how credible, if the source takes their side. Can we not elect any more oil men to the WH? It pains me to think what a different place we’d be in if Al Gore was in office. Now, HE respects science.