Christiana_Figueres_UNFCCC1
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said yesterday, while attending meetings in Barcelona, Spain, “The developing countries must develop clean electricity. What we cannot allow is for them to develop access to traditional electricity.” She pointed out that, “The challenge is to fight climate change by taking advantage of the strong growth expected in developing countries,” added Figueres, a native of Costa Rica. “The development of the countries of the North was based on the generation of extreme amounts of pollution…”
The rest of the planet is searching for solutions while our American government plays politics with the world’s environmental future. While this important work is being done in other governments and international organizations around the world, conservative Republican climate-change deniers in Congress do nothing, but stand in the way of possible American contributions to mitigating and stopping current scientifically-proven global warming.
Utah State Gun - Browning Automatic
Utah Government Does Not Believe in Climate Change and Global Warming — Maintains Obstructionist Stance
While the world searches for solutions for the established science of global warming, my own Utah state governor, Gary Herbert (along with a rabidly conservative Republican Utah state legislature majority), stands by his belief, as told directly to me by him, and in past public statements, that he remains a free-market capitalist, and as such, doesn’t believe in the science behind human contributions to climate change and resulting global warming. With all his training as a realtor before entering state politics, he makes the claim that he knows better than a world full of well-established scientific evidence. But don’t despair, our state legislature has been very busy passing important bills like the one to establish a state gun.
Mormon Church Headquarters, Salt Lake City, Utah - Image flickr
Mormon Church in Salt Lake City Remains Silent on Global Warming
And the Mormon Church, headquartered here in Salt Lake City, remains silent on the issue of climate change and possible ways their members, who make up a majority of this state’s population, and are running for President of the United States, could possibly contribute meaningfully toward responsible environmental stewardship for our planet. While openly supporting causes like their contributions toward defeating a gay rights bill in California, the church has made no statement supporting current science that establishes human contributions to climate change.
Scientific Evidence About Global Warming and CO2 Emissions Mounts
Meanwhile evidence of increased CO2 emissions in the planet’s atmosphere mounts. Reuters recently reported that, “China’s carbon dioxide emissions rose 10.4 percent in 2010 compared to the previous year as it surpassed the United States as the world’s biggest energy consumer, data released by BP on Wednesday showed.”
In another recent article printed on RedOrbit entitled Carbon Release, Global Warming Now And In the Ancient Past, it was reported that, “The present rate of greenhouse carbon dioxide emissions through fossil fuel burning is higher than that associated with an ancient episode of severe global warming, according to new research. The findings are published online this week by the journal Nature Geoscience.”
The report goes on to say that somewhere around 565 million years ago, “the Earth experienced a period of intense global warming known as the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which lasted for around 170,000 years. During its main phase, average annual temperatures rose by around 5°C.” The findings went to say:
Scientists believe that the warming may have been initially triggered by an event such as the baking of organic-rich sediments by igneous activity that released the potent greenhouse gas, methane. This initial temperature increase warmed ocean bottom waters which allowed the break down of gas hydrates (clathrates), which are found under deep ocean sediments: this would have greatly amplified the initial warming by releasing even more vast volumes of methane. As the methane diffused from the seawater into the atmosphere it would have been oxidized to form carbon dioxide, another potent and longer-lived greenhouse gas.
Based on their carbon isotope measurements and computer simulations of the Earth system, the researchers estimated that the rate of carbon emissions during the PETM peaked at between 300 million and 1,700 million metric tons per year, which is much slower than the present carbon emission rate.
“Our findings suggest that humankind may be causing atmospheric carbon dioxide to increase at rates never previously seen on Earth, which would suggest that current temperatures will potentially rise much faster than they did during the PETM,” concluded Dr Harding.
Dana Rohrabacher
Members of Congress Continue to Obstruct Measures to Mitigate Global Warming
We simply cannot allow this current recklessness of playing politics with the environment to continue. Environmental issues should not be part of current immoral political discourse in our country, especially by those conservative Republican geniuses in government positions, who by their own public statements, metaphorically continue to believe that the earth is flat, and that its resources are there for us to rape and pillage according to corporate desires for profit.
