Climategate:New Leaked Memos as US Moves to Spoil Climate Accord

[G_j]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061905X.shtml

New US Move to Spoil Climate Accord

By Mark Townsend
The Observer UK

Sunday 19 June 2005

Extraordinary efforts by the White House to scupper Britain's attempts to tackle global warming have been revealed in leaked US government documents obtained by The Observer.

These papers - part of the Bush administration's submission to the G8 action plan for Gleneagles next month - show how the United States, over the past two months, has been secretly undermining Tony Blair's proposals to tackle climate change.

The documents obtained by The Observer represent an attempt by the Bush administration to undermine completely the science of climate change and show that the US position has hardened during the G8 negotiations. They also reveal that the White House has withdrawn from a crucial United Nations commitment to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions.

The documents show that Washington officials:

-Removed all reference to the fact that climate change is a 'serious threat to human health and to ecosystems';
-Deleted any suggestion that global warming has already started;
-Expunged any suggestion that human activity was to blame for climate change.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/16/AR2005061601666_pf.html

U.S. Pressure Weakens G-8 Climate Plan
Global-Warming Science Assailed

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 17, 2005; A01

Bush administration officials working behind the scenes have succeeded in weakening key sections of a proposal for joint action by the eight major industrialized nations to curb climate change.

Under U.S. pressure, negotiators in the past month have agreed to delete language that would detail how rising temperatures are affecting the globe, set ambitious targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions and set stricter environmental standards for World Bank-funded power projects, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. Negotiators met this week in London to work out details of the document, which is slated to be adopted next month at the Group of Eight's annual meeting in Scotland.

The administration's push to alter the G-8's plan on global warming marks its latest effort to edit scientific or policy documents to accord with its position that mandatory carbon dioxide cuts are unnecessary. Under mounting international pressure to adopt stricter controls on heat-trapping gas emissions, Bush officials have consistently sought to modify U.S. government and international reports that would endorse a more aggressive approach to mitigating global warming.

Last week, the New York Times reported that a senior White House official had altered government documents to emphasize the uncertainties surrounding the science on global warming. That official, White House Council on Environmental Quality chief of staff Phillip Cooney, left the administration last Friday to take a public relations job with oil giant Exxon Mobil, a leading opponent of mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
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[Karenina]

1. This is the face of America

to the rest of the world.

[killbotfactory]

2. it's pretty accurate

the rest of the world knows the deal

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. Thanks g.j. Another quality post about a too ignored subject.

"That official, White House Council on Environmental Quality chief of staff Phillip Cooney, left the administration last Friday to take a public relations job with oil giant Exxon Mobil, a leading opponent of mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions."

Could there be a connection? Naaaahhh..the people would be riled if they found out. Or, paid any attention.

[G_j]

7. they don't even bother to try to hide it anymore

straight to Exxon Mobil

[longship]

4. Astounding Hubris

That's right, folks.

At a time when somebody inside the UK government is releasing damaging, classified documents that could only come from a member of the top echelon of that government what does CuckooBananas do? He throws gasoline on the fire by deliberately and overtly undermining the same UK government.

Am I the alone in being amazed at the reckless hubris of these bums?

It seems like these people aren't as smart as their success would indicate. So why can't we just exploit their stupidity? Why are we having trouble getting the message out?

What can we do to maximize the situation?

[Karenina]

5. You'll never walk alone!

[G_j]

6. true, they are not that smart, but they are thugs

it is impossible for arrogance not be accompanied by stupidity, for arrogant people are convinced they are so smart they don't have to listen to anyone else. Thus, arrogance and ignorance often go hand in hand. Most of their 'successes' stem from pure thuggery, brutality, threats and smears.

IMHO

[G_j]

8. Sudden climate change is not just about Eskimos in bikinis

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/19/INGK0D99PP1.DTL

Sudden climate change is not just about Eskimos in bikinis

Chip Ward

Sunday, June 19, 2005


When we hear the term "global warming," we usually imagine collapsing Antarctic ice shelves, melting Alaskan glaciers, or perhaps starving polar bears wandering bewildered across an ice-free, alien landscape.

Warnings about climate change tend to focus on the Earth's polar regions, in part because they are warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet and also because the dramatic changes under way there can be easily captured and conveyed. We may not be able to see the 80 percent decline in the Antarctic krill population -- the tiny, shrimplike creatures that are a critical food source for whales, seals, and seabirds -- but we can easily see satellite photos of state-size chunks of ice shields separating from the continent. We can grasp the enormity of planetary glacial melting simply by comparing photos of glaciers taken just a decade apart.

But as long as we're talking about ice in distant climes, global warming seems like something that's happening elsewhere and to somebody else -- or some other set of creatures. So when you hear about global warming, the odds are good that you never think of the yellow-bellied marmot. Probably, you've never even heard of the critters, but the big rodents, common not to the distant Arctic but to Rocky Mountain meadows, have been acting like so many canaries lately -- coal-mine canaries, that is. They may be the first among many species in the Lower 48 to die off, thanks to close-to-home global warming effects that we hear little about. They are dying of confusion.

Although the radical break in climate patterns now under way will lead to rising oceans and expanding deserts, the most insidious changes may be more subtle -- and as unnoticed as the disappearance of the marmots may be. The intricate and precisely timed collaborations of plants, animals, birds and insects, fine-tuned over endless thousands of years of evolution, is inevitably short-circuited when the weather goes wacky over periods of time that are the geological equivalent of a wink. When environmental and biological events that once fit together lose their synchronicity, the consequence can be extinction.

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[G_j]

9. kick