<h1>I have not closely studied this article in total for accuracy yet, but the second sentence is a bit odd... Greenhouse gases due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions (other variables also) are now trapping more heat than is released to space, so there is no speculative scenario about waiting till 2100 for this to occur (GISS article referenced below). However, the "Venus Syndrome" scenario is highly questionable, even if we induce another PETM like (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, about 55 million years ago) event, which did not result in "runaway" global warming, but a temperature increase of about 6 C. However, a rapid PETM like event would devastate human life on Earth, given the climate to which our civilization is adapted, especially many meters of sea level rise. I do not think it would result in the extinction of human life, though a tragic mass extinction of species is likely; and the population carrying capacity of human life on Earth could be reduced profoundly (what a tepid way of phrasing this, but of course I want to avoid appearing to be an "alarmist"):<br>
</h1><p><font size="6">On the PETM from "Nature" journal Jan. 2008:</font><br></p>
<div><a href="http://es.ucsc.edu/%7Ejzachos/pubs/Zachos_Dickens_Zeebe_08.pdf" target="_blank">http://es.ucsc.edu/%7Ejzachos/pubs/Zachos_Dickens_Zeebe_08.pdf</a></div>
<p>The <span class="il">Paleocene</span>-<span class="il">Eocene</span> <span class="il">Thermal</span> <span class="il">Maximum</span> lasted around 20,000 years, and was superimposed on a 6 million year period of more gradual global warming,<sup><a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene-Eocene_Thermal_Maximum#cite_note-Zachos2008-5" target="_blank">[6]</a></sup> peaking later in the <span class="il">Eocene</span> at the "<span class="il">Eocene</span> climatic optimum". Other "<a title="Hyperthermal (page does not exist)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hyperthermal&action=edit&redlink=1" target="_blank">hyperthermal</a>" events can be recognised during this period of cooling, including the <a title="Elmo event (page does not exist)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elmo_event&action=edit&redlink=1" target="_blank">Elmo event</a> (ETM2). During these events, of which the PETM was by far the most severe, around 1,500 to 2,000 gigatons of <span class="il">carbon</span> were released into the ocean/atmosphere system over the course of 1,000 years. This rate of <span class="il">carbon</span> addition almost equals the rate at which <span class="il">carbon</span> is being released into the atmosphere today through anthropogenic activity.</p>
<p>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p><p><font size="4">Six pages of references at the bottom of his paper! </font><br>
</p><p><font size="6">Earth's Energy Imbalance and Implications</font></p><p><font size="6">Published 2011</font><br></p><p><font size="6"><font><a href="http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha06510a.html">http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha06510a.html</a></font><br>
</font></p><h1><font><a href="http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110415_EnergyImbalancePaper.pdf">http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110415_EnergyImbalancePaper.pdf</a></font><br></h1><p>Earth's Energy Imbalance and Implications<br>
James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha<br>NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, NY 10025, USA<br>Columbia University Earth Institute, New York, NY 10027, USA<br>Karina von Schuckmann<br>Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique<br>
Laboratoire de Physique des Oceans, IFREMER, Brest, France</p><p><br>Abstract. Improving observations of ocean temperature confirm that Earth is absorbing more energy from the sun than it is radiating to space as heat, even during the recent solar minimum. This energy imbalance provides fundamental verification of the dominant role of the human-made greenhouse effect in driving global climate change.<br>
</p><h1>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br></h1><h1><a href="http://www.inlander.com/spokane/article-18391-scorched-earth.html">http://www.inlander.com/spokane/article-18391-scorched-earth.html</a><br>
</h1><h1>Scorched Earth</h1>
<h2>How climate change could upend the Inland Northwest
</h2>
<span class="author"><a href="http://www.inlander.com/spokane/by-author-805-1.html">Joe O'Sullivan</a><br><br></span><span class="dateCreated">Tuesday, September 11, 2012<br><br></span><span class="s1"><strong><span class="dropcap">I</span>magine this:</strong></span><span class="s2"> </span>It’s
2050. Global warming has melted the icecaps, and rising oceans are
swallowing up islands and countries. Papua New Guinea is gone. So is
Florida. Refugees from Bangladesh stream into India and Pakistan, two
countries perpetually on the verge of conflict. The millions of refugees
spur panic. And then war.<br><p class="p2">Or this:</p>
<p class="p2">It’s 2100. Greenhouse gases have reached the tipping
point where the atmosphere traps more heat than it releases. Runaway
warming begins turning the world into a hot, dead marble like Venus. No
one on Earth can stop it...</p>
<p class="p2">But why go with the doomsday, sci-fi scenarios? Let’s
stick to the evidence and what scientists think they can establish for
certain.</p>
<p class="p2">So, what if:</p>
<p class="p2">It’s 2050 and it’s been a grueling summer. Summers and
winters in Eastern Washington are on average 3 degrees warmer than at
the century’s start. The snow pack melts early and leaves rivers nearly
dry by summer’s end. Lower river flows hamper the dams that generate
electricity. And the heat sustains more bugs: pine bark beetles eating
into forests, codling moths burrowing into apples. By this point climate
change is costing Washingtonians $6.5 billion per year, according to a
study by the American Security Project, a think tank headed by guys like
conservative former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel and liberal Massachusetts
Sen. John Kerry.</p>
<p class="p2">The 3-degrees figure comes from Nick Bond, Washington
state’s climatologist. And while he says long-term projections have to
be taken with a “bucket of salt,” Bond says that by 2100 Eastern
Washington could be 7 degrees or 8 degrees hotter than it is now.</p>
<p class="p2">“We’ve kind of already made our bed,” Bond says.</p>
<p class="p2">After decades of talk about global warming, politicians
have done little to stop the greenhouse gases that began pouring into
the atmosphere at the dawn of the Industrial Age. And since 2008, when
the Great Recession began choking the United States’ economy, mention of
climate change has been largely verboten. In its place have come
immediate needs: millions of Americans unemployed, having lost their
homes and retirements.</p>
<p class="p2">But with much of the country still wilting under the
third-hottest summer on record — plus a prominent climate skeptic
changing his mind, drought declarations hitting 26 states and the CIA
now analyzing catastrophe scenarios — we could look back on the summer
of 2012 as the moment we finally embraced the implications of human
progress.</p>
<p class="p2">But will our current political climate stymie efforts to
address global warming? If so, can the Inland Northwest create change
through its own policies?</p>
<p class="p2">More to the point: As the region withers, how will people adapt?</p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s3"><strong><span class="InternalHed">A History of Change</span></strong></span></p>
<p class="p1">“I’m not very optimistic,” says Gonzaga University Associate Professor Brian Henning. “I wish I was.”</p>
<p class="p2">Henning, who teaches global warming ethics, says
Americans would need to cut between 60 percent and 80 percent of
greenhouse gases to stave off catastrophe (species going extinct, global
populations being displaced). The professor practices what he preaches —
he bought a house within walking distance of Gonzaga so he wouldn’t
have to drive to campus — but like many others he sits in an
air-conditioned office.</p>
<p class="p2">The average American generates 20 metric tons of carbon
per year, according to a 2008 study from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Even an average homeless American, the study found, uses
more carbon (8.5 tons) in a year than does the average global citizen (4
tons).</p>
<p class="p2">“You need to have a conversation about whether our
habits are sustainable,” Henning says. “[Many people] like to think we
can keep on pretty much as we are, if [they] just put solar panels up.”</p>
<p class="p2">The science is paradoxical. Greenhouse gas — the
cocktail of carbon, nitrous oxide, methane and other gases found in the
atmosphere — is what holds in the sun’s heat and allows life. From
orbiting spacecraft, it appears as nothing more than a blue shell the
width of a thumbnail. The gases occurs naturally — plants give off
oxygen and take in carbon, and when those plants die, they often release
the carbon again.</p>
<p class="p2">“The greenhouse effect is completely natural — if we
didn’t have [some greenhouse gas] in atmosphere, the planet would be
frozen roughly to the equator,” Henning says.</p>
<p class="p2">Too much greenhouse gas is equally fatal. Consider
Venus, sometimes called Earth’s sister planet. The two planets share a
similar size and gravity. But as a result of runaway greenhouse gas —
meaning its blanket of gases continue to trap more heat than they let
escape — the surface temperature of Venus can reach more than 800
degrees Fahrenheit.</p>
<p class="p2">The climate — the temperatures, seasons and weather
patterns that surround us — has always fluctuated. So why do scientists
believe humans are causing climate change this time around?</p>
<p class="p2">Several factors have been discarded as plausible
theories, according to Henning. The changes can’t be coming from the
sun, because given its current activity, we’d be getting cooler. And it
can’t be from the planetary cycles that cause ice ages and warming
periods, because we’re still 50,000 years away from another ice age, he
says.</p>
<p class="p2">In the absence of other evidence, scientists believe
humans are the reason the world is warming faster than ever before
recorded. Technological advances in the Industrial Revolution of the
mid-1800s brought factories, the internal combustion engine and the need
for fuel. Fossil fuels — coal and gas, the buried carbon leftovers of
trees and plants from ancient forests and swamps — satisfied this
demand. In the early 1900s the number of cars burning motor fuels
measured in the thousands. In 2010, the number of cars worldwide
surpassed 1 billion.</p>
<p class="p2">“We’re just simply making that blanket — CO2, methane and nitrous oxide — thicker, trapping more heat,” Henning says.</p>
<p class="p2">It’s not just cars burning fossil fuel. By churning up
carbon stored in the ground, agriculture — the industry tasked with
feeding 7 billion mouths across the world — also contributes to
greenhouse gases.</p>
<p class="p2">There’s been talk over the years of whether fossil fuels
are really polluting the atmosphere, but climate change deniers lost a
major ally this summer, when scientist and climate skeptic Richard
Muller announced his findings after an extensive global warming study.</p>
<p class="p2">“I still find that much, if not most, of what is
attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain
wrong,” he wrote in a July 28 <em>New York Times</em> opinion piece. “I’ve analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn’t changed.”</p>
<p class="p2">But, he continued, “I concluded that global warming was
real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct.
I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.”</p>
<p class="p2">The irony: Muller’s research was funded by libertarian
Charles Koch, one of two oil magnate brothers whom liberals blame for
funding climate denial. Between 1997 and 2008, Koch Industries
contributed more than $50 million to groups that deny climate change,
according to a report by Greenpeace.</p>
<p class="p2">Muller may have changed his mind, but according to a
March Gallup poll nearly half of Americans don’t believe global warming
is happening right now.</p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s3"><strong><span class="InternalHed">A Practice That Mirrors Nature</span></strong></span></p>
<p class="p1">The headquarters of Shepherd’s Grain Co. consists of a
pair of rooms on the second story of a building on a dusty stretch of
Highway 231 north of Reardan. The road looks dusty, but that’s only
because combine operators are threshing grain and wheat stubble along
the lazy hills that the highway divides. A pour of red feed flows from
the spigot of a grain bin into a semi-truck as Fred Fleming walks from
his house to his office. It’s a busy day for a busy guy. In addition to
co-owning Shepherd’s Grain and owning Reardan Seed Co., Fleming, 63,
farms the family land.</p>
<p class="p2">Parts of his fields are the same ones his
great-grandfather farmed when he homesteaded in 1888 — the same fields
his grandfather roamed with a baby Fleming in his truck.</p>
<p class="p2">“I always claimed that I was weaned in a 1950 pickup,” he says with a chuckle.</p>
<p class="p2">Decades spent farming — he started spotting for grain
trucks when he was 12 — helped Fleming evolve his practices to help
popularize what he calls direct seeding, also known as no-till farming.</p>
<p class="p2">As “a practice that mirrors nature,” direct seeding
combines the seeding and fertilizing of croplands and it allows the
stubble from last year’s crops to serve as fertilizer. Instead of making
eight or 12 passes across the ground, Fleming’s equipment may just pass
over it two or three times. Less carbon is released from disturbing the
soil, and the amount of fuel Fleming has to pour into tractors is 38
percent less than before. When Fleming began 10 years ago, barely anyone
in the region practiced direct-seed farming.</p>
<p class="p2">Now, he estimates about 85 percent of the farmers in the watershed are using the practice.</p>
<p class="p2">Customers have responded to Shepherd’s Grain’s image as
an Earth-friendly and locally sourced crop. This year, the company
expects to ship 500,000 bushels of grain. Some of that will show up in
Spokane at Bennidito’s Pizza, Sweet Frostings and Main Market Co-op.</p>
<p class="p2">Despite being an advocate for globally conscious
farming, Fleming scoffs at the doomsday scenarios, like Earth becoming
another Venus. He points to advances he’s witnessed in 50 years of
farming — in technology and more sustainable practices. How can
scientists predict what will happen in 50 or 100 years? How can anyone
predict the hot, dead mess of Venus happening here?</p>
<p class="p2">“I’m not going to believe that,” he says. “To me, that
seems extreme. … There’s many other end-of-the-world scenarios you could
come up with besides climate change.”</p><p class="p4"><span class="s3"><strong><span class="InternalHed">History of Misinformation</span></strong></span></p>
<p class="p1">By the mid-1990s, politicians began to act on the
consensus that global warming was real and human-made. In 1997,
countries struck an agreement known as Kyoto Protocol to begin lowering
greenhouse gas emissions. (Today, 84 countries, including China, India,
Russia and much of Europe are signatories — but not the United States).
It was a consensus that posed a grave threat to the industries — in
particular, oil and coal — whose production, when burned, release
once-buried carbon into the air. In looking for a reaction plan, they
cribbed from an industry long experienced with damning publicity: Big
Tobacco.</p>
<p class="p2">Using money from corporate and personal benefactors,
they borrowed the playbook from tobacco companies that had spent decades
spreading doubt and confusion about the danger of cigarettes, according
to Connor Gibson, a research assistant with Greenpeace.</p>
<p class="p2">The first component, according to Gibson, was denial — global warming isn’t real. Then, diversion.</p>
<p class="p2">“It’s real, but we can’t do anything about it. It’s
real, but we can’t fix it. It’s real, but it’s too expensive to fix,”
Gibson says, ticking off arguments.</p>
<p class="p2">It’s a set of arguments still in vogue with politicians
opposed to climate change policies. Republican U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris
Rodgers — Spokane’s congresswoman, who sits on the House Energy and
Commerce committee — reflected this approach in a statement she made
this summer to the <em>Spokesman-Review</em>. In precisely four
sentences, McMorris Rodgers denied that people are responsible for
climate change, said private industry must lead the way in cutting
emissions, then called cap-and-trade a “Big Government” scheme that will
destroy jobs. She ended by saying that reducing greenhouse gases is
hopeless because of rising emission by emerging countries such as China.</p>
<p class="p2">Climate change deniers have also founded think tanks,
published books and pressured mainstream media reporting on climate
change to pursue “balance” in their stories by including skepticism
about global warming. Gibson cites an example that TV viewers in the
Deep South may have seen in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Andrea Saul —
currently a spokeswoman for Republican presidential candidate Mitt
Romney — was then working for DCI Group, a public relations firm for
Exxon Mobil, according to Gibson.</p>
<p class="p2">“DCI set up another firm [called] Tech Central Station
to say there’s absolutely no link to Hurricane Katrina with climate
change,” Gibson says. “And local news media picked it up.”</p>
<p class="p2">“It’s been extremely effective,” Gibson says of the
doubt-sowing campaigns. “We’ve seen climate change legislation crash and
burn on the global stage. The Dems don’t want to talk about it. Obama
doesn’t want to talk about it. … Romney is more a climate change denier
now.”</p>
<p class="p2">While they pursued health care reform, Democrats
attempted to enact a national carbon cap-and-trade system. Cap-and-trade
would set a price for units of carbon pollution generated by companies.
It would also set maximum caps per year of how much carbon a company
can generate, allowing those who produce more carbon to buy credits from
companies who come in below the threshold.</p>
<p class="p2">The theory goes that while some businesses have to pay
for disposal of their garbage — a restaurant, for example, pays the city
to pick up its trash each week — large energy producers pollute the
atmosphere for free.</p>
<p class="p2">“One cost of mining is getting [coal] out of the ground
and bringing it to market, but [they] don’t have to pay for the exhaust
[they] put into the atmosphere,” says Henning, the Gonzaga professor.</p>
<p class="p2">The cap-and-trade bill had the support of President
Barack Obama and passed the House in June 2009; but, even though it had
the support of large corporations — big companies like General Electric,
Johnson and Johnson, Honeywell, Alcoa, DuPont and Dow Chemicals joined a
coalition that supports cap-and-trade — the bill died in the Senate in
2010.</p>
<p class="p5"><span class="s3"><strong><span class="InternalHed">Close to Home</span></strong></span></p>
<p class="p1">Researchers in Washington state aren’t talking about
alarmist claims — they’re talking about what will happen if, as
expected, our temperature bumps up just a few degrees.</p>
<p class="p2">By 2020, changes in climate are projected to cost
Washington state close to $10 billion annually, according to a report
released in April by the state Department of Ecology, due to “increased
health costs, storm damage, coastal destruction, rising energy costs,
increased wildfires, drought and other impacts.”</p>
<p class="p2">The study, commissioned in 2009 by the Washington State
Legislature, isn’t an idle research document. It’s a plan for how to
cope as the state morphs.</p>
<p class="p2">“People know how to deal with natural variability —
we’ve always had droughts and floods,” says Hedia Adelsman, an executive
policy advisor at Ecology. “Climate change will make these events more
chaotic, but also … they’ll become much more frequent and intensive.</p>
<p class="p2">“Washington, if we don’t take it seriously, we will be unprepared.”</p>
<p class="p2">Crops are one concern.</p>
<p class="p2">Because of the Evergreen State’s northern latitudes,
declining crop yields aren’t a huge worry, according to Chad Kruger,
executive director of the Center for Sustainable Agriculture and Natural
Resources at Washington State University. Instead, Kruger worries about
declining quality.</p>
<p class="p2">“A lot of our agriculture is really driven by high
quality fruits and veggies, which are more susceptible for quality
issues in a change-climate” scenario, he says.</p>
<p class="p2">And there’s the addition of more pests eating into
crops. The larvae of the codling moth, for example, seeks out fruit,
gobbles through the skin and bores through the fruit, eating its way to
the seeds.</p>
<p class="p2">“The further we get out from today, the more likely we
are to get a third generation of codling moth” in a single growing
season, Kruger says. That means more pesticides on the food, more
expense for farmers and more chances for crop damage.</p>
<p class="p2">The warm weather could also bring more pine bark beetle
infestations in the forests of Washington. Such beetle infestations have
caused the loss of up to 1 million trees a year, according to U.S.
Forest Service studies.</p>
<p class="p2">Warmer winters means the snow will melt earlier off the
mountains. Since 70 percent of the water in western mountain regions
comes from snow pack, water supply, wildlife and fisheries will suffer,
according to the Ecology report. Under conservative estimates, snow pack
in Washington mountains will decline by a quarter of its current
average for the 2020s, by a third in the 2040s and by over half during
toward the end of the century.</p>
<p class="p2">Hydropower production in the summer is likely to
decrease about 10 percent by the 2020s, according to the report. And
less water will further hurt the forests of Eastern Washington,
increasing the number of forest droughts and spurring on wildfires. The
report predicts the land burned annually in fires will double to around
800,00 acres in the 2020s.</p>
<p class="p2">Those shifts are unlikely to impact Avista’s ability to deliver electricity in Eastern Washington, according to Jessie Wuerst.</p>
<p class="p2">Wuerst, a senior communications manager for Avista, says
water flow changes due to global warming are projected to change only
minimally over the next 20 years. And because Avista supplies Eastern
Washington with a mix of hydropower, natural gas, coal and renewable
energy, the decline wouldn’t be directly felt in Spokane, Wuerst says.</p>
<p class="p5"><span class="s3"><strong><span class="InternalHed">Hope and Change</span></strong></span></p>
<p class="p1">Could the Pacific Northwest tackle global warming by
itself? Highly unlikely. But several states are trying, using what
Henning, at Gonzaga, calls the “California” effect.</p>
<p class="p2">“California passes higher emissions standards, and
businesses don’t want to make products especially for California,”
Henning says. “So they end up adopting California standards nationally
because California is such a big market.”</p>
<p class="p2">With this in mind, a group of western states and
Canadian provinces have been laboring to assemble states for a
cap-and-trade system. The Western Climate Initiative (WCI) began in 2007
as five westerns states, including Washington, teamed up to develop
targets for reducing greenhouse gases. Washington and Oregon both
withdrew from the plan in November 2011. Currently, only California and
four Canadian provinces are part of the project.</p>
<p class="p2">Jerome Delvin, a state senator from Richland, sponsored
the bill to remove Washington from the WCI. Delvin cites studies by the
conservative Heritage Foundation that say gas prices could rise by $1.40
per gallon under cap-and-trade. And he calls it arrogant that people
assume to predict the future of climate change.</p>
<p class="p2">“To the effect they say it’s happening, I don’t think so,” Delvin said recently over the phone.</p>
<p class="p2">In a statement to <em>The Inlander</em> responding about
whether he’d support rejoining the WCI, former congressman and
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jay Inslee wouldn’t say. Nor did
Inslee mention climate change; he spoke instead of working to creating
more clean energy jobs.</p>
<p class="p2">Calls and emails asking the same question of Republican
gubernatorial candidate, Attorney General Rob McKenna, were not
returned.</p>
<p class="p2">Wuerst, the Avista spokeswoman, says her company tracks
the progress of cap-and-trade proposals. Noting the concern of some
proposals as being overly complex, Wuerst says Avista is already working
to reduce the region’s carbon footprint, for example, by helping large
manufacturing plants to add energy efficient lights, windows and
refrigeration.</p>
<p class="p2">Henning holds out hope that a global solution — an
international cap-and trade or a carbon tax, for instance — can be
found. He describes those big reforms as a kind of insurance.</p>
<p class="p2">“I’m not likely to get into a car accident, but should I
get insurance because I might?” he says. “Some people have a higher
risk tolerance than others.”</p>
<p class="p2">But, “the burden of proof should be on the people who
say there isn’t a problem,” he says, “rather than on the people who say
there is, out of an abundance of caution.” </p><hr>
<h1>POLITICAL HOT POTATO <br></h1><p class="p1"><span class="dropcap">W</span><span class="Lede">here do</span>
Mitt Romney and Barack Obama stand on climate change? It depends when
you’re asking. Both candidates have altered their remarks over the
years. Romney has said in the past — and in his 2010 book <em>No Apologies</em>
— that he believes climate change is caused by human actions. That
changed as he vied to become the Republican choice for president.</p>
<p class="p3">“My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate
change on this planet,” an October 2011 story by CNN quotes Romney as
saying. “And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to
try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.”</p>
<p class="p3">And Romney last week, in a statement to
Sciencedebate.org, said: “I am not a scientist myself, but my best
assessment of the data is that the world is getting warmer, that human
activity contributes to that warming and that policymakers should
therefore consider the risk of negative consequences. However, there
remains a lack of scientific consensus on the issue — on the extent of
the warming, the extent of the human contribution and the severity of
the risk — and I believe we must support continued debate and
investigation within the scientific community.”</p>
<p class="p3">President Obama has done some of his own shifting. Like
other Democrats, he’s chucked the soaring rhetoric of saving the planet
in order to talk about the consistently uneven economy.</p>
<p class="p3">In November 2008, Obama vowed during the presidential
campaign “to reduce climate-altering carbon dioxide emissions by 80
percent by 2050, and invest $150 billion in new energy-saving
technologies,” according to a 2008 <em>New York Times</em> story. But
while Obama still talks about how we need to reduce greenhouse gases,
the lofty promises are absent. In remarks last week, Obama instead
touted a series of smaller moves already made by the administration to
curb greenhouse gases.</p>
<p class="p3">“Climate change is the one of the biggest issues of this
generation,” he said in a statement to Sciencedebate.org, “and we have
to meet this challenge by driving smart policies that lead to greater
growth in clean energy generation and result in a range of economic and
social benefits. Since taking office I have established historic
standards limiting greenhouse gas emissions from our vehicles for the
first time in history. My administration has made unprecedented
investments in clean energy, proposed the first-ever carbon pollution
limits for new fossil-fuel-fired power plants and reduced carbon
emissions within the federal government.”</p><p class="p3">-----------------------------------------</p><p class="p3">Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett<br></p>