Climate change is occurring far more rapidly than even the worst predictions of the UN’s Nobel Prize-winning scientific panel on climate change, Al Gore said on Thursday. Recent evidence shows ‘the climate crisis is significantly worse and unfolding more rapidly than those on the pessimistic side of the IPCC projections had warned us,’ climate campaigner and former US vice-president Gore said. There are now forecasts that the North Pole ice caps may disappear entirely during summer months within five years, he told a gathering at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a massive report the size of three phone books on the reality and risks of climate change, its 4th assessment in 18 years. Global warming is a key theme at this year’s meeting of the world’s business and political elite in Davos.
WASHINGTON — Democrats cited the nation’s economic problems as a reason to expand a popular health insurance program for children on Wednesday, but their effort failed as the House sustained President Bush’s veto of a bill to provide coverage to nearly four million uninsured children. The vote for the bill was 260 to 152. Supporters were 15 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass the measure over the president’s objections. ‘Amid this economic downturn, with skyrocketing energy costs, a record number of mortgage foreclosures and fewer new jobs, the rate of unemployment has jumped dramatically,’ said Representative Allyson Y. Schwartz, Democrat of Pennsylvania. ‘Two-thirds of unemployed individuals lose health care coverage for their families when they lose their jobs. In times like these, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program is needed most.’ Republicans said the vote was a political stunt, intended to embarrass Mr. Bush before his State of the Union address next week. The bill would pump $35 billion more into the child health program, providing a total of $60 billion over the next five years. The money would allow states to cover nearly four million children, in addition to the six million […]
Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses. On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration’s case for war. […]
WASHINGTON-EPA officials told agency Administrator Stephen Johnson that California had ‘compelling and extraordinary conditions’ to justify a federal waiver to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, according to excerpts of agency documents made available Wednesday. Johnson denied the state’s request for a waiver under the federal Clean Air Act in December. In doing so, he said the California standards were not needed to meet ‘compelling and extraordinary conditions,’ one of the criteria in the federal law. The excerpts from EPA documents were released by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., whose environmental committee is investigating Johnson’s decision and has a hearing scheduled for Thursday, when he is expected to testify. The staff report was given to Johnson in a Power Point presentation dated late October. The Environmental Protection Agency has refused to release unredacted versions of that presentation or other documents in response to congressional requests, citing an executive branch confidentiality. However, Boxer’s aides were allowed to review and transcribe several versions of the 46-page presentation on Tuesday, spending 5 1/2 hours doing so under supervision of EPA staff, Boxer said. White tape covered the portions of the documents deemed confidential by EPA officials, but the congressional […]
For 15 years, United Nations talks aimed at fixing a faltering 1992 climate treaty have provided little drama. But at the latest session last month on the Indonesian island of Bali, Kevin Conrad, a young man representing one of the world’s least influential nations, Papua New Guinea, gained a worldwide spotlight as he faced down the sole superpower, the United States. It was during the final formal plenary, which was crammed with observers, journalists and officials from more than 180 countries. The American negotiators had objected to language inserted in a document at the last minute by developing countries led by China and India. A swell of boos and jeers built. After a long sequence of polite criticisms from developing countries over the sudden diplomatic logjam at the very end of two draining weeks, it was Mr. Conrad’s turn. ‘I would ask the United States, we ask for your leadership,’ he said. ‘But if for some reason you’re not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way.’ The room erupted in applause, and within minutes the lead American representative, Paula J. Dobriansky, dropped the objection and said, ‘We will […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
