Sorry Gaspen I disagree with your opinion. EVERY nation needs to change their practices. If no-one is willing to be the first to change it creates a lose-lose scenario. But that too is problematic….we have Termite People, YEC’s and flat-earth-er’s all trying to treat science as though all arguments and perspectives deserve equal consideration, and economic regressives saying that OUR economy comes first(goodness, that’s the very thing you are criticizing ‘the orient’ for). It will NEVER work that way…we will just foul the waters and air till we create an environment that we are incapable of surviving in. What will wind up happening is that the richest will have the best quality of life for the longer period but population will increase, and weather/climate will continue to deteriorate. Sounds pretty bleak to me unless everyone wakes up pretty quick. Seems to me we should clean up our OWN crap first if we expect anyone else to try. Whatever happened to America leading the way in the right things for the right reasons?

Dutch environmental economist Richard Tol, and one of the leading IPCC authors and authority on the economics of climate change, says that the “threat” of CO2 and “climate change” is being way overstated.

…”Even if one accepts the IPCC WG2′s estimate that a “further warming of 2°C could cause loses equivalent to 0.2-2 per cent of world gross domestic product,” that is “about as bad as losing one year of economic growth” in half a century, Tol notes.

In contrast, since the start of the Eurozone financial crisis, the income of the average Greek has fallen more than 20%. “Climate change is not, then, the biggest problem facing humankind”

“The idea that climate change poses an existential threat to humankind is laughable”

HHHmmmm: Not disagreeing with you. We do have our own issues here at home. Just commenting that the Orient has openly said they will NOT attempt to make anything better.

AND, “whatever happened to America”?…..O’Bummer happened. Yes, I realize we can’t blame it all on his anti American ideas and lies, but he seems hell bent on ruining what used to be America.

@A.B. Did you by any chance notice who is funding the Yahoo News articles you are quoting-without referencing or crediting? Follow the money. @Gaspen…there is a rather sizable contingent here in the USA who says the same thing about their unwillingness to sacrifice short term profit for planetary accountability and responsibility. And, blaming the United States ‘across the board decline’ on Obama?….seriously? (yawn)…get real.

I survived the imminent great earthquake that was going to drop CA into the ocean in the sixties, the up-coming ice age in the seventies, Regan nuking the world in the eighties, Y2K in the late nineties.

I bet I live long enough to see man made global warming claims proven to be over blown.

I wonder why AB and his fellow climate change deniers believe Hydrogen Bomb Scientists (I assume) yet constantly attack the Scientist of Climatology? The new UN Report has thousands or Scientific reference points, hundreds of authors from over 50 countries. But, now to AB’s weather.

2013 is still the 6th warmest year recorded; 2010 still holds the record. Greenland Ice Sheets melted at a slightly higher 30 year average rate; 2012 still holds the record. Arctic Ice in the Summer of 2013 still declined 18% by the 30 year average. Antarctic Ice shelves are breaking off in large chunks and are leaking fresh water. Precipitation in Antarctica has been higher then normal and again this is fresh water. Fresh water has a freezing point of 32 degrees while Sea water has a freezing point of 28 degrees. Hence the increase in Antarctic sea ice while the Antarctic continental ice is shrinking.

Weather and climate are two different things.

Speaking of science: here’s an interesting opinion about an important local event:

http://www.rgj.com/story/opinion/columnists/2014/04/06/glenn-miller-large-scale-contamination-lake-tahoe-acceptable/7229197/

Fish, you mean the media made the whole thing up all by themselves?!?
Gee, I wonder what else they’ve made up over the years?

“A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.” – Newsweek – April 28, 1975 “The Cooling World”

“The world “could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age, a leading atmospheric scientist predicts,” read a July 9, 1971 Washington Post article. NASA scientist S.I. Rasool, a colleague of James Hansen, made the predictions. The 1971 article continues: “In the next 50 years” — or by 2021 — fossil-fuel dust injected by man into the atmosphere “could screen out so much sunlight that the average temperature could drop by six degrees,” resulting in a buildup of “new glaciers that could eventually cover huge areas.” If sustained over “several years, five to 10,” or so Mr. Rasool estimated, “such a temperature decrease could be sufficient to trigger an ice age.”

In the 1970s Professor Stephen Schneider was one of the leading voices warning the Earth was going to experience a catastrophic man made ice-age. However he is now a member of the UN IPCC and is a leading advocate warning that the Earth is facing catastrophic global warming. In 1971, Schneider co-authored a paper warning of a man-made “ice age.” See: Rasool S., & Schneider S.”Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols – Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate”, Science, vol.173, 9 July 1971, p.138-141 – Excerpt: ‘The rate of temperature decrease is augmented with increasing aerosol content. An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 deg. K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.” Schneider was still promoting the coming “ice age” in 1978.

You see Fish, you’ve been scammed. You’re denying your own gullibility!

OK, my pleasure…just a few more though to humble Fish:

1976 Book: “The Cooling: Has the Next Ice Age Already Begun” By Lowell Ponte – Excerpt: “This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000.”

Earth Day 1970: Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling: “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000…This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.”

1975 Newsweek: “The Cooling World,” Newsweek. April 28, 1975 By Peter Gwynne

Excerpt: The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. […] The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.” […] Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve.

Priceless excerpts, and there’s hundreds more Fish – I think I will serve up a slice of humble pie for Fish to enjoy!

Climate change is real and it’s accelerating. The vast majority of scientists have done studies involving ocean tempuratures, changing tidal flows, sattelite imaging showing how much ice pack is melting on a DAILY basis, rise in the sea level, along with many other indicaters.
All of this matters not to the deniers. I showed a picture to a conservative friend of mine, pictures showing a rapidly melting glacier, her response? “That picture was probably photo shopped”.
The disbelievers find a few so called scientists(who are usually being paid by petro chemical companys) to back up their claims that it’s all a hoax.
You call this change in weather a hoax or scam? Wait untill this summer rolls in! Extreme fire danger on the west coast of California,none or very meager crops from California causing food prices to skyrocket, water shortages for everyone from Utah to the west! The east and south east of the US struggeling to cope with the harshest winter on record. Europe suffering from several storms so immense crippeling entire nations forcing them into bankruptcy.
Yes it’s real and in a few months we’ll see the effects of what it’s like to live with climate change.
Conserve water wherever you can and start growing your own food. I can recomend some veggies and berries that thrive here. to those that are interested. Tear up that water wasting lawn and plant food!
OLS

Pescado, I don’t have a potato tower but “potato head bobby was a friend of mine”. With a little SUN, fix up your SOIL and selecting the right SEEDS you to can “call any vegetable” and grow all kinds of food. For the uninitiated those words in quotes are lyrics from some old Frank Zappa tunes. I did that for Pescado!
So it all boils down to the 3 “S’es”, sun, soil and seeds.
I’ve got a small patch of land in Sierra Tract and every sunny spot will be filled with edible plants. I re use every bit of water. The old dog and cat water goes to watering plants. I’ll be installing gutters this year to catch rain water to help grow vegetables. If you can afford it put in low flow shower heads and toilets.. There is lots you can do ,once you start thinking about it, to conserve water.
I’m happy to share with anyone as to what grows here in our short growing season here at the lake.
Conserve water, keep your yard clear of pine needles and pine cones and other flammable materials and keep your fingers crossed we don’t have another fire like the Angora Fire. Thanks, Old Long Skiis

So you still have no grasp of the basic concepts here?
You are both dumb as rocks.

I made my valid point in the comments above. Read.

A new report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), written by an international collection of scientists, claims that humanity’s impact on climate is not causing substantial harm to the Earth.

“All across the planet, the historical increase in the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration has stimulated vegetative productivity,” reads a portion of the 1,063-page report, called “Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts.” “This observed stimulation, or greening of the Earth, has occurred in spite of many real and imagined assaults on Earth’s vegetation, including fires, disease, pest outbreaks, deforestation and climatic change.”

The panel of scientists says human impact on the global climate is small, changing temperatures are within a historic scope of temperature variables and there is no net harm to human health of the production of food.

Following underscores just how INTENTIONALLY misleading Bitter and those of his ilk are…and I quote-
From “Climate Science Watch”, Sept. 09, 2013″:
“Heartland Institute and its NIPCC report fail the credibility test.

Tomorrow the Heartland Institute launches a new report Climate Change Reconsidered. To write the report, Heartland assembled a group it calls the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), a particularly revealing choice of name. The name, combined with the timing of the release to coincide with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s upcoming Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), shows that Heartland is attempting to present itself as a legitimate alternative authority to the IPCC.

However, the Heartland institute is nowhere close to the IPCC in terms of credibility. A few key points show the NIPCC to be a transparent marketing gimmick rather than a legitimate scientific undertaking:

The NIPCC does not follow the same rigorous scientific evaluation process as the IPCC.
The Heartland Institute has a long history of opposing settled science in the interests of its free-market funders, and has used decidedly un-scientific tactics to do so….
Heartland’s funding over the past decade has included thousands of dollars directly from ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute, but a large portion of their funding ($25.6 million) comes from the shadowy Donor’s Capital Fund, created expressly to conceal the identity of large donors to free-market causes. The Koch brothers appear to be funneling money into Donor’s Capital via their Knowledge and Progress Fund.”
A prime example of Free-Market Democracy at it’s bludgeoning best. Bitter either is being disingenuous or lacks the basic ability to research the veracity of the materials he reads, or both.