Climate Change Conference Organizers Threatened

After five years in office the Bush White House still needs to blame Clinton for their lack of leadership when ever possible. Pathetic. Bush Threatens U.N. Over Clinton Climate Speech By Greg Sargent Bush-administration officials privately threatened organizers of the U.N. Climate Change Conference, telling them that any chance there might’ve been for the United States to sign on to the Kyoto global-warming protocol would be scuttled if they allowed Bill Clinton to speak at the gathering today in Montreal, according to a source involved with the negotiations who spoke to New York Magazine on condition of anonymity. Bush officials informed organizers of their intention to pull out of the new Kyoto deal late Thursday afternoon, soon after news leaked that Clinton was scheduled to speak, the source said. The threat set in motion a flurry of frantic back-channel negotiations between conference organizers and aides to Bush and Clinton that lasted into the night on Thursday, and at one point Clinton flatly told his advisers that he was going to pull out and not deliver the speech, the source said. “It’s just astounding,” the source told New York Magazine. “It came through loud and clear from the Bush people—they wouldn’t sign the deal if Clinton were allowed to speak.” Clinton spokesman Jay Carson confirmed the dustup took place and that the former president had decided not to go out of fear of harming the negotiations, but Carson declined to comment further. ........... “The organizers said the Bush people were threatening to pull out of the deal,” the source said. After some deliberation between Clinton and his aides, Clinton decided he wouldn’t speak, added the source: “President Clinton immediately said, ‘There’s no way that I’m gonna let petty politics get in the way of the deal. So I’m not gonna come.’ That’s the message [the Clinton people] sent back to the organizers.” But the organizers of the conference didn’t want to accept a Bush-administration dictum. They asked Clinton that he go ahead with the speech. “The organizers decided to call the administration’s bluff,” the source said. “They said, ‘We’re gonna push [the Bush people] back on this.’” Read More at: New York Magazine More on Climate Change: The Psychology of Global Warming: Alarm-ist Versus Alarm-ing One Expert Warns Temperatures Could Climb to Highest Level in 500,000 Years Analysis By BILL BLAKEMORE Dec. 8, 2005 — Journalism has no precedent for a story of the scale or seriousness of global warming. The vast majority of credible climate scientists — well over 95 percent, according to specialists in assessing scientists' opinions — agree that the average temperatures of the oceans, the land surface of the planet and the lower atmosphere (anything lower than the tip of Mount Everest) have been climbing at an accelerating rate. The same specialists say that nearly as many scientists agree that manmade greenhouse gas emissions are a significant factor — and a good many say the only significant factor — in the dangerous global warming now under way. If 95 of the world's best, most experienced experts in child well-being were to tell you that your child was under lethal attack — and with dramatic signs already visible if you only look — would you say, "I think I'll wait until the other five experts are convinced before I do anything about it?" It would be the other way around, and yet that is how a lot of people — and some parts of what's called "the mainstream media" — often seem to be reacting to what the vast majority of scientists are telling us. The latest news includes a study by one of the Galileos of global warming, NASA's Dr. James Hansen, who told the 11,000 Earth systems scientists at their annual meeting that mankind has at most 10 more years within which significant emissions cuts must get well under way or else the planet's temperatures will, within the next 30 to 40 years (by the time today's toddlers are entering middle age), climb to levels higher than at any time in the last 500,000 years. Civilization is less than 10,000 years old. ................ Two decades ago, many people without questionable motives — and some with — called NASA's James Hansen an "alarmist" when he stood before Congress and said his calculations showed that global warming had begun and was "changing the climate now." Then his alarm-ing descriptions — and predictions — panned out. Now, with a new set of calculations, Hansen — no longer so alone, joined now by thousands of concerned scientists — is again challenging our psychological capacities to deal with hard news. Read More At : ABC News