GE finally gives in, admits that climate is actually warming

The debate's over: Globe is warming

By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
Mon Jun 13, 6:56 AM ET

Don't look now, but the ground has shifted on global warming. After decades of debate over whether the planet is heating and, if so, whose fault it is, divergent groups are joining hands with little fanfare to deal with a problem they say people can no longer avoid...

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Moving ahead with solutions looks like the hardest part of the equation for the United States. The Bush administration's stance has frustrated advocates of a more aggressive response.

Bush explained in a 2001 speech why he opposed joining the
Kyoto Protocol, a global agreement to curb greenhouse gases: "The (Kyoto) targets themselves were arbitrary and not based upon science. For America, complying with those mandates would have a negative economic impact, with layoffs of workers and price increases."

Instead, the administration "harnesses the power of markets and technological innovation, maintains economic growth, and encourages global participation," former Energy Department head Spencer Abraham wrote last year in Science. He pointed to tax incentive programs, climate research and technologies such as "FutureGen," the Energy Department's 10-year,$1 billion attempt at creating a coal-fired power plant that emits no greenhouse gases.

Other administration efforts:

• The $1.7 billion hydrogen fuel-cell car initiative announced two years ago in Bush's State of the Union address.

• A $49 million carbon "sequestration" initiative with 65 projects to see whether carbon dioxide can be stripped from emissions.

• Participation in the international ITER program to develop nuclear fusion as an energy source.

The administration has encouraged voluntary efforts. Fourteen trade groups representing industrial, energy, transportation and forest companies have signed up for a program aimed at cutting greenhouse-gas emissions 18% by 2012.

So why isn't this enough to assuage critics?

Rick Piltz, a science policy expert who resigned in protest from the administration's Climate Change Science Program in March, says the reliance on voluntary measures and long-term technology breakthroughs is a roadblock against simple conservation steps that could curb emissions now. Piltz provided the edited documents that were the subject of last week's story in The New York Times.

Commonly cited examples of the conservation steps Piltz mentions:

• Incentives for emission controls on the oldest and least efficient power plants.

• More stringent mileage and tailpipe requirements on vehicles.

• Expanded tax credits for more efficient air conditioners, hybrid cars and appliances...

Of course, nice of the journos at USA Today to not mention that the only "debate" on the topic came from industry groups complaining about about it and dumping enough cash into efforts to cloud the argument, not, you know, from any actual climate or enviro-science group.

on a side note, Spencer Abraham was a Repub senator from Michigan who finally got his ass voted out 5 years ago. Of course, it didn't prevent him from continuing to stump for oil and auto companies...