Thank You Al Gore!

Thank you Al Gore!

I had the opportunity of seeing An Inconvenient Truth last night. If you haven't seen the movie, make a point of taking it in. The former Vice-President presented the issue of global-warming in an easily grasped fashion. I shall not review the movie here, but it remains timely and required viewing.

Just today, it was reported how an ice core from the Antarctic ice pack revealed that we live in times of record CO2 levels, highest in 800,000 years.

As was noted in the report:

""Carbon dioxide has increased by about 35 per cent in the past 200 years. Before that 200 years, which is when man's been influencing the atmosphere, it was pretty steady to within 5 per cent," Wolff said.

The core shows that carbon dioxide was always between 180 parts per million (ppm) and 300ppm during the 800,000 years. However, now it is 380 ppm. Methane was previously never higher than 750 parts per billion (ppb) but now it stands at 1780ppb.

The rate of change is even more dramatic, with increases in carbon dioxide never exceeding 30ppm in 1000 years - and yet now carbon dioxide has risen by 30ppm in 17 years.

"The rate of change is probably the most scary thing because it means that the earth systems can't cope with it," Wolff told a British Association meeting.

"We have little capacity to adapt to changes that are much faster than anything in human experience."

Also, take a look at this story about the Greenland Ice Cap in which it is reported:

"According to satellite data, Greenland's ice is melting at a rate three times faster than it was only five years ago.

The estimate of the melting trend that has been observed for nearly a decade comes from a University of Texas team monitoring a satellite mission that measures changes in the Earth's gravity over the entire Greenland ice cap as the ice melts and the water flows down into the Arctic ocean.

The same satellites tracking Greenland's ice cap also are monitoring the melt rate of Antarctica's ice cover, and there too the melting is adding to the global rise in sea level."

Al Gore has put this issue on the national agenda.

But Senator John Kerry has also been working at bringing this to the fore. He wrote last month in the San Francisco Chronicle:

"It's time to put Washington to the test. No more bite-sized ideas that tinker at the edges of outdated policy. It's time to put global-climate change at the top of the national agenda.

There are three big steps that are imperative to addressing global warming.

-- First, we must establish a mandatory program to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

-- Second, we must provide the incentives and resources to transition to a low-carbon economy.

-- Third, we must recognize that climate change is a global problem requiring a global solution.

Under President Bush, efforts to reduce U.S. emissions have been limited almost exclusively to voluntary activities. It's clear that the voluntary efforts are not getting the job done. The proof is in the numbers -- over the past several years, overall U.S. emissions have been on the rise. While voluntary programs can contribute to a domestic-climate change program, they cannot stimulate the global action that we know is necessary. Each year since 1992, the science has become more certain and Al Gore's summer movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," has brought the science home to Americans in a persuasive way.

So, what are we going to do about it? We need a plan that does what the science tells us we have to do. That's why I am introducing legislation to stop and reverse U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases. My bill establishes a mandatory cap-and-trade program to reverse emissions growth, starting in 2010. After that, we will progress to more rapid reductions and end at 65 percent below 2000 emissions by the year 2050. We have lost too much time for voluntary measures to be put to the test. We can't just set a mandate -- we have to provide incentives to businesses and industry to make the mandate achievable."

Thank you Senator Kerry! Thank you Vice-President Gore!

While this blogger has been working hard to get Senator Kerry's name out for the 2008 election, America needs the support and cooperation of all of us to deal with the threat of Global Warming and the consequences of ignoring the continuing evidence of the threat to this planet.

Keep on Coming John!

And thanks so much Al!

America needs strong leadership that can use science and not abuse science to deal with the challenges facing our nation in the 21st century!

A new direction is needed!

Bob