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Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him
Lucre Lucifer writes "The top climate scientist at NASA, James E. Hansen, says that the Bush Administration tried to silence him(NY Times) after he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming. In the talk, he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the earth 'a different planet.' The administration's policy is to use voluntary measures to slow, but not reverse, the growth of emissions."
Then what should we do about all those volcanoes that spew out more gases in 1 day than the emissions of all puny motor vehicles within a 3000 mile radius?
Stop adding to the problem by eliminating the vehicle emissions? The planet can obviously handle the amount of emissions it naturally generates, and handle it in such a way as to provide a climate that facilitates our existence. The problem is that the emissions we are adding are tipping the balance towards a climate which does a much poorer job of supporting our existence.
It's foolish to think that motor vehicles are the direct cause of global warming which is a theory anyway.
So is Gravity. They're both very well supported theories, too. If you don't believe me, try walking off the nearest cliff.
I couldn't agree more.
Sydney, Australia is currently powered by several large coal plants. In fact 78% of the power generated in Australia is from coal. Every year we spread a ridiculous quantity of carbon dioxide and other emissions in to the atmosphere.
Australia has no nuclear power plants. None at all.
To makes things even more ridiculous, Australia even mines uranium!
The main concern anywhere about nuclear power stations is the chance of a catastrophe. People point at Chernobyl and say "We can't have one of THOSE near us!". This is obviously garbage, it's well documented how safe a modern nuclear plant can be and how badly you need to stuff up to end up with an event like the one at Chernobyl.
What's more - Australia has a LOT of empty space. While building a plant in the middle of the outback wouldn't make a great deal of sense (hard to maintain, expensive to carry the power so far to the city etc), we could certainly find a balance point between distance and cost if it really worries people (personally, I wouldn't care if it was in the next suburb over from me).
There has been some thought of getting nuclear power in Australia, however as yet, the protests of an uninformed public have stopped any serious efforts.
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Many of the same people defending Bush's lies are the same ones that said so many things about clinton (he murders loads of people; he raped 10's of women; He ran up the defict, he did not balance it; etc, etc, etc). Yet, GWB had at least one traitor in the white house and said that he would fire him once he found him. So far, libby has been shown to be involved and bush allowed the man to quit with the statement that he had to be proved guilty. Likewise, he runs up monster deficits. I remember his infamous state of the union addr where he stated that Iraq was buying Uranium from Nigeria. That same night, tenet came out and said that it was absolutely false. Bush then follows it up with saying that Tenet already showed that it was true, so tenet's last statement was incorrect. IOW, GWB was incorrect, Tenet outed him on it, and then GWB tried to disprove Tenet over it. And yet, Tenet was accused of being incorrect on this. Currently, GWB has Sibel Edmunds under a quasi-legal gag order. I only hope that the courts will do the right things and allow her to speak (or that she leaves the country, tells all that will not turn her into a traitor, and wait for the next president to allow her back).
And yet, some 40% of the country support a lieing traitorous president who is destroying the country and turning just about every country against us. Very scarey.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It is sad that this story doesn't surprise me. In fact, back when Bush stole the election from Al Gore, I explained to my republican friends that its not that I'm so much for Gore, but every ounce of my being is against Bush. The country would have been in good hands with Gore and none of the bullshit we've seen come to pass would have occurred. And I'm not talking about 9/11, I'm talking about our childlessly impotent response to 9/11 and the subsequent sacrifice of 1000's of American lives and countless Iraqi lives by Bush under the guise of a lie.
I gasp when I hear anyone suggest that the Monica Lewinsky "scandal" amounted to more than stealing from a cookie jar and lying about it- when Bush lies to us daily, spies on us, and breaks our laws; setup to keep the government from doing just that.
If you want to argue about this, please don't bother- I'm not hanging around for responses. Like the rest of the country, I'm tired of this guy being in office and I'm ready to split the country in half and move if my half has to have him as president. I'd be happy to give the religious right their own country and leaders because I don't want them in my life. The scary thing is that they'd probably immediately declare war on the other half because the last thing the extreme republicans and the religious right want is freedom of religion and beliefs in the world. I sometimes believe such a war is coming...just like the middle east, we can't escape these morons whose belief in imaginary deities cause them to butt into the lives of others and attempt to legislate their religious edicts into law. Whether you're talking about the Taliban or Bush Administration, both hope to legislate their religious beliefs and both are a threat to freedom.
You know what really bothers me? People will turn their heads the other way when this hits all the papers. "So what if Bush tries to silence scientists...its bad, but what am I going to do about it?" What you can do about it is vote for Democrats in the coming election so we can get enough seats to boot this guy based SOLELY on the countless laws he has broken. Donate money to the DNC. Throw out your politics, just count the number of laws he admits he has broken, but claims authority to break in the name of the American people! No President is above the law. If the president can break the law, then we have no law and he's not the President and we owe no allegiance to him- because the law is the only thing that makes him the President. Once he shows us that the law means nothing to him, he ceases to be the President of the United States. I don't care if he is "protecting the american people". The American people don't need a King who protects us- we had that- and we delcared independance and wrote our own constitution.
We are not going back to a ruler who thinks they know better than our laws. Impeach today.