Re: [Futurework] Hear No Evil See no Evil...

[Ray Evans Harrell]

In 1980 I was at a party in the home of a prominent physicist at Los Alamos New Mexico.   They were all talking about the efficacy of Nuclear power and how they could build a perfect power plant but not perfect people to run it.   It was an "in" joke for the yahoos.   One turned to me and asked me what I thought.   I asked him if he was for nuclear power?    He said yes.    I then asked what he would be willing to sacrifice if it had an accident in a major metropolitan area?    He thought that was a novel idea.    I suggested that the taxi drivers in Washington had left one person, who was responsible for the death of one of their bretheren and who had gotten away with it in the courts,  hanging from a local light post.   Sort of the reverse of the old racists lynchings.      These folks are so used to getting away with destroying minority lives that they believe they can take on the majority like boiling the animal slow so it doesn't understand why its dying.   That is the question.   I told the scientist that the first nuclear accident would mean that nuclear scientists would probably be joining those folks on the lamp posts.      I'm from that side of the people.   I know their violence and their pleasure in vengence.   The key is to have enough power.   80% to 20% is enough power.   The country is evenly divided today between Republican and Democrat.   Real global warming or the Krugman scenario on the economics will be enough of a disaster to go beyond just kicking the bums out.   If it crosses the line of death then death will spread around.      They had better have the best survelliance cameras in the world and they had better be well hidden.    I know the root of that anger and George Bush just "affects" it.   It isn't real with him.   It also isn't real in the middle class yet but its coming.    I remember it in 1968 before the student and race riots in Washington and it feels just beneathe the surface here.   There is such a disconnect between the organization of the national corporate mengele media and the real heart of America that they are making a big mistake.      America won't turn for an ideology but if the damage is deep enough it will turn for revenge.   That is the root of the wounded animal that came here and that wound is just underneathe the huge scars they "affect" with great pride.   "War wounds" or in this case "immigrant wounds."     There is no home to go back to but the pain of rejection and suffering is a ritual and the pride of expectation is a creed.   To destroy those with reality is to free the beast.   Ray Evans Harrell     ----- Original Message ----- From: Karen Watters Cole To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 8:57 PM Subject: [Futurework] Hear No Evil See no Evil... In the name of protecting the public health and in the greater public common interest - Precautionary Principles: identifying environmental risks and implementing policies that will head off environmental damage before it occurs.*   Oregonian Editorial: 12/05/03: See No Warming, Feel No Warming Northwest researchers challenge the claim that scientists are evenly divided about the causes of climate change With so many policymakers covering their ears, climate scientists must speak louder to be heard. Now, with Congress rejecting global warming legislation and the Kyoto treaty possibly on the verge of collapse, is a good time for 17 Northwest researchers to raise their voices. Oregon's and Washington's leading climate change experts are publicly challenging a claim by U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., that scientists are evenly divided about whether current warming has human causes or is entirely natural. Smith made the claim in a Nov. 5 op-ed article in The Oregonian explaining his vote against the Climate Stewardship Act, which would have reduced greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, as the scientists make clear in a letter to Smith, which appears on the opposite page, the overwhelming scientific consensus is that much of the warming over the past 50 years is due to human activities, particularly the emission of greenhouse gases. Smith is free to believe what he wants about global warming, even if it is contradicted by the experts in his own state, by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and by hundreds of scientists who contributed to a landmark report for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, the senator's claim that "just as many scientists" believe that a natural cycle is responsible for the warming trend is flat wrong. Smith, of course, is in good company in looking the other way from the growing pile of scientific evidence about global warming, its human causes and its potential to cause tremendous social and economic problems. President Bush has adopted the same stance, sowing doubt about the science and pushing a wholly inadequate voluntary plan to reduce greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, the only serious global effort to combat warming, the Kyoto Protocol, depends now on whether Russia agrees to ratify the treaty. On Tuesday, a senior adviser to President Vladimir Putin said Russia would not agree to Kyoto because it would be too much of an economic burden. The next day, the Russian government said it had not made up its mind about Kyoto -- suggesting that the Kremlin is still trying to wring more concessions out of Europe and Japan. Whatever the Russians decide, the world will not successfully attack global warming without the support and participation of the United States, the No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases. Real progress on global warming will come only when President Bush and other political leaders realize that it's not enough to hope against hope that the overwhelming consensus of scientists is wrong. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Oregon senator cited imbalanced scientific view on global warming Commentary in The Oregonian, 12/05/03 The following is from a letter that 17 Northwest scientists -- including five on the faculties of Oregon universities -- sent to Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., responding to his Nov. 5 guest column, "Climate bill posed risks to economy." Dear Sen. Smith, We read your opinion piece in The Oregonian and believe that the reasons you gave for voting against the Climate Stewardship Act included some misrepresentations of the science of climate. We certainly agree with you that "nature is in a constant state of change." However, it is quite untrue to present the consensus view of climate scientists as evenly divided about whether current warming is entirely natural, as you did in your piece: "And our understanding of climate change is very limited. Some think automobiles and industrialization are to blame for Earth's current warming period. Yet, just as many scientists point to natural indicators -- from ancient tree rings to glacial ice cores -- as evidence that the planet regularly experiences both warming and cooling trends . . ." A bit later in the piece, you state: "The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reported that the 20th century has neither the warmest nor the most extreme weather of the past 1,000 years." Three important points must be made in response to these claims: On the issue of climate change, more than on any other policy-relevant science issue we know of, scientists have repeatedly been asked to produce comprehensive assessments of the state of science. To ignore those assessments is to ignore the very basis of a sophisticated modern society . . . the role of experts. When someone ignores or discredits experts in favor of a single paper (produced by two researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, not by the entire institution, and faulty in its analysis) that supports an extreme point of view, then it really is "more to do with politics than science." The most important such assessment culminated in early 2001 -- the years-long effort by 600 scientists laboring under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to produce an 894-page report on "The Scientific Basis" of climate change. This document was peer-reviewed piece-by-piece by several hundred scientists; the language in each chapter was carefully crafted to reflect the state of scientific understanding, including areas of great controversy and substantial agreement. The report's summary stated that "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities. . . ." At the request of President Bush, The U.S. National Academy of Sciences convened a panel in spring 2001 to answer "some key questions" that reaffirmed the IPCC's conclusions that most of the recent warming was likely due to human activity: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue. . . ." The evidence for a growing human influence on climate is very strong. This evidence includes (a) rapidly increasing greenhouse gases; (b) a pattern of warming that resembles the pattern expected from this increase in greenhouse gases; (c) direct measurements ruling out solar radiation as the cause of warming in the last 24 years . . . The existence of past natural variations -- like the glacial-interglacial cycles -- in no way diminishes the likelihood that in the past 30 to 50 years, human influence has also played a role in observed warming. There can be and indeed are multiple causes for climate variations; the differences between human-induced and natural causes are (a) the pace of global (as opposed to regional) change, which most research suggests is unusual; (b) the moral and legal responsibility for the change. As the American Geophysical Union puts it in its official statement on climate change, "The present level of scientific uncertainty does not justify inaction in the mitigation of human-induced climate change." We applaud those who, rather than hoping that the overwhelming consensus of the climate research community is completely wrong, are seeking innovative and cost-effective ways to reduce greenhouse gases. This letter takes no position on whether the Climate Stewardship Act was a good, cost-effective policy; rather, we are grieved to see members of the most august legislative body in the world citing a tiny minority of climate researchers in constructing an imbalanced view of the state of science, rather than relying on expert knowledge as represented in the comprehensive assessment efforts of the IPCC and the National Academy of Sciences. Richard Gammon, professor of oceanography and chemistry, University of Washington (and 16 cosigners from Northwest universities) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> * Precautionary Principles: identifying environmental risks and implementing policies that will head off environmental damage before it occurs.   “In the 1980s, the precautionary principle began appearing in policy statements and mechanisms in Europe and Canada, and it has been written into international treaties such as the North Atlantic Treaty, the Maastricht Treaty on the European Union, and the 1992 Rio Declaration from the UN Conference on Environment and Development (Agenda 21), to which the United States is a signatory.  In 1998, at the Wingspread Conference on the precautionary principle, an international gathering of scientists, government officials, lawyers, labor representatives, and environmental activists formulated some of the principle’s key components:   When an activity or policy potentially threatens human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken, even if certain cause-and-effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. The burden of proof regarding environmental damage falls not on the public but on the specific proponents and actors behind a given activity or policy. Application of the precautionary principle must be open, informed, and democratic, and must include potentially affected parties.  It must also involve an examination of the full range of alternatives, including no action.   Simply put, the precautionary principle embodies a philosophy of “better safe than sorry” in matters of commerce, industry, environmental law, and public health.   … after all, those critics who are concerned about entangling red tape are engaged, even if they don’t realize it, in the very dynamic that the precautionary principle advocates: one of vigorous, multi-sided debate about the potential future consequences of a particular course of action.  That’s the whole idea, and the stakes are too high, for ourselves and for future generations, not to take it seriously.” - KWC   (see attached or Around the Corner: Precautionary Principles, Uncommon Denominator April 2003)