We're guessing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's newly-released findings won't shut up Glenn Beck, Fox News, NBC, or much of the rest of the media reporting climate change misinformation without any regard for reality or context. That withstanding, we'd still like to bring you the facts.
Coinciding with the beginning of the UN conference on climate change in Copenhagen, the U.S. government has officially recognized that greenhouse gases are dangerous pollutants that threaten public health. From the EPA's release announcing the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activities are causing global climate change:
[Greenhouse gases] are the primary driver of climate change, which can lead to hotter, longer heat waves that threaten the health of the sick, poor or elderly; increases in ground-level ozone pollution linked to asthma and other respiratory illnesses; as well as other threats to the health and welfare of Americans.
As a result of human activities, greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are at record high levels and data shows that the Earth has been warming over the past 100 years. Contrary to what dissenters of a 'climate crisis' and numerous Fox News personalities would have you believe, the impact of man's effect on the global climate goes way beyond just short-term changes in weather like a series of cold spells...including (gasp!) snow falling in Texas. It also includes:
· melting ice in the Arctic · melting glaciers around the world · increasing ocean temperatures · rising sea levels · acidification of the oceans due to excess carbon dioxide · changing precipitation patterns · changing patterns of ecosystems and wildlife
Massachusetts Rep. Edward J. Markey, who helped author the climate change bill passed by the House, spoke out against global warming "deniers" and reiterated the significance of EPA's findings:
"Now that the U.S. government has officially ended its era of climate denial, the real endangerment to our planet comes from those who continue to deny the science and delay taking any action.
"The finding that global warming pollution poses a threat to human health and our environment is based on mountains of data accumulated from thousands of scientists over the course of decades. The molehill recently manufactured by a few climate deniers does not change that. President Obama and the United States Congress can now travel to Copenhagen armed with regulatory credibility and emission reduction targets from the Waxman-Markey legislation. The world is watching, and the United States is acting."
Deniers will probably continue to cite "emails" as proof there's no human-induced climate change--but we're definitely going to go with the EPA's conclusions as a result of scientific evidence with this one. We hope members of the public will choose to inform themselves before buying into the warming alarmism being promoted in the media, etc--because it's up to us to avert a climate crisis.
Shedding light on fake "green" groups: As the overblown "Climate-gate" scandal remains prominent in news headlines, Mother Jones has a guide to the dozen "loudest components of the climate disinformation machine," a list which includes FreedomWorks, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and the Heartland Institute. Check it out here.
Photo courtesy of Yago Veith.
