Griper News: Griper Blade: Bush, ExxonMobil, and the Climate; Time to Lead, Follow, or Get the Hell Out of the Way

Now this is depressing. Not only is global warming indisputable, but it's also unstoppable. At least, the way things stand today.

Associated Press:

The world's leading climate scientists, in their most powerful language ever used on the issue, said global warming is "very likely" man-made, according to a new report obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

The report provides what may be cold comfort in slightly reduced projections on rising temperatures and sea levels by the year 2100. But it is tempered by a flat pronouncement that global warming is essentially a runaway train that cannot be stopped for centuries.

"The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice-mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that is not due to known natural causes alone," said the 20-page report.

Human-caused warming and rises in sea-level "would continue for centuries" because the process has already started, "even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized," said the 20-page report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Part of the problem is that glacial and polar ice contain carbon that's being released as it thaws. Melting ice releases carbon which melts the ice which releases carbon which melts the ice which... you get the idea.

The IPCC report has been called 'the smoking gun' on global warming.

AP:

"Although President Bush just noticed that the earth is heating up, the American public, every reputable scientist and other world leaders have long recognized that global warming is real and it's serious. The time to act is now," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who with GOP Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine crafted one of a half-dozen competing bills to address global warming.

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a senior member of House panels on energy and natural resources, said that "for those who are still trying to determine responsibility for global warming, this new U.N. report on climate change is a scientific smoking gun."

The White House issued a statement less than four hours after the report's release defending Bush's six-year record on global climate change, beginning with his acknowledgment in 2001 that the increase in greenhouse gases is due largely to human activity.

Notice how the White House's first reaction isn't "we've got one helluva lot of work to do?" No, as it always is, the Bush administration's first impulse is to issue a press release covering their ass. Never mind that recognizing a problem isn't the same thing as doing something about it. "Hey, don't blame me," isn't actually going to accomplish anything. How's that for leadership?

But if Bush's lack of leadership on the issue is bad, the oil industry's reaction is worse.

The Guardian, via Think Progress:

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world’s largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.

[…]

The letters were sent by Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar at AEI, who confirmed that the organisation had approached scientists, economists and policy analysts to write articles for an independent review that would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC report.