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Signs of Climate Change Fail to Shift Political Landscape
2010-09-23 15:02:18.262 GMT
By Juliet Eilperin
Sept. 23 (Washington Post) -- The evidence for climate
change grows: The first eight months of 2010 put this year on
track to tie 1998 as the hottest year on record, global bleaching
is devastating coral reefs and Arctic summer sea ice is reaching
new lows.
But for all the visible signs of global warming, weakened
political support for curbing the emissions that drive it means
that the United States is unlikely to impose national limits on
greenhouse gases before 2013, at the earliest. Several leading
GOP candidates this fall are questioning whether these emissions
even cause warming, while some key Senate Democratic candidates
are now disavowing the cap-and-trade bill that passed the House
in 2009.
"I don't see a comprehensive bill going anywhere in the next
two years," Senate Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff
Bingaman (D-N.M.) told a Washington policymakers' conference
sponsored by Reuters on Tuesday.
This disconnect has left environmentalists and many climate
scientists feeling pessimistic. For years activists argued it was
hard to limit greenhouse gases because unlike other forms of
pollution, they were impossible to see, smell or touch. Climate
effects are increasingly plain to see, but no easier to address.
Rafe Pomerance, a senior fellow at the group Clean Air-Cool
Planet, said he and other experts are stunned to see so many
examples of global warming materializing at once: "It is
breathtaking to watch several indicators demonstrate
simultaneously climate impacts from the poles to the equator."
However these developments, coupled with extreme weather
events such as massive wildfires in Russia and floods in China
and Pakistan this summer, have done nothing to revive prospects
for a climate policy that President Obama has championed since
taking office. In at least eight contested House races and six
competitive Senate races - all of which would represent GOP
pickups - the Republican candidates reject the idea that human
activities are linked to global warming.
"If many of the climate science deniers get elected to
Congress, it is difficult to imagine the next Congress limiting
global warming pollution," said Daniel J. Weiss, who directs
climate strategy for the Center for American Progress Action
Fund.
And even some Democratic Senate candidates are playing down
the prospect of a federal cap on carbon emissions. Sen. Michael
Bennet (D-Colo.) said he opposes the House-passed climate bill
during a Sept. 11 debate with his opponent, while Connecticut
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal - who backed Senate climate
legislation in 2009 - recently told one voter that "cap and trade
is dead."
Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), who voted for the House
climate bill last year, told a group of scientists at the
University of California at Davis last weekend that researchers
and politicians need to do more to get the American public to
grasp the urgency of climate change.
"It's not enough to have the science. We need to be able to
convince the people," he said. "We have to be able to convince
them how serious these issues are."
When asked about the dim prospects for climate legislation
in the next few years, Obama energy and climate change adviser
Carol Browner provided a statement emphasizing the "aggressive
steps" the president had taken to improve fuel efficiency, home
weatherization and electricity transmission. "There's no doubt
that there is a global race to the top to capitalize on the jobs
that will be created by transitioning to a clean-energy economy,
and the president recognizes the urgency and will continue to
aggressively advocate for the United States to be that nation,"
she said.
The administration continues to back a federal cap on
greenhouse gas emissions. So does House Select Committee on
Energy Independence and Global Warming Chairman Edward J. Markey
(D-Mass.), who co-wrote last year's climate bill and is holding a
hearing Thursday on the connection between this year's extreme
weather and global warming, featuring Pakistan's U.S. ambassador,
Husain Haqqani.
But if Republicans retake the House this fall, they'll
eliminate Markey's select committee. And Sen. James M. Inhofe
(R-Okla.), who would chair the Environment and Public Works
Committee if his party gains control of the chamber, said the
combination of some Democrats' unease with the Environmental
Protection Agency regulating greenhouse gases and unified
Republican opposition could curtail any federal limits on carbon.
"With the GOP certain to gain seats in November, the
prospect of dismantling that regime is growing brighter every
day," he said.
Despite the political impasse in Washington, several recent
readings now suggest that climate change is accelerating.
Combined ocean and land temperature readings for the first eight
months of 2010 make it likely that this year will tie 1998 as the
hottest year on record. For only the second time in history, a
worldwide bleaching event has devastated coral reefs from the
Maldives to the Caribbean. Arctic summer sea ice volume has
steadily declined since the late 1980s, and the minimum extent it
reached this month ranks as the third-lowest since satellite
record-keeping began in 1979.
"The bad part about this is it really shouldn't be
surprising us," said Mark Eakin, coordinator of the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coral Reef Watch,
referring to the bleaching event. "This is exactly what we've
been predicting. None of us want to be seeing this or believing
it, because it's a scary prospect."
Norway's Kongsvegen glacier still looms within sight of
Ny-Alesund, the northernmost human settlement on Earth. But along
with the rest of the world's glaciers, it is shrinking.
Robert Bindschadler, NASA's emeritus chief scientist, said
researchers are just beginning to grasp how warmer ocean waters
are helping erode ice sheets, and that this will lead to more
rapid sea-level rise by the end of the century.
"It's the heat in the oceans that are attacking the ice
sheets, that's the primary driver," he said. He added that
because researchers have largely relied on satellite data to
gauge ice sheet melt in the past, "we don't have many
measurements of how that process takes place. We're kind of just
getting started."
-0- Sep/23/2010 15:02 GMT
