(CNN) — Sen. Barack Obama says in an interview scheduled to air on TV Friday that he would have left his church if his pastor had not retired and had not acknowledged making comments that "deeply offended people."

Speaking of getting ducks in a row, I have a sick feeling in my tummy that the RNC is going to turn this comment of Obama's into a "flip flop" example, and run with it.

Even on the off chance that John McCain suckers the press into installing him as president, he's better on this issue than Bush and his Stepford aides. —Kevin Drum

Hardly. He represents a state with some of the worst environmental standards in the country. We have no real indication that McCain is on the side of the little animals.

BushCo: We fucking hate everyone but our campaign contributors.

Even on the off chance that John McCain suckers the press into installing him as president, he's better on this issue than Bush and his Stepford aides.

Geez Kevin they are willing, useful idiots in this cause. They aren't being suckered, they are actively helping.

Why do you keep pretending they aren't?

I think they have to start fighting this now, even if its futile. If they don't start pushing back now they're not going to have as much credibility as environmental activists later on.

What cjenkins at 1:12 said.

But after the Rapture, won't greenhouse gas emissions be way down anyway? So why worry?

I think cjenkins is right - fight it now. But Mr. Drum is right in that the fight shouldn't be done with the actual intent of getting the Bush Administration to act, just enough to keep it in the public's attention (at least somewhat).

@thersites:

Certainly hot air emissions will go down.

ANY attempt to limit CO2 emmissions will cause economic pain in some sector of the economy. Bush specifically, and the Republicans generally, don't want to be seen as causing this pain. They would rather have it happen under a Democratic president and congress, so people being hurt by the regulations will only blame democrats. It is to democrats interest to get at least SOME CO2 regulation out of Bush so that this is seen as bipartisan.

I think cjenkins is right - fight it now. But Mr. Drum is right in that the fight shouldn't be done with the actual intent of getting the Bush Administration to act, just enough to keep it in the public's attention (at least somewhat).

I think that's right.

Wow, quite a lot of piggybacking we'e doing, huh?

The chill and the relax and the wait-until-the-next-president arguments are best suited to (1) okaying judicial and other candidates, and (2) finally bringing Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers to justice for their contempt of congress.

The HOPE, the HOPE, should be that the Supreme Court will, at least in this case, issue one of their extremely rare, non-despicable, non-craven, non-rightwing, non-corporatist just decisions.

Anything that thwarts the Bushite pigs, or symbolizes the thwarting of the Bushite pigs, or brings attention in the MSM to the symbolic thwarting of the Bushite pigs....

Wow, quite a lot of piggybacking we're doing, huh?

Yes, it is!

"They would rather have it happen under a Democratic president and congress, so people being hurt by the regulations will only blame democrats."

Well, since only Democrats and McCain truly believe this nonsense, then they should be fully responsible for the debacle that EPA regulation of this "pollutant" will cause.

I, for one, would love to hear how ALL of the Presidential candidates would handle this issue and specifically, what actions that they believe will be necessary to save us from excessive greehouse gases.

"Well, since only Democrats and McCain truly believe this nonsense"

LOL.... Along with reputable scientists and the majority of the American public, but you keep living in that little fantasy world of your, if you want.

"then they should be fully responsible for the debacle that EPA regulation of this "pollutant" will cause."

No problem.

"...since only Democrats and McCain truly believe this nonsense..."- I guess those scientists, Federal judges and Supreme Court Justices are all Demorats, right?

thersites: Wow, quite a lot of piggybacking we're doing, huh?

Thanks for the correction in bold. Until you made it, I'd thought "we'e" was the proper spelling of that word. You always have a grasp of the big issues, and I for one am grateful for your constant interest.

Chico: Well, since only Democrats and McCain truly believe this nonsense, then they should be fully responsible for the debacle that EPA regulation of this "pollutant" will cause.

I sometimes wish we could limit environmental damage to one corner of the planet, put all the dead enders there and watch from afar as they deny reality until their voices become too faint from the choking.

shortstop >"I sometimes wish...until their voices become too faint from the choking."

Keep holding that thought because there ARE ways...

"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." - Niccoló Machiavelli

"I didn't think so. Better to let 'em stall, and then next year let a Democratic president, Democratic Congress, and Democratic EPA administrator create regulations that are actually useful and properly targeted."

I completely disagree with this. Letting the Bush administration get away with this kind of crap has led to the historically low Congressional ratings. Moreover, these are not mutually exclusive positions: you can force the Bush administration to act now and you can pass sensible regulations next year.

I, for one, would love to hear how ALL of the Presidential candidates would handle this issue and specifically, what actions that they believe will be necessary to save us from excessive greehouse gases.

Ask, and you shall receive:

http://www.heatison.org/candidates

We can all do a lot ourselves, right now, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Like stop using the intertoobz - those servers you use are really energy hungry beasties. And reduce your driving, turn down the heat (or air), wash your clothes less, buy less clothes, take short showers, .....

EPA mandates are not going to solve the problem. Its the people who have to solve this problem.

CO2 agreements won't work. They are wishful thinking.

Worldwide CO2 will increase rapidly during the coming decades, primarily due to the growing prosperity of China and India. This trend may even intensify as other poor countries become wealthier and begin to use more automobiles, etc.

In short, if man-made CO2 is truly the key determinant of the earth's temperature, the international community is not going to fix the problem by slightly reducing the rate of increase in CO2.

One trick the AGW skeptics use is to ridicule the idea that CO2 should be called a "pollutant" - well, sure, it isn't in the toxicological sense (well, at current ppm, but eventually it will be! BTW, any studies showing biomed effects of CO2 going from 285 ppm to 420 ppm etc?) But neither is air as such or water, so does that mean we shouldn't ever worry about tornadoes or flooding?

Also, AGW skeptics are again plying confusion between long-term trend lines and short-term fluctuation to sow confusion and doubt (since recent cooling spell claimed relative to overall climb.) Just consider fluctuations imposed on a trend, look at graph of e.g. formula like y = ax + bRND(x).

tyrannogenius

Definitely should push for the present administration to begin, repeat begin, the process of slowing our contribution to greenhouse gases. It is certainly something that needs to be as "bipartisan" as possible.
As for hurting the economy, the Republicans have already done that. It is quite possible that some sane proposals can be inaugerated while we dig ourselves out of the mess they leave behind (see Depression, Great).

Wait,
"D-Beverly Hills"??
Is that what Waxman calls himself?
I've never heard that before....

Neil B. I agree that the lack of global warming over the last decade doesn't change my belief that long-term global warming is taking place.

However, CO2 is just one of the causes of global warming. The reason for focusing on CO2 as the major cause has been the good fit between CO2 growth and global temperature growth. Over the last 10 years, the fit is poor, since CO2 has continued to grow, but the tempreature hasn't gone up. So, there should now be less certainty about how significant a role CO2 plays in causing global warming.

Intuitively it might seem that CO2 shouldn't be that significant a greenhouse gas since there's so little of it in the air. E.g., water vapor, another greenhouse gas, averages about 2% to 3%. That's 50 to 75 times as much as CO2 at 432 ppm.

BTW the unusually large drop in global temperature during the last year probably has no significance. However, it will be interesting to see what another year brings. If the temperature goes back up, then this year's drop would be a meaningless outlier. OTOH if the temperature drops again, then our entire view might need to be re-studied.

The current administration is slowing the contributions to greenhouse gases. It's known as an economic recession.

Wrong.

Just because Bush makes a rule now does not prevent Obama/Clinton from remaking the rule later. After all, that is what Bush did to a lot of late Clinton administration rules (e.g. oil exploration roads in wilderness areas and snowmobiling in Yellowstone). And whatever rule Bush makes is going to have to do SOMETHING, even if not very much. The weakest of rules cannot be completely toothless.

On the other hand, keeping the issue alive and noisy allows more and more people to notice it and associate it with Republicans.

Plenty of upside, no downside. What's not to like?

I don't know why I even address someone as incredibly ignorant and craven as ex-liberal. What the fuck kind of data are you using for your assertion that the temperature hasn't gone up in the last ten years. Oh by the ex-lib believe it or not the earth is relatively round and it revolves around the sun.

Gandalf - The leveling of the earth's temperature during the last decade is available here for example:

there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ...
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23411799-7583,00.html

Or, look at the chart at http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Temp/2008.htm

That chart doesn't include 2008, which had a drop larger than any prior 1-year drop or 1-year increase.

A better chart is at http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/giss-jan08.png

It shows the
-- long-term warming trend
-- accelerated warming beginning around 1960
-- peak temperature at 1998
-- plateau since 1998
-- huge drop in 2008
-- the latest (2008) temperature is lower than some of the peak years in the 1920's and 1930's.

IMHO a 10-year plateau doesn't mean that long-term global warming has ended. However, the shape shows that factors other than CO2 play a major role.

An advantage of delaying the EPA regs is that we will have another year of data on this chart. If 2009 is below 2008, we will have to re-study our theories IMHO.

That bogus bullshit that you retch up has been thoroughly discredited. Even on this blog. And to further show what an ignorant sod you relly are you reference the year 2008 which by all credible accounts is only three months old as of today.Dude keep beleiving what you want but it doesn't make it true.

Gandalf, the temperature change is measured on a January to January basis. Here's another cite:

January 2008 - 4 sources say “globally cooler� in the past 12 months

January 2008 was an exceptional month for our planet, with a significant cooling, especially since January 2007 started out well above normal.

January 2008 capped a 12 month period of global temperature drops on all of the major well respected indicators. I have reported in the past two weeks that HadCRUT, RSS, UAH, and GISS global temperature sets all show sharp drops in the last year.

Also see the recent post on what the last 10 years looks like with the same four metrics - 3 of four show a flat trendline.

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/january-2008-4-sources-say-globally-cooler-in-the-past-12-months/

Unsurprisingly, the consistently dishonest ex-liberal is just regurgitating fossil fuel industry disinformation designed to keep the public confused and ignorant about the reality of global warming and the urgent necessity of phasing out fossil fuels within 5 to 20 years if we are to have any hope of averting catastrophic climate change.

1998 was an extraordinarily hot year due to a strong El Nino. Global warming deniers deliberately pick 1998 as the starting point for a "trend analysis" to create the false impression that anthropogenic global warming "peaked" in that year and that warming has "leveled off" since then.

According to a February 2007 report from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), at that time the five warmest years since the late 1880s were, in descending order 2005, 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2006.

According to the January 2008 analysis from GISS, 2007 tied with 1998 for Earth's second warmest year in a century.

The eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 14 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1990.

According to NASA scientist James Hansen, "It is unlikely that 2008 will be a year with truly exceptional global mean temperature. Barring a large volcanic eruption, a record global temperature clearly exceeding that of 2005 can be expected within the next few years, at the time of the next El Nino, because of the background warming trend attributable to continuing increases of greenhouse gases."

SecularAnimist, I fully agree with you that the earth is in a long-term warming trend. I agree that years with temperatures greater than 2005's are likely to occur. Even if we have a 20-year drop, like the one that occurred in the 1940's and 1950's, I'd expect the long-term upward pattern to continue.

What I'm questioning is the degree to which CO2 is responsible for the warming and to what to degree other factors are causing it.

ex-lib,

Increased levels of CO2 are the principal driver of global warming. To argue otherwise is to ignore overwhelming physical, chemical, biologic, and statistical evidence.

What "other factors" can you cite and to "what degree" in support of your position?

In the end, this is a futile debate because (1) global warming is a fact, not conjecture; (2) It really doesn't matter whether it's CO2 or some "other" undocumented "factors" causing it, because it's not going away in our lifetimes; (3) If we (collectively) can't quit arguing who-shot-john and get to the task at hand, our lifetimes will be one hell of a lot shorter than we thought, and all the arguing will cease.

You MAY be right, but you and other disbelievers will be dead right unless you stop pointing fingers of blame and join with the rest of us to immediately begin cleaning up this mess.

Forgot to sign the preceding post.
Sorry. My bad.

Wileycat

I think the idea of someone who drives his car to the freaking grocery store prattling about greenhouse gases is obscene.

wileycat, I agree with much of what you wrote. Global warming is a fact. It's not going away in our lifetimes. If we can't solve it, bigger and bigger problems will ensue.

Where I part company with you is that I tend to doubt that humanity will solve global warming. If the predominant cause is man-made CO2, then we're in big trouble. India and China will have enormous increases in CO2 in the coming decades. So, worldwide CO2 will continue to rise, even if the US and a few other countries manage to hold our CO2 level or even cut it somewhat.

If the predominant cause is sunspot activity, then there's little we can do. If the predominant cause is greenhouse gases other than CO2, such as water vapor or methane, then cutting CO2 won't solve the problem.

A plausible alternative is to assume that mankind will not be able to prevent global warming and instead focus our activities on what we can do to ameliorate its effects. E.g., we could learn to build better, more secure levees around islands and other low-lying areas that would be affected by a rise in sea level.