Bernie Sanders – Global warming is not a hoax

  • Published on April 15th, 2013

what if climate change is a hoax and we create a better world for nothing?

By Senator Bernie Sanders

I support Gina McCarthy to be the next Environmental Protection Agency administrator. When her Senate confirmation hearing was held on Thursday, the debate among senators on the Environment and Public Works Committee wasn’t really about her qualifications. It was about global warming. It was about whether or not we are going to listen to the leading scientists of this country who tell us we’re facing a planetary crisis.

It was clear at the hearing that Senator John Barrasso, from coal-producing Wyoming, does not want the EPA to address the global warming crisis. What he wants is for us to continue doing as little as possible as we see extreme weather disturbances: super storms, floods and heat waves all over the world.

It was clear at the hearing that Senator Jim Inhofe, from oil-producing Oklahoma, does not want the EPA to curb climate change. What Senator Inhofe has written and talked about is his belief that global warming is one of the major hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people. He blames Al Gore, the United Nations, and the Hollywood elite. He didn’t dispute that at the hearing. In fact, when I asked him about it, his conspiracy theory thickened. “I would add to that list MoveOn.org, George Soros, Michael Moore, and a few others,” he said.

So that is the issue. Do we agree with Senator Inhofe that global warming is a “hoax” and that we do not want the EPA, the Department of Energy or any other agency of the federal government to address that issue? Or do we agree with the overwhelming majority of scientists who tell us that that we must act boldly and aggressively to protect the future of this planet?

That’s the real issue at stake in this debate and that’s the reason I’m supporting Gina McCarthy. That is why I want the EPA to be vigorous in protecting our children and future generations from the horrendous crisis that we face from global warming. That is why I have introduced legislation to tax carbon and methane greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, 2012 was the warmest year ever recorded for the continental United States. More than 24,000 new record highs were set in the U.S. alone. It was the hottest year in recorded history in New York; Washington, DC; Louisville, Kentucky; even my home city of Burlington, Vt., and other cities across the country.

Last year’s drought – affecting two-thirds of the United States – was the worst in half a century, contributing to extraordinary wildfires burning more than 9 million acres of land, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Heat waves and droughts are not limited to the U.S. Australia, for instance, experienced a four-month heat wave with severe wildfires, record temperatures, and torrential rains and floods causing $2.4 billion in damages, according to The New York Times.
Global warming is also resulting in extreme weather disturbances of all kinds. NOAA’s Climate Extremes Index tracks extreme temperatures, drought, precipitation and tropical storms. It reported that 2012 set yet another distressing record for the most extreme climate conditions recorded.

Ronald Prinn, director of MIT’s Center for Global Change Science, concluded that what we have heard recently from scientists is that their earlier projections regarding global warming were wrong. That in fact they underestimated the problem and that the conditions that they were worried about will likely be worse than what they had originally thought. “There is significantly more risk than we previously estimated … [which] increases the urgency for significant policy action.”

Global warming is real. It is not a hoax. It is a planetary crisis but one that we have the knowledge and technology to address.

(Originally posted to SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS).

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11 comments

  • Sadly humans don’t do long term well. We will not react as a society or species until the effects are impossible to ignore and by then it will be too late to have much effect. So it goes.

  • I find it odd that all the record setting temperatures we had in Canada last summer broke records that had stood since the 1930’s. What was the reason for the high temps then? Perhaps our weather is cyclical?

    • Of course it’s cyclical, always has been and always will though there are many cycles involved and the complexity isn’t yet understood. Look at how cold Canada’s spring has been this year with record setting snow accumulations in many parts of the country. There’s nothing odd about the climate and the variations are not out of the ordinary.

  • Of course it’s a hoax’s. The real issue is 7 billion people global warming if it is real is a symptom not a problem. You cannot cure/solve a problem by treating the symptoms. Farming at any level is environmentally destructive, manufacturing at any level is environmentally destructive, permanent settlements are environmentally destructive. To solve this pending world disaster you would have to kill off 6.5 billion people and go back to chipping flint while hunting/gathering. The hoax is people are “believing” there is a painless incremental solution to a massive problem and there fore avoiding the real issue….humans are stupid destructive parasites…

    • Well Robertt, you could make your own little contribution by killing yourself and all your family, or perhaps you figure that there are just the right number of your family members and way too many of all the others?

      • Thank you for proving the “humans are stupid” part Leigh. Come on back when you have something intelligent to say about the issue.

        • Well Robert, you started it off with a remarkably stupid statement that the only solution to a presumed problem is to eliminate over 90% of the human population. Since it seems you don’t wish to offer your family as a sacrifice to save the world, how do you suggest choosing who to kill? Since the climate changes don’t seem to be cooperating with the computer models, you don’t suppose the models are wrong?

          • First the “world” is not in any danger it’s does not matter what humans do the planet is safe. The biosphere is also safe, mass extinctions have happened several times and will happen again and again. A geological age or two and everything gets recycled and cleaned up, new species evolve and the planet is full again. So the question is when and how the stupid humans will extinct themselves.

            I propose to leave it to random chance when/if the mass die off happens.

            Please learn to read! No where in my original post do I state or imply that global warming is not happening. My issue is with all the Chicken Little’s running around screaming “The sky is falling” without any clue as to what the problem is or what an effective “solution” would look like.

            Of course the models are wrong. The issue is pollution dumping gigaton’s of crap into the air and water is a bad idea even if global warming is a hoax. This has been known for decades yet stupid humans keep doing it and increasing the population which are dumping the crap.

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