Mission Accomplished II

Bush lies misleads on global warming, again

Posted by Kit Stolz (Guest Contributor) at 9:50 AM on 04 Sep 2007

Read more about: climate | lying liars | George Bush

The Prez has a long history of misleading the nation on climate change. Not unlike his father, who promised on the stump to be the "environmental president," Bush promised on the campaign trail in 2000 to reduce CO2 emissions, then promptly reversed this position once he took office.

But that's in the history books. Last week, according to the Washington Post, he told an audience at a fundraiser in Washington state:

Do you realize that the United States is the only major industrialized nation that cut greenhouse gases last year?

One problem: that's, er, misleading at best. A spokesperson for the Council on Environmental Quality admitted so after the speech, saying that although the U.S. did slightly reduce energy consumption and thus emissions last year, it couldn't rule out the possibility that other nations did as well.

"We are making sure the President is aware of that," the spokesperson said.

Michael Abramowitz of the Post politely adds:

How much the Bush administration influenced this [1.3 percent decline in emissions] is another question. The Energy Information Administration offered two major explanations for the decline: The first, a cooler summer and a warmer winter, had nothing to do with Bush. The other explanation was that cleaner power sources such as natural gas and non-fossil fuels are coming online in the electrical industry -- another area where Bush's pull seems minimal, at best.

Since the Prez's father signed a bill in l990 authorizing the creation of a research group to investigate the threat of climate change, countless Canadian forests have been pulped in the mostly fruitless discussion over global warming, while carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. have risen almost 18 percent.

(h/t: ThinkProgress.)

For story: Mission Accomplished II
4 Comments | Post a Comment

More stats

According to the UNFCCC, US emissions rose by 15.8% between 1990 and 2004: 14.3% between 1990 and 2000 and 1.3% between 2000 and 2004.

Lots more statistics are in the linked document.

a sibilant intake of breath

by sindark at 11:36 AM on 04 Sep 2007

Bush Is Right

The U.S. is the "only" industrialized nation...if you believe all the enviros plaints about how much CO2 we generate.

We're also like an order of magnitude greater in productivity than any other industrialized nation -- same with GNP.

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by jabailo at 11:46 AM on 04 Sep 2007

Order of magnitude?

Where do you GET this stuff? (The same place you get the "abrupt climate change will improve people's lives" studies, I guess.) Let's see, according to UNDP data the US's GDP in 2004 was USD$11,711 billion and change. The GDP of Japan was $4,622 billion; of Germany, $2,740 billion; of France, $2,046 billion.

Do you actually know what the phrase "order of magnitude" means? Or does putting the word "like" in there act as a disclaimer for "I don't actually know what I'm talking about and am pulling these numbers out of my ass?"

by eriqa at 12:03 PM on 04 Sep 2007

Well, ok, Japan

So big deal...Japan is not even half of what we are.

And Europe, which everyone makes such a big deal about is almost an order of magnitude less than the U.S.

And after that the rest are bunch of pikers.

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by jabailo at 1:15 PM on 04 Sep 2007
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