[The following truly frightened me when I'd heard it, early this
week, on "Real Time with Bill Maher"!!! Inded, I came to learn the
the NASA scientist of high repute that's involved was also
interviewed at 60 Minutes-- is that all!!! No one watches 60
Minutes!!! Here are some links re: the issue (though it SHOULD be
widely available via the media of Television, which will undoubtedly
touch the most Americans!!!
*
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/60minutes/main1415985.shtml?
CMP=ILC-SearchStories [Here's the origional Interview, so it appears!]
*
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/60minutes/main1415985.shtml
["Rewriting Science"]
* http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/03/20.html ["The Attack on
Global Warming"-- scroll down]
Why isn't CNN or similar stations covering this, abd blowing it wide
open-- to make it the common knowledge that it SHOULD be??? I have
written to CNN about such issues, before, but my words appear to be
falling on deaf ears-- why? They don't seem to be listening to me,
or following these HUGE stories! Why? Taken together it's truly
frightening!!! Someone, hold me? *G*]:
And finally, New Rule: Nobody can use the phrase "our greatest
problem" anymore unless you're talking about global warming.
[applause] [cheers] President Bush has been saying we're in a war on
terror, and now I get it. He's not saying "terror," he's
saying "terra" as in "terra firma," as in the Earth. George Bush is
an alien sent here to destroy the Earth! [laughter] [applause]
[cheers] I know it sounds crazy, but it made perfect sense when Tom
Cruise explained it to me last week. [laughter] [applause]
Now, last week on "60 Minutes," James Hansen, who is NASA's leading
expert on the science of climate delivered the world's most important
message. He said, "We have to, in the next ten years, begin to
decrease the rate of carbon dioxide emissions and then flatten it
out. If that doesn't happen in ten years, we're going to be passing
certain tipping points. If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, what
can you do about it? You can't tie a rope around an ice sheet."
Although I know a certain cowboy from Crawford who might think you
could. [laughter]
And that cowboy and his corporate goons at the White House tried to
censor Mr. Hansen from delivering that message, claiming such
warnings were speculative. This from the crowd that rushed into a war
based on an article in the Weekly Standard. [laughter] [applause]
[cheers] This � this from the guy who thinks Kyoto is that Japanese
emperor dude his dad threw up on. [laughter]
Global warming is not speculative. It threatens us enough so that it
should be considered a national security issue. Failing to warn the
citizens of a looming weapon of mass destruction � and that's what
global warming is � in order to protect oil company profits, well,
that fits, for me, the definition of treason. And codified treason.
[applause] [cheers]
Please, wait a second. The guy in the White House who made the edits
was Phil Cooney, who had been an oil industry lobbyist before given
this job as head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
That's the office that is supposed to be watching out for us. But
that's where Phil busied himself crossing stuff out in scientists'
reports, because apparently in Phil's mind, he hadn't switched jobs.
He was just doing his old job � oil industry lobbyist � from a
different office. You know, in the "people's house."
Republicans have succeeded in making the environment about some tie-
dyed dude from Seattle who lives in a solar-powered yurt and eats
twigs. [laughter] It's not. This issue should be driven by something
conservatives are much more familiar with: utter selfishness. That's
my motivation. I don't want to live my golden years having to put on
a hazmat suit just to go down and get the mail. [laughter] Those are
my Viagra years. [laughter] [applause] When I'll be thinking about
having children. [laughter]
But I wouldn't know what to tell a kid about our world in 20
years. "Dad, tell me about the birds and bees." "They're all gone.
Now, eat your Soylent Green." [laughter] [applause] We are letting
dying men kill our planet for cash, and they're counting on us being
too greedy or distracted, or just plain lazy, to stop them.
So, on this day, the 17 th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill,
let us pause to consider how close we are to making ourselves fossils
from the fossil fuels we extract. In the next 20 years, almost a
billion Chinese people will be trading in their bicycles for the
automobile. Folks, we either get our shit together on this quickly,
or we're going to have to go to Plan B: inventing a car that runs on
Chinese people. [laughter] [applause]