The Goracle compares climate change deniers to birthers
As America loses its lead in green technology and causes further endangerment from delay, Al Gore stopped off in Seattle to take on the ideological deniers: "They are impervious to any intrusions of fact."
On the same day as Gore’s visit, President Obama and China's President Hu Jintao announced what the White House called "a far reaching package" on clean energy. (From two nations that use 40 pecent of global energy resources.) Here’s the rub: One provision is titled "21st Century Coal." Both presidents want to develop "clean coal" and the implausible carbon capture and storage (CCS).
While DTE and The Goracle hope for honestly clean energy--solar and wind---writer Joel Connelly says “coal may very well end up in the Christmas stockings of those who want action on climate change.”
Full story here.
Also, check the excerpt below from a Seattle Times interview with Gore where he touches on Obama thus far, Copenhagen, and the public perception of climate change.
Q: A recent Pew Research Center poll suggests the public is less likely than a few years ago to believe global warming is a problem. What do you make of that?
A: "There's a seeming paradox in the polls if you take them all together over the last 10 years. When you ask people how important this issue is, how real is it, should we do something about it, big majorities always say yes, it's real, its manmade, we've got to do something about it. But then, when you turn it to one side and give people a list of 20 problems and ask them to rank them in priority order, climate has usually come out in the bottom quartile. And I think one of the reasons for that is something I address (in a chapter in his new book ) about the way we think about climate change.
"It's unprecedented in its scope, in its magnitude, in its seriousness, but in other ways as well. Because its unfolding manifestations play out on a global scale, it masquerades as an abstraction. And because the length of time between the cause and the consequence is stretched out over a longer period than we're used to dealing with viscerally, it requires a different kind of approach."
