Could ABC have made Dick Cheney look any more evil than in this photo they pasted next to the interview they had with him on global warming? Can't say he deserved much more flattery than the picture, as his claim that humans' contribution to global warming is "still debatable" is grossly negligent and tragically irresponsible.

If he would have taken a glance through the United Nations' International Panel on Climate Change's most recent report (which he does not refer to in his comments), or popped the $10 to go see the dumb downed synopsis of the problem in Al Gore's movie, Inconvenient Truth (which he admits he hasn't seen), he would have recognized the following (from the UN's report):

-- "Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. This is an advance since the Third Assessment Report's conclusion that 'most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."'

-- "Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years. The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land-use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture."

-- "The primary source of the increased atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide since the pre-industrial period results from fossil fuel use, with land use change providing another significant but smaller contribution."

-- "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level."

-- "The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past fifty years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that it is not due to known natural causes alone."

-- "Anthropogenic forcing is likely to have contributed to changes in wind patterns, affecting extra-tropical storm tracks and temperature patterns in both hemispheres."

-- "Temperatures of the most extreme hot nights, cold nights and cold days are likely to have increased due to anthropogenic forcing. It is more likely than not that anthropogenic forcing has increased the risk of heat waves."

-- "Since the Third Assessment Report (in 2001), progress in understanding how climate is changing in space and in time has been gained through improvements and extensions of numerous datasets and data analyses, broader geographical coverage, better understanding of uncertainties, and a wider variety of measurements."

-- "Eleven of the last 12 years (1995-2006) rank among the 12 warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperature (since 1850)."

Posted by Michelle Smith on February 24, 2007 11:59 AM