Obama orders new plans to prepare for climate change
(CNN) - President Barack Obama required federal agencies on Friday to present plans to combat climate change.
An executive order mandated steps to make it easier for communities "to strengthen their resilience to extreme weather and prepare for other impacts of climate change," according to a White House statement.
It also creates an interagency Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience, charged with overseeing federal efforts at fighting climate change.
Made up of representatives from across the federal government, the council will work with a task force of state, local and tribal leadership also created by Obama's order.
The task force will advise the Obama administration on how the federal government "can respond to the needs of communities nationwide that are dealing with the impacts of climate change," according to the statement.
Obama charged federal agencies to modernize their programs supporting "climate-resilient investments," like their building policies for local governments, especially after natural disasters.
He also ordered land management policies that will protect natural resources and the development of data sets for Americans to better understand climate change.
U.N. climate change report points blame at humans
The dual working groups have their work cut out for them as climate science clashes with political realities.
Congressional Republicans oppose virtually any effort to combat climate change, critical of federal regulations on emissions as burdensome on business. They are skeptical of the physical evidence on global warming, which an overwhelming majority of climate scientists support.
A recent survey released by the Pew Research Center showed that two-thirds of Americans, 67%, believe there to be solid evidence to support a warming Earth. Scientists say that scenario is causing increasingly violent storms and rising oceans.
While the overall percentage of Americans who accept climate change science has remained unchanged over the past few years, according to Pew, rifts within the Republican Party remain strong.
Only one in four (25%) tea party Republicans identified by Pew think there's solid evidence of global warming, compared to 61% of Republicans who do not identify with the tea party.
Obama has already angered Republicans with various efforts aimed at curbing climate change, particularly an executive order issued in June aimed at reducing carbon emissions.
–CNN's Bryan Koenig contributed to this report.
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Oh, and here come the deniers. If you every take a world tour, make sure you don't go too far in one direction, lest you fall off the edge of the earth. LOL
Lynda/Minnesota
"Obama has already angered Republicans with various efforts aimed at curbing climate change, particularly an executive order issued in June aimed at reducing carbon emissions."
Shame on President Obama for trying to make air quality a top priority in America.
/sarcasm
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I just read a few days ago that 60% of all new lung cancer cases in the last few years have been diagnosed in patients who have never smoked or had quit years/decades earlier. The physician who wrote the article stated that air pollution is the cause and went on to say that "if you use your lungs to breathe you are succeptable to lung cancer."
The problem is........human populations are what is causing climate change, and no one in the world, is actually making any effort to REDUCE human populations.
Quite the contrary.......many parts of the world are expected to grow human populations by as much as 50% in the next 40 yrs. If you think we have climate problems now...........just do NOTHING about population growth, over the next 40 yrs.......and see how bad it can really get.
Fair is Fair
Oh brother. Dude can't get a website to work properly and he thinks he can stop naturally occurring climate cycles on a planetary scale. Clueless.
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C'mon, isn't it pretty clear? We can't "fix" the changing climate (although we may mitigate things by not making the change even worse), but we can prepare for those changes. As far as your "natural" assertion, well, that's your belief- 95% of climate scientists seem to have a very different view of the unfolding events. The water is rising and temperatures are going up- get used to it.
patNY
Even a t-bagger should get this: fact – CO2 levels are highest in recorded history; fact – humans need O2 to breath; fact – too much CO2 and not enough O2 in the air kills humans; fact – if CO2 levels continue to rise, all animal life will die, including humans. Therefore, if they don't buy the human causing waming issue, they can at least admit too much CO2 is still bad for us, and get on the band wagon and do something not only to reduce CO2 emissions, but take steps to start trapping excess CO2 and sequestering it in the ground!
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You "conveniently" left off a few facts. Most (if not all) of the oxygen in the atmosphere is produced by plant life. Plant life thrives in high-CO2 environments – thus throwing off more oxygen. Kinda ruins your CO2 kills humans soliloquy. Now... sequester CO2 in the ground you say? Interesting... read any studies about what the unintended consequences are to that, especially to underground water sources? I know, I know... those pesky unintended consequences.... why, they were never intended, were they? But seeing how we're going loco, here's an idea. Let's take all that CO2 and convert it to dry ice and then the dry ice will cool down the planet. What could possibly go wrong????
A True Conservative
15 years with no appreciable change in global temperature.
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Funny, that's not what the data says- I keep seeing this year hotter than last- and that was the hottest on record. Perhaps that is too nuanced for a party and political orientaion that cannot embrace basic Science.
"so obama is now relinquishing authority to communities to perform federal responsibilities "
Seriously? SERIOUSLY? That has to be the biggest, fakest, most disingenuous, deliberate mischaracterization I think we've ever seen you make. He's not relinquishing anything to local governments. He's handing down executive branch orders to local governments and setting up a system to work with those local governments to help them comply and to help them provide information and advice to the federal gov't about how best to help their local communities protect themselves from and prepare for large-scale weather/climate emergencies. Boy are you a big fat liar.
"(run the data yourself – I did)."
Funniest thing I've read all week.
A True Conservative
15 years with no appreciable change in global temperature. No correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and temperature (run the data yourself – I did). Scientific models are wrong – but consensus says that it must be happening – it has to be happening – and we need to do something even if it isn't happening!! Why? Because our view of the world says so!! We don't need facts – we have an opinion!!
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Spoken like a true conservative. Denier of modern science, facts, and dinosaurs. Seriously. Who actually needs any facts when you "have an opinion"?
Will he tell us we won't have to change our lifestyles and will actually save money if we buy in to this bogus theory. This corrupt president had no credibility at all. He figures he has now taken control of the healthcare segment of th economy and now wants to destroy the energy sector. Remember Obama LIES.
simpley amazing
15 years Mikey, 15 years......there certainly is climate change...always has been....always will be.....Mikey – I happen to be an engineer – masters degree actually – so I've studied some science. What amazes me is all of the arm chair scientists who don't bother to read the actual literature, plot the data themselves and then come to an educated conclusion. Instead they read information from some politically motivated source and then accuse anyone who disagrees with them of being ignorant of scientific facts and priincipals. Nice try – but I have studied the literature and the data. Climate change? Yes? Caused by man or controllable by man? No.
Fair is Fair wrote:
You "conveniently" left off a few facts. Most (if not all) of the oxygen in the atmosphere is produced by plant life. Plant life thrives in high-CO2 environments – thus throwing off more oxygen. Kinda ruins your CO2 kills humans soliloquy.
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Did you know that Venus is a "high-CO2 environment" where absolutely no plant life that we know of can live, much less thrive? In fact, average surface temperatures are estimated to be in the hundereds of degrees.
But what happens when the capitalists kill off most of the high-CO2 producing plant life? Kinda ruins your food chain theory, doesn't it? Mankind is breaking the chains. Killing off rain forests is the worst thing mankind could do.
Did you know that only 1/3 of the Earth's surface is land, and nearly 2/3 of that is currently desert? Did you also know that the size of the deserts are growing?