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There are 4 comments on Op-Ed: Twelve Questions for Presidential Hopefuls

  1. NASA updated its figures on global temperatures, correcting previous errors. The warmest year on record is 1934. Five of the 10 warmest years were before 1954. And temperatures have been flat since 1998, despite ever-increasing levels of carbon in the atmosphere. In fact, the biggest 12-month drop in temperatures ever recorded is happening right now.

  2. These issues cannot be addressed out of context. The context is the runaway corporatization going on today around the world. Corporations are heavily invested in the military industrial complex and so powerful that there is very little left in the way of national sovereignty—and I am not just speaking of the U.S. To try to address issues of climate change without addressing the underlying financial machines that run roughshod over attempts at democracy is to fail to solve the problem.

    This problem is researched and presented very cogently by Naomi Klein in her book, “The Shock Doctrine,” which I think everyone should read to gain an understanding of the real forces behind the difficulties we are facing in this age.

  3. What about questions from the other side of the story. Something like; Recent statistics have shown a cooling pattern in Earth’s average temperature over the past 8 years, virtually eliminating the warming that occurred the twenty years prior, how as president would you ensure that reducing CO2 emissions would be economically responsible? How would you provide incentive for private companies to produce cleaner more fuel efficient vehicles? How would you ease the climate of fear that is resulting from false reporting on global warming issues? How would you ensure that people hear the other side of the story and truly understand the issue so that real democracy can take place?

  4. Comments #1 and #3 are based on confusion and disinformation from denialists. There are several good sources of information available on the web; one is http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php (where you can find responses to all the above claims).

    1. The fact that 1998 was unusually hot does nothing to change the overall trend of temperature increases. It’s a simple misunderstanding of the basic science to suggest otherwise.

    2. 1934 is the warmest year only for the United States, which is a rather small part of the globe. This again does nothing to undermine the fact of global warming. Fluctuations are to be expected; it’s irrational to focus on them when one is trying to establish overall trends.

    Beware of denialists who cherry-pick facts to try to obscure a thoroughly convincing body of scientific evidence. It’s the same strategy that Big Tobacco used, that creationists use to deny evolution, that crazies use to deny that HIV is the cause of AIDS, etc. etc.

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