Guest essay by Eric Worrall
President Obama visited Yosemite National Park via helicopter, to demand an end to people paying “lip service” to natural beauty and the climate crisis.
Obama at Yosemite attacks ‘lip service’ to natural beauty amid climate inaction
Barack Obama warned on Saturday that climate change could ravage many of America’s vaunted national parks, criticizing political opponents who “pay lip service” to areas of natural beauty while opposing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
During a visit to Yosemite national park, Obama said climate change was “no longer a threat, it’s a reality”. The first sitting president to visit Yosemite since John F Kennedy in 1962 said the famed glacial valley was already experiencing changes due to rising temperatures.
“Here in Yosemite, meadows are drying up, bird ranges are shifting farther northward, mammals are being forced further upslope,” Obama said. “Yosemite’s famous glacier, once a mile wide, is almost gone. We are also facing longer, more expensive wildfire seasons.
“Rising temperatures could mean no more glaciers in Glacier national park, no more Joshua trees in Joshua Tree national park. Rising seas can destroy vital ecosystems in the Everglades and at some point could even threaten icons like the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. That’s not the America I want to pass on to the next generation.”
…
Obama said: “We can’t treat it like it’s someone else’s problem, it shouldn’t lead to careless suggestions that we don’t get serious about carbon emissions or that we scrap an international treaty that we spent years putting together to deal with this.
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Obama’s visit to Yosemite via helicopter caused major congestion in a park already heaving with summer visitors. Yosemite advised people to enter the park either before 8am or after 6pm to avoid the worst of the disruption. All parking, trails and climbing routes in the Lower Yosemite Falls area were shut down to allow Obama, wife Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia to do some hiking.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/18/yosemite-obama-national-parks-climate-change
I mean, seriously? When President Obama demands that we can’t treat climate like someone elses problem, he clearly doesn’t include himself as part of that “we”.
I will start believing President Obama thinks climate is a serious issue, when he finds a way to burn less than a month of my fossil fuel budget, on a single helicopter trip to give a climate speech which demands an end to “lip service”.
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I actually agree with Obama.
We should progress from the current policy of discussing what to do to a firm policy of doing nothing.
People should not be wasting time giving lip service to a non-problem.
Think of all the electricity and paper we can stop wasting by filing W-2 forms to the IRS!
If the POTUS is worried about climate change, he should keep in mind that the park he is visiting is actually a massive caldera volcano.
http://traveltips.usatoday.com/interesting-yellowstone-volcano-102611.html.
Quote: “Catastrophic eruptions occur at Yellowstone approximately every 600,000 to 800,000 years. Two of those eruptions are among the largest eruptions known to have occurred on Earth, each more than 1,000 cubic kilometers in scope. The USGS believes that the last eruption spewed out close to 240 cubic miles of debris, including red-hot pumice, volcanic glass and rock and gas that spread as pyroclastic flows……
….
….
The USGS, the University of Utah and Yellowstone National Park formed the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory to continuously monitor activity in the region. If another caldera-forming eruption occurs, it’s estimated that the explosion would be equivalent to a force a thousand times more powerful than the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980. The after-effects would be felt around the planet, with ash deposits dumped in 10-foot layers up to 1,000 miles away, and gases released into the atmosphere, dramatically affecting the global climate. Two-thirds of the U.S. could become uninhabitable as toxic air forces millions from their homes. Although scientists feel that the odds are good that such an eruption won’t happen within the next few thousand years, smaller and less damaging lava flows are possible.”
The last sentence above is reassuring if the scientists are right. But if the POTUS wants something that may be worth worrying about while he is there, I will suggest this is it.
Whoops….the POTUS is visiting Yosemite, not Yellowstone. Never mind.
Miss Emily Litella agrees:
There are several significant calderas in CA as well. Though I’m pretty sure that Yosemite isn’t one of them.
The first sitting president to visit Yosemite since John F Kennedy in 1962 said the famed glacial valley was already experiencing changes due to rising temperatures.
Kennedy never said that! I tell my students to re-read everything they write; they might be surprised at what they just said. Punctuation is important, Lynn Truss’s book is an entertaining read: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/854886-eats-shoots-and-leaves
Yeah, I know you can construe this sentence because if you misread it, there is no main verb. But you are likely to have to read it more than once, after experiencing some confusion. Professional journalists should be more careful.
Juan the Grammar Nazi
Yeah, I know you can construe this sentence because if you misread it, there is no main verb.
I don’t think that the lack of a main verb depends on misreading the sentence 🙂
Obama, just leave already…another prime example of charisma without substance being a dangerous thing…
1. Do as the ruling class tells us…don’t follow their examples.
2. Without the climate having warmed the earth in the past few thousand years, wouldn’t Yosemite be buried under hundreds of feet of ice today?
3. Didn’t our POTUS also just force others into huge carbon morass that he claims to abhor, as he is spewing carbon much like his hypocritical visit in Nebraska a few month back that required many aircraft, dozens of automobiles and thousands of gallons of carbon-rich petroleum…to once again tell us to lower our carbon usage as his hits the stratosphere?
Hypocrisy in his action seems to trump true leadership by good example.
I see Obama has been watching Al Gore’s science fiction movie again.
The real world is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense.
Al Gore’s work doesn’t even make good fiction because it made no sense.
Is there any ignorant thing he’s willing to leave unsaid?
“Obama said: “We can’t treat it like it’s someone else’s problem, it shouldn’t lead to careless suggestions that we don’t get serious about carbon emissions or that we scrap an international treaty that we spent years putting together to deal with this.”
I can perhaps see a little mild irritation with hypocritical consumption. But by Jov, please don’t miss the part where he announces a treaty being used to dictate domestic policy in the US, using foreign environmental regulations.
Oh what the heck.
Dear Honorable Senators All,
Let’s scrap an international treaty Obama and Hillary spent years putting together.
Thanks, PW
It’s not a treaty. The U.S. Senate has to sign off on it before it becomes a treaty. It is essentially an Executive Order by the president, which can be undone by another Executive Order by another president.
I would prefer the president spend time on something (ANYTHING) other than a pointless international sometimes-treaty that will do nothing other than waste resources on a non-problem. Think of how many real problems might have been lessened if all those resources were put into solutions. Poverty, unaffordable energy, unclean water, disease, crazy terrorist groups like Daesh and Boko Haram…
This is very similar to the tussle over the Redskins’ football team name. All the time, energy, and money being spent on changing a name that does not offend 90+% of Native Americans, while actual problems facing those Native Americans are ignored. Imagine all those resources being used to improve education, health care, job opportunities, housing… Heck, even building a few rehab centers would do more for the Native American population than the name crusade. Which is worse, a sports team having a name that has on occasion been considered a mean nickname for your ethnic group, or not being able to provide the essentials for your family because there are no jobs in your area?
There are enough problems in this world, there is no need to make up new ones or exaggerate minor ones.
This is bull. The meadows are not drying up and there is an incredible amount of water now. I live about 90 minutes from Yosemite Valley. I have been going there for 60 years. Come on Mr President you are fabricating events to support your theory.
How few are as fortunate as we to remember the low maintenance Yosemite! Remember the Fire Fall! Remember Fern Pond! Remember the LeConte LIBRARY. Remember the quiet places that are no more.
Imagine a helicopter in the Valley, it probably drowned out even the madding crowd. Remember the silent places that are no more.
“Come on Mr President you are fabricating events to support your theory.”
Nothing new there, that’s what he always does. He is either the most prolific liar I have ever seen, or if he believes what he says, he lives in a very strange false reality.
You want to think Obama has to be smart enough to understand what he is saying, but when you hear what he says, you have to wonder.
One of Obama’s (and our) problems, is he thinks he is the smartest guy in the world. He is convinced of it. So he doesn’t listen.
TA:
“[…]he thinks he is the smartest guy in the world.”
Then why doesn’t he unseal his transcripts and prove it? (Probably doesn’t want to be shown up by Al Gore’s transcripts, but I’m just guessing since his are sealed.)
IIRC, he said he would be better at his advisors’ jobs than they would be. This raises the question: why not get better advisors?
Having gotten very good grades, and not-so good grades, I can tell you that there is only one reason not to be cagy about one’s grades: the grades are not as good as they should be and/or as one wishes them to be. I do not think O’s grades were necessarily bad, but I suspect that they would reveal that he did not really qualify for Harvard, etc. on his own merits. I suspect they would expose his scholarship as closer to mediocre than good, and show that he is nowhere near as smart as he claims or believes.
The funny thing is, I believe that schools were already moving away from the “gentleman’s C” (as my art history professor put it) when he entered higher education, so it is likely that his grades were higher than they might have been a decade or two before.
Run along, little people, now run along! All you good little nippers gives us your carbon tax money, don’t ever use air conditioning, reduce your winter heating to 65 degF, dry your clothes outside and wipe your rear ends on leaves. And while you’re at it, sacrifice your transportation to bicycle riding. You don’t need a car with all of the CO2 emissions that causes.
In the meantime, Michelle, Joe, Hillary, Bill, John and I and all of our extended families in the White House cabinet are going to travel the world monthly and assess all of the horrible, horrible things that climate change is doing to our environment. And because you’re such good little nippers and great citizens of the world, we are going to privilege you all with monthly reports from around the world as to just what progress your efforts are making to combat climate change.
Now this will take a lot of work and you do realize that using the brain power you have voted for that put us all in charge will require that to nourish our brains and efforts as your world leaders that we must eat and drink the finest food and wine anywhere in the world that money can buy to refresh our tired bodies. And to refresh our tired and brilliant minds, we must have hotel accomodations second to none so that we can carry on as brilliantly in the following days as we did when we first left.
You can be sure that in the days ahead, we will save this deteriorating world from the ravages of all of the irresponsible behavior you rotten citizens of this country have partaken in with all of your self centered greed that is causing this accelerating change in the climate, which I declare is the most pressing problem facing humanity today.
Now don’t blame Mr Obama! We have to remember that he is but an actor and simply follows his script un critically.
Its more important to find who composes the script.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
Eminent Domain laws must be stricken from the law books to make way so nature can own the land, this is my suggestion.
There are no inductive inferences.
Karl Popper.
Read The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal by James Franklin. He may tell the origins of our dependence on induction. He does tell the origins of frequentist statistics and its dependence on induction. It is an excellent and long read.
When I was a kid in the late 50s/ early 60s, I visited the glaciers. IIRC the tour guides told us that the glaciers had been shrinking ever since the 1800s.
Most valley or alpine glaciers formed after the Holocene Climatic Optimum, during the Neoglaciation period and reached their maxima during the mid-1800’s.
http://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-90-481-2642-2_370
So Yosemite valley as well as other locations in the sierras should be dammed to provide more water storage capacity to ease the adverse effect of California droughts and more CO2 free electrical power. That is the best way to fight the effects of climate change.
Even if “we” whities get serious about climate change, it will have nearly no effect on global “carbon” emissions in coming decades. They’re going way up regardless. Obama is being willingly played by the alarmists he chooses to listen to exclusively.
Math, people! Obamao didn’t spent your month’s heating bill visiting Yosemite, he spent 1000x the total lifetime energy consumption of you, your kids and their kids on a propaganda op. Someone needs to do the math. Math is hard…
I share Larry Pickering's concerns about whether the world can survive another six months of the US "Gander-in chief".
Whether it's his blind, irrational obsession with "climate or change" or his wilful blindness when it comes to the undeniable connection between Islam and the current explosion in terrorism seen throughout the world. The bloke is a massive threat to the safety and prosperity of the western democracies.
Thanks for the read, Bob, good perspective.
During a visit to Yosemite national park, Obama said climate change was “no longer a threat, it’s a reality”.
__________________________
chew gum on past walk is no longer a threat, it’s reality.
/ no one told Obama /
I guess Obama’s words were written for him by Holdren. ‘Nuff said, really.
Dude, I thought your team said this wasn’t a treaty, and on that basis you felt empowered to send $500 million to the climate shakedown fund?
Note to the Moron-in-Chief… Glacial valleys are the result of climate change. They can’t exist without “changes due to (falling and) rising temperatures.
David,
Mr. Obama desperately needs to distract Americans from critically reviewing his policies and leadership.
His ranting faux-scientific drivel about so-called “climate change” is just one of his Allinsky tactics in action.
Mr. Obama, you are an embarrassment to our once-great country, and that will be your legacy. Your teleprompted, mindless drivel regarding climate shows you to be both a moron and a liar. Get off the stage, dimwit.
I have answers to Mr. Obama’s inappropriate, alarmist statements in my new book “The Real World, A Synthesis: Featuring the One Simple but Critical Question that Albert Einstein (and Everybody Else) Never Thought to Ask,” at amazon.com/dp/B01ERXVQ8K.