How Did We Come To “Unknow” What We Already Knew In 1981?

[JaneyVee]

PROOF: The Right’s Denial of Climate Change is a LIE.

-snip-

The Energy Task Force report to Ronald Reagan in May 1981:

“Given the magnitude of the potential threat represented by global climate change, it is equally in the strategic interest of the United States to identify and implement cost-effective measures at home and abroad to stabilize the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gasses at levels that will not lead to catastrophic climatic change.”

It goes on to say:

“Many different constituencies within the U.S. government will need to work together to develop a unified and integrated energy policy framework with well-defined and orchestrated goals—a policy that addresses not only today’s energy bottlenecks, but also will seek to provide affordable, clean, and reliable energy supplies five to fifteen years into the future, in order to underpin long-term economic growth in an environmentally acceptable manner and to promote the security of the United States, and its allies”

So just to review, this republican task force sponsored by the James Baker Institute and the Foreign Affairs Councilfrom 1981 said they knew and understood that we had a serious problem.

At the time, they said it would take 5 to 15 years to provide alternatives, which would, in their words, promote the security of the United States. That should have meant we would have made the transition by 1986 at latest.

The rest: http://buckyworld.me/2013/01/26/proofthe-rights-denial-of-climate-change-is-a-lie/

[Brother Buzz]

1. There are known knowns; there are things we know we know.

There are known knowns; there are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know. - Rumsfeld

[libinnyandia]

2. Ronald Reagan was concerned about pollution from trees.

[Tikki]

3. Institutions pushed back really hard to preserve their supernatural myths and monetary haul...

and they won't give up until we step up and make them as obsolete as betamax...

Tikki

[RobertEarl]

4. Then filed away...

..... under "Now we know how to make a really big mess, thankyou"

Only idiots of the most moneyed persuasions denied that we could and would alter the climate. They figured, correctly, that there is no short term profit to be made by protecting the environment and like one Interior secretary declared, Jesus is coming soon so why worry? Watt was his name?

[tk2kewl]

5. K&R