Jan 30 2009
Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Climate
I recorded this hearing, and it’s linked below, so more people can hear it. How many people go to C-SPAN and listen to the hearings there? I don’t know — I usually don’t unless I have to.
On Wednesday, January 28, Al Gore testified on climate change to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (Gore was also there to support President Obama’s stimulus package, which was up for a vote at the time he was testifying.) John Kerry, Russ Feingold, and several others on the committee talked and questioned Al Gore. This is a must-listen committee hearing for anyone interested in how we are going to deal with climate change. They not only heard a presentation about how serious things are with our climate, but concrete ways to deal with it. In fact, in the last half hour (of part 2) Al Gore really discusses some solid plans and solutions, and puts forth what can be done.
It’s probably the most useful and politically practical thing I’ve heard on dealing with climate change so far, and it’s good to hear something so positive and optimistic about climate change solutions. I think Al Gore is one of the best people to communicate the facts and solutions, too.
But before the solutions, Gore covers some frightening facts. Here are two more graphics I was able to grab off the CSPAN screen (where I got the recording). The picture on the top of this post is the one he used to illustrate what a planet with all of its CO2 in the atmosphere becomes: The planet Venus, at 855 degrees, with all its carbon in the atmosphere (none in the soil or the oceans).
The graphic here on the left shows that hundreds of thousands of people will be displaced by rising sea level if climate change is not reversed. In the second picture, it shows how the sun’s rays, which would normally bounce off ice, are now absorbed by the ocean when the ice is missing. Gore loves slides shows and that’s part of what his presentation was.
The hearing was about 3 hours long and I split it into two parts, and they are downloadable below. This is the hearing in its entirety, minus a couple of minutes at the beginning where chairman Senator John Kerry was intoning his introductions and thank-you’s. But for all Kerry’s previous dronations, his speech this time is very interesting throughout, as is the whole hearing. I think it’s the only senate hearing I’ve listened to in its entirety and not been bored one minute.
Download/ Listen to Part 1 here.
