Michael Conniff wrote a great article on the Huffington Post yesterday about how American conservatives are downplaying the effects and even denying global warming itself.

According to scientists, the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed 3ºC since the 1950’s.

Britain’s own David Vaughan, an Antarctic Survey glaciologist, said, “We’ve been watching it all summer, waiting for it to go, and bang—now it’s gone.”

He is referring, of course, to the Wilkins Ice Shelf, which is no longer connected to the continent of Antarctica.

“The last couple of years, particularly, we’ve seen a real steep drop off in the older ice, ice that’s older than two years old, that used to cover 30 per cent of the Arctic Ocean, the total ice at the end of winter. And even as late as 2006, it covered about 20 per cent, and now we’re down below 10 per cent.” said Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at CU.

“With the collapse of an ice bridge that holds in place the Wilkins Ice Shelf, we are reminded that global warming has already had enormous affects on our planet and we have no time to lose in tackling this crisis,” said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The general response of the American Right seems to be that India and China need to do something about climate change, but also that climate change is not a real issue. In general, the overall opinion of the American Right is that climate change is not a real problem, but if it is, it’s something somebody else should do something about.

I applaud the response of the Obama White House and their new environmental advisor James Holdren for making climate change, global warming and the green economy vital parts of their agenda!