2000 Bill Clinton - Global Warming

In the year 2000, according to the Journal Science, ice core samples taken from the Himalayan glacier revealed that the decade of the 1990's was the warmest decade of the past 1000 years.  And, according to one expedition leader from Ohio State University, there was no question that the warming was driven by human activity.  This was just two years after , Michael E. Mann et. al developed new statistical techniques to produce the first eigenvector-based climate field reconstruction that showed global patterns of annual surface temperature.   This included a graph of average hemispheric temperatures back to 1400.  This graph showed a downward trend to 1900 followed by a sharp steady increase in the late 1990's.  This graph was dubbed the "hockey stick" and predicted that the 1990's would be the hottest decade in the millennium.    Now there was evidence, and the great debate over global warming was in full swing, and Vice President Al Gore would become the champion of the cause to effect global climate change.  But it was President Clinton in 2000, who would take the opportunity in his last state of the union address, to give a firm warning to congress and the nation regarding global warning.  Clinton warned of deadly heat waves, droughts and flooding if we don't act six years.   Six years later Al Gore would expand on this in his documentary, "Inconvenient Truth".  Here are Clinton's words from 2000.

"The greatest environmental challenge of the new century is global warming. The scientists tell us the 1990's were the hottest decade of the entire millennium. If we fail to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, deadly heat waves and droughts will become more frequent, coastal areas will flood, and economies will be disrupted. That is going to happen, unless we act.

Many people in the United States, some people in this Chamber, and lots of folks around the world still believe you cannot cut greenhouse gas emissions without slowing economic growth. In the industrial age, that may well have been true. But in this digital economy, it is not true anymore. New technologies make it possible to cut harmful emissions and provide even more growth."

This was three years after the signing of the Kyoto protocol at the third conference of parties (COP3) in 1997.  The protocol was a nonbinding agreement by 192 countries to lower greenhouse gas emissions.  U.S. never ratified it, Canada dumped it in 2011, and China and India were exempt from it.   Now in 2015, at the COP21, 200 countries including U.S. and China once again tried hammering out a treaty to reduce greenhouse gasses.   Meanwhile the debate over global warming rages on.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=58708
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/4753780/1990s-was-the-hottest-decade-of-millennium.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_graph
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/30/europe/cop21-why-care-paris-global-warming/
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http://www.usnews.com/cmsmedia/92/9e/8ee6a1894c0bb5ce59cf650fe483/140317-clintongore-editorial.jpg