Antarct:
In answer to your question: There have been several who have but these have been ridiculed and shouted down by the money people. George Soros can and has shut down many people, for example. Now that really is a fact.
If you just want someone with national prominence to make such an idiotic statement, I'm sure you can find one. At this time the Republican Party (especially the Tea Party faction of it) is filled with large numbers of people that make stupid statements all the time--things that defy logic.
If by "national figurehead" you mean a president, good luck with that. The same ideas in the Republican Party that have made the Tea Partiers and other whackadoodles so influential in the party are the same ones that prevent them from winning national elections. In the future it will just get harder and harder for them to win national elections with the idiotic elitist ideas they have, and eventually they may start losing congressional seats that they once had also.
You really should be looking for people that are LESS stupid, not MORE. Part of the reason that the U.S. has become the most important country in the world is because we have valued the role that science plays, if the U.S. follows your lead you will not only find a mass exodus of talented people from the country, you will quickly see the U.S. become a second tier nation economically.
Unfortunately there are many people in this country that seem to value ignorance and irrationality over learning and logic.
EDIT: Increased CO2 may cause increased growth, if plants are not limited in other ways. Unfortunately the growth you're talking about is not in our food crops, which tend to be limited by water instead of CO2. Increase CO2, increase the temperature, change the precipitation patterns and you'll soon find yourself in a world with widespread food shortages--but lots of "growth" of things we can't eat, like the boreal forest.
Another EDIT: I never said that CO2 was a "villain," and I don't think that the IPCC did either. The fact is (as I've said before), that without CO2 in the atmosphere the Earth would turn into a giant snowball within a few years or decades.
However, that does not mean that we should be running the largest experiment in the history of the world on the atmosphere of the planet we all depend on for life. You complain about Bill Gates and Monsanto trying to engineer nature. Ha!! What exactly do you think we are all doing by increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by 40% (so far)?
People that argue for increased CO2 are idiots. If you want increased CO2 in your greenhouse to grow your marijuana plants--or whatever it is that you smoke that gives you these insane ideas--fine, just DON'T advocate changing the atmosphere of the planet I live on for your harebrained ideas. That is not just insanity, it is not your right.
An EDIT for your ideas about the "progressives": Yes, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan schemed the whole thing up while having sex in the Vatican Library. George Soros is their love child who came from that secret tryst. He invented a machine where he could travel backwards in time. He went back to 1820 and fathered John Tyndall, then indoctrinated him into the teaching of the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons and the Knights Templar, who all taught of the evils of carbon dioxide.
I've got to stop...I've said too much...I can feel their eyes on me....
Karl Popper defined the truth as something that could be proved wrong. He meant that science by its very nature remains fallible, open to correction. Thus, challenges to an orthodoxy especially one as important as the theory of global warming are welcome.
I'm not in your camp but I do think there is a certain arrogance to the green line that humans are changing climate. Their models lack enough variables. Consider sun spots. They flare and give off more heat. The sun also cools down and causes colder spells - Europe at the moment is in one of these cold spells that will last 100 years or so.
Politicians are reluctant to say anything that will damage their chances of getting elected or re-elected. Don't expect too much from that quarter. However, it would be interesting if some prestigious scientists started throwing spanners in the works of perceived CO2 wisdom.
Oh dear, here we go again with the "it's only 0.8c" as always is it really necessary to try and explain that this is a global average in some quite important places the temperature has gone up far more than this, particularly in the Arctic. Where the local rise is more like 3-5c, this is why the ice is melting.
Even someone with high school level science should be able to understand the implications for ice in such a rise It means ice will melt sooner in Summer and reform later in Winter (and that's exactly what is happening) The Antarctic is a little different due to the nature of it's sea ice and that is expanding a little (as denier keep try to shout at us, as they ignore all the other evidence) interesting how they scream scientists are liars, yet it is the same scientists whose data they use to scream about that sea sea ice (but that's denial for you) of course what they ignore is that glacial ice in Antarctica is losing mass, that is in part why the sea ice is is surviving as all that cold glacial water melts into the surrounding sea.
As for the talk of just 0.8c the difference between a glacial period and an interglacial is just 8c, just 8c is enough to cause a change in sea level of over 120m for those a little slow in the math department 0.8c is 10% of 8.0c, of course the other factor in an glacial or interglacial change is time we are a bit over 100 years into this natural glacial change takes several thousand, but as we have already raised Co2 above anything seen in the last 8 glacial cycles and will at current rates raise it above anything seen since the glacial cycle started 2.5 million years ago, what is happening now is going to be much faster, as is already being seen in sea level rise, with that "just 0.8c" pat refers to seeing the rate return to a level not seen in almost 8 thousand years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Post-G...
Now Pat can rant about bill gates and profiteers as much as he wants, but you will note he has no answers for scientific points, sea level is rising that is a fact and while denier try to link all this to their own favorite pet hates like "Global Governance" or our pretend geologists dislike of communists or one of the others (if they are indeed different people) fantasies about HAARP or whatever other nonsense they invent.
Science has shown in a wide field of evidence that this is happening and that evidence is coming from a range of science fields not just climate scientists, the fiction that it's "the Sun" (one some denier still try to us) was dispelled long ago, as was "it's volcanoes" deniers answer to this is to simply invent more and more ridiculous theories.
Not really sure what pat's link has to do AGW or what he seems to be ranting about, if it's some sort of connection to GM crops perhaps he should read it again as that is not what it's about, it's simply about picking crops that grow faster for farming profit, this it not that dissimilar to tree farming where the same thing has been done, a fast crop means a faster turnaround in profit, but wood that is not as strong, as that grown naturally and allowed to take it's time.
Then we have this
"Why can't we hear from politicians on the benefits of extra CO2 in our atmosphere? We know that temperature increases have been very minimal (1.2% since 1880). Are they too chicken to stick their necks out for the truth?"
Of dear Pat what is this 1.2% figure something you just invented, whats it supposed to be based on, go back to 1880 and the global average temperature was a little over 14.0c now it's about 15c are you seriously saying the difference between these two figures is just 1.2%, oh dear, denier maths at their best or are you trying to be clever and use absolute zero as your starting point.
As to "the benefits of extra CO2" this one always amuses me when deniers try to use it, as they shift back and forward between "extra Co2 has no effect" to "look at the benefits", somehow it always seems to escape their attention that for these "benefits" they have just admitted that that Co2 has an effect, as they try to point to the "benefits" and try really hard to ignore the obvious problems that also go with that benefit, like melting ice and sea level rise. But again that's denial for you !
Its quite simple really. The fact that no one really gives a **** shows that we will never really be restricted. Humans will use up every resource they can. Why shouldn't we?
nobody is going to do anything about "global warming" because it doesn't exist. There are more polar bears then there ever had been, a lot more ice then there gas been in a long time. It's more environmentalists trying to push their agenda than a real problem
A nice thought but it wont happen.
Politics rely on impending doom, vote for me and I will save you (and at the same time grab power and control over you)
When in power they need a calamity to divert attention from their failures and climate change is the perfect scapegoat.
edit
Antarctica not only is temperature only 0.8c but sea level rise is 6.7 inches in a 100yrs (big deal) where's the big catastrophe
Why do you think that Germany is giving up nuclear power?
http://rt.com/news/germany-poland-nuclea...
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/arti...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/23/ge...
Straw man argument. Everything is harmful in excess, including essential vitamins and minerals.
You don't expect them to see logic do you? That would require a complete dismissal of their world view and their past lack of it. It isn't about what CO2 might do to us. It is about using CO2 to increase their power over us. You aren't suppose to tell them that it hasn't harmed us. They like to pretend it has. Every heat wave, every hurricane, every cold snap is due to them not having more control. The arrogance will be their downfall. I just hope it happens sooner than later.
stupid puppets on a death course
Here's a # for you :
Let's give the alarmists the temperature increase of 0.8C since 1880. What is that in F? 1.44F roughly? Temperatures vary from season to season in the middle latitudes by as much as 120 F. Temperature increase of less than 1.2% in 133 years? We know that the population has increased over 500% since the late 1800s (the population was around 1.5 billion at the turn of the 19th century. More life? We also know that biomass has increased 5% to 10% in many places since 1982 according to satellite data. Is there a direct correlation there somewhere? How much has the biomass of the planet increased since 1880? Let's investigate that instead of calling CO2 a villain. CO2 in our atmosphere may cause a little warming, but it also helps in producing more life and by a wide margin. I'll take the 0.8C rise in favor of more life. I've never seen it actually cause a death in its current state in our atmosphere.
Why can't we hear from politicians on the benefits of extra CO2 in our atmosphere? We know that temperature increases have been very minimal (1.2% since 1880). Are they too chicken to stick their necks out for the truth?
Your science is simply and demonstrably wrong. You are not entitled to your opinion unless it's an informed opinion. Clearly yours isn't.
