Those of you concerned about Barack Obama’s future once he leaves the White House in less than two weeks can now rest easy.
Apparently, he has decided to start a second career as a climate scientist!
The soon-to-be-former President of the United States had a policy paper that just published in Science (hat tip Willis Eschenbach posting in Watts Up With That).
The piece is entitled: The irreversible momentum of clean energy:
The release of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) due to human activity is increasing global average surface air temperatures, disrupting weather patterns, and acidifying the ocean. Left unchecked, the continued growth of GHG emissions could cause global average temperatures to increase by another 4°C or more by 2100 and by 1.5 to 2 times as much in many midcontinent and far northern locationsAlthough our understanding of the impacts of climate change is increasingly and disturbingly clear, there is still debate about the proper course for U.S. policy—a debate that is very much on display during the current presidential transition. But putting near-term politics aside, the mounting economic and scientific evidence leave me confident that trends toward a clean-energy economy that have emerged during my presidency will continue and that the economic opportunity for our country to harness that trend will only grow. This Policy Forum will focus on the four reasons I believe the trend toward clean energy is irreversible.
While Obama is heating up the rhetoric on global warming, recent analysis shows that world temperatures over land have taken a dive:
Global average temperatures over land have plummeted by more than 1C since the middle of this year – their biggest and steepest fall on record.The news comes amid mounting evidence that the recent run of world record high temperatures is about to end.The fall, revealed by Nasa satellite measurements of the lower atmosphere, has been caused by the end of El Nino – the warming of surface waters in a vast area of the Pacific west of Central America.
Furthermore, 49 of our 57 50 states have snow, and over 2/3rds of the United States is covered in the stuff. This includes Hawaii, Obama’s home state!
Intriguingly, Obama, the first black president of the Harvard Law Review and senior lecturer in law at the University of Chicago Law School, also recently published a piece of legal scholarship for the first time.
The president’s first journal article appeared Thursday in the Harvard Law Review and concerned the role of the executive branch in advancing criminal justice reform.Though supporters lavish praise on a man they call a constitutional scholar, Professor Obama left practically nothing by way of a paper trial at Harvard or the University of Chicago. The scant six pages unearthed by Politico in 2008 addressing whether an unborn child has standing to sue its mother appear to be the only scholarly piece Obama produced as a law student or a law professor.
I wonder why Obama has retired his golf clubs for his pen in recent weeks. Perhaps he is getting tired of all the winning President-Elect Donald Trump has done over the past few weeks with the magic wand.
Less than 10 days until Obama can spend even more time developing his second career. Given the data, I think it will be as successful as his presidency.
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