Bad Religion's song, "Kyoto Now!" is more accurate now than when it was written.

The world corporate empire will extract every last ounce of coal, tar, oil and burn it as long as they can make a buck. They're just going to do it faster now. Think China.

We have the ability to live in peace.

Let us first SHUT DOWN THE PHONEY "WAR ON DRUGS", "WAR ON TERRORISM" (the most oxymoronic war given its ability to harbour more terrorists and fundies !), "WAR ON POVERTY" which could never be won thanks to VIETNAM, etc ... . Only then will we have any true chance of SHUTTING DOWN WARS FOR OIL and WATER.

Sorry, boys, and girls, this is the siren song of a planet that is spiralling out of control, (if there ever was any), we are going to see the end, it is all predicted,-.."first by water, then by fire.." humans- good riddence,,,,hurray for the walrus, I am the walrus....ku ku ka choo, we will never change, in time to realize we're all in this together, the brainwashing is complete, not the knowledge that we are trying to make it a little better off for everybody, but the lust of :"getting" before its gone, fighting for it, and the bulge pumps be damed...this ship is flooded, idiots are the captains, and they are told what to do by the passengers in first class, you may sink last but you will sink too...it is time for a mutiny, viva la revolution! call me I'll bring my limo

So What is Progress, for us critters here on Earth?

Our tiny blue marble Earth rotates around its polar axis (at the Equator), once a day at
1000 miles per hour
Our Earth orbits around our Sun (tiny compared to Mu Cephi, whose diameter is larger than the orbit of Saturn), once a year at
67,000 miles per hour
Our entire solar system revolves around the Milky Way's Black Hole (toward the constellation Sagittarius, from ~30,000 light years out from the gravity center), once every 230 million years at
560,000 miles per hour
Our Milky Way Galaxy dances around nearby Andromeda Galaxy, in a progressively faster death spiral for another 5 billion years, while moving together as a local group, toward Virgo's super cluster of galaxies (50 million light years away) at
990,000 miles per hour
This large congregation of galaxies is moving toward the "Great Attractor"(in the Hydra-Centaurus direction), with respect to the faintly glowing embers of the 15 billion yr old "big bang", called the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)
several million miles per hour

Our net velocity is approximately 2,000,000 miles per hour (450 miles per second, which is 0.2% of the speed of light)

So WoW, that's a real measure of "our true progress"!

Too bad it's mostly in circles, going nowhere real fast

Namaste … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … … … … … … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed »

Has anyone really consided the personal sacrifices that will be necessary to really change the direction that the earth's climate is going? Think about driving habits, distance that you travel to work, size of your home and eating food that may be trucked 2000 miles to get to your local market. I've yet to hear any candidates talk about this. There's close to 7 billion of us now, and many of the people in the developing countries would like to live just like us. There's some pretty smart people that contribute to these discussions here at CDs. I'd like to hear some ideas. So far, Lester Brown has come the closest to a solution. And you can bet that the gop candidates are going to score alot of points by saying that changing our extravagant living habits are off the table.

maxpayne, you're right about the phony wars on drugs and terror. Unfortunately, I think a "War on Oil" will be just as unwinnable.

The more precious a resource, the more hard-to-get, the more expensive, even the more deadly, the more incentive there is for someone somewhere to profit from its exploitation. Corporations will stop making big bucks from oil and other fossil fuels only when there is no more oil or fossil fuel left.

"American wetdream"

First, Iraq and from there a stanglehold on middle east oil, from the many established bases.
Then, some "terrorist" attack from/through Canada and the US must invade to protect itself. Just so happens Canada has the largest amount of fresh water in the world; which in fifty years or so of global warming will be more valuable than oil.

A prelude to water war was last years attack by Israel on Lebanon. the war was not about kidnapped soldiers and Hezbullah. It was about getting access to the Litany River.

In the 10th paragraph above, Amy Goodman says, "The Senate Republicans are now blocking an energy bill..."

Indeed. They are, they have, they will, they would.

Elect a Democratic majority and White House by landslide. Then expect some change. Or retain by default some roadblockers, and expect the road to be (Guess What?) blocked.

The International Journal of Climatology just published some research where real world climate data from the recent past (1970's) was input into 22 of the most widely used atmospheric circulation models.

The models were then asked to "predict" what the atmosphere would be like 30 years later (i.e. today)

Well, no suprise that all the predictions were way off, and of course, predicted far higher atmospheric and surface temperatures than actually exist right now.

These 22 models are the ones used by the UN IPCC.

This is just typical of the major, serious problems with these atmospheric and ocean ciruculation models.

Climate change radicals need to separate the issue of cleaning up the wasteful, polluting practices of our world economy from the subject of climate change.

I for one, believe there is a moral imperative for everyone to do what they can to preserve our plant's "health". Alternative energy, responsible agriculture, stopping pollution, etc.. etc...

But this climate change paranoia has to be exposed for what it is.

The worst of the climate change radicals are the "top-down" solution people who want more laws and want to institute a world wide bureaucracyto control the everyday life of average people.

Well, the good news is that we won't be dependent on hostile foreign countries for water. We'll have more than enough of it flooding our coastlines.

Don't think Coca Cola won't be hiring private "contractors" to make sure they indigenous peeps don't confuse their water with Coke's water.

Well, I for two (DD) will be perfectly willing to let the Republicrats take hold of the government and pass that lovely energy bill I'm sure they will create to help us all out of this mess. I think it's the one that supports subsidies for ethanol, the nuclear industry, clean coal technology etc. - Hmmm, seems pretty much like the Republican plan perhaps a little more money for solar and wind and a few bucks for some other technologies. Throw in some rhetoric about holding oil companies accountable, perhaps some standards for the auto industry to increase gas mileage to 30mpg by 2020 and some other B.S. they can negotiate to water down before it passes; add some pork for their friends and local constituencies and keep their jobs for a few more years. I'm sure that will do it.

Thank ____ we have Democrats to do what's right for this county.

Sorry DD it's gonna take a whole lot more than that.

This is nothing short of a global crisis. This will take a power that mandates to corporations that they WILL make cars that submit less CO2 and get 100mpg by 2015 or they will not be allowed to sell cars. FDR stopped car production during WWII and mandated all car companies use their assembly lines to make tanks and other war machinery. There needs to be no less urgency to stop CO2 prduction in it's tracks and begin to roll it back.

The government needs to stop funding the war machine and start funding a commitment to build all new homes and retrofit old homes with current solar, wind and geothermal technology that will make them energy independent. They need to support locally generated energy plants for every small community, neighborhood and on-site energy supplies to provide power for office buildings and manufacturing centers (are there any left). This will take time to achieve but will create good paying jobs in the U.S. in the meantime.

Do you think DD that the energy companies that are now contributing more heavily to Democrats than Republicans will allow that to happen in our present system?

Time to hit the streets buddy - this ain't no game for video voters, this one's for real. Your vote won't count but your actions will.

Water Wars are coming to a neighborhood near you. The energy steps outlined in any version of our governments energy bill serve only to consume even more water and be certain DEMS wil take no action to curb water privatization to make it less available to the common people. This is what plutocracies do DD. They govern only to provide more for themselves.

-Help me I'm melting!-

TV news programs need to be pressured to get more informed. The American networks like CBS, NBC, and ABC tend to treat global warming as Giuliani and Southern Co. would like it to be represented. Until American news institutions devote as much attention to the issue as, say, the Independent in the U.K., the movement will not acquire much urgency in the U.S. It's a chicken and egg phenomenon. How to get the media to take the issue seriously so that the public will take the issue seriously?

We really can't depend on Al Gore or any presidential candidate to do responsible things for us. We have to start seeking ways to do it ourselves. We need to consume A LOT LESS. We also need to find our own alternatives without depending on huge corporations to do it for us. I have a friend who is setting up his garage so he can make his own fuel out of used cooking oil, for example. Imagine if communities organized so that they could pitch in and make their own fuel.

Indigenous communities in Mexico already have years of doing away with depending on candidates, corporations, and government. I have seen communities where they have set up there own water systems, their own electric grid, schools, and clinics. If we organize and stop spending our money on useless crap (and federal taxes) we could fund community projects like sustainable gardens to feed ourselves and other local projects that actually help people instead of profiting a faceless group of shareholders and CEOs. Disinvest in your 401K and your mutual funds (because publicly traded corporations are the ones pushing for irresponsible and damaging policies in the name of profit, even if they say they are "socially responsible") and reinvest in your community. Gardens, solar panels, local farmers markets, the possibilities are endless.

We just have to sacrifice some of our comfort and do it ourselves.

Our fearless oval office despot recently purchased 100,000 acre's in Paraguay situated on top of the world's largest aquafier. Want to look forward to the Bush Clan controling H2O?
And, BTW, Paraguay does NOT have an extradition treaty with the US.
War criminal haven.

Curtsie!

tech2 wrote: "But this climate change paranoia has to be exposed for what it is."

Climate change denialist propaganda has to be exposed for what it is.

In actual fact, the actual empirically observed effects of anthropogenic global warming are in every respect far exceeding the predictions of climate models. The Earth's atmosphere and oceans and land surface are warming more rapidly, the Earth's stores of ice are melting much more rapidly, and extreme weather events such as droughts and violent storms are increasing in frequency and severity much more rapidly than climate models predicted.

If there is a systemic problem with climate models, it is that they have underestimated the extent and rapidity of anthropogenic global warming and the resulting climate change.

And screaming "climate change radicals! climate change radicals!" is not going to change that fact, although it may make you feel you are soooo much smarter than the hundreds of climate scientists who participate in the IPCC process and have studied this matter diligently for decades.

Seen on cd: "Mommy! The free hand of the market is touching me inappropriately." How inappropriate is our system of letting the market decide? BP is currently buying into a Canadian tar sands venture. A pipeline will be built through the boreal forest bringing natural gas to heat water for boiling the tar into useable fuel. The forest will likely be strip-mined, huge amounts of water used and contaminated, and a nasty mess will remain. Aside from the obvious pollution, huge amounts of global warming carbon dioxide will be released. But, since a little more energy will be obtained than used, then this is one of those good reasons why the market should decide and I agree. However, someone has to take responsibility for the ensuing damages. A dollar figure must be placed on every damaging action to our environment, with the cost charged immediately. Of course figuring the exact charge now for all future environmental degradations is the tricky part. A couple of preliminary suggestions are one hundred dollars per ton of carbon dioxide released and one hundred thousand dollars per pound of mercury released into the atmosphere in the burning of coal. As things stand today, many of us have the opportunity to pay an extra charge on our electric bills to purchase clean, green wind power. Does anyone else think this is one of the most asinine perversions of our current woefully inadequate capitalist system?

tech2 wrote: "The International Journal of Climatology just published some research where real world climate data from the recent past (1970's) was input into 22 of the most widely used atmospheric circulation models. The models were then asked to "predict" what the atmosphere would be like 30 years later (i.e. today). Well, no suprise that all the predictions were way off, and of course, predicted far higher atmospheric and surface temperatures than actually exist right now. These 22 models are the ones used by the UN IPCC."

If you look up the actual study that tech2 refers to, you will find that his assertion that the study found that "all the predictions were way off, and of course, predicted far higher atmospheric and surface temperatures than actually exist right now" is incorrect.

What the study actually found was that the ensemble of models did not correctly predict the relative changes of temperature between the Earth's surface and different layers of the atmosphere over the tropics.

The study in no way challenges the validity of the climate models' fundamental predictions that the Earth's surface, atmosphere and oceans will warm as a result of the basic physics of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, let alone the overwhelming direct empirical evidence that the Earth's surface, atmosphere and oceans are warming rapidly -- much more rapidly than predicted by the models, probably due to poorly understood self-reinforcing feedbacks -- and that this warming is already disrupting the Earth's climate, hydrosphere and biosphere -- much more extremely and more rapidly than predicted by the models.

It's all very well to bleat about "climate radicals", but this sort of distortion of science is unfortunately all too typical of ideologically driven climate change denial.

Here are the simple facts:

Human activities, principally the combustion of fossil fuels, are releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide, as well as other greenhouse gases like methane, into the atmosphere.

The increased concentration of these gases causes the Earth's atmosphere to retain more of the Sun's energy, and as a result the Earth's atmosphere, surface, and oceans are heating up.

Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are cumulative, as they have rapidly grown over the last century and are currently growing at an accelerating rate, and the CO2 we emit remains in the atmosphere for as long as a century. We are presently experiencing the effects of the warming that we are already committed to from our emissions to date, and every day that we release thousands more TONS of CO2 into the atmosphere than we did the day before, we are locking in even more warming.

And the observed effects, right now, today, of the warming that we have already locked in are so extreme, so radical, so fast, so far beyond the worst case predictions of the climate models used by the IPCC, that essentially all of the world's climate scientists are terrified, and are screaming bloody murder (in their careful, rational, precise, polite scientist way) to governments, corporations, citizens, and anybody who will listen that we had damned well better stop the growth of emissions within the next few years and virtually eliminate emissions within a few decades, or we will have locked in irreversible climate chaos that will threaten the survival of human civilization.

Deal with it.

"Seen on cd: "Mommy! The free hand of the market is touching me inappropriately.""

Bwahahahahaa... This was funny... Thanx Greg R

And how very convenient for Big Oil, the leaders of the anti-global warming misinformation campaign, that the melting permafrost is opening up vast expanses for new oil exploration? Indeed, one cannot help but wonder if Big Oil played any role in advancing the quickly discredited idea of global cooling (still cited endlessly today, of course) -- and advanced just as global warming was beginning to really heat up.

Meanwhile, the middle-aged woman who cleans our house once a month doesn't believe global warming is anything but a cyclical, natural phenomenon; nor does she believe the polar bear is in peril. That's just the "liberal media" exaggerating things to make a buck.

beyondempire,

I believe corporations are donating large amounts to Democrats because real bookmaking is predicting that Democrats might win. They're buying access to a possible future government. I also believe that a landslide mandate, if one occurs, will tilt the Democrats left, and as soon as they get there they should be met by resounding demands for at least part of our agenda from progressives---to tilt them even further left. As well as the environment, health care policy is a big, big deal. Perhaps I'm naive, but I can't think of anything else realistic enough to hope for.

Please take a look at the inconvenient truth about an inconvenient truth:

Meat Eating and Global Warming
www.ivu.org/members/globalwarming.html

Also check out Eco-Eating at www.brook.com/veg

Share the info with others

and then take personal action while we're struggling and waiting for structural change!

Sarah Connah,
Thanks for that piece of info.
An investigation is underway.
Bow.

The melting of the polar ice caps must happen or the earth would flip on its side from the weight and centrifugal forces.
Either event is bad for human beings.+

SecularAnimist, thanks for posting the link to an article on the study that tech2 mentioned (note that your link does not go to the actual study). I agree wholeheartedly that humans are causing climate change, that the risks are very high, and that we need to take action immediately to try to ameliorate the situation. The scientific question of the accuracy of climate models is worthy of debate, however, and, according to the review you linked to, the study does in fact question the reliability of the climate models. For example, one scientist says "We suggest, therefore, that projections of future climate based on these models should be viewed with much caution." It's not clear if he's one of the study's authors, however.

The article mentions that the study used the average of the various models' predictions of the earth's surface temperature. That's a very dubious approach, which to me at least, invalidates the study.

Note, though, that one of the scientists quoted (John Christy) argues that an earlier study indicates that the discrepancies are due to faulty data rather than to faulty climate models, but he says "... the widely scattered range of results from all of the model runs combined. Many of the models had surface trends that were quite different from the actual trend. Nonetheless, that study concluded that since both the surface and upper atmosphere trends were somewhere in that broad range of model results, any disagreement between the climate data and the models was probably due to faulty data" To me, the phrases "widely scattered" and "broad range" indicate that there's still a lot of uncertainty in the models. Nonetheless, as I said, I think the evidence is clear enough that we need to address the problem urgently.

"More than two decades ago, scientists calculated that nuclear war could...cause a "nuclear winter." Their eloquent warnings here in Oslo helped galvanize the world's resolve to halt the nuclear arms race."

"Just as Hull's generation found moral authority in rising to solve the world crisis caused by fascism..."

Two quotes from Al Gore's acceptance speech: both fallacious - the spread of "depleted" uranium has become part of the daily commerce of our, our, military industrial complex, and of course the sadism of fascism does it's morbid dance in the White House everyday.

This is why I still staunchly call for impeachment daily as the best means to confront our, our, sadistic fascist behavior and my part in it.

My guess is that at least ninety per-cent of the people who post here drive more than ten thousand miles each year in cars which get less than thirty miles per gallon.

Corporate water fails quickly. Ask Atlanta GA. Very quickly the water was undrinkable and too expensive.

I must be one of the 10% kayaker.

Water is life, primal.

Models can err in both directions, optimistically and pessimistically.

As an example, the observed rate of Arctic ice melting is much faster than all of the principal models. See:

http://www.orbit.nesdis.noaa.gov/star/IceSymposiumProgram.php

See slide 3 in this 1.6 MB file:

http://www.orbit.nesdis.noaa.gov/star/documents/2007IceSymp/Overland1.pdf

or slide 13 in this 3.8 MB file:

http://www.orbit.nesdis.noaa.gov/star/documents/2007IceSymp/Spinrad.pdf

Shorter discussion in this news article on the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm

or to quote Buffalo Springfield,

"Something's happening here.

What it is ain't exactly clear."

Anybody who is able to read this has nothing to fear from any so called catastrophe. That is for others who will never be able to access this information. The reason being less than 1 percent of the world population has access to computers. We are the fortunate ones.

Does anyone really think Americans (North Americans) are going to stop driving, flying, eating meat, watching TV, believing in fundamentalist Christianity, fighting wars or electing morons in droves? The issue with all the suggested solutions is that so few people will attempt to implement that it makes no difference. We might as well hang on tight because the world as we know it is crashing and burning. We're finished.

I wish we were all wrong.

More likely than all being right

I plan to dream a better dream than this one. It sucks!

The Pope thinks Catholics should go on burning fossil fuels, anyway. Don't worry about global warming - it's all scaremongering according to Benedict VI:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=501316&in_page_id=1811&ito=1490

As I recall, we once had an Interior Secretary named James Watt. He would be nothing more than a negative cipher in my memory (as a virulent anti-environmentalist) if he had not been a member of a Christian sect/cult which believed the "second coming" was imminent, and thus measures to protect the Earth unnecessary and unholy. It seems to me that this message has permeated the Christian right (who seem to run our country), although nobody ever mentions it anymore. The plutocrats who run the world do not care about the end of the Earth. They just do not care. They are not going to care, and thus no effective measures are currently possible. Every so often they nominate one of their number to denounce the climate-change notion as a fraud, most recently this was the guy who founded the weather channel. Shortly, I'm sure, it will be someone else's turn.

I think there's an unspoken religious/cult basis for resistance to doing anything about climate change. Religion has always wanted to control things, and apparently that includes the end of the human race.

Amen.

John Mitchell wrote: "... thanks for posting the link to an article on the study that tech2 mentioned."

Also, I would direct your attention to this article by the team of climate scientists who maintain the excellent RealClimate.org website, which analyzes the study in detail and finds it deeply flawed by omissions and inaccuracies.

As the RealClimate scientists explain, this new paper is authored by the same group of researchers (Douglas, Pearson and career global warming denier Fred Singer, now joined by John Christy) who authored a paper in 2004, similarly claiming that actual satellite and radiosonde data were globally inconsistent with climate model simulations for the same time period. Their 2004 work was faulted by RealClimate for "over-confidence in observational data accuracy" and "an insufficient appreciation of the statistics of trends over short time periods", and the global inconsistencies alleged by the paper disappeared with a longer observational record and some important corrections to the processing. The new paper limits its claim to the rate of warming in the troposphere over the tropics. It does not dispute the fact of anthropogenic global warming itself, as tech2 incorrectly suggested.

The RealClimate team analyzes the flaws of the current paper in depth and concludes that in fact "there is no clear model-data discrepancy in tropical tropospheric trends once you take the systematic uncertainties in data and models seriously ... Douglas et al's claim to the contrary is simply unsupportable." The RealClimate article cites another recent paper by P. W. Thorne et al, published in Geophysical Research Letters (a journal of the American Geophysical Union) which comes to the same conclusion.

So, what we have here is a deeply flawed scientific paper, whose claims fail to stand up to scrutiny and are not replicated by other studies of the same question. Even worse, tech2 is attributing sweeping claims to this paper that it does not even make!

This is unfortunately typical of the global warming denialists -- relying on science which is bad to begin with and is then misrepresented as proving claims that the actual science doesn't even make.

I doubt that tech2 is even reading any of this rebuttal, let alone able to respond to it intelligently. He is most likely too busy posting Rush Limbaugh-inspired disinformation on as many blogs as he can.

SecularAnimist:
Your argument seems to be that the basic physics of CO2 (and other greenhouse gases)in the atmosphere and their effect on the sun's radiant energy (and the earth's reflected energy), and therefore the world's energy balance is the end of the arguement.
You believe that this basic fact deciedes the issue.

Well, the reason why the ocean and atmospheric circulation models are so critical is because they have an overriding effect on the the earth's surface temp.
Its very cold in outerspace. We get massive amounts of energy from the sun.
Its all about heat transfer.

In fact your entire post can be reduced down to a few key points:
Greenhouse gas concentrations are the begining and the end of climate change studies.
world temperatures are changing and the change is accelerating and this is ample evidence of the coming catastrophy.

Now I conciede your assertion that average temperatures are increasing. But its too soon to be talking about catastrophy.

This is a hugely complicated scientific problem, and the more its looked at the more variables are added into the equations.
The theoretical assumptions are to long to list. But its an incredibly interesting field of study and very fascinating.
Just the chemistry of the atmosphere, and its relationship to the processes on the earth's surface (man made or natural) is full of incredible questions. When we look at crystalized methane deposits, and many many other features, we all have to step back and think about the incredible changes the earth has gone through. And the incredible changes that are possible.

This issue is very new, and modeling the entire planets interconnected systems is a massive undertaking.

Doubt - a very high degree of doubt and distrust of the current predictions is warranted. That doesn't mean there is not a problem, it doesn't mean we need to stop research - heck the research has just started.

Nothing is going to be accomplished through paranoia.

They only possible arguement you would be that:

"better safe than sorry"
""its" happening so fast that we have to take action now on what little info we have"

Well, I completely disagree. This incredibly cold autumn that is being experienced is a case in point.

We have the time to get the science right.

However, using less energy, living in harmony with nature instead of destroying it, changing our economy to be more "green"
understanding that the atmosphere and oceans are not limitless garbage cans, these are all good things anyway.

Just deal with it.

tech2 wrote: "Doubt - a very high degree of doubt and distrust of the current predictions is warranted."

Distrust of the current predictions is warranted -- because all of the empirical evidence, without exception, indicates that the current predictions are far too conservative, and that the effects of anthropogenic climate change are far more rapid and extreme than predicted. Moreover, scientists are well aware of factors such as self-reinforcing feedbacks in the carbon cycle, and the dynamics of rapid glacier melt, none of which were reflected in the IPCC's most recent predictions, because they cannot yet be precisely quantified -- but all of which are known to make the effects of climate change more extreme and more rapid. Climate scientists know that global warming and climate change will be faster and worse than current predictions. The shockingly rapid loss of Arctic sea ice discussed in Amy Goodman's article is a perfect example.

tech2 wrote: "We have the time to get the science right."

This is ironic coming from someone who not only cited wrong science, but misrepresented the actual conclusions of the study you cited! You have offered no defense of your previous post, only hand-waving.

tech2 wrote: "This incredibly cold autumn that is being experienced is a case in point."

You apparently don't understand the difference between climate and weather, and you evidently don't really know what you are talking about. You are just grasping at straws to support your pre-existing belief that anthropogenic global warming and climate change are nothing but baseless "paranoia". You are ill-informed, and you are wrong.

Just read your last post, SecularAnimist,

So RealClimate says there is an
"over-confidence in observational data accuracy" and "an insufficient appreciation of the statistics of trends over short time periods",

Well, I guess that's the end of the debate.

On second thought, just think about that statement for a while and let it sink in.

Better yet, take that statement to any practicing scientist, any mathematician, any engineer, and ask them what it means, and what the impiclications would be if it was applied across the board to all climate research.

Just read your last post - we seem to be a bit out of sync here. On-line at the same time.

You say that:
"Climate scientists know that global warming and climate change will be faster and worse than current predictions."

I noticed that the word "know" is italicized.

Well I guess that ends the debate then, all knowing oracle.

Seems to me that the clearcutting of most of the world's forests has even more to do with global climate change than carbon emissions, seeing as how trees clean the air of a lot of that stuff.

And isn't this cold autumn a sign that the Gulf Stream is shutting down? Every time there's been an ice age, hasn't it been preceeded by a rise in temperature?

It's be ironic if all the heat islands we've been building caused an ice age. But maybe that's the planet's equilibrium putting us in our place.

Looks like my last edit finally did take. Feel free to ignore or delete this.

out of my mouth,for the millionth time!-it has never been a war about oil..it has always been a war about water !! now maybe in the near future you will all awaken to several more truths...1)the melting of the ice caps was speeded up deliberately....testing of new toys of warfare has been going on in the artic for several years..including electromagnetics and bio-magnetics,and nuclear improvements...these devices were used to speed-up icemelt,accidently and on purpose.2)the arctics hold a treasure-trove of pristine water and the abscense of ice is desired for shorter shipping routes.3)global warming is caused by big money corporate elitists(nabobs)in their quest for ever more money and power...and the only guilt you and i share,is for being the consumers of their inventions.4)al gore is fully aware of all of the above (mentioned)and he is an avatar who is a large part of the problem and has made a fuckin bundle of money off of exploitation of resources and warfare and global warming....and i personally am going to hate it,when i say "told you so "

sarahconnah-so true,so true-you are correct.and i can guess, the new waterless plumbing system,is already being installed in paraguay,to upgrade the country from third-world status.