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Warming Is Major Threat To Humans, EPA Warns
WASHINGTON - Climate change will pose "substantial" threats to human health in the coming decades, the Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday -- issuing its warnings about heat waves, hurricanes and pathogens just days after the agency declined to regulate the pollutants blamed for warming.
In a new report, the EPA said "it is very likely" that more people will die during extremely hot periods in future years -- and that the elderly, the poor and those in inner cities will be most at risk.
Other possible dangers include more powerful hurricanes, shrinking supplies of fresh water in the West, and the increased spread of diseases contracted through food and water, the agency said.
The strong warnings highlighted the contorted position that the EPA has staked out on climate change. Last week, the agency decided not to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, at least not until after President Bush's term ends.
A former EPA official told a House panel this week that senior administration officials and several Cabinet members supported regulating the emissions before the White House changed course and barred the EPA from concluding that they endanger public welfare.
In a closed interview Tuesday, former EPA deputy associate administrator Jason K. Burnett told the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming that Joel D. Kaplan, Bush's deputy chief of staff for policy, originally signed off on the decision to regulate emissions from both vehicles and stationary sources such as power plants and refineries. The decision came in response to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that instructed the administration to determine whether carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases should be regulated under the Clean Air Act.
"There was a general belief that moving forward with a challenge and establishing a precedent in channeling regulation would serve the country better than leaving the challenge to the next administration," Burnett said in the interview, according to a transcript obtained by The Washington Post. "The chief of staff's office then appears to have changed its mind."
Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who chairs the House panel, said in a statement: "Today typifies the climate-change schizophrenia in the Bush administration. On one hand, government scientists are saying that global warming poses grave threats to our health and our welfare, and, on the other hand, [there] are White House political hacks following the oil industry's bidding to do nothing."
The EPA report yesterday was less notable for its warnings -- similar problems have been predicted by other scientists and by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- than for its source. The Bush administration has resisted the conclusion that increasing temperatures will harm human health, but in yesterday's report, that finding was unmistakable.
"We . . . anticipate substantial human health impacts," the document said.
In the West, it found, changing weather patterns could thin snowpack that feeds rivers, affecting hydroelectric dams and water supplies. In coastal areas, it could bring a sea-level rise that eats away at dry land and storm surges that can wash it away in a flash.
In Washington and other Eastern cities, the report said, a warmer climate is likely to produce more bad-air days, because heat speeds up the process by which exhaust byproducts are cooked into smog. The report also found that rising temperatures are likely to mean more periods of sustained summer heat.
"It's going to be hotter, it's going to be hotter sooner in the year than it was in the past," said Kristie Ebi, an Alexandria-based consultant and one of the report's authors.
She said that young people living in the D.C. area now will notice a difference before they reach middle age. "They're going to look back and think back about how nice the summers used to be," she said. "Within 20, 30 years, on average, the [public] should notice that it's warmer."
The report was prepared under the EPA's leadership but released by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, which coordinates research among several federal agencies. Joel D. Scheraga of the EPA's Global Change Research Program said that there was no political interference in the report's findings or the timing of its release.
"The answer is unequivocally 'no,' " he said.
EPA spokesman Jonathan Shradar said there was no conflict between the warnings in the report and the agency's conclusion last week that regulation should be put off.
"Climate change is a serious problem that our nation needs to address. But we need to address it correctly," Shradar said.
Last Friday, the EPA announced that it would solicit comments on the idea of regulating greenhouse gases under the federal Clean Air Act. But at the same time it released a lengthy preamble, with messages from EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson and four other Cabinet members, saying that this idea was ill-advised.
Burnett said that this, too, was ordered by administration officials: "We were told . . . that the [document] should not establish a path forward or a framework for regulation, but should emphasize the complexity of the challenge."
He also told the panel that senior EPA officials met with representatives from Exxon Mobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, who argued that Bush should not undermine his legacy by regulating greenhouse gases.
White House spokesman Tony Fratto said yesterday that the EPA administrator chose his course on his own.
"Steve Johnson, as he has said repeatedly, and in sworn testimony, made his own decision," Fratto said. "And so whatever anyone's views were at that time are fairly irrelevant because the administrator chose to go a different route."
© 2008 The Washington Post Company
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Show AllGlobal Warring is The Major Threat -
'Fundamental right'
Archbishop Tutu said that "the right to food is fundamental".
"The world today is captivated by an obsession with fighting a war against terror. We are wasting time and resources.
"If there is one war we can predict we will never win it is the war against terror, as long as we make the conditions that make people desperate."
If the US government says so then it must be true. At least it doesn't sound like fear mongering. I personally prefer global warming to global cooling but I must be crazy. I guess now that the terrorist threat is becoming less believable we now need something else to be deathly afraid of. Yep The sky is falling! Stay inside everyone. Your gov't will protect you. We will establish new laws and regulations to keep you safe. More taxes will be needed of course but it all goes to the enviroment. How much does it cost to protect the enviroment anyways. My math says it should be about nil. Just leave it alone. Stop the destruction. Let it heal. Oh wait, the companies destroying it will go out of business if they aren't allowed to rape the land any more. Maybe that is who will get all the money from this threat. Read the Report from Iron Mountain.
"He also told the panel that senior EPA officials met with representatives from Exxon Mobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, who argued that Bush should not undermine his legacy by regulating greenhouse gases."
Undermine his legacy? Bush? huh? Who would believe that a big ball of fire in the sky could be so bright and hot. Its crazy.
puhleeeeeeeeeese tell us something new..............
Yet another article about the climate crisis without a mere mention of the POPULATION crisis. This is a TWO-headed monster we are facing. Regulating greenhouse gases will do no good unless we also regulate our BREEDING!
Solutions-
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1824132,00.html?imw=Y
AL Gore is not crazy-we need to get on this NOW!
I read the first paragraph and almost stopped. They use the words, ____ "Subtantial threats to human health in the coming DECADES."
DECADES?? ___ NO!! ___We have a very few years, perhaps twenty, or even ten or less. They do not mention the distinct threat of the methane gas releases from the Arctic and our oceans which will be caused from the current global warming.
You can forget about the polar bears, rising sea levels, droughts, famine and melting glaciers, water shortages, etc. The release of the Arctic's methane gas will set off global warming like few have ever predicted or imagined.
When that corner is turned, it will be too late to stop the methane in the oceans from bursting out into our atmosphere and when it does, ____ it's all over. ___ALL OVER___. It won't be DECADES either, it will be a few years if we don't correct the global warming problen NOW.
MY opinion? ___ Nope, these links tell all any need to know about the subject. If you don't agree and also don't believe this is the most important issue mankind has ever faced, you are arguing with some very highly qualified experts on the subject.
http://www.energybulletin.net/3647.html
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080423_methane.html
" I guess now that the terrorist threat is becoming less believable we now need something else to be deathly afraid of. Yep The sky is falling! Stay inside everyone. Your gov't will protect you. We will establish new laws and regulations to keep you safe. "
Geez, the article I read stated that government is refusing to help keep us safe, and won't pass ANY new laws or regulations with that aim.
And if you have a preference for one severe climate change over another, well, who is anyone to call you crazy? However, if you prefer warming, I suppose you live somewhere that is not already too hot or too dry, or with storms that are too big, or is on fire. If you prefer cooling, well, for god's sake, if you think that way, you're an American who lives in one of our mostly temperate regions and you think you'll be fine, because a little hotter or a little cooler is going to affect other places more than alot of America.
You hope, anyway.
So, what caused the methane release 250 million years ago?
Climate
As the Permian opened, the Earth was still in the grip of an ice age, so the polar regions were covered with deep layers of ice. Glaciers continued to cover much of Gondwanaland, as they had during the late Carboniferous.
The Permian Period, at the end of the Paleozoic era, marked a great changes in the Earth's climate and appearance. Towards the middle of the period the climate became warmer and milder, the glaciers receded, and the continental interiors became drier. Much of the interior of Pangaea was probably arid, with great seasonal fluctuations (wet and dry seasons), because of the lack of the moderating effect of nearby bodies of water. This drying tendency continued through to the late Permian, along with alternating warming and cooling periods.
Reptile and amphibian fauna
Early Permian terrestrial faunas were dominated by pelycosaurs and amphibians, the middle Permian by primitive therapsids such as the dinocephalia, and the late Permian by more advanced therapsids such as gorgonopsians and dicynodonts. Towards the very end of the Permian the first archosaurs appeared, a group that would give rise to the dinosaurs in the following period. Also appearing at the end of the Permian were the first cynodonts, which would go on to evolve into mammals during the Triassic. Another group of therapsids, the therocephalians (such as Trochosaurus), arose in the Middle Permian. There were no aerial vertebrates.
The Permian period saw the development of a fully terrestrial fauna and the appearance of the first large herbivores and carnivores. It was the high tide of the anapsides in the form of the massive Pareiasaurs and host of smaller, generally lizzard-like groups. A group of small reptiles, the diapsids started to abound. These were the ancestors to most modern reptiles and the ruling dinosaurs as well as pterosaurs and crocodiles.
Thriving also, were the early ancestors to mammals, the synapsida, which included some large reptiles such as Dimetrodon. Reptiles grew to dominance among vertebrates, because their special adaptations enabled them to flourish in the drier climate.
I caught a little bit of O'Reilly on Fox the other night while someone was channel surfing. He had Carl Rove as his guest. He quizzed Rove abot global warming and the reponse was something like the administration has done wonderful things to mitigate climate change over its 8 years, that investment in green technologies... is greatly increased due to the Dubya administration...
O'Reilly is pretty much "Give me the neocon position and I'll fill in the details", but he was pissed. There are no boundaries to Rove's BS, no depths too low, and guys like him will be writing "history" for future elections.
So that's what is going on. Dubya is letting EPA, NOAA and NASA tell the story, and he plans on taking credit for this stuff and doing good things while he really has everything clamped down for big oil, king coal business as usual. Not to mention the pundits and syndicated columnists (Will, Limbaugh, Thomas, Avery, Roberts, Hannity, Kelly...) who whore for the neocons trying to debunk the science.
"Warming Is Major Threat To Humans, EPA Warns"
Bush demands 'Polar Invasion Force' to protect against new menace.
The title more appropriately should be:
"Humans Are Major Threat To Environment"
"Regulating greenhouse gases will do no good unless we also regulate our BREEDING!"
Unless "breeding" is regulated through long-term investments in health care and education, both of which are medium- to long-term solutions, then 'regulating' our "breeding" habits will be futile.
I always assume, when reading/hearing calls for population control, that its advocates are also advocates of massive investments in health and education on a global scale (perhaps even enshrining these as human rights). But so few posts and lay people discussing this issue mention these things that I can only assume, and hope that the posters are not advocating the curtailing of developing country births in order to continue their own (society's) consumption habits.
Kill all the humans.
At this point, anyone who doesn't know about the dangers
of global warming, hey, you are beyond belief. You could
be the new icon for the denial society. I have an old
Esquire magazine, dated 1941 and it has an article on GW that
is relevant today. So after 67 years, the EPA signs on. Give me
a big f___ing break. Johnny come lately doesn't begin to describe
you. I know you didn't come into existence until the Nixon era, but
didn't any of you do a little homework before you signed on to
your cush government jobs. Probably not, that's not
what you were being paid for was it?
You are all going to have to excuse me but why is it that sitting here in Southern Florida with jobs non existent, home market a mess, gas and food prices skyrocketing that I don't feel too optomistic that there will be a rush by the people to help in getting the climate under control using any version of clean alternatives?
Last night I went to a local sponsored event by a hotel that has recently been LEED certified for its contribution for going green and I was the only one who showed up on my bike in pearls. All the rest were having their Mercedes valet parked while the engines ran and ran. There was one other person besides myself who had any information in their hands. The rest were there to drink free, eat free and network for themselves.
Do I sound bitter?
MiMiCcs should be in here any minute to deny that there is any evidence of global climate change...
Bush, obvious to anyone with a more evolved intellect than Rove and Fox; is guilty of innumerable crimes against humanity. Not to mention war crimes. The solution: ??? round up anyone who cares about the future of the human race and put them in camps??? Then steal the next 5 elections??!!!
Was thinking if I had children going to college, I would "insist" it have 2 basic courses: 1.) How the world really works: government, politics, corporations, the economy, religion, the media.
2.) How to survive or even thrive in a failing society.
My guess is not one university in the USA makes an attempt.
Yale does have Skull and Bones where, GW allegedly swore allegiance to Satan while someone shoved a human femur up his a@@.
God Bless America!
-George Evans MA
I read that McCain graduated in the bottom 5% of his class at the Naval Academy.
Remind Me, What was it Darwin said about stupidity?
Just in time to save the day.
The world is cooling, sea levels are falling, ice is spreading, there are fewer extreme weather events, and it was hotter 1000 years ago.
Following the end of the Sun's most active period in over 11,000 years, the last 10 years have displayed a clear cooling trend as temperatures post-1998 leveled out and are now plummeting.
BTW, you people do know that Bush controls the EPA. So this should make you wonder " Joel D. Scheraga of the EPA's Global Change Research Program said that there was no political interference in the report's findings or the timing of its release.
"The answer is unequivocally 'no,' " he said."
Meanwhile, Al Gore calls for a carbon tax. Obama is all for carbon cap and trade which will mean higher electricity costs, and great profits for those trading in carbon credits. China will continue to make the skys dark with soot. CO2 will continue to rise, but who cares, it does not cause significant global warming, and might even prevent the coming ice age, or at least delay it.
The world has an ice age every 100,000 years or so. It lasts on average 88,000 years, and an interglacial period follows that lasts on average 12,000 years. This is the climate cycle of the last few million years. We are 12,000 into the current interglacial in which temperatures have risen 6 deg C, and sea levels risen 120 meters. A new ice age is on the horizon. The neo malthusians would love to see a new ice age, since this would wipe out a few billion people and give man a new start (ever wonder why Bush bought all that land in Paraguay and why we are suppressing Africas development with civil wars, famine and disease?). The problem is it just might be that mans CO2 and land use is helping to prolong the interglacial and postponing the ice age. So we need to reduce CO2 and preserve forests to make sure we enter the new ice age. Thats one hyopthesis.
John Sullivan- "Regulating greenhouse gases will do no good unless we also regulate our BREEDING!" Garvey - "Unless "breeding" is regulated through long-term investments in health care and education, both of which are medium- to long-term solutions, then 'regulating' our "breeding" habits will be futile"
But our fertility rates are already below replacement levels and have been for 35 years. Population growth is due to immigration. To compensate for population growth due to immigration, they make health care expensive to make sure people will not live long enough to collect social security and medicare, or at least, not for long. As a result our life expectancy is at the bottom of the developed world.
Yes, a much bigger threat than terrorism in any rational analysis of numbers of lives lost and/or displaced... so we should take the money we're spending on "terrorism" now and spend it on solving the global warming problem instead, obviously.
civil behavior-I've got my bandana. I have no pearls to wear whilst riding my bike, but I do have some kickin' earrings my daughter made me.
I cannot imagine DC being worse than it is now in the summer with the humidity.
Here in the midwest, I'm "looking forward" to more summers where we get torrential rains, followed by weeks of no rain, followed by more flooding. We've had three 100 or 500 year floods/rains since August which unleash the darn flood mosquitoes. And this is minor compared to other parts of the country and world.
If us humans do not regulate ourselves, then eventually Gaia will regulate us.
Am very glad you brought up the PERMIAN age ~ANN R. KEY~. So has the distinguished vertabrate paleontologist, ~MICHAEL J. BENTON~.
The greatest mass extintion of life of all time on Earth, occurred very suddenly during the Permian period and ~M. J. Benton~ explains in detail exactly how it is about to reoccur. All life down to the microbal level was wiped out within hours when the oceans methane was released into Earth's atmosphere during the Permian era and that was due to rapid global warming. ___(Not gobal warming caused from burning fossil fuels.)
Only some deep sea life, bacteria and perhaps some earthworms and other such types of land animals survived. Benton states that unless we stop burning coal and fossil fuels, we will have a repeat of the Permian era. We can prevent it if we desre to do so and if people will stop arguing that we humans are not causing this current global warming era.
We are causing it with Human activity, primarily from burning fossil fuels. Annually, that human activity is equivelant to the Co-2 which would be produced by 17,000 volcanoes the size of Hawaii's Kilauea.
Here is an analogy: Suppose scientists discovered that a miles wide asteroid, large enough to destroy all life on Earth, was due to strike the Earth near San Diego, California at twelve noon, on August 3rd, 2028. Do you believe we humans would attempt to avert that coming disaster? ___ I do.
Now one major problem we have here with global warming is, the credible scientists are unsure of precicely when the ocean's methane will release into the atmosphere, they cannot put a specific date and time on it. No one can. So here are people arguing about what happen 50 to 100 years or more, or "decades" into the future.
We don't have 50 years to act, we may not have 20. I sure don't have even 20, but my children and their's do and it isn't fair for us adults who control their destiny, to tell them and their chilldern to fuck off, and not do anything about it.
And please don't anyone tell us that life on Earth will continue and Mother Nature will insure that, even if all humans are gone. That likely is so, but we don't have to cause that scenerio to happen. We should be concerned about NOW, not what life on Earth will be like a million or more years from now.
Very few if any 'noted' scientists disagree with ~Michael Benton's~ premise, that a methane release disaster is surely going to happen if we don't reduce the amount of excess C02 we put into our atmosphere and do so soon. Any arguments with the links I posted at 3:30 pm?
There is really no need to do anything.We are in for a ride as our planet transits the galatic equator......and culminates in a magnetic polar shift.
galactic
The world is cooling?
Polluted air (particularly the Asian dirt that has been swirling recently0 has been demonstrated to have a dual effect of warming the atmosphere as particles absorb sunlight and of cooling the earth's surface as the particles curb the amount of sunlight that reaches the ground. In the worst case scenario the surface acoolness but warmer atmosphere might serve to mask global warming leading the public (and Mimi) to misinform and underappreciate the full magnitude of anthropogenic warming.
Sea levels are rising?
Local sea levels are subject to many influences including wind and ocean currents that can "pile up" the ocean water locally, temperature anomalies like El Nino, local gravity wells of ice sheets and land masses and regional salinity levels that alter the water's density. Measurement is further complicated by changes in land height as the Earth's crust moves up or down from tectonic motion and rebounding after long and recently ended glaciation although these complications are avoided by using satellite measurements.
SInce sea levels are not uniform around the globe due to the above mentioned issues this is undoubtedly of interest but it does not in any way alter the global climate change picture.
The sea ice is spreading?
The creeping of added ice around the edges of the Antarctic shelf sounds like a winning argument. Sounds like, not is. It is seasonal ice not the great ice mass we have come to know and is a misleading statement. The actual ice mass has been receding dramatically.
To make matters worse the added sea ice actually portends warmer temperatures. You see, according to a 2005 NASA-funded study, warmer temperatures have caused greater snowfall around the continent's edges, where the open oceans provide plenty of raw material for precipitation. Get it? Warmer air. Aerosols heat the atmosphere but cool the surface masking the true effects of global warming.
The only obvious reason why deniers want to refute global warming is that they are too self absorbed and unwilling to be part of the solution. It doesn't matter what Al Gore says.
The debate is over. The monologue of ignorance is simply a way of preserving a lifestyle they are unwilling to change. Can you imagine what kind of degenerate mind it takes to write off the entire planet for your own personal gain?
"Can you imagine what kind of degenerate mind it takes to write off the entire planet for your own personal gain?"
Yes, that of a Republican free-market capitalist.
We knew this decades ago. And did precious little. But then there were still a lot of SUVs to sell while gas was cheap.
Get a bike. Use it to do actual stuff.
Adding to some information on volcanoes.
For about two-thirds of the last 400 million years, geological evidence suggests CO2 levels and temperatures were considerably higher than present. The theory is that volcanic eruptions elevated CO2 concentrations. According to the USGS Volcano Hazards Program, human activities today emit 130 times as much CO2 as volcanoes. However, we are in a period of very low Volcanic activity. And comparisons of mans emissions with regard to a single rather puny volcano is silly, as well as misleading.
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/pastcc.html
Man is responsible for 3% of the planets CO2 emmissions. Repeat, 3%. And temperatures have only risen 0.6 deg C while CO2 has increased from 280 ppm to 380 ppm. Most of the warming is in the Northern Hemishpere where most of the worlds population and land is. It has been beneficial. The plants are happy, with plenty of food, crop yields are up.
I understand that when sea ice melts, it does not cause an increase in sea levels. That is not the case when fresh water ice melts. When the vast quantities of fresh water ice in Antarctica melts, that indeed will cause sea levels to rise as much as 250 or more feet.
As ~CIVIL BEHAVIOR~ has just so well stated, the ice packs in Antarctica are thawing at an alarming rate and about 90% of ALL of the fresh water on Earth is in the ice packs of Antarctica. It's sort of difficult to comprehend that fact, when we see the Great Lakes, the mighty rivers of the world, melting glaciers in Greenland, etc, and near 90% of the world's fresh water is Antarctica's ice packs.
All of that is important. The 'MOST' important issue however, is when the (methane gas) which is presently locked up in the ocean's sea-beds is released, that due to warming ocean waters. We or our off-spring will not be here to observe the rising sea levels. That much methane gas bloomiong out into the atmosphere will kill all life within hours, down to the microbal level.
It is possible that some forms of life will survive in the ocean's deeper depths. So we can tell our childeren and grand-kids, that all is not lost, life on the unique water planet Earth may go on. ___ Maybe. I am certain they will be pleased to understand that we adults had the power to insure ALL forms of life could continue, but we declined that option.
So you are saying ~MIMICCS~ that humanity is not responsible for the current global warming and the "excess" Co2 in our atmosphere, which has risen dramatically for the past 200 years, -ever- since- humans- began- burning- fossil- fuels- at- an- accelerated- rate.
YOU ~MIMICCS~ therefore disagree with the highly respected and highly regarded scientists, people who have spent their entire adult lives studying the planet, the oceans and the atmosphere, who state otherwise. They have a "consensus" that human activity is causing the current global warming, yet YOU keep posting comments here at Common Dreams which only tend to confuse and detract from the facts.
I also posted a link here which states humanity emits as much Co2 from burning fossil fuels, as would (17,000) volcanos, NOT ONE puny volcano as you posted. Would you be so kind as to reply to those links I posted and explain to ALL here, why those authors are incorrect? ___ Of course you won't, none of you DENIERS ever do.
And thank you for posting that informative link ~MIMICCS~. I see you posted a couple of sentences from it with an intent to show humanity is not respnsible for the current global warming. After reading the entire article, I see nothing there to suggest or prove, that humanity is not the cause of the problem. And absolutly nothing about the methane gas issue, which is "rather" important, since if it releases, everyone on Earth will die and we may still have time to prevent that disaster.
The causes and dangerous effects of global warming have been cited as a prime concern for two decades by the international scientific community. Despite their impeccable credentials, the Bush team and their energy cartel supporters have rebuked their conclusions with nothing more than right wing rhetoric, and have transformed the EPA from a non political watchdog for the environment to a tool for the right wing.
Now after nearly seven years into this administration, the EPA concedes that we have contributed largely to global warming and that it is a concern.
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON??
Why it's too late
Baseball caps.
My wife and I were on a bus tour from Ontario to Lake Placid yesterday and I was hoping to find a store that sold straw hats. Low and behold, the bus parked right in front of a store called "Where'd you get that Hat?" Anyways, my point is this: I walked into the store and I said to David, the owner, "Look at all of these beautiful hats, and everybody out there is wearing ball caps."
Look around and see how many people are wearing baseball caps. It says alot about our society.
Shit It's me!!! ___ I wear a basball cap.
I still jack off occasionally too and I'm 72 years old. Is that also a society problem? My dad warned me once that if I kept doing that, my brains would run out of my ears. I've had double bubble gum stuffed in my ears for the past 60 years. Ya know what my favorite word is? ___ WHAT?
MiMiCcS: "Man is responsible for 3% of the planets CO2 emmissions. Repeat, 3%."
The natural CO2 emissions are re-absorbed at an equal rate which stabilizes the atmospheric CO2 level, that is, until man increases the emissions rate beyond the re-absorpion rate to make the CO2 level rise year after year. It only takes a few decades of robber baron profiteering to reach the tipping point. Just a handful of robber barons damaging every species and organism on the planet.
When Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt they wandered in the wilderness for forty years because it took them that long to vote. Now can we get on with it?
First of all, thank you to Kem Patrick for your persistent defense of reality! And, again I will plug the incredibly inexpensive dvd, The Eleventh Hour, in which it is passionately and graphically laid out that it is not only the eleventh hour, but eleven fifty-nine and fifty-nine seconds. So, as cited in the latest edition of the Monthly Review, the Stern report states that "radical mitigation of the problem SHOULD NOT BE ATTEMPTED. The costs to the world economy of ensuring that atmospheric CO2 stabilized at present levels or below would be prohibitive, destabilizing capitalism itself. Paths requiring very rapid emission cuts are unlikably to be economically viable." The article goes on to say, "Consequently, in order to keep the treadmill of profit and production going the world needs to risk environmental Armegeddon."
James Gustave Speth, known as the ultimate insider , wrote Bridge at The End of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability(2008). He writes, "Capitalism as we know it today is incapable of sustaining the environment. The crucial problem (now quoting quoting the Monthly Review article by Foster, Clarke, and York)is exponential economic growth, which is the driving force of capitalism...the expansion of output overwhelms all increases in efficiency in throughput of materials and energy...growth is the enemy of the environment."
I don't have the exact quote from one of the participants in the Eleventh Hour because I keep loaning it out; but, it goes something like: "I can hear the screams of future generations!"
In pursuit of greater clarity, could you please elaborate on what you mean by the terms "our" and "we" in your posts.
"John Sullivan- "Regulating greenhouse gases will do no good unless we also regulate our BREEDING!" Garvey - "Unless "breeding" is regulated through long-term investments in health care and education, both of which are medium- to long-term solutions, then 'regulating' our "breeding" habits will be futile"
But our fertility rates are already below replacement levels and have been for 35 years. Population growth is due to immigration. To compensate for population growth due to immigration, they make health care expensive to make sure people will not live long enough to collect social security and medicare, or at least, not for long. As a result our life expectancy is at the bottom of the developed world."
Thanks
`
`
What the hell is going on with my last post to Robert Settgast? It disappeared and some blanks show up instead.
I wrote, Hi there ~Robert Settgast~ you asked, ___ "What the hell is going on?"
What is going on is, the "powers who be" can now easily see with their own eyes, that the Arctic is thawing and will very likely be ice free within three to five years. They are finally scared and they should be, and they realize that time is running short, as ~RUMILUV~ so well stated.
The consequences of Gore/or the entire "care for your planet" movement being wrong, would be that we all learn more sustainable lifestyles, ensure a decent habitat for our offspring, and learn that not all profit comes from money.
The consequences of if the anti-conservation movement being wrong is that we will see massive transformations in the environment, which affects everyone and everything on the planet. Not even the super-rich will be immune. Hellfire and brimstone come to mind…but it might have to freeze over first?
I am fascinated by the argument that global warming is a natural phenomenon and that human activity is not connected to it. Again we see this "either/or" thinking that is typical of a narcissistic personality.
How about "both/and" thinking? Sure, there are natural phenomenon which contribute to greenhouse gases AND humans are also contributors.
It may be that the Earth's atmosphere would be heating up even if we were not here, but clearly we have accelerated the process. Duh.
Common sense dictates that we see what is right in front of us and take responsibility for our part. If humanity is to survive it is incumbent upon us to do what we can. If it's not enough then so be it, but if we can curtail our contributions to global warming we may at least slow it down and prolong our time on this beautiful planet.
http://www.healingmagic.org/articles/Narcissism.pdf
MiMiCcS - have you considered the concept of balance, and how our increasing resource extraction and transfer of C02 has affected the balance? What is your investment in NOT seeing what's happening? You might want to take a look inward and ponder why it is that you seem hell bent on affirming our (humanities) uninvolvement in climate change. Read my article and look in the mirror. No blame, just a nudge, a wake up call...not just for you, for all of our species.
At the heart of climate change is our traditional belief that we can take from the planet without giving back. The earth and all its resources are being converted into PROFIT as never before in our history. Our advances in technology and the advent of the global village have intensified this human endeavor to a point now where the planet can no longer sustain our demands.
Seeking profit as the single goal of the corporate sector is an impossible task as basic food and energy prices rise to unsustainable levels.
In the end this traditional financial management of our natural resources will cause wide spread starvation and discontent, whilst also hitting at the very goals it seeks to achieve in ever increasing levels of profit.
To survive we must not eradicate profit but move the emphasis away from its sole requirement of business to ensure we begin to replace and better manage what we are currently taking out without heed or hindrance.
If fertility rates are below replacement, why are there almost 7 billion people in the world today when there were only 2.5 billion of us in 1950? Looks like a trend to me.
Don't confuse the American rich honky gringo howley longknife roundeyes rate with the rest of the world.
Maybe human activity is reponsible for "only" 3% of CO2 emissions, but it contributes 0% to photosynthesis. No matter how big your storage tank is, if you remove 100 gallons/hr and add 103 gallons/hr, its eventually going to overflow.
I think I figured out where MiMi is coming from. She is a LaRouchite. Lyndon LaRouche is quite a character and has a small but devoted following.
For him, global warming theory is at odds with (his) Christianity so is a "false religion". Secondly, he believes that global warming is a deep conspiracy that includes both Bush and Gore... for whatever purpose. Some of LaRouche's global warming "facts" that are very similar to MiMis were traced by George Monbiot to typos, a lazy botanist asked to write an article, and a non-existant 1989 article supposedly in Science magazine.
NOAA, EPA and NASA have the real data and real scientsts.
Thank you kindly ~BBR, Merlin, Baruch, Tesla, Rumiluv, Rtdrury~.
Oh and thank you too ~Huntz~ You got me thinking about the hats deal and I went out and bought a straw hat and threw all of those damn basball hats in the trash. I also stopped playing with my mouse and finally dug that bubble gum out of my ears. Wow, I can hear again. I didn't know until today that my mate of 52 years can't stand me.
But we'd better not worry about the straw hats, it's the methane that's our number one concern. ___ Or it damn sure should be.
People need to get it through their thick skulls that this thing is a serious Code Red right now. Not tomorrow, not 10 years from now. The hammer is coming down right now. They need to immediately ban SUV's work out some kind of program for people to trade them in for cars geting no less than 35 mpg. The cafe standard needs to be 35 mpg right now. Incandescent bulbs need to be banned immediately, recycling mandatory, etc etc and the punishment for violations needs to equal that of being caught with ten pounds of marijuana. We need to get off oil 20 years ago. Wind, Solar, etc, all these assholes with their ipods and american idol need to wake the fuck up, we are living in seriously critical times, i know its fucked up but the time for frivolity is gone even for the kids, everyone needs to be doing something to save our fucking asses.....