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TechnoratiObama Left With Little Time to Curb Global Warming
WASHINGTON - When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid.
![[A protester stands behind a painting during a demonstration rally in Poznan in this December 6, 2008 file photo. (Reuters/Tobias Schwarz)
]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/globalwarming-1215.jpg "globalwarming-1215.jpg")
Since Clinton's inauguration, summer Arctic sea ice has lost the equivalent of Alaska, California and Texas. The 10 hottest years on record have occurred since Clinton's second inauguration. Global warming is accelerating. Time is close to running out, and Obama knows it.
"The time for delay is over; the time for denial is over," he said on Tuesday after meeting with former Vice President Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming. "We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now that this is a matter of urgency and national security and it has to be dealt with in a serious way."
But there are powerful political and economic realities that must be quickly overcome for Obama to succeed. Despite the urgency he expresses, it's not at all clear that he and Congress will agree on an approach during a worldwide financial crisis in time to meet some of the more crucial deadlines.
Obama is pushing changes in the way Americans use energy, and produce greenhouse gases, as part of what will be a massive economic stimulus. He called it an opportunity "to re-power America."
After years of inaction on global warming, 2009 might be different. Obama replaces a president who opposed mandatory cuts of greenhouse gas pollution and it appears he will have a willing Congress. Also, next year, diplomats will try to agree on a major new international treaty to curb the gases that promote global warming.
"We need to start in January making significant changes," Gore said in a recent telephone interview with The Associated Press. "This year coming up is the most important opportunity the world has ever had to make progress in really solving the climate crisis."
Scientists are increasingly anxious, talking more often and more urgently about exceeding "tipping points."
"We're out of time," Stanford University biologist Terry Root said. "Things are going extinct."
U.S. emissions have increased by 20 percent since 1992. China has more than doubled its carbon dioxide pollution in that time. World carbon dioxide emissions have grown faster than scientists' worst-case scenarios. Methane, the next most potent greenhouse gas, suddenly is on the rise again and scientists fear that vast amounts of the trapped gas will escape from thawing Arctic permafrost.
The amount of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere has already pushed past what some scientists say is the safe level.
In the early 1990s, many scientists figured that the world was about a century away from a truly dangerous amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, said Mike MacCracken, who was a top climate scientist in the Clinton administration. But as they studied the greenhouse effect further, scientists realized that harmful changes kick in at far lower levels of carbon dioxide than they thought. Now some scientists, but not all, say the safe carbon dioxide level for Earth is about 10 percent below what it is now.
Gore called the situation "the equivalent of a five-alarm fire that has to be addressed immediately."
Scientists fear that what's happening with Arctic ice melt will be amplified so that ominous sea level rise will occur sooner than they expected. They predict Arctic waters could be ice-free in summers, perhaps by 2013, decades earlier than they thought only a few years ago.
In December 2009, diplomats are charged with forging a new treaty replacing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which set limits on greenhouse gases, and which the United States didn'tratify. This time European officials have high expectations for the U.S. to take the lead. But many experts don't see Congress passing a climate bill in time because of pressing economic and war issues.
"The reality is, it may take more than the first year to get it all done," Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said recently.
Complicating everything is the worldwide financial meltdown. Frank Maisano, a Washington energy specialist and spokesman who represents coal-fired utilities and refineries, sees the poor economy as "a huge factor" that could stop everything. That's because global warming efforts are aimed at restricting coal power, which is cheap. That would likely mean higher utility bills and more damage to ailing economies that depend on coal production, he said.
Obama is stacking his Cabinet and inner circle with advocates who have pushed for deep mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas pollution and even with government officials who have achieved results at the local level.
The President-elect has said that one of the first things he will do when he gets to Washington is grant California and other states permission to control car tailpipe emissions, something the Bush administration denied.
And though congressional action may take time, the incoming Congress will be more inclined to act on global warming. In the House, liberal California Democrat Henry Waxman's unseating of Michigan Rep. John Dingell - a staunch defender of Detroit automakers - as head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee was a sign that global warming will be on the fast track.
Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., vowed to push two global warming bills starting in January: one to promote energy efficiency as an economic stimulus and the other to create a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from utilities. "The time is now," she wrote in a Dec. 8 letter to Obama.
Mother Nature, of course, is oblivious to the federal government's machinations. Ironically, 2008 is on pace to be a slightly cooler year in a steadily rising temperature trend line. Experts say it's thanks to a La Nina weather variation. While skeptics are already using it as evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming.
The average global temperature in 2008 is likely to wind up slightly under 57.9 degrees Fahrenheit, about a tenth of a degree cooler than last year. When Clinton was inaugurated, 57.9 easily would have been the warmest year on record. Now, that temperature would qualify as the ninth warmest year.
Associated Press writer Dina Cappiello contributed to this report.
43 Comments so far
Show AllYou people are quacks! Do you believe everything Al Gore says?
snydly
Certainly not. That's why we few are examining the main "thing" that he's "said"---the IPCC ice core data chart that is the shank of his statements about climate change. That chart has been vetted through the UN and the Nobel people.
There are things he's said about it and things he's left unsaid, and, probably, things he will not say. But with that chart and other earth science information we may be able to see what awaits us in the near future.
Want to help?
Global warming is a process the world goes through. We did not cause it and can't stop it. All it is is a smoke screen to keep us from knowing how bad this and other governments are ripping us off by the boat load. Air quality is a problem granted, but isn't uncovering the corrupt officials that run this world a little more important? Come on! Pull your heads out people and wake up!
"1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore"
Actually it wasn't. The science was there at the time, but it was not convenient for the Clinton's DLC directed administration to take action.
Too bad for the Earth that VP Al Gore, who was in place throughout that time and COULD HAVE called more attention to it then, chose to wait.
I don't think it's ever been explained WHY he didn't do more then, since he clearly KNEW the importance of the issue and followed through AFTER his time as Clinton's second.
I applaud his focus on the issue since, as well as his production of "An Inconvenient Truth."
George W. Bush certainly holds the record for the most damage done to the Earth in just about every way. But, let's not re-write history to give him all the blame on this one. Clinton and Gore COULD HAVE done a much better job explaining the problem to the American people during their eight years in office.
###
The science has never been there, a bunch of lies have been though. Do you really think there is no reason we came out of the ICE age. Name me one legitimate scientist that believes this? You name me one and I'll give you five that think it's a made up conspiracy.
I find the paucity of comment to this article rather disturbing. I know the coming economic debacle may be on everyone's mind right now, and a global economic depression may be one way to address global warming. But, just 6 months ago, at least a hundred comments would have been posted.
---USAn---
I'm a little disappointed with commondreamers in that too many here seem to have trouble seeing through the fog of pseudo-science. The same corporate-controlled media that sold the public on Big Bad Bin Laden the Boogie Man has pulled the same kind of trick with Big Bad Global Climate Change. Whether from the Left or from the Right the Insiders are seducing us into a form of global governance, which they themselves admit will be a new feudalism.
For a challenging counterpoint check out "Michael Crichton: Environmentalism: Science or New World Religion?" at www.sillyConValley.net
Michael Crichton, thankfully dead, was a right wing whacko willing to pretend to scientific knowledge out of his field in order to collect those tasty coal industry dollars. His disinformation was debunked years ago on RealClimate.org's post Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion II: Return of the Science.
The coal industry stands to lose hundreds of billions of dollars a year if we actually deal with climate change. They have more than enough money to support a full-time disinformation campaign that puts the tobacco industry and child porn promoters to shame in the amount of damage it does. Burning coal, aside from climate effects, puts thousands of tons of mercury into the air every year and that finds it's way back into the food chain. Add the fact that climate change is disrupting crop yields and causing famines and you have a legacy of indirect mass murder.
Don't believe the deniers. They are here to poison all wells.
Fighting the forces of rather dim lighting wherever they may be found!!
Agreed Pangolin. Thanks for the link. I think these deniers are the absolute exemplars of pure evil.
People who spew this crap are part of the problem. Global warming deniers like Crichton and stupidconvalley are creating the illusion that the jury is still out, and that there are reasonable scientist who disagree about the dire threat of a drastic warming of our atmosphere. There is a wide consensus among the scientists across the world, that human caused global warming is real, and is the single most important environmental issue of our time.
For the fools above it's all about keeping the big polluters polluting, as the corporations continue to rape the planet for the dollars...
snydly
This just keeps unfolding in amazing ways. I want to start with another look at the IPCC/Gore ice core data chart of CO2/Temp dev. Do you see 5 or 6 cycles of weather across the 650ky? See how the last 3 resemble an electrocardiagram printout? Spike to spike to spike? Like Gaia's heartbeat. Each of these is an iceage. The spike is significant in that it reveals the character of the change, and hints at the mechanics of the change.
Most of organic life, including humans, have survived through these iceages.
In the previous cycles the temp and CO2 levels were defeated and reversed before methane was released in quantities sufficient to wipe out life.
I believe these reversals are the result of a change in the angular momentum of the planet brought about by the transfer of land-borne ice/water mass to the equatorial bulge which puts pressure on the tectonic plates, activates geo-tectonic undersea volcanism, heats the oceans, and provides the ecosphere with the energy and moisture necessary to move the water mass back to the poles via massive storms which will cover the polar thirds of the planet with ice thick enough that it does not melt off seasonally, but remains to reflect solar energy off the surface, thus defeating and reversing the spike, re-sequestering the methane and saving 30% of our sorry asses.
I realize that last sentence just sloughed 90% of the readers (if there was more than one).
So. Going cold turkey on fossil burning is all we CAN do, and what we MUST do to bring the key environmental factors back into natural, historical norms, and let Nature take its course. If we don't get a climate reversal, we're screwed. If we get one that's altered by our excess GHGs, we're screwed.
Evidently, the previous reversals occurred before recordable ice layers were melted off Greenland. That's a clue.
Evidently, the previous reversals occurred before the methane got loose. That's a clue.
The Navy or Woodshole may have the paleo-magnetic record of the magnetic striping of the mid-Atlantic ridge which would show if geo-tectonic activity occurred co-incident with past global warming cycles. That would be a big clue.
When this information was available for timely action, the powers that be gave us leaders who squandered our resources on war to secure more of the fossils to burn to steal away more time, concentrate wealth, and, in effect, pack the life boats with only first class passengers. They should be relieved of power this afternoon, and all their policies reversed so that the steps necessary for our survival can begin. In 35 days, if we can't get him into the White House by tomorrow morning, Obama will be able to access that info from the Navy, or whomever else has it.
If there is any response to this post, I would be delighted to go on, but, so far, it feels like these posts have been akin to throwing message bottles into the surf from a desert island...or a quarantined site.
Perhaps you can find the chart on Google somewhere.
Snydly,
Are you a geologist? A physicist?
Because the explanation you give is just gibberish of earth-science words strung together. Continental glaciation has nothing to do with oceanic plate volcanism (mid-ocean ridges or hot-spots) and ability for volcanism to influence water temperatures compared to climatic events - even a few meters from the volcanic vents - is miniscule.
Glacier mass cannot change the angular momentum of the earth because that don't add or remove mass to the earth. Ever heard of conservation of angular momentum? The growth of glaciers southward would change the earths moment of inertia and decrease the rotation (increase the length of day) some small fraction of a second a year you'd need an atomic clock and the world-class observatory to measure it. And all this has it would have nothing to do with the plate-tectonic forces.
The reason that massive methane runaway global warming from methane clathrate releases have been geologically rare (the last one is hypothesized to have caused the great Permian-Triassic extinction 250 my ago) is simply that there have not been sufficient climatic forcings to do it. In the case of the end of the Permian it was massive CO2 releases (not the insignificant heat) from a series of massive flood basalt-type volcanic events of unusual size, plus the unpredented fusing of the continental masses into a single land mass (called pangaea) mass sitting on the equator. These events were without precedent going back at least 600 milllion years.
Today, the geolologically unprecedented event is called the capitalist economy and the deliberate uncontrollable human releases of huge qantities of stored carbon into the atmosphere under such a system. I am pessimistic anything will change.
---USAn---
snydly
Thanks, and I mean THANKS for your response.
I am neither of those specialties, but a Generalist, one of the early ones---a B.S.
with a minor in counter-intuition and non-linear thought.
But, I'm always willing to learn. Here are a few more factors upon which I base my pseudo-science:
The planet is not perfectly spherical, it has what is called an equatorial bulge. I hypothesize that water mass which is ice, atop a land mass, and spinning, has a certain momentum, or inertia. When that (generally polar areas) ice melts, the water (mass) flows into the oceans, to the equatorial latitudes and makes the bulge more massive. Perhaps it is precisely because angular momentum is conserved that a change in location of mass would produce forces on the tectonic plates. How much water? Gore, etal, speak of 1-20 feet of overall sea level rise, happening sooner, rather than later. The other half of that is that a landmass relieved of the weight of x% of its ice, would tend to rise/float a little higher on the magma and also disturb the plate equilibrium, esp around Greenland.
I must say that I have no idea how much undersea volcanism can heat the water, and it may very well be that volcanism will not add the last two degrees of warming in such a way. But without such a tremendous boost of energy(heat), I find no way to explain how a mass of ice and snow, deep enough to not melt off seasonally, could get deposited on the poles and down to, what? 35N or so. Also, we need a satisfactory way to explain the defeat and reversal of the spikes shown on the IPCC chart. Isn't the main characteristic of a graphic spike that everything is going along pretty much as expected...until it isn't? What is it that makes those spikes pointy? ("Pointy" is a pseudo-scientific term-[chuckle]). Can the disruption of the Gulf Stream move that much water mass? If so, I say let's get on with it before the methane is cut loose.
I value and look forward to your response.
The ice would still have little effect. Yes, continental ice sheets depress the continents like a loaded raft, and they rebound when the ice melts, but this has little effect on plate tectonics - he depression of the land may be 2-3000 feet, but the convection currents in the upper mantle that drive the plates go down several hundred miles.
Likewise the effect of added weight at southern latitudes would be miniscule.
And volcano simply can't heat much water compared to the huge volume of ocean water. I saw a movie once taken by poeple scuba diving right at the edge of an active undersea lava flow on the Hawaii Coast. They could swim right up to the extruding edge of the lava without getting uncomfortably warm.
---USAn---
snydly
Yes, but you're not factoring in the heat I'm taking for posting this counter-intuitive, non-linear scenario...
Cheers, time to sign off----have you watched the new series, "Leversge" on TNT?
Average ocean depth is 3700 m (12,000 ft).
Why would you assume an additional mass of 1-20 feet of water would so overburden tectonic plates as to lead to massive vulcanism ??
As to how massive continental ice sheets form: winter snow doesn't completely melt, leading to higher albedo and colder temps in future years, reinforcing the process.
snydly
Thanks, Brian, for responding.
I have been trying to uncover a scenario that would explain the defeat and reversal of the CO2/Temperature-deviation-from-mean spikes evident most clearly at the top of the last 3 cycles as depicted in simplified form by Gore in his book and movie. I am assuming that it accurately approximates the formal IPCC chart in its essentials. The IPCC chart I've seen was close enough, as far as I can make out.
I'm trying to read the chart like a tracker would read a trail.
Notice the steepness of the rise, and the descent. We see that the mean temp doesn't plummet to deep cold, it takes a good long while to reach its lows. A hundred years before the top is about the same temp as 100 after, and so on for several thousand yrs.
I deduce that if snow and ice gradually built up at the poles, the tops would be more rounded, and the climate cycle look more like a sine wave than a spike.
Mean earth temp is in the mid 50's F, well above freezing, and it stays high, even after the reversal.
In Creighton's novel, the devastating storms are the result of the disturbance of the Thermo-hyliene/ gulf stream and the presence of enough moisture and heat to feed those storms. Our scientists tell us that we are about 2C degrees away from a temp tipping point. We are told by Nat'l Geographic that Greenland's ice cap is melting at an accelerated rate, but for any data to be gathered from an ice mass, we must deduce that the reversals are triggered before much ice melts off.
We've got a lot of melting going on in the last few years (and, of course, some snowing too, it's not a one way street).
If we wait around for another 20 years at these temperature levels, wouldn't G-land end up bald?
So I have asked, What mechanism could trigger a reversal while preserving G-land's ice cap?
Above, the thing about mass re-location, momentum and earth crust floating on magma presents the possibility of the plate/undersea volcanism idea coming into play.
It would be sudden, as the reversals are depicted as sudden. Whew! this has dragged on---it might be kicked off the site for length, so I'll stop now. Next will be a req for further data from the pros...
RESPONSE TO THE SKEPTICS and to MikeCorbeil
Hello Mike. I looked up http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11383
(www.worldnet is not available) and I am not impressed. They cannot explain, and therefore do not even mention, two "inconvenient truths." One, the accelerating disappearance of ice in the summer arctic ocean. And two, the meltdown of the arctic tundra.
These two phenomenon are easily observed, and are less ambiguous than the averaging of temperature measurements around the globe. More important, however, is the fact that both meltdowns are involved in positive feedback loops. Sea ice, being white, reflects most sunlight back into space. The more it melts, the more sea surface is exposed; and sea water absorbs sunlight. The more melting, the more heat absorbed, the more heat absorbed, the more melting. Positive feedback.
The feedback loop from the tundra is even worse. Underneath the tundra lie millions of tons of frozen methane, which are now being released. There are newly melted lakes in Siberia that are bubbling up methane so fast (and visibly) that the lakes don't freeze in winter. Pound for pound methane is 23 times as strong a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. The more methane, the warmer it gets, and the warmer it gets, the more methane. Feedback loop. It is only in the past two years that methane levels in the atmosphere have been seen to increase. If these feedback loops continue to accelerate, there will come a time when there is NOTHING we can do to stop them. And one more thing. There is more methane frozen on the floor of the Arctic Ocean than in the tundra, and this year methane has been seen bubbling up from the ocean north of Siberia.
Remember Dick Cheney's one percent rule. If there is a one percent chance of a terrorist attack, we strike. How big a chance do you need of Florida and Long Island going under water (to say nothing of Bangla Desh and Holland) before you act?
Actually, there are much more severe "one-percent" risks than sea level rise, which would be slow enough to accomdate to at any rate (RE developers would love it).
The real risk is the extinction of humanity, and thousands of other species with them. there is even a possibility of runaway climatic disruption so severe that biological diversity never gets re-established over the next 700-800 million years that complex life would have left on earth even without this disruption. There is even the chance of "Venusification" of the earth where it gets too hot for any life at all.
None of these scenarios will happen anytime soon - they'll probably take at least a thousand years - a tiny amount of time geologically. But what we do today, could set us irretrievably on such disasterous paths. The challenge is to get humans to see that their actions are creating suffering in yet-to-be born humans centuries in the future, and this future human suffering is as "real" as that of their own children.
---USAn---
"There is even the chance of "Venusification" of the earth where it gets too hot for any life at all."
This scares me too. Nice post!
The National Snow and Ice Data Center site:
http://www.nsidc.org/
has up-to-date information.
For detailed information on arctic ice, see:
http://www.nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/index.html
I am also concerned about the feedback. One of the articles explains that the new ice is thin and will melt faster in coming years.
No known relationship to RuthK, although K is a fine letter and I do have lots of cousins.
The second article notes two positive temperature feedback effects. Storms and winds have been growing stronger. On average, this creates more convection of heat from the tropics into the polar regions, which inhibited ice growth this November. Also, with the open ocean absorbing heat all summer in the Arctic, much of this stored heat is given back into the atmosphere in the fall, inhibiting ice formation, keeping the water open for yet more heat absorption in September, October and into November, and reducing winter ice growth.
These posts are encouraging. We have a wider variety of responses that by in large are not tirades, but honest statements of what people believe and are not too negative. Maybe we have a Kumbaya (sp?) moment.
If I say that conservatives are responsible for global warming, this post will disappear.
"If I say that conservatives are responsible for global warming, this post will disappear."
I think you just said it.
There are social conservatives who believe that we shouldn't wreck God's garden. It's immoral to poison the land and by doing so, to kill your own descendants.
Then there are money conservatives who believe in drill baby drill. I think that this philosophy does contribute to the emissions that cause global weather wierding.
Social conservatives want uniformity and monoculture. Liberal nature wants diversity and multiculture.
Some fundamentalists have a problem that if there is an "active God", and Jesus saved the world 20 centuries ago, why do we have to worry about man's puny little CO2 emissions. To some, even discussing manmade climate change is an affront to God and his Plan.
You can't say conservatives are responsible for global warming. Its man's fossil fuel based technology and population growth that is responsible. The conservatives just don't want to make the changes and sacrifices necessary to stop GHG emissions. They don't understand that hundreds of millions of climate refugees or worse is not the kind of "market response" they want.
"The conservatives just don't want to make the changes and sacrifices necessary to stop GHG emissions."
Therefore conservatives are responsible for global warming.
There's plenty of time as long as Obama pushes to remove the ban on Industrial hemp and reward bicyclists with huge tax cuts.
Research on the scientists named and cited in the following article would be needed by me before I can say whether, or not, I really believe them in terms of them being fully honest, not associated with energy corporations profiting from business that causes increases in CO2; however, I do agree with what some of them say in the words provided in this article. As for the news media source, WND, I don't have any adequate reading done with their articles, so can't make a general statement, only believing that they're surely not all ... quite correct, say; but, if the citations are valid, truly from the named scientists, then what they say certainly couldn't be blamed on WND.
This is 650 scientists, with 250 who newly joined over the past year, and some of them were on the IPCC panel from which we got the U.N. report, which, in turn, doesn't honestly answer questions posed by critics of global warming and any really true scientist would. Not doing that leaves a question of credibility.
"Scientists abandon global warming 'lie'
650 to dissent at U.N. climate change conference
Global Research, December 13, 2008
www.worldnet daily. - 2008-12-11"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11383
This is denialist crap. Part of a paid disinformation campaign to keep the coal industry alive as it poisons the planet. There isn't a decent peer reviewed journal worth the name that has a published paper supporting climate change denial.
The people who promote these lies are poisoning the planet for money.
Fighting the forces of rather dim lighting wherever they may be found!!
I am very pessimistic. Aside from massive global economic depression, there is absolutely nothing on the economic horizon to indicate anything but accelerating coal use - fed by increasing personal electricity consumption with no end in sight.
I just learned that Verizon's much vaunted "FOIS" fiber optic phone/TV/internet service is a positive energy hog. Their modem and converter boxes consume a total of 80 to 100 watts, 24 hours a day. Tens of millions of eastern US housholds will be forced to get FIOS service whether thay want it or not over the next few years when Verizon abandons it's copper phone wires.
Then throw in all those big HDTV's over the coming year. And from this one bit of "high tech" alone, the average household will be using an additional 3 KWH per day.
---USAn---
Update:
It may be more like 6 KWH per day - in every home!
---USAn---
Did you say that Verizon found a way to BOOST energy consumption in communications lines? Well then bring it on! We need MORE economic activity! I'm not going to risk losing MY job! I know Sen Boxer claims we can boost the economy with energy efficiency. But that idea is pinko commie. A strong America cannot rely on pinko commie ideas. So to hell with energy efficiency. We need to consume MORE energy, not less! By consuming MORE energy we can be SURE that we are expanding the economy, so I can keep my pathetic job. God Bless the Mammon-Drenched States of America!
I don't think we humans are too stupid, just too lazy.
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
'Obama Left With Little Time to Curb Global Warming'
That implies, that there is time to 'curb' 'global warming'.
First the term 'global warming' needs to be retired quickly.
It is an invention of conservative scientists to mock the real
problem of global climate change. Republicans and other
inferior humans made their idiotic statements of "Global
warming is a hoax", because it gets colder now in Boise,
Salt Lake City and other areas of the nation.
Last weeks Ice Storm showed once more that some people
will refer this to doubt global warming.
Despite the fact that intelligent people already know, that
there is no way to reverse the gear this Planet has put in.
Pointing the finger towards those who are responsible for
this is kind of cheap. Greed made people support policies
of exploitation and carelessness towards the Planet.
Eastern philosophy advises man to 'Die before You Die'.
Well its time to do that now. The ensuing changes will take
out the majority of the human species to prevent the
ultimate holocaust on the surface of the Earth.
Sacrificed on the altar of mammon, the shrinking of diversity
of life on Earth has just begun.
What are You going to throw at bush when he comes back?
Shoes won't suffice, something more telling is required, like
an anvil.
The Hopi Indians knew it all along. "In the end, the white man
will realize, that You can't eat money." But that is what we
transformed this planet into. We made the Planet to money.
We sold our future to the corporate wealth. Let's see how
the MIC will save the Planet, or Exxon, or the Bailout Boys.
The movie 'Zeitgeist' gives some interesting insights as of
how everything could get that far. It is called 'Religion' and
as long as there is only one 'christian' in political power,
I would not worry about the little time Obama has to 'curb'
global climate change. Because the time Obama has for
change has already expired.
Only an Atheist Administration will be able to focus on what
is really important. Keeping this Planet habitable for all life
forms, including our own.
Total Global Disarmament Today - A Hope For Tomorrow
May all Beings be blessed. Specifically the weak and ill minded.
"Last weeks Ice Storm showed once more that some people
will refer this to doubt global warming."
Actually, the increasingly common ice storms in upper New York and New England are evidence of the intrusion warm air further north than normal. Such storm's in the past would have been in the form of snow.
Ice storms used to be more associated with the mid-southern states of the US and were rare further north.
But yes, isolated odd events like the freak snow in Baton Rouge last week do tend to grabbed on by climate denialists.
More significantly is how we seem to frequently apprach or break record daily high temperatures, but breaking record daily low temperatures has become very rare over the past decade.
---USAn---
Adding an energy pulse to a fluid system tends to cause pressure waves. Think of dropping a bowling ball in a bathtub. The high energy mark will be higher and the low energy marks will be lower until the extra energy is balanced in the entire system. Because of imbalances between northern and southern hemisphere energy systems energy pulses are normal parts of our weather. Adding to amplitude of those pulses doesn't make things easier for humans or other complex plants and animals.
Things are going great if you're a cockroach, rat or weed though.
Fighting the forces of rather dim lighting wherever they may be found!!
The smoking-gun "signature" of global warming is in higher nighttime temperatures (and secondarily in more record high temperatures in winter than other seasons) due to the enhanced greenhouse effect.
The records would be in the form of "highest daily low temperature", which I have never seen reported by the Weather Service. But such "records" could clearly be retrieved from historic hourly weather station data.
Global warming, banking fraud and bankruptcy -- all related to growth economy. We won't curb global warming until we stop growing and start shrinking. Fat chance of that happening without the help of peak oil, peak water, peak natural gas and massive disease. We humans are too stupid, and Obama's no exception.
Here you go: the health of the planet vs. the health of the economy. The contradictions of capitalism will sink this ship once and for all unless we can start articulating what a new, more sane economic system would look like. Then and only then will people start to fight for something they can believe in.
The more sane system is an economic system focused on sustainable or virtuous cycle agriculture and infrastructure. The use of biochar agriculture and permaculture can build soils, remove carbon from the atmosphere and increase the resilience of economic systems.
Capitalism rapes the land, the seas, the air and the people in order to maximized short term gain for the smallest number of people. The peak expression of capitalism will always be economic boom cycles that promote the wealth of very few people but leave the majority poorer. Look at what Wall Street has done to the world in order to make a roomful of people into billionaires.
Simply tilling charcoal into the soil permanently improves that patch of soil compared with the dirt right next to it. Crop yields and biomass growth increase significantly over controls and up to 400% in multi-year trials. The soil itself retains the greenhouse gases of methane and nitrous oxide as nutrients instead of releasing them into the atmosphere.
With the simple act of crushing a bag of charcoal and burying in your garden you can demonstrate to yourself how we can beat global warming AND increase the income available to the living planet; try it.
Fighting the forces of rather dim lighting wherever they may be found!!
Appalachia can't stand www.wisecountyissues.com anymore of Presidebt Bush's and THE COAL INDUSTRIES prosperity. Wise County is a toxic third world waste dump.