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A Link Between Climate Change and Joplin Tornadoes? Never!
Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing.
It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. It is not advisable to try to connect them in your mind with, say, the fires burning across Texas — fires that have burned more of America at this point this year than any wildfires have in previous years. Texas, and adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico, are drier than they’ve ever been — the drought is worse than that of the Dust Bowl. But do not wonder if they’re somehow connected.
If you did wonder, you see, you would also have to wonder about whether this year’s record snowfalls and rainfalls across the Midwest — resulting in record flooding along the Mississippi — could somehow be related. And then you might find your thoughts wandering to, oh, global warming, and to the fact that climatologists have been predicting for years that as we flood the atmosphere with carbon we will also start both drying and flooding the planet, since warm air holds more water vapor than cold air.
It’s far smarter to repeat to yourself the comforting mantra that no single weather event can ever be directly tied to climate change. There have been tornadoes before, and floods — that’s the important thing. Just be careful to make sure you don’t let yourself wonder why all these record-breaking events are happening in such proximity — that is, why there have been unprecedented megafloods in Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan in the past year. Why it’s just now that the Arctic has melted for the first time in thousands of years. No, better to focus on the immediate casualties, watch the videotape from the store cameras as the shelves are blown over. Look at the news anchorman standing in his waders in the rising river as the water approaches his chest.
Because if you asked yourself what it meant that the Amazon has just come through its second hundred-year drought in the past five years, or that the pine forests across the western part of this continent have been obliterated by a beetle in the past decade — well, you might have to ask other questions. Such as: Should President Obama really just have opened a huge swath of Wyoming to new coal mining? Should Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sign a permit this summer allowing a huge new pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta? You might also have to ask yourself: Do we have a bigger problem than $4-a-gallon gasoline?
Better to join with the U.S. House of Representatives, which voted 240 to 184 this spring to defeat a resolution saying simply that “climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare.” Propose your own physics; ignore physics altogether. Just don’t start asking yourself whether there might be some relation among last year’s failed grain harvest from the Russian heat wave, and Queensland’s failed grain harvest from its record flood, and France’s and Germany’s current drought-related crop failures, and the death of the winter wheat crop in Texas, and the inability of Midwestern farmers to get corn planted in their sodden fields. Surely the record food prices are just freak outliers, not signs of anything systemic.
It’s very important to stay calm. If you got upset about any of this, you might forget how important it is not to disrupt the record profits of our fossil fuel companies. If worst ever did come to worst, it’s reassuring to remember what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told the Environmental Protection Agency in a recent filing: that there’s no need to worry because “populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations.” I’m pretty sure that’s what residents are telling themselves in Joplin today.
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167 Comments so far
Show AllThis is a very different, angrier, and more cynical Bill McKibben than the McKibben of "Step it Up" a couple years ago.
And, this new, angry McKibben is not at all a bad thing.
And the Washington Post actually printed this op-ed too!
Ya, we like the new angrier Bill! Being nice is not going to make much of an impression.
[ it’s reassuring to remember what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told the Environmental Protection Agency in a recent filing: that there’s no need to worry because “populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations.” I’m pretty sure that’s what residents are telling themselves in Joplin today.]
I first read that and put the word 'Japan' where Joplin was.... Same thing tho, remain calm and let the adults stay in control. You know those wonderful adults who brought us the other wonders of the world like; the War on Some Drugs, the War on Communism, the War on Terrorism, the economic system, and so many other blessings like the churches and temples or mosques. Them adults sure know what they're doing don't they? I'd expand the rant and might even make it on topic with the article.
But I need to go out and buy some groceries. Last week they cost 150$, I wonder how much they'll be this week. Of course the price of growlies has nothing to do with the changing conditions on the fields of the farmers....
Look they prayed and prayed and they got raptured! a few days late so yammer at god!
As far as the humans did it b/s goes,, go check the volcano in iceland putting out more co2 per minute than we put out in a year, there was another big one last year too! Humans do a lot of things but when it comes down to it We aint got a thing on nature!
>^^<
[go check the volcano in iceland putting out more co2 per minute than we put out in a year,]
In 2006, the last year I checked, the earth burned 6 thousand million metric tons of coal. One short tonne of coal for every man, woman and child on the planet. I somehow think that your math is off in your claim about what man can do and what nature can do. To be sure, nature is powerful. Much more powerful than we are. But unlike nature, we can think of ways to do what it cannot. Nature couldn't get humans to fly. Nor could nature get man to travel below the surface of the sea.
I know I'm not going to change your mind. You're convinced that the puny humans couldn't possibly have figured out a way of destroying our life support system.
>>>> volcano in iceland putting out more co2 per minute than we put out in a year
Nonsense !!! The Iceland volcano is estimated to be putting out between 150,000 and 300,000 tons per day, or about 55 and 110 million tons per year (around one percent of annual emissions from burning fossil fuels).
Per minute, that would only be about 100 to 200 tons of CO2, so your math is off by a *factor* of 30 to 60 million.
Haven't been hearing from all the preachers how all these floods and tornados are God's punishment for gays and abortion. Think the truth might finally be dawning on them? Nah. They just can't compete with the loud noise from Rand Paul and the other Tea Baggers.
SCRIBE: I was not the one who flagged your post; however, it seems it was addressed at me. I suppose it doesn't occur to you that karma can work through natural agencies, that there might be some ultimate homeostasis that factors into matters that occur on this planet? I subscribe to the belief in a Divine Order, and stand on the foundation of brilliant mystics from yesteryear. These illuminated ones related what was quite clear to them: that there IS a relationship between how people behave (not just according to resource usage patterns), and how the natural world responds. I have quoted Yogananda on the relationship between nature's vast dissolution processes and human engagement in massive aggression, like war. I also posted, 9 months ago, that astrological alignments pointed to a cycle I termed, "The Great Coming Apart." For those critics who try to make me look bad in this forum by pulling up past quotes taken out of context, where are the IT specialists prepared to re-post what I so presciently related months ago? I can admit when I am wrong, yet I deserve credit for being right... although like Cassandra, to know what others are not prepared to receive is hardly a blessing.
The understanding of karma is not "magical" thinking. Those who prize intellect above all human features generally lack the understanding of the soul; and it is chiefly through that vehicle that things not yet known to (or understood by) science can be recognized.
For the record, I'd love to see karmic retribution aim at those directly responsible, but needless to say, I don't run the big karmic show. I am one of its many messengers. Shoot at your peril!
I've seen this term"Magical Thinking" here before. I just wanted to say if we were only lucky enough for magical thinking to manifest in today's world. An extremely high degree of sympathy/empathy is required for magical thinking, Such a person, if he/she were born today, would probably just "shut down" (sort of like autism). Such a degree of "openness" is asking for the war with the darkness (I know from experience). I also know from the other side of the exchange (when I was asked to please leave that towering white castle-in-the-clouds, as my "vibe" was too crude & coarse for those entities living there in that wonderful realm). No,; it's the long, slow, slog uphill for us, in this dark age ("a monsterous, mountained thing" as Henry Vaughn, the mystic/poet said).
INB: While religion, especially Christianity, has phenomenal blood on its hands for its various ruthless campaigns of carnage; and while science owns credit for designing such atrocities as the nuclear bomb and genetically-engineered plant material, leave it to a CD poster to make "magical thinking" the problem of our times!
Many great inventions began through an inspired mixture of poetry and imagination. If anything disparaging is to be said of magical thinking, it's that the world fortified by Mammon and Mars dangerously marginalizes it... apparently there are still people who would like to burn women of the deeper wisdom, as witches. I've experienced the symbolic equivalent in this forum.
One thing I've also recently noticed is that every continent has experienced massive earth changes except for South America. Could it be that with its vast majority of leaders genuinely distributing greater goods and freedoms to their native populations, added to the wisdom of the Indigenous, shamans included, in such initiatives as that taken by Evo Morales in seeing to the recognition (in legal, international bodies) of the rights of Mother Earth that no wake-up calls need happen to summon the higher understanding that's already in evidence there?
You might be onto something there. I've noticed they've taken the real, democratic steps I've wished for decades we would take. Also, their wilderness has not been so "violated" as has ours; true. I guess one can say there are smart ways, and dumb ways, to proceed with technology; not to leave out co-operation with the "Faere Nation" (so-to-say), as the shaman would say we do, in the north; and we DO, in the north.
"Atheist rule simply does not have a good history of protecting human rights and caring for those in need."
What do you call the secular governments of Norway, Sweden, Germany, France, Belgum, the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, etc, etc.? They do far better than that theocracy called the USA. A majority of the most morally-prinicipled and compassionate persons I am familiar with are athiests.
And your "athiestic commies"red-baiting is laughably quaint. Some people really still beleive in that stuff?
I asume you are an Irish American. No modern Irishman would have your hoary viewpoints.
I think if christianity dissapered today, Obama would come out tommorrow as an Athiest, he always been an Athiest and is and Athiest today!
At least we could get rid of that abomination of the national prayer breckfast!
>^^<
But, where would Hilary get her free low-fat flapjacks?
You name some darn awful atheists however today, my thinking goes that an atheist would often be a good indicator of logical-thinking instead of fear-based thinking or comfort-based thinking. That would make one of the most stable foundations for leadership. The other qualities would be a good heart and a good head. No one has any insight into something anyone else cannot have (provided they're not retarded). There are no "special ones" who have access to the future or the past or the afterlife (I think because there isn't one but many would debate otherwise). And the sooner we face this the more fulfilling and humane our lives will become. I look forward to the day when atheists are the norm.
Athiests are too religious for my liking, I prefer to leave it open. The first god to get a 30 share on ABC wins. I really don't care if theres a god or not, it never has affected my life. Except for the Dreary Christmas celibrations when everybody is christian weather they want to be or not!.
>^^<
ahh,angry irishman,the ancient past is long gone,so let us look at our lifetime,,lets say from day one of this socalled christian country,ok!!!!!!!! i'm sure your aware our christian countrystarted from day one murdered 6million or so natives while stealing their land,while socalled cristians took their kids away from them&shipped them off to christian schools to"teach the heathens to be good christians,whew!!!!we all know what so called "kill a commie for christ" folks did to black african slaves and on and on,this socalled christian nation has murdered multi millions(guess hundreds of millions of innocent humanbiengs worldwide&that is fact mister!!!!!!
You make good points, A. Irishman. Christianity (especially the Catholic faction) is such a vast and complex organisation that one can find all things in it; the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful. Its' "crown jewel" are the mystics to be found within its' ranks (especially the Catholic ones), also its' saintly/charatable workers of "good works" like Mother Teresa. The seeds of fascism were launched from particularly reactionary, right-wing, factions within the Catholic faction of christianity (and I can see where one would be tempted to see that it could actually work, given a society composed of "catholic man", like "soviet man" for communism, and "homo economicus" for capitalism).
I see the "adversary" polluting ALL organisations upon planet Earth (the Masons have their "worm". The Illuminati too; ie. the false ones reflecting badly upon the REAL Illuminati).
The battle lines are STILL good vs evil, NOT nation vs nation, nor ideology vs ideology, nor even pure vs corrupt (it's a question of degree of freedom from corruption, allowing enough good to prevail, relatively speaking, which gets tarred as "lesser evil"ism).
Your post is full of double-speak, purporting NOT to wish to damage my reputation while planting disparaging comments designed expressly to do so.
Although you lack the understanding to recognize that there need not be an either-or construct, that BOTH science (where it's correct) and astrology (where it presciently predicts) can point to what's true and operational at any given time. Each has its own domain for inquiry.
My pen name is in party by choice. Some people may mistake the current outline of their physical body for the totality of their essences, I do not. I have lived as an Indigenous American before and retain some of that soul memory. Since many of my beliefs harmonize with that tradition, I took on that name.
You also managed to slip in the innuendo that I was acting like Pat Robertson in suggesting that the south had cause to suffer. To the contrary, I have been speaking about the variety of massive earth change events that have impacted the entire world.
Because you so deftly conflate one thing with another while trying to come off as a sagacious, scientific scholar, I question your motives.
Some people find any thinking that departs from the authoritarian (too often) orthodoxies of science and religion to be dangerous. Fortunately, I am brave and committed enough to what I've found to be true to not allow myself to be silenced by the ignorant, or those with stubborn prejudices. No one in this forum has my background in this particular field of study. And while I bring the astrology (and esoteric) into less than 20% of my posts, it's the preferred way to challenge my credibility on ANY topic, at least by those apparently tasked with doing so. The questioning of my pen name has been done redundantly, too.
I don't pretend to understand engineering, but I am confident in what I do know. I have a LONG list of published credentials in my field, and offer a unique brand of insights to this forum ... Interestingly enough, there are some who genuinely appreciate them. As for the reliable detractors, they have the option of ignoring my posts altogether, which is what I would prefer.
Answer for your own affairs, and I will do likewise.
By asking this question, you show a complete lack of understanding of my post. I 've given you more than enough time today. I'm sure you can find someone else to argue with.
I agree with you. White poeple (who collectively bear a great burden of colonial and genocidal oppression), should not be jocularly adopting the names of other peoples. It would be like me (a person of entirely western European descent) calling myself "Ahab the A-rab". Such a thing would be respectively racist-orientalist or anti-semitic and offensive.
Personally I'm quarrter Chippewa, tribes of the Sioux Nation and the fact that Sue here uses Siouxrose for a commenting name does not bother me in the least. I enjoy her posts although I don't necessarily agree with all she writes about the mysteries of the galxies and monthly position of the planets, etc.
I wanted to use the name Tonto or Chief Joseph but someone else had them. So I use my middle name; and so what, who cares? This name use crap is also all way off topic so I personally won't mention it again.
Sue,,, yes, I'm a Leo.
@Scribe Get real. Some of your comments to Sioux Rose are bordering on the absurd. Stop judging her and start listening and you may learn something. I doubt you will and I haven't near the patience of Sioux Rose so please don't expect a flowing dialogue with me.
Freedom: Thank you. It is HARDLY my imagination that some in this forum repeatedly endeavor to damage my reputation, while misconstruing my posts and their intended content. This is a campaign that began 3 years ago, and it's never stopped. To those who have not had the luxury of being on the receiving end (and I don't mean the occasional HONEST debate, or rare attacker), it may seem that I act like the lady that doth protest too much.
I am unclear as to what it is that I relate that they find so threatening? Surely if they did not like mysticism, they would either ignore my posts, or allow them to stand on their own veracity--or lack of same. Instead, they have redundantly attacked my name, my writing style, my messages, my integrity, my work, my background, etc. 90% of what they say is untrue, nor do they correct their memes when offered the accurate information.
C.D. is a mentally stimulating site, and there are a number of people whose posts are well worth reading. In addition, quite a few articles are powrefully written, and relay material not found in any mainstream source. That is why I return here. I also feel a genuine kinship with quite a few regular posters.
Authoritarians have slain mystics for centuries. They find the view revealed by those who have studied the Masters to threaten their limited take on reality, along with the state of the nation. The times are too filled with peril for the ssers not to speak out!
Sioux is not an Amerindian name. It was the name given to a group of tribes by the French.
>>Bdewákaŋthuŋwaŋ (Mdewakanton), Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ (Wahpeton), Waȟpékhute (Wahpekute), Sisíthuŋwaŋ (Sisseton), the Iháŋkthuŋwaŋ (Yankton), Iháŋkthuŋwaŋna (Yanktonai) Thítȟuŋwaŋ (Teton or Lakota)
Are the original tribal names in their own language.
The coolest lakota sioux guy I ever met was born a white man from New Jersey. He lives in complete harmony with mother earth in a small cabin in the mountains, and will offer a nice cup of tea from herbs growing nearby. He does the finest oil paintings of Sioux chieftains, just for fun.
By comparison, it's sad to see a poor soul hopelessly trapped in a perceived scrivener image.
Dude, look up "Sioux" on Wikipedia. It wasn't ever what the Sioux called themselves outside the context of colonialism. The word is a French borrowing of an Ojibwe-language word for non-Ojibwe peoples. To get on Siouxrose for "stealing" the name Sioux is akin to getting on the Irish for using potatoes ("stolen" from the Incas!)---it's been passed through so many hands by the time it gets to us that it is impossible to figure out who the original "owners" were, if anybody. We need to work together to fix some BIG problems, and not get bogged down in this petty bullshit.
You think that's bad. Wait till people start using zero-point-energy the waste heat alone will probably kick us over the top. But everybody will finally have electricity!
>^^<
scribe,
I've never really believed in Karma, or paid a whole lot of attention to the Karmic retribution thing - although there were a few times in my life when I realized I was was probably experiencing it, but if we look at what we've been doing to the earth since we've been on it, and see what's happening now, I could see where that might be seen as a form of the earth's karmic retribution. Especially since this destruction is happening world wide. It's a point of view. Not necessarily mine though.
As for what you call "reprehensible discompassion' of those attributing these disasters to ''karmic retribution' for the imperial ignorance of southern legislators," there isn't any different from your "If an F5 tornado were to skip over the poor neighborhoods of Washington DC and smash the capitol building, that would be my idea of karmic retribution," because in either case a whole lot of innocent people would be victims.
"If an F5 tornado were to skip over the poor neighborhoods of Washington DC and smash the capitol building, that would be my idea of karmic retribution."
Ha Ha, I thought the same thing! As an agnostic/atheist I always thought if that ever happened I might have to reevaluate my non belief in a higher power!
(And may I add I have no idea why you got flagged for this comment !?!?)
RFLOH recently had the dubious privilege of posting the right wing media's favored talking point on this subject that touches us all. It's this idea that ONE event alone does not prove or disprove climate change. Your post feels like a glib derivative of the same meme, if masked in a more sincere sort of would-be concern.
When the matter has become one of ostensible life and death, it is no longer wise to err on the side of the polluters, industrialists, war-makers, and neo cons. Splitting hairs over which weather-related event is a DIRECT result of climate change, and which is not, provides for LOTS of wiggle room. And it's just the sort of space exploited by those (types of) attorneys who did a similar injustice over the question of wheter a direct, provable link could be established between cigarette smoking and cancer.
Life involves uncertainties. Very few things (some would say apart from death and taxes) qualify as virtual certainties.
We, as an impacted humanity, are past the point where there is available time to appoint yet more committees to yet further study the issues. And for those who take computer models for their Gospel, every variable fed into these otherwise sophisticated computer systems relates to what happened in the past. When new variables emerge due to so many simultaneous tipping points, the computer models will fail to pick up the perturbations.
We're ON new turf!
For anyone truly capable (or willing) of connecting the dots, a similar sense of profound uncertainty, or the related sense of stepping out onto new turf is felt in the following arenas:
1. Health: Due to the fact that dangerous nuclear particles are infusing the earth's atmosphere on account of the awful event, and resulting lack of containment, in Japan.
2. Money: That our financial system has been rendered as precarious as a house of cards largely due to the fictitious systems that have entered it like some kind of virus, eating away at everything that once held viability.
3. Human rights: That our political system functions as the world's most expensive masquerade. Devoid of any semblance of a representative democracy, we are truly on our own.
4. Ethics: Dangerous political factions, having taken over both parties and intent upon obeying their covert money masters, are now preparing to gut Social Security, Medicare, and those necessary state programs that protect the poor, aged, and ill.
5. Defense: Weapons are proliferating to and through unstable nations, many of which have well-justified vendettas against the U.S.
6. Food: It's become so adulterated that it's questionable whether future generations will have any built-in immunities to disease at all.
ETC.
Because the media, most universities (due to their reliance upon private financial donors), and the alleged leaders all show deference to big business and its quest for unlimited profits, first and foremost, it is grotesque to further argue that not enough is known to put MEANINGFUL action into effect. Your post suggests yet more cause for delaying tactics... when LIFE itself, for too many, is on the line!
"There was a responsible climatologist on ABC nightly news . . . ."
Hahahahahahaha. You are in the wrong place, pal, to be peddling drivel of talking heads from msm. Here, the spewage is from the same corporation that gave us right wing hucksters Rush Limbaugh and Dennis Miller as football "color commentors" on MNF.
The generation of tornados is not rocket science, it's warm moist air rising and creating atmospheric pressure imbalance. This unstable atmosphere produces wind, storms, and tornados. The glogal warming greatly increases moisture in air, so we are accordingly seeing increases in fequency & severity of storms & tornados. Your msm climatologist is paid to say "we don't know enough to be sure." Hahahahahaha
Yes, climate change is occurring. As it always has done.
Tornadoes are a result COOLING, not warming. A warm climate does not produce tornadoes and severe thunderstorms. They're caused by the interaction of COLD air masses with warm, moist air masses. The tornadoes and severe weather on the continental US are the result of cooler than normal ocean temperatures.
Droughts, thunderstorms, precipitation, snowfall, have always fluctuated on their own cycles; the interaction of these cycles produces patterns of weather we call climate. There has always been severe weather events everywhere over the earth.
Now, with ubiquitous communications and a paucity of education, we shout that things are different than they used to be, that now the climate is more “severe,” getting worse, causing more damage. These shoutings are usually self-serving, designed to sell books, advance a political agenda, or gather funds for one's technocratic department. One only has to look at the record to see that nothing is changed, climate variation is occurring just as it has throughout the history of mankind.
Unfortunately, Bill McKibben has taken on the role of corner-shouter, mindlessly repeating prophecies of doom and gloom.
stick your head further in the sand
hope you sleep well
hayduke is obviously a troll or just plain dumb. His analysis is completely the opposite of the truth.
Increased heat causes increased moisture, which retains even more heat, in a closed loop. When the sun heats the earth, the moisture rises, producing clouds and causing low pressure troughs to develop. This creates an atmospheric pressure imbalance, resulting in winds, storms and tornados. With global warming and increased delta T, the effects of hot moist air create positive feedback, so the whole process goes exponential.
The esteemed author has repeatedly emphasized that we are only now seeing the effects of one degree rise in Earth's temperature. Just wait & see what a couple more degrees do.
I hope Exxon, Chevron, of whatever coal company you must work for is paying you well for posting your corporate lies and distortions here. Everything is the OPPOSITE of what climate scientists around the world have been saying, right? Hayduke lives! To spread his lies that they've got it all backwards and all this has been going on forever. Unfortunately, you've assumed the role of carnival barker, mindlessly and perniciously repeating your anti-prophecies that "nothing has changed" and we're all succumbing to hysteria.
Go sell crazy in Joplin and all across Alabama. They're well-stocked up with it already, but I'm sure you can get plenty of eager, ill-educated listeners.
Hayduke2000
Is all of that so? Here is a link for an excellent article which Scribe posted on another thread yester day. You should read it Hayduke2000.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/article.html
And you wrote > ("Tornadoes are a result COOLING, not warming"). You don't know what you are talking about. Tornadoes are formed in heavy thunderstorms when warm air meets cooler air and a "hook" in the wind pattern occurs and the winds begin to spiral until they become a tornado. That in rather simple but correct terminology for a complex subject..
And yes there has "always been weather". However for the past 18 months we are experiencing (record setting) heat waves, cold spells, rainfall, snowfall, flooding, droughts, world wide. That is dramatic climate change bud as has been predicted will happen. It's going to get worse from here on out.
WayneWR, actually what he wrote is essentially what you wrote. He stated, "They're caused by the interaction of COLD air masses with warm, moist air masses."
Yes jackburns
I read what he wrote... His (opening sentencce) to that paragraph is wrong and very misleading. That is what I replied to. He is attempting to (downplay) global warming.
Wow!! You just managed to show you failed every science and math class you ever tried to take past 6th grade. No wonder the Kocks hired you.
Somebody took lessons from this cat...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110524/ap_on_re_us/us_apocalypse_saturday
After all his church is worth $80 million..... Remember that although Al Gore failed 5 out of 7 classes in Divinity School, he still aims at being the first carbon billionaire on the backs of the rest of us.
I appreciate a clean environment and have significant experience in the renewable energy sector. I have seen first hand what the snake oil salemen are up to and it isn't in our best interest. Maybe these proclaimers of doom and their followers will be raptured in October as per the ministers revised math....Or else it will our money that is raptured to those doing "gods work".
You are a one trick poney, Aesop's Dog. You always enter to muddle the truth about climate change by making it about the few on its vanguard who might profit from a variety of new adaptive responses or technological measures.
Because human nature is what it is, and some are by nature greedy, has NOTHING TO DO with the TRUTH of climate change. You purposely conflate one issue with the other to, as your companions are herewith seeking to do, create any slight crease in the theory of climate change that can be used to foment probable doubt.
Those who side with liars to reinforce a status quo that is killing nature, and eventually the rest of us, are worthy of NO respect. They are traitors to life, and committing treason of the most acute sort. I don't think any of you can rely on ignorance given the magnitude of evidence all but hitting you in the head.
As someone else recently asked in this forum, how many once-in-100, or once-in- 500 year events, barreling back to back, are needed for you morons to surrender your ignoble platform that these are but natural occurrences?
Granting false witness is a cardinal sin.
Great post, as usual, Siouxrose. Your logic prevails.
"Granting false witness is a cardinal sin."
Yes indeed it is.
Meaningless rejoinder, obnoxious and self-sacramental.
FACT CHECK, Ocean temps. are on the up, not down, and it is that differential that is creating stronger storms. Also the Arctic is, was 20 degrees warmer this past winter than normal.
Lets send these deniers to Alaska to view the 'drunk trees', and rising oceans and thinning ice while having a cocktail with the Palin crowd. Maybe as they view the cracking foundations above the melting permafrost they will take notice.
HAYDUKE: You've probably posted this same shit, since that's what it is, under other screen names. You deserve NO respect. Doom and Gloom IS what's going on. Your moral stance is not unlike that of a waiter on the Titanic, calmly urging those in the cheap seats to remain below board while the rich, and thus more privileged, have time to grab the available life boats.
Perhaps one such event will take your home, possessions, or family to provide you with the wake-up call your deceitful post so richly deserves.
Since you're part of the CD "split hairs" to create probable doubt club... maybe you'll only recognize global warming when you win your personal ticket to Hell. Bon voyage, and God speed to you!
I don't have anything to sell; I sold it all on Craigslist for face value. You know, tangible items that no longer serve any purpose for me.
Having lived in the same place for 50+ years and with my parents and grandparents, climate change is very obvious to all of us.
If what some CD posters claim - that our physical world reflects our spiritual views - is true, my right wing religious granpappy has no issues with that because it's staring at us plain as day, while some of our neighbors scoff at the whole notion of climate change and just rationalize it as God's plan. The deniers are just the angriest, ignorant, malcontents. We've watched them devolve from friendly types into raging ignorophobes who believe everything on Full of Xenophobia News.
So, who's right? Us or them? Using the precautionary principle never hurt, never set anyone back, and it's risk free.
As for the guy who adamantly proclaims these 1,000+ twisters so far are not related to climate change, just look at what you wrote: warmer, moisturized air. Tornadoes don't happen without them and it doesn't take much heat to get them started. As for cooling, you got that right but failed to admit that while the poles are warming up - as climatologists predicted it would - the middle sections are cooling down. That's us in Colorado. We're waiting for summer again and our veggies don't like the cooler air and moisture at all.
I VOTED: Thank you for an intelligent post. The precautionary principle, indeed! Problem is, with corporate personhood trumping all other considerations, it's being used to impede those changes that might save the nation from its profligate self (in terms of usage patterns that mock conservation in every possible form).
Certainly I feel for those who lost their homes in the blink of an eye, and every time there's another severe weather threat, I sudder. It is TRULY frightening how fast things are heating up, and quite clearly speeding up, and whirling the security we once lived by out of control, one community at a time.
Just as the insurance companies, in their lust for profit, find ways to NOT cover the medical needs of paying customers, how long will it be before these insurers claim insolvency due to the number of claims legitimately made as a direct result of these unbalanced natural forces?
I VOTED:
I too live in Colorado but close to the end rather then for the whole run. I grew up and lived most of my life in Kansas and have witnessed the savagery of tornados. Now living along the Front Range I watch the storms get born of warm moist air, charged by the sun and made into thermal energy rise to hit the cooler dry air. Then a magical thing happens..clouds and they are carried east. Once they hit the flat, the plains, where a lot more warm moist air is going to thermal energy and rising to the cool dry air of higher altitudes the small fleecey clouds I watched form are turned into nimbo cumulus and then they join with others and mega cells are formed. Being from Kansas I can still hear the weather boys on radio and tv interrupting normal broadcast and giving us the most up to date information on these storms before they had even crossed the border into Kansas. Doppler radar is a life saver.
The largest tornado I witnessed was in 1993. It was an F-5 and was a half mile across with exterior winds estimated at over 300 mph. It tore up two small towns and a piece of southern Sedgwick County where I lived. It was a monster. There was massive amounts of property damage and several people were killed. Ted Lewis, a photojournalist working for the NBC affiliate in Wichita caught some of the action on video tape. He was with a producer and a man and a girl under an over pass along the turnpike just south of Wichita. The video got Mr. Lewis a Pulitzer. These monsters are unbelievable when you experience them. They leave you totally undone, completely dazed and without a sense of presence without a sense of anything, just emptiness and then pain.
Folks on this blog who've never experienced one of these storms have no idea of what the current spat of storms may mean, but in my 60 odd years I have never seen this many storms of this intensity in such a short space of time. Can I say this is part of climate change, I'm no expert but this does fit the predictions made over two decades ago. Nothing good can come of this. We have a great challenge ahead of us and I have to answer to my grandson at some point. So I have to go out and make the good fight in an effort to hand him a world he at least can live in.