The headline bleakly states "Antarctica's Wilkins Ice Shelf eroding at an unforeseen pace." It is a magnified echo of scientific reports over the last five years - it's all happening too fast. The change is not just happening too fast, it is happening faster and faster.
For the past decade we were told "don't worry." We were told that we were in for a long, slow warming of the planet. We were told 2150. Then, a couple of years ago that date dropped to 2057; then 2020. In less than ten years, we have lost130 years. Or perhaps, the acceleration as sped us up 130 years - or less. "Unforeseen pace" - a statement to raise the hair on the back of your neck. What exactly are we rushing into? I am not sure that anyone can even come close to answering that at this point. We are in new terrain.
As I have read reports and articles; watched the news and the seasons around me, the image of a locomotive speeding down a steep mountain comes to mind. With the throttle open to full, and the firebox be stuffed to burn white hot, the train goes faster an faster. At some point, even if the engine is no longer stoked and the engine is thrown into neutral, that train will continue to accelerate just by its mass and momentum.
At the bottom of the mountain is a steep, narrow, valley. Sitting in the engine, I know that when we hit that bottom we won't just start up the next slope. I fear that we will hit the bottom of that slope running at unimaginable speed and it will drive us into the ground. The mass of the train cars behind us piling one into another.
Meanwhile, the ads from the energy companies, and from the automotive companies, tell us they are "going green." The cheerleaders trumpet renewable energy and "new" technologies. The activists push the "sustainability" movement. The underlying message is alluring and a lie - we can continue on the path we are on. We can continue to grow, to consume voraciously, to exploit the planet and our fellows. We can do all that, bit we can do it in a "green" and "sustainable" way.
How anyone who thinks for 30 seconds on this situation and still finds solace in the mantra of "it's OK," baffles me. I mean totally dumbfounds me. We are so far past sustainable, that a sustainability movement would require a decrease of "footprint" of magnitudes. One of the scientists participating with the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said a couple of years ago that we would need to immediately decrease carbon emissions by 80% to have any effect on global warming. Folks, a reduction of that scale means a pre-industrial level of carbon emissions. Instead, we have continued to grow our carbon footprint - as a nation and as a world. Open throttle down the mountain.
The Sundarbans in the Ganges Delta are being inundated from the rising ocean. The lands are fertile, but also populated by cultures. India is seeing a growing refugee crisis as the island peoples are displaced.
Lying one-third in India and two-thirds in Bangladesh, the Sundarbans are where two of Asia's biggest rivers, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, broaden and violently roll into the Bay of Bengal. The source of the problem is 1,500 miles away, at the source of the Ganges, where melting Himalayan glaciers are raising river and sea levels.
Lohachara island, once visible from Ghoramara, a mile to the east, is already gone beneath the waves, succumbing to the ocean two years ago, leaving more than 7,000 people homeless. Ghoramara itself has lost a third of its land mass in the past five years. To the north, Sagar island already houses 20,000 refugees from the tides.
So what is being presented to us as the direction for the future?
Translation? More fossil fuels for burning, another earth region to exploit and populate. Never mind that fossil fuels are accelerating global warming. Never mind, that the arctic (and Antarctic) are among the most fragile environments on the planet.
Don't question the story, and don't question the path. Full steam ahead. Even the darkest cloud has a silver lining.
I am at a loss on how to counter this kind of thinking. Your ideas are more than welcome.
Build an ark. Drown. What the hell can we do? There's no "fixing" this. There is no solution. No group of scientists are not going to huddle in a lab and come out with a pill we can take. We can't re-cycle our way into Heaven.
Conservation? Don't make me laugh. If we were to have done anything we should have started at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Not only did we not plan for this we went out and bought SUV's!
No, sorry, we've screwed the pooch. It was nice while it lasted but the party's over and the Fiddler wants to be paid and he doesn't take credit.
by
Mr M (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 1436 comments)
on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 2:08:44 AM
Here is my recommended list of things that almost anyone can do with a little effort. Some cost some money, most do not- just a matter of paying attention and changing the ways in which things are done:
1) $(save) For "A/C" in the summer, open the windows at night and close them during the day;
2) $(save) When cooking, cover the pot- this uses about 30% less energy;
3) $(a little more) buy recycled products if you can find them- support recycling;
4) $(same, better quality) buy local products & produce (http://www.localharvest.org)- if they are not transported, that saves gasoline and also supports the local producer. Also, for grass-fed, local meat (the way it is supposed to be done), try Eat Wild (
by
Marc Plante (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 11:21:25 AM
1) Last winter Buenos Aires had its first snow in 80 years. 2) Last summer Scandinavia had record snowstorms. 3) Last summer the British Isles had record low temperatures. 4) This last winter was the coldest on record for China. 5) This last winter there were record snowfalls in many places in North America. 6) All, I repeat A L L scientists who have examined the data agree that the average temperature of the earth has dropped in the past 12 months. 7) Solar activity has a much greater influence on the earth’s temperature than do “greenhouse gasses.” 8) Russian scientists are predicting a period of global cooling. 9) The earth is in a period called an “interglacial.” This is a period between ice ages. 10) Having glaciers once again in Seattle and Chicago would be much more disrupting to humanity than having the sea level rise a few meters. 11) The flatulence of termites contributes orders of magnitude more “greenhouse gasses” than does human activity.
When conventional communism was pretty much discredited, many of its diehards (read big government worshipers) decided the best way to grow government and control people was via the “environmental” movement. That is what the “global warming” hysteria is all about. There will always be more stupid people than there are intelligent ones, however in our perverted form or government, the votes of the ignorant count just as much as do those of the intelligent voters. The inevitable outcome is the kakistocracy we have today.
Now, please tell me again why I am supposed to be concerned about “global warming?”
by
M. Bennett (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 82 comments)
on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 4:22:20 PM
So, there are melting polar caps, record snowfalls, record high and low temperatures. Sun is cooling down but displays high number of spots when there should be none at all. Each fact is matched by another one of the opposite meaning, with the only exception: the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere used to oscillate in sync with climate changes, but now the pattern is broken and it is several times higher than ever.
Basically, the Earth returns all the heat it gets from the Sun, and a little bit more due to the heat generated inside the planet, back to Space. The idea of the global warming is based on the assumption that since green house gases make it harder to radiate heat from the surface into space, the surface will get hotter. It is oversimplification next to blatant lie.
The most evident faults are: first, the surface is not the only source of outgoing heat; second, the surface temperature is so uneven that the very idea of the "global temperature" is meaningless, consequently, there can be no such thing as "global warming".
The truth is that high levels of green house gases interfere with the mechanisms that make the Earth climate stable. It is impossible to predict or discuss the net effect without a supercomputer and huge set of observations. Media reports supercomputers are build for exactly that purpose, but I do not see any reported results, except "some scientists predict ice melting, other predict ice age". Evidently, something is classified.
For example, theoretically it is possible to get ice free poles, oceans of higher level and cooler than now, and inland temperatures so high that no humans can survive on dry land.
I guess that the "global warming" has been sold to the public for a very good reason: the public cannot understand it (unless some hero arranges for a program like SETI at home, only 100 times larger). Those who believe will provide new markets for new "instruments", like emission quotas; those who disbelieve will not listen to other warnings, like "more species are dying out every day", "oceans cannot take all our garbage any more", or "we are making new global pandemia inevitable".
Thus, fight the global warning or ignore it, you loose.
by
Andrey Gerasimenko (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 16 comments)
on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 at 5:09:20 AM
CO2 accounts for about four hundredths of a percent by volume of the atmosphere.That is .04%.Think about how minuscule that is.This is up about 30% since the dawn of the industrial revolution.That is .012 percent raise by volume.According to Universal Industrial Gases, Inc: http://www.uigi.com/carbondioxide.html; “The rate of increase in carbon dioxide content of air is currently more than 2 ppm annually”. Of that, man made CO2 releases account for about 4%.That is .08 ppm attributed to man annually.This equates to .0002 percent by volume of the atmosphere.That deserves repeating; .0002%.These are "trace" amounts.These amounts are so small that nearly all studies are measured in parts per millions or parts per billions because percentages don't do it justice.
Get off the carbon trip!
Not to mention the effect of CO2 on temperature is questionable.Acording to A publication of the National Center for Public Policy Research, National Policy Analysis:
by
Keith Fisher (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 22 comments)
on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 at 6:08:20 AM
Not to mention the effect of CO2 on temperature is questionable.Acording to A publication of the National Center for Public Policy Research, National Policy Analysis:http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA349.html, "carbon dioxide accounts for less than ten percent of the greenhouse effect - whose ability to absorb heat is quite limited
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