Intro: "When I testified before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988, I warned of the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet. I painted a grim picture of the consequences of steadily increasing temperatures, driven by mankind's use of fossil fuels. But I have a confession to make: I was too optimistic."
A study finds a 'stunning' rise in the frequency of extremely hot summers. (photo: Bloomberg/Getty Images)
Climate Change Worse Than We Thought
06 August 12
hen I testified before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988, I warned of the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet. I painted a grim picture of the consequences of steadily increasing temperatures, driven by mankind's use of fossil fuels.
But I have a confession to make: I was too optimistic.
My projections about increasing global temperature have been proved true. But I failed to fully explore how quickly that average rise would drive an increase in extreme weather.
In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, which will be published Monday, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.
This is not a climate model or a prediction but actual observations of weather events and temperatures that have happened. Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.
The deadly European heat wave of 2003, the fiery Russian heat wave of 2010 and catastrophic droughts in Texas and Oklahoma last year can each be attributed to climate change. And once the data are gathered in a few weeks' time, it's likely that the same will be true for the extremely hot summer the United States is suffering through right now.
These weather events are not simply an example of what climate change could bring. They are caused by climate change. The odds that natural variability created these extremes are minuscule, vanishingly small. To count on those odds would be like quitting your job and playing the lottery every morning to pay the bills.
Twenty-four years ago, I introduced the concept of "climate dice" to help distinguish the long-term trend of climate change from the natural variability of day-to-day weather. Some summers are hot, some cool. Some winters brutal, some mild. That's natural variability.
But as the climate warms, natural variability is altered, too. In a normal climate without global warming, two sides of the die would represent cooler-than-normal weather, two sides would be normal weather, and two sides would be warmer-than-normal weather. Rolling the die again and again, or season after season, you would get an equal variation of weather over time.
But loading the die with a warming climate changes the odds. You end up with only one side cooler than normal, one side average, and four sides warmer than normal. Even with climate change, you will occasionally see cooler-than-normal summers or a typically cold winter. Don't let that fool you.
Our new peer-reviewed study, published by the National Academy of Sciences, makes clear that while average global temperature has been steadily rising due to a warming climate (up about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century), the extremes are actually becoming much more frequent and more intense worldwide.
When we plotted the world's changing temperatures on a bell curve, the extremes of unusually cool and, even more, the extremes of unusually hot are being altered so they are becoming both more common and more severe.
The change is so dramatic that one face of the die must now represent extreme weather to illustrate the greater frequency of extremely hot weather events.
Such events used to be exceedingly rare. Extremely hot temperatures covered about 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent of the globe in the base period of our study, from 1951 to 1980. In the last three decades, while the average temperature has slowly risen, the extremes have soared and now cover about 10percent of the globe.
This is the world we have changed, and now we have to live in it - the world that caused the 2003 heat wave in Europe that killed more than 50,000 people and the 2011 drought in Texas that caused more than $5 billion in damage. Such events, our data show, will become even more frequent and more severe.
There is still time to act and avoid a worsening climate, but we are wasting precious time. We can solve the challenge of climate change with a gradually rising fee on carbon collected from fossil-fuel companies, with 100percent of the money rebated to all legal residents on a per capita basis. This would stimulate innovations and create a robust clean-energy economy with millions of new jobs. It is a simple, honest and effective solution.
The future is now. And it is hot.
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Comments
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I really, really wanted to believe I was wrong back when we bought this place in the 90s but for me the writing was on the wall. It was only a matter of how bad it would be. Like Hansen, I'm afraid I underestimated.
We are in some seriously deep doodoo and I'm not talking sheep manure. I hope people will heed Hansen's warning and take his suggestions seriously otherwise I fear our children will curse us for the wasteland we will leave them.
As one Idiot Senator said how can there be global warming when we can build a snow man and igloo on the mall in Wash DC, which his kids actually did a couple years ago. However, the real problem is the millions of idiots that voted for these morons. Until food prices doubles or triples these stupid people will not get it – and by then it just might be too late to stop global warming.
As long as the oil and coal companies continue to own the politicians, nothing is going to change on Capital Hill. Until there are two hundred thousand really, really pissed off people on Capital Hill (all at the same time) raising some serious hell absolutely nothing is ever, ever going to happen to these totally bought and paid for by the richest 50 people in the world that are becoming more and more powerful with each passing rigged election thanks to the stupid people.
And, as I have been preaching for a long time: There are much more urgent problems that should be on our radar--my favorite is the 26,000 children who will die TODAY of preventable causes.
Anyone want to put that ahead of sea level rising in 50 to 75 years??
John Miller
Corydon, IN
That's the fact Jack.
I recommend you all look into a process called aquaponices. Allows you to grow fish, vegetables, fruits in a contained system. Uses a fraction of the water soil based growing systems need, is not dependent on soil fertility and is not subject to sudden changes in weather.
We're building two 50'x 20' structures on our farm and bringing all but our root crops indoors.
That said, we do have to stop what we're doin PJ15. If we don't, what's happening to those 26k children a day is going to be multiplied by orders of magnitude.
We can do it, but we've got to put enormous amounts of pressure on the Powers That Be or we are all screwed (even the PTB though they're too arrogant and self-centered to know it.)
26,000. Today. Under 5 years old. Mostly from malnutrition, diarrhea and malaria.
Didn't you read the article? It is much, much more than just rising seas and it is something that affects everyone, not just 26,000 children but billions of people. You sound like a CEO at a corporation who is only concerned with this quarter's profits and the future be damned.
I'm sorry. I feel for the 26,000 children but damned if I am going to mortgage the future of the planet to save them.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be planning for climate change, only that absent a huge change in the decision makers, we are going to need to do much more adapting to the change rather than hoping to fix it.
But we could save the kids. You know we could save the kids.
1. There is enough food and capacity to produce food, by far, to support the population.
2. A big part of the problem is clean water and cheap medicine.
3. Who are we to decide who gets the food & medicine? Can we say because they are poor and we are not, they die?
As to your first statement, I'm sorry but you're dead wrong. What we've been doing since the Green Revolution was started to make lots of money for the chemical companies, has been the equivalent of staying warm by burning down the house. The tiny percent of the earth's surface that has tillable soil has had it's fertility steadily depleted and we are reaching a tipping point there as well. Just call it a perfect storm; climate change, exponential population growth and overdrawing the fertility of our soils without rebuilding them. Nasty scenario.
Statement 2. You may not have noticed it but we are currently poisoning some of our largest remaining aquifers to extract "cheap" natural gas.
Trust me, no water, no crops so even if we weren't farming like there's no tomorrow water limitations will not allow us to keep up with the growing demand for food.
Your heart may be in the right place but your facts are seriously flawed.
A response to this would be to trap the P as well as the N and K from our sewage and then put it back with other useful nutrients onto our farmlands. That would also reduce the problems triggering dead zones in lakes and the oceans from eutrophication.
Just a 'small wheel on the ground', but time to stop using the planet as an endless frontier. We need to grow up. See the recent article in New Scientist re the collapse of civilizations.
You make some excellent points, and I am
no expert on the subject but my understanding from reading those that do work on the issue is that PappaJohn15 is absolutely right that CURRENTLY (and this is key) there is enough food to feed everyone. This is not to say that population, environmental degredation, etc., are not critical issues we need to address but the problem is also how we produce and distribute. To deny this is to let those responsible off the hook for the needless death of the 10-15 million children from hunger (at least these are the estimates i have seen).
Absent from the piece and the overall discussion is the role of capital (finance) and giant agribusiness in destroying traditional methods of agriculture and forcing people who have been self-sufficient (even at what we would consider a low standard of living) into the money economy (in Africa, currently through the same kind of "enclosure" laws that were first put in place in England and which were necessary to create a mass of wage-laborers). ..not to mention their role in pushing genetically modified seeds on people who have traditionally collected (and traded) their own from year to year in order to maintain their ability to feed themselves and their family or countries that have been forced to destroy their food reserves as part of the IMF "structural adjustment" programs.
When food, energy, and all the normal things associated with normal life are in short supply the fact is that the market mentality is an outrage to human rights.
Since everything in this age is being recorded we are a species acting for the planet had better grow up and NOT do something that we will forever look back on in history with horrible regret, many times worse than how we look at the holocaust, Fukushima, WWII, the Killing Fields.
We need to worry more about everyone getting enough to sustain themselves in a non-destructive /productive mode than we do about the 1% being able to lord their assumed superiority over everyone else.
The 1% WANTS us to think there is a shortage, a finite resource, to keep us in competition for it.
Americans THROW AWAY enough food to feed the world--and our technology hasn't even scratched the surface of the potential.
The philosophy of scarcity and fear is what keeps the elite in control.
1. Americans are terribly wasteful but to say that 300 million people throw away enough food to feed 6 billion is just plain ignorant unless you've got a reliable source to back up your claim.
2. We've been saying "technology" will save us for the past 70 years. Try looking at our soil as a bank. To be sustainable we have to live on the "interest" the soil creates. Instead "technology" has been burning through the "principal" for the past 70 years.
The only that's going to save us is rebuilding our soil, eating lower on the food chain, and preserving our fresh water sources.
If we don't start doing those things it won't be long before your 26k children dying a day is going to seem like the good old days.
But as long as we are allowing the 1% to keep us in this climate* (get it?) of austerity and finite resources, we will never be able to "afford" to fix the planet.
Or the starving, dying children.
*minor humor, sorry.
Quoting pappajohn15:
Pappajohn15, great comments.
Below are a couple of things i found re there being currently enough food to feed everyone on the planet (which doesn't mean population and other environmental issues aren't important and have to be addressed).
http://overpopulationisamyth.com/food-theres-lots-it
http://rehydrate.org/facts/hunger.htm
I agree with you completely that for the most part "scarcity" is a human-made weapon of social control (as debt has also become).
It's all around us.
We have more vacant homes than we have homeless people yet we talk about an oversupply of housing or a shortage of renters/buyers. We spend trillions on unnecessary wars and a national security state but then say there is a deficit problem and a shortage of funds for social needs. High tech firms say they have to outsource as there is a shortage of skilled workers here after we gut our public education system; we have an energy shortage after we gut public transit systems and promote suburban sprawl that fuels the oil and gas industries; our infrastructure is crumbling but we say we have no money and a shortage of skilled workers after we cut "shop" classes and dismantle a network of trade schools that prepared people for skilled jobs with decent pay and benefits...we are sold a bill of goods and we buy into it hook line and sinker to the point of accepting that millions must die needlessly because there really isn't enough for all....don't believe the hype
This suffering and death was preventable, but because people were too short-sighted, they would only focus on much less serious shorter term problems. Now you are doing the same thing. When millions are dying of starvation, will you still be trying to feed them all? You may save some lives, but many more will be needlessly lost if people keep ignoring our biggest threat.
No matter how hopeless it looks, it can always get worse. It is never too late to make the situation better than it would have been. Stopping global warming must be our top priority. We don't have to let children starve in order to stop global warming. But if we don't stop global warming, there is no way we can prevent all the starvation that will come.
We can't save the kids? It is simply not true that there is currently not enough food to feed everyone on the planet. I'm not saying that population is not a problem, it is but to say that today there is not enough food to feed everyone is simply justifying the needless deaths of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands or more) from needless starvation much of it caused not by population but by the destruction of tradional forms of agriculture practiced by indigenous people's for thousands of years and the destruction of small family farms and the domination of our global food supply by giant agribusiness corporations (not to mention speculators in the agricultural futures markets that are responsible for the huge increases in food, mainly grain, prices around the world). Don't buy into the hype that there is not enough food and that it is all due to "natural disasters." Most so-called "natural disasters" are human-made at this point and are also the result of serving those in search of profits instead of taking care of the basic needs of the most vulnerable people aroudn the world.
Government is practically the only answer to improving the common good. Business is the answer to making profits, however it can be done. Rarely, if ever, does that help the general welfare.
Government is for the common good--taking care of those that need it.
Society encouraged the junk food, the cigarettes, the alcohol--societ y ought to help with the social cost and the real cost.
We can afford it. We really can.
By the way RE, who was it that swore up and down for years that cigarettes didn't cause cancer and other diseases? Seems to me they were some of those business owners who you claim are the "folks who do really great things."
Let me see if I understand one of your other points correctly. Is the only reason for doing the "right" thing profits? So if it's profitable to do something that might be ruining the planet for human habitation your "folks who do really great things" are perfectly justified to keep on making those profits.
Pretty twisted RE, pretty twisted.
Ayn Rand was a moron.
Greed is good - yeah, right!
But...even though a prophet of the right wing she said (correctly) "you can deny reality but you cannot deny the consequences of denying reality"...why don't the right wing wingnuts understand this when it comes to effects of climate change.
This is such a meaningless phrase that so far has never been used to actually find and stop the exploitation of government and private wealth by those who are really the problem.
All the arguments we get like this in favor of the "hard line" and so-called "austerity" are not supported by any facts, or qualified against the real problems we face.
Trying to use these boldface lies to tip the scales away from the survival and prosperity of the majority of Americans and people on the planet and towards the continued abuse and exploitation of the planet and its people by those who have pretty much caused all of the bit problem we face by their relentless greed and psychopathy will increasingly not fly in the next years and the next elections.
People are not stupid no matter how much the media is permeated with stupidity to make them think everyone else is stupid - they will eventually grimace at just how disgusting you people have been and ignore your nonsense.
It is the middle class and below that are increasingly being taxed, and the reason is that the bad decision they made was to trust the bullshit of the 1% ... now ain't that ironic?
The cure is to stop blaming the victims and start focusing attention where the problems are - with the 1% and those in authority who distort the system so much for their own gain there is nothing left and then call that the free market and genuflect to the dollar.
Science and facts do not belong to the voice that can spend the most money to shout down or lie to everyone else, science and fact should belong the least person who can prove what they see or challenge the festering nonsense that the 1% churns out with the money they steal - calling in free market investment - can capitalism. It is neither.
mal-educated costs us as much as Solyndra did ONCE.
I mean, I could see skipping this, ignoring it, whatever. But Thumbs Down? Really??
It would be nice to fix and boat and warm up the children but I know which one has priority as far as I'm concerned.
When there is a famine in Africa, we rush and feed them (more or less) without condition, and the next generation grows to be larger and more difficult to feed.
I elieve this planet is overpopulated and I don't see a nice way to resolve this aspect of things.
Not with cultures and religions developed over the centuries to grow the population and overtake the neighbors.
Any idea out there?
All these deaths and all this suffering was preventable, but because people were too short-sighted, they would only focus on much less serious shorter term problems. Now you are doing the same thing. When millions are dying of starvation, will that finally be enough for you? You may save some lives, but many more will be needlessly lost if people keep ignoring our biggest threat.
No matter how hopeless it looks, it can always get worse. It is never too late to make the situation better than it would have been. Stopping global warming must be our top priority, NOW!
Don't stop working on global warming, but open your eyes to more urgent and doable issues...
That can only be stopped NOW, before they get the infrastructure in place. I'm afraid we have a LOT of urgencies to work on NOW, before it's too late. Meanwhile, insulate, insulate, insulate! Cutting each of OUR OWN carbon footprints is imperative - NOW.
I'm not sure why you think these are mutually exclusive. We should be trying to improve the living conditions for all the poor people of the world *as well as* trying to reduce the impact our "free lunch" attitude to the environment is having.
If we want the human race to carry on operating at something above subsistence level - reaching for the stars, rather than returning to lives that are nasty, brutish, short and steeped in superstition - this is our one chance to do it. Because if we screw up this time it won't just be Easter Island or a patch of jungle that goes down with our civilisation, it'll be the whole planet.
What is amazing is, like the monkey clutching the nut in the bottle, greed keeps him hanging, on to his peril. The greedy in this country are hanging on to the idea that there is a technological solution to their sins. This hope/trust is the 'nut' that keeps them sawing on their perch and moving ever more rapidly to the precipice.
Until we address the issue of population growth, any other approach is simply addressing the symptoms of the problem. Human population growth cannot be sustained forever and it won't be. Something will stop it. If we don't stop it ourselves, something else will; and that's likely to be very, very bad.
we need to take the billions being wasted on this insane, failed technology and put them into the wind, solar, efficiency etc that will bring us to Solartopia & end this climate chaos nightmare.
no nukes/4 solartopia...ha rvey wasserman
The problem is not the heat generated by the nuclear power plants - this is a one off occurrence per unit of energy produced.
The problem is the piling on of blankets on the planet, which traps solar energy on it by reflecting it down when it radiates.
The CO2 released when burning fossile fuels stays in the atmosphere and continuously heats the planet.
I agree that the nuclear waste or safety are major problems but let's not confuse matters.
Hell is coming. But money and ignorance rule.
How about you share with all of us how you came up with your last statement. Show us your data and then maybe you'll have some credibility. Until then be sure to put some sunscreen on your butt. With your head so deeply buried in the sand your little tush is sure to get burnt.
Also, as I understand it, global warming is affecting the ocean currents. I read somewhere that the only reason much of Europe was in a temperate climate was due to the ocean currents. When they change, they affect the temperatures in europe. that's why Europe supposedly had such a cold winter last year, and why it continues to go in that direction.
Time to do some reading of dull reports like the annual reports of at least the 1st world countries meter logical organizations. They keep the records. If it was only USA exceptionalism all would question it, but it is global.
If you are going to criticize someone or make a point, you will get much more respect if you make an attempt to understand the subject you are writing about. What Hansen wrote above is pretty simple. It should not be that difficult to read and understand it before you write a comment.
The CIA believes in Climate Change
The Pentagon believes in Climate Change
These federal agencies are working on strategic planning to cope with world wide food/water shortages and migration due to a warming planet. If these agencies can see it coming, why are our elected officials holding back or denying that Climate Change is real.
"Populations need to be relocated and reduced through draconian measures."
Whoa! You really said this??
Do progressives really think this way??
It's called the American System--where you buy local, use your own resources to develop your economy, and keep your financial system simple and supportive of the general welfare.
See Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, FDR, JFK among others...
But when I told a progressive college audience during my campaign for congress this spring that global warming might be only as important as millions of kids dying right now, I got run out of town.
(I also think the climate change publicity hubub might be a wedge issue distraction to keep us from noticing that the 'banksters' have stolen all our equity and retirement savings. We have plenty of food, medicine, technology to fix all these problems--but the 1% want us to grovel in the spirit of austerity and finite resources.)
Question: In a world facing this horrible event, do you have children? Is it not cruel to do so, or blindly optimistic? I am a teacher and love kids. Throughout mankind's history we have always suffered in one way or another. And we survived. I understand the countries of the world, including America, are storing drought resisting seeds in Norway's northern caves.
If we know this, as jackson47 states and I believe he is correct, why are we allowing corporations lie to the people. Seems we must arrest them as terrorists because they will be responsible for the deaths of five or six billion people. Only a few may, just may, survive the oncoming horror. Will we live in the surf during the day, and how how will the oceans be? Will the oceans produce the air we will need? I am 75 and will not see this. I fear for my kids and their kids.
Let's all remember the inevitable truth in all of this: Nature bats last.
but common sense adaptations are rarely
being discussed. For example, the outcry
about rising ocean levels flooding NYC or San Francisco. There is a country called the Netherlands that has lived below sea level for five centuries.
Forecasts are for the carry capacity of the planet to be reduced from 8 billion to about 2 billion (up around the arctic circle).
Remember, hundreds of millions of years ago, the world was a hot soupy bath and
huge crocs and giant dragonflies lived in warm arctic seas. It can happen again.
I also think that man has too high an opinion of himself and somehow, delusionally, thinks humanity isn't an expendable specie existing on this planet.
The truth is that life on earth will continue to evolve and adapt as it has for billions of years quite easily with a single human present.
Maybe Mother Earth thinks it time to get rid of the human infestation and come up with a new plan.
Warming and UVs from the sun will wreck all life. All life is suffering right now.
Planting trees might helpo some, if the wather doesn't tear them down, as it does in tornadoes, cyclones, straight-line winds, and hurricanes. And, as I understand it, young trees do not absorb nearly as much CO2 as the older trees do.
Here's a small thought. Raise less corn, and more grains. Corn is extremely water intensive, and for the amount of water used to raise corn, you can get 16 times the amount of edible grains. And tornadoes on't knock them down so easily.
But first, we must get out of the ethanol and beef cattle industries. How do convince corn and beef farmers that it is in their best interests to stop doing the things that make them money.
If we as people were able to look at everything from a long run point of view, things would change. Keep people worrying about survival, and all they can focus on is the short-term symptoms of what is going on around them.
Issues for the plant breeders.
There have been many suggestions concerning what could be done, but we all know these projects will more than likely not be realized. Increased radiation stimulates some plants and trees but destroys others. Where I live, trees are dying as much from the drought as from what appears to be radiation. Leaves and entire plants being burned, literally, in spite of receiving water. There has been no rain, so one could not mark it up to acid rain, which I have witnessed in the past.
We shall see. Things do not look good for the future. Prepare for the worst, and be glad if it doesn't pan out.
So what are they doing in the northern par of N. Dakota? Why they are drilling for oil, and using semis to ransport it all over the place. Duh-h-h.
Money talks to those who have learned to listen. A local auto mechanic closed up his shop in the next town down the road, because he wanted to make $200,000 a year in the oil fields, rather than the $50,000 a year he made as an auto mechanic.
I live in N. Minnesota. We have lots of trees, and 1,000 lakes in our county alone. People here are blissful in their ignorance. They are so preoccupied with their tiny little lives, they don't know how to see the big picture. As I learned in my human relations classes some 20 years ago, we need to think globally, and act locally. Trouble is, the bull isn't in our china shop yet. By the time it gets to N. Minnesota, it may be too late for all of us.
Within the next decade or two, Lovelock forecasts, Gaia will hike her thermostat by at least 10 degrees. Earth, he predicts, will be hotter than at any time since the Eocene Age 55 million years ago, when crocodiles swam in the Arctic Ocean.
"There's no realization of how quickly and irreversibly the planet is changing," Lovelock says. "Maybe 200 million people will migrate close to the Arctic and survive this. Even if we took extraordinary steps, it would take the world 1,000 years to recover."
It would be easy to view this as just another kooky end-of-the-worl d theory, if it weren't for the history of some of Lovelock's other kooky theories -- like the time in the late '70s when he hypothesized that chlorofluorocar bons wafted high into the stratosphere would eat great big holes in the ozone layer, exposing first the polar regions and then the rest of the earth's surface to increasingly harmful ultraviolet radiation. What a nut.
AND PEOPLE CALL ME A PESSIMIST
http://web.archive.org/web/20061018181253/billmon.org/archives/002743.html
I am a Pediatric nurse. In 2004 I wrote my Nursing Graduate paper on the Health Effects of Global Warming. Between changing vectors, the increase in asthma, the increasing severity and frequency of storms and natural disasters, rising sea levels and the destruction of multiple ecosystems I was stunned to realize that global warming/climate change had become a political football. We play this 'game' at our peril.
And to the equation fracking; extracting oil from tar sands; declining availability of water; all of us driving too much in; and inadequate research into and development of renewable energy sources, we could indeed destroy our earthly home at a much more alarming rate than previously predicted.
From a health perspective, CO2 toxicity or hypercarbia, results in respiratory distress, decreased level of consciousness, increased acidity in the blood and hypoxia. These symptoms are life threatening and adversely affect our young and our elders, let alone the rest of us. It is time to call a Code.
And where is the President on this mess still counting up the money he gives the Main Stream Media to lie about the fact it getting hotter.
When the poles melt we can drill, baby.
And since it will be so warm we won't need it for heating homes, we'll have a huge surplus of oil we can turn into gasoline to burn in cars.
It's a blessing in disguise!
And then we can use the cars to travel to all kinds of exotic and interesting places.
Especially to all the new beaches created by rising sea levels.
Named features on maps of Death Valley National Park include the Funeral Mountains, Coffin Peak, Hell's Gate, Starvation Canyon and Dead Man Pass.
Slash.
Snark.
I'm telling you, these people will stop at nothing to perpetrate their hoax on an unsuspecting world.
The extreme hyperbolic fearmongering rhetoric and obviously photoshopped pictures are worse than anything even a Santorum could come up with.
"This is the last resort, there's no way out of this one" Kiribati President Anote Tong said.
"Our people will have to move as the tides have reached our homes and villages."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/kiribati/9127576/Entire-nation-of-Kiribati-to-be-relocated-over-rising-sea-level-threat.html
Do you seriously believe that every man, woman anc child in America should take full responsibility for his or her life? And that no one bears any responsibility for how their actions--as, say, investment bankers or oil company executives--mig ht affect others?
I think PJ's philosophy is, essentially,cor rect.Whatever one's favorite issue-be it saving children from disease or protesting U.S. empire and its dreaded ramifications.O r take your pick from voting rights to increase of alternative fuels. Seems to me the point is take action...any action...on something you can actually do something about.
It is more than apparent that climate change can not be reversed. I will not attempt to cast dissent or doubt on scientific studies that many here are more well versed on than me.
The evidence is clear. The best we could do at this point is slow down the eventual doom of our plant. But be assured the inevitability of our extinction due to over population will be the world's future. Perhaps in 100 years..certainl y no more than 150. So do something...any thing to help our fellow humanity-and do it now!
But more that 26,000 kids dying today has got to outrank, on anyone's priorities, working on a climate change that we cannot possibly fix, and is many, many years off in the distance.
I mean, how do you look yourself in the mirror and say I've worked to save my great grandchildren, when millions of babies are dead at your feet?
It's like the house is burning down (with kids inside), but we have decided that working on designing a new fire hydrant is more important.
Because of the power structures that now exists, we have kids going hungry in the U.S.. What do we do about our own?
On the Alternative Radio program broadcast Sunday night on our local community radio station, Michael Bernardi said the the super-rich would rather protect their fortunes than protect the earth. They don't want to simply make a profit, they want to continue to make a killing. They are not only homicidal, they are suicidal as well.
But who can tell them anything. Because they happen to be rich, they can't ever believe they might be wrong about anything.
Versus death for 9-10 million kids under 5.
Small price to pay.
If your child was hungry, would you quit your job so that you could buy him something to eat? That is what it seems to me you are advocating. You don't have to quit your job to get your child something to eat, and if you do, the situation will get much, much worse later on.
Of course I know the situation will get much worse before it gets better. But why in the world would you want it to get any worse than it has to? We still have the capability of preventing a world-wide famine. But we won't prevent it with so many people denying the problem or giving up already. We could still prevent the next mass extinction, but not if we don't even try!
So yes, feed the hungry children. But don't give up on life. No matter how bad things are, they can always get worse. And whoever doesn't do his part, for whatever reason, is helping it get worse.
would be a birdflu that eradicates us
back to 2 billion people (like in 1920)
with the same knowledge and technology
as we have today.
that would give us some "breathing space"
to act more wisely than hitherto.
could you imagine the following plot:
year 2030, America is going down the drains, Iran has nuclear weapons, climate chaos, drought, wildfires, wars, nuclear catastrophies,
terrorist attacks, poverty, civil unrest,
plus a couple of billion more people!
In secret CIA has found a vaccine against a lethal birdflu or Ebola and vaccinates the ones they want to survive:
republicans, newborn evangelicals, jewish
people, the superrich, corporations and
the rest can go!
Chinese, Iranians, muslims, 99% !!
You will probably be able to see this blockbuster movie in a cinema nearby
next year.
Oddly, apart from a 1975 article in Science Digest, a 1979 piece in Harrowsmith, and a quite obscure book, Huke's work has received little attention. With advances in technology since the 1970s, it could undoubtedly be improved upon--the possibilities may. well be endless. The neat thing about Huke's designs is that they produced their own oxygen and absorbed any carbon dioxide produced, effectively being carbon-neutral long before the term was invented.
I would VERY much like to see this man's work revived and put into wide use. Our lives may well depend on something of the sort.
Future generations, if there should be, will no doubt adapt. Most of us living today would go mad living in such an environment.
As indeed good progress has been made in the area of Elektroautos, extremely tiny amount of effort has been made to electrify the country's (uh, correction: North America's) intercity railway infrastructure. (Con't...)
The railways in America are indeed a gross EMBARRASSMENT! Even Amtrak is an embarrassment! I am Japanese-Swiss, both of these countries have an excellent railway infrastructure, the SBB and the JR -- especially Japan! The JR in my most humble opinion, is second to none, and as I see it, Japan IS the railway capital of planet Earth! (The States is an unmittigated EMBARRASSMENT to the rest of the world! With outdated rolling stock, and a mentality that has not changed one iota since the 1940's, and this hangup in still using all this diesel nonsense in this day and age (Yes 'diesel-electri c' hybrid, but to me nonetheless still DIESEL!), America Canada and México inclusive have done extremely little to upgrade the railway infrastructure to the 21st Century standards!
Even CHINA is beating would records! In fact they have been going so fast that due to an engineering design error on a curve on an elevated section of track in Gwenghou, they actually placed a 'speed limit' on their high-speed trains!
France is currently holding the world record on speed with their new V-150 series TGV trains at 574.8 km/h! (2001-4-3). (Amtrak's ACELA on the other hand, currently the fastest trains in America, is only holding at a mere 200 km/h)! This is a disgrace!
Let's get crackin'! let's get these trains here ELECTRIFIED -- and NOW!
Thank you!
What I find amusing is humans have an inherent delusional arrogance to believe the Earth won't get rid of them before they do too much damage.
The earth will continue creating new forms of life long after we're nothing but fossilised bones.
Eventually, the Earth will end up like Mars or Venus as it's inevitable. Nothing lasts forever.
Also, many people point to carbon as the root cause - a gas which is neither created nor is it destroyed. We are to be steward's of the earth. Unfortunately for the masses, climate change and climate change legislation is one up for the very wealthy - a mass marketing slogan used so that those who have little will cater to the those who want to have power over the masses. It will be promoted and of grave concern for this generation, but barring the Lord's return, another 100 years from now there will be new fears and concerns generated by people who are not in control of the universe
15th, genocide of the Amaleks!
God belongs in the Hague besides
Karadsic, Mladic and others accused of
genocide.
In fact, we all, especially we Americans, use too many resources. Why is nobody uttering the dreaded "C"-word? You know the one I mean--conservat ion. Can we make a commitment to drive cars less (or not at all)? Buy only what we need, keeping away from the things the 1% has foisted on us, like sugar, guns, cheap electronics, throwaway consumer goods? We Americans are ruining the planet almost on our own!
If there is to be change, let it begin with me.
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