Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

[Faldur]

Might want to read up on it...



Hmm.. sounds all too familiar.

Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist, (Oooh it must be true if one of these said so), George J. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.

[Ben]

Stavros, read: Merchants of Doubt.
I repeat: The denial movement was lead by a group of physicists. Who were cold warriors. And had a firm anti-communist ideology.
And in the early 90s, when the Cold War came to an end, well, they needed a new enemy. And some came to believe that environmentalists were communists. (Again, they wanted to defend so-called capitalism and freedom.)
A paranoia emerged that environmentalists were, again, communists. And what do environmentalists want? Well, regulation.
So, they viewed it as a kind of creeping communism, a threat to their freedom.
So, the science of global warming THREATENS their free market ideology.
So, in their minds they're defending freedom. And I genuinely think they believe that. So, well, you'll do everything you can to deny global warming to defend that freedom.
Here ol' Chomsky explains neoliberalism.

And, well, if Maggie wasn't a neoliberal, well, what was she? She certainly believed in privatization, the free movement of capital or so-called free markets. She firmly believed in property rights. I mean, she had a heavy faith in the market.
And now a little economics lesson --
And, too, in order for markets to function, well, three things have to happen. (Markets are horrid in that they need to keep growing and growing. Ya know, more stuff. That's the reason we're in this ecological crisis.)
One: the sellers must bear the full cost of what they produce. Of course, car companies always bear the full cost of what they produce. As do oil companies... ha ha ha!
Pollution is a market inefficiency.
Two: investment income needs to stay in the country of origin. How often does this happen?
Three: Savings must be spent on real wealth and not phantom wealth.
And companies, again, work to undermine markets. As in order for markets to work, well, you need PERFECT information. For starters.
You also need informed consumers making rational choices.
Does this happen? I mean, corporations want UNINFORMED consumers making completely irrational choices.
So, therefore markets are inefficient.
But, again, the endless growth of markets are going to finish off the species.

[Stavros]

BEN
It doesn't matter how many links to David Harvey's interesting book you provide, it doesn't obscure the fact that he admits in Chapter 3 (The Neoliberal State) that the actual practice of both the Reagan and Thatcher governments does not 'fit' exactly with his -or anyone else's- definition of Neoliberalism, so there were times when their policy decisions were anything but Neoliberal, but apparently this doesn't matter! Facts like this which suggest the theory is wrong are of little or no importance to Harvey who, against his own evidence, soldiers on with his distorted interpetation of history, errors of fact (p60-no, David half of Liverpool City Concil -45 out of 90- were not gaoled, ut some of them were surcharged), in order to prove that we are living through a new phase of capitalism that began in the 1970s. In spite of his alleged fidelity to Marx, Harvey has never been able to produce an analysis of the means of production or the social relations of production that is remotely as pungent as anything Uncle Charlie managed.

But what is Neoliberalism? It is Liberalism, defined intellectually in the European sense in which it is a philosophy of Free Enterprise contasted with Conservatism and Socialism. I once had to explain to a foreign student I was helping on a course in the theory of international relations, that Neoliberalism was a bogus concept dreamed up by some academics to merit the publication of a book here, a lot of articles there. It suited many people in the 1980s to latch on to it as if they needed a revived concept of an old doctrine to explain something as simple as Thatcherism -look closely and you can't see the difference. As if that wasn't bad enough, someone decided to re-package realism as, wait for it, Neo-Realism. Is it any wonder that so many students find political theory an arid field in which to plough?

Thatcher was indeed a Liberal on many issues, but she was also a Conservative, and she cannot be fit neatly into a pigeon-hole with the word 'Neo-Liberal' attached, the same is even true of Ronald Reagan -in fact, the need for all elected politicians to make pragmatic decisions when they get into office, regardless of what their 'ideology' says they should do, is what makes politics interesting and challenging.

So, sorry Ben, your need to fold people up and place them neatly into pigeon-holes is a waste of time and has nothing to do with the history of politics or the current situation in which we are in.

[Stavros]

Just to reiterate as your other posts intervened: Margaret Thatcher was first and foremost a Conservative politician; that some of her policies were liberal was part of the trend in politics that moved away from the Keynesian consensus that had developed after 1945; but a lot of her policies and practices were not so you cannot blanket her entire political record with a slogan.

Just because some people think environmental activists are left-wing, communists or whatever, doesn't mean that they are. My point -which I don't seem to have made very well- was that if you engage with them, you find a wide range of political affiliations among people concerned about the environment, although I think the most militant direct action activists are difficult to deal with and intolerant of debate.

I notice, again, that like a lot of people, the concept of resource management doesn't excite you. And yet it is at the crux of the argument about the environment.

[trish]

Let's see Faldur what do we have today that we didn't have in the 70's? How about a capacity for high speed computation making detailed computational modeling and simulation of complex systems possible for the first time ever in the history of science. What else? Automatic remote measuring and data collection devices, many of them on board satellites that monitor the Earth's surface, oceans and atmosphere. Many more ice cores have been collected, studied and understood. Many more layers of Earth strata have been examined in fuller detail and understood. (The iridium layer that made Alvarez famous was unnoticed in 1970). We have a greater understanding of the chemistry of the atmosphere as well as the physical mechanisms responsible for the transfer of energy through it. Anything else? Oh yes, a scientific consensus. In 1970 the jury on climate change was still out with different researchers exploring different possibilities.

You mention the late Dr. George Kukla, a climatologist. Here some of his later work
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/usgsstaffpub/174/

As you can see he had a lifelong interest in the glacial cycles of our planet. He studied, researched, designed models, tested hypothesis and refined our understanding of the phenomenon. Anyone with an interest in the science behind the ice ages owes him a debt of gratitude. Thank you Dr. George Kukla.

Here is a lay report on some of his later work.
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/19/us...ing-trend.html

Oh my gosh! Faldur and Kukla have emotional stakes in this issue. Both would benefit from any legitimate argument that would allow them to deny global warming. Unlike Faldur, Dr. Kukla knows that no such argument has been presented. Instead of relying solely on the state of knowledge as it was in the early 70's and on the inclinations he had as a young researcher with a deep interest in the ice ages, Dr. Kukla through time, with thought and consideration, uninfluenced by politics and ideologies, revised his scientific assessment.

Dr. George Kukla gives the deniers no solace. His own work, by his own interpretation, supports the consensus position that the climate is warming and it is in part anthropocentric in origin.

Faldur, you should be ashamed to use Kukla's name as you did. It's as lame as baptizing the dead.

[Faldur]

Faldur, you should be ashamed to use Kukla's name as you did. It's as lame as baptizing the dead.

Sorry, unashamed been riding this marble to long to live with that. And hun, you can only baptize the dead. The living are already saved...

[trish]

I see you chose to respond to nothing in my post but the closing simile.

...you can only baptize the dead. The living are already saved...

Interesting. Life begins at baptism, rather than conception. That should make for an equally interesting stance on abortion. You can't kill a baby that hasn't been baptized, it's already dead.

[Ben]

Warren Buffett Exposed: The Oracle of Omaha and the Tar Sands:

http://www.desmogblog.com/warren-buf...-and-tar-sands

[trish]

Without a doubt the tar sands will be sucked of their crude and transported one way or the other. If the route isn't all downhill, all modes of transportation will consume energy and most likely put more hydrocarbons in the atmosphere. What strikes me as particularly pernicious about the XL pipeline is the endangerment of the Ogallala aquifer. Most people (at least those that don't live on the desert) don't think much about water, but it is our very most valuable resource. Fracking is already contaminating scores of local underground freshwater sources. The Ogallala aquifer is a giant underground reservoir that serves millions of people. IMO it's best to take another route or another mode of transport entirely.

I know there's a movement among the Greens to abandon the sands entirely. It's not going to happen. The sands are just too alluring. The oil corporations are too greedy and their lobby too powerful. The carbon in those sands is coming out. One way or another that crude will find its way to the gulf, it'll be refined and sold on the global market.

I also know the administration is being accused of standing in the way of the jobs the XL would create. But those jobs are not in the immediate future. Whatever the procedure we finally agree upon to mine, move and refine that crude, there will be jobs.

[russtafa]

Might want to read up on it...



Hmm.. sounds all too familiar.

Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist, (Oooh it must be true if one of these said so), George J. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.

these people are ice age deniers lol.besides they think a little bit of ice wont hurt, any way it's more ice to drop into their cocktails