Forget Iraq: The weather will kill us all

Rising sea levels will create new seashore in North America

The rich world's policy on greenhouse gas now seems clear: millions will die.

Our governments have set the wrong targets to tackle climate change using outdated science, and they know it - George Monbiot (Tuesday May 1, 2007)


The nay-sayers and the doom-mongers ought to gather in one room and have a big food fight over their precise (and selfish) objections to the reports of global climate change. The outcome of that encounter won't change one quanta of the reality of the changing climate.

Note that phrase: "changing."

Changes in the Earth's climate are historic and nobody is arguing against that. The point is that humans are contributing in a major and ahistoric fashion, and it can and should be abated for any number of very sound economic, military, cultural and environmental reasons.

Yes, Earth's climate has gone through changes in the past, some quite abrupt, like the sudden global chilling that brought on the Ice Ages a little over ten thousand years ago. There is warming as well, which gave us the Age of the Dinosaurs; which, by the way, lasted 250 million years.

Each of these (only) two examples was caused by temperature changes of a piddling two degrees Celsius.

However, recent icepack core samples from the Antarctic (time span: approximately 1 million years) show a rapid and unprecedented climb in average temperature starting at the beginning of the Industrial Age.

I suggest that there should be major alarms at any rapid change in climate, which change is what ALL the models are showing us. We need to be aware of the extent so we can make preparations, whether your economy is based on tulips, are a housewife buying cabbages, or are a Marine colonel planning a beach assault ("Where did the beach go?"). Not to mention the massive human migration that will go along with these changes.

Sure, a handful of scientists disagree with the findings of the IPCC, but over 1,200 others signed their names to it. My bet is on the battalion of climatologists who think we should be a tad concerned.

Bear in mind that the average temperature increase is just that: an average.

Local weather patterns can be very chaotic, while micro-events can be quite severe. The extremes in a geographic range are what are of concern. Summers could see temperatures as high as 120 F in Northern Europe, and as low as -40 F in Northumbria, for example, and very swiftly. Are you looking forward to that? Sea levels will rise; are you willing to just sit around and wait for the Thames (in the UK) to broach your attic at high tide? Temperatures in sub-Sahara Africa will go through the roof on occasion. Are you going to house the millions of displaced Africans trying to get out of the oven that Africa will become?

By the way, the uranium that powers your nuclear power plants comes from Africa. The political, economic and military consequences of mining operations in Niger et al, in the face of climate heating are almost beyond contemplation. Chew that over for a while.

The UK's Ministry of Defense recently released report Strategic Trends 2007 states that climate change WILL severely impact many areas of concern to everyone. And, I might add, despite your hysterical objections.

The military are not usually given to arm-waving; contrary to popular opinion, the military are not unintelligent. Also, you might want to take a gander at NASA's own contribution to the subject, available here: The Next 50 Years, which projects alarming sea level changes, droughts & desertification, abnormal animal migrations, diseases such as malaria spreading northward, etc., if we continue our present rate of expelling CO2 emissions. NASA's report was written in 2001.

The consensus has been building for some time; and it is a consensus.

In closing, I am put in mind of the old biddy's adage, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."


Update: The US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), has released a side-by-side comparison of the report as presented on Tuesday October 23, 2007 by Dr. Julie Gerberding, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The presentation has been heavily edited by the White House, trimming 6 of the original 12 pages in the report. Here's a screenshot of one pdf released on the 25th of October by the Committee.

Click on image for more readable version

Two highly informative pdf's (including an eye-opening redlined version) illustrating the White House's editing of the CDC report are available here and here.

More sad evidence that this administration doesn't give a crap about you.


current-events

Am I crazy, or just very, very angry?

The Shrub is going to come on the TV here in just a few and tell me how great it is to be an American. I couldn’t agree more. It’s great to come home from your second part-time job at the Wal-Mart to a house full of ignorant, doped-up kids, only to turn on the news to watch another piece of American infrastructure drop into a river, taking several fellow taxpayers with it.

It’s just swell to learn that the bastards in Congress passed another ratification of the Shrub’s demon vision of Iran as a terrorist state, declaring them “murderers, ” while American Blackwater contractors machine gun Iraqi citizens with impunity and we learn that not only are we supplying guns and ammo to the Sunnis, we’re giving weapons to the Shi’ias , too, thus ensuring that both sides have lots of armament for their upcoming full-out civil war.

Meanwhile here at home, a reporter on assignment for Britain's largest newspaper (the UK Guardian) was deported after spending 26 hours in lockup in an undisclosed location for failing to have a journalist visa, per the US Patriot (sic) Act. If this is how we treat our friends, you can just imagine how we treat people we don’t like.

By the way, New Orleans is still a mess and the Shrub just vetoed the idea of a 5 cent tax on gasoline to pay for repairing America’s bridges, and he still wants another $80 billion to continue fucking up Iraq. In breaking news we learn that the Japanese just fired up their presses and printed a trillion (with a “T”) yen to prop up the failing (and getting worse) American real estate market.

Congress – and the idiots in the White House – could take some pointers from the Chinese, where the guy in charge of inspecting Mattel toys for the American market committed suicide after it was discovered that those toys were covered with poisonous lead paint.

So how’s your day been?

current-events

Global warming starts in your driveway

Credit: iamtherevolution[dot]org

I have lived in the greater Los Angeles area for most of my life. Like the good native Southern Californian that I am, I almost always have had a car, sometimes a fast motorcycle or two, not to mention the old but reliable Ford F150 pickup truck for pulling the vacation trailer and/or the funky dune buggy.

My personal tastes run to Austin-Healey 3000s, Pontiac GTOs, custom-built Mustang GTs, Nissan 300Zs and the like; brutally fast and not necessarily fuel-efficient. But as I have gotten older, I have reduced my use of privately-owned self-propelled motor vehicles to zero.

I didn't get religion or anything, it's just that - using the bus and rail system almost exclusively - my insurance bill dropped to zero; I have no bank loan to pay off; I couldn't care less about how much premium costs for gas-guzzling SUVs; and I don't fume and fret in traffic, stuck on the five-way flyover anymore. My annual Metro pass costs about $550, and it's good 24/7. I do splurge on a cab on the rare occasions that I get stuck late in the evening far from home and the bus might be inconvenient, but that's not often.

I read in the papers that the average atmospheric temperature is going up inexorably as we continue to pour premium into our monster cars. Consider this: the California state budget calls for spending almost as much on <>prisons<> as we do for education, while leaving our infrastructure (read streets & highways) to crumble a little bit more with the passing of each and every two-ton Cadillac Escalade or Suburban.

So here's what the powers-that-be propose as a solution: shafting the little guy one more time. The Los Angeles Metro system board is proposing a fare increase of about 15%, to take effect at the beginning of the Metro's fiscal year in October, to be followed by a series of increases over the next two years, for a total fare increase of 72% over the next four years.

This in the face of angry calls to get the jammed freeways unstuck, not to mention global warming, or oil depletion concerns.

Mass transit is supposed to be part of a solution for global warming and urban crowding, but we are making it twice as expensive for someone like me who would prefer to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem. (Not to mention those ten million Mexican illegals driving clapped-out Camaros because it is literally cheaper in LA to drive an uninsured, unsmogged beater than to take public transportation).

"No one wanted to see a fare increase and it's probably true that we'll probably will lose some riders," said [LA County] County Supervisor Gloria Molina, who co-authored the plan with Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. "But I think in the long run, we owe to this community a stable organization." - Long Beach Press-Telegram

What a crock. We don't need a "stable" organization; we need an affordable way to get to work. Neither Supervisor Yaroslavsky or Molina take the bus to work; they ride in private automobiles, and park their cars in city-owned municipal parking garages. Haven't these people heard that it's "Volume, volume, volume!"? Lower the damn fare, more people pile on the buses and trains, and the cost/mile goes down and everybody's happy.

The Metro is not a private enterprise; exactly like the freeways it is a tax-payer funded (public) utility, for crying out loud. Get the commuters off the jammed Harbor Freeway and to work in a reasonable amount of time on either the bus or the light rail. Maybe if there were MORE potholes commuters would get so fed up with the lousey paving that they'd be glad for a cushy, smooth ride on the bus or train. And, while they're at it, raise the damn gasoline taxes. Gas is too cheap by half and it's the gas taxes that pay for our highways and bus systems in the first place.

Hell, they do it in Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Washington DC, New York, and Paris and London and Berlin and Prague. Los Angeles should have a commuter system at least as good as Prague's, and as cheap.

current-events

Exposing hidden costs of Middle East oil

Have you read the jaw-dropping Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's global warming report ?

I skimmed the headlines and was truly appalled, but because I love to wallow in misery and have to have every tooth-gnashing factoid (the headlines were just that: headlines), I went looking for a source that could give me the whole skinny. I finally arrived at this here website for a "fair summary" of the report. Boy, is it grim. So, to cheer myself up, I thought I might cogitate a bit on the price of oil instead, so I went to the public library and here's what I learned in the latest issue of Futurist Magazine.

Between the two Iraq wars, the cost of maintaining a defense readiness posture in the Persian Gulf region (including troops stationed in Saudi Arabia) cost $49.1 Billion annually, for a total cost of nearly half a trillion dollars to the American taxpayer. This figure does not include the cost of the second war in Iraq (Operation "Enduring Freedom"-har!). That little fiasco's cost is running into nearly half a trillion dollars as this is written. But there is another, hidden cost to the American consumer, particularly consumers of gasoline, but not just them.

That cost of maintaining our military presence in the Middle East works out to an additional, hidden cost of $1.17 per gallon of gasoline used in America during the same time period. This additional extra dollar-plus was not added to the pump price for American taxpayers to see, but was, of course, deducted from the available funding of all sorts of things, including,

 The loss of 828,400 jobs in the US economy
 $159 billion in GDP annually
 $13.4 billion in federal and state revenues annually
 Total economic penalties of $297.2-$304.9 billion annually
 The Twin Towers atrocity and economic loss as a direct result (including original building costs plus insurance payouts in the billions)

All items taken into account, the real cost of a gallon of gasoline is more than $10.

But let's not stop there. Bearing in mind that the majority of global warming is due to fossil fuel use, we must consider collateral damage costs. When we take into account the rising sea levels and loss of seafront properties, drowning polar bears, acid rain, extinct species, average temperatures rising to 7 degrees Farenheit (low estimate)and increased A/C usage plus the concomitant costs of crop loss, farms wiped out, heat stress in livestock (dead ducks, cows, sheep, etc.), water tables damaged due to the incursion of seawater, hurricanes estimated to average Force 4 plus, and more woes than you can shake a thermometer at, the dollar costs are going to be astronomical, unimaginable.

From the NOAA website:

"Our climate is warming at a faster rate than ever before recorded. Ignoring climate change and the most recent warming patterns could be costly to the nation. Small changes in global temperatures can lead to more extreme weather events including, droughts, floods and hurricanes," NOAA Administrator D. James Baker said.

At the news conference, FEMA reported that damage from more frequent and severe weather calamities and other natural phenomena during the past decade required 460 major disasters to be declared, nearly double the 237 declarations for the previous ten-year period and more than any other decade on record. Financially, comparing a three-year period of 1989 through 1991, and 1997 through 1999, the federal costs of severe weather disasters rose a dramatic 337 percent in the latter part of the decade.(my emphasis)

You really, really need to get rid of that SUV soon, and learn to ride a bike.

Source: The Energy Project: Independence by 2020, article by Tsvi Bisk, The Futurist magazine, Jan-Feb, 2007 (Pay-to-download article on the Net, free at your local library)