January 2004 Archives

As humans envelope nature and impact climatic processes, there is no guarantee change will be even and predictable. As ecosystems change, they may reach a tipping point, whereby there is rapid movement to a new relatively steady state. The massiveness and rapidity of human influence upon the atmosphere may well lead to dramatic changes in climate that threaten civilization. Precautions are warranted.

Fortune.com - Technology - The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare

Global warming, rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to a tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world's climate can lurch from one state to another in less than a decade%u2014like a canoe that's gradually tilted until suddenly it flips over. Scientists don't know how close the system is to a critical threshold. But abrupt climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant future. If it does, the need to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many societies%u2014thereby upsetting the geopolitical balance of power.

There is no contradication in saying areas may get colder as in whole the globe warms. The nature of complex climate system interactions and feedbacks is such that ice, water, oceans, land and the atmosphere may interact in such a manner as to drastically change the ecosystem processes that had been responsible for climatic patterns. An example is the possible "shut down of the gulf stream" caused by more fresh water flowing into the North Atlantic from melting glaciers. This may lead to a much colder North America and Europe while the globe on average is warmer. Climate change is fundamentally about the destruction of relatively stable ecological processes and resultant chaotic climate patterns. The confusion on this issue results from the widespread acceptance of "global warming" rather than "climate change" to describe the phenomena of anthropogenic impacts upon climate.

CNN.com - N. America, Europe to cool as world warms? - Jan. 21, 2004

Parts of Europe and North America could get drastically colder if warming Atlantic ocean currents are halted by a surprise side-effect of global warming...

Why is it that "compassionate conservatism" has come to be synonymous with conspicuous energy consumption? Despite "conservation" and "conservative" having the same word root, the Bush administration repeatedly seeks to obstruct energy efficiency, conservation and innovation - instead seeking to prolong the era of deadly overuse of fossil fuels through subsidies to the energy industry. Thankfully, his recent attempt to halt mandatory increases in the energy efficiency of air conditions has been rejected by the courts. Of course Bush's repeated pro-energy policy proposals have nothing to do with political favors, and are in the interest of most Americans and the World. Not.

Softer Energy Rule by Bush Rejected

A federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned a rule, announced early in the Bush administration, that would have weakened the Clinton administration's energy efficiency standard for home air conditioners.

George Bush's obstructionist climate change policy (or lack thereof), in the face of massive scientific evidence that the globe is heating with devasting consequences, represents deliberate violence against the Earth and its peoples. Global efforts to address the greatest threat to every face human civilization is being stonewalled by a sinister, naive, addled and dangerous man.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Scorching world of climate politics
The White House's top climate advisors are like foxes "guarding the chicken coop", an anonymous source at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has told the BBC.

Fantastic to hear others say what I have been for years - "Climate change is a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism..." - as is loss of large, fully functional terrestrial ecosystems. The Bush, Putin and Howard administration's myopia must be challenged and overturned as a matter of Planetary as well as human survival.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Global warming 'biggest threat'

Over-developed nations enjoying short lived material prosperity are in a state of environmental denial. What happens when there is not enough water to meet human and other needs in Australia? Humanity is well on its way to finding out what happens when regional ecological limits are surpassed and ecosystems start collapsing.

Water savings paying off, but don't dream of hosing that driveway yet - www.smh.com.au

...water restrictions will be remembered as the first time global warming changed the daily lives of Sydney residents.

President Bush is fiddling as the globe burns, selling short future generation's stable climate as political payback for his oil oligarchy buddies. This is environmental terrorism, morally evil and inept governance.

Yahoo! News - Bush Plans On Global Warming Alter Little

Two years after President Bush (news - web sites) declared he could combat global warming without mandatory controls, the administration has launched a broad array of initiatives and research, yet it has had little success in recruiting companies to voluntarily curb their greenhouse gas emissions...