CommonPrejudice

So What's In it For Us?

Billmon points to this article that discuss the shock of European scientists at discovering that enough ice melted last month to make it possible to sail to the North Pole.

European scientists voiced shock today as they viewed pictures which showed Arctic ice cover had disappeared so much last month that a ship could sail unhindered from Europe's most northerly outpost to the North Pole.

The satellite images were acquired from August 23 to 25 by instruments aboard Envisat and EOS Aqua, two satellites operated by the European Space Agency (ESA).

Perennial sea ice – thick ice that is normally present year-round and is not affected by the Arctic summer – had disappeared over an area bigger than the British Isles, ESA said.

Vast patches of ice-free sea stretched north of Svalbard, an archipelago lying midway between Norway and the North Pole, and extended deep into the Russian Arctic all the way to the North Pole, the agency said in a press release.

"This situation is unlike anything observed in previous record low-ice seasons," said Mark Drinkwater of ESA's Oceans/Ice Unit.

More scary stuff. But I thought this last paragraph which Billmon didn't cite was also very telling.

There are geopolitical implications, too, as Canada, Russia and the US jockey to claim rights over transpolar passages that open up within their newly ice-free waters.

The world is going to hell. So the big question is; How can we profit from it?

Real Problems

While Bush blathered on disingenuously at the United Nations about his fantasy of American style democracy in the Middle East there is one problem the winning candidate of the 2000 American election talked about yesterday at the New York University School of Law that will be ignored at our peril ... really:

A few days ago, scientists announced alarming new evidence of the rapid melting of the perennial ice of the north polar cap, continuing a trend of the past several years that now confronts us with the prospect that human activities, if unchecked in the next decade, could destroy one of the earth's principle   mechanisms for cooling itself. Another group of scientists presented evidence   that human activities are responsible for the dramatic warming of sea surface   temperatures in the areas of the ocean where hurricanes form. A few weeks earlier, new information from yet another team showed dramatic increases in the burning   of forests throughout the American West, a trend that has increased decade by   decade, as warmer temperatures have dried out soils and vegetation. All these   findings come at the end of a summer with record breaking temperatures and the   hottest twelve month period ever measured in the U.S., with persistent drought   in vast areas of our country. Scientific American introduces the lead article in its special issue this month with the following sentence: "The debate on global warming is over."

Many scientists are now warning that we are moving closer to several "tipping   points" that could - within as little as 10 years - make it impossible   for us to avoid irretrievable damage to the planet's habitability for human civilization. In this regard, just a few weeks ago, another group of scientists   reported on the unexpectedly rapid increases in the release of carbon and methane  emissions from frozen tundra in Siberia, now beginning to thaw because of human  caused increases in global temperature. The scientists tell us that the tundra   in danger of thawing contains an amount of additional global warming pollution   that is equal to the total amount that is already in the earth's atmosphere.   Similarly, earlier this year, yet another team of scientists reported that the   previous twelve months saw 32 glacial earthquakes on Greenland between 4.6 and 5.1 on the Richter scale - a disturbing sign that a massive destabilization may now be underway deep within the second largest accumulation of ice on the planet, enough ice to raise sea level 20 feet worldwide if it broke up and slipped   into the sea. Each passing day brings yet more evidence that we are now facing   a planetary emergency - a climate crisis that demands immediate action to   sharply reduce carbon dioxide emissions worldwide in order to turn down the earth's thermostat and avert catastrophe

Read the whole thing. I really mean that this time. At least Gore approaches the subject with some attempt at a solution.

There is simply no threat that is even remotely close to the one the environment poses. To those blind ignorant fools who claim that Gore and Professor James Lovelock (see below) are Cassandras, I fear for once they may be right (though of course they would hardly realize it).

In Greek mythology, Cassandra ("she who entangles men") (also known as Alexandra) was a daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy whose beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy. However, when she did not return his love, Apollo placed a curse on her so that no one would ever believe her predictions...

When Cassandra foresees the destruction of Troy (she warns the Trojans about the Trojan Horse, the death of Agamemnon, and her own demise), she is unable to do anything to forestall these events. Her family believes she is mad, and, according to some versions, kept her locked up because of this.

At times I am absolutely dumbfounded by the magnitude of the stupidity of our species. Look at Lovelock's conclusions (via Billmon):

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."

And as Billmon notes, Lovelock is hardly a quack:

It would be easy to view this as just another kooky end-of-the-world 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 chlorofluorocarbons 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.

We are really at critical - beyond critical - stage of human history and at the helm of the world's most powerful (and ignorant) nation is a man-child surrounded by corrupt, incompetent, greedy goons.

Billions of dollars are spent on bombing people, and in the process making the world far more dangerous. And one of the many reasons for this is oil, the resource whose burning is crippling our planet. It seems to me a sane species would be focusing all its resources and energy on finding ways to survive what is clearly the most devastating threat imaginable instead of blowing what it has in a battle for the commodity that only makes the problem worse. Do people not realize that this is something that we can not afford to wait on? And to those who doubt the overwhelming scientific consensus; Is this something you can afford to be wrong about? Do you have any children?

Be afraid. Be very very afraid. It's our only hope.

Update: Senator Inhofe:

He's (Gore) been hyping unfounded fears of planetary doom for 20 years

To Senator James M. Inofe, Republican from Oklahoma, I say; Go to hell. Go straight to hell.

 

Walmart to go "Organic"

Very interesting article by Michael Pollan on how Walmart is getting into the organic food business. This of course signifies, as the article states, the mainstreaming of organic food. On the surface this seems like a very good thing.

However, as is the case with most of what Walmart does, there is a much shadier side to the issue . When you consider Walmart's promise to keep the price of organic food only 10% higher than that of non-organic food and the company's well-deserved reputation for squeezing suppliers to get the absolute minimum cost, there are some obvious negative consequences looming on the horizon, the most important and obvious being that the word 'organic' will soon come to mean nothing at all.

As the article notes:

Organic is just a word, after all, and its definition now lies in the hands of the federal government, which means it is subject to all the usual political and economic forces at play in Washington. Inevitably, the drive to produce organic food cheaply will bring pressure to further weaken the regulations, and some of K Street's finest talent will soon be on the case. A few years ago a chicken producer in Georgia named Fieldale Farms persuaded its congressman to slip a helpful provision into an appropriations bill that would allow growers of organic chicken to substitute conventional chicken feed if the price of organic feed exceeded a certain level. That certainly makes life easier for a chicken producer when the price of organic corn is north of $5 a bushel, as it is today, and conventional corn south of $2. But in what sense is a chicken fed on conventional feed still organic? In no sense but the Orwellian one: because the government says it is. [the law was eventually repealed)

Whether its chickens in Confined Animal Feeding Operations(CAFO's) whose "free roaming" consists of a concrete porch with a view outside or cows in deserts chewing grain instead of grass (and thus highly reducing the vitamin content of its milk), it does seem that industrial food production can not be compatible with organic food production if the word organic is to continue to mean something. As the author of the article states:

To say you can sell organic food for 10 percent more than you sell irresponsibly priced food suggests that you don't really get it — that you plan to bring business-as-usual principles of industrial "efficiency" and "economies of scale" to a system of food production that was supposed to mimic the logic of natural systems rather than that of the factory.

Frankly I doubt we ever really will "get it." Check the story out.

A Disgrace

Apparently it is acceptable in today's modern world of 'journalism' to pretty much print anything regardless how inane the argument is, how dishonest the claims are, and how little evidence is provided, as long as it appears in the opinion section.

Take this fine piece of work by Jack Strayer entitled Global Warming: Media is hyping the issue that appears in many dailies throughout the States. Strayer's article is an absolute piece of garbage that doesn't deserve to be published in a junior high newsletter. And unlike Strayer I'll attempt to prove what I say.

First of all, it is highly informative to see how the print edition of the Miami Herald presents the opinion. It comes with a big headline, a large graphic and its 14 paragraphs occupy nearly half of the opinion page. Right below it, if you look hard, you can find the counterpoint - all four paragraphs of it. I would like to think that this is because Strayer's article is so ridiculous it needs no rebuttal, but I doubt that was the editors' (if they have editors) intention.

Now I'd rather not waste too much time on this nonsense, but as it appears in major newspapers throughout the U.S. it worth highlighting how bad it is. First Strayer starts with:

Nowhere is the yawning gap between science and alarmism better illustrated these days than the rancorous, decade-long debate over the extent of human contribution to global warming -- which, pardon the pun, is on the verge of boiling over.

I was taught back in high school that you when make an argument you need to back it up with some evidence. Apparently Strayer missed that class. Instead of demonstrating this "yawning gap" he precedes to make the issue one of left and right.

The argument has created zigzag fissures in the scientific community and among politicians -- usually, but not always -- with advocates of an unrestrained free market on one side and those who favor rigid government controls on the other.

It's not quite to the point of becoming another one of those ''red state vs. blue state'' cross-fires, but it's getting close.

No No No. Didn't the world "global" tip him off that it is world problem which makes his attempt to turn the debate into one of red state versus blue state absurd? I sure as hell don't want to go into the vast amounts of evidence and the overwhelming consensus of scientists regarding global warming (And I'm guessing many of these scientists throughout the world don't even know what a red state is.)  But I'll let the professor, writing about this very subject today, take it up . (I hadn't realized that until I had already started this post. Makes it a lot easier for me. Thanks Pr. Krugman)

...Global warming emerged as a major public issue in the late 1980's. But at first there was considerable scientific uncertainty.

Over time, the accumulation of evidence removed much of that uncertainty. Climate experts still aren't sure how much hotter the world will get, and how fast. But there's now an overwhelming scientific consensus that the world is getting warmer, and that human activity is the cause.

In 2004, an article in the journal Science that surveyed 928 papers on climate change published in peer-reviewed scientific journals found that "none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position."

To dismiss this consensus, you have to believe in a vast conspiracy to misinform the public that somehow embraces thousands of scientists around the world.

Global warming is very very real and humans have contributed mightily to this phenomenon. And  anyway, considering what is at stake, this is obviously something you want to err on the side of caution. (In other words you don't want the smoking gun to be human extinction)

Continuing... It isn't easy to present two fallacies in the same paragraph but Strayer manages it like a pro. After giving us a red herring by setting the issue up as a battle between progressives and conservatives, (ignoring the only important issue, the science) Strayer lays a false dictum on us.

...with advocates of an unrestrained free market on one side and those who favor rigid government controls on the other.

There are really very few who argue for either extreme that Slayer states. (This could almost be termed a Jeffie). Most progressives advocate reasonable controls on the market when it does not adequately meet society's needs. As well I know of few conservatives who would favour a truly "unrestrained free market" if that meant the elimination of the prohibition on child labour or the dumping of toxic chemicals into lakes and rivers. Only the extremists think this way and they are vastly outnumbered by those that fall somewhere in the very large middle. Ridiculous.

The rest of the article is basically unsubstantiated nonsense. Only once in the entire piece does he attempt to back up his claims. Nine paragraphs in the following is all he offers as evidence that global warming is overhyped (oh as evidence the "media" is at fault, he cites all of one story in Time magazine, a story that most agree was very much overdue.)

This despite recent reports from the National Academy of Sciences and scientists at Harvard's prestigious Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, among others, pointing out that the rise in the Earth's temperature has been roughly one degree Fahrenheit over the last 120 years. That's well in line with the gradual pattern of warming and chilling that has occurred since humans began walking upright.

Hmph. Just three days ago this was published:

The National Academy of Sciences joined with other world science academies last June in supporting the most recent research that global warming is occurring and that much of it is directly or indirectly related to human activity.

Guess Strayer is still figuring out that google thing.

Not surprisingly Strayer doesn't cite what which report by the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, but perhaps it was this one.

The study, "Reconstructing Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1,000 Years: A Reappraisal," was published several weeks ago in a British scientific journal, Energy and Environment. The authors contend in the 65-page paper that their reanalysis of data from more than 200 climate studies provides evidence of global temperature shifts that are more dramatic than the current one.

The research was underwritten by the American Petroleum Institute, the trade association of the world's largest oil companies. Two of the five authors are scientists who have been linked to the coal industry and have received support from the ExxonMobil Foundation. Two others, who are affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, also have the title of "senior scientists" with a Washington-based organization supported by ExxonMobil Corp.

There is plenty to link the vast majority of dissenters - who really make up an incredibly small number of climatologists - to the oil and energy industries. As Krugman noted in his column, this is simply the reprehensible strategy of greedy, immoral SOBs who want to continue to rake in the dollars while driving their Hummers. They make me sick.

Strayer himself writes for the "non-profit" think tank National Center for Policy Analysis, a front for pet conservative causes, that received over 4 million dollars from 1981-2001 from just twelve conservative foundations, many with ties to big oil. Obviously, though, you wouldn't find this out from reading the article in the paper.

There is serious harm done by publishing articles like this. Most people do not have the time or desire to research what they read in the paper (nor should they have to). Perhaps, in their busy day, they have 15 minutes to have a coffee and read the paper. And probably many don't want to believe in global warming (with good reason, it is damn scary). So a column like this will circulate word of mouth. Yeah I read that this global warming thing is a bunch of BS. I saw it in the Herald today.

That is the problem. By printing it major daily papers it gives it a credibility that it should never, ever, have.  In this endless quest for 'balance' it is a disgrace this kind of crap gets the prominent play it does. I am just waiting for the opinion article that argues that nuclear war isn't really that bad. I'm sure it's coming.

(Funny at another newspaper (online) a lede that didn't appear in the print or online edition of the Miami Herald was included:  "Even in the best of times there's a thin line between scientific fact and unadulterated baloney and, to be sure, these aren't the best of times." Again I have to disagree. There is, in fact, a "yawning gap" between scientific fact and his very special type of "unadulterated baloney")

Traveling to the United States? Don't drink the water

If you were given a glass of water which virtually every mainstream scientist in the world told you was almost certainly laced with poison would you drink it because they weren't 100% sure?

That's is essentially what the Pentagon, supported by the White House, is asking Americans to do. (from an important article in the Los Angeles Times by Ralph Vartabedian, read the whole thing)

After massive underground plumes of an industrial solvent were discovered in the nation's water supplies, the Environmental Protection Agency mounted a major effort in the 1990s to assess how dangerous the chemical was to human health.

Following four years of study, senior EPA scientists came to an alarming conclusion: The solvent, trichloroethylene, or TCE, was as much as 40 times more likely to cause cancer than the EPA had previously believed...

By 2003, after a prolonged challenge orchestrated by the Pentagon, the EPA lost control of the issue and its TCE assessment was cast aside. As a result, any conclusion about whether millions of Americans were being contaminated by TCE was delayed indefinitely.

So let's layout the argument and you can determine who you would believe. Those on the side of caution.

• ... senior EPA scientists [in the 2001 study] came to an alarming conclusion: The solvent, trichloroethylene, or TCE, was as much as 40 times more likely to cause cancer than the EPA had previously believed ...
• "It is a World Trade Center in slow motion," said Boston University epidemiologist David Ozonoff, a TCE expert. "You would never notice it."...
• "Do I think TCE causes cancer? Yes," said Ozonoff, the Boston University TCE expert. "There is lots of evidence. Is there a dispute about it? Yes. Whenever the stakes are high, that's when there will be disputes about the science."
• "The evidence on TCE is overwhelming," said Dr. Gina Solomon, an environmental medicine expert at UC San Francisco and a scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We have 80 epidemiological studies and hundreds of toxicology studies. They are fairly consistent in finding cancer risks that cover a range of tumors. It is hard to make all that human health risk go away."

And those who say, "ah just drink it. (I buy bottled water)."

• ... Senior officials in the Defense Department say much remains unknown about TCE.
• ... The agencies [Pentagon, Energy Department and NASA] argued that the EPA had produced junk science, its assumptions were badly flawed and that evidence exonerating TCE was ignored...
• ... But Raymond F. DuBois, former deputy undersecretary of Defense for installations and environment in the Bush administration, said the Pentagon had not been willing to accept whatever came out of the EPA, though it cared a great deal about base contamination.
• "If TCE is a human carcinogen, it isn't much of one," said Paul Dugard, a toxicologist at the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance Inc., which represents TCE manufacturers. "People exposed at low levels shouldn't be concerned...
• ...Gilman said an entire consulting industry has sprung up in Washington to attack the EPA and sow seeds of doubt about its capabilities...
• ... But industry experts fire back that evidence on TCE is still weak...

How widespread is the problem?

An internal Air Force report issued in 2003 warned that the Pentagon alone has 1,400 sites contaminated with TCE.

Among those, at least 46 have involved large-scale contamination or significant exposure to humans at military bases, according to a list compiled by the Natural Resources New Service, an environmental group based in Washington.

It does not take much of a genius to see once again that greed, myopia and ideology trump science.

[Air Force rebuttal to EPA study] ... said "there is no convincing evidence" that some groups of people, like children and diabetics, are more susceptible to TCE, a key part of the EPA's report. And it said the EPA had failed to consider viewpoints from "scientists who believe that TCE does not represent a human cancer risk at levels reasonably expected in the environment."

But comments such as these are outside the scientific mainstream. Other federal agencies have also expressed grave concern about TCE and some experts say it is only a matter of time before the chemical is universally recognized as a known carcinogen....

..."If you go down two or three levels in EPA, you have an awful lot of people that came onboard during the Clinton administration, to be perfectly blunt about it, and have a different approach than I do at Defense," DuBois said

...The military says it is only striving to make smart decisions based on sound science and accuses the EPA of being unduly influenced by left-leaning scientists.

Think about that last comment for a second. Somehow warning about an almost certain carcinogen is the position of a "left-leaning scientist. Since when is concern over drinking toxic water or breathing toxic air "left-wing?" I had always assumed that ideological differences arose when determining how to deal with problems such as these, but claiming concern over the issue based on innumerable mainstream  scientific studies is left wing? No wonder Bush is so popular. Furthermore I believe most of us who appreciate and respect the scientific community know that politics has precious little to do with science, and the only way I can imagine any credible scientist leaning left is if their left leg were shorter than their right one. 

In terms of the future:

Bush administration appointees in the EPA — notably research director Paul Gilman — sided with the Pentagon and agreed to pull back the risk assessment. The matter was referred for a lengthy study by the National Academy of Sciences, which is due to issue a new report this summer. Any resolution of the cancer risk TCE poses will take years and any new regulation could take even longer.

Of course we know there is only one reason to protest the scientific community's warning about TCE, and it ain't uncertainty over the science.

He (V. James Cogliano, lead author of the 2001 health risk assessment and senior official at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France) added: "The degree of opposition was not surprising given the degree of economic interests involved."

...[In the 1980s] ... Defense Department officials said, "You put in every margin of safety, because we want to be sure it will be safe," he said. "There was no argument. There is a different spirit today."

A different spirit indeed.

If the planet goes to hell, don't worry. Friedman will respond in a column

In the midst of debating himself - insert joke here - Friedman says

Well, it wasn't exactly Nixon to China. But it wasn't bean bag either. I'd say the president's State of the Union speech, when it came to calling for an end to our oil addiction and a real push to improve our educational competitiveness, was more like Nixon goes to New Mexico. It was an important change in direction and tone — but still a long way from China, a long way from a definitive change in policy and implementation.

... We do not have three years to lose — not on climate change, energy efficiency or improving math/science education. I am not going to sit around for the next three years just trashing these guys and praying that some Democrat gets elected and does all the right things. We don't have time, you moron!...

He concludes:

You may be right. And if he fails to carry through with this energy initiative, I'll be the first to rip him for it. In the meantime, I prefer to give him a new reputation to live up to. You never know. ... And by the way, pal, you got a better horse to ride right now?

The United States and consequently the world, as the U.S. is the biggest polluter, don't have three years to lose. So Friedman is willing to give the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt regarding its apparent change in "direction and tone." I mean, c'mon, when you consider Bush's history of honesty, his grasp of the complexity of the world's problems, the past environmental record of Bush, Cheney, et al,  and the claims made by the president in previous State of the Unions, you can only arrive at one conclusion: "You never know."

How disconnected from reality does someone - anyone, never mind a columnist of Friedman's supposed stature -have to be to still - still! - be willing to put some faith these guys? Not to worry to though, if several Katrinas start hitting the coasts of world each year and the realization that global warming is irreversible becomes obvious, Friedman will "rip him for it ."

I wonder if the news the day after Bush's speech changed Friedman's position.

One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said that the president didn't mean it literally.

What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.

Like how he said they would track down Bin Laden. Not literally of course. The president is going to figuratively reduce America's dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Hell, even this is an important change in direction and tone, right Tom.

Would Bush's promise make a difference? No.

...Not a word from Bush about attacking the demand side of the equation by burning less oil, although after the 1973-74 oil embargo the U.S. managed to cut its oil consumption by almost 30 per cent strictly by energy conservation.

Not a word about the consequences for climate change of burning so much oil or about the implications of soaring oil demand in the emerging Asian giants, China and India, for prices and supply. Just a promise to cut American oil imports from the Middle East by three-quarters -- by 2025.

As so often with Bush, it's hard to tell whether he is trying to fool us or just fooling himself. Sixty per cent of the oil the U.S. consumes is imported, up from 53 per cent when Bush took office.

Last year, less than one-fifth of that imported oil came from the Middle East, so achieving Bush's stated goal would only bring the share of imported oil in U.S. consumption back to the level of 2001.

And much of it would still come from "unstable parts of the world."

The three largest sources of American oil imports are Canada, Venezuela and Nigeria.

To have a highly influential columnist in the "paper of record" yammer on about giving Bush another chance because it is the only hope we've got is about as defeatist, naive and irrelevant as you can get.
I firmly believe greatest threat we face - infinitely greater than terrorism, - is the damage being done to the planet. As the science increasingly starts to point to, we are perilously close (or have passed) the point of no return in regards to global warming. This is no time to fool around, blindly putting faith in a group of people who are so very much destined to fail or abuse your confidence or both. This is serious shit. Whatever needs to be done, you can rest assured that none of it will be initiated by the Bush crime family. If we really don't have three years to wait, then other avenues absolutely have to be pursued. Somehow we have to go around them. They won't help.

Question of the Day

Does it matter that salmon for $4.84 a pound leaves a layer of toxic sludge on the ocean bottoms of the Pacific fjords of southern Chile?

An Optimist's Approach

Is there a way out of our seemingly dreadful end on this planet?

Ironically, given how the world appears to being turning towards Iran as the main villian now that Iraq has been left in shambles, a Persian poet of the thirteenth century, Jelaluddin Rumi, produced a poem that demonstrates a manner of thinking which is I truly believe is humanity's only hope.

I hold to no religion or creed,
am neither Eastern nor Western,
Muslim or infidel,
Zoroastrian, Christian, Jew or Gentile.
I come from neither the land nor sea,
am not related to those above or below,
was not born nearby or far away,
do not live either in Paradise or on this Earth,
claim descent not from Adam and Eve or the Angels above.
I transcend body and soul.
My home is beyond place and name.
It is with the beloved, in a space beyond space.
I embrace all and am part of all.

Of course espousing words such as these would only make one a delusional cockeyed optimist. Too bad.

Time to Hoard Some Food

A very scary conclusion based on the work of scientist James Lovelock:

Thirty years ago, the scientist James Lovelock worked out that the Earth possessed a planetary-scale control system which kept the environment fit for life. He called it Gaia, and the theory has become widely accepted. Now, he believes mankind's abuse of the environment is making that mechanism work against us. His astonishing conclusion - that climate change is already insoluble, and life on Earth will never be the same again...

He goes on: "We have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act, and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can." He believes that the world's governments should plan to secure energy and food supplies in the global hothouse, and defences against the expected rise in sea levels. The scientist's vision of what human society may ultimately be reduced to through climate change is " a broken rabble led by brutal warlords..."

... Over the coming decades soaring temperatures will mean agriculture may become unviable over huge areas of the world where people are already poor and hungry; water supplies for millions or even billions may fail. Rising sea levels will destroy substantial coastal areas in low-lying countries such as Bangladesh, at the very moment when their populations are mushrooming. Numberless environmental refugees will overwhelm the capacity of any agency, or indeed any country, to cope, while modern urban infrastructure will face devastation from powerful extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans last summer.

Of course the wingnuts will arrogantly call him a Cassandra (Is there anything they don't do arrogantly?) Funny thing is, I couldn't agree more.

In Greek mythology, Cassandra ... was a daughter of King Priam of Troy and his queen Hecuba, who captured the eye of Apollo and was granted the ability to see the future...

The word Cassandra has recently become more widely used in the English language, but unfortunately it is usually used totally incorrectly ...in an attempt to describe somebody who makes false predictions which are believed.

You see she was right about the fall of Troy, and I do believe Lovelock will be too. Unfortunately there will be no one left to rub it in.

Foward to the Past

While Bush argues that mandatory emissions cuts would damage the US economy, seven US states agree on a plan to invoke such cuts, including New York Republican governor George Pataki. As commendable as this is, it seems to me that a country without a national plan for developing alternative energy sources - and the necessary resources a federal government possesses -  is indeed in danger of facing economic problems. So while Bush leads the United States back to the 19th century, China once again demonstrates why it will be a very formidable power in the years to come. In an approach directly contrary to Bush's, they are introducing a measure which will calculate the economic damage to the nation's economy by virtue of the poor utilization of natural resources and pollutant discharge:

China will work out its first assessment on pollution-based economic losses for 31 provinces, cities and regions in 2006, said Wang Jinnan, chief engineer of Chinese Academy of Environment Planning, State Environmental Protection Agency.

The survey, known as "green GDP" in China, is launched in December this year. Wang illustrated the gap in "green competitiveness" between China and developed nations. The economic growth is still based on high resource consumption, heavy pollution and poor output. The cost of development and environment is very high. And the "green competitiveness" varies geographically in China.

Research has shown that pollution per GDP has to be reduced by four to five times if China wishes to have its economic scale doubled in 2020 on the basis of the current level.

While certainly the Plame affair has very little international significance, nor does Bush spying on Americans, anything that can be used to impeach his ass and get these madmen and women out of office as soon as possible would be a blessing for everyone who breathes the air on this planet.