Silencing climate critics
This isn't really a surprise coming out of this administration which puts just about anything, votes in this case, ahead of science and what's in the greater public interest, but it's the top story on the NYTimes site right now, and that's a little significant.
By the way, down here in Houston, we've had the warmest winter I can remember in thirty years. I saw that 2005 was the warmest year on record, and am assuming that our "winter that wasn't" down here is taking place across the country.
The weird thing to me is all the strange, sorta spooked conversations I have been a part of where people look up as if checking to see if it's safe, then almost whisper, "Is this global warming?" If it's beginning to freak out some of the oil and gas men I know, I'm sure that similar conversations are taking place elsewhere in the country.
And just for a little climate reading to keep you up at night. (if you have any other articles of interest, drop them in the comments.)
Warmer Seas Will Wipe Out Plankton - Reprint from The Independent
A partial collapse of the North Atlantic Conveyor currents
Feedback loops amplifying warming kicking in
I often wonder, sheer speculation here, that maybe in some US government vault there's not a study showing that, although it would suffer significant damage, the US would fare far better through a climate catastrophe than it's major geopolitical rivals. Maybe it's a little overparanoid, but it's the only other way, besides greed, that I can explain the willful policy of large scale climate destruction by the US government.
And after all, in the fifties, there was a group making the case for a full preemptive nuclear strike on Russia with the idea that we would be better off than them. "10-20 million US dead, depending on the breaks."
And if you look at it, China, for instance, would likely suffer far more than the US in terms of water supplies and agriculture. If their grain imports dried up, a significant portion of their population would starve and their economy would grind to a halt. Europe and Russia would suddenly find themselves under intense increases in preciptation as well as drastic drops in temperature across the wealthier northern parts of Europe.
Just playing in paranoid land as I wait for the rain to come.
The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
By the way, down here in Houston, we've had the warmest winter I can remember in thirty years. I saw that 2005 was the warmest year on record, and am assuming that our "winter that wasn't" down here is taking place across the country.
The weird thing to me is all the strange, sorta spooked conversations I have been a part of where people look up as if checking to see if it's safe, then almost whisper, "Is this global warming?" If it's beginning to freak out some of the oil and gas men I know, I'm sure that similar conversations are taking place elsewhere in the country.
And just for a little climate reading to keep you up at night. (if you have any other articles of interest, drop them in the comments.)
Warmer Seas Will Wipe Out Plankton - Reprint from The Independent
A partial collapse of the North Atlantic Conveyor currents
Feedback loops amplifying warming kicking in
I often wonder, sheer speculation here, that maybe in some US government vault there's not a study showing that, although it would suffer significant damage, the US would fare far better through a climate catastrophe than it's major geopolitical rivals. Maybe it's a little overparanoid, but it's the only other way, besides greed, that I can explain the willful policy of large scale climate destruction by the US government.
And after all, in the fifties, there was a group making the case for a full preemptive nuclear strike on Russia with the idea that we would be better off than them. "10-20 million US dead, depending on the breaks."
And if you look at it, China, for instance, would likely suffer far more than the US in terms of water supplies and agriculture. If their grain imports dried up, a significant portion of their population would starve and their economy would grind to a halt. Europe and Russia would suddenly find themselves under intense increases in preciptation as well as drastic drops in temperature across the wealthier northern parts of Europe.
Just playing in paranoid land as I wait for the rain to come.
posted by mikevotes at
1:00 PM
2 Comments:
I was raised in Houston (my teen years were half a century ago), and while warm winters were not exactly rare, I have noticed on recent visits that plants which used to die back or had to be moved indoors in the winter, such as hibiscus, live on through the winter now.
Here in Japan, where I presently live, southern species of plants, birds, marine life and insects are moving northward. Species that were once confined to Okinawa are now found on Honshu, the main island.
On the other hand, northern areas are being hit with hotter summers and colder winters, all predictable under most global warming models.
By
notjonathon, at 9:35 PM
By the way, down here in Houston, we've had the warmest winter I can remember in thirty years.
...and that's really saying something. I was raised in Texas (far, far West Texas, can you guess where?), and my recollections of Houston is "hell with brutal humidity".
By
Anonymous, at 10:28 AM
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