news.independent.co.uk — A delegation of Inuit is to travel to Wash DC to provide 1st-hand testimony of how global warming is destroying their way of life and to accuse the Bush admin. of undermining their human rights, arguing that its energy policies and its position as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases is having a devastating effect on their communities.
Feb 11, 2007 View in Crawl 4
vikingcoderFeb 12, 2007
@magicjavaPaleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum<a class="user" href="http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~silab/biocomplex/lptm_background.htm">http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~silab/biocomplex/lptm_background.htm</a>At the PETM, within a very short time interval, at least 2000 Gt of carbon were added to the ocean-atmosphere system, and polar temperatures soared by as much as 8?C
william01Feb 12, 2007
"I think being able to look at a model and see an explanation for the data we know is a reasonable expectation. Current models cannot do this."Climate scientists think it can, you think it can't.Most of the things you ask are much harder to predict than if global average temperatures will increase, just as weather is much harder to predict than climate, and I do not know the current status, if any, of predictions for these events. The role of clouds and water vapor in determining the climate is pretty well known.In the past at times the initial triggering mechanism for warming was something other than an increase in carbon dioxide, and preceded it often by centuries. That does not seem to be the case today:<a class="user" href="http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/exhibitgcc/images/historical03.gif">http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/exhibitgcc/images/historical03.gif</a>
janereinheimerFeb 12, 2007
PERSPECTIVE TAKING IS A POWERFUL TOOLUWhether you are talking with your partner about any number of topics, or engaging in a debate about other issues, the ability to see another person's perspective is an extraordinarily powerful cognitive tool.Perspective taking does not mean you have to agree or even subscribe to another person's point of view. It means that you are able to allow someone else to think differently and hold a point of view that's different from your own. I am putting my moment of zen into this blog because I want it to be archived just in case I want to resurrect it later.I am reading a book called Left to Tell. It's written by a Rwandan lady named Immaculee Ilibagiza. In the book, Ilibagiza recounts the horror of her experiences in the 1994 genocide of her homeland. Nearly one million Tutsis were killed by the Hutus. There was such hatred fomented toward the Tutsis that it finally erupted into a machete-wielding bunch of idiots who thought it was their right to exterminate an entire people.It's a theme that gets played out all too often. Even in the modern day. All around the globe. And right here in America, there is a growing lack of tolerance for differing points of view.We used to pride ourselves in engaging in debate about a wide variety of issues. Now we're polarized. It has become the Democrats versus the Republicans. It has become the Seculars versus the Evangelicals. It's the left verus the right.It doesn't seem like we can have a differing point of view anymore.One columnist in the Boston Globe actually says that people who do not support the premise of global warming also deny the holocaust. Excuse me, but that's a huge leap. And it happens not to be true. But then, she's a columnist. She's not supposed to propose truth. It's just a column in a big city newspaper.Can we say that global warming is a possibility and disagree as to its cause? I readily admit that I am not a scientist and I do not know what the cause is. But then, neither do a lot of other people who have set themselves up as experts. I tend to be more influenced by neutral scientists than politicians and celebrities when it comes to problems that are scientific in nature -- like climate for instance.But to close off debate and say that I don't believe in the holocaust sounds too much like a Hutu trying to correct a Tutsi's thinking. Next thing you know, I won't be allowed to have an opinion unless it matches theirs.Once that leap is made, can hatred be far behind?##
Closed AccountFeb 12, 2007
"That's what happens when you steal someone's land and relocate him in a place that sucks."They are already living in a place that sucks. Hopefully global warming will improve it. And the US and Canada didn't steal the land. They just administer it in a wider jurisdiction.
angryredplanetFeb 13, 2007
@AngryPengiun47There is no and can never be any "hard evidence" that global warming is happening. There are many different interrelating systems and processes (read: uncontrollable variables) such that any experiments that set out to prove or disprove the current theory are not achievable. We can not make a *proven* conclusion that it is in fact our activities that are causing the problem. So you can safely bury your head in the sand a bit longer.Scientists know the effect of CO2 in the upper atmosphere. They know that it, along with other molecules stay there for a long time. They know that we humans contribute to the quantity of CO2 in our atmosphere immensely. What they do not know and can only project is the collateral effects on our climate and many of the systems that rely on it. Sorry, but in this case I think that correlation, especially in this example, is good enough to conclude causation fairly solidly. We either slow down or stop, or our biosystems will perish. When this will happen is up for debate but the conclusion by the majority of scientists affirm that it's not a question of if.@mike17032"Since the dawn of f**king human existance? Where the f**k have you been?"It should be clear to you then that our "progress" is unsustainable. This thought brings about another question, should it really classed as progress or the ignorant destruction of our biosphere?