Glaciers Melt – Oceans Rise – Islands Flood – Inhabitants Evacuate – McCain and Palin Pander

Glaciers melt

Because of melting ice due to warming of the earth’s surface:


What does this portend for the future, in the absence of aggressive action to halt the global warming trend? Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor of The Independent, reported the following last week, August 31st:



Oceans rise

Prior to the mid-19th Century, sea level had been almost constant over three thousand years. We then saw a marked acceleration in rising sea levels, concomitant with the onset of the industrial age and warming of the earth’s atmosphere, as sea levels rose about 17 cm. during the 20th Century. The 21st Century is expected to be much worse:


The faster than expected melting of arctic ice portends even faster sea level rises than previously predicted.


Islands flood and inhabitants leave

Rising sea levels pose grave threats to most coastal areas of the world, including those in the United States. But effects on small islands are already being seen.

In 1998 the first uninhabited islands, in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati, disappeared because of rising sea levels. Then, in December 2006, the first inhabited island, Lohachara Island, disappeared beneath the sea. Several nearby islands have been affected as well, with tragic human consequences:


In addition, several other islands face catastrophic consequences in the immediate or foreseeable future if global warming isn’t soon halted or at least slowed considerably. For that reason, many small island nations are currently making evacuation plans and at the same time collectively making a resolution plea to the United Nations Security Council to address the problem.

Here is a petition to the U.N. to address these concerns. Included with the petition is an e-mail you can send your friends about this situation, which reads in part:



McCain and Palin pander to oil companies on the issue of global warming

Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin has made a big deal over her claim of “standing up” to big oil companies. But when it comes to issues that really matter to big oil, Daniel Weiss notes:


John McCain uses impressive rhetoric to convince independents, moderates and progressives that he takes global warming seriously.

Yet the non-partisan League of Conservation Voters (LCV) gives McCain a 24% lifetime score for his global warming policies, and a 0% score for 2007. McCain expresses opposition to the funding of clean energy alternatives to oil. He supports the appointment of “strict constructionist” judges to the Supreme Court, who are deeply antagonistic to the regulation of greenhouse gases. He has never expressed plans to improve energy efficiency. And his plans for reducing global warming rely almost entirely on the hope of voluntary compliance by industry.


Differences between McCain and Obama on global warming

Unlike John McCain, Barack Obama not only talks about the need to do something about global warming, but he actually develops plans to do something constructive about it.

Obama has a comprehensive plan that involves improving energy efficiency and developing sources of clean, renewable energy. The League of Conservation Voters gives him a 96% environmental voting record.

With regard to plans to cap greenhouse gases, Mark Hertsgaard explains some of the problems with McCain’s plan. Noting that Obama’s plan for an 80% cut on greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, using a “cap-and-trade” system that “sells corporations permits to emit greenhouse gases and then invests the revenue in green energy development and rebates to Americans hit with higher energy prices”, is consistent with what scientists say is necessary, Hertsgaard notes that McCain:


In other words, aside from advocating a much smaller cut in emissions than Obama, McCain seems to hold the opinion that purely voluntary cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by industry will work.

John McCain’s confusion, flip flopping, and misleading statements about his positions on global warming are part and parcel of a general pattern with the man. Just as he doesn’t know much about the economy and can’t remember that Iran doesn’t harbor al Qaeda or how many houses he owns, John McCain doesn’t appear to know what a mandate is. Joseph Romm explains:

Denial is a sign of FANTASY.....

BS is allowed area.....

http://www.alternet.org/story/16243

I think that they just don't give a damn.

The rich aren't going to be the ones to suffer for this. The wealthy make their billions as they ruin the earth for the vast majority of its inhabitants. But when the flooding occurs, they will have no problem in flying off to their 7th homes and establishing residence wherever they like.

extinctions, or if the Atlantic ocean conveyor actually stops, or if food systems crash and famine and riots erupt in country after country like dominoes, or if the world markets crash, or etc etc.

The very rich have as much to lose as the rest of us if change happens as rapidly as it could. No one is immune, and those who think they are immune are relying on predictable systems, which could very well no longer exist very quickly.

But what I really wanted to say was K & R :)

wealthy leaders among Republicans, rather than the rank and file, when I say that I believe selfishness rather than denial mostly explains their refusal to take global warming seriously. That is, those who make the decisions, like McCain and Palin.

Among the Republican masses I don't doubt that denial explains a much bigger part of the picture.

In her book, “The Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”, in Chapter 20 – Disaster Apartheid: A World of Green Zones and Red Zones – she discusses what has been happening in recent years in the security industry. She notes the massive proliferation of private security companies spurred by the Bush administration, coupled with massive government debt. Then she considers the relationship between government spending on private security contractors and spending for public security, and what will happen when our government has to cut back on expenditures to private security companies – and expenditures on public security as well:


She then quotes a private security consultant, John Robb, on the wonders of privatization of disaster relief:


And she has this specifically to say about global warming:


You're right that this could backfire on them and damage them as well. But I believe they're mainly focused on themselves in the short term, not the planet or humanity in the long term. I think that the situation is a lot like that of a bankrobber. Except I think that most of those wealthy individuals who are pushing activities that lead to global warming and working to keep our country out of the Kyoto treaty feel much more secure about their futures than does the typical bank robber.

their own greed.

I just think the source of their greed itself is a very deep-seated fear and a very fundamental denial of that fear. And it is that fear and denial which causes them to miss the risk of backfire, it is that deep denial which causes them to make such obviously faulty decisions.

I think this fault courses through all those who choose never-enough-personal-profit over even the life support system itself. That includes the likes of Bush/Cheney and McCain/Palin who may end up spending the rest of their, and their descendants', lives in bunkers with artificial life support systems, warring with each other over canned lobster and flat champagne.

Naomi Klein is brilliant, an amazing treasure to our generation. I saw her speak in Seattle and was so proud to be from the same species! She describes what they are doing so well.

We need a brilliant psychologist to tell us why exactly they are doing it, what happened in their development to cause their fears, and maybe even how we can ease their fears so that they can calm down and live happy lives without the need to destroy everything they see.

I think that her writing may be more informative and important than any I've ever read.

We certainly do need someone to sort out the psychological issues involved. Unfortunately, psychology is such a complex and difficult subject to understand, and we still have such a long way to go.

and they are good but they don't capture the energy.

I am kind of obsessed with figuring out the motivation behind right wingers. I have a right wing older brother who I have been trying to figure out for decades now. It is if he was born with a disability. He's a blustery, fearful person who admits he only has enough empathy for his immediate family. Even as a child I would try to protect him from his own actions. He absolutely cannot see likely results which look obvious to others. Unfortunately he married a fearful wife who reinforces this part of him. Actually quite nice when he's not in fear mode.
I wonder if simply the rapid change and complexity of our human environment is enough to instill the fear in him, let alone all the additional fear mongering he gets from tv and radio. I think if he would just spend more time hiking in the wilderness he'd relax a bit. (Now that I live closer to him that is going to be my new method: to simply take him hiking, if he'll go. No talk, just walk.)

What do you think about Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point"?

I almost decided to make psychiatry a career, but I eventually came to believe that the science of psychiatry and psychology is so mixed up that I might just get more confused the more I learned about it. But sometimes I regret that decision.

I never read “The Tipping Point”. Would that be worth reading?

The stack is huge, and some of the books in it are years old already. Sigh. Books I would love to be reading if I weren't obsessed with this whole fascist coup thing.

I like the concept though, of communities suddenly moving forward once a certain number of people decide forward movement is a good idea, a tipping point is reached, and all the people who were so adamantly against forward movement suddenly support it wholeheartedly. The tipping point can go in any direction though, even sideways. He discusses it as an evolutionary biologist, IIRC.

Just another way to say we herd I suppose, but the movement of herds and flocks and schools of fish is interesting. Only they mostly do their group movements spatially, we mostly do it ideologically. But I would imagine it applies to the way epidemics move through a population too.

It sounds like the information in that book could be useful in preventing a fascist coup.

Bicycles were all over the place. More of them than cars. Too bad our auto industry and oil companies have lobbied so successfully against mass transporation and clean renewable sources of energy.

...because he disagreed with their support of policies that accelerated the very damage to the planet this thread details.

Insanity.

A war between those trying to save the planet, and those trying to destroy it.

That would mean a bunch of scattered civil wars.

Hopefully, we'll find a way to derail them without resorting to that.

they could still fill their pockets and the coffers of their lobbyists at the same time. Fossil fuels are extinct a second time, we hear about how people are loosing their homes to foreclosure and eminent domain, yet we hear nothing about the destruction and decapitation of 350 Million year old mountains which is home to us here in SW Virginia, West Virginia and E Kentucky. According to Hannity, Morris, Oliely and others 'so we kill a few polar bears, so we kill a few caribou, we need to drill, dig and destroy. Sean Hannity, I ask you since you ranted so about eminent domain where are you now ? An infant was killed in his bed asleep by a boulder from a mountain top removal mine. Didn't hear you mention that in your fair and balanced double speak. See what a decapitated mountain looks like, www.samsva.org

Many of them seem to be almost totally lacking in any sense of social responsibility. Instead they claim that any action at all is justified by "free market" principles -- which essentiall means that they should feel free to do whatever they please, despite the consequences, as long as they can get away with it.