I wonder if we'll be able to buy canned sand suppers?

It's bloody maddening.

I found it! 

On the thread about religion surviving Darwin, I got thinking that its ok - people don't want to be smart anymore, and intelligence just doesn't cut in in "REAL PEOPLE"s tea parties.  So no worries to the pre-scientific open-minded renaissance wannabe's - you will always find enough people who want to trade their brains for a blankie.

Might not need it when the earth warms up.

Did you see the story about whales with sunburn blisters?  UGH.  That Shimkus guy doesn't seem to notice that it doesn't take a sudden explosive disaster to destroy the planet - our creatures & our ecosystems & even real people are already suffereing.  They could argue the earth is destroyed as God intended it for them. 

I guess as long as Shimkus has champagne on his table and a fancy paycheque, his world is just fine thank you.

Russ - I worry about our nutbars too, but this isn't a national problem, its my world these guys are messing with.

NEWS:

THERE may come a point, if the world warms enough, when parts of the tropics will become so hot and humid that humans will not be able to survive. Models predict that this could start to happen in places in as little as 100 years in the worst case scenario. Now, observations show the process is already under way.

As humidity rises, sweating cools us less, so we suffer heat stress at lower air temperatures. For now, no place on Earth exceeds the human threshold for heat tolerance, with the exception of a few caves like the Naica cave in Mexico. That is thanks to a fortunate natural thermostat: when humid air gets hot, it rises and causes storms that cool things down.

But there is a catch. The point at which air begins to rise - the stability threshold - depends on how warm and moist surrounding air is. Models predict that as the entire tropics warm, the stability threshold will rise.

Nathaniel Johnson and Shang-Ping Xie at the University of Hawaii studied satellite and rain-gauge data from the last 30 years and found that sea surface temperatures in the tropics now need to be about 0.3 °C higher than they did in 1980 before the air above rises and produces rain (Nature Geoscience, DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1008).

This means the stability threshold has already started to rise, says Johnson. He adds that the same should be true over land masses in the tropics.

Earlier this year, Steven Sherwood at the University of New South Wales in Australia pointed out the serious implications for humans. Heatwaves already kill tens of thousands of people every year, and even more will die as the thermostat rises.

Eventually, some tropical areas could get so hot and humid on occasion that even someone standing naked in the shade in front of a fan would die (New Scientist, 23 October, p 36).

The classic line from the movie "Soylent Green", "the oceans are dieing , the plankton is dieing".  Both are beginning to happen.  Guess what planton does?  Generates up to 90% of the oxygen we breath.  Not trees, not flowers, pond scum, and we are killing it.

If we stopped all burning of carbon based fuels now, the CO2 level would continue to rise for 50 to 100 years. 

I fear that we have passed the tipping point and that my garndchildren's children will NOT thank us for the planet we have left them.

Go BP.

Go OIl Sands.

Dumb humans, another failed species on planet earth!

IT

Russ

And we think we're God's Chosen people.  Either God ain't so smart, or we're out to lunch. 

for all the people doing something right, there are far far too many who are flippant & uninterested.  They aren't even the ones who are skeptical of Climate Change, and I worry about them the most because they're priorities are fueled by, and in turn fuel the consumer/manufacturing/heavy fuel & resource use economy that we have. 

So this guy in the states seems just another small part of the Tea Party - ultra conservative, protectionist, me&mine first, who needs brains, anti-intellect.... argh.... yeah- them.  Right now that is so strong, even with the promises of Obama (yes, Graeme, I know - I hear you!!) - the US is going to eat itself alive with this tea party mentality.   And unfortunately, on many levels, they're taking us down with them.  The environment is just the one thing no one can do on their own.

GOD gave us the brains and bodies to make better decisions and actions. We just need to do so.

I wouldn't count on God saving us. He seems quite content to sit and do nothing

The Lord help those who help themselves.

 The recent documentary by David Suzuki on the possible reversal of the earth's magnetic field in the near future was quite interesting in this regard. Apparently what's happening to the magnetic field right now is somehow connected with earlier periods of global cooling. The evidence, in other words, suggests that reversals in the magnetic field are connected with global cooling. So, in other words, it was being questioned whether natural global cooling or human-caused global warming will win out. Right now, global warming seems to be winning!

RussP,

indeed, G_d will 'save us'.  As in G_d being everyone working together :3

yes, but that only works on a person by person basis.  I can choose to be green, but if no one else does, its lost in the enormity of the impact.

Like Canada waiting for China.

or these days, like everyone waiting for Canada.

As the flood waters rose, a man stands on his front porch.  Soon, 2 men in a canoe happen by.

"Hop in!" says one of the canoe men "we'll take you to higher ground"

"No thanks" says porch man " God will save me".  The canoists leave.

A little later, the man has retreatd to the upper floor of his house, and is looking out the window when a motor boat pulls up.

"Hop in" yells motor boat man "I'll take you to higher ground"

"No thanks, God will save me"  The motor boat leaves.

A little later and the man is now stranded on the roof of his house when a helicopter appears. 

"Grab the rope ladder" the pilot yells. "I'll take you to higher ground!"

"No thanks.  God will save me"

The man drowns and goes to heaven to meet his maker.  "God" he says "I prayed and prayed for you to save me from the flood!  Why didn't you?"

God slaps his forehead and says "I sent 2 boats and a helicopter for crying out loud!  What more do you want?"

Birthstone

Or like people in Canada realizing all that Wally-Mart stuff from China is junk and we shouldn't buy it, or at least realize we don't need all the stuff that we think we do. 

For us, this is going to be a very cheap Christmas.  If I need it, I buy it when it is on sale.  If I don't need it, I don't buy it just because it is on sale!

And yes, King Harper.  Protector of big business.  He doesn't even follow what the US does anymore, he does zip.

And yes, there are no more CFLs I cna install.  Meanwhile the neighbour idles the car because heavens, we should sit on a cold seat.  There goes my effort down the drain.

IT

Russ

This.

The human race will almost certainly survive -- we have been decimated in the past.  What is almost certainly doomed is our culture; and billions of people may die due to violence, starvation, heat stroke or disease related to climate change.  The industries most resistant to change will be among the first to be shut down.

This is assuming we do nothing to ameliorate what we have done.

My hope is that the people will gain more control of our political and economic power and reduce the impending harm.

alta, I've told that very good joke before - lol

I helped to throw a party last night  and we had a great time, and it was at someone else's house.  I tried to reduce garbage, I tried to suggest other ways, I brought dessert bowls, and planned to wash & bring home some plastic cutlery but other wonderful people who are giving & gregarious & awesome brought styrofoam, chinet, threw out the plastic forks ...  I started folding up the newspaper that had been used for a game, so it could be easily recycled, but someone got to it when I turned my back and it ended up in the garbage.

Same as you Russ- all that I do is cancelled out.  I think there is a large "Green" movement, bigger than before and last year, I felt it was gaining momentum.  This year, its been largely forgotten.

And we had a great party too

Birthstone, I'm sure you were trying to be polite, but I definitely would have said something in that situation.  I feel my heart break a little when people who are perfectly able to recycle things throw them out instead.

Rev. Steven Davis - I have also heard of what Mr. Suzuki suggests, that reversals of polarity in the earth's magnetic field are at cooling points in the world's history.  In fact, I remember learning (way back in my archaeology years) that the polarity would shift at fairly regular times - so many thousands of years, that is.  You could actually use the geological striation of the ocean's floor as a time line; it's where we get the numbers for when certain forms of life existed.  Fossils would be found in those layers of 'magnetically charged' rock, and depending on it being negative or positive it could be linked to an existing layer and a very rough date could be given.

I dunno, I thought it was fascinating.

Yes, Faerenach, Suzuki said that the evidence suggests a reversal in the magnetic field on average about every 250 thousand years but that the last one happened about 780 thousand years ago. We're long overdue. So the cooling vs. warming issue is sort of the irresistable force meeting the immovable object. Which will win? (And either way the result may be devastating for our society!)

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=47628

A comparison of temperature anomolies world-wide: 1979 and 2009 (from NASA)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/science/earth/22carbon.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a2

Good article from the NY Times.   Check the graphics too.