In 1994, I was asked by Rachel Carson's publisher to write the introduction for the 30th anniversary edition of Silent Spring. It was, of course, a privilege and honor. Here is part of what I wrote:
Writing about Silent Spring is a humbling experience for an elected official,because Rachel Carson's landmark book offers undeniable proof that the power of an idea can be far greater than the power of politicians. In 1962, when Silent Spring was first published, "environment" was not even an entry in the vocabulary of public policy. In a few cities especially Los Angeles, smog had become a cause of concern, albeit more because of its appearance than because of its threat to public health.Conservation -- the precursor of environmentalism -- had been mentioned during the 1960 Democratic and Republican conventions, but only in passing and almost entirely in the context of national parks and natural resources. And except for a few scattered entries in largely inaccessible scientific journals, there was virtually no public dialogue about the growing, invisibly dangers of DDT and other pesticides and chemicals. Silent Spring came as a cry in the wilderness, a deeply felt, thoroughly researched, and brilliantly written argument that changed the course of history. Without this book, the environmental movement might have been long delayed or never have developed at all.
On this Earth Day, which comes nearly fifty years since the first printing of Silent Spring, Carson's work continues to stand as a testament to the power of conscience, insight and our collective ability to make the world a better place. Carson's conclusions inspired a generation to realize that human beings do not live in isolation, but as part of something much bigger. As she so eloquently stated in her masterwork, "in nature nothing exists alone."
Nothing demonstrates the complexity of the natural world -- and our ability to disturb it -- like the climate crisis. Every day, we pump 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere as if it were an open sewer. Already, we are experiencing many of the impacts scientists predicted decades ago -- higher temperatures, more extreme weather, the emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases, and rising sea levels. Scientists have warned us of the disturbing future we are creating for ourselves and our children and grandchildren. At stake is the survival of our civilization as we know it and the type of world we are going to leave as a legacy for those who follow us.
It is at times like these that people must come together, mobilize, and demand the change we need. This is a moral moment, a fork in the road. It is not ultimately about any scientific discussion or political dialogue but about who we are as human beings. It is about our capacity to transcend our own limitations and rise to this occasion. We have done so before. I have seen young people and their parents come together to create great change. In the 1960's, the Civil Rights movement, led by young people but joined by people of all ages and backgrounds, helped to overturn the legal oppression of African Americans and helped create a morejust society.
And, it was young people and social activists who helped to end apartheid in South Africa by supporting the divestment movement in the United States and around the world, which ultimately pressured the government to end legalized racism.
So on this Earth Day, I urge you to reflect on Silent Spring and to open your heart to Rachel Carson's message. Allow it to inspire you to act. Feel the preciousness of our connection to our children and the solemnity of our obligation to safeguard their future and to protect the Earth we are bequeathing to them.
Cross-posted from Al's Journal.
Follow Al Gore on Twitter: www.twitter.com/algore
...from the very Conservative (lol) PBS:
An Online NewsHour Report
More than three months after Democrat Al Gore conceded the hotly contested 2000 election, an independent hand recount of Florida's ballots released today says he would have lost anyway, even if officials would have allowed the hand count he requested.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/media_watch/jan-june01/recount_4-3.html
"James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too."
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/23/11144098-gaia-scientist-james-lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change
OUCH! That is going to leave a mark on the scam that keeps having problems with the wheels falling off as each week passes...and we are less than four years away from when AlGore said "humans may have only 10 years left to save the planet from turning into a total frying pan.""
I have the bacon ready if the predicted warming ever starts...”
Please consider your owner responding instead; humans are generally more informed.
Thanks,
Monk
It's about our ability to upgrade our power supplies when the old ones are no longer good enough. That's all solving the AGW problem really requires. Our current approach to powering 21st-century civilization, digging up rocks to burn, was fine when we had a lower population and the age of technology was just beginning. It's no longer good enough, because both the digging and the burning cause too many problems, and because we're going to need more energy in the future.
Fossil fuels aren't good enough any more, just like horse-drawn buggies were no longer good enough once we had cars.
If my conservative compadres spent more time thinking about principles instead of listening to bullshit conspiracy theories on talk radio, they would understand what's going on here. We, by which I mean me and the few rational conservatives still left in America, are supposed to preserve the good ideas of the past, but only as long as they work. Holding on to a bad idea just so a few people can keep making money off it, which is essentially what the science deniers are demanding, is not conservative.
One of the funniest explanations I have read is that climate research is false because someone is funding it. The irony is that those who are skeptics are funded as well!
Generally:
International scientists are funded by GOVs and industry. Skeptics are funded by conservative organizations and big corporations.
I can't enjoy the irony, because there's too much hypocrisy. The science deniers' mistrust of anything that is developed with government funding is recent and purely partisan. Give the GOP control of the government, and the denier revulsion with government-funded research will flip flop to a respectful admiration.
Well picture a garbage bag a foot thick, and two miles wide and very very long. Want to take a guess how long that garbage bag would be?
Here is the basic arithmetic as I see it.
90,000,000 tons of CO2 per day equals
180,000,000,000 pounds of CO2 per day equals
81,720,000,000,000 grams of CO2 per day equals about
1,856,000,000,000 GMW of CO2 per day equals about
41,593,000,000,000 liters of CO2 per day equals about
1,468,000,000,000 cubic feet of CO2 per day equals about .
139,015,000 linear feet of garbage bag two miles wide and a foot thick or
26,328 linear miles of garbage bag two miles wide and a foot thick.
The circumference of the earth at the equator is about 24,901 miles.
So a full day's load of fossil fuel waste gas could strangle the earth at the equator with a two mile wide garbage bag easily visible from outer space, and there would be 1400 miles extra left over.
That is a lot of waste.
all that plant food still equals .038% of the atmosphere..
and makes no impression on Standard Temperature and Pressure (STP).
CONTEXT stephen CONTEXT!!!
STP is an arbitrary engineering value fumes. No amount of change in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will ever change it. Similarly, no amount of facts will convince someone who is not reality based.
Your post, as usual, is the sort that I would expect from someone with a screen name, avatar and bio that all scream "smoke and mirrors" and illegal drugs.
Enjoy your illusions, because that is what they are.
And have a nice day.
Maybe it's that I'm sensing that the door we've been knocking on is closed. Isn't it too late to expect the huge, dysfunctional bundle of nation states to get their heads around the complexity of civilizational meltdown. Why are there nation states, anyway? For the most part, they have nothing to do ecosystems, watersheds or the traditional cultures that are integrated with them--look at the mess in the Sahels of North Africa. What can be expected from this year's Rio conference? If Rio isn't even asking the right question, how can there be an answer that leads to an understandable way forward?
Is there another door? Is our challenge to at least begin to think functionally? Are we ahead of ourselves advocating specific solutions when we don't even understand the problem? There has to be some collective, universal understanding if human endeavor is to rise to the level needed for our times. But how is that understanding to be arrived at?
The same way we've always arrived at understanding. A long, hard slog through the swamp of ignorance with our torches held high and our eyes fixed on the goal.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/end-civ-resist-or-die/
Sunday, 28 February 2010 17:24 Jonathan Leake, The Sunday Times
Research by hurricane scientists may force the UN’s climate panel to reconsider its claims that greenhouse gas emissions have caused an increase in the number of tropical storms.
The benchmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that a worldwide increase in hurricane-force storms since 1970 was probably linked to global warming.
It followed some of the most damaging storms in history such as Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans and Hurricane Dennis which hit Cuba, both in 2005.
The IPCC added that humanity could expect a big increase in such storms over the 21st century unless greenhouse gas emissions were controlled.
The warning helped turn hurricanes into one of the most iconic threats of global warming, with politicians including Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, and Al Gore citing them as a growing threat to humanity.
The cover of Gore’s newest book, Our Choice, even depicts an artist's impression of a world beset by a series of huge super-hurricanes as a warning of what might happen if carbon emissions continue to rise.
However, the latest research, just published in Nature Geoscience, paints a very different picture.
http://thegwpf.org/the-observatory/592-ipccs-climate-link-to-hurricanes-in-doubt.html
The premise still stands, that hurricanes might not be more frequent, but will be, on average, stronger.
Here is a list of just published articles mentioning hurricanes and climate change.
http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?hl=en&q=%2Bhurricanes+and+climate+change&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_ylo=2012&as_vis=1
NOLA's doing just fine!
Mirror mirror, on the wall.
Has manmade warming truth at all?
Image image, now I see.
Fossil fuel exhaustion right behind me.
"the power of an idea can be far greater than"
the sum of its transient repositories.
"human beings do not live in isolation"
No man is an island. Though Earth be an island in space.
"in nature nothing exists alone."
Everything inexorably connects to everything else.
"Nothing demonstrates the complexity of the natural world -- and our ability to disturb it"
- and our propensity to interpret its mystery in a myriad disparate ways.
"Scientists have warned us"
that on past dating records we should be in another cyclic ice age by now. Is pollution postponing that?
"a fork in the road"
may explain that flat in the wheel of our wagon.
"We have done so before."
Though that was before we had irradiated our brains with mobiles.
"overturn the legal oppression of African Americans"
and make way for the legal oppression of American Americans.
"end apartheid"
and oppression. For Mandela, read Manning.
"end legalized racism."
end legalized repression. Hillary condemns Johnnie foreigner for locking up whistleblowers, while at the same time…
"we are bequeathing to them"
a sickness, centred in our own heads.
at it's finest:
Einstein's formula also accounts for the heat in our planet's crust, which is kept warm by a steady barrage of E = mc2 conversions occurring within unstable radioactive elements such as uranium and thorium. "When they decay, some of the mass is lost and a little energy is created, and that keeps the crust warm," says John Rigden, a physicist at Washington University in St. Louis and author of Einstein 1905: The Standard of Greatness (Harvard, 2005). "So the temperature of the outer Earth, the crustal matter, is directly related to E = mc2."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/legacy.html
So what explains the very large swings of temperature that the earth has experienced in its lifetime, since radioactive decay happens at a constant rate?
Logic at its finest - NOT.
ANTHROPOGENIC?
LOL..
(i don't think so)
and neither are all the under sea volcanoes right?
Ocean Warmed By Deep Sea Volcanic Activity ~ Dec 17, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO — Scientists have recorded the deepest erupting undersea volcano ever seen, capturing for the first time video of fiery molten lava bubbles exploding 4,000 feet beneath the Pacific Ocean. "It was an underwater Fourth of July," said Bob Embley, a marine geologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in a news release. The eruption was a spectacular sight: Bright-red lava bubbles shot out of the volcano, releasing a smoke-like cloud of sulfur. Scientists said the water around the volcano was more acidic than battery acid, but shrimp and certain microbes were able to thrive. Biologists were also excited about a new opportunity to study the creatures to see if they are unique to this volcanic environment. Although 80 percent of the earth's volcanic activity occurs in the sea, scientists from NOAA and the National Science Foundation had never witnessed an eruption this deep and in this detail.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/17/deep-sea-volcano-seen-by_n_396451.html
since 1841:
The 1841 sea level benchmark (centre) on the `Isle of the Dead', Tasmania. According to Antarctic explorer, Capt. Sir James Clark Ross, it marked mean sea level in 1841. Photo here taken at low tide 20 Jan 2004.
Mark is 50 cm across; tidal range is less than a metre.
http://www.john-daly.com/photomrk.htm
Meanwhile, the rest of us will consult science:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise
I was able to locate a reference to the marker at Port Arthur that you provided photos of, in this report located at:
http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter,nsf/Publications/PMAS-63K6W5?open
Note that the report distinguishes between the various coastal types found in Tasmania, and which are more susceptible to erosion due to rising waters.
2 years later in 2006, examples of erosion are documented in this report:
Indicative Mapping of Tasmanian Coastal Vulnerability to Climate Change and Sea Level Rise
Located at: http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/webpages/pmas-6rg5wx?open
By 2010 more research is being conducted as evidenced in this article, which also provides photos: Rising seas erode Tasmanian shoreline
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/content/2010/s2809320.htm
In 2011 this article:
Southern sea levels rise drastically
http://www.gpem.uq.edu.au/sea-level-rise
references this paper:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X11005103
Another ongoing Australian research project with data indicating accelerated rise in water levels and contributing factors:
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/index.html
In a Fortune interview, noted climatologist John Christy contends the green crusade to fight climate change is "all cost and no benefit."
A veteran climatologist who refuses to accept any research funding from the oil or auto industries, Christy was a lead author of the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report as well as one of the three authors of the American Geophysical Union's landmark 2003 statement on climate change.
Yet despite those green-sounding credentials, Christy is not calling for draconian cuts in carbon emissions. Quite the contrary. Christy is actually the environmental lobby's worst nightmare - an accomplished climate scientist with no ties to Big Oil who has produced reams and reams of data that undermine arguments that the earth's atmosphere is warming at an unusual rate and question whether the remedies being talked about in Congress will actually do any good.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/14/magazines/fortune/globalwarming.fortune/?postversion=2009051412
So my first question would be: In those "reams and reams of data" what else is he wrong about?
Second: If he has evidence that most other climate scientists are wrong, where is his evidence? So far, all I've seen from Christy have been more in the line oh hunches...not hard evidence.
So, my question to you, fumes, is this: What if global warming is worse than we expect?
Being green is about being healthy, saving money and not being wasteful.
Why give more of your money to the utility company or to the oil company to fuel your vehicle when you can keep the savings and enjoy it with your spouse or child?
How awful to think that taxes might help clean up our air, water and land. OMG! Just dreadful!
Is the inflammatory rhetoric helpful?
CONTEXT:
after all that scary tonnage..
Standard Temperature and Pressure (STP)..
remain the same!
Carbon offsets are great, but if we have to live humbly, maybe leading by example would be a start.
Oh, and if we're going to talk "Silent Spring," would it be okay to mention the tens of thousands of Africans who have died of Malaria because it convinced people that pesticides are evil?
-----------------
ding ding ding ding ding we have another winner folks!
thanks for playing Hector Boag!!!
(F&F)
Personally, I suspect that he believes in AGCC, but he probably doesn't bother to examine his own beliefs very closely given how much money he is making from them and he doesn't feel the need to change his own lifestyle because he is purchasing those offsets... from his own company. It's easy to be delusional when you are acruing vast wealth from the delusion.