This is the Face of Global Warming
As severe storms and the resultant flooding continue to batter the Midwest with deadly results, the media is filled with scary stories of the destruction and misery being inflicted. We see headlines about 300,000 Chicagoans without power, state of emergency declarations across four other states, dozens killed by storms from Texas to Minnesota, flooded interstates, and thousands of flooded homes and businesses. It's now commonplace to see news footage of people being rescued off their rooftops, many saying goodbye to their homes for good.
But no news outlet has had the courage to state the obvious: This is the face of global warming. This is it. While no single weather event can be directly pinned to global warming, these are the predictions of the world's best scientist come to terrifying life. Scientists are certain that these deadly events will only become more common -- and more extreme -- as the earth continues to heat up. More intense rainfall, more extreme flooding, more crippled infrastructure and unsanitary conditions, more homes and businesses lost. More, more, more...
These glimpses from storm-ravaged Middle America ought to be a wake-up call. How many more American lives must be lost and property destroyed for this administration to take action?
What will the next pictures look like? Blackouts? Looting? Riots?
Will it have to reach the level of Southeast Asia, where the worst floods in recent memory have affected an estimated 28 million people? In Bangladesh at least 678 are dead and over 50,000 are suffering from flood-related diseases -- millions more now find themselves homeless.
What's it going to take for this White House to act? I hope not that.
Karl Rove should do one last thing before he heads back to Texas to spend more time with his family, bailing out his own flooded basement: he should have the courage to demand that the administration face this problem and DO SOMETHING.
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Are there more severe floods and hurricanes than historically worldwide? ----- no.
squirrel,
You're comparing the last 20 years or so to the entire known history of man?
Not really a very valid comparison, is it now?
Would you be willing to make the same claim about any SPECIFIC 20 year period in history?
Thank you.
Are recent storms due do global warming? From a scientific standpoint that is hard to say. The 'wiggle room' created by the nature of science gives NeoCons plausible deniability despite evidence to the contrary. As long as big oil maintains climatologists on their payroll to say the opposite and as long as our government administrations are up to their eyeballs in corporate America not much will be done from a government perspective. While government should be us ("We, the people...") it has been hijacked in Florida and taken to Ohio. You can change lightbulbs, buy a more efficient vehicle, dry your clothes on a line, put photovoltaics on your roof, turn off your TV (Especially for O'Reilly and Hannity) and bike to work, get a solar water heater and eat more vegetarian meals.
Well said. But unfortunatley, we'll have to wait for a new President to try and tackle this problem.
This administration doesn't really give a hoot. One need not belabor what is apparent. This administration is not interested in recognizing the obvious because it is banking on chasing fossil fuel. Global warming is the antithesis of the profit goals. Pull out of Iraq, and leave the oil behind? Quit subsiding the oil industry and begin subsidizing sustainable energies? No and no.
Follow the money.
It is going to get worse and will not get better in our lifetime. Read Collapse by Jared Diamond. Prepare for the worst.
Scooter Liddy and Jared Diamond know the truth about the future. I've only just recently read Diamond's "Collapse" and it only validated my own beliefs formulated over 40 years ago about the future of Homo sapiens on this planet. But we might as well be on Easter Island(watch the movie "Rapa Nui" in which the people cut down the last tree) or Greenland (the Greenland Norse, as described by Diamond, refused to change the way they lived and gathered food so they all died). It seems so logical to my mind that Homo sapiens cannot continue poisoning the air, the water and the soil, cutting all the trees, catching and eating all the fish, etc., etc, then our species on this planet, are for want of a better word, doomed. Good luck to us.
Laurie, Laurie, Laurie. Karl Rove should do something? Rove is among the chief laborers in stupidity's mushroom farm, hoeing and nurturing the spores, ensuring that they were irrigated with plenty of liquid spoor from the likes of Savage, Hanitwit, Limbaugh and O'Reilly, and most importantly ensuring that they stayed in the dark. Rove has made his fortune this way, and will simply move his palace to higher elevations and continue to not give a damn about anyone below his own self perception of vaunted standing. Were it not for our Media Cavalcade of Distraction (which he helped to cultivate), and the Affluenza pandemic in this country, Rove would've been roughly escorted out of D.C. with pitchforks and torches years ago.
No, this is the reason the term "climate change" is becoming more popular than the term "global warming": so every kind of weather, including cooler temperatures, can be blamed on CO2 emmissions.
Replacing oil and coal derived energy with innovative clean and renewable energy sources is a great idea. It would reduce toxic pollutants other than CO2 (which isn't toxic), helping the world's ecological state. It would also reduce the world's dependence on foreign oil, leading to a more peaceful and economically stable world. But it won't change the weather!
Pyr,
Actually, Frank Luntz did all the world's intelligent a favor when he created the term "climate change".
Not only more appropriate, but it seems as though they suddenly grew aware. (Which of course they are, truth be known. SEE MY COMMENT somewhere below, I think.)
Too late. It already is changing the weather. Just because you never get out of the house doesn't mean it isn't happening. What are you, a turtle?
Excellent point!
Laurie:
* Holland, 1228: sea flood (100,000 dead)
* India, 1775: Tsunami (60,000 dead)
* Caribbeans, 1780: Hurricane (22,000 dead)
* India, 1864: Cyclone (70,000 dead)
* Bangladesh, 1876: Cyclone (200,000 dead)
* China, 1876-78: Drought (9 million dead)
* China, 1881: Typhoon (300,000 dead)
* Indonesia, 1883: Tsunami (36,000 dead)
* Huayan Kou, China, 1887: Yang-tse Kiang flooding (one million dead)
* Florida, USA, 1928: Hurricane (1800 dead)
* China, 1931: Flooding (3.7 million dead)
* New York, USA, 1938: Rains (600 dead)
* Holland, 1953: Sea flood (1,794 dead)
* Iran, 1953: Rain flood (10,000 dead)
* Louisiana, USA, 1957: Hurricane (400 dead)
* Japan, 1958: Typhoon (5,000 dead)
* Mt Huascaran, Peru, 1962: Volcano eruption (3,000)
* Bangladesh, 1970: Sea flood (200-500,000 dead)
* Vietnam, 1971: Red River flood (100,000 dead)
* Nicaragua, 1972: earthquake flood (10,000 dead)
* Bangladesh, 1974: floods (28,000 dead)
* Ethiopia, 1974: famine (200,000 dead)
* Haicheng, China, 1975: 7.0 earthquake (10,000 dead)
* Tangshan, China, 1976: 8.0 earthquake (750,000 dead)
* Guatemala, 1976: earthquake (23,000 dead)
* Andhra Pradesh, India, 1977: cyclone (10,000 dead)
* Caribbeans, 1979: Hurricane (2,000 dead)
1.
Huang He (Yellow) River, China
1931
Death Toll: 1,000,000 to 3,700,000
2.
Huang He (Yellow) River, China
1887
Death Toll: 900,000 to 2,000,000
3.
Huang He (Yellow) River, China
1938
Death Toll: 500,000 - 900,000
4.
Huang He (Yellow) River, China
1642
Death Toll: 300,000
5.
Ru River, Banqiao Dam, China
1975
Death Toll: 230,000
6.
Yangtze River, China
1931
Death Toll: 145,000
7.
The Netherlands and England
1099
Death Toll: 100,000
8.
The Netherlands
1287
Death Toll: 50,000
9.
The Neva River, Russia
1824
Death Toll: 10,000
10.
The Netherlands
1421
Death Toll: 10,000
Advo,
How many of these tragic deaths can be attributed to:
lack of weather prediction,
lack of transportation, and
lack of communication during ANY time in Earth's history, prior to now?
Thank you.
Black plague - one third the population. So what? It was good for labor and ended the concept of serfs being tied to the land to work for their lords. You forgot the big flood in Holland in around the late fifties. How about hunger every year - one million. Natural disaster I guess.
Iraq ,Bush Presidency's (400,000?dead) and counting.
I didn't think it was possible to bring Iraq into this...but I guess that is the mantra.
1930's Dustbowl, winds, and drought in the plains of America. Record floods 1936. Record heat in Midwest 1934 and 1936. 500 year flood 1973, Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. Another 500 year flood in 1993, Missouri and Mississippi Rivers even with the levees built from the lessons of 1973. Its called weather.
Spook,
I can't speak to the others, but the dustbowl (lower case, since it's not a sporting event) was the result of MAN.
I've never heard any speculation to the contrary.
Thank you.
If you can read I suggest you read Acts of God. An interesting book about weather and how we are never responsible for the problems it causes.
"Karl Rove should do one last thing before he heads back to Texas to spend more time with his family, bailing out his own flooded basement: he should have the courage to demand that the administration face this problem and DO SOMETHING." - Laurie David
I won't hold my breath. Karl Rove should do MANY things before he bails (pardon the pun), if by "should" you mean "has a moral obligation to." Since he and the rest of the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight are amoral, psychopathic animals, they will instead declare their way to be the one true path and continue to attack anybody else entertaining other directions until Hell freezes over. Given the problem of global warming, that day seems farther away than ever.
Oh God, the sky is falling! I wonder which will kill us faster, global warming, or the nuclear winter when Iran attacks Israel?
Fact is, we should be worried about the middle east, which is a real problem, and not global warming, which is junk science.
DLB,
I fear that you'll have no more luck convincing us that GW is “junk” than you did when you claimed that "SUPPLY AND DEMAND" is NOT a valid Economics principle.
And then you went on to say that corporate failure and/or bankruptcy is a myth (that any company can simply raise prices to offset any increase in costs.)
“…..when democrats sign legislation increasing taxes on corporations that that tax is passed on to the consumer? (In other words, corporations don't actually pay taxes)”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-cohen/keith-olbermann-ask-demo_b_59426.html
Just trying to help.
I don't want you to waste too much of your valuable time trying to convince intelligent people that GW doesn't exist, must less isn’t a grave concern.
(You refused to say where you studied Economics. Any chance you’ll tell us where you studied Meteorology or Forestry?)
Thank you.
I'm impressed!
To the partisans of the right, all science is junk science. Ever since Newt Gingrich looked to a future when dinosaurs would be looked upon in some fundamentalist approved way rather than the way paleontologists study them, we've been under the sway of a naive branch of politics that masquerades its disdain for science with what judges routinely use to damn criminals--unwarranted, superior attitudes.
As often as they repeat the big lie that GW is junk science, they damn themselves and those poor fools who will suffer the most from global warming, those at the margins of society here and abroad.
Republicans created junk science, just as they created junk bonds, and junk government.
Global warming may exist but the fact that many special interest groups claim it's caused by man's emissions of carbon dioxide is total junk -- which I think most serious scientists agree on.
"DLB" has a point though: the bridge disaster in Minneapolis, the power outage in Chicago, Katrina, the power outage in New York last year and in 2004, etc., is NOT global warming's fault.
I've made no claim that "supply and demand" is not a valid economic principle, you have. Go back and read your posts.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-cohen/keith-olbermann-ask-demo_b_59426.html
I've also made no claim that corporate failure and/or bankruptcy is a myth. Again, your claim, not mine.
I did, however, say that corporations pass on their taxes to the consumer of their products. That's common knowledge to anyone who's studied economics. Why you cannot grasp such a simple concept is beyond reason. And I won't ask you where you studied Meteorology or Forestry.
Well said!
You bring up a good point. Maybe they've already got it figured out:
global warming + nuclear winter = Goldilocks
Pyr,
What a concept!
That the two greatest forces on the planet can reach compromise, when Mr. bush and congress cannot!
Great!
Thank you.
Just admit you're stupid.
Tom Brokaw had a show on today that clearly outlines where we're headed with Global Warming. The fact is whether you want to believe it or not, we're screwed. China is building one coal fired plant a week. Their atmosphere is polluted beyond belief. The science is in and the climate models show it. Ice core samples going back 600,000 years prove that this rate of warming we have now is 10 times worse than anything previous. Glaciers are melting in EVERY location AROUND the world at an alarming rate. That is 75% of the fresh water available to humans. The feedback loops are kicking in and once that takes hold there will be nothing anyone can do.
It doesn't matter whether you believe it or not. The earth doesn't give a shit whether or not you believe it.
Stick your heads in the sand and wait for Gawd to rapture you out of it trolls. The fact is you're stuck and so are your children. There's nothing you can do to stop it now. China and India are picking up the slack. I say the party is over for humans and it's probably just as well. Earth will do fine without us.
BH,
Very good points. One day this big dog will stand up and S-H-A-K-E!!!
According to a VERY good piece on China's pollution, of over a half BILLION Chinese living in cities, ONE PERCENT has safe (not clean, SAFE) air to breath. Air count value of 50 in US, 40 in EU, 141 IN CHINA!
PLEASE, PLEASE read to see where the world is headed, with or without GW.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/world/asia/26china.html?ex=1345780800&en=c2fb14345e2905b1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Does anyone really care more about what causes it than they do about how to cheat death? (Yes, IDing cause is a step toward cure. But not continuing to be STUPID is the FIRST step.)
WAKE UP! They are dying first, but we’re breathing the same air, and will continue to until WE are dead.
PLEASE READ!
Thank you, VERY much.
"Just admit you're stupid."
Go ahead, knock yourself out. Tom Brokaw is a newscaster, not a scientist.
Face it, the science is in. The Earth's temperature was warmer at one time than it is now. Greenland used to be green. 10,000 year old villages in Peru are finally having the snow melt away to expose them. Everyday new studies are proving that the U.N. is a bunch of lying morons with an agenda to halt capitalism. Read Sunday's "Parade Magazine". China has coalmine fires belching out almost as much CO2 as the cars in the U.S. And those fires are probably natural. India has them too.
Why don't you bury your head in the sand about the real threat to the world, Iran wanting to destroy Israel. I'll worry about reality.
BH.....
Right on! Potentially even a more serious problem concerns various scientific forecasts that Earth's water supply is good for about only another 30 years. Sounds like Earth is caught in a 'catch 22.'
I don't believe that the warming of the globe is caused by human action. Neither do I think that the globe warming up is unusual or necessarily detrimental. Here are a few reasons for me believing this.
- Carbon dioxide makes up about 0.037% of the earth's atmosphere. It is not the only heat absorbant gas which keeps heat in, and it is not the most potent. Plants take in this gas in order to grow, it is naturally pulled out of the air and stored in solid matter again. It is only a matter of time before plant matter absorbs human emitted CO2.
- CO2 increase does mirror the increase in global temperature, but it follows the temperature increase it doesn't precede it. This suggests that warming increases CO2 in the atmosphere, not CO2 increasing temperature.
- From 1940-1970 there was a sharp increase in CO2 levels but global temperature was going down.
- The globe naturally has temperature increases. In the late 1800's temperatures were even higher than they are now. In the 1000-1300 time frame temperatures were much higher than they are now, and they stayed that way continuously without disrupting society.
- Virtually all heating originates from the sun. If the sun becomes intrinsically brighter, the earth will get warmer. This is a major source of temperature change (both up and down). I haven't seen a very long history of data measuring sun strength, but that might be very revealing.
I think that given the extreme complexity of weather it is very difficult to support claims that an increase in temperature is causing all the extreme weather occurances. For one thing, these storms, droughts, and all the other things have been happening for all of known history. Considering that the current temperature is even cooler than it has been at other times even within the last 150 years, I don't think we should be alarmed.
These are just a few thoughts. Some good points are also brought up in this film:
The Great Global Warming Swindle
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3028847519933351566
kev,
One of us is wrong.
I sincerely hope it's me.
But since the RISK involved with being wrong is ALL YOURS (and others on your side, of course), I can't imagine anyone willing to take such chance with their children's (ALL children) lives, regardless of the degree of doubt they bring to the table.
Regardless of the outcome, what will you tell your children when they ask, "What did you do to protect the planet, Daddy?"
Besides, nowhere do you seem to address the issues of the RATE of temperature increase and CO2 emissions, which has never occurred prior in the known history of the planet.
Thank you.
Kev-
Educate yourself on the earth's OZONE layer. You might have a different opinion after you do.
Global warming can either cause CO2 levels to rise (more plant life) or be caused by rising CO2 levels (greenhouse effect). The people who gave you that bit of information were deliberately trying to mislead you.
From Scientific American, April 2007:
Compared with historical output, the sun contributes an extra 0.12 watt/sq. meter, while man-made CO2 contributes an additional 1.6 watt/sq. meter. The actual science behind these numbers would fill a magazine.
In the brief cooling period you mention, the greenhouse effect was offset by sulfite particulate pollution.
How might we worry about the middle east when mother nature knows no boundaries? The price of oil won't mean a 2 cents when we are in need of clean water. Until you can tell us how to make water out of oil, we might look elsewhere for our answers.
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