'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'
The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.
Read more:
Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us
Note: Now the Pentagon tells ...
Stumble It!
http://www.stopesso.com/campaign/Pentagon.doc
Why StopEsso ... because ExxonMobil\'s one of the biggest naysayers when it comes to climate change. It\'s funding all the front groups telling Bush to keep his head in the sand on climate change.
The fifth day of a five day forecast is accurate 20% of the time but pseudo-scientists and social activists, with their hands deep into the taxpayers pockets, can tell me what the weather will be like in a hundred years? Don\'t be so naive.
Oil and will get too expensive to use before any catastrophe. Coal won\'y help, but will be needed in the coming years. We will NEED coal and nuclear plants to produce electricity for warmth and other uses. McGuinty had better not keep his election promise to convert our coal plants to gas.
We have 50 years of gas, and well over 500 years of coal......do the math.
-Perturbed at another location.
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Dave Ruston
Scientists don\'t have all the answers and they are wrong a lot of the time. But the debate on climate change has ended. All reputable scientists agree that the earth\'s climate is changing, whether that be a natural process or a human driven one. Given the incredible speed at which humans are re-introducing carbon into the atmosphere from decayed dinosaur goo, however, you\'d have to be pretty stupid not to draw the inference that the incredible amount of carbon being pumped into the air is affecting the earth\'s atomosphere in a detrimental way. And that\'s exactly what it comes down to I\'m afraid. Stupidity or wilful blindness. Stupidy because because people don\'t have the scientific literacy to understand the basic concepts underlying climate change, or wilful blindness because they oppose measures that will reverse climate change because they will affect their bottom line. Well screw the both of you. I want my great grandchildren to be able to view real live polar bears (more evidence here: each year the bears are migrating earlier and their fat mass is decreasing at an alarming rate) in Churchill, not replicas in the museum of man and nature in winnipeg. Do you understand how fragile our ecosystem is? I once heard it described that the earth\'s atomosphere is like a layer of paint varnish. It is that varnish that protects not just humans but MILLIONS of other forms of life from the death of space. We are literally only 30 minutes from death from anywhere on earth. The situation is grave. We owe a responsibility to our decendants and to our fellow creatures to do whatever it takes preserve this oasis of life. Yes, that may mean third quarter profits will go down.
Watching a few programs and reading up on climate change tells me the following:
Our mean temperature has risen 1 or 2 degrees (or more) over the last 50 to 100 years, and the polar caps are beginning to melt.
The mean temperature during the last ice age was some 8 degrees lower that it was 100 years ago. That\'s all !!
It doesn\'t take much to trigger the change.
Snow and ice reflect sunlight, so the more snow, the colder it gets.
A dense atmosphere allows the sun in but traps the heat, hence the warmer it gets.
Plants are starting to show the damage from slightly less sunlight getting to ground level.
Draw your own conlusions.
We are at fault. Period.
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"Arrogance in Politics is unacceptable"
Jim Callaghan
Minden, Ontario
705-286-1860
www.misterc.ca
Another trick is to latch onto an iceberg, tow it to a location, then somehow move it inland, say in the US midwest. It has been talked about before, but I haven\'t heard anything about it for several years.
I\'m sure they could come up with a technology to do this, and perhaps create a small lake. Lining the area with clay would keep the water from seeping into the earth, as they do in some landfill sites.
Australia would be another good location, as would any arid area.
The cost could well be high now, but may become feasible at a later time.
When clean drinking water becomes scarce, the price will not be too high.
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"Arrogance in Politics is unacceptable"
Jim Callaghan
Minden, Ontario
705-286-1860
www.misterc.ca
The thing is that all of us sitting here on our PC\'s discussing climate change and the energy crisis... well, we\'re the ones doing this. We\'re the ones who live in a country where we can vote and influence policy. We\'re the ones with SUV\'s and environmentally regressive governments.
So what are we going to do about it?
Well, jumping the gun on the solutions section
Our real concern is the energy crisis. If there is any possible way for us to avert environmental catastrophe, it is through widespread reduction in carbon fuels. And we\'re running out of carbon fuels (except coal, apparently). So what we need to do is find a clean fuel source and we need to do it now. The options vary a lot in feasibility and plausibility, but here\'s what I\'ve found:
-Nuclear reactor: nuclear waste, meltdowns. I mean.. compare the terms nuclear reactor and nuclear reaction. Now think Hiroshima and Nagasaki. \'nuff said.
-Hydro electricity: most of the world uses very little hydro electricity. I\'ve read estimates in the range of 1-3% of global energy is provided by hydro electricity. And really, we don\'t have enough rivers as it is. The sheer scale of dam construction in an energy-hungry society is mind boggling.
-Tidal Energy: put a turbine at the mouth of an ocean inlet and the tide will turn it. This is a sustainable energy. Unfortunately, we wouldn\'t be able to harness enough energy from it to make much of a difference. Maybe it\'ll get used a bit in the future. Like heck, we could put turbines at the lowest points on all the dykes in low-laying cities and as the raising ocean rises over them, the water can rush through our turbines as it floods the cities.
-Natural Gas: sorry hun, but it looks like gas is running out too. And besides, while it DOES burn cleaner than oil, it will still pollute.
-Cold Fusion: apparently some scientists in the states have caused a slow, low-energy-state nuclear reaction. Or so they claim. The readings are about the results, but nothing on the methods used. And even the \'results\' are disconcerting. They\'re all about energy rays named after greek alphabet characters.
-Methane: the environment can\'t sustain the population as it is. Should we really try fitting enough cows on this planet so that we can burn their farts? Not that we could anyways. There just isn\'t enough biomass of any type that could be sustainably used in this type of scenario.
-Wind & Solar: isn\'t really feasible on that scale. But they may provide a good percentage of energy in the future (although the total energy will be much smaller), if we can pull our heads out and actually deal with the issue. I\'m pretty sure the percentage of energy produced by these methods now is single-digit. And most places aren\'t really suitable for wind and sun. Most places aren\'t even suitable for either. But I\'ve got my fingers crossed.
-Hydrogen energy: hydrogen fuel cells, hydrogen combustion, etc. The great thing about hydrogen energy is that the only \'waste\' is water. The bad thing is that hydrogen isn\'t really an energy source. It\'s more like an energy carrier. Separating hydrogen from oxygen in water takes more energy than burning the hydrogen or using it in fuel cells could produce. It\'s basic chemistry. But I do see a future in hydrogen as a carrier of energy. Imagine a fuel that can be distributed like gasoline and only produces water as a biproduct when used. Too bad it takes more energy to make it than the stuff can produce.
Well I think I covered the energy alternatives there. Peak oil should be in a bout *checks watch* four years ago. Peak oil per capita was in 1970. So I guess that means we\'re just about to hit that nasty part of a bell-curve that drops straight downwards.
Anyways, sorry about the rant everyone. If I missed any fuel sources or whatever, let me know. I know I didn\'t miss any really viable ones anyways.
*phew* that was too long a rant
-KY
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Kory Yamashita
"What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
A couple of them require more energy to create than they produce, so they are not viable in the long term.
Solar cells, hydrogen cells, etc. Wind turbines will require maintenance, and will have little use at night in some areas when the breeze drops to nil.
I have always been a dreamer, and have always felt that power is present in the ground and the atmosphere. No one knows how to harness this energy yet, but a simple battery consists of two diferent materials in a liquid medium, with electrodes attached.
I know this may never work on a grand scale, but there has been little research into the idea that the earth\'s magnetic fields are a potential source of energy, if and when we ever learn to harness it.
That would be the purest source of energy one can think of.
If you know of any promising research in this area, please let us know.
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"Arrogance in Politics is unacceptable"
Jim Callaghan
Minden, Ontario
705-286-1860
www.misterc.ca
\'Giant space shield plan to save planet \'
this is an idea originally advanced by the recently deceased Teller (father of the H-Bomb) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
please, please read the article posted on the Guardian website.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange ... 10,00.html
clearly, climate change is real and in progress. But before one gets too excited about the Pentagon creating pressure on US gov\'t to take action, we need to consider what those actions could be.
sincerely,
kelly reinhardt