Entire Antarctic Shelf splitting away from Continent.

[civil42806]

Okay we can write off solar panels as the solution

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16550-why-sustainable-power-is-unsustainable.html



were doomed I tell you doomed!!

[kellypope]

There isn't a cut and dry solution to a problem with so many causes. There are a lot of things you can do to leave the planet a better place than it is right now. And they don't have to involve creating ridiculous greenhouse gases

• Reducing your carbon footprint by eating locally-grown things and minimizing energy consumption from transportation or from home energy costs (being that JEA is mostly coal-powered, yes?)
• Reducing your waste by composting plant wastes, not using as much unrecyclable plastic, bringing a mug to work or to your favorite coffee shop, paying attention to how much paper towels you use, getting things used instead of new
• If you can, plant native flora around your home. Bonus points to bee, butterfly, and bird-attracting plants. Even more bonus points if you construct a house for butterflies or become a registered beekeeper.
• Go ahead and plant the things you like to eat, but be aware that lots of things are not suitable for our climate.
• Eat less meat if you can, and eat in season. Pay attention to the foods you buy too--why get a Californian or--God forbid--South African orange when your neighbor down the street might let you have some of his for free?
• Adjust your car and home to be more energy efficient. There's lots of different things you can do. Sky lighting, getting it examined by a specialist who'll help you know what needs insulation where, green roofs, wall gardens, installing rainbarrels, collecting the water from your shower while you wait for it to warm as well as turning off the shower while you lather, keeping the heat or cool within a range close to the temperature outdoors, changing lightbulb wattage and type
• Pay attention to what kinds of fibers you're wearing. If you can, use more cotton, linen, wool, bamboo, hemp, or silk clothing. Unnatural fibers are essentially plastic, and even though they will break, they will not break down. Also, use natural fiber bags when shopping. And then reuse them.
• Support local-anything you can think of. A person making new clothing from thrift-store finds, a craftsman who carves wooden furniture, a ceramicist who uses local clay, a person canning the fruits from her backyard


http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/william_kamkwamba_on_building_a_windmill.html

This is only 5 minutes long. But if a 16-year-old boy in Africa with little more than a bicycle tire and some PVC can build a windmill, why can't you?

And if you like fish, get familiar with which kinds live near you. Get to know what kinds of fish are predatory fish as well. Even though you might think a farmed fish is better than a hunted fish, it might take a lot more energy just to feed that fish than is redeemed by the fact that it's farmed.

[gatorback]

Thanks for the reminder kellypope.  I'd add carpool, cycle, walk, and use mass transit  when you can. Change those light bulbs.  And especially harvest rain water, fertilizer the lawn less, install new toilets, drink municipality local water, and if you're not, use less of those plastic water bottles.

[BridgeTroll]

And now we can add environmental jihad...

http://www.theage.com.au/national/islam-group-urges-forest-fire-jihad-20080906-4b53.html?page=-1

Islam group urges forest fire jihad
Josh Gordon
September 7, 2008 - 12:00AM

AdvertisementAUSTRALIA has been singled out as a target for "forest jihad" by a group of Islamic extremists urging Muslims to deliberately light bushfires as a weapon of terror.

US intelligence channels earlier this year identified a website calling on Muslims in Australia, the US, Europe and Russia to "start forest fires", claiming "scholars have justified chopping down and burning the infidels' forests when they do the same to our lands".

The website, posted by a group called the Al-Ikhlas Islamic Network, argues in Arabic that lighting fires is an effective form of terrorism justified in Islamic law under the "eye for an eye" doctrine.

The posting â€" which instructs jihadis to remember "forest jihad" in summer months â€" says fires cause economic damage and pollution, tie up security agencies and can take months to extinguish so that "this terror will haunt them for an extended period of time".

"Imagine if, after all the losses caused by such an event, a jihadist organisation were to claim responsibility for the forest fires," the website says. "You can hardly begin to imagine the level of fear that would take hold of people in the United States, in Europe, in Russia and in Australia."

With the nation heading into another hot, dry summer, Australian intelligence agencies are treating the possibility that bushfires could be used as a weapon of terrorism as a serious concern.

Attorney-General Robert McClelland said the Federal Government remained "vigilant against such threats", warning that anyone caught lighting a fire as a weapon of terror would feel the wrath of anti-terror laws.

"Any information that suggests a threat to Australia's interests is investigated by relevant agencies as appropriate," Mr McClelland said.

Adam Dolnik, director of research at the University of Wollongong's Centre for Transnational Crime Prevention, said that bushfires (unlike suicide bombing) were generally not considered a glorious type of attack by jihadis, in keeping with a recent decline in the sophistication of terrorist operations.

"With attacks like bushfires, yes, it would be easy. It would be very damaging and we do see a decreasing sophistication as a part of terrorist attacks," Dr Dolnik said.

"In recent years, there have been quite a few attacks averted and it has become more and more difficult for groups to do something effective."

Dr Dolnik said he had observed an increase in traffic on jihadi websites calling for a simplification of terrorist attacks because the more complex operations had been failing. But starting bushfires was still often regarded as less effective than other operations because governments could easily deny terrorism as the cause.

The internet posting by the little-known group claimed the idea of forest fires had been attributed to imprisoned Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab Al-Suri. It said Al-Suri had urged terrorists to use sulphuric acid and petrol to start forest fires.

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/national/islam-group-urges-forest-fire-jihad-20080906-4b53.html

[gatorback]

This is in today's New York Times

On Feb. 2, 2007, the United Nations scientific panel studying climate change declared that the evidence of a warming trend is "unequivocal," and that human activity has "very likely" been the driving force in that change over the last 50 years. The last report by the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in 2001, had found that humanity had "likely" played a role.

The addition of that single word "very" did more than reflect mounting scientific evidence that the release of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from smokestacks, tailpipes and burning forests has played a central role in raising the average surface temperature of the earth by more than 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1900. It also added new momentum to a debate that now seems centered less over whether humans are warming the planet, but instead over what to do about it. In recent months, business groups have banded together to make unprecedented calls for federal regulation of greenhouse gases. The subject had a red-carpet moment when former Vice President Al Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," was awarded an Oscar; and the Supreme Court made its first global warming-related decision, ruling 5 to 4 that the Environmental Protection Agency had not justified its position that it was not authorized to regulate carbon dioxide.

Read More...

The greenhouse effect has been part of the earth's workings since its earliest days. Gases like carbon dioxide and methane allow sunlight to reach the earth, but prevent some of the resulting heat from radiating back out into space. Without the greenhouse effect, the planet would never have warmed enough to allow life to form. But as ever larger amounts of carbon dioxide have been released along with the development of industrial economies, the atmosphere has grown warmer at an accelerating rate: Since 1970, temperatures have gone up at nearly three times the average for the 20th century.

The latest report from the climate panel predicted that the global climate is likely to rise between 3.5 and 8 degrees Fahrenheit if the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere reaches twice the level of 1750. By 2100, sea levels are likely to rise between 7 to 23 inches, it said, and the changes now underway will continue for centuries to come.

[BridgeTroll]

Thank god for the U.N...

[kellypope]

It also added new momentum to a debate that now seems centered less over whether humans are warming the planet, but instead over what to do about it.

Old habits die hard. Someone who routinely acts without thinking will routinely forget to change their actions. Do we have to raise individual awareness--period?

Are there any figures for efforts like when Google was black instead of white, or when people turn off all their lights for a day? Any numbers?

Lots of little things, piled on top of another, performed by as many people as possible, simultaneously and enduringly is what will be the easiest and most impacting. Congress doesn't have to come to any agreement if everyone in the country is already doing what they can.

[kellypope]

Clean Coal Dropped from Stimulus Bill
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2009/2/12/83439/6486

The $789 billion economic-recovery bill looks good in terms of green spending, according to preliminary analysis from the Center for American Progress. The House and Senate reached agreement on the bill on Wednesday and are expected to approve it by the end of the week; President Obama hopes to sign it into law by Presidents' Day.

The bill contains at least $62.2 billion in direct spending on green initiatives and $20 billion in green tax incentives, while funding for nuclear and coal projects was dropped from the final version. Here's the breakdown:


Energy transmission and alternative energy research:

$11 billion for smart grid
$7.5 billion for renewable energy and transmission-line construction
$400 million for the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Project Agency for Energy for the development of alternative energy sources and efficiency
Efficiency:

$4.5 billion for energy-efficiency improvements to federal buildings
$6.3 billion for local government energy-efficiency grants
$2.25 billion for energy-efficiency retrofits for low-income housing
$2.25 billion for the HOME Investment Partners Program to retrofit community low-income housing
$5 billion for the Weatherization Assistance Program for efficiency in low-income households
$510 million for energy-efficiency retrofits for Native American housing programs
$420 million for energy-efficiency improvements at the Department of Defense
$300 million for Department of Defense research on energy efficiency at military installations
$300 million for the appliance rebate program for Energy Star products
Mass transit and advanced automobiles:

$8.4 billion for transit capital assistance programs
$8 billion for Amtrak and intercity passenger rail
$300 million for the purchase of more alternative-fuel and hybrid vehicles for the federal fleet
$300 million in grants and loans for technologies that reduce diesel emissions
Green jobs training:

$500 million for green jobs programs through the Workforce Investment Act
The Senate version of the bill had contained $4.6 billion for the research and development of carbon-capture-and-sequestration technologies for coal-fired power plants and $50 billion in loan guarantees for the nuclear industry, but that funding appears to have been dropped entirely, to the delight of enviros.

"This is a huge win, for our planet and for taxpayers who want stimulus funds to be invested wisely," said Friends of the Earth President Brent Blackwelder. "The bailout in question would have thrilled nuclear industry lobbyists but done virtually nothing to stimulate the economy. Congressional leaders did the right thing and prevented waste by removing this bailout."

"It's rare for a compromise to make a bill better, but that's what happened yesterday," said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters. "According to the reports we've seen, the members of the Conference Committee kept the best aspects of the House and Senate versions of the bill. Tens of billions of dollars for clean energy, energy efficiency, public transportation, scientific research and a smart energy grid remain. Tens of billions set to be wasted on coal and other outdated energy sources were removed."

[gatorback]

http://www.alternet.org/environment/126910/firestorms_and_deep_freeze:_climate_change_may_bring_both/

Last week, the heaviest snowfall since the '90s blanketed the U.K., disrupting bus, rail and air transportation and costing areas like London a cool billion in lost revenue.

Meanwhile, in Australia, a punishing, record drought was worsened by the nation's worst heat wave and worst wildfires, wherein over 400 conflagrations killed over 200 people (and counting), torched a thousand homes and renewed calls for a country with its environmental head up its ass to finally launch its still-hibernating national warning system.

Those who would argue that these are isolated events do so at their own peril. The more time passes, the more both examples of extreme weather resemble two sides of the same fearsome coin known as catastrophic climate change.

And depending on how the science plays out, it could get much worse indeed, and fast.

Deniers of catastrophic climate change have been clinging to extreme rainstorms and snowstorms, such as those recently witnessed in the U.K. or American East Coast, like life rafts off the Titanic.

They still argue that such record-breaking deep freezes disprove global warming. But they're desperately seeking semantics, while the rest of the world is waking up to reality. Which is this: Catastrophic climate change will feature as much ice as fire. It probably already has.

"Scientifically, it would not be correct to make the statement that the current weather in Australia, the U.K. and U.S. are examples of climate change," explains Jian Liu, chief of the Division of Environment Policy Implementation's climate change adaptation unit at the United Nations Environmental Program. "Rather, these are extreme climate events; whereas climate change is something that can only be observed by looking at the average conditions over long periods of time. But while the general average trend is one of a warming climate, this does not mean that extreme cold events or snowstorms will not take place.

"In fact, as you rightly point out, climate change may even contribute to an increasing intensity of snowstorms, as moisture levels in the atmosphere rise."

Liu's point is a good one: It's only climate change, scientifically speaking, once you've had hundreds, or hundreds of thousands, of years to chart the differences and gradations in weather, extreme and otherwise. But we don't have hundreds of thousands of years to wait for that data to come through, which is probably why few scientists ever run for public office, where life-and-death decisions are made in advance of the data, often to influence it.

But disciplinary differences aside, this much is certain: Extreme weather has taken hold of our planet, the only one in our known universe capable of sustaining lives and habitats like ours, and we don't have hundreds of thousands of years to get our act together to forestall even worse events, ones that are exponentially taking many lethal forms.

"Numerous long-term changes in the climate have been observed, including extreme weather such as droughts, heavy precipitation, floods, heat waves and increasing intensity of tropical cyclones," Liu says. "Trends towards more powerful storms and hotter, longer dry periods have been observed. As a result of reduced precipitation and increased evaporation, water-security problems are projected to intensify by 2030 in some regions, and significant loss of biodiversity is projected to occur by 2020 in some ecologically rich sites.

"As to your question on winter storms and cold events, those pointing at intense winter storms or extreme cold events as evidence that global warning is not happening are confusing weather and climate."

That arguably deliberate confusion has slowed our response to a danger that is snowballing by the day, but may disappear if some of climate change's more unlikely, but terrifying, possibilities come to pass.

In one scenario that has taken by storm, pardon the pun, scientists and disaster-cinema stalwarts like director Roland Emmerich -- director of the enviro-horror blockbusters The Day After Tomorrow and 2009's 2012 -- excessive concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere shut down our oceans' thermohaline circulation and plunges regions of Earth into a miniature ice age. Which regions? Wait for it: The U.K. and the American East Coast.

This thesis has been treated like an environmental, and geopolitical, football by scientists and policymakers alike, who have yet to agree on the scientific data or even what the data is looking for. But everyone seems to agree that the possibility of such an extreme global event warrants vigorous study.

[BridgeTroll]

  Thanks Gator... another unbiased scientific article...

http://www.alternet.org/about/index.html

[gatorback]

I do what I can.  So what is so biased about Liu is saying?

[BridgeTroll]

A slightly differing view... clearly a nutjob.

http://news.bostonherald.com/news/national/general/view/2009_02_15_Former_astronaut_speaks_out_on_global_warming/srvc=home&position=recent

Former astronaut speaks out on global warming

By Associated Press  |   Sunday, February 15, 2009  |  http://www.bostonherald.com  |  Around the Nation

SANTA FE, N.M. - Former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who walked on the moon and once served New Mexico in the U.S. Senate, doesn’t believe that humans are causing global warming.

"I don’t think the human effect is significant compared to the natural effect," said Schmitt, who is among 70 skeptics scheduled to speak next month at the International Conference on Climate Change in New York.

Schmitt contends that scientists "are being intimidated" if they disagree with the idea that burning fossil fuels has increased carbon dioxide levels, temperatures and sea levels.

"They’ve seen too many of their colleagues lose grant funding when they haven’t gone along with the so-called political consensus that we’re in a human-caused global warming," Schmitt said.

Dan Williams, publisher with the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which is hosting the climate change conference, said he invited Schmitt after reading about his resignation from The Planetary Society, a nonprofit dedicated to space exploration.

Schmitt resigned after the group blamed global warming on human activity. In his resignation letter, the 74-year-old geologist argued that the "global warming scare is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making."

Williams said Heartland is skeptical about the crisis that people are proclaiming in global warming.

"Not that the planet hasn’t warmed. We know it has or we’d all still be in the Ice Age," he said. "But it has not reached a crisis proportion and, even among us skeptics, there’s disagreement about how much man has been responsible for that warming."

Schmitt said historical documents indicate average temperatures have risen by 1 degree per century since around 1400 A.D., and the rise in carbon dioxide is because of the temperature rise.

Schmitt also said geological evidence indicates changes in sea level have been going on for thousands of years. He said smaller changes are related to changes in the elevation of land masses â€" for example, the Great Lakes are rising because the earth’s crust is rebounding from being depressed by glaciers.

Schmitt, who grew up in Silver City and now lives in Albuquerque, has a science degree from the California Institute of Technology. He also studied geology at the University of Oslo in Norway and took a doctorate in geology from Harvard University in 1964.

In 1972, he was one of the last men to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 17 mission.

Schmitt said he’s heartened that the upcoming conference is made up of scientists who haven’t been manipulated by politics.

Of the global warming debate, he said: "It’s one of the few times you’ve seen a sizable portion of scientists who ought to be objective take a political position and it’s coloring their objectivity."

[BridgeTroll]

It is true.  You were not aware of the phenomenon?

[BridgeTroll]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound

Post-glacial rebound (sometimes called continental rebound, isostatic rebound, isostatic adjustment or post-ice-age isostatic recovery) is the rise of land masses that were depressed by the huge weight of ice sheets during the last glacial period, through a process known as isostatic depression. It affects northern Europe -- especially Scotland, Fennoscandia and northern Denmark -- Siberia, Canada, and the Great Lakes of Canada and the United States.

We are still rebounding...!

[BridgeTroll]

I don't know about you, BT, but I wouldnt want John Glen performing fertility surgery on me.

Astronaut training doesnt account much for organic chemistry or climatology.

John Glenn did not walk on the moon.  Mr Schmitt... 

has a science degree from the California Institute of Technology. He also studied geology at the University of Oslo in Norway and took a doctorate in geology from Harvard University in 1964.