The 2006 election is a few days away and election rhetoric is at a fevered pitch. It saddens me that so much of our attention is on completely irrelevant wedge issues like gay marriage and stem cell research. I havent heard a single politician discuss climate change.
Global warming is THE issue for our generation. Global warming is going to change the ability of the Earth to sustain human life. Even Iraq is small potatoes in comparison.
Despite the lack of US electoral attention, this week had a raft of disturbing global warming news.
the UK shows some leadership
Blair was a big poodle when it came to Iraq but he is showing some real backbone regarding global warming. How long can our leaders go on ignoring this life-changing issue?
British turn up heat on U.S. over global warming
Chicago Tribune
10-31-06
WASHINGTON — Left unchecked, global warming could drive the world economy into a depression similar to the devastating downturn of the 1930s, the British government said Monday in a report that appeared designed to influence politics in the United States.
The report, written by Nicholas Stern, head of the British Government Economic Service and a former World Bank economist, said the environmental cost of global warming could range between 5 percent and 20 percent of the world's total annual economic output after 2050.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has sought to persuade President Bush to take a more aggressive stance in tackling global warming, asked former Vice President Al Gore on Monday to advise his government on climate change — an action that could be considered a political shot across the bow. Gore, who has warned of the dangers of global warming for years, is one of Bush's sharpest critics on the environment.
the disappearing ice we depend on
Glaciers are melting in Washington, threatening drinking water supplies, salmon and power generation.
State's shrinking glaciers: Going ... going ... gone?
Seattle Times staff reporter
11-1-06
MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK — Like tiny doctors on the belly of a sleeping giant, three National Park Service workers trudged up the middle of the Nisqually Glacier, stepping over tiny creeks and peering down a dizzying chute where water from the melting glacier wormed into the 300-foot-thick slab of ice.
Nearby, a tall plastic pole arced from the ice into the sky. Park scientist Rebecca Doyle knelt at its base, whipped out a tape measure, and began jotting down numbers.
The pole is 41 feet long. Six months ago, in April, it was totally buried in snow and ice. On this recent sunny October day, so much snow had melted that only a few inches of the pole remained buried.
"Wow, that's a lot," exclaimed Paul Kennard, a park service geomorphologist, as he stood holding the pole.
Like Kennard and Doyle here on Mount Rainier, scientists on mountains all over Washington, the most glacier-covered state in the Lower 48, are trying to determine how glaciers are changing. What they are finding here and elsewhere is worrisome: Many of them, such as the South Cascade Glacier in the remote North Cascades, are shrinking quickly — and some are on the verge of disappearing.
here fishy, fishy
Enjoy those Filet O' Fish and sushi while you can. The oceans arent able to keep up with our consumption. If we stop rationing the amount of fish we catch for the grocery store, we might be ok but overfishing and warming water could well cause the ocean ecosystem to collapse.
