It's all over!!!
By Diplomad
According to the EU, all life as we know it has at most six more months. In fact, it could come to a crashing halt at any time; it seems that the clock might have run out on December 3 of this year!
We explain -- and hope we can finish this before the world ends!
As everybody except President Bush knows, global warming is very bad because it is killing all the wildlife in the Arctic. The New York Times (December 15) said so, and you know they're the newpaper of record,
The Eskimos, or Inuit, about 155,000 seal-hunting peoples scattered around the Arctic, plan to seek a ruling from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that the United States, by contributing substantially to global warming, is threatening their existence. <...> The lawyers, at EarthJustice, a nonprofit San Francisco law firm, and the Center for International environmental Law, in Washington, said the Inter-American Commission, which has a record of treating environmental degradation as a human rights matter, provides the best chance of success. The Inuit have standing in the Organization of American States through Canada.
Well, if the world is going to end, we might as well sue somebody, i.e., the USA, and thank goodness we have unbiased experts such as those lawyers carrying out this needed activity . . . I know that I would want to spend my last day on earth in a courtroom . . .
And, perhaps had we listened to the LA Times back on March 31, 2002, we would have done something!
Strange portents are everywhere. Thunder and lightning, once rare, have become commonplace. An eerie warm wind now blows in from the south. Hunters who prided themselves on their ability to read the sky say they no longer can predict the sudden blizzards. "The Earth," one hunter concluded, "is turning faster."In recent years, seabirds have washed up dead by the thousands and deformed seal pups have become a common sight. Whales appear sick and undernourished. The walrus, a mainstay of the local diet, is becoming scarce, as are tundra rabbits.
And the BBC agrees, er, uh, well,
Research in the American Arctic has revealed that the polar bear and bowhead whale populations are booming after decades of decline, and part of the reason for that may be global warming.
Although the long-term predictions suggest many Arctic species could be jeopardised by any continued rise in temperatures, scientists think that at the moment some animal populations may be benefiting from a slightly warmer climate.<...> Researchers say they have never seen such big and healthy animals. That may be because at the other end of the food chain, plankton are thriving in warmer waters. <...> A team of researchers has also been monitoring the local polar bears from a helicopter. They tranquillise, weigh and tag the animals.
George Durner, from the Alaska Biological Science Center, says he has never seen the bears look in such good shape. "The lengthening of the ice-free period may actually increase the
amount of sunlight entering the ocean, triggering greater plant growth, plankton growth. This is the foundation of the food chain out there," he said. Fish eat the plankton. Seals eat the fish, and polar bears feed on the seals. <...>Some climate models predict that if warming continues at current rates, within 50 to 80 years there could be no Arctic ice at all during the summer. That would allow more shipping through the region, bringing noise and pollution, which could hurt the bowhead population.
Researcher George Durner says it would also be a disaster for the polar bears. "If this ice-free period gets too long, then the period of time when polar bears can hunt for food becomes shorter and shorter because polar bears are so dependent on the ice platform for hunting for seals," he said. It could reach a point where the ice period may be too short for polar bears to get enough food. If the current warming trend does take hold, the comeback being made by animals in Alaska could soon be reversed.
(Stupid Brits . . .didn't they get "The World is Ending Now" memo; what's with all this "maybe," "some models," and "if" crap? We don't have 50 - 80 years!)
Well, we might have no idea of what if anything is happening, but thanks to those lawyers we know whom to blame right? The USA! Well . . . maybe not,
EU nowhere near meeting Kyoto targets
Margot Wallstrom, the EU's environment commissioner, warned that the EU's own efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions were in crisis. Ms Wallstrom said that only two countries, Sweden and the UK, were on track to meet the EU's target of cutting 1990 greenhouse emissions by 8% before 2010 and that 13 of the EU's 15 member states would easily miss that goal.
Brandishing an annual progress report on the subject, she said that the EU was on course to achieve only a 0.5% cut in its 1990 greenhouse gas levels with existing policies. <...> Unless specific policy changes were made within 12-18 months, Ms Wallstrom warned, the trend would not be reversed.
The Diplomad notes with great alarm that the above Guardian article ran on December 3, 2003, based on information that was already about 24 hours old, so do the math! We've used up Ms. Wallstorm's 12 months and are now eating into her 18 months upper limit! We're all going to die! We won't be able to elect a Republican in 2008! We'll all be dead -- and dead voters vote Democrat -- and we're all going to starve to death, or, well, maybe not, no, it appears we'll have a good lunch while we wait for the world to end,
Global cereal output hits record high
9 December 2004, Rome - Global cereal production is expected to hit a record 2.04 billion tonnes in 2004, which would lead to an increase in cereal stocks for the first time in five years, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said today in the December issue of Food Outlook. According to the FAO report: "With this level of production, even after allowing for an expected increase in global cereal utilization in 2004/05,a significant surplus is expected, for the first time since
1999/2000."
And maybe we can have some tea, too,
World tea production hit record high in 2003
6 December 2004, Rome - World tea production in 2003 reached 3.15 million tonnes, 75 000 tonnes more than in 2002, largely as a result of favourable weather conditions, according to a report released by FAO.
And maybe while we're waiting for the end of life on the planet, we might just do some reading of Steven Milloy ,
"Global warming could cause polar bears to go extinct by the end of the century by eroding the sea ice that sustains them," is the dire warning in a new report from an international group of "researchers" called the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment.
I'm not quite sure about the polar bears' future, but it doesn't seem any alleged manmade global warming has anything to do with it. The report, titled "Impacts of a Warming Arctic," pretty much debunks itself on Page 23 in the graph labeled, "Observed Arctic Temperature, 1900 to Present." The graph shows Arctic temperatures fluctuate naturally in regular cycles roughly 40 years long. The Arctic seems to be undergoing a warming phase — similar to one between 1900-1940 — which will likely be followed by a cooling phase — similar to that of 1940-1970.
The report's claim that increased manmade emissions of greenhouse gases are causing a rise in Arctic temperatures is debunked by the same graph, which indicates the near-surface Arctic air temperature was higher around 1940 than now, despite all the greenhouse gas emissions since.
Also self-debunking is the report's statement, "Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has increased by about 35 percent and the global average temperature has risen by about 0.6 degrees centigrade." So despite all the greenhouse gases emitted by human activity over 200 years — we're supposed to worry, even panic, about a measly 0.6 degree C rise in average global temperature in that time? Even if such a slight temperature change could credibly be estimated, it would seem well within the natural variation in average global temperature, which in the Arctic, for example, is a range of about 3 degrees C. Remember, global climate isn't static — it's always either cooling or warming.
What a party pooper . . .we were going to have such a nice lunch . . . diplomadic.blogspot.com |
