Posted on 11/20/2004 11:45:56 PM PST by El Oviedo
"We sometimes get the feeling they are going to let us die," said Enele Soponga the other year. Soponga is the ambassador to the UN of Tuvalu, an island nation with a population of 12,000 that is projected to be the first island state to go under water. Tuvalu's main island has already been inundated three times in 2003; vegetable plots were washed away along with the island's drinking water.
Soponga, who is also the chairperson of the Association of Small Island States, is not alone in his sentiment.
Climate change is not a smart bomb. Like weapons of mass destruction, human-induced climate change will hit the environment and smash people's lives indiscriminately, punishing the vulnerable and the weak the hardest. The warning signs are everywhere.
The three hottest years in recorded history - 1998, 2002 and 2003 - all occurred in the last six years. The 1990s remain the warmest decade on record.
Weeks ago Japan suffered from its fourth major storm since late August. It was reportedly 'the most powerful to hit Okinawa since 1972.
(Excerpt) Read more at feeds.bignewsnetwork.com ...
Maybe it isn't that the sea is rising, it's that Tuvalu is sinking.
Life sucks at 1.3 meters above mean sea level.
It was cooler than usual here this summer and has gotten cold here faster this winter. The hottest summer we had was in 1988.
I have a letter that my great grandfather wrote in July,1864, while he was in the Union Army in Georgia, and said it was 110 degrees in the shade.
Is it hotter in Georgis than that in the summer now?
I read an article that temperature measurements are hotter because they are taken in cities which do grow hotter due to all the cement. And we all know that the Earth has been warming slowly but steadily since the last Ice Age, that 10,000 years ago the level of the oceans were rising and slowly taking out cities built on the shorelines of the Mediterranean.
To blame this all on America's present day culture is ludicrous, and may divert us from finding out what to do to adjust to the climatic vagaries of our planet.
I posted an article about precession (variations in the axis tilt of the Earth and its orbit around the sun) once, but couldn't find anyone who knew where we were in the precession cycle and how much longer the natural movement of our planet was going to last till it reached the furthest point and began tilting the other way again.
Re: what to do to adjust to the climatic vagaries of our planet.
Wear a coat when it's cold, remove it when it's warm.
Tuva-who?
Move to higher ground.
This past election here in Colorado, we passed an amendment to the state's constitution calling for sizeable increases in the amount of renewable energy produced across the state over the next decade. I don't have a real problem with that, except that the form of power production that is being relied upon most heavily is wind, and sometimes the wind just doesn't blow while at other times it blows too much (have to shut those large wind turbines down above about 50 mph wind speed).
I work at a natural gas fired generating facility, and we are in constant contact with the people who are responsible for maintaining the reliability of the power grid across the state. I asked one of them about wind power the other day, and she said everyone in their office voted against it and that they were all pretty unhappy that it passed because of the reliability issue of having 500 megawatts of power either suddenly appear or disappear from the grid.
Personally, I'd like to see more nuclear plants get built. They are much more cost-effective over the long haul, and their environmental impact is basically zero because they have no emissions.
Just my $0.02, of course.
Be really glad that Seward bought Alaska from the Russians.
Develop crops resistant to increased heat, that are more drought tolerant.
When the forests died off and our ancestors came out of the trees, they adapted to life on the savannas or they died.
There are upsides. It's a lot easier to take a shower if you don't have fur.
The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blame By Michael Leidig and Roya Nikkhah
[snip]Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: "The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.
You can not have, for example, 90% of max capacity from fossil fuel production and 10% from renewable sources. You must have 100% available capacity from fossil fuel which you can, of course, take offline when solar or wind is available. The sunk cost of those plants does not go away when they are idle though. This means that comparing costs between fossil fuel production and renewable is meaningless. Renewable energy is always a cost added on top of the cost of producing energy from fossil fuels.
Take all of themoney the are yusing to complain and spread BS and put it into a prject like Signapore does.
Singapore is 1/3 larger than it originally was. They dredge for more land. Pile the sand up, let it settle for 20 years and build on it. Meanwhile dredging up more sand and "creating" more land. Really good idea and maybe used alot more in the future.
Oh I forgot this must be doing something bad to the mud sucking, yellow belly, slack jawed dimfish.
He he he. I knew I could get a zinger in some how!
Amazing how all these floating chunks of ice that are supposed to be melting will somehow increase the levels of the oceans.
Note to reporters: Fill a measuring cup with water and ice. Watch what happens when the ice melts. Then try to figure out why the 'oceans will rise' mantra doesn't make any sense.
Great point. I have never even thought of that. I mean I understand (spelling)archamedies principle but never applied it to the ice up north
It's Bush's fault!
"Australia's National Tidal Facility has had a monitoring station in Tuvalu since 1993 and over the last nine years, the sea level around Tuvalu had risen an average of 0.9 millimeters per year -- that's a whopping 0.03 inches per year or a grand total of .27 inches since 1993." Source: "Tuvalu Is Not Sinking"
--Boot Hill
Which is why you tie those wind generators to electrolyzers and make hydrogen, instead of trying to tie directly to the grid. Ditto for solar.
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