ECOLOGICAL MELTDOWN EVEN WORSE THAN FINANCIAL ARMAGEDON

A number of experts in the area of ecological apocalypse are pointing out that as bad as the economic meltdown could be the ecological situation is even worse. So as priorities go we cannot ignore the ecological meltdown just to pump up the economy.

In other words a lot of the so-called "green solutions" in energy are not green at all. This includes ideas like "clean coal", biofuels and anything else that still produces carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases but calls itself "green".

Big Oil is in a fight for its life and these folks seem to have little understanding of the science of human survival.

If the last decade teaches us anything it is that big oil and fossil fuel interests are running the United States energy policy. It may have been a meeting of these energy giants and Cheney that led to the most recent invasion of Iraq! Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Natural Gas have a stranglehold on the economy and politics of the United States.

If the fossil fuel industry continues to dominate the United States our ecological catastrophe will only be accelerated and certainly not prevented or ameliorated.

EXTREME MEASURES MAY SAVE HUMANITY AS WE KNOW IT

With the recognition that global warming is about twice as bad as we thought due to the phenomenon of "global dimming" we must come to terms with the fact that commonly circulated facts about global warming understate the problem to a significant degree.

Global dimming is the result of particulate matter in the atmosphere and aerosols the former which is certainly due to hydrocarbon combustion causes global dimming. Global dimming reflects a significant amount of light back into outer space. So average temperatures are going up even though more radiation is being reflected back into space than without carbon emissions.

So the various parties and classes upon mother earth might consider working together to save our common home, earth itself!

Otherwise it looks like the capitalist system is going to finish off the natural world and make life on earth a living hell. Temperatures will challenge the survival of human beings. Earth may end up too hot for us to handle.

So wise heads must arrange for the end of hydrocarbon combustion as principle means of transportation and energy production.

Who will lead the world to survival? Will it be the impoverished billions? Or will they simply perish as global warming destroys crops? Captitalist development, having forced so many into the working class. With no means to support themselves workers must either suffer and perish at the hands of a profit crazed capitalist system or take history into their own hands. Of course all classes, creeds and cultures will perish if global warming goes too far. Of course we hope to transcend this capitalist system and/or abolish any energy production that endangers our common heritage and our biological network, the living world around us.

Hard to believe, the tropical zone expands!

There are ninety degrees from the equator to one of the poles, 0 degrees at the equator and 90 degrees at the poles. The article from BBC indicates that the tropics have expanded by from 2 to 4.8 degrees in the last thirty years. That's a pretty big growth of the tropics especially since these degrees are crossing a pretty big chunk nearer the equator. A two to five degree wide band of territory nearer the equator is going to be a lot larger in area than a band near the poles.
Does this mean that the temperate zone has lost area? Has the northern border of the temperate zone moved north? Wouldn't it have to move a lot farther north than the degrees lost on the south border in order to compensate for lost area. Does that mean the arctic zone is definitely shrinking?

'Tropics expand' as world warms

Climate change is causing the tropics to widen, with possible impacts on the global food supply, research suggests.

Scientists examined five different measures of the width of the tropical belt, and found it expanded by between 2 and 4.8 degrees latitude since 1979.

Other researchers meanwhile said climatic change could increase the number of thunderstorms in the US.

The findings emerged as delegates met in Bali for UN climate talks focusing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The capacity of poorer countries - many of them in the tropics - to respond and adapt to impacts of climate change will be another major theme of the talks.

Widening belts

The new analysis of tropical expansion comes from a team of US scientists who reviewed five separate strands of evidence, all gathered from satellite data.

While geographers define "The Tropics" rigidly as the region between 23.5 degrees North and 23.5 degrees South, to atmospheric scientists it is a more variable zone marked by features such as the jet stream and the circulation known as Hadley cells.

On these measures, the tropics have expanded since the era of reliable satellite observation began in 1979.

"The edges of the tropical belt are the outer boundaries of the subtropical dry zones, and their poleward shift could lead to fundamental shifts in ecosystems and in human settlements," the researchers write in the journal Nature Geoscience.

"Shifts in precipitation patterns would have obvious implications for agriculture and water resources, and could present serious hardships in marginal areas."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in its series of reports this year that serious impacts on food and water supplies lie ahead, including:

• 75-250 million people across Africa could face water shortages by 2020
• Crop yields could increase by 20% in East and South East Asia, but decrease by up to 30% in Central and South Asia
• Agriculture fed by rainfall could drop by 50% in some African countries by 2020

The scientists behind the new study note that the tropical zone appears to be expanding much faster than predicted by computer models.

Thunder rolls

While impacts on agriculture could prove important for developing countries, a bigger concern for richer nations such as the US may be the damage wrought by extreme weather.

The IPCC forecasts stronger hurricanes in the future, but possibly fewer of them. Now another US team is suggesting an increase in thunderstorms over the country as well.

In the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers report a computer modelling study that projects a doubling of the frequency of weather conditions right for the formation of severe thunderstorms.

Already, they write, extreme weather events are costing the US economy more than $2bn (£970m) each year.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7126069.stm

Published: 2007/12/04 02:40:01 GMT

© BBC MMVII

ECOAPOCALYSPE NOW? A QUESTION

From the tropical fires of the amazon forests to the melting ice caps our world is rapidly turning into an ecosystem hostile to not only the life of other species but also our own. We have overburned our planet, the planet on which we evolved. Will we be smart enough to reverse our optimistic rush into oblivion or will we demonstrate that we really are smart enough to know what the right thing is and competent enough to do it and do it as a species, homo sapiens, on a planetary scale?