Emissions cut won't now bring quick relief

Sooo selfish our culture is, if we don't reap instant reward then we just don't bother. When I hear things such as " I won't be around to see it", "why bother we're beyond fixing", makes me sad for our children because this is the example they will learn from, NOTHING+NOTHING = NOTHING

If everyone could just do one small thing, with billions of people in this world, it surely would = SOMETHING

Although I am not a fan of "HIM" as my version of whatever god is. I do believe in a greater something and find this prayer worth a read:

The Serenity Prayer

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

The short and more commonly known form of this reads this way:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

One comment on what I am listening to: THANK YOU John Kerry for mentioning water scarcity!

OMG, Richard Lugar is touting the MONSANTO line on GM crops feeding the hungry. YOU ARE SO WRONG. Stop using the climate crisis to push your corporate BS.

Senate Committee On Foreign Relations is having a session on Global Climate Change now, with Al Gore expected to testify. You can watch it live by clicking on the link at the site.

My message sent to President Obama:

There is no such thing as "clean coal." It is an oxymoron and does not exist. And it will take at least twenty years to be seen in any viable form which will be too late according to scientific reports about glacial melt in the Arctic and elsewhere. There is no safe way to store CO2 underground at this time, and even the GAO reported there is not even a federal policy written on it. That is why it baffles me that you constantly touted it during the campaign as if it is already viable.

We need solar, wind, geothermal, wave energy, and a moving away and weaning off of dirty coal and oil, and that also includes you standing up against mountaintop removal. Even if sequestration of CO2 existed, how coal is now extracted by blowing the tops off mountains is environmentally devastating. How does that balance out burying CO2 in the ground that can harm groundwater sources and the toxic coal ash still buried in the ground? And how will allowing these companies to continue burning this pollution until 2050 help? Coal must be relegated to the dustbin of history as investment in alternate energies is encouraged and it must and can be done in a decade.

It is way past time to move into the 21st Century and to boldly do what we must do to avoid a climate tipping point that has already begun in the Arctic. Al Gore's plan does that. Please support it.

BTW...in Scientific American, there is a two page layout about the "clean coal" myth and today I seen on CNN a parody about the "clean coal" myth.
The word is beginning to spread.
I forget what organisation it was that placed the ad and paid for the commercial.

There are days I feel like you, Jan.
I work in Las Vegas, NV and the air pollution can be horrid on calm days. Sometimes I can barely see across the valley.
I stand outside and look at the mountains surrounding the valley and they are shrouded in a brown mist.
But then I head home over the hill and see a brilliant sunset and Mt. Whitney, in CA, off in the far distance, and I feel lighter and I know that somehow, with the effort of many people, we can make a difference.
We have to, because this is a beautiful planet we live on.

I have never read so much lemming nonsense in my life. Why are you all so incredibly afraid of death. Die like a,,,, like a,,,,, like a,,,,, Well I don't know what, but die like one. Shut down all the trucks, cars and planes, oopps and tractors (almost forgot) tomorrow and everyone ride bicylces and it will have marginal impact on global warming er wait, I mean climate change. Ah but to listen to the msm and most 'experts' (defined as anyone with a keyboard) and the average schmuck absolutely would and does believe that elimination of auto's and such are THE solution. (hell eliminating termites would be a much better strategy and garner greater results if CO2 and Methane in particular are the issues) Auto's don't make a scratch. And that my lemming friends is why I care so little about following you as you know so little of what you speak, but have engendered in the weak minded whatever it is you think they should think. But no sense discussing it as the discussion is over and the science is now complete from what I have been instructed.

So die like a, like a, oh who cares. Thanks.

Like I've been saying, it's too little too late. We're doomed for good, why stress about the future? Just enjoy the little time we have left on this earth.

Worrying about this is, unfortunately, like worrying about dying. It's an inevitability. Listen to the politicians. Listen to the corporations. Nobody really gets it. This is more important than any issue facing us today. Forget unemployment. Forget a possible depression. If we don't take care of this and make changes NOW, the people who ended up getting jobs from our focus on the economy will have jobs in a world that is uninhabitable and in the grip of a world war over land and water resources. Then the population will slowly die off and our species will be either gone or left in the stone age.

Forget about it, though. No one in power gets it and everyone alive now with more than 2 cents to rub together is simply worried about making as much money as they can because they will be dead when all this comes to roost.

Satan, laughing, spreads His wings.

Here in Springfield MO they are planning co2 injection underground straight from the (coal fired) power plants, an experiment, and we are the guinea pigs.

NEVER GIVE UP.
No Matter what is going on, never give up.
Develop the heart.
Too much energy in your country is spent developing the mind
instead of the heart.
Be compassionate.
Not just to your friends, but to everyone.
Be compassionate.
Work for peace in your heart and in the world.
Work for peace and I say, never give up.
No matter what is going on around you
NEVER GIVE UP.

-His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama

There is one thing that has been burning a hole in my head. Why hasn't anyone come up with an idea for getting rid of the excess CO2 in out atmosphere? Every one talks about cutting the production of it, and how it will be better for all of us. Well that's all fine then, and i think it is still something we should all do. But if you think about it, if we have up set the balance of thing so that the earth's cycles have gone out of whack, then how will they be able to stabilize themselves if we don't set in and fix some of the mess?

Janfor Gore; I see sadness and a little hopelessness in your words and heart today.

As a 55 year old father of 2 grown girls in long term relationships I too would cry should one of them tell me I were to become a Grandfather. The legacy we have left our children and theirs is one of no safe future. I looked yesterday at a mother and her new born child and as you are today; I felt sad.

Often at this time in the morning in Perth Western Australia (6 am) I start out my work to wake up those that are complacient with vision as to how we can add a voice for change, and how we can and must do whatever we can. My daughters must not ask of me what could I have done but didn't. So feel sad Janfor Gore but don't give up. No mother, no father will thank you for giving up. Your voice and mine are not the voice of one. We need that voice to swell to be the collective voice of many. Good policy on climate change must become good politics or it will not be the direction our global political leaders will take. Good politics can only come from a voice and mandate to them from the people. Collective will, collective vision and collective action, for our collective and safe futures.

The Australian and US population as with many similar complacent nations and it's peoples are focued not on the message you left here today.

They will not be reading your words for a call to arms.

They in the US at present, with all the problems they have in there busy lives, are still illogically sleepwalking to the inevitable. Unless we concentrate our efforts to get to these people with what they are concerned with (today) and talking about and worrying about; that affects them today, our crys to them will, as they are now, continue to fall on deaf ears.

If you have lost your job - this is your main worry today - if you have lost your home - If you feel alone - what is your focus?

A great black hope is presently sweeping the US. Will Obama change the future we are on track to? I hope with all my heart he does. His job is immence and many battles, challenges, successes and failures lie ahead. Will he succeed - who knows? But you and I like him, need to not give up on those sleepwalking people.

You and I and those like us need to open their ears to our urgent calls. To do this we must first talk to them of there concerns (todays concerns) once we have their attention - then and only then can we have them listen to our urgent crys.

We need to redirect our voices and our efforts away from singing to those in the choir that are converted. No mother, and no father would want their children to die. Those that have the future of these in their hands need to hear our voice.

Get their attention; talk to the deaf, no time to loose. No time give up. Fell sad for a day. Feel hope for the future.

Let not our legacy be 'What could you have done but didn't'

Bob Williamson
Greenhouse Neutral Foundation

this isnt some bs.

somthing needs to change. and change very soon

Oh please. If that's the case did you really want to discuss it in the first place?

You lost me in the god/higher power rhetoric.

No it won't, it'll bring "relief" at the speed of Government... Too slow, too late, and never ever enough.

More from the article:

The new work dealt only with the effects of carbon dioxide, which is responsible for about half of greenhouse warming. Gases like chlorofluorocarbons and methane, along with soot and other pollutants, contribute to the rest. These substances are far less persistent in the atmosphere; if these emissions drop, their effects will decline relatively fast.

Michael Oppenheimer, a geoscientist at Princeton, praised the report in an e-mail message as a “remarkably clear and direct” discussion of whether it would be possible to temporarily exceed a level like 450 p.p.m. and then reduce emissions in time to avoid catastrophic events like the collapse of a major inland ice sheet.

Dr. Oppenheimer said the new analysis showed that “some dangerous consequences could be triggered and persist for a long, long time, even if emissions were cut radically.”

“Policy makers need to understand,” he continued, “that in some ways once we are over the cliff, there’s nothing to stop the fall.”

Dr. Solomon said it would be wrong to view the report as evidence that it was already too late to do much good by reducing carbon emissions. “You have to think of this stuff as being more like nuclear waste than acid rain,” she said.

Acid rain began to abate when pollution contributing to it was limited. But just as nuclear waste remains radioactive for a long time, the effects of carbon dioxide persist.

“So if we slow it down,” she said, “we have more time to find solutions.”

For example, engineers may one day discover ways to remove the gas from the atmosphere. But “those solutions are not now in hand,” Dr. Solomon said. “They are quite speculative.”

From the article:

Many people who worry about global warming hope that once emissions of heat-trapping gases decline, the problems they cause will quickly begin to abate.

Now researchers are saying that such hope is ill-founded, at least with regard to carbon dioxide.

Because of the way carbon dioxide persists in the atmosphere and in the oceans, and the way the atmosphere and the oceans interact, patterns that are established at peak levels will produce problems like “inexorable sea level rise”� and Dust-Bowl-like droughts for at least a thousand years, the researchers are reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“That peak would be the minimum you would be locking yourself into,”� said Susan Solomon, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who led the work.

The researchers describe what will happen if the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide — the principal heat-trapping gas emission — reaches 450 to 600 parts per million, up from about 385 p.p.m. today. Most climate researchers consider 450 p.p.m. virtually inevitable and 600 p.p.m. difficult to avoid by midcentury if the use of fossil fuels continues at anything like its present rate.

Article Continues:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/science/earth/27carbon.html

JUST KEEP BURNING THAT COAL.

OUR CHILDREN THANK YOU for the pollution and disease you have brought them.