Friday, February 17, 2006

Oh, the weather outside is frightful

Listening to: Liars, They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top

Some snow yesterday, some today, some tomorrow they say, just some and not a moment too soon. This season has been a skimpy one for Colorado's eastern slope, scant amounts at best. Although there's a couple of months left to make up for the shortfall (with March and April being the wettest months, too), the pittance we've received so far is hardly the start our water table needs.

In the midst of this, I've heard whispers of global warming. From this tiny corner of the earth, I'm not so sure that what's going on here is due to global warming, strictly speaking. This June I'll have been in Colorado 20 years and in that time I've seen some extremely whacky weather (or whacky extreme weather) and this Colorado winter hardly seems exceptional compared with other winters I've experienced the past two decades.

That's not to say I'm not concerned about global warming. Hearing the other day that
Greenland's glaciers melting at twice the rate previously suspected, has me more than just a little freaked out. Even though in the Global Warming debate there is little disagreement that there has been a substantial rise in average global temperatures (since the Industrial Revolution), the fatuous argument that we aren't 100% certain of the cause seems rather thick-headed. Strictly speaking, we can't make a causal connection between smoking and lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, etc., but damned if I hear the Cato Institute pooh-poohing the hazards of smoking because tobacco farmers would be economically disadvantaged due to uncertain science.

Considering that Polar Bears are drowning due to diminished arctic ice and they're expected to be extinct by the end of the century, concern for corporations seems a bit specious, at best. After all, who benefits when corporations pocket more profits - you? Get a goddamn clue, the big three auto makers in the US laid off almost 100,000 workers last year while Mercedes Benz (and other luxury car) sales went through the roof. A few people are getting by just fine and many people are sinking. Change the weather, in a big way, and many more people will sink, whatever the cause. Bring on global warming and the poor will get poorer at a much faster rate while the rich will - get tanned.

Despite the Christian Right's adoration of the mongrel murderous thug they elected,
some are beginning to see the madness - and unchristian-like destruction of the planet - enough to say, well, enough. Not only are they calling for christians to follow the mandate to be stewards of creation but recognize the economic and environmental desolation that will come with global warming. Renews my faith, it does.

Unfortunately, local hieratic hacks like Jim Dobson and Ted Haggarty oppose the call to action, they being bigger fans of Bush than Christ. Vermin like Haggerty and Dobson are more concerned with their Wal-Mart churches (and the mammon produced therein) and have little interest in Christ's real message. They're making a bundle off their theology of hate and remaining corporate shills serves their purpose more than actually practicing a Christian message. Besides, they're safe here in the Rockies and have little to worry about when the deluge hits the coastal lands.

Good for them. When my children are dealing with refugees from the coasts, they'll know where to point their guns. Because, I can assure you, when global warming makes its full effect known, changes in climate won't be the only tide turning here and elsewhere.*

*That last paragraph written as a certain "Fuck You" to our Glorious Leader and his anti-American sack of shit snoops.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can always build a boat, Noah.
On a positive note, Canada and the rest of the frozen tundra will become habitable.

landismom said...

I guess all the red states will become slightly more purple, when those of us from the blue states have to move to the middle of the country. This has been one weird winter here, too, but the summer was so wet I'm not worried about drought, that's for sure.

trusty getto said...

Now is the time to buy the soon-to-be oceanfront property in Nevada . . .

Anonymous said...

There is some argument about whether or not this is a "natural" (time-based) cycle, and just how much human mucking-about has changed or accelerated that cycle. My dad and I have argued about that for quite some time (Daddy's a retired organic chemistry prof). I don't think there's any real argument about global warming, except from certain children in DC. Ahem.

We're putting in a dock in anticipation...assuming we're not going under too.

Puck said...

Karen, I don't know if you caught 60 Minutes this past week (I missed it, I had to work) but I caught this, the producer's response to complaints that the piece did not include contrarian voices:

""There is virtually no disagreement in the scientific community any longer about global warming," he says. "The science that has been done in the last three to five years has been conclusive. We talked to the chairman of the National Academy of Scientists, Ralph Cicerone. Jim Hansen at NASA, who's considered the world's leading expert in climate change. The people in the story, who are well respected in the field. There's just no longer any credible evidence that suggests that, a, the earth is not warming or, b, that greenhouse gasses are not the cause. What you do see in the data again and again and again is this almost lockstep increase between the levels of CO2 and the rise of temperature in the atmosphere. And the climate models that predicted these things happening 15 years ago have proven to be accurate."

Pelley's 60 Minute piece:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/16/60minutes/main1323169.shtml

The comment (and others) I found at:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/2/22/23152/9077