Monday, July 6, 2009

Global warming is happening despite what the right pretend


Deadly warning as tropics advance
CANBERRA - A widening of the world's tropical belt that will turn Sydney's climate into that of Brisbane will hammer Aboriginal communities and the poor nations of Asia and the Pacific, new studies warn. The studies say there is already evidence that the tropics are moving further north and south in a trend that will also extend the range of sub-tropical climates, drying out present fertile regions with devastating effects on health and food production. James Cook University Vice-Chancellor Professor Sandra Harding said tropical climates had already moved more than six degrees of latitude beyond the traditional confines of the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, and were continuing to expand. About half the world's population, including most of its poorest and least educated, lived in tropical climates that were also home to 80 per cent of plant and animal species, and which generated about 20 per cent of the planet's wealth. "It is in the tropics where we have new and dangerous diseases evolving and spreading," Harding said. "According to genetic studies, about 80 per cent of infectious diseases arise in the tropics, with many new illnesses resulting from viruses that jump from animals to humans. "And it's in the tropics that we are seeing massive extinction of plant and animal life, the loss of indigenous cultures and deforestation on a scale that is scarcely imaginable." Harding's warning, based on a new James Cook University review of the scientific literature on climate change, was echoed by a report by the aid group Oxfam, which found that formerly distinct seasons are shifting, destroying harvests and causing widespread hunger.

Surprise, surprise, global warming is going to crucify the poor, and as the economy tanks (because of unregulated American greed), the poor are the last ones we start to care about, as an example look at how Murray McCully killed off independence in aid and married it to trade.

According to our friends on the right (the ones who are holding the Spanish inquisition select committee into climate change) and our very own on-line right wing bloggers in this country, they can’t argue that there isn’t climate change occurring any longer (because punters can clearly see the effects of climate change disrupting the agricultural cycle), so they pretend that it isn’t man made pollution that is causing the climate to change. I believe currently Ian Wishart is claiming the Antarctic is melting because of a ‘volcano’…

Alarm grows over big melt in Antarctica
Antarctica is shrinking more quickly than expected and the pace is increasing, a conference has been told. Professor Peter Barrett of Victoria University's Antarctic Research Centre summarised the latest findings at the Annual Antarctic Conference. Recent satellite pictures showed the frozen continent was calving glaciers from its edges at a rate adding up to about 0.4mm of sea-level rise a year. That might not sound like much, he said, but the rate of ice loss was increasing quickly - up 75 per cent since 1996. The Antarctic ice sheet has been stable for a million years and until recently had seemed too large and too cold to be vulnerable. But Dr Barrett said scientists now believed it could change significantly in a matter of decades. A new assessment adding up global ice loss from Greenland, Antarctica and other glaciers suggested sea levels would rise between 80cm and 2m by 2100, he said.

…that’s right folks, what the hell does Professor Peter Barrett know! It isn’t global warming from man made pollution – IT’S A VOLCANO YOU IDIOT! This is true because Leighton Smith and Ian Wishart say so! I find it amusing that so many right wing bloggers in this country take the very same ‘it isn’t man made pollution causing climate change’ attack line that the Heartland Institute takes. The Heartland Institute (who until 2006 were receiving money from Exxon Mobile) is also behind the Tobacco Industries ludicrous position that Tobacco isn’t scientifically proven to cause cancer and as such there shouldn’t be taxes on cigarettes.

Capitalism has a problem, I’m not talking about the inherent injustice of a few having all the money or the slavish ideological worship of the free market or even the IMF and worldbank genocide of poor people they commit every day with policies that promote Western mega corporations and their ability to dump heavily subsidized mass produced food on countries thus destroying the local markets – oh no, I’m talking about it’s impact on the environment. The reality is that the filth we pump into our planet has an impact on that planets health, a truth that the right wing desperately want to cover up.

We have had to put up with oil funded skeptics claiming the entire global warming idea is a hoax created by Greenpeace to make money for tree huggers for too long. The reality is that our pollution created by an unsustainable consumer greed capitalism is killing the planet and we push the environment to its very edges of being able to sustain our civilization with our denial of this fact. Right now we have a climate change denial Government in power, led by a man who initially didn’t believe in global warming supported by a political party that claim C02 is a misunderstood nutrient and that a 2 degree rise in temperatures would be “beneficial” for NZ. In their first week in power, nACTional have destroyed the Emission Trading Scheme and they are embarrassingly setting up a select committee to examine the 'science' behind global warming to provide pollution Industry funded quack science with a platform. It will be a global media embarrassment that will make NZ out to be a backwater Hicksville that seems unable to accept that the world isn’t flat.

This isn’t a debate about science because the science has been ‘settled’ in the same way evolution science has been ‘settled’, this is a culture war. Those in denial will not accept that their lifestyle is part of the problem and their ego’s are so inflated that to admit ‘tree huggers’ (a group they despise as much as their mythical ‘nanny state’ bullshit) are right and they are wrong would be such a devaluation of their status driven personalities that they fight with the venom of vanity. Would Paul Henry or any of his ilk ever admit they were wrong? We know the answer to that. They’re petty denial should be viewed with the contempt it deserves and their role in the debate should be as marginalized as much as one would marginalize someone trying to argue the planet is only 5000 years old at an evolution conference.

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