Bush to Planet Earth: "Drop Dead!"

Bush to Planet Earth: "Drop Dead!"
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/7/27/22847/9296
NASA has reportedly eliminated the promise"to understand and protect our home planet" from its mission statement. That statement was repeatedly cited last winter by NASA climate scientist James Hansen, who said he was being threatened by political appointees for speaking about the dangers posed by greenhouse gas emissions.

The scariest fucking thing I've ever read
"In a nutshell, it is that the Amazon can withstand 2 years of drought before it begins baking to desert. The tallest trees, which provide shade for all of the growth below, can withstand one year of drought. After that, their roots grow deeper to seek out more water. If they don't find any in the second year, they die.

When they die and topple, all of the undergrowth is suddenly exposed to the withering equatorial sun. These are "shade" plants and they quickly die. Finally, the soil bakes. At every step of this process, some of the CO2 sequestered in the forest is released into the atmosphere.

If we lost the carbon sink that is the Amazon, the rate of global warming would increase by 50%. The Amazon is currently beginning its second year of drought."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/7/31/204441/754

That's One Small Step Forward, One Giant Leap Back
"[Washingtonpost.com] Employees and contractors working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with a U.S. Geological Survey scientist working at an NOAA lab, said in interviews that over the past year administration officials have chastised them for speaking on policy questions; removed references to global warming from their reports, news releases and conference Web sites; investigated news leaks; and sometimes urged them to stop speaking to the media altogether. Their accounts indicate that the ideological battle over climate-change research, which first came to light at NASA, is being fought in other federal science agencies as well."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/4/5/231744/0702

NASA to Wingnuts: Global Warming Confirmed
"[MSNBC] Following two recent studies on changes to Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, NASA is touting a survey that it says confirms "climate warming is changing how much water remains locked in Earth's largest storehouses of ice and snow."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/3/14/122316/269

yeah, just let it die during the night, just like all the past 'dead-hour' reporting that's gone on. (heeeyyyy, we reported it at 4:30am... and you think -we're- responsible??)

Unfortunately, official denial won't make it go away. My sympathies go out to those who have been gagged from speaking out. Reality has a way of making its' presence known. FWIW, we haven't had a real winter here in London in over 20 years. That's all the proof I need.

The good news -- sort of -- is it's already way too late to fix it, or for that matter any of the other problems that are all starting to come due all at once. I know that sounds like a depressing sentiment, but (I feel) there's really a certain surprising sense of inner peace to be found in acceptance.

Just brace yourself, do what you can to prepare to survive, if you can and wish to, and wait for things to get interesting (and they will).

George Carlin tells us 'The Planet Is Fine' Part 1 Part 2

-Ghoti

theres a credible source

anyone who says that hte planet is fine is full of sh!t. Fox news tried to do a cover up about global warming by interviewing a few senators and a few other people that liked to say that global warming isn't existant. The senator said "yes the planet is warming, but if you think that the raising temperatures are going to kill us all then you are wrong! If the planet changes 1 or 2'C do you think humans will die? no!". What the senator does not knwo is that the earths climate is balanced to a hair. Imagine you have a scale with equal weights on each end, it is ba lanced and not tipping over. Now imagine you add one penny to it, it now tips over. Add two pennies and it will for sure tip over! That is exactly what our earth's climate is like!

Do I think global warming is bad, yes. Do I think Humans are responsible for all of it, no. the Earth's climate goes through peaks and valley's for example, ice ages. In fact if I remember correctly, this is actually not the hottest the earths mean temperature has ever been. I think we are just compounding a natural event.

http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm

Global warming will be a huge nightmare, true.

It wont detroy human life as we know it and turn the Earth into an unihabitable hell, though.

People who go on about how the earth will die really give ammunition to those who claim there is no problem.

What will happen is bad enough - Tens of Millions of people will likely die due to disasters and food shortages.

Many species will go extinct.

Many countries will collapse. Most certainly the economic effects will be horrendus.

Im not sure the Amazon is quite as critical as listed in these sources, however, I remember reading that most oxygen is produced by Ocean based plant life. ("a carbon sink" as the OP mentioned)

Still the amazon dying is tragic enough even if it were not to increase the speed of warming by 50%. (Increasing it by any amount is alarming though of course)

Anyone that would dismiss an argument out of hand is full of sh!t. Carlin does not deny that global warming exists, nor does he deny that humans are fucking up the environment.

HOWEVER:

The planet is not in danger. The planet will be fine. The Earth has been around for billions of years... whatever 200 years of human industrialization could have damaged, the Earth will eventually heal.

It's HUMANS that are in danger. We're destroying the environment which we and the Earth's current stock of plants and non-human animals currently inhabit.

View the clips to understand the perspective instead of dismissing it out of hand.

-Ghoti

who dismissed it? I made a joke since you know George Carlin is a comedian after all.

The amazon and other rainforests are regarded as "the lungs of the planet". You take away them and you take away the planets ability to inhale large amounts of co2.

A lot of people think global warming is just because of excessive exaust from cars, coal factories, etc but it is also caused by deforestation. Deforestation will be the downfall of our planet.

global warming is caused by greenhouse gases of which co2 is one of hundreds. Now tell me, do you live indoors? I bet your house is made of wood, and did you know the largest supplier of wood in the world is Brazil? I suggest you find a better way to build a house and then the demand for the trees in the forest is greatly diminished.

yes I know.


I saw in time magazine a neighbourhood that was completely wiped from hurricane katrina, there was one house that was left s tanding and perfectly fine. That house was built of concrete.

Concrete homes are the way to go, they retain indoor temperature better and are more survivable against all the elements.

except for the strip mining for the raw materials that destroys the environment as well. Trees are just as dead from strip mining as from deforestation.

Not you Billybob. Jessy was the one saying "anyone who says that hte planet is fine is full of sh!t."



I'll bet you a bagillion dollars that even if humans managed to deforest the entire planet, the Earth will survive. It may take a couple million years for plant life to return, but it will happen.

Nature finds a way.

-Ghoti

strip mining is a form of deforestation. Deforestation means cutting forests down/taking them away.

still didn't address the problem with the concrete

the planet will survive no matter what, we will not.

wrong, I'd like to submit into evidence, Song A!


A Countryboy Can Survive by Hank Williams Jr.
The preacher man says its the end of time
and the Mississippi River she's a going dry.
The interest is up and the stock markets down
and you only get mugged if you go downtown.
I live back in the woods you see,
my woman,and the kids and the dogs and me.
I got a shotgun and a rifle and a four wheel drive
and a countryboy can survive. Country folks can survive.


I can plow a field all day long,
I can catch catfish from dusk til dawn.
Make our own whiskey and our own smoke too
aint to many things these boys can't do.
We grow good old tomatoes and homemade wine
and countryboy can survive, country folk can survive.


Because you can't stomp us out and you can't make us run,
cause we're them ole boys raised on shotguns.
We say grace and we say mam
amd if you aint into that we don't give a damn.
We came from the West Virginia coal mine's
and the Rocky Mountains and the Western skies
and we can skin a buck, we can run a trout line
and a countryboy can survive, country folks can survive.


I had a good friend in New York City
he never called me by my name just hillbilly.
My Grandpa taught me how to live off the land
and his taught him to be a business man
He used to send me pictures of the Broadway Nights
and i would send him some homemade wine
but he was killed by a man with a switchblade knife,
for forty three dollars my friend lost his life.
I'd love to spit some beechnut in that dudes eyes
and shoot him with my ole forty-five
cause a countryboy can survive, country folks can survive.


'Cause you can't stomp us out and you can't make us run,
and we're them ole boys raised on shotgun.
We say grace, we say mam,
if you aint into that we don't give a damn.
We're from North California and South Alabam'
and little towns all around this land.
We can skin a buck, and run a trout line
and a countryboy can survive,
country folks can survive,
countryboy can survive,
country folks can survive.

That was EXACTLY my point.

Some folks here are talking about how the 'planet is in danger!'. The planet is not in danger... humans are. 90%+ of all species that ever existed are now extinct... species go extinct at the rate of something like 25 species a day... why should humans be any different?

-Ghoti

correction: the plant and country folk will survive, the rest of us will not.

much better

Y' Honah, this Southahn Belle would lahk t' introduce intah evidence John Denver's "Earth Day Every Day (Celebrate)" as a countah-claim to mah distinguished fellows' claihms. Thank yah.

lol counter to what? I just said us country folk will survive because we pretty much live off the land and adapt to its conditions more easily than say city dwellers.

Um, try billions.

Also, why should I care that I'm "giving ammunition" to those who claim there's no problem? We're already pretty much past the 11th hour and only working even harder to dig deeper. What's coming is coming regardless, and I hate to burst your bubble, but it's completely immune to politics. At the end of the day, the most skillfully crafted argument against global warming (and gross overpopulation and resource shortage) isn't even going to slow the reality of it down. Not even a little bit.