Friday, February 02, 2007

Living in warm times

The lowered jet-stream this last week has us huddled under blankets this week... But we are living in warm times, Niagra hasn't frozen solid in nearly a century (pictured below, courtesy of Dr. Scott Bair). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report and we have much to prepare for...
"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level," (Temperatures will rise an average of 2-12 F by 2100)--- with a response of up to 1/2 meter of sea level rise....

The prestigious atmospheric scientist Susan Solomon said, "There can be no question that the increase in greenhouse gases are dominated by human activities."

"The point here is to highlight what will happen if we don't do something and what will happen if we do something," IPCC co-author Jonathan Overpeck at University of Arizona said. "I can tell if you will decide not to do something the impacts will be much larger than if we do something."

These are just a small sampling of comments... Dr. Lonnie Thompson (Tropical Ice Core Climate Expert) has pointed out that the recent IPCC report has largely ignored the "gorillas" (melt from Greenland and Antarctica)... so the IPCC report is perhaps too optimistic.

Remember the accelerating rate of population growth and energy use... and take a deep and frustrated breath over how little our government invests in Energy (there is some growth in Hydrogen Fuel research, but the overall energy budget is flat--- and remember the Hydrogen fuel cell still requires energy to operate) I am writing to any policy makers that will read it and hoping that California prospers beyond its wildest dreams with their new energy saving policies and continues with more drastic measures that inspire the world to follow suit... Thanks also to the companies that are investing in a sustainable future- ck out. We can make some money by making our world better. I'm putting my dollars here.

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/progressiveinvestor/

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