Weather, Water, Energy 9-6-07

Okay, sit down. Praise for China coming. They’re dumping on Australia’s idiot PM’s attempt to end-run UN efforts on global warming to engage a smaller group that Australia could influence better (AKA, stall doing anything meaningful). The US, of course, supported the idiot PM, can't hurt the economy by saving the planet, you know. And knock me back with a feather—China is coming down hard on liquid coal fuels and Japan is swearing that China will be more proactive post-Kyoto. Folks, if China is getting these things and we’re not . . . . Speaking of Japan, it’s trying to get people to commit to fighting global warming by getting them discounts on Big Macs????? I’m not making this up. . . . Classic case of looking at the costs of not doing something but not the costs of not not doing something, this time the clean-up of the Great Lakes. . . . Skeptical Science explains the very small number of glaciers that are growing rather than shrinking, but the brainless ones who have been hooking onto the growing glaciers as proof of their wisdom don’t understand words bigger than two syllables so it’s probably another waste of time. Always keep in mind the high degree of overlap between these people and the folks selling us that Big Business was pushing energy deregulation so consumers could keep more of their money. (And remember how our brilliant legislators on state and fed levels bought the BS then and will likely buy it now.) . . . From Science Daily, word that global warming will likely increase cholera in Africa and birch trees stomping out aspens across northern forests. Sad that this kind of news is so common now that it can’t excite the way it should. . . . Over at Climate Progress, good news (maybe anyway, that bad weather has driven movie profits up this year), bad news (that Australia and its idiot PM (see above) are facing a permanent, Dust Bowl-like drought by mid-century), and no surprise but evil news (that Bushnev has buried a climate satellite that would have enabled us to plan better for the warming). . . . While at Climate Progress, also check this great catch on a 1972 study (yes, that’s 1972) accurately forecasting the global temp increase by 2000. As we’ve been saying about virtually everything the Repubs have fvcked up while Dems have kept their thumbs up their a-ses since Tip O’Neill first blighted the Congress, all the crap we’re going through has been known for almost 4 decades now, global warming, energy, water, economy, degeneration of our media, creeping imperialism, loss of our Constitution, all of it. To hear even the best bloggers talk as if they just woke up to this stuff in the 90s is one of the most depressing things I unfortunately get exposed to. Living these last 35 years watching this all happening in slo-mo and seeing no one paying needed attention or, worse, calling me a doomsayer and the evil “pessimist” when all it was was reality has been even worse. We could have stopped all this sh-t, all of it, by taking it seriously and not admiring ourselves Oprah-style and MisterRogersing everything and all the destructors for so long. Our ignorance of history, humanity’s as well as American, will be our crowning achievement when history finally gets to bite our a-ses good.