European Tribune - Community, Politics & Progress.

it doesn't matter how compelling the evidence, nothing will happen until a major city is flooded. which means that there will be no action until the Greenland Icecap collapses.

About 10 years too late to save us. the 21st century will be about the human ability to survive, not about civilisation's.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 01:14:21 PM EST
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[Helen's Crystal Ball of Doom™ Technology]

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 03:22:24 PM EST
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Sorry, but I've really lost all hope that we will dodge the climate change bullet. Politicians will not do anything like enough to even slow the behemoth hurtling towards us.

I feel sorry for the children, we have destroyed Eden.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 03:28:22 PM EST
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Start a trend: plant a vineyard in Cornwall.

No one could have predicted

by ATinNM on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 03:48:36 PM EST
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or avocados.

No one could have predicted

by ATinNM on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 03:51:42 PM EST
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Take a long shot: put in a pineapple plantation.

No one could have predicted

by ATinNM on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 03:52:45 PM EST
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BANANAS! EU Certified® bananas! (Sure to be a hit with The City crowd and the young 'uns.)

No one could have predicted

by ATinNM on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 03:54:34 PM EST
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Nah, date palms are the way to go.

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine - Patti Smith

by dvx (dvx.clt ät gmail dotcom) on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 04:13:33 PM EST
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It's an exciting idea, i wonder if somebody would notice me planting it in their back garden. I certainly can't afford to buy any land down there (or anywhere for that matter)

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 04:24:06 PM EST
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Everything has been done before. And it is online: The Guerrilla Gardening Homepage

So copy, plant, harvest!

A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!

by A swedish kind of death on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 04:37:29 PM EST
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Before planting consider this:

Big freeze plunged Europe into ice age in months European Science Foundation press release, 29. November 2009 10:00

William Patterson, from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, and his colleagues have shown that switching off the North Atlantic circulation can force the Northern hemisphere into a mini `ice age' in a matter of months. Previous work has indicated that this process would take tens of years.
Around 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere was hit by a mini ice-age, known by scientists as the Younger Dryas, and nicknamed the `Big Freeze', which lasted around 1300 years. Geological evidence shows that the Big Freeze was brought about by a sudden influx of freshwater, when the glacial Lake Agassiz in North America burst its banks and poured into the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. This vast pulse, a greater volume than all of North America's Great Lakes combined, diluted the North Atlantic conveyor belt and brought it to a halt. Without the warming influence of this ocean circulation temperatures across the Northern hemisphere plummeted, ice sheets grew and human civilisation fell apart.
....
Patterson and his colleagues have created the highest resolution record of the `Big Freeze' event to date, from a mud core taken from an ancient lake, Lough Monreach, in Ireland. Using a scalpel layers were sliced from the core, just 0.5mm thick, representing a time period of one to three months.
Carbon isotopes in each slice reveal how productive the lake was, while oxygen isotopes give a picture of temperature and rainfall. At the start of the `Big Freeze' their new record shows that temperatures plummeted and lake productivity stopped over the course of just a few years. "It would be like taking Ireland today and moving it up to Svalbard, creating icy conditions in a very short period of time," says Patterson, who presented the findings at the European Science Foundation BOREAS conference on humans in the Arctic, in Rovaniemi, Finland.
....
Looking ahead to the future Patterson says there is no reason why a `Big Freeze' shouldn't happen again. "If the Greenland ice sheet melted suddenly it would be catastrophic," he says.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer at eurotrib.com) on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 06:02:21 PM EST
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Read that first as:

Big freeze plunged Europe into ice months ago

A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!

by A swedish kind of death on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 06:25:31 PM EST
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Re: Sunday Open Thread (4.00 / 4)

What's really scary about this is that we already saw a major city get flooded - New Orleans in 2005 - and though it did play a major role in solidifying public opinion behind the fact of global warming and did generate some political momentum to do something about (California's global warming law wouldn't have passed in 2006 without it), that momentum is almost totally gone.

So I agree with you that it'll take another major disaster to snap people into action. This, despite the fact that farmers, ranchers, and others who work with the land and are attuned to the climate, all accept global warming as a fact, have seen it affect their industries and livelihoods, and are demanding action.

Unfortunately for them, in the US, the fossil fuel industries still dominate political debate. The only ray of hope here has been the movement against the US Chamber of Commerce by some of its more high-profile members who are embarrassed and outraged by the Chamber's continued denialism. It's going to take a movement of businesses, sadly, to reorient the debate toward action and to finally cut off the funding for the deniers.

And the world will live as one

by Montereyan (robert at calitics dot com) on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 06:17:22 PM EST
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Unfortunately, the Chamber of Commerce is only one of the funders. See Climate Denial - A Criminal Enterprise? by ask for a long list.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer at eurotrib.com) on Mon Dec 7th, 2009 at 01:25:46 AM EST
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And the irony (none / 0)

there is, if one is allowed irony for a disaster so grave, that climate change had nothing to do with it...

by Nomad on Mon Dec 7th, 2009 at 04:05:12 AM EST
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Re: Sunday Open Thread (4.00 / 8)

I'm going back to work tomorrow. Oh my.

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 04:49:53 PM EST

Sorry, I think I missed it - but what kind of job did you get.

And good luck with it and a good start tomorrow. :-)

by Fran (fran at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 06:14:47 PM EST
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Re: Sunday Open Thread (4.00 / 6)

I got my old job back. Had that not panned out I probably would have been unemployed for a long time - although that would have forced me to do something else which might have been good.

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 07:38:50 PM EST
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Glad you got it back for two reasons:

This is a terrible time to be looking for a job.
It is always easier to get a job when you have a job.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer at eurotrib.com) on Mon Dec 7th, 2009 at 01:13:07 AM EST
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~~terrible~~ apocalyptic

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Mon Dec 7th, 2009 at 06:42:07 PM EST
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Re: Sunday Open Thread (4.00 / 9)

hey ETers, checking in from cost rica, winding down to the end of the trip now, trying to cram in as many beautiful sights and sounds before returning twitterly in 9 days.

have been visiting ET when i could, downloading a few diaries, salons and OT's and then reading them offline, wonderful to know there's still such good reporting and commentary available, accessible from deep in the primary rainforest.

here all is very chilled, great people, great country, highly recommended as travel destination.

the biggest gift i received here is what it feels like to be in a country whose government is so actively educating its children and young adults to respect and treasure the environment.

what a concept...

pura vida!

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 05:17:19 PM EST

Sounds lovely.

A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!

by A swedish kind of death on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 06:27:04 PM EST
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Re: Sunday Open Thread (4.00 / 5)

This weekend was the last working weekend this year. Things are winding down a little. So I am looking forward to a few weeks of more quiet and leasure time - hopefully.

by Fran (fran at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 06:16:42 PM EST

Is it just me, or have the diaries been drying up in quantity and narrowing in focus lately? I realize that, as a non-diary-poster, I'm part of the problem, but still . . .

Right now, we have two photo diaries, 5 American Empire diaries, and a climate change diary. And, one of the photo diaries has been front paged as well.

The salon is still quite good, generally speaking, but . . .

Is it the holidays, or the much-talked-about, long and drawn out death of ET?

by Zwackus on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 06:41:31 PM EST

Yes, and I am as guilty as you. It was months since my last.

Lack of good elections to cover + lack of common project after Blair was stopped?

A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!

by A swedish kind of death on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 07:24:23 PM EST
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