Global Warming News n Views

The most critical problem we now confront is not global warming or how to tax emissions, but providing enough affordable fuel to avoid severe recession before alternative energy can become reality. The Lucky Country faces a choice between disaster and a unique opportunity.

Over the past two years climate all over the world has inexplicably begun a pronounced cooling. This is contrary to all expectations from global warming theory and growing other evidence is also indicating that the threat has been overestimated. However, the obsession with catastrophic climate change seems to have distracted attention from a much more certain and immanent danger. The oil supply vital to the entire economy is not keeping up with increasing demand while presently all focus is on renewable energy solutions that will require decades to develop and implement.

According to the study, temperatures in Europe have risen over the past 28 years far faster than could be explained by the greenhouse effect alone.

Two landmark conferences of the 1990s really seemed to get the links between human population
and the environment. The 1992 Rio
Declaration on Environment and Development noted that “human beings are the
centre of concern for sustainable development.” Building on this two years
later, the Cairo Programme of Action included the objective “to reduce both
unsustainable consumption and production patterns as well as negative impacts
of demographic factors on the environment in order to meet the needs of current
generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their own needs.”

OneWorld.net note: The term “global warming” obscures the fact that rising temperatures
will have a host of effects on the Earth, from desertification to the
release of methane gas. Perhaps the moniker “global disruption” would be more apt, says Citizens for Global
Solutions.

Cover of Nicaragua’s El Nuevo Diario for September 5, 2007, after Hurricane Felix ripped through the country. ??svengaarn (flickr)
Methane is described by some as “by far the most important non-CO2 greenhouse gas.” The melting of the artic permafrost, an expected consequence of global warming, will release methane deposits from peat bogs previously frozen over.

The United Nations has warned that global warming will result in more severe natural disasters such as hurricanes and droughts. There is currently intense debate over how much global warming has exacerbated the scope of recent natural disasters.

So why in little more than a decade after the global cooling scare of the mid-1970s was the IPCC certain about human-induced global warming?

In 2004 the United Nations University – World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), published a study into possible scenarios for implementing a global tax. It states: “How can we find an extra US$50 billion for development funding? Our focus is on flows of resources from high-income to developing countries… Any foreseeable global tax will be introduced, not by a unitary world government, but as the result of concerted action by nation states… The taxation of environmental externalities is an obvious potential source of revenue. … Does this mean that the global tax should be levied at the same rate on all countries?

What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist
otherwise, none more noisily than NASA’s Jim Hansen, who first banged
the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered
with all the modesty of “99% confidence”).

But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now
begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the
continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that
six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000
scientific robots in the world’s oceans show there has been slight
cooling in the past five years, never mind that “80% to 90% of global
warming involves heating up ocean waters,” according to a report by
NPR’s Richard Harris.

In 2008, global food demand is testing the capacity of petroleum-dependent, export-focused commodity agriculture. This system has not served developed nations as food prices soar—inflamed by biofuel demand and fuel prices—and has especially hurt developing nations already struggling with food security issues. The modern-farming paradigm has also resulted in nutrient overload in our waterways from the use of synthetic nitrogen, degradation of our soils and animal health and welfare concerns. Most disturbing is modern agriculture’s contribution to global warming.

New data from U.S. government research shows that with agriculture using chemical fertilizers and herbicides, the U.S. food system contributes nearly 20 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions. On a global scale, figures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) say that agricultural land use contributes 12 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The hundreds of fires hitting California right now are a wake-up call to both government and California residents: we’re unprepared for a rapid climate change crackling at our doorstep.

The facts are unequivocal, and point to a troubling future ahead. Over 850 fires, scorching some 200,000 acres, have set a new 2008 record for early-season wildfires in California. And from March to May precipitation has been the lowest since the inception of record keeping in 1894. In California as well as throughout the West, mountain snowmelts are occurring earlier, and winter storms are arriving later, extending the fire season by at least several weeks.

On June 5, 2008 Governor Schwarzenegger declared a state-wide drought. Droughts fuel wildfires. Across western North America global warming has caused prolonged droughts — some areas are now entering their 13th year — and warmer temperatures. These are the same kind of conditions that led to the mega fires of 2003 and 2007.