The climate is crashing, and global warming is to blame--Time cover story

[Lone_Star_Dem]

Global Warming Heats Up

The climate is crashing, and global warming is to blame. Why the crisis will hit so soon—and what we can do about it
By JEFFREY KLUGER

No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth. Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us.

It certainly looked that way last week as the atmospheric bomb that was Cyclone Larry—a Category 5 storm with wind bursts that reached 180 m.p.h.—exploded through northeastern Australia. It certainly looked that way last year as curtains of fire and dust turned the skies of Indonesia orange, thanks to drought-fueled blazes sweeping the island nation. It certainly looks that way as sections of ice the size of small states calve from the disintegrating Arctic and Antarctic. And it certainly looks that way as the sodden wreckage of New Orleans continues to molder, while the waters of the Atlantic gather themselves for a new hurricane season just two months away. Disasters have always been with us and surely always will be. But when they hit this hard and come this fast—when the emergency becomes commonplace—something has gone grievously wrong. That something is global warming.

The image of Earth as organism—famously dubbed Gaia by environmentalist James Lovelock—has probably been overworked, but that's not to say the planet can't behave like a living thing, and these days, it's a living thing fighting a fever. From heat waves to storms to floods to fires to massive glacial melts, the global climate seems to be crashing around us. Scientists have been calling this shot for decades. This is precisely what they have been warning would happen if we continued pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, trapping the heat that flows in from the sun and raising global temperatures.

Environmentalists and lawmakers spent years shouting at one another about whether the grim forecasts were true, but in the past five years or so, the serious debate has quietly ended. Global warming, even most skeptics have concluded, is the real deal, and human activity has been causing it. If there was any consolation, it was that the glacial pace of nature would give us decades or even centuries to sort out the problem.
Much more...
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1176081,00.html

[moblsv]

1. can't wait for the spin

it's natural
it's arrogant to thing *we could influence Gods work*
there are scientists who dispute it
come on, it's snowing at my house, how could there be global warming?

Some still wouldn't believe it if the ocean rose twenty feet and took out thier house. It would still be *normal* somehow.

[Kazak]

2. Duh! Everyone knows...

the Earth goes through a natural heating and cooling cycle...

:puke:

[Lone_Star_Dem]

3. Welcome to DU!

Glad to have you. :hi:

They don't care about the predicted 20' rise since it won't be until the year 2100. Either they really do think that they will be raptured or this is the most selfish generation ever. This will have a direct effect on the lives of their children and grandchildren, not that they give a damn.

Did you see this in LBN the other day? It's a good read about how London could be underwater by they year 2100.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2187261

[Jayhawk Lib]

4. The planet has been warming ever since

the ice age. Man has nothing to do with it.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

5. I truly hope...

...that you are being sarcastic.

[im10ashus]

9. I am truly hoping the same thing.

:shrug:

[KittyWampus]

11. Ah, but Mankind DOES have something to do with the Earth's capacity to

rebound efficiently!

Think of someone who has smoked for 40 years getting a case of bronchitis.

Think of someone who has exercised and lived without smoking for 40 years getting a case of bronchitis.

Which person is more likely to recover easily from the bronchitis?

Which person is more likely to die due to complications resulting from weakened lungs?

[Lone_Star_Dem]

13. Even under that premise we've accelerated the warming

I think that means we hold responsibility.

[Mr.Green93]

6. The USA is the cause

and the USA can be the cure. Our 'standard of living' is obscenely unsustainable and must be brought in line. Vehicle ownership has to be curtailed and controlled. There are too many cars and too many electric appliances. The production of electricity must be cut drastically.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

15. I think we're at around 6.6 tons per year of GHG emissions

If that isn't obscene enough USA hasn't done anything to really address or reduce our per year GHG.

The majority of Americans have been greedily living for the moment and be damned those who will follow in their footsteps.

[Jamison]

7. I believe it.

According to our local weather forecaster, this is to date the 3rd coldest March on record despite the fact we had several 70-degree days at the beginning of the month. Coincidence? I think not.

[Blue_In_AK]

8. Scientists have been warning us for decades...

I watched an episode of Cosmos last week on the Science Channel about dying planets. While Carl Sagan looked rather quaint in his '70s turtleneck and blazer, his words couldn't have been more timely. Everything he warned us about 30 years ago is coming true. We should have listened.

[gauguin57]

10. Just think of what the headline would have said if Al Gore were POTUS!

"Earth on her way back from the brink"?

AL!!!!!!! We NEEEED you!

[Lone_Star_Dem]

12. More Media Cover of Global Warming -- What suddenly got their attention?

Global warming ad makes a stark point
Train barrels down on child standing on tracks

MSNBC
Updated: 11:47 a.m. ET March 24, 2006

A new TV campaign by the Advertising Council and an environmental group uses stark imagery of a child about to be run over by a train to drive home its point on global warming.

“The new global warming campaign marks a watershed moment in the effort to stir the public’s consciousness about global warming,” the nonprofit Council and partner Environmental Defense said in a statement Thursday announcing the campaign.

The train ad starts with an adult standing on tracks and asking why he should worry about a problem that he might not live to see. He then moves away, revealing a girl also standing on the tracks as the train comes barreling down.
Story continues below ↓ advertisement

The ad is one of several public service TV and radio announcements unveiled by the partners.

“Global warming has reached the point where it threatens the world we leave our children and grandchildren,” Fred Krupp, head of Environmental Defense, said in the statement. “This campaign is a wake up call about the urgency of the problem.”
more...
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11992630/

I recommend watching the video.

Global Warming Might Sink America's Coasts

March 26, 2006 — With glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica melting into the ocean at up to double the speed of just a few years ago, all the water has to go somewhere — and that could mean an end to America's coastlines as we know them.

The water wouldn't come crashing down city streets the way it did in the movie, "The Day After Tomorrow." Instead, according to the new issues of the journal, "Science," the oceans fed by rapidly melting glaciers would rise steadily over years — a total of 13 to 20 feet by the end of this century, threatening huge chunks of American cities like New Orleans, Miami, Charleston, S.C., and New York.

In the future, storms could regularly swamp New York's subways and tunnels if barriers aren't built to hold back the rising tides, according to Vivien Gornitz, a sea level specialist for NASA. Even pricey riverfront properties in the borough of Manhattan may be under water periodically.

This is the sort of thing that happens in Venice, Italy. Each winter they have floods or high tides and have to put down temporary boardwalks as walkways to keep people out of the water.


Ice falls from the Perito Moreno Glacier in Santa Cruz province, Patagonian southern Argentina , some 3,200 kilometers, (2,000 miles) south of Buenos Aires, Thursday, Oct.16, 2003. A study suggests, that melting of glaciers in the Patagonian ice fields of southern Argentina and Chile has doubled in recent years, caused by higher temperatures, lower snowfall and a more rapid breaking of icebergs. (Natacha Pisarenko/ AP Photo )
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/GlobalWarming/story?id=1769298&page=1

Glaciers vanish in before-and-after photos


These photographs show how Glacier National Park's Shepard Glacier has changed over 92 years, as seen from Pyramid Peak. The left picture was taken in 1913, and the right picture was taken in 2005.

By Bjorn Carey
Updated: 4:34 p.m. ET March 24, 2006

Glacier National Park might soon need a new name.

The Montana park has 26 named glaciers today, down from 150 in 1850. Those that remain are typically mere remnants of their former frozen selves, a new gallery of before and after images reveals.

All arguments about global warming aside, now is a time of clear retreat by age-old ice packs in many locations around the world. Some retreat just a few inches or feet per year, but others are melting faster than a snow cone in Texas.

Montana might not be the first place that comes to mind when you think of glaciers. Elsewhere, however, the situation is similar.

The Columbia Glacier in Prince William Sound, the world's fastest-melting glacier, slides into the ocean at a rate of 80 feet (24 meters) per day. This tidewater glacier is up to 3,000 feet (900 meters) thick, but it has thinned up to 1,300 feet (400 meters) in places during the past 25 years, and researchers say it's stretching like taffy. Each year, it dumps 2 cubic miles (8.3 cubic kilometers) of ice into the sound.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11996943/

[yasmina27]

14. I had the same thought

when I saw some commercials for programs on global warming!

[Lone_Star_Dem]

16. Was it the one I mention above about the little girl on the train track?

I'm just curious if there are more that I'm not aware of.

[long_green]

17. There's all the cover we need. RUN with this!

Is it difficult to tie Bush and Cheney to Oil? Get the video of the Oil CEO's testifying on the Hill without taking the oath, put the best bits up alongside of their profits and beat it into the heads of the people. If the Democrats can't win in November now, I am sooooo Green.

[RedEarth]

18. kr......I'm posting this on a winger site