Monday, January 24, 2005
The commons sine qua non
Those of us who worry about the Creative Commons, and what culture loses when great works are permanently privatized, would do well to pull our heads out of our screens once in awhile.
Energy use practices are jeopardizing the ability of our little blue marble, our habitat, to sustain us. The current Chairman of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), installed at the request of the Bush Administration to replace a World Bank moderate who was saying similar things, says
The Independent reports
The Independent article concludes:
Energy use practices are jeopardizing the ability of our little blue marble, our habitat, to sustain us. The current Chairman of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), installed at the request of the Bush Administration to replace a World Bank moderate who was saying similar things, says
"Climate change is for real. We have just a small window of opportunity and it is closing rather rapidly. There is not a moment to lose . . . [we have] already reached the level of dangerous concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere . . . We are risking the ability of the human race to survive."Current IPCC chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, a man who former Vice President Gore called, "the let's drag our feet candidate," called for "very deep" cuts in pollution if humanity is to survive.
The Independent reports
His comments rocked the Bush administration - which immediately tried to slap him down - not least because it put him in his post after Exxon, the major oil company most opposed to international action on global warming, complained that his predecessor was too "aggressive" on the issue.The article goes on to recount the accumulating evidence, including dying coral reefs, the loss of 20% of ice cap area, etc.
The Independent article concludes:
. . . levels of carbon dioxide (the main cause of global warming) have leapt abruptly over the past two years, suggesting that climate change may be accelerating out of control . . . because of inertia built into the Earth's natural systems, the world was now only experiencing the result of pollution emitted in the 1960s, and much greater effects would occur as the increased pollution of later decades worked its way through.Thanks to George Woodwell for this.
Comments:
David
There is another factor at work here as well and that is that particulate matter in the atmospher has led to a noticeable dimming of sunlight reaching the earth's surface. This article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4171591.stm discusses the problem. We are caught in a bind right now. If we drastically lower atmospheric pollution then the greenhouse effect will skyrocket as sunlight intensity at ground level increases. If we only lower CO2 levels then we'll have masasive global cooling as the CO2 global warming effect is helping to offest the cooling produced by the dimming of sunlight. So we somehow have to come up with a way to gradulallyt lower both at the same time or we're royally screwed.
Regards
Doug Alder
http://www.thealders.net/blogs/
Post a Comment
There is another factor at work here as well and that is that particulate matter in the atmospher has led to a noticeable dimming of sunlight reaching the earth's surface. This article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4171591.stm discusses the problem. We are caught in a bind right now. If we drastically lower atmospheric pollution then the greenhouse effect will skyrocket as sunlight intensity at ground level increases. If we only lower CO2 levels then we'll have masasive global cooling as the CO2 global warming effect is helping to offest the cooling produced by the dimming of sunlight. So we somehow have to come up with a way to gradulallyt lower both at the same time or we're royally screwed.
Regards
Doug Alder
http://www.thealders.net/blogs/
# posted by 
: 1/25/2005 8:43 PM
: 1/25/2005 8:43 PM
