Record-breaking day

Hi,

Today, we had a record high of 65 degrees (January 6). It looks like my last blog will be accurate. I opened up my Newsday today, and there was what I call a "creampuff" article about the springlike weather. It just talked about how flowers were blooming already, shit like that. Nothing about global warming. The closest the paper came to talking about weather patterns at all was in an inset, and only then it mentioned this year's El Nino. Weather reports on television? That's another thing, they'll boast about the warm weather and they might mention the El Nino now and then. Absolutely nothing about global warming.

This is what's frustrating about being an activist, especially on this topic of debate. I work at a job where I talk to people a lot, random people coming in, buying stuff. I heard a lot of raves and applause over the beautiful, spring-like weather. No concern, not even a mention, of global warming. I thought the Gore movie would have helped finally bring the issue into the mainstream. No such luck. I'm more convinced than ever that there is a governmental and corporate conspiracy (probably more corporate) to keep mum on global warming, although it's long since past the moment where it became an indisputible reality. But, why should any of us give a shit? It isn't likely that we're going to experience the effects and the consequences. And that's what it's all about, isn't it? As long as WE don't experience it... our kids and our grandkids will? Well, that's their problem.

Sorry for latching onto my soapbox. I need an original post now and then, linking to stuff gets old after awhile.

Forecasters expect toasty 2007

LONDON, England (AP) -- A resurgent El Nino and persistently high levels of greenhouse gases are likely to make 2007 the world's hottest year ever recorded, British climate scientists said Thursday.

Britain's Meteorological Office said there was a 60 percent probability that 2007 would break the record set by 1998, which was 1.20 degrees over the long-term average.

Read the rest of the article at: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/01/04/britain.globalwarming.ap/index.html?section=cnn_lates

Climate of Denial

While surfing, I discovered a series of articles about global warming from Mother Jones magazine. This article was published last year, but it's still absolutely worth reading. It outlines how, even as much of the rest of the world has taken significant steps in lessening the effects of global warming, we have gone in the opposite direction. There are many reasons for this, but one this article argues is due to the pressure of lobbyists and talking heads who are paid to be in denial about global warming. And the way the corporate media presents a story is that one side is just as important and significant as the other, even if that one side has, like, two people speaking for it, while the other side has thousands. By the "other side", I mean the scientists and many other people who have determined beyond a reasonable doubt that global warming is real and poses a real danger to our future.

Climate of Denial
One morning in Kyoto, we won a round in the battle against global warming. Then special interests and pseudoscience snatched the truth away. What happened?

Bill McKibben
May/June 2005 Issue

It was around eight in the morning in the vast convention hall in Kyoto. The negotiations over a worldwide treaty to limit global warming gases, which were supposed to have ended the evening before, had gone on through the night. Drifts of paper—treaty drafts, industry talking points, environmentalist press releases—overflowed every wastebasket. Delegates in suits and ties were passed out on couches, noisily mouth breathing. And polite squadrons of workers were shooing people out of the hall so that some trade show—tool and die makers, I think—could set up its displays.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/05/mckibben_introduction.html