PowerSwitch

The Five Uncontrollable Urges of a Secrecy-Surveillance World

by Tom Engelhardt.

Good read.

Imagine for a second the reaction here [Murca] if Snowden had revealed that the Pakistani or Iranian or Chinese government was gathering and storing vast quantities of private emails, texts, phone calls, and credit card transactions from American citizens. The uproar would have been staggering.

Never mind the terrorists, it's us tree-huggers they're after:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/e ... -nsa-prism

Well, feck 'em all.

As I said to someone recently, shortly the Arctic will all but disappear, Greenland will live up to its name and the Antarctic will visibly shrink.

And everyone will carry on as before, except for the concerned, tear-gassed few.

As usuual for the last few years, the arctic ice is behaving in totally unpredicted ways. A persistant summer storm has lasted for three weeks now, keeping the arctic cloudy and cool, and blocking the satellites from getting a clear view. However, there is growing and tantalising evidence that the storm has shattered the thin ice across most of the central arctic and what we are seeing is in fact the disintigration and rapid melt of the ice, so that the north pole itself could be open water (and open water all the way down the Greenwich Meridian, by September.

There is a heat wave an Alaska.

Another useful blog.

Even if the canary dies, they'll keep mining.

emordnilap wrote:Well, feck 'em all.

As I said to someone recently, shortly the Arctic will all but disappear, Greenland will live up to its name and the Antarctic will visibly shrink.

That's actual a perfectly normal thing for our planet to do. Our current Ice Age will end when the poles are ice free.

Did you think our current climate was the only climate?

Don't be such a twazzock JSD. Of course "the climate has always been changingTM" It's just that with everywhere habitable already full of people, next time it changes we'll have nowhere to go.

It's not just that it's always been changing but more that in geologic time ice free poles are the norm. In fact having ice at the Poles is decidedly abnormal.

So whether we like it or not and whether we stop producing CO2 or not we had better get the idea of a static climate out of our heads 'cos it is a fantasy.

Instead of screaming at the darkling sky I'd much rather we learn to make light.

In geologic time a human free planet is the norm. In human time, stable climate is the norm. I'm a human not a rock. That's why I care.

RenewableCandy wrote:Don't be such a twazzock JSD.

And that is helpful because?

JavaScriptDonkey wrote: Instead of screaming at the darkling sky I'd much rather we learn to make light.

There's too much light pollution, I'd rather have dark skies.

biffvernon wrote:In geologic time a human free planet is the norm. In human time, stable climate is the norm. I'm a human not a rock. That's why I care.

Er, ....I thought you were concerned for the wellbeing of the planet.

woodburner wrote:

RenewableCandy wrote:Don't be such a twazzock JSD.

And that is helpful because?

It's the pub test.

woodburner wrote:

biffvernon wrote:In geologic time a human free planet is the norm. In human time, stable climate is the norm. I'm a human not a rock. That's why I care.

Er, ....I thought you were concerned for the wellbeing of the planet.

Not particularly. Only inasmuch as the planet supports the lifeforms that I'm fond of.

When I say 'save the planet' I am, of course, and as you well know, using the phrase as a shorthand for caring for an environment that is going to be nice for my grandchildren. The big lump of rock that forms most of the planet will carry on regardless, whatever.

RC's twazzock comment was helpful as it showed us that she thought the previous comment was silly and not worth elaborating upon. I agree with the sentiment.

Thinking purely from self-interest, given the quite rapid deterioration in weather stability, I'm wondering whether we in our household need to do a bit of "technological leapfrogging". Forget trying to establish our vegetable plot and go for a growing system in an artificial environment, such as Aquaponics?