So from what I'm hearing so far, the Cancun summit has been a bust. Japan looks like it's pulling out of the Kyoto Treaty and very little "progress" has been made. I'm also hearing that media coverage has been 1/100th of what it was in Copenhagen. Democracy Now! on Pacifica Radio stated that they searched all of the past week's transcripts of major US media outlets (ABC, NBC, etc.) and found not one mention of the Cancun summit. They also reported that the press was strikingly absent from this summit; thousands at Copenhagen vs. hundreds at Cancun.

So it certainly seems the U.S. is caring less and less about climate change...not that it ever did.

As far as a cooperative global effort, it seems we all better hope then that Rog and the likes are right.

Regardless of the final verdict on anthropogenic climate change, based on the discussion I've heard at Cancun, it seems to me that this is another pretty concrete sign that industry and consumption patterns will always trump the environment.

Edited by xnomanx on 12/06/2010 09:55:28 MST.

"it seems to me that this is another pretty concrete sign that industry and consumption patterns will always trump the environment"

Until the environment trumps the human race, that is....

"Until the environment trumps the human race, that is...."

Yep, the Earth-plus-plastic will get us in the end.

Not by frying us though. Cold is a far greater danger to society.

"Australia’s BoM doesn’t need to exaggerate temperature trends when the media can turn average seasons into sweltering records."

Rog, Rog, Rog ...

I said that Perth was having hot weather for the time of year - which it was:

"Daytime temperatures were well above average across the Perth metropolitan area during November 2010 .... Both Perth Metro and Rottnest Island recorded their hottest November since comparable records commenced at both sites in 1897, highlighting the significance of the unusually hot November in the Perth metropolitan area.

A record number of hot days (a hot day is a day when the daily maximum temperature is 32 °C or higher) were experienced throughout the Perth area in November. Hot days occurred on the 2nd and 3rd, followed by three consecutive hot days between 17th and 19th, and then between 28th and 30th. Medina Research Centre recorded 41.4 °C on the 19th, which is its highest November temperature in 25 years of recording, as well as the highest temperature for November 2010 in the Perth metropolitan area.

Perth Metro's mean daily maximum temperature in November was 29.6 °C, which is Perth Metro's highest November mean maximum since records commenced in 1897, easily overtaking the previous record of 28.5 °C in 2007. The average for November is 26.2 °C, whilst for comparison Perth Metro's December average is 28.8 °C! Daily maxima during November 2010 ranged from a very hot 38.8 °C on the 19th to a mild 21.0 °C on the 11th.

During November 2010, Perth Metro recorded 10 hot days, which was the greatest number of hot days for Perth Metro in November on record"

So far it is also one of the driest years on record. The stark change in rain and weather patterns in south-west WA is well documented. The CSIRO has cautiously ascribed it to climate change.

Well CSIRO is one of those organisations which chose to dismiss the sceptics pointing out that there has been no statistically significant warming for 15 years by saying climate cannot be determined on periods less than thirty years.

They can't have it both ways.

If "the stark change in rain and weather patterns in south-west WA" is climate change then so is the lack of warming for 15 years.

Capiche?

"Cold is a far greater danger to society."

Greater still, according to some oceanographers and marine biologists, is acidification and rising temperatures of the world's oceans and a resulting die off of the phytoplankton that supply ~50% of the earth's atmospheric oxygen. The other half, which comes from terrestial plant photosynthesis, is also at risk from deforestation and other environmentally harmful practices. One way or another we seem to have a collective death wish.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=phytoplankton-population

There are a lot of other references out there, but this one is a pretty good example of what the commie world government climate change conspirators are peddling these days in their nefarious efforts to scare us into giving up our SUV's, wide screen TV's, and all the other paraphernalia necessary to a civilized life style.

I'm curious when, if ever, we will reach a threshold and take serious action. Rampant environmental destruction seems to typically be greeted with a shrug of the shoulders and hands in pockets. Everyone seems to acknowledge it, but few seem willing to do anything. Very few seem to know where to even start; that's where we get meager pleas to screw in a better lightbulb, buy "green" dish soap, and shop local...all in the face of a behemoth.

I'm not sure anyone even knows what "taking serious action" looks like, but I'm fairly certain that whatever we are currently doing isn't serious enough. Otherwise we wouldn't be casually reading and debating articles about the death of our oceans. If we, collectively, are capable of doing anything at all.

Which leads me to believe that, as a culture, our alienation from the environment is so profound that our collective threshold for its destruction is nearly infinite.
Layman's terms: We seem perfectly willing to go down with the ship rather than right its course and give up our way of life in the process.

If somebody destroyed or encroached upon your property (as in your house, car, television, etc.) you'd fight to stop them; legally, possibly physically. How far would you be willing to extend this circle of responsibility?

Would you fight to save a forest, a lake, a stretch of ocean? How hard? How close would the destruction have to come to home before it became worthy of your struggle against it? I ask these questions of myself as well.

It comes back to alienation, a disconnect systemically created and encouraged (I'd argue our economic system and culture as a whole thrive on alienation) and unconsciously manifested. We don't live off the land. We don't even have land anymore. Not land in the conventional ownership sense, but land in an ancestral, personal, grounding sense; "Our Land" in the sense of a deep symbiotic relationship with one's environment that fosters love, respect, and defense of it. I think "Our Land" is long gone. It's been replaced by "My Stuff".

I guarantee that if somebody intentionally scratched your car today you'd react with greater outrage than when you read the article Tom linked above. Why?

When our connection to the Earth occurs in an abstract, alienated, and primarily recreational way (wax philosophical all you want about the beauty of Sierra sunsets, it's still purely recreational for most), I fear we won't go far enough, if we even muster the strength to act at all, to defend the land.

Edited by xnomanx on 12/07/2010 18:11:18 MST.

Alienation. Well now, Craig, that's the crux of it, isn't it? We're alienated from our food supply, so we allow all kinds of horrors, both environmental and physical, to occur and we simply don't want to know about it. We're alienated from our land, so we allow all kinds of destruction and we simply don't want to know about it. And in most places I've lived, we're alienated from each other, so we allow all kinds of transgressions to occur to others and we simply don't want to know about it (unless, of course, they're young and pretty and white, at least in this fair land). We're even, perhaps, alienated from ourselves, but we don't want to believe it.

We just want to buy stuff without having to feel guilty about it, so we decide that if we don't know how it's made/under what conditions it's made/at what cost to people, the environment, other living creatures, etc., then it's okay. And we simply don't want to know about it.

You see, it's all about personal freedom. Screw personal responsibility, and screw even more any kind of responsibility to anyone or anything else!

Climate Change Denial and The Misrepresentation of Climate Science Speaker: Dr Andrew Glikson 12.30 pm 14 December 2010. Hedley Bull Lecture Theatre 1 The climate change denial syndrome claims alternatively the atmosphere/ocean system is not warming, or warming is natural and may be even beneficial, or climate change represents a conspiracy on the part of the IPCC and the science community. An examination of climate denial articles indicates (A) departures from and alteration of instrumentally measured climate datasets, including temperature and CO2 measurements; (B) invention of paleo-climate “data”; (C) ignorance of the basic laws of physics and chemistry which govern the atmosphere-ocean-cryosphere system; (D) avoidance of the peer-reviewed literature; (E) objection to computer modelling (a method undertaken in almost every other field of science). No account is taken by the denial syndrome of the infrared absorption/emission resonance effects of over 320 Gigaton carbon (GtC) emitted by humans since 1750, which constitute more than 50% of the original inventory of the atmosphere. No account is taken of multi-proxy paleo-climate studies which indicate that above 400 ppm atmospheric CO2 the Antarctic ice sheet becomes unstable, leading to a major shift in the state of the Earth’s climate. Transient and cyclic effects of the ENSO cycle and the 11 years sunspot cycle superposed on the decade-scale warming are used to claim global “cooling”. The increasing spate of extreme weather events is dismissed as irrelevant. Seasonal fluctuations in sea ice cover are stressed while the progressive melt of the large ice sheets of Greenland and west Antarctica and of mountain glaciers is overlooked. A plethora of alternative global warming mechanisms is invoked, ranging from enhanced insolation, to volcanic CO2 release, to cosmic rays, effects of clouds, geothermal heating or apparent warming of Mars and Venus. When such claims are shown to be inconsistent with recorded data and with natural laws, the denial syndrome resorts to claims of a “conspiracy” on the part of climate scientists. Despite its pseudoscientific nature, the climate denial syndrome has succeeded in providing promoters of open ended carbon emission with arguments resulting in a delay of required climate change mitigation by over 20 years.

I fear you have nailed it on the head Tony.

"We just want to buy stuff without having to feel guilty about it, so we decide that if we don't know how it's made/under what conditions it's made/at what cost to people, the environment, other living creatures, etc., then it's okay. And we simply don't want to know about it.

You see, it's all about personal freedom. Screw personal responsibility, and screw even more any kind of responsibility to anyone or anything else!"

I think this has always been the human condition. Humans have never really cared about other humans, or their environment, beyond their clan or their local land's ability to support their own survival. This is the first time in history that humans have even had the opportunity, much less the desire (at least some of us) to think globally. And we're talking just a small proportion of humans who are in a position to think beyond immediate survival even now. I don't rate humanities chances of pulling through this one in time to make a difference...

Why is it always what people do personally that gets all the attention?
I mean all you leftwingers ( and Im not picking on you just making a point) claim to believe in collective responsibility, but then instead of saying, hey we have an infrastructure built on cars and oil and it needs to change, you (we) harp on individuals who have SUVs? Or are "materialistic" what ever that means outside of the new age ascetic mumbo jumbo. people who live in places where they have to drive to work in 2 feet of snow in the morning most of the year so they aren't homless and can pay the bills are not listening to these arguments and they shouldnt. If they had public electric rail cars (or something) that they could take to work or the grocery store THEY WOULD!
Also everyone knows that basically the only people who go to Washington and protest are college kids who don't have jobs and real responsibilities or nut job radicals who recklessly sherk theirs. And make no mistake if you want REAL change ( not Obama change) it will be violent and disruptive don't believe the Gandhi myth. I suspect most people know this intuitively and want to avoid it by ignoring it. Why do people so easily believe that "society" is ignorant or apathetic. Maybe they feel powerless or are powerless. Do some people really think so highly of themselves that they think they are the only ones who can see whats going on and have the capacity to care?
Instead of attacking individuals who are stuck trying to make a living within the system given them with holier than thou guilt trips. We should be harping on the agricultural/oil/military/banking complex who have us by the balls.

"I don't rate humanities chances of pulling through this one in time to make a difference..."

Sad, but probably true. Mother Nature will have the last word, and we shall likely join the dinosaurs in the dust bin of evolution. My money is on some sulfur metabolizing bacteria down in the Marianas Trench surviving to start the whole process over again. My faith, such as it is, is in life itself, not any particular life form. I feel a deep sadness for my own species which comes from the realization that if ever a species had it made, it was us. And we've blown it.

As for violent change, which way is this violence going to flow? Bottom up? Top down? Left to Right? Right to Left? Or one big mish-mash? Not sure who you're insinuating will try to wipe out who. My bets are on an increasing amount of top>>>down violence. Like always.
As for "harping on the agricultural/oil/military/banking complex who have us by the balls.", I wholeheartedly agree. When I speak of this "culture" that is predominately whom I address. SUV driving soccer-moms and Exxon-Mobil are a bit of a false equivalent.

But what is the threshold for when merely "harping" is no longer sufficient?
Is there one?



Douglas:
Yup, that's pretty much it.
Except for the "You see, it's all about personal freedom. Screw personal responsibility, and screw even more any kind of responsibility to anyone or anything else!" part.
But I did enjoy the "Screw__________, and screw even more________" part.

Brian,

It's what people do personally that leads to the agricultural/oil/military/banking complex. Sorry, the individual doesn't get a pass, since it's the individual, acting collectively, who can affect change.

Some of your post is just downright rant, and rather ill informed at that. Gandhi affected real change, significant change, through nonviolent means. There's nothing mythical about what he did. And many people, including (and, in these times, most often) the "leftwingers," have been railing against our infrastructure built on cars and oil, and the need to change to a more sustainable transportation infrastructure, for a long time. If you really haven't heard it then you simply haven't been listening, or you've been listening to the wrong people.

And your characterization of protesters is just ridiculous. First off, it's important to note that protests happen all over the United States, not just in Washington. And second, many protestors are willing to be arrested in their attempt to wake up a sleeping public. They're actually doing something instead of simply whining about how unfair life is and how powerless we all are. I'm not sure how working full time, and then protesting during one's free time, is shirking responsibility, recklessly or not.

Individuals are only stuck within the system because they choose, for whatever reason, to allow it to continue (though I generally chalk it up to ignorance fueled by fear and a decided lack of capacity to think beyond oneself or one's situation).

Lastly, look around. Society IS ignorant and apathetic. It's why we're in the mess we're in. We're powerless only when we allow ourselves to be. And we allow ourselves to be quite often.

Just open up any history book. If people want change badly they will be non-compliant and insist the government do something. At first it will be tolerated and then the cops will be sent out to restore "order". Now you can choose to do as they say and go home and nothing will change or if you continue to insist violence will be used against you. How far it goes depends on how far those with power are willing to take it before they give in.
"SUV driving soccer-moms and Exxon-Mobil are a bit of a false equivalent."
-thats my point. But many people demonize "soccer moms" who just need something to get to work on snowy streets and point the finger at them as if they are the source of the problem. Soccer moms being just an example of how people make a collective problem an individual one and put unjustified blame on the powerless to do something that only those in power can do. This just creates class warfare and partisanship and does nothing to address the cause.

"It's what people do personally that leads to the agricultural/oil/military/banking complex"
-No its also whats done too them. You aren't outside that system I noticed?

"and rather ill informed at that. Gandhi affected real change, significant change, through nonviolent means. There's nothing mythical about what he did."
- Its the ill informed mythical cult of personality who believes individuals accomplish such things. The British were already tired of Empire when he came along and they just needed a push, he was just a public face sitting by with flowery speeches as the poor masses got clubbed. A hundred Gandhis before him had their skulls bashed in by a British rifle before him when they more serious about their Empire. No one knows their name.

"sleeping public"..."They're actually doing something instead of simply whining about how unfair life is and how powerless we all are"
- Protesting is whining, and it isn't enough to make change.
"I'm not sure how working full time, and then protesting during one's free time, is shirking responsibility, recklessly or not"
-Than you are out of touch.

"Individuals are only stuck within the system because they choose, for whatever reason, to allow it to continue (though I generally chalk it up to ignorance fueled by fear and a decided lack of capacity to think beyond oneself or one's situation)."
and... "Society IS ignorant and apathetic"

Im sorry this is self righteous BS. People are smarter and more informed that you know.

"Im sorry this is self righteous BS. People are smarter and more informed that you know."

I'm sorry, this is whiny BS. People are more self involved than you seem to want to admit.

"-No its also whats done too them. You aren't outside that system I noticed?"

I don't ever remember saying I was outside the system, whatever that's supposed to mean. But this is just more whiny BS. "I'm powerless, I'm powerless! It's not my fault! It's the big, bad complexes! They're so, so, darned complex and everything!"

"- Protesting is whining, and it isn't enough to make change."

Depends on the protesting. I'll agree that the protesting you're doing in your post is whining and isn't enough to affect change. But when people get together to create a larger voice, that voice can, and does, affect change.

"-Than you are out of touch."

Not sure what you mean by this. Are you saying that protestors don't have full time jobs?

Regardless, I guess it's easier to whine and Piss and moan about how powerless we all are than to actually try to do something about it. And, of course, belittle those who do. Yes, much easier all around.

Edited by idester on 12/07/2010 21:24:58 MST.

he was just a public face sitting by with flowery speeches as the poor masses got clubbed. A hundred Gandhis before him had their skulls bashed in by a British rifle before him when they more serious about their Empire. No one knows their name.

Brian, you really need to read up on Gandhi's history. He was an extremely pragmatic man. Nothing flowery about him. Learn a bit more about what he did in South Africa before India. All the non-violent marches he orchestrated had very practical and consequential purposes. It was all calculated.

Protesting is whining, and it isn't enough to make change

I'm going to say something very disturbing and in bad taste to Americans, but bear with me and try to see what I'm getting at: From an alternative point of view the attack on New York in 2001, if it actually was carried out by Muslim fundamentalists, was very much a form of attempt to make a change. By your philosophy, Brian, this should have been a justified approach. Somehow I doubt it. Don't you then think that "protest"... the kind you pooh pooh here... would have been a far better way for those who were angry with the US to express their anger? Personally I feel America missed out, after the attack, on a very important chance to reach out to those countries that dislike the States so much. Obviously there is a lot of anger out there, and anger doesn't happen in a vacuum.

NM

Edited by davidlutz on 12/07/2010 23:00:48 MST.

"I mean all you leftwingers ( and Im not picking on you just making a point) claim to believe in collective responsibility, but then instead of saying, hey we have an infrastructure built on cars and oil and it needs to change, you (we) harp on individuals who have SUVs?"

Which raises a question I've asked repeatedly: why do you think climate change is a left-wing issue?