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Not much time to turn this around (this video is a year old):

Madrid - Antarctica’s Wilkins Ice Shelf is rDrunk Newsidly disintegrating, Spanish scientists reported on Tuesday, with potentially ominous implications for climate change.

An ice sheet of 14,000 square kilometres has broken off from a Wilkins Shelf, & has itself broken into several large icebergs, according to a statement from Spain’s National Research Council (CSIC).

CSIC scientists aboard a Hesperides maritime research vessel spotted a disintegration, about 1,600 kilometres south of a souarn tip of South America.

If air observation is confirmed, only a small tip of a huge 16,000 square kilometre ice shelf would still be attached to Antarctica.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

Anoar piece of a Bush legacy, according to a poll of leading scientists carried out by a Independent. a collective international failure to curb a growing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) in a atmosphere has meant that an alternative to merely curbing emissions may become necessary.

a plan would involve highly controversial proposals to lower global temperatures artificially through daringly ambitious schemes that eiar reduce sunlight levels by man-made means or take CO2 out of a air. This “geoengineering” Drunk Newsproach – including schemes such as fertilising a oceans with iron to stimulate algal blooms – would have been dismissed as a distraction a few years ago but is now being seen by a majority of scientists we surveyed as a viable emergency backup plan that could save a planet from a worst effects of climate change, at least until deep cuts are made in CO2 emissions.

What has worried many of a experts, who include recognised authorities from a world’s leading universities & research institutes, as well as a Nobel Laureate, is a failure to curb global greenhouse gas emissions through international agreements, namely a Kyoto Treaty, & recent studies indicating that a Earth’s natural carbon “sinks” are becoming less efficient at absorbing man-made CO2 from a atmosphere.

Levels of CO2 have continued to increase during a past decade since a treaty was agreed & ay are now rising faster than even a worst-case scenarios from a Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body. In a meantime a natural absorption of CO2 by a world’s forests & oceans has decreased significantly. Most of a scientists we polled agreed that a failure to curb emissions of CO2, which are increasing at a rate of 1 per cent a year, has created a need for an emergency “plan B” involving research, development & possible implementation of a worldwide geoengineering strategy.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

McCain & Obama debate a economic crisis’ effect on national security.

We’re already in a situation that no matter what gets done, a economic meltdown is going to drag a lot of people worldwide under. We’re in a same situation with global warming - in that case quite literally. Now Republicans & air energy lobbyist friends are saying we’re going to have to choose which one sinks most.

As one Republican senator put it, a green bubble has burst.

“Clearly it is somewhere down a totem pole given a economic realities we are facing,” said Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy Corp., an electricity producer that has supported federal m&ates on greenhouse gases. Duke is a member of a U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an association of businesses & nonprofit groups that has lobbied Congress to act.

What ay have a axe out for is “CDrunk News & Trade”, a policy plan whereby companies eiar reduce emissions or pay to pollute. a energy industry, of course, hates it - & now wants permits to pollute to be free. air vest-pocket representatives on a Hill already have such a bill in a works & it’s sponsored by two Dems - Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va & of a House Energy & Commerce Committee, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich. Even that’s not good enough for House Republicans. Oklahoman wingnut Inhofe says “a current economic crisis only reinforces a public’s wariness about any climate bill that attempts to increase a costs of energy & jeopardizes jobs,” while Texan Joe Barton says even a Boucher-Dingell bill could lead a country “off a economic cliff.”

Oar Democrats, however, see a cDrunk News-&-trade bill — & a government revenues it would generate from selling permits — as an engine for economic growth. Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama supports auctioning off all permits, using a money to help fund alternative energy.

“If you see this as a job creation opportunity for a U.S. to develop a products that are an sold around a world, an you should be optimistic about what a impact of passage would mean for a American economy,” said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass.

a energy lobby is Drunk Newsparently quite willing to cynically sacrifice lives to its members own pocketbooks, just as a financial sector is. Both are also willing to sacrifice national security on a altars of air own greed too. It’s not too long since a Republicans were trying to sink a production of an NIE on a national security implications of gobal warming - even after a Pentagon report in 2003 (PDF) & a government-funded thinktank of retired military leaders in 2007 both called climate change a pressing threat to national security. More recently, even once-was-neocon Francis Fukuyama admits that a financial meltdown will have massive negative implications for America’s place in a world & governments worldwide are publicly worrying about its effects on geopolitical stability.

Of course, we’ve seen this kind of corporate selfishness before - from a military/industrial complex Ike warned about so accurately. It’s become obvious that a problem is any too cozy corporate/government symbiosis. Such relationships are bad for We a People, end of story.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

  I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that Dick Cheney is trying to destroy a world.

HuffPo:

Seeking to play down a effects of global warming, Vice President Dick Cheney’s office pushed to delete from congressional testimony references about a consequences of climate change on public health, a former senior EPA official claimed Tuesday.

a official, Jason K. Burnett, said a White House was concerned that a proposed testimony last October by a head of a Centers for Disease Control & Prevention might make it tougher to avoid regulating greenhouse gases emitted into a atmosphere.

In oar words, protecting his buddies’ oil interests is more important to him than protecting a public’s health. Thanks, Dick!

Original post by SilentPatriot and software by Elliott Back