Friday, November 05, 2010

One hundred thousand years

From Grist, The Climate Post: Earth will take 100,000 years to recover from the midterms’ effects on climate
...Nothing closes the window of opportunity on peaking greenhouse gas emissions by 2015 quite like a new of speaker of the House who once expressed outright disbelief about the veracity of scientists' claims regarding the threat of climate change
...
Geologists published a paper this week suggesting the Earth will take 100,000 years to recover from the effects of the global warming resulting from our current emissions trajectory.
When you vented your outrage at the ballot box, maybe wasn't The Man you were sticking it to.

4 comments:

gzaller said...

"When you vented your outrage at the ballot box, maybe wasn't The Man you were sticking it to."

This seems a little cryptic to the point of puzzling. Are you speaking to right wing voters? Is Obama the "Man"? Are you talking about future generations and all life having to deal with the result of voting right wing?

In any case, if the goal is to lower carbon emissions, the global warming issue as a political agenda should be dropped in favor of energy independence. Global warming theory is too ambiguous for the world but the immediate costs of oil and the benefit of renewable energy to the economy is not ambiguous.

Let's play a hand we all can win, and let's also not turn it into a polarizing debate or we all will lose again.

Change only comes from agreement, and not from being "right". It follows that trying to be "right" makes you the enemy of change.

Anna Haynes said...

GZ, I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. If there's no referee, or the refs aren't doing their job, and action is urgently needed that'll unavoidably make some powerful interests unhappy, conflict avoidance won't yield success.

(Though yes, it'd be nice if it would. And you are an extremely nice person.)

gzaller said...

My point isn't about conflict avoidance. It is about choosing an approach that is likely to succeed. The powerful interests you speak of want the argument to be about global warming because in the public forum they can win it, as they are doing. People's priorities today are about money and jobs now. Oil independence can save money and create jobs. I think the argument for oil independence can be won in the public forum.

Anonymous said...

gzaller:

And guess what, the oily interests lie about that too. Just witness all the bullshit about how greenism will destroy the economy, drive up costs, plunge us back to the Stone Age, etc. etc. The oily interests are more than willing to obfuscate about anything.

There's no way to avoid a "polarizing debate", because what we have here is nothing short of a full-blown War on Facts. And facts are polarizing.

-- frank