-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: September 6, 2007 11:16:56 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Burning Down the Planet
More 'megafires' to come, say scientists
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
The Independent (UK), 02 September 2007
http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2919643.ece
Fires of unprecedented ferocity are sweeping around the world,
fuelled by global warming and misguided environmentalism.
Dubbed "megafires", they rage over thousands of miles at 1,000C and
create their own weather, even triggering tornadoes. Rapidly
increasing in number, they are often unquenchable by any human
efforts, burning unchecked until they reach coasts or are put out
by heavy rainfall.
The devastating fires that have ravaged Greece killed at least 63
people and charred 482,000 acres of land. This summer, as record
heatwaves hit much of southern Europe, more than 1.9 million acres
have gone up in smoke .
Matters are even worse in the United States, where 20 years ago,
fires burning over 5,000 acres were relatively rare. In the past 10
years, however, there have more than 200 conflagrations 10 times
the size. Last year, 9.6 million acres of the country were
devastated, beating an all-time record set 2005. This is the sixth
time in the past decade that a record year has immediately been
surpassed in the following 12 months.
A year ago the Australian state of Victoria suffered 200 fires in a
single day. There have also been megafires in France, Spain,
Portugal, Canada, Russia, Mongolia, Indonesia, South Africa and
Brazil.
Experts agree that they are caused partly by droughts and higher
temperatures brought by global warming, but they also point to
conservation practices which have discouraged controlled burning of
forests and caused a huge build-up of up to 30 of 40 tons of tinder
dry kindling on each acre of ground. Once lit – by lightning, arson
or human error – they produce 20ft flames and generate temperatures
of up to 1,200C. At this intensity they generate their own winds.
One such fire caused tornados near Canberra in 2003.
Professor Stephen J Pyne, an expert at Arizona State University
called the fires "climatic tsunamis", and Kevin O'Loughlin, the
head of Melbourne's Bushfire Co-operative Research Centre added:
"They cannot be controlled by any suppression resources that we
have available anywhere in the world."
-------------------
Global warming:
Too hot to handle for the BBC
Green groups protest after corporation calls off day of programming
dedicated to climate change
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
The Independent, 06 September 2007
The transformation of climate change from a scientific to a
political issue became clear last night when the BBC dropped plans
for a day-long TV special on global warming.
The scrapping of Planet Relief, an awareness-raising broadcast
similar in concept to programmes such as the poverty-focused Comic
Relief and Live8, and planned for early next year, marked a
watershed moment: it showed that opining about climate change is
now as significant in Britain as scientific fact.
Environmentalists and politicians fiercely criticised the BBC for
abandoning the programme, for which Ricky Gervais and Jonathan Ross
had been provisionally lined up as presenters. The corporation said
that it had decided it was not the BBC's job to lead opinion on the
global warming issue. However, critics complained that the effect
of the decision was to imply that there was no scientific consensus
on the reality of climate change and its human causes, and accused
the corporation of being swayed by increasingly vocal climate-
change sceptics.
Chris Huhne, Liberal Democrat spokesman on the environment, said:
"The consensus about global warming in the science community is now
overwhelming, so accusing the BBC of campaigning on such an
undisputed threat is like suggesting it should be even-handed
between criminals and their victims."
The green activist and author Mark Lynas said that the decision
showed "a real poverty of understanding among senior BBC executives
about the gravity of the situation we now face.
"The only reason why this became an issue is that there is a small
but vociferous group of extreme right-wing climate 'sceptics'
lobbying against taking action, so the BBC is behaving like a
coward and refusing to take a more consistent stance," he said.
Planet Relief was a working title for the TV special, which was
being developed by Jon Plowman, head of BBC Comedy. While the event
might have been similar in scale to Comic Relief or Children in
Need, it would not have involved fundraising.
It was intended to raise awareness of the issue of climate change.
The BBC had been in discussions with the National Grid about the
possibility of calling on viewers to participate in a mass
electricity "switch-off" or if that had not proved feasible, to
turn off the electricity at selected iconic landmarks.
The abandonment of the programme came about after an intense in-
house debate about exactly how the corporation should treat the
global warming issue, now becoming increasingly politicised in
Britain. It could be broadly said that action on climate change,
while favoured by many across the political spectrum, has a
particular appeal for radical groups, not least because industrial
capitalism is seen as being the principal cause of the problem.
By extension, some voices on the right regard it as just another
radical cause, oppose it instinctively and seek to cast doubt on
its scientific basis. The BBC has been under fire, especially from
right-wing commentators, for proselytising in its presentation of
some concerns, and some senior executives had doubts about the
Planet Relief proposal in particular, suggesting it would leave the
corporation open to the charge of bias.
Speaking at the Edinburgh International Television Festival this
month, Newsnight's editor, Peter Barron said: "It's abso- lutely
not the BBC's job to save the planet." The head of television news,
Peter Horrocks, wrote in the BBC News website editor's blog: "It is
not the BBC's job to lead opinion or proselytise on this or any
other subject."
However, a spokeswoman for BBC1, the channel on which Planet Relief
would have been shown, insisted that last night's decision was not
made "in light of the recent debate around impartiality." She
added: "BBC1 aims to bring a mass audience to contemporary and
relevant issues and this includes the topic of climate change.
"Our audiences tell us they are most receptive to documentary or
factual-style programming as a means of learning about the issues
surrounding this subject, and as part of this learning we have made
the decision not to go proceed with the Planet Relief event.
Instead we will focus our energies on a range of factual programmes
on the important and complex subject of climate change."
Mark Lynas dismissed the argument that Planet Relief was dropped
for purely editorial reasons as "PR guff". "This is all to do with
the fact that climate change is such a political issue and it's too
hot for the BBC to handle," he said. "It's intellectual bankruptcy.
The entire scientific community is telling the world that it's the
biggest threat to human civilisation. What more evidence do you
need?" Tony Juniper, executive director of Friends of the Earth,
said the decision was very disappointing "considering the huge
potential for the BBC in helping us more quickly make the shift
toward a low-carbon society."
Andrew Neil, who presents the Daily Politics and This Week on the
BBC, said: "I'm delighted the BBC has cancelled it. Our job is to
cover these things, not to comment on them.
"There's a great danger that on some issues we're becoming a
[leftist] one-party state in which we're meant to have only one
kind of view. You don't have to be a climate-change denier to
recognise that there's a great range of opinion on the subject."
Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL.com.
www.ctrl.org
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
<A HREF="http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
