Richard Macaulay wrote:
<<Most everyone in Vortex excepting the really dense understand that the
Dime Box Saloon does not
allow English gentlemen inside unless accompanied by a Scots. So make
friends with Philip of Glasgow.>>
I'm married to a Scot Richard! So, if it's all right with you,I won't
befriend Gorbals Phil. Line up a tequila for me... Actually, my outburst was
fuelled with 3/4 bottle of home made elderberry wine so I was more than
usually fractious but to see someone coming up with the same old, same old
unsustainable solutions, without apparently appreciating the problem was
just too much...
Here are a few quotes from yesterday's New York Times article about the new
IPCC report released a couple of days ago. Finally the scientists are
becoming brave enough to tell it almost like it is. They are still being too
mealy mouthed, though. Bear in mind that what they are saying now was said
decades ago by environmentalists. I personally was lobbying our Government
to seriously uprate insulation etc standards last time they were planning to
uprate building standards laws in 1991 using exactly these arguments and
pointing out that all houses built from 1991 onwards would be around, and
consuming excess energy, during the critical times ahead. The highly trained
minds of the civil servants and their consultants could not apparently
understand the new information so they pretended it did not exist and they
justified their position by traducing the bearer of sense (me and others)
with what was bullshit (or horse feathers for the delicate on this forum).
History will judge that people like that, no matter how highly trained,
qualified or educated were just plain stupid. Dangerously stupid and
undeserving of respect. They should be vilified because we cannot afford to
let such as them continue to screw things up with their self aggrandising
stupidity. Promoted beyond their level of competence and clinging onto their
position by publicly rubbishing threats to their self image, seemingly
without regard to the consequences. People in similar situations in the past
have often reacted like this - Jed would mention the Wright brothers'
tormentors or Robert Park at this point. It's time to clear away the tidal
waves of B.S. (horse puckey) that our civilisation is swamped with. Draw a
line in the sand. Throw people like this in the dustbin of history.
------------------------------------------------
<<The panel, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last month, said the
world would have to reverse the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 2015
to prevent serious climate disruptions.
"If there's no action before 2012, that's too late," said Rajendra Pachauri,
a scientist and economist who heads the IPCC. "What we do in the next two to
three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.">>
<<Saturday's synthesis report was reviewed and approved by delegates from
130 nations gathered here this week. But unlike the earlier reviews, in
which governments had insisted on changes that diluted the reports' impact,
this time scientists and environmental groups said there had been no major
dilution of the data.>>
<<For example, this report's summary was the first to acknowledge that the
melting of the Greenland ice sheet from rising temperatures could result in
a substantive sea-level rise over centuries rather than millennia.
"Many of my colleagues would consider that kind of melt a catastrophe" so
rapid that mankind would not be able to adapt, said Michael Oppenheimer, a
climate scientist at Princeton University who contributed to the IPCC.
"It's extremely clear and is very explicit that the cost of inaction will be
huge compared to the cost of action," said Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of
Columbia University's Earth Institute. "We can't afford to wait for some
perfect accord to replace Kyoto, for some grand agreement. We can't afford
to spend years bickering about it. We need to start acting now.">>
<<Mr. Connaughton acknowledged that the United States, like other nations,
had tried to make some changes to the draft. Dr. Sharon L. Hays, the leader
of the American delegation here, said the goal was not political but "to
make sure the final report matches the science. Stephanie Tunmore, a member
of Greenpeace International who had observer status as the countries debated
the text, questioned that explanation. She said, for example, that the
United States had tried to remove a section of the report titled "Reasons
for Concern," which listed consequences of climate change that are either
likely or possible. One was the melting of ice sheets, which the panel said
could take place more rapidly than previously thought.>>
Here is an extract from the dim and distant past... of June 1988
<<It was the culmination of an extraordinary meeting on the human-changed
atmosphere. For three days, scientists had described how a buildup of
long-lived gases emitted by burning fuels and forests would, if it
continued, raise temperatures, raise seas and disrupt weather patterns
important to agriculture, water supplies and wildlife.
As the conference concluded, a leader of the group, Michael McElroy of
Harvard, stood and said this: "If we choose to take on this challenge, it
appears that we can slow the rate of change substantially, giving us time to
develop mechanisms so that the cost to society and the damage to ecosystems
can be minimized. We could alternatively close our eyes, hope for the best,
and pay the cost when the bill comes due.">>
19 YEARS AGO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and going even further back yet, before the energy greedy consumer society
was even defined... even before "Silent Spring" was published....
<<Many of the scientists involved with this marathon effort (the IPCC - NP)
have spent more than half their lives trying to clarify what may come from
what Roger Revelle, in an understated line, described in a 1957 paper as a
"large scale geophysical experiment.">> This page
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Revelle.htm should make people weep for
the stupidity of some of humanity. It wouldn't be stretching the truth too
much to call Revelle and his colleagues unsung Galileos. "E pur si muove".
