Needlenose

Remember the climate-change deniers mocking Al Gore last winter during the unusually heavy snowfall?  Funny that they’re keeping their traps shut in the face of record-breaking June heat wave - the Earth Fuckers really owe Mr. Gore an apology.

And right after apologizing to Mr. Gore, the Earth Fuckers should apologize to the scientists of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit for stealing their emails and smearing them mercilessly over the last year – an independent panel of researchers has upheld their research results and professional integrity.

Don’t hold your breath, though – Uber-Earth Fucker Apologist Benny Feiser doesn’t put much faith in either solid science nor an unbiased review process:

But Benny Feiser, who runs the skeptic-leaning Global Warming Policy Foundation, said there was strong evidence that legitimate requests for information had been repeatedly stifled.

“I don’t think the university can just claim that this is a vindication,” he said. He promised his own inquiry into the matter, to publish its report in August.

This is the real difference between real scandals and reactionary-inspired scandals – just like Whitewater, Climate Gate has turned out to be nothing more than a Reactionary smear campaign of dirty ad-hominem attacks designed to muddy the waters of public discourse and keep it off the course from the discussion that really matters.

Carbon limits are for the little people! Faster, driver!

Sir Richard Branson saw fit to lecture to world leaders currently debating carbon emissions limits at Copenhagen on behalf of the airline industry.  “Reduction targets”, not carbon taxes is what he’d like.  He’s also pushing the idea of moving the airline fleets to biofuels, something he terms green fuel.

Biofuels, you know – things like ethanol and bio diesel derived from industrial agriculture that require more energy inputs then they produce in outputs and exist only as pork delivery vehicles for firms like ConAgra?

Keep in mind this bullshit is from a guy who has made an a second fortune from running an especially carbon porky business, an airline.  And if that weren’t enough, his latest venture is to fly fat rich tourists into space.  Hey Sir Carbon Asshole, here’s a reduction for you – shelve your stupid space tourism and save the planet an additional 54,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually – and tell your rich buddies to go plant some trees on one of their 365 days of yearly vacation instead.

And while you’re at it, why don’t you make a real statement and shelve your new Formula 1 racing team.  I don’t think the additional 50 tonnes of CO2 your car will emit per season will ‘tip the balance’ but talk about hypocrisy.

Sea level rise chart

Curious about when your coastal town or property will go back to the sea?

“To establish a timeline, choose a location … and find out its elevation. You can then use the graph to determine if the area will be underwater at any particular date between 1990 and 2100.”

Don't worry kids, Big Oil says a magical sea creature symphony awaits you!

Here is a distinction a country would want to avoid – first to disappear under the seas due to the rising sea level stemming from global warming.  The population of Tuvalu has already started to abandon their sinking island as increasingly high tides smash up their houses and a salty water table kills off their crops.

So does the ‘country’ still exist after the last Tuvaluan has left?  Do they keep their U.N. seat?  How about their lucrative “.tv” top-level domain?

Joking aside, we should round up the prominent loud-mouth global warming deniers and shove them onto the soggy uninhabitable land as punishment for their crimes against humanity.

Limbaugh the Nazca denounces the liberal tree hugging alarmism

Well okay, maybe rampant deforestation created conditions for terrible erosion and floods that brought down the Nazca civilization, but otherwise…poppy-cock!  Er…and of course the deforestation of Easter Island had similar consequences…oh yeah, and the Anasazi had a similar problem…but under no circumstances is that anyway comparable to today’s increasing desertification and global warming which of course have nothing to do with human activities and certainly won’t lead to the collapse of our civilization…

Malthus is alive and well and living in the 3rd World

The UN figures we’ll need to increase food production by 70% over the next 40 years to keep hundreds of millions from starving.  Looking at historical food production trends, it seems like cereal production has sort of kept pace with population growth (although seafood production has pretty much peaked if not actually declined a bit).  But historical trend analysis doesn’t take into account the projected negative impact of global warming on crop production.

Or more immediately, it doesn’t take into account the growing diversion of cereal crops into biofuels (a process actually subsidized by your tax dollars so you can pay more to fill both your tank and your tummy!), nor the challenges of worldwide water stress.

Until now the trends have supported the self-indulgent skeptics (those fortunate enough to live in the developed world at least) who have blithely scoffed the warnings of the food-security crowd.  However we’re looking at a ‘perfect storm’ of factors that will throw ever larger populations of folks in various regions into the food have-not category much earlier than that in the UN 40-year time frame.

*Update* Just to put this in perspective, UN says 1 in 6 people are facing famine today as developed countries both cut food aid and increase biofuel subsidies.

Sad news about the Great Barrier Reef:

“…the Great Barrier Reef could be “functionally extinct” within decades, with deadly coral bleaching likely to be an annual occurrence by 2030.”

The ‘big news’ today today was non-news – how the leaders of the G-8 agreed that they’d work to keep the global average temperature from rising 3.6 degrees F (even though it went up 1/2 that already).  But as you’ve already suspected, they wouldn’t agree on any particular mechanisms to make that happen.  More hot air we didn’t need.

To top it off, neither India nor China would agree to any climate management deal.

With leaders like these, who needs enemies?  They’ll destroy the planet faster than any alien invaders ever could.

In the very beginning of the Judeo-Christian bible, God allegedly grants humanity

“…dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

And so it came to pass.  And speaking of creeping things that doth creepeth, it seems the creeps have inherited the Earth, creeps that seem intent to stomp every creeping thing over which they have dominion into extinction (and don’t forget the permanent snuffing the fowl of the air).

You’re probably wondering why I’ve decided to bum you out tonight.  I’m blue because of these new bummer tidbits, the massive die-off and looming extinction of nine species of shark due to the charming practice of ‘finning’ the poor critters for shark-fin soup while tossing the still alive but mutilated shark back into the ocean to effectively die slowly from blood loss and asphyxiation.

I can’t tell you how depressed I get knowing that over the course of my lifetime I’ve watched the biggest species die-off since the disappearance of the dinosaurs.  Except for a few modest successes (think a few species of whales, wolves, American bison), people world-wide seem driven to destroy as many habitats and species as rapidly as possible, whether through global warming, deforestation, desertification, strip mining, urban sprawl, polluting and increasing the acidity of fresh and salt water, overfishing, poaching and just polluting the air and land in general.  Is the game to see how many of them we can take with us before our fossil fuel runs out and civilization collapses?

In the case of creatures like pelagic sharks or other deepsea fish, we’re looking at the classic tragedy of the commons writ large.  Unless some modern day, environmentally-motivated Captain Nemo decides to take matters into his own hands, it’s pretty much all she wrote for these poor creatures.  Wouldn’t hurt to have some more (and less gentle) Bruno Mansers on land as well.

There might be a bit more hope for the poor vaquita which recently lost funds for protection due to the economic downturn.  Rather than watch it follow the Yangtse River Dolphin, perhaps a campaign funded by private donations run by a group such as the WWF could make up the shortfall?

The only thing that depresses me more than the actual mass extinction event underway is how people seem to care so little about it.

I don’t know why I bother to keep posting these global warming bits…each story seems to follow much like the others.  “Unprecedented.”  “Greater than expected.”  “Positive feedback loop.”

Today’s depressing tidbit is the loss of a Texas of ice from the Arctic.  You know it’s bad when they don’t use Rhode Island as the unit of measure.  Of course while we are on the subject of losing polar ice in units of New England states, scientists are predicting a Connecticutt of ice will calve from Antarctica in the near future.