Climbing on a mountain
Floating out on the sea
Far from lights of a city
The elements they speak to me...

Whispering that life
Existed long before greed...
Balancing the world
On its knee...

Don't see some men as half empty
See them half full of shit
Thinking that we're all but slaves
There's ain't gonna be

No middle anymore
It's been said before
The haves be having more
Yet still bored

Won't someone save?
Won't someone save
The world?

Hey, why did they go to Bali anyway? Interesting place. Seems just a little bit out of the way from the self appointed luminaries live though isn't? I wonder how they got there? How about Ben Ki Moons use of a plane to go to Bali, to America for a FUCKING CONCERT! Then back.

Gee, I wonder if these are the types of senseless fucks that Eddie was talking about.

Don't even get me started on the Nobel Prize Party that Al Gore had in Phoenix and his fucking mansion.

Didn't they just find a huge, piping hot caldera filled with magma under Greenland? I could have swore I read that somewhere.

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7009456471

"The melting glaciers have a particular significance for Americans, as the water from them flows into the sea raising sea levels around the world.

"The complete melting of these continental ice sheets would put much of Florida, as well as New Orleans, New York City and other important coastal population centers, under water," von Frese said."

Oh yeah, like that's gonna happen...

How many more decades are people gonna put up with this bullshit.

You know, you can argue about the CAUSES of global warming without appearing to be COMPLETELY ignorant, but it's pretty simple math that if the glaciers melted completely, coastal areas would be under water. Whether it's likely to happen, or whether people created the problem or can prevent it is open to debate. Denying that melting glaciers would lead to that result makes you look like a creationist or some shit.

The passage of time has not been kind to the Arctic's fortunes: Where scientists once predicted the Arctic would be ice-free by the end of the century, they revised their estimates in recent months to 2030 and now - stunningly - to 2013. Presenting the findings of his modeling studies at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, Wieslaw Maslowski, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, explained that earlier projections had low-balled the real values by not accounting for some of the processes driving the ice loss.

Even worse, he conceded that his own estimates may be on the optimistic side, explaining that the models he had run - using data from 1979 to 2004 - did not take into account the ice cover minima reached in 2005 and 2007. "Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007. So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative." said Maslowski.

Maslow believes earlier estimates missed out on some key melting processes; those issues could be partially resolved if future models incorporated more realistic representations of warm water movement into the Arctic from the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University remarked that past models did not sufficiently take into account the ice-albedo feedback effect, which occurs when water is heated by solar radiation, leading to more warming and melting.

Mark Serreze, a scientist with the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), still believes 2030 is a reasonable estimate, deeming Wieslaw's projections as "a little aggressive . . . simply because the luck of the draw means natural variability can kick in to give you a few years in which the ice loss is a little less than you've had in previous years." Either way, the melting of the Arctic ice cap within our lifetimes now seems inevitable.

Wow Corky, you found a chart on Treehugger.com. I'm convinced. We are all doomed.

Yeah, the Arctic is melting. Big deal. The artic has been melting for a very long time. Just a couple thousand years ago the Artic ice extended beyond Alaska. And it's common sense that melting of glaciers and ice will accelerate provided temeperature's remain steady. I mean, it's nice that you show us that the Arctic is melting. But what about Antartica? There are parts of Antarctica that are melting, yes, but on the whole, the ice on Antarctica is growing, and Antarctica is cooling at a much faster rate than the Arctic is warming.

2013 is not that far off. I'd wager my entire bank account, that in 2013, there's gonna be ice there. How confident are you, Corky and other doomsdayers, that your doomsdayer scientist's are right?

It's all bullshit. Every year they come out with some new report, and then five years down the road that report is found to be a complete joke, a fraud...just completely wrong. Five years from now the latest IPCC report will have found to completely full of errors, but they'll have a new report that they are just SURE is accurate this time.

How many times will you guys, on the whole, believe what's being fed to you, when there is such a history of blatant data manipulation in these studies and estimations?



In all seriousness. Do you for a moment actually think that coastal cities are gonna be under in five years? Or ten years? Or in your lifetime? Or is it just a little more plausible to assume that this is all just fearmongering doomsdayer to goad people into accepting a hefty carbon tax?

from http://www.crikey.com.au

The earth moves in Bali

Clive Hamilton, author of "Scorcher: The dirty politics of climate change", writes:

"The world has changed in the last hours."

These words were texted to me from Nusa Dua on Saturday evening by Bill Hare, Greenpeace International’s climate policy director and arguably the world’s most influential environmentalist.

The sentiment was inspired by the dramatic capitulation of the United States at the final plenary session of the Bali Conference of the Parties in the vast auditorium of the conference centre at the Westin Hotel.

The standing-room-only session was unprecedented in the history of climate change negotiations. The pressure on the US delegation was immense and, in the end, unbearable.

When the head of the US delegation Paula Dobriansky had declared that the United States was unwilling to support the draft that had been agreed by all other parties, she was booed and jeered, an unheard of outburst.

But when a world power demands that poor countries commit to stronger measures to cut their emissions when it has itself refused to do anything about its own, it was a surprise that they were not set upon by the hundreds who packed the room.

The US position has been built on the arrogance, obstinacy and disregard for the facts characteristic of neo-conservatives. The Bali meeting exposed yet again the damage to US prestige of President Bush’s foreign policy.

The big countries threatened to boycott the planned January meeting of Bush’s major emitters group, seen by most as a third-order process but a credibility life-line for the US President.

In the last hours in Bali UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, President of the Convention Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer made impassioned interventions to pressure the US delegation to yield.

As one nation after another rose to condemn the United States, it fell to the delegate from humble PNG to encapsulate the mood of the world: "If you are not willing to lead then get out of the way" he said to acclamation.

In the end it was too much; even Bush’s hard-arsed negotiators proved human and the super-power was humiliated in the most public way.

Thank God Australia no longer must share the opprobrium that rained on the United States.

Australia’s defection to the cause of climate progress was instrumental in the Bali outcome because it left the United States friendless. Kevin Rudd played a clever and constructive hand, and Penny Wong made a deep impression on negotiators from around the world for her deft negotiating skills and extraordinary ability to get on top of the dauntingly complex issues in record time.

The Bali roadmap commits both developed and developing countries to negotiate towards a treaty embodying "nationally appropriate mitigation actions". As South Africa pointed out, such a commitment from developing countries would have been unthinkable a year ago.

The shift reflects rising alarm about the impacts of global warming and the long process of trust-building, led by the Europeans, that convinced China, India, Brazil and other developing countries that the rich world, with the exception of the United States, is serious about deep cuts in their carbon emissions.

Two sets of negotiations occurred simultaneously in Bali—the "Convention track" in which the US participated and caved in, and the "Kyoto track" from which the US, as a non-ratifier, was excluded. The declaration coming from the latter in the end included reference to the science-based emission cuts of 25-40% on 1990 levels by 2020 for developed countries.

Australia agreed to this, a decision undoubtedly made easier by the statement of support for the target range by Opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt, which removed a huge chunk of potential domestic criticism.

Support for the 25-40% goal presents Kevin Rudd with the task of setting a 2020 target that will not be seen to undermine the aspirations of the post-Kyoto treaty expected to be agreed in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The Bali roadmap will almost certainly give rise to a post-2012 treaty that builds on and strengthens the Kyoto Protocol, as was always intended.

It will have mandatory emission reduction targets for rich countries, some form of abatement commitment from developing countries, an international emissions trading system, a Clean Development Mechanism, along with technology transfer and financial assistance for poor countries.

There are no surprises. It’s Kyoto plus. No one underestimates the magnitude of the task ahead. Climate change policy has always lagged well behind the science. The agreement in Bali provides a desperately needed accelerator to policy.

And it sends an unambiguous message to the business world. Watch the stampede and, if money is your thing, buy shares in renewable energy and carbon offset companies today.

they should try this again with the USA after the Bush Administration is out of office...

Swoon.

Nothings going to come of it...

No, I don't. But it's because I don't believe that ALL of the ice will be gone that quickly, not because I believe that if it were gone it wouldn't cause sea levels to rise.

yeah it does make one wonder whether they would have been better to say to the USA, so that the outcome would have been less watered down, then just wait for the USA with their new president to sign up to whatever the rest of us have agreed to later on. at any rate, i am happy the USA finally capitulated and joined the consensus. even if it did take delegates from the rest of the world literally booing them.

It's all so laughable...

Thou art wrong, oh lovely siren of the southern hemisphere. They capitulated because it's election season and they don't want the Dems cornering the market on 'green voters' or having anymore public relations weapons to use against them next year. You can still bank on the US rejecting any absurd international taxes on carbon output.

well yeah, but i had to insert the booing comment somewhere. it was just too good an opportunity to pass up.

also, are you saying that taxing carbon is an absurd thing to do or that the US will just reject the absurd taxes as opposed from the non-absurd? i'm just a bit unclear over that statement

That was bad grammar, even for me. I meant any tax levied on carbon pollution at the international level is absurd and will be summarily rejected the federal government of the US o' Fuckin' A. I would expect to see some US states enact carbon taxes after the 2008 elections and have people move away shortly there after. My home state, Maryland, is one of the 5 most likely to do this, and if/when they do, I will be moving to northern Virginia and drive 40 minutes to work, rather than ten. Not because they are taxing carbon, but because they are already taxing us too much and another tax would make living elsewhere too attractive to resist.

um

two main points here
first, almost no-one is advocating a carbon tax, rather a cap and trade system, where a limit is set on emissions and tradeable certificates are created

second
the system, which you and i refer to as a tax for simplicity, won't be on joe blow for using too much oil in his whipper snipper. it's on companies like electricity retailers.

Crikey! We call those "whipper snippers" "weed whackers" over on our side of the globe!

kudos to you, or wikipedia, then, for translating