Our Summer of Climate Truth
POSTED BY: kpo
UPDATED: Tuesday, October 21, 2025 14:11
VIEWED: 3074
PAGE 1 of 4
A good article - in case you're still not concerned about climate change:
Quote:
Jeffrey D. Sachs
Jeffrey D. Sachs is a professor at Columbia University, Director of its Earth Institute, and a special adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. His work focuses on economic development and international aid, was he was Director of the UN Millennium Project from 2002 to 2006. His books include The End of Poverty and Common Wealth.
NEW YORK – For years, climate scientists have been warning the world that the heavy use of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) threatens the world with human-induced climate change. The rising atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, would warm the planet and change rainfall and storm patterns and raise sea levels. Now those changes are hitting in every direction, even as powerful corporate lobbies and media propagandists like Rupert Murdoch try to deny the truth.
In recent weeks, the United States has entered its worst drought in modern times. The Midwest and the Plains states, the country’s breadbasket, are baking under a massive heat wave, with more than half of the country under a drought emergency and little relief in sight.
Halfway around the world, Beijing has been hit by the worst rains on record, with floods killing many people. Japan is similarly facing record-breaking torrential rains. Two of Africa's impoverished drylands – the Horn of Africa in the East and the Sahel in the West – have experienced devastating droughts and famines in the past two years: the rains never came, causing many thousands to perish, while millions face life-threatening hunger.
Scientists have given a name to our era, the Anthropocene, a term built on ancient Greek roots to mean “the Human-dominated epoch” – a new period of earth’s history in which humanity has become the cause of global-scale environmental change. Humanity affects not only the earth’s climate, but also ocean chemistry, the land and marine habitats of millions of species, the quality of air and water, and the cycles of water, nitrogen, phosphorus, and other essential components that underpin life on the planet.
For many years, the risk of climate change was widely regarded as something far in the future, a risk perhaps facing our children or their children. That threat would, of course, have been reason enough to act. Yet now we understand better that climate change is also about us, today’s generation.
We have already entered a new and very dangerous era. If you are a young person, climate change and other human-caused environmental hazards will be major factors in your life.
Scientists emphasize the difference between climate and weather. The climate is the overall pattern of temperature and rainfall in a given place. The weather is the temperature and rainfall in that place at a particular time. As the old quip puts it: “Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get.”
When the temperature is especially high, or rains are especially heavy or light, scientists try to assess whether the unusual conditions are the result of long-term climate change or simply reflect expected variability. So, is the current US heat wave (making this the hottest year on record), the intense Beijing flooding, or the severe Sahel drought a case of random bad weather, or merely the result of long-term, human-induced climate change?
For a long time, scientists could not answer such a question precisely. They were unsure whether a particular weather disaster could be attributed to human causes, rather than to natural variation. They could not even be sure that they could detect whether a particular event (such as a heavy rainfall or a drought) was so extreme as to lie outside the normal range.
In recent years, however, a new climate science of “detection and attribution” has made huge advances, both conceptually and empirically. Detection means determining whether an extreme event is part of usual weather fluctuations or a symptom of deeper, long-term chanNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
KPO, I guarantee they will not read it.
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Why read it?
I already saw that movie with Charlie Sheen and Ron Silver about it.
Since then, Charlie has paid as much as 40ka night on hotels to regularly bed a woman I'd kill to be with and Ron Silver has died.
The times, they are a-changing!
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." ~Shepherd Book
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NIKI< people generally do not change their beliefs and habits until they are forced to change by circumstance. The obese person doesn't lose weight until a heart-attack scare, the heavy drinker doesn't stop drinking until he/she winds up attempting suicide, and the energy-guzzlers don't stop guzzling... and don't try to even understand WHY they are guzzling... until they have to pay a price.
Now, if people were to think proactively, they might see that our energy wastage is based on a number of false assumptions; that our energy use can be cut in half and still maintain a high standard of living. They might also see that changing policy to achieve that goal would require cutting across the bow of a number of powers-that-be, including the military, which would lose its relevance if it was not mucking about in the mideast protecting "our" oil.
Change is scary, and messing up the plans of the rich and powerful is even scarier.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
NIKI< people generally do not change their beliefs and habits until they are forced to change by circumstance. The obese person doesn't lose weight until a heart-attack scare, the heavy drinker doesn't stop drinking until he/she winds up attempting suicide, and the energy-guzzlers don't stop guzzling... and don't try to even understand WHY they are guzzling... until they have to pay a price.
Now, if people were to think proactively, they might see that our energy wastage is based on a number of false assumptions; that our energy use can be cut in half and still maintain a high standard of living. They might also see that changing policy to achieve that goal would require cutting across the bow of a number of powers-that-be, including the military, which would lose its relevance if it was not mucking about in the mideast protecting "our" oil.
Change is scary, and messing up the plans of the rich and powerful is even scarier.
Exactly... and that's why you all hate the rich.
Even though they're only 1% and shouldn't be counted lol....
If the other 99% were doing as bad as you were, then everyone would LOVE MOTHER NATURE, right?
Maybe you're just worse off than most of the 99% since you're the 1 in 1,000,000 bitching, right????
You're surely in the minority of people who give two shits to change anything.......
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." ~Shepherd Book
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Quote:Still drunk, still miserable I see. How far do you think we would have gotten had the Founding Fathers decided against change?
You're surely in the minority of people who give two shits to change anything..
Lay off the sauce, Jack.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Still drunk, still miserable I see. How far do you think we would have gotten had the Founding Fathers decided against change?
You're surely in the minority of people who give two shits to change anything..
Lay off the sauce, Jack.
I guess because I don't join in the Lefty orgy against the rich I'm depressed and drunk and miserable....
Did it ever occur to you Signy, that it's been about 5 days since I've posted here?
Further than that, did it ever occur to you that Jack might just be sober?
It's sure as hell been several fortnights since I've said a needless derogatory word against a female, let alone a male.
I don't remember DC making it a point in his book in the 30's but if he wrote it today I'm guessing he would have told people to stop drinking so much if they wanted friends.
Touche.....
Fair enough, that you would use my own self admitted faults against me....
But i only plan to be here once and a while....
I'm getting off the sauce.
Funny how it seems to my pshycatrist that the darkest people I know are in the RWED, on either side.
I'll do Her a favor and never introduce any of you to Her.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." ~Shepherd Book
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Sig, essentially what I was referring to. I agree with everything you said, and as you can see, there is a perfect example right here. Hence my snark that the deniers wouldn't bother to read what KPO put up. Sadly...
Just like the fracking/earthquake connection I put up; trying to open the eyes of those determined to stay blind is a waste of time. I put this kind of stuff up for those of us who don't choose to be blind, and assume KPO did the same.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Niki2:
Sig, essentially what I was referring to. I agree with everything you said, and as you can see, there is a perfect example right here. Hence my snark that the deniers wouldn't bother to read what KPO put up. Sadly...
Just like the fracking/earthquake connection I put up; trying to open the eyes of those determined to stay blind is a waste of time. I put this kind of stuff up for those of us who don't choose to be blind, and assume KPO did the same.
In the end, whatever you and KPO and Signy put up, is just as futile as any of us who loved Firefly and wanted it to continue....
Truth hurts, I know....
All we got was a shitty movie that wrapped up 3 to 5 seasons in a pretty Hollywood bow that Joss probably pukes on.
Trilogy my ass.... unless Inara is 80 some day and recounting her years on Serenity like it was that old bitch with the jewel on The Titanic.....
Even Inara will tell you today she's too old...
I know that sucks for women, especially the women that were already too old the first time around, but it is what it is....
I know things aren't as awesome for me as they were in my mid twenties either. Maybe they would be if I admitted to everyone I knew in "real" life that I had no bills and a house, but that's the last way I want to meet a girl.....
Don't try to change their minds Signy
Part of me wants to go there now....
I could make a fortune and keep it all to myself rather than run it up with tabs on the new-age whores in the area (seriously... with that much money, don't you think we could make an awesome narrative to a follow-up to Deadwood in this situation with our creativity?)
Tupac has been my compass for years...
MOB!
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." ~Shepherd Book
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