Our World and Everything in It

I just got through reading some current worldwide environmental news and have to say, we don’t seem to have a clear-cut view of anything. What we profess, what we say, and what we actually do is all contrary.  First, I saw the Pope give his blessing and speak on behalf of peace and the environment over the Christmas season to over one billion Catholics. And the World Council of Churches that represents 560 million Christians worldwide is calling concerns over global warming a matter of faith. The WCC has had a program about climate change since 1992 and books about ecotheology (I’m interested).  Dr. Samuel Kobia the Secy. General of the WCC stipulates that Christians are well aware that dominion over all living things was given to us. He said that meant, “We were entrusted with the care of the rest of God’s creation.” The emphasis is on the word “CARE” here.

Care doesn’t come under savagely taking a machete to an orangutan trying to defend it’s young, or hooking a live dolphin in the side and sending it to be stripped of skin before it’s even dead, while the resulting meat is basically poison from ingesting too many pollutants, or shooting 6 elephants dead for stepping into a coffee field that is supposed to be their sanctuary. We should actively try to get this stopped, but our demands for things like lumber and coffee encourage it.  Oh and don’t forget about native animals and the latest Internet hunting websites that have yet to be banned in over 20 states.

Now we’re finally getting solid documentation that man is indeed having a great impact on the environment. The NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, found that humans caused nearly ½ of the bad weather we experienced last year. This is not a U.N. conspiracy like some like to call environmentalism. This is that voice on the weather band on your car audio: “This is NOAA weather and hazard” at least that’s what it sounds like. This is our national weather service that did the study spanning 1998 to 2006.

The NOAA ran 42 different tests using data of weather conditions relative to human activity and El Nino’s. The article I read on MSN went into detail how they did it, why it took awhile, and the not so surprising results. At least a growing majority of us are seeing and believing. It’s a pretty good weather page from MSN.

Look at some of the weather reports on there for just this past week:

A cyclone hit the coast of Bangladesh with winds up to 155 mph.  At least 425 people were killed, 1000 fishermen, and hundreds more are unaccounted for. The summer floods there just killed 1000 people.

Vietnam flooded last weekend. 100,000 people have no food. They lost it all, 190,000 houses are submerged. The flooding has been going on for a month with over 250 dead.

A major 7.7 earthquake in Chile “crushed cars, damaged thousands of houses, blocked roads and terrified people for hundreds of miles around Wednesday. Chilean authorities reported at least two deaths and more than 150 injuries.

The quake, which struck at 12:40 p.m., shook the Chilean capital 780 miles to the south of the epicenter, and was felt as far away as the other side of the continent — in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1,400 miles to the east.”

The next day the northern part of Chile was hit with huge aftershocks of 6.2 and 6.8 injuring about 100 people and killing 2.

Atlanta’s out of water.

This is a wake up call. The longer we wait for policy, the more it’s not going to be pretty. On the NOAA weather site they have listed the major catastrophic weather events going back to 1990. I did the same about 2 years ago, and wouldn’t have now that I see how nicely they’ve compiled it!  I went back to 1990 and printed a list of all catastrophic events per page for each year to 2001. 1990 barely filled a quarter of a page. 2001 was 2 ½ pages printed no double spacing. I don’t think I used NOAA, but another International Weather Service that had the events by year but not in a neat little list.

Check out the NOAA website yourself and scan the climate events. There are many recently and as you scan down to 1990 it dwindles to about 2 or 3 events. That’s a scannable eye opener. Every line scanned represents a catastrophe somewhere in the world where someone died.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20481186/wid/18298287/.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/hazards/index.php.
 

This should be pretty good. I watched the one on the Science Channel. It answered quite a few of the questions I’ve heard floating around and showcased some of America’s most energy efficient cities like New York. I will be blogging about that soon.

 CNN appears to be more accessible to the general public than the Science Channel but I still think that every major network should keep the environment in our faces until we realize duh, it sustains us, we should take better care of it than stripping it bare of everything and leaving a trail of pollution.

You know I’m amazed at people that don’t believe man has any hand in global warming. Especially since my house sits in a jet zone. Oh I don’t mean I can hear my house shake when they take off. They are pretty high up there. When I look up, they look to be about inch in size. No one let homeowners know where the flight patterns were going to be when they enlarged Detroit Metro. I got lucky and now the sky above me is full of planes coming and going. I’m listening to one right now. It’s loud because it’s flying lower. I’ve turned down the TV before to see if it’s thunder or a plane.  With all these planes criss-crossing in the sky but doing so way, way up there, most people wouldn’t notice any problem. But just last weekend my husband closed our pool and in 2 short days time without a solar cover on that pool, we could see a gas slick on the surface of the water. We left it off for a week once before and a stain appeared at the bottom. 

I don’t need someone telling me man has created a big pollution problem due to fossil fuel use. I can see it! Out of curiosity I went rummaging around the internet to see just how much jet fuel falls on me everyday and found an article that jet fuel additive is in our food supply. Not a surprise to me. Fuel in my pool, fuel in the protected wetlands marsh behind my house. So it follows it’s in the groundwater, our drinking water, and our food supply. Our population has had 100% exposure to a jet fuel contaminant called perchlorate. The article went on to say: “The shocking thing is that it appears to be very widespread in the food supply. No one knows for sure, because the FDA has not done the studies they need to do to document its complete presence in the food supply.” Gee, I wonder why?

 This is just another way to keep under wraps the real pollution that’s taking place right under our noses in favor of the fossil fuel industry. For more about Jet Fuel Additive you probably ate tonight read: http://www.ewg.org/node/21582.

The “Galloping Glacier” in Greenland has receded 9 miles in the past 5 years. The water produced in one day from this glacier melt equals what N.Y. uses in one year. This could mean that Boston, Galveston, and Seattle will be under water by mid–decade. Anyone notice these predictions keep moving closer and closer? 

This isn’t a pretty picture. Michigan should start looking at environmental issues a little closer, a little faster. Indiana has some sweet deals going with one of the nation’s largest bio-diesel plants and 2 more to follow, plus 6 ethanol plants to be built. This looks like a lot of jobs for Indiana. So what about Michigan? We’re still courting big polluters as everything appears to be stagnating. It’s one thing to save jobs but a decent economy also requires getting more jobs, like Indiana!

Read more about Indiana’s new bio-diesel plants:  http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/03/one_of_largest_.html.  

The BBC announced this morning that a large protest by environmentalists would take place this weekend over Heathrow Airport’s plans to expand. Are you kidding me? They are that aware of the environmental problems jet fuel poses that they are organizing protests? Finally, someone has the foresight to see an environmental problem ahead of time and the stamina to start doing something about it right away. The protesters said “Holding the camp at Heathrow aims to highlight the lunacy of the government’s airport expansion plans,” says a statement from campaigners,” according to the BBC. What’s wrong with the lunacy in America?
 
While they are setting up camps to thwart efforts to expand Heathrow because that will mean more jet fuel released into the atmosphere exacerbating the CO2 problem, which aggravates global warming, Michigan is seeing to a massive expansion right here at Metro airport. Instead of protestors, we have people rubbing their palms together. Just like the so so response I got on the Monroe talks blog about BP’s dumping more sludge and ammonia into Lake Michigan. Someone responded that it’s all right, the EPA signed off on it. EPA in this administration? Right. The idea that it creates more jobs (80), and oil for us overrode any environmental problems it produced.
 
And finally what do you think the protestors would think about our Dream Cruise where hundreds of cars from across the country will show up here to dump a big load of CO2 in the air over Michigan in just one weekend? Oh, but it brings income into the state and is so much fun. Money is the name of the game. I hope people learn to eat and drink money when there is no fresh water, or decent food to eat. Without irrigation in the ever-increasing intense heat, we will not be able to grow anything, including corn for ethanol. 39 people have died in the south so far because of scorching heat.
 
As always, Americans have their heads buried in the sand about our environmental gaffs in lieu of money, always money. I blame this administration for the spin they’ve put on an ever increasing and obvious weather problem. This administration has done more evil by altering reports about everything including the war than anything else. What they’ve done is create doubt. And as the earth’s weather gets more and more erratic, the doubters cling to the validity altered government reports. I think feeding the public lies about climate change is a crime against humanity.  A 4.6 earthquake in Hawaii, and 7.9 earthquake in Peru, with over 590 dead so far and thousands injured, and now this morning a 6.2 earthquake in Indonesia again. The satellite view of hurricanes show spinning masses everywhere in the oceans. There is a searing heat wave hovering across many states, and massive fires across our country. But all is well. Our government said so.
 
Many people do not see the correlation between earth quakes and global warming but doesn’t it stand to reason if excess pressure builds up on the earth’s surface due to an unusually heavy atmosphere from CO2, there will be consequences beneath that surface? Peru’s earthquake was 25 miles deep! Some thing is going on. The protestors in England have my admiration; unlike the response I get here about environmental problems in a country that is supposed to have the best of everything but the truth.
 
Michigan has a law in effect against outdoor burning right now as we proceed ahead with an airport expansion and the Dream Cruise. More CO2, more global warming and more fires. 18,000 acres burned in the UP and the fire is only 62% under control.  Is this irony at it’s finest? We’re just not getting it.
 
 
 
 

I  had to jump in here and be a wise guy. Of course no one is interested in a smoking ban. Monroe has a nuclear power plant, a coal burner, and trash dump. Why worry the small potatoes?  We’re being killed off in small increments by more insidious forms of pollution.  No one seems to care as long as our car starts, our house is warm, our tv works, and we eat.

Blowing smoke on someone is a smaller version of blowing our CO2 on everyone else in the world. If second had smoke is irritating, imagine what the rest of the world feels about our CO2? We have a bad attitude. It probably won’t change until the lakes dry up or as some would believe, pigs fly.

Today is the first time a global warming case has reached the Supreme Court. They will begin hearings based on testimony of 12 states that are asking the court to force the U.S. government to order its environmental agencies to control CO2 emissions from vehicles under the Clean Air Act.  Michigan is among 8 of the 12 states that support the EPA.

But do we really trust the EPA? It was originally established to be independent of government, focusing on public health and its relation to the environment. We all know any business or agency’s ethics and motives are only as good as the people governing them. Also, there are other governmental agencies that have an impact on the EPA. The White House Council for Environmental Quality, formerly headed by Phillip A. Cooney is one of them. Cooney was caught editing important data from scientific reports for quite awhile as well as pressuring the EPA to go along, so much so, that in 2002 the EPA removed an entire section on global warming from its annual report about air pollution. In 2003 it published an extensive report of the environment with no information whatsoever about global warming. Cooney came to his position at the council as a lawyer and former lobbyist  for the American Petroleum Institute.  He has no scientific background to make any alterations of scientific data. You might say throw the bum out, but he has already left the position and now works for Exxon Mobil.

James Hansen, a climatology expert from a NASA Space Study, was pressured by his superiors after giving a presentation about human related climate change. He was told it was still an uncertain topic by his administrator. He reported that in 30 years he never witnessed as much White House involvement and filtering of information from science to the public.

The State Department pressured an international panel of representatives known as the Artic Council to alter their report on global warming. The final draft withheld recommendations for policy to reduce green house gas emissions in order to stop its horrible impact on the Artic. The State Department was also successful in ousting Dr. Robert Watson who chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 1996. During his time the IPCC produced a report that predicted an increase of 2.5 to 10.5 F in avg. global warming by 2100 with new evidence it was due to human activities. Exxon Mobil opposed the proposed regulation of CO2 and wanted Watson out. The State Department complied. Dr. Watson lost the support of the U.S. and his position as chair.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service developed a brochure on ways to curb agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. They managed to send the first printing but the White House’s Council of Environmental Quality objected to it and a reprint was canceled. 

As I stated in a previous blog, many Americans are wondering how our environment got so bad, so fast. Well this White House accomplished what they set out to do. Appointments to key environmental positions throughout the administration were filled by people that were once employed by the tobacco industry, and are now busom buddies with the petroleum industry. By altering scientific facts, they’ve attempted and succeeded in concealing from and confusing the public about the ever-increasing effects of global warming due to CO2 emissions. The biggest culprits of CO2 emissions are jet airliners, automobiles, refineries and coal burning facilities.  I watched a CBC segment by The Fifth Estate called “The Denial Machine.”  Phil Klapp cornered Jeffrey Holmstead, EPA Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation about altering scientific documents. Klapp had in his hand documents with visible alterations. As he read the changes, it was clearly understood they were meant to dilute the message of the reports. We weren’t just duped about the war folks. We’ve been lied to about the state of our world. And now the race is on to clean it up. It can be done and hopefully the U.S. will emerge as a model in that endeavor. It will take each and every one of us to do our part.  

     There are all types of casualties we endure on a daily basis especially during times of war. Losing someone or something precious can happen moment to moment. And although our lives are upset to the point we don’t think we’ll recover, we do. I just wonder how many people realize the biggest casualty of all is happening in small increments every day that none of us will recover from if we don’t turn it around.

Our environment is taking hit after hit, and many of us still do not know that when it’s stated we have 10 years to do something, it does not mean we have ten years before we start doing something. It means if we do not start today toward reversing global warming by controlling our pollution it will be irreversible within 10 years. It’s a good idea to control pollution to begin with. By all the water bottles I see these days, I realize that everyone does get the idea that maybe our water isn’t all that clean, and probably our air.  What I also see by those same water bottles is that we really aren’t getting it at all. Where do you think those plastic bottles go? If your community recycles that’s great. If you recycle on your own, then bless you, but unfortunately only 70% of all our garbage is recycled. Those bottles end up in landfills of which there are approximately 6000 in the U.S.  Plastic takes around 500 years to decompose. Do we love our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren? Then what are we doing?

The intent of this news blog is to be in your face about our world because we’re all in this together, and if you or my other neighbors don’t jump in and help, the experience of living won’t be what we once knew. Right now it is what it is “An Inconvenient Truth” as Al Gore aptly named it. Many of our little conveniences in life may have to be abandoned to save our earth, save ourselves. It’s a rude awakening, but the sooner we snap out of it, the sooner we turn it around. No more burying our heads in the sand or waiting for “they or them” to do something. They or them is us, all of us.

Anyone who has any questions about anything environmental feel free to blog. If you know something you don’t think the rest of us are aware of blog it. If you don’t quite believe in global warming yet let us know why. Anyone who has already adapted his or her lifestyle differently to save on anything let us know how, so we might adapt. One idea becomes a ripple that becomes a wave and the whole community benefits.

None of us are perfect angels about the environment. I still drive a gas hog, although I’m looking at all hybrids and beseeching Ford to revive the cobra body style with an electric/ethanol motor. I’m a baby boomer that wants a hybrid sports car. Any baby boomers out there want to weigh in on that? Doesn’t an environmentally friendly sports car sound good? My tip to any other gas hog drivers out there, consolidate your running around. I’m down to 2 days per week. Group up and ride to work together. Quit running your kids around and enjoy family nights. Quitting our rat race can help the environment.