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Healing Inch by Inch?
Submitted by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse.
Earlier today I watched the movie Any Given Sunday with Al Pacino. I've seen it before and love it because I use to play football in high school.
It was the summer of '87 when my high school football coach called me to tell me he needed me on the team as an offensive lineman. I was short relative to the others on the line, but was strong and fearless. I was so happy and honored he called me to be part of the team.
My job on the offensive line was simple. Protect the QB at all times and run a sweep play where I took out the defensive end to clear the path for my running back. We must have run that play hundreds of times and I remember that as painful as it got on my body, I loved the game and the team spirit.
Football was a big deal during my high school years. It still is as the Notre-Dame Cactus were crowned champions last November. One memory that stands out in my mind is a whopping victory we had over Lindsay Place high school.
I can't forget it because we annihilated them and acted cocky throughout the whole game. Our coach, Jacques Gauthier, wasn't pleased with our unsportsmanlike attitudes. The day after, he brought us to the University of Montreal field, which unlike our field was hard AstroTurf, and made us sprint the full length of the field about 40 or more times. It was cold and raining that night.
And boy did we sprint. When everyone started collapsing, puking, sucking up air, the coach whistled us in for a huddle. "The next time you guys want to act like arrogant jerks, remember this practice because I won't be as easy on you". Needless to say, we won lots of games, lost the championship, but never acted like arrogant idiots ever again.
The last time I saw my high school football coach was a few years after I got diagnosed with MS. He was fighting his own battle with cancer and we chatted about life. He died a few years later but I'll never forget what he told me, no matter how hard it gets, you keep moving forward. He was a great coach and a great man.
I don't know why I'm sharing this story but just like football, life is a game of inches. As world leaders get ready to meet in Copenhagen this week, it's unbelievable how much skewed coverage 'Climategate' is receiving.
I happen to agree with Tom Friedman who recently wrote this in an op-ed column, Going Cheney on Climate:
Frankly, I found it very disappointing to read a leading climate scientist writing that he used a “trick” to “hide” a putative decline in temperatures or was keeping contradictory research from getting a proper hearing. Yes, the climate-denier community, funded by big oil, has published all sorts of bogus science for years — and the world never made a fuss. That, though, is no excuse for serious climatologists not adhering to the highest scientific standards at all times.
That said, be serious: The evidence that our planet, since the Industrial Revolution, has been on a broad warming trend outside the normal variation patterns — with periodic micro-cooling phases — has been documented by a variety of independent research centers.
As this paper just reported: “Despite recent fluctuations in global temperature year to year, which fueled claims of global cooling, a sustained global warming trend shows no signs of ending, according to new analysis by the World Meteorological Organization made public on Tuesday. The decade of the 2000s is very likely the warmest decade in the modern record.”
This is not complicated. We know that our planet is enveloped in a blanket of greenhouse gases that keep the Earth at a comfortable temperature. As we pump more carbon-dioxide and other greenhouse gases into that blanket from cars, buildings, agriculture, forests and industry, more heat gets trapped.
What we don’t know, because the climate system is so complex, is what other factors might over time compensate for that man-driven warming, or how rapidly temperatures might rise, melt more ice and raise sea levels. It’s all a game of odds. We’ve never been here before. We just know two things: one, the CO2 we put into the atmosphere stays there for many years, so it is “irreversible” in real-time (barring some feat of geo-engineering); and two, that CO2 buildup has the potential to unleash “catastrophic” warming.
When I see a problem that has even a 1 percent probability of occurring and is “irreversible” and potentially “catastrophic,” I buy insurance. That is what taking climate change seriously is all about.
If we prepare for climate change by building a clean-power economy, but climate change turns out to be a hoax, what would be the result? Well, during a transition period, we would have higher energy prices. But gradually we would be driving battery-powered electric cars and powering more and more of our homes and factories with wind, solar, nuclear and second-generation biofuels. We would be much less dependent on oil dictators who have drawn a bull’s-eye on our backs; our trade deficit would improve; the dollar would strengthen; and the air we breathe would be cleaner. In short, as a country, we would be stronger, more innovative and more energy independent.
But if we don’t prepare, and climate change turns out to be real, life on this planet could become a living hell. And that’s why I’m for doing the Cheney-thing on climate — preparing for 1 percent.
Friedman reiterated this message with CNN's Campbell Brown, drawing an interesting connection between climate crisis and the financial crisis:
They are both based on the same faulty accounting. What we call the great recession has actually been an environmental crisis and an economic crisis coming together. How so? In the financial world, we allowed people to massively underprice risk (risk of subprime mortgages), we allowed them to privatize gains from selling those mortgages, then when it all blew up, we allowed them to socialize the losses...We are doing the same in nature. We allow people to massively underprice the risk of emitting carbon molecules, we allow them to privatize the gains from cheap coal and electricity, and we are socializing the losses by charging all those CO2 molecules on our kids' Visa cards which they will pay for in the form of future climate change.
One other thing on the financial crisis caught my attention this weekend. It seems there is a movement to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act. Of course, while this amendment makes perfect sense, the banksters will fight it tooth and nail, effectively killing it before it sees the light of day.
But the inches we need to make a difference in this world are everywhere around us. I urge world leaders, corporate leaders, pension leaders, banking leaders and everyone else to listen to Al Pacino's inspirational speech below and carefully think about doing what's best for the common good. If there was ever a time we needed to band together and forge ahead, now is that time.
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Hey Leo,
Take a look at the CO2 vs. Temperature curve. You will see that carbon is a lagging indicator, by anywhere from ~800-1200 years (it varies a bit). It's easier to recognize if you look at peaks and valleys to see which one leads.
Therefore, the central premise of AWG (in fact all carbon based GW) is false.
The gymnastics that proceed trying to explain this are astounding.
Help Grandma not have to buy a variable annuity ,when all she wants is a CD,and every level from there on up...
Gimme Shelter...MAD Bull has lost its way...
Leo, it was the global global warming crowd that bought insurance by changing their name to climate change. In this way no matter what the climate does they can enact laws, taxes, and other transnational controls on the population.
Just follow the money, that should tell you everything.
the whole co2 story is a fraud. this is the problem. An allegation of dangerous global warming rests on a hypothesis of positive feedback with water vapor. No reason to think this is true, there never was a reason, just propaganda
Leo, are you ZH's village idiot?
I saw a chart back in 1990 that settled it for me. The chart showed solar activity (as measured by sunspots) versus average global temperature. The correlation was almost perfect. While there is always a possibility that correlation does not imply causation, given that we are speaking of Mr. Sun, it was pretty conclusive.
AGW is a hoax.
What, Leo has fallen for th GW scam??? Who would have ever guessed!
It has been talked about that all the planets are warming due to the fact that our solar system will be (is - its a multiyear event) passing through the galactic plane. NASA has data on this although will not release any informat - chief scientist is paid to back globel government. Are you in the inner circle, Leo, getting paid or one of those as Lennin put it; "useful idiots" with aspirations in the new regime. Because an idiot would remove all vestiges of a free society to dogmatically attemp to control a .2% change of CO2 a natural by product and destroy the US industrial base at the same time. Do the environmentalists even attempt to see that there might be a a very diabolical political agenda at work. We have a president that is comittig us to this treaty that has so far refused to produce a long form birth certificate.
Get an idea of the beginnings of this new regime, how its beginnings resemble the rise of the Nazi state in germany in Christopher Moncktons interview:
<http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Broadcast.html>
Sorry Leo, but MEH.
How many things can we apply your "inches" or "1% argument" to.
Lets face it, certain parties have significantly invested in this pop science, and nobody is going to stop this train.
I say, lets not dismiss it, but we do need to go back to the drawing board and do REAL scientific research.
Oh and for the millions this further impoverishes, well they will not thank you either, but who cares given that 1% "possibility", let the elephants further trample the grass, as the swahili saying somewhat goes.
Earth and it’s inhabitants need more, not less, CO2.
More CO2 means:
* More Plant Growth
* Plants need less water
* More food per acre
* More robust habitats and ecosystems
CO2 is Earth’s greatest airborne fertilizer. Without it – No Life On Earth!
LEO;
The moment of truth happened for me. When GE bought Vetco Gray and started scarfing $20 billion dollar deep water contracts in Brazil.................?!?!!!
That's when "I" knew cap and trade was a scam and man made global warming was a fraud.
Google GE Oil and Gas see for yourself!
When GE gets ass deep in Big oil it's time to GTFO of green energy.
T. Boone Pickins dumped green energy a long time ago.
Algore is accumulating big oil as we speak, the gig is up!
Don't be a bag holder!
I HEARTILY AGREE. RAY CHARLES COULD SEE THIS IS THE GLOBAL GOVT./GLOBAL TAX APPARATUS "END GAME"
TELL ME THIS, IF MANKIND IS CAUSING GLOBAL WARMING, WHAT IS CAUSING THE POLAR ICE CAPS ON MARS TO MELT. HINT; THE SUN.
IF MANKIND AND CATTLE FLATULENCE IS CAUSING GLOBAL WARMING, THEN COTTON MUST HAVE CAUSED SLAVERY.
LEO, WAKE UP!!! YOU HAVE BEEN SCAMMED BY THE AL GORE GREEN WEINIE ECO NAZIS. GOLDMAN IS ALSO IN FOR 20% OF THE CARBON CREDIT EXCHANGE. THESE MONEY MONGERS HAVE FOLDED THEIR UMBRELLAS AND ARE SIMPLY WAITING FOR IT TO RAIN, (MORE BILLIONS ON THEM)
Mars is MeltingMars is Melting The south polar ice cap of Mars is receding, revealing frosty mountains, rifts and curious dark spots.
science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/07aug_southpole.htm - Highlight - 1 more top result from this site
I am a climate change sceptic but the referring to scientific articles gravely out of context does extreme damage to the case against human created climate change.
The south polar ice cap is to a large degree made of co2 ice or dry ice that evaporates or precipitates from the martian atmosphere over a given martian year. This is seasonal occurance that has been observed for nearly two centuries.
The mountains that you refer too are not mountains but merely albedo features that have been used since 19th century telescopic observations recorded these features.