Global Warming Perils

[Doug]

Global Warming Experts Say Mountain Glaciers in Equatorial Africa Expected to Disappear
05-15-2006 1:27 PM

WASHINGTON -- Mountain glaciers in equatorial Africa are on their way to disappearing within two decades, a team of British researchers reports.

Located in the Rwenzori Mountains on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the glaciers will be gone within 20 years if current warming continues, the researchers report in this week's online edition of Geophysical Research Letters.

...Also known as the Mountains of the Moon, the glaciers on Rwenzori were first reported to Europeans by the ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy, who said the Nile was supplied by snowcapped mountains at the equator in Africa.

Read the rest here.

[Doug]

Group: Global Warming Threatens Millions
By Associated Press

May 14, 2006, 8:27 PM EDT

LONDON -- Millions of people around the world face death and devastation due to floods, famine, drought and violence caused by global warming, according to a report by a charity group.

A report to be released Monday by Christian Aid said 162 million people in sub-Saharan Africa alone could die of disease directly attributable to global warming by the end of the century...

In Bangladesh, it said, a predicted rise in sea levels could leave millions displaced and dispossessed. Already families in some areas must move every couple of years, as increased melt water from the Himalayan glaciers sweeps their land and fragile livelihoods away, the report said.

Read the rest here.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

If we cut fossil fuel-generated CO2 in half starting tomorrow, it wouldn't save the glaciers - the time lag between cause and effect is too long. If they really are the source of the Nile, it's going be more than just sub-Saharan Africa that will be dying off. Oil wars are bad enough, but wait til the water wars start (again)!

[Dardedar]

DAR
Gore on global warming and his new movie. Notice his answer to the last question. The rather obvious motivations of Bush and the deniers....

***

"At Some Point, Reality Has Its Day"
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek

Friday 28 April 2006

Al Gore on why America - and even George Bush - is close to a tipping point on global warming.

Al Gore has launched his new campaign-this one to battle the effects of global warming. At its center is a new film, "An Inconvenient Truth," which stars Gore and has been winning surprisingly positive press. It opens May 24. The former vice president, who has abandoned a relatively low profile to promote the movie, spoke to Eleanor Clift about the environment, technology and politics in America. Excerpts:

Newsweek: They say timing is everything. Has the moment arrived for this issue?

Al Gore: I hope it has. I hope that we are close to a tipping point beyond which the country will begin to face this very seriously and the majority of politicians in both parties will begin to compete by offering meaningful solutions. We're nowhere close to that yet, but a tipping point by definition is a time of very rapid change-and I think that the potential for this change has been building up, with the evangelical ministers speaking out, General Electric and Republican CEOs saying we have to address it, grass-roots organizations-all of these things are happening at the same time because through various means people are seeing a new reality. The relationship between our civilization and the earth has been radically transformed. Global warming is by far the most serious manifestation of the collision-and Mother Nature is making the evidence ever more obvious. Scientific studies have been coming out right and left over the last several years that connect various parts of the overall picture to the whole. And by whatever means, a lot of people have been absorbing this message, and they're now saying, "Wait a minute, we really have to do something about this."

Where did you get your initial interest in this?

AG: When I was an undergraduate I was privileged to sign up for a course offered by the first person to measure CO2 in the earth's atmosphere. He was a visionary, and he saw that the postwar economic boom powered by coal and oil was beginning to radically change the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere-and he knew atmospheric chemistry, and he knew what it would do to outgoing infrared radiation. So he started this historic set of measurements out in the middle of the Pacific. He shared his measurements with my undergraduate class, and he explained what it meant and sketched the future implications in such a compelling way that it was different from other experiences I had in college. I kept in touch with him, and later when I was elected to Congress-10 years later, or less-I helped organize the first hearings on this issue and had him as the lead-off witness. And that began a long series of hearings in the House and in the Senate, which led to a book and then, as vice president, to Kyoto and other measures. All along that journey I have watched those measurements continue to come in, and what my professor pointed to almost 40 years ago has come true.

How did this become a movie?

AG: After I left the White House in January 2001, I once again started giving a slide show on global warming on a regular basis. The first time I took the slides out of storage and held them up to the light and combined them into one carousel, went down to Middle Tennessee State University to give my slide show, and they were all backward. It was a very awkward and embarrassing moment, and I went back home to Nashville and Tipper said, "I knew I should have put those in for you." And then she said, "By the way, Mr. Information Super Highway, we have computers now and you should put them on your computer." Once I did that, it began to get a lot easier to update and improve-it got to the point where it was much better and more compelling. And at that point, I started to give it a lot more frequently-several times a week. At one of the showings in Los Angeles several people from the entertainment industry came up afterward and talked to me, and said, "Would you consider making this into a movie?" I was skeptical about that. I couldn't see how a slide show could be a movie, but they set up a follow-up meeting and persisted, and they satisfied my concerns that the science would be in the foreground and that it would be true to the integrity of the message, and they have done a fantastic job. The result I think-it's surprising to me-is a very entertaining and compelling movie that does preserve the central elements of the slide show.

And you inject some humor into your presentation.

AG: It's hard to believe-I benefit from low expectations.

I was surprised to hear that as vice president you went to China and gave the slide show. Why didn't we hear about it until now?

AG: The visit to China that's documented in the movie, that's later. But I did give a full presentation in the Great Hall of the People in China when I was vice president. A lot of the speeches and events and messages on global warming were not seen as being on the A list of issues to be covered by the news media. So a lot of what I tried to do to get more attention to it seemed as if it didn't take place because it didn't make it through that filter. But in any case, I think that's changing now-I think that people are tuned into it now. I hope that continues.

What do you hope to accomplish with this film?

AG: It's not just the film: I have a book coming out June 2 that is also titled "An Inconvenient Truth." At the end of the summer I'll start a training program to show others how to give my slide show. And what I hope to accomplish with all of the above is to help move the United States of America past a tipping point beyond which the political dialogue is completely different, and that both parties are competing to really solve this crisis. You know in England now that's already happened. Both parties are competing to be the most imaginative and creative and effective on this issue, and it's healthy. And this shouldn't be a partisan issue. It should be lifted above partisanship because it's a question of survival. It's a moral issue.

What do you say to President Bush and others who still suggest we need more study?

AG: Well, the title "An Inconvenient Truth" is a way of highlighting the reasons why some people, including the president, don't seem to accept the truth. It's inconvenient. This administration, as has been abundantly documented, is quite responsive to the oil and coal industry and, by the way, to the least responsible companies within those industries. And they do not want anything done on global warming.

Because it would cut into their profits?

AG: I think there are three reasons. One is they genuinely believed that in the past there has been hyperbole used to stampede the Congress or the people to adopt some measure that later turned out to be excessive-they fear that might be happening again-so there's a reflexive us and them. I'm trying to give them credit.

Secondly, though, I think that it's an example of the Upton Sinclair quote that "It's hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding." The behavior of ExxonMobil is disgraceful. They finance in whole or in part 40 organizations that put out disinformation on global warming designed to confuse the American people. There has emerged in the last couple of decades a lobbying strategy that is based on trying to control perceptions. In some sense it's not new, but it's new in the sophistication and the amount of resources they devote to it. It's not new in the sense it's the same thing the tobacco industry did after the surgeon general's report of 1964, and that is a major part of the reason why the Bush administration doesn't do anything. The president put their chief guy in charge of environmental policy in the White House.

The third reason is that some of the ideological conservatives believe that if global warming is a) real and b) as bad as the scientists are telling us-and we're responsible for it and we have to fix it-they worry that will mean government has to play a larger role in some way shape or form, and they want to prevent that no matter what.

But you know the temptation to reject the truth and try to manufacture your own reality is what got us into Iraq-it's what got us into these deficits. At some point, reality has its day. I hope they'll change. I think there is a chance they'll change. You know Winston Churchill once said that the American people generally do the right thing after first exhausting every other alternative. And maybe after exhausting every other alternative, Bush will do the right thing on this. I'm not going to hold my breath, but I do think that there's a chance. And after all, as I said last night, if the scientists turn out to be right and we only have 10 years, we can't give up two and a half years out of 10 to wait for this guy to accept reality. You know there are 218 U.S. cities that have adopted Kyoto on their own, a lot of grass-roots initiatives that are very impressive, and all that's going to continue. I'm not Pollyannish about it, but I'm optimistic.

[...]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042906A.shtml
.
.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Winston Churchill was a very irritating person in many respects - and one of the most irritating was how well he knew the American people as a whole. In the past, while the outcome wasn't as good as it would have been had we done the right thing first, instead of waiting until we'd exhausted all other possibilities, there was a good outcome. I don't know if we have enough time to exhaust all other possibilities before doing the right thing as far as global warming is concerned. Still, I've requested Gore's book at the library and will see what he has to say about how long we have and what he thinks we need to do (and see how well it coincides with my other sources of same).

[Hogeye]

The three reasons for skepticism Gore gives are (paraphrased):

1) Environmental alarmists have cried "wolf" so many times in the past.

2) Fossil fuel firms don't want competition.

3) Massive regulation and govt spending is bad for freedom, and "solutions" offered so far tend to be quite authoritarian.

While #2 is a special interest, 1 and 3 should be of concern to most everyone.


Hey, I learned something the other day when I was studying up of ethanol. Did you know that the most cutting edge ethanol production firm in the world is BRI Energy headquartered in Fayetteville, Arkansas? They developed some critters that eat carbon monoxide and shit ethanol!!!

• BRI Energy is proud to introduce the world's most efficient, renewable energy technology for the co-production of ethanol and electricity (green power) from organic wastes.
• The BRI Process is a clean and economically viable technology that converts any carbonaceous materials into fuel and other by-products.
• The environmentally-sensitive BRI Process decomposes organic materials through an enclosed thermal gasification step that does not create air emissions. It can also produce electricity without combustion. 
• The BRI Process is fast and odorless. The power to operate a BRI plant is generated internally from the plant's waste heat.

BRI Energy

Maybe we should get Dr. James L. Gaddy to speak at FayFreethinkers.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

As of May 1, 2006, BRI was seeking gummint funding (actually loan guarantees for up to $300 million, really more like insurance) to build 2 plants to actually start doing this - currently it's still in the "experimental" or "test" mode, rather than actually production.

Dr. Gaddy is UofA Emeritus & (I think) did much of the original work at Engineering South, before forming BRI. Hurrah for the combination of individual creativity (1% inspiration 99% perspiration) and government facilities for R&D. Hopefully the Senate gave the OK (after BRI pres did his presentation) for loan guarantees so they can get this up and running.

This process solves a whole lot of problems - it turns highly polluting waste products, like chicken litter and sewer sludge, into ethanol and electricity (no more law suits from OK for polluting the Illinois River, for example), which is even more efficient than putting natural gas power plants on closed landfills to generate electricity from leeched methane. And it does it with almost no emissions, no net carbon increase, and at a 60% or better energy out over energy in ratio. In fact, the major complaint out there seems to be that cars and distribution will have to be modified to use high ethanol mixes (or even pure ethanol) - which I see as a plus, at least at first, since it means American jobs (and there's a bill before Congress right now to move some subsidy money from Big Oil to the auto industry to do just that). At best estimates, and once the process is in full operation across the country, American could generate up to 20% vehicular fuel (presupposing constant use of vehicular fuel) and 40% electricity from biomass this way. Combine it with solar and wind generation for electricity, "green" architecture and appliances, and EVs and we're no longer dependent on any oil, much less foreign oil - although petroleum and other fossil fuels will probably be a part of the energy mix - a much smaller part of the energy mix - for at least another century. Of course, at that much reduced usage, they may be a part of the energy mix for several centuries.

Now here's something Hogeye and I can agree on - this is a go!

[Hogeye]

When the government sticks its thumb in so many pies, it's bound to get one right sooner or later. After making USAmericans dependent on automobiles and fossil fuels, subsidizing gas with foreign wars, subsidizing inefficient corn-based ethanol, and so on, the politically based decision-making process stumbled upon BRI's brilliant syngas fermentation process. Can it compete with govt subsidized gasoline and special favors to corn farmers? We'll see. Of course, it would have a better chance in a free market, without government interference and manipulation. Is it a good thing that BRI is already getting dependent on government largesse rather than private investment? Definitely not. They are apparently not selling stock publicly. Too bad. I want some.