What you cant see...

I'm looking up at the clouds and thinking about the problems we can't see. Like the ozone layer and the chlorine molecules that are stealing oxygen molecules as you read this. Unfortunately for our ozone layer, chlorine molecules can withstand UV rays thirty times better than our more important oxygen molecules - thus the Ozone hole.
And then there's climate change... you think you know what the verdict is? yeah right! Expert scientists have been working on the equations for more than five decades and they can give us all but a few noteworthy "scenarios". That's why the newspapers play-up the uncertain aspects so often and why the corporations that still pollute still benefit. We haven't made an informed decision on our own! We won't commit to something drastic if we can't see or feel a tangible negative impact on ourselves. And if the Aral Sea can dry up, like it has within one generation, then the great lakes can become poisoned too and dry up just as quickly if we continue upon our present path of "progress".
Climate change is varied and unpredictable by nature. If anyone tells you that Western Canada, for example, will get nicer and warmer in respect to climate change, they're full of it. When change happens it will happen with regards to local and global weather patterns, occluding the national and municipal denotations of the present inhabitants of the locales. We'll be in for it whether it gets warmer or colder since our species has been accustomed to a climate "norm" for many, many centuries. Ice ages just aren't in our peoples myths and strategies for dealing with the future.
I shouldn't say that they aren't, but we aren't listening anyways. The warnings began with myth. They then became real in around the nineteenth century when coal had been burned in abandon for the industrial age. Europeans have been dropping dead from man-made air pollution for two hundred years now, they just don't bother to enlighten us due to the supremely fashionable free-market and other "under-the-carpet" arrangements we have with our consciences, like slavery.
Think for yourself - or be trampled by the masses when the shite hits the fan.Like the Scouts always said: "Be Prepared."
-Trev

OUR FUTURE IS OUR CHOICE...

"When I look at a snowless street in January I may see a natural weather variation, or I may see a human artifact caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Such perceptions are shaped not only by scientists, but by interest groups, politicians, and the media. For global warming in particular, the social influences run deeper still. Unlike, say, the orbits of planets, the climate in the future actually does depend in part on what we think about it. For what we think will determine what we do." (emphasis added)

- from GLOBAL WARMING by Spencer R. Weart; pg.198

The Process of Change

"When a group of citizens (in this case scientists) decides that their government should do more to address some particular concern, they face a hard task. The citizens have only a limited amount of effort to spare, and officials are set in their bureaucratic ways. To accomplish anything - to bring about a new government program, for example - people must mount a concerted push. For a few years concerned citizens must hammer at the issue, informing the public and forging alliances with like minded officials. These inside allies must form committees, draft reports, and shepherd legislation through the administration and legislature. Roadblocks will be put up by special interests that feel threatened by change, and the whole process is liable to fail from exhaustion. Typically such an effort succeeds only when it can seize a special opportunity, usually news events that distress the public and therefore catch the eye of politicians."

- From GLOBAL WARMING by Spencer R. Weart; pg. 95
Copyright 2003, Harvard University Press

EVENTS TO NOTE:

• National Threatened Species Day: September 7; annually
• World Peace Day: September 21; annually
• World Animal Day: October 4; annually
• World Children's Day: November 20; annually
• Family Day: February 15, 2010
• World Water Day: March 22; annually
• World Health Day: April 7; annually
• Earth Day: April 22; annually