Climate Change Vs. The Cold War
Posted: Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 by damnHippyTags: Climate Change, Economics, Latest News, Oh Shit, Politics, Predictions
A senior policy official from the UK has said that climate change poses an even greater security threat to the world than ironically, the Cold War.
So how do you deal with an enemy when it's yourself?
He points to several recent and ongoing conflicts that may have a root cause in climate change, including the crisis in Darfur.
It's a good read that definitely got me thinking.
Climate change creates security challenge 'more complex than Cold War' - [Janes.com]
So 13% of Americans reported that they have never read or heard anything about global warming. Perhaps even more disturbing is that American's ranked least likely in the world to rank global warming as a serious problem. It's disturbing because American's are the largest contributers to the problem, producing 25% of the world's greenhouse gases while representing only 5% of the population.
Vanity Fair has included an interesting photo in their 2006 year in photos magazine feature. Interesting because it's my home city, and interesting because it represents a remote yet plausible scenario due to global climate change.
If you like to ski in the Northeast United States, well, you're out of luck this year. Ski resorts are feeling the pain of an abnormally warm winter, one which has brought virtually no snow to the region. They typically make up to a third of their seasonal income by now so they're in for a painful season if things don't turn around soon.
Imagine an energy system that runs constantly, requires no fuel, has a minimal environmental impact, produces no waste other than worn out machinery, and is available almost everywhere on Earth. It's geothermal energy and a panel from MIT suggests it may be the answer to the energy woes of the United States. 
A new report on climate change is going to be released next week and claims to have the smoking gun on climate change. Authored by over 600 scientists, and reviewed by as many experts in the field the report is somewhat authoritative.
Diesel is rolling out a new ad campaign featuring a subject we're familiar with. Although it reminds me of Bush telling us that the best thing to do post 9/11 is continue shopping, I figure the visual depictions of our destruction through climate change might actually be helpful.
Which is better? Nuclear waste which can remain toxic to almost all life for up to 250,000 years, or greenhouse gases which are relatively harmless to life, but harmful to global climate stability.
It's rare these days that the American democratic process works in favor of environmental issues. Exxon has recently been feeling the burn of a Democratic Congress, so much so they pulled the funding from many of their climate change "think tanks". Instead it's going to focus on what can be done to influence the actual policies that will affect them rather than denying there's a problem.
