The State of the State

*
OK

I mean, really OK.

I realize that most of us just don't want to be bothered.

And, quite honestly, I don't either.

It's a big brain bogging bother to think that we are

edging towards extinction, as we struggle to make the mortgage.

It's a big drooling dribbling drag to be so negative all the time.

It makes me go into my Sanitarium stare.

So, Come on, lighten up OZ,

There are birds out there singing.

And there are beautiful playful winds riding on lovely tree tops.

There are young children laughing and old men playing dominoes.

The economy is good enough.

And inflation is more or less in check.

And it's going to be 70 something today.

And,

Global warming demands urgent solutions
Reuters
Tue Jan 31, 2006

LONDON (Reuters) - The world must halt greenhouse gas emissions and reverse them within two decades or watch the planet spiralling towards destruction, scientists said on Monday.

Saying that evidence of catastrophic global warming from burning fossil fuels was now incontrovertible, the experts from oceanographers to economists, climatologists and politicians stressed that inaction was unacceptable.

"Climate change is worse than was previously thought and we need to act now," Henry Derwent, special climate change adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair, said at the launch of a book of scientific papers on the global climate crisis.

Researcher Rachel Warren from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, who contributed to the book "Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change", said carbon dioxide emissions had to peak no later than 2025, and painted a picture of rapidly approaching catastrophe.

Global average temperatures were already 0.6 Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and a rise of just 0.4C more would see coral reefs wiped out, flooding in the Himalayas and millions more people facing hunger, she said.

A rise of 3C -- just half of what scientists have warned is possible this century -- would see 400 million people going hungry, entire species being wiped out and killer diseases such as dengue fever reaching pandemic proportions.

"To prevent all of this needs global emissions to peak in 2025 and then come down by 2.6 percent a year," Warren said.

"But even then we would probably face a rise of 2 degrees because of the delay built into the climate system. So we have to start to plan to adapt," she added.

Already the effects of the change are becoming visible, with more extreme weather events and people in coastal areas put at risk from rising sea levels due to melting ice caps."

more

Meanwhile the POTUS in his SOTU gets this response.

The State of Energy
The New York Times
Published: February 1, 2006
Editorial

President Bush devoted two minutes and 15 seconds of his State of the Union speech to energy independence. It was hardly the bold signal we've been waiting for through years of global warming and deadly struggles in the Middle East, where everything takes place in the context of what Mr. Bush rightly called our "addiction" to imported oil.

Last night's remarks were woefully insufficient. The country's future economic and national security will depend on whether Americans can control their enormous appetite for fossil fuels. This is not a matter to be lumped in a laundry list of other initiatives during a once-a-year speech to Congress.

It is the key to everything else.

(clip)

Of all the defects in Mr. Bush's energy presentation, the greatest was his unwillingness to address global warming — an energy-related emergency every bit as critical as our reliance on foreign oil.

Except for a few academics on retainer at the more backward energy companies, virtually no educated scientist disputes that the earth has grown warmer over the last few decades — largely as a result of increasing atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels.

(clip)

That Mr. Bush has taken a pass on this issue is a negligence from which the globe may never recover. While he seems finally to have signed on to the idea that the earth is warming, and that humans are heavily responsible, he has rejected serious proposals to do anything about it and allowed his advisers on the issue to engage in a calculated program of disinformation.

At the recent global summit on warming, his chief spokesmen insisted that the president's program of voluntary reductions by individual companies had resulted in a reduction in emissions, when in fact the reverse was true.

(clip)

The State of the Union speech is usually a feel-good event, and no one could fault Mr. Bush's call for research, or fail to applaud his call for replacing more than 75 percent of the nation's oil imports from the Middle East within the next two decades.

But while the goal was grand, the means were minuscule.

The president has never been serious about energy independence. Like so many of our leaders, he is content to acknowledge the problem and then offer up answers that do little to disturb the status quo.

If the war on terror must include a war on oil dependence,

Mr. Bush is in retreat."

We can solve this.

And we can love and enjoy ourselves,

and the world, and the people around us,

as we do.

If we will.

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art courtesy of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff