Earth’s Natural Defenses against Climate Change ‘Beginning to Fail’

[Pharaoh]

Earth’s Natural Defenses against Climate Change ‘Beginning to Fail’
by Michael McCarthy
The earth’s ability to soak up the gases causing global warming is beginning to fail because of rising temperatures, in a long-feared sign of “positive feedback,” new research reveals today.

Climate change itself is weakening one of the principal “sinks” absorbing carbon dioxide - the Southern Ocean around Antarctica - a new study has found.

As a result, atmospheric CO2 levels may rise faster and bring about rising temperatures more quickly than previously anticipated. Stabilizing the CO2 level, which must be done to bring the warming under control, is likely to become much more difficult, even if the world community agrees to do it.

The news may give added urgency to the meeting in three weeks’ time between the G8 group of rich nations and the leading developing countries led by China, at Heiligendamm in Germany, when an attempt will be made to put together the framework of a new world climate treaty to succeed the current Kyoto protocol.

“This is a timely warning in advance of Heiligendamm and the G8 that the climate clock is beginning to tick faster,” said the leading environmentalist Tom Burke, visiting professor at Imperial College London.

“The shift that has been detected in a four-year study by researchers from the University of East Anglia, the British Antarctic Survey and the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, published in the journal Science, is one of the most ominous in the development of climate change. It implies a breach in the planet’s own defenses against global warming.
http://www.commondreams.org:80/archive/2007/05/18/1301/

[Auggie]

1. It's probably time for another mass extinction...

The last one was 65 million years ago. We're due.

[Peace Patriot]

4. Yeah, but it can't be said that the dinosaurs did themselves in. That is our unique

signature. The dinosaurs couldn't help whatever hit them--asteroid, or vulcanism. Evolution then led to us, the intelligent species, the species that could think ahead. It's almost as if Madame Evolution was thinking: 'Well, we goofed there, with the stupid dinosaurs. Let's create a species that can appreciate the beauty of this "little blue ball" and has the forethought to avert and survive disasters.'

'Intelligent design.' Ah, me. And we get along pretty well, for a long while, tilling the soil and holding fertility festivals, and maybe slaughtering each other from time to time, when resources run out in a particular region, but, alas, never getting the point. And then building cities, and civilizations, and creating whole libraries full of information, to avert famines and plagues, and to organize resources, and to try to keep a "balance of power" in the world, through diplomacy and sometimes through even worse mass slaughters. And, finally, we hit upon the ultimate resources (or so our robber barons feel): coal, oil. Power! The power to permanently avert famines and plagues, and to create massive WEALTH, enough even for the workers. But hidden in that glorious discovery and its exploitation was a poison pill, CO2.

And what is our elite doing about it? Hoarding oil, hoarding wealth, in a panic of greed, and positively preventing the human race from solving this problem. The governments of the world--our own in the lead--seem like gangsters splitting up a territory. Each wants to maximize profits at the expense of the others, and of our common welfare. Some--ours--are willing to kill for it. Massively kill--over a half a million people in Iraq. How did we produce such a stupid, selfish, brutal elite? It may be our tragic flaw that, in creating a system of wealth--capitalism--we created our own demise: out-of-control, predatory capitalism, that is acting to prevent a democratic, common sense, collective solution. It is no accident that we now have Bushite corporations "counting" all our votes with "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code, and...wonder of wonders...an oil corporation puppet for president, at a time when the environment is failing, due to their massive pollution of the atmosphere.

And an odd irony, isn't it?, that the fuels at issue come from dead dinosaurs.

'Intelligent design.' If only it were true!

[Auggie]

5. Wow --

"It may be our tragic flaw that, in creating a system of wealth--capitalism--we created our own demise: out-of-control, predatory capitalism, that is acting to prevent a democratic, common sense, collective solution."

Damn nice!

[Pharaoh]

6. Nice Rant

:toast: You should give that rant it's own thread :hippie:

[Forkboy]

2. A lot of people still think that's been the only extinction event,too.

There's been many before,and there will be many still to come.May be our turn this time.

And there's the happy thought for the day,huh? :)

[LibertyorDeath]

3. Oh Joy

Rec!