Today we will continue our explanations of how the rebalancing will manifest itself.  Once again, these are situations with which the Crystal, Indigo, and Star Children are very familiar.  They have experienced planetary rebalancing many times before.  They were also trained to come to this planet at this time to help us with our rebalancing.

Next Week

By Friday we will have spent two weeks looking at many different aspects of the planetary rebalancing.  That should be enough for now.  If anyone has any questions or comments please submit them and we can discuss the subject in greater detail.

Next week we will start taking a look at the illusions that so easily entrap the Crystal, Indigo, and Star Children.  These illusions are not encountered on other planets because people are trained out of them from birth.  Here, we are trained into them.  So starting next Monday we will begin looking at how we can learn to see through those illusions and by example help others to do the same.

Are you ready for today’s post?  Let’s go!

Windstorms

Once again, in previous posts to this blog we saw how on other planets windstorms were an essential part of the rebalancing.  The trees and buildings that are left behind when people move to safe areas need to be blown over.  Large and powerful windstorms do the job.

Many times our large windstorms are associated with large rainstorms.  We will approach them separately because wind and water play two different roles in rebalancing.

Rainstorms

Water plays a major role in helping a planet to rebalance properly.  The primary function that water plays is to carry the minerals and elementals needed to rebalance the soil and subsurface of the land.

Imagine the power of water to dissolve minerals and other compounds.  Now imagine that water seeping down through the entire surface of the earth.  As the preparations are finalized for the land to sink it receives some elementals and other compounds that will aid in rebalancing it once it sinks.  As the land that is submerged rises it also receives a few elementals and compounds that will enable it to finalize the proper balance.

All this carrying of compounds and elementals is done by water.  There are tremendous rainstorms that create large flows of water on the land and under the land.  What we call aquifers are the primary means of carrying the various elementals and compounds below the surface of the land.  Also, large amounts of water on the land that has yet to sink will help it prepare for being underwater.

Comets

Where do the elements needed for rebalancing come from?  During our discussions regarding rebalancing we talked a lot about elementals and compounds that are needed for rebalancing.  It is very clear that this planet will need a lot of different compounds to finalize its rebalancing.  How will they get here?

There are two main ways for the compounds and elements to enter the planet.  First they come from the sun.  The sun is a major force to stabilize balance through the solar system.  The sun will begin to emit the necessary elementals as the planet rebalances.  These elementals will be carried on the solar wind and enter the planet through the atmosphere.

The other major source of the elementals required for achieving proper balance is comets.  A comet has a very long and eccentric orbit.  As it travels far away from the solar system it is gathering the elementals needed for rebalancing.  When it reenters the bounds of the solar system it begins to drop those elementals off.  Sometimes they enter the planetary atmosphere directly.  Sometimes they are adjusted by the solar winds and then enter the atmosphere.  Either way, comets are a primary source for the building blocks required to achieve proper planetary rebalancing.

Well, that’s all for today.  Remember, next week we will start to take a look at the illusions in which so many of us feel trapped.  These are the stumbling blocks that prevent so many of us from accomplishing what we came here to do.  It should be a great week.

Until tomorrow…

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In a letter dated July 6 in response to questions from the chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), Mr. Burnett said Mr. Cheney's office and the White House Council on Environmental Quality "were seeking deletions" last fall to congressional testimony about climate change prepared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mr. Burnett said the latter office asked him "to work with CDC" to remove from the testimony "any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change." [Emphasis mine - ed.]

The issue of whether greenhouse gases endanger public health or welfare is significant because a finding by the EPA that they do would require the agency to regulate them under the terms of the federal Clean Air Act, spurring new rules across a range of industries.

In a letter dated July 6 in response to questions from the chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), Mr. Burnett said Mr. Cheney's office and the White House Council on Environmental Quality "were seeking deletions" last fall to congressional testimony about climate change prepared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mr. Burnett said the latter office asked him "to work with CDC" to remove from the testimony "any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change." [Emphasis mine - ed.]

The issue of whether greenhouse gases endanger public health or welfare is significant because a finding by the EPA that they do would require the agency to regulate them under the terms of the federal Clean Air Act, spurring new rules across a range of industries.

Of course, George W. Bush, calls this meeting a 'very productive' one and points at some important progressions like the succesful climate agreements. Huh? I think we might have missed something over here..which successes is Mr. Bush talking about?

Because the participating countries still don't agree on a mutual implementation concerning the emission of greenhouse gasses and how to act on climate changes, this will be the topic of the next G8 meeting. The differences between countries will make it even harder to develop a new global treaty on climate and environment. This new treaty should be signed and agreed on by the end of 2009 in Copenhagen as a the replacer of the Kyoto protocol which ends in 2012. At least that's the plan. Globalina wonders when all countries will make less false promises and take more action..

Today, the third and final day puts the summit in a better light. The G8 commitment on Africa was reinterpreted with a more positive shine. After the draft communiqué left out the promised figure from the Gleneagles 2005 summit – new aid to the tune of $50 billion with $25 billion of that figure going to Africa – the final text did contain the original amount. Although NGOs such as Oxfam and ONE remained highly critical of the summit for its laggardness on the health agenda, it did give credit to the G8 on several counts. One was the agreement to expand the number of health workers in developing countries to a World Health Organization recommend minimum level of 2.3 per 1000 people. The G8 agreed as well to progress reports at the 2009 Italian summit on education and on water.

After a frustrating first day of talks between the G8 and the group of ‘outreach’ African countries on Zimbabwe, the revisiting of this issue on Wednesday in closed session allowed the appearance of a more coherent if more narrowly constituted approach. Russia was persuaded (largely it seems to show that it was a good club member amidst all the talk of Russian regression to a managed democracy) to go along with the decision to move towards targeted sanctions against the Mugabe regime.

An even bigger advance came on the highly controversial issue of climate change with regard to the serious consideration of halving CO2 emissions by 2050. The details of the deal of course are still fraught with all sorts of difficulties including no start date, compliance mechanisms nor mid-term targets. Yet, amidst the skepticism, a number of positives jump out. Whereas U.S. President Bush and Russian President Medvedev resisted setting the “50/50” target at the 2007 Heiligendamm summit, in 2008 they were pushed onside with the G8 consensus.

However the negotiations on emissions play out, the die has been cast, encompassing both the G8 and the G5, or alternatively another variation of the Major Economies (or emitters) stretching the partners up to an evenly matched 8 and 8. China and India in particular have stuck to the argument that they release far lower emissions than the G8 countries on a per capita basis, and that in any case they have been victims of industrial emissions over a longer time span.

Nonetheless, for all the technical and political obstacles a tentative new compact is beginning to look a likely option. This will mean a trade off between the big emerging countries – and especially the G5 countries – taking on greater modes of responsibility for CO2 emissions along with the G8. But in return they will be given accentuated forms of representation at the apex of power. Already the Italian government has indicated that both climate change and the G5 will be given a larger role at the 2009 summit. Not only will the G5 be invited to the second day but they will also be invited as part of the morning of the third day. These representational questions remain a work in progress. However, with the other forms of progress made in the functional arena, this move signals that the G8 still remains the barometer for the reorientation of global governance architecture.

Total energy consumption was down by less than one percent to 228.2 million tonnes of oil equivalent, but of this we produced in these islands only around 20% of our total energy consumption. Oil consumption and coal consumption were both down as was primary electricity consumption – in the case of coal by 6.3% and gas consumption was 3.4% higher so carbon dioxide emissions should be marginally lower that they were in the first quarter of 2007.

Coal imports, production and coal used in power stations are all down by around 8% compared with the same period in 2007. Closing Tower Colliery in Glamorgan, the oldest deep mined colliery which has been worked since 1805, led to a decrease by 11.8% of deep mined coal, with open cast coal production barely changing.

Oil use was down 5% with petrol use decreasing and diesel use increasing by the same amount. The hike in oil prices is beginning to affect motoring behaviour. Aircraft fuel use showed a rise of nearly 2%. UK oil production was down by 5.6% and only the coming into production of nine new small oil fields preventing that figure from doubling. The UK was a net importer of oil, and I think this new trend will continue with oil imports having to be increased year by year in the future as the oil of the North Sea fields runs out.

Most people use natural gas to heat their homes and water. Here the figures are showing the start of a very significant new trend. UK gas production was down by 3.5% but gas imports were up by 14.3%. Gas used in the domestic sector increased by 7.2% and the amount of gas used in power stations was up by 10.7%. This shows that the natural gas reserves are depleting and we are becoming more dependent year on year on imported gas. That means more international pipe line gas will be needed and more liquefied gas shipped by sea and stored here will also be needed.

Electricity generation may be coming more efficient as the figures show that generators supplied 2% more electricity which catered for an increased demand of a slightly higher figure. The efficiency of electricity generation is probably due to more gas and less coal being used to supply power. Domestically we are all using more electricity, notwithstanding the increased use of low energy light bulbs.

Electricity produced by nuclear power was down by 7% as some nuclear generating plants closed for servicing and repairs.

As everyone knows, fuel prices have increased, coal by 11%, oil by 43%, and gas by 15%. Oil now costs nearly three times more than it cost in 1990, after adjusting for inflation, as everyone who drives a car or who depends on heating oil knows. By the middle of June petrol had increased by 22% to 118p per litre and diesel by 35% to an average of 131p a litre. Heating oil increased by 41%

Renewables barely make an impact on the heat and power that we use. We have an energy economy based almost entirely on fossil fuel, with a small amount of nuclear electricity generation. Almost all of our greenhouse gas emissions comes from burning fossil fuel and this is unsustainable in economic terms as well as in environmental terms.

Talking about reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 60%, as the Climate Change Bill envisages or 80% as some Members of Parliament prefer, or talking about a shared climate change “vision” by the leaders at the G8 summit actually disguises the immensity of the task that we face to reduce emissions.

Targets should be couched in terms of renewable energy measures, not in theoretical emission savings. Mr Wick’s recent statement about the need to put solar heating panels on seven million homes and the need to build thousands of large scale wind farms points the way to the kind of targets that we need to adopt and then create the means for fulfilling them. All the climate change visions in the world will not, by themselves stop irreversible climate change

At the end of July the government will be publishing further figures including those that cover renewable energy generation. If you want to see the complete statistics you can find them by clicking on the following link. http://www.berr.gov.uk/energy/statistics/publications/trends/index.html

With only a few weeks to go before the 2008 Olymics, officials in Beijing have ordered the Home Guard to fire Silver Iodide into the smoggy air above the capital in a desperate attempt to seed rain clouds.
Air Quality is so bad here that these antiquated anti-aircraft guns have been hauled out of their dust sheets to do a job that seems almost impossible.
But the problems are only just beginning for Beijing. For within a generation, Beijing will 'cease to exist,' according to China's leading environmentalist Dai Qing. To quote:
"We won’t have the ancient capital any longer and the ugly modern Beijing would disappear too. Unfortunately, government officials and Beijing residents are equally unaware of how serious the water crisis is."

Much of the available information about this pending crisis is top secret of course, but there is an underlying theme here. Available water resources will not match demand. Period.
Climate changes are upon us all, with the Far East set to become beset with water wars.
Sadly, the G8 summit is becoming an annual bureaucratic hand-squeeze, with little to offer the planet save for a mediocre resolution about halving greenhouse emissions by 2050.

Too little too late.
One can only feel sorry for the athletes who compete in Beijing this year as their lungs struggle to cope with a particulate soup that is likely to harm them. The gold medals will come with a health warning.
Mankind simply cannot continue belching out cloud-loads of effluent into the atmosphere without consequences, and seeding clouds with silver iodide will be unlikely to clear the air for long.

courtesy of queenie13 via Flickr

Air France mulls tie-up with Veolia to cut fuel costs by shifting some routes to high-speed rail. 

European Union approves deal to make airlines pay for CO2 emissions.

In the letter, while declining to name individuals, Mr. Burnett said the offices of Mr. Cheney and the White House Council on Environmental Quality “were seeking deletions” of sections of draft testimony describing health risks from warming. The testimony was prepared by Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for a hearing last October before Mrs. Boxer’s committee.

Mr. Burnett’s letter said the council “requested that I work with C.D.C. to remove from the testimony any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change.”

While Mr. Burnett's credibility should be considered carefully, given his political history, such blatant disregard for environmental policy is not unprecedented from the Bush administration. Last month, senior E.P.A. officials accused the Bush administration of pressuring them to remove their conclusion that greenhouse gases must be controlled from an environmental analysis. And more than one half of the sixteen-hundred EPA employees who responded to an online questionnaire reported that they faced "incidents of political interference" while at work.

To avoid this sort of outrageous political meddling in the future, the E.P.A. must be reformed. To put federal environmental policy in the hands of political appointees is irresponsible; there are too many conflicting interests in the world of politics to risk the global climate on it. Congress must look towards the Environmental Agency of England and Wales, a Non-Departmental Public Body that does its work farther from the reaches of political hands, as a model for reform of the E.P.A, and allow scientists a greater voice in shaping federal environmental policy.

UNEARTHED:

NEWS OF THE WEEK THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA FORGOT TO REPORT

Non credi sia esagerato parlare di complotto, non credi sia impossibile che delle menti efferate riescano a controllare il mondo?

Ultimamente sto parlando di genocidio globale, come ai tempi di Ecometropoli, in altri momenti parlavo di business in contrasto con gli interessi del genere umano e dell'ambiente in cui viviamo proponendo la finanza etica.

Se non ti piace usare la parola complotto perchè nel tuo giro di amicizie viene osteggiato il termine, ti consiglio di parlare di business, di gente che tira acqua al proprio mulino, di templari, massoni, cattolici, che cercano di badare ai propri interessi e fare il proprio business.

PER SAPERNE DI PIU’ LEGGI L’ARTICOLO COMPLETO CLICCA SU:

BUSINESS, COMPLOTTO, GENOCIDIO E DINAMICA NONVIOLENTA

Not only were there no concrete mid-term targets set but the 50% reduction promise has no binding character, lacks any base reference year against which the reduction should be measured and is all focused on finding solutions through technological innovations. Of course, political leaders with lack of vision see no need to change the unsustainable lifestyles which hundreds of millions of new middle class Chinese and Indian citizens are now starting to imitate. The declaration also still clings to the fallacious premise that the necessary climate/energy revolution can take place without questioning the current "economic growth addiction".

Don't take my word for it, just read the excellent "annotated climate declaration" by Andrew Rivkin in the New York Times' Dot Earth blog.

According to the Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog, "clean" coal is the big winner of the G8 Hokkaido summit.

July 9 (Bloomberg) -- Bob Brown, leader of the Australian Greens party that now holds the balance of power in the Senate, will push for the government to cut greenhouse gases by 90 percent by 2050.

The five Greens Senators will push for deeper emissions cuts and a tougher carob trading system, Brown said. The government has vowed to cut gases by 60 percent by 2050 and has not yet set short-term targets.

It's not yet clear what climate science says about the impact of eating chocolate substitutes.

All things I did last weekend.

No, not really. Forgive me. But I do really want your attention.

So I went through a phase of existential terror when I was about 12 years old, as I became temporarily convinced we were doomed to die in a nuclear holocaust. All due to an alarming novel called Children of the Dust which I borrowed one day from the school library. Don't ever let your children read it. They won't sleep for weeks.

Nowadays I don’t often think about nuclear war, and when I do (say after some scaremongering speech from the White House about Iran) I think, well, if it’s going to happen, nothing I can do will stop it. Right after that I stop worrying.

But apocalypse is creeping back into my brain. And this time there's no angsty teen novel to blame. Only the world's best scientists, economists, and NASA.

I used to be a sceptic about climate change, just like you (according to Ipsos Mori's poll, "The majority of the British public is still not convinced that climate change is caused by humans - and many others believe scientists are exaggerating the problem").

But then, about 18 months ago I had to read a document called The Stern Review, for work. How dull, I thought, weighing the massive tome (670 pages) in my hands. Also, wasn't it about climate change, and isn't that to do with science, and therefore something I won't understand? (And doesn't the cover look boring as hell?)

Then I started reading, then I got scared, and then I started wondering if maybe when I'm older I shouldn't have kids after all, because, who knows what kind of world they will be born into?

It was like Children of the Dust all over again.

Catastrophic thinking? If only. I don't expect you to read the report; like I said, it's long, but then again, if you like horror movies where the whole world's under threat, maybe you'll get a kick out of it. Anyway this is how the BBC's business editor, Robert Peston, described it:

• "The Stern Review says that climate change represents the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen. And on the basis of this intellectually rigorous and thorough report, it is hard to disagree. Sir Nicholas Stern, a distinguished development economist and former chief economist at the World Bank, is not a man given to hyperbole...

• ...he warns that we are too late to prevent any deleterious consequences from climate change. The prospects are worst for Africa and developing countries, so the richer nations must provide them with financial and technological help to prepare and adapt".

A very stern warning indeed. Published in 2006 the report demanded action on a personal, national and global level. Since then we've done, well, bugger all, to put it bluntly.

We've just buried our heads in the warming sand. And why is that a problem?

• as the Nobel prize-winning scientist and economist Rajendra Pachauri explains: "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."

• according to the UN, climate change already kills 150,000 a year

• poor children will be among the principal victims of climate change

• climate change will cause global conflict, according to leading defence thinktank, RUSI (read their Whitehall report here)

• if you're my age, it's our children who will have to fight to survive in this climate-changed world. All the politicians who are currently trying to work out when and how we should stop producing carbon will be dead by 2050, the date they're working towards.

• In Mother Jones, an article welcomes us "to the Anthropocene: the new geologic era we're officially entering, a period in which humanity may simply, and catastrophically, outrun history itself".

• Last week a NASA climate scientist called James Hansen told Congress it was nearly too late to defuse "the global warming time bomb": “if we don’t begin to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next several years, and really on a very different course, then we are in trouble”.

Trouble's putting it mildly. For a sense of what Hansen's talking about, I'd really recommend reading what I think is still probably the best article I've read on the issue, though it was written over a year ago now.

The great thing about the Sunday Times piece - based on Mark Lynas' acclaimed book, which National Geographic have recently adapted for film - is the idea of breaking down what climate change will mean, one degree at a time. The world's leading scientists have agreed temperatures will rise between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees C by the end of this century, but what does that mean?

Just saying temperatures will rise by 2 degrees actually sounds quite tame until you read about what impact that will have. It's stuff like, the total disappearance of Arctic sea ice; desertification and extreme water shortages in the sub-tropics; floods and heat waves becoming the norm; melting glaciers in the Andes and Himalayas; more than a third of all living species facing extinction.

Ok.

I've put in this cup of coffee here because if you've got this far you're a superstar but you probably need a caffeine kick.

I know this is probably the longest blog post I've ever written.

But I honestly think it's also the most important thing I should be writing about.

A few weeks ago I was chatting to some super-intelligent friends, probably the cleverest people I know, and none of them really thought climate change was a big deal. They were inclined to think it was just another of those media-scares, like the millenium bug that never was.

That was when I started thinking apocalyptic thoughts again. Because I started to wonder how we could avoid temperature rises of below 2 degrees if even the brightest thinkers I knew hadn't really got the fear. Why is public consciousness lightyears behind where it needs to be?

• Because politicians didn't want us to know the truth. Last month NASA admitted:

“during the fall of 2004 through early 2006, the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs managed the topic of climate change in a manner that reduced, marginalized or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public.”

Or, as the New York Times concluded:

This [Bush] administration long ago secured a special place in history for bending science to its political ends. One costly result is that this nation has lost seven years in a struggle in which time is not on anyone’s side."

[Unfortunately, America's disregard for truth has cost the world; in 2001 President Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol (which would have limited emissions from 35 developed countries); without U.S. support it became "as ineffectual as the post-World War I League of Nations"]

• because industry doesn't want us to know the truth. Obviously there's a lot of money to be made in fossil fuels, and as we're seeing with oil, the scarcer they get, the better they pay. When it comes to greed, there's no time like the present - forget 2050; who's getting the biggest bonus this year? That's got to be the logic behind E.ON's outrageous plans to build more coal-fired power stations in the UK, which this government has shamefully backed.

• because we don't want to know the truth. The necessary conclusion is that our current lifestyles are just not sustainable. It's as simple as that. And lots of us would rather not give up our luxuries - cheap flights, cars, tumble-dryers, endless plastic bags and packaging, out-of-season food flown all over the world, keeping every gadget constantly plugged in, putting the central heating on full so you can wear t-shirts round the house in winter...

It's about the pleasure/pain principle. The problem is, the pain won't hit us in the developed world until it's too late. The people climate change already hurts - say, the half million pastoral farmers in the Mandera district of North-East Kenya forced to abandon their way of life by a catastrophic four-fold increase of drought - have no real voice; no way of contacting people like you and me to warn us that we're destroying our own - and their - habitat.

So, time to get evangelical. Hence, sex, drugs and rock and roll.

The experts say you shouldn't write about climate change in depressing terms (e.g. the longer we go on doing nothing about climate change, the more mass suffering, havoc and extinction we're going to face. If we took the scientists seriously, we'd all have trouble sleeping, just like 12-year-old Me waiting for the nuclear holocaust, except this time it'll be floods and drought and whole areas of Bangladesh submerged).

Yet it seems ridiculous that we should need to rephrase and market the truth just to get people to care about their own future. Then again, people are remarkably stupid about our own mortality, as hundreds of natural disasters have shown. And as they say over at Celsias.com, climate change is not a spectator sport.

There are things to be done.

The biggest one is going to be putting pressure on our government, through marches, petitions, letters to the environment minister Hilary Benn, our own MPs, and of course, wielding our votes like the weapons they are.

Without our input, ministers can say they lack a mandate. Don't let them. We have to make it easy for them to protect our planet.

If you fancy something more active, follow the example of my friend Beth, who protested against coal power-stations (read her story at the end of the page here).

And, take small steps in your own life: go to celsias.com for ideas. You could also join my facebook group, and try to keep to its mantra: Trains Not Planes for Short-Haul Flights. Or come up with a group yourself. This is our cause, and now is our only chance to make a difference. Don't wait.

"TOYAKO, Japan, July 8 (Reuters) - G8 nations, papering over deep differences, said on Tuesday they would work toward a target of at least halving global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 but emphasised they would not be able to do it alone.

From the Economist (some days ago)

"But what is the point of their discussing the oil price without Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest producer? Or waffling about the dollar without China, which holds so many American Treasury bills? Or slapping sanctions on Robert Mugabe, with no African present? Or talking about global warming, AIDS or inflation without anybody from the emerging world? Cigar smoke and ignorance are in the air."

Everything as predicted, the world is fucked and they don't give a shit.

Have a nice day. Esperando la ultima ola.

สาเหตุส่วนใหญ่ของการเปลี่ยนแปลงสภาพภูมิอากาศเกิดขึ้นจากกลุ่มประเทศอุตสาหกรรมชั้นนำ ซึ่งเป็นผู้ปล่อยคาร์บอนไดออกไซด์ที่สะสมอยู่ในชั้นบรรยากาศในปัจจุบันในสัดส่วนมากกว่าร้อยละ 80 กลุ่มประเทศเหล่านี้ยังเป็นผู้ปล่อยคาร์บอนไดออกไซด์มากกว่าร้อยละ 40 ของปริมาณการปล่อยคาร์บอนไดออกไซด์ทั้งหมด ทั้งๆ ที่มีประชากรรวมกันเพียงร้อยละ 13 ของประชากรโลก

ผลกระทบทางเศรษฐกิจและสิ่งแวดล้อมจากการเพิ่มขึ้นของราคาน้ำมันและถ่านหิน และการเปลี่ยนแปลงสภาพภูมิอากาศที่กำลังเกิดขึ้นจริง ทำให้พลังงานหมุนเวียนที่สะอาดเป็นหนทางเดียวที่จะหลีกเลี่ยงผลกระทบที่ร้ายแรงที่สุดของการเปลี่ยนแปลงสภาพภูมิอากาศและรับประกันความมั่นคงทางเศรษฐกิจ

ผู้นำ G8 และธนาคารโลกจะประกาศกองทุนปกป้องสภาพภูมิอากาศใหม่ที่เมืองโทยาโกบนเกาะฮอกไกโดของญี่ปุ่น กองทุนนี้ไม่ได้ให้คำนิยามถึง “เทคโนโลยีสะอาด” ที่ชัดเจน กลุ่ม G8 จึงเป็นส่วนหนึ่งของปัญหาไม่ใช่ทางออก และกองทุนดังกล่าวนี้ท้ายที่สุดแล้วก็จะนำไปอุดหนุนทางเลือกพลังงานที่สกปรก ที่สุดนั่นคือ ถ่านหิน จะต้องไม่มีการสนับสนุนถ่านหินเพราะไม่มีสิ่งที่เรียกว่าถ่านหินสะอาด

การอุดหนุนให้สร้างโรงไฟฟ้าถ่านหินโดยอ้างว่าเป็นการแก้ปัญหาโลกร้อนคือความบ้าคลั่ง กรีนพีซ ชุมชนในเอเชีย และ กลุ่มประชาสังคมต่างๆ มีจุดยืนร่วมกันในการคัดค้านกองทุนนี้

ผลกระทบต่างๆ ของระดับน้ำทะเลที่เพิ่มสูงขึ้น

ถ้าเราไม่ควบคุมการปล่อยก๊าซเรือนกระจกให้ลดลงมากที่สุด ทั้งพืดน้ำแข็งกรีนแลนด์และพืดน้ำแข็งแอนตาร์กติกาตะวันตกอาจทำให้โลกต้องประสบกับระดับน้ำทะเลที่เพิ่มสูงขึ้น 13 เมตร (43 ฟุต) ระดับน้ำทะเลที่เพิ่มขึ้นแม้เพียงเล็กน้อยนี้จะเป็นหายนะต่อเศรษฐกิจและ มนุษยชาติ

หากระดับน้ำทะเลเพิ่มขึ้นแม้เพียงเพียงเล็กน้อย จะทำให้เกิดน้ำท่วมใกล้ชายฝั่ง พายุรุนแรงขึ้นทำให้สร้างความเสียหาย ชายฝั่งถูกกัดเซาะ น้ำอุปโภคบริโภคถูกน้ำทะเลปนเปื้อน พื้นที่ใกล้พื้นที่ชุ่มน้ำและแนวเกาะถูกน้ำท่วม และ การเพิ่มขึ้นของความเค็มที่ปากแม่น้ำ นอกจากนี้ เมืองและหมู่บ้านตามชายฝั่งที่อยู่ในระดับต่ำจะได้รับผลกระทบด้วย ยิ่งไปกว่านั้น ทรัพยากรที่สำคัญยิ่งต่อประชากรบนเกาะและตามชายฝั่ง เช่น ชายหาด น้ำจืด การประมง แนวปะการังและเกาะหินปะการัง และ ถิ่นที่อยู่ของสัตว์ป่า ก็กำลังตกอยู่ในภาวะเสี่ยง

นี่คือภาพจำลองเมืองต่างๆ หากระดับน้ำทะเลสูงขึ้นในอีก 50 ปี ซึ่งเป็นผลมาจากภาวะโลกร้อน ซึ่งทำให้น้ำแข็งขั้วโลกละลาย นำไปสู่น้ำท่วม

เริ่มจากแมนฮัตตัน , นิวยอร์ก สหรัฐอเมริกา
เป็นศูนย์กลางทางธุรกิจที่สำคัญของอเมริกา ไม่ว่าจะเป็นตึกระฟ้า สำนักงานใหญ่บริษัทต่างๆ หรือตลาดหลักทรัพย์ วอลล์ สตรีท

รัฐฟลอริดา สหรัฐอเมริกา

ภาพเมื่อถูกน้ำท่วม คนเป็นล้านจะต้องอพยพออก

ต่อมาคือ ปักกิ่ง ประเทศจีน

เซี่ยงไฮ้

กัลกัตตา อินเดีย

ซานฟรานซิสโก ในอเมริกา

และเนธอร์แลนด์ ซึ่งเป็นประเทศที่พื้นที่ส่วนมากของประเทศอยู่ต่ำ (มีพื้นที่บางส่วน ต่ำกว่า ระดับน้ำทะเล ด้วยซ้ำ)

หายไปเกือบครึ่งประเทศ

นี่เป็นแค่ส่วนหนึ่งเท่านั้น ของพื้นที่ที่ได้รับผลกระทบจำนวนมากบนโลกแห่งนี้

กรีนพีซเรียกร้องให้ผู้นำกลุ่มประเทศอุตสาหกรรมชั้นนำ 8 ประเทศที่กำลังประชุมที่ญี่ปุ่นผลักดันแนวทางเพื่อรักษาระดับอุณหภูมิเฉลี่ยผิวโลกมิให้เพิ่มมากไปกว่า 2 องศาเซลเซียสเมื่อเทียบกับระดับก่อนยุคอุตสาหกรรม

ติดตามการเดินทางของเรือเรนโบว์ วอร์ริเออร์ได้ที่ http://www.greenpeace.or.th/quitcoal
ลงชื่อในจดหมายเรียกร้องการปฏิวัิติพลังงาน

[WTF]

A week after U.S. District Court Judge Ralph Beistline declared that "the balance of hardships" is in favor of the BP and Shell, "who have invested significant time [never mind nature's 4.55 billion year investment] and expense in preparing for the scheduled activities," and dismissing lawsuit against exploration permits granted by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the MMS, two environmental groups filed a lawsuit yesterday against new federal regulations that grants permission to oil companies to disturb the polar bears and walrus in the Chukchi Sea.

The Pacific Walrus. Image: NOAA

"The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, challenges regulations issued last month by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that allow 'incidental takes' of the animals, meaning permission to disturb or accidentally harass them as long as such actions do not result in physical injury or death." Reuters reported.

Polar bears were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in May, and a similar petition seeking protections to the Pacific walrus has since been submitted. More ...

An aerial view of the oil spill from Statfjord A platform in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea December 12, 2007. About 25,000 barrels of oil spilled into the Norwegian sector of the North Sea near the Statfjord oilfield on Wednesday, field operator StatoilHydro and oil officials said. REUTERS/Kystverket (The Norwegian Coastal Administration) via Scanpix Norway (NORWAY) NORWAY OUT NO COMMERCIAL USE

[MMS: the U.S. Minerals Management Service]

Related Links:

• Death by Lethal Pollution
• Bering Sea Drilling Revisited!

The G8 came to the conclusion that the industrialized countries that participate within the group of eight will eliminate emissions in half by 2050, just about the time the troops will get on a time table to return from Iraq.  Environmentalists are disappointed in the group who believe the world needs to eliminate 80-90% of greenhouse gas emissions at current levels to hold off environmental affects.  The New York Times reports:

...there was confusion over whether the cuts would be from current levels or the 1990 levels discussed at Heiligendamm. Mr. Fukuda, in a question-and-answer session with reporters, seemed to indicate it would be current levels.

That prompted harsh criticism. Phil Clapp, an expert in climate change at the Pew Environmental Group who is here monitoring the talks, said, “The science shows that we have to reduce 80 to 90 percent from current levels to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.”

Securing a harsh realization that the countries that run the world are in no hurry to save it.  This is a truly pressing matter and hot button issue for future candidates to take into consideration so it begs the question:

What do the candidate say? 

Barack Obama the flip-flopping electable democrat has been listening to his environmental advisors and states on his website that he pushes to remove carbon emissions by 80% (at 1990 levels) by the time we reach 2050 (Obama site).  Of course, that's not current levels which Mr. Clapp says won't cut it.

John McCain who probably still believes it's a myth but wants to get elected has compromised and wants to follow the same cap-and-trade strategy of Barack Obama but has his goal set 16% higher than that of the G8, stating he would like to lower emissions to 66% of 2005 standards (The Lexington Project).

Weather has been a little freaking funny lately, hasn't it?

When Professor Garnaut's roadshow visited Perth this week it was greeted by protestors dressed as polar bears carrying placards reading "save the humans".

Last time I checked there were no wild polar bears in the southern hemisphere.

But whoever these characters were, they seemed to know more about the bleak prospects for Australian working families than the good professor and his political acolytes

Good job, Prattler.

Do you think he checked if there were domesticated, capable-of-holding-signs polar bears, too? Maybe he should have also read the caption on his buddy Taxi Driver's pic of the polar bears on Monday:

Make Poverty History campaigners outside a public meeting on the Garnaut climate change report in Perth today. They were protesting the impact of climate change on endangered species and the poor. Photo: Chalpat Sonti (WA Today)

Yeeeeeah. I don't think MPH campaigners have the same conception of the "bleak prospects for Australian working families" as Howard does.

Idiot.

He's losing like-minded friends, too.

T Boone Pickens, the oil billionaire and lifelong Republican who provided financial backing to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth back in 2004, has decided that his money will be better spent on wind farms and other weird lefty-hippy ideas that might reduce dependency on greenhouse-gas producing fuels.

Meanwhile back in Australia echoes of past recalcitrance emerged with John Howard's backing, in a  speech overnight, for the Nelson policy of obstruction on emissions trading.  He criticised the Rudd government for not having "a theme" and that politicians should have conviction.  The only conviction that Mr Howard showed during his period of tenure was to avoid any move to accept climate change and to stubbornly fall into line with the US in doing nothing about the growing problem.

In fact the only "theme" of the Howard government was moving in close unison with the US and blindly following it in every circumstance.  He is quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald as saying that rather than holding "starry eyed" views about international organisations, Australia had realised that "if you want to get anything done in the world" it had to do so with like-minded liberal democratic nations."  It beggs the question: exactly did the Howard government "get done " other than involve us in the Iraq war?

He even went so far as to defend opposition for oppositions sake "when it is in the national interest," and because as he saw it, this is what Labor had done and now the Coalition should do likewise.  How burying one's head in the sand in the face of a problem of global proportions that is being tackled by governments across the globe and even individual states within the US is "in the national interest,"is beyond belief. Of course it speaks volumes about Howard's bitterness that he feels justified to cause further division in the Coalition ranks. The divisions in the Coalition on climate change are clear. Julie Bishop, deputy leader, is an example: "We support the Shergold recommendations that were given to the Howard government" she said — that a scheme was "doable by 2012".  This moves away from Nelson's "wait till China and India set targets" approach.

Returning to the G8 summit, the outcome is less than stunning but its a start.  The weak language of the G8 summit statement underscores the difficulty in getting the richest nations of the world, who contribute to "62 % of the carbon dioxide accumulated in the earth's atmosphere," to set quantifiable medium term emissions targets. Even their "vision" of 50% reduction by 2050 is rather lame but at this stage any action on climate change has to be welcomed.

The practical experience of individuals as climate change continues to affect them and the future of their children and grandchildren will be the moving force for change.

In Australia the only ongoing "theme" of the opposition and the media is denial, obstruction and dissemination of negative information and criticism on any action on climate change.  The "honeymoon is over" narrative of the media is becoming a little tiresome and it is time to move on and provide a less biased analysis of the policies that will have to be pursued by this new government.

For those that haven't noticed because they have been in denial for so long, climate change is with us and demands action, leadership and some sacrifice.  On the other hand it also offers a wealth of opportunity for innovation and new ventures involving renewable energy and new ways of doing things in this 21st Century.  It will not be all doom and gloom if we remove ourselves from the gasole teat and our oil addiction to find new ways forward.  We may even be surprised by the economic benefits that courageous initiatives may bring. After all there must have been nay-sayers at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

PHOTO OF THE DAY:

Ross Sea scenery.

Photograph by: Patrick Rowe, National Science Foundation. Date Taken: January 23, 2006.