- Peace Garden: A rosy future?

A rosy future?

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

AP reports on some very dire warnings about our future environment in "Is It Too Late to Stop Global Warming?"

But many scientists are not so sure that the oncoming train of global warming can be avoided. Temperatures are going to rise for decades to come because the chief gas that causes global warming lingers in the atmosphere for about a century.
"In the short term, I'm not sure that anyone can stop it," said John Walsh, director of the Center for Global Change and Arctic System Research at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.
There are limits, experts say, to how much individuals can do. The best we can hope for is to prevent the worst -- world-altering disasters such as catastrophic climate change and a drastic rise in sea levels, say 10 leading climate scientists interviewed by The Associated Press. They pull out ominous phrases such as "point of no return."
The big disasters are thought to be just decades away. Stopping or delaying them would require bold changes by people and government.
"The big payoff is going to be for our children," said Tim Barnett, a senior scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California. "Together, if we take a concentrated action as a people, we might be able to slow it down enough to avoid these surprises."
"You don't give up," said Schneider, co-director of Stanford's Center for Environmental Science Policy. "If you have high blood pressure, do you sit there till you die or do you take Lasix," the blood pressure medicine.
Both Barnett and Walsh said the question they get most from the public is: What can I do personally about global warming? They tell people to drive less and drive fuel-miserly cars, be more efficient about heating their homes.
But those efforts "are not going to change us from an irreversible course to a reversible one," said Walsh. "What you really want to say is: 'You can't go on like this. We can't go on like this."
Robert Correll, a top scientist in charge of an eight-country research program into arctic problems caused by global warming, recognizes the contradictions, especially since developing nations such as China, India and those in Africa will play bigger roles in greenhouse gas pollution in the future.
The individual effort, Correll said, "is damn important, but you're not going to make much difference." That requires group or governmental action, he said.
Just keep on changing to flourescents. Keep driving less. Save energy. Conserve.

Though it won't matter anyway. Our environment is shot but so is everything else. We are totally doomed when our Prezident takes it up a notch and invades Iran, pisses off Russia and China, and declares himself "Dicktator for Life."



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