sitakali

Ever want resources for information about global warming and water shortages? This entry is spontaneously combusting with them.

The Prosecutor:

Like it or not, the US is extremely clean compared to every other country (except for some of europe).

Are you saying that global warming will shift the equillibrium of water to vapor?? I’m not sure that increased temperatures necessarily lead to more droughts: The more water evaporates, the more it rains.

Ever notice how rain forests exist near the equator?

The drought prediction is propaganda by alarmists.

The Defense

Yes, I do know how the water cycle works. Unfortunately, your explanations for why this is “propaganda by alarmists” are too simple. This is from the AAAS website. AAAS stands for The American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes the journal, “Science”, which is the “largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general-science journal”. If this journal still seems to you like alarmist propaganda, then I’m afraid that your definition of “alarmist propaganda” is too broad, and covers anyone who says something to the left of the mainstream.

“Ocean warming is driving a disruption of the Earth’s freshwater balance. Evaporation rates over warmer tropical and subtropical oceans have increased by about 10 percent in the past 20 years. But instead of falling over the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, it is instead falling over the far north in North America, Europe and Asia. That at least partly accounts for a drought in the Western United States and elevated rates of river runoff in the Arctic.”

“Models have predicted that the western United States will face a water crisis within 20 years, he said. Peruvian officials have estimated that with continued warming, the glaciers of the Andes will be gone within a decade; other estimates show that two-thirds of the glaciers in Western China could be gone by 2050. Those developments would leave millions of people without sufficient summer-time water for drinking, bathing and farming.”

This is why it isn’t so simple: “As the ocean warms, sea level will rise. We’ll see more evaporation and precipitation, and more storms. While the local effects of global warming cannot be predicted, ‘You can’t not look at it,’ says Sandra Postel. Warming ‘will literally change the hydrology of every major river basin in the world, especially in Asia.’

And from National Geographic: Even as the ice caps melt, global warming threatens to leave a billion people high and dry, says a team of U.S. climate scientists.

As for America being good to the environment to other countries: well, not sure if I agree with you on that one. Even compared to Third World nations, the U.S. produces more greenhouse gas emissions per person than any other country. Fossil fuel-burning in the U.S. produces one-quarter of the world’s gases that scientists blame for trapping heat in the atmosphere like a greenhouse. The Bush administration advocates slowing the growth rate of those gases, not reversing the trend. The US and Australia are the only industrialized nations that have not yet ratified the Kyoto Protocol.

Basically, America has the worst environmental record of any country on earth.
Percentage of the word’s population comprised of Americans: 5%
Percentage of the world’s resources consumed by Americans: 30%

This is what we’re getting from the “mainstream” media, and this is what I think “alarmist propaganda” is:

*The media’s (and government’s) persistent attempts to blow the issue of “terrorism” out of the water, until people are buying duct tape, because some idiot told them it would make them safer.

*Schools suspending and expelling students for wearing trench-coats, listening to Marilyn Manson, or anything else associated with the “Trench Coat Mafia”.

*Right-Wing Christians’ constant attempt to induce fear from Wiccans, Pagans, and people who practice Witchcraft

*The Bird Flu epidemic! It’s coming any second now

*Constant coverage of murders and kidnappings, especially when the victims are middle-class and white, or the perpetrators are poor or non-white

*Remember, we have to protect our poor children from the scary world–especially the scary non-whites and poor people who walk around all day, ready for some poor white person to victimize! Put up your fence! Move to a gated community! Buy guns, guns, guns, and more guns! Oh, and don’t forget the duct tape.

Here are real issues that aren’t being covered, which I rarely if ever see in the mainstream media:

*The fact that child abuse is exponentially more common than abduction, and it is usually perpetrated by a friend or relative

*Most rapes and sexual assaults are done by a friend or relative of the victim

*Certain neighborhoods, especially poor neighborhoods, have become dumping grounds for toxins and toxic wastes from chemical plants

*The government is not taking care of the poor people of this country, especially the minorities–a fact that was blown wide open by hurricane Katrina (no pun intended)

*Our government has repeatedly lied to us about our reasons for entering the Iraq war, about their reasons for spying on us, and more

*There is strong evidence of election fraud in both the 2000 and 2004 elections

*Global warming is based more in fact than any mainstream media outlet is willing to admit

*Do the media even know what Peak Oil is?

I am trying to show you examples of “alarmist” distortion of fact vs. scientifically or statistically proven fact.

I will end with a few words of wisdom from John Carroll:

Child abduction happens, but it doesn’t happen all that often. What does happen all too often is the sexual or physical abuse of a child by a family member. I have long had a theory that the media-fed child abduction frenzy was a way of deflecting or forgetting that uncomfortable fact. The person statistically most likely to hurt your child is in your house.

~ by sitakali on 13 January, 2006.

Posted in Social Environmentalist
Tags: environmentalism, global warming, politics