Earth ChangesS


Better Earth

Why Climate Change Can't Be Stopped

As the world's leaders gather in New York this week to discuss climate change, you're going to hear a lot of well-intentioned talk about how to stop global warming. From the United Nations, Bill Clinton, and even the Bush administration, you'll hear about how certain mechanisms - cap-and-trade systems for greenhouse gas emissions, carbon taxes, and research and development plans for new energy technologies - can fit into some sort of global emissions reduction agreement to stop climate change. Many of these ideas will be innovative and necessary; some of them will be poorly thought out. But one thing binds them together: They all come much too late.

For understandable reasons, environmental advocates don't like to concede this point. Eager to force deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, many of them hype the consequences of climate change - in some cases, well beyond what is supported by the facts - to build political support. Their expensive policy preferences are attractive if they are able to convince voters that if they make economic sacrifices for the environment, they have a reasonable chance of halting, or at least considerably slowing, climate change. But this case is becoming harder, if not impossible, to make.

Comment: The assumption throughout the entire article is that the current climate change is a result of human activities, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Building any solutions on false ground only results in exactly what the PTB intend - to create the illusion that progress is being made to pacify the reader. Another false assumption the author is making is that all we will have to deal with is a "warming world", and not consider the historic ramifications of this - a sudden and catastrophic global ice age.


Info

Typhoon Lekima slams into Vietnam's coast, killing 2

Typhoon Lekima slammed into Vietnam's central coast Wednesday night, killing two people, destroying hundreds of houses and unleashing floods in one of the country's poorest regions.The storm made landfall in Quang Binh and Ha Tinh provinces around 7 p.m., packing winds of more than 80 mph, disaster officials said.

Red Flag

Australia to be hit hard by climate change

Australia, the driest inhabited continent in the world, will get even hotter and drier due to climate change triggered mainly by greenhouse gases, authorities said on Tuesday in new projections.

Temperatures had already increased, sea levels had risen and the oceans surrounding the country had warmed, said Scott Power, principal research scientist at the Bureau of Meteorology.

Bell

Tsunami alert as quake 6.2 hits Sumatra

Authorities issued a tsunami alert as a powerful earthquake hit the western coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island.

The quake, with a preliminary magnitude of 6.4, struck nearly 100 miles off the coast of the town of Bengkulu, the Meteorological and Geophysics Agency said.

Bell

Update! Six Yemeni soldiers killed as volcano erupts

A volcano erupted on a Red Sea island, burning to death six Yemeni soldiers and sparking a major rescue operation for their comrades on the garrison island, the military said Monday.

Survivors evacuated to the Yemeni port city of Hodeida said four of the soldiers were killed outright when the volcano erupted on the island of Jabal al-Tair, some 150 kilometres (90 miles) away.

Attention

Impact of Arctic Heat Wave Stuns Climate Change Researchers

Unprecedented warm temperatures in the High Arctic this past summer were so extreme that researchers with a Queen's University-led climate change project have begun revising their forecasts.

"Everything has changed dramatically in the watershed we observed," reports Geography professor Scott Lamoureux, the leader of an International Polar Year project announced yesterday in Nunavut by Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl. "It's something we'd envisioned for the future - but to see it happening now is quite remarkable."

Attention

Two rescued, three dead as volcano sinks Red Sea island

Sana'a, Yemen - At least two men were rescued in dramatic fashion from the Red Sea, but three more were reported dead on Monday as a volcano blasted a small Yemeni island under the sea.

Comment: Oddly, the supposed 3.7 earthquake that preceded the eruption never registered on the seismic maps.


Cloud Lightning

Almost 90 dead in fresh India monsoon rains



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Attention

"Catastrophic volcanic eruption" on Red Sea island off Yemen

A volcano has erupted on a tiny island off the coast of Yemen, spewing lava and ash hundreds of feet into the air, a Canadian naval vessel near the island in the Red Sea reported. There were no immediate reports of deaths, but at least eight people were missing.

©Reuters
The entire 3-km-long island was aglow with lava and magma as it poured into the sea.

Stop

Sushi craze threatens Mediterranean's giant tuna



©REUTERS/Ruben Sprich/Files
Fishmongers drag frozen giant tuna in the early morning at the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo in this April 25, 2002, file photo.