War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
In just a few words, the current plight of mankind: “It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.†— Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe Despite some scientists saying humanity will take true…
A new study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) describes a gosh-awful state of affairs for the planet in just a few short years. From ClimateProgress and the NCAR’s report author, Aiguo Dai: “We are facing the possibility of widespread drought in the coming decades, but this has yet to be fully recognized…
Global warming (oops, sorry, “global climate disruption”) is indeed cancer, an illness as hypothesized by a recent report most-likely a man-made disease and like the earth’s hurting environment, a product of the industrial age. A new Yale University survey shows only 10 percent of US peoples polled say they are “very well informed” on the issue. Which…
A view of the future as the now: Hungarian sludge worker. (Illustration found here). A dam holding back acres of toxic red sludge from a metals plant in Ajka, located 100 miles southwest of Budapest, Hungary, broke on Monday and swept across miles and miles of countryside, killing at least six people and painting everything…
As anyone gifted should know, a cigarette and a cup of coffee is the maximus-a-mode in a perfect remedial coupling — no matter the clock face. And then, take that coupling, couple it with an environment of other like peoples and stuff, and faster-than-you-can-say-Kafka-three-times — innovative/enlightened speech and thought develops. (However, in these more-than enlightened,…
Beyond peak oil, climate change, the financial meltdown, peak soil, the GOP’s “Pledge to America,” the death of Eddie Fisher, the population bomb, etc., etc. — what else could possibly disrupt my golden years? From NASA: “The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see…
One of those extremely-dramatic moments, though, executed in easy, slow steps: Scientists studying an Indonesian tropical glacier witnessed first hand life with climate change: The glacier was literally melting under their feet. From NPR (including the highlighted sentence above), a piece on a research team’s two-week outing earlier this summer on Puncak Jaya Glacier in…
Ocean water all over is apparently getting warmer. Above the Bering Strait, in the Chukchi Sea, northwest of Alaska, the water there is nearly pool worthy as recorded in this captain’s blog: “The water temperature is 7.5 degrees. If we weren’t sailing, it would be a great temperature for a swim!” (via ClimateProgress). And in…
As this summer carves its way through the year, any dumb-ass can see something fishy is going on with the planet’s weather systems, like an old, old radiator busting its seams — heat and more heat. Global warming might be beyond the “tipping point.” (Illustration found here). Climate change has always been a serious subject…
Copenhagen: Tempers flared Monday at the United Nations climate summit as poor nations staged a walkout to protest what they called inadequate aid offers from rich countries, and the U.S. and China jockeyed for position. The talks have become what one observer called a “farce,” as guidelines agreed on two years ago are not even…