Giant Ice Island Breaks Off from Greenland

A Giant Ice island has broken off from Petermann glacier in northern Greenland. It is 100 square miles - more than four times the size of Manhattan.

Cracks were noticed early in the year. Not since 1962 has such a large chunk of ice broken off in the Arctic. This scares me as much as killing civilians in Afghanistan or Iraq. It has a major effect on our future, yet no one is paying attention.

Tropical Storm Kyle

Hurricane Kyle is threatening a family wedding this weekend. Is there any doubt that global warming is helping these hurricanes get stronger and more powerful. Granted Kyle is not yet a hurricane it is a powerful tropical storm, but I don't remember a storm threatening like this in recent memory. I mean the fucking Atlantic seaboard rarely sees any of these. This year we have had Hanna, a no-name storm that is pounding the eastern seaboard right now and Kyle moving up the coast. Crazy.

The Tropics Come to Europe

Maybe one of the most trying challenges in combatting global warming in getting people to take a hard look at their lifestyles is that the average person may not notice any substantial changes in their immediate day-to-day routine. Their own private world hasn't drastically changed, so the problem can be put off, the immediacy ignored. Climate change is something for the wackos of Greenpeace, etc. The average Joe, well, doesn't need to worry about something so, well, distant.

Today, on Christmas day 2007, many people reading the New York Times may start to think a little differently.

The title of the article: As Earth Warms Up, Tropic Virus Moves to Italy.

Simply put, the little town of CASTIGLIONE DI CERVIA, Italy, earned the unhappy distinction of being host to the first outbreak of a tropical disease in modern Europe. This village of 2,000 fell prey to chikungunya, a relative of dengue fever normally found in the Indian Ocean region. About 100 people came down with a sickness whose sypmtoms ranged from acute bone pain, high fever, to exhaustion. And there were plenty of potential suspects. Including, unsurprisingly, immigrants. Most of the villagers blamed Africans for bringing the plights to their haven of peace and quiet. The reality was a little different.

As the Times put it, "But the immigrants spreading the disease were not humans but insects: tiger mosquitoes, who can thrive in a warming Europe."

This is real, and present in people's lives today, As the article explains:

And if chikungunya can spread to Castiglione — “a place not special in any way,” Dr. Angelini said — there is no reason why it cannot go to other Italian villages. There is no reason why dengue, an even more debilitating tropical disease, cannot as well.

“This is the first case of an epidemic of a tropical disease in a developed, European country,” said Dr. Roberto Bertollini, director of the World Health Organization’s Health and Environment program. “Climate change creates conditions that make it easier for this mosquito to survive and it opens the door to diseases that didn’t exist here previously. This is a real issue. Now, today. It is not something a crazy environmentalist is warning about.”

can you spare a square?

"I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper

can be used in any one sitting."

--Sheryl Crow

OHMY! limit squares? maybe i'm just not ultra committed to reversing global warming but limiting TP use? eek! in the movie 2 days in paris, julie delpy whines about her anxiety of using too much TP. don't we have better things to focus on that curb global warming and encourage more sustainable behaviors? am i missing the point? and what about the dining sleeve design? ok yes, we shouldn't use paper products like napkins, etc. but wiping my mouth after meals on my clothes and detaching it? how about cloth napkins that can be washed? simple and practical enough. is she trying to out-green everyone? i'm waiting for larry david's witty and biting reactions to this innovative new trend!

from the BBC news:

Crow calls for limit on loo paper Singer Sheryl Crow has said a ban on using too much toilet paper should be introduced to help the environment.

Crow has suggested using "only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required".

The 45-year-old, who made the comments on her website, has just toured the US on a biodiesel-powered bus to raise awareness about climate change.

She teamed up with environmental activist Laurie David for the shows.

The pair targeted 11 university campuses to persuade students to help combat the world's environmental problems.

"I have spent the better part of this tour trying to come up with easy ways for us all to become a part of the solution to global warming," Crow wrote.

"Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating.

"I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting."

The tour ended on Sunday at the George Washington University in Washington DC, where Crow performed with Tim McGraw, Faith Hill and Carole King.

Laurie David's husband, Seinfeld creator Larry David, also appeared.

Crow has also commented on her website about how she thinks paper napkins "represent the height of wastefulness".

She has designed a clothing line with what she calls a "dining sleeve".

The sleeve is detachable and can be replaced with another "dining sleeve" after the diner has used it to wipe his or her mouth.

The shows involved a short set by the singer, a talk by David and segments of Al Gore's environmental film An Inconvenient Truth.

Wishing Global Warming To Go Away Will Not Make It So

"It has been declared at risk by conservation groups. Yet rich Westerners are paying thousands of dollars for the privilege of shooting an animal whose very existence is already threatened by environmental disaster. Geoffrey Lean reports from Ilulissat, Greenland, on a fight for survival."

In an article in the Independent by Geoffrey Lean on September 9, 2007 Lean says Polar Bears are looming toward disaster by 2050, headed to extinction. Who found this leftist, extremist viewpoint you ask? Greenpeace? The Sierra Club? Nope. The reactionary U.S. government. Lean says:

The development comes at the end of the most momentous week in the human history of the Arctic, which is warming faster than anywhere else in the world. Satellite observations have revealed that its ice has shrunk to much its lowest ever level, raising fears that it had reached a "tipping point" where it would melt irreversibly, disappearing altogether in summer in less than 25 years, with incalculable global consequences...

Meanwhile an investigation has found that polar bears are being shot in alarming numbers by "rich trophy hunters from the US, Europe and Japan," even as their increasingly fragile habitat melts beneath them. Only in an Alice in Wonderland age would we be shooting a near extinct environmental icon for a trophy while we are on the verge of environmental disaster. At the same time the U.S. Geological Survey concluded that the world population of Polar Bears would be cut by two-thirds by the middle of the century as the result of the melting of the ice. Lean says: this is likely to be over-optimistic because, as the survey itself admits, it is based on estimates of the rate of the ice's disappearance that fall far short of what is actually taking place."

The Arctic crisis has become so compelling that leaders of the world's main religions gathered this weekend on the iceberg-studded sea off this small town, deep in the Arctic Circle on the west Greenland coast, to pray for the planet. Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox church - who convened the group - told them: "the danger of an avoidable catastrophe is now more acute than ever." On Friday senior representatives of the Roman Catholic and protestant churches, Sunni and Shia Islam, and the Hebrew, Hindu, Shinto and Buddhist Zen religions joined the Patriarch in silent prayer on the prow of a liner under a lowering sky in the shadow of giant icebergs.

Unfortunately, prayer is not what we need. What we need is action. We can pray all we want about this crisis; people of different faiths coming together is a good thing in this fractured age in which we live, however the only measure that will save our dear planet from disaster is radical change now.

Robert Corell, who heads the world's main monitoring project on the region - the international Arctic Climate Impact Assessment - said the melting was becoming "catastrophic", and experts increasingly fear that it is approaching the point where the disappearance of the entire icecap becomes inevitable. That would raise sea-levels worldwide by over 20 feet, inundating coastal cities.

Last week the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Denver, Colorado, announced that the sea ice had shrunk to 2.05 million square miles in August 2007; its previous record low was 2.14 million square miles two years ago. It means that a staggering 200,000 sq miles of ice is now open sea for the first time. This year the fabled Northwest Passage through northern Canada opened, while the North-east Passage around Siberia is blocked by just a single tongue of ice. Scientists expect that they will both shortly open simultaneously, making it possible to sail round the North Pole for the first time...

These are facts, not global warming theory. Global warming is not coming. It is here. Congress recently passed Clean Energy Legislation which is certainly a start. Go to the truthout environment page for more information and action.

Mitt Romney Doesn't Care About Snow-people

You know that Republican, You-Tube debate that is or isn't going to happen? Well I came across a snowman on Wonkette that has something to say to Mitt Romney. Check it out.

"Global Warming" Art

Natasha Myers is the artist in residence at the website Commondreams. Check out her stuff.