writeaboutwarming

April 25, 2011 – Ohio’s new governor, John Kasich, hasn’t stopped dumbfounding opponents and supporters alike since his election. First he promised the Cincinnati Enquirer that all meetings regarding public business would be open to the public; it’s one of the reasons they supported him. Once in office, he lost no time in holding meetings closed to the public - in the case of his meeting with the state EPA, so that he could speak “candidly.” One can only assume from this that those meetings actually open to the public will not be notable for their candor. Next came SB5, now passed into law, which drastically limits the rights of teachers and other union members to engage in collective bargaining. Neither of these instances of ill-advised chutzpah can compare, however, with the governor’s support for power plant proposals to clear-cut all Ohio forests over the next 15 years, for the purpose of burning them for fuel. You read that right: according to the Buckeye Forest Council ( www.buck...

April 18, 2011 – Two states of which I have formerly been a resident are enduring weather that nearly defies description. North Carolina experienced 60-plus tornado touchdowns over the past weekend, a large number of them in the Raleigh area, where we used to live. Having grown up in the Midwest, I long since became accustomed to tornadoes as being representative of “typical” spring weather. However, that meant in “Tornado Alley,” a swath of prairie land that ran from Texas up through Wisconsin. While some of the usual places were hard hit this time around – I’m referring here to Oklahoma and Kansas – I don’t think of North Carolina as tornado country. However, my expectations rely upon decades of weather memory that are based on climate behavior that conformed with known patterns and trends. We are now in a transitional period, and the old rules don’t apply. Then there’s Texas. By every account, Texas weather is on a bender, the Forest Service helping to battle 700,000 acres of fires ...

April 11, 2011 – There’s a lot of end of the world talk out there these days. I read Chris Martenson, and I listen to Mike Ruppert, and I’ll tell you what, they are two minds with but a single thought: the sky is falling! I’m not making fun of them, and if you ask me what I think, I have to admit, they could be right. When I say “end of the world,” I don’t mean the planet’s going to implode. I mean the end of the world we all know. I mean the beginning of a period entirely unlike the current one; one of great hardship and privation, probably a time of violence and barbarism. The gentlemen of whom I speak both pride themselves on having prepared for this terrible time, and seem, if I may be forgiven for saying so, almost eager for it to start. There’s not one of us who doesn’t like being right, and they are positively aglow with the conviction of their rightness. It’s the very earnest young men who call into Ruppert’s show who tug at my heartstrings the most. They have a selfless, prote...

April 5, 2011 – I really can’t say enough good things about algore.com, not to mention its eponymous founder. Since I’m not a member of Michael Ruppert’s Collapsenet, I can’t compare the two. The Gore site is free, and I think it makes available an admirable quantity of high-quality news and up-to-the-minute information. Today, the former vice president highlights an editorial that ran yesterday at the American Medical Association’s news site, amednews.com. (If you would like to read the entire editorial, go to http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2011/04/04/edsa0404.htm#top ) I can think of no better way to begin than to quote the first paragraph of the editorial: “If physicians want evidence of climate change, they may well find it in their own offices. Patients are presenting with illnesses that once happened only in warmer areas. Chronic conditions are becoming aggravated by more frequent and extended heat waves. Allergy and asthma seasons are getting longer. Spates ...