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Showing posts from February, 2015

The Noose Tightens

CORRECTION:   I failed to mention in my last article that Australia sells and sends a great deal of coal to China every year.   My oversight – sorry! February 24, 2015 – It’s been 43 years since the Club of Rome commissioned scientists at MIT to conduct research into the likelihood of civilization collapse.   Their results were published in a book titled The Limits to Growth .   Its primary focus was the finiteness of our planet, and its inability to support never-ending population growth and resource depletion. Researchers at the University of Melbourne recently decided to examine the accuracy of Limit ’s predictions.   Dr. Graham Turner used data provided by both the United Nations and the United States, specifically the UN’s department of economic and social affairs, Unesco, the UN’s food and agriculture organization, the UN statistical yearbook, and the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. What he and his research team learned is that, in k

What Lies Ahead

February 15, 2015 -NASA released a report on Friday the 13 th , detailing the effects of megadroughts they foresee occurring in the United States throughout the rest of this century.  I don’t think I need to tell you that the only way to mitigate these effects is by sharply reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE).  What might very well need saying is that our future and the future of humankind rests in the hands of the Chinese, and the people of India.             Don’t misunderstand: we must all do much better, and very, very soon.  However, the population of the United States is paltry when compared with the populations of either of these two countries.  Combine that fact with the increasing demands of rising middle classes in both, and you get bad news.  Combine that bad news with the fact that China burns staggering amounts of coal, and you get, according to NASA, megadroughts in the United States.  What NASA has forecast for the rest of the world, I do no