By James Bishop, Jr.
(June 3, 2013)
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, circa 1890.
Sometimes it feels as though we as a people have entered into the twilight zone where what is an illusion is real and what is real is an illusion. Readers of the Los Angeles Times likely felt way not long ago, I am told, when a research study reported that rapidly melting ice sheets and warming oceans associated with climate change will raise sea levels by six feet or higher on the West Coast—by 2030.
Say what?
In some circles the report drew hoots and holler from politicians such as our Governor denouncing the scientific finding as tree-hugging, left wing propaganda; in others it was merely dismissed by citizens as unthinkable, as unthinkable as the Verde River going dry, as unthinkable as faucets spewing out nothing but air. Also beyond the realm of reality is that Virginia’s attorney general has launched a two-year investigation of a college scientist for believing in global warning.
Cut to the Verde Valley to Sedona, far from the coasts where water may rise; local gardeners already knew that climate changes had arrived. How did they know? Historic cases of allergies have been sweeping Sedona and other communities because the earth has been warmer than normal and a galaxy of pollens via plants and flowers decided to come alive sooner than usual “assaulting our immune systems,” spots Susie, this pilgrim’s gardener put it succinctly. What’s more, in coming years this assault will continue so long as greenhouse gasses produced by burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels keep increasing.
Someone else who found the news in the LA Times old hat was Charles Keeling, known as Dave in scientific circles in which he’s regarded as a superstar because of his creation of the “Keeling curve.” Briefly his name recently flashed in academic journals: Monitoring devices he developed at Mauna Loa at the U.S. Weather Bureau installation on the island of Hawaii, just detected carbon-dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere on the order of 400 parts per million, the last time there were readings like that, according to The Economist, was in the Pliocene era, more than 4million years ago when jungles covered northern Canada.
Keeling’s first readings, taken fifty years ago, found that carbon dioxide levels varied with the seasons, falling in northern summer as plants take up carbon dioxide and rising in winter as dead plant life rotted away. Average readings then were 315 parts per million, definitely safe as far greenhouse emissions are concerned, scientists tell this author.
Unless our president wakes up, truth be told, and focuses his intellectual Princeton/Harvard brain on facts before us—and before him, emissions will continue to rise so that Mauna Loa readings will rise 450 ppm, “terrifyingly predictable” asserts science writer, Elizabeth Kolbert, among the first national magazine writers to recognize that climate change is not a myth and will change the we way live if more people remain blind to reality. By the way reality hit Canada hard last winter when the first time that hockey nation’s rinks refused to freeze and games were played inside arenas for the first time. Still and all, the US is not alone in having leaders without the courage to crack down on sources of CO2. Writes Bob Gifford, a scientist in British Columbia, “people have trouble imagining a future different than our own, their habits of inaction are dragons of inaction.”
To be sure, the US Congress is teeming with dragons of inaction skilled at obstruction and willful ignorance. Why is that? In a tale rarely told, what would be good for America and its health, would be dreadful for coal and oil industries. Currently their plans for the future call for tapping fossil reserves until they have been used up. But what if a tax was placed on carbon designed to throw meters in Hawaii in reverse? That would mean fossils would have to remain underground never to be burned, billions in value lost forever.
Obama may have to sweat it out alone, using his executive power to crack down on emitters, that is not a duty, it must be his final mission.
Long ago Poet What Whitman mused that “after we have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on, what remains? Nature remains.” Would he be so sure, were he around today?
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2 Comments
As far as “global warning” (sic) goes, the biggest environmental threat we face at this time is global dimming. As noted in the article, there’s a lot of stuff in our atmosphere that is stopping the healing rays of the sun to reach our beloved planet. Added to this are the constant chemtrails that are sprayed over Sedona and creates a fake over-cast sky. Not only are pollens more plentiful, many are experiencing “chemtrail flu” and having horrible reactions to the heavy metals raining down from the trails.
It would be lovely to have Sedona stand up and say “NO!” to the chem clouds. This would be an important step in alleviating the many allergies symptoms people are experiencing in the Verde Valley, but it will also bring everyone’s attention to the horror of it.
Global dimming causes drought – and 60% of the United States is now experiencing drought conditions. Of course, things like wild fires and volcanos can cause global dimming and there may not be much we can do about those. But we can do something about the amount of manmade Co2 being poured into the air on a daily basis. We’ve talked about getting off oil since the 50’s, but there’s been very little headway there. Quite the opposite. And no one seems to be paying attention to not only the pollution from our cars, but the dreaded accidents that cause widespread environmental damage. BP spilled water in the gulf nearly two years ago, injuring wild life and ending the livelihoods of many in the gulf states. Today, the oil is still spewing in the gulf, and BP oil is doing very little about it except pour coexit on it, bury it when it hits the beaches, and pay small fines. That needs to stop. Lawmakers have proposed a “Carbon Tax” to pay for the damage caused by the too big to fail, too big to jail corporations. It is a ruse to make tax payers pay for the ecological damage big corporations are responsible for.
Also, the earthquakes in Fukashima have not stopped, the core is exposed at the nuclear reactor there, Japanese people are losing their hair and teeth, and a mountain of radioactive debris is headed our way. It’s Cherynobl times 400, and yet the nuclear industry is planning on restarting the reactors there, causing protest of 100s of thousands of people to march in the streets in Tokoyo (but you don’t hear this on the news).
There’s a buoy in the Indian Ocean that had been off line for months after it recorded that the sea floor had fluctuated over 2000 feet. It’s back on line now, and I’ll be watching it for signs for earth changes. Some think the earth is expanding, which is causing much of the changes we see. Time will tell. But we really aren’t seeing any global WARMING, but we are seeing weather patterns change all over the world.
Another global warning comes in the form of economic collapse. Even a child knows there’s not enough money in the world to pay all the debt owed. Looking at the problem mathematically, there’s no way that the economy will survive. Having the people pay more taxes, printing up more money, and having China buy our debt is a fool’s paradise. You can throw all the money you want at Mother Earth – in the end, she will survive. Will we? Well, maybe not.
It seems America’s answer to ecological and economical problems is to start another war. We’re now in 87 wars across the globe. Isn’t it time we stayed home and took care of things?
Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
It is true that it is mathematically impossible to ever pay the national debt. All these schemes to pay the debt are simply ways to prolong the inevitable. And to whom is this “debt” owed? Privately owned Banks, who have hijacked our wealth for their own benefit. The latest is the “bail in” where they take your money from their banks and pay themselves, all without your permission and done through laws they passed. That’s theft in my book.
We have two remedies to stop this theft: economic and spiritual. Stop being a slave to debt, and use our minds to rise above this enslavement.
Remember, this is all to keep us from realizing that we are capable of living a higher vibration in this life and that all this money stuff is just to keep our knowledge of what we are cleverly hidden.
They can steal our assets but they can’t steal our minds.