Climate change issues..

arthra

arthra

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Here's a slide presentation on climate issues.. I decided to post it here and ask people how they respond to it.. I think the photos speak themselves. How does climate change affect you? I think this is a cutting edge issue that will in one way or another impact all of us on a lot of levels- materially, spiritually and culturally..

Climate Change Issues - Yahoo! News Photos

- Art
 
Yeh..well for me the issue of climate change has affected me personally over a period of years and it has to do with where I live..

I happen to live in the San Bernardino Valley of Southern California..

The San Bernardino Mountains are a branch of the Sierras and there is a significant ozone layer which reaches up into the mountains..

We call this ozone layer "smog" caused by autos and industry which happen to be as you know man-made.. so I have daily lived in this man-made "muckypoo" for ohh more years than I'd care to recount to you..

Anyway this "smog" as we call it keeps the warm air in the valley and mountain areas and we notice it a lot in the summer months.. So our valley has what you call droughts from low rain fall.. combined with warm temperatures that rise above a hundred degrees in the summer..

Now without much rain and warm temps the trees in the forests of the mountains had a lot of what we call bark beetles

See:

Bark Beetles of the Southern California Forests

http://www.sbcounty.gov/MUSEUM/barkbeetle/invade.htm

All these unhealthy conifers in our beautiful mountains suddenly combusted in 2004..destroying a large portion of our hitherto beautiful San Bernardino mountains.. the forests that had been around for thousands of years and once boasted the oldest inhabitants on the face of the earth: the bristle cone pine over four thousand year old.

See:

Ancient Bristlecone Pine

http://sonic.net/bristlecone/

Back in 1947 my father and I were on a lovely mountain slope in our beloved San Bernardino Mountains overlooking the valleys it is one of the memories I will always cherish..

My father extended his arm and pointed out in the westward direction.. there in the distance we could see the Pacific Ocean and Santa Catalina Island..

We used to joke about the smog in Los Angeles...those poor suckers who had to live and work there... Sad to say.. it got us!

What does this have to do with our spirituality? Well it relates to how people have treated the environment or Mother Earth and as my Yaqui Indian friend used to say Father Sky.. We pollute both.

From the Baha'i Faith

"NATURE IN ITS essence is the embodiment of My Name, the Maker, the Creator. Its manifestations are diversified by varying causes, and in this diversity there are signs for men of discernment. Nature is God's Will and is its expression in and through the contingent world. It is a dispensation of Providence ordained by the Ordainer, the All-Wise....

"By nature is meant those inherent properties and necessary relations derived from the realities of things. And these realities of things, though in the utmost diversity, are yet intimately connected one with the other . . . Liken the world of existence to the temple of man. All the organs of the human body assist one another, therefore life continues . . . Likewise among the parts of existence there is a wonderful connection and interchange of forces which is the cause of life of the world and the continuation of these countless phenomena."

~ Baha'i Writings
 
that looks like a good slideshow of the goings on at copenhagen and l so agree with you Artha, though you definitely see the effects more than l do over here in Scotland. For british viewers there was an excellent documentary tonight on the history of climate change observations, going back to a guy in the 50's, on the tests at the city of the century in greenland and on the 3rd report done during the Reagan years which shelved any action on a response to the accurate predictions done 30 years ago, and enabled the sceptic lobby and nay sayers to gain ground in denying the fact that our goings on does affect the environment [so quickly].
BBC iPlayer - Earth: The Climate Wars: The Battle Begins

That bahai quote btw seems extremely like how l envisage how Spinoza would have explained his philosophy.
 
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The thing with the global warming bunch is they are all caught up in the idea that people are 100% responsible for the warming.

This is a legal matter where the people (in general) are being fingered for an eco-crime and the results the warming bunch are seeking is for the guilty to pay for their crimes.
This will be administered as taxes.
Now the average person is not really responsible, yet at the end of the day, it is the average person who will have to pay the fines as the big business and the banks who actually did the polluting have their carbon-tax trading scheme which they will make even more money off of, and if they do incure costs they will merely pass it on to the average person whom they have over the barrel.

The fact is, we the people may not be the guilty party in climate change as there is a lot of evidence to show that this is driven by the sun and other factors such as our position in the galaxy and relation to anomalies in the gravitational field, etc.
So here we see that the kangaroo court is ready with the lynch mob to convict everyone of being responsible, yet this is not so cut and dried.

I agree that humanity has fouled the nest and make no apologies for that.
but to say we are responsible for all the climate problems and then just put the penalties onto the backs of the average people while protecting the very industries who did the polluting is a travesty of justice.
Very "kingdom of the flies" kind of stuff.
 
The average person is responsible, though - certainly in the rich Western countries which means on a % level we consume more of the world's resources than anyone else.

The trouble is, the ordinary person is not able to change their lifestyle much - low-energy lightbulbs, energy saving, and similar means - but the changes required are far bigger and larger.

This is why the politicians are being forced to lead on the matter - because addressing climate change is all about making fundamental changes to how society operates.

Often it need not be big things - for example, encouraging electronics manufacturers to not have a standby light on across most entertainment systems.

I agree, though, lots of this posturing is fake and mis-directed - but what would you expect from politicians? :)

You say we've fouled the nest - shouldn't we look to address that?
 
You say we've fouled the nest - shouldn't we look to address that?
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Yes, but by implementing a tax which is going to hit the average person harder than the ones who lead the way?
That is not fair, nor very just.
I have been against pollution for decades and there are lots of good ideas on how to deal with that which do not include taxation schemes which make the fat cat rich while ripping off the average person even more.
 
Every scheme advanced in the USA for "dealing with global warming" somehow comes back around to making Al Gore even richer. Anyone else notice that?
 
Dogbrain said:
Every scheme advanced in the USA for "dealing with global warming" somehow comes back around to making Al Gore even richer. Anyone else notice that?
Click to expand...

No.. I haven't noticed that.

I have noticed that it seems to make conservatives stupider.

Maybe Al should come out with a line of Climate Change for Dummies books, and get rich off that.

Then we'd both be right.
 
the whole carbon credits thing will definitely make a bigger separation between the haves and the have nots... this is going to be one huge money grab from the taxpayer/consumer to the wealthy/producer/corporate types....
 
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