Own Goal with Devastating Consequences?

Who are the real denialists?

Sail World is a pretty straightforward publication with an audience of sailors wanting to know about their hobby. Their interest is in being totally objective.

So, here's what a Sail World news item of 19th August reported about this year's Arctic ice season:

"In 2013 there has been a 55% increase in Arctic ice since this date last year". And they have maps based on satellite imaging to prove it.

So when the Mail on Sunday tells us that their newspaper has received a leaked final draft of the IPCC's latest report, showing that the world is warming far less than the international panel have long been predicting, things really are starting to look increasingly bleak and chilly for the single issue climate protesters.

Trouble is though that the, so say, climate crisis has been the most over-promoted environmental issue - even amounting to what some have described as "the great climate change hijack" - one which has diverted almost all the public and policy-makers' attention to itself and narrowed down all debate to one issue alone; that of global warming. The climate obsessives have marginalised and side-lined all the other huge ecological, or rather socio-ecological problems we face, like overpopulation, habitat destruction, massive losses of biodiversity both wild and cultivated, erosion and degradation of soils, freshwaters and seas.

Many scientists have also tied themselves, and their science, to the climate bandwagon in the public mind.

If the whole thing does prove to be plain wrong, then not only environmentalism but even science itself will suffer a massive blow to its credibility, and humanity could be facing a new age of reaction against science, against reason, and against the natural world.  

REDD Herring

Dying of Consumption

Just as the fossil fuel nations have already consumed the easiest oil and gas resources and are now scraping the bottom of the barrel, reaching into ever more difficult and dangerous areas, so also are we forcing our way into ever more remote places as we suck the life out of the biosphere. Concentrating wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Devising ever more cunning and devious ways of asset stripping the Earth and our fellow human beings. Destroying genuinely sustainable ways of life and replacing them with the here now, throw tomorrow uncertainty of modern Western consumer atomisation. Blaming the poor for our greed. Turning a private profit from destroying the common heritage of humanity.

Carbon Cowboys Draw Up New Plans to Eliminate Indians

REDD Monitor has produced a list of the top ten worst climate cons being perpetrated against defenceless communities in the name of "saving" the environment from the consequences of our Western fossil fuel addiction.

By way of example, a project in the Amazon region threatens the Guarani people by shutting them off from the forest that is their very means of subsistence, ignoring the fact that, as film-maker Paul Kell explains:

“These tribes are not the reason our ecosystem is being threatened, but they are now being made scapegoats and are actually going to prison for it. As is often the case, hastily (and insanely profitable) laws are put in place to appease the collective conscience, when in fact, the real criminals behind crimes against Nature are being rewarded with unheralded growth and prosperity. Such is progress.”

Not What it Says on the Tin: REDD Will Not 'Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation'

Here's a video view from the grass-roots.

Over 1000 Arrests Outside White House But Media Still Silent

More than a thousand people have so far been arrested protesting the construction of the Keystone-XL Tarsands pipeline through the Ogalalla Aquifer.

Still not heard anything about this on the radio or other media here.

Why not?

President Turns a Blind Eye as Masses Arrested at White House

"... Now, here’s the thing: while it’s great to see the press corps pushing the Administration to recognize our demonstration, the fact that Carney hasn’t yet briefed the President on the protest and the pipeline is a worrying sign about how out of touch this administration is on this issue."

“Just in the last two days everyone from the president’s chief climate scientist to an 84-year-old grandmother was arrested on his front doorstep,” said environmental author Bill McKibben, who is spearheading the White House protest. “This is the largest civil disobedience action in the environmental movement in a generation, and if they really aren’t even discussing it with the president, that signals a deep disrespect for their supporters ..."

More at Tarsands Action

The Glamour of Industrialism is Deadly

From La Via Campesina, en route to Cancun:

"THE DEATH OF THE LERMA SANTIAGO RIVER

"The second caravan performed its first act in El Salto, Jalisco, a town situated thirty kilometers from Guadalajara, on the bank of the Lerma Santiago River.

This region once had a great natural diversity of corn and vegetables. There were mangoes, plums, guava, quince, white fish, carp, catfish and lots of birds and many other species. Their pride was the Salto de Juanacatlán, a waterfall of twenty-seven meters in height and one hundred and sixty seven meters in width.

By 1900 the government had installed a hydro-electric plant and the first industry in the region. With the plant as a beginning point, industry gained power over the municipality of Salto with industrial jobs and encouraged the illusion that with industry they would gain progress and end poverty.

The population went to factories and lost their view of the river. In a few years, the lack of planning, the urbanization of the jungle and the arrival of highly polluting industries transformed a paradise into a wasteland and converted the river into a receptacle for industrial poisons and excrements.

“When we returned, the river was dead. Today we are still poor, and sick, and now we have no river”, says Enrique Enciso Rivera.

Now the town is fighting for its life and to restore hope, and received the delegations that make up the caravan with a fighting spirit.

But they will never forget that less than two years ago, Miguel Ángel López Rocha, a young boy, accidentally fell in the river, and was in a coma for nineteen days and finally died due to heavy metal poisoning, hydrogen sulfide and arsenic.

In one act on the wide porch of a house, amidst the foul odors coming from the sewers that flow into the river, the members of the caravan (delegates of local, national and provincial organizations from Texas, California, Colorado, Oregon, Florida, Illinois and Chicago, also from Quebec and France) and the fighting locals share solidarity in their fights and make commitments. The road is long and uphill, but we must continue.

Already in Morelia, Michoacán, the professors of basic education of Section XVIII of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE) and militants of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) agreed to join the social struggles which aims to respect and preserve the environment."

Read more about La Via Campesina and the International Caravan to Cancun here ...

Jesus v the Green Dragon

The prism through which US literalists view environmental concern ...

The New DDT

The cause or causes, proximate or ultimate, of the ongoing problem of Colony Collapse Disorder are still contested, but a toxicologist ought to have a useful insight into the matter. So the fact that Dr Henk Tennekes has weighed the evidence and considers that neonicotinoid pesticides are to blame, has to be taken seriously. You'd hope. Their use has already been suspended in several countries, with positive results for domestic bee populations

His recent book on the subject is comfortingly titled "The Systemic Insecticides: a Disaster in the Making" and it also has a website. Echoes of Rachel Carson.

It's also not looking good for the British Bee Keeping Association. People are starting to ask awkward questions.