http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index20.htm


Informant: Valerie Fine

I've been trying to sound the alarm on this for ten years now. But forest activists haven't wanted to become climate activists. What's your excuse?

I know the science and politics can be intimidating, but so is it to learn the forest ecology of native forests, or marine biology. But just think about, among other horrors, how many coastal forest ecosystems will just vanish. Unfortunately, too, I know, we don't have the equivalent of clearcuts to show people or to put on video.

So ten years later, there still isn't a climate action protest movement, and no resources have been offered to start it. If you want to help or can offer financial, office, or expertise support, or can get some celebrities or otherwise influential people involved, please drop me a note. I would be thrilled to hear from you.

And the threat is a 20 foot increase, not 16.

Andy Caffrey
Climate Action NOW!

I know I've posted this link/article before, but for those who are new to this list, please check out my Earth island Journal article:

http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/summer98/wr_sum98d.htm



February 2, 2005

Dramatic Change in West Antarctic Ice Could Produce 16ft Rise in
Sea Levels

by Michael McCarthy

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=606845

Tim Hermach
Native Forest Council

PO Box 2190
Eugene, OR 97402
541.688.2600
541.461.2156 fax

web page: http://www.forestcouncil.org

DEFENDING LIFE, LAND & LIBERTY

* Demanding Honest & Fully Costed Accounting,
* Supporting Inspired Voices of Moral Integrity, Hope & Reason
* Providing Uncompromised Public Education, Advocacy & Litigation
* Demanding Total Protection for 650 Million Acres of Federal Lands & Waters

YES, for Survival
YES, for Wild Forest Sanctuary
YES, for Keeping Public Lands Forever Wild & Free, Forever
YES, for Ending our Third World Colony behavior exporting jobs & natural resources

See the photographic evidence for yourself at:
http://forestcouncil.org/learn/aerial/index.html


From EF! Media Center

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10009238


Informant: NHNE

GLOBAL WARMING AWARENESS DAY

http://www.geocities.com/mtneuman/tribute_flag.html
http://www.angelfire.com/vt2/globalwarming005/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Paleontology_and_Climate_Articles/


Informant: Richard Harvey

http://news.inq7.net/breaking/index.php?index=1&story_id=25827


From NHNE

EDITOR'S COMMENT:

Here's one more report that warns global temperatures due to global warming are approaching dangerous levels. This report was commissioned by the World Wildlife Federation. Two other reports, produced by two other groups, were also made public this past week.

The first report was produced by a collaboration of experts at Oxford and Reading universities, The Open University, London School of Economics, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory:

NEW REPORT: EARTH HEATING UP TWICE AS FAST AS THOUGHT (1/26/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/8754


From NHNE

Hopi prophecy pointed to this climate change
abstracted from John C. Mohawk, Ph.D.

Beginning about 70 years ago, some traditional Hopi formulated a message to the rest of the world that there was a rising danger that humankind's lack of spiritual attention to the world was going to lead to disaster. The form this disaster would take was that there would be violent storms and all kinds of disruption that would eventually threaten human beings around the world. It had happened before, they said, and all signs, including ancient prophecies, are that it will happen again. The individual who emerged as spokesperson for this was Thomas Banyacya. A very interesting element to the message was that proof of their message was to be found in the American's own libraries and scientific papers.

There is every evidence that this is happening, just as the traditional Hopi predicted, and the major leadership of the world is not acting in an effective way to meet the threat. This August, the Bush administration finally issued a statement acknowledging that human activity may be contributing to global warming. If you think that radical Islamic terrorism is scary, wait until you see global warming.

Scientists are certain that greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have a history of altering global climate patterns, a history that goes back perhaps at least 900 million years. A dramatic but widely-held theory is that 600 million years ago the earth was an ice ball trapped in a glacial period and that it escaped this seemingly permanent condition when volcanoes released enough CO2 into the atmosphere to create a greenhouse effect which warmed things up to perhaps an average temperature of 120 F, causing hundreds of thousands of years of rain which trapped the CO2 and put it back in the earth. Eventually the earth stabilized. That was when the dramatic proliferation of life forms, including multi-cellular animals, appeared. There is pretty good evidence to support this theory. The ice may have been a kilometer thick. Greenhouse gases do cause climate change.

The earth is getting warmer and its average temperature has risen about one degree Fahrenheit since 1830 - at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The last 20 years have been the warmest in 12,000 years and the warming trend is worldwide. People who study tree rings find evidence that in the last 20 years there has been an unprecedented rate of change in the climate and among the best evidence for the effect of this change is that glaciers, worldwide, are receding and disappearing. There are glaciers in the Central Andes. Even there, glaciers have been retreating dramatically. Some are retreating at the rate of almost 100 feet per year. 40 percent of the ice has disappeared in some places. In others, numerous glaciers have already disappeared. For thousands of years, glaciers have maintained a record of what has happened over the centuries. Scientists collect ice cores from the tropics and the polar regions. They contain the history of climate going back to a half million years. Ice cores record that CO2 never got higher than 300 parts per million. Today, we find 360 ppm, strong (even irrefutable) evidence that humans are contributing to dramatic changes in the composition of the atmosphere. Scientists know there is a threshold beyond which dramatic and irreversible and unpredictable climate change will be triggered.

The impact of the climate change we have already can be seen in Alaska. In just 30 years, Alaska's temperature has risen an average of five degrees and glaciers there are melting. Since 1995 some have receded 10 to 20 feet a year. And the rate of change may be accelerating. Climatologists are alarmed. Soon there may be no glaciers in Glacier National Park. Fossil fuels are changing the chemistry of the atmosphere. It is the northern areas that will experience this warming first. In Alaska, the first thing is the meltingof the permafrost. This thawing is spreading. Already telephone poles are leaning and the ground is opening up in places, leaving holes in the land. The Alaska pipeline was built on the permafrost, but there was no planning for the possibility the permafrost might melt and the pipeline is threatened.

But the most devastating short-term impact may be from the unexpected. There are 120 million acres of forest in Alaska, and these forests are beginning to die on tens of millions of acres. The destruction has been rapid and devastating and trees on three million acres have already been killed by insect infestation. Some species which threaten forests thrive in warmer weather, like the spruce bark beetle, which eats the bark. These beetles arrived with the onset of warmer weather and in some places there are so many beetles that people have been forced to abandoned their homes and cabins. In southern Alaska, more trees have died in a few years than in the previous 70 years. !!!

In East Africa it rained excessively in traditionally arid lands and this led to extensive flooding which overwhelmed the water management systems. One result was a cholera epidemic from contaminated water. The mosquito population exploded and a malaria epidemic ensued in places in Kenya where mosquitoes were previously rare or unknown. People blamed El Nino, but global warming probably had a hand in the disasters. The problems didn't end there. As the earth heats up, the land dries up. Moisture is released through evaporation into the atmosphere, making it available for weather events. Thus there is flooding, record rainfalls and sometimes storms stronger than previously. While one place is experiencing flooding, other places experience drought. California is flooded, while Indonesia experiences drought. It is just as the Hopi warned.

The natural climate system can change rapidly. If it happened rapidly in the past, it could happen NOW! Global temperature records are being broken. It seems inevitable that we will reach four times the CO2 levels in the atmosphere from a century ago and maybe soon. Of [The emissions last for 50 years in the Atmosphere!] By the time we can [politically] 'prove' beyond a doubt that human activity is causing thewarming, it will be far [FAR] too late to do anything about it. American[and European] politicians, who compete among themselves selling visions of wishful thinking from everything from the economy to terrorism have not performed well in facing this threat. Earlier this year a movie, ''The Day After Tomorrow'', dramatized (and action-adventurized) SUDDEN global freezing (an after effect of warming), but even if the climate changes are much less dramatic [taking months rather than days or weeks] than depicted in this movie, the question arises: what about the day after the day after tomorrow? The U.S. government does see climate change as a national security threat, but it's actually much greater than that. It is a threat to species survival. [And European bankers.]

[Our survival, and the survival of millions of other fellow traveling species on planet Earth ...]


Informant: MessiahTwain