From today’s San Francisco Chronicle, that rarity, a piece on the environment — global warming in this case — that puts a few things together. Increasingly, the world is a vast Rube Goldberg machine in which everything is ever more bizarrely tied to everything else, and yet from our mainstream media you’d never know it. Synthesis is generally treated (except on op-ed pages) as an occupational disease. In the major papers, for instance, you can certainly find pieces on the environmental violation of the day — and hardly a day passes without the Bush administration promulgating something environmentally unbearable. But I have yet to see a decent piece on two years of the Bush environmental agenda (or the people who are driving it) — certainly not in my hometown paper, the New York Times.
Even with global warming, the most obvious connection of the moment will never be raised (see next email). Our oil mullahs in Washington imagine a world controlled by us and humming forever on fossil fuels. It’s their “vision thing.” Naturally, this doesn’t exactly fit well with the Kyoto agreement, developing alternative energy sources, or reducing oil dependency in any way. Unfortunately, it fits all too well with global warming and a war in Iraq. But again these connections are seldom or never made in our papers. Tom
Global warming evidence mounts
Flurry of reports show a withering ice cap
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
December 23, 2002
The San Francisco ChronicleFrom the tropics to the poles, evidence is growing stronger than ever that Earth’s climate is warming dangerously.
In the Arctic Ocean, floating masses of sea ice are shrinking and splitting apart, and the massive Greenland ice cap melted more this past summer than ever before.
Meanwhile, warming ocean temperatures are endangering coral reefs in the tropics.
At the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco earlier this month, a flurry of new reports examining evidence of global climate change all tell the same story.If the trends continue unchecked, scientists say, rising sea levels will drown coastlines. Droughts in some regions — and increased rainfall in others — will alter harvests drastically. And other climate disruptions will destabilize regional ecologies and global economies.
Some of these alarming phenomena may be due to the natural climate variability that the planet has seen over millions of years.
To read more of this San Francisco Chronicle piece click here
From the tropics to the poles, evidence is growing stronger than ever that Earth’s climate is warming dangerously.
In the Arctic Ocean, floating masses of sea ice are shrinking and splitting apart, and the massive Greenland ice cap melted more this past summer than ever before.
Meanwhile, warming ocean temperatures are endangering coral reefs in the tropics.
At the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco earlier this month, a flurry of new reports examining evidence of global climate change all tell the same story.
If the trends continue unchecked, scientists say, rising sea levels will drown coastlines. Droughts in some regions — and increased rainfall in others — will alter harvests drastically. And other climate disruptions will destabilize regional ecologies and global economies.
Some of these alarming phenomena may be due to the natural climate variability that the planet has seen over millions of years.
To read more of this San Francisco Chronicle piece click here