climate review June (A)

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Sahara invading southeastern Spain, 6.2.08

It seems the trends visible last year are settling in for the long haul. The crossing of all sustainable thresholds pushes prices ever higher.

System failure has begun.

At least the Paris-based International Energy Agency got down to brass tacks, hammering out a plan for the global energy revolution.

In Germany, the Bonn Climate Change Talks 2008 opened on 6.2.08. It's a conversation about designing the future among 162 nations, or rather, a dispute of 161 nations with the oily, carboniferous USA. The point is to launch the renegotiation phase for Copenhagen 2009. And the point of that is to get everyone up to speed about Kyoto 2
(Kyoto 1 will expire 2012).

In the USA, on the day the Bonn meeting started, the first-ever climate bill reached the Senate floor (S. 3036) and is now being debated. Or rather was. Despite kowtowing to Adam Smith & the Carbon Trading boyz, it had been predicted to fail from the get-go. The Climate-Changer-in-Chief vowed he'd veto a U.S. climate bill.

This is history in the making. After proof positive of anthropogenic climate change passed peer review and was first published in 1981; after the Brundtland people formally defined sustainability in 1987; after the Global Village agreed on climate mitigation at Rio in 1992; after the Kyoto Accord came into Kantian, cosmopolitan being 1997; after all Developed Nations, except the U.S., ratified Kyoto in 2007 -- after all this, the Presidential Neanderthal makes it known he'd veto a climate bill. The U.S. president hates science, or children, and either way, and unimpeached, he represents America in 2008.

And he certainly represents his party: today's headline (6.6.08) is that the Republican Lawmakers Block a U.S. Climate Bill. The poor party of Abraham Lincoln! Consider this stunning decline -- and imagine the Darwin Award in the making! Imagine how the GOP is going to feel a decade from now. Imagine how ashamed children of such GOP members are going to be of their fathers and mothers -- how they will wish, then, they'd been born into different families.

As an anthropological aside, it's noteworthy that the first & failed gringo climate bill had been baptized the US Climate Security Act -- a label befitting the devolving zeitgeist.

The history of the American Disenlightenment is written post by post.

Best quote:

The battles of yesterday were fought over land ... Those of the present center on oil. But those of the future, a future made hotter and dryer by climate change in much of the world, will focus on a much more basic resource: water.

Elisabeth Rosenthal, "Desert is claiming southeast Spain," International Herald Tribune 6.2.

Best picture:

Spitzer telescope unveils highest resolution pic of Milky Way (link)

CLIMATE EVENTS
... vast cracks appear in Arctic ice 5.23.
... satellite pics reveal rapid forest loss in New Guinea 6.2.
... Sahara desert is claiming southeast Spain 6.2.
... water crisis to be biggest world risk 6.5.
... Nepal hard hit by climate change: minister 6.5.
... Schwarzenegger declares drought in California 6.5.

CLIMATE POLICY
... under pressure, White House issues climate change report 5.30.
... climate science gov link
... here's the report: Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Climate Change on the United States (NB: "climate" is censored)
... new round of climate talks open in Germany 6.2.
... UN FCCC Bonn Climate Change talks 2008 (link to site)
... the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008 (link library of congress; enter search query 'S.3036,' click on 'bill number')
... trouble with Congress' green gambit 6.2.
... Q & A: The Climate Security Act 6.2.
... US Climate-change bill: how it works and players involved 6.2.
... would cut CO2 and other g-gas emissions by 71% by 2050 6.5.
... Int'l Energy Agency: Energy Technology Perspectives (link)

GLOBAL MILIEU
... U.S. soldiers try to convert Iraqis to Christianity 5.30.
... food prices are rocketing all over Europe 5.31.
... Sen. B. Boxer: a critical week in the global warming debate 6.2.
... last flight of the honey bee? 6.2.
... Iraq death toll 'above highest estimates' 6.2.
... UN blames rich nations for food shortages 6.3.
... biggest jobless jump since 1986 -- Wall Street sinks 6.6.
... Dow Jones falls 400 pts 6.6.
... Oil at $ 139 6.6.
... $ 45 trillion needed to combat global warming 6.6.
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ENLIGHTENMENT
... guerrilla gardener movement takes root in LA area 5.29.
... climate findings were distorted in US, probe finds 6.3.
... high gas prices lead to surge in mass transit 6.3.
... end for retard truck Hummer after sales dive 6.4.

DISENLIGHTENMENT
... increase in Republican doubt about global warming 5.13.
... Confederate flag to fly over Moron City Tampa 6.2.
... Republican lawmakers block US climate bill 6.6.

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