July 4th, 2010
Part of our ceremony is to remember and rededicate ourselves to change as we prepare for future struggles.
In years and decades to come, humanity will perform a heroic drama played out against the physical reality of global warming and a progressively destabilizing climate. This epic struggle will be greater than the American Revolution, greater than any historical campaign or war.
Anthropogenic global warming has built the perfect storm that has become the tumultuous, dramatic core conflict for now and for generations hence. The looming battle for our species survival - will be greater, more chaotic and tumultuous than any other human effort, bigger than any 3D movie, video game, World Cup, Superbowl, D-Day, Manhattan Project, Polio vaccine, IT revolution, or falling Berlin wall. It trumps all.
But right now we are distracted and lured into the false dramas of partisan economics and pop-jingoism. Petty tyrants annoy and distract us from this true existentialist struggle. We are not yet awakened to the alarm, not yet stirred to battle. Our enemy is not science. Our struggle is not military, although we may launch military campaigns. It is not political – although it requires a unified body politic, Our struggle is with ourselves as we decide whether to actively control our future or surrender to the relentless threats to human life.
Although our American Revolution was tumultuously violent, the political off-spring has been the art of peaceful compromise. The physical science of our changing world is an increasingly harsh reality that permits no political compromise. We cannot sue for peace, we can only examine and adjust to our situation.
Once again, our revolutionary battle is to decide whether to impose adaptive change or accept subjugation.
Richard Pauli
July 4th 2010
http://www.credoandscreed.com/2010/07/july-4th-2010.html
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on July 4, 2010
We live in interesting times. We are in an ice age now but the weather seems to be warming up in most places, how much more? Who can tell. When Greenland was settled in the eight hundreds, the ice pack was only about half what it is today, grapes grew well in England. That period in Northern European history is one of population growth to the point where people had to migrate.
I agree that people are going to have to work together with the changes that are coming but I am not so sure that the warming trend is going to be all bad.
The “it’s been this warm before” argument, based on the 1500 year solar cycle, has been debunked.
The truth is that humans have never existed with the levels of CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere today.
Natural variations do not explain the warming being measured today. In a recent survey of active, published global climate scientists, only 2% disagreed with the concept that today’s warming is caused by human activity and that it was occurring at an alarming rate. The most active denier previously worked for big tobacco companies, denying that cigarettes cause cancer.
In fact, actual measurements are running ahead of the computer models used in recent – it is warming more than predicted and the warming corresponds with increases in CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
The “Greenland story” is refuted here — http://home.iprimus.com.au/nielsens/medieval.html