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1. 

   caniscandida Posted 8:01 pm
   12 Dec 2007

   Or,

   if that is not attention-grabbing enough:

   <<
   "The Arctic is screaming," said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government's snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.

   >>

   Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

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2. 

   stevenearlsalmony Posted 1:57 am
   13 Dec 2007

   Perhaps there is truth in the idea...........

   .........that there are none so blind as those who choose not to see.  Evidence of hysterical blindness among too many leaders as they refuse to face certain looming global challenges, the ones already visible on the far horizon, is present in many places, especially at the Bali Climate Change Conference.

   Steven Earl Salmony
   AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
   http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/

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3. 

   damead Posted 5:30 am
   13 Dec 2007

   If the "coal mines" are the Earth...

   ...where do we climb out TO?

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4. 

   jsflescher Posted 7:59 pm
   13 Dec 2007

   recycled...

   Thought I'd let you know -- I did a little reading around, and it turns out this was first said by a scientist, Lonnie Thompson -- to Maren Dougherty :National Geographic Adventure July 27, 2004

   "Glaciers serve as the canaries in the coal mine. I grew up in West Virginia, where coal mining was an important part of the state's economy. Coal miners would take canaries down in a cage. If the canary died, they would get out of the mine, because it meant methane gas was building up in the system."

   thanks for the quote.

   jsflescher@yahoo.com http://productofcompression.blogspot.com www.tuesdayjournal.org

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5. 

   caniscandida Posted 8:32 pm
   13 Dec 2007

   ethical accounting

   Just to be clear, the use by coal miners of canaries, to alert the miners by their deaths of the presence of dangerous gases, is itself an unjust exploitation of a living creature.  If a canary dies, and if that death alerts coal miners to evacuate, so that they survive, the escape and survival of the miners are good things, but the exploitation and death of the canary are evil things.

   But these things are not balanced against one another, numerically and quantitatively, as so much book-keeping.  Even if we judge the survival of many human beings to have been a greater good than was the death of the canary an evil, nevertheless, it remains an eternal fact that the canary was exploited and abused.

   So with the warming Arctic: It must not be considered an ethically neutral warning sign.  The more the Arctic ecosystems are radically altered on account of warming, with adverse effects on living creatures, the more real evil is done.

   Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

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