Des Emery’s Recent Comments

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  Yeah, there are many reasons for our apathy over here. One reason is that we have it so good nowadays that our pre-occupation is with making even more money (and yes, I know that unemployment is on the minds of most of us, most of the time). Then we drive our cars to the corner store. We turn down the air conditioning or push up the central heating in the winter. We know the bus will be along every five minutes and we hope the kids will like the new (every few months) video game we just got them. We find it too comfortable using what we already possess before we have to start thinking about what the future might hold - except for the good things, like more money, another car, a quieter air conditioner, a louder video game. When Marie Antoinette was told that the crowd outside was screaming because "there was no bread" she famously said "Well then, let them eat cake!" But she wasn't being facetious nor insulting. She really had no comprehension of what it meant to be hungry since the concept was so totally foreign to her, living in her castle all her life, with her every need or want or whim promptly met. Until there is no gas to pump into your car or your lights brown-out when you adjust the thermostat or your kid starts crying because there is no new video game to plug into the TV, then Ethiopians will have to march alone.On Why the climate movement needs more Ethiopian-style activists posted 2 days, 20 hours ago 9 Responses

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  Isaac - I don't hear the apologists for AGW wishing for the world to stay the same forever. Change is the natural course of events, both for human history and for natural geology. The trouble is that we, like Cassandra, preach to the unbelievers that the change we are living in is not following that natural course but is happening too quickly for us to adjust. You acknowledge that the oceans are undergoing acidification because of excess CO2, but seem to accept that occurrence as a natural event. We don't. We see that as unnatural, and as one of the harbingers of global tragedy. Of course the sea will change - the shorelines erode here and grow there, the corals grow and turn into atolls, some fish-stocks decline while others increase. But all of that should only happen over thousands and millions of years. We are concerned that it will happen within our own lifetime. And we see deniers of climate change as being more concerned about immediate profits at the expense of long-range planning which we know will cost much more but which will serve as an S.O.S. -"Save Our Souls!"On Dispassion as the world ends: The absent heart of the great climate affair posted 5 days ago 97 Responses

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  Wow! That should take care of any naysayer whatsoever, Dan. And for anyone who can't follow the details of your expose, then I suggest they look up any recent video or photos of the Arctic from Alaska to Baffin to Greenland. They'll see for themselves the collapse of glaciers, sea-ice, shorelines, animal habitat, and Inuit discontent with the physical disappearance of their way of life. And just this week I heard a radio report of a former lake that contained sediments (accumulated over centuries) whose analysis proved the newer, more recently laid down particles (algae, insects, etc.) liked to live in warm times, and showed a sudden increase in recent years.On Poll finds sharp rise in global warming skepticism posted 1 week, 4 days ago 31 Responses

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  Rogue - All the other points you mention are so very true, but the BSE just struck a nerve. I fully agree with your last comment about the Brazilian-Chinese-American chicken. The same thing happens with fish from Newfoundland, sent to China for processing, flash-frozen, and sent back to Newfoundland for consumption. Low wages. I guess it pays (Ha! Ha!)to always 'follow the money' when you're trying to figure something out. Askantik - those are Holstein dairy cows tied up all right, doing their 45 days confinement duty in CAFO. I can only hope they get their grazin' in later - unless they're just being fattened up in the CAFO for consumption. BTW, as a kid growing up on a farm I used to wander out to the pasture to bring the cows home for milking, get their hay to keep them happy in their stalls, and help to lug the milk-pails from the barn to the separator. And that's where I learned why milking stools are always three-legged.On Corn-based meat and ethanol: burning the planet to a crisp posted 1 week, 4 days ago 85 Responses

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  This may not be the proper place to comment on this, but...#8 above mentions "mad cow" disease, blaming Canadian dairy cattle for the outbreak that resulted in the Japanese ban -- as I recall that incident, it turned out that the infected cow in Alberta, Canada, had been imported from Tennessee (I think, but one of the southern states for sure). But as far as I know, dairy cattle are not kept in crowded feedlots, but roam freely on grassy pastures. Still, most people would rather eat prime beef cattle than tough old dairy cows.On Corn-based meat and ethanol: burning the planet to a crisp posted 1 week, 5 days ago 85 Responses