- Banned
- #1
Published on Thursday, November 1, 2012
by The New York Review of Books
Commondreams.org/view/2012/11/01
A Grim Warning from Science
by Bill McKibben
'***
Its possible that we can spend enough money to somehow protect Manhattanand its possible that we cant. *** and a recent study found that New York was only seventeenth on the list of cities at risk of such flooding, with Mumbai and Calcutta leading the league.
Having great scientists, and taking those scientists seriously, are two different things, of course. Our climate scientistsled by James Hansen, who lives in New Jersey and does his work from a NASA lab on the Upper West Sidehave trotted patiently up to Capitol Hill every year for the last two decades to present their latest findings, and been entirely ignored, the fossil fuel industry having purchased one of our political parties and cowed the other. But it may be that firsthand experience will accomplish what academic studies have notGovernor Andrew Cuomo, for instance, was forthright in his declarations this week that climate change was a reality, that we were vulnerable as a result, and that we would need to adjust to deal with it.
But that adjustment cant just be building new seawalls, because well never catch up. The same researchers who predicted events like this weeks horror have warned that unless we cease burning coal and gas and oil the planets temperaturealready elevated by a degreewill climb another four or five. At which point civilization will be another word for ongoing emergency response.
Building new defenses will be expensive but relatively popular; cracking down on the fossil fuel industry will be a great trial***"
===========================================
The bird is on the wing.
Do you want to form a political party
or just continue to have more get-together play-parties?
SHOCKLEY
by The New York Review of Books
Commondreams.org/view/2012/11/01
A Grim Warning from Science
by Bill McKibben
'***
Its possible that we can spend enough money to somehow protect Manhattanand its possible that we cant. *** and a recent study found that New York was only seventeenth on the list of cities at risk of such flooding, with Mumbai and Calcutta leading the league.
Having great scientists, and taking those scientists seriously, are two different things, of course. Our climate scientistsled by James Hansen, who lives in New Jersey and does his work from a NASA lab on the Upper West Sidehave trotted patiently up to Capitol Hill every year for the last two decades to present their latest findings, and been entirely ignored, the fossil fuel industry having purchased one of our political parties and cowed the other. But it may be that firsthand experience will accomplish what academic studies have notGovernor Andrew Cuomo, for instance, was forthright in his declarations this week that climate change was a reality, that we were vulnerable as a result, and that we would need to adjust to deal with it.
But that adjustment cant just be building new seawalls, because well never catch up. The same researchers who predicted events like this weeks horror have warned that unless we cease burning coal and gas and oil the planets temperaturealready elevated by a degreewill climb another four or five. At which point civilization will be another word for ongoing emergency response.
Building new defenses will be expensive but relatively popular; cracking down on the fossil fuel industry will be a great trial***"
===========================================
The bird is on the wing.
Do you want to form a political party
or just continue to have more get-together play-parties?
SHOCKLEY
