Probing the link between slaughterhouses and violent crime

To author Upton Sinclair, the hellish world of factory slaughterhouses was as dangerous to human beings as it was to pigs. He filled his 1906 novel The Jungle with meat-packing images that seem ripped from a slashed movie:

"... and as for the other men, who worked in tank-rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting -- sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard!"

Sinclair's abattoir laborers get so desensitized to violence that rates of murder, rape and brawls among them rise. The book cemented the link between slaughterhouses and crime for decades to come -- long before pig farmer and serial killer Robert Pickton haunted headlines.

More than a hundred years later, a University of Windsor researcher may have proven the literary classic right. Criminology professor Amy Fitzgerald says statistics show the link between slaughterhouses and brutal crime is empirical fact.

In a recent study, Fitzgerald crunched numbers from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report database, census data, and arrest and offence reports from 581 U.S. counties from 1994 to 2002.

"I have a graph that shows that as the number of slaughterhouse workers in a community increases, the crime rate also increases," she says. Fitzgerald says she was inspired by The Jungle to study crime records in U.S. communities where slaughterhouses are located.

She became fascinated by studies of the environmental effects of slaughterhouses that mentioned crime rates, without explanation, seemed to go up when the factories opened in communities.

Fitzgerald carefully weighed the figures in order to see whether a link really existed. She found that an average-sized slaughterhouse with 175 employees would annually increase the number of arrests by 2.24 and the number of reports by 4.69. The larger the abattoir, the worse the local crime problem.

Source : Vegsource

Cows Used for Their Flesh

Cattle raised for their flesh spend the first year of their lives grazing. In fact, they are the only farmed animals other than sheep who are ever allowed to do anything natural, like breathe fresh air or feel sun on their backs.

However, cattle are still subjected to abuses that would warrant felony cruelty-to-animals charges if they were dogs or cats. To mark cows for identification, ranchers restrain the animals and push hot fire irons into their flesh, causing third degree burns, as they bellow in pain and attempt to escape. Male calves’ testicles are ripped from their scrotums without pain relievers, and the horns of cows raised for beef are cut or burned off.

While “on the range,” most cows receive inadequate veterinary care, and as a result, many die from infection and injury. Every winter, cattle freeze to death in states like Montana, Nebraska, and North Dakota. And every summer, cows collapse from heat stroke in states like Texas and Arizona. After about a year of facing the elements, cows are shipped to an auction lot and then across hundreds of miles to massive feedlots—feces- and mud-filled holding pens where they are crammed together by the thousands. Many arrive crippled or dead from the journey.

Cattle on feedlots are fed a very unnatural diet to fatten them up. This diet causes chronic digestive pain—imagine your worst case of gastritis never going away—and some of their innards actually become ulcerated and eventually rupture (the industry calls this condition “bloat”). According to a study published in the Journal of Animal Science, this diet also causes potentially fatal liver abscesses in as many as 32 percent of cattle raised for beef.²

The feedlot air is saturated with ammonia, methane, and other noxious chemicals, which build up from the huge amounts of manure, and the cows are forced to inhale these gasses constantly. These fumes can give the cows chronic respiratory problems, making breathing painful.
Cattle raised for food are also pumped full of drugs to make them grow faster and keep them alive in these miserable conditions. Instead of taking sick cattle to see a veterinarian, many feedlot owners simply give the animals even higher doses of human-grade antibiotics in an attempt to keep them alive long enough to make it to the slaughterhouse.

Source : Goveg

Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs 2009 – Preface

By Karen Davis,

I wrote Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs in the mid-1990s in order to bring attention to the billions of chickens buried alive on factory farms. At the time, neither the animal rights movement nor the public at large knew very much about chickens or about how the poultry industry originated and developed in twentieth-century America to become the model for industrialized farmed-animal production around the world. Some informative articles and book chapters had appeared, but the poultry industry’s own detailed and glowing account of its transformation of the chicken, from an active outdoor bird scouring the woods and fields to a sedentary indoor meat-and-egg “machine,” filled with suffering, diseases, and antibiotics, remained largely unknown.

The purpose of Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs was to bring this story to light in a way that would reveal the tragedy of chickens through the lens of the industry that created their tragedy without pity or guilt. The book became, as I’d hoped it would, a blueprint for people seeking a coherent picture of the U.S. poultry industry, as well as a handbook for animal rights activists seeking to develop effective strategies to expose and relieve the plight of chickens.

While much has happened since Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs first appeared in 1996, little has changed for the chickens themselves, except that their lives have become, as a global phenomenon, even more miserable. Instead of 7.5 billion chickens being slaughtered in the mid-1990s in the United States, nearly 10 billion chickens are now being slaughtered, with parallel rises in other countries reflecting the expansion of chicken consumption and industrialized production into Latin America, China, India, Africa, Russia, Mexico, and elsewhere. Throughout the world, over 40 billion chickens are now being slaughtered for meat each year, and over 5 billion hens are in battery cages, many of them in egg-production complexes holding up to a million or more birds.

U.S. per capita consumption of chicken went from 42 pounds in 1972 to 48.4 pounds in 1995 to 86 pounds in 2007, and the number of “meat-type” chickens being crammed into filthy, dark sheds has risen from 20,000 up to as many as 50,000 birds in a single metal building. Chickens forced to gain five pounds in six weeks in the mid-1990s are now being forced to gain eight pounds in the same amount of time. Chickens raised for meat are in such crippling pain, their bodies are so abnormally large and disproportioned, their skin, joints, and intestines are so rotting with ulcers and necrotic diseases, that they can barely stand, let alone walk—not that there is anywhere for them to go, being raised as they are without room to move except onto an adjacent bird’s back. When you pick up a chicken on the road who has fallen off a truck on the way to the slaughter plant, the huge white bird with the little peeping voice and baby blue eyes feels like liquid cement.

When I decided to start an advocacy group for chickens in the late 1980s, I was told by some that people weren’t “ready” for chickens. This proved to be false. The point, in any case, was to make people ready. Between 1996, when Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs first appeared, and the start of the present century, up to the time of this writing in 2008, chickens have become a primary focus of the animal advocacy movement. United Poultry Concerns’ campaign in the 1990s to expose the U.S. egg-industry’s practice of starving hens for weeks at a time, to force them to molt their feathers and reduce the cost of egg production, had a decisive effect in shifting attention toward chickens.

Most notably, activists in the United States and Canada have joined with their European and Australian allies in waging a high-profile campaign to get rid of the barren battery cage system for laying hens, though the European ban set for 2012 is not without problems, as I show in Chapter 3. Farmed-animal sanctuaries and stories about rescued chickens have become an important part of the animal advocacy movement, along with shocking, well-publicized, undercover investigations documenting the appalling cruelty to chickens and turkeys by poultry industry workers.

Recently, a number of celebrity chefs, environmentalists, and sectors of the food industry have come on board with animal welfare groups calling for an end to industrialized poultry and egg production in favor of “humane,” “free-range” methods of production. These alliances have spawned concern and anxiety among those animal advocates who consider it a betrayal to work for welfare reforms that involve the duplicity of encouraging people to eat animals and animal products under the illusion that the animals involved were somehow raised and butchered “humanely.”

Instead, it is argued that animal advocacy programs should be mainly directed at getting people off animal products altogether. Farmed-animal advocates should invest their resources in campaigns designed to in increase the demand for vegan foods—the delicious mock meats, soymilks, egg substitutes, and other vegan items that are now readily available.

The following chapters tell the story of chickens and the poultry industry and where things stand as we move toward the end of the first decade of the new century in a world in which avian influenza, food poisoning, global warming, vegan cuisine, genetic engineering, animal welfare campaigns, and the expansion of poultry and egg production and consumption jostle together. At the heart of this story is the chicken, to whom this book is dedicated, and on whose side, and at whose side, I remain steadfast.

To order Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs, visit the United Poultry Concerns.

Source : all-creatures.org

Looking for a Solution to Cows' Climate Problem

With the approach of the U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen next month, the livestock industry is coming under renewed scrutiny for its contribution to greenhouse gases.

But a more recent report for the World Watch Institute, by Robert Goodland, former environmental adviser to the World Bank, and Jeff Anhang, environmental specialist at the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corp., estimates this figure to be much higher: 51 percent, when the entire life cycle and supply chain of the livestock industry is taken into consideration.

Their report — “Livestock and Climate Change: What if the key actors in climate change are ... cows, pigs and chickens?” — factors in emissions from the tens of billions of animals exhaling CO2 annually, as well as deforestation for feed production and grazing, which prevents the reduction in greenhouse gases that would normally result from photosynthesis.

As things stand, global meat and dairy consumption is projected by the F.A.O. to more than double by 2050. Reversing the role of livestock in climate change is “even more important than the urgent transition to renewable energy,” Dr. Goodland wrote in an e-mail message.

In the World Watch report released last month, Dr. Goodland and Mr. Anhang wrote that “livestock (like automobiles) are a human invention and convenience, not part of pre-human times, and a molecule of CO2 exhaled by livestock is no more natural than one from an auto tailpipe.”
Their solution to livestock’s global warming effect is simple: eat less animal products, or better still, none at all.

The researchers propose revenue-neutral carbon taxes on products that are greenhouse gas intensive, so that foods like pork and beef would pay for their high environmental cost.

But their wider proposal, however, is to find “better alternatives to livestock products,” like foods made with soy, seitan and mycoprotein, the ingredient in Quorn products made by the British company Marlow Foods.

“Meat and dairy analog companies have been working on continuous improvement of their products, and further improvement can be expected,” Dr. Goodland said. “This contrasts with meat and dairy companies, which sell products whose quality is practically impossible to improve, and which many believe has deteriorated in recent years with decreased regulation and increases in zoonotic diseases.”

Another meat substitute under development is cultured meat — meat produced in vitro, from a cell culture, rather than in vivo, from an animal.
“We think that within 10 years, a cultured meat product should be feasible,” Jason Matheny, director of New Harvest, a nonprofit research organization working to develop meat substitutes, wrote in an e-mail message this month.
Cultured meat would also have a significantly reduced environmental impact, according to Mr. Matheny. “Recent research at Oxford University suggests that cultured meat would reduce meat’s greenhouse gas emissions by around 90 percent. It would do more for the climate than would replacing all of our cars with bicycles.”

Mr. Matheny believes that the stigma surrounding cultured meat will change, “in part because of food-borne illnesses from regular meat, like avian and swine flu, that originated in factory farms.”

“What we’re talking about is hydroponic meat that would be the cleanest meat ever produced,” said Mr. Matheny. “That’s far preferable to how our meat is produced now: 10,000 animals crammed into a metal shed, pumped full of drugs and living in their own waste.”

Instead of looking to science and the future for a solution to the world’s livestock woes, many others are looking back at an old-world approach to agriculture in the form of small-scale, sustainable family farms.
From : New York Times

Global Warming and Our Children

If you surf the internet, listen to the radio, or watch the news on television, there is a good chance that you have heard of global warming before. Although you may have heard of global warming before, have you taken the time to better understand? If you are a parent, you should.

One of the many reasons why individuals feel that global warming is not a serious issue is because of all of the debate that surrounds it. Yes, global warming does have its opponents and some of that opposition do have valid points, but is global warming something that you are willing to ignore? If you are a parent, it shouldn’t be.

As stated multiple times above, if you are a parent, global warming should be a huge concern of yours. After all, you love your children don’t you? When your children grow up, you likely want them to have their own family and children, right? After all, many individuals want their family name and legacy to be carried on for eternity. Unfortunately, global warming may throw a wrench in that plan.

As it was previously stated, global warming is an issue that many are unsure about. In addition to wondering if those who oppose global warming are right, the delayed affects of global warming also play a role. Yes, we are starting to see many changes resulting from global warming, such as melting glaciers and droughts, but these changes are small compared to what is being predicted. Unfortunately, many individuals go by the thinking of “it isn’t a problem if we can’t see it.” Although you may not be able to live to see the drastic and horrific affects of global warming, your children or their children may.

Speaking of the horrific affects of global warming, you may wonder just what is expected to happen. As previously stated, glaciers and other ice masses are melting. Despite the fact that this melting has always been noticed, it has picked up in speed. If things continue, coastal flooding is predicted and not just in limited areas, but around the entire world. Do you and your family currently reside in a coastal area? If so, did you know that global warming may prevent your children or their children from doing the same? Your hometown and your history will be unable to be shared with future family members to come, as it may be under water.

Coastal flooding is just one of the many ways that global warming may have a profound affect on your children or their children. Other affects of global warming are likely to include increased temperatures, droughts, and weather instability. These global warming affects can have a huge impact on your future family’s ability to eat, drink, work, and live. That is why you are urged to take action. After all, you do love your family right?

If you would like to help join in the fight against global warming, you will want to get started soon. The sooner we all take action, the easier it will be to make a successful, united stance against global warming. To get you started, you may want to look at your home and your vehicle. If you are unable to purchase an energy efficient vehicle, carpool or use public transportation as much as possible, as well as combine as many errands together in one trip as possible. As for your home, limit your electricity uses by only running your dishwasher when it is full, use energy efficient light bulbs, and turn your heat down, even just a few degrees.

Cows Used for Their Milk

The 9 million cows living on dairy farms in the United States spend most of their lives in large sheds or on feces-caked mud lots, where disease is rampant.³ Cows raised for their milk are repeatedly impregnated. Their babies are taken away so that humans can drink the milk intended for the calves. When their exhausted bodies can no longer provide enough milk, they are sent to slaughter and ground up for hamburgers.

Cows produce milk for the same reason that humans do: to nourish their babies. In order to force the animals to continue giving milk, factory farmers impregnate them using artificial insemination every year. Calves are generally taken from their mothers within a day of being born—males are destined for veal crates, and females are sentenced to the same fate as their mothers.

Mother cows on dairy farms can often be seen searching and calling for their calves long after they have been separated. Author Oliver Sacks, M.D., wrote of a visit that he and cattle expert Dr. Temple Grandin made to a dairy farm and of the great tumult of bellowing that they heard when they arrived: “‘They must have separated the calves from the cows this morning,’ Temple said, and, indeed, this was what had happened. We saw one cow outside the stockade, roaming, looking for her calf, and bellowing. ‘That’s not a happy cow,’ Temple said. ‘That’s one sad, unhappy, upset cow. She wants her baby. Bellowing for it, hunting for it. She’ll forget for a while, then start again. It’s like grieving, mourning—not much written about it. People don’t like to allow them thoughts or feelings.’”⁴

After their calves are taken from them, mother cows are hooked up, several times a day, to machines that take the milk intended for their babies. Using genetic manipulation, powerful hormones, and intensive milking, factory farmers force cows to produce about 10 times as much milk as they naturally would.⁵ Animals are pumped full of bovine growth hormone (BGH), which contributes to painful inflammation of the udder known as “mastitis.” (BGH is used throughout the U.S., but has been banned in Europe and Canada because of concerns over human health and animal welfare.)⁶ According to the industry’s own figures, between 30 and 50 percent of dairy cows suffer from mastitis, an extremely painful condition.⁷

A cow’s natural lifespan is 25 years, but cows used by the dairy industry are killed after only four or five years.⁸ An industry study reports that by the time they are killed, nearly 40 percent of dairy cows are lame because of the filth, intensive confinement, and the strain of constantly being pregnant and giving milk.⁹ Dairy cows are turned into soup, companion animal food, or low-grade hamburger meat because their bodies are too “spent” to be used for anything else.

Veal Calves

Male calves—“byproducts” of the dairy industry—are generally taken from their mothers when they are less than 1 day old.¹⁰ The calves are then put into dark, tiny crates, where they are kept almost completely immobilized so that their flesh stays tender. The calves are fed a liquid diet that is low in iron and has little nutritive value in order to make their flesh white. This heinous treatment makes the calves ill, and they frequently suffer from anemia, diarrhea, and pneumonia. Frightened, sick, and alone, these calves are killed after only a few months of life. “Veal” is the flesh of a tortured, sick baby cow, and a byproduct of the milk industry.

All adult and baby cows, whether raised for their flesh or their milk, are eventually shipped to a slaughterhouse and killed.

The Oceans and Global Warming

The Oceans
Scientists have long understood the key role that oceans play in regulating the Earth's climate. Oceans cover 70 percent of the globe and store a thousand times more heat than the atmosphere does. What's newer is the understanding of how this key component of our climate system responds to global warming.

"Even five years ago most scientists had no inkling of the extent to which global warming was affecting the oceans-but slowly over the years a consensus has been building," says Environmental Defense marine ecologist Rod Fujita. Today, the scientific community believes there's plenty to worry about: changes are afoot in global ocean dynamics that could have profound ecological impacts.

A brake on global warming-for now
One of the ocean's most important climate functions is absorbing heat and carbon dioxide (CO2), one of the gases that causes global warming. Acting as a heat sponge, the oceans have absorbed huge amounts of heat and CO2 in the last forty years.

Fujita explains that "the oceans are saving us from faster climate change-in essence, they are a big flywheel that delays rapid overheating of the earth, putting a brake on the climate system."
"That's the good news," he adds. "The bad news is that the oceans only slow the atmospheric warming down. Once the oceans come to equilibrium with a greenhouse-gas warmed earth, the excess heat will remain in the atmosphere and things will get much hotter."

In effect, the oceans are taking up the slack for the atmosphere and delaying the full impacts of global warming. But where and how the oceans release this accumulated heat is uncertain. And as the ocean stores heat, fragile underwater ecosystems are struggling.

The most recent scientific report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also notes with concern that the ocean is acidifying because of increased absorption of atmospheric CO2, and thus posing a threat for shell-forming species, which are an essential part of the marine food web. Projected increases in carbon dioxide levels will cause further acidification of the ocean.

Currents Distributing Heat
Another important role the oceans play is that of distributor. Oceans deliver heat and life-sustaining nutrients around the globe.

Just as blood vessels and capillaries bring oxygen and nutrients to cells in the human body, the ocean's currents carry oxygen, nutrients and heat throughout the Earth. The ocean distributes 25 to 50 percent of the energy the planet receives from the sun.

For example, the Gulf Stream carries heat across the Atlantic. This warm current gives northwestern Europe a milder climate than it would normally have so far north.

A change to the ocean's circulation patterns could plunge Europe into a colder era, even as the rest of world experiences warmer temperatures. (Find out more about the ocean's circulation system on oceansalive.org.)

Currents Circulating Food
Changing ocean circulation patterns would also affect the nutrient delivery system for marine life. Colder waters are more productive than warm waters. The warming of the oceans may be starting to break the ocean's food chain.

The system of currents replenishes deep waters with oxygen and carries nutrients to surface waters where microscopic plants known as phytoplankton can use them. When cold, nutrient-rich waters rise to the surface seasonally and mix with sunlit surface waters, the upwellings trigger the growth of phytoplankton.

The areas where these upwellings occur are often rich fishing grounds, the sea's "gardens of Eden" where an abundance of marine life flourishes.

As oceans absorb more heat, upwellings of cold, nutrient-rich waters can become less frequent. Without this nourishment, blooms of plant plankton, which are the base of the marine food chain, are disrupted and so food for sea life up the food chain, like krill, larger fish and seabirds, is cut off.

To make things worse, phytoplankton use carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. With fewer plankton, the oceans could not remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

An Example: Starving Sea Birds
Some signs already show that the marine food web is fraying. In 2005 on the U.S. West Coast and 2004 in Britain, hundreds of thousands of seabirds failed to breed. Dead seabirds like cormorants and Cassin's auklets have washed up on West Coast beaches.
Juvenile rockfish counts were the lowest they had been off California in more than 20 years. Most alarming, small crustaceans like krill -- a critical link in the ocean's food web -- suffered steep declines.

The culprit for the collapse appears to be slackening upwellings, which decreased phytoplankton blooms in these coastal areas. Fewer phytoplankton mean fewer fish, leaving the birds to face mass starvation.

Monitoring of the oceans off Hawaii over the last 20 years shows that upwellings are decreasing. Scientists suspect that this is an effect of global warming.

The debate over global warming has shifted from whether it is happening to how to avoid catastrophic damage. Significant changes loom for seabird and fish communities, ocean circulation patterns and basic processes of ocean chemistry.

"We're facing warming waters and major alterations in many oceanic processes and ocean chemistry, damage to coral reefs, and effects from sea level rise on marine ecosystems," says Environmental Defense scientist Doug Rader.

Without emissions cuts, the effects will be even worse.
"The ship is already in motion, and it will take immediate action to turn it away from the danger ahead," sums up Environmental Defense climate scientist Dr. James Wang.

Sources for the Oceans and Global Warming
Fujita. Rod. Heal the Ocean: Solutions for Saving our Seas. New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, B.C., Canada. 55-57, 75-78.

The Heat Is On: A White Paper on Climate Action (PDF). Environmental Defense, 2004.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). "Climate Change 2007: The Physical Scientific Basis": Summary for Policymakers (PDF).

Martin, Glen. "Sea Life in Peril - Plankton Vanishing: Usual Seasonal Influx of Cold Water Isn't Happening." San Francisco Chronicle. 12 July 2005.

McCarthy, Michael. "Disaster at Sea: Global Warming Hits UK Birds." The Independent. 30 July 2004.

The National Assessment Synthesis Team. Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change (PDF). US Global Change Research Program, Washington D.C. 2000.

Sarmiento, J. L. ; Gruber, N. ; Brzezinski, M. A. ; Dunne, J. P. "High-Latitude Controls of Thermocline Nutrients and Low Latitude Biological Productivity" (PDF). Nature, Vol. 427, 1 January 2004.

The Basics of Global Warming

The greenhouse effect
The atmosphere has a natural supply of "greenhouse gases." They capture heat and keep the surface of the Earth warm enough for us to live on. Without the greenhouse effect, the planet would be an uninhabitable, frozen wasteland.

Before the Industrial Revolution, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere was in a rough balance with what could be stored on Earth. Natural emissions of heat-trapping gases matched what could be absorbed in natural sinks. For example, plants take in CO2 when they grow in spring and summer, and release it back to the atmosphere when they decay and die in fall and winter.

Too much greenhouse effect
Industry took off in the mid-1700s, and people started emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases. Fossil fuels were burned more and more to run our cars, trucks, factories, planes and power plants, adding to the natural supply of greenhouse gases. The gases-which can stay in the atmosphere for at least fifty years and up to centuries-are building up beyond the Earth's capacity to remove them and, in effect, creating an extra-thick heat blanket around the Earth.
The result is that the globe has heated up by about one degree Fahrenheit over the past century-and it has heated up more intensely over the past two decades.

If one degree doesn't sound like a lot, consider this: the difference in global average temperatures between modern times and the last ice age-when much of Canada and the northern U.S. were covered with thick ice sheets-was only about 9 degrees Fahrenheit. So in fact one degree is very significant-especially since the unnatural warming will continue as long as we keep putting extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

How much is too much?
Already, people have increased the amount of CO2, the chief global warming pollutant, in the atmosphere to 31 percent above pre-industrial levels. There is more CO2 in the atmosphere now than at any time in the last 650,000 years. Studies of the Earth's climate history show that even small changes in CO2 levels generally have come with significant shifts in the global average temperature.

Scientists expect that, in the absence of effective policies to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, the global average temperature will increase another 2.0 degrees Fahrenheit to 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.

Even if the temperature change is at the small end of the predictions, the alterations to the climate are expected to be serious: more intense storms, more pronounced droughts, coastal areas more severely eroded by rising seas. At the high end of the predictions, the world could face abrupt, catastrophic and irreversible consequences..

The science is clear
Scientists are no longer debating the basic facts of climate change. In February 2007, the thousands of scientific experts collectively known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that there is greater than 90 percent likelihood that people are causing global warming. (IPCC, 2007)

These latest findings amplify what other highly respected science organizations say:
" In a joint statement with 10 other National Academies of Science, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences said:
"The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action. It is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions."-Joint Statement of Science Academies: Global Response to Climate Change, 2005

" The American Geophysical Union, a respected organization comprising over 41,000 Earth and space scientists, wrote in its position on climate change that "natural influences cannot explain the rapid increase in global near-surface temperatures observed during the second half of the 20th century."

Global Warming Fast Facts

Global Warming Fast Facts
National Geographic News
Updated June 14, 2007

Global warming, or climate change, is a subject that shows no sign of cooling down.
Here's the lowdown on why it's happening, what's causing it, and how it might change the planet.

Is It Happening?
Yes. Earth is already showing many signs of worldwide climate change.
Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) around the world since 1880, much of this in recent decades, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The rate of warming is increasing. The 20th century's last two decades were the hottest in 400 years and possibly the warmest for several millennia, according to a number of climate studies. And the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that 11 of the past 12 years are among the dozen warmest since 1850.

The Arctic is feeling the effects the most. Average temperatures in Alaska, western Canada, and eastern Russia have risen at twice the global average, according to the multinational Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report compiled between 2000 and 2004.

Arctic ice is rapidly disappearing, and the region may have its first completelyice-free summer by 2040 or earlier. Polar bears and indigenous cultures are already suffering from the sea-ice loss.

Glaciers and mountain snows are rapidly melting-for example, Montana's Glacier National Park now has only 27 glaciers, versus 150 in 1910. In the Northern Hemisphere, thaws also come a week earlier in spring and freezes begin a week later.

Coral reefs, which are highly sensitive to small changes in water temperature, suffered the worst bleaching-or die-off in response to stress-ever recorded in 1998, with some areas seeing bleach rates of 70 percent. Experts expect these sorts of events to increase in frequency and intensity in the next 50 years as sea temperatures rise.

An upsurge in the amount of extreme weather events, such as wildfires, heat waves, and strong tropical storms, is also attributed in part to climate change by some experts.

Are Humans Causing It?
"Very likely," the IPCC said in a February 2007 report.
The report, based on the work of some 2,500 scientists in more than 130 countries, concluded that humans have caused all or most of the current planetary warming. Human-caused global warming is often called anthropogenic climate change.

Industrialization, deforestation, and pollution have greatly increased atmospheric concentrations of water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, all greenhouse gases that help trap heat near Earth's surface. (See an interactive feature on how global warming works.)
Humans are pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than plants and oceans can absorb it.

These gases persist in the atmosphere for years, meaning that even if such emissions were eliminated today, it would not immediately stop global warming.

Some experts point out that natural cycles in Earth's orbit can alter the planet's exposure to sunlight, which may explain the current trend. Earth has indeed experienced warming and cooling cycles roughly every hundred thousand years due to these orbital shifts, but such changes have occurred over the span of several centuries. Today's changes have taken place over the past hundred years or less.

Other recent research has suggested that the effects of variations in the sun's output are "negligible" as a factor in warming, but other, more complicated solar mechanisms could possibly play a role.

What's Going to Happen?
A follow-up report by the IPCC released in April 2007 warned that global warming could lead to large-scale food and water shortages and have catastrophic effects on wildlife.

Sea level could rise between 7 and 23 inches (18 to 59 centimeters) by century's end, the IPCC's February 2007 report projects. Rises of just 4 inches (10 centimeters) could flood many South Seas islands and swamp large parts of Southeast Asia.

Some hundred million people live within 3 feet (1 meter) of mean sea level, and much of the world's population is concentrated in vulnerable coastal cities. In the U.S., Louisiana and Florida are especially at risk.

Glaciers around the world could melt, causing sea levels to rise while creating water shortages in regions dependent on runoff for fresh water.

Strong hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, wildfires, and other natural disasters may become commonplace in many parts of the world. The growth of deserts may also cause food shortages in many places.

More than a million species face extinction from disappearing habitat, changing ecosystems, and acidifying oceans.

The ocean's circulation system, known as the ocean conveyor belt, could be permanently altered, causing a mini-ice age in Western Europe and other rapid changes.

At some point in the future, warming could become uncontrollable by creating a so-called positive feedback effect. Rising temperatures could release additional greenhouse gases by unlocking methane in permafrost and undersea deposits, freeing carbon trapped in sea ice, and causing increased evaporation of water.

Global Warming by Jocelyn Collins

Global Warming
by Jocelyn Collins

Global warming (also called the greenhouse effect) describes the gradual increase of the air temperature in the earth's lower atmosphere.

Why is global warming called the greenhouse effect? Greenhouses are not common in Africa, so don't be surprised if you have never seen one! They are used mainly in the cooler northern hemisphere to grow vegetables and flowers.

A greenhouse is made entirely of glass. When sunlight (shortwave radiation) strikes the glass, most of it passes through and warms up the plants, soil and air inside the greenhouse. As these objects warm up they give off heat, but these heat waves have a much longer wavelength than the incoming rays from the sun. This longwave radiation cannot easily pass through glass, it is re- radiated into the greenhouse, causing everything in it to heat up.


THE NATURAL GREENHOUSE EFFECT
The term greenhouse effect is used to describe the warming effect that certain gases have on the temperature of the earth's atmosphere under normal conditions.
Sunlight (shortwave radiation) passes easily through the earth's atmosphere. Once it strikes and warms the earth's surface, longwave radiation is given off and goes back into the atmosphere. While some of this longwave radiation or heat escapes into space, most of it is absorbed or held by carbon dioxide and other gases that exist in small quantities in the atmosphere. Thus these gases form a `blanket' that keeps the earth an average of 33 degrees centigrade warmer than it would be if this greenhouse effect did not occur. Without these gases the whole planet would be an icy wasteland with an average temperature of 16 degrees centigrade below freezing!

HOW HAVE PEOPLE ALTERED THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT?
Human population growth and related industrial expansion, have led to greater air pollution and a change in the composition of the earth's atmosphere. Some pollutants enhance the natural greenhouse effect, resulting in increased global atmospheric temperatures.

WHAT ARE THE GREENHOUSE GASES?
* Water vapour is the main greenhouse gas. Human activities are not known to have had a significant influence on the atmospheric concentration of water vapour.

* Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the pollutant most responsible for increased global warming. It is released into the atmosphere mainly through burning of fossil fuels (e.g. coal, petrol, diesel). In addition, widespread destruction of natural vegetation, particularly forests, has contributed to increased atmospheric CO2 levels (see Enviro Facts "Deforestation"). This has occurred for two reasons. First, plants take up CO2 through the process of photosynthesis. The destruction of vegetation, as occurs in deforestation, reduces the amount of CO2 that is removed from the atmosphere. Second, when forests are cleared, and burnt or left to rot, CO2 is released.

* Methane (CH4) has doubled in concentration, mainly as a result of agricultural activities, between 1750 and 1990.
* Nitrous oxide (N2O), also a product of burning fossil fuel, has increased by 8% over the same period.
* Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), in addition to damaging the ozone layer, are potent greenhouse gases. Their concentrations in the atmosphere are increasing by about 4% every year.

SIGNS THAT GLOBAL WARMING HAS BEGUN
* The average global temperature is about 0,5 degrees centigrade warmer than it was 100 years ago.
* 1990 is the warmest year on record, 1988 the second warmest, and 1980, 1981, 1983 and 1986 were all warmer than any other years in the last century. Preliminary analyses of 1991 temperature records indicate that this year was also above average.
* Snow and ice-cover have decreased this century, deep ocean temperatures have increased, and cloud cover over North America has also increased over this period. The latter indicates increased atmospheric water vapour.
* Over the last century, global sea levels have risen by between 100 mm and 200 mm.

FURTHER EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING
If current pollution trends continue, scientists conclude that the earth could probably be about 1 degree centigrade warmer by 2025 and 3 degrees centigrade warmer by 2100. This rapid temperature rise could have several effects:
* These changes in global temperature, although apparently small, could cause very large changes in climate. For example, the last Ice Age, which ended approximately 15 000 years ago, was only 5 degrees centigrade colder than current temperatures, but the resulting climate changes were massive: most of North America was covered in a layer of ice about 1,5 km thick and sea levels in the Cape were about 120 m lower than at present. In those days, if you had wanted to go for a swim at Cape Agulhas you would first have had to walk about 150 km to reach the sea!
* A rapid extinction of species.
* Rising sea levels - water expands as it warms and glaciers melt, adding water to the oceans, thus we can expect widespread flooding of coastal areas as sea levels

Global Warming Revealed

Dry/Ice: Global Warming Revealed
by Drunvalo Melchizedek

What you are about to read is going to change your world forever, this I can promise you. I actually apologize that I have to be the one who brings this unsettling news, but you must know if you wish to survive, for what is coming will either be DRY and heat or ICE and freezing.
Global warming has been in the news for over 40 years, and by this time we have become complacent. Our scientists have come to the agreement that global warming will eventually cause major changes and problems in the world, but in their way of thinking it will be 50 to 100 years before we will actually have to deal with the effects.

The general idea is that global warming will be slow and the world will find time to discover the solutions to the problems.
New powerful evidence strongly suggests that this scenario is simply wrong, and we had better prepare for another more abrupt possibility.

DISCOVERY MAGAZINE
One of the first hints that something may be different than what we are being told (especially here in the US) was published in Discover magazine in September 2002 with the cover announcing "Global Warming Surprise, A New Ice Age", "Oceanographers have discovered a huge river of fresh water in the Atlantic formed by melting polar ice. They warn it could soon bury the Gulf Stream, plunging North America and Europe into frigid winters."
That was almost two years ago, and no one listened. Life goes on oblivious to the incredible danger approaching.

ENGLAND & SIR DAVID KING
Then in January 2004 enter Sir David King. Sir King is the Prime Minister of England's chief scientist. Sir King went to Mr. Blair and told him of the impending worldwide disaster and that they needed to tell the world of what was about to happen.
Tony Blair told Sir David King to be quiet and not speak. But Sir King felt that this was simply too important for him to say nothing, so in January of this year he deliberately went around Mr. Blair and went straight to the American journal Science where he published his information and concern.

Sir King said in this article, "In my view, climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism."
England placed a gag order on Sir David King, and now he is not even allowed to discuss this subject publicly without threat of detention.

AMERICA & THE PENTAGON
A month later in February 2004, the Pentagon became involved, which has stirred the world to action.
The Pentagon has been studying Global Warming for many years because of its possible national security problems associated with the kind of changes that could present themselves to the world through Global Warming.

A special study was conducted through one of the Pentagon's departments, the Office of Net Assessment, which is directed by Andrew W. Marshall, 83, who has the responsibility of identifying long-term threats to the United States.

Mr. Marshall went to a US based think-tank called Global Business Network to compile the possibilities of Global Warming on US national security. A study was completed in October of 2003 and released to the Pentagon, which was looking at this problem from the point of view of what is the worst that could happen. It was named "An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security." The summary went far beyond what most Pentagon experts had expected.

Realizing the incredible possibilities of this study, Mr. Marshall made a decision to publicly report this and other information to the American people. And probably because of President Bush's stance on Global Warming, which is beyond negative, he also decided to go around the president, and he published his information and concern in Fortune magazine on February 9th 2004.
In his article in Fortune, Mr. Marshall explains how the melting North and South poles and glaciers from around the world are composed of fresh water and within this fact is the basis of the impending global weather disaster.

The Gulf Stream or scientifically referred to as North Atlantic thermohaline conveyor is a stream of warm water that comes from south of the equator and flows over the surface of the ocean toward the north where this warm water keeps Northern America and Northern and Western Europe from freezing. It also holds most of the world's weather patterns in the way we are used to.

Then as this Gulf Stream cools down, it drops to the bottom of the ocean and returns as a river in the ocean to the south where it warms up again and rises to the surface and then returns to the north one more time in a continuous convection current. It is a huge three dimensional figure eight.

The motor that keep this warm water flowing is found in the north where the Gulf Stream drops to the bottom of the ocean. It is the salt density of the ocean that causes this river to drop and pulls the warm water up from the south.

Now that the poles are melting and fresh water is flowing into the Atlantic Ocean and the salt density is decreasing, the Gulf Stream does not drop quiet as far, which results in a slowing down of this Stream. The Gulf Stream has been dramatically slowing down now for at least ten years.
As the Gulf Stream slows down, the warmth is not brought to the North Atlantic region, and the weather patterns begin to change for they are dependent on this warmth to keep a balance.

THE MELTING POLES
The Bush Administration
During the Bush administration when discussions have been held on the melting of the North & South Poles, this government and US corporate entities alike have stated that the world's scientists are all wrong on their conclusions that say there is great danger, and have led the American public to believe there is no real problem at all.

However, George W. Bush was the focus of attack by Sir David King when he wrote his article in Science, for the world's greatest scientific minds, at least one thousand seven hundred of them with the Union of Concerned Scientists say that Mr. Bush is ill informed at the least.
Since the US government is 25% of the CO2 pollution in the world that is creating Global Warming, a discussion of Mr. Bush's Global Warming policies is paramount. Perhaps one of the best articles that summaries Mr. Bush's position will be found in the ROLLING STONES magazine article of May 19, 2004 by Tim Dickinson. What follows in italics is a portion of this article.

Given the imminent threat from global warming, even the Bush administration might be expected to launch a War on Heat. After all, as a candidate in 2000, George W. Bush vowed to "establish mandatory reduction targets" for carbon-dioxide emissions, saying he would make the issue a top priority.

Once Bush became president, however, reducing carbon emissions was the first promise he broke -- and his record has been all downhill from there. Only two months after taking office, the administration withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, the global treaty that the United States signed in 1997 to set strict limits on greenhouse emissions. Instead, Bush instituted a voluntary emissions plan that has been an abject failure: So far, only fourteen companies have pledged to curb their CO2 output.

The president also folded the interagency group that monitors climate change into the Commerce Department -- led by Secretary Don Evans, a former oil and gas executive. And he called for additional climate research that would delay any meaningful regulation for at least another decade. "We do not know how much our climate could or will change in the future," Bush declared in a speech in the Rose Garden. Such statements spurred an open letter signed by twenty Nobel laureates, who blasted the administration for having "consistently sought to undermine" public understanding of man's role in global warming. (Bush's science adviser refused to be interviewed for this article.)

Then the censorship began. In September 2002, the Environmental Protection Agency released an air-quality report that - for the first time since 1996 - included no mention of global warming. Seven months later, the White House made wholesale revisions to the climate-change chapter of the EPA's "Report on the Environment," playing down human influence, deleting references to the health impacts of global warming and inserting climate data funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute. The EPA withdrew the altered chapter, acknowledging in an internal memo that it "no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change."

Even some Republicans have been astounded at Bush's meddling in EPA affairs. "What seems constantly evident with George W. Bush is that EPA is expected to take its marching orders from the White House on regulatory matters," says Russell Train, who headed the agency under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. "During my time, I never had that happen. Never." Train, a recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom from the elder Bush, calls the administration's approach to global warming "totally wrong" and "irresponsible."

Bush can rely on key Republicans in Congress to block any efforts to curb pollution and stave off disaster. Sen. James Inhofe, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, dismisses global warming as a "hoax." In a speech last July, Inhofe compared the IPCC to the Soviets and extolled the virtues of what he called a "CO2-enhanced" world. "It is my fervent hope," he concluded, "that Congress will reject the prophets of doom who peddle propaganda masquerading as science in the name of saving the planet from catastrophic disaster."

From another point of view in the same article we hear: "They (the Bush Administration) do not have a credible plan, either domestically or internationally, for addressing the problem (Global Warming), says Michael Oppenheimer, a climatologist at Princeton University. They (the Bush Administration) argue that they don't want to address global warming, he says, 'because the science is shaky'. And that approach is indefensible, because the science isn't shaky."

The North Pole Melting
Let's look at the facts. Two summers ago the North Pole completely melted for the first time in history that we know of. Both private and military ships floated directly over the actual North Pole as it was completely water. This area has never been seen to be less then ten feet of solid ice.

Greenpeace a few years ago announced that the North Pole's winter to summer snow pack had receded by around three hundred miles, but no one listened.

And today, as I am writing this article, we are witnessing the Alaska fire that has consumed over one million acres of forest. This fire is burning in an area that is always wet with rain or snow until now. And this fire, as you will understand in this article is directly related to the melting of the poles and the Gulf Stream.

But finally the Pentagon, thanks to Andrew Marshall, has told the truth in the Fortune magazine on February 9th. The Pentagon shows a satellite photo of the North Pole in 1970 and then in 2003, which reveals that, according to the Pentagon, 40% of the North Pole has melted in just 33 years. And it is melting faster and faster now. The Pentagon has now proven that all these government statements that the poles are not melting were simply a lie. And it is a lie more damaging than anything that Bush's Iraq war could possibly throw at the United States.

The South Pole Melting
In the South Pole a couple of years ago Larsen A ledge broke off, which surprised many scientists. At that time we were told by the scientific personnel that were studying this event that it was no big deal since this ice ledge had only been connected to the South Pole for about the last ten thousand years.

And these same scientists also added that Larsen B ledge that was behind Larsen A ledge would never melt as it has been there for many ice ages. Yet last year, Larsen's B ledge broke off and went to sea. These same scientists said that it would take six months to melt because of its immense size, but again they were wrong. It melted in a mere 35 days, and more significant, it rose the entire world's oceans by almost an inch.

Now with Larsen's B ledge gone, an incredibly enormous ice shelf called Ross's Shelf is exposed and the only thing holding Ross's Shelf from sliding into the ocean was Larsen's B ledge. According to my sources, Ross's Shelf is now cracking.

If Ross's Shelf were to slide into the ocean, it has been estimated that it would raise the entire world's oceans by sixteen to twenty feet. And that, my friends, would change the world, as almost every coastal city in the world and many islands along with the county of Holland would be underwater. Perhaps it will take an event like this to wake up the world to become serious about Global Warming.

THE ANCIENT PAST
1300 AD
The Pentagon in their study of what is now happening in the North Atlantic ocean, has looked into the past to see when this slowing down or stoppage of the Gulf Stream has happened before and what actually took place at those time in the world's weather patterns.

In actual fact, this North Atlantic ocean slowing or stoppage has happen hundreds of times before in the past going back hundred of millions years, but in our recent past of the last 10,000 years, it has only happened twice.

The most recent time was in the year 1300 AD, and at that time it simply slowed down. It never actually stopped. And why it slowed down, scientists are at the moment theorizing. They don't really know why.

It resulted in abrupt global climatic weather changes that never returned to normal for 550 years. This period of time in our history has been named the "Little Ice Age" because of the havoc it caused to our weather and the dramatic cooling that resulted.

What the Pentagon has realized is that at that time of the "Little Ice Age", the East Coast of America became extremely cold, while the middle and Western areas of the United States became so dry that the Midwest became a dust bowl and the mountain forests burned to the ground, just as they are doing right now today, for you see, this slowing down of the Gulf Stream has been going on today for about ten years. It also affected Europe dramatically as their weather changed completely during the "Little Ice Age".

A study of the Anasazi Indians of the 14th century is enlightening. In Chaco Canyon in New Mexico the Anasazi completely disappeared, and where they went no one is sure. But one of the reasons that has emerged from the study of the New Mexico environment for their leaving the area is that soon after the turn of the 14th century, Chaco Canyon went into a drought where they didn't receive a drop of rain for 47 years! 47 years of drought will definitely cause anyone to move. No water, no life.

The archeologists who presented this study didn't know why the drought happened, but it is clear why it happened with the information of the Gulf Stream slowing down just before this period. And this is exactly what the Pentagon believes is about to happen here in America, Canada and Europe as we speak.

We may think that this current drought in the US West is going to stop soon, but the earth's history with the Gulf Stream suggests strongly that it will continue for about another 40 years before it begin to regain balance.

8200 Years Ago
However, the Pentagon report believes that the Gulf Stream, from everything they know, is not just going to slow down, but rather it is going to stop. And the last time this happened was 8200 years ago.

And according to the Pentagon, from their research, this is a much more dramatic scenario. When the Gulf Stream stopped 8200 years ago, it soon left Northern Europe under a half mile of ice, and New York and England quickly endured weather similar to Siberia.

Further it resulted in a true "Ice Age" that lasted about 100 years, and so you can see why the Pentagon is so worried. According to Andrew Marshall, like Sir David King, he says that this Gulf Stream problem is a greater threat to US national security (and other countries') than all of the world's combined terrorism. Really, when you think about it, terrorism is nothing compared to the stopping of the Gulf Stream. It's not even close.

Realize that without stable weather conditions, the growing of food becomes almost impossible, and according to the Pentagon, this could become such a huge problem for the world in the near future, that wars will begin to form all over the world, not for oil or energy, but for food and water.

And with whole countries having to evacuate, if this were to happen, such as Finland, Sweden and Denmark, which will be under ice, and many other countries for other reasons, this enormous immigration is what will cause the most threat to national security, again according to the Pentagon report.

This is why Andrew Marshall and Sir David King wanted the world to know about what was coming so that the world could begin to prepare for the inevitable.

THE US SENATE
Then in March 2004 the US Senate became aware of what the Pentagon was saying and they appropriated 60 million dollars to the study of ABRUPT GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGES. This offers hope that soon the US Senate will begin to tell the world of these coming climate changes.

THE UNITED NATIONS
In June 2004, ending on June 29th, a meeting was held at the United Nations to consider what to do about Global Warming and the Gulf Stream. 154 countries participated with the result that the only thing they could figure out what to do was to eliminate the use of oil and gasoline as soon as possible.

There are those who believe that if we continue to lower the CO2 levels, that possibly we can slow down the problems, and, of course, we must do everything we can. This is important for there are ocean currents other that the North Atlantic that are in every ocean, and if they all were to stop or slow down, Earth would all most certainly enter a true ice age. And history has shown that if that were to happen, our civilization would not return to a warm period again for 90,000 years.

But really, to change or increase the current of the entire Atlantic ocean to bring it back to "normal" is beyond the possibilities of the human race and all of it's technologies. It is too late, by the estimate of most of the world's scientists, to alter the course of what is about to happen. All we can do now is prepare for the shock. And preparation is essential, which is the main message of both Sir David King and Andrew Marshall.

NASA PREPARES
On July 13th, 2004, NASA launched a satellite, the first of three, that's whole purpose is to study Global Warming. Besides the study of the ozone, another huge problem associated with Global Warming, these satellites will monitor the temperature and salt density of the oceans. Perhaps we will at least be able to monitor the rapid changes and predict what will happen next.

SOME UNUSUAL WEATHER CHANGES THAT HAVE HAPPENED
SINCE THE GULF STREAM SLOWED DOWN
In March 2004 the world saw a major hurricane hit the coast of Brazil. This is the first time in all recorded history that a hurricane has struck land in South America.
In May 2004, the United States witnessed 562 tornadoes in a single month, breaking all records. A few of these tornadoes were recorded in Seattle, Washington. Never has a tornado been seen in Seattle.

Eastern Canada in the winter of 2003/2004 just had one of the coldest winters on record.
For several years forest fires have been burning around the world. The list would be extensive. The north part of Australia is on fire. Alaska, as we have already mentioned, is burning. Unprecedented!

The entire Western United States is under fire, jumping from region to region, with the US government announcing that this is the worse drought in 500 years. Really, the fires are worldwide.

France and Europe had a heat wave in 2003 that caused 15,000 people to die in France and 30,000 through-out Europe simply from the intense heat caused by Global Warming and the Gulf Stream.

Argentina this month July 2004, had the greatest storm they have ever seen in their history.
Mexico's weather is so strange and wet in some regions that mold/fungus is forming on their crops. (And in other regions they are having a drought) As weather patterns begin to change more and more radically, food growth will become one of our biggest problems.

The coral reefs of the world are dying because of Global Warming, and this is threatening most of the islands in the oceans, including those in the Pacific. Anyone living on most islands will probably have to leave sooner or later because of their fresh water being corrupted with salt ocean water. Definitely they will have to leave if the oceans rise much higher.

Further, it was reported on NPR this morning, July 16, 2004, that fifty percent of the CO2 that has been released in the atmosphere from our technological society has ended up in our oceans and this in turn is dropping the PH to the acidic. This in turn is actually dissolving the coral reefs and killing them along with vast numbers of other life forms in the oceans.

These are problems simply off the top of my head. If one were to get serious and really research all the strange weather problems of the last ten years (the years the Gulf Stream slowed down) one would begin to be truly aware of the coming abrupt global climate weather changes that we must all adapt to if humanity is to continue on Earth.

THE 40-FOOT WALL
In the Pentagon report it suggests that the United States build a 40-foot wall around the entire country to keep out people who are immigrating and trying to escape world weather problems. The Pentagon believes that food and water will be the biggest problem, and since the US has the money to buy food, they believe we will be best able to resist this particular problem longer than most countries. People will want to come here just to get food.

This sounds like something out of a weird movie, but in fact the US government has already begun the construction of this wall between the US and Mexico.

SIDE NOTE:
Speaking of movies, The Day After Tomorrow, which was recently released is based on this information of the Gulf Stream stopping. However, Hollywood exaggerated the results of the storms so much that most people simply thought it was fantasy. It is not fantasy, it is really happening, but will it happen as this movie predicts? And in this movie you saw massive amount of Americans fleeing to Mexico to escape the extreme cold weather.

I just spoke with a US military person about two weeks ago who is involved in the construction of this 40-foot wall. In the discussion, with him about the Gulf Stream, which he was unaware of, he said, "Oh, now I understand. You see, the wall is straight up and down on the Mexican side, but it has steps and ladders on the US side to get over the wall and into Mexico. I never could understand why the government was doing this."

THE CHANGING OF THE SHAPE OF THE GULF STREAM
In the Pentagon report they said that they believed that the stoppage of the Gulf Stream would probably happen in three to five years from October 2003. This was their best guess, and admittedly it was only a guess and a theory.

But what they didn't know, because it was beginning at the actual time of their release of their report, was that the Gulf Stream was beginning to change shape. The change of shape of the Gulf Stream is the beginning of the breakdown and stoppage of this warm water current and the end of our civilization as we know it.

I have this information from two sources, both of which do not wish to be named right now, but both of them are world famous scientists.

If this is true, then all the effects and timing of the Pentagon report have to be shifted closer to the present by three to five years.

I don't know if this is true, but in the vein of holding nothing back, this info is placed in this article. The actual proof will follow if it will be given to me.

FROM MY HEART TO YOURS
As I became aware of this information, I didn't know what to do or if I should write this article. But because I believe in and love humanity, I finally realized, like Sir David King and Andrew Marshall, that I must speak out, for knowledge is power.

And when the time comes for us all to make life decisions, my prayer is that we all go inside where God resides and listen to our inner Heart. If we trust in ourselves and the presence of Divine Guidance, we will all know exactly what to do and where to be.
May God bless us all in what is about to come.

Global Warming

Published on Monday, September 12, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
On Katrina, Global Warming
Speech given by Al Gore

The following is a transcript of a speech given by former Vice President Al Gore at the National Sierra Club Convention in San Francisco on September 9, 2005 addressing the challenges and moral imperatives posed by Hurricane Katrina and global warming.

I know that you are deeply concerned, as I am, about the direction in which our country has been moving. About the erosion of social capital. About the lack of respect for a very basic principle, and that is that we, as Americans, have to put ourselves and our ability to seek out the truth because we know it will make us free. And then on the basis of truth, as we share it to the best of our abilities with one another, we act to try to form a more perfect union and provide for the general welfare and make this country worthy of the principles upon which it was founded.

My heart is heavy for another reason today, and many have mentioned this, but I want to tell you personally that my heart is heavy because of the suffering that the people of the Gulf Coast have been enduring. The losses that they've suffered in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, New Orleans in particular, but other cities as well, and rural areas. We are here thinking of them, thinking as well of the many brave men and women who have exceeded the limits of exhaustion as they do their duty in responding to this crisis, to the families of those responders and the families of the victims.

When I received the invitation that you generously extended for me to come and speak to you, I did not at first accept, because I was trying to resolve a scheduling conflict. The fifty State Insurance Commissioners were meeting in New Orleans, and asked me to speak about global warming and hurricanes.

I was supposed to be there today and tomorrow morning. And of course as we all watch this tragedy unfold, we had a lot of different thoughts and feelings. But then all those feelings were mixed in with puzzlement at why there was no immediate response, why there was not an adequate plan in place. We are now told that this is not a time to point fingers, even as some of those saying "don't point fingers" are themselves pointing fingers at the victims of the tragedy, who did not - many of whom could not - evacuate the city of New Orleans, because they didn't have automobiles, and they did not have adequate public transportation.

We're told this is not a time to hold our national government accountable because there are more important matters that confront us. This is not an either/or choice. They are linked together. As our nation belatedly finds effective ways to help those who have been so hard hit by Hurricane Katrina, it is important that we learn the right lessons of what has happened, lest we are spoon-fed the wrong lessons from what happened. If we do not absorb the right lessons, we are, in the historian's phrase, doomed to repeat the mistakes that have already been made. All of us know that our nation - all of us, the United States of America - failed the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast when this hurricane was approaching them, and when it struck. When the corpses of American citizens are floating in toxic floodwaters five days after a hurricane strikes, it is time not only to respond directly to the victims of the catastrophe but to hold the processes of our nation accountable, and the leaders of our nation accountable, for the failures that have taken place. [applause]

The Bible in which I believe, in my own faith tradition, says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

Four years ago in August of 2001, President Bush received a dire warning: "Al Qaeda determined to attack inside the US." No meetings were called, no alarms were sounded, no one was brought together to say, "What else do we know about this imminent threat? What can we do to prepare our nation for what we have been warned is about to take place?" If there had been preparations, they would have found a lot of information collected by the FBI, and CIA and NSA - including the names of most of the terrorists who flew those planes into the WTC and the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania. The warnings of FBI field offices that there were suspicious characters getting flight training without expressing any curiosity about the part of the training that has to do with landing. They would have found directors of FBI field offices in a state of agitation about the fact that there was no plan in place and no effective response. Instead, it was vacation time, not a time for preparation. Or protecting the American people.

Four years later, there were dire warnings, three days before Hurricane Katrina hit NOLA, that if it followed the path it was then on, the levees would break, and the city of New Orleans would drown, and thousands of people would be at risk. It was once again vacation time. And the preparations were not made, the plans were not laid, the response then was not forthcoming.

In the early days of the unfolding catastrophe, the President compared our ongoing efforts in Iraq to World War II and victory over Japan. Let me cite one difference between those two historical events: When imperial Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt did not invade Indonesia. [applause]

I personally believe that the very fact that there has been no accountability for the horrendous misjudgments and outright falsehoods that laid the basis for this horrible tragedy that we have ongoing in Iraq, the fact that there was no accountability for those mistakes, misjudgments and dissembling, is one of the principal reasons why there was no fear of being held accountable for a cavalier, lackluster, mistaken, inadequate response to the onrushing tragedy that was clearly visible - for those who were watching television, for those who were reading the news - what happened was not only knowable, it was known in advance, in great and painstaking detail. They did tabletop planning exercises, they identified exactly what the scientific evidence showed would take place. Where there is no vision, the people perish.

It's not only that there is no vision; it's that there has been a misguided vision. One of the principal philosophical guides for this administration has been the man who said famously that he wants to render the government of the United States so weak and helpless that you can drown it in a bathtub. There were warnings three years ago from the last director in the Clinton-Gore Administration of FEMA that FEMA was being rendered weak and helpless, unable to respond in the event of a catastrophe. The budget was cut, the resources sent elsewhere.

Carl [Pope] said he was embarrassed. The word is a tricky word. What did you feel after the invasion of Iraq when you saw American soldiers holding dog leashes attached to helpless prisoners, 99% of whom, by the way, were innocent of any connection to violence against our troops, much less terrorism - innocent prisoners who were being tortured in our name - what did you feel? I don't know the words. I don't know the words but I want you to draw a line connecting the feelings you had when you saw the visual images providing evidence that our soldiers, acting in our name, with our authority, were torturing helpless people and that it was a matter of policy - now, they pointed fingers at the privates and corporals that were in charge - but I want you to draw a line between the emotions that you felt when you absorbed that news, and the emotions that you felt over the last ten days when you saw those corpses in the water, when you saw people without food, water, medicine - our fellow citizens left helpless. And of course in both cases the story is complex and many factors are involved, but I want you draw a line connecting the feelings that you had then and now. And I want you to draw another line, connecting those responsible for both of those unbelievable tragedies that embarrassed our nation in the eyes of the world.

There are scientific warnings now of another onrushing catastrophe. We were warned of an imminent attack by Al Qaeda; we didn't respond. We were warned the levees would break in New Orleans; we didn't respond. Now, the scientific community is warning us that the average hurricane will continue to get stronger because of global warming. A scientist at MIT has published a study well before this tragedy showing that since the 1970s, hurricanes in both the Atlantic and the Pacific have increased in duration, and in intensity, by about 50 %. The newscasters told us after Hurricane Katrina went over the southern tip of Florida that there was a particular danger for the Gulf Coast of the hurricanes becoming much stronger because it was passing over unusually warm waters in the gulf. The waters in the gulf have been unusually warm. The oceans generally have been getting warmer. And the pattern is exactly consistent with what scientists have predicted for twenty years. Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, engaged in the most elaborate, well organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind, have produced long-since a consensus that we will face a string of terrible catastrophes unless we act to prepare ourselves and deal with the underlying causes of global warming. [applause] It is important to learn the lessons of what happens when scientific evidence and clear authoritative warnings are ignored in order to induce our leaders not to do it again and not to ignore the scientists again and not to leave us unprotected in the face of those threats that are facing us right now. [applause]

The President says that he is not sure that global warming is a real threat. He says that he is not ready to do anything meaningful to prepare us for a threat that he's not certain is real. He tells us that he believes the science of global warming is in dispute. This is the same president who said last week, "Nobody could have predicted that the levees would break." It's important to establish accountability in order to make our democracy work. And the uncertainty and lack of resolution, the willful misunderstanding of what the scientific community is saying, the preference for what a few supporters in the coal and oil industry - far from all, but a few - want him to do: ignore the science. That is a serious problem. The President talked about the analogies to World War II - let me give another analogy to World War II.

Winston Churchill, when the storm was gathering on continental Europe, provided warnings of what was at stake. And he said this about the government then in power in England - which wasn't sure that the threat was real, he said, "They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent." He continued, "The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences."
Ladies and gentlemen, the warnings about global warming have been extremely clear for a long time. We are facing a global climate crisis. It is deepening. We are entering a period of consequences. Churchill also said this, and he directed it at the people of his country who were looking for any way to avoid having to really confront the threat that he was warning of and asking them to prepare for. He said that he understood why there was a natural desire to deny the reality of the situation and to search for vain hope that it wasn't really as serious as some claimed it was. He said they should know the truth. And after the appeasement by Neville Chamberlain, he sad, "This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This only the first sip, the first foretaste, of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year - unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we rise again and take our stand for freedom."

It is time now for us to recover our moral health in America and stand again to rise for freedom, demand accountability for poor decisions, missed judgments, lack of planning, lack of preparation, and willful denial of the obvious truth about serious and imminent threats that are facing the American people. [applause]

Abraham Lincoln said, "The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country."

We must disenthrall ourselves with the sound-and-light show that has diverted the attentions of our great democracy from the important issues and challenges of our day. We must disenthrall ourselves from the Michael Jackson trial and the Aruba search and the latest sequential obsession with celebrity trials or whatever relative triviality dominates the conversation of democracy instead of making room for us as free American citizens to talk with one another about our true situation, and then save our country. We must resist those wrong lessons.

Some are now saying, including in the current administration, that the pitiful response by government proves that we cannot ever rely on the government. They have in the past proposed more unilateral power for themselves as the solution for a catastrophe of their own creation, and we should not acquiesce in allowing them to investigate themselves and giving them more power to abuse and misuse, the way they have so recently done. The fact that an administration can't manage its own way out of a horse show doesn't mean that all government programs should be abolished. FEMA worked extremely well during the previous administration.

A hundred years ago, Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding." Here's what I think we here understand about Hurricane Katrina and global warming. Yes, it is true that no single hurricane can be blamed on global warming. Hurricanes have come for a long time, and will continue to come in the future. Yes, it is true that the science does not definitively tell us that global warming increases the frequency of hurricanes - because yes, it is true there is a multi-decadal cycle, twenty to forty years that profoundly affects the number of hurricanes that come in any single hurricane season. But it is also true that the science is extremely clear now, that warmer oceans make the average hurricane stronger, not only makes the winds stronger, but dramatically increases the moisture from the oceans evaporating into the storm - thus magnifying its destructive power - makes the duration, as well as the intensity of the hurricane, stronger.

Last year we had a lot of hurricanes. Last year, Japan set an all-time record for typhoons: ten, the previous record was seven. Last year the science textbooks had to be re-written. They said, "It's impossible to have a hurricane in the south Atlantic." We had the first one last year, in Brazil. We had an all-time record last year for tornadoes in the United States, 1,717 - largely because hurricanes spawned tornadoes. Last year we had record temperatures in many cities. This year 200 cities in the Western United States broke all-time records. Reno, 39 days consecutively above 100 degrees.

The scientists are telling us that what the science tells them is that this - unless we act quickly and dramatically - that Tucson tied its all-time record for consecutive days above 100 degrees. this, in Churchill's phrase, is only the first sip of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year until there is a supreme recover of moral health. We have to rise with this occasion. We have to connect the dots. When the Superfund sites aren't cleaned up, we get a toxic gumbo in a flood. When there is not adequate public transportation for the poor, it is difficult to evacuate a city. When there is no ability to give medical care to poor people, its difficult to get hospital to take refugees in the middle of a crisis. When the wetlands are turned over to the developers then the storm surges from the ocean threaten the coastal cities more. When there is no effort to restrain the global warming pollution gasses then global warming gets worse, with all of the consequences that the scientific community has warned us about.

My friends, the truth is that our circumstances are not only new; they are completely different than they have ever been in all of human history. The relationship between humankind and the earth has been utterly transformed in the last hundred years. We have quadrupled the population of our planet. The population in many ways is a success story. The demographic transition has been occurring more quickly than was hoped for, but the reality of our new relationship with the planet brings with it a moral responsibility to accept our new circumstances and to deal with the consequences of the relationship we have with this planet. And it's not just population. By any means, the power of the technologies now at our disposal vastly magnifies the average impact that individuals can have on the natural world. Multiply that by six and a half billion people, and then stir into that toxic mixture a mindset and an attitude that says its okay to ignore scientific evidence - that we don't have to take responsibility for the future consequences of present actions - and you get a collision between our civilization and the earth. The refugees that we have seen - I don't like that word when applied to American citizens in our own country, but the refugees that we have seen could well be the first sip of that bitter cup because sea-level rise in countries around the world will mobilize millions of environmental refugees. The other problems are known to you, but here is what I want to close with:

This is a moral moment. This is not ultimately about any scientific debate or political dialogue. Ultimately it is about who we are as human beings. It is about our capacity to transcend our own limitations. To rise to this new occasion. To see with our hearts, as well as our heads, the unprecedented response that is now called for. To disenthrall ourselves, to shed the illusions that have been our accomplices in ignoring the warnings that were clearly given, and hearing the ones that are clearly given now.

Where there is no vision, the people perish. And Lincoln said at another moment of supreme challenge that the question facing the people of the United States of America ultimately was whether or not this government, conceived in liberty, dedicated to freedom, of the people, by the people, and for the people - or any government so conceived - would perish from this earth.

There is another side to this moral challenge. Where there is vision, the people prosper and flourish, and the natural world recovers, and our communities recover. The good news is we know what to do. The good news is, we have everything we need now to respond to the challenge of global warming. We have all the technologies we need, more are being developed, and as they become available and become more affordable when produced in scale, they will make it easier to respond. But we should not wait, we cannot wait, we must not wait. We have every thing we need - save perhaps political will. And in our democracy, political will is a renewable resource. [sustained applause]

I know that you are debating as an organization and talking among yourselves about your own priorities. I would urge you to make global warming your priority. I would urge you to focus on a unified theme. I would urge you to work with other groups in ways that have not been done in the past, even though there have been Herculean efforts on your part and the part of others. I would urge you to make this a moral moment. To make this a moral cause.

There are those who would say that the problem is too big and we can't solve it. There are many people who go from denial to despair without pausing on the intermediate step of actually solving the problem. To those who say it's too big for us, I say that we have accepted and successfully met such challenges in the past. We declared our liberty, and then won it. We designed a country that respected and safeguarded the freedom of individuals. We freed the slaves. We gave women the right to vote. We took on Jim Crow and segregation. We cured great diseases, we have landed on the moon, we have won two wars in the Pacific and the Atlantic simultaneously. We brought down communism, we brought down apartheid, we have even solved a global environmental crisis before - the hole in the stratospheric ozone layer - because we had leadership and because we had vision and because people who exercise moral authority in their local communities empowered our nation's government "of the people by the people and for the people" to take ethical actions even thought they were difficult. This is another such time. This is your moment. This is the time for those who see and understand and care and are willing to work to say, "This time the warnings will not be ignored. This time we will prepare. This time we will rise to the occasion. And we will prevail."

Thank you. Good luck to you, God bless you.