One of the semi-local papers had a headline monday of

"TEMPS STIR WARMING FEARS - Past twelve months held record high in century of U.S. data."


Now I know that this is the "Religion" thread so don't go thinking that I am lost but this is a "Religious" matter for me. I went to a full moon Imramma on the third where we ate dinner and had a few hours of song, dance and then a short service but the temperature never got below 85'F(I know, I am a super geek, I have an ambient air temp reading on my watch which is received from the closest atomic clock just like the time). Now any other night this matter would have blown right over me but this night there were over a hundred of us huddled on our little knoll stinking to high heaven because the humidity was 100% and it was 85' at 2:00 in the morning.

I have one of the only Old American Elm trees of which I know of remaining in this county. Dutch Elm Disease has killed them all off but just very few and this weather is killing this hundred year old tree. I had a fellow from the University out last week and he said that too many of the rare trees are dying because of the heat. We don't care about other trees I mean we haven't been babying those other trees for twenty years but this Elm tree represents years of love and care from my own hands. I have a set of Sassafras trees that the Gods have been kind enough to see through very tough times because when I bought this property they were all four just saplings a few inches tall and we took down all of the wild cherries and scrub around them thus somehow managing to save them in the process. We call them the four brothers because when one refuses to bloom they all four refuse to bloom. Even the honeysuckle is wilting and that stuff is tough as nails.

We have wild mushrooms growing in our frontyard this year. Some of the shrooms are edible but I hate having to ID the blasted things and we have ochra growing in the bottoms and ditches but the corn, barley and soybean fields are looking bare. Our sweet corn is only two feet tall and the silks are already crispy brown. Many of the soybean groups are full of empty pods and the Barley is spotty at best.

I was looking at some graphs for a class I am supposed to teach in the fall and they were just blatantly short sited and false. The college decided that they were going to "appoint" a set of teachers to choose class materials this term just as a "trial run-through" for possible "future policy" decisions or some crap and the books they chose are full of nothing but fascist crap and I let them know that i'm not going to teach that nonsense in my classroom. I can't crap on the workbook on this forum but it featured people like John McCain and Milton Friedman giving their "opinions" on things like foreign policy and global warming. Students should be encouraged to look up real data and then make their own opinion instead of assimilating crap like that.

I did take some time to look up some real hard data on this Climate Change thing and it is upsetting to say the least. The first graph charts the overall GTC between 1880 and 2009 paralleled with the increase in CO2 emissions. Now I worked for one of the largest energy companies in the world for over a decade, and I spent a great deal of time in the C_E_M lab so my understanding of this will differ somewhat from other people thus if I can be of further service please let me know.



and this one is NASA's graph on the 2'C increase in overall global temperature.



What do you guys think about the general theory of global warming? Is it real? Is this strange weather a result of Climate Change? Is it man made or is it natural? If it's natural then where are the Carbon Dioxide emmissions coming from and are they the reason for Climate Change?

My poor Grandfather just got a new neighbor and he claims to watch FOX and only FOX news and he says that's all he listens to day in and day out. I asked him about a number of things, already knowing what he would say, and one of those things was Global Warming - Is it real? He said in a very hostil tone "No such thing." This fella claims that he was an engineer before he retired so I told him that I was a PE and then I explained my credentials to him and why I thought it was very real which enraged him, which I also expected. After he got through yelling I asked him again "Is Global Warming Real?" and then he changed a little and said "Well it might be but we are'nt causing it!" and I thought that I should stop there because for all I knew he might have a bad ticker and fall over dead in my grandad's living room!


Pictures I took out in the yard this morning of the trees: YARD PICS

Link to Graphs and data: GCC Graphs and Data

funny one.

i remain sceptical that our species is of sufficient significance to 'wreck' global climate. plenty of events have significantly affected climate in hugely bigger ways without our help - kt event, tora bora, blahblah.

i think its real enough -it seems thoroughly measured, i just think we maybe do not have enough understanding of long term climate patterns to be an authority on the causality of the situation. ofr all we know there may have been a deep sea vent puking out co2 for the past 200 years.

then again - the prevention side is a no brainer for all sorts of reasons. if we are right we are stupid not to try and counteract the effects we think we have had on the climate.

it seems clear that fossil fuels are more pollution intensive than emerging alternatives like wind, solar and tidal. and most reasonably intelligent people can appreciate an unpolluted world would be a nicer place to hang out.

besides - if we get off our fossil fuel habit, we take income way from oil companies which is no bad thing - it would fundamentally change world politics.

but then that is the trouble with the whole debate - it is made vastly more complicated by all the vested interests involved. oils companies need it not to be real because it threatens their income, and the banks and governments who play their corner will be with them all the way as they are in americay and the uk. but maybe they do wan tit to be real because it could be an excuse for more price hikes, an option no western government would be adverse to because the of the vast revenue implications. and unfortunately the scientific community is not nearly as impartial as it likes to portrayed - everyone can be bought and there are all sorts of agendas floating about.

position is maybe we caused it maybe we didn't but we do need to get our sh!t together and get off fossil fuels, stop stuffing our hard earned cash into the pockets of evil oil corporations and clean up our yard.

my view of way forward - shoot some oil executives and bankers, and put up loads of wind farms.

Thanks for replying Janimal. Most people seem to avoid this subject altogether.

I used to think that it was pure arrogance to think that we, humans as a species, could do anything to really affect the overall planet and then I took a trip to eastern Kentucky and West Virginia to go hiking.

My wife and I had our first trip to Ashland in 2002. We went there for a deep hike into the Pogue mountain area. I have a friend who knows the area really well that went with us. We hiked about half a mile and then stopped because a guy lost his footing and sprained an ankle. I kept on browsing around looking for things that interested me (Arrow Heads, Mushrooms, etc) and then I took a look over the hill at the next valley and there were no more mountains (knobs) to the north because they had all been mined out.

Where each mountain was supposed to be there were massive holes. Imagine growing up on a mountain that had been in your family for a hundred years and then some bureaucrat comes to your door one day and tells you that the property has been condemned and you need to get out by XX dates. 'Here is your fair market comp check so now get out.'

After the state runs the people off of their land they sell the land to a coal company for pennies on the dollar. The mountain is then removed so the company can get the coal beneath. This is a common practice in East Kentucky and West Virginia. After the mountain has been removed and the coal stripped and minimum reclamation has been attempted the State buys the land back at a premium and then holds onto it until they feel it has settled enough to sell or run roads over but the fact is that it will take decades for the material to settle enough for any settlements on the land.

Usually things are frustrating in an area like Ashland because there is no visibility thus all of the mountains look the same but this trip was different because I could see for miles if I looked north over the ridge. When I saw those "Holes" where mountains used to be . . . it hit me like a sack of bricks - We are destroying our world acre by acre.

Behind my house, about half a mile away, there were some old growth woods so thick that a person dare not try and hike through them. We have always called these woods "Copperhead Forest" because of the snakes that slither out of there. I would bet my life that there were trees which were a couple hundred of years old in those woods. "Copperhead Forest" was about sixty acres and full of every kind of hardwood tree you can imagine. It was a paradise for Mushroom hunting because it was a wetland.

About three months ago the owner of "Copperhead Forest" decided that it was time to make it farmland. The farmers brought in a Track Hoe with a tree cutter on it along with a couple of skidders and within two days that entire sixty acres had been cleaned of all "worthy" trees and then within seventy-two hours the entire area was rid of all "Life" and the fires were still burning. Anything that was not taken and used for lumber was piled into massive piles and then burnt to ash.

If ~sixty acres can be "cleaned" in five days and every mountain in the Appalachian plateau is disappearing then yes I believe that we are making a huge impact on our Goddess Mother.

oh, we are not without impact, but when you consider that in terms of scale, mountains in all, the earth is smoother than any billiard ball, then chewing up a couple of mountains looks less significant. and yes we are doing a lot of deforesting, but we are a very young species and i don't think we need be viewed as different to any other species which emerges and pushes out others.

humans are part of the same global eco system as everything else - the emergence of photosynthetic plants was disastrous for most life at the time - way beyond the effects we are having. not that we are free of guilt, but humans do have trouble seeing that they are subject to the same laws of ecology as all other creatures and we will ultimately be regulated byt the same factors as any other population.

at the present rate, humanity will not survive long enough to leave any lasting effects beyond a millennium or two which a blink of an eye in the story of life. the planet will rock on long after we are forgotten. i think the most that we are doing i making life more unpleasant for some species for a while...

Slightly off the global warming topic, which I dont understand how anyone who looks at the data could dispute, is your sassafras. "We call them the four brothers because when one refuses to bloom they all four refuse to bloom" - they well be more than just brothers - sassafras does root sprout so all 4 stems may well be off the same root system and therefore genetically identical and really all one organism

if you think that was fast to deforest that amt of land you should look into how quick they can completely deforest the eco system of the rainforest in south america and thats in my opinion one of the biggest threats is all the rainforest being ripped up...and see how much has been lost in ten years...

then there is CHINA one of the worst polluters going...

instead of buying so many plastic things look for things in alternative containers and for gawd sake STOP with the dang plastic bags you put your grocery items in and buy cloth bags...

not that any of this is going to now stop all this ...we were warned when the first clues of the ozone layer had opened and ignored it and its now a known fact the most we can do is ****try to slow the inevitable not reverse it.

I did not know that! That is cool you mean they sprout from the roots of other sassafras trees kind of like a mimosa?

Now the four brothers may be a siamese quadruplet. . .

I have read a great deal on the deforesting rates in Latin America and they are astounding. 200+ square miles a day if my memory has not failed me.

Please don't read too much into my rants. The only time I am at peace is when i'm in a grove or forest. Nature talks to me now almost to the point I can understand it. During the Ancient holidays, like the coming Lughnasadh, our mother speaks to us and all you need to do is listen.

Paper or plastic? I have always been confused about the paradox surrounding that term. If you choose paper then you just killed a tree and if you choose plastic then you release poisons onto the world. We started buying those reusable bags so the question was not even asked.

Illusive - Personally I think that intervention has long past and now we just have to prepare for the results. That Copperhead Forest shocked me and amazed me at the same time - It was there one day and then gone the next along with all of the deer, rabbits, raccoons, etc and that really did render me into a helpless, worried state. I go by there occasionally and lust look, look, look but the land now seems just as dead ad all of the land surrounding it ][d

I worry about not if, but when our planet is going to take her revenge. The Wife says that I worry too much, my Elders tellme that we are not to ponder on such things. The Old Gods get weaker by the minute as their world is torn down tree by tree. Man has no idea what's he is doing!

first of all our planet...doesnt express emotions it just goes thru the phases it always has for eons and will continue to do and did even well before man started adding to it...

i dont do paper only cloth bags for shopping and plastic is far worse than using paper..you can still plant a tree but wont be able to where all this plastic gets dumped and take gobs of years to no longer release its toxins into the earth...styrofoam...worse yet..and most meats are packaged using it ...packing materials on and on even used in construction of new homes etc as a weather barrier...

and the rain forest thats more like less than a day...tv aired the equipment used to do this and how effective it was in doing it SUPER fast. its been stated that the deforestation of rain forest is doing more to cause this than any super city adding its poisons.

[quote]first of all our planet...doesn’t express emotions it just goes thru the phases it always has for eons and will continue to do and did even well before man started adding to it... [/quote] Even as a professional I would have to disagree. Just like the basic law of elementary physics "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." Our planet is a living organism where every living thing therein relies on the next for survival. Does that sound familiar? If you do not water your roses do they not wither and die? :confused: The human body is the same way is it not? Remove the Human heart and what happens - the human dies and that could be said for any number of internal organs. It may sound crazy, like I said before, but for those of us that hear her screams mother earth is in pain and there is no remission in sight. I do acknowledge the fact that these reactionary schemes may be called different things by different individuals. Just like Cernunnos the Christian God told his people to be good stewards of the land and sea and have we? So instead of emotions the said reaction could, in fact, be a punishment for years of our race destroying what the Gods hold dearest - Their greatest creation - Man and his habitat. I’m sorry Illusive but as much as I love you I have to disagree. Earth is our mother and she deserves our respect or her reactions to our abuse will condemn us all.