[Dialogue] Are We Ignoring the Biggest Story in Our History?
Jim Baumbach
wtw0bl at new.rr.com
Mon Jan 23 09:25:04 EST 2006
Following a hyperlink on the page below, I cam across an interesting
group of artists and some of their paintings. I found that Justin
Faunce has a peculiar style see them at:
http://www.leokoenig.com/artist.php?art_id=17
Jim Baumbach
Jean C. Smith wrote:
> Check out the article and paintings in the current issues of Orion
> http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/06-1om/McKibbenRockman.html
> Imagine your favorite place under water! Permanently!
>
> If you do not know this magazine, you should get the free issue. it
> is one of the best all round magazines going.
>
> Jean
>
> _________________________________
>
> Jean C. Smith
> Wild Connections Coordinator
> Upper Arkansas and South Platte Project
> 1420 Pinewood Road
> Florissant CO 80816
> www.wildconnections.org <http://www.wildconnections.org>
> jeancsmith at peakinet.net <mailto:jeancsmith at peakinet.net>
> 719-686-5905
>
> "God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease,
> avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods;
> but he cannot save them from fools." John Muir
> ______________________________________________________
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* jim rippey <mailto:jimripsr at qwest.net>
> *To:* Dialogue <mailto:dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, January 18, 2006 8:47 AM
> *Subject:* [Dialogue] Are We Ignoring the Biggest Story in Our
> History?
>
> As a long-time reporter/editor, I thought this an interesting and
> frightening take on global warming. It concludes with this
> thought: "It may seem impossible to imagine that a
> technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to
> destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of
> doing." The failure of the United States to get serious about
> climate change is unforgivable, a human folly beyond imagining.
>
> Jim Rippey in Bellevue, NE, where winter is still playing
> peekaboo. It's supposed to be a sunny 48 degrees this afternoon.
> .... OK, now shall we talk about Intelligent Design?
> ------------------------------------
>
> *Is It Warm in Here?*
> We Could Be Ignoring the Biggest Story in Our History
>
> By David Ignatius
> Wednesday, January 18, 2006; A17
>
> One of the puzzles if you're in the news business is figuring out
> what's "news." The fate of your local football team certainly fits
> the definition. So does a plane crash or a brutal murder. But how
> about changes in the migratory patterns of butterflies?
>
> Scientists believe that new habitats for butterflies are early
> effects of global climate change -- but that isn't news, by most
> people's measure. Neither is declining rainfall in the Amazon, or
> thinner ice in the Arctic. We can't see these changes in our
> personal lives, and in that sense, they are abstractions. So they
> don't grab us the way a plane crash would -- even though they may
> be harbingers of a catastrophe that could, quite literally, alter
> the fundamentals of life on the planet. And because they're not
> "news," the environmental changes don't prompt action, at least
> not in the United States.
>
> What got me thinking about the recondite life rhythms of the
> planet, and not the 24-hour news cycle, was a recent conversation
> with a scientist named Thomas E. Lovejoy, who heads the H. John
> Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. When
> I first met Lovejoy nearly 20 years ago, he was trying to get
> journalists like me to pay attention to the changes in the climate
> and biological diversity of the Amazon. He is still trying, but
> he's beginning to wonder if it's too late.
>
> Lovejoy fears that changes in the Amazon's ecosystem may be
> irreversible. Scientists reported last month that there is an
> Amazonian drought apparently caused by new patterns in Atlantic
> currents that, in turn, are similar to projected climate change.
> With less rainfall, the tropical forests are beginning to dry out.
> They burn more easily, and, in the continuous feedback loops of
> their ecosystem, these drier forests return less moisture to the
> atmosphere, which means even less rain. When the forest trees are
> deprived of rain, their mortality can increase by a factor of six,
> and similar devastation affects other species, too.
>
> "When do you wreck it as a system?" Lovejoy wonders. "It's like
> going up to the edge of a cliff, not really knowing where it is.
> Common sense says you shouldn't discover where the edge is by
> passing over it, but that's what we're doing with deforestation
> and climate change."
>
> Lovejoy first went to the Amazon 40 years ago as a young scientist
> of 23. It was a boundless wilderness, the size of the continental
> United States, but at that time it had just 2 million people and
> one main road. He has returned more than a hundred times,
> assembling over the years a mental time-lapse photograph of how
> this forest primeval has been affected by man. The population has
> increased tenfold, and the wilderness is now laced with roads, new
> settlements and economic progress. The forest itself, impossibly
> rich and lush when Lovejoy first saw it, is changing.
>
> For Lovejoy, who co-edited a pioneering 1992 book, "Global Warming
> and Biological Diversity," there is a deep sense of frustration. A
> crisis he and other scientists first sensed more than two decades
> ago is drifting toward us in what seems like slow motion, but fast
> enough that it may be impossible to mitigate the damage.
>
> The best reporting of the non-news of climate change has come from
> Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker. Her three-part series last
> spring lucidly explained the harbingers of potential disaster: a
> shrinking of Arctic sea ice by 250 million acres since 1979; a
> thawing of the permafrost for what appears to be the first time in
> 120,000 years; a steady warming of Earth's surface temperature;
> changes in rainfall patterns that could presage severe droughts of
> the sort that destroyed ancient civilizations. This month she
> published a new piece, "Butterfly Lessons," that looked at how
> these delicate creatures are moving into new habitats as the
> planet warms. Her real point was that all life, from
> microorganisms to human beings, will have to adapt, and in ways
> that could be dangerous and destabilizing.
>
> So many of the things that pass for news don't matter in any
> ultimate sense. But if people such as Lovejoy and Kolbert are
> right, we are all but ignoring the biggest story in the history of
> humankind. Kolbert concluded her series last year with this
> shattering thought: "It may seem impossible to imagine that a
> technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to
> destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of
> doing." She's right. The failure of the United States to get
> serious about climate change is unforgivable, a human folly beyond
> imagining.
>
> /davidignatius at washpost.com <mailto:davidignatius at washpost.com>/
>
> © 2006 The Washington Post Company
>
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