How Much Evidence Do You Need?!

I'm so sick of this. No words can describe how pissed off I am about it. I can't believe people aren't taking this seriously.

President Bush and hard-line, tax hating conservatives and libertarians will have you believe that the American economy is more important than Planet Earth. I'll repeat that again: the American economy is more important than PLANET EARTH (read that one more time, just for good measure). Let's ponder this thought for a moment.... human survival depends on the conditions and resources that our climate provides us. uhduh... any reasonable person who actually cares about the world that their children will be living in, who looks at ALL of the evidence, and doesn't have a brain with a left hemisphere committed to denial, and a right hemisphere committed to stupid, will recognize the need for swift action, however "inconvenient" and "hurtful" to the economy it may be perceived to be.

The only people who will actually be really negatively affected by changes in government policy will be the oil and coal industry. If we continue burning millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere everyday, the economy will be just fine.... until the arctic is gone and sea levels rise over 40 feet, displacing millions of people, and until the seasons change so dramatically that thousands of species of animals with ecological niches will be unable to adapt. Today, species extinction is happening at a rate 1000 times higher than is observed to be normal.

Everybody remembers the economic tragedy that occured when the horse and buggy industry went under, right?.... anyone? Anyone at all?

Prices will go up on products at walmart as carbon taxes and caps on emissions are implemented and signed into law. The economic impact will be insigficant. Americans are innovative, hard working people, we can take care of ourselves. In effect, the "carbon market" will have to be regulated by the state, as we transfer our dependence on oil to renewable resources. Last monday, the Supreme court, in a vote of 5-4 ruled that the United States government had the authority, under the Clean Air Act to enforce caps on carbon dioxide emissions. But President Bush is much too loyal to the industry that made generations of his family rich, to take action and do the right thing. Loyalty over morality... thats what I always say.

Here's more evidence that he will inevitably ignore. Yet another catastrophe, coming sooner than you think to a reality near you:
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Arctic ice cap is melting much faster than expected and is now about 30 years ahead of predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.S. ice expert said on Tuesday.

This means the ocean at the top of the world could be free or nearly free of summer ice by 2020, three decades sooner than the global panel's gloomiest forecast of 2050. No ice on the Arctic Ocean during summer would be a major spur to global warming, said Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Center in Colorado.

"Right now ... the Arctic helps keep the Earth cool," Scambos said in a telephone interview. "Without that Arctic ice, or with much less of it, the Earth will warm much faster."

That is because the ice reflects light and heat; when it is gone, the much darker land or sea will absorb more light and heat, making it more difficult for the planet to cool down, even in winter, he said. Scambos and co-authors of the study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, used satellite data and visual confirmation of Arctic ice to reach their conclusions, a far different picture than that obtained from computer models used by the scientists of the intergovernmental panel.

"The IPCC report was very careful, very thorough and cautious, so they erred on the side of what would certainly occur as opposed to what might occur," Scambos said in a telephone interview.

------------- Read all of it here

This is crazy! Conservative talking heads and politicians call the IPCC (made up of over 2,500 of the world's leading climate scientists) "alarmist" for their predictions. Now it turns out that arctic melting is occuring faster than any of the so called "chicken-little's" had previoiusly predicted. When are we going to start respecting science again in this country?

Shame on us. Oh, well... the world is going to shit. Let's all just sit back, pick our butts, and enjoy the apocalypse.