Planet Earth is Turning on Us
By louisehartmann
Planet Earth is turning on us. Yesterday – violent storms lashed the southern United States – spinning off tornadoes – and killing more than 190 people. 128 people were killed in the state of Alabama alone yesterday – prompting Alabama authorities to declare a state of emergency. Arkansas and Tennessee have also declared states of emergency. Three nuclear reactors at Browns Ferry nuclear power plant were knocked off power in the storms – luckily the NRC confirmed that back up generators came on properly to just barely avert a Fukushima like disaster in America.
So how much more evidence do climate deniers need to understand that our planet is entering dangerous times as a result of our pollution? And by climate change deniers – I’m talking about EVERY newly-elected Republican in the United States House of Representatives who are self-proclaimed deniers of man-made global warming. That’s what millions in big oil campaign contributions get us - industry-owned politicians.
It’s becoming painfully – very painfully – clear what’s going on here – and soon it will be too late to reverse the damage we’re doing to our planet.
Comments
#2
Thom,
One resopnse to the coal guy who claimed that burning coal for electricity is 'good' could have been that before the 1950s, the type of coal used for this purpose was anthracite, which was practically pure carbon. Today, the major coal being burned for electricity is bituminous, which is chock-full of junk like crude oil, sulfur and phosphorous.
Obviously, the deleterous effects of industrial coal burning today has little relationship to the pollution profile of yesteryear.
Fred in Massachusetts
#3
a caller today challenged SUV effect on warming comparing to volcano. isn't there a difference of "burning" vs "heated"?
#4
Here are two good articles to read!
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Hiding-Behind-God-Frankli-by-Rev-Dan-Vojir-110427-383.html
Religious cowards!
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Legislated-Dictatorship-C-by-Steven-Jonas-110425-623.html
State dictatorship is here and it will never leave us.
#5
Let America be America again!
The poem below by Langston Hughes reveals his feelings and thoughts and his feelings and thoughts are similar to my personal feelings and thoughts.
#6
OUR ANTI-CHRIST NATION HAS AN IMMORAL ETHOS MENTALITY. AMERICAN VALUES CONTINUOUSLY EMBRACE IMMORAL VALUES AS THEIR WAY TO SALVATION.
#7
When one is sitting under a nice blue sky, with 70-80 degrees, sipping Martinis by the ocean, the last thing they believe in or want to discuss is Climate Warming!
When a 200 hundred mile an hour tornado dissolves their house, however, they are no longer around to discuss the issue!
Few people can think of time longer than their life spans; fewer still can project themselves that far in the future.
Like someone who builds their house on a floodplain, where there is direct evidenced of 50 and 100 years floods, the modern climate warming denier wants and willfully denies the evidence. And when that house they just built 10 years ago on a floodplain, and a then 50-100 year flood occurs that sweeps and carries their house down river, they are mystified!
Climate warming is happening! To deny this in the face of incontrovertible evidence from over 30,000+ Climate scientists is stupidity on the grandest scale!!
People must start believing what they are seeing with their own eyes. They need to start thinking of their children and grandchildren, not at how rich they can make people like the Koch brothers even richer!
#8
Here is some breaking news! I was listening to the Stephanie Miller show and one of her co-helpers on her show has entered Jeb's name as a possible candidate for president in 2012. If you will recall, I have predicted that Jeb will be sworn in as president on January 20, 2013.
State dictatorships and the elimination of low income voters, students, and racial minorities will have the Anti-Christ Party be in the majority for every election until the second coming of Jesus Christ. NEVER AGAIN WILL THE DEMOCRATS CONTROL THE THREE BRANCHES OF OUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. IGNORANT AND STUPID AMERICANS ARE BRINGING IN THE CLOWNS
.
#9
As Americans sip martinis on the beach or at the pool, the impoverishment and slavery of Americans are here by mass murderers and war criminals, aka Satan's disciples. The devil is now controlling our country.
#10
Of course we are doing this to our beautiful earth. She is sick with cancer. "Free Market" capitalism is the cancer. The tumors are the oil companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the insurance companies, the for profit hospitals, the media companies, and on and on it goes. They feed off of us, just like cancer feeds off of our bodies. We are feeding them daily. Some of us do this very reluctantly, but most people do not use critical thinking to even realize what they are doing. The politicians (most of them) are each tiny tumors trying to grow as big as they can during the feeding frenzy. The current corporate model of profit above all else is exactly the same as the cancer model of getting bigger and bigger. Thinking this model through to completion, it is evident that the body eventually dies. We need to each become imaginal cells, exactly like the cells in a crysallis (Bruce Lipton's "Biology of Belief). Each of us going inward to create a better vision, and then connecting with other imaginal cells to co-create a new way forward. We can't just push back on the cancer or try to kill it. As we begin to do this, eventually there will be enough of us to simply melt the existing cancer into oblivian. We must do this by changing the entire paradigm of thought. Competition will no longer make any sense. We must reconnect with the great field of potential. We must understand that we are one with each other and with all living source. If we do not do this, our earth will indeed die, or certainly she will be wise enough to imagine us off of her beautiful skin. Sadly, the other beautiful life forms will be destroyed as well. But, in my own imagination, I can see enough of us reconnecting and unplugging from the tumors as we support one another with our life supportive ideas and actions.
#11
I don't think the planet is turning on us although we shouldn't be acidifying our oceans and lakes.I've worked in construction for 18 yrs and I just think we need some very strong unique regional codes.Houses in the flood prone Red River should be built on stilts with no basements.Houses should't be built in the pine forests of BC which is one of the world's worst tinderboxes.Houses in Tornado alley should be half below ground with a rebar ceiling and trap storm door.The ground floor should just be considered temporary and replaceable part of the house.Mobile homes shouldn't even be permitted in Eastern Oklahoma.
#12
AMEN !!!!!!!!!!!!
#13
Even if you don't believe it, and I do believe it, but even if you don't believe what caused it the biggest way we can mitigate it is to change the way we live. Now. I've been talking about it and warning people for 30 years and people just thought I was a holdover hippie from the 1960's. I knew that if had a normal lifespan then I would see the peak production and 20 or 30 years of life with dwindling supplies. It's just happening faster than I thought it would.
#14
You are one of the few who make sense. I am not a socialist who wants to make people do things. What I agree with is changing local building codes to require some type of storm shelter. People who build on the side of cliffs or over the ocean or on the sides of hills, that's all money talking and local government that can't say no to money. What did you think was going to happen eventually? I don't think a lot of people have insurance especially in poorer or rural area so that doesn't matter. But not to require a storm shelter when you rebuild a home or replace a trailer or repair a home, again that's all money and the mistaken belief that not requiring it makes you more American and proves you cherish personal freedom to do what you want. Those people know what they are doing if they choose to live in a trailer or home without a storm shelter. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. A lot of people I know, their parents or grandparents hand dug their storm shelters.
#15
Hell yes there's global warming! You would have to be a blind, greedy, murderous thief to think otherwise.
#16
We need to call it climate change, otherwise the Fox Watchers will deny it's happening because it snowed last winter.
#17
If left to my own observations, I could not say "yes" with any weight. However, the overwhelming weight of (scientific and non-scientific) evidence over the last 2 decades is that it is quite real. As one objector who called in today rightly stated, volcanic eruptions toss unbelievable amounts of CO2 and contaminants into the atmosphere, compared to human activity. While I have sympathy for such callers, as they rightly point to something real, they miss the historical and contextual trends. Volcanic activity is an ongoing scenario, while many of the changes we see happening (the melting of glaciers, the absolutely certain melting of the polar ice, etc.) are extremely serious indicators of a global problem not traceable to natural events even since the beginning of industrialization less than 3 centuries old. It's not too difficult to pull up the data and look at the rise in temperatures and stats for emissions since the industrial revolution began.
For anyone who looks to the covert activities of the military or world governments in general for clues as to whether they believe climate change is real, it is critical to inspect the now massive amount of $ and energy being put into geo-engineering. Thousands of scientists, many governments, and certainly actively the US military, have invested huge amounts of time and effort at climate control and research. One might surmise these activities are about weaponization of weather, which is also true enough to be said, but there is far more going on there than this simplistic analysis.
In listening to climate change deniers, one must put them in the context (in the US, which is where they all seem to be and be talking) that we have in this country massively funded misinformation mills that churn on behalf of those who are destroying the environment, and a corporate culture that has enslaved otherwise intelligent people into working for, and without any consideration of, actual human and non-human well being. These folks can be seen as the unconscious killers of manking. Fundamentalism and its base of un-examined ignorance seem to trump the simplicity and benign concepts of cooperation and tolerance.
#18
I do wonder which brings to mind, that the military and science are playing around with weather control, And believe radiation is a big part in climate warming. During the 60's people have claimed that nature can and will set off those nuclear supply vessels and possibly war heads in do time in one way or another. This has been predicted.... So please Shut them down.
#19
Mother Earth (God) is making corrections to the man made damage.
#20
Advanced societies educate scientists and support research to assure that we can get some straight answers on complex issues. The vast majority of researchers agree that the human impact on our ecosystem is undeniable.
Al Gore makes a strong point: With global population pushing seven billion, there might be a billion of us daily clawing away at coal fields with gigantic shovels, stripping forests with high-tech rolling saws, denuding the hills for firewood, driving more cars and extracting more petroleum than ever before. We are consuming electric power to run air conditioners, TV-s and factories in places that previously have never seen them. How can we think this would NOT have an impact? Here is a scenario new to human history. We can view these ravenous machines at play on that oh-so-Lefty Discovery Channel. We can spot the Haiti / DR border from space.
Where, then, does the vehement denial come from? Progressives need to “grok”, to thoroughly and deeply comprehend the mind set behind this refusal. Some have absorbed American Exceptionalism into their very being. Reared in suburban, mall-cruising, upper middle-class families, they have enjoyed living large and simply can not fathom scaling back. Others, the “Wanna-Be” crowd, are striving to get there. The 6 thousand square foot house with 3 SUV-s is base line. All us Old Hippies and young, anti-growth Obama-voting idealists are getting in the way with our crazy talk of limits and extinction. Any criticism of our shop-til-you-drop culture is taken as heresy.
#21
I wrote this a couple of years ago. I think it is getting more appropeate as time goes on.
http://washington.sierraclub.org/loowit/main/newsletterCurrent.asp
scroll down to Weather and Global Warming
#22
I don't know how many times on cold days I hear "see global warming aint real". So I agree with michaelb 44 #17 climate change best describes it, and yes it's very real.
As far as I'm concerned the CLIMATE CHANGE DENIERS might as well join the FLAT EARTH SOCIETY. Apparently both groups share the same disbelief of satellite imagery, and science in general.
Of course we all know big oil money is behind a lot of the deception, and of course the Republicans are their partners in crime. So as usual without true representative govt. a few gain a lot while the rest of us suffer. Problem is this time the price of greed and selfishness is the planet.
#23
I have an easier solution and certainly less costly in $$ and human life - we know what is causing global warming, so let us fix that. It is very simple and planet friendly and certainly less intrusive. The culprit is CO. Let us regulate it and spew less of it into our atmosphere.
BUT...there are a VERY Few, VERY VERY rich individuals and Corporations who simply DO NOT want that to happen! Why? LOTS and LOTS of Profits and $$$!
So Billions of people on this planet are suffering and will suffer in the very near future because of these few very rich people who do not want to lose their $$$$ and profits!!.
The planets weather cannot be turned on a dime. It takes sometimes millenniums. Where I write right now there was a mile high Glacier just 20,000 years ago. It took thousands of years for it to melt. Before that a 100 million years ago it was tropical. But it took millions of years for that to change.
Modern civilization is less than 6000 years. 6000 years ago there was way less than maybe 50-100 million humans on this planet. And they had an effect on climate! (North Africa was a lush grassland, but now its a desert!) Now we are approaching 7 BILLION humans!!
Anyone with a modicum of sense KNOWS that we screwing with our environment and our climate. We are changing it and the change will be anything but good for human life, no matter how many houses you build on stilts or bunkers you build in tornado alleys!
Just check out our nearest planets. Mercury – hot enough to melt lead! Venus – not too hospitable either. Mars – well we have those pictures also, and also very inhospitable for human life. The Moon – very near, but also a wasteland.
Knowing this, why would we want to make our planet more like those and totally inhospitable too human life?? WHY?
#24
Global warming is having an effect but there are other forces that are adding to the melee. Google Planet X or Nibiru.
#25
What we need is a new energy source that is abundant, clean, safe, and enough for a Steady State world economy.
Pehaps this would work
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw&feature=player_embedded
#26
Hi Thom,
Today, you had a caller that made references to a "brown dwarf" in our solar system. Poor chap. There were so many problems with his statement, I woudn't have known where to start. Here is a link to the current state of nearbye brown dwarfs: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=cool-brown-dwarf-may-be-a-newfound-2010-04-09.
It is so hard to have intelligent discussions with ignorant people. Exactly what the Republicans want!
You are terrific!
-Ron
#27
Ron - maybe in our discourse we should slack off on the words such as “Ignorant" and "Stupid". I know I am guilty of the same thing when I get exasperated and frustrated.
Lots of times this is nothing but 'Lack of Knowledge'. Many smart people are not always knowledgeable in other areas of expertise then their own. They may have graduated only from High School, if at all, but are very smart none the less. It's the knowledge they lack, not the intelligence. It is very difficult for someone who did not have the luxury of acquiring the knowledge like you, I and Thom may have, but that does mean that they are ignorant or stupid.
There was a time when even I, as a college graduate, even with all the knowledge I had, got caught up in this 'Water Bottle" thing where you if you fed a mist of H2O into a carburetor, you got better mileage! I fell for this! But not for long as I quickly realized through more reading that this was a pretty “stupid” thing to do! So I can see where those who have way less accumulated knowledge can sometimes think very illogically. Even today I still catch myself in logical inconsistencies! Besides, we only alienate them and then even if we try to impart the correct knowledge, they decline to listen, as they now label us as condescending and patronizing.
So we should try to stop calling others as stupid and ignorant, when in fact all they lack is knowledge and critical thinking abilities. The dangerous ones are those who do have the knowledge, know what they are doing, and make decisions based only on self-interest and greed. For these types there is no excuse. The Koch brothers are a prime example of this type.
#28
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~ Plato.
#29
Global Warming! What about Moral Turpitude? Nature triumphs over Nature.
XXXXX
#30
Hear the Warning The End is Begining
When you Break The Circle you Have no right to Live
When you Kill The Mother There is no Other
#31
Yes, of course. Those of us who don't find science a matter of faith, but faith in a process of inquiry fear that Al Gore, and his heroic efforts, are sadly correct.
Thanks, yankeerebel64, for saying it another way! And one that, also, is true. The wolves that the lunatic fringe in Idaho and Montana want so badly to kill know instinctively not to soil their territory.
But, when they come to positions of power, the right wing banksters really don't believe in anything but their own sacred right - demonstrated by their wealth - to do what they want to do.
Tom Friedman gets credit for one idea, in my book: being, "as dumb as we want to be," is destructive of the welfare of the planet and of the people whose impact is go great. Somebody needs to make a new bumper sticker,"you're so rich: why aren't you smart?"
#32
And the really tough moral issue of dramatic human population increase can be responded-to by dramatically increasing access to effective birth control measures in the entire world - industrialized as well as developing countries. Sadly, there are entrenched religious and cultural forces that blindly push for all women to bear as many children as they can before they die. Also not peculiar to developing countries.
The scandal is the number of members of our own U.S. Congress who blandly choose to, "not rock the boat" and bow to the extreme anti-women forces that equate contraception with abortion of a viable fetus. We urgently need respected public figures to publicly promote smaller families and unfettered access to contraception and sterilization as a positive public benefit.
China may be having social difficulty with the dramatic drop in the number of marriageable women as one result of the, "one child" policy - but the next generation may see the economic benefit to their entire population of a slow decrease in Chinese population. For generations, China's people suffered the tragedy of tens of thousands of deaths from famine - being unable to provide enough food for the growing numbers.
The Ayn Rand adherents generally believe that there is no public responsibility, for example to make a compassionate effort to help limit population growth. In unguarded moments we're likely to hear them say, "let 'em die!" And their journalists are the cynics who cite Nazi eugenics policy as the equivalent of responsible family planning. And they have no shame.
#33
Overpopulation is indeed at the core of our problems. And while I'm glad to see that there is information here about the extremes in the weather that we are just BEGINNING to see, I ask that you please read this information:
http://theyflyblog.com/ufos-extraterrestrials-and-the-weather/12/22/2010
We have had - since 1951 - an abundance of specific, scientific, impeccably accurate information provided by one man in Switzerland - who most of you have never heard of thanks to the successful job of suppression by military intelligence, the corporate media, religions, etc.
What we are going to face environmentally from here on is referred to as "apocalyptic" in this information. This transcends ALL of the political considerations, pros and cons, and other chase-your-tail aspects of the dead-end political game.
I was a guest on Thom's show a couple of years ago and I'd obviously welcome the opportunity to update him and his audience.
Please also see:
#34
@Michael812
Thank you for making yourself, and your web site, known here. I stopped staying up till the wee hours of the night listening to Art Bell many years ago and have lost out on a lot of stuff. I still think about the distraught caller warning people of imminent danger to major US cities promulgated by our own government and then the satellite feed went dead for about 20 minutes. Scary! And I don't catch every Thom Hartmann show so I missed you when you appeared. I have also stopped going to the UFO conventions many years ago because they just cost too much. Anyway, thanks for posting here and I will now set out to read more of your articles.
#35
I don't believe the earth is turning on us, quite the contrary, I believe the earth is trying to help us regain some sort of balance. Our energy and existence is so intertwined with the earth that through our thoughts and actions we influence what is happening around us. We are getting more and more chaotic through loosing touch of this connection, yet there is a desire (even if somewhat unconscious) to restore the balance. When things get out of hand, it is difficult to step back and see the bigger picture. A 'chaotic' event or 'disaster' makes us evaluate. Please don't think me someone who wants these disasters, I just think we have caused them and we can see them as disasters or as an urgent call to relook at who we are and the world we are creating.
I have no doubt the planet is in a critical state, many of us consume without any regard to where it really comes from and whether it is unlimited or not. I think for some it seems too 'big' an issue to contemplate and possible solutions can be sensitive. I would like what's left of this beautiful planet to be preserved and enjoyed for a long, long time. I believe the world became like it is through a compilation of individuals choices, and it will be changed the same way. I think if we don't act, the earth will act for us.
#36
well i believe that that the major cause of globle warming is the jets and the rockects we send out to our upper atmosphere where the water vapor is at a minimal.they say that the ozone is shrinking,well look at all the jets flying in the upper atmosphere were water vapor canot mix with the carbon as well to fom acid rain to bring down to the rivers and oceans so it can be stored in the plant life.the jets is were i beleive where 60percent of the warming effet comes from 30000 feet+
#37
@Palindromedary And thank you for taking the time to comment. Thom's audience would be an even more hopeful one to reach than C2C. "Preaching to the choir" is not the most productive thing, as I'm sure you understand. The only problem I see is that people who focus on politics are as trapped as those who focus on religion...or even the majority of C2C topics that are equally delusional.
I know of no other even remotely significant information than that which Meier has been bringing forth for over 60 years.
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