The sky isn't falling but the poles are melting!

Unfortunately, politics is really the least of our worries. It is really becoming too late to argue about whether this or that...but to sit back and behold the awesome spectacle of the destruction of the earth. It really is too late to do anything about it. So, sit back kiddies and watch it all disintegrate before your very eyes. All the political arguments are merely a distraction to keep people from freaking out and massively striking out against the privileged few who have, perhaps, known all along how it was going to go down...or not. The ones who have been dragging the rest of us into a world-wide, mass suicide have selfishly maximized their pleasures at the expense of everyone else. Holed up in their pleasure bunkers and guarded by their personal armies, they will be the last to go.

Perhaps they will devolve into future Morlocks burrowing, mole-like, in subterranean realms. Or maybe giant termites, commonly known as "greys" with big black eyes that have been, allegedly, spotted from time to time time-traveling back from our future to repent for having destroyed the world.

If we were being invaded by an invincible force of Klingons, we might be able to reason with them and prostrate our unworthy selves before them in order to survive. There is no way, really, to fight the melting Arctic Ice. Climate change has already displayed it's ruthless forces...just a sample mind you...and an omen of worse things to come....very soon. "Greenland's glaciers are melting far faster than scientists expected." Abrupt changes noticed in just the last few weeks.

They will have to build a gigantic dike around major cities that are located on the coasts...New York, Miami, and Mumbai, for example. Either that or they will have to evacuate. Crops will continue to wither and die. People will starve.

Perhaps some people, who have been hording all the money and building personal survival shelters stocked with generations of rations already know what is about to happen. Let the struggle for survival begin! Some already have a head start! The rest of us will struggle to survive as we experience the exponential rise in food prices at the supermarkets.

Albedo or not to Albedo..that is the question. Albedo is the ability of something to reflect light. Light, ie: energy, is absorbed by darker surfaces and reflected by lighter surfaces...and can be measured from satellites in space. Turns out that the albedo of the poles is rapidly changing for the worse causing an unprecedented absorption of energy. That means, of course, that the ice shelves, bigger than the island of Manhattan, are melting, cracking off and floating away, melting even faster. This changes the salinity of the ocean waters and the temperatures of continental currents which drastically affects long term, very long term, weather patterns. "... this summer: Without warning, the line on the albedo chart dropped deep into uncharted territory."

"Simply by changing the albedo of the Greenland ice sheet....the island now absorbs more extra energy each summer than the U.S. consumes in a year." "The shape and color of the ice sheet's crystals, in other words, are trapping more of the sun's rays than all the cars and factories and furnaces produce in the world's biggest economy." But, it is all of those cars and factories and furnaces....and wildfires in Colorado and Siberia...creating the soot that blankets the ice at the poles which drastically changes the albedo to darker, energy absorbing, shades of grey. As draughts continue to ignite fires and cars and factories, and farting cows continue to belch out albedo destroying waste, it creates a "feedback loop" that is running away..no longer controlled by normal earthly cycles.

"Working in Greenland these past years has left me (Photographer James Balog) with a profound feeling of being in the middle of a decisive historic moment – the kind of moment, at least in geologic terms, that marks the grand tidal changes of history." Amid this summer's drama of drought, fire and record heat, the planet's destiny may have been revealed, in a single season, by the quiet metamorphosis of a silent, empty sheet of ice."

quotes from Rolling Stone article The Arctic Ice Crises by Bill McKibben--Aug 16, 2012

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-arctic-ice-crisis-20120816...

I for one have no plans for the destruction of the planet ,it's time for repair not despair my friend palindromedary .Humans have a choice our collective consciousness creates the future the time to shine is now .Things might look bad and yes we could be in for a rocky road but remember we are a young species at the cross roads or threshold some say this moment is like a new birth of humanity ,as you know a birth is a very precarious time.

A positive vision for the future of our world and what that will look like is really important ,take all the good stuff in our world and start a new television channel that only focuses on positive developments and things that are working .I see a civilisation on the cusp of breaking through on so many levels,I see it stuck only at the level of belief.

As thom says above the understanding that comes across is a party,s belief in limiting people's freedoms and controlling behaviours ,but freedom is our essence and the human being will always rally against this.And where does all this control and fear come from ,its based on ideas that people have on what they think god wants and needs ,have you ever noticed that the problems in this world are mostly caused by people that believe they are doing what they think god wants but if they understood that if there was a god why would she want anything and then if you replace the word god for the word life then humans perhaps might evolve to the next level and actually do something to save this precious planet for our children.

Life is what we are and that is what we have to preserve, we pre-serve life to serve life and we serve our selves at the same time,I,am going to stop now ,perhaps I read to many book,s and I get carried away on a whim and like you I see breakdown every where but perhaps we are in the storm before the calm.

Namaste

Not all Republicans or Conservatives are nutcases. (Nor are all Democrats or Progressives, not).

So it may be that some significant portion of the Republican Party are beginning to recoil from the extreme and untrue positions taken by the extremists. Somehow We People, must forge some sort of consensual coalition of rational people across some significant rational moderate portion of the political spectrum -- if there is any hope for the future of our country and world.

I'm beginning to think in terms of our 2nd US Civil War, only that this time rather than being physical conflict; it is at least still a war of ideas -- between two tribes now living in two inconpatible realities. Realitied so different, they are now literally unable to communicate between themselves sharing any common culture or language.

Meanwhile as is always the case, there are the manipulative-elites (1%) exploiting the disarray of the People -- while running off with the loot, to their off-shore global vaults. Whoda-thunk?

When the news starts calling them by their correct name....maybe the average Republican will realize what they are buying into. The last real Republican was Eisenhower and even he KNEW that the GOP was done and over with. Reagan was the 1st of the "New Right" of Paul Weyrich and over 40 yrs of infiltration has given them power which even the Democrats can't beat. They now have over 600 corporations, 2000+ republican politicians, make our laws and have the courts. Their platform is NOTHING like the Republican platform of old and to continue pretending that they are republicans is hurting our country. Why do they NOT call them the New Right? Perhaps, republicans that strictly follow party lines will take a deep breath and realize that our Democracy is under attack and that they don't want Weyrich's Theocracy, either. Please Press....call a spade a spade and get it over with.

A voice of moderation and sanity.... And it would be nice to be able to have some modicum of belief that everything is going to be ok...even if it was merely fooling myself that the non-sense I chose to believe in had some merit...even though it tended to clash with science. Don't worry...be happy!

It does feel good to meditate and listen to my hemi-sync, brain-wave entrainment CDs...got quite a few of them. I can also do super low frequency vocal intonations with simultaneous varying high frequency intonations...like Mongolian Throat singing. Very relaxing for me...not so sure about for everyone else within ear shot...neighbors...etc. But, there is no superstition elements...no gods or devils. No ridiculous dogma!

But it does seem pretty scary...some of the articles I read..about the possible, and very soon, fate of our planet...as predicted by hard scientific facts. I sure wouldn't want to look like all of those people throughout history that thought the world would end soon....many of those people...however, were inspired by some preacher who got food poisoning, had a bad dream, or swallowed too many shrooms and "had a vision" or thought he interpreted the scriptures correctly....not many were inspired by scientific facts.

We are much more likely to die of some self-inflicted disease...like eating the wrong food and much to much of it...or dying from a Hell-Fire missile sitting at a desk because some bureaucratic nitwit from TSA or NSA thought we were not true blooded Americans and/or threats to national insecurity...than to see the actual end of the world. One thing is pretty certain, though, and that is none of us, who are not very well situated monetarily...like, say, many millions of dollars net worth...will be able to afford health care or even food and will likely perish much sooner than those at the top of the economic ladder.

That article on the unprecedented rapid melting of Greenland's ice shelves is a dire warning, and so are all of the weather changes, drought-like conditions, and fires.

So, repair would be grand but despair may be most appropriate. I don't know...maybe if we collect billions of tin-foil balls and litter Greenland with them...we can more effectively re-radiate the sun's ray in order to again lower the temperature...and in millions of years the ice shelves will reform and the libido will return. But, once melted...all that fresh water turns into salt water and raises the sea levels. Maybe we could hire those snow making machines in Tahoe to go up there and give it a go. I suspect that Mother Nature is p1$$ed and won't forgive very easily. If we don't adapt..we'll perish. Lizard skin anyone? Now, where's my rock?

I suspect you may be correct on this. Money will stop at nothing to get what it wants. But even if Obama wins...money will still win.

I don't know about civil war, though, too many people have given up their guns...it would be a pretty lopsided battle...but then again so was the war against the British. I think if the Republicans win...it could happen a lot sooner than if Obama wins. Obama panders hope, however futile, which will delay things a bit. Some people will still be confused thinking we still have a democracy.

Interesting observation that it is not the Obama administration that is behind arming the government agencies but right-wing forces. There surely is a government within a government that operates in secret, on black budgets, and are not accountable to Congress or the President. I sure will be awfully ticked off if the Republicans win...that's for sure. But that is not enough for me to vote Obama this time. As far as I'm concerned he blew it and will continue to blow it if re-elected.

Somehow the whole notion and going through the motions of putting together a platform was just that - going through the motions. The election from the republican perspective is ultimately in the hands of those who pay for it, and manipulate every possible angle to try to win it. Notice that gas prices are back on the rise ..with 1 lame excuse or another...but timed to peak out just before the election. Apparently, as the party is now, they don't even believe they could win an election legitimately or they wouldn't have to go to so much effort and expense.

In the late 1960’s and the early 1970’s, the people perceived as being strange and radical were on the left. Republican politicians like Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon did not hesitate to run against the hippies, the drug users, the student radicals, the anti-war protestors and the actual proponents of violent revolution. The Republicans understood that they were not alienating potential supporters because they stood no chance of getting those people’s votes under any circumstances. They knew that, if antagonized, the eccentrics would become even louder, angrier and more militant. They also understood the benefits of putting mainstream Democratic politicians in the position of having to either repudiate the eccentrics or support them. The Republicans’ strategy proved to be very effective. Although I was too young to vote, I knew many adults who didn’t especially like the Republicans or especially dislike the mainstream Democrats. They voted Republican largely to express their disapproval for the weirdos.

Today, the weirdos are on the right. Democratic candidates from President Obama down to candidates for county clerk should be using the same strategy that the Republicans were using forty years ago. Don’t focus on Willard Romney or the other members of what passes for the mainstream in today’s Republican Party. Focus on the weirdos.

· Run against the known lunatics like Todd Aiken, Michelle Bachman, and that clown from Florida who channels Joe McCarthy.

· Run against Rick Santorum and others who would outlaw not just all abortions but all forms of birth control.

· Run against the Republican debate crowds who cheered for the idea of someone dying because he did not have health insurance, who cheered Rick Perry’s execution record and who booed an active-duty soldier.

· Run against the greater and lesser stars of hate radio.

· Run against the people who wore guns to anti-healthcare rallies.

· Run against the birthers.

· Run against those who claim that the more bullets that are flying through the air, the safer everyone will be.

· Run against those who claim that we shouldn’t care about the environment in which our children will live because Jesus will end the world next month.

· Run against Ayn Rand, the militant atheist who understood that her ideas were completely irreconcilable with Christianity.

· Run against the closeted homosexuals who want to express their own self-loathing through public policy.

This election is too important to lose. It needs to be a referendum on right-wing extremism.