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Originally posted at D.C. Watch

On this hot sunny Independence Day, I sit in my comfy chair and browse while this news catches my attention. And I wonder, “If it is so hot here, imagine how bad it should be in places like Africa?�

Is it really hard for one to accept that it is getting hotter each year? Are we in denial, just to defend our political ideologue?

According to a report on BBC, the Gleneagles Summit pledged:

Help Africa “improve resilience and integrate adaptation goals into sustainable development strategies”
Work to increase the use of renewable energy within the continent
Strengthen the Clean Development Mechanism, a Kyoto Protocol process with the potential to help poor countries set up renewable energy facilities
Work to tackle illegal logging
Improve Africa’s capacity for environmental and climatic research

Under the Kyoto protocol, which preceded the Gleneagles Summit, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) was designed to introduce clean energy technologies into the world’s poorer regions. Richer nations with emissions targets to meet can choose instead to invest in clean energy systems in developing countries and receive carbon credits for doing so.

Yet a year later, less than 2 percent of the 210 CDM projects registered were in Africa. With the major share going to India, China and Brazil, which provide the western world “cheap commodities and service�. Africa lacks energy technologies in areas including hydroelectric and geo-thermal sectors, promoting the continuing trend of illegal logging, inducing anthropogenic climate change.

The obvious nature of these Summits seems far more self-serving than for the common good of all. If Africa were to provide in return to the richer countries good of value (of less value to be precise), would then have been a more equitable distribution of such (CDM) projects? Africa has and continues to be the most neglected continent, politically and otherwise. What we fail to understand is that climate change is not geographically limited to Africa, failing to address ecologically issues in one area can manifest into a catastrophe elsewhere.

For the BBC report, click here.

Originally posted at D.C. Watch

Here’s an interesting psycho analysis of humans and our reaction (or lack of) to Global Warming. The author is Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University. The interesting part is the title, “If only gay sex caused global warming.” (with due apologies to our gay readers…)

 

Get the L.A. Times Op-ed here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Originally posted at D.C. Watch

I can understand people fussing about the �Da Vinci Code�, that’s what religious zealots do. But “An Inconvenient Truth�?

In an unprecedented move, the nation’s top climate scientists gave 5 stars for Al Gore’s documentary on global warming, making it an historic first for scientific topping Ebert and Roeper who gave the movie a B-.
William Schlesinger, dean of the Nicholas School of Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University said, “excellent, he got all the important material and got it right.” Robert Corell, chairman of the worldwide Arctic Climate Impact Assessment group of scientists read the book and saw a presentation said, “I sat there and I’m amazed at how thorough and accurate,” he continued, “After the presentation I said, `Al, I’m absolutely blown away. There’s a lot of details you could get wrong.’ … I could find no error.”

One exception amid the back patting was Brian Soden, a University of Miami professor of meteorology and oceanography, who said, “I thought the use of imagery from Hurricane Katrina was inappropriate and unnecessary in this regard, as there are plenty of disturbing impacts associated with global warming for which there is much greater scientific consensus.”

Contrary to the academic praises, Dave White a columnist for movies.com said “OK, here’s my beef with Al Gore, and then I’ll talk about the film’s message: He’s a hypocrite. During the Clinton administration, the causes of global warming were chugging right along with help from the government. Global warming didn’t stop when the first Bush left the White House and start up again when the second Bush stole the place back for the Republicans. Gore himself gave the Tellico Dam project a waiver from the Endangered Species Act. George W. Bush might be a nightmare for the EPA, but the Democrats weren’t their wet dream by a long shot.â€?

Somehow, by the end of it all, I personally believe the debate should not be “whether the film was right or left wrong,� but rather “how to combat global warming,� after all the effects are felt by one and all, irrespective of how dramatized or underplayed it is in movies.

Today marked the day when US military causality in Iraq reached a landmark 2500. Sadly, people at the Capitol Hill were signing off on something all together irrelevant. This morning, President Bush signed the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response (MINER) Act into law. While no way am I undermining the lives of miner, but such emphasis and attention from deaths of 33 miners this year seem awfully overrated when so many Americans are dying in Iraq. Miners are obviously more valuable than Marines, think about it, Marines fight wars, insurgents, enemies, and die doing it, end of story, while Miners bring to surface coal, which is as precious as OIL. Fighting for oil may be good, but obviously not as good as mining for coal.