As mentioned in 'An Inconvenient Truth,' epistemically we are indeed like frogs: until the truth is shockingly visceral, we will dither.
However, in this case, the truth may be among the last that we will know. We don't seem to realize that global warming reiterates a Kantian paradox: our continued human existence generally pivots on 'maxims' that ultimately entail that human existence discontinue. The paradox is tragic, I think: should these maxims become shockingly visceral and, thus, understood, their entailments will already be upon us. Like the last words uttered upon Socrates' therapeutic death (accepting Nietzsche's interpretation): a debt to Aesculapius will be owed.

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In Galileo's time there were many people who refused to consider the possibility that the earth revolved around the sun or even that the world is round. After all, the bible talks about the four corners of the earth and religion is the source of all truth. There are still people who refuse to believe in evolution for much the same reasons, and there are even a few members of the flat earth society.

The denial of global warming likewise has its deniers and the cause is similar. There are a small number of authoritarian people (I use the term in the way that John Dean defined in his book, Conservatives Without Conscience). The difference is that this small minority takes its orders on how to think from FOX and Rush Limbaugh rather than, as in Galileo's time, from the church. Not so much has changed.

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"For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?"

- Geologist Dr. David Gee, the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress, who has authored 130 plus peer-reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.

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I am sitting on 80 acres of burnt land in Colorado as I write this response.

The two major cause of wildfires in this country are a combination of poor forestry management, and fire suppression, when combined with summer dryness or cyclical drought and the occasional pyro, dumb person or natural lightning strike the conditions become very dangerous.

Forests need fire to clear dangerous ground fuels, generate new growth in trees like Aspen and Pine, (fire opens the pine cones) and to keep the spacing of trees at a healthy distance so firestorms don't destroy old growth trees.

You can buy the al gore garbage but I am going to go back outside and continue planting trees (20' apart) and and try to help this piece of land recover in a healthy way.

Ps...after a 5 year drought up here we appear to have returned to a normal daily summer rain pattern :)

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Global climate change.
Morons with matches.
Lightning strike fires.
Al Gore being portaryed as a bufoon by the corporate press, while we get ever closer to the cliff of death and destruction.

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There is an obvious simple labor-intensive solution to drought and fires. Let's see if I can boil it down to a couple of paragraphs.

1. We have aerial photography and other techniques adequate to locate all the worst drought-infected regions, where biofuels have accumulated. The answer is to bring in a labor force-- hundreds of millions as needed-- to pick up or clip off enough deadwood. Certainly start with the unemployed or underemployed or imprisoned citizens of our own country and proceed to invite both economic and political refugees or immigrants. Set up a CAMP ZERO wherever any existing truck-negotiable road or rail line intersects with any seasonally dry creekbed, ravine, gully, wadi etc. Set up a city there of repaired safety-inspected FEMA trailers, adding more and more trailers, shacks, treehouses, etc. as fast as they can be brought or erected. Zero in on areas where drought has produced the most deadwood and pick up, clip, hack, saw all wood within 10 feet of the ground or reasonably reachable by tree climbing. Using old (non-recyclable) pallets, of which billions are discarded each year in this country, and plywood, create a four-foot-wide road system over which forklift trucks (powered by propane, wind- or solar-charged batteries or whatever means) can deliver the pallets and plywood to wherever the road system is being extended. Emphasize the use of the streambeds, ravines etc. as the basis of the road system. Besides the lift trucks, use two other technologies which may have to be developed: chipper-shredder machines of a size (less than four feet wide) that can be delivered to the site where they will be used by lifttruck; likewise pulverizers (which produce fine "woodflour" i.e. sawdust).

Here's the scenario: let men, women and children of all ethnicities and races work with anvil pruner, ratchet pruner, saws and hatchets to retrieve all deadwood. Log and organize all thick trunks and branches and deliver to camp zero where they can be loaded and trucked to town to be used for carpentry and manufacturing in lieu of live-harvested wood such as our wonderful corporations provide today. Put all weathered, rotted wood, unfit for carpentry and manufacturing, through the shredder and use it for grading the four-foot-wide pathways where pallets and plywood will be used to build up roads negotiable by lift trucks. Some of this can also be used for anti-erosion, composting, and filling in mosquito ponds. Grind substantial amounts of woodflour (sawdust) which can be used for composting (takes care of the bathroom facilities problem) and the streamfill program which follows.

2. Deliver woodflour, chips, and stubble, brush, etc. to the nearest stream or to a CAMP ZERO from which it will be liftrtucked up or downstream. Lay a foot or two of flour in the streambed first which will, when rare rain occurs, trap water and prevent runoff downstream. Lay chips, shreds etc. a couple of feet higher on top to weigh this down and prevent it escaping. Lay bundles of stubble, brush etc. on top of this. Finally lay on top a line of pallets linked by plywood, more than one layer if necessary, so that the streambed becomes the basis of a lifttruck road ranging miles as needed from the main road toward drought infected places.

Plant fast-growing invfasive species: WLLW (Weepy long-leaf watertree), Shaky quaky spadeleaf watertree (cottonwood), GAIH (Govt.-approved industrial hemp) etc. A bushy green mound will grow up where there used to be a ravine, a finger of reforestation.

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In a phone conversation, he argued that reporters and editors are still "wary" about linking climate change to natural disasters, even when such links are scientifically uncontroversial; he believes this needs to change.

Given that a full third of the U.S. citizenry happens to be prone to fundamentalist essentialism, it's unsurprising there are so many unconcerned amongst the populace and that there are so many "reluctant" right wing editors and reporters. The MSM is like listening to four year olds arguing over whether the world ceases to exist once one shuts one's eyes. Fundies are driving the species over the cliff singing praise jeebus all the way.

It's all extinction behavior. And in the U.S. especially, throwing in the owning class stoopids and the denialist "skeptics", it's a total clusterfuck. Meanwhile native people are looking at the land they're about to get back once the idiot faction amongst the whites does away with themselves and as many of the rest of us as they can....

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The stuff that is linked to global warming is getting ridiculous.

Before we dive into blaming AGW, maybe we need to look at more established things like a changing PDO and other oscillations. Since short term weather, like droughts, are more related to those than the well debunked AGW theory, those links might be easier to establish.

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Yes, I am sure that global warming is somewhat responsible for wildfires, but the major cause is that the US leads the world in preventing fires from occurring in our forests. A natural fire in a natural forest cleared the forest floor of debris and kept the number of baby trees to a number necessary to replace those that died of old age. Natural fire rarely gets into a tree to burn it.
However, when you look at a western mixed-conifer forest, four hundred years ago, there were, on average, forty adult trees per acre (tpa). This represents an average of thirty-three feet apart. With fire exclusion we now have from eight hundred to over 2,000 tpa. This means that the sun does not get to all parts of the tree to promote growth. The sun also does not reach the ground in some areas.
A healthy habitat requires that the sun lay on the ground for at least two hours each day in the same spot. This allows for the growth of the grasses and seed-bearing plants that attract small animals. Small ones attract larger ones, and you have a habitat. At about 100 tpa, the sun begins to be curtailed, and this means the begining of species endangerment (trees included).
I have a photo of a cross section of a pine tree. In the first 27 years of growth in a very thick forest, the tree grew to a diameter of six inches. Then the forest was severely thinned. After an additional 37 years the tree was removed and the section made available for scientific study. In that 37 years of a thin forest, the tree grew to have a cross-sectional area of 44 times as much wood as was grown in the first 27 years --all because of the sun.
Why is this important to the subject? A forest only has so much water available to the trees, and nature does a pretty good job of determining how many trees the area will support. Where nature puts 40 trees, any more will be stressed. Any gardener will tell you that most bugs only attack stressed or unhealthy plants. With bark beetle killings, the forests are prime for a fire. But even without the bugs, we have too many trees for a healthy forest. In Chapter 246 I'll describe. . . .

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