Penguins, climate change, politics – short post (really)

Fen Montaigne has written a piece about penguins and climate change for the New Yorker. The magazine’s web site features a disturbing slide show about how the penguins are threatened by habitat change due to warming sufficient to melt arctic ice. Montaigne suggests habitat change will likely be global, affecting humans as well as penguins.

I’ve been thinking how politicization of climate change is making it hard to think about the problem, which is clearly real, and decide what action we should be taking.

My friend Emily Gertz was in Copenhagen; she’s reporting on it in a discussion at the WELL.

Author: Jon Lebkowsky

Co-wrangler of Plutopia News Network, cohost Radio Free Plutopia. Podcaster, writer, dharma observer, enzyme. Former editor/publisher, FringeWare Review; associate editor at bOING bOING and Factsheet Five; writer at Mondo 2000, 21C, Wired, Whole Earth Review, Austin Chronicle; sub-editor at Millennium Whole Earth Catalog; blogger at Worldchanging. Digital culture maven, podcaster, writer, dharma observer, enzyme. On The WELL, Cohost of VC (virtual communities), Media, and Civil War (.ind) conferences.

One thought on “Penguins, climate change, politics – short post (really)”

  1. Flashpoint: Congress should cease all climate change legislation
    As some of your readers know by now, it has taken a scandal to get the attention of enough of the media to potentially expose and correct the global warming fraud being perpetrated by Al Gore and those of his ilk. For those who have missed “Climategate,” I would like to summarize a few of the facts:

    1) Recently obtained e-mails have revealed that some of the foremost scientists who are spreading the hysteria have manipulated data, suppressed dissenting views, undermined the peer review process and destroyed documents requested under the “Freedom of Information” laws.

    2) Claims of carbon-driven global warming are unproven and contested by 31,000 scientists who believe that there is no serious problem.

    3) Research from MIT and the University of Alabama has clearly dispelled the global warming theory. Furthermore, the UN agency IPCC promoting the alarm, states in their own report that the values assumed in their models for “climate sensitivity,” one of the most important factors “have not been developed” (tested or confirmed).

    4) Global temperatures have not risen for the past 10 to 15 years and have actually dropped for the past four years.

    5) The House of Representative’s Cap and Trade bill which is supposed to solve this “problem,” will impose an energy tax on all goods and services produced in the U.S., cause energy prices (in Obama’s own words) “to necessarily skyrocket,” cost taxpayers over $1 trillion per year, result in millions of additional job loses, inflict economic damage on the poor and middle classes and result in an additional $7 trillion loss in GDP to an economy that is already in a recession.

    6) Even if one accepted the claims of the alarmists, and cap and trade worked as they hope, global surface temperatures will be only one-tenth-of-one-degree cooler than currently projected after 100 years.

    7) Cap and trade schemes would benefit a select group of wealthy individuals (Al Gore’s wealth has grown from less than $2 million to over $100 million since he ran for president) on the backs of hard working Americans who will see absolutely no benefit even after paying for it for 100 years.

    8) Based on this bogus alarm and the “solution,” President Obama is attending a UN Climate summit where he will probably endorse a treaty that intends to establish an un-democratic world government which would threaten our national sovereignty. Draconian limits on our energy consumption and a requirement to fund the activities of underdeveloped countries would be imposed.

    Everyone who wishes to stop this madness should call their representatives in Washington and demand that Congress immediately cease all climate change legislation, and instead conduct a formal investigation into this fraud. Furthermore, we must demand that President Obama withdraw from the UN treaty summit and not sign any form of agreement.
    Thomas B. Tucker,Terre Haute Take a look at this video clip with a little humor that states the case of where things stand with the CRU East Anglia Email Leaks! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8O-E_GN0Kg&feature=player_embedded

    Check out what Government is doing behind your back at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VebOTc-7shU

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