Archive for October, 2007

UN Report Highlights Threat of Climate Change

Thursday, October 25th, 2007

As I write this a press conference has just drawn to a close at UN headquarters in New York to announce the fourth Global Environment Outlook (GEO4). The document continues the program launched with GEO1 in 1997.

Like a physical exam for the planet, the program’s goal is to regularly monitor and document changes to the Earth’s condition and health. And, in a word, the diagnosis is not good and unless dramatic action is taken soon the prognosis for the “patient” is grim.

According to the BBC News web site (read it here), summarizing the message of GEO4:

The Global Environment Outlook says most trends are going the wrong way.

It lists degradation of farmland, loss of forest cover, pollution, dwindling fresh water supplies and overfishing among society’s environmental ills.

“There continue to be persistent and intractable problems unresolved and unaddressed,” said Unep’s executive director Achim Steiner.

“Past issues remain and new ones are emerging, from the rapid rise of oxygen ‘dead zones’ in the oceans to the resurgence of new and old diseases linked in part with environmental degradation.”

An eight page brochure describing the 572 page GEO4 report can be downloaded as a PDF from the UN’s Environmental site here. One statement from the brochure caught my eye as perhaps summarizing the thrust of the GEO4 message: “Climate change is the greatest challenge facing humanity today.” Note that that statement does not contain any modifiers such as “possibly” or “perhaps,” but baldly states the nature of the threat or, as the writer chose to word it, challenge to humanity.

Quoting the UN Secretary-General, the BBC News article says:

“This assault on the global environment risks undermining the many advances human society has made in recent decades,” wrote UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon in a foreword.

“It is undercutting our fight against poverty. It could even come to jeopardise international peace and security.”

That last item underscores the point I made recently in reference to Al Gore’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change. A declining ecosystem is already a threat to peace, and the situation is only going to become worse. As the GEO4 report reveals, farmland in many areas has reached its peak of potential and is entering into decline, particularly in Africa. Access to fresh water will soon affect nearly a third of all humans, the report adds, and changing climate patterns are already bringing drought to some areas, floods to others.

One is reminded of the poet Robert Frost’s vision of the future:

Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

How ironic that the actual end may be due to “all of the above” plus a whole panoply of effects that few if any could have anticipated when Frost wrote his words little more than a half century ago.

Posted in Climate Change | Comments Off

Climate Change Is Serious Threat to Peace

Friday, October 12th, 2007

By David L. Brown

In what can only be good news for the issue of climate change, Al Gore and the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are to share the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, it was announced this morning. Climate nay-sayers, predictably, are making disparaging noises as usual.

One of the charges I have seen launched at Gore is that climate change has nothing to do with world peace and that it is a political, not a scientific issue. I must strongly beg to differ. As most knowledgeable scientists believe and as outlined by the IPCC itself, the Earth’s climate is almost certainly in the early stages of what is very likely to become a rapid period of change. There are many ominous signals, such as the rapid meltdown of the Arctic Ice Cap. Formerly cold places are becoming warmer. Formerly warm places may become dryer, or wetter, or merely evolve into unpredictable chaos.

It has already been recognized that drought in Darfur has contributed to the genocide that is going on there. That drought has been demonstrated to be related to climate change. Agricultural failures in places such as Australia have reduced the world food reserves to a few thin weeks. Almost everywhere you look, and especially in the fragile Third World, growing population numbers (and we must always keep in mind that human-caused climate change is a result of too many people using too many resources) is placing unsustainable pressure on land, water, and other necessities for human life. Here in America and other advanced nations, people for the most part are content to continue to pollute the air with greenhouse gas and use up valuable resources for their own present convenience and without regard to the future.

What do all these and many other similar factors add up to? Why, obviously, the possibility of civil uprisings, guerilla attacks, and out-and-out warfare between nations, races, regions and religions. You have only to look at the daily news to see plainly before your eyes that exactly these things are happening almost everywhere you look.

Although differences in political views, economics, religious fervor, and other factors are generally pointed to as causes, at the root of all this strife is almost always the conflict over resources. Climate change will only increase the incentive for war as farm fields dry up, crops wither, water supplies disappear, starving people take up arms against their neighbors, and first world societies including the U.S. continue to attempt to sustain the unsustainable.

In my opinion, shared by many climate scientists, global warming in all its many incarnations is the most significant threat to world peace, not only in some distant future but in the here-and-now.

Yes, Al Gore deserves the Peace Prize and in my mind more so than the IPCC because he has made the effort to reach out to the public with a simple, easy-to-understand message. As the planet spins into what could soon become a death spiral of climate change, peace will be one of the first victims wherever the mark of change appears.

Posted in Climate Change, Politics | Comments Off

A New Jewish State in … Alaska?

Friday, October 5th, 2007

By David L. Brown

I note with amusement that Iran’s leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has seriously suggested that Israel be relocated to Alaska. He defends this position by claiming that the Jewish state is “an insult to human dignity,” as reported here on the Jerusalem Post web site. He targeted America as a new location because of its support for the Israel and also proposed as an alternative a new Jewish homeland in Europe.

His statement was made against a background of massive public demonstrations in celebration of Al-Quds Day, as reported on the Post site:

In the capital Teheran, hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets as they chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” Some protesters also burned American and Israeli flags.

Well, I have to say that there is definitely reason to be concerned about insults to human dignity, but the focus should be turned 180 degrees toward Iran itself. What can we say about a nation whose leader makes statements such as the ones reported today, not to mention repeated threats to destroy Israel, perhaps with atomic weapons now being developed in the theocracy?

Iranians and Arabs make a big point about the supposed fact that Jews displaced Muslims in what is now Israel, and decry the fact that Israel controls Jerusalem, the third most holy spot in Islam (“al-Quds is the Arab name for Jerusalem). Well, all of that may have some basis in the near-sighted view of recent history. But what if we look further back? Hmm, it seems that the early followers of Muhammad conquered Jerusalem and slaughtered or drove away its Jewish and Christian peoples. Prior to that, Jews have had a history in the region going back more than a millennium prior to Muhammad’s arrival on the scene as a bloody conquering warlord.

It also hardly bears mentioning that Jerusalem is the No. 1 holy site in both Judaism and Christianity, and the construction of a mosque on that site was an outrageous act of infamy against the “people of the book”.

Interestingly enough, there is talk among radical Muslims about a natural progression in their ongoing conquest of Europe, namely the pledge to someday convert St. Peter’s Basilica and all the cathedrals of Western Europe into mosques … precisely the program carried out in centuries past after the Islamic conquest of Jerusalem and other cities.

Which leads me to ask: Since it appears to be a Muslim goal to overrun Western Europe, why suggest it as a new location for Israel? Alaska makes some sense, since it will be a long time until Islam sweeps over that part of the world, but Europe? It’s already virtually a slam dunk to become a key part of the new Islamic Caliphate. Oh well, nothing that Ahmadinijan says makes much sense anyway, so we shouldn’t look too deeply into his rantings.

So why can’t the Muslims be content with their own No. 1 and No. 2 holy sites Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, and for those raving loonies in Iran, their own city of Qum? They will never be satisfied, because the plan as laid down for them in the Koran is for Islam to wage endless jihad until it has conquered all nations and forced every Infidel to convert or be put to the sword. In their dream of future world hegemony the only places of worship will be mosques.

Here’s an idea: In the interests of human dignity and peace, let’s relocate Iran itself, to a place where it can act out its vile hatred in a less troublesome manner. Alaska is out, because the Alaskans are heavily armed red-blooded Americans accustomed to surviving under tough conditions and the Persians wouldn’t stand a chance there. Hmm, let’s see, where could we put these hate mongers where they would no longer cause trouble?

I’ve got it! There is an ideal place, something that in fact has a lot in common with Alaska, a vast and welcoming space just waiting to receive the Iranian hordes and their looney leaders. An entire continent in fact. I refer, of course, to Antarctica. Lots of room to build mosques and rouse the rabble in endless protest against everything non-Muslim.

But, oops, that wouldn’t be fair to the penguins would it? I guess we’ll just have to let the Persian maniacs stay where they are and hope that their jingoistic ravings and export of terror will eventually cause something bad to happen to them. What they really need is a good old fashioned revolution, to run the mullahs out of office and return Iran to the realm of civilized nations. It could happen. And I, perhaps, am the Queen of Moldavia.

Posted in Religious Extremism, Satire, Irony, and Humor | Comments Off

‘Bird Flu’ Pandemic Is One Step Closer

Thursday, October 4th, 2007

By David L. Brown

We have not written recently about avian flu, but you can bet we have been keeping an eye on this potential threat to humanity. Now, a story from Reuters (read it here) indicates that a recent mutation in the H5N1 virus responsible for the disease makes it possible for it to thrive in the upper respiratory tract of human beings. This is an ominous step toward making the so-called “bird flu” a large-scale threat to humankind. Here is an excerpt from the report:

The H5N1 bird flu virus has mutated to infect people more easily, although it still has not transformed into a pandemic strain, researchers said on Thursday.

The changes are worrying, said Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“We have identified a specific change that could make bird flu grow in the upper respiratory tract of humans,” said Kawaoka, who led the study.

“The viruses that are circulating in Africa and Europe are the ones closest to becoming a human virus,” Kawaoka said.

So far the virus still cannot be easily be transmitted between people, but until now a major explanation for that fact has been its inability to grow except deep in the human lungs. Now that barrier has been breached.

How deadly could this influenza be if it should make the final step or steps to become easily transmitted between humans? Well, consider that the last major pandemic, the Spanish Flu of 1918-9, killed perhaps 50 to 100 million people, possibly more than the infamous Black Death. That pandemic, caused by the H1N1 strain of the influenza virus, killed as few as 2 percent and certainly no more than 20 percent of those infected.

Now consider that of the 329 people known to have been infected with H5N1 by contact with birds since the avian flu appeared in 2005, 201 have died. That is a chilling 61 percent mortality rate.

(more…)

Posted in Disease and Pandemics | 1 Comment »