Exactly What I Was Thinking

The whole debate is just silly... The world is warming, that is not disputed so we better decided what we are going to do about it instead of muddying the political waters.

Al Gore Confronts His Critics

With the new administration in Washington actually admitting that climate change is in fact occurring we are making progress toward a better future... Bush was a poison for the world... thank god he is gone...

Global Warming 101

Maybe if you don't believe me you will take the word of National Geographic...

The Climate Wars Part 2

This episode of The Climate Wars shows the other side of the climate change debate. It takes a look at the climate skeptics and gives their point of view. Seriously, I can't believe there are still so many ignorant people still out there. I mean either way shouldn't we be moving towards energy independence? It is a fact that the earth is warming and the glaciers are melting... Shouldn't we do something about it instead of having the debate being clouded by politics and oil money.

To view part one of The Climate War click here!

ABC Won't Aired Climate Change Ad

The real hypocrisy here is that ABC will take the oil companies money, but not someone who is promoting CLEAN RENEWABLE energy! Everyone with half a brain knows that this is the solution to a lot of our problems. Watch the video below and decide for yourself if it is too "controversial".

Sign the petition here against ABC!

Massive Arctic Ice Shelf Breaks Away

As the climate change picture continues to worsen around the world there is more bad news out of the Arctic. A huge 19 square mile (55 square km) ice shelf in Canada's northern Arctic broke away last month and the remaining shelves have shrunk at a "massive and disturbing" rate, the latest sign of accelerating climate change in the remote region.

As anyone can find out by doing a little research, temperatures in the Arctic have rise far faster than the global average as a direct result of global warming.

Unfortunately these changes are irreversible under the present climate and indicate that the environmental conditions that have kept these ice shelves in balance for thousands of years are no longer present. The total amount of ice lost from the shelves along Ellesmere Island this summer totaled 83 square miles -- more than three times the area of Manhattan island. The figure is more than 10 times the amount of ice shelf cover that scientists estimated on July 30 would vanish from around the island this summer.

The first sign of serious recent erosion in the five shelves came in late July, when sheets of ice totaling almost eight square miles broke off the Ward Hunt shelf. Since then that shelf has lost another 8.5 square miles. Ellesmere Island was once home to a single enormous ice shelf totaling around 3,500 square miles. All that is left of that shelf today are the four much smaller shelves that together cover little more than 300 square miles.

When will we ever learn?

The North Pole May Be Ice Free This Year!

A dire warning about how bad climate change really is becoming. Most people would have thought that the North Pole becoming ice free in their lifetime wasn't possible and now here we are just a couple years later and it could actually happen. Scary really that it has gotten this bad and still no major changes from the top green house gas emitters. Here is a short interview with Tony Blair discussing climate change...

New Study Shows The Arctic Is Melting Even Faster!

Back when I first started this site people said that the Arctic Ice melting was impossible. Even the "bold" predictions that it would be gone by 2050 were dismissed by the skeptics of Global Warming. Here we are only two years later, and we are arguing about who has the rights to the shipping passages that have opened up for the first time in modern history. Please wake up world before it's too late, listen to the scientists instead of the oil and coal companies and the politicians that they control. We are at a tipping point now more than ever and we still continue on, business as usual. The time for a change is now...

Here is a bit of the report that was released...

Scientists on the project say that much of the ice is so thin that it melts easily, and the Arctic may be ice-free in summer within five to 10 years.

"We had a bit more ice in the winter, although we were still way below the long-term average," said Julienne Stroeve from NSIDC in Boulder, Colorado.

"So we had a partial recovery; but the real issue is that most of the pack ice has become really thin, and if we have a regular summer now, it can just melt away," she told BBC News.

In March, Nasa reported that the area covered by sea ice was slightly larger than in 2007, but much of it consisted of thin floes that had formed during the previous winter. These are much less robust than thicker, less saline floes that have already survived for several years.

But from a climate point of view, the melt could bring global impacts accelerating the rate of warming and of sea level rise.

"This is a positive feedback process," commented Dr Ian Willis, from the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge.

"Sea ice has a higher albedo (reflectivity) than ocean water; so as the ice melts, the water absorbs more of the Sun's energy and warms up more, and that in turn warms the atmosphere more - including the atmosphere over the Greenland ice sheet."

Greenland is already losing ice to the oceans, contributing to the gradual rise in sea levels. The ice cap holds enough water to lift sea levels globally by about 7m (22ft) if it all melted.

You can read the entire article here!

What are you going to do to help?

Going Green Will Create More Jobs...Duh!

I have been saying this for a while now, but it is not often that you can actually find someone that agrees with me. All the talk coming out of the present administration is that we can't sign the Kyoto Protocol, can't reduce emissions, can't help the environment because it would hurt the economy. The joke is on them because now the economy is being crippled by high gas prices... Ah leave it to Bush, what an amazingly intelligent president we have : )

Van Jones, founder of Green for All knows what he is talking about... have a listen!

100th Post At Growing Growing Gone

Typical George W. Bush... Dragging his feet on climate change! I heard someone in the store today call him a devil... I myself am beginning to wonder! I can't wait for all those new nuclear power plants he talks about in the speech below, that way when we have a nice earthquake like the one in China the other day we can all become X-men mutants... It will be a great world! O wait or maybe we could use all that nuclear waste from all those new power plants and give it to Nevada to hold... after all if it's underground it is no problem right? All that clean coal too... I just can't wait! What a damn ignorant fool...



On a side note polar bears were put on the protected species list today... a step in the right direction, but what is this really going to accomplish. I have talked about climate change over the past couple years on this site, and it seems as if here in The United States nothing has really done nothing. The consequences are everywhere though, new studies come out all the time about how much ice is melting in Greenland, the Arctic and virtually ever other glacier in the world. Cyclones and tornadoes are ravaging parts of the world, but that's no real problem right? Let's all talk about the economy and how our poor house is going down in value... Get your head out of your ass!

Phew, glad I got that out... now let's take a look at the past 100 post here at Growing Growing Gone...

Some Words From Dr. Richard Alley
U.S. Dragging It's Feet On Climate Change
Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda
Do They Really Think We Are That Stupid?
Finally A Pill Casinos And Drug Companies Can Agree Upon
Is God Going To Save Us From Climate Change?
The Bush Administration Suppressing Science... Again!
Inventor Of Water Powered Car Murdered?
A Nationwide Recycling Program
Side Effect Include

I could go on and on, but those are just some of the highlights from the past year. Thoughts are welcome...

Al Gore: How Dare We Be Optimistic

This video just released and is an updated version of Al Gore's famous slide show on climate change that was presented around the world. With ice levels continuing to shrink, and droughts around the world worsening over the past few years, I think people are finally beginning to realize that this is in fact a crisis.



It is so true that if we had a drought like the one in Australia the American people would have a much different view on how severe climate change really is. Just because it hasn't happened here yet doesn't mean that we won't see it in the future. We have already experienced droughts, wintertime tornadoes, increasing temperatures, massive hurricanes and more violent storms.

The time for our government to act is now! How about creating some manufacturing plants for solar panels and wind turbine plants? How about manufacturing much higher fuel efficient vehicles instead of wasting our tax dollars on a unpopular war that has accomplished next to nothing? Our economy is in the tank and this would be a great way to create jobs and help solve the climate crisis at the same time. What we need now is the government subsidies from the oil and coal industries to be transferred to wind, solar and geothermal. This is the simple solution, the problem is that the oil and coal industries are the ones pulling the strings on the puppet in the White House and many other government officials. What is your say?

Point Of No Return?

This video highlights a lot of the different things that I have talked about in this blog over the past two years... for those of you who missed it, the planet is warming the glaciers are melting, droughts are increasing, wildfires are increasing, storms are becoming even more severe just like the tornadoes that hit Atlanta last night. Or how about the tornadoes that hit New York last year or the massive tornadoes that hit us in the middle of wintertime. These are far from normal occurrences and I am afraid things are just going to get worse until something is done...

Some Words From Dr. Richard Alley

Dr. Richard Alley, one of the lead author of the IPCC report discusses the importance of Greenland and what effects it could have on the sea levels. I here some people talk about how the figures are wrong and this and that, but really the specifics don't matter. If Greenland continues to melt the sea levels will rise, even if it is not as much as they think, it will still displace hoards of people...



Here is a bit more from Dr. Richard Alley... As he states in the video below we have been studying climate change for a long, long time now and there is truly no debate left. The world is warming whether or not you choose to understand the facts or listen to nonsense from oil and energy funded "scientists" is up to you...

Hummer... Because It's Cool

You know I actually see the point in producing a Hummer... I mean sure it works great for the military and maybe if you live in the backwoods somewhere that is very hard to access, but the majority of Hummer owners never even leave the highway. They drive back and forth from work stopping at the gas station on the way there and back. These machine are gas guzzling for the sake of gas guzzling. Perhaps their owners are trying to compensate for something if you know what I mean...

US Dragging It's Feet On Climate Change

The US says that it is not the right time to talk about climate change... What a joke, there are nations from all over the world gathered in Bali to discuss the serious issue that is climate change. Why is this not the right time? Damn fools...

James Connaughton is a major US negotiator and here is his quote...

"We will lead... The US will lead, and we will continue to lead, but leadership also requires others to fall in line and follow." Does he even comprehend the words he is spouting out? We are not the leaders here, we are and always have been on the wrong side of this argument... and it is not the other countries, but us the needs to fall in line and follow!



Here is a bit more of Mr. Gore's speech...



Comments?

Arctic To Be Ice Free By 2050, 2040.. Now 2012!

A new report released just today has dire prediction for the arctic ocean. Greenland's ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer's end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data. Here are some highlights for the report...

2007 shattered records for Arctic melt in the following ways:

_ 552 billion tons of ice melted this summer from the Greenland ice sheet, according to preliminary satellite data to be released by NASA Wednesday. That's 15 percent more than the annual average summer melt, beating 2005's record.

_ A record amount of surface ice was lost over Greenland this year, 12 percent more than the previous worst year, 2005, according to data the University of Colorado released Monday. That's nearly quadruple the amount that melted just 15 years ago. It's an amount of water that could cover Washington, D.C., a half-mile deep, researchers calculated.

_ The surface area of summer sea ice floating in the Arctic Ocean this summer was nearly 23 percent below the previous record. The dwindling sea ice already has affected wildlife, with 6,000 walruses coming ashore in northwest Alaska in October for the first time in recorded history. Another first: the Northwest Passage was open to navigation.

_ Still to be released is NASA data showing the remaining Arctic sea ice to be unusually thin, another record. That makes it more likely to melt in future summers. Combining the shrinking area covered by sea ice with the new thinness of the remaining ice, scientists calculate that the overall volume of ice is half of 2004's total.

_ Alaska's frozen permafrost is warming, not quite thawing yet. But temperature measurements 66 feet deep in the frozen soil rose nearly four-tenths of a degree from 2006 to 2007, according to measurements from the University of Alaska. While that may not sound like much, "it's very significant," said University of Alaska professor Vladimir Romanovsky.

- Surface temperatures in the Arctic Ocean this summer were the highest in 77 years of record-keeping, with some places 8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, according to research to be released Wednesday by University of Washington's Michael Steele.

Could this be the tipping point? Are we at the point of no return? Well, none of that really matter now if we don't start to do something about it. How many reports like this have to come out before the American public demands some kind of action? Other countries are at least beginning to take steps to curb their emissions, but the United States is still sitting on their hands... powerless against the big energy companies that run this country.

Well at least there is hope and it is coming from a strange source to some. Google is planning and initiative through Google.org to develop energy that is cleaner and more efficient then coal. A bold act that Google says it can accomplish in years not decades. Now that is what I like to hear, action not just a bunch of politics! They have also put into place one of the largest solar developments in the entire world at the Googleplex.

So while this new report is very disheartening, it is good that more reports like this come out so the public can really begin to understand how severe this problem is and how action is needed now... not in the future when it will just be too late.

To view the full report click here!

Why The Alternative Energy Bill Won't Pass

Finally alternative energy is starting to gain some traction in the United States government, but don't get too excited about this bill. It is being challenged in the Senate, and even if it gets past them President George W. Bush has already threatened to veto it.. just like he veto's the health care for kids.

If you missed his last great decision, the reason he vetoed the health care for kids bill was because it called for an increase in the cigarette tax to cover the expenses... Apparently the tobacco companies are yet another evil bunch that are pulling the strings of this puppet. Here is his explanation for vetoing a bill for POOR CHILDREN'S HEALTH CARE...



So why would George W. Bush want to veto this alternative energy bill... well it is quite simple, the bill calls to stop subsidising the oil and coal industry and give the money to wind, solar and other renewable energies. Unless you have lived under a rock for the past 7 years you already know that the oil and coal industries have the biggest pull with this oil hungry president. After all isn't that why we are in Iraq... or was that to spread democracy through blood... hmm I forgot!

The bill also requires passenger vehicles sold in the United States to achieve an average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020, the first significant increase in mileage standards since 1975. (that is not asking a lot countries all over the world have way better fuel standards then The United States) First off, this would reduce our dependence on oil and help out the automotive industry by encouraging people to purchase cars and trucks with better mileage... it is a win-win. Plus, all that money going to solar and wind would only stimulate the economy further by creating a demand for these type of manufacturing jobs.

Being the pessimists that I am when it comes to having any faith in the abilities of our government, I don't think this bill has a chance in hell of passing, but the fact that it even made it to the senate does say something... The question is can we afford to wait until the next president is elected and gets settled in.. which will probably take another 2 years! It just seems like it will simply take too long.

In other news in case you missed it The United States is now the only one who hasn't signed the Kyoto Protocol with Australia agree to the pact just the other day. Listen to what we had to say about it...

"The challenges of climate change are big, and serious. The next step is to reach agreement in Bali on a negotiating road map for a new post-2012 framework. We look forward to continuing to work together constructively with Australia, as we have in APEC, the Asia Pacific Partnership, and the Major Economies process," said Kristen Hellmer with the White House Council on Environmental Quality."

I am sorry but why are we talking about what we are going to do in 2012? By then it could already be too late to reverse the process that is beginning to snowball more and more ever year... Money grubbing fools is the only way I can describe this administration... sad that America used to be the leader when it came to making world-wide decisions and leading by example. I hate to think about the way the world sees us nowadays not as a great nation, but as invaders and occupiers who are only helping destroy the world through pollution and waist.

I know most American's are better than this, so why do we let ourselves be portrayed this way? I know what your thinking there is nothing I can do, but guess what you can... make some noise, write your congressman, get involved... The country was built on the people, not the corporations. Corruption has been running this country for way too long... time for a change. What do you think?

What Would Happen If Politics Didn't Get In The Way?

Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best... This video breaks down the monumental problem of climate change into three easy answers. Sure, I am sure all you nah-sayers will be up in arms saying things are much more complicated then that, but they're really not. We have to start somewhere, and what better place to look to for inspiration then our children? After all they are the ones that will feel the brunt of the effects that climate change will have on our planet over the next 100 years.



For more information on this video visit the site here!

Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda

As I watch the United States economy slipping farther and farther into recession like territory I can't help but wonder if things could have been different? Sure, I know most of this mess is caused by the major downturn in housing, and serious overvaluations in some real estate markets such as California and Florida, but still that is not the case here in Michigan, and many other states through the country.

Most of us were just hit with problems caused by outsourcing ever single job we could to places were we could manufacture things cheaper like China and India. Now with the dollar plummeting to new lows and the Chinese filling our kids with lead and threating to sell ever dollar they own we have to look back and think... hmmm perhaps we made a mistake somewhere along the lines.

The truth is things could have been much different if we were looking towards the future instead of concentrating on making a quick buck. $100 oil is here and doesn't appear to be going anywhere with winter time just around the corner and how did we plan for this as a country? The answer is we didn't.

What we should have done was start manufacturing as much alternative energy as we can, solar, wind, geothermal ect. We should have been building these plants up like crazy over the past few years, especially with all the science coming out about climate change, and how almost ever scientist out there is SCREAMING at us that we need to change our ways before it was just too late... so what did we do... nothing.

If the state and local governments could have put in major tax incentives (not the half-ass ones we have in place now) for business's and residences to go green this would have created a huge demand for these type of items which would in turn create jobs and supported our economy. Not too mention people could have been buying all new houses that were "green" and would actually save on heating and electricity cost. Instead we are looking at a weak dollar, depreciating house values, high oil, a shrinking middle class and a climate that from the looks of it is going to cause the world to become much less livable in the very near future.

Take a look at the video below... even the International Energy Agency is telling us that we missed the boat.

Preach On Brother!

Ross Gelbspan, author of "the heat is on" and "boiling point" spoke Sept 2007 at the international forum on globalization. Please take some time to listen to what he has to say, this man has been studying the subject for the past 10 years and knows quite a bit about the issue that is climate change. There is a lot of talk these days about how to handle such a immense issue, well have a listen because this guy actually has the answers...



What really bothers me is that The United States is suppose to be a leader when it comes to world issues like this, but with George in office he and his administration have completely turned their back's on scientific fact, and sided with the energy companies. I know I can sound like a broken record sometimes, but this is the sad truth. For more about our president and his evil tactics check out this post or for more information about the speaker in the above video Ross Gelbspan check out his website here.

We need to realize that this is an issue we need to deal with now, not later. We can't let politics get in the way of saving humanity from itself...