Since the '60s, the scientific community
has been hammering away about the harm
being done to the atmosphere by the
burning of fossil fuels. They knew that
the planet would warm gradually, and
that it was necessary to start slowing
down the use of CO-2 producing energy.
They didn't have any concrete evidence
of what was in the future but they knew
it would cause change. Well, that was
enough to get some legislation passed
that helped a little. In fact, it helped
allot in Los Angeles where smog had
become a huge problem, but major
changes in US and world use of carbon
based fuels were difficult to make happen.

For decades, oil companies and the
Energy Industry hired scientists to refute
the claims of global warming. These
"company scientists" gave bogus reports
and tried to disprove every attempt by the
real scientific community to bring a
stronger awareness to the subject and get
major legislation passed.

In '96 an oceanographer named Wally
Broeker discovered the connection between
ocean circulation and abrupt climate change.
This was absolutely mind boggling news -
that the result of global warming would be
an abrupt (rather than the 10,000 year
transition as had long been accepted) flip
into "ice age type" weather patterns. This
new information was slowly being accepted
in the scientific community, and in '98 he
was awarded the Nobel Prize for his
discovery. This fact, that there is abrupt
climate change coming, jolted the neo-cons
into running the, then, Gov. George W. Bush
in the Presidential Primary, and they did so
using any means necessary to guarantee a win
(push polling Senator McCain, keeping
democrats off of Florida's voting rolls, etc.).
When Bush became President he immediately
turned 180 degrees on his campaign pledges
and started on his disastrous environmental
melt down.

So, in 2001, the scientific community
decided to do something that could not be
refuted by anyone. They put together a
world wide commission of almost 3,000
experts - The International Arctic Science
Committee - who came up with several
possible scenarios from computer models
of very dramatic changes, to more modest
climate changes, and averaged the entire
array to one that they all agree is very
likely - The Arctic Climate Impact
Assessment.

Based on tons of data, these scientists have
finally finished the report and are releasing
it to the public, the Congress, and the world.
The data that they gathered shows an
alarming rate of warming in the Arctic,
where the ice cap is diminishing at
increasing rates due to man's burning of
fossil fuels, and there is no question about
that. What will happen in the decades
ahead is still, of course, unknown.....but
there is consensus that climate change has
already begun, and that it will continue, and
that the rate of change will increase.

At some point, the ice caps will melt to a
level which will shut down the Atlantic
Conveyor that distributes heat from the
equatorial region to the poles. At some
point in the future, the growing season in
Kansas will likely be reduced to 5 to 10
weeks a year. This knowledge, rather
conspicuously, coincides with the right
wing's blatant dismantling of the Bill of
Rights and the Democracy of the United
States.

They too, now know what the result of
their gluttony for profits and their decades
long neglect of the environment will bring,
and they are calling in all bets. They didn't
know about the Atlantic Conveyor (and it's
sister in the Pacific) and that global warming
would eventually cause an abrupt climate
change. That is, quite frankly, very hard to
understand without proof. But the proof has
been shown in study after study, and is
irrefutable - and the right wing knows it.

President Bush was selected to lead our
nation in this time of "climate change
awareness" very likely because of his
coziness with the oil industry, and the
energy industry is still unwilling to make
major changes of their emissions or to
curtail fossil fuel usage.

The current Administration has a despicable
record on the environment - the worst ever.
They have rolled back laws, and placed
industry executives in oversight positions
of the very industries they came from.
Things have changed. We can now expect
environmental concerns to be neglected
even more than before, with the (supposed)
mandate Bush received in the November
election.

You may not need to worry yourself about
this if you can tuck your family away in a
mansion in the Caribbean or the Cayman
Islands, like all of President Bush's friends
will be able to do when food supplies
start dwindling. If not.....perhaps you
should worry.