THE EARTH ABIDES


I marvel at images of Earth from space, its almost ethereal beauty,clean, round, seemingly unmarred, floating in a sea of blackness interspersed with tiny pinpricks of brightness eons of light-years away.

"One generation passes away, and another generation comes but the earth abides forever."  (King James Bible.) 

                           MAN VS CHANGE

It appears we've only scratched the surface on this issue of climate change just as Man has merely scratched the surface of the planet. 

There are 15 You Tube videos below accessible through the menu button.  Particularly compelling to me is the one titled THE MOST TERRIFYING VIDEO YOU'LL EVER SEE where a calm gentleman, without any background music or extraneous images, looks at the issue of global climate change using logic on a chalk board.  Makes you think.  

Thinking is a good thing, delays dementia, or so I'm told.

                             
                    ANOTHER VIEW ON CLIMATE CHANGE


Since we at Hurricane Central are mandated to provide more than one side of every argument we present these YouTube videos.  This is a well made albeit mostly one-sided view of climate change.   Motion pictures are so powerfully dramatic that you almost automatically believe their message or hidden message, combining multiple senses of sight and sound.  

                        MEDIA AND "TRUTH"

Marshal McLuhen wrote about early television proclaiming, "The medium is the message," implying, I think, that moving images are powerfully pervasive and in and of itself regardless of content can sway public opinion in a subliminal sense. Think about this and your teen's almost catatonic stare at some music video or game.  What is the lesson they're really getting? (Marshal McLuhan, UNDERSTANDING MEDIA: THE EXTENSIONS OF MAN, 1964.)

Video provides a more compelling view of any subject when compared to prose as readers have only sight to determine the veracity of its author's thesis. 

Click the magic arrow and listen to the first one.  Frenetic beating-heart drums, frenzied strings, wailing horns, doom in pictures and sound. How can all of that not be true, the narrator said so.  Right?  

          FREDDY KRUGER AND GLOBAL WARMING

While watching Freddy Kruger on some Elm Street saga you know he's going to dismember the pretty cheerleader before she finds her friend in that dank misty night, inevitable as age-lines on your brow.  And then he maims both girls with a frenzied musical background; flashing lights, sounds, grunts, screams, flowing fluids, images so real and compelling hackles rise on almost every nape in the audience.

Freddy could be a metaphor for Global Warming and maybe just as true.  Think about it.  Not bad.  Ay?  Once again if you're a newcomer to John's Musings that's a Canadian eh.  We're multilingual here at Musing Central for your edification and amusement.   


                                    ANOTHER VIEW

We at HURRICANE CENTRAL strive to provide multiple sides to every argument, note that many other issue speakers present only one view, persuading with hype and browbeating just as Hitler's regime did with The Big Lie.  Say it often enough with sufficient force and fervor and it will be perceived as "TRUTH."

Looking further however there appears to be another side or perhaps multiple sides to this issue.  Lets continue the debate.

I suggest you look at UNSTOPPABLE GLOBAL WARMING EVERY 1,500 YEARS.  I spent several hours with this paperback at the local Books-A-Million while sipping a pricey coffee concoction.  I would have bought the book but they wanted $26 for it, which seemed kind of steep.  Lots of money to be made on perceived tragedy. 

Other chapter titles in this book include the myth of catastrophic flooding, the myth of weather change, the myth of just about everything mentioned in the You Tube videos.  Its an interesting read and if you've got 26 bucks you might want to buy it.  Controversy abides just as the Earth, on and on and on.

                                        GREENLAND

Why did early Viking explorers give Greenland that name?  Certainly not because of all the snow and ice covering it today.  It was beautifully green nine hundred or so years ago supporting livestock and agriculture.  What happened to all that green?  An interesting connotation with the Green hype we hear so much of today.  There were several books in the store with Green in their titles.  Living Green, How To Live Green, etc, etc, etc.  Green with its images of fresh life, clean life, healthy life. 

I'm almost green with envy.  No, no that's another thing.  Mustn't mix metaphors.

According to Singer and Avery climatologists have discovered a 1500 year cycle of relative warm and cold periods on Earth, we are in the warming part of that cycle now.  (UNSTOPPABLE GLOBAL WARMING EVERY 1,500 YEARS, Fred Singer and Dennis T.Avery, Rowman and Littlefield publishers, 2007.)  
   

           
                    SANDSTORM IN THE DESERT

This is the Taklimakan Desert in northwestern China, an interesting contrast to follow the blue of the oceans above.  Another view of Earth comprised of dry, wet, tan, blue and green vistas.  Earth is an equal opportunity provider combining all sorts of environments within which LIFE can exist.  The Earth abides and Man is just another life form scrabbling about on its surface. 

                                        OP-ED PAGES

Additionally my local paper, The News-Press of Fort Myers, Florida had some more letters on its op-ed pages which add to the controversy. 

On December 31, 2007 Mr Dan Slosek of Cape Coral wrote a letter titled UNDERSTANDING CYCLES.  He disagrees with Wayne Holbrook's thesis and discusses all the additional heat Man has added to Earth's burden and its difficulty in radiating it out to space.  He concludes with, "I suppose the whole matter will become moot before too long when mankind finishes depleting its finite supply of fossil fuels.  Won't we wish for a little global warming then?

Comment by JB: 

I'm not sure of the statistics but I think one hurricane supplies more energy to Earth's burden than all of the atomic bombs ever detonated.  Earth creates and disperses more heat than Man has produced in almost a wink of a geologic-time  eye.  This powerful planet continues to abide and will do so long after we're gone from its surface.

Mr. Mike Downing of St. James City disagrees with Mr. Slosec and writes, "Count me in as a "denier" on global warming as well."  He goes on with his educational credentials touting 32 years in R&D with graduate degrees in chemical engineering.  He concludes with, "Please do not insult this highly trained and experienced technical person that our biased university professors have sufficient data to statistically prove that global warming is caused solely by man-made CO2."

Mr W. Dexter Bellamy of Fort Myers also disagrees with the Deniers and writes about the demise of coral reefs throughout the world stating that increased carbon dioxide levels have added to the acidity of ocean waters and are destroying this vital resource necessary for  other sea creature's survival. 

Mr Leonard Gato of Cape Coral writes, "What a pleasure it was to read Wayne Holbrook's articulate letter on global warming."  He went on with a litany of ideas including those who tout fundamentalist Islam as a threat, and those who contributed to the demise of the nuclear power industry in the U.S. and concludes with, "They should be ignored and Al Gore should be recognized as the false prophet he is."

Mr Jerry Mooney of Estero agrees with Holbrook and wrote about hype vs facts.  He concluded his letter with, "Thanks again.  Being a "denier can be difficult."

Mr Ron Hood of Cape Coral thought Holbrook did not make his point.  And likened it as the aftermath of the passage of a herd of elephants with its accumulation of methane producing waste.  I guess he was thinking BS.  He went on to state that the U.S. has not signed the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gases and that we are the world's greatest contributor of those gases.  He concluded with, "Even if the rest of the world is wrong, including 90 percent of its scientists, is it worth the risk?"

Mr Wayne K. Hood of Cape Coral also disagreed with Holbrook citing passages of the Bible and how his father predicted some of the effects of global warming over 25 years ago by reading it.  He wrote in part, "Although my scientific credentials are not as long as his, one would have to be blind, deaf and living in a vacuum to not be able to see, hear and taste the glaringly obvious effects from all around the world."  He likened deniers to those with their heads in the sand.

More grist for this mill appeared on The News-Press Op-Ed page January 4, 2008. 

Mr. Leonard Sword of Cape Coral who's letter titled GETTING COLD NOW wrote, "Once again we are fed a litany of catastrophic events that will befall us unless we make drastic changes in our lifestyles and economy.  Man-made global warming or climate change is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the public.  What little temperature change that has occurred is a natural phenomenon, not man-made.  Global warming is a political movement, not a scientific one."  He also mentioned BS in his letter.

The final letter was from Mr. Wayne Holbrook of Bokeelia, the instigator of all this turmoil. He stated that the study by Naomi Oreskes regarding the credibility of proponents of global warming was in her methodology and that she based her conclusion on, "1000 carefully chosen publications, out of a total of 12,000." 

He also cited cyclic ice ages and noted they typically last 10,000 years with a period of warming of 10,000 years.  He wrote, "Past warming cycles have produced temperatures which were higher than those of today.  For example, Greenland was warm enough in 1100 AD to grow vegetables as a staple crop, which led the Vikings to name it Greenland.  Yes, we burn an enormous amount of 'stuff' and produce an untold amount of heat.  That heat, however, is only a tiny fraction of the heat delivered to the Earth each day by the sun. ......The carbon dioxide theory is rapidly losing credibility among legitimate climatologists in favor of changes in solar activity." 

Holbrook concluded his letter with a quote from Dr. Mitchell Talor, Department of Environment, Government of Nunavut (the ancestral home of the Inuit), "Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable and are increasing in population.  They are not going extinct or even appear to be affected at present."

See below for some evidence of polar bear vitality.

Comment by JB:

And so the debate goes on.  I'm sure this is not the last discussion we'll have on this issue.  But let's end with this, you guessed it, 

                               THE EARTH ABIDES.


      
                                   LUNCH?
                
       
            HEY PETE YOU GOT A CAN OPENER?

These bear pics were taken by crew members of a nuclear submarine surfacing in the Arctic Sea.  The bear's comments might be appropriate regarding the appearance of a possible meal.  Take out maybe, a real value meal. 

                     "I like mine rare, super size please." 

                             "You want fries with that?"

           "Yeah, and a Diet Coke, I'm watching my weight."

 More grist, oops, food for the mill.

They were sent to me in another context by my fiend Tommy Poppell.  I thought they might be a satisfactory ending to this little saga of Man's achievements vs importance on Earth.  

Tommy buddy-boated with me a year ago in an eventful voyage from Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula to Cape Coral, Florida. You can read some of his comments in the review section of TILLER TALES elsewhere on this site.


               ALWAYS WATCHING OUT FOR YOU


                                
                               TAKE CARE,


                             JB