Presumably you've heard the
news today that our atmosphere, that narrow band of chemicals enveloping the only planet we know that harbors sporadically intelligent life is now filled with 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide and rising.
Perhaps the purveyors here of metawars and pie fights can take a break (or maybe take a hike) while we ponder what this means for us and who knows how many other species on Earth.
George Monbiot writes:
The data go back 800,000 years: that's the age of the oldest fossil air bubbles extracted from Dome C, an ice-bound summit in the high Antarctic. And throughout that time there has been nothing like this. At no point in the preindustrial record have concentrations of carbon dioxide in the air risen above 300 parts per million (ppm). 400ppm is a figure that belongs to a different era.
The difference between 399ppm and 400ppm is small, in terms of its impacts on the world's living systems. But this is a moment of symbolic significance, a station on the Via Dolorosa of environmental destruction. It is symbolic of our failure to put the long-term prospects of the natural world and the people it supports above immediate self-interest.
The only way forward now is back: to retrace our steps and seek to return atmospheric concentrations to around 350ppm, as the 350.org campaign demands. That requires, above all, that we leave the majority of the fossil fuels which have already been identified in the ground. There is not a government or an energy company which has yet agreed to do so.
Recently, Shell announced that it will go ahead with its plans to drill deeper than any offshore oil operation has gone before: almost 3km below the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time, Oxford University opened a new laboratory in its department of earth sciences. The lab is funded by Shell. Oxford says that the partnership "is designed to support more effective development of natural resources to meet fast-growing global demand for energy." Which translates as finding and extracting even more fossil fuel.
The European Emissions Trading Scheme, which was supposed to have capped our consumption, is now, for practical purposes, dead. International climate talks have stalled; governments such as ours now seem quietly to be unpicking their domestic commitments. Practical measures to prevent the growth of global emissions are, by comparison to the scale of the challenge, almost nonexistent.
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FishOutofWater has posted an excellent diary on the subject:
The Siberian Arctic Was a Summer Resort Spot the Last Time CO2 Was Today's 400ppm
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—Kagan Filibuster? All Part of the GOP Plan:
TWI's Mike Lillis catches Mitch McConnel mid flip-flop. Last month, he ruled out a Republican filibuster of any Obama nominee, unless that person had "really bizarre fews."
But today he's saying that "it's way to early to be making a decision about the issue of whether there should be a 60 vote threshold on the nominee." Way too early, because it's not like they've already been through a nomination process for Kagan when she received confirmation as Solicitor General, or as Lillis put it, as if she "just arrived in a coffee can from Pluto."
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Tweet of the Day:
It's 2013, and South Carolina state government offices are closed today for Confederate Memorial Day.
— @wexler via Twitter for iPad
On today's
Kagro in the Morning show, how drawing on the information from past #KITM shows can help convert frustrated WalMart shoppers into anti-WalMart evangelists, one at a time! Jonathan Chait on "Why Left and Right Economics Can't Just Agree." Catholic hospital ditches Catholic doctrine when it might cost them money. Twitter star
@UnitedLiberals joins us to discuss Kutztown (PA) University's decision to sorta-kinda loosen their on-campus gun policy, ALEC's latest anti-transparency play, campaigns-in-a-box, increasing concerns over "political intelligence" consulting, and other issues under which Liberals are typically United.
High Impact Posts. Top Comments.