Climate change: It's here

Global climate change deniers (& another link) and misdirect-ers/misinform-ers: Your stance is almost certainly wrong. 

More areas of the world are now experiencing likely effects -- i.e., more frequent extreme weather events (EPA link) --  already. Peruse the following link to a recent news article by CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent – Fri Aug 13, 3:09 am ET: 


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100813/ap_on_sc/us_sci_climate_breakdown

Update: An 8/14/10 article by Justin Gillis of The New York Times also discusses climate change and recent, extreme weather events around the world. Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/science/earth/15climate.html


More: Some climate change facts. Not Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh distorted or manufactured "facts", but scientific ones (instead). Think of your kids as you read them:

Extreme Weather and Climate Change:
"Extreme weather is putting hundreds of thousands of lives and livelihoods at risk all around the world. In order to avoid the worst and most devastating impacts of the severe weather events that are consistent with climate change, we must begin to significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

Learn more about climate change and extreme weather and make sure your friends and family get the facts.

Get the Facts: Extreme Weather and Global Climate Change:

    * Pollution from human activities is warming our climate. The 10 warmest years on record all occurred since 1990, and the last decade was the hottest recorded since worldwide record keeping began more than 100 years ago.  The period between January and June of 2010 was the warmest six months on record.

    * A warming climate increases the chance that we will experience extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and intense storms, and ramps up the risk that severe weather events will cause catastrophic damage.

    * The floods, fires and droughts we're seeing in places like Pakistan and Russia are consistent with the
effects of global warming, including temperature increases, increased precipitation in some parts of the world,
and droughts in others.

    * In early August, a 97-square mile chunk of ice--the largest since 1962--broke away from the northwest coast of Greenland. Canadian officials fear the massive "ice island" could pose a risk to ships and oil platforms.

    * Unless we significantly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, we are likely to see even more extreme weather events and the consequences they bring.


References:
1. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Earth Observatory, "Ice Island Calves off Petermann Glacier," August 13, 2010.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=45112

2. Randy Boswell, "Giant iceberg drifting toward Canada could threaten ships, oil platforms," Montreal Gazette, August 10, 2010.http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Giant+iceberg+drifting+toward+Canada+could+threaten+ships+platforms/3382103/story.html"

Source link: http://acp.repoweramerica.org/page/invite/extremeweather?s

Now it's not "just" your kids and grandchildren who will be "paying the price".  It's (more and more of) us, also....

Old image from Google/LIFE archives. Photographer: Loomis Dean


 
P.S.: Meanwhile, what's "in the sights" of Tea-bagger (link) heroine Sarah (photo below), instead of the planet's/your children's future?? Do you actually want to know? ...Recall the tale of Nero and the Great Fire of Rome...??
 

This image is a work of a U.S. Army soldier or employee, taken or made during the course of the person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain. Author: Pfc. Christopher Grammer, 50th Public Affairs Detachment.

But Omar Thornton owned six guns

According to the following 8/4/10 news article from The Hartford Courant, Hartford Distributors alleged masscrer/murderer Omar Thornton owned a total of six guns:

 Link to 'courant.com' story: http://www.courant.com/community/manchester/hc-omar-s-thornton-connecticut-shooti20100804,0,6244219.story

Yet, we are also already seeing sympathetic, shoulder-shrugging stories such as the following (by The Courant's Hilda Munoz and Jon Lender), at times depicting Omar as "...so soft-spoken and laid-back that no one knew how much of an impact the problems were having on him". Plus, (no attribution, same story/writers): "The only clue that the family has about Thornton's motive for the shootings was his complaint that he was racially harassed at work."
Link to 8/4/10 courant.com article: http://www.courant.com/community/east-hartford/hc-omar-thornton-story-0804-20100803,0,5894638.story

'Only clue'??  More information will likely come out in the days ahead, but why does anyone 'need' six guns (of various kinds)?  How were these guns kept (e.g., locked up in a safe somewhere, or not)?  With all of those guns available, what might happen when "Mr. Soft-spoken" has a "bad" day, or gets angry? (Rhetorical questions. We now know the terrible 'answer' (to at least one), plus Omar (apparently) took the coward's way out and shot himself. Update: 'Mr. Soft-spoken'  apparently declared that he wished he "...could have got more of the people." I.e., in his (alleged) shooting/murdering rampage. In the same '911' call he called himself "the shooter". C'mon Omar, should have told it like it was: Ambushin' mass-murderer of unarmed people.)

Who will be the next innocent American co-workers, bystanders, etc. to die at the hand of a heavily-armed, but "real quiet", "nice guy" mass murderer?  Will it be me....or you? A loved one?? Who's "number" will be up the next time?

Easy guns. (Link to undercover video.) Poor control. In a gun-happy country of 300 million-plus people, this kind of horrible outcome - repeated over and over - is inevitable.  (Probability and statistics-wise that is (if you will). And ultimately, no one can easily predict exactly who will do something like this. Only that it will happen, with some frequency. (I.e., so many people; so many guns.) Also pls. see an earlier post here, same subject. Such carnage occurs over and over in America...)

Here's even a grim (partly-related) "tally" for you, from just one U.S. state (link). We're keeping TRACK of various deadly events, kind of like a (lethal game) score...

Keep turning a blind eye to rampant gun ownership and horrifying gun massacres in this country....and: Pray that you're not the next in the line of fire. Plus keep "trotting out" those much-practiced, finely-honed mourning skills...

When is it ever going to be ENOUGH? What does it take?