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.