Yeah, it’s a weak opener, but I couldn’t get any more clever. Bill McKibben’s most recent post, reprinted here in today in “Tomgram”, is a bite sized mouthful, likely to send daddy drunk and mumbling into the night…
…McKibben’s nimble break down of NASA climatologist James Hansen’s most recent reporting on the state of the planet is, uh, inspiring stuff.
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David,
Thanks.
I had already read the McKibben piece twice and was trying to figure out what to say about it.
In the meantime, here’s a link to the 350.org site that’s focusing on Hansen’s magic number of 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (explained in article)
http://www.350.org/
McKibben is The Man on this issue. Here in LA, we rallied hard for his “STEP IT UP ’07” event and more recent public discussions at the LA Library. My images are printed in his recent call to action:FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING NOW, a straight up primer on the issue.
Oddly enough, since I’ve begun working for Discovery, I occasionally get something almost like hate-mail, accusing me and others of being anti-American and Anti-Oil, due to our promotion of alt-energy technologies. It’s astonishing that in light of work like McKibben’s and Hansen’s, there are still many- a diminishing but vocal lot- who call this a hoax. For the rest of us, the beat goes on….
“It’s not just the economy. We’ve gone through swoons before. It’s that gas at $4 a gallon means we’re running out, at least of the cheap stuff that built our sprawling society. It’s that when we try to turn corn into gas, it sends the price of a loaf of bread shooting upwards and starts food riots on three continents. It’s that everything is so inextricably tied together. It’s that, all of a sudden, those grim Club of Rome types who, way back in the 1970s, went on and on about the ”limits to growth“ suddenly seem… how best to put it, right.”
Shall we parse this? First some reports project that 60% of the current price of oil is speculation. Second, go to CBOT. The price of corn and the price of wheat are not linked. The link of the cost of bread is the cost of transport, ie the diesel, not the cost of a bushel of corn. The diversion and conversion of corn to ethanol is not the cause of a rise in bread prices. It is however the cause of a rise in corn and corn byproducts.
A lack of critical thinking.
JohnMcC,
What is COBT?
The assertion that the price of corn and wheat are not linked seems dubious, especially over a few seasons in ecological zones & soils where corn & wheat are substitutable. And obviously they are substitutable as food.
Have you any regression analysis to support your assertion?