Global warming is not some far off distant possibility. The federal investigation reports that we are suffering the bad effects already.

report

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 28, 2008; Page A02

Global warming is already affecting the nation's forests, water resources, farmland and wildlife, and will have serious negative consequences over the next 25 to 50 years, according to a report issued yesterday by the federal government.

The scientific assessment by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, which was commissioned by the Agriculture Department and carried out by 38 scientists inside and outside the government, provides the most detailed look in nearly eight years at how climate change is reshaping the American landscape. The report, which runs 193 pages and synthesizes a thousand scientific papers, highlights how human-generated carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels have already translated into more frequent forest fires, reduced snowpack and increased drought, especially in the West.

Anthony C. Janetos, director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute of the University of Maryland and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, said the document aims to inform federal resource managers and dispel the public's perception that global warming will not be felt until years from now.

"They imagine all these ecological impacts are in some distant future," said Janetos, one of the lead authors, who noted that many animals and plants have shifted their migratory and blooming patterns to reflect recent changes in temperature. "They're not in some distant future. We're experiencing them now."

And to me the argument about the cause is kinda moot, it's here and it's now, what are we gonna do about it is my question?

Very true and to the point. It's long past time for thinking and talking, we need to go to action. Even shrub has started down that path though he only talks about it.

I'm liking what Alan Watts would have to say on it. That the damage to the environment is due to our alienation from the universe at large, and that we seperate our inside world as us and our outside world as something else. That we are part of this universe like a wave is part of the ocean.

All the debate around the global warming issue, and onwards into how to repair such things will come as a direct result of healing this rift between self and universe.

Boooshpig