Year 2, Month 12, Day 6: The Onward March Of Folly

The Zimbabwe Independent runs a story on the bad news:

THE World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) warned on Tuesday at the UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa that greenhouse gas levels were rapidly reaching critical levels that could trigger “far reaching and irreversible changes” to the planet, its oceans and its biosphere. In South Africa, meteorologists confirmed the country was witnessing an unprecedented increase in the frequency and intensity of weather “events”, and experiencing warming trends that were above the global average.

On Tuesday morning, the WMO released a provisional statement on the status of the global climate, showing that 2011 has been the 10th warmest year since 1850, when records began. This was despite the strong, cooling influence of the La Niña event that developed in the second half of last year.
The volume of Arctic sea ice in 2011 was also the lowest on record and the area covered by seasonal Arctic sea was the second lowest on record — 35% below the 1979 — 2000 average.

The full report from the UN agency, which assesses global temperatures and provides a snapshot of weather and climate events in 2011, will be released early next year.

Finding a link for sending them a letter took longer than writing the damn letter. Sent December 1:

The temperature is rising everywhere on Earth; likewise, the scientific evidence confirming the reality and the danger of human-caused climate change. And yet, the world’s richest nations are seemingly paralyzed, unable to utilize their economic power to help avert catastrophe. Why? There are many answers, but many of them boil down to a fatal combination of two factors: short-sightedness and greed.

In most of the industrialized world, the profit cycle reigns supreme. Programs or projects that do not offer immediate returns on investment are automatically excluded from the policy-making process of nations whose economies are dominated by multinational corporations. The inability of the United States to address the disaster it has in large part created is a symptom of the control of government by these forces, and until their power and influence is checked, none of the world’s nations will be able to offer genuine solutions to the climate crisis.

Warren Senders

UPDATE: and the LTE bounced back; the Zimbabwe Independent does not appear to want to receive my emails. I searched on a text string from the original article and found another version of it in the Trinidad Guardian, so I’m resending it to them.

Published in Trinidad.