Correction to the link embedded into comment below:

http://www.northwestern.edu/science-outreach/globalwarming/webcast.html

Sorry, that comma killed the link.

Was it greed that killed the world?  Our nature has always been predatory, self destructive.  Just ask the Greeks, the Romans, the Iraqis.  Perhaps we’re slated to fall harder than anything this world has seen in a long time.

If you want to begin exploring the data behind global warming, a good place to start is http://www.northwestern.edu/science-outreach/globalwarming/webcast.html, note that some of the Quicktime links were offline last week.  One small detail about the delicate nature of our world is revealed in this discussion, something called Oceanic Acidification, which is the absorption of Carbon Dioxide back into the waters of our world.  This too has not happened for several hundred millennia. Typically, Co2 has been released from the ocean…there’s so much in the air now, that the osmotic balance has been reversed.  This is a huge, and largely unknown / little explored problem. 

After you have finished reviewing these videos (you’ll need about 3 hours), contact your congressman and promise to vote them out of office if they do not initiate immediate and drastic measures to introduce legislation that effectively halts the further degradation of our atmosphere.  Promise to vote into office those that have made clean air and clean energy gathering systems a priority for their platform.  http://www.house.gov/writerep/

3 Billion dollars to save the world.  How much did Larry Silverstein get for the WTC?  What did IBM profit last year?  What was the amount spent on a flawed missile defense system by Clinton, by Bush? http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/securitynet/missile-defense-budget-summary-for-fy-2005.html

Although it seems like a lot of money, there are corporate initiatives out there that dwarf this figure, and it’s exactly the hidden, buried projects in those budgets that are impacting our world with such great abandon.  Maybe we need to launch a global war against greed.

Well, R. A. you could move to Fla. Of course, you need to be prepared to live on a houseboat in less than perfect circumstances.
CLINTON, BRANSON, I AM OLD ENOUGH TO HAVE SEEN LOTS OF OLIGARCHS FLING LOTS OF MONEY AT WHATEVER POPULAR CAUSE HAPPENED TO HAVE THE HOI POLLOI EXERCISED…DID ANY OF IT DO ANY LASTING GOOD….I DO NOT KNOW…..MAYBE CARNEGIE SLIPPED UP AND ACTUALLY DID SOMETHING WITH LASTING EFFECT, BUT THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM TOOK CARE OF THAT BY TURNING OUT GRADUATES WHO CANNOT READ.
I wonder why it does not occur to you that a world where GREAT PHILANTHROPHY is not necessary would be a superior model…....

Meaning that unless we win in November, it really won’t make a bit of difference what any one of us thinks, says, or does, because that’ll be it , el fin, the end.  A century or so, that’s about how long it’ll take to finish us off. 

What’ll happen is that somewhere near the North Pole there’ll be this group of survivors.  Why there?  Because by the end of this century the Arctic and Antarctica will be only habitable places left on earth.  And as usual the subject of conversation is where’s the next meal going to come from.  Just before the gathering breaks up, during show and tell actually, an elderly woman offers to share a childhood memory with her friends -

“There was this mid-term election, hope even of winning back Congress, but it didn’t happen.  That was it, too, because from then on everything fell apart.  And even though we’re stuck with what we got,  I can’t help wondering what my life would have been like, had my parents and grandparents only won that mid-term election.    .

Oh sure… 67 years of freezing my ass off during 6 months of winter every year… and NOW it gets warm. Thanks a heap!