who needs glaciers anyway

i received this email from the people upstairs the other day:

"SILVER SPRING, Md (5/12/06) -- hundreds of concerned citizens and leaders from across the nation will join Hurricane Katrina survivors May 31st just outside of Washington, D.C. to denounce the Bush Administration's cover up of the growing scientific link between monstrous hurricanes and human-induced global warming. Despite a flurry of peer-reviewed scientific studies linking planetary warming to storms like Katrina, leaders at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Hurricane Center (a subset of NOAA) continue to claim with no supporting data -- that the recent hurricane devastation is part of a "natural cycle." Protesters will condemn these responses as an abdication of government responsibility when millions of Americans are increasingly vulnerable to violent storms in a warmer world.
Meanwhile, just since August 2005, no fewer than four major scientific studies; one conducted by NOAA itself have shown that warmer sea-surface temperatures created by atmospheric warming are increasing the frequency, power, and lifespan of major hurricanes. Yet there is no mention of these studies at the National Hurricane Center (NHC) web site despite the agency's official mission to save lives, mitigate property loss, and improve economic efficiency by issuing the best watches, warnings, forecasts and analyses of hazardous tropical weather, and by increasing understanding of these hazards. And NHC director Max Mayfield denied any substantive connection between global warming and hurricanes before a US Senate panel last fall. Meanwhile at NOAA, The Washington Post and other media have documented the ongoing campaign to cover up global warming data. Under the directorship of Bush's friend and political appointee, Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr., NOAA climate scientists are being intimidated from talking to the press and their papers are being withheld from publication. These actions at NOAA and the NHC are part of an obvious political campaign orchestrated by the White House to avoid the serious cuts in fossil fuel use scientists say are needed to fight global warming. But by ignoring the science and denying the warming on behalf of Exxon Mobil, the Bush Administration is condemning millions more Americans to the suffering and loss seen throughout the Gulf Coast in 2005. The cover up must stop now! Please make plans to join the May 31st protest and vigil."

next wednesday will be an interesting workday indeed. now i'm not really privied to say if there has been a total 'cover-up' or not at NOAA - global warming climate change has always been a contentious issue in climate research, even before Dubya came to NOAA headquarters to trash the Kyoto protocol and deny our role in global CO2 emissions in front of the very people who struggle daily to prove the tenuous link between americans and the global environment with science. but i will say, hurricanes - all the crazy shit we saw last year - backed up highways, toppled houses, people hiding in astrodomes, stranded on rooftops - it all speaks a hell of a lot more to people than say, coral bleaching or the extinction of polar bears - both of which are pretty friggin' serious but it won't get Geraldo on-site live! or make the headlones for weeks.

i don't know really know what a protest at NOAA can achieve (to be frank, most people in my office are dems, speak ill of the repubs anyway, like how you see so many cartoons in the hallways, poking fun at the dubya and his cronies, always sorta odd to see in a government building), as i think many people within the administration (look at christie todd whitman and her resignation) have already been battling this issue politically for a long time.

so i guess i'll just say this: it's pretty important to scream this issue out loud, it's pretty timely, given the recent press and yeah! al gore's new movie! (the music is scary enough) but let's also decry that we're pretty far from having any significant action to prevent climate change or hurricanes for that matter, for obvious reasons - we can't just change the climate from year to year, and $$$$$. and greed. just look at the inside page of the post today - we are some greedy, fucked up people!).

because in the end, despite all the news and publications, political struggle, what the repubs say in the end about climate change and all that - they spew what seems to come from some pamphlet written by karl rove, or even worse, the frightening, undeniably insane complete lunatics that take the other side:
"Carbon Dioxide - they call it pollution, we call it life" who are these people?

i'll tell you what tho, my softball team cum environmental aggressors wish more than anything that those nutso's had a team we could smash an ozone hole though:
"Cheap Beer, they call it pollution, we call it life"