Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Fact-Checking the Global Warming Deniers

1. There's more ice in Antarctica than ever.
The past few years have seen an expansion of Antarctica's coastal ice sheets – a byproduct, ironically, of climate change, which has brought increased snow and rainfall to the continent. Meanwhile, Antarctica's inland ice sheets are melting at an alarming rate – 1,350 billion tons of ice disappeared into the ocean between 1992 and 2011. And that rate is increasing, fueling global rises in sea level.

Are the Pole's Great Glaciers Beyond Saving?

2. The climate may be changing, but human activity has nothing to do with it.
Many skeptics claim that ice ages have come and gone over the millennia, and global warming is no different. But those earlier climate shifts were caused by phenomena like changes in the Earth's orbit. The current rise in global temperatures has coincided with a nearly 40 percent rise in CO2 levels over the past 150 years.

Greenland's Melting Ice Sheets: Climate Changes' Disastrous Effects

3. Whatever happens, we can adapt.
True, perhaps, for rich countries. But the worst impacts of climate change – drought, famine, disease – will disproportionately strike the poorest nations. And even the well-off will be hit hard: Between 2011 and 2012, the U.S. government dished out more than $100 billion in climate-related emergency spending.

Why We Can't Count on Evolution to Counterbalance Climate Change

4. The pace of warming has slowed significantly in the past 15 years.
This may be true for the Earth's surface, but, according to NASA's Josh Willis, it doesn't tell the whole story, because "over 90 percent of the heat trapped by global warming is going into the oceans."

Original Article
Source: rollingstone.com
Author: Jeff Goodell

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