If climate change don’t get you then it seems the bird flu will. I don’t want to seem alarmist, I don’t want send the multitudes onto the streets to denounce the bull we are being fed by our bought and paid for politicians and so-called government experts — but maaate, when one day the British Government says don’t worry, this bird flu thing that just landed is only transmitted bird to bird. And the very next day the government’s chief scientist says that packaged turkey meat might have to be removed from all supermarket shelves because of the bird flu outbreak at a Suffolk farm, you gotta start worrying that these people are either bullshitting us or worse — they ain’t got a clue!

The BS is no less downunder. Little Johnny Howard has suddenly become the saviour of the Murray-Darling Basin — by far the most significant agricultural area on our very dry and very large continent. He’s even talking about Carbon-Trading and if you were a little more right-wing than me and a lot more gullible then you might say that the old geezer has just had a climate change epiphany — either that or there’s an election in the offing and our Prime Minister’s new-found interest in global warming has more to do with opinion poll ratings than any new found conviction in the environment. Maybe as we get closer to that election we’ll also start to hear more about the outrageous spin (some say lies) George Bush made in his attempt to remake the Middle East. And the big poo-poo our compliant and equally spinning Prime Minister, John Howard has helped him create in Iraq.

Last night I went to see the Al Gore documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. Which highlight’s Gore’s persuasive argument that global warming is the biggest challenge facing our global civilisation.

This morning I woke to one newspaper article reporting that our NSW State Government is getting ready to appeal against the recent landmark ruling that it must consider the greenhouse impacts of burning coal to make electricity.

And, another article about a New Zealand-led scientific drilling team in Antarctica that has recently recovered three million years of climate history. Their conclusion — the Ross Ice Shelf, a raft of ice the size of France, may collapse as quickly as Larsen B did in 2002, triggering a dramatic rise in sea level.

The Larsen Ice Shelf which is on the Antarctic Peninsula had been stable for 10 thousand years or so but in 2002 proved that when these things decide to go, they go extremely quickly. A total of about 3,250 km2 of shelf area disappeared in a 35-day period. The Larsen Ice Shelf is now about 40 percent of the size of its previous stable minimum. You can view the speed and the extent of the Larsen B break up at the British Antarctic Survey. Link

The scientific consensus is clear: global warming is real, it’s happening now and it is the result of our use of oil and other fossil fuels. There is a lot you and I can do. Learn more here!

The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty on climate change, assigning mandatory targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to signatory nations. It has been signed and ratified by upward of 160 countries.

The USA and Australia continue to be the only countries that refuse to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

No need to scare yourself silly about Global Warming — well not yet anyway. Take a look across the pond at Indonesia they have just confirmed a 27-year-old woman who died on Monday in Jakarta had bird flu — that’s 20 people who have died of bird flu in Indonesia since July.

Meanwhile the French are also getting worried. One little old Turkey with the flu has caused their poultry industry to drop by more than thirty percent. French scientist and politicians (who we all love and trust) are saying that it’s okay to eat well-cooked eggs and chicken meat.

I suppose if you like your Sunday eggs fried (or poached) with hard shrivelled up yokes and without any hollandaise sauce, well then, that’s okay. Personally, I’m off to cook some good old Aussie lamb chops for breakfast. Honey, where’s the barbecue sauce?

There is no longer any doubt that the world is getting warmer. Glaciers in Greenland and the USA are melting. Ocean temperatures are on the rise. And weather patterns seem to be less reliable/predictable… well less like they used to be. Yesterday for instance, Mumbai (Bombay, India) had nearly a meter of rain over a 24 hour period. 200 people died — imagine that! Link

… The reasons for this trend are less certain. The Earth’s climate changes naturally all the time. Witness the many occasions over millions of years in which the planet has slipped into and out of ice ages.

Mark Henderson | Times Online | Link

A few months ago I joined the Stop Global Warming Virtual March on Washington as a bit of fun. It was also a way of putting my hand up and saying ‘I AM CONCERNED’ about what we are doing to our environment.

I’m not sure if global warming is an issue that will bite us today or in a hundred or a thousand years time. What I am sure of is that something funny is going on with the bloody weather. And maaate, when it quacks like a duck, then in my book it may well be a duck. Which only goes to show, I’m really quite a simple sort of guy.

This email arrived today from the Virtual March:

Dear Fellow Marcher,

With most of the country trapped in a sweltering heat wave this week, we turn our attention to Glacier National Park, where the ultimate heat wave — Global Warming — is threatening to destroy a national treasure.

In 1910, Glacier National Park had 150 glaciers. Today, just 37 remain. At the current pace at which temperatures are rising, they will all be gone by 2030! You can read more about the dramatic destruction of Glacier National Park at http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/march/glacier.

This weekend, the March goes electric at the Lollapalooza Festival in Chicago. The festival’s founder, Perry Farrell (front man for Jane’s Addiction), will take the stage to urge 90,000 festivalgoers to join our March! Using state of the art “Mobile Marching” technology, music fans will be able to sign up by sending a simple text message from their cell phones via 4INFO.

But don’t leave all the work to Perry! Invite your favourite music lovers to join us on the March to Stop Global Warming from your personal impact page!

More from the road in two weeks…

Laurie David
Founder

This weeks email from the march.

Dear Fellow Marcher,

As we continue our trek across America, new leaders with big ideas emerge in the fight to stop global warming. Last week, MTV joined the ranks of the 75,000 already marching, featuring the Virtual March on their student network, mtvU.com, and hatching big plans for the fall.

This week, the Virtual March stops in South Dakota, where the leaders of the Rosebud Sioux Reservation have given us a powerful example of how clean energy can harness nature’s power without destroying it.

Find out more about the exciting potential of wind energy here.

Are your legs getting tired yet? Well, lets hope not, because we’ve got a long way to go.

Keep on marching. And send the March to 3 new friends this week.

Laurie David
Founder