Category: RT Newswire

USE ME! Essentially, this is a catch all for everything. This is probably the ONLY category where things that are not directly related to Rising Tide affiliates/allies should go. For example if a coal company goes out of business (and we didn’t directly cause it) it should probably only go here.

Book Review: The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations

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“Drought doesn’t usually get much attention in
concerns over melting icecaps, rising sea levels,
toxic UV rays and poisonous air. But … Fagan’s
The Great Warming examines what’s known as the
Medieval Warming Period (MWP), a sort of trial
run for the present.”
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Toronto Star
June 8, 2008

History, climate change destined to be repeated
The Medieval Warming Period provoked massive social and historical convulsions

Hans Werner
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The Great Warming:
Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
by Brian Fagan
Bloomsbury,
282 pages, $29.95
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Brian Fagan, the leading authority on the
interaction of climate and human society, has
noticed that there’s a little detail that tends
to get lost in all the dire predictions of global
warming. Fagan is professor emeritus of
anthropology at the University of California and
editor of The Oxford Companion to Archaeology,
and has something like 21 books to his credit,
including Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting and
the Discovery of the New World. His latest, The
Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and
Fall of Civilizations, is about drought caused by
climate change.

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Powerful Storms Swamp Midwest; Spawn Tornadoes, Floods

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Powerful storms swamp U.S. Midwest, spawn tornadoes
Sat Jun 7, 2008 11:43pm EDT

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Heavy rains caused flooding that forced hundreds of evacuations in Indiana, and a tornado raked Chicago’s suburbs on Saturday as violent thunderstorms pummeled the already soggy U.S. heartland, authorities said.

The U.S. Coast Guard was called out to help rescue stranded homeowners and motorists, and near-record flooding was forecast for rivers and creeks in western and central Indiana.

“We are getting a lot of rain and water. There are a lot of roads that are impassable. We are urging people to sit tight and stay off the roads,” said John Erickson of Indiana’s Department of Homeland Security.

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Selective Logging Not So Benign

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“This was totally surprising to us and alarming to our colleagues,
especially those interested in conservation, climate change and the
ability of governments like Brazil to enforce environmental laws,” he
notes.

“When a tree trunk is removed, the crown, wood debris and vines are
left behind to decompose, releasing carbon dioxide gas into the
atmosphere,” Asner says. “Sawmills often have an efficiency level of
about 30 to 40 percent, so large amounts of sawdust and scrap also
decompose into atmospheric CO2.”

An estimated 400 million tons of carbon enter the atmosphere every
year as a result of traditional deforestation in the Amazon, and
Asner and his colleagues estimate that an additional 100 million tons
is produced by selective logging. “That means up to 25 percent more
greenhouse gas is entering the atmosphere than was previously
assumed,” Asner explains, a finding that could alter climate change
forecasts on a global scale.
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Phys0rg.com
Science Physics Tech Nano News
October 21, 2005

Selective Logging Causes Widespread Destruction Of Brazil’s Amazon: Study
http://www.physorg.com/news7448.html

Selective logging – the practice of removing one or two trees and
leaving the rest intact – is often considered a sustainable
alternative to clear-cutting, in which a large swath of forest is cut
down, leaving little behind except wood debris and a denuded
landscape.

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World Bank Called ‘Unqualified’ to Run Climate Fund

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Putting the foxes in charge of the chicken coop…

ASW

Published on Friday, June 6, 2008 by One World.net
World Bank Called ‘Unqualified’ to Run Climate Fund
By Alison Raphael

WASHINGTON – Organizations from 40 countries called on leaders of the developing world yesterday to oppose World Bank plans to establish a “Clean Technology Fund” that they fear will have little or no impact on halting global warming.0606 03 1

“The Clean Technology Fund [includes] no definition of clean technology,” said Kenny Bruno, international program director for Oil Change International, one of the signatory groups.

By leaving definitions of key terms hazy, the groups argue, the World Bank leaves the door open to use scarce resources in support of energy initiatives likely to have only a minor impact on climate change.

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