Have you read or heard from news that has G.W. Bush talked anything about Kioto's Climate Agreement and that U.S.A should take it more seriously by now to stop or slow down the 'greenhouse' effect on this planet?

The media are as dumb as the US president. Especially if they're American. Just watch any US coverage and you'll see what I mean. FFS they are all SOOO clueless. This is meant to be the most powerful nation on earth. How worrying. How can one country have produced so many imbeciles?

Within the last year or so, I've come to believe its too late now.

The tundra is thawing. Why is that important?

Well, the tundra area holds more methane (a highly potent greenhouse gas), than all the C02 humanity could release in centuries.

Its too late. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to curb emissions, but the reductions they proposed (which the USA can't accept) are so small as to be meaningless anyway.
---

Update:
we now have Tropical Storm Nate, east of Florida. no one really knows where Nate will go, but it'll probably westwards and north a bit.

Calrissian: remembers the cold winters of the early 1980s

Hmm, the UK population is no better.
Millions of dumb idiots buying homes built on floodplains. Those same utter IDIOTS will be whining by 2015 when the sea is sloshing around their back garden.
Interesting that it was Blair who decided to plaster the flood plains of the east 'Thames Gateway' with homes/businesses.

Hmm, the UK population is no better.
Millions of dumb idiots buying homes built on floodplains. Those same utter IDIOTS will be whining by 2015 when the sea is sloshing around their back garden.
Interesting that it was Blair who decided to plaster the flood plains of the east 'Thames Gateway' with homes/businesses.

What a dumb species humanity is. Its amazing that we ever managed to design and successfully make Nuclear bombs.
---
*meanwhile...we have 3 storms to the east of Florida. One 'model' has Ophelia slamming into New Orleans in 3 or 4 days time, although a dozen other models say no to that view.

Calrissian: dispondent

Just another thought with my wild imagination - if the Gulf Stream fails and it'd get much colder over here than it is, would it be much more rainy in the area of Sahara - could it burst into a leaves an turn to be green?

How the Free Market Killed New Orleans

By Michael Parenti


The free market played a crucial role in the destruction of New Orleans and the death of thousands of its residents. Forewarned that a momentous (force 5) hurricane was going to hit that city and surrounding areas, what did officials do? They played the free market.

They announced that everyone should evacuate. Everyone was expected to devise their own way out of the disaster area by private means, just like people do when disaster hits free-market Third World countries.

It is a beautiful thing this free market in which every individual pursues his or her own personal interests and thereby effects an optimal outcome for the entire society. Thus does the invisible hand work its wonders in mysterious ways.

In New Orleans there would be none of the collectivistic regimented evacuation as occurred in Cuba. When an especially powerful hurricane hit that island in 2004, the Castro government, abetted by neighborhood citizen committees and local Communist party cadres, evacuated 1.5 million people, more than 10 percent of the country’s population. The Cubans lost 20,000 homes to that hurricane---but not a single life was lost, a heartening feat that went largely unmentioned in the U.S. press.

On Day One of the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina, it was already clear that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Americans had perished in New Orleans. Many people had “refused” to evacuate, media reporters explained, because they were just plain “stubborn.”

It was not until Day Three that the relatively affluent telecasters began to realize that tens of thousands of people had failed to flee because they had nowhere to go and no means of getting there. With hardly any cash at hand or no motor vehicle to call their own, they had to sit tight and hope for the best. In the end, the free market did not work so well for them.

Many of these people were low-income African Americans, along with fewer numbers of poor whites. It should be remembered that most of them had jobs before Katrina’s lethal visit. That’s what most poor people do in this country: they work, usually quite hard at dismally paying jobs, sometimes more than one job at a time. They are poor not because they’re lazy but because they have a hard time surviving on poverty wages while burdened by high prices, high rents, and regressive taxes.



As for the rescue operation, the free-marketeers like to say that relief to the more unfortunate among us should be left to private charity. It was a favorite preachment of President Ronald Reagan that “private charity can do the job.” And for the first few days that indeed seemed to be the policy with the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina.

The federal government was nowhere in sight but the Red Cross went into action. Its message: “Don’t send food or blankets; send money.” The Salvation Army also began to muster up its aging troops. Meanwhile Pat Robertson and the Christian Broadcasting Network---taking a moment off from God’s work of pushing John Roberts nomination to the Supreme Court---called for donations and announced “Operation Blessing” which consisted of a highly-publicized but totally inadequate shipment of canned goods and bibles.

By Day Three even the myopic media began to realize the immense failure of the rescue operation. People were dying because relief had not arrived. The authorities seemed more concerned with the looting than with rescuing people, more concerned with “crowd control,” which consisted of corralling thousands into barren open lots devoid of decent shelter, and not allowing them to leave.

Questions arose that the free market seem incapable of answering: Who was in charge of the rescue operation? Why so few helicopters and just a scattering of Coast Guard rescuers? Why did it take helicopters five hours to lift six people out of one hospital? When would the rescue operation gather some steam? Where were the feds? The state troopers? The National Guard? Where were the buses and trucks? the shelters and portable toilets? The medical supplies and water?

And where was Homeland Security? What has Homeland Security done with the $33.8 billions allocated to it in fiscal 2005? By Day Four, almost all the major media were reporting that the federal government’s response was “a national disgrace.” Meanwhile George Bush finally made his photo-op appearance in a few well-chosen disaster areas---before romping off to play golf.

In a moment of delicious (and perhaps mischievous) irony, offers of foreign aid were tendered by France, Germany, Venezuela, and several other nations. Russia offered to send two plane loads of food and other materials for the victims. Cuba--which has a record of sending doctors to dozens of countries, including a thankful Sri Lanka during the tsunami disaster---offered 1,100 doctors. Predictably, all these proposals were sharply declined by the U.S. State Department.

America the Beautiful and Powerful, America the Supreme Rescuer and World Leader, America the Purveyor of Global Prosperity could not accept foreign aid from others. That would be a most deflating and insulting role reversal. Were the French looking for another punch in the nose? Were the Cubans up to their old subversive tricks?

Besides, to have accepted foreign aid would have been to admit the truth---that the Bushite reactionaries had neither the desire nor the decency to provide for ordinary citizens, not even those in the most extreme straits.

I recently heard someone complain, “Bush is trying to save the world when he can’t even take care of his own people here at home.” Not quite true. He certainly does take very good care of his own people, that tiny fraction of one percent, the superrich. It’s just that the working people of New Orleans do not number among them.