Climate Hussein – Saddam Change

This is the first in a series of none–too–soon, historical glimpses at the soon to be infamous...

BUSH LEGACY

Some seven years ago, BushCO descended into Washington, driven into office by a media–push that nailed his opponent as 'Al Gore: the Liar', painting him as Clinton Twice, and it was done. (Upon deprecation of its own historically-neutral role in State Voting Cases, by the US Supreme Court)

The question posed now, for this first essay is this: what makes Bush's stance on Climate Change any different from that which he took against Saddam Hussein?

Justifying the war in Iraq, which circumvented sixty to nearly four hundred years of developed International Law, much of our modern era international structures having been expressly fashioned via American input and legal theory after World War II, Bush the Lesser turned toward his ideological lackeys, for the creation of his Bush Doctrine.

a reminder, that cZENm does not 'rely' on Wikipedia, but
finds it totally acceptable as a first step for
anyone seeking deeper understanding
(especially if you go to the footnoted links for further reading)

The Bush Doctrine presented the premise that, when a nation has 'evidence' of imminent attack, international law cannot force that nation into a paralytic state, awaiting 'nuclear annihilation' or otherwise. Experts in International Law (“I-law”) universally attacked such an opened Pandora's Box, announcing that its implementation would also lead to imitation: a form of flattery otherwise occasionally denominated as 'Blowback' (which most often relates to Intelligence-efforts).

Bush, Cheney, and their admin–underlings, Rice, or Powell; in concerted effort these Neoconservatives trumpeted a theory that many Americans accepted in overwhelmingly strong numbers after September 11, 2001: fear of the unknown potential future actions of Saddam Hussein were sufficient 'imminent threat' to start an action, widely condemned around the world, to structure an invasion force, invade, conquer, and 'liberate'. The timing of their fearmongering, not incidentally, allowed a strong Republican increase in the 2002 Congressional elections.

The rest is history.

This presents the situation posed in our title, above: what makes Climate Change any different than Saddam Hussein?

Rephrasing: is hypothetical, yet unrealistic action taken by a despot, whom our CIA helped to attain his dictatorial powers, which provokes real action by a US president, any different from actions observed whose overwhelming data announces significant climatic shifts that will, more likely than not, return to any former state of equilibrium?

Bush took America and its taxpayers to the well, in hyped–out propaganda drives that have cost this country a better future, to create the paranoiac state of a perpetual War on Terror, with seven and five-year actions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Similar actions, the Fear Campaigns, included the Social Security 'SCARE' of summer 2006, and the vastly more deadly Financial Crash of fall 2008.

John, you didn't run far enough...

Bush fought America and its taxpayers all the way, in denying action and evidence on Climate Change, asking for the sufficient level of proof that he could have demanded in Iraq, by supporting the UN Inspections under supervision by Hans Blix.

Imminent attack by a weakened Middle Eastern dictator – imminent climatic evolution?

“We don't have in our possession, sufficient confirmatory proof to act...”.

Such was not said, against Saddam, and the Bush Legacy is what it is, based on one man's claim of Leadership...

___çç*******/ ZENmud \*******çç___

© 2008

All washed up? Is the Symptom great than the disease?

[THIS IS AN UNLINKED POST: CHECK BACK FOR IMPROVEMENTS!]

Here at ZENmud Productions, the question of 'utility' often arises.

Today, and recently, a focus goes towards the utility of discussing 'global warming', when Ninety per cent of Car owners don't think about just reducing their OWN use maybe... 25 per cent?

(FYI: could be as little as one car–pool per week, and twice to the store on a bicycle... unless you're a mileage–maniac (smile)... can't be done?).

They shouldn't feel oppressed, not by these small words: Brazil hasn't stopped cuttin' down its gorgeous great forests, although the pace has slowed somewhat in the last few year trend. India and China, with their home corporations (and those Occidental companies that are in the hunt) and rising middle class, are going to pump out Three Million New Cars each in the next FIVE years.

Know what? They want your gasoline...

Guess what? The people they're negotiating with are all neighbors without a tie to the Occupation by the USA of Iraq...

So the 'utility' thought is we're all on the same sled sliding somewhere swiftly down a silent slippery slope.

Hold that thought a second:

A lingering aftertaste from a family 'argument', recently provoked thoughts here, at the fertile imagination found at ZEN Central... You may have one of these 'die–hard' Bush–loving RepubliCANTS in your family...

We at ZEN Central share your pain...

Cherish that aftertaste of amazement as those brothers, or others, whose constant1984+20denials render the maligned Ostriche one of the great decision–makers of our times, a species par excellence, in comparison. RepubliCANTs, however, will prognosticate sans cesse for another fifty years, over the reality of Global Warming.

It isn't too late, one hears, but you must feel in your heart, that it... is?

And so, as typhoons wreak havoc in Southern Myanmar, as the 2008 “killer–spring tornado season” rips swathes, houses and souls apart: consider

Utility

Every evening, storms that are hatching across the US Tornado Belt, as Snow continues to fall in the high Colorado Rockies before Memorial Day, or over 3,200m in the Alpes...

Weeks of rain continue across much of Western Europe, (have you seen Roland Garros?) and we here at ZEN Central are wondering now, somewhat, if the world should focus away from the disease of Global Warming, towards one of its principal symptoms: maybe the real reality is that we are really entering an Age of Humidity:

Global Humidification?

The symptoms of a disease can become quite distinct.

Here, on our planet, whose surface area is 71 per cent water, the symptoms of overheating such a mass of water are cruelly imposed, to excessive amounts in certain zones, while exacerbated drought regions are enduring their cruel situations, far off the prevaling winds that are inundating other neighbors.

Global Humidification?

In the Swiss–Italian mountains of Ticino, last month, one village enjoyed (?) some 127 L/m², across a span of twelve hours. Consider the storm surges, the tidal waves, the devastation wrought, bringing tens or over a hundred thousand of Burmese deaths, as a result of Typhoon Nargis.

One doesn't have to have studied Meteorology, and certainly it is hard to confirm annually–occurring events as conclusive evidence of the 'changing climate' that most rationalists believe. Lest we forget, the summer that followed the Katrina–Rita–Summer of 2005 was more beneficent towards those regions: fewer, lighter hurricanes or depressions and many doubters scoffed.

However, given evidence of 'warmest years' or 'warmest decades' and other such drastic accolades, there are numerous confirmative reasons that substantiate the preponderant climate–change theories.

So what to make of Global Humidification (“gH”)?

When confined systems are heated intrinsically, they often run closer to a pressurized failure point, or they edge toward instability. As hurricanes, tornados and typhoons rage, through region by desolated region, we may be witnessing Switzerland transformed into a warm–temperate Rain Forest, with certain climate similar to the California Sequoia forests of dozens of millions of years ago; similar to those foothills of the Northern Italian Alpine valleys.

gH: is it any long–run benefit?

This change towards ancestral warm climates that once gave us those beautiful Redwood forests, which are only remaining now as pocket–sized remnants of their former wide territories?

Territories for plants and animals are not as adaptive as humans to change. Where go the Marmots, from high Colorado meadows, who rise from slumbering hibernations into meadows freshly–warmed, yet still unyielding of their vital vegetation?

In numerous articles or works discussing Global Warming, the table turned always to the rising Sea Levels, that would inondate the low–lying coastlines, in Florida, India or elsewhere...

But is that going to happen, if over–heated water masses unleash more increasingly–energetic climactic storm events? In theory, it could... wouldn't an Ice Age start not only from cold, but more precipitation?

Global Humidification: what effect will gH have on crops, farming habits, marketed regional specialities?

What studies discuss Global Humidification? ... and the impact of Violent Storms? [NB: Google Scholar, on 'Global humidification' shows ZERO hits...]

The future of this issue – Global Humidification – is very robust, one would think. Greater open surface levels at northern and southern Polar regions; greater water vapour energy movements from solar–ocean evaporation; increasingly desalinated polar regional ocean zones...

The answer is not yet here...

___ç-ç*******/ ZENmud \*******ç-ç___
© 2008

AFTER Worlds Collide... Part II of the ZENfull future...

“one generation plants a tree; the
next generation gets the shade.”
(Chinese proverb quoted in Human Development Report 2007/08)

ZENmud productions is still as high as three kites, from an overly-energized period of time spent amongst fellow world-travellers who voyaged to Switzerland for a week-long seminar entitled Climate Change II: Understanding Solutions, sponsored by Media21.


Although the week was mostly devoted to the filming of speakers and participants to these workshops, time was allowed for developing friendships of a profound nature, and these were amply rewarded. (ya tebya...)

The photo of these logs came from a municipal waste incinerating plant in the Swiss Jura mountains, from which a town supplements its heating supply by burning the detritus from various commercial logging operations.

This 'solution' was one of a wide range of Swiss governmental or industrial actions that were presented to our group. Steps taken to reduce environmental problems showed how small and large government initiatives could aid to reduce the greenhouse gasses that were driving Humanity across the REACTION zone.

That zone defines a place where short-sightedness, if not replaced by long-term sustainability, will provoke unending consequences for the biological balance of our planet.

Meeting people who share multiple common planetary concerns, although certainly their experiences, from passing through various 'prisms' of national or cultural origins, enabled an expanded shared focus, and the input from Swiss and UN authorities allowed everyone to walk away more knowledgeable about the radical times we face as 'Humanity', in the coming 80 or more years of peak climate change.


Given that Mr Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just a month ago or so, the concerns it reported, on climate change are even overpowering the petroleum-profit base in the Republican Party, which has distanced itself from the rapacious Halliburton-derived foreign policy that has saddened and rendered bleak, both an outlook for "tomorrow", and the world's opinion of the United States as a 'leader' that would get us there.


To the right, is the major graph (source: HDR 2007/08) that has circled the world, showing the sustainable (dark lines) future progressions, versus the unsustainable (reddish lines) alternatives that the IPCC postulated to be fully-impacting our future if no modification or adaptation actions were fully implemented.

Since at ZENmud productions this philosophy of car-less life and sustainability through 'small-living' has been a ten-year affair, assuredly more people can find new 'freedom' by rejecting the 'slavery' that cars induce... such as:

freedom from car insurance;
freedom from car repairs;
freedom from car thefts;
freedom from ROAD RAGE;
freedom from parking tickets;
and

freedom to discuss life in a bus with a stranger;
freedom to cycle to the store and return with a smaller pack of food;
freedom to breath air shared with birds and other fauna...

Whoever said "IF you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem" is talking about all of US, sharing ONE planet, until we return it to our grandchildren...

Not from Tibet, lyublyu,

Courage through the darkening days

ç*”*”*””*ç”*”* ZENmud ”*””*ç*”*”*””*ç”

When Worlds Collide... Part I of the ZENfull future...

ZENmud productions is ah-ah-live again...

Hello ZENers, welcome to those from the Media21 Fall Climate Change conference.

(FN: "When Worlds Collide" was a super, childhood science fiction novel, co- written by Philip Gordon Wylie and Edwin Balmer; the plot concerned pre and post-event effects of two 'otherworldly planets' entering in contact with the inner Solar System, and the migration of the 'chosen' to the new planet)

Rarely does such a vibrant chance materialize, to witness so many different Worlds interacting.

For the 25 participants of Media21's second Climate change workshop, our past met our future (or certain potential components for a sustainable future), as South met North, West met East, developed met developing, and the problem - of global climate change, man-made or otherwise - was offered parallel solutions.

By seeking to stress mitigation and adaptation as the solutions to actual climate change, through recognition of the value-added concepts of increasing alternative-energy use or ecological construction (which both share components of mitigation and adaptation), Media21's Conference participants were offered abundant information of certain concrete solutions offered by various players in the waste-disposal sector, a Zero Energy home owner, and an abundant array of UN Program or Agency officials whose work revolves around Climate Change.


Monday's program included a visit to Les Cheneviers, a plant operated by the Service Industriel de Genève. Throughout the windy afternoon, journalists from four continents were ably guided through this multifunctional, state-of-the-revolution plant, combining municipal functions of waste-removal storage or, here, incineration, from which the 1,000° C flames allow this SIG facility to heat water, which generates local household heating and as electricity, for some 3,000 households in the vicinity.

ZENmud will be writing much more on this in the days and weeks to come, as the events of the past week provided more-than-ample fodder for in-depth commentary.

Welcoming new friends, ZENmud returns energized for the new winter to come...


As we move toward mitigation and adaptation;

Courage!
Et la prochaine en français?

ç*””*”*”*ç*””* ZENmud *””*ç*”*”*””*ç

Ya teb...

Warm Arctic Winds devastating the balance...

Back in August, ZEN Central informed on the new heated race to explore and verify any oil content under the Arctic Ocean, and your Humble Writer stated this:

Top o' the Planet to you...

Is the opening Arctic Ocean NOW available for oil exploration, extraction, exploitation and exhaustion, due to the lack of substantive global action?

Can YOU read between the lines? Can any oil company profit from the potential vast reserves, cut-off from exploitation as long as sea-ice ruled the winter waters?

Observe a NASA photo, and imagine the impossibility of putting deep-water oil platforms on ice-shields that shifted, cracked, and were impossible to work with.

+ + + + + +

Under the radar screen, as the world concentrates on the France v USA race to Iran, or the Russia and Caspian Alliance in resistance of that, there are articles now published that, in observing this last summer 2007, state evidence is accumulating which presages a bad turn in our most Northerly lands...

Read from any of these articles found at BBC.com

'Warm wind' hits Arctic climate
(Last Update: 18 October 2007)

The Arctic is being hit by melting ice, hotter air and dying wildlife, according to a US government report on the impact of global warming there.

Ice melt raises passage tension
(Last Update: 8 October 2007)

In another sign of potential friction in the warming Arctic, Canada has warned that it will step up patrols of the Northwest Passage.

Arctic ice island breaks in half
(Last Update: 1 October 2007)

The giant Ayles Ice Island drifting off Canada's northern shores has broken in two - far earlier than expected.

In the analysis that you can do yourself, ZENers or ZENistas should be worried; does one prefer that the Arctic melt, the caribou die (who by nature live in the cold, are adapted for that and not warmer climates?)...

But! You may say, we have a better chance now of finding OIL there, and of course, that is the most important thing...

Sadly, without

Courage

ç*””*”*”*ç*””* ZENmud *””*ç*”*”*””*ç

Noctilusense...

Dear ZEN'ers...

With the summer comes long fun frolicking evenings, and you can forgive a ZENish guy for taking the time to profit from real-space and real-time friends, aspects which leave little time to get back into regular posting.

Especially now that ALL the World is as aware as you and I, what travesties remain behind the inTOTALcompetence of this Bush misAdministration. But this phenomenon of the skies...

(ZENmud was once a student of meteorology and astronomy, before his life took him skiing for thirteen years!) and the lovely photo bears a posting. The phenomenon is newly discovered (or witnessed), and in English they are known as 'Noctilucent clouds'.

An excerpt from the site Livescience (With this article , entitled Mysterious Clouds Creeping Out of the Artic photo credit Veres Victor/NASA):

A new NASA satellite has recorded the first detailed images from space of a mysterious type of cloud called “night-shining” or “noctilucent."

The clouds are on the move, brightening and creeping out of polar regions, and researchers don't know why.

"It is clear that these clouds are changing, a sign that a part of our atmosphere is changing and we do not understand how, why or what it means," said atmospheric scientists James Russell III of Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. "These observations suggest a connection with global change in the lower atmosphere and could represent an early warning that our Earth environment is being changed."

As is often the case, a new phenomenon like this must be studied and pursued, prior to hasty conclusions being drawn. But! Will our 'Panic! To increase our media SALES' TV and newspaper friends exploit again your fears, or help you to understand what this may actually mean? STAND CALM, friends: we'll know soon enough. But tomorrow's a good day to cycle, or take the bus to work (As ZENman has for the last ten years...).

courage!

ç*””*”*”*ç*””* ZENmud *””*ç*”*”*””*ç