Serious Hot Stuff

Interview on Churchill Falls evacuation, wild fires. In Labrador.

I started my blog way back in the mists of time writing about this. And here I am twenty years later, still thinking, talking and writing it.

Like a nonsense of an oul granny wittering away about her favourite cat.

I moved to Newfoundland for a few reasons. A primary one was climate change. Newfoundland was deemed one of the safest places in the world in which to live.

If you want to read what Gwyn Dyer says about it, here's the link Gwyn Dyer.

Here's the pertinent paragraph:

What price do you see Newfoundland and Labrador paying with regards to climate change?
Newfoundland pays a smaller price than most places. I’ve talked to a lot of people about this; scientists and so on, and I’d say we’re one of the three or four most favoured places, that now have a significant population in the world, to withstand the ravages of climate change because of global warming. Essentially, the oceans are cooler than the land here. We have an oceanic climate and we’re very far north as these things go. Put those two things together and what you don’t get in Newfoundland is what you do get in most land parts of the planet, which is: the heating over land is much higher than the global average.

My direct observations, having lived here now for twenty odd years:

Summers are hotter, far more humidity, a longer fog season.

Birds are hurting. Many, many more are thrown on our shores by unseasonable storms. Hurricanes have taken out a few towns. Wildfires are rampant today in Labrador with a whole town evacuated. Labrador, reminder, home of the Innuit and igloos and dog teams. Migrations are iffy.

Icebergs are getting bigger and bigger as Greenland melts. Awesome for the tourists, bad for the rising sea levels here and everywhere.

Shorelines are changing, vanishing. I noticed that when I lived around the bay and I'd note the changes in daily walks with my dog along the shore outside my house.

And today, as I fold my winter clothes into storage, I note I never had to do that before. There was only one set of clothes when I moved here. A medium set. Now I wear the summer clothes of yore. Light cotton, head band for the sweat. Air conditioning has become de rigeur here now. None in my building, as it was never built to withstand such excruciating heat and there's talk of expensive retro-fitting.

Lawns were never watered, now they are. BBQs and outdoor bonfires are forbidden across the whole island as of yesterday. Unheard of before. Water levels will lower before too long now. 

Grapes are now growing here and some have managed to grow quinoa. More heat resistant paving is being thrown on the roads.

And, yes. the heat season has expanded and heightened to such an extent that private swimming pools are being installed in many homes.

I just placed a hold in the Library on the book The Heat Will Kill You First

I saw several interviews with the author and maybe it's better to know what's coming and plan the pre-exit strategy.

Thoughts?

Beautiful rain

 

With all the dreadful fires happening in Canada and elsewhere, I view rain in a different light than ever before. 

Outside it rains today and I find a tear of gratitude, matching it, rolling down my cheek. I imagine that most of us in the world see rain differently these days. I am hoping that it rains in the Northwest Territories and Northern BC here to bring desperately needed relief. I can't bear thinking about the lack of it in so many parts of the world. And the excess of it too. All out of whack.

One thing that sickens me completely about these fires are the animals, the innocent animals (and birds) trapped in the conflagration and I daren't google the numbers, even if there aren't statistics on all these precious creatures who are lost. It really doesn't bear thinking about, but I do. And I find thinking about their terror heart-wrenching.

What absolute evil us humans have wrought on this tiny planet where democracy is worth shyte and theocorporatocracy rules and regulates our bodies and our very existence. And is the ongoing cause of these climate change events disasters.

We're on the edge of a cliff and like many, I no longer feel safe and secure.

Outside today. Our noon cannon on top of the hill facing my window just boomed. The soldiers dress up like soldiers of yore, all red coats and mighty feathery head toppings and the tourists flock and us locals go: ah, lunch, and at times I think of the noon city wide angelus bells that rang out my childhood in Cork.

Sanity

 

Do you ever wonder about your own status? I'm talking mental health of course, per the heading.

And what is sanity?

Well, here's a definition:

the ability to think and behave in a normal and rational manner; sound mental health.

"I began to doubt my own sanity"

We know what insanity is, of course - and this is just my recollection of a good one:

Performing the same task over and over and expecting different results. 

 Do we all fall between these, somewhere?

I don't know what thirty odd months of basic incarceration has done to my brain.

There have been spurts of outings and trips, but far too infrequent and, unlike some, I don't hold out any hope this pandemic is ever finished with us, too many variants with too many ineffective vaccines. I remember reading when I was in my early twenties that the greatest threat to humanity was a virus and it would take us all out.

I lived through the polio epidemic, which I've written about here. I've lived, again as a child, through the threats of cold war and nuclear chains being rattled every day on the news, and believing in the cataclysmic threats of Fatima - the angry virgin, seen by peasant children, threatening all of humanity until Russia succumbed to Christianity or some such rot. I imagine that must effect an unformed child-brain in ways we can't imagine. 

And yes, we all have trauma of some kind as children - from peer bullying, to drunken fathers (or mothers) to poverty and unimaginable abuse.

I suppose if I'm questioning my own state of mind, the brain health meter would point to sanity. 

I'm dealing with inertia, loads of it. It's hard to get enthusiastic, to experience joy, to make any kind of plans, to even call my doctor (who last time was coughing through a Covid variant- much to my shock as he was rigid in precautions).

There's also massive denial out here on The Edge of those also caught with The Covid. They label it something else, like cold or flu. Statistics are lacking. Many Covid deaths are written off as something else. The Economy defeats public health mandates or precautions.

And note I haven't touched climate change or Roe or Ukraine or all the other shyte happening around us. We really, really, don't deserve this planet. Like the pestilential fleas we are, we will be shrugged off. The Virus is winning.

All your thoughts are welcome.

Headlines

 I look at the headlines today and heave a huge sigh, of despair, of hopelessness. Is anyone paying attention to (along with everything else) our end of days climate change? Anyone with power? And yes I'm aware there's nothing individuals can do. And I keep thinking about the film "Don't Look Up" and thinking how prescient it is as we roll our way to species extinction.

• U.S. Coronavirus Cases and Hospitalizations Soar to Record Highs

• Warming Oceans Set New Temperature Records in 2021 as Climate Crisis Worsened

• U.N. Appeals for Nearly $5 Billion in Afghanistan Aid as 1 Million Children Face Severe Malnutrition
• Amid Talks with U.S., Russia Says Ukraine Must Never Be Allowed to Join NATO
• North Korea Tests Hypersonic Missile for Second Time in a Week
• Lithuania Pays $113,000 to Guantánamo "Forever Prisoner" Tortured at CIA Black Site
• Former DEA Informant Arrested over Alleged Role in Plot That Assassinated Haiti's President
• El Salvador Reopens Probe into 1989 Massacre of Jesuits by U.S.-Trained Death Squad
• Biden and Harris Visit Georgia, Calling on Congress to Pass Voting Rights Bills
• NC Voters Sue to Block Rep. Madison Cawthorn's Reelection Bid over His Support for Insurrection
• Fox News Promotes Jesse Watters Despite Record of Violent and Racist Rhetoric
• Safety Doors Failed at Bronx Apartment Where Fire Killed 17
• Arson Blamed for New Year's Fire That Destroyed Tennessee Planned Parenthood Clinic
• In a First, Doctors Transplant Heart of Genetically Altered Pig into a Human
• Washington Post Investigation Finds 1,700 U.S. Congressmembers Enslaved People
• Mourners Gather for Funeral of Valentina Orellana-Peralta, 14-Year-Old Killed by Police Bullet

Thoughts on Reality

Conversations on the weekend circled around the inevitability of our extinction. As we have passed the point of no return in our extinction plan.

The latest UN report confirms this.

 "Earth’s climate system is changing across the entire planet and human activities are worsening its effects which are “widespread, rapid and intensifying”, according to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

"The report by leading climate scientists published on Monday provides evidence that “unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5 degrees or even 2 degrees will be beyond reach”.

"Such as a scenario will come with inevitable catastrophic impacts over coming decades for human populations, especially in the form of extreme weather events and rising sea levels, the report’s authors have warned."

Read more here

I'm not in fear of all of this and I don't share the opinions of many, e.g.

(1) There's an afterlife and God/Goddess etc. will save us all. 

(2) It's another exaggeration to curb our Free-Dumbs.

(3) Science will save us.

(4)Glass domes over cities with AC will ease the worst of it. (I'd like to see that!)

And on.

No one thinks of the climate refugees escaping from waterless environments and the devastating effects of forest fires. California has never experienced anything like them, along with BC here. And massive food shortages.

I spent time in a roasting hot Labrador this summer - no one had ever experienced that kind of heat up there.

And the humidity and heat on the island of Newfoundland this summer is extreme and unique. And grain is being grown for the first time. And our iceberg season was pitiful.

The flooding is alarming everywhere. 

We've all been warned, of course, of this end of days, but nothing of any major reversal has been done to halt the rapid progress of warming oceans.

Capitalism roars on. Gas is supreme still. The plundering of the Amazon (the lungs of the earth) continues

I compare our slumber to the Three Wise Monkeys of old.

Not that us individuals can do anything at all. But I do wonder who else is giving any thoughts to what is going to happen and if you are, like me, resigned to the inevitable and hoping that whatever cataclysmic event wipes our little section of the planet into extinction, it doesn't hurt too much. But then I'm old and may pass before everything gets worse.

Or maybe, just maybe, the new virus variants will take us all out first. 

Another excellent read from Science Daily.

Wildfires

The smoke from the wildfires in BC and California (the Pacific ocean) has spread across Canada to our island of Newfoundland (the Atlantic ocean), affecting our weather.

Here's a map of the BC fires.

Here's a map of Canada

We are over 7,000 km away from these fires (see distance from Vancouver on our west coast to St. John's on the east coast).

That's over 4,350 miles.

We have entered the zone of the 4 Cs = Constant Chaos of Climate Change.

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico


Throwing up its everything
To warn us
Of foolish expectations
In this corporate climate
Crisis.

We are on our own.
Indeed.

Rampant capitalism
Pushing, shoving,
Destroying all
In its path

Tolling our requiem bell
In Puerto Rico

Unashamedly Geezer

I was talking to a very old friend on the phone today, she's in another province so we tend to catch up with each other every odd month or so and get caught up in our doings and in those of the slender little mound of joint friendships remaining from the random scythe-swipes of Mr. Reaper.

I've noted something in myself lately: an increased crotchetiness accompanied by far less time for fools and eejits, all doused with a spicy mix of darkest cynicism.

Youngsters (under 60s) don't understand this so I don't mention it, though I'm sure my Resting Bitch Face gives them a clue from time to time.

I have to put on Nice Face a lot, and it's looking rather worn and tired from overuse during this PG (tourist season).

D asked me if my house was listed for sale yet and I said no, it was all too much for me at the moment.

She asked me to parse that for her.

And I said, like Eleanor Rigby, I had to put on Nice Face so much lately - public events, hosting, library volunteering and on, that there was hardly any time for RBF (see above) and she needed to come out more or my head would explode. My nice quota had maxed out. And potential purchasers traipsing through here would finish me off.

She totally got it. Her tolerance level for life's stupidities and the appalling state of our planet matches mine. Our sorry future along with Stephen Hawking's predictions in light of the Orange Nightmare's disbelief in the science of climate change is giving us elders the freedom to be as cranky and crotchety as we want and expound on this rancid world of endless war as we see it: a hopeless, boiling mess, lurking for the final shove off of its pestilential fleas - the human race.

We agreed we need to turn off the news and the newsfeeds and the Twitters and Facebook updates, treating all of it in a Kardashian kind of way as if 45 is a joke and oh let's impeach him. Soon. As if. When the real problem is those who put him there, those who keep him there and the Fourth Estate who refuse to do their jobs and leave it to very few unread non-MSMs who do it for them.

Enough jokes from the John Olivers and the Stephen Colberts. This is not satire or humour or what's he tweeting now, the toddler.

Very few MSMs are taking the current global status with any seriousness or offering realistic solutions. Because they are mostly all bought and paid for.

Which leave us elders muttering together, feeling all rather hopeless for our grandchildren. But without the physical vigour to placard and march.

Peopled Out, Iceberged In

Because I'm a gregarious loner, I like a lot of downtime, away from the maddings. This week was a rough one, an ongoing intense quality and quantity to human exposure for me. Drop ins. Don't like them. But I foolishly hung out the tax services shingle and I figure all told, with the drops and convos about life stories and Uncle Ned, great fellah you should have met him, I'm making about $5.00 an hour if I factor in the social aspect. Big Mistake.

I'm very fussy as to friends. Loads of acquaintances but friends I can count on one hand. So I have to wear my nice for these tax clients and engage with them reluctantly but smilily. I am sensitive to social cues but most people are not, I find. I say I'm sorry but I'm busy but I imagine they think that applies to others and not them as they ramble on about Auntie Mildred and Grandfather Jack and just who are in these photos around my living room.

Meanwhile some ancient ice has been hanging around outside my front door. Pictures, yes. And this is after a couple of weeks as the weather has been glorious and most of the ice has melted, it covered the bay at one point and there were mini-mountains bobbing along.

I can't imagine what this gigantic ice melt has done to the glaciers of Greenland and to the planet's health. And they are here far too soon this year. And apparently are only the precursors of more yet to come.

Syria

The comic linked below is easily read and understood and captures the whole situation in Syria succinctly.

There are many reasons for the refugee crisis but the major one is climate change. Millions of small farms have been wiped out. I and many more have maintained for years, that the next global catastrophe and massive migrations of starving people will be over water. This is just the beginning.

See it here.

So it takes the death of one small boy to make the world sit up and take notice. And I do wonder why my small province, hungry for immigrants, can't hold out its welcoming hand to these desperate refugees. I'm sure they would contribute, at the highest level, to Canada as a whole and to Newfoundland particularly.

I give up

I pull in to the parking lot outside the local store last night. I get the last parking spot. With the smallest car. The lot holds 7 cars.

And I turn off the motor. As I always do. And as I walk into the store past the rest of the vehicles I notice every single one is running in absentia of the owners. Every. Single. One. Trucks and SUVs all.

And if I ever needed proof that there is no hope at all for this planet, the evidence is all there in front of my nose.

And yes, of course, I am the only one also with my own reusable grocery bag.

Climate Change Denial

Further to my post on Wot? A Wacky World? yesterday, the U.K. Guardian answers the dilemma of some of us on the lack of North American media attention to the biggest crisis of the millenium, namely climate change, with an article titled:

America's miasma of misinformation on climate change

"With serious reporting of global warming by US media virtually nonexistent, it's no wonder Americans are paralysed in denial."

 

It is accompanied by an affirming photo of a Burger King sign.

 

So, yes, as per your comments Europeans are well stocked with full media information and even corrective measures in countries such as Germany with its focus on solar energy.

 

But here in Harperland (Canada) with the pushing of the Alberta oil sands and, Maude forbid, the drilling of the arctic a coming reality, it's no wonder that so little is said of the ongoing catastrophic effects on Mother Earth of our profligate ways or the possibility of a corrective turn in our plundering and despoiling of her resources. 

Wot? A Wacky World?

The Gannets of Cape St. Mary's August 2011
 

Or world out of wack. Or “What? Me Worry?”

On August 8^th this year, thousands and thousands of gannets flew away, en masse, from their nesting grounds on Cape St. Mary's, Newfoundland. Abandoning their solitary chick. Gannets have only one chick a year and safeguard it as we would our own babies. Both birds attending to its every need.

Word of mouth here spread the news. Nothing was published on the phenomenon. (Bird watching at Cape St.Mary's is a huge tourist industry. )

I now see on a Google search that there is finally something on this catastrophe in the Winnipeg Free Press where a biologist is attributing the vanishing bird-parents to the higher temperatures of our oceans.

Daughter was driving through Quebec recently and discovered, in a conversation with a local, that their gannets were falling dead from the skies. A phenomenon never seen before. A web search brings up nothing on this.

And this all brings to mind what other serious environmental wake-up calls are not being publicised. Media being bought and paid for like never before and all that.

Common Dreams struggles along, its lamp still held high, bringing our attention to the arctic ice disaster on a regular basis. The record breaking iceberg run past Newfoundland this past few months was startling to many of us. We dared to whisper: is this the last of the northern ice? How much is left?

And still we party, like there is no day of reckoning tomorrow.

 

And sure, maybe it's all we're capable of doing.

The World is on Loan From our Grandchildren?

Whatever happened to that wise old saying? If we carried this truism like the sacred trust that it is, deep in our consciences and the minds of those we elect to safeguard us, would we have this current dilemma:

Man's catastrophic damage to the environment and disparities between rich and poor head the daunting challenges facing the Rio Summit in June, experts said on Monday.

The summit must sweep away a system that lets reckless growth destroy the planet's health yet fails to help billions in need, they said.

"This century is special in the Earth's history. It is the first when one species -- ours -- has the planet's future in its hands," said Martin Rees of the Royal Society, Britain's academy of sciences.

"We've invented a new geological era: the Anthropocene," he said referring to an epoch shaped by Man, not nature. [...]

"Under a worst-case scenario, it's very likely, I think, that the Earth's system will move to a new state of some sort, with a very severe challenge to contemporary civilisation," said Steffen. "Some people have even talked about a collapse." [...]

The UN's goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is already out of reach, said Bob Watson, former head of the UN's climate panel and chief advisor to Britain's environment ministry, as he presented the laureates' study.

"If you look at the commitments today from governments around the world, we've only got a 50-50 shot at a 3 C (5.4 F) world, almost no chance of a 2 C (3.6 F) world, and to be quite honest I would say it's not unlikely that we will hit a 5 C (9.0 F) world," said Watson.

"That is clearly a world with significant adverse consequences for ecological systems, for socio-economic systems and for human health."

He added: "We have to realise that we are looking at a loss of biodiversity that is unprecedented in the last 65 million years... We are clearly entering the (planet's) sixth mass extinction."

Read more here.

Where is the Invisible Cosmic Housekeeper when you need her?

Fasten Your Seat Belts

Yeah, I know there's room for all of us and our opinions on this good planet but seriously, my paper (The Telegram), published this letter this morning. Extracts below and offered without comment by me. (Reminder: This is 2012 and scientific data, blah, blah)

I would like to make a few comments about the recent increase in warmings and threats about global warming. “If ” the temperature increases the ice caps will melt and cover the whole world with water. How much money has already been wasted on this false information?

Just think of all the cold weather we have had this past winter; it was 50 degrees below zero in Russia less than a month ago. Europeans were freezing to death according to the news reports. So which report should we believe?

Did you ever read the story of how Henny penny tried to convince all the animals in the forest that, “the sky was falling,” just because an acorn fell on her head? She caused such a flurry of panic among all the other animals they all ran around like chickens with their heads cut off. The sly fox though, convinced all the animals, mostly poultry, to come into his lair and he would save them. However, he had them all for lunch instead. I hope we are not all chickens in Canada.

If people would read the Bible in Genesis, chapter 8, verse 22, God made a covenant with Noah and his family after the flood which destroyed all living creatures except the ones who were saved in the ark. In verse 22, God says while the Earth remains, seedtime and harvest and cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.

I think God is true and every man a liar. Just imagine how much money could be saved to do better things in this world, feed and clothe the nations of people who are hungry and destitute as we read this.

If the nations of the world would eliminate the atomic weapons and bombs as they used to in the past, along with better forest management, maybe the Earth’s environment would be safer for human habitation.

And then I toddle over to this, another gas-oil leak, but this one with the potential of a catastrophic blowout:

Jake Molloy, of the RMT union which represents offshore workers, was asked if the incident was the most serious in the North Sea since the 1988 Piper Alpha oil platform tragedy which saw 167 men die.

He told BBC Scotland: "Fortunately we have dealt with the human side of it, but the potential exists for catastrophic devastation.

"If it somehow finds an ignition source we could be looking at complete destruction." [...]

Are we a planet of cretins?

Kyoto Failure, Durban (and so on and so forth)...

Of Tides and Jupiter

I note the tide getting higher, during leap tides, than it has been previously in front of my window. It jumps over my small bridge to the shore and lies there, smugly, annoyingly, blocking my access to the beach for a couple of hours. Twice a day. Twice a year.

Two times a year, spring tides, or leap tides, are exceptionally high, close to forty percent higher. This is due to a change in the moon's distance from us. The moon is actually 30,000 miles closer than usual, and as we've stated, the closer you are, the greater the gravitational force.

Rising tides, global warming. Will one eventually swamp my house, set it free, floating, bobbing gently as it sweeps out into the broad Atlantic. Ireland will be underwater by then and so will England and who knows how many other countries. So where will we wind up, my house and I? On top of some mountain no doubt. Like Noah's ark.

I watch Jupiter nightly, it is so bright. Our nights here are star-studded, I imagine I can touch them.

I think how dare we, us paltry planet earth types, name these galaxies, these other planets, these stars. Ownership. As if. Who knows what these planets call themselves. And how can we say they are 'uninhabited'? Because our poor little eyes cannot see or our dismal ears hear or our limited intelligence understand?

Perhaps we are the lowliest species in space. Humanoids that are pitied for our inability to get along, to co-habit with each other in peace and harmony. Held up as the bad example of how awful the destruction of one tiny planet can be when rampant over-population and greed take over.

I know. Inside my mind is a dangerous neighbourhood and I should never go in there alone.

Climate Refugees

I met my first such people on Sunday.

Sunday afternoons are the rehearsal times for my new play, "Spancel". This wonderful gentleman showed up as a volunteer to paint scenery. He is an incredible artist. His wife will be acting/singing in the play.

He was roped in to reading a timing runthrough of Act 1. And thoroughly enjoyed himself.

He and his wife wound up here four years ago and started an art gallery and coffee shop across the bay. She is multi-talented as well, I had briefly met her in the past and am looking forward to getting to know her a lot better.

As is the way, we traded life stories. They had investigated impending catstrophic climate change and resolved, before it was too late, to come to a cooler climate. They proceeded to check out all the northern states of the USA and followed this with the provinces of Canada.

Newfoundland blew them away, so they applied for landed emigrant status and achieved this a year later.

It will take a further three years for them to attain Canadian Citizenship. They are like me, totally in love with Newfoundland and its people and they are contributing greatly to the bay communities in which we live and the further enhancement of same.

They are originally from Oklahoma and have encountered other Americans who have moved way out here to the edge of the Atlantic, for a variety of reasons.

Hurricane Igor

Photo courtesy CBC of the St. Lawrence area not too far from here.

Yeah, it's here. Igor has hit and he's brought some really strange weather. House so warm within and so wet outside that all windows are fogged up. The trees sway as their still green leaves get wrenched and thrown at the windows in handfuls.

My niece, who lives about 400km from here tells me her roads are washed out, she ventured out briefly and saw cars floating in the water, something she'd never seen before. She turned and went home. All of her town has folded up into itself, many have lost their homes. Her brand new home has roof leaks, but it could be the force of the wind.

Here we are slightly more sheltered but it is still an awesome sound with a frisson of uncertainty as the windows, under the pressure of the wind, leak in odd places. The roof, so far, is solid.

Only the odd dudely truck rolls by on the streaming flooded road. The stream across from my house has burst its banks, the bay is a mass of whitecaps. If the windows were clear I would try and capture it. I have never seen it like this, a complete turmoil of white and grey flowing in with the north wind.

With all of this maelstrom around, I feel grateful that we are far better off than the unfortunates of Bermuda.

The power is still on, with emergency supplies standing by and the woodstove ready to be fired up.

I'm dry and safe within broken by the odd accusing look from the dog.

You see, in her world, this is all my fault.

**Update - 4.40pm my time
Now the power is out. I have large battery back up and I am on "turbo stick" for internet and had the sense to stockpile a bit of water this morning as my pump is now down and also landline is out. Lots of candles and battery radio. CBC is going to stay with us until it is over but it is on generator power only as all of St. John's now in blackout along with all of the Avalon. Wind is frightening, small branches flung like matchsticks off my trees. Oh, we are such midgets in the force of awesome Mother Nature.
**Update - 7.10pm my time
Well the sun peeped out amongst the speeding clouds for a few minutes. Radio says the rain storm is now over and another two hours of wind. Hurricane has been downsized as of now to a tropical storm. Leo came over and started picking up the branches around the place and then stopped as the wind picked up again. Mr. Igor is not done with us yet.

Juxtaposition

Ye gads and little fishes (what's left of them)!

No doubt about it. We have all entered the Twilight Zone now.

Here we have eminent scientists proclaiming that we have gone past the point of no return with regard to climate change: our Arctic is now just about extinct.

"There can be no recovery because tremendous amounts of extra heat are added every summer to the region as more than 2.5 million square kilometres of the Arctic Ocean have been opened up to the heat of the 24-hour summer sun. A warmer Arctic Ocean not only takes much longer to re-freeze, it emits huge volumes of additional heat energy into the atmosphere, disrupting the weather patterns of the northern hemisphere, scientists have now confirmed."

Meanwhile we have the U.S. government touring our Alberta oil sands saying we are doing a 'heckuva' job in enviromental safeguards.

"The tour did not include a visit to aboriginal communities downstream from the oilsands, whose residents believe their water, food and bodies are being poisoned by the operations. The senators did not meet with renowned biologist David Schindler or any other critics of development."

BUT

"Senator Saxby Chambliss said he was particularly impressed with the technological advances and reclamation efforts."

When exactly do we pay attention?

Never mind. I know the answer.