Environmental Ethics: Hottest July on record.

Friday, September 30, 2016

Hottest July on record.

Don Enss

Last month wasn’t just the hottest July on record for the surface of earth. It continued the longest-ever streak of record-breaking months—15, according to data released on Wednesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). July followed the hottest June, May, April, March, February, January, December, November, October, and September, along with last August, July, June, and May.

The extremes of recent months are such that we're only midway into 2016, and there’s already a greater than 99 percent likelihood that this year will go down as the hottest on record, according to Gavin Schmidt, who directs NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. NASA and NOAA maintain independent records of the earth’s temperatures, and both agree that last month was a scorcher. "July 2016 was absolutely the hottest month since the instrumental records began," Schmidt wrote on Twitter.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-08-17/fires-floods-and-scorchers-earth-destroys-yet-another-heat-record

1 comment:

Kevin BibbyOctober 4, 2016 at 3:56 PM
It's almost baffling that things such as this can be shown and publicized but mass numbers of people will still chalk it up to happenstance or say ohh that's not that big a problem. one or two maybe even three I could see the difference in opinion being acceptable but when its 15 straight months breaking records, I think the proof is pretty clear that there is an issue here, its just unfortunate that so many people still seem to show no urgency on the matter.
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First things first--a proper education

“The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or "accessing" what we now call "information" - which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.” ― Wendell Berry

The college project

“The American college may be considered a continuation, at the human level, of the self-education process of the earth itself: universe education, earth education, and human education are stages of development in a single unbroken process...The entire college project can be seen as that of enabling the student to understand the immense story of the universe and the role of the student in creating the next phase of the story.” --Thomas Berry, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth

“Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

“Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it creates.”
― Vandana Shiva, Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis

“Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“How can we be so arrogant? The planet is, was, and always will be stronger than us. We can't destroy it; if we overstep the mark, the planet will simply erase us from its surface and carry on existing. Why don't they start talking about not letting the planet destroy us?”
― Paulo Coelho, The Winner Stands Alone

“When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: if you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse.”
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“When the last tree is cut and the last fish killed, the last river poisoned, then you will see that you can't eat money.”
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― T.S. Eliot

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“An attitude to life which seeks fulfilment in the
single-minded pursuit of wealth - in short, materialism - does not fit into this
world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the
environment in which it is placed is strictly limited.”
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“Saving the world requires saving democracy. That requires well-informed citizens. Conservation, environment, poverty, community, education, family, health, economy- these combine to make one quest: liberty and justice for all. Whether one's special emphasis is global warming or child welfare, the cause is the same cause. And justice comes from the same place being human comes from: compassion.”
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“The re-establishment of an ecological balance depends on the ability of society to counteract the progressive materialization of values. The ecological balance cannot be re-established unless we recognize again that only persons have ends and only persons can work towards them.”
― Ivan Illich

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Friday, September 30, 2016

Hottest July on record.

1 comment:

Peripatetics