Cutbacks Impede Climate Studies

The government's ability to understand and predict hurricanes, drought and climate changes of all kinds is in danger because of deep cuts facing many Earth satellite programs and major delays in launching some of its most important new instruments, a panel of experts has concluded.

Oh great! Just as the need for ever more vigilance and precision in weather and atmospheric monitoring becomes critical, the funding is cut. We couldn't make global warming go away by denying it. Now apparently we are going to try ignoring it. It is just another case in a long list of incredibly misplaced priorities by this administration.

We are fighting the wrong war. Instead of fighting for control of the worlds oil in order to assure an uninterruptible supply of fuel to support our existing lifestyle, we should be fighting the threat to our existence from using that oil at all. Eventually we will realize that the only way to get out of the trap we have set for ourselves is to quit using oil. We must do this for two reasons. To survive the climate catastrophe that is Global Warming, obviously we have to stop adding carbon to the atmosphere as we have been doing. We can best do that by not burning hydrocarbons and thereby releasing all of the carbon that has been sequestered in the earth's crust all these millions of years. But also, because we will begin to run out of oil in no more than a generation, we have to find a way to survive, as a species, without it. I think the only way to do that, painful as it might be, would be to go cold turkey for all uses of oil that could be done another way. That includes transportation, direct energy generation, fertilizers, asphalt and so on. That would force us to build a rational way of life using renewable resources while we still have some petrochemicals around for those situations where that is the only way to do it. Think of lubrication, medicines, exotic plastics, electronic components, etc. Let's not burn up those possibilities. In the long run there are no hydrocarbons. The bad news is that you probably can't hand off the long run to your children and grandchildren anymore.

[Link: Cutbacks Impede Climate Studies - washingtonpost.com]