Letters to the Editor
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WHERE, Whatma and Who Cares ?
Melting ice? Food chain ? Whatever.
Fagettaboutit.
Nobody's paying attention.
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Paying attention
Everyone will pay attention when this steamroller rolls over us.
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"These changes are happening much faster than anticipated"
It's chilling how often one hears those words these days.
A fitting epitaph for our species, I'd say.
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Case Not Made
Only a true believer could accept the premise of this article.
One wishes the author had tried even weakly to distinguish between hypotheses and facts.
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Hey sequel:
Be sure to keep that head buried in the dirt. Wouldn't want anything to disturb your fantasies, like the disturbing thought of mercury laced food. So, I guess the horrendous poisoning of people in Minamata back in the 1970's wasn't caused by eating fish with toxic levels of mercury after all.
Down with science, too, right sequel?
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Here it is
The article on Madonna has garnered 25 letters and this article four, one of which denies the idea of global climate change. I guess this is a good indication where the Salon readerships', supposedly better educated than average, interests and priorities are. Twenty years from now there will be an article in Salon examining and trying to explain how this could have been.
After you have falen off the cliff it is too late to say that you shouldn't have been so close to the edge.
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Our chickens are coming home to roost
Environmentalists have been warning for decades that humans could not continue to poison the world with impunity, and for decades politicians and big business and rightwing preachers and the media have mocked or belittled or ignored those warnings or, when it became fashionable to pretend to be green, co-opted the message without really changing anything.
Well guess what, all you anti-environmentalists and doubters and greedy corporate creeps and ignorant/opportunistic politicians: the environmentalists were right! And best of all, you live in the same poisoned world as the rest of us. You and your children will suffer, despite your fat bank accounts and platinum Jesus bobbleheads.
The only downside to this is that non-human species are suffering for our sins. I just hope a few of them manage to outlast us.
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Persistent Organic Pollutants
"Can we reduce the impact of the pollutants? "We can control persistent organic pollutants," says Muir. It's well documented that when hazardous chemicals -- including mercury -- are taken out of use, environmental levels decrease. And if affected populations are sufficiently healthy, they will recover."
There is an international agreement to curb the use of POP's, called the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, which the US signed but did not ratify. Even China signed and ratified it. Yikes.
http://www.pops.int/reports/StatusOfRatifications.aspx
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"We may be next."
Next?? As far as global pollutants go there is no such thing as 'remote'. We all live on a relatively tiny little sphere, and in a way this article illustrates why rejecting world accords like Kyoto is such a colossally stupid idea.
My point is that although the U.S. has worked to clean up emissions from its own coal power plants, rivers in the Pacific Northwest now have toxic levels of mercury direct from coal-burning plants in China. The pollution from Asian coal plants is becoming an environmental catastrophe. China and India have hundreds of new plants coming on line within the next ten years (in addition to all their coal-burning factories) so this situation is likely to become much, much worse. And while countries like Mexico have been phasing out the use of chlordane and DDT (a silver lining of NAFTA) those pesticides are still very much in use in other parts of the globe. You probably don't know this but there's actually a fair amount of DDT in the air you're breathing as a result of its widespread use in Asia.
Kudos to Salon. Good article.
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Who is killing US?
One way or the other the Fascist's of the world will kill all of us, either through benign neglect or physically. All of them should be given a psychological test and then shipped to a Gulag in the deserts of the world. There they should remain until they die off. Then we can continue on building a better world-not destroying same.
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Indeed
Paulus: "After you have fallen off the cliff it is too late to say that you shouldn't have been so close to the edge".
Excellent quote, and one I'll have to steal. I'm constantly in conflict with folks (relatives, whatever) on a wide variety of topics, including ones of this ilk. Once it becomes obvious that the prognostications, cited as "shrill and alarmist" were actually extremely conservative, the reaction is typically "what can we do?!?".
Sometimes you just need to walk away and save what you can. Like in lifeguard training, you die yourself if you try to save the person thrashing violently around and panicking.
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once again...
..this prompts the question to the men behind the curtain running the show, "What part of YOU'RE GOING TO DIE TOO don't they understand?"
Unless they have a secret plan to escape to a "Bio-Dome" on Mars, they will not escape the ultimate ramifications of the end result of their self-destructive policies.
and the polar ice caps on Mars are melting as well...
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Post hoc, ergo proper hoc
As temperatures rise, causing sea ice ... to melt
If the Mercury from burning Coal is reaching the Arctic, is the particulate matter from burning Coal also reaching the Arctic? If so and it accumulates on the ice, it will increase the amount of solar energy absorbed by the ice.
So, is the melting ice causing the temperature to rise? That hypotheses makes more sense.
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Less rhetoric
Well written, but old message, not news, with same old clichés and added window dressing. The ‘uncovering’ evidence of disturbing fallout of global warming by pesticides , PCB, mercury in trace amounts is “increasing faster than anticipated”. The thesis of the research offered is plausible and now must be ‘proven’. That is the way science works; nothing wrong or surprising about that. However, reporting it should be balanced and even skeptical. Please, Mr./Ms. Editor let’s have some more balanced reporting instead of one-sided campaign literature.
How are contaminant levels down here where most people live? Are we actually more ‘polluted’ than the arctic residents? What are the levels of mercury, the ‘powerful neurotoxin’ in people in the lower 48s?
“Some toxic contaminants are at ‘remarkably high levels”- are there others at remarkably low levels?
It states that traces of DDT and PCB “long banned” still are there. Does that not undermine the policy to “ban” chemicals. Is it not a utopian view that we can rid ourselves of the negative effects of our existence by banning a few chemicals. These chemicals will be around forever. PCB are still plentiful in the US , in the ground, in rivers, not just trace amounts. The “reservoir” is full and will remain full. Let’s not kid ourselves. Let’s not propagate the utopian view that “banning” makes the problem go away. The banning of DDT, of course, has resulted in millions of people dead, dying and with severe suffering, but who is counting when we can worry about trace quantities in the Arctic. Unbalanced?
Pesticides, fungicides, waterproofing fire and stain retarding compounds are discovered and produced for our benefit and eager adoption by us. The very research vessel to study their trace residues uses them and would not be able to survive without them . How does one spell “hypocracy”?
Did we miss in Kindergarten, elementary school, high school that there are consequences? Why would one not expect that there are impacts, even negatives, for any of the ‘smart’ choices we make? Are Salon readers presumed to live in a dream world, Nirvana, heaven, with no consequences?
Are we oblivious to the basics of environmental knowledge? Do we deny the fundamentals that every life form affects, interferes with, and even destroys other life forms? So humanity is not alone when it has a negative effect on the rest of the environment. Without protecting ourselves by using our intellect to destroy or keep at bay damaging life forms, we would not survive one season, perhaps not even one day. One might as well ban humans – they definitely hurt the environment.
Salon readers should be better served than this type of article.