Horrible Global Warming story.

[joeunderdog]

Haven't seen this as a post here on DU, and it sure hasn't hit local news...

Just returned from Costa Rica, a country I've visited several times. The people are kind and genuine and the country is as beautiful and full of life as anywhere I've been. For this trip, my wife and I planned to spend some time in the Osa Penninsula to visit Corcovado National Park, described by National Geographic as one of the most biologically diverse places in the world.

During our visit, we were accompanied by the best guide we've ever had in CR, Roy, who told us that it had been raining alot more than ever before during their dry season which started a couple of months ago. He said the weather had been "all messed up...weird" in the last year and a half. This calender year rained enough that it delayed by several weeks the bearing of fruit on numerous of trees. This resulted in a lack of food for many animals of the forest.

Corcovado National Park was closed for 2 weeks as local guides gathered to collect the rotting corpses of animals dying of hunger. The stench was everywhere. Up to 25% of the total animal population died and as high as 60% of the monkeys perished because they could not find food. Animals became weak and vulnerable to ordinary disease and some succumbed to being consumed by some of their own digestive bacteria.

This is a country whose natives (Ticos) have an active, gentle relationship with their environment and they are politely concerned about the US approach to Global Warming. Generally, I loosen them up by telling them that "Bush is the Devil" and they universally respond with a handshake, a smile and a more blunt objection to the Chimp's policy. Unfortunately, their worries are being realized with the harsh reality of nature's fragile balance and the devestation of the wildlife of their country. The Ticos have noted that they have seen migratory habits of animals (birds) change in recent years, generally in pursuit of food. But nothing like this has happened. The whole area was shocked.

I tell people "I'm going to go down to Costa Rica as much as possible before they completely wreck the planet." I better get more tickets quick.

[NanceGreggs]

1. We've been hearing alarming stories like this for a while ...

... but this one is TRULY CHILLING!

[AuntiBush]

18. Has anyone else noticed how bright the sun is this winter?

I know all about the winter solstice, but nothing like this. And what about the goings-on up in the skies? What are they doing?

[CoffeeCat]

20. Ok....you are freaking me out, because I have noticed this...

In fact, yesterday, I backed out of the garage in the morning and the sun was so incredibly bright and blinding. My two daughters and I all went, "Wooooaahhh!" at the same time. I don't ever recall seeing the sun so incredibly bright!

I dismissed this. However, I did notice it. Have others noticed it too?

On a positive note, when we backed out and were engulfed by the bright sun, my five year old cheerfully said--as we backed out of the driveway, "Wow! Good morning world!"

I thought that was too cute. :)

[AuntiBush]

22. I didn't mean to frighten you...

but it's causing me to loose sleep.

Late yesterday the sun was to my rear. It literally blinded me, understanding it was directly behind me, not in front of me. A yield sign was just ahead, and the glare was so bad, no one could see to drive. I can't find a better pair of sunglasses to keep the glare out.

And yes, there is always a positive thought to add. Grass is growing in the backyard, amid the snow; the robins and red jays are plentiful, as well. A hoot owl is in love with my wooden apple-holder bird hanging in the backyard tree, and I'm sorry I freaked you out.

That sun is just kinda bothering me, lately.

[CoffeeCat]

25. Oh no...I'm ok...thanks for your concern...

I was just amazed to see someone else notice this too!

I didn't stop to think about WHY the sun was so bright. I just noticed it and thought it was really odd. I've never been so blinded by the sun before.

Could this be due to ozone depletion?

We have grass that appears to be getting green, and I'm in the Midwest and it's Feb!

There was an article in our local paper about tulips and daffodils blooming here, as well. I guess that is totally extraordinary. I guess these flowers have been coming up--when they normally don't come up until May--but they are dying when they are exposed to the cold temperatures.

There are so many changes taking place. I've never noticed, ever in my lifetime--significant, perceptible changes in the weather and in the environment.

Thanks for your concern, but I am ok! You're very kind. I was shocked and intrigued...but ok! :)

[FULL_METAL_HAT]

44. Global dimming --> Unfortunately Frightening :(

Global dimming From Wikipedia

The effect varies by location but worldwide it is of the order of a 5% reduction over the three decades 1960-1990; the trend has reversed during the past decade. Global dimming creates a cooling effect that may have led scientists to underestimate the effect of greenhouse gases on global warming.

Read the whole thing -- it's verified and quite frightening.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming

[womanofthehills]

27. My solar system has never worked so well

The sun does seem brighter. I am totally off the grid and although my batteries are getting older the whole system is working better than ever before. Now I'm getting really freaked out. I live in the foothills of the mts in NM at 6500 feet and we usually get about 5 or 6 good snowstorms. The old timers say they have never seen a winter like this - no snow or rain and very warm days. It's only Feb and we have had two brush fires this week.

[purji]

33. we have had a lot more sun in Mi.

this winter than normal.
Its usually grey skies 80-90 percent of the time in winter.
I'd say we have sunny skies about 40% of the time now.
I work in food service,and we keep a record of the weather every day.(we have less business on rainy days.)When I get to work I think I will pull up last years records and compare.I'll let you know what I find out.

[slor]

2. Thanks for posting...

a film crew needs to get down to document this! We need to put it in the face of people now.

[Inland]

I HOPE it is just a temporary event.

I FEAR it is the harbinger of the future.

[Boomer]

4. Things are going to get a lot worse....

...before they get better.

And better will not be during our lifetime.

[Inland]

3. dupe

I FEAR it is the harbinger of the future.

[Extend a Hand]

5. heart breaking

:cry: :cry:

I recently saw a show where biologists were *REALLY* worried about a massive extinction of many species during this decade.

[BeHereNow]

7. Species, including human ones: The Kogi Indians and Dyncorp

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE take the time to educate yourself
about the Kogi Indians and what is happening to them.
http://www.taironatrust.org
BHN

"The Kogis took five years to regenerate the soil, now they will have to
wait, at least, five more years to replant. Everything is contaminated
and the streams are dry because there are no more trees to retain water.
What are they going to eat? What are they going to drink? Where to go?
Tchendukua's director in Santa Marta organized some time ago with the
Kogis and the farmers around, the eradication of coca by hand. There was
no coca in La Luna.
It is impossible that your sophisticated planes are unable to detect
Indians villages."

"In the movie there is a scene with a Kogi shaman sitting in front of his
house, in the middle of the devastation. He is crying.
This image is unbearable and it will remain in my memory forever.
Yes, Mr. Bush, an image can turn people really angry.
Remember the picture of Nick Ut showing a little girl naked, burned by
Napalm, running on a road in Vietnam. This image had an incredible
impact in America."

[Extend a Hand]

13. some days it's just demoralizing to not be able to stop the madness

Thanks for the link.
For those interestsed More from the open letter to the shrub...

Condolezza Rice wants Colombia to change its laws and spray in National
Parks such as La Macarena, El Catatumbo, La Sierra Nevada de Santa
Marta, etc...
To achieve that dirty job, a new aerial base for fumigation planes will
be build, $125 million.


The fumigation of La Luna on July 17th 2004 was completely illegal.

In the Sierra, Kogis, Arsarios-Wiwas, Kankuamos and Arhuacos are
starting to have health problems , especially children (see notes-page
14).

In Vietnam, after 45 years, Agent Orange is still active.
The new poisoned cocktail is called Agent Green. If you take the
ingredients one by one, it doesn't seem so dangerous. If you mix them,
highly concentrated, it is a terrible weapon. The mixture is made with
Monsanto Round Up Ultra, Cosmoflux 411F (illegal in the US), POEA and
the fungus fusarium oxysporum EN-4.

[AuntiBush]

19. BeHereNow...

are you a Cultural Anthropologist?

And, good significant post.

[BeHereNow]

21. No. I am not a Cultural Anthropologist- just aware.

I first learned of the Kogi Indians when I saw the documentary
about them back in the early nineties. It haunted me.
I never gave up on searching for a copy and subsequently found
the Tairona Trust dot org site.
I donated to the trust and am now the happy owner of the documentary
I saw back then about them. I insist that everyone I know (and who registers
a pulse) watch it, when they come to visit my house.
I am also an artist, (music and clay among other things)
as well as a teacher of what they call, "special needs" children,
which has led me to contemplate the connection to what I consider a
"related conciousness" with them, as far as Indigenous people go.
The tragedy in our society is that we call them
"Special needs" children when it is my experience
in working with them that they are the wisest people
among us, as are the indigenous people of the world.
The similarities are striking to me.
BHN

[AuntiBush]

23. You're Very Well-Versed

I commend you for your writing, and comprehension skills.

Never forgot that one elective some time ago; Cultural Anthropology. It almost changed my field, literally. You'll know what I mean when I say so many Indigenous people are so sadly taken advantage of, yet they survived for so long without reportedly civilizational help.

Many, many tragedies. And glad to hear you're a teacher. Your writing is impeccable. I bet you play the piano, as well.

[BeHereNow]

24. You are too funny!

How did you know I play the piano!?!?
But probably not in the way you think...
My mother is a classical pianist.
My favorite childhood memories of her are
of pressing my head (ears) against the bottom of
the piano while she played. I could spend hours
in that position while she played.
Curiously enough, I now play only by
"ear," which is to say if I hear it in my head,
I can fumble my way through reproducing it on my
piano. I learned to sight read and all, but I much
prefer to play what I hear in my head- that for which
no notes have yet been written.
I think there is somehow a connection between this and
the clay I put on a wheel to form.
The clay, like the piano, tells me what it would like to become.

Thank you so much for your compliment of my writing style-
it too, is only what comes through me in an intutive or
spontaneous way.
I may be somewhat of a "special needs" person myself.,
come to think of it..that is certainly how I would be
"classified" in the educational system today, as I have come to learn it.
Maybe that is why I get on so well with the kids I work with...
Hugs,
BHN

[AuntiBush]

39. Cause I do

I can read it between your lines... you have a compassion one gets when playing the piano from early chilhood, and with feeling - not a forced thing, you know.

[babylonsister]

6. Recommend for awareness! Now I want to get my butt to CR! nt

[northamericancitizen]

8. K & R

[Pachamama]

9. Costa Rica: the Global Warming Canary in a Coal Mine....

:cry:

Why, why, why???? When are people going to wake up? :grr:

[sasha031]

12. our beautiful planet is dying

and what is this country interested in war games!:cry:

[joeunderdog]

15. I'm haunted by the jungle tragedy, but fortunately

I'm heartened to know that it won't be a slow death for us humans. Looks like full speed ahead on Iran. Sometimes feels like worrying about Global Warming is "organizing the deck chairs" when you consider what these nutcases in the WH are doing with the military.

Then again, when I see that death can strike so quickly from changes in climate, I've come to believe that we don't have as much time left either way. Hate to sound so pessimistic.

Live it up while you can.

[DemonGoddess]

10. k & r

[Boomer]

11. Did the r before, here's the ...

:kick:

[sasha031]

14. Does anyone want to participate in a Global Warming Experiment

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=435231&mesg_id=435231

[mom cat]

43. Thanks sasha031. I just joined.

[progressoid]

16. Ironic that trips to view nature add greenhouse gasses that negatively

the environment we go to see.

[AuntiBush]

17. So, So Sad.

I'm surprised I don't see more Cultural Anthropologists and Physical Geographers speaking-out about this sort of thing. If it's happening at the Corcovado Nat'l Park, it's happening elsewhere. 60% of the monkeys perishing. Huge ice packs falling, melting like never before from the North on both sides of the continent.

And most I know are in total denial, refusing to believe though I continue to point at the sun and temperature differences, and all those lines in the skies. Still, they refuse to look, or believe. I think they're afraid to think about it.

[upi402]

26. While travelling, say Bush is no good -and people smile and say "whew

...I like you now!"
I heard it a lot.

[FreedomAngel82]

28. It really is horrible

And quite scary too to think about. :(

[Lorien]

29. Why is the concept of "environmental collapse" so difficult to get

through to the people? And why do so many-even people here on DU-believe that this kind of collapse won't ever effect the human species, and can certainly never effect them?

Mainstream views on the environment and the value of other species today are downright frightening. ONLY humans and pets are deemed important-everything else is valued by it's contribution to the welfare of mankind or it's potential to earn money for an individual or corporation as a "resource". There's no discussion of the intrinsic worth of a plant or animal. The only way any of us can drum up any concern for what's happening to biodiversity on this planet is to frame it as a threat to mankind-which it most certainly is-but it's also an immediate threat to millions of other species that deserve far better than what we have given them.

[countryjake]

32. Well said!

The way I look at it is that as we destroy, one by one, each of those millions of other species we were meant to share this world with, their very absence is what will destroy us, bit by bit.

I shudder to think of a spring without its peepers!

[blindpig]

36. It is sometimes so frustrating

I sometimes feel disingenious grasping for anthroprocentric frames for the preservation of biodiversity. As I see it there are plenty, plenty people concerned with the fate and condition of humankind and few who give more than a cursorial shit about the rest of life on Earth. Yet lacking such frames leaves one open to charges of misanthropy from those whose humanism is imho incomplete as it refuses to recognise humankind's place in, not above Nature. One of the worst things that we have done to ourselves is losing our sense of kin-ness with the wild, particularly animals. For the bulk of human existance wild animals were the template by which we understood ourselves. It is only in the past 10,000 years, the age of agriculture, that we traded what works for what is increasingly proving not to work. Change in climate probably had something to do with it and the workings of intraspecific group dynamics thereafter kept those changes in place. Not to say that we should abandon civilization wholesale, no point in throwing out the baby with the bathwater. But we should do what we can to recapture what we can of our old proven mode of existance and preserving, living with the wild is a very important aspect of that existance.(there I go getting anthroprocentric!) I believe it is possible to have our cake and eat it too, to have the wild and civilization, though a very different civilization than we have today. Well, I can dream, can't I? Because the alternative is to me too ugly to contemplate.

(sorry for the rant, I was on a roll.:blush: )

[Uncle Joe]

42. I am just speculating here,

however I believe it's because we have disconnected our selves from nature and created a false environment of concrete, steel and glass. In this artificial world people are born, live and die without ever getting out in to the real world, so there is no appreciation for it. We as a species have deluded our selves with this illusion and the natural world for some, might as well be on the moon. I had a debate with a neocon type once and told him global warming would probably cause the Polar Bear to become extinct within our life time and he said something to the effect of, well animals become extinct all the time and it's is the natural order of things. I believe the same dog eat dog, every man for himself mentality that make up the neocon mentality projects it self on this issue.

It's like a giant blind spot for some, the problem is so huge, they cannot conceptualize it, and if they do some think it is beyond our control. However the earth or nature will correct this problem with a very stern hand if humankind does not.

P.S. I am so looking forward to Al Gore's movie in May, "An Inconvenient Truth"

[Lorien]

30. Kick n/t

[Lorien]

31. Kick n/t

[crispini]

34. Yes, and all of that travelling you're doing to get there

isn't helping either is it? How much jet fuel do you think gets burned and carbon dioxide emitted every time you go?

I just think it's ironic that you're so avid about going to see this part of the planet "before they wreck it" and that very action of going to see it helps to "wreck it."

[blindpig]

38. Too true.

And I'm more guilty than most, having taken a number of "ecotourists" trips over the last 10 years. I've been having misgiving lately for the reason mentioned and have resolved to drasticly cut back on such travels. As much as seeing wildlife, particularly species new to me, is the joy of my life, if I'm to be honest with myself I'll have to forego such pleasures. We'll all need to make sacrifices if we're to get through this thing, if it's possible.

[pitohui]

41. because it won't be preserved if people can't make $$$

costa rica is a tourism and agricultural based economy

the day the tourists go home is the day the forests will be cut down and converted to agriculture

people have a funny way of insisting on the right to make a decent living even if they have the nerve to have been born outside the united states, if tourists won't support costa rica's attempts to create a model park system, fine, the park system will go away and other countries won't emulate their experiment

telling people to stand down and stay home is counterproductive

[MadHound]

35. You don't have to go to Costa Rica to see the change in our world

Here in America we're going through a horrible drought in the West and Great Plains. Many many areas of the country are experiencing one of the mildest winters ever, after experiencing a mild winter last year(and lord lord, the bugs are going to be an absolute horror this summer). Aquifers are starting to run dry, rivers and streams are drying up. In Europe they are experiencing a very, very cold winter, as the salinity of the Gulf Stream goes down, and thus threatens to stop the Gulf Stream entirely. Areas of the Artic are gone, water now, and perma frost is starting to thaw. We are reaching a tipping point where nothing we do will prevent a global climate catastrophy, and subsequent massive die-off.

What can be done? Our leaders, our government is not going to take any meaningful action to change things for the better, in fact it is going to do all it can to benefit its corporate masters, and thus make matters worse. Thus, it is up to us, each and every one, to do what we can to limit the further degradation of the planet. Start driving a less polluting vehicle is something that many people can do. Homeowners can insulate their house, and add less polluting energy generating technologies such as solar and wind. Add a woodstove with a catalytic convertor, a very clean burning alternative to heat your house. And either grow your own food, or buy it from local farmers. And whatever you do, either grow or buy organic. If people started changing their lifestyles to follow this advice, the sheer purchasing power represented would force corporate America to change at least some of its practices. And apparently the power of the wallet is the only power we have left.

[joeunderdog]

40. Last year was the warmest year on Earth in 10,000 years.

I'm enjoying the mild weather back in New England, but it unfortunately feels like a sign of bad things to come. Even the Pentagon has said that Global Warming represents the biggest threat to the country and the world.

[bloom]

37. That is a sad account

We know how weird the weather is around here - but it's important to get a view of the rest of the world.

Too bad we can't travel without adding to the problem.