“More than 120 scientists across seven federal agencies have been pressured to remove the phrases ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’ from various documents. The documents include press releases and, more importantly, communications with Congress. Evidence of this sort of political interference has been largely anecdotal to date, but is now detailed in a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held hearings on this issue Tuesday; the hearing began by Committee members, including most Republicans, stating that global warming was happening and greenhouse gas emissions from human activity were largely to blame. The OGR hearings presage a landmark moment in climate change research: the release of the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC report, drafted by 1,250 scientists and reviewed by an additional 2,500 scientists, is expected to state that ‘there is a 90% chance humans are responsible for climate change’ — up from the 2001 report’s 66% chance. It probably won’t make for comfortable bedtime reading; ‘The future is bleak’, said scientists.”

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If Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” has a single message, it’s that global warming is bad—very, very bad. Floods, droughts, famine, disease . . . a miasma of End Times calamity caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

Even at that, Gore is—at the risk of paraphrasing—a candy-assed optimist, according to James Howard Kunstler, author of “The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century.”

Whereas Gore and other prophets of climate change believe we still have the time and means to avert the worst consequences of anthropogenic global warming—hybrid cars, solar panels!—Kunstler argues with hellish persuasion that we are basically toast. Why? The entire edifice of American civilization—from our mega-scale methods of food production to our great repositories of national wealth, that is, the equity invested in our sprawling suburbs—is propped up, trembling as if balanced on matchsticks, on cheap oil. And there is no substitute for cheap oil.

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Why is global warming at all a controversial issue when 99% of the world’s scientists agree about it and its cause? Because the other 1% are paid industry shills. And people are lazy. And people like their cozy luxuries. Anyway, here’s a good Bill Maher clip on global warming:

Great article. Also has some good suggestions on local food production.

Global food is based on an economic theory: instead of producing a diverse range of food crops, every nation and region should specialise in one or two globally-traded commodities - those they can produce cheaply enough to compete with every other producer. The proceeds from exporting those commodities are then used to buy food for local consumption. According to the theory, everyone will benefit.

The theory, as it turns out, is wrong. Rather than providing universal benefits, the global food system has been a major cause of hunger and environmental destruction around the world.

The environment has been hit particularly hard. The global system demands centralised collection of tremendous quantities of single crops, leading to the creation of huge monocultures. Monocultures, in turn, require massive inputs of pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilisers. These practices systematically eliminate biodiversity from farmland, and lead to soil erosion, eutrophication of waterways, and the poisoning of surrounding ecosystems.

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