A Few Things Ill Considered

Sandbag Central

Posted by coby on April 1, 2009
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Guest post from het, provider of the weekly feature “Another week of GW News“

Sandbag Central


(source: Boston.com)
When I see scenes like the ‘sandbag central’ Fargo stadium — thousands of people shovelling sand, making and piling sandbags, fighting together for their city — my heart swells. It is the community of shared adversity.

CBC-TV had a camera crew wandering around the stadium interviewing people and they zeroed in on one little blonde haired girl of 7 or 8 years. “Why are you doing this?” asked the interviewer. “For my city, for my family,” said the little girl. But the thing that struck me was that all the time she was being questioned, she never stopped working. When it came down to it, she had her priorities straight.


This has been one of my unspoken, background hopes in the long twilight struggle to deal with global warming — that people would find community when the reality of the threat became unavoidable.

There are many problems with the idea. The first is perception. A Keeling Curve is not like the Red River rising. The danger is not immediately obvious. Another is the time factor. Our climate today is a result of the emissions, the energy balance of the past 50 to 100 years. The danger is not clear until it is too late.

And if, in the absence of enlightened leadership, some technological wizard should craft a geoengineering miracle to solve our climate crisis, we would still face the ecological crunch. We have exceeded the planet’s carrying capacity and will have to rectify that account as well.

These are difficult, if not intractable problems; still…sandbag central is inspiring.

>EOF

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Comments

  1. #1 larrydalooza
    April 1, 2009

    Thank AGW we are passing cap n trade. All the AGW damn CO2 in the air. AGW bless America. Oh my AGW, I can’t believe we almost boiled the Earth.

  2. #2 Crakar14
    April 1, 2009

    Hello Coby,

    I take it you are blaming GW for the floods? So is B.O’B

    Political grandstanding quote

    “I actually think the science around climate change is real. It is potentially devastating. … If you look at the flooding that’s going on right now in North Dakota, and you say to yourself, ‘If you see an increase of 2 degrees, what does that do, in terms of the situation there,’ that indicates the degree to which we have to take this seriously.”

    However back in the real world you have this

    “Temperatures as cold as 7 degrees Fahrenheit froze water running into the river and are responsible for turning back the flood, said David Kellenbenz, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Grand Forks, North Dakota, about 80 miles north of Fargo.”

    “In fact, temperatures in North Dakota have been running about 5-10 degrees below normal for the entire winter and spring.”

    Therefore if it wasnt for the freezing temps caused by GW then the flood caused by GW would have flooded the town.

    On a more serious note how is your brother? Did he get flooded? I hope all is OK.

    Cheers

    Crakar

  3. #3 coby
    April 6, 2009

    Crakar, I am not blaming climate change for this flood, I have not really paid a lot of attention to it, aside from the actual drama of the event. It is very difficult to ever attribute any extreme event to a single cause, especially one as slow moving as climate change.

    (the quoted email is from het’s brother, BTW)

  4. #4 Betula
    April 7, 2009

    Coby……

    How could you not blame Climate change for this flood? C’mon, your letting a perfect opportunity go to waste.

    Whether or not this event is related to AGW isn’t the real issue here….. the real issue is perception. When a once in a lifetime event like this occurs, it is important to take advantage of it’s enormity and scope in terms of media coverage and emotions.

    Seriously, this is a chance to use all those proven marketing tools to drive home a point……fear,passion, guilt etc. I’ll admit there’s not much sex in this one, but if they were to show some sexy lady dressed in green, filling sandbags with pictures of Polar Bears on them…..it wouldn’t hurt.

    Look, your friend het is way ahead of you. I checked out his site and found this link in his GW news archive…..

    http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/03/27/global-boiling-red-river/

    Here are some helpful hints…..you can use word’s like “possible”, “maybe”, “might” etc….or in the case of the Wonk Room…”predicted” to help create a perception.

    So please, in the future, never let a disaster or catastrophe like this go to waste.

    We are counting on you.

  5. #5 Crakar14
    April 7, 2009

    Sorry Coby i should not have assumed this was your point, appologies to you. However this is Barak Obamas point of view as per the quote in my post.

    It is sad that politicians have to resort to this kind of scaremongering to hammer home a tax plan. And dont worry we have pollies just like him here in Australia.

    Cheers