2-28-14 - Andy Ferguson - Since we installed our green energy changes we’ve easily learned how to use them to minimize energy. - read more on Andy's cuke page.

 TV news shows almost never cover climate change, which ought to be one of the most aggressively-reported issues around, given that, y'know, it's a dire threat to the planet and everyone on it. A recent study from Media Matters found that the Sunday shows on NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox spent a combined 27 minutes on the topic in the whole of 2013. Meet the Press was singled out as "failing to offer a single substantial mention of climate change" for the entire year. - Media Matters

Read on

2-16-12 - The jet stream is meandering

2-05-14 - The Last Time Co2 Levels were at 400 parts per Million, Humans didn't exist - Science Blogs with arguments by others and a place for all debating and links to more.

2-04-14 - Andy Ferguson comments on yesterday's mention of 350.org and him.

Thanks for the donation to 350 and plug for action. It really isn’t too late, I think. I believe that that radical palliative measures, including geo-engineering will likely be necessary, but these must be complemented with the cheapest and correct path which is to think globally and act locally to the best of our abilities. - posting in Climate Change

International Dharma Teachers’ Statement on Climate Change

Endorsement Sought by Dharma Teachers and Sangha Members Worldwide

"Climate change is the most serious issue facing humanity today. It is already seriously impacting economies, ecosystems, and people worldwide. Left unchecked, it will cause tremendous suffering for all living beings."

I signed it and I hate to sign things or belong to anything. I'd say the quote above was an understatement. - DC

Give everyone in the world a Christmas present. Join 350 dot org. - dc

12-24-13 - Put all the prior cuke posts on Climate Change on its own page in the Species Threat Section. Ten years ago I didn't think it was a species threat. Now I think it's moved from threat to likelihood. At lunch with a couple of friends in Stinson Beach last month, asked what I thought about climate change, my response was geared not to spoil the meal. The most positive comment I can come up with, I said, is that everything I believe always turns out to be wrong. - dc

12-23-13 - The Coming ‘Instant Planetary Emergency’ - from the Nation which got it from Tom's Dispatch which comes with an intro by Tom. Sorta puts everything else in an interesting perspective. - DC - Thanks Kelly. -

12-21-13 - Who's to Blame for Climate Change?

11-14-13 - Emissions of CO2 driving rapid oceans 'acid trip'

11-03-13 - Climate Change Report Sees Violent, Sicker, Poorer Future - Are we including possible scenarios of climate change in our long term planning? Are we preparing for various eventualities? Or are we marching along with the governments, corporations, masses, ignoring the warnings? That's what we here at cukeville do. What, us worry?

10-25-13 - Arctic Temperatures Reach Highest Levels In 44,000 Years, Study Finds - This is placed last as item 3 in today's What's New posts because my brain is ill equipped to deal with such a slow moving threat, especially one that doesn't focus on a smaller group and demands so many changes in the money flow and in our habits. By smaller group how about our tribe or my child or my teacher as a subject that could grab my attention. But a threat to the species, to higher forms of life, to the biosphere as we know it? And some ice melting far away? All too vague. Too bad. - dc  - posted in Species Threats

10-11-13 - Union of Concerned Scientists on Global Warming Solutions - those who still have hope

It's too late #1

It's too late #2

Almost too late

10-09-13 - Guy McPhearson on near term extincion and seeing all of us as in a global hospice

His site: Nature Bats Last - thanks Brigid Meier

10-07-13 - We're Addicted to Economic Growth and It Will Be the Death of Us - thanks Gregory - posted in Engaged Buddhism/Current Events

9-25-13 - EDF - the Environmental Defense Fund - on global warming

9-21-13 - In CA's Marin County today: Climate Action: Draw the Line on the Keystone XL Pipeline in San Anselmo, Saturday, September 21st,1:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m.

9-20-13 - Met a man collecting cans to sell. He used to be in banking. He said he'd been thinking about climate change and how the human race is bringing it on and doesn't seem to be able to make the sorts of changes necessary to avert calamity, that it seems that neither democratic or undemocratic states are capable of dealing with it and it's coming on in a way that we're not mentally prepared for. He said he knows some folks who have run some computer models on responses to climate change and that the only one that worked out well for humans and the most other species involved a global military takeover working with artificial intelligence. More will surely be revealed. - dc

9-19-13 - Chasing Ice

9-18-13 - Got this strange message: Read your Jr Hi article.  Try pickleball.  You'd b a natural.  Good conditioner, low stress & sociable sport.  You can play anywhere in country.  Great low impact exercise for old(and young) monks and Zen priests.  Check out in your area.  "Have paddle, will travel". Searched and found this: Pickleball is a highly contagious, progressive and incurable disease. How could I resist with a come-on like that?

Brett writes his band Everest Cale wrote a song about Nuclear War titled 'Fossils'.  It is their newest single.  You can stream 'Fossils' on Soundcloud. Here's their Facebook page and here's more on these folks. Posting this on Defuser Music dot com which has a nuke song section.

We can play Pickleball as we wait to see which threat gets us first. Good luck human race. - dc

6-03-13 - Old Data Reveals Warming Oceans - just another article on climate change. An early sentence in the article is characteristic of reporting on this topic, not just now but way back - it's worse, happening faster than scientists previously thought, or some new factor that accelerates it.

A main finding is that the impact of global warming on the oceans might have been significantly underestimated: the oceans are absorbing far more heat than previously realized.

5-11-13 - The human race for reaching the 400 parts per million for the first time in four million years or so. The World Suicide Club is delighted.

1-27-12 - First saw this in today's Fort Worth paper from Carolyn Lochhead, the San Francisco Chronicle's Washington correspondent.: Climate change may be irreversible, scientists say

Googled "global warming" and got a string of more encouraging links such as

Norway Data Shows Earth’s Global Warming Less Severe Than Feared

Checked science sites and got more dire results.

Experts Agree Global Warming Is Melting the World Rapidly

Have not noticed Buddhist groups including this subject in their projections and plans. Like the government. Like almost every institution and everyone. Individual and local actions are good I think but only massive global action it seems will help. All I do is mention it, link to it, watch and wait. Good luck to us all. - dc

1-14-13 - So 2012 was the hottest year on record in the US with a one degree spike that was unprecedented, usually it's one tenth this way or that. I recall Dennis Miller on some talk show a few years ago saying he could live with a world that was one degree warmer and I'm sure that's what a lot of people think. But it seems to me that thinking about the significance of the world's average temperature in terms of what it's like outside is not useful. Better to liken it to the temperature of a human, one's child or parent might bring it home better for some. We could look at the world as our mother who is running a bit of a fever with signs that the fever is going to get worse. But that analogy also doesn't quite work. The mother is fine - as George Carlin pointed out - it's her children that will suffer from her running a temperature, not her. She runs a few degrees and catastrophes happen, world order is threatened. Stephen Hawken warned that too many degrees could tip us into a Jurassic type climate not suitable for humans. Mother earth would just have different children. Meanwhile the smartest pundits like Zakaria whom I admire greatly, host conversations with authorities whom speak of the necessity of every country having continued growth, the benefits of all this cheap gas that wasn't figured on. We hear all sorts of interesting ideas and learn important facts but there seems to be a factor or two missing. We don't seem to be able to focus on serious impending problems or prepare for and do everything we can to avert catastrophe. See Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Are our leaders to blame? Again I refer to George Carlin who didn't blame the elected leaders but the electorate.

11-24-12 - UNEP Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report Finds Climate Change Goals Growing More Elusive

11-13-12 -Climate Change - it's the Heat and the Humidity

11-03-12 - Chris Mathews and guests on Climate Change

10-13-12 - Diss Information: Is There a Way to Stop Popular Falsehoods from Morphing into "Facts"? - Scientific American

9-15-12 - Arctic Ice Melting fast

7-25-12 - Greenland Ice Melting liquidy split.

Why haven’t we rallied our collective power to mitigate climate change? - Columbia U blog

We’re All Climate-Change Idiots - NY Times - thanks Gregory

6-07-12 - While we're fiddling:

Earth Tipping Point Study In Nature Journal Predicts Disturbing And Unpredictable Changes

Green decline 'may bring irreversible change'

4-22-12 - Happy Earth Day.

Al Gore on Earth Day

Earth Day Network

Cuke staff takes day off to honor our interconnectivity with the land, sky, water, animals, and plants. We will go forth into the world to hug rocks, dance with trees, dissolve into the  earth body. reflect on public policy, sing to the crushing treads of corporate and governmental robots which tower over us, crush our dreams, and disappear as we awaken. - dc

2-22-07 - I was just getting ready to sit zazen but...
 

Trinkita hadn't seen An Inconvenient Truth so I watched the DVD with her and once again was so impressed with the film and Al Gore and with the extreme urgency of the issue of global warming and how well it's all presented. Can't wait for the academy awards. Isn't that embarrassing. And I am digging (through) the supplementary DVD materials like the informative 30 minute intro and update by Al Gore. I appreciate how he has put this whole thing together pretty much by himself - the info, the slide show as he calls it - not the movie (thanks Laurie David and Lawrence Bender and Davis Guggenheim and others).

The thought crossed my mind that what Gore's doing might be more important than what he might have done as president cause, for one thing, there might have been too many issues to deal with, like what to do with all those Saudi's that were, due to having an alert crew running the country, caught plotting to send planes into buildings. I thought it could be that having these reckless, psychopathic, warmongering incompetents in charge could be, from a global point of view, in terms of the survival of civilization and the coral reefs and all, it could be that the good work Gore's doing outbalances all that misery and waste. I think it's good for him too - not being president. He's so much more free and easy-going now. I really don't want him to run in 2008. Politics is a sea of lies and misrepresentation so greatly influenced by sinister whispers and worshipers of Mammon who cannot be concerned about the fate of the earth and earthlings when there's so much short-term profit to be had, to be dived into like ole Scrooge McDuck used to do. It would be fun. Oh yes, back to that thought. It might turn out that Ralph Nader will be heralded as the man who saved the world by making the 2000 election so close that the Republicans could steal it thus freeing Al Gore up and away to pursue his life-long passion - making people aware of global warming. And we turn the tide in the nick of time. Hooray! Or maybe not.  It doesn't look like we're going to but, not to despair, I recommend seeing the film as a terribly relevant thing to do and also heartily promote going to the site of the film, http://climatecrisis.org. - DC

All this while of course keeping in mind that it was time to cool off with a refreshing period of, well, as Sylvia Boorstein said, Don't just do something - sit there.

9-06.5-06 - Some ZC people  went to Burning Man this year with a cardboard zendo built by Paul Disco of Joinery Structures. Mayumi Oda painted it. The idea was to burn it but I think due to global warming rules, they can't. See www.coolingman.org. Photo by Gene de Smidt.

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9-05-06 - Global Warming Blues