Epistemic Ingemination

:: Art, Science, Politics, Humor, Geekery: Randy Kirchhof's Weblog

NOTE: this blog is no longer active as of 12/07. New one: http://blog.kirchhof.com

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

Home Page MySpace Page Shelfari Page Tips, Rants, etc: E-mail Randy

Tue, 25 Jul 2006

Occasionally I read something that drives a point home in a way that nothing else has to date. This morning is such a time.

The scariest thing that I've seen in a long, long time. The Amazon rain forest is in a protracted drought, and quote possibly on its way to becoming a desert. Not in the next thousand years or something like that. Perhaps in the next thousand days. If it comes to pass, it could release as much as 90 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere, with immediate, irreversible, and catastrophic results.

The article uses the phrase "world becoming uninhabitable." And these aren't wild-eyed tree huggers. These are the scientists at Woods Hole, one of the most respected research labs in the world.

Looks like mother Earth may be getting ready to get rid of most of us like a bad case of fleas. We may have destroyed our home already.

Addendum: that article is now for-fee. Here are some other links to the same subject:

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/themix/39493/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4344310.stm

http://www.welt.de/z/plog/blog.php/the_free_west/the_free_wests_weblog/2006/07/23/amazon_desert

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2005/10/amazon_drought_.html

Posted at 09:55 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink] [Reload all] [E-mail]