yep, hard to believe that some people still don't believe in climate change.... here's just a quick overview from the Australian Conservation Foundation...
"What’s causing the problem?
Humans are causing climate change by adding huge amounts of carbon dioxide (C02) and other greenhouse polluting gases to our atmosphere. The biggest source of greenhouse pollution is burning fossil fuels (like coal and oil) for energy.
Why is the planet warming?
Earth is wrapped in a delicately balanced ‘blanket’ of gases. Like a greenhouse in a garden, this insulating layer traps heat from the sun, and sustains life.
Human activities (like burning coal and oil) are adding huge amounts of greenhouse pollution to the atmosphere. The pollution stays in the atmosphere for many decades. Greenhouse pollution is making Earth’s ‘blanket’ unnaturally thick, and this is heating up the planet. This is commonly called global warming. The heat trap is also causing many unusual and dangerous changes to our climate and weather systems, best described as climate change.
• Temperatures have already risen 0.76°C over the past century and there is more than 90% probability that most of this global warming was caused by humans.
• Eleven of the last twelve years (1995-2006) rank among the 12 warmest years on record.
• Melting of glaciers and ice caps is already contributing to sea level rise.
• Many long-term changes in climate have already been observed. These include differences in Arctic temperatures and ice and changes in extreme weather events like droughts, heat waves and tropical cyclones."
we've had the worst heat wave and bushfires in recorded her/his-story this year...
we've got drought and heat-stressed animals... some country towns would actually ask "what's rain???"...
flooding and tropical storms aplenty...
glaciers melting at a fast rate... such beautiful creatures as the polar bear will no longer exist...
humans need to stop adapting the environment to themselves, fix what they've damaged, and start learning to adapt themselves to the environment before it's too late... 'we' are the most destructive species... when will 'we' learn to live in harmony with the world and all the creatures that inhabit it??? 'we' aren't superior in the least... inferior maybe!!!!
I'm going to spend some time with my old girl Allie now... she's 17 (and that's 119 if you take the literal 7 canine years to every 1 human year!!!)... she's been slowly losing her sight over the last few years, but has rapidly lost the tiny bit of vision she had left over the last week and gets disoriented really easily... no doubt old age is catching up with her... but I'm not enamoured of the vet we went to (worse than useless - I won't go into the incompetence, the inability to listen, the lack of empathy, the lack of any physical check - heart, eyes(!), ears, kidneys, etc. etc. - all things affected by, guess what, age!!! - even had to hassle for eye drops and an anti-inflammatory injection - and her eyes were really red - an indication something was going on!!!!)... she seems comfortable enough, but gets a bit distressed when she can't work out where she is - and she walks into things - and she fell off my bed a couple of nights in a row so I dismantled it and we're sleeping on the mattress on the floor at the moment - and she's sleeping a lot more... who knows how much her poor wee old body is deteriorating - heart, brain, everything) - watching her deterioration over the last week I doubt my babe will be with me for much longer... and there's her quality of life to think about - got some sedatives if she gets really distressed (haven't used them yet though)... i can only hope she'll drift off peacefully in her sleep when her time has come - she deserves that... and just thinking about that makes me weep....
