Wow, Global Warming could eventually mean the end of the warm jet stream that makes Europe so warm. It could make London like Anchorage (it's at the same latitude)! It could also mean a lot of England goes underwater (as well as New York City, New Orleans, anything within 25 feet of sea level).

While Washington Slept
The Queen of England is afraid. International C.E.O.'s are nervous. And the scientific establishment is loud and clear. If global warming isn't halted, rising sea levels could submerge coastal cities by 2100. So how did this virtual certainty get labeled a "liberal hoax"?
by Mark Hertsgaard

Ten months before Hurricane Katrina left much of New Orleans underwater, Queen Elizabeth II had a private conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair about George W. Bush. The Queen's tradition of meeting once a week with Britain's elected head of government to discuss matters of state—usually on Tuesday evenings in Buckingham Palace and always alone, to ensure maximum confidentiality—goes back to 1952, the year she ascended the throne. In all that time, the contents of those chats rarely if ever leaked.

So it was extraordinary when London's Observer reported, on October 31, 2004, that the Queen had "made a rare intervention in world politics" by telling Blair of "her grave concerns over the White House's stance on global warming." The Observer did not name its sources, but one of them subsequently spoke to Vanity Fair.

"The Queen first of all made it clear that Buckingham Palace would be happy to help raise awareness about the climate problem," says the source, a high-level environmental expert who was briefed about the conversation. "[She was] definitely concerned about the American position and hoped the prime minister could help change [it]."

Press aides for both the Queen and the prime minister declined to comment on the meeting, as is their habit. But days after the Observer story appeared, the Queen indeed raised awareness by presiding over the opening of a British-German conference on climate change, in Berlin. "I might just point out, that's a pretty unusual thing for her to do," says Sir David King, Britain's chief scientific adviser. "She doesn't take part in anything that would be overtly political." King, who has briefed the Queen on climate change, would not comment on the Observer report except to say, "If it were true, it wouldn't surprise me."

With spring arriving in England three weeks earlier than it did 50 years ago, the Queen could now see signs of climate change with her own eyes. Sandringham, her country estate north of London, overlooks Britain's premier bird-watching spot: the vast North Sea wetlands known as the Wash. A lifelong outdoorswoman, the Queen had doubtless observed the V-shaped flocks of pink-footed geese that descend on the Wash every winter. But in recent years, says Mark Avery, conservation director of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, she also would have seen a species new to the area: little egrets. These shiny white birds are native to Southern Europe, Avery says, "but in the last 5 to 10 years they have spread very rapidly to Northern Europe. We can't prove this is because of rising temperatures, but it sure looks like it."

Temperatures are rising, the Queen learned from King and other scientists, because greenhouse gases are trapping heat in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, the most prevalent of such gases, is released whenever fossil fuels are burned or forests catch fire. Global warming, the scientists explained, threatens to raise sea levels as much as three feet by the end of the 21st century, thanks to melting glaciers and swollen oceans. (Water expands when heated.)

This would leave much of eastern England, including areas near Sandringham, underwater. Global warming would also bring more heat waves like the one in the summer of 2003 that killed 31,000 people across Europe. It might even shut down the Gulf Stream, the flow of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico that gives Europe its mild climate. If the Gulf Stream were to halt—and it has already slowed 30 percent since 1992—Europe's temperatures would plunge, agriculture would collapse, London would no longer feel like New York but like Anchorage.

The Queen, says King, "got it" on climate change, and she wasn't alone. "Everyone in this country, from the political parties to the scientific establishment, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to our oil companies and the larger business community, has come to a popular consensus about climate change—a sense of alarm and a conviction that action is needed now, not in the future," says Tony Juniper, executive director of the British arm of the environmental group Friends of the Earth.

Wow, the Queen gets it, but Bush doesn't. Please, let's get someone somewhat rational in office next time? Okay, red staters?
VANITY FAIR : FEATURES : While Washington Slept

Hi Everyone,

This is my first post to my first blog. After a lot of time thinking about creating one I've finally done it! This will serve as a collection of my thoughts and ideas on American identity and politics from my own perspective (for more on me check out my profile). I've called it TiyospayeNow in sort of a wish-fulfillment. Tiyospaye is the Dakota/Nakota/Lakota word for an encampment of tipis wherein a traditional Nakota person would live their entire lives surrounded by family and their lives filled with a sense of purpose. I got this idea from the writings of my great-great aunt, Ella Deloria, a famous Yankton Nakota Sioux ethnologist. My dad is Yankton, I am however, due to my U.S. Federal laws, registered as a Navajo tribal member (my mother's tribe). But I gained a tremendous respect for my dad's people and their ways through the writings of my great-great aunt. I met her only once as a baby crawling around on my grandmother's living room floor. My mother says she entered the house, to my full-blood mother she appeared to be a tall white woman and swept me up in her arms and kissed me full on the lips. As my small town, Midwestern grandmother and aunt watched disapprovingly. "Who kisses babies on the mouth?", they asked, my traditionally-raised mother saw it differently. She believed that this amazing woman had given her daughter some of her spirit and then my great-great aunt said, "This child will grow up to help her people and write great things." Now, I don't know what all this really means, but the overall effect of the story was to leave a big impression on my as a child. Perhaps, yet another self-fulfilling prophecy?

I must also note that I have recently become an atheist, yet have a great deal of respect for my traditions. I do not believe in a personal god, but do feel the traditional Nakota "crying for a vision" ceremony more accurately depicts the relationship we could have with greater spirits than our own. If small beings like us can generate a spirit, surely larger beings can as well? I believe in the miracle of life as it evolved from the smallest organism and stardust. To me this process is surely the greatest miracle. And I view my body and its workings as an amazing thing and a great honor to possess even for so brief a time. As an atheist, I believe that our future depends on human beings as weak as we are to ascribe to greater moral and ethical values not bounded by religion or fundamentalism, but through a basic desire to do good and make the world a safe place.

More on all of this later.