Richard Black reports for the BBC:

A Nasa satellite has documented startling changes in Arctic sea ice cover between 2004 and 2005.
The extent of “perennial” ice – thick ice which remains all year round – declined by 14%, losing an area the size of Pakistan or Turkey.

The last few decades have seen ice cover shrink by about 0.7% per year.
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September 2005 saw the lowest recorded area of ice cover since 1978, when satellite records became available.
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“The change we see between 2004 and 2005 is enormous.” – Son Nghiem

Technorati Tags: Arctic, Climate Change, Ecology, Energy, Global Warming, Ocean, Sea level rise

Wouza. This is great clip.

As reported by a recent poll, nearly half of America still believe the Bush propaganda that Saddam was connected to 9/11. This guy correctly nails the corporate media in their role for allowing this to persist. This is a must watch. Watch Young Turk’s righteous anger over CNN poll (video):

Here’s your red meat for the day. Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks demands that every editor be fired over the fact that half of America still believes 9/11 and Saddam are connected.

For the record, they are not. At all. In any meaningful way.

I could not agree more. The corporate news media have, for many years, served no purpose but to misinform and distract through “entertainment”. Celebrity babies and breakups keep people distracted while the Constitution is shredded. Democracy in America has been nothing but a facade since the founding but even the facade is no longer respected.

Technorati Tags: 9-11, CNN, Democracy, George Bush, Lies, media, Politics, propaganda, Saddam, USA Today, War, Young Turks

Still on the question of choices that we must make, over at Yes Magazine, David Korten discusses another choice before us though he presents it differently and with a greater scope of time than Jonathan.

The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community:

By what name will future generations know our time?

Will they speak in anger and frustration of the time of the Great Unraveling, when profligate consumption exceeded Earth’s capacity to sustain and led to an accelerating wave of collapsing environmental systems, violent competition for what remained of the planet’s resources, and a dramatic dieback of the human population? Or will they look back in joyful celebration on the time of the Great Turning, when their forebears embraced the higher-order potential of their human nature, turned crisis into opportunity, and learned to live in creative partnership with one another and Earth?

A defining choice

We face a defining choice between two contrasting models for organizing human affairs. Give them the generic names Empire and Earth Community. Absent an understanding of the history and implications of this choice, we may squander valuable time and resources on efforts to preserve or mend cultures and institutions that cannot be fixed and must be replaced.

Empire organizes by domination at all levels, from relations among nations to relations among family members. Empire brings fortune to the few, condemns the majority to misery and servitude, suppresses the creative potential of all, and appropriates much of the wealth of human societies to maintain the institutions of domination.

Earth Community, by contrast, organizes by partnership, unleashes the human potential for creative co-operation, and shares resources and surpluses for the good of all. Supporting evidence for the possibilities of Earth Community comes from the findings of quantum physics, evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, anthropology, archaeology, and religious mysticism. It was the human way before Empire; we must make a choice to re-learn how to live by its principles.

Developments distinctive to our time are telling us that Empire has reached the limits of the exploitation that people and Earth will sustain. A mounting perfect economic storm born of a convergence of peak oil, climate change, and an imbalanced U.S. economy dependent on debts it can never repay is poised to bring a dramatic restructuring of every aspect of modern life. We have the power to choose, however, whether the consequences play out as a terminal crisis or an epic opportunity. The Great Turning is not a prophecy. It is a possibility.

Technorati Tags: Agriculture, Antarctica, Arctic, Capitalism, Climate Change, Community, Community Development, Cooperative Living, Cooperatives, Direct Action, Ecology, Empire, Energy, Energy Conservation, Energy Crisis, Extinction, Food, Gardening, Global Warming, Living Simply, Natural, Natural Resources, Oil, Peak Oil, Politics, Self Reliance, Social Ecology, Solar Energy, Suburbia, Sustainable Development

It’s been a month, eh? Thought I’d poke my head out for a looksee. Actually, I was motivated by this movie created by my friend Jonathan over at Irregular Times.

We have a very serious choice to make about our future. It’s a choice I’ve been writing about for a good long while, choice between citizenship or consumer, between responsibility or neglect. As Jonathan puts it:

Yesterday, the President of the United States announced that he has set up a secret system of prisoner of war camps in which people are being interrogated using torture techniques. He also asked the Congress to undo the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, an essential part of the Bill of Rights which guarantees us all the right to confront our accusers when we are put on trial. Bush asked for the right to convict people of crimes using secret evidence that the accused and their lawyers never get to see.

Things are getting very, very frightening here in America. Yet, many Americans don’t seem to care, no matter how much I write about how our government is being transformed into a totalitarian regime.

What will you do?

Technorati Tags: 9-11, Activism, Alberto Gonzales, Bill of Rights, CIA, Constitution, Detention, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Empire, George Bush, Iraq, National Security, NSA, Politics, Security, Torture, US Detention Camps, US Terrorism, War, War Crimes, Wiretaps