This year alone, we witnessed hundreds of tornadoes in the Midwest and Southeast, record wildfires and massive drought in Texas, massive flooding on the Mississippi River. Record-setting extremes -- heatwaves, tsunamis, floods (not to mention the continuing melting arctic) were reported all over the globe.
At the same time, the scientific community has agreed that greenhouse gasses contribute to global warming and the erratic nature of climate change we are seeing today.
The key factor is the level of carbon in our atmosphere and how it reacts with the myriad of other gasses and conditions which influence climate. Most scientists agree that we are now close to the maximum threshold of carbon "particles per million' in the atmosphere -- meaning that any substantial new carbon emissions beyond the current levels will likely exacerbate relatively sudden, if unpredictable, changes in atmospheric behavior. It's not politics -- it's chemistry and physics. (http://www.350.org has excellent, accessible scientific references to this complex issue).
It is nothing short of absurd, then, to imagine that President Obama is currently considering approval of a massive new fossil-fuel project: The proposed Alberta Tar Sands Keystone XL Pipeline. The project will open up the world's largest pool of underground oil in the world outside of Saudi Arabia, maintain the United States reliance on fossil fuels, and introduce massive new amounts of carbon into our atmosphere.
It is called "the most destructive project on Earth" by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
(Alberta Tar Sands Keystone Pipeline Project, image courtesy of Google)
This project would build a 2,000 mile pipeline stretching from Alberta, Canada, across the entire north-south plane of the U.S., to refineries in Texas.
Few people know about this project. Here are a few basic facts:
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