its heatin up (it rining in LA in june!)

Healing Our World: Weekly Comment

By Jackie Alan Giuliano,
Ph.D.

The Earth Is Heating Up
Despite the Lies

Hold on to what is good
even if it is
a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe
even if it is
a tree which stands by
itself.
Hold on to what you must do
even if it is
a long way from here.
Hold on to life even when
it is easier letting go.
Hold on to my hand even when

I have gone away from you.
-- Nancy Wood

I have become really tired
over the years of presenting the �other side� when discussing global
warming
with students or the public.
While I knew that the vast majority of climate scientists are convinced
that the
Earth�s temperature is
increasing due to a build up of greenhouse gases from human activities,
the news
media regularly reported
that there were scientists who claimed it wasn�t true. I dutifully
presented both
sides. But recently, I
learned that even I was duped by a carefully orchestrated effort to
convince the media
and the pubic that there was
division among global warming researchers.

It turns out that major
energy companies were underwriting a pre-planned and well funded
campaign to lie
to us all. And the Bush
administration joined the ranks of the deceivers this week when the
Environmental
Protection Agency was
directed to eliminate a long section describing the risks from rising
global
temperatures from a soon to
be released report on the state of the environment.

John C. Topping, Jr. has
been president of the Climate Institute since its founding in 1986.
(Photo courtesy Penn State)

John C. Topping, Jr.,
president of the Climate Institute and a former Republican staff
director of the Office of
Air and Radiation of the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, told the Cox News
Service earlier this month that some energy companies
devised a plan to attack the
credibility of climate science in the late 1980s. Playing off
the news media�s tendency to
include both sides of an issue - and not looking too
closely at the details - the
companies were able to create the impression that scientists
were deeply divided over
whether or not global warming existed. Topping said, �It
was all very shrewdly done.�

As a result of this
manipulation of the news media, further fueled by most mainstream
reporters� lack of
critical examination of the
issues, people were led to believe that science was still unsure of the
cause of
global temperature
increases.

The truth is that most
climate scientists have thought for a long time that the significant
rise in the Earth�s
global temperature that came
to light in the 1980s is due to the buildup of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere, largely from the
burning of fossil fuels. Many of the scientists who dispute the validity
of
global warming have deep
ties to energy industries.

A recent study challenging
global warming was underwritten by the American Petroleum Institute. Two
of
the study�s five authors
have ties to the coal and gas industries. Two others are senior
scientists with an
organization supported by
ExxonMobil Corporation.

In the book �The Heat is
On,� author Ross Gelbspan writes, �The contradictory statements of a
tiny handful
of discredited scientists,
funded by big coal and big oil, represent a deliberate ? and extremely
reckless ?
campaign of deception and
disinformation.�

Modern science represents
itself as universal, value free and able to arrive at objective
conclusions about
life. Yet how can any
endeavor be free of judgment and completely objective, especially when
politics and
business interests
interfere?

Melting glacier in the North Cascade Mountains of Washington

State (Photo courtesy North Cascade Glacier Climate Project)

Even if a research program is free of political and industrial

entanglements, studies have shown that a researcher will

nearly always observe data and draw conclusions that fit

within the boundaries of her or his expectations. After all,

humans are thinking, feeling, and subjective beings. Add to

this dynamic political maneuvering and payoffs, and

scientific investigation no longer becomes the purveyor of

objective truth.

Vandana Shiva, a theoretical physicist and feminist scholar
from India, observes that
modern science claims to be a liberating force for humanity as a whole.
Yet
worldwide experiences do not
support this claim.

Science and technology are
used throughout the globe as a political and economic force to bring
lesser
developed countries up to
North American standards. In these developing countries, in order to
support this
new set of values brought
about by these supposed improvements, the separation from the natural
world
must, sadly, increase. For
example, healthy, productive land is cleared for cattle ranches, the
consumption
of meat increases, and the
production of local food ceases as production efforts are deflected to
exportable
goods.

Cancers that have been
unknown until now in the lesser developed countries are on the rise as
peoples'
lifestyles shift towards
high animal protein diets and the abuse of substances such as caffeine
and tobacco.
The increase in stress that
accompanies a more consumer oriented lifestyle, the quest for the
"American
Dream," results in higher
blood pressure and an increase in circulatory diseases such as heart
attacks and
strokes which, together,
kill 15.3 million people a year.

The World Health
Organization (WHO) confirms that shifts in the lifestyles of the
industrialized world,
made possible by scientific
and technological advances, have dramatically impacted the health of the
world.
Diseases of affluence are
now rampant in developing countries, as they are in the West, and WHO
estimates
that cancers from these
diseases will rise a remarkable 40 percent by the year 2020.

The mainstream news media
seems dedicated to promoting an ideal that may have never existed - that

science is absolute and
objective. With the recent revelations of journalistic fraud, and the
lack of oversight
by editors of very well
known news organizations, it is not too hard to conclude that the
assumptions we
have been making about our
world based on news reporting by these organizations will need
reassessment.

Since the scientific
revolution in the 1600s, people in the developed nations of the Earth
have walked
inexorably down a path
towards reliance on technological solutions to life's choices. These
technological
solutions have inevitably
involved the creation of huge amounts of chemicals and materials that we
now
know to be toxic, and the
need for their disposal.

Oil refinery in Teesport,
England (Photo courtesy FreeFoto)

Yet we do not choose to stop
using substances that we
know cause harm. Those who
lead our industrial complex
and those political leaders
who support economic health
over human and ecosystem
health have chosen instead to
continue producing and
disposing of toxic substances in
our air, water, and soil.

Even the concept of disposal
is flawed and fallacious -
there is no place for our
toxic trash to go except here on
our Earth, dispersed in our
air or buried or dumped
among its inhabitants.

There is no such place as
"away." Everything is still in our backyard or someone else's backyard.
The
inescapable web of life
brings us into daily contact with these substances, and with their life
threatening
effects.

But everything is OK, isn't
it? So many people are tired of all the talk of doom and gloom.
Everything is
going to work out, most
hope. That is certainly a very safe and comfortable belief.

But the danger of such a
belief is that we fall into what I call the Lullaby of Misplaced
Responsibility.
When we do not wish to
examine the dark side that naturally accompanies the activities of our
greed based
society, then we won't want
to take responsibility for any of the consequences, whether intended or
unintended.

I believe that all will be
all right, too - eventually, but only after much hardship and darkness,
and only if
we the people force our eyes
open.

The effects of these toxic
practices on our world and our health can no longer be debated as they
were when
Rachel Carson published
Silent Spring in 1962 and awakened the world to the folly of ignoring
the
interconnectedness of all
life.

Eight generations have now
grown up in a world where toxic substances have made their way deep into
the
webs of our lives and of our
planet. Many thousands of generations of animal, insect, bird, and plant
life
have felt the magnifying
effects of toxic exposure. We have consumed many of these toxics in our
foods.

Global warming is real.
Pesticide poisoning is real. The greed and corruption of many of our
political
leaders is real. We have to
stop denying and hoping that the worst is not possible and begin facing
the
realities of our world. The
idea of there being two sides to every issue has been overstated and
abused. Look
into your heart, past the
social conditioning and the fears, and see the truth.

RESOURCES

1. See an article about the
energy industry ties of global warming researchers at:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/124642_warming02.html

2. Check out the Climate
Institute at: http://www.climate.org

3. Learn about Ross
Gelbspan�s book at: http://www.heatisonline.org

4. Keep the media under
control with the help of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting at:
http://www.fair.org/

5. Get help watching the
media from the Center for Media and Democracy at:

http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/index.html

6. Find out who your
Congressional representatives are and e-mail them. Tell them it is time
to put
planetary health ahead of
greed and self-interest. If you know your Zip code, you can find them
at:

http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html

7. Get a very different
perspective on the news from: http://www.indymedia.org/

{Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.
is a writer and teacher in Seattle and the author of "Healing Our
World," A
Journey from the Darkness
Into the Light," available at:
http://www.xlibris.com/HealingOurWorld.html and
�Of This Earth, Reflections
on Connections,� available at: http://ofthisearth.org. Please send your
thoughts,
comments, and visions to him
at: jackie@... and visit his website at:

http://www.healingourworld.com}
-- -Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
http://www.anaphoria.com
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