Jamais Cascio discusses the possibility of states getting into a Cold War-like situation over who can adapt to global warming fastest. Eerily plausible. And I don’t think the United States would be anywhere near the top of the pile.

What happens if global efforts to set and abide by strong carbon emissions cuts fail?

The standard answer to a question like this is that “we all suffer.” While that’s probably true, it misses the point—we may all suffer, but we don’t all suffer equally. Some nations will be hit harder by storms or droughts than others; some nations will have the resources and technologies to adapt better than others. And therein lies the potential for what may end up as a nasty tool of international competition.

There is, I believe, a non-zero chance that an extended period of climate instability could induce a state that believes itself to be better able to adapt to global warming to slow its efforts to decarbonize in order to gain a lead over its more vulnerable rivals.

(Open the Future: A Cold War Over Warming)

(Check out my interview with Jamais Cascio on the future of green business here.)

File under “terrifying shit which will keep you up at night for weeks on end.” More Americans believe in the existence of guardian angels than the role of humans in global warming. I’m so glad we have our heads on right as a nation.

More Americans believe in guardian angels than humans’ role in global warming, according to recent polls.

A Pew poll released late last month found that just 36 percent of Americans believe humans are responsible for accelerating global climate change, which scientists say mushroomed after the industrial revolution due to humans’ dependence on carbon-based fuels.

(The Raw Story: More Americans believe in angels than humans’ role in global warming)

As the Copenhagen Talks begin, a massive problem rears its head: The Himalayas, one of the world’s primary sources of fresh water (as well as spiritual weirdness), are under threat from global warming. The Himalayan glaciers that store the world’s waters are melting. As if China’s Three Gorges Dam project wasn’t enough, now this?

Way above us in the Himalayan cloud are jagged, snowbound peaks ?

Mary Hagedorn is coral’s guardian angel. She’s a Smithsonian scientist heading up an effort to cryopreserve coral reef genetic data, so that if reefs are ever wiped out (and they look to be headed that way quick), we’ll be able to regrow them. Reefs are quite literally the lungs of the planet; crucial for filtering the air that we breathe and keeping the oceans stocked with life. Without them we would be done for. Yet, astoundingly, this woman is running her operation on personal credit card debt because the Smithsonian can’t properly fund her.

Check out this website I wrote to help raise money for her. These are the kind of people who change the world, and it’s those tiny PayPal donations that are what keep them going, for all of us.

(Help Mary Save Coral)

 
An industry not known for giving freebies—ever—has decided to offer its services gratis, just in time for the COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen. When Copenhagen’s mayor, Ritt Bjerregaard, sent off a message to local hotels urging them not to assist hotel guests in town for the event hooking up with… well… hookers, the pros struck back.

The postcards the city council sent read, in part: “Dear hotel owner, we would like to urge you not to arrange contacts between hotel guests and prostitutes.” The local prostitutes became furious, protesting that the council had no right to interfere with them plying their perfectly legal—and the world’s oldest—profession.

From Der Spiegel:

“This is sheer discrimination. Ritt Bjerregaard is abusing her position as Lord Mayor in using her power to prevent us carrying out our perfectly legal job. I don’t understand how she can be allowed to contact people in this way,” SIO Spokeswoman Susanne M?ɬ?ller tells avisen.dk.

M?ɬ?ller adds that it is reprehensible and unfair that Copenhagen politicians have chosen to use the UN Climate Summit as a platform [to target] sex workers.

“But they’ve done it and we have to defend ourselves,” M?ɬ?ller says.

 
Some astounding images of melting Antarctic icebergs.  In them, you can see the stripes that were formed over time as layers of snow reacted with various ocean conditions.  Thanks for the cool pix, global warming!
 

 
Via Daily Cognition: Striped Antarctic Icebergs