Oil interests are willing to publish any myth and put any amount of money behind anyone who will support their untenable position. – Vinod Kloska

The leadership has got to come to the surface at some point and explain to the people what we're facing. One fact: 65 percent of the oil you use every day in the United States is imported, and you're sending out $1.3 billion a day for that. That oil comes in, and in 24, 25 days, it is burned up in the system in the United States. And what do you get for it? You get 24, 25 days of transportation around the country. Is that worth it? And that's the story of oil around the world. – T. Boone Pickens

I assume that everyone has taken a college level course in Biology, Zoology, etc., and is familiar with terms like Carbon Cycle, Carbon Dioxide, Oxygen, Life and so on.  If not you can click on the links for more information.  When I am able to, I like to stay informed about things that are going on in the world, things in general as well as things that might affect me and those I care about.  This is why I actually read the news from newspapers on the Internet.  To find out what happened on any given day, a newspaper published in any major city in the United States will provide that.  Sometimes however, more detailed information is needed and one has to look a little deeper to find what is required to fully understand something.

I took the photographs with this story on Monday November 24, 2008 on a flight between Rome, Italy and Washington, DC somewhere over the south of France.  The Boeing 767-300 I took the pictures from was at an altitude of about 36,000 feet (>10,000m) and plums of heat can be seen in the images captured.  They rise to a certain altitude and are then picked up by the jet stream.  I'm not certain what the source of this atmospheric phenomenon is but one possibility is a nuclear reactor.  France obtains about 80% of its electricity from nuclear fission plants which can produce intensive atmospheric heat.

Recently Frontline had a story on Global Warming.  It is very good and makes it difficult, very difficult in fact, not to be concerned, whether or not you expect to be around in 2050, and what you are going to do if you are.  The program I'm talking about is a two hour presentation and you can see it here. It is explained there in detail what could happen to the planet if the earth's temperature increases beyond a certain point. To summarize in a few sentences:

Runaway Climate change is defined by most scientists as a point beyond about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit of the planet heating up, or 2 degrees [Celsius]. That's roughly the point at which the world's biological and physical systems take over as primary sources of greenhouse gases and kick off a chain reaction which then continues on its own. So the world has to prevent that point from being reached. What happens is that many of the world's critical systems -- such as the ocean, the forests, the soil -- begin releasing large amounts of greenhouse gas as the planet warms. Take the oceans: The colder a body of water is, the more gas can be dissolved in it. As it warms up, it loses gas. For example, with a bottle of soda, warm it up and the gas bubbles out -- exactly the same happens with the oceans. The warmer oceans get, the more carbon dioxide they release; the more carbon dioxide they release, the warmer they get; and it goes on and on like that in a vicious cycle. The forests and tropical forests, when heated up a little bit, start to die back. Trees are basically sticks of wet carbon. As they die, that carbon is oxidized. It turns to carbon dioxide that causes more temperature rise that kills more trees. The soils are full of bacteria, little bugs which eat all the detritus in the soil. As they warm up, the metabolic rate of the bacteria increases, and they breathe out more; they produce more carbon dioxide. It is a load of effects like this which are called runaway or positive feedback effects -- a process creating more of itself and just accelerating, and goes on accelerating. So that's why, beyond a certain point, which scientists put at roughly 3 to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit of total warming, it gets snatched out of mankind's hands, and it turns into a runaway process which man won't be able to stop.

Again if you or anyone you care about are going to be alive in 2050 and beyond, I suggest that you set aside two hours and look at the Frontline Presentation. 

For all countries to recalibrate their economies to globalism could require adjustments which may not be pleasant.  This may be especially true for the United States however the abundance of resources this country has may allow it to quickly catch up and lead the transition to energy sources that don't endanger the planet.  And I can understand the feelings regarding global warming of those in underdeveloped and developing countries toward the United States and other advanced industrial societies which might simply be stated as "Well it took you 150 years but you broke it, so you fix it."  It just requires the political will to deal with what are critical choices.  Time will tell.