This article from the BBC is worth a read.
“There was a staggering 22% drop in the sunlight, and that really amazed me” said Dr. Gerry Stanhill, an English scientist working in Israel. Intrigued, he searched records from all around the world, and found the same story almost everywhere he looked. It was only recently, when his conclusions were confirmed by Australian scientists using a completely different method to estimate solar radiation, that climate scientists at last woke up to the reality of global dimming.
The concluding paragraphs offer this startling speculation:
[Continuation of this trend suggests] a temperature rise of 10 degrees Celsius by 2100 could be on the cards, giving the UK a climate like that of North Africa, and rendering many parts of the world uninhabitable.
Whether this data can be extrapolated directly in this fashion or not, the substantial declines light energy reaching the earth being reported from different study groups is certainly likely to spark a new wave of debate.
In my mind, its impossible not to believe that our actions have caused substantial harm to our environment – the question is whether we are on a speeding and unstoppable train, or can we take action in time enough to avoid slamming into a brick wall?
How many of us have turned down our heat, walk or bike more, drive less, consume fewer things, reduce and reuse more? What’s it going to take to get people really committed? Catastrophe first?
There are several problems. The first is the fact that, technically, we don’t know the candidates. We know the principal heads of the lists but we don’t know who exactly will be running. It really is confusing. They aren’t making the lists public because they are afraid the candidates will be assassinated.
Another problem is the selling of ballots. We’re getting our ballots through the people who give out the food rations in the varying areas. The whole family is registered with this person(s) and the ages of the varying family members are known. Many, many, many people are not going to vote. Some of those people are selling their voting cards for up to $400. The word on the street is that these ballots are being bought by people coming in from Iran. They will purchase the ballots, make false IDs (which is ridiculously easy these days) and vote for SCIRI or Daawa candidates. Sunnis are receiving their ballots although they don’t intend to vote, just so that they won’t be sold.
Yet another issue is the fact that on all the voting cards, the gender of the voter, regardless of sex, is labeled “male”. Now, call me insane, but I found this slightly disturbing. Why was that done? Was it some sort of a mistake? Why is the sex on the card anyway? What difference does it make? There are some theories about this. Some are saying that many of the more religiously inclined families won’t want their womenfolk voting so it might be permissible for the head of the family to take the women’s ID and her ballot and do the voting for her. Another theory is that this ‘mistake’ will make things easier for people making fake IDs to vote in place of females.
All of this has given the coming elections a sort of sinister cloak. There is too much mystery involved and too little transparency. It is more than a little bit worrisome. Baghdad Burning