Surely if the writer does not wish to be accused of hypocrisy he should leave the USA with its rapacious banks, industrial military complex and universities filled with departments of death, and go and live in Greece. Given the state of Greek economy and the likelihood that it will be forced to leave the EEC, Greece will no doubt have to undergo a massive devaluation and will only be able to afford a much smaller percentage of the coal, gas and oil it currently imports. The writer given his education and beliefs would then be an excellent leader to help the Greeks transform themselves into the low carbon economy he is seeking.

Only someone with the rosiest possible glasses stuck firmly in front of their eyes could produce a sentence like this one:

>>However, the thoughtless and ungrateful bankers and corporate managers demanding all their money back from Greece forget that without Greece they would still be living in caves.<<

The bankers' "thoughtlessness", Mr Vallianatos, was in the lending.

They totally ignored the fact that they were loaning other people's money to a country so infected with sloth, so indolent, yet at the same time utterly profligate. They epitomised the observation made years ago by Euromoney's Christopher Fildes about the banks themselves, but which applies equally to governments to which those banks lend:

"Giving capital to a bank is like giving a gallon of beer to a drunk: you know what will come of it, but you can't know which wall he will choose"

No mention either, by Mr Vallianatos, on the venality of the government that authorized such borrowing in the first place. What we do get is a massive dose of self-pity for the demise of a great civilization, consumed by greed and sloth.

Not to mention that he gets carried away with his own rhetoric, into the realms of fantasy:

"Like Dark-Age barons, international bankers and members of the industrial-military-academic complex have embraced death in nuclear bombs, genetic engineering, nuclear power plants, industrialized agriculture, perpetual war, and fuelling higher temperature for the planet."

This "parallel" is beyond parody. Name one "Dark-Age baron" that was in a position to bring any of the above to bear, even metaphorically. There was no equivalent to international banking, let alone genetic engineering or nuclear power plants.

Overblown, to the extent that any relationship with the real Dark Ages disappears completely, at which point the entire article becomes meaningless.

Please, encourage all your like-minded colleagues to drink hemlock. And set a good example yourself.

The emergence of a new political party in, of all places, California. The Useful Idiots for Obama

The author makes repeated references to the Dark Ages. In the Dark Ages the climate is known to have been colder than now. It was certainly not the reason for the problems of those times, but the colder climate didn't help. Medieval times were climatically warmer and Europe, in particular, thrived. Life was still brutish and short but the great cathedrals were built.

Climatic conditions are warm again, with many scientists attributing some of the extra warmth to industrial activity, but why should additional warmth on top of what we are experiencing now bring on a new dark age? The writer has left out a couple of steps in his reasoning. The bit about how the world really owes the Greeks a living can be ignored..

In the seventies, in my undergraduate geography class, we learnt that Bangladesh sits on a tectonic plate which is, very slowly, tilting down to the east, so that the Bangladeshi coastline is always sinking, while the Bengali coastline to the west is slowly rising.

Ever since then, I've assumed that anybody who talks about rising sea-levels along the coast of Bangladesh being due to global warming is a charlatan.

Or rising sea-levels in the Nile Delta, now that the Aswan Dam is in place, trapping sediment which would have gone to maintain the Alexandrian lowlands.

Measuring sea-levels by their effects on coast-lines must be a very difficult business, what with some coasts rising with adjustments to the weight of the glacial ice-sheet from the last Ice Age, other coast-lines rising or falling with tectonic movement like Australia's east coast.

To get back to Greece: I wonder how many governments play this Ponzi Scheme: borrow huge amounts to curry favour with the electorate, wink at tax evasion, leave the debt to the next government and then whinge about greedy foreign banks when they want 'their' (i.e. our) money back.

There is an easy solution to Greece's woes: all those who think that lending to Greece without much prospect of getting their money back is some sort of progressive politics, please do so, urgently and enthusiastically.

Joe

Yeah.
I'd have to say this is the kind of article that gives the so-called 'alarmist' side of the AGW debate a bad name.
But then, what can one expect from the religious right/left/confused.

"After all, we know that the burning of petroleum, coal, and natural gas is primarily responsible for global warming."

We don't, of course, know anything of the sort, because we have no hard evidence that 'global warming' is related to CO2 levels or that it has continued after the year 2000. Antarctic sea ice coverage is headed for record levels and Arctic ice is well above its normal lows. Even the warmistas admit that there has been 'no significant warming' for ten years.

Enjoy the flow of funds from panic-stricken politicians and members of the public while you can -- it surely can't last much longer.

Jon J,

http://www.skepticalscience.com/arctic-antarctic-sea-ice.htm

"Arctic sea ice loss is three times greater than Antarctic sea ice gain."

This is the Bill McKibben, the man the author praises lavishly in his article.

The video below is a form of tragic comedy.

Repeat after me...I,(insert name here) am a mindless ideologue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13S5uqPLJUk

The author's capacity to blame everyone but the Greeks for the mess Greece is in knows no bounds.

Here is Matthew Lynn’s take on the Greek crisis, which I suspect is nearer the mark:

Greece “cheated and lied its way into the single currency. It had gone on a massive borrowing spree to cover up the inefficiencies of its economy. When it was offered the chance to reform itself, it had rejected that option and instead chose for itself a socialist prime minister who peddled the easy line that the country could simply carry on spending other people’s money to get itself out of trouble.”

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=yfeDMsIY00oC&pg=PA125&lpg=PA125&dq=bust+%22matthew+lynn%22+greece+%22cheated+and+lied%22&source=bl&ots=NFvAwggHJc&sig=KygqHuNPcTZGEXPlk7jz4N994Bg&hl=en&ei=DjPoTtDYFYqUiQfr8MTaCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Joe, how fast and by what amount do you think the tectonic plates are moving?

Hi Bonmot,

I don't know how fast the bloc is moving, or tilting, (as well as butting up against and under the Himalayas) but this from Wikipedia:

"A 1990 study noted "There is no evidence that environmental degradation in the Himalayas or a 'greenhouse'-induced rise in sea level have aggravated floods in Bangladesh."[10] The Bengal Basin is slowly tilting towards the east due to neo-tectonic movement."

And this from http://hssen-hssen-coastalmanagement.blogspot.com/2010/09/river-ganga-ecology.html:

"Due to neo-tectonic movement during 16th to 18th century the Bengal basin had tilted easterly along a hinge zone starting from Sagar (Indian Sundarbans) to north of Malda (West Bengal, India), finally curving towards Dhaka (Bangladesh).
"As a result of this, the flow of Ganga river started coursing through the river Padma in Bangladesh leaving Hugli with the erstwhile course as a mere tidal channel.
"During 16th – 18th century innumerable distributaries were generated from Ganga which formed huge network of creeks and channels within Sundarbans delta and other parts of TDA in both India and Bangladesh and many of them now act as brackish water channels."

So subsidence somewhat pre-dates global warming.

But just to confuse us, check the effects of an earthquake in the late eighteenth century on http://www.banglapedia.org/httpdocs/HT/B_0615.HTM:

" .... By the beginning of the 19th century its (the Brahmaputra) bed had risen due to tectonic movement of the Madhupur tract and it found an outlet farther west along its present course.... "

The new dark age has been initiated by the environmentalists and the banksters who want the ETS derivative scams.The Greens are financed by the Rothchilds.

Joe I've not been able to find figures for the vertical component of movement. Horizontal movement seem to be 5 to 6 cm a year.

Some of the links I skimmed
http://geology-book.blogspot.com/2010/06/bangladesh-tectonic-system.html

http://resources.metapress.com/pdf-preview.axd?code=t748u41987323671&size=largest

http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/07/13/lurking-under-bangladesh-the-next-great-earthquake/

http://www.banglapedia.org/httpdocs/HT/E_0002.HTM

From Wikipedia and stats on the rate of rise in the oceans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise "Global average sea level rose at an average rate of around 1.8 mm per year over 1961 to 2003 and at an average rate of about 3.1 mm per year from 1993 to 2003"

Without clear figures on the vertical component of the tectonic shifts affecting Bangladesh it's difficult to be certain but with a stated horizontal movement of 5 to 6 cm a year it seems unlikely that rising sea levels caused by global warming is the best reason to move off the flood plains of Bangladesh.

R0bert

Dark Ages? Caves?...is that the smell of burning cakes and smoke from mighty Islamic minds grinding over one's and zeroes?
Cliche upon cliche...of course,according to smart Alecs like the author Western Europeans were all sitting in the dirt picking their noses while the Greeks became Ottoman Turks and caused yet another empire, Byzantium, to cave in around them.

The so called "Dark Ages" were the flowering of post Roman European culture, few know of the achievements of Clovis, Dagobert and the iron fisted Charles Martel, grandfather of Charlemagne.

The unification of Germanic and Roman law was, to be sure a painful process but the Gothic cathedral, the high middle ages and the Renaissance were the results.
They also had the sense to end the "unhelpful" Greek and Jewish slavers, merchants and other assorted heretics, deviants and troublemakers out of Aquitania before they could drag Western Christendom back down into the mire from which they were trying to extricate themselves.
If we're entering a "New Dark Age" then those of us with Southern birth but Northern hearts might smile, rejoice even.
The self hating Whites may get their wish, we "Genocidal Colonists" might all pack up and move back to our ancestral homelands and leave them to their rainbow nations.

Arjay - "The Greens are financed by the Rothchilds"
and of course by other billionaires such as Rockerfeller and a number of others.

I wonder how many people know this? It is interesting to reason out why billionaires want to fund the anti-capitalist, anti-growth lobby Green lobby. Think about it...

Heres a clue:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/transport/8818995/Billionaires-to-be-given-free-carbon-allowances-to-offset-green-tax-on-private-jets.html

Correct! The answer is that WE will pay and THEY will profit by being granted exemptions and through siphoning off carbon tax/ETS money through Carbon exchanges which they now own.

Thanks for that link Joe, albeit the 1990 bit is well, a bit dated. I think RObert's links especially informative. It certainly seems like Bangladesh is going to cop it, from all directions.

Their floods from increasingly moisture laden air and Himilayan ice melt can only exacerbate their problems - China know this and I'm sure they do too. Moreover, a Tsunami caused by a not too distant earthquake would be a disaster of epic proportions.

So much so that the pressures put on neighbouring countries to house "refugees" have the potential to strain diplomatic relations so much so as to define a new (or another) security threat - particularly when you consider the number of people that may be affected.

Obviously, a lot more research is required to get a better handle on it all, from all types - oceanographers, geologists & geographers, glaciologists, engineers, NASA, climatologists, agronomists, etc. Whoops, there goes another gravy train :) Perhaps it's best to just let things be ... poor fellows their country :(

Atman the super elites who are the 0.0001% want it all.They were urged on by scientists in the 1980's who had us all convinced that AGW was actually happening and we as a species was doomed.

By the mid 90's the science no longer supported their theories.The ship of AGW doom would not be turned around.There was too much money to be made.

"The ship of AGW doom would not be turned around.There was too much money to be made."

Yes, but the ship is sinking. If we can avoid a legally binding treaty and follow Canada's lead and get rid of the Labor Govt and the Carbon Tax we might escape having to pay too much. Its interesting to note that the head of the CSIRO Megan Clark is a former Rothschild Bank Director and owns her own carbon sequestration company,Cradle Mountain Carbon Pty Ltd. The company owns land which they intend to use as part of the carbon credits system yet she denies any conflict of interest.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/csiro-denies-its-head-megan-clark-has-any-conflict-of-interest-over-carbon-store-role/story-fn59niix-1226170818106

Where's the 'investigative' ABC now?

Sorry, Bonmot, this article is much more recent:

http://www.ajol.info/index.php/ejesm/article/viewFile/71627/60589

On page 15: "Because of the ongoing
collision of the Burmese plate overriding the eastern
margin of the Indian continent and its adjacent
oceanic crust, the Bengal Basin has been subsiding
since the Eocene (Alam, 2003)."

Bangladesh is in a zone of tectonic complexity - there could even be some regional uplift going on as a result of the retreat of the glacial sheets after the Ice Age. So the lesson is that one should be circumspect and careful making statements about sea-level rise - there are many other factors involved, many of them anthropogenic.

Thanks Joe, seems like Bangladesh is going to cop it from all directions :(