Images by Jock Gill, Peacham, Vermont

And does it matter if our food chain consumes 20% of our fossil fuel budget?

I am currently “digesting” Michael Pollan’s book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, Joe D’Aleo’s “Alternative view of climate change” slide deck from his presentation at the 7th Southern New England weather Conference on October 28th, 2006, and Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. Talk about a lot of moving parts in many dimensions - with many apparent contradictions, ambiguities and uncertainties.

I have just started to blog on this over on Greater Democracy at [permalink]. Download D’Aleo’s slide decks [here].

D’Aleo presents a range of interesting data that does not appear to fit “conveniently” with the dominant global warming theories. He reports, for example, that Mt. Kilamanjoro is actually getting colder as the snows recede. So why are they receding? D’Aleo suggests it is because there is less snow fall to replace the snow that naturally evaporates. And why less snow? Because of variations in sun energy output and cyclical changes in sea conditions.