It's confirmed. Not only is the Earth getting warmer - greenhouse effect - but it's getting darker, too. Apparently the dust and pollution particles deflect a significant proportion of sunlight from reaching the earth's surface. So it will be hotter and darker in our future unless we can stop the endless denials of the Bush administration that any of this is happening.
Rumsfeld is quoted as saying the Geneva Convention is open to interpretation.
Yesterday in Poughkeepsie I search for a bike path along the Hudson River. It's a lovely day. No such thing exists on this side. But I spy what looks like a small riverside road on the opposite shore and take the Mid Hudson bridge over to investigate. It turns out to be a rocky gravel path that parallels the train track. It's a horrible ride. I occasionally pass some weekend fishers, so I assume the path leads somewhere... to a little town downriver maybe. But after a few miles of rocks and dust I reach a young man fishing off a ledge and ask him if he's caught anything. "Not yet," he replays, without turning to me. I ask if the road leads somewhere. He half glances at me, then turns away as he replies, "don't think so." I guess they don't care for strangers around here.
I turn up a dirt path away from the river. I can hear chainsaws in the woods. At the top of a hill the dirt path is blocked by oil drums and it empties onto blacktop. A kid on a bike tells me the road doesn't go to the big bridge... then he says "actually, I don't know."
His older brother appears and says I can get to Rt 9 but, to get to the bridge, I have to go all the way to McDonalds. And that sounds like the edge of the known world from his perspective.
