What American didn't learn how to play "Connect the Dots" as a kid?

The game is simple: Look at all the numbered dots on the page and begin tracing lines between them, one, two, three, and so on. Pretty soon, an image emerges that wasn't clear until you connected the dots. The last 12 months remind me of a game of connect the dots, and global warming is the image that appears more clearly than ever before.

Picture a big map of the United States. The first great big dot appeared one year ago right in the middle of New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina, at her strongest, was a Category 5 storm and even as she weakened upon coming ashore, she devastated a gigantic swath of the Gulf Coast, and nearly wiped out an entire city. Researchers tracking Katrina reported in September that record-high sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico were likely responsible for intensifying the storm.

A few more dots could be placed in the weeks following in places like Lake Charles, La., Biloxi, Miss., and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., thanks to Hurricanes Rita and Wilma. In all, 2005 was one of the worst years for natural disasters in the United States, causing an unprecedented $121 billion in damage, and more than 1,460 deaths.

Farther north, the winter of 2005-2006 brought us additional dots in places such as Cenaiko Lake in Coon Rapids, Minn., and Grafton Lake in upstate New York, where communities had to cancel annual ice fishing derbies because the lakes failed to freeze.

This summer, we've seen dots all over the West, from Texas to California to Wyoming, where wildfires fueled by hot, dry conditions have scorched millions of acres. According to new research released in July, the length of "wildfire season" in the West has increased by 64 percent since the 1970s, matching global warming models that projected earlier springs combined with hotter, drier summer conditions would contribute to longer fire seasons.

Let's not forget the dots many of us could mark on our own sweltering neighborhoods this summer. According to the National Climatic Data Center, the average temperature for the continental United States from January through June 2006 was the warmest first half of any year since records began in 1895. It's likely 2006 will be among the hottest years ever recorded, right up there with 2005 and several of the 1990s.

While no one hot year or severe weather event can be blamed on global warming, scientists tell us these events are indicative of what a changing climate will bring: more intense hurricanes, longer and more severe drought and wildfires, less snow and ice in winter, more heat waves. If this year is any example, global warming is no longer a problem of the future we can comfortably contemplate, promptly ignore and leave for the next generation to address. It is upon us now.

Nearly a year after Hurricane Katrina became one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history, Americans are connecting the dots. A new Zogby poll shows that three-fourths of American voters are more convinced today that global warming is happening than they were two years ago, and nearly two-thirds believe global warming is contributing to more intense hurricanes like Katrina, this summer's heat wave, more frequent drought and less snowfall in parts of the United States.

How many more Katrinas, Ritas or Wilmas does it take before our national leaders address global warming as an urgent threat to the people of this nation? We cannot afford to continue patching our coastlines with expensive Band-Aids. We must address the root cause of the problem and take the necessary measures to protect our country from disaster.

Americans deserve solutions. We deserve leadership. Our children and grandchildren deserve to inherit a healthy, thriving planet. We have an obligation to our generation and a moral responsibility to future generations to address global warming before it's too late.

Al Gore's newest book, An Inconvient Truth, has been on best seller's lists for some time and was recently nominated by 6,000 booksellers and librarians for the Quill Book of the Year award. The Quills, an initiative launched with the support of Reed Business Information and NBC, is an industry-qualified “consumers choice” awards program for books. MSNBC.com is the official voting partner for the Quill Book Awards.

The Quills were established to:

• Celebrate excellence in writing and publishing
• Recognize and praise the writers and illustrators of wonderful books and great literature
• Interest more consumers in acquiring books and reading
• Act as a bellwether for literacy initiatives

Americans are concerned about global warming but not well informed about what we are doing to cause it or how they can help to stop this threat. Reading The Inconvient Truth would be a good way to learn more.  You can encourage more people to read the book by voting for it as the Book of the Year.  Vote online at www.quillsvote.com or at www.quills.msnbc.com through Sept. 30. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13737550/

"The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight."  Theodore Roosevelt

I was thinking of President Roosevelt's good citizen statement when I was pulling the weight of a cart full of eight thousand petitions.

Over eight thousand National Wildlife Members signed personal petitions to urge their members of Congress to stop global warming by legislating a framework that would enable America to cut CO2 emissions by more than half by mid-century.

People who spend time in the out-of-doors see the changes that occurring in our natural world as the temperature goes up.  They want Congress to quit questioning the science and begin addressing this threat before it's too late to stop enormous ecological damage.

To learn what you can do to help stop global warming, read our information sheet.

Download solutions_fact_sheet_81106.pdf

There have been a lot of conversations about the “new green” Wal-Mart since CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. announced that he was transforming Wal-Mart into a green machine. Some skeptics are wondering whether it’s real or not.

Here are my two cents. (1) It’s real! (2) Wal-Mart will drive huge changes in American retail markets.

Since the days of Sam Walton driving his pick-up from store to store, Wal-Mart has been driven by bringing products to consumers at the best prices even if it drives their smaller competitors out of business and takes production to China. In recent years, they have been sharply criticized for their zeal in doing so. Last October Scott announced that he was going to transform the company into a leading edge retail force to eliminate waste, to use and sell renewable energy and offer sustainable products to its customers. Recently, they hosted a global warming presentation by former Vice President Al Gore. Scott and his executive team know that energy will be the big driver controlling price in decades ahead. They understand that if they don’t get a handle on energy usage and carbon footprints, costs will spiral out of control.

Wal-Mart is not stupid.

They are not procrastinating, questioning the science of global warming or lobbying to slow down public policy. Instead, they are listening to the scientists. They see where things are headed so they will re-invent their entire institution to beat others to the gate. My guess is once again Wal-Mart will win and win big.

During the Civil War, General Robert E. Lee made cannons out of blackened logs and marched noisy troops up an down the lines to create an illusion of much greater troop strengths.  It worked. The Pinkerton spies and the press always reported much greater numbers back to the Union forces than actually existed behind Southern lines. During the Second World War, the  U.S. military deployed inflatable decoy trucks and tanks for the purpose of confusing the enemy. 

ExxonMobil is currently using the old military strategy of creating illusion and confusion to win the media battles to stop global warming:

**  Through authoritative sounding institutions, ExxonMobil has funded a bevy of decoy-scientists who are publishing documents on the web that emulate peer-reviewed science to create the illusion that many scientists are challenging the firm conclusions of thousands of peer-reviewed and published global warming studies. 

** Fund third-party surrogates like the Competitive Enterprise Institute to be host organizations for their PR stratagems.   By hiding behind others who appear objective, ExxonMobil advances its secret agenda to confuse the American public and to create cover for a reluctant Administration and support for Congressional inaction and delay. 

**  Through the CEI, they paid for an advertisement that challenges those who want to stop global warming; 

** This week a goofy parody of former Vice President Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, surfaced as a video produced by a self-proclaimed amateur who was in fact not an amateur but an employee of the Republican DCI  Group that has direct ties to ExxonMobil according to Antonio Regalado and Dionne Searcey of The Wall Street Journal.

By the way they handled the Exxon Valdez oil spill damages and failed to address legitimate environmental concerns while spinning an “all clean” message, ExxonMobil long ago demonstrated that it has no ecological foundation or moral compass.  They spin the media message to be what they want it to be on any given day.

By advancing its short-term corporate interests, ExxonMobil is committing crimes against the future of humanity. The failure to act in time will threaten millions of lives from more intensive hurricanes, tornadoes, coastal flooding, forest fires and severe droughts and famines.  By causing a long delay in action, ExxonMobil is bequeathing to our children a damaged and less productive planet from the ravages of global warming.  One day we will lay these deeds at ExxonMobil’s feet.