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Roseanne Barr to Speak at Chemtrails and Geo-Engineering Conference in Los Angeles and Live Online
Award-winning actress, author, activist, and presidential candidate Roseanne Barr will join weather experts, researchers, journalists and filmmakers to discuss Geo-Engineering based Weather Modification Programs at the Consciousness Beyond Chemtrails Conference & Fundraiser.
http://globalpoliticalawakening.blogspot.com/2012/08/roseanne-barr-to-speak-at-chemtrails.htmlAward-winning actress, author, activist, and presidential candidate Roseanne Barr will... more-
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Global Warming Jokes
Knock knock. Who’s there? No one. No one who? __________ (fill in the blank).-
- coolplanet
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Climate change study forces sceptical scientists to change minds | Environment | The Guardian
The Earth's land has warmed by 1.5C over the past 250 years and "humans are almost entirely the cause", according to a scientific study set up to address climate change sceptics' concerns about whether human-induced global warming is occurring.
Prof Richard Muller, a physicist and climate change sceptic who founded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (Best) project, said he was surprised by the findings. "We were not expecting this, but as scientists, it is our duty to let the evidence change our minds." He added that he now considers himself a "converted sceptic" and his views had undergone a "total turnaround" in a short space of time.
"Our results show that the average temperature of the Earth's land has risen by 2.5F over the past 250 years, including an increase of 1.5 degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases," Muller wrote in an opinion piece for the New York Times.The Earth's land has warmed by 1.5C over the past 250 years and "humans are... more-
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2012 Drought Update | This Is Not Cool by Peter Sinclair
Published on Jul 30, 2012 by yaleclimateforum
The Drought of 2012 rivals the Great Dust Bowl years of the 30s and is coming at a time of melting arctic ice, shrinking ice sheets, and extreme events across the planet, matching the projections of Climate models for global warming.Published on Jul 30, 2012 by yaleclimateforum The Drought of 2012 rivals the Great... more-
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The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic
By Richard A. Muller
Published: July 28, 2012
CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.
My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.
These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming. In its 2007 report, the I.P.C.C. concluded only that most of the warming of the prior 50 years could be attributed to humans. It was possible, according to the I.P.C.C. consensus statement, that the warming before 1956 could be because of changes in solar activity, and that even a substantial part of the more recent warming could be natural.
Our Berkeley Earth approach used sophisticated statistical methods developed largely by our lead scientist, Robert Rohde, which allowed us to determine earth land temperature much further back in time. We carefully studied issues raised by skeptics: biases from urban heating (we duplicated our results using rural data alone), from data selection (prior groups selected fewer than 20 percent of the available temperature stations; we used virtually 100 percent), from poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations and poor ones) and from human intervention and data adjustment (our work is completely automated and hands-off). In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions.
The historic temperature pattern we observed has abrupt dips that match the emissions of known explosive volcanic eruptions; the particulates from such events reflect sunlight, make for beautiful sunsets and cool the earth’s surface for a few years. There are small, rapid variations attributable to El Niño and other ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream; because of such oscillations, the “flattening” of the recent temperature rise that some people claim is not, in our view, statistically significant. What has caused the gradual but systematic rise of two and a half degrees? We tried fitting the shape to simple math functions (exponentials, polynomials), to solar activity and even to rising functions like world population. By far the best match was to the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, measured from atmospheric samples and air trapped in polar ice.
Just as important, our record is long enough that we could search for the fingerprint of solar variability, based on the historical record of sunspots. That fingerprint is absent. Although the I.P.C.C. allowed for the possibility that variations in sunlight could have ended the “Little Ice Age,” a period of cooling from the 14th century to about 1850, our data argues strongly that the temperature rise of the past 250 years cannot be attributed to solar changes. This conclusion is, in retrospect, not too surprising; we’ve learned from satellite measurements that solar activity changes the brightness of the sun very little.
How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect — extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does.
Adding methane, a second greenhouse gas, to our analysis doesn’t change the results. Moreover, our analysis does not depend on large, complex global climate models, the huge computer programs that are notorious for their hidden assumptions and adjustable parameters. Our result is based simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase.
It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I’ve analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn’t changed.
Hurricane Katrina cannot be attributed to global warming. The number of hurricanes hitting the United States has been going down, not up; likewise for intense tornadoes. Polar bears aren’t dying from receding ice, and the Himalayan glaciers aren’t going to melt by 2035. And it’s possible that we are currently no warmer than we were a thousand years ago, during the “Medieval Warm Period” or “Medieval Optimum,” an interval of warm conditions known from historical records and indirect evidence like tree rings. And the recent warm spell in the United States happens to be more than offset by cooling elsewhere in the world, so its link to “global” warming is weaker than tenuous.
The careful analysis by our team is laid out in five scientific papers now online at BerkeleyEarth.org. That site also shows our chart of temperature from 1753 to the present, with its clear fingerprint of volcanoes and carbon dioxide, but containing no component that matches solar activity. Four of our papers have undergone extensive scrutiny by the scientific community, and the newest, a paper with the analysis of the human component, is now posted, along with the data and computer programs used. Such transparency is the heart of the scientific method; if you find our conclusions implausible, tell us of any errors of data or analysis.
What about the future? As carbon dioxide emissions increase, the temperature should continue to rise. I expect the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about one and a half degrees over land in the next 50 years, less if the oceans are included. But if China continues its rapid economic growth (it has averaged 10 percent per year over the last 20 years) and its vast use of coal (it typically adds one new gigawatt per month), then that same warming could take place in less than 20 years.
Science is that narrow realm of knowledge that, in principle, is universally accepted. I embarked on this analysis to answer questions that, to my mind, had not been answered. I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes. Then comes the difficult part: agreeing across the political and diplomatic spectrum about what can and should be done.
Richard A. Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former MacArthur Foundation fellow, is the author, most recently, of “Energy for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines.”By Richard A. Muller Published: July 28, 2012 CALL me a converted skeptic. Three... more-
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Heat Domes & Derechoes
The Summer of 2012 has added a few new words for weather to the American vocabulary. Wikipedia has no definition for Heat Dome (pictured above).
This is the only reference I could find:
“Heat waves form when high pressure aloft (from 10,000–25,000 feet (3,000–7,600 metres) strengthens and remains over a region for several days up to several weeks… Summertime weather patterns are generally slower to change than in winter. As a result, this mid-level high pressure also moves slowly. Under high pressure, the air subsides (sinks) toward the surface. This sinking air acts as a dome capping the atmosphere.”
But unlike a heat wave, which lasts “for several days up to several weeks,” this Heat Dome has lasted for several months, since last March! This was called a “blocking high” when I first began reading about global warming forecasts 30 years ago.
A derecho, which swept a dozen states last month, knocking out power to a half million people, is defined by Wikipedia:
“Derecho (/dəˈreɪtʃoʊ/; Spanish pronunciation: [deˈɾetʃo]; deh-REH-cho) is a widespread, long-lived, straight-line windstorm that is associated with a fast-moving band of severe thunderstorms. Generally, derechos are convection-induced and take on a bow echo form of squall line, forming in an area of wind divergence in the upper levels of the troposphere, within a region of low-level warm air advection and rich low-level moisture. They travel quickly in the direction of movement of their associated storms, similar to an outflow boundary (gust front), except that the wind is sustained and increases in strength behind the front, generally exceeding hurricane-force.”
Hopefully we will not have to learn any more new words for weather this year.The Summer of 2012 has added a few new words for weather to the American vocabulary.... more-
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Storms Threaten Ozone Layer Over U.S., Study Says
Strong summer storms that pump water high into the upper atmosphere pose a threat to the protective ozone layer over the United States, researchers said on Thursday, adding that the risk of damage may increase as the climate warms.
In a study published online by the journal Science, Harvard University scientists reported that some storms send water vapor well into the stratosphere — which is normally drier than a desert — and showed how such events could rapidly set off ozone-destroying reactions with chemicals that remain in the atmosphere from CFCs, the now-banned refrigerant gases.
Ozone helps shield people, animals and crops from damaging ultraviolet rays from the sun. Much of the concern about the ozone layer has focused on Antarctica, where a seasonal hole, or thinning, has been seen for two decades, and the Arctic, where a hole was observed last year. But those regions have almost no population.
A thinning of the ozone layer over the United States during summers could mean an increase in ultraviolet exposure for millions of people and a rise in the incidence of skin cancer, the researchers said.
“This problem now is of deep concern to me,” said James G. Anderson, an atmospheric scientist and the lead author of the study. “I never would have suspected this.”
The findings were based on sound science, he and other experts said, but direct measurements of the impact of water vapor on ozone chemistry are lacking, and much more research is needed.
While there is conclusive evidence that strong storms have sent water vapor as high as 12 miles — through a process called convective injection — and while climate scientists say one effect of global warming is an increase in the intensity and frequency of storms, it is not yet clear if the number of such injection events will rise.
“Nobody understands why this convection can penetrate as deeply as it does,” said Dr. Anderson, who has studied the atmosphere for four decades.
“It’s the union between ozone loss and climate change that is really at the heart of this,” he said, adding that for years he and other scientists had always been careful to keep the two concepts separate. “Now, they’re intimately connected.”
Mario J. Molina, a co-recipient of a Nobel Prize for research in the 1970s that uncovered the link between CFCs and damage to the ozone layer, said the study added “one more worry to the changes that society’s making to the chemical composition of the atmosphere.” Dr. Molina, who was not involved in the work, said the concern was “significant ozone depletion at latitudes where there is a lot of population, in contrast to over the poles.”
The study, which was financed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, focused on the United States because that is where the data was collected. But the researchers pointed out that similar conditions could exist at other midlatitude regions.
Ralph J. Cicerone, an atmospheric scientist and the president of the National Academy of Sciences, who reviewed the study for Science, also called for more research. “One of the really solid parts of this paper is that they’ve taken the chemistry that we know from other atmospheric experiments and lab experiments and put that in the picture,” he said. “The thing to do is do field work now — measure moisture amounts and whether there is any impact around it.”
“The connection with future climate is the most important issue,” Dr. Cicerone said.
Large thunderstorms of the type that occur from the Rockies to the East Coast and over the Atlantic Ocean produce updrafts, as warm moist air accelerates upward and condenses, releasing more heat. In most cases, the updrafts stop at a boundary layer between the lower atmosphere and the stratosphere called the tropopause, often producing flat-topped clouds that resemble anvils. But if there is enough energy in a storm, the updraft can continue on its own momentum, punching through the tropopause and entering the stratosphere, said Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
When Dr. Anderson produced data about five years ago clearly showing these strong injections of water vapor, “I didn’t believe it at first,” Dr. Emanuel said. “But we’ve come to see that the evidence is pretty strong that we do get them.”
At the same time, he added, “we don’t really understand what determines the potential for convection in the atmosphere,” so it is difficult to say what the effect of climate change will be.
“We’re much further along on understanding how hurricanes respond to climate change than normal storms,” Dr. Emanuel said.
CFCs, or chlorofluorocarbons, were banned in the mid-1980s by the international treaty called the Montreal Protocol, but it will take decades for them to be cleansed fully from the atmosphere. It is chlorine from the CFCs that ultimately destroys ozone, upsetting what is normally a balanced system of ozone creation and decay. The chlorine has to undergo a chemical shift in the presence of sunlight that makes it more reactive, and this shift is sensitive to temperature.
Dr. Anderson and his colleagues found that a significant concentration of water vapor raises the air temperature enough in the immediate vicinity to allow the chemical shift, and the ozone-destroying process, to proceed rapidly.
“The rate of these reactions was shocking to us,” Dr. Anderson said. “It’s chemistry that was sitting there, waiting to be revealed.”
Dr. Anderson said that if climate change led to more events in which water was injected well into the stratosphere, the effect on ozone could not be halted. “Because it’s linked to the inexorable addition of CO2 and methane,” he said, “it’s irreversible.”
If CFCs had not been banned, the ozone layer would be in far worse shape than it is. But by showing that CFC-related ozone destruction can occur in conditions other than the cold ones at the poles, the study suggests that the full recovery of the ozone layer may be further off than previously considered.
“The world said, ‘Oh, we’ve controlled the source of CFCs; we can move on to something else,’ ” Dr. Anderson said. “But the destruction of ozone is far more sensitive to water vapor and temperature.”Strong summer storms that pump water high into the upper atmosphere pose a threat to... more-
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Entire Greenland ice sheet undergoes unprecedented levels of melting
Scientists say they are shocked at the unprecedented levels of melting that have taken place on the Greenland ice sheet this month.
http://www.examiner.com/article/entire-greenland-ice-sheet-undergoes-unprecedented-levels-of-meltingScientists say they are shocked at the unprecedented levels of melting that have taken... more-
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Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
July 24, 2012: For several days this month, Greenland's surface ice cover melted over a larger area than at any time in more than 30 years of satellite observations. Nearly the entire ice cover of Greenland, from its thin, low-lying coastal edges to its two-mile-thick center, experienced some degree of melting at its surface, according to measurements from three independent satellites analyzed by NASA and university scientists.
On average in the summer, about half of the surface of Greenland's ice sheet naturally melts. At high elevations, most of that melt water quickly refreezes in place. Near the coast, some of the melt water is retained by the ice sheet and the rest is lost to the ocean. But this year the extent of ice melting at or near the surface jumped dramatically. According to satellite data, an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface thawed at some point in mid-July.
Researchers have not yet determined whether this extensive melt event will affect the overall volume of ice loss this summer and contribute to sea level rise.
"The Greenland ice sheet is a vast area with a varied history of change. This event, combined with other natural but uncommon phenomena, such as the large calving event last week on Petermann Glacier, are part of a complex story," said Tom Wagner, NASA's cryosphere program manager in Washington. "Satellite observations are helping us understand how events like these may relate to one another as well as to the broader climate system."
Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., was analyzing radar data from the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) Oceansat-2 satellite last week when he noticed that most of Greenland appeared to have undergone surface melting on July 12. Nghiem said, "This was so extraordinary that at first I questioned the result: was this real or was it due to a data error?"
Nghiem consulted with Dorothy Hall at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Hall studies the surface temperature of Greenland using the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites. She confirmed that MODIS showed unusually high temperatures and that melt was extensive over the ice sheet surface.
Thomas Mote, a climatologist at the University of Georgia, Athens, Ga; and Marco Tedesco of City University of New York also confirmed the melt seen by Oceansat-2 and MODIS with passive-microwave satellite data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder on a U.S. Air Force meteorological satellite.
The melting spread quickly. Melt maps derived from the three satellites showed that on July 8, about 40 percent of the ice sheet's surface had melted. By July 12, 97 percent had melted.
This extreme melt event coincided with an unusually strong ridge of warm air, or a heat dome, over Greenland. The ridge was one of a series that has dominated Greenland's weather since the end of May. "Each successive ridge has been stronger than the previous one," said Mote. This latest heat dome started to move over Greenland on July 8, and then parked itself over the ice sheet about three days later. By July 16, it had begun to dissipate.
Even the area around Summit Station in central Greenland, which at 2 miles above sea level is near the highest point of the ice sheet, showed signs of melting. Such pronounced melting at Summit and across the ice sheet has not occurred since 1889, according to ice cores analyzed by Kaitlin Keegan at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather station at Summit confirmed air temperatures hovered above or within a degree of freezing for several hours July 11-12.
"Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time," says Lora Koenig, a Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data. "But if we continue to observe melting events like this in upcoming years, it will be worrisome."July 24, 2012: For several days this month, Greenland's surface ice cover melted... more-
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Beijing floods unleash online criticism of government
For 16 hours on Saturday, sheets of unrelenting rain pummeled China’s capital, reportedly the heaviest storm in six decades.
By Sunday, Pan Anjun, deputy chief of the Beijing flood control headquarters, had tallied the damage. The Chinese newswire Xinhua reported that at least 37 people had died in storm-related damage or events, including 25 who drowned, 6 who were trapped in collapsing buildings, 5 who were electrocuted by fallen power lines, and 1 who was struck by lightning. [Reuters reports over 95 people were killed.]
Some 500 flights into or out of Beijing Capital Airport were canceled. Reportedly 736 homes were flooded, and 66,000 residents in the hardest-hit areas had been temporarily located, many from the suburban district of Fangshan. At least 31 roads or bridges had collapsed.
All told, Mr. Pan estimated 2 million people were affected. And many of those have taken to online forums to express anger over what they see as ongoing lack of concern for proper construction amid Beijing's pell-mell growth – as well as for people's needs amid the storm.
On Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media site, some residents suggested that China’s Meteorological Bureau should have alerted Beijingers to potential dangers through text messages sent via China’s giant state-run telecoms, China Mobile and China Unicom. Of greater Beijing’s roughly 20 million people, roughly 95 percent have cellphones.
The impact of the unusual storm was exacerbated by problems in the municipal drainage system. Beijing’s total urban area has doubled in a decade, from about 700 square kilometers (270 sq. mi.) in 2000 to almost 1,400 square kilometers (500 sq. mi.) in 2010.
Many of the city’s newer drains are built to absorb up to 45 millimeters (1.7 inches) of rain per hour, but at several points the volume of Saturday’s storm was much greater.
“When the city hosts big conferences, there are guards at every bridge. But when the big rain comes, there are none,” wrote Dong Lu, the popular sports anchor and commentator.
“We hosted the Asian Games and Olympic Games,” wrote someone on Weibo going by the name Wen. “We spent billions of yuan to do monumental things. But now after after the heavy rains, we discover that we don't know how to build sewers.”
And as another concluded: “The secret of Qingdao, a [coastal] city that not afraid of floods? Its drains were built by Germany.”
Pan, the flood control official, estimated the total cost of damages to be about 10 billion renminbi, or $1.6 billion. More than 13,000 vehicle insurance claims have already poured into the China Insurance Regulatory Commission’s Beijing branch.For 16 hours on Saturday, sheets of unrelenting rain pummeled China’s capital,... more-
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Heavy rainfall leaves many dead in China
The heaviest rain to hit Beijing in six decades has killed at least 37 people and left cars and buses submerged, Chinese state media has reported.
Xinhua news agency said on Sunday more victims of the downpours which battered much of the capital throughout Saturday had been discovered, revising up considerably the number of dead from ten.
More than 500 flights were cancelled at the main airport, the Beijing News reported.
The rain on Saturday night knocked down trees in Beijing and trapped cars and buses in waist-deep water in some areas.
The rainstorms led to the evacuation of more than 50,000 people from their homes in Beijing, mostly from the city's outlying mountainous districts, as up to 46cm (18 inches) of rain lashed some areas, the agency added.
Xinhua quoted the Beijing municipal government as saying 25 of the victims had drowned, six had died when their houses collapsed, one was killed by a lightning strike and five had been electrocuted.
Twenty-two of the bodies have been identified, it added.
The agency had earlier reported the death toll at 10 but said it was expected to rise as numerous people, including rescue workers, were missing.
The government flood control headquarters told AFP news agency damage assessments were ongoing.
Three bodies were recovered in Beijing's mountainous Fangshan region where several landslides were reported, China National Radio reported.
Up to 46cm of rain fell in Fangshan district, the most rain to hit the city in a 14-hour period since records began in 1951, Xinhua said.The heaviest rain to hit Beijing in six decades has killed at least 37 people and left... more-
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Scientists Propose Dumping Hundreds of Tons of Iron into Ocean to ‘Stop Global Warming’
In an attempt to ‘stop global warming’, scientists have been experimenting with dumping several tons of iron into the Antarctic ocean in order to potentially fertilize the development of plankton. Despite raising a multitude of red flags raised from leading scientific organizations and health watch organizations, a new study is now calling for the practice to be even further extended as a worldwide ‘geoengineering’ strategy to alter the climate via dumping hundreds of tons of iron dust into the ocean.
http://globalpoliticalawakening.blogspot.com/2012/07/scientists-propose-dumping-hundreds-of.htmlIn an attempt to ‘stop global warming’, scientists have been experimenting... more-
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On Bark Beetles, Drought and Wildfires
“The consequences are here, now, just as climate scientists predicted. If we fail to take action, many scientists predict ruin for large parts of this country – ruin for large parts of your districts – ruin that lasts 50 generations.”
My Testimony for House Hearing Today on Bark Beetles, Droughts and Wildfires
Oral Testimony of Joseph J. Romm
Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. Thank you for inviting me to testify.
Four score and seven years ago our grandfathers and grandmothers were enjoying life in the roaring 20s.
Now imagine you are in Congress back then and imagine that the nation’s leading scientists are warning that human activity – years of bad land management practices – has left our topsoil vulnerable to the forces of the wind. And that the next time a major drought hits, much of our farmland will turn to dust. Dust in the wind.
YOU WOULD TAKE ACTION.
Over the past two decades, the nation’s leading scientists have issued stronger and stronger warnings that human activity – burning fossil fuels and deforestation – will lead to longer and stronger droughts that dry out topsoil and timber, creating the conditions ripe for multiple, multi-decade Dust Bowls and wildfires.
In fact, we’re already topping Dust Bowl temperatures in many places – and the Earth has warmed only about 1 degree Fahrenheit since the 1930s Dust Bowl. Yet we are poised to warm some 10 degree Fahrenheit this century if we stay on our current path of unrestricted carbon pollution emissions.
I repeat, several studies now project the world may warm 10 degree Fahrenheit this century if we don’t act. And that is the average warming of the globe. Much of our country would see far higher temperatures. The recent heat wave would be considered a pleasantly, cool summer.
Another study looked at mid-century warming of just 2 degrees Fahrenheit. It found that wildfire damage in many of your home states — Utah, Colorado, Idaho, South Dakota, Nevada and Washington – would double, triple, even quadruple from current levels.
Imagine how big the government would have to be to deal with rampant wildfires and with a Dust Bowl choking the bread basket of the world. A lot bigger government than today, for sure.
So of course this great deliberative body is debating various bills to avoid this catastrophe by slashing carbon pollution.
Except it isn’t. We are here discussing bills aimed at “fuels treatment” – a euphemism for cutting down trees and using controlled burns.
Ignoring carbon pollution and focusing instead on fuels treatment to address the epidemic of bark beetles, the epidemic of drought, the epidemic of wildfires is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Or, more precisely, it is like burning some of the deck chairs and removing some of the umbrellas on the Titanic. Same outcome, more time wasted.
As I explained in the journal Nature last year, what we are discussing here today is the single most important question facing the nation: Can we prevent the extreme drought and wildfires ravaging the country today from becoming the new normal?
But the real question — and I am addressing myself to the members of the majority now – is how you want to be remembered. Do you want to be remembered as a Herbert Hoover, who sat by and did nothing in the face of obvious calamity, or as Abraham Lincoln, who took every measure to save the Union?
Lincoln said at Gettysburg “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” That of course wasn’t true. But after testifying to Congress nearly a dozen times since 1995, I am quite convinced that nobody remembers what we say here – and in the case of these bills, everyone will forget what you did here.
Are you Nevil Chamberlain — Or will you be Winston Churchill, who worked tirelessly to warn and prepare Britain for what was coming and told the House of Commons in 1936 “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.”
The consequences are here, now, just as climate scientists predicted.
If we fail to take action, many scientists predict ruin for large parts of this country – ruin for large parts of your districts – ruin that lasts 50 generations. Americans have fought for generations to defend government of the people, by the people, for the people. In the hour of crisis, we need that government to do its job. Now is that hour.
Thank you“The consequences are here, now, just as climate scientists predicted. If we... more-
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Global Warming not Properly Discussed
All said about global warming is true, its man made and a potential disaster. The costs are externalities passed along by the oil companies. That being said it is quite possible to engineer climate cooling at least temporary. Malcolm Bull had an article in the London Review arguing that Global Warming Rate has been slowing due to Sulphate dumping in the air by the Chinese. The rate of temperature increase apparently has been slowing.
Global temperature can be at least temporarily engineered and it is not done due to cost which is large but possible and the fact that major social costs to the rich i.e. Miami
going under water is not happening. Engineering is the only possible cure as nobody is going to do anything to live in a pre-industrial world unelss forced. Also Super Freakonomics has a good discussion of thisAll said about global warming is true, its man made and a potential disaster. The... more-
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Uninformed Gen X unconcerned about climate change
As the United States suffers a summer of record-shattering heat and the UK experiences record summer rainfall, a University of Michigan report finds that Generation X is lukewarm about climate change - uninformed about the causes and unconcerned about the potential dangers.
"Most Generation Xers are surprisingly disengaged, dismissive or doubtful about whether global climate change is happening and they don't spend much time worrying about it," said Jon D. Miller, author of "The Generation X Report."
The new report, the fourth in a continuing series, compares Gen X attitudes about climate change in 2009 and 2011, and describes the levels of concern Gen Xers have about different aspects of climate change, as well as their sources of information on the subject.
"We found a small but statistically significant decline between 2009 and 2011 in the level of attention and concern Generation X adults expressed about climate change," Miller said. "In 2009, about 22 percent said they followed the issue of climate change very or moderately closely. In 2011, only 16 percent said they did so."
Miller directs the Longitudinal Study of American Youth at the U-M Institute for Social Research. The study, funded by the National Science Foundation since 1986, now includes responses from approximately 4,000 Gen Xers—those born between 1961 and 1981, and now between 32 and 52 years of age.
Only about 5 percent of those surveyed in 2011 were alarmed about climate change, and another 18 percent said they were concerned about it. But 66 percent said they aren't sure that global warming is happening, and about 10 percent said they don't believe global warming is actually happening.
"This is an interesting and unexpected profile," Miller said. "Few issues engage a solid majority of adults in our busy and pluralistic society, but the climate issue appears to attract fewer committed activists—on either side—than I would have expected."
Because climate change is such a complex issue, education and scientific knowledge are important factors in explaining levels of concern, Miller said. Adults with more education are more likely to be alarmed and concerned about climate change, he found. And those who scored 90 or above on a 100-point Index of Civic Scientific Literacy also were significantly more likely to be alarmed or concerned than less knowledgeable adults. Still, 12 percent of those who were highly literate scientifically were either dismissive or doubtful about climate change, Miller found. He also found that partisan affiliations predicted attitudes, with nearly half of liberal Democrats alarmed or concerned compared with zero percent of conservative Republicans.
"There are clearly overlapping levels of concern among partisans of both political parties," Miller said. "But for some individuals, partisan loyalties may be helpful in making sense of an otherwise complicated issue."
Given the greater anticipated impact of climate change on future generations, Miller expected that the parents of minor children would be more concerned about the issue than young adults without minor children.
"Not so," he said. "Generation X adults without minor children were slightly more alarmed about climate change than were parents. The difference is small, but it is in the opposite direction than we expected."
Miller found that Gen X adults used a combination of information sources to obtain information on the complex issue of climate change, with talking to friends, co-workers and family members among the most common sources of information.
"Climate change is an extremely complex issue, and many Generation X adults do not see it as an immediate problem that they need to address," Miller said.
"The results of this report suggest that better educated young adults are more likely to recognize the importance of the problem, but that there is a broad awareness of the issue even though many adults prefer to focus on more immediate issues—jobs and schools for their children—than the needs of the next generation. These results will not give great comfort to either those deeply concerned about climate issues or those who are dismissive of the issue."As the United States suffers a summer of record-shattering heat and the UK experiences... more-
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Global Warming's Terrifying New Math
So far, we've raised the average temperature of the planet just under 0.8 degrees Celsius, and that has caused far more damage than most scientists expected.
By Bill McKibben
July 19, 2012 9:35 AM ET
If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven't convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.
Meteorologists reported that this spring was the warmest ever recorded for our nation – in fact, it crushed the old record by so much that it represented the "largest temperature departure from average of any season on record." The same week, Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet's history.
Not that our leaders seemed to notice. Last month the world's nations, meeting in Rio for the 20th-anniversary reprise of a massive 1992 environmental summit, accomplished nothing. Unlike George H.W. Bush, who flew in for the first conclave, Barack Obama didn't even attend. It was "a ghost of the glad, confident meeting 20 years ago," the British journalist George Monbiot wrote; no one paid it much attention, footsteps echoing through the halls "once thronged by multitudes." Since I wrote one of the first books for a general audience about global warming way back in 1989, and since I've spent the intervening decades working ineffectively to slow that warming, I can say with some confidence that we're losing the fight, badly and quickly – losing it because, most of all, we remain in denial about the peril that human civilization is in.
When we think about global warming at all, the arguments tend to be ideological, theological and economic. But to grasp the seriousness of our predicament, you just need to do a little math. For the past year, an easy and powerful bit of arithmetical analysis first published by financial analysts in the U.K. has been making the rounds of environmental conferences and journals, but it hasn't yet broken through to the larger public. This analysis upends most of the conventional political thinking about climate change. And it allows us to understand our precarious – our almost-but-not-quite-finally hopeless – position with three simple numbers.
The First Number: 2° Celsius
If the movie had ended in Hollywood fashion, the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009 would have marked the culmination of the global fight to slow a changing climate. The world's nations had gathered in the December gloom of the Danish capital for what a leading climate economist, Sir Nicholas Stern of Britain, called the "most important gathering since the Second World War, given what is at stake." As Danish energy minister Connie Hedegaard, who presided over the conference, declared at the time: "This is our chance. If we miss it, it could take years before we get a new and better one. If ever."
In the event, of course, we missed it. Copenhagen failed spectacularly. Neither China nor the United States, which between them are responsible for 40 percent of global carbon emissions, was prepared to offer dramatic concessions, and so the conference drifted aimlessly for two weeks until world leaders jetted in for the final day. Amid considerable chaos, President Obama took the lead in drafting a face-saving "Copenhagen Accord" that fooled very few. Its purely voluntary agreements committed no one to anything, and even if countries signaled their intentions to cut carbon emissions, there was no enforcement mechanism. "Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight," an angry Greenpeace official declared, "with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport." Headline writers were equally brutal: COPENHAGEN: THE MUNICH OF OUR TIMES? asked one.
The accord did contain one important number, however. In Paragraph 1, it formally recognized "the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below two degrees Celsius." And in the very next paragraph, it declared that "we agree that deep cuts in global emissions are required... so as to hold the increase in global temperature below two degrees Celsius." By insisting on two degrees – about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit – the accord ratified positions taken earlier in 2009 by the G8, and the so-called Major Economies Forum. It was as conventional as conventional wisdom gets. The number first gained prominence, in fact, at a 1995 climate conference chaired by Angela Merkel, then the German minister of the environment and now the center-right chancellor of the nation.
Some context: So far, we've raised the average temperature of the planet just under 0.8 degrees Celsius, and that has caused far more damage than most scientists expected. (A third of summer sea ice in the Arctic is gone, the oceans are 30 percent more acidic, and since warm air holds more water vapor than cold, the atmosphere over the oceans is a shocking five percent wetter, loading the dice for devastating floods.) Given those impacts, in fact, many scientists have come to think that two degrees is far too lenient a target. "Any number much above one degree involves a gamble," writes Kerry Emanuel of MIT, a leading authority on hurricanes, "and the odds become less and less favorable as the temperature goes up." Thomas Lovejoy, once the World Bank's chief biodiversity adviser, puts it like this: "If we're seeing what we're seeing today at 0.8 degrees Celsius, two degrees is simply too much." NASA scientist James Hansen, the planet's most prominent climatologist, is even blunter: "The target that has been talked about in international negotiations for two degrees of warming is actually a prescription for long-term disaster." At the Copenhagen summit, a spokesman for small island nations warned that many would not survive a two-degree rise: "Some countries will flat-out disappear."
When delegates from developing nations were warned that two degrees would represent a "suicide pact" for drought-stricken Africa, many of them started chanting, "One degree, one Africa."
Despite such well-founded misgivings, political realism bested scientific data, and the world settled on the two-degree target – indeed, it's fair to say that it's the only thing about climate change the world has settled on. All told, 167 countries responsible for more than 87 percent of the world's carbon emissions have signed on to the Copenhagen Accord, endorsing the two-degree target. Only a few dozen countries have rejected it, including Kuwait, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Even the United Arab Emirates, which makes most of its money exporting oil and gas, signed on. The official position of planet Earth at the moment is that we can't raise the temperature more than two degrees Celsius – it's become the bottomest of bottom lines. Two degrees.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719#ixzz216dyGPqaSo far, we've raised the average temperature of the planet just under 0.8 degrees... more-
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Rolling Stone - Global Warming's Terrifying New Math
Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe - and that make clear who the real enemy is.
By Bill McKibben
July 19, 2012 9:35 AM ET
If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven't convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.
Meteorologists reported that this spring was the warmest ever recorded for our nation – in fact, it crushed the old record by so much that it represented the "largest temperature departure from average of any season on record." The same week, Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet's history.
Not that our leaders seemed to notice. Last month the world's nations, meeting in Rio for the 20th-anniversary reprise of a massive 1992 environmental summit, accomplished nothing. Unlike George H.W. Bush, who flew in for the first conclave, Barack Obama didn't even attend. It was "a ghost of the glad, confident meeting 20 years ago," the British journalist George Monbiot wrote; no one paid it much attention, footsteps echoing through the halls "once thronged by multitudes." Since I wrote one of the first books for a general audience about global warming way back in 1989, and since I've spent the intervening decades working ineffectively to slow that warming, I can say with some confidence that we're losing the fight, badly and quickly – losing it because, most of all, we remain in denial about the peril that human civilization is in.
When we think about global warming at all, the arguments tend to be ideological, theological and economic. But to grasp the seriousness of our predicament, you just need to do a little math. For the past year, an easy and powerful bit of arithmetical analysis first published by financial analysts in the U.K. has been making the rounds of environmental conferences and journals, but it hasn't yet broken through to the larger public. This analysis upends most of the conventional political thinking about climate change. And it allows us to understand our precarious – our almost-but-not-quite-finally hopeless – position with three simple numbers.
The First Number: 2° Celsius
If the movie had ended in Hollywood fashion, the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009 would have marked the culmination of the global fight to slow a changing climate. The world's nations had gathered in the December gloom of the Danish capital for what a leading climate economist, Sir Nicholas Stern of Britain, called the "most important gathering since the Second World War, given what is at stake." As Danish energy minister Connie Hedegaard, who presided over the conference, declared at the time: "This is our chance. If we miss it, it could take years before we get a new and better one. If ever."
In the event, of course, we missed it. Copenhagen failed spectacularly. Neither China nor the United States, which between them are responsible for 40 percent of global carbon emissions, was prepared to offer dramatic concessions, and so the conference drifted aimlessly for two weeks until world leaders jetted in for the final day. Amid considerable chaos, President Obama took the lead in drafting a face-saving "Copenhagen Accord" that fooled very few. Its purely voluntary agreements committed no one to anything, and even if countries signaled their intentions to cut carbon emissions, there was no enforcement mechanism. "Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight," an angry Greenpeace official declared, "with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport." Headline writers were equally brutal: COPENHAGEN: THE MUNICH OF OUR TIMES? asked one.
The accord did contain one important number, however. In Paragraph 1, it formally recognized "the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below two degrees Celsius." And in the very next paragraph, it declared that "we agree that deep cuts in global emissions are required... so as to hold the increase in global temperature below two degrees Celsius." By insisting on two degrees – about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit – the accord ratified positions taken earlier in 2009 by the G8, and the so-called Major Economies Forum. It was as conventional as conventional wisdom gets. The number first gained prominence, in fact, at a 1995 climate conference chaired by Angela Merkel, then the German minister of the environment and now the center-right chancellor of the nation.
Some context: So far, we've raised the average temperature of the planet just under 0.8 degrees Celsius, and that has caused far more damage than most scientists expected. (A third of summer sea ice in the Arctic is gone, the oceans are 30 percent more acidic, and since warm air holds more water vapor than cold, the atmosphere over the oceans is a shocking five percent wetter, loading the dice for devastating floods.) Given those impacts, in fact, many scientists have come to think that two degrees is far too lenient a target. "Any number much above one degree involves a gamble," writes Kerry Emanuel of MIT, a leading authority on hurricanes, "and the odds become less and less favorable as the temperature goes up." Thomas Lovejoy, once the World Bank's chief biodiversity adviser, puts it like this: "If we're seeing what we're seeing today at 0.8 degrees Celsius, two degrees is simply too much." NASA scientist James Hansen, the planet's most prominent climatologist, is even blunter: "The target that has been talked about in international negotiations for two degrees of warming is actually a prescription for long-term disaster." At the Copenhagen summit, a spokesman for small island nations warned that many would not survive a two-degree rise: "Some countries will flat-out disappear." When delegates from developing nations were warned that two degrees would represent a "suicide pact" for drought-stricken Africa, many of them started chanting, "One degree, one Africa."
Despite such well-founded misgivings, political realism bested scientific data, and the world settled on the two-degree target – indeed, it's fair to say that it's the only thing about climate change the world has settled on. All told, 167 countries responsible for more than 87 percent of the world's carbon emissions have signed on to the Copenhagen Accord, endorsing the two-degree target. Only a few dozen countries have rejected it, including Kuwait, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Even the United Arab Emirates, which makes most of its money exporting oil and gas, signed on. The official position of planet Earth at the moment is that we can't raise the temperature more than two degrees Celsius – it's become the bottomest of bottom lines. Two degrees.
(click on the link to access all five pages)Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe - and that make clear who the... more-
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Satellite data shows greater Greenland ice melt
Greenland--Greenland's ice sheets are melting extensively, even in some inland areas, according to an image generated from data obtained by a Japanese climate-observation satellite.
Data from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Shizuku satellite shows the ice has been in retreat most noticeably in the southern part of the vast island.
"In the south, ice is melting in many locations, even in inland areas at high altitudes," said Kazuhiro Naoki, who analyzed the satellite data.
In the image, the different hues of blue represent how many days the ice melted. Darker blue indicates where ice melted for longer periods.
The Shizuku satellite, which was carried into space on an H-2A rocket in May, observed the ice sheets between July 3 and 9. The data was analyzed at JAXA's Earth Observation Research Center.
Greenland's ice sheets have been surveyed since 2002. The extent of melting found in the satellite survey was similar to those seen in 2002 and 2007, when widespread melting was observed.
A team of researchers also recently visited Greenland to observe the conditions of the ice firsthand.
On July 16, they surveyed an ice sheet in the northwestern region of the land mass, located at an altitude of 1,500 meters. They found the surface of the ice had melted and become "like sherbet" as temperatures reached 2 degrees.
They also observed rainfall of around 10 centimeters over a three-day period.
Teruo Aoki, senior researcher at the Meteorological Research Institute of the Japan Meteorological Agency who took part in the observations for three weeks, expressed his surprise.
"I had not expected rain to fall there," he said. "The melting was greater than expected."
More at the linkGreenland--Greenland's ice sheets are melting extensively, even in some inland... more-
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Largest National Disaster Area Ever Declared in U.S.
When National Climate Disasters Go Global: On Drought, Food, And Global Insecurity
The national Drought Monitor recently declared abnormally dry conditions or a drought for almost 80% of the contiguous United States, ranging in intensity up to “drought-exceptional.”
Five days ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture followed by declaring disasters in 26 U.S. states. This is the largest national disaster area ever declared.
But while the drought is obviously a serious concern for the U.S. (historically, droughts are the nation’s most costly natural disaster), it also has worrying implications for other countries that are tied to the U.S. through the global food market. Coupled with other recent extreme weather events across the globe, the U.S. drought could have a globally destabilizing influence. And while it is too early to tell exactly why these events are happening, in the way that they are happening, recent reports show that climatic changes are a part of the story.
Record-breaking droughts, and an uncertain climate future
The conditions of this drought are abnormal. The drought happened suddenly - what is called a “flash drought” – because it has occurred over a matter of months, rather than seasons or years. It is associated with record-breaking temperatures, and has been labeled among the worst droughts in U.S. history.
Climate change projections are set to make matters worse. According to NOAA and the Met Office, last year’s drought in Texas was 20 times more likely because of climate change. Furthermore, as temperatures are set to continue increasing, these conditions will become more frequent.
Impact on the global food market
In lieu of the recent drought, the U.S. Department of Agriculture adjusted its prediction for corn yields, the country’s largest export crop, down by 12%. This, and any subsequent adjustments, will likely impact global corn prices, but also meat and dairy prices, as corn is used for animal feed. Meanwhile, beef prices are still high from last year’s drought in Texas.
As a leading exporter of corn and soy, the U.S. is intricately linked to the global food market. Drought and crop failure in the U.S. could spike world food prices and have serious implications for places like Mexico, China, Central America and India, who rely heavily on imports of these crops, as well as animal feed. But this is not the first time that droughts have caused a spike in world food prices. If this drought does lead to a price spike, it will be the fifth such spike in six years.
The security implications of food price spikes
What we’ve also seen is that spikes in world food prices have increased the likelihood of instability and riots. In some instances, crop failure in one part of the world associated with instability halfway around the globe, can contribute to serious diplomatic crises between the U.S. and its allies, as occurred with Egypt, and could conceivably result in U.S. military involvement.
This is part of a larger phenomenon Dr. Troy Sternberg calls “the globalization of hazards,” where natural hazards in one region can have a significant impact on regions halfway across the globe. This is not to say that the current U.S. drought will necessarily lead to unrest. However, it is not unprecedented for droughts, and other climatic events that damage crop production, to do so.
Collective impact of crop failure across the globe
It is also important to consider that the drought and crop failures in the U.S. are not happening in isolation. In recent years, extreme hot and dry weather has forced Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan to reduce their harvest forecasts (and two studies explicitly link the devastating Russian heat wave of 2010 to climate change). European Union wheat yields this year will be smaller, in part, because Spain is suffering from the second worst drought in fifty years. North and South Korea are facing the worst drought in a century.
Shifts in glacial melt and rainfall are threatening crops in Pakistan. The proliferation of locusts throughout West Africa is threatening household food security. Recent floods in Japan, India and Bangladesh are threatening rice crops. Argentina’s soy crops were severely depleted because of a shortage of rain. And in Mali, drought combined with other factorsled to a major humanitarian disaster in the region. The list goes on.
Many of these conditions are record-setting, or the worst of their kind in decades and sometimes centuries. And climate projections threaten to make matters worse. What this means is that it is possible that the global food market is about to witness an unusual amount of stress. It is not entirely clear if the market is prepared for it, or even if nations have the capacity to adequately respond.
Impact on U.S. assistance and diplomacy
Food, for better or worse, is also used as a form of diplomacy. For example, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Food for Peace program has sent 106 million metric tons to the hungry of the world, feeding billions of people and saving countless lives. The program depends on the unparalleled productivity of American farmers and the American agricultural system. Without this vast system there would be no Food for Peace program, or any of the other food assistance programs either run by the U.S. government, or heavily supported by the U.S. such as the UN’s World Food Program.
On average, American food aid provides 60 percent of the world’s food aid, feeding millions of desperately hungry people every year. This means that in addition to facing an increasing risk from lower crop and animal stock yields and global food market shocks, the U.S. may also be limiting its ability to respond rapidly to global disasters, including global food crises. This is bad news for the global poor, and for U.S. diplomacy.
Climate insecurity is a global security threat
In short, climate insecurity is a global security threat. Unprecedented droughts in the U.S., which according to many climate projections are expected to occur more and more often in the future, threaten both national health and global food security, which could lead to significant instability in key strategic regions of the world. The pattern of extreme weather events across the globe compound the problem. The worrying thing is that these conditions could be the new normal.
Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell write for The center For Climate and Security.When National Climate Disasters Go Global: On Drought, Food, And Global Insecurity... more-
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Big Oil's Secret: They Support Global Warming Policy
There was once a company named "Glori Oil" based in Houston, Texas, according to its website, it was:
"a Delaware corporation founded in 2005 to commercialize technology developed by 'The Energy and Resources Institute' (known as TERI). [...]
Our vision is to be the leader in bio-technology solutions to the global oil and gas industry and service provider of choice to both independent and major oil and gas producers. Our mission is delivering state of the art bio-technology solutions to improve and increase recovery from mature oil wells and to solve complex problems associated with the production of oil, gas and water."
http://globalpoliticalawakening.blogspot.com/2012/07/big-oils-secret-they-support-global.htmlThere was once a company named "Glori Oil" based in Houston, Texas,... more-
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