tagged w/ Global Warming
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As many as 27 states could hit record-breaking temperatures today. Some highs in parts of the Midwest are expected to climb close to 100 degrees.
By Olivia Katrandjian
May 27, 2012 9:46am
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/05/scorching-temps-rain-wildfires-plague-memorial-day-weekend/
Indy 500 race fans today will endure record-breaking heat, with temperatures expected to exceed the mid-90′s, as harsh weather upsets Memorial Day weekend plans across the U.S.
Doctors are on standby at 15 first aid stations set up at the race in Indianapolis. There are also 78 misting stations and even cooling buses so people can take breaks in an air conditioned environment. Doctors expect to treat at least 1,200 people. Fans are encouraged to drink lots of water and go easy on beer and caffeinated drinks.
The heat wave is expected to hit about half the nation today, from Washington D.C. to Texas to Massachusetts. As many as 27 states could hit record-breaking temperatures today. Some highs in parts of the Midwest are expected to climb close to 100 degrees.
As people flock to the beaches this Memorial Day weekend, swimmers are warned to be wary of dangerous rip currents caused by sub-tropical storm Beryl, which led to at least 100 rescues Saturday.
“I couldn’t move anywhere. Like I felt like I was in a concrete shell,” said Rhyki Puma, who was swimming at Daytona Beach.
The Atlantic coast, from central Florida to southern South Carolina, could be hit with several inches of rain today as Beryl approaches the coastline. The storm is expected to make landfall tonight or Monday morning.
Jacksonville, Fla., Mayor Alvin Brown encouraged everyone to stay out of the water and indoors.
“This storm has the ability to do produce localized flooding, downed trees and downed power lines that can pose a threat to public safety,” Brown said.
“There are no mandatory evacuations. However, we are encouraging residents living in low lying areas on boats to consider seeking shelter,” he added.
In addition to scorching temperatures and rough waters, wildfires are spreading through 11 states. The Michigan governor declared a state of emergency there, where an uncontained wildfires has burned more than 21,000 acres so far.As many as 27 states could hit record-breaking temperatures today. Some highs in parts... more
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“The most prominent advocates of global warming are not scientists, they are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”
Recently, the Heartland Institute, a hotbed of Climate Contrarianism, posted a billboard near a Chicago freeway. The Billboard suggested that those who accept mainstream science in regard to climate change, are like Ted Kaczinsky, the Unabomber.
Heartland promised to follow up with similar billboards featuring Fidel Castro, Osama Bin Laden, and Charles Manson.
When a scathing barrage of internet protests and parodies went viral, Heartland was forced to withdraw the billboard, and post a defense on its website. Even then, they continued to maintain that "the most prominent advocates of global warming are not scientists, they are murderers, tyrants, and madmen."“The most prominent advocates of global warming are not scientists, they are... more
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China spurred a jump in global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to their highest ever recorded level in 2011, offsetting falls in the United States and Europe, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday.
CO2 emissions rose by 3.2 percent last year to 31.6 billion metric tons (34.83 billion tons), preliminary estimates from the Paris-based IEA showed.
China, the world's biggest emitter of CO2, made the largest contribution to the global rise, its emissions increasing by 9.3 percent, the body said, driven mainly by higher coal use.
"When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius (by 2050), which would have devastating consequences for the planet," Fatih Birol, IEA's chief economist told Reuters.
Scientists say ensuring global average temperatures this century do not rise more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is needed to limit devastating climate effects like crop failure and melting glaciers.
They believe that is only possible if emission levels are kept to around 44 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2020.
Negotiators from over 180 nations are meeting in Bonn, Germany, until Friday to work towards getting a new global climate pact signed by 2015.
The aim is to ensure ambitious emissions cuts are made after the Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of this year.
Procedural wrangling and a reluctance to raise ambitions to cut emissions due to economic constraints is threatening progress, however. (ID:nL5E8GLCRU]
"I think it would be unrealistic to think that there will be major breakthroughs very soon," Birol said.
"Climate change is sliding down in the international policy agenda, which is definitely a worrying trend."
More at the linkChina spurred a jump in global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to their highest ever... more
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SHOPS and restaurants could face fines up to $1.1 million if waiters or sales staff wrongly blame the carbon tax for price rises or exaggerate the impact.
And households are being warned to watch out for telephone scammers offering to deposit carbon tax compensation into their bank accounts.
The prices watchdog, the ACCC, will today launch its countdown to the July 1 carbon tax with a special focus on helping small businesses understand their obligations and consumers to be vigilant for false claims.
ACCC deputy chairman Dr Michael Schaper told the Herald Sun companies were entitled to increase their prices and did not have to justify or explain why.
"It is business as usual,'' Dr Schaper said.
But if they blamed the carbon tax they must be able to prove it and not use it as a cover for other price increases related to wages, rent or stock.
"If a business claims that a price is linked to the carbon price, that claim must be truthful and have a reasonable basis,'' he said.
Dr Schaper said the warning applied to comments made by staff over the phone, on the shop floor or in meetings.
It also covers advertising, product labels, websites, invoices, contracts and contract negotiationsSHOPS and restaurants could face fines up to $1.1 million if waiters or sales staff... more
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By James Hansen, NASA
New York Times | May 9, 2012
GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”
If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.
Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now.
That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.
That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.
If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically.
President Obama has the power not only to deny tar sands oil additional access to Gulf Coast refining, which Canada desires in part for export markets, but also to encourage economic incentives to leave tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground.
The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather, as I predicted would happen by now in the journal Science in 1981. Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they were caused by human-induced climate change.
We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life. But add too much, as we are doing now, and temperatures will inevitably rise too high. This is not the result of natural variability, as some argue. The earth is currently in the part of its long-term orbit cycle where temperatures would normally be cooling. But they are rising — and it’s because we are forcing them higher with fossil fuel emissions.
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million to 393 p.p.m. over the last 150 years. The tar sands contain enough carbon — 240 gigatons — to add 120 p.p.m. Tar shale, a close cousin of tar sands found mainly in the United States, contains at least an additional 300 gigatons of carbon. If we turn to these dirtiest of fuels, instead of finding ways to phase out our addiction to fossil fuels, there is no hope of keeping carbon concentrations below 500 p.p.m. — a level that would, as earth’s history shows, leave our children a climate system that is out of their control.
We need to start reducing emissions significantly, not create new ways to increase them.
We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny. This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices. Not only that, the reduction in oil use resulting from the carbon price would be nearly six times as great as the oil supply from the proposed pipeline from Canada, rendering the pipeline superfluous, according to economic models driven by a slowly rising carbon price.
But instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to make fossil fuels pay their true costs, leveling the energy playing field, the world’s governments are forcing the public to subsidize fossil fuels with hundreds of billions of dollars per year. This encourages a frantic stampede to extract every fossil fuel through mountaintop removal, longwall mining, hydraulic fracturing, tar sands and tar shale extraction, and deep ocean and Arctic drilling.
President Obama speaks of a “planet in peril,” but he does not provide the leadership needed to change the world’s course. Our leaders must speak candidly to the public — which yearns for open, honest discussion — explaining that our continued technological leadership and economic well-being demand a reasoned change of our energy course.
History has shown that the American public can rise to the challenge, but leadership is essential.
The science of the situation is clear — it’s time for the politics to follow. This is a plan that can unify conservatives and liberals, environmentalists and business. Every major national science academy in the world has reported that global warming is real, caused mostly by humans, and requires urgent action. The cost of acting goes far higher the longer we wait — we can’t wait any longer to avoid the worst and be judged immoral by coming generations.
James Hansen directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is the author of “Storms of My Grandchildren.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/opinion/game-over-for-the-climate.html?_r=3&ref=opinionBy James Hansen, NASA
New York Times | May 9, 2012
GLOBAL warming isn’t a... more
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by Amaterasu Solar
Let Us presume a world where free energy is available to all. Also, Let’s add robots doing all the necessary work no One wants to do - or taking up the slack where not enough People are doing necessary work.
In this scenario, there would not be any need for money - in any form: barter, trade, work exchange, cash, checks, electronic funds. You may doubt this, but Let’s examine a single case to illustrate the whole.
Let Us now suppose that You have a hot dog cart - You like to hang around it from time to time and chat with People, say; You are a gregarious sort. And You like to see people happy eating food. The energy to run this cart is free, and You have a robot tending it, taking orders, fixing the dogs, and so on. You, Yourself, may choose to fix a dog or two for People You particularly like, but You don’t HAVE to do any of the work.
Your robot is run on free energy, so it doesn’t cost You anything.
Now Let’s say Your hot dogs come from pigs, and the farm - where the pigs are allowed to roam a few acres - is run by robots. There may be someone who LOVES to raise pigs there, but most likely, the pigs are cared for, organically, by the robots (which are run on free energy). The cost of the pigs themselves is nothing.
The fields that grow the food for the pigs are farmed by robots, running on free energy, and perhaps a Human or three who LOVE to farm the land. The tilling, planting, weeding, debugging (maybe by small robots patrolling the plants), and harvesting is all handled organically by these robots and so there is no cost to grow the pig food.
Robots transport the pig feed for free (and any Humans who LOVE to transport things, should there be any).
Robots would handle the slaughter, cleanly (We would ensure this), quickly and honorably. They would also process the meat into the dogs, and upon a standing order, or Your request over the web, would deliver the dogs to Your cart - for free.
From the fields, free-range chicken coops and dairies (handled by robots), would come the ingredients for the buns and condiments, delivered to bakeries and processing plants for free - baked by robots (and Those whose bliss it is to bake large batches of buns) and processed by robots, with no energy cost anywhere. These things too would be delivered upon request, for free.
So… How much would You charge for these hot dogs? You paid nothing for the energy in the production line, nor for the labor in the production line - Those who chose to add Their Human energy did so not because They HAD to in order to survive, but because They LOVE to do what They were doing. Things being free, They simply chose to spend Their time in Their bliss. The seeds that were farmed are freely given by nature...so are the pigs, for that matter. The planet sits under Us freely for seeds to go into and pigs to live on.
You paid nothing for these hot dogs; it costs You zero to run the stand. (And We could go into the stand itself, as well as the robot, costing nothing, too, through robot workers for mining the metals, smelting, shaping, etc...). So why would You need to charge for the hot dogs?
Now, Let's say one day You befriend someone and She just LOVES to make specialty hot dogs - Her own "secret recipe" of spices. She can get Her meat free, Her spices free, Her cooking heat free, Her pots and pans and whatever else for free. And, because She doesn't HAVE to spend 8 or more hours pursuing Her slave's compensation for Her Human energy, She has time and energy of Her own to devote to making Her signature hot dogs.
One day She invites You over - You, who don't have to "mind the store," since Your robot can handle it easily - and so You decide to hang out with Her while She is in Her bliss, making Her dogs.
You say, "Hey. Those smell damn good. Better than what I have at the hot dog stand! If You have any extra, can I distribute them at My cart?"
She smiles in delight. "Of course. I always have a lot and You can have what You want! Thank You for the compliment!"
Thus begins a happy relationship. You have a robot pack up Her dogs and take them to the cart. You also have a sign made up saying, "NOW! Dogs by Delilah!" And soon, Delilah is blissfully making Her dogs, and Your cart is gaining the reputation of being the best on the block - or in town…or in the world. You develop a reputation. Your cart is written up in a number of blogs, and demand for the dogs - HUMAN made - grows. Soon, reservations are required to get the dogs, because Delilah does not want to make THAT many dogs. All this is handled via net and computer.
In the end, You gain reputation for having a popular hot dog cart, Delilah has reputation for making dogs, and neither of You have traded, bartered, exchanged work, exchanged coin, bills, checks or electronic funds (money).
But You are both very rich in social standing.
This all seems idyllic, so wonderful to consider. Every Human Being freed from wage-slavery and poverty to follow Her/His bliss, with richness in character and betterment contributions defining wealth. But can We get there? The answer is, YES!, but We need a plan.
The Plan is to:
1) Raise awareness that electrogravitics technology (which provides gravity control (“antigravity”) and overunity (“free energy”)) exists so that We can -
2) Call for the release of the overunity technology to -
3) Remove the cost of energy in manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, homes, & misc. so -
4) The cost of building robots to do the necessary jobs no One wants to do becomes affordable so -
5) We can relieve Ourselves of undesired toil, being supported easily at this point on social services since -
6) Money will become unnecessary when the effort to collect the penny for the week's groceries (the room full of furniture, the house, the [fill in the blank]) is more than the penny is worth
By abundantly replacing the money with what it represents (meaningful energy expended), the need for money dissipates and there is no motive to promote consumerism. There is no motive to create cheap, breakable goods to ensure future sales. There is no motive to solve issues the cheapest or most profitable way. There is no motive to steal - if One wants it, another can be had for the asking on the web. There is no motive to defraud. There is no motive to silence discoveries. There is no motive to hide cures. There is no motive to do what does not give One bliss.
But surely there are plenty Whose bliss is solving problems. Plenty Whose bliss is creating robots. Plenty Whose bliss is programming. Plenty Whose bliss is researching. Plenty Whose bliss is helping Others. Plenty Whose bliss is building. Plenty Whose bliss is creating art. Plenty Whose bliss is teaching. Plenty Whose bliss is any endeavor robots can't handle.
There WILL be motive to better the world - Those who contribute will earn appreciation, thanks, gratitude, name recognition and Self satisfaction. Instill a Betterment Ethic in place of the work "ethic" (a slave's ethic - enrich others with One's Human energy).
"From Each according to BLISS; to Each according to DESIRE."
So if One wants to be a couch potato... Heh. No problem!
Clearly We must spread this information. Widely. Below is a link to a petition, but if You choose to sign it, don’t stop there. Share it. Email it to friends and family, tweet it often on Twitter, post it to the Hotel Califacebook and on forums You visit. Become proactive and maintain the proactivity. If We all do this, We can make this planet a far better place than it is now.
To sign a petition for the release of electrogravitics technology:
http://www.change.org/petitions/us-military-release-the-technology-of-electrogravitics
More detail on the simple chaos seed for a society with free energy: http://bit.ly/I5TriH
Twitter: @AmaterasuSolarby Amaterasu Solar
Let Us presume a world where free energy is available to all.... more
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Caldicott: If Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 collapses I am evacuating my family from Boston. Few people know that the Pacific Northwest got whacked hard by fallout from the Fukushima disaster with radiation rates hundreds of thousands of times higher than normal background radiation. The damage from this is not something that the corporate media or the government is talking about. It mysteriously disappeared from the radar almost immediately. Dr. Caldicott referred to this as a process of "cover-up and psychic numbing." Looks like it may be working. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission just approved two new nuclear power plants this week (4/2/12) in South Carolina in addition to the two approved earlier this year in Georgia. Dr. Caldicott talks about the dangers and hidden costs of nuclear power then tells the awful truth in minute detail about the actual scale of the Fukushima disaster and compares it to the nuclear disasters of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Recent studies estimated that a million people have died so far from Chernobyl. Dr. Helen Caldicott is a physician, Nobel Peace Prize winner, noted author, anti-nuclear power advocate and has founded numerous national and international groups which oppose nuclear power & weapons, including Physicians for Social Responsibility.Caldicott: If Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 collapses I am evacuating my family from Boston.... more
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The American auto industry has been the consistent bright spot in the slow economic comeback over the last several months. As the demand rises, automakers may be pushing factories and workers to the limit. We're taking a closer look at this story from the Current community. Check it out and add your two cents:
Auto Industry Adds Thousands Of Jobs To Meet Growing Demand, Proving Auto Rescue's Success Yet Again
Submitted by letsliveinpeace
Factories for both foreign and domestic automakers are now working "at maximum capacity" to keep up with the growing demand. Some manufacturers are adding working hours, hiring new workers, third work shifts, worker overtime and six-day weeks. To help with the rising demand, Ford Motor and Chrysler Group are reducing the annual two-week July shutdown at several plants this summer to produce thousands of vehicles to their output. Chrysler and General Motors have both reported their best profits in more than a decade and continues to add jobs this year.
“We have many plants working at maximum capacity now,” says Ford spokeswoman Marcey Evans. “We’re building as many (cars) as we can.”
Estimates expect automakers to sell 14.3 million cars in the United States in 2012 — 1.5 million more than they sold last year.
The American auto industry has been the consistent bright spot in the slow economic... more
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He has been picked as an expert judge to help find the nation's next biggest superstar on hit TV show The Voice.
But when Will.i.am arrived at a climate change debate recently, he showed a shocking lack of judgement.
The 37-year-old Black Eyed Peas star arrived for the talk at Oxford University in his private helicopter.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2148557/The-Voice-judge-Will-goes-Oxford-University-climate-change-debate-gas-guzzling-helicopter.html#ixzz1vjrwJH3X
Nice "debate". I wonder if Will.I.Am knows that the atmosphere consists of 0.03% CO2 and humans contribute 4% of that (0.012%).
Real scientists don't believe Al Gore's quack global warming hoax.
I doubt they invited any of those tens of thousands of scientists to debate this fraudulent joke on society and educate the black-eyed pea brain on how the climate really works.He has been picked as an expert judge to help find the nation's next biggest... more
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This week science fiction writer and global warming promoter Elizabeth Moon argues that everyone should be given a barcode at birth.
“If I were empress of the Universe I would insist on every individual having a unique ID permanently attached - a barcode if you will; an implanted chip to provide an easy, fast inexpensive way to identify individuals.
It would be imprinted on everyone at birth. Point the scanner at someone and there it is."
Moon, who has published essays warning of the dire effects of global warming and even made catastrophic global warming part of the background to her novels, made the stunning revelation in a BBC Radio programme on possible futures. Asked for her vision for the future of humanity, Moon stunned and “terrified” the other guests with this vision:
"If I were empress of the Universe I would insist on every individual having a unique ID permanently attached – a barcode if you will; an implanted chip to provide an easy, fast inexpensive way to identify individuals.
It would be imprinted on everyone at birth. Point the scanner at someone and there it is.
Anonymity would be impossible as would mistaken identity making it easier to place responsibility accurately, not only in war but also in non-combat situations far from the war
You can listen to Elizabeth discuss her idea with aerial warfare expert Elizabeth Quintana and war ethics authority David Rodin in more detail on the BBC World Service programme.This week science fiction writer and global warming promoter Elizabeth Moon argues... more
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New ice is less reflective than old ice and absorbs more heat from the Sun, which means it doesn’t just melt faster: it actually speeds up its own melting.
By Michael D. Lemonick
Published May 16, 2012
The sea ice that blankets the Arctic Ocean each winter peaked in early March this year, as usual, and is now in retreat, en route to its annual minimum extent in September. How low it will go is something scientists worry: ice reflects lots of sunlight back into space, and when the darker ocean underneath is exposed, more sunlight is absorbed to add to global warming.
That’s the simple version of the story, but things look even worse when you dig into the details. For one thing, all that open water does re-freeze each winter, but it freezes into a relatively thin layer known as seasonal, or first-year ice. Because it’s so thin, first-year ice tends to melt back quickly the following season, giving the ocean a chance to warm things up even more in what National Snow and Ice Data Center director Mark Serreze has called a “death spiral” that could lead to ice-free Arctic summers by 2030.
But it’s worse than that, says a new analysis by scientists at the U.S. Army’s Cold Regions Research Laboratory in Hanover, N.H. “First-year ice is not just thinner, “ said Donald Perovich, lead author of a report in Geophysical Research Letters, in an interview.
“We’re also beginning to realize it has other properties.” The most important: new ice is less reflective than old ice, for most of the year, anyway. It absorbs more heat from the Sun, which means it doesn’t just melt faster: it actually speeds up its own melting.
Here’s how it happens, according to Perovich. “Most of the precipitation in the Arctic,” he said, “happens at the end of summer and in the early fall.” When the snow first begins to fall, it builds on the multi-year ice, but disappears onto the patches of open ocean.
Those patches eventually freeze, and the snow sticks there as well; it just forms a thinner layer. So for most of the winter, all of the ice, thick and thin, is covered with a brightly reflective blanket. That would be good as far as warming is concerned, except that for most of the winter, the Sun doesn’t rise.
When the Sun finally does rise in spring, it melts the thinner snow first, forming heat-absorbing pools on the surface of the first-year ice. The older ice eventually catches up, forming pools of its own, but since the surface is crumpled, the ponds don’t spread as widely, and they absorb less heat.
In short, the death spiral — where more melting leads to more melting — appears to be even steeper than anyone thought.
That doesn’t mean that there’s less ice literally every year. The lowest levels ever recorded happened in September of 2007; since then, coverage has been bouncing around near, but not quite at, those historic lows, and first-year ice in the winter has been near its historic highs.
“What it means,” Perovich said, “is that with more seasonal ice, the Arctic is more susceptible to an outlier kind of year.” If there’s significantly more heat in a particular year due to natural variations, in other words, there could be a huge loss of ice. It’s kind of like a staircase, Petrovic said. “It bounces around for a while, then there’s a drop to a new normal, then it bounces around.” The point, he said, is that “we now have a type of ice cover that’s even easier to knock over than it was before.”
What that means is that at some point in the not too distant future, an unusually warm summer (even for a globally warming world) could knock the ice in the Arctic ocean down another major step, and take the world closer to the time when all of it vanishes — creating a new heat-trapping region where none existed before, and pushing climate change into an even higher gear.New ice is less reflective than old ice and absorbs more heat from the Sun, which... more
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Last Saturday people around the world volunteered, documented, educated, and protested to connect the dots on climate change. We're just getting started. Please join us at http://www.350.orgLast Saturday people around the world volunteered, documented, educated, and protested... more
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There is growing evidence that some of the Earth’s most catastrophic geological events were triggered by changes in the climate.
The melting of ice sheets and changes in sea level served as triggers to some of the world’s largest earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, according to British geologist Bill McGuire.
The best evidence of climatic influence on geology is from around 12,000 years ago, the end of the last ice age. Recent studies of volcanic deposits, have shown that this period of rapid change, as the ice sheets retreated, coincided with an outburst in geological activity.
Volcanic eruptions increased about 50 fold after the ice sheet retreated, and took around 1,500 years to return to the previous level.
McGuire argues that the weight of ice, two kilometers thick over Iceland, kept pressure on the volcanoes and suppressed the eruptions. As the ice sheet retreated, the surface of the ground in some places rose up by hundreds of meters, relieving the pressure.
Freysteinn Sigmundsson of the Nordic Volcanological Center at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik, is quoted as saying “Reduction of pressure enabled mantle rocks to melt, creating a zone of magma upwelling underneath Iceland.”
The production of magma then increased 30 fold, leading to the huge increase in volcanic eruptions.
(click on the link for the complete article)There is growing evidence that some of the Earth’s most catastrophic geological... more
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US thinktank launches poster campaign comparing Unabomber and Osama Bin Laden to those concerned about global warming
By Leo Hickman | Friday 4 May 2012 06.03 EDT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/may/04/heartland-institute-global-warming-murder?newsfeed=true
It really is hard to know where to begin with this one. But let's start with: "What on earth were they thinking?"
The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based rightwing thinktank notorious for promoting climate scepticism, has launched quite possibly one of the most ill-judged poster campaigns in the history of ill-judged poster campaigns.
I'll let its own press release for its upcoming conference explain, as there's simply no need to finesse it further:
“Billboards in Chicago paid for by The Heartland Institute point out that some of the world's most notorious criminals say they "still believe in global warming" – and ask viewers if they do, too…The billboard series features Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber; Charles Manson, a mass murderer; and Fidel Castro, a tyrant. Other global warming alarmists who may appear on future billboards include Osama bin Laden and James J. Lee (who took hostages inside the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in 2010).
These rogues and villains were chosen because they made public statements about how man-made global warming is a crisis and how mankind must take immediate and drastic actions to stop it.
Why did Heartland choose to feature these people on its billboards? Because what these murderers and madmen have said differs very little from what spokespersons for the United Nations, journalists for the "mainstream" media, and liberal politicians say about global warming. The point is that believing in global warming is not "mainstream," smart, or sophisticated. In fact, it is just the opposite of those things. Still believing in man-made global warming – after all the scientific discoveries and revelations that point against this theory – is more than a little nutty. In fact, some really crazy people use it to justify immoral and frightening behavior.”
But then comes the best bit:
“Of course, not all global warming alarmists are murderers or tyrants.”
It tries to morally justify its posters - the first of which appeared over the Eisenhower Expressway yesterday - by saying that, due to ""Climategate" and the recent incident in which a US scientist called Peter Gleick admitted to obtaining and releasing internal documents (one of which Heartland claims was faked) detailing Heartland's funding and policy strategies, that "the leaders of the global warming movement are willing to break the law and the rules of ethics to shut down scientific debate and implement their left-wing agendas".
It adds:
“The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society. This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren't scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”
The bigger question, beyond trying to analyse the collective mentality of an organisation that would sign off a poster campaign like this, is whether it will now lead any of the speakers, attendees and sponsors to pull out of the conference and dissociate themselves from this thinktank.
As a result of the embarrassment caused by the release earlier this year of its internal funding documents, the US car giant GM pulled the plug on its funding for Heartland. Will Microsoft, Pfizer or GlaxoSmithKline, for example, now also choose to cut their funding to this organisation?
You also have to wonder if any of the scheduled conference speakers are now having doubts about whether they want to be associated with Heartland. One person who is on the list to speak is Roger Helmer, a British politician who has attended previous conferences. Having recently left the Conservative party as an MEP, the prominent climate sceptic is now the UK Independence Party's spokesperson on industry and energy.
Earlier, I sent him an email with a link to Heartland's poster campaign press release and asked him: "Will you now be reconsidering attending in light of this new poster campaign for the conference? Do you approve of or condemn the poster campaign?"
He confirmed he was still attending, adding:
“I am delighted that the Heartland campaign for the Chicago climate conference has succeeded in its purpose and attracted the attention of the Guardian. I urge Guardian readers to attend the conference if they can, but failing that, to follow it on the web.”
I simply have nothing further to add.US thinktank launches poster campaign comparing Unabomber and Osama Bin Laden to those... more
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If we’re going to tell this story — and it’s the most important story of our time — we’re going to have to tell it ourselves.
by Bill McKibben, via TomDispatch
The Williams River was so languid and lovely last Saturday morning that it was almost impossible to imagine the violence with which it must have been running on August 28, 2011. And yet the evidence was all around: sand piled high on its banks, trees still scattered as if by a giant’s fist, and most obvious of all, a utilitarian temporary bridge where for 140 years a graceful covered bridge had spanned the water.
The YouTube video of that bridge crashing into the raging river was Vermont’s iconic image from its worst disaster in memory, the record flooding that followed Hurricane Irene’s rampage through the state in August 2011. It claimed dozens of lives, as it cut more than a billion-dollar swath of destruction across the eastern United States.
I watched it on TV in Washington just after emerging from jail, having been arrested at the White House during mass protests of the Keystone XL pipeline. Since Vermont’s my home, it took the theoretical — the ever more turbulent, erratic, and dangerous weather that the tar sands pipeline from Canada would help ensure — and made it all too concrete. It shook me bad.
And I’m not the only one.
New data released last month by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities show that a lot of Americans are growing far more concerned about climate change, precisely because they’re drawing the links between freaky weather, a climate kicked off-kilter by a fossil-fuel guzzling civilization, and their own lives. After a year with a record number of multi-billion dollar weather disasters, seven in ten Americans now believe that “global warming is affecting the weather.” No less striking, 35% of the respondents reported that extreme weather had affected them personally in 2011. As Yale’s Anthony Laiserowitz told the New York Times, “People are starting to connect the dots.”
Which is what we must do. As long as this remains one abstract problem in the long list of problems, we’ll never get to it. There will always be something going on each day that’s more important, including, if you’re facing flood or drought, the immediate danger.
But in reality, climate change is actually the biggest thing that’s going on every single day. If we could only see that pattern we’d have a fighting chance. It’s like one of those trompe l’oeil puzzles where you can only catch sight of the real picture by holding it a certain way. So this weekend we’ll be doing our best to hold our planet a certain way so that the most essential pattern is evident. At 350.org, we’re organizing a global day of action that’s all about dot-connecting; in fact, you can follow the action at climatedots.org.
The day will begin in the Marshall Islands of the far Pacific, where the sun first rises on our planet, and where locals will hold a daybreak underwater demonstration on their coral reef already threatened by rising seas. They’ll hold, in essence, a giant dot — and so will our friends in Bujumbura, Burundi, where March flooding destroyed 500 homes. In Dakar, Senegal, they’ll mark the tidal margins of recent storm surges. In Adelaide, Australia, activists will host a “dry creek regatta” to highlight the spreading drought down under.
Pakistani farmers — some of the millions driven from their homes by unprecedented flooding over the last two years — will mark the day on the banks of the Indus; in Ayuthaya, Thailand, Buddhist monks will protest next to a temple destroyed by December’s epic deluges that also left the capital, Bangkok, awash.
Activists in Ulanbataar will focus on the ongoing effects of drought in Mongolia. In Daegu, South Korea, students will gather with bags of rice and umbrellas to connect the dots between climate change, heavy rains, and the damage caused to South Korea’s rice crop in recent years. In Amman, Jordan, Friends of the Earth Middle East will be forming a climate dot on the shores of the Dead Sea to draw attention to how climate-change-induced drought has been shrinking that sea.
In Herzliya, Israel, people will form a dot on the beach to stand in solidarity with island nations and coastal communities around the world that are feeling the impact of climate change. In newly freed Libya, students will hold a teach-in. In Oman, elders will explain how the weather along the Persian Gulf has shifted in their lifetimes. There will be actions in the cloud forests of Costa Rica, and in the highlands of Peru where drought has wrecked the lives of local farmers. In Monterrey, Mexico, they’ll recall last year’s floods that did nearly $2 billion in damage. In Chamonix, France, climbers will put a giant red dot on the melting glaciers of the Alps.
And across North America, as the sun moves westward, activists in Halifax, Canada, will “swim for survival” across its bay to highlight rising sea levels, while high-school students in Nashville, Tennessee, will gather on a football field inundated by 2011’s historic killer floods.
In Portland, Oregon, city dwellers will hold an umbrella-decorating party to commemorate March’s record rains. In Bandelier, New Mexico, firefighters in full uniform will remember last year’s record forest fires and unveil the new solar panels on their fire station. In Miami, Manhattan, and Maui, citizens will line streets that scientists say will eventually be underwater. In the high Sierra, on one of the glaciers steadily melting away, protesters will unveil a giant banner with just two words, a quote from that classic of western children’s literature, The Wizard of Oz. “I’m Melting” it will say, in letters three-stories high.
This is a full-on fight between information and disinformation, between the urge to witness and the urge to cover-up. The fossil-fuel industry has funded endless efforts to confuse people, to leave an impression that nothing much is going on. But — as with the tobacco industry before them — the evidence has simply gotten too strong.
Once you saw enough people die of lung cancer, you made the connection. The situation is the same today. Now, it’s not just the scientists and the insurance industry; it’s your neighbors. Even pleasant weather starts to seem weird. Fifteen thousand U.S. temperature records were broken, mainly in the East and Midwest, in the month of March alone, as a completely unprecedented heat wave moved across the continent. Most people I met enjoyed the rare experience of wearing shorts in winter, but they were still shaking their heads. Something was clearly wrong and they knew it.
The one institution in our society that isn’t likely to be much help in spreading the news is… the news. Studies show our papers and TV channels paying ever less attention to our shifting climate. In fact, in 2011 ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox spent twice as much time discussing Donald Trump as global warming. Don’t expect representatives from Saturday’s Connect the Dots day to show up on Sunday’s talk shows. Over the last three years, those inside-the-Beltway extravaganzas have devoted 98 minutes total to the planet’s biggest challenge. Last year, in fact, all the Sunday talk shows spent exactly nine minutes of Sunday talking time on climate change — and here’s a shock: all of it was given over to Republican politicians in the great denial sweepstakes.
Continued at linkIf we’re going to tell this story — and it’s the most important... more
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A butterfly lands on a flowering Confetti Lantan plant in San Antonio, Texas. Scientists have commonly under-predicted the climate change's effects on plants, says new research. AP Photo/Eric Gay
Scientists have been underestimating the effects of climate change on plant growth, according to a recent study.
Plants are flowering faster than scientists predicted in response to climate change, research in the United States showed on Wednesday, which could have devastating knock-on effects for food chains and ecosystems.
Global warming is having a significant impact on hundreds of plant and animal species around the world, changing some breeding, migration and feeding patterns, scientists say.
Increased carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels can affect how plants produce oxygen, while higher temperatures and variable rainfall patterns can change their behaviour.
"Predicting species' response to climate change is a major challenge in ecology," said researchers at the University of California San Diego and several other U.S. institutions.
They said plants had been the focus of study because their response to climate change could affect food chains and ecosystem services such as pollination, nutrient cycles and water supply.
The study, published on the Nature website, draws on evidence from plant life cycle studies and experiments across four continents and 1,634 species. It found that some experiments had underestimated the speed of flowering by 8.5 times and growing leaves by 4 times.
"Across all species, the experiments under-predicted the magnitude of the advance - for both leafing and flowering - that results from temperature increases," the study said.
The design of future experiments may need to be improved to better predict how plants will react to climate change, it said.
Plants are essential to life on Earth. They are the base of the food chain, using photosynthesis to produce sugar from carbon dioxide and water. They expel oxygen which is needed by nearly every organism which inhabits the planet.
Scientists estimate the world's average temperature has risen by about 0.8 degrees Celsius since 1900, and nearly 0.2 degrees per decade since 1979.
So far, efforts to cut emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases are not seen as sufficient to prevent the Earth heating up beyond 2 degrees C this century - a threshold scientists say risks an unstable climate in which weather extremes are common, leading to drought, floods, crop failures and rising sea levels.A butterfly lands on a flowering Confetti Lantan plant in San Antonio, Texas.... more
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Polar bears are capable of swimming vast distances, with one endurance swimmer travelling 220 miles in a non-stop marathon over 10 days.
The bears were tracked as part of a study, published in the Canadian Journal of Zoology, which tracked 52 female polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea off Alaska.
Between 2004 and 2009, a period of extreme summer-ice retreat, about a third of those bears made swims exceeding 30 miles in distance - and many others swam at least 90 miles or more.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2138444/GPS-trackers-reveal-polar-bears-swim-non-stop-10-days.html#ixzz1tlAztgfu
But I thought that the polar bears were drowning and losing population/ Oh wait, their population has more than doubled in the past 50 years and the can swim for hundreds of miles. These are true facts. The false information, or propaganda, comes from the brainwashed global warming losers, with their scientific fraud and carbon scams.Polar bears are capable of swimming vast distances, with one endurance swimmer... more
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'It’s important for all of us whose lives are being damaged to know that it’s right that we get a little angry at those forces causing this problem.'
Across the planet now we see ever more flood, ever more drought, ever more storms. People are dying, communities are being wrecked — the impacts we’re already witnessing from climate change are unlike anything we have seen before.
But because the globe is so big, it’s hard for most people to see that it’s all connected. That’s why, on May 5, we will Connect the Dots.
In places from drought-stricken Mongolia to flood-stricken Thailand, from fire-ravaged Australia to Himalayan communities threatened by glacial melt, we will hold rallies reminding everyone what has happened in our neighborhoods. And at each of those rallies, from Kenya to Canada, from Vietnam to Vermont, someone will be holding a…dot. A huge black dot on a white banner, a “dot” of people holding hands, encircling a field where crops have dried up, a dot made of fabric and the picture taken from above — you get the idea. We’ll share those images the world around, to put a human face on climate change–we’ll hold up a mirror to the planet and force people to come face to face with the ravages of climate change.
Anyone and everyone can participate in this day. Many of us do not live in Texas, the Philippines, or Ethiopia — places deeply affected by climate impacts. For those communities, there are countless ways to stand in solidarity with those on the front-lines of the climate crisis: some people will giving presentations in their communities about how to connect the dots. Others will do projects to demonstrate what sorts of climate impacts we can expect if the crisis is left unchecked. And still others of us will express our indignation to local media and politicians for failing to connect the dots in their coverage of “natural disasters.”
However you choose to participate, your voice is needed in this fight — and you can sign up here: www.climatedots.org
These will be beautiful events, we’re sure. But they will also have an edge. It’s important for all of us whose lives are being damaged to know that it’s right that we get a little angry at those forces causing this problem. The fossil fuel industry is at fault, and we have to make that clear. Our crew at 350.org will work hard to connect all these dots — literally — and weave them together to create a potent call to action, and we will channel that call directly to the people who need to hear it most.
May 5 is coming soon; we need to work rapidly. Because climate change is bearing down on us, and we simply can’t wait. The world needs to understand what’s happening, and you’re the people who can tell them.
Please join us–we need you to send the most important alarm humanity has ever heard!
Onwards,
Bill McKibben'It’s important for all of us whose lives are being damaged to know that... more
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"New research finds that wind farms actually warm up the surface of the land underneath them during the night, a phenomena that could put a damper on efforts to expand wind energy as a green energy solution.
Researchers used satellite data from 2003 to 2011 to examine surface temperatures across as wide swath of west Texas, which has built four of the world's largest wind farms. The data showed a direct correlation between night-time temperatures increases of 0.72 degrees C (1.3 degrees F) and the placement of the farms.
"Given the present installed capacity and the projected growth in installation of wind farms across the world, I feel that wind farms, if spatially large enough, might have noticeable impacts on local to regional meteorology," Liming Zhou, associate professor at the State University of New York, Albany and author of the paper published April 29 in Nature Climate Change said in an e-mail to Discovery News.""New research finds that wind farms actually warm up the surface of the land... more
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