The Bush Administration's final rush to loot and pillage as much of America's national heritage as it can before leaving office is proceeding full steam ahead. On the heals of its plans to lift the ban on offshore drilling and its refusal to abide by the Supreme Court ruling on EPA's responsibility to regulate greenhouse gases comes this.
The Bush administration is preparing to ease the way for the nation's largest private landowner to convert hundreds of thousands of acres of mountain forestland to residential subdivisions.
I live in Fallbrook, a rural area on the edge of Camp Pendleton. It's ULTRA conservative. We have a local paper called the Village News, and the letters to the editors provide insight into what's going on with the rightwing religious conservatives. This week there was a rant about, "Global warming: a political Doom’s Day religion"
Here is the whole letter:
Instead of believing Al Gore’s big distortion, there are various organizations that study and report on climate using technology rather than hype. Of course there are those who receive grants to distort, and with the help of the willing media, advertise this region for the control and the taxing of corporation and citizens by the heads of this "religion."
I have provided the Village News office (127 West Elder Street in Fallbrook) with a copy of a paper by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, distributed by the Heartland Institute of Chicago.
This paper shows that increased atmospheric CO2 does not cause unfavorable changes in global temperatures, weather or landscape. I am a professional engineer, State of California.
I decided to take a few hours and do an exhaustive response, which may be useful for your responses to such letters.
For years, Sarah felt safe as she traveled about. She shielded herself from harm. She placed her faith in science. She listened to the advice of experts. She thought she had been careful with chemicals and creams. This wise woman knew not to trust recommendations without doing a thorough examination of evidence. After an avid assessment, Sarah avowed, "Sunscreens are good." Then one day, as she entered her home after being out and about, she saw what she had never imagined.
Call me an optimist. Coal is king, tar sands oil is booming, the arctic is melting, tropical cyclones keep setting new records, and my own city is still flooded. Yet, in these times, a revolution in both energy and electrified transportation is taking place right beneath our noses, and perhaps nowhere are we seeing the seeds of this being planted more than on the island of Oahu.
Read on to learn more about the world you may be leaving to your grandchildren and the role Hawaii's third largest island may play in bringing it about.
As books go, this one is very short. That, however, is one of it's strengths. By leaving out the details of climate change, which one can find in many other books and reports, and focusing instead on a synthesis of our current knowledge of climate science, Dr. Emanuel has written an extremely useful summary.
I have read many books on global warming, climate change, or, to use the term that I prefer, Climaticide. This volume is one of the most useful for the non-scientist because it presents all the major concepts in a concise, clearly written, yet comprehensive account.
Do you know how I know this, Virginia? Because those well known and highly decorated Scientists, Rush Limpbaugh,PhV (Physician, Viagara), Sean Hannity,WnGnT (Wingnut), and Neal Boortz, LnC (Libertarian Nutcase) have told me in no uncertain terms that it is SO.
Who, in their Right(wing) Mind could possibly have the expertise in this field to actually stand up to these "Keepers of the Truth and the American Way" and offer a different opinion?
Certainly not Fox News! That bastion of the Fair and Balanced coverage of all things great and small would never give in to the temptation to try their hand at discouraging their viewers from not believing any single word uttered by the above mentioned "brilliant scientists of hate radio."
In fact, Fox News has their very own theory that they pulled directly out of their collective asses regarding why global warming is not the cause for the melting of Planet Earth's Arctic ice.
Let's see what they have to say on this issue, below.
It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.
The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.
Although there have been a couple of exceptions recently (see here and here), the Traditional Media continues to report on extreme weather events: flooding, fires, tornadoes, hurricanes and drought, etc. as if they were isolated occurrences, without any context. This, despite the facts that the IPCC (see Table 3.2 in the 2007 Summary Report) and most recently NOAA (see Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate), foresee an increase in precisely these kinds of extreme weather as a result of our continuing Climaticide.
Given that it is vitally important for the public to know both the context and the details of the relationship between Climaticide and extreme weather I have started a petition (sign here) demanding that the Traditional Media provide that context in its reporting.
If you didn't see the Harry Reid "coal is making us sick" video yet, check it out - its only 30 seconds or so, but its definitely tapped into public sentiment, if over 360,000 hits on Youtube means anything.
Will someone please tell Barack Obama that he’s aiming way too low when it comes to energy policy? We need a big, bold plan that gets us beyond oil dependency FAST – not in that always promised 25 or 50 years -- but in this decade. We need a President who will shoot for the moon.
It's not just penguins. Many species of birds are in decline in the U.S.
Some major population declines have been seen in northern pintail, greater scaup, boreal chickadee, common tern, loggerhead shrike, field sparrow, grasshopper sparrow, snow bunting, black-throated sparrow, lark sparrow, common grackle, American bittern, horned lark, little blue heron and ruffed grouse.
Of course, some species not listed and decling just as fast (though were not neccesarily as common to beginwith). Cerulean warblers, olive-sided flycatchers, whip-por-wills have seen major declines.
Impossibility comes in (at least) four brands. There are:
The logically or mathematically impossible. It can't be.
The scientifically imposible. It doesn't happen.
The technologically impossible. We can't do it.
The economically impossible. We can't afford to do it.
Much technological progress results in moving things from the economically or technologically impossibe to the possible.
The most important scientific developments reveal that things which once appeared scientifically possible are really scientifically impossible. Almost never does scientific progress lead in the other direction.
Those ignorant of science often confuse (2) with (3). That can lead us to anything from simple silliness to policy blunders. Concretions after the jump.
I've been engaged in several long diary discussions on peak oil and gas prices over the past few days and a recurrent theme is what can we DO about it. We feel incapable and despairing of getting train service or bus service in our particular locality, so what else can we do?
I teach sustainable living classes so I have some suggestions on the flip.... This is only my second diary so please be kind!
The high priests in the Wall Street Church of Corporatism have issued another op-ed fatwa against the majority of Americans who connect their faith to our environment.
In today's Wall Street Journal piece, "Global Warming as Mass Neurosis," editorial board member Bret Stephens brings the logic:
With all the recent distress over a couple of not-completely-progressive stances -- and the requisite not-more-more-dime comments, it's probably a good idea to step back for a moment for some perspective:
Barack Obama will be the most progressive president in the history of our great nations.
I'm not here to get into historical disputes about why, given the times, FDR or JFK or whoever may prove more progressive. My point is that, on issue after issue, Obama will be the most progressive than any President before him. By a long shot.
We know he's going to end the war in Iraq, restore habeas, reduce the influence of lobbyists, close Gitmo, engage in tough diplomacy with our enemies, appoint progressive judges, etc. But this just scratches the surface. Just a quick trip through some of Obama's issues pages reveals the breadth of progressive change that he wants to bring to American
Pushed from center stage by the expected record arctic ice and permafrost melt, tropical rain forest destruction has been elbowing it's way back through the smoke and into view.
Previously, the article states, the forest loss was estimated at 139,000 hectares per year between 1990 and 2005. But now?
Using satellite images to reveal changes in forest cover between 1972 and 2002...Papua New Guinea (PNG) lost more than 5 million hectares of forest over the past three decades...Worse, deforestation rates may be accelerating, with the pace of forest clearing reaching 362,000 hectares (895,000 acres) per year in 2001. The study warns that at current rates 53 percent of the country's forests could be lost or seriously degraded by 2021.
