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Thread: Global Warming - Page 176







Post#4376 at 05-13-2014 09:48 AM by Eric the Green [at San Jose CA joined Jul 2001 #posts 22,504]
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Someone else posted something from this, but it's cool.

"I close my eyes, and I can see a better day" -- Justin Bieber

Keep the spirit alive,

Eric A. Meece







Post#4377 at 05-13-2014 09:51 PM by Eric the Green [at San Jose CA joined Jul 2001 #posts 22,504]
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This guy wants to be President of the United States? of what? The United States of Dumb? The United Red States? Heck, we've already had one dumb president. If we didn't get the warning by now, well, all I gotta say is, the United States is just not viable anymore. And flooded out too.

(quote)

Friends –

This past Sunday, while families across the country celebrated Mother’s Day, we witnessed one of the most egregious cases of climate-denial and anti-science rhetoric in recent history.

Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida), a politician angling to be president in 2016, doubled down on his climate-denier beliefs, on ABC’s "This Week," when he said "I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it."

Help us tell Senator Rubio why he's wrong about climate change.

You have to scratch your head and ask: Does Senator Rubio’s climate-denial disqualify him from being the GOP’s nominee for president in 2016?

Just this month, the National Climate Assessment underscored that Florida and its residents are at high risk from the devastating effects of climate change. Here is what we know about how climate change will affect Florida:

In Florida, 2.4 million people, 1.3 million homes, and 1.8 million acres of land are vulnerable to sea level rise.
Florida will lose an estimated $40 billion in tourism revenue by the 2050s as sea level rise impacts the Everglades, the Florida Keys and other top tourist attractions.
Florida cities are among the most vulnerable to the risks of climate change—including population-dense cities such as Miami and Tampa.
Southeast Florida faces an "imminent threat" of flooding due to rising sea levels—putting coastal communities, freshwater supplies and 37,500 acres of cropland at risk.

We need your help to remind politicians and elected officials that the stakes are too high to play politics-as-usual with an issue as important as climate change.

Share your climate change story with Senator Rubio and let him know that we won't allow him to deny the cause of climate change any longer.

NextGen Climate will collect and share the top stories with Senator Rubio to remind him that voters are paying attention and that the time to act on climate change is now. We can't wait any longer to address climate change and protect the next generation.

Thanks,
Chris

Chris Herold
Research Director
NextGen Climate
"I close my eyes, and I can see a better day" -- Justin Bieber

Keep the spirit alive,

Eric A. Meece







Post#4378 at 05-14-2014 09:41 PM by Ragnarök_62 [at Oklahoma joined Nov 2006 #posts 5,511]
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Buggy Solar SCADA leads to power p0wnage.

Quote Originally Posted by Eric the Green View Post
I like nuclear power--- from the sun!

Without the sun, there would be no birds. But birds will do just fine without nucs. So will people.
Newsflash.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05...rt_free_money/

Yeah, but, but read the above. Buggy solar software brings black eye to solar via possible mass blackouts.

Ah, those Brits. Such a sense of humour.

"Flaky firmware makes power panels p0wnage possible"

Now in other news, department = "there's no fixing stupid"

http://www.kurzweilai.net/how-to-con...rnet-of-things

Nothing like coming home to see your AC and heater on at the same time.

Gotaa love it, Eric. This let's connect stuff to teh internets so it's cool to make stuff go pear shaped.




B
MBTI step II type : Expressive INTP

There's an annual contest at Bond University, Australia, calling for the most appropriate definition of a contemporary term:
The winning student wrote:

"Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and promoted by mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a piece of shit by the clean end."







Post#4379 at 05-15-2014 03:01 PM by Eric the Green [at San Jose CA joined Jul 2001 #posts 22,504]
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The cost of Republican rule. Hey, they spend billions of our dollars to turn more land overseas into homelands for docile New American Century subjects, but their policies destroy land in our own homeland. Not a very good bargain, do you think? The price of not voting in midterms and gerrymandering, millies!

(quote)
New research indicates that climate change has already triggered an unstoppable decay of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The projected decay will lead to at least 4 feet of accelerating global sea level rise within the next two-plus centuries, and at least 10 feet of rise in the end.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/u...vel-rise-17428

What does the U.S. look like with an ocean that is 10 feet higher? The radically transformed map would lose 28,800 square miles of land, home today to 12.3 million people.

More than half of the area of 40 large cities (population over 50,000) is less than 10 feet above the high tide line, from Virginia Beach and Miami (the largest affected), down to Hoboken, N.J. (smallest). Twenty-seven of the cities are in Florida, where one-third of all current housing sits below the critical line — including 85 percent in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Each of these counties is more threatened than any whole state outside of Florida – and each sits on bedrock filled with holes, rendering defense by seawalls or levees almost impossible.

Cities with the Most Population on Affected Land
CITY POPULATION
1. New York City 703,000
2. New Orleans 342,000
3. Miami 275,000
4. Hialeah, FL 224,000
5. Virginia Beach 195,000
6. Fort Lauderdale 160,000
7. Norfolk 157,000
8. Stockton, CA 142,000
9. Metairie, LA 138,000
10. Hollywood, FL 126,000


By the metric of most people living on land less than 10 ft above the high tide line, New York City is most threatened in the long run, with a low-lying population count of more than 700,000. Sixteen other cities, including New Orleans, La.; Norfolk, Va.; Stockton, Calif.; Boston, Mass.; St. Petersburg, Fla.; and Jacksonville, Fla.; are on the list of places with more than 100,000 people below the line. (Much of New Orleans is already below sea level, but is protected at today’s level by levees.)

Climate Central’s enhanced analysis paints a much more detailed pictured for completed states. For example, more than 32,000 miles of road and $950 billion of property currently sit on affected land in Florida. Threatened property in New York and New Jersey totals more than $300 billion. And New England states all face important risks.

The predicted sea level rise will take a long time to unfold. The numbers listed here do not represent immediate or literal threats. Under any circumstances, coastal populations and economies will reshape themselves over time. But the new research on West Antarctic Ice Sheet decay — and the amount of humanity in the restless ocean’s way — point to unrelenting centuries of defense, retreat, and reimagination of life along our coasts.

(unquote)
Last edited by Eric the Green; 05-15-2014 at 03:08 PM.
"I close my eyes, and I can see a better day" -- Justin Bieber

Keep the spirit alive,

Eric A. Meece







Post#4380 at 05-17-2014 05:34 PM by Eric the Green [at San Jose CA joined Jul 2001 #posts 22,504]
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Oh, the joy of living in the Republican South!

North Carolina Coastal Commission Votes to Ignore Long-Term Sea Level Rise
byFishOutofWater
for North Carolina BLUE
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/0...?detail=email#


Ignorance has consequences. Idiot ignored Hurricane Irene forecast.

The North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission has found a solution to the political impasse posed by the conflict between science, which predicts the acceleration of sea level rise as the glaciers of western Antarctica collapse into the Southern Ocean, and Republican, money-driven politics tied to coastal development. The Coastal Commission voted to ignore long-term sea level rise.

The Commission voted, with one lone dissent, to limit the period of consideration of sea level rise to 30 years. Keeping the period to 30 years allowed the Commission to avoid considering the consequences of the collapse of west Antarctic glaciers, the speed up of the melting of Greenland's ice cap and the slowing of the Gulf Stream. This vote will end the conflict between the Republican dominated state legislature and the Commission that happened in 2010 when the Commission's panel of experts predicted as much as 5 feet of sea level rise by 2100. The legislature rejected that report and prohibited state and local government offices from considering the possibility that sea level rise would accelerate.

Many critics of the panel's earlier forecast had attacked its premise that the recent slow rate of sea-level rise would begin a dramatic acceleration sometime later in this century. They ridiculed a "hockey stick" curve used to portray a rapid rise that would submerge much of the coast by 2100.

But there should be little disagreement next year, commissioners and scientists agreed Thursday, when the advisory panel of geologists and engineers issues a new forecast that is likely to show only a moderate increase for the next 30 years.

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2014/05/15/3...cast-will.html

Ignoring the inevitable acceleration of sea level rise will allow business as usual development along North Carolina's coast. Many bridges and structures designed to last longer than 30 years will suffer the consequences of rising waters and the government will surely be asked to bail out the victims, but the inevitable damage will provide business opportunities for redevelopment at government expense. Middle class Americans will provide the disaster relief to rebuild the properties of the wealthy living along North Carolina's coast. This is a plan North Carolina's Republican legislature can support.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU6nN3CaAjI
Last edited by Eric the Green; 05-17-2014 at 05:48 PM.
"I close my eyes, and I can see a better day" -- Justin Bieber

Keep the spirit alive,

Eric A. Meece







Post#4381 at 05-18-2014 04:33 PM by Eric the Green [at San Jose CA joined Jul 2001 #posts 22,504]
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This post originally appeared at Mother Jones.

Climate skeptics like to point out that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stimulates plant growth — suggesting that ever-growing fossil fuel consumption will lead to an era of bin-busting crop yields. But as I noted last week, the best science suggests that other effects of an over-heated planet — heat stress, drought and floods — will likely overwhelm any bonus from CO2-rich air. Overall, it seems, crop yields will decline.

And here’s more bad news: In a paper published in Nature this month, a global team has found that heightened levels of atmospheric carbon make key staple crops wheat, rice, peas and soybeans less nutritious.

The team, led by Samuel Myers, a research scientist at Harvard’s Department of Environmental Health, grew a variety of grains and legumes in plots in the US, Japan and Australia. They subjected one set to air enriched with CO2 at concentrations ranging from 546 and 586 parts per million — levels expected to be reached in around four decades; the other set got ambient air at today’s CO2 level, which recently crossed the 400 parts per million threshold.

These are potentially grave findings, because a large swath of humanity relies on rice, wheat and legumes for these very nutrients, the authors note. They report that two billion people already suffer from zinc and iron deficiencies, “causing a loss of 63 million life-years annually.”
The results: a “significant decrease in the concentrations of zinc, iron and protein” for wheat and rice, a Harvard press release on the study reports. For legumes like soybeans and peas, protein didn’t change much, but zinc and iron levels dropped. For wheat, the treated crops saw zinc, iron and protein fall by 9.3 percent, 5.1 percent and 6.3 percent, respectively.

These are potentially grave findings, because a large swath of humanity relies on rice, wheat and legumes for these very nutrients, the authors note. They report that two billion people already suffer from zinc and iron deficiencies, “causing a loss of 63 million life-years annually.” According to the Harvard press release, the “reduction in these nutrients represents the most significant health threat ever shown to be associated with climate change.” Symptoms of zinc deficiency include stunted growth, appetite loss, impaired immune function, hair loss, diarrhea, delayed sexual maturation, impotence, hypogonadism (for males) and eye and skin lesions; while iron deficiency brings on fatigue, shortness of breath, dizziness and headache.

Wheat, rice, soybeans and peas are all what scientists call C3 crops, characterized by the way they use photosynthesis to trap carbon from the atmosphere. C4 crops, which use a different pathway, include staples like corn and sorghum. Fortunately, C4 crops showed much less sensitivity to higher CO2 levels, the study found.

Meanwhile, in my post last week about the big National Climate Assessment and its finding on agriculture, I left out a key point on weeds. The report’s agriculture section notes that “several weed species benefit more than crops from higher temperatures and CO2 levels,” meaning that climate change will likely intensify weed pressure on farmers. And then it adds a bombshell: glyphosate, the widely used herbicide marketed by Monsanto as Roundup, “loses its efficacy on weeds grown at CO2 levels projected to occur in the coming decades.” And that means “higher concentrations of the chemical and more frequent sprayings thus will be needed, increasing economic and environmental costs associated with chemical use.”

In short, the era of climate change will hardly be the paradise of carbon-enriched bounty envisioned by fossil fuel enthusiasts. For a look at how farmers probably should adapt to these unhappy developments, see my 2013 profile of Ohio farmer David Brandt.

Tom Philpott, Mother Jones Food and Agriculture CorrespondentTom Philpott is the cofounder of Maverick Farms, a center for sustainable food education in Valle Crucis, North Carolina. He was formerly a columnist and editor for the online environmental site Grist and his work on food politics has appeared in Newsweek, Gastronomica and the Guardian.

http://billmoyers.com/2014/05/18/cli...nto-junk-food/
"I close my eyes, and I can see a better day" -- Justin Bieber

Keep the spirit alive,

Eric A. Meece







Post#4382 at 05-18-2014 07:23 PM by TnT [at joined Feb 2005 #posts 2,005]
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If you want to drop into total despair, check out Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction. Turns out that the CO2 in the atmosphere may not be our worst problem. Given the "normal" pH of sea water, CO2 likes to dissolve in it. That makes the water more acidic, and that has the potential to take down much of the current ecosystem.

This book is really worth reading. She does a superb job of assembling good science from several disciplines into a really scary story.
" ... a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition."







Post#4383 at 05-19-2014 04:03 AM by B Butler [at joined Nov 2011 #posts 2,329]
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Left Arrow Sixth Extinction

Quote Originally Posted by TnT View Post
If you want to drop into total despair, check out Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction. Turns out that the CO2 in the atmosphere may not be our worst problem. Given the "normal" pH of sea water, CO2 likes to dissolve in it. That makes the water more acidic, and that has the potential to take down much of the current ecosystem.

This book is really worth reading. She does a superb job of assembling good science from several disciplines into a really scary story.
I've started through it. I was interested in how biologists clung to gradual evolution theories long after the evidence for catastrophic transitions between eras ought to have been clear. It seems another example of humans clinging to existing perspectives.

I've about decided to disregard total despair, even if it is appropriate. As far as I can tell, total devastation seems unlikely within a Boomer's life span.







Post#4384 at 05-19-2014 09:48 AM by Anc' Mariner [at San Dimas, California joined Feb 2014 #posts 258]
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Quote Originally Posted by B Butler View Post
I've started through it. I was interested in how biologists clung to gradual evolution theories long after the evidence for catastrophic transitions between eras ought to have been clear. It seems another example of humans clinging to existing perspectives.

I've about decided to disregard total despair, even if it is appropriate. As far as I can tell, total devastation seems unlikely within a Boomer's life span.
Gradualists vs Punctuated Equilibrium. The late SJ Gould did some good work showing the latter. Maybe his best work (better than his Marxian views of unlimited human malleability by education and social conditioning - sorry Steven, we are still biological organisms with various physiological limitations). In other words, quiet periods where mutations build up here and there, then a revolutionary "big sort" that sifts through the useful and the obstructive, adaptive and non adaptive.

What you get looks like a quick period of evolutionary change. But really it was incipient / nascent for a long time before it changed from random quirks to a new evolutionary package of harmonious traits.
Last edited by Anc' Mariner; 05-19-2014 at 10:18 AM.







Post#4385 at 05-19-2014 12:02 PM by B Butler [at joined Nov 2011 #posts 2,329]
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Left Arrow Yah, but...

Quote Originally Posted by Anc' Mariner View Post
Gradualists vs Punctuated Equilibrium. The late SJ Gould did some good work showing the latter. Maybe his best work (better than his Marxian views of unlimited human malleability by education and social conditioning - sorry Steven, we are still biological organisms with various physiological limitations). In other words, quiet periods where mutations build up here and there, then a revolutionary "big sort" that sifts through the useful and the obstructive, adaptive and non adaptive.

What you get looks like a quick period of evolutionary change. But really it was incipient / nascent for a long time before it changed from random quirks to a new evolutionary package of harmonious traits.
Some truth in that in a more stable environment, but The Sixth Extinction is focusing on the major extinction events. Species are suddenly confronted with an environment they simply had not evolved to cope with. If a meteor hits or the sea goes heavily acidic, which species manages to push though the environment change is more a question of luck than how suitable an organism was for the old environment.







Post#4386 at 05-21-2014 09:10 AM by Mikebert [at Kalamazoo MI joined Jul 2001 #posts 4,502]
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Interesting paper that provides a value for long-term discount rates that can be used in present value calculations looking at what sort of effort today is justifiable to prevent a negative outcome in the future. Abstract below:

We provide direct estimates of how agents trade off immediate costs and uncertain future benefits that occur in the very long run, 100 or more years away. We exploit a unique feature of housing markets in the U.K. and Singapore, where residential property ownership takes the form of either leaseholds or freeholds. Leaseholds are temporary, pre-paid, and tradable ownership contracts with maturities between 99 and 999 years, while freeholds are perpetual ownership contracts. The difference between leasehold and freehold prices reflects the present value of perpetual rental income starting at leasehold expiry, and is thus informative about very long-run discount rates. We estimate the price discounts for varying leasehold maturities compared to freeholds and extremely long-run leaseholds via hedonic regressions using proprietary datasets of the universe of transactions in each country. Agents discount very long-run cash flows at low rates, assigning high present values to cash flows hundreds of years in the future. For example, 100-year leaseholds are valued at more than 10% less than otherwise identical freeholds, implying discount rates below 2.6% for 100-year claims. Given the riskiness of rents, this suggests that both long-run risk-free discount rates and long-run risk premia are low. We show how the estimated very long-run discount rates are informative for climate change policy.
Given this 2.6% discount rate I developed values of various negative future outcomes.

Scenario Present Value
5% 100 yrs hence 2x Iraq War
5% 50 yrs hence 6x Iraq War
Collapse in 300 yrs 0.25 Iraq war
Collapse in 200 yrs 3 Iraq Wars
Collapse in 150 yrs 2X Defense budget over 10 yr
Collapse in 100 yrs 1.5 X Entire Fed Budget over 10 yrs
Collapse in 50 yrs WW II-like nationalization for 20 yrs

The 10% and 5% refer to a decline in GDP due to global warming that begins in the target year and then persists after, but with no adverse effect before that year. Collapse refers to a complete collapse of GDP in the target year, with no adverse effect before that year.

As one would think, the cost depends on the severity of the disaster being prevented and also on how distant it is. The collapse examples show the time effect quite clearly. The results suggest that truly massive efforts are "worth it" if the damage is severe and close, say 50-150 years. The value for the 150 years case is something we already decided to incur when the follow-on costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are added to their primary costs. What I am saying is stopping collapse in 150 years is something for which political support could be generated. But no models, even the most catastrophic, project civilizational collapse no later than 2165.

On the other hand avoiding permanent economic depressions 50 or even 100 years away can generate considerable support. None of the models predict such dire consequences in 50 or even 100 years. IMO, based on what I've read, I think an effort of about the size of the Iraq war is justified today, say something along the line of $150 billion a year earmarked for preventing adverse economic efforts through a combination of adaptation to unstoppable effects (e.g. sea level is going up 10-25 feet and there is nothing we can do to stop it) and efforts to reduce severity of impacts we still can affect.

As warming continues we will get a better and better handle on the short term effects. For example, before this past winter I read an article in Scientific American that predicted more frequent severe winters because of a weakening of the polar vortex. It used the 2011 and 2012 winters as examples. Well you can certainly add this past winter to the list. Now I am reading that a massive el Nino is likely to occur this or next year which will mean record heat, something like 1998 with 16-17 years of warming trend added on. Let's see if this happens. Sooner or later the polar ice cap will be completely gone in late summer. Each one of these outcomes, when they occur will allow further calibration of impact prediction models. As the decades go by and more and more of the impacts start to hit us, the ability to forecast will improve to the some point where a massive effort along the lines of one of the scenarios outlined above becomes politically possible.

To me this analysis is not pessimistic. Is says that humans can and will deal with this, but only when it gets closer. And then we will be willing to shell out far more than we would have had to shell out if we had started earlier. This is how it always works and the model above shows you why.
Last edited by Mikebert; 05-21-2014 at 09:52 AM.







Post#4387 at 05-21-2014 01:56 PM by Deb C [at joined Aug 2004 #posts 6,099]
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Yeah, why is it that some of us humans act like the proverbial procrastinator when it comes to getting involved with speaking truth to the powers that be? At some point, procrastination, heads in the sand and down right denial of climate change, will take us to a point of no return. There may be few of the future generation who hold any respect for our generations. We are dropping the ball in a big way.

"Marching doesn’t solve anything by itself. But movements can shift political power—in fact, little else ever does." Bill McKibben

A Call to Arms: An Invitation to Demand Action on Climate Change

When world leaders gather in New York this fall to confront climate change, tens of thousands of people (and maybe you) will be there to demand they take action before it's too late


n a rational world, no one would need to march. In a rational world, policymakers would have heeded scientists when they first sounded the alarm 25 years ago. But in this world, reason, having won the argument, has so far lost the fight. The fossil-fuel industry, by virtue of being perhaps the richest enterprise in human history, has been able to delay effective action, almost to the point where it's too late.

So in this case taking to the streets is very much necessary. It's not all that's necessary – a sprawling fossil-fuel resistance works on a hundred fronts around the world, from putting up solar panels to forcing colleges to divest their oil stocks to electioneering for truly green candidates. And it's true that marching doesn't always work: At the onset of the war in Iraq, millions marched, to no immediate avail. But there are moments when it's been essential. This is how the Vietnam War was ended, and segregation too – or consider the nuclear-freeze campaign of the early 1980s, when half a million people gathered in New York's Central Park. The rally, and all the campaigning that led to it, set the mood for a planet – even, amazingly, in the Reagan era. By mid-decade, the conservative icon was proposing to Mikhail Gorbachev that they abolish nuclear weapons altogether.

The point is, sometimes you can grab the zeitgeist by the scruff of the neck and shake it a little. At the moment, the overwhelming sense around the world is nothing will happen in time. That's on the verge of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy – indeed, as I've written in these pages, it's very clear that the fossil-fuel industry has five times as much carbon in its reserves as it would take to break the planet. On current trajectories, the industry will burn it, and governments will make only small whimpering noises about changing the speed at which it happens. A loud movement – one that gives our "leaders" permission to actually lead, and then scares them into doing so – is the only hope of upending that prophecy.

A loud movement is, of necessity, a big movement – and this fossil-fuel resistance draws from every corner of our society. It finds powerful leadership from the environmental-justice community, the poor people, often in communities of color, who have suffered most directly under the reign of fossil fuel. In this country they're survivors of Sandy and Katrina and the BP spill; they're the people whose kids troop off to kindergarten clutching asthma inhalers because they live next to oil refineries, and the people whose reservations become resource colonies. Overseas, they're the ones whose countries are simply disappearing.



Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...#ixzz32NEUmOPy


"The only Good America is a Just America." .... pbrower2a







Post#4388 at 05-21-2014 01:59 PM by Deb C [at joined Aug 2004 #posts 6,099]
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Conclusion to Bill McKibben's article:

You can watch the endgame of the fossil-fuel era with a certain amount of hope. The pieces are in place for real, swift, sudden change, not just slow and grinding linear shifts: If Germany on a sunny day can generate half its power from solar panels, and Texas makes a third of its electricity from wind, then you know technology isn't an impossible obstacle anymore. The pieces are in place, but the pieces won't move themselves. That's where movements come in. They're not subtle; they can't manage all the details of this transition. But they can build up pressure on the system, enough, with luck, to blow out those bags of money that are blocking progress with the force of Typhoon Haiyan on a Filipino hut. Because if our resistance fails, there will be ever-stronger typhoons. The moment to salvage something of the Holocene is passing fast. But it hasn't passed yet, which is why September is so important.

Day to day this resistance is rightly scattered, local and focused on the more mundane: installing a new zoning code, putting in a solar farm, persuading the church board to sell its BP stock. But sometimes it needs to come together and show the world how big it's gotten. That next great moment is late September in New York. See you there.


Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...#ixzz32NGR2eof
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
"The only Good America is a Just America." .... pbrower2a







Post#4389 at 05-21-2014 06:03 PM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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Good work, Mike, on showing the difference in value between freehold and 100-year-term leases in value. If global warming is to be the huge problem that it seems to project itself, then things could get really bad within a century. Eighty years? That would be roughly a full saeculum, just in time for the next Crisis Era.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."


― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters







Post#4390 at 05-22-2014 09:29 PM by B Butler [at joined Nov 2011 #posts 2,329]
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Left Arrow Green billionaire prepares to attack 'anti-science' Republicans

Green billionaire prepares to attack 'anti-science' Republicans

Quote Originally Posted by CNN
An environmental advocacy group backed by hedge fund tycoon Tom Steyer is set to unleash a seven-state, $100 million offensive against Republican "science deniers" this year, a no-holds-barred campaign-style push from the green billionaire that could help decide which party controls the Senate and key statehouses come November.
In past crises, there has often been a new group of robber barons, backed by new industries, who are attempting to undercut the influence of establishment robber barons. This is one of the things that seems to have been missing this time around as modern progressives try to push for a progressive regeneracy.

I don't know that the above will be enough, but I'd endorse the attempt.







Post#4391 at 05-31-2014 07:40 PM by Deb C [at joined Aug 2004 #posts 6,099]
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Ouch! Here's some unwarranted Baby Boomer blame.

The following is an interview with a climate activist who's pretty upset with us liberals. But Sarah van Gelder from YES magazine confronts his anger.

DeChristopher: I’ve met very few baby boomer liberals who understand what it means to be a young person facing the reality of climate change. It means that we’re never going to have the opportunities that our parents’ and our grandparents’ generations had, and that we’ve got this massive burden weighing on our future.

We constantly hear baby boomers saying to young people: “Stopping climate change is going to be the challenge of your generation.”


Well, that’s not really true. We’ve known about climate change for 20 years, during the time when baby boomers were holding power in this country. Stopping climate change was the challenge of the baby boomer generation, and they failed because it would’ve meant making sacrifices and putting their children’s and grandchildren’s generations ahead of their own. They chose not to do that.

Certainly a lot of the blame falls on fossil fuel executives and politicians, but a lot of it falls on comfortable liberals who changed their light bulbs, bought organic, and sat back and patted themselves on the back. Young people don’t have the luxury of feeling like that’s enough—like they can go to their graves content that they drove a Prius and voted Democrat, so they don’t have to feel guilty about this catastrophe.


van Gelder: That may be objectively true, but if you look at most young people, they’re doing as little as the boomers did.
The Boomers "Failed" Us: Climate Activist Tim DeChristopher on Anger, Love, and Sacrifice

First the anger, then the love—overcoming generational anger to find the courage required for the difficult work ahead.


http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/th...paign=20140530
"The only Good America is a Just America." .... pbrower2a







Post#4392 at 06-02-2014 07:28 PM by Eric the Green [at San Jose CA joined Jul 2001 #posts 22,504]
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EPA announces new coal emission regulations. Do they go far enough? It seems to me we ought to go to 0 by 2030, not a 30% reduction by 2030. Director McCarthy even said the US will still get 30% of its energy from coal by 2030.

But most of that limited reduction would be in place by 2020.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...f0a_story.html

Environmentalists seem pleased with the plan so far, according to reports.

from

http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...f0a_story.html

Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), one of the lawmakers who spoke with Obama Sunday, said in an interview the rule will make it easier for politicians to make even deeper carbon cuts a few years from now.

“This decision is going to unleash the same kind of technology revolution that the tighter fuel economy standards for automobiles unleashed,” Markey said.

The EPA plan resembles proposals made by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which would allow states and companies to employ a variety of *measures — including new *renewable-energy and energy-efficiency projects “outside the fence,” or away from the power plant site — to meet the target for carbon reduction. This approach aims to keep consumer electricity prices from rising too sharply.

from

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-most-...egulation-ever

Environmental activist groups were similarly upbeat regarding the proposed rule. Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org and a frequent critic of the administration’s energy policy, said the EPA’s proposal ”will help advance the obvious tasks of moving America off coal.”

“This is what good organizing does, and more of it will keep the ball rolling,” he said in a statement. “Movement pressure is starting to bring results.”
(end of quote)

The EPA is trying to make the plan flexible so states dependent on coal can comply. There's no easy way around this though, in my opinion. Coal needs to be phased out ASAP. That means coal miners will need new jobs. There could be concerns about energy reductions and higher costs.


But many reports say switching to renewables is good for jobs and energy supply overall. For example, from http://powersource.post-gazette.com/...s/201406010228

Michael Brune, executive director of the environmental advocacy group Sierra Club, noted in an interview that a spokesman for the Colorado-based utility Xcel Energy explained that his company was expanding its investments in solar and wind power because they are the “most cost-effective and most reliable.”

The American Wind Energy Association, which also supports a federal carbon cap on existing plants, recently published a study that found that rates declined over the past five years in the 11 states that use the most wind, while rates increased collectively in all the other states during that same time period.

Rhone Resch, president and chief executive of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said the rule will have an enormous impact because it is so different from previous air-quality regulations in which power plants installed pollution controls to curb the emissions coming out of their stacks.

“This is renewable energy as a compliance technology, and that’s a huge change from what it’s been in the past,” he said. “We think that solar will be an option, one of the technologies of choice for both the utilities and the air directors of these states.”

The proposed regulations will provide new impetus for energy-efficiency measures to flatten out or even lower electricity consumption. A March report by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy looked at efficiency programs in 20 states from 2009 to 2012 and found an average cost of 2.8 cents per kilowatt hour — about one-half to one-third the cost of alternative new electricity resource options, the group said.
(end of quote)


Red state lawmakers from coal states will try to block the plan, and they could get a majority in the House easily; the Senate would be far less certain, and a presidential veto would be likely. The Supreme Court has already given the go to these plans.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 06-03-2014 at 01:50 PM.
"I close my eyes, and I can see a better day" -- Justin Bieber

Keep the spirit alive,

Eric A. Meece







Post#4393 at 06-02-2014 08:19 PM by Deb C [at joined Aug 2004 #posts 6,099]
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Various opinions from climate change activists.

Obama's EPA Plan vs. Climate Catastrophe: 'Fighting a Wildfire with a Garden Hose'



More critical takes on White House plan to cut emissions say new rules simply don't go far enough



This is good," said McKibben of the, "these rules will help advance the obvious tasks of moving America off coal. It’s one of the many things that simply have to happen if we have a chance of catching up with the physics of climate change. Others include rejecting Keystone XL, securing a powerful international agreement, and ending dangerous energy exploration, like fracking and tar sands mining."


In a joint statement, Wenonah Hauter of Food & Water Watch and Janet Redman from the Institute for Policy Studies, said the plan falls short for several key reasons. First, the targets are just too low. And second, the reliance on a cap-and-trade scheme, which essentially allows utilities and power plant operators to pay-to-pollute, has been proven inadequate at reducing overall emissions and does nothing to help local communities situated in the shadow of those plants. They write:

We applaud the President for using the tools he has available, given that Congress refuses to act, and for setting hard targets for emissions reductions. However, the targets don’t make the U.S. a leader in addressing climate change. Because this rule applies to only one segment of our economy – existing coal-fired power plants – the reduction targets fall far short of the IPCC’s goal for developed countries of economy-wide reductions of 15 to 40 percent below 1990 emission levels by 2020. With the President’s targets, U.S. economy-wide emissions would still be above 1990 levels in 2030.


In addition, by allowing states the option of using cap-and-trade and offsets, the administration has cut the legs out from under its own rule. Carbon trading is designed to benefit big corporate polluters. It lets industry decide for itself how to limit carbon emissions based on profit motive, and makes it cheaper for the dirtiest power plants to simply pay for permits instead of cleaning up pollution.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/06/02-4#
Last edited by Deb C; 06-02-2014 at 08:28 PM.
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Post#4394 at 06-02-2014 08:43 PM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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I suggest that anyone who did not see COSMOS on FoX Television last night see the episode which will be replayed on the National Geographic Channel (Monday, June 2). Neil DeGrasse Tyson makes the clear, unambiguous case that global warming is real... and dangerous. His message is simple, clear, and complete. The science is simple and over the head of nobody with about a junior-high level of science.

The Earth will survive our folly. Will we, Humanity, change our ways fast enough?
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."


― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters







Post#4395 at 06-03-2014 01:26 PM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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According to this nationwide poll by a respected pollster, people are beginning to recognize global warming as a troublesome topic. It cannot help Republicans. One Republican politician who has often been touted as a potential nominee of the Republican Party loses by a margin of about 7% against Hillary Clinton loses by 9% once it is shown that he opposes efforts to stop global warming.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."


― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters







Post#4396 at 06-04-2014 02:31 PM by Eric the Green [at San Jose CA joined Jul 2001 #posts 22,504]
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June 3, 2014 Sierra Club says:

Yesterday the Environmental Protection Agency proposed historic standards to curb carbon pollution from existing power plants. The standards, which will clean up the power plants that create the lion's share of carbon pollution in the U.S., are the most significant action any president has ever taken to combat climate disruption.

I have to admit I am with Deb on this; somewhat skeptical that these regulations go far enough. At least my fellow environmentalists seem mostly pleased.
"I close my eyes, and I can see a better day" -- Justin Bieber

Keep the spirit alive,

Eric A. Meece







Post#4397 at 06-05-2014 07:45 PM by Deb C [at joined Aug 2004 #posts 6,099]
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"The Netherlands just made electric trains 100% cooler. There's a joke about climate change in here somewhere, but we're too busy being excited about wind power to make it. Sorry!"
Thanks to Greenpeace UK and 350.org for the photo!







"The only Good America is a Just America." .... pbrower2a







Post#4398 at 06-06-2014 12:50 PM by TnT [at joined Feb 2005 #posts 2,005]
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Quote Originally Posted by pbrower2a View Post
... The Earth will survive our folly. Will we, Humanity, change our ways fast enough?
Probably not. Check out ​The Sixth Extinction.
" ... a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition."







Post#4399 at 06-06-2014 05:09 PM by Deb C [at joined Aug 2004 #posts 6,099]
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Quote Originally Posted by TnT View Post
Probably not. Check out ​The Sixth Extinction.
This is why I've indicated that nothing is forever, including Fourth Turnings.
"The only Good America is a Just America." .... pbrower2a







Post#4400 at 06-09-2014 03:06 PM by Marx & Lennon [at '47 cohort still lost in Falwelland joined Sep 2001 #posts 16,709]
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Considering the complaints are focused on low frequency noise in quiet rural areas, and urban environments have orders of magnitude greater noise at all frequencies, you have to ask just how they wish their energy to be supplied? I assume they get theirs from urban coal and gas plants. Nothing cynical there.

Sorry, but this is not enough reason to eliminate wind generation as a clean energy solution. It may be enough to limit its density ... but that's all.

I might feel more inclined to give a bit if I thought for one minute that the opponents ... the REAL opponents ... were the people actually living in the countryside. This smacks of the kind of propaganda paid for with carbon-based-fuel-source money.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
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