I've said this before on this forum, that I think George Will had an opportunity to become "the" intellectual center of the Conservatives, or at least one of a few to replace the likes of William Buckley. Though I seldom agreed with Buckley, I thoroughly enjoyed reading him and especially listening to him debate.

Will has become a crotchety pedant, simply reciting Republican bumper sticker talking points.

The irony is that the conservative rhetoric is so bad that I could improve upon it. It's now all about class privilege and popular superstition.

Sane conservatives recognized that the common man needed a stake in the system if conservatism were to be something other than a crass endorsement of class privilege at the expense of the happiness of all people.

One possible consequence: the Pacific Ocean becomes a very tough place for marine life.

....................

It should come as no surprise that human activity is causing the world’s oceans to warm, rise and acidify.

But an equally troubling impact of climate change is that it is beginning to rob the oceans of oxygen.

While ocean deoxygenation is well established, a new study led by Matthew Long, an oceanographer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, finds that climate change-driven oxygen loss is already detectable in certain swaths of ocean and will likely be “widespread” by 2030 or 2040.

Ultimately, Long told The Huffington Post, oxygen-deprived oceans may have “significant impacts on marine ecosystems” and leave some areas of ocean all but uninhabitable for certain species.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b0f309baf0499e

Nuclear power could help until solar power,with adequate storage systems, is available. However, Nuclear power seems to be declining.

http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip...E1PA8Z,FAFNB,1


Columnists from dissimilar national newspapers offer unusual analyses of emissions-reduction possibilities.


… "22 March Science Times section of theTimes, an article warned that from 2029 to 2035, “three dozen of the nation’s 99 reactors, representing more than a third of the industry’s generating capacity, will face closure as their operating licenses expire.” The piece noted that nuclear plants provide 19% of US electricity.
At Scientific American, Frank von Hippel—a theoretical particle physicist who conducts nuclear policy research at Princeton University—marked the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident with an essay that concluded, “On the scale needed to shift human energy use away from fossil fuels ... nuclear power has become a helpful but relatively marginal player. Chernobyl damaged its prospects, but it was not the only reason for the technology’s decline.””…

It looks bad for Norfolk.

http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip...E1PA8Z,FAFNB,1


Norfolk: A case study in sea-level rise


… "Subsidence in the area has two other principal causes. The land continues to sink as it readjusts to distortions in Earth’s crust created by the continental ice sheets 10 000 years ago. (See “The puzzle of global sea-level rise” by Bruce Douglas and Richard Peltier, Physics Today, March 2002, page 35.) And a bolide—an extremely bright meteor—that slammed into the southern end of the Chesapeake Bay about 35 million years ago produced an 85-km-diameter crater into which the surrounding land continues to slowly slide. Larry Atkinson, an oceanographer at ODU, says that one-two punch probably accounts for about one-third of the total subsidence.
In addition to the effects of subsidence, the slowing of the Gulf Stream that began in the mid 1990s has had a noticeable effect on sea level by moving the current, which flows well above mean sea level, closer to the Virginia coast, notes Stiles.
J. Pat Rios, the US Navy’s director of facilities and environmental for the mid-Atlantic region, says that a further 61 cm rise in sea level is expected by 2050. Today, unusually high tides and a moderate storm surge will sometimes necessitate shutting off the electric and steam lines that run under the naval base’s piers. By midcentury, he says, the same combination of events will flood most piers.”…

The Armed Forces consider global warming a real threat. Does anyone want to have a naval base... in Arkansas?

Still waiting for someone to explain why, if the HGW chicken littles were sincere, that guys like Peter Gleick would have to phony up evidence against their opponents?

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

The world has a better chance of saving itself from catastrophic global warming now than at any time over the past two decades, according to the scientist behind some of the most alarming predictions ever made for the planet’s future...

-More than likely, he's admitting that the most bed-wetting claims of the homo-global warming crowd were ridiculously overblown, and it finally occured to him that people will take his previous silly claims and shove them down his throat if he doesn't back track.