The level is just a few years from what many scientists regard as the tipping point of 400ppm.Oh Man. I am really starting to hate this term "tipping point." There is absolutely no science or calculation -- none whatsoever -- that demonstrates any "tipping" phenomenon at 400 ppm. It's only an ominous number because humans happen to have 10 fingers. That's it.
The International Telecommunications Union reports that the number of mobile phone users worldwide soared to over 3.3 billion by the end of 2007, equivalent to a penetration rate of 49 per cent.
1)COAL IS NOT VIABLE AS A LOW-CARBON ENERGY SOURCEThese are all lemmas which prove the following theorem:
2) NO MATTER WHAT SOME COAL COMPANY EXECUTIVE SAYS, EFFORTS TO SEQUESTER COAL'S CO2 EMISSION HAVE BEEN A HUGE FAILURE.
3) BASIC PHYSICS SAYS THIS SITUATION WILL NOT BE IMPROVING ANYTIME SOON.
4) "CLEAN COAL" IS AN OXY-MORON.
COAL IS COMPLETELY ANTITHETICAL TO THE FUTURE OF THE HUMAN RACE.
NEXT?
In Detroit last night — that’s May 28 — temperatures plunged to 39 degrees, just missing the record set in 1966 by half a degree. The Midwest is experiencing its latest spring in well over a decade, as temperatures have consistently been 15 degrees below normal.Really. Payne is clearly a smart enough guy to understand that climate is not weather, but rather its long-term average, long-term meaning 5-10-20 years.
As the Bush administration fended off pressure in recent years to sign the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty limiting greenhouse gases, more than 800 U.S mayors signed a "Climate Protection Agreement" to cut their cities' emissions to 7% below 1990 levels, the Kyoto target.If your mayor signs up for a goal, you can be sure his bureaucrats will try pretty hard to meet it -- on way or the other. Soon we are going to be in a position where all of our cities are claiming significant cuts in their carbon emissions, but overall emissions for the United States will continue to grow.
"Science in the United States has really kind of died over a quarter of a century, even as the importance of science has grown."
-- Nina Fedoroff, science and technology adviser to Condoleezza Rice
"It could be even true that we are now at a stage where mere facts, reason and truths are powerless in the face of the global warming propaganda," he said.That is, truly, an astonishingly bold accusation. Klaus actually seems to believe that there is some grand conspiracy among climate scientists, all of them promoting global warming, all so they can continue to get funding.
At Glittery Cannes, a Gritty Palme d’OrReally, I'm not angry.Laurent Cantet, right, posed with some of the nonprofessional actors in his film “Entre les Murs,” which won the Palme d’Or at the 61st Cannes Film Festival.
On campuses nationwide, professors and administrators have passionately debated whether their universities should accept money for research from tobacco companies. But not at Virginia Commonwealth University, a public institution in Richmond, Va.
That is largely because hardly any faculty members or students there know that there is something to debate — a contract with extremely restrictive terms that the university signed in 2006 to do research for Philip Morris USA, the nation’s largest tobacco company and a unit of Altria Group.
I just can't understand how people like this look at themselves in the mirror in the morning.
A Global Comeback for CoalNew York Times, May 21, 2008By MARTIN FACKLER
Soaring commodity prices have been an unanticipated boon to coal producing regions that had written coal mining off as a relic of the Industrial Revolution.
25% of high-school teachers indicated that they devoted at least one or two classroom hours to creationism or intelligent design.... Of the 25% of teachers who devoted time to creationism or intelligent design, nearly half agreed or strongly agreed that they teach creationism as a “valid scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species.We are largely a nation of imbeciles, taught partly by imbeciles who wouldn't recognize the scientific method if it stabbed them dead in the dark, and unfortunately led by imbeciles who think we should respect these other imbeciles and are too terrified to say otherwise because it might cost them a couple of votes. It is in no small part responsible for the direction our country is headed -- a wave rushing towards a lack of reason, intelligent and informed thought, and respect for the wonders and prizes that science has brought them over the last 400 years.
Each year, the semiconductor industry makes about 100 million transistors for every man, woman, and child on Earth. By 2010, the number should be up to 1 billion.
-- Excerpt from Seven Wonders for a Cooler Planet – The Microchip
Asked if it was odd that he can be mayor - but not married - in Oregon, Adams said it was "surreal.""With the position of mayor comes life and death authority and responsibility in running a police force, emergency preparedness system and fire departments," he said. "But gay folks still can't be trusted to be married."
A simulation of Atlantic hurricane activity for the final decades of the century projected an 18 percent decrease in hurricanes and a 27 percent decrease in tropical storms, researchers at the U.S. government's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in New Jersey found."It does not support the notion that increasing greenhouse gases are causing a large increase in Atlantic hurricane or tropical storm frequency," said Thomas Knutson, one of the study's authors.
Clearly more study is needed. Give the scientists time to do their jobs before you plan out your propaganda.
"Dawkins’s uncompromising literalism is nowhere more obvious than in his astonishing insistence throughout The God Delusion that the notion of God should be treated as a scientific hypothesis, subject to the same verificational procedures as any other “scientific” hypothesis."I simply cannot see -- or imagine -- why the notion of "God" should not be treated as a scientific hypothesis.
Malcolm Reynolds: "The wheel never stops turning, Badger."
Badger: "That only matters to the people on the rim."
Firefly, Season 1, Episode 1
The Interior Department has decided to protect the polar bear as a threatened species because of the decline in Arctic sea ice from global warming, officials said Wednesday....This is the first time that the Endangered Species Act has been used to protect a species threatened by the impacts of global warming. There has been concern within the business community that such action could have far-reaching impact and could be used to regulate carbon dioxide.
After all the corporate giveaways from this administration, especially from the EPA, I never thought I would see something like this.
g = 32 ft/sec^2 = 1 lightyear/year/year
While unwilling to discuss his wealth, he said he could be a lot richer if he wanted to. “We know these guys in Google and the eBay guys,“ he said, “and they are not any happier than anyone else. A lot of money is a burden.”On the other hand, I am reminded of the Jewish aphorism "God gave burdens, also shoulders."
Fish swimming in water containing modest amounts of fullerenes, soccer-ball-shaped nanoparticles made out of 60 carbon atoms, showed a large increase in brain damage. These are the same types of fullerenes being used in various skin products.
...what surprises me is that more people haven't been making the connection between the Burma cyclone and global warming. That kind of talk was all over the place after Hurricane Katrina even though it made little sense in that case. In the end, Katrina made landfall as a strong Cat 3 hurricane, hardly a superstorm, and the bulk of the damage to New Orleans was done not by Katrina itself but by the breaching of poorly built levees. That had nothing to do with global warming.It's not at all clear that this cyclone is a consequence of global warming, and no one will ever know, and it's scientifically and intellectually wrong to make such an attribution.
By contrast, the Burma cyclone really is a good example of the kind of thing we're likely to see more of in coming decades.
Al Gore Calls Myanmar Cyclone a 'Consequence' of Global Warming
Former vice president tells NPR's 'Fresh Air' cyclone is example of 'consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.'
By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
5/6/2008 4:04:54 PM
Using tragedy to advance an agenda has been a strategy for many global warming activists, and it was just a matter of time before someone found a way to tie the recent Myanmar cyclone to global warming.
Former Vice President Al Gore in an interview on NPR’s May 6 “Fresh Air” broadcast did just that. He was interviewed by “Fresh Air” host Terry Gross about the release of his book, “The Assault on Reason,” in paperback.
“And as we’re talking today, Terry, the death count in Myanmar from the cyclone that hit there yesterday has been rising from 15,000 to way on up there to much higher numbers now being speculated,” Gore said. “And last year a catastrophic storm from last fall hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China – and we’re seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.”
This is just a ridiculous claim, completely unsupported by the science, and the Al Gore's and Chris Mooney's of the world who keep doing this are doing a serious disservice to science and to the cause of responsibly addressing the CO2 problem.
No one is, ultimately, going to believe anyone who stretches and twists the truth. It might get you a headline, it might sell you a few books, but in the end it damages the credibility of everyone trying to responsibly report on climate change. In some ways this damage has already been done.
To repeat: There have been big storms forever. No one storm can be proof of anything. Climatology predicts storm intensity and frequency only in a statistical manner.
This is getting very frustrating.
For comparison, this is the same amount of CO2 produced by twelve 100-watt lightbulbs glowing for an hour or a car engine burning 14 ounces of gasoline.By comparison, the average American emits about 143 lbs CO2e/day.
The sale of new SUVs and pickup trucks has dropped precipitously in recent months amid soaring gas prices and a weakening economy: SUV sales for the month of April alone fell 32.3 percent from a year earlier and small car sales rose 18.6 percent. This fundamental shift comes against a backdrop of relentless gas increases, and growing concerns over the environment and US oil consumption, according to auto analysts and car dealers.
"The SUV craze was a bubble and now it is bursting," said George Hoffer, an economics professor at Virginia Commonwealth University whose research focuses on the automotive industry. "It's an irrational vehicle. It'll never come back."
McCain has amended his plan: States would create “high-risk” pools for people with risky pre-existing conditions.Why must we acquiesce to the insurance companies in plans to provide health care? They're vultures, vampires, fuckers who only want to make a profit, and they want to do it regardless of its impact on individuals, even if they suffer, in pain, or even if they die. I mean, this is a war, literally, and they are using all the tools at their disposal to win, regardless of the casualties. I mean that literally. Their tools are briefcases and campaign donations. They will... are.... strangling the country for the sake of their bottom line.
Wha? Lots of states already have high-risk pools. Thirty states require insurance companies operating there to cover people with pre-existing conditions. Problem is, the premiums they charge for such policies are often twice as high as those for people without pre-existing conditions, and the co-payments and deductibles they charge such people are beyond belief. In other words, the insurance companies technically obey they law. They do offer health insurance to high-risk people. But it's so expensive almost no high-risk person can afford it.
Now here's some quality journalism for you, characterized by an ardent desire to uncover all the facts, interview a spectrum of respectable sources, and insisting on proof of every claim, even if your mother said it:SENSATIONAL sightings of a flying HUMAN above the skies of Mexico could be true, says a paranormal expert.Even for a British paper, this strikes me as a new accomplishment.
"Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today's computer models cannot predict climate."Anyway, this latest news is good news because, if it turns out to be true, it means we have more time to get out civilization carbon-free.
-- "Don't Fight, Adapt; We Should Give Up Futile Attempts to Combat Climate
Change," Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, National Post, Dec. 13, 2007.