Winter may be coldest in 1000 years
BRITAIN’S winter is the coldest since 1683 and close to being the chilliest in nearly 1,000 years.
Latest figures reveal that the average temperature since December 1 has been a perishing -1C.
That makes it the second coldest since records began in 1659.
THURSDAY, Dec. 9 (HealthDay News) -- Life expectancy dipped slightly in the United States from 2007 to 2008, according to a new federal report -- the first decline of its type in 25 years.
Life expectancy for Americans in general declined by a little more than one month, from 77.9 to 77.8 years.
Whoever heard in life expectancy dropping anywhere, anytime in the last 100 years? It seems to be too early yet to suss out the reasons. But this bears watching. You have to wonder if the failing U.S. health care isn't partly behind it.
"You have about 5 percent of the market that is green and committed to fuel efficiency," said Mike Jackson, the chief executive of AutoNation, the largest auto retailer in the country. "But the other 95 percent will give up an extra 5 mpg in fuel economy for a better cup holder."
-- Peter Whoriskey, Washington Post
Der Spiegel:
The U.S. has 59 million people medically uninsured; 132 million without dental insurance; 60 million without paid sick leave; 40 million on food stamps. Everybody in the European Union has cradle-to-grave access to universal medical and a dental plan by law. The law also requires paid sick leave; paid annual leave; paid maternity leave. When you realize all of that, it becomes easy to understand why many Europeans think America has gone insane.
-- Why Germans Think the U.S. is Insane
The target audience of denialism is the lay audience, not scientists. It's made up to look like science, but it's PR. (David Archer)
- from jules-klimaat.blogspot.com
"A Christmas miracle: The gods gave us the Immaculate Reception"
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 25, 2010.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10359/1113052-109.stm
Very religious Americans are more likely to practice healthy behaviors than those who are moderately religious or nonreligious....We've seen these kind of result before.... But I never know what to make of them.
Very religious Americans make healthier choices than their moderately religious and nonreligious counterparts across all four of the Healthy Behavior Index metrics, including smoking, healthy eating, and regular exercise. Smoking is one area of particular differentiation between the very religious and less religious Americans, with the nonreligious 85% more likely to be smokers than those who are very religious.
It is evident that time segments of a few decades or shorter can exhibit either warming or cooling trends, while trends for longer segments are mostly positive, though quite weak compared to those present in shorter segments.
"Generally speaking, the smarter move is to invest in the Tiffanys of the world—and shop at the Wal-Marts."
-- Brett Arends, Why I Don't Want an iPad for Christmas, Wall Street Journal
Disasters from the Earth, such as earthquakes and volcanoes "are pretty much constant," said Andreas Schraft, vice president of catastrophic perils for the Geneva-based insurance giant Swiss Re. "All the change that's made is man-made.""Through Nov. 30, nearly 260,000 people died in natural disasters in 2010, compared to 15,000 in 2009, according to Swiss Re. The World Health Organization, which hasn't updated its figures past Sept. 30, is just shy of 250,000. By comparison, deaths from terrorism from 1968 to 2009 were less than 115,000, according to reports by the U.S. State Department and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory."
In the summer, one weather system caused oppressive heat in Russia, while farther south it caused flooding in Pakistan that inundated 62,000 square miles, about the size of Wisconsin. That single heat-and-storm system killed almost 17,000 people, more people than all the worldwide airplane crashes in the past 15 years combined.More:
The excessive amount of extreme weather that dominated 2010 is a classic sign of man-made global warming that climate scientists have long warned about. They calculate that the killer Russian heat wave - setting a national record of 111 degrees - would happen once every 100,000 years without global warming.There are lots more interesting facts in the article.
Hansen feels the need to explain why GISS is high in the midst of frigid air
I was working on a general report yesterday, but in checking background for it, I discovered this recent missive from Dr. Hansen. I suppose when your agency is the “odd man out”, you feel a need to explain yourself. Note the difference in November 2010 global temperature anomaly metrics:
UAH: 0.38 GISS: 0.74°CApparently it never occurred to Watts to actually compare the numbers scientifically -- that is, to note that GISS's baseline is 1951-1980 and UAH's baseline is 1981-2010. So it's little wonder that GISS gets a higher number.
In April 2001 the Portland City Council under the leadership of Mayor Vera Katz approved an aggressive plan aimed to combat global warming by decreasing carbon emissions by 10% from their 1990 levels by 2010, thus making Portland an icon in the renewable energy movement. An important part of this plan mandated that the City of Portland acquire one hundred percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2010. This would be accomplished through the purchase of renewable energy certificates (RECs) from public utility companies, renewable energy installations at city and county facilities and the sponsorship of local renewable energy projects. Nine years later the City of Portland has demonstrated the ineffectiveness of a government-led push for renewables by utterly failing to achieve its goal of 100% renewable energy. As of 2010 only 9% of the Portland city government’s power comes from renewable energy sources.Via the Oregonian, via a report by the (free market) Cascade Policy Institute.
"You have been negotiating all my life," 21-year-old Mima Haider of Lebanon told delegates at the United Nations climate negotiations in Cancún. "You cannot tell me you need more time."
-- from "The Cancun Compromise" by Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation, Dec 16, 2010
"A male 20-year-old today can expect to spend 5.8 years over the rest of his life without basic mobility, compared to 3.8 years a decade ago — an additional two years unable to walk up ten steps or sit for two hours. A female 20-year-old can expect 9.8 years without mobility, compared to 7.3 years a decade ago.
"There is substantial evidence that we have done little to date to eliminate or delay disease while we have prevented death from diseases," Crimmins explained. "At the same time, there have been substantial increases in the incidences of certain chronic diseases, specifically, diabetes."
The Atlandtic: Wikileaks vs the growing culture of official secrecy & stilling of public discourse http://bit.ly/et2XWq In context with Wikileaks vs habitual secrecy, Wash Post. "Top Secret America". http://wapo.st/f4dT4j Bill Moyer's Journal. Rick Karr on Government Secrecy (video). http://to.pbs.org/fHTuZi More on the growth of gov. secrecy. Bill Moyer's Journal - The Need to Know. http://to.pbs.org/9kJeLn RT @DanielEllsberg EVERY attack now made on Assange and @wikileaks was made against me and release of Pentagon Papers http://bit.ly/eZnep8 RT @wired Military bans disks, threatens courts-martial to stop new #WikiLeaks - http://wrd.tw/gTYgoL RT @fastcompany With @WikiLeaks Looming Large, @StateDept Announces Hosting of Press Freedom Event http://bit.ly/grzkYG Infoworld: WikiLeaks persists despite massive, multifaceted attacks http://bit.ly/gIzsyH
“You are complete joy to me,” Mrs. Edward wrote. “I hope you will always know that. Wherever I am, wherever you are, I have my arms wrapped around you.”
-- Elizabeth Edwards, letter to her children
"You can't just spend a weekend with an Excel spreadsheet and issue comments. I wanted to make sure that what we were passing out was scientifically vetted." (Oregonian, Nov 27, 2010).
In "Tron: Legacy," which opens Dec. 17, 61-year-old actor Jeff Bridges will play Kevin Flynn, at his natural age, and a computerized avatar called "Clu," who hasn't aged since around the time he was first created in the original Tron in 1982.
Clu bears Bridges' face, altered to make him about 35 years old, but it's grafted onto a younger actor's body.
While it may be eerie for audiences to see a new performance from a younger-looking Bridges, it was no less strange for the actor himself.
"It's bizarre. It's great news for me, because now it means I can play myself at any age," Bridges said.I am not so sure. I think audiences like seeing actors they are familiar with play different roles, and they like seeing their evolution over time. They don't want to see them playing roles they should have played 30 years ago.
Almost certainly, as individuals, scientists are responsible for an order of magnitude more greenhouse gas emissions than the average global citizen, in large part due to travel associated with our scientific interactions, presentations, and service to the scientific community....
Scientists must lead the charge against “business as usual” by demonstrating a different way of doing business. The technology is available, and it is time for us to find ways to promote scientific progress without contributing so substantially to the climate change problem we study.
-- "Travel Trade-Offs for Scientists," Ingrid C Burke, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Science v 330, 10 Dec 2010, p 1476
Watching official China stomp and whine after the Nobel Prize was awarded to Liu Xiaobo is really quite amusing (and, as well, rather sad). They seem like a six-year old -- or, rather, like any bully who ever lived. James Fallows nails it:"If the Chinese people ... don't know why this prize should be given to Liu Xiaobo, now they should understand."
In many respects, information has never been so free. There are more ways to spread more ideas to more people than at any moment in history. Even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.
During his visit to China in November, President Obama held a town hall meeting with an online component to highlight the importance of the internet. In response to a question that was sent in over the internet, he defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows, the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens to hold their governments accountable, generates new ideas, and encourages creativity. The United States' belief in that truth is what brings me here today.
After the European settlement, strange ideas about "manifest destiny" were used as an excuse to push Native Americans from their land. Later, in the antebellum South, some preachers routinely endorsed the thesis that slavery, American-style, was endorsed by God. Today's "exceptionalists" are really no different, a theologian's equivalent of the child in the backseat telling his sister that "Mom likes me better than you!"
God doesn't play favorites among nations. Any "exceptionalism" in the United States is because of the character of her people and a structure of government which doesn't pick sides in theological debates either. When we start thinking that God is patting us on the head more regularly, we'll be "exceptional" only for our vanity and pride.
"Far from the oceans acidifying, their pH currently ranges between 7.9 and 8.3, putting them very firmly on the alkaline side of the threshold, at 7.0."This is just unbelievably stupid. I can't even believe even Booker thinks this is an accurate description of ocean acidification, which is, of course, about the ocean's pH getting lower, regardless of its starting point.
The U.S.government is doing the same thing to Wikileaks that the Chinese government did to Google.
"Re: Wikileaks - In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble."
