As I write this, Joe Scarborough's favorite governor, Chris Christie, is sitting with a comfortable 40-point lead over his likely Democratic opponent, Barbara Buono. Christie recently underwent lap-band surgery in an attempt to address his slightly controversial girth and has now, despite the devastation wrought upon his state last fall by Superstorm Sandy, has joined the Flat Earth wing of the Republican Party:

“I don’t think there’s been any proof thus far that Sandy was caused by climate change," Christie said. "But I would absolutely expect that that’s exactly what WNYC would say, because you know liberal public radio always has an agenda.”

Proof. He wants "proof."

Keep in mind that this is a guy who believes that there is a great white alpha male who lives in the sky and that a guy in a dress in Rome has a direct conduit to him and that when he takes Communion the wafer and wine literally turn into the body and blood of a guy who may or may not have lived over 2000 years ago.

And yet several hundred miles of his state were devastated last fall by a veritable turducken of a storm that was unprecedented, and he wants to see "proof."

Granted, "weather" and "climate" are not the same thing. But a storm of the magnitude of Sandy, just like a tornado of the magnitude of the one that hit Oklahoma on Monday, is a symptom of a generally warming climate, which allows the air to hold more moisture and build more energy. We used to see devastating hurricanes every ten years or so. Now there is at least one every two or three years. Tornadoes have always been common in the midwest, but not tornadoes that cut a swath of up to two miles wide:



That looks like a CGI effect, doesn't it? It's not. Oh, and by the way? It's only May. It's not July, the peak of tornado season, it's MAY.

F5 tornadoes in May. Thunder-snow in January.

Nope. Nothing to see here.

Christie is hoping that by joining the "La La La La La I Am Not Listening" wing of his party, he can get past the certifiable lunatics that are sure to be his opposition in 2016. But here is the company he's going to have to keep in order to get there:



Got that, New Jersey and Chris Christie? Oklahoma's federal relief is deserved. YOUR relief is a "slush fund."

Someone should tell Sen. Inhofe that the U.S. Virgin Islands and Washington DC were also devastated by Sandy. Not that it would matter. It's the same mindset that gives Republican politicians a free pass on corruption and sexual infidelity but runs Democratic politicians out of town. It's also the same mindset that has more than one in ten Oklahoma residents not having even basic literacy. It's also a state where:

• 12.5% of pregnancies are unwanted.
• More than 610,000 Oklahomans lived below the poverty line in 2010.
• $410.42 per month is the average salary for a single person living in poverty in Oklahoma and more than 190,000 children under the age of 18 and more than a half million Oklahoma residents total are living in homes where they don’t have enough money to pay for housing, medicine, food and heat.
• Of households experiencing hunger, less than 20 percent are classified as unemployed. More than one-third are disabled and/or retired, while the remaining 46 percent have at least one working member..
• Nearly 20% of Oklahoma girls never graduate high school.

James Inhofe and Tom Coburn, the latter of whom wants relief for tornado victims offset by cuts to programs in states other than his own (presumably the Communist Jewish Homosexual Pornographer states of New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts that subsidize Oklahoma year after year), insist that THEIR state's relief is somehow different from New Jersey's. Left unsaid is their view that God and Jesus somehow favor the Bible-thumpers in Oklahoma who are doing just as much fucking and divorcing as everyone else, in which case why does God always rain tornadoes and devastation upon them making them a leading recipient of federal relief funds, while in the Communist Jewish Homosexual Pornographer states, we ask for help maybe once a decade?

Voters in New Jersey this fall ought to remember that this is the company Chris Christie wants to keep.

Labels: assholes, climate change, double standards, hypocrisy, James Inhofe, right-wing economic terrorism, Tom Coburn

Here at Casa la Brilliant, all of October has been a hurricane. It started when my mother had a life-threatening medical emergency, which took me to North Carolina for two weeks, during which I attempted, with mixed success, to juggle continuing to work full-time remotely on The Project That Ate My Life while simultaneously helping my sister with finding a facility where Mom could recover. Then there was the flurry around the deployment of The Project That Ate My Life, the work on other projects that were clamoring for attention after being neglected in favor of The Project That Ate My Life, and the month was capped off with Hurricane Sandy.

The power came back on last night. We were returning from an unhealthy but delicious meal of The Best Bar Burgers in Bergen County at our beloved Dog House Saloon. The area around the business district had been back on the grid for a couple of days, but we noticed that the area of houses with lights on extended further than it had just the day before. And then it extended further...and further...and when we saw lights on when we arrived at our street, it's difficult to describe the sheer joy that we felt after five days in the dark. If I ever won the lottery, I doubt I could be any more excited.

We live every day in blissful oblivion of what a gift it is that we can enter a room, flip a switch, and a light comes on; that we can push a button on a wall box and heat comes out of the vents; that we can touch a button and unlimited entertainment comes directly into our living room; that we can double-click on an icon and the world appears on our computer screens. For those of us lucky enough to have not had our homes destroyed as those who live along New Jersey's beaches have, who were lucky enough to NOT have an eighty-foot pine tree come crashing into our houses, coming within a shower of sheetrock of impaling our twelve-year-old (as happened to a former colleague of mine); whose loss consisted largely of the absence of cable TV and gnawing anxiety about obtaining gasoline for the generator; it's easy to wake up today and vow never to take electricity for granted again.

On Community

I have an unfinished novel that I often wonder if I will ever have time to finish. The novel takes place in the early part of the 20th century, and in the heyday of my time to work on it, I did a great deal of research into agrarian life at that time. We hear a great deal during political campaigns about "heartland values", and ads showing amber waves of grain and farm families sitting down to meals of the earth's bounty make an appearance. But what doesn't appear in these ads, particularly when they are for Republican candidates, is the idea of working together for a collective good. When housewifery involved banking a coal stove and pumping water from a near-frozen well and cooking everything from scratch and feeding men enough to sustain them through a day of hard work; when it involved canning vegetables for the winter and slicing the bacon from a slab in the smokehouse; when what women did in the home contributed as much towards the overall farm as the physical labor the men did, there may not have been happiness, but there wasn't the "Is that all there is?" ennui that afflicted women by the 1950's, when housecleaning and meal preparation was streamlined into near-effortlessness.

When times are tough, people have to come together just to keep life together. When you're in the dark and the cold, the things about your spouse that irritate you and have had you snapping at each other for weeks seem to disappear because someone has to lift the 5 gallon gas can for the generator and someone else has to hold the flashlight over the fill hole in the dark. When there's no TV and no internet, you have to actually TALK to each other. Marital strife is a luxury that we only have when just keeping day-to-day life together is not an issue. When you have to wait in line for four hours to buy gasoline, the guy who tries to cut in front of you because you are not blocking someone's driveway becomes someone you want to kill. But when the power comes back on and you don't need the generator, you're happy to give the gasoline you waited for just the other day to your neighbor on the next block who still doesn't have power and would have to still wait for hours for gas.

I'm not trying to ascribe any kind of character-building nobility to those who have lost everything. But for those of us who have emerged from Hurricane Sandy with relatively few hassles, it's time to reflect on how we have been living. It's a time to reflect on the "I Got Mine And Fuck You" doctrine that seems to have taken over our political discourse as we head into Election Day. And it's a time to try to hang on to the lessons of this relatively mild hardship for as long as we can.

On Leadership and Bipartisanship

I've never liked Chris Christie. People say that the cast of Jersey Shore represents everything that's terrible about New Jersey. I've often thought that Chris Christie does. He's like Tony Soprano without the Mafia -- gluttonous, crass, vulgar, a big hulking bully. It's hard to forget his jihad against New Jersey's teachers and his expression of desire that someone should take a baseball bat to septuagenarian state Senator Loretta Weinberg. Threatening a seventy-plus grandmother doesn't make you a tough guy. But these days, what DOES make you a tough guy is putting your job as a public servant above ideology -- and saying so on Fox News, of all places:

As if trying to ease the difficulties of those left homeless and wondering where the money is going to be found to rebuild the honky-tonk glory of the Jersey shore that he and many other New Jersey denizens love so much isn't enough, Christie is now under siege by the gasbags on his side of the political fence for his apostasy in putting the needs of people like this:



...ahead of his party's agenda of wishing for any number of horrors to be visited on the American people if it means they get to gain more power.

I hope Christie succeeds. I don't care if he becomes the most beloved governor in the history of this state. I want him to succeed. Because if he succeeds, Jenkinson's Amusements rises again. If he succeeds, evenings spent by young couples on Jersey shore boardwalks will be enjoyed as much by future generations as it was by mine. If he succeeds, people will eat piping-hot fried scallops on a nearly-deserted Seaside Heights boardwalk on a rainy Labor Day the way we did in 2000. If he succeeds, the smell of cotton candy and the creaminess of Kohr's Frozen Custard and the sounds of amusement rides mixing with the crashing surf will once again be enjoyed by families. That would be worth it, no matter what the letter after the governor's name.

And the fact that I feel this way is what makes liberals different from -- and yes, just plain better people than -- today's conservatives.

If you want to help, and you just don't want to pour money into the Red Cross' coffers, here are things you can do and donate

: The Sea Bright firefighters are in need of the following items (source):

• Socks
• T-shirts
• Blankets
• Toiletries
• Baby wipes
• Snacks that can be carried in their gear (granola bars, cookies, etc.)
• Flavored drinks (vitamin water, gatorade, etc.)
• Cots to sleep on

The items can be dropped off at the firehouse at the corner of Stillwells Corner Road and Schanck Road.

Donate directly to the town of Sea Bright here. Sea Bright is has been declared unsafe, with live wires and gas leaks.

Donate directly to Belmar relief here.

Labels: climate change, Hurricane Sandy 2012, personal musings

In a Pew survey last spring, 75 percent of staunch conservatives, 63 percent of libertarians, and 55 percent of so-called Main Street Republicans said there was no solid evidence of global warming.

NOW can we stop taking any of them seriously?

((source)

Labels: American Idiots, climate change, Teh Stoopid, willful ignorance

So what'd I miss?

The power came back on at around 5 PM yesterday, a day after I was starting to feel very deprived because there was power three blocks west of us and two blocks east, and even at the foot of our street. We live on a dead end, which I'm sure has something to do with it, but no power starts to wear thin after three days.

Sitting in the dark, or near dark, thanks to the generator, makes one think long and hard about just how spoiled we all are. I'm fortunate that I had the $2750 to spend on a direct-wired generator setup that allowed us to switch from the furnace/fridge to the water heater with the flip of a circuit. I'm fortunate that my packrat ways (and the generator) meant a full freezer out of which I only have to throw away some ice cream and a few bags of frozen vegetables that were in the door. We even had recognizable ice cubes left in the tray. I'm fortunate that I had bought tons of batteries for the crank radio prior to the hurricane in September so we didn't have to sit there cranking in order to get weather updates. After the first night, which was dark and cold because we had never used the generator before and wanted to wait until daylight, the house never had to go below sixty degrees.

But for one evening at least, it's kind of nice to just sit in the dark with nothing to do but listen to music on the radio -- really LISTEN -- and talk about music and culture; things OTHER than politics, because the box that feeds rants into our brain every evening was out of commission. It was nice not to be bothered by telephone solicitors. It was nice to think about how many years ago this was how everyone lived, only with gas lamps and candles, and entertainment was gathering around the piano.

But I've had enough of all that now.

I remember when the first snowfall would take place in late November or early December. It would usually be just a dusting, and it never, ever stuck. This one started at around 10:30 AM and was sticking by 11, despite temperatures in the upper 40's. Driving was treacherous by 1 PM. One colleague reported to me that she was so frightened driving because of the cracking of branches and the "snow bombs" that sagging branches were dropping on her car that she abandoned her car about a half-mile from home and walked the rest of the way -- an astounding decision, given the even higher risks of walking under trees unprotected. But this was the kind of pouring-out-of-the-sky snow that we saw last January, and its path, coming out of the south as it did, followed the same path as the many foot-or-more snowfalls we had last year -- not a good omen for the rest of the winter.

But this storm seems to fit right in with the United Nations report on climate change that is shortly to be released:

The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is expected conclude that there is a high probability that man-made greenhouse gases already are causing extreme weather that has cost governments, insurers, businesses and individuals billions of dollars. And it is certain to predict that costs due to extreme weather will rise and some areas of the world will become more perilous places to live.

Federal climate scientists have labeled 2011 as one of the worst in American history for extreme weather, with punishing blizzards, epic flooding, devastating drought and a heat wave that has broiled a huge swath of the country. Weather related losses amounted to more than $35 billion even before the Nor'easter shellacked the East Coast.

Among the more costly events in the U.S. this year was the flooding of the Mississippi River and tributaries due to rapid melting of the Rocky Mountain snowpack and early spring rains. That event, which prompted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to open a Mississippi River spillway and flood more than 4,000 acres in Louisiana, caused billion of dollars in direct damage.

April also spawned 875 tornado reports nationwide, well above the 30-year average for the month of 135. The "super outbreak," as climatologists dubbed it, killed 327 people.

Drought in Texas has caused more than $5.4 billion in damage to the cattle industry alone, driving up beef prices, while wildfires consumed 2 million acres. A heat wave throughout much of the country caused 29 states to issue heat advisories in July. Nationwide, the hot spell was blamed for scores of deaths.

The "Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation" will be released Nov. 18. It builds on the climate change panel's previous assessments of the Earth's climate, and is intended to help governments and policymakers boost preparedness for extreme weather events.

Even former climate change skeptic Richard Muller has changed course, though in this article he penned for the climate change-denying Wall Street Journal, he actually admits to having thought "Some places are cooler so that disproves global warming" shows that he is a scientist not above letting his politics affect his research bias when it suits him. But since he does not seem to have become a nightly viewer of The Rachel Maddow Show, we can perhaps safely assume that his gear-shift extends only to climate change, and right-wing fears that he has been kidnapped by Occupy Wall Street and turned into a liberal are probably unfounded. That global warming may not preclude some places being cooler than normal is a difficult idea for those who think Rick Perry would be a great president to fathom, but I don't think anyone ever accused the Tea Party right of being able to juggle two ideas in their heads at the same time.

So it's time to gas up the generator, buy some extra umbrellas, run the sump pump, and whatever else we have to do until we leave this mortal coil. Fasten your seat belts, folks, it's going to be a bumpy ride to oblivion.

Labels: climate change

Does Barack Obama care about anything he ran on in 2008, or is he just another shill for big money interests, especially Big Oil? We will soon find out:

Already, more than a thousand people have signed up to be arrested over two weeks beginning Aug. 20 — the biggest display of civil disobedience in the environmental movement in decades and one of the largest nonviolent direct actions since the World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle back before Sept. 11. (Among the first 500 to sign up, the biggest cohort was born in the Truman administration, followed closely by FDR babies and Eisenhower kids. These seniors contradict the stereotype of greedy geezers who care only about their own future.)

The issue is simple: We want the president to block construction of Keystone XL, a pipeline that would carry oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta down to the Gulf of Mexico. We have, not surprisingly, concerns about potential spills and environmental degradation from construction of the pipeline. But those tar sands are also the second-largest pool of carbon in the atmosphere, behind only the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. If we tap into them in a big way, NASA climatologist James Hansen explained in a paper issued this summer, the emissions would mean it’s “essentially game over” for the climate. That’s why the executive directors of many environmental groups and 20 of the country’s leading climate scientists wrote letters asking people to head to Washington for the demonstrations. In scientific terms, it’s as close to a no-brainer as you can get.

But in political terms it may turn out to be a defining moment of the Obama years.

That’s because, for once, the president will get to make an important call all by himself. He has to sign a certificate of national interest before the border-crossing pipeline can be built. Under the relevant statutes, Congress is not involved, so he doesn’t need to stand up to the global-warming deniers calling the shots in the House.

But the president does need to stand up to the fossil fuel industry, which has done its best to influence the decision. Since the State Department plays a role in recommending a decision, the main pipeline company helpfully hired the former national deputy director of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign as its lead lobbyist. WikiLeaks documents emerged recently showing U.S. envoys conspiring with the oil industry to win favorable media coverage for tar sands oil. If you were a cynic, you’d say the fix was in.

Still, the final call rests with Barack Obama, who said the night that he clinched the Democratic nomination in June 2008 that his ascension would mark “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Now he gets a chance to prove that he meant it.

We have our first clue: The author of this article, Bill McKibben, was arrested outside the White House today:

Police arrested 65 environmentalists outside the White House Saturday as they staged a demonstration urging President Obama to block a proposed pipeline that would bring oil from Canada’s oil sands projects to Gulf Coast refineries.

People arrested include Bill McKibben, the prominent climate activist and founder of 350.org; Jane Hamsher, who founded the popular liberal blog Firedoglake; and Gus Speth, whose career includes co-founding the Natural Resources Defense Council and chairing the White House Council on Environmental Quality in the Carter Administration.

We have yet to see Barack Obama stand up to any industry, so its hard to imagine him standing up to the petroleum industry.

To keep up with this, visit Tar Sands Action.

Labels: Barack Obama, climate change, spinelessness, We Are So Screwed

Guess who bought and paid for the opinions of the nation's top climate change-denying scientist:

Dr. Willie Soon is certainly entitled to his theory that global warming is caused by solar variations rather than CO2, especially given his field of study within astrophysics—Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences. But getting paid to $1 million by the Koch Brothers, Exxon and a fleet of other energy industry giants makes Soone a stooge.

Now, it is possible that Dr. Soon developed the theory that solar variations cause climate change before the $1 million in grants began to arrive in his bank account, but it’s just as likely that he was approached by the energy industry and developed the theory for the express purpose of earning his keep.

Soon himself states in a Reuters interview:

I have never been motivated by financial reward in any of my scientific research. I would have accepted money from Greenpeace if they had offered it to do my research

Question: if Greenpeace had funded his studies, would his research have aligned with their point of view?

If we are to get unvarnished scientific opinion, there cannot be the appearance of corporate influence. Soon may be sincere in his theory, but his acceptance of oil and coal industry grants do much to discredit his studies, even if there is possible value in his ideas. And it seems that Soon has had his ideas peer-reviewed.

Greenpeace filed a Freedom of Information Act and obtained information revealing the Koch Brothers gave Soon $175,000 in 2005/2006 and once again in 2010. The American Petroleum institute gave Soon grants totalling $274,000 between 2001 and 2007, and Exxon Mobile provided Soon with $335,000 in grants between 2005 and 2010.

One can’t really fault Soon for wanting a payday or for holding such a theory on climate change—but we can certainly be skeptical of his sincerity now. Like every American, Soon seems to have a price.

Labels: climate change, corporate assholes, Greedy Republican Bastards, Koch brothers, The War Against Science

I don't usually link to anything Thomas Friedman writes, especially after his infamous "suck on this, Iraq" moment and his gleeful embrace of a globalization that leaves his own job intact. But in the context of a 24-hour all-you-cn-eat buffet of Weiner jokes taking up ALL of the news, including at MSNBC, it's worth noting what he has to say today (NYT link):

You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?

“The only answer can be denial,” argues Paul Gilding, the veteran Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur, who described this moment in a new book called “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.” “When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world, then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required.”

Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths. “Having only one planet makes this a rather significant problem,” says Gilding.

This is not science fiction. This is what happens when our system of growth and the system of nature hit the wall at once. While in Yemen last year, I saw a tanker truck delivering water in the capital, Sana. Why? Because Sana could be the first big city in the world to run out of water, within a decade. That is what happens when one generation in one country lives at 150 percent of sustainable capacity.

“If you cut down more trees than you grow, you run out of trees,” writes Gilding. “If you put additional nitrogen into a water system, you change the type and quantity of life that water can support. If you thicken the Earth’s CO2 blanket, the Earth gets warmer. If you do all these and many more things at once, you change the way the whole system of planet Earth behaves, with social, economic, and life support impacts. This is not speculation; this is high school science.”

Of course local weather in any particular area at any particular time is not the same as climate. But what we are seeing is a function of a warmer atmosphere that holds more moisture, and hence more storms, more intense storms, and dramatic changes everywhere. Add this to overpopulation and an emerging developing world, and what you have is something unsustainable. And when it hits critical mass, the earth won't be endangered, we will. Because it will shrug us off like fleas from a dog.

Every day when I drive 25 miles to work in a place that is not accessible to me via public transit I know I'm contributing to the problem. Yes, we have a Civic and a Corolla, both of which get close to 40mpg on the highway, so I use far less fuel than the person at my employer who is still driving a Hummer. And yes, I have tried to set up a carpool with a co-worker, but she refuses to car-pool because what if her teenaged children get sick and has to leave in a hurry? And my employer is very likely to move even further away, at which point I will probably be spending money on hotels at least one and perhaps two nights a week. But the reality is that we have set up a situation in which we are far too reliant on the individual automobile, still fueled largely by fossil fuels, and while tornadoes and hurricanes and snow in Arizona are warning us of impending catastrophe, we continue to do nothing, and Americans continue to vote for ignorant fools who say that God would never let our planet become inospitable, as they pocket huge checks from the petroleum industry.

Labels: climate change, We Are So Screwed

I know that other areas, like Connecticut, have it worse than we do. All we have is about 20" is snowpack on the ground, ruined shrubs, and ice dams in the gutters with icicles that would have to be registered as deadly weapons in some states. And of course there's that storm coming this week, which is going to either dump another ton of snow on us, or coat everything with ice, undoubtedly causing a power outage that will mean no heat for who knows how many days. Just something else to look forward to.

But if you're wondering why this winter is so crazy, here's why:

The warming Arctic and melting sea ice is a planetary-scale change since the Arctic Ocean covers 14 million sq km, an area almost as big as Russia. The Arctic and Antarctic polar regions are key drivers of Earth's weather and climate. The rapid defrosting of the Arctic has already altered the climate system, researchers now agree.

IPS previously broke the story revealing that the snow and cold in the eastern United States and Europe during the winter of 2009-10 was likely the result of the loss of Arctic sea ice. The same thing has happened this year.

As more and more sea ice melts, there is more open water to absorb the summer sun's heat. A day of 24-hour summer sun in the Arctic puts more heat on the surface of the ocean than a day in the tropics, James Overland of the NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in the United States told IPS.

That extra heat in the ocean is gradually released into the lower atmosphere from October to January as the region slowly re-freezes months later than normal. This is a fundamental change - a large part of the Arctic Ocean is radiating heat instead of being cold and ice-covered. That has disrupted wind circulation patterns in the northern hemisphere, reported Overland and other researchers at the International Polar Year Oslo Science Conference in Norway last June.

The result: the Arctic stays warm and mid-latitude regions become colder and receive more snow for much of the winter. Last December was the coldest south Florida has experienced in more than a century of record-keeping.

Most of Britain suffered through its coldest December ever. Up in the Arctic, Coral Harbour on the northwest corner of Hudson Bay was above zero degrees C for two days in early January for the first time in history. Much of the eastern Arctic centred around Baffin Island averaged +21C above normal between Dec. 17 and Jan. 15 this year.

This looks to be the new normal since Arctic experts agree the melting sea ice is now locked into a death spiral.

"In future, cold and snowy winters will be the rule rather than the exception" in the eastern United States and Europe, Overland previously told IPS.

So tell your wingnut friends who think climate change is a hoax to stop bitching about this winter. Because there are more of them to come.

Labels: climate change, We Are So Screwed

Just go read this. Then take a stiff drink. You'll need it.

Labels: American Idiots, chickenshit weasel Republicans, Christofascist Zombie Brigade, climate change

Certainly not after his amazing speech today. Would that the Democrats had this kind of guts to tell it like it is.

The full speech isn't available yet, but here's a peek:

Labels: Arnold Schwarzenegger, climate change, renewable energy

...instead of the cowardly corporatist tool he is:

A quest to get Barack Obama to shout his commitment to solar power from the roof tops - by re-installing vintage solar panels at the White House - ended in disappointment for environmental campaigners today.

Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, had led a group of environmental activists to Washington in a bio-diesel van hoping to persuade Obama to re-install a set of solar panels originally put up by Jimmy Carter.

The actual Carter-era solar panels - which weigh in at 55 kilograms and are nearly 2 metres long - are out-dated now. But campaigners had hoped that the White House would embrace at least the symbolism of going solar - much like Michelle Obama kicked off her healthy food movement by planting a vegetable garden.

"Clearly, a solar panel on the White House roof won't solve climate change - and we'd rather have strong presidential leadership on energy transformation. But given the political scene, this may be as good as we'll get for the moment," McKibben said in a Washington Post comment this morning.

A California company Sungevity had offered to equip the White House with the latest technology.

But the White House declined - twitchy perhaps about inviting any comparison to one-term Democratic president Carter in the run-up to the very difficult mid-term elections in November.

Pathetic. Just fucking pathetic. Here, folks, is Democratic ineptitude in full flower. God forbid we should point out that it isn't 1980 anymore, we've just had the hottest summer on record, even former climate change skeptics are coming on board, and those who aren't are either Christopaths or guys like Limbaugh and Beck making millions of dollars a year off of the willfully ignorant and the terminally stupid. Because that would require EFFORT, and it would require LEADERSHIP, and oh, no, we can't have any of THAT. Because it's SO much more important to try to win over people who will NEVER, EVER, EVER IN A MILLION YEARS VOTE FOR YOU.

Goddess almighty, would someone please send this man a SPINE?

Labels: Barack Obama, climate change, Democratic sellouts, We Are So Screwed, wussy-ass Democrats

...because the planet they live on will be uninhabitable:

We now know that global warming is “capable of wrecking the marine ecosystem and depriving future generations of the harvest of the seas” (see 2009 Nature Geoscience study concludes ocean dead zones “devoid of fish and seafood” are poised to expand and “remain for thousands of years”).

The acidification of the ocean in particular is a grave threat — for links to primary sources and recent studies, see “Imagine a World without Fish: Deadly ocean acidification — hard to deny, harder to geo-engineer, but not hard to stop” (and below).

A new Nature Geoscience study, “Past constraints on the vulnerability of marine calcifiers to massive carbon dioxide release” (subs. req’d) provides a truly ominous warning. The release from the researchers at the University of Bristol is “Rate of ocean acidification the fastest in 65 million years.”

Funny how those who worship before the alter of BP don't care about that...at the same time they call abortion murder. We are slowly murdering this planet -- and the future generations who will have to live on it.

Labels: climate change, environment

Eastern U.S. Headed for Many More Extreme Heat Waves with Warming, Study Finds

Oppressive temperatures gripping Southern and Eastern U.S. states this summer will only worsen if little is done to curb greenhouse gases, according to an August report update from the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), a conservation group.

"2010 is a sample of what's to come," said Amanda Staudt, lead climate scientist for the report titled "Extreme Heat in Summer 2010: A Window on the Future."

"Global warming is bringing more frequent and severe heat waves, which will seriously impact vulnerable populations."

It is a supplement to the federation's 2009 report "More Extreme Heat Waves: Global Warming's Wake-Up Call."

This hot summer is a continuation of what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says is already the hottest January through June on record. New Jersey, Delaware and North Carolina have already recorded their hottest June ever and Rhode Island and Delaware have recorded their steamiest July, according to NOAA. Hundreds of daily temperature records were set across the country — with July being among the top five hottest on record for 10 Eastern states.

Through Aug. 11, Washington has already dripped its way through 51 days where temperatures were 90 degrees or higher; twenty of those days have been 95 degrees or higher, according to data published on the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang.

Typically, Washington has 18 days through July 31 with temperatures above 90 degrees. This year, that number had more than doubled — to 39 — by the end of July.

And Washington is by no means alone. The federation's analysis of large cities on the Eastern seaboard shows most locations have had roughly twice as many days with temperatures exceeding 90 degrees than they typically would by the end of July. Cities in the south-central United States also are running hot.

"For each of these cities ... sweltering the last couple months, summer 2010 could be considered mild compared to the typical summers of the future," the report's authors state.

The report explains how summers such as this one could become the norm by mid-century if carbon dioxide emissions aren't brought under control.

For instance, Washington is projected to sweat through 100 summer days above 90 degrees by 2050 if emissions continue unabated. That number could hold steady at about 55 days, however, under a lower-emissions scenario.

The report's predictions in Philadelphia and St. Louis are equally alarming. Through the end of July, Philadelphia has had 25 days above 90 degrees and that number is predicted to grow to at least 55 by year's end. St. Louis is on track for 45 extremely hot days this year, about 10 above average.

By 2050, Philadelphia is projected to have 40 days above 90 degrees under a low-emissions scenario and 60 such days with high emissions. St. Louis is projected to have 60 days above 90 degrees under a low-emissions scenario and 80 such days if emissions are unabated.

Using maps from the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the report shows how end-of-the century climate predictions are even more dramatic if heat-trapping gases are unchecked. Days with temperatures above 90 degrees could double between now and 2099. That would leave much of the South almost unbearable for three or four months when temperatures rarely — or ever — dip below 90 degrees.

There's going to be one hell of a lot of seriously cranky postmenopausal women out there, I'll tell you that much.

Labels: climate change, We Are So Screwed

Climate scientists are receiving death threats -- which escalate every time Rush Limbaugh opens his piehole:

Climate scientists in the US say police inaction has left them defenceless in the face of a torrent of death threats and hate mail, leaving them fearing for their lives and one to contemplate arming himself with a handgun.

The scientists say the threats have increased since the furore over leaked emails from the University of East Anglia began last November, and a sample of the hate mail sent in recent months and seen by the Guardian reveals the scale and vitriolic tone of the abuse.

The scientists revealed they have been told to "go gargle razor blades" and have been described as "Nazi climate murderers". Some emails have been sent to them without any attempt by the sender to disguise their identity. Even though the scientists have received advice from the FBI, the local police say they are not able to act due to the near-total tolerance of "freedom of speech" in the US.

The problem appears less severe in the UK but, Professor Phil Jones, the UEA scientist at the centre of the hacked email controversy, revealed in February he had been receiving two death threats a week and had contemplated suicide. "People said I should go and kill myself," he said. "They said that they knew where I lived. They were coming from all over the world." The third and final independent review into the issues raised by the hacked UEA emails is due to be published on Wednesday when Sir Muir Russell presents his panel's conclusions.

Professor Stephen Schneider, a climatologist based at Stanford University in California, whose name features in the UEA emails, says he has received "hundreds" of violently abusive emails since last November. The peak came in December during the Copenhagen climate change summit, he said, but the number has picked up again in recent days since he co-authored a scientific paper last month which showed that 97%-98% of climate scientists agree that mankind's carbon emissions are causing global temperatures to increase.

Schneider described his attackers as "cowards" and said he had observed an "immediate, noticeable rise" in emails whenever climate scientists were attacked by prominent right-wing US commentators, such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

"[The senders] are not courageous people," said Schneider. "Where are they getting their information from? They just listen to assertions made on blogs and rightwing talkshows. It's pathetic."

Schneider said the FBI had taken an interest earlier this year when his name appeared on a "death list" on a neo-Nazi website alongside other climate scientists with apparent Jewish ancestry. But, to date, no action has been taken.

"The effect on me has been tremendous," said Schneider. "Some of these people are mentally imbalanced. They are invariably gun-toting rightwingers. What do I do? Learn to shoot a Magnum? Wear a bullet-proof jacket? I have now had extra alarms fitted at my home and my address is unlisted. I get scared that we're now in a new Weimar republic where people are prepared to listen to what amounts to Hitlerian lies about climate scientists."

Meanwhile, back in reality:

A sobering new report warns that oceans face a "fundamental and irreversible ecological transformation" not seen in millions of years as greenhouse gases and climate change already have affected temperature, acidity, sea and oxygen levels, the food chain and possibly major currents that could alter global weather.

The report, in Science magazine, doesn't break a lot of new ground, but it brings together dozens of studies that collectively paint a dismal picture of deteriorating ocean health.

"This is further evidence we are well on our way to the next great extinction event," said Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland in Australia and a co-author of the report.

John Bruno, an associate professor of marine sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the report's other co-author, isn't quite as alarmist, but he's equally concerned.

"We are becoming increasingly certain that the world's marine ecosystems are reaching tipping points," Bruno said, adding, "We really have no power or model to foresee" the effect.

The oceans, which cover 71 percent of the Earth's surface, have played a dominant role in regulating the planet's climate. However, even as the understanding of what's happening to terrestrial ecosystems as a result of climate change has grown, studies of marine ecosystems have lagged, the report says. The oceans are acting as a heat sink for rising temperatures and have absorbed about one-third of the carbon dioxide produced by human activities.

Among other things, the report notes:

* The average temperature of the upper level of the oceans has increased more than 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past 100 years, and global ocean surface temperatures in January were the second-warmest ever recorded for that month.

* Though the increase in acidity is slight, it represents a "major departure" from the geochemical conditions that have existed in the oceans for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years.

* Nutrient-poor "ocean deserts" in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans grew by 15 percent, or roughly 2.5 million square miles, from 1998 to 2006.

* Oxygen concentrations have been dropping off the Northwest U.S. coast and the coast of southern Africa, where dead zones are appearing regularly. There is paleontological evidence that declining oxygen levels in the oceans played a major role in at least four or five mass extinctions.

* Since the early 1980s, the production of phytoplankton, a crucial creature at the lower end of the food chain, has declined 6 percent, with 70 percent of the decline found in the northern parts of the oceans. Scientists also have found that phytoplankton are becoming smaller.

Volcanic activity and large meteorite strikes in the past have "resulted in hostile conditions that have increased extinction rates and driven ecosystem collapse," the report says. "There is now overwhelming evidence human activities are driving rapid changes on a scale similar to these past events.

"Many of these changes are already occurring within the world's oceans with serious consequences likely over the coming years."

There is going to be a time, and it's not long off, when these idiots insisting that climate change is either nonexistent or not caused by anything we do, will be faced with the reality that our profligate ways over the last fifty years have doomed us to a world of hunger and instability. And even then, Rush Limbaugh will tell them it's all imaginary -- from the comfort of his guarded, gated mansion.

Labels: American Idiots, climate change, domestic terrorism, willful ignorance

Rush Liimbaugh doesn't care because he won't be around. Neither does Glenn Beck, or Bill O'Reilly, or Sarah Palin, or Mitch McConnell, or John Boehner.

You know who might be around? Descendents of the current crop of Bush family criminals. Because they reproduce.

But they don't care either.

Not one of them gives a rat's ass that in less than 300 years -- aknist as much time as this country has been in existence, and the blink of an eye in historical time -- we will have made this planet too hot to inhabit:

Climate change could make much of the world too hot for human habitation within just three centuries, research released Tuesday showed.

Scientists from Australia's University of New South Wales and Purdue University in the United States found that rising temperatures in some places could mean humans would be unable to adapt or survive.

"It would begin to occur with global-mean warming of about seven degrees Celsius (13 Fahrenheit), calling the habitability of some regions into question," the researchers said in a paper.

"With 11-12 degrees Celsius warming, such regions would spread to encompass the majority of the human population as currently distributed."

Researcher Professor Steven Sherwood said there was no chance of the earth heating up to seven degrees this century, but there was a serious risk that the continued burning of fossil fuels could create the problem by 2300.

"There's something like a 50/50 chance of that over the long term," he said.

I hope that when all these people find that there's nothing after death except nothingness, or having to come back and do it all again, or even if they do find the Great White Alpha Male and his son standing by the pearly gates welcoming them to an eternity of being bored out of their skulls, that they consider maybe they should have taken care of the gift that was given them instead of spending 600 years doing their damnedest to destroy it.

Labels: climate change

When Thomas Friedman was supporting the War in Iraq and saying things like "Suck on this, Iraq!", he was regarded as a sage, and invited to tubthump about the war everywhere. Now that he's talking about climate change, and he's actually RIGHT for a change, will the same right-wingers who thought he was so smart listen? Or will they be too busy thinking that because we now have 16" of snow on the ground in New Jersey instead of palm trees, it means climate change doesn't exist?

When you see lawmakers like Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina tweeting that “it is going to keep snowing until Al Gore cries ‘uncle,’ ” or news that the grandchildren of Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma are building an igloo next to the Capitol with a big sign that says “Al Gore’s New Home,” you really wonder if we can have a serious discussion about the climate-energy issue anymore.

The climate-science community is not blameless. It knew it was up against formidable forces — from the oil and coal companies that finance the studies skeptical of climate change to conservatives who hate anything that will lead to more government regulations to the Chamber of Commerce that will resist any energy taxes. Therefore, climate experts can’t leave themselves vulnerable by citing non-peer-reviewed research or failing to respond to legitimate questions, some of which happened with both the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Although there remains a mountain of research from multiple institutions about the reality of climate change, the public has grown uneasy. What’s real? In my view, the climate-science community should convene its top experts — from places like NASA, America’s national laboratories, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, the California Institute of Technology and the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre — and produce a simple 50-page report. They could call it “What We Know,” summarizing everything we already know about climate change in language that a sixth grader could understand, with unimpeachable peer-reviewed footnotes.

At the same time, they should add a summary of all the errors and wild exaggerations made by the climate skeptics — and where they get their funding. It is time the climate scientists stopped just playing defense. The physicist Joseph Romm, a leading climate writer, is posting on his Web site, climateprogress.org, his own listing of the best scientific papers on every aspect of climate change for anyone who wants a quick summary now.

The right-wing ridicule about climate change is yet another example of how, for Republicans, ideology trumps everything. When their vacation homes in Florida are under water, and malaria becomes common in Missouri, and category 5 hurricanes are the rule rather than the exception, do they think their snark about Al Gore is going to mean anything?

Labels: assholes, climate change, Thomas Friedman, wingnuttia

Mr. Brilliant is a bit of a science geek. I can't tell you how many nights I've sat blogging, playing mahjong titans on Vista, trying to do the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, or sitting around waiting for an Excel spreadsheet to load while I'm connected to my employer's VPN while he watches yet another program on plate tectonics, or black holes, or how the universe began, or something else that makes my eyes glaze over because if I pay attention I'll feel so insignificant that nihilism seems like a good way to go. He really does understand what the Large Hadron Collider is supposed to be doing.

You know what he doesn't really get, though? What the hell happened with the infamous Climate Change E-mails™. What he DOES understand, though, is that the scientific community and those who recognize that if we don't do something about climate change PDQ we are going to be in a world of shit, have done a really crappy job of explaining why these e-mails don't "disprove" that climate change exists, that we are largely responsible for it, and that if we don't do something about it, we are going to be in a world of shit.

It's unfortunate that it's up to the Associated Press, that wonderful organization that brought us Nedra Pickler, to do the job. AP has been known to be somewhat dickish when it comes to excerpting their articles, so you'll have to click over. Or, you can read the statement directly from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Yes, it was bitchingly cold in New Jersey yesterday. Yes, I know there have been blizzards in the midwest. Global warming doesn't mean "Everyplace gets hotter." Anyone who's enough of a dumbass (I'm talking to you, John Elliott, the nimrod on WCBS-TV in New York who says crap like this every time the temperature is below normal) to believe that one cold day means decades of science is bunk deserves to drown or die of tropical diseases that are going to be moving north. But I defy you to look at this, this, this, or this and tell me that there's nothing going on and that if there is, we have NOTHING to do with it, and then try to tell me that we have a God-given right to burn as much fossil fuel as possible driving our kids to soccer practice.

And how weird is it when I find a voice of sanity on all this over at Little Green Footballs? But I did, and found this:

Labels: American Idiots, climate change, The War Against Science

Last night I pulled into my street and found pea-soup fog, punctuated by homeowners shoveling their driveways. Yes, really. Shoveling. In June. In New Jersey. One house had a 3'high pile of HAILSTONES built up just from clearing the driveway. Video of more ice cleanup in June here and a photo gallery here.

Meanwhile, up at Casa la Brilliant, we didn't have 3' of hail to clean up, though we did have a good 4" built up around my poor impatiens, which are now, I'm quite certain, ruined (and they were so pretty this year, too):

The clematis vine isn't very happy either:

The whole mess:

We've had hailstorms before, though never one like this. But for it to be only June, and we've had TWO already, is very strange, as were the thunderstorms we were having in January.

And Congressional Republicans still don't believe that something very strange is going on -- and refuse to do anything that might piss off their energy industry patrons.

Meanwhile, it is 12 hours after the storm -- and there is STILL hail on the ground.

Labels: climate change, You can't make this shit up

(Cross-posted at Cheek and Bluster)

Even in this era of with-us-or-against-us partisanship, I never cease to be amazed at the neocons' mendacious, irresponsible, utterly illogical denial of the escalating environmental crisis. You can arm yourself with Coby Beck's excellent syllabus, but what can you ultimately do about people who are shallow enough to play politics with the habitability of the planet?

I have beaten my head against this particular wall in far too many conversations, so today I'm sending in the cavalry.



Who's a puppet now?

Labels: climate change, global warming, House Republicans, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog