Here you can opine on all things non-radioactive”¦.
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I’ve discovered an outstanding set of graphic images illustrating many themes of this blog:
http://maps.grida.no/
Check out the 490 graphic under the climate theme, enough to occupy your weekend.
The site is a project of the United Nations Environmental Programe (UNEP). Images are available for for public use; clear instructions are provided for citations.
I have been writing about that “ex-CIA operative” Kent Clizbe who wrote all those emails asking professors to denounce Dr. Mann for fraud. It’s funny that Clizbe wants academics to help him expose Dr. Mann because Clizbe has nothing but contempt for scholars.
Recently, Kent Clizbe wrote an article claiming that John Brennan, the Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, is incompetent because he was only a CIA analyst instead of a spy.
I wonder if Kent Clizbe has a grudge against the CIA and/or John Brennan.
Clizbe maintained that CIA analysts are bitter because they don’t get to “recruit spies, travel the world under cover, meet and befriend exotic people, and plan and execute clandestine operations.”
According to Kent Clizbe, because CIA analysts are supposedly jealous of the covert operators, the analysts sometimes are given covert assignments to assuage their envy. I really doubt this is true.
Clizbe mocked John Brennan’s “CIA station chief experience in ‘the region.’…”
Well, I looked up information about John Brennan. He served as the CIA Station Chief in Saudi Arabia as well as being an analyst and an administrator. He is an expert on terrorism. He speaks excellent Arabic. He studied in Egypt during college and spent his career at the CIA.
Clizbe didn’t even tell his readers that John Brennan served as the Station Chief in Saudi Arabia because it would spoil his fairy tale about the envious analysts versus the cool operators. Clizbe doesn’t care about the most basic facts at all. It’s hard to imagine that a person with such an ignorant outlook would be successful at the CIA for very long.
Clizbe mocks analysts by desparaging them as academics. Perhaps Clizbe is really against the CIA. When he attacks climate scientists, he is really attacking the CIA because they study the security implications of global warming. The CIA also gives some climate scientists security clearances so they can use the satellite data. The CIA often consults specialists.
Clizbe claims that the analysts are bored in their dreary cubicles and would rather lead the lives of a Tom Clancy hero and fast-rope from Blackhawks.
I don’t think this guy could have been a very effective CIA operative if he was so contemptuous of the scholarship that the government agencies depend on. Kent Clizbe probably has a chip on his shoulder about something.
http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2011/03/dumb-and-dumber-kent-clizbe-trashes.html
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/08/bob-inglis-tea-party-casualty
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/mar/18/republicans-tea-party-movement
Today I’m rubbing my hands with anticipated glee, thinking ahead to when republicans of integrity have finally had enough of the Tea Party. When that happens, those mainstream republicans of integrity will package an effective message to brand the tea party as nut cases, and one powerful tool will be to demonstrate the basic fallacy of Tea Party math and science. Nevermind those same mainstream republicans are abusing math and science right now. Before long it will be in their political self interest to start talking math and science sense because the truth is the best offense against the Tea Party’s illogic and deceipt. I can’t wait! If the dems don’t get their act together, they’ll be playing catch up in the message game. Again.
Walden Pond, A Question For Fun
In ‘Walden’, Thoreau tells us about the timing of the ice leaving Walden Pond in late March or early April:
“In 1845 Walden was first completely open [free of ice] on the 1st of April; in ’46, the 25th of March; in ’47, the 8th of April; in ’51, the 28th of March; in ’52, the 18th of April; in ’53, the 23rd of March; in ’54, about the 7th of April.”
Can any of the Climate Progress readers who live in the Concord, MA area tell us about the state of the ice on Walden Pond today? Is there ice on the pond as of today? If not, when did it melt off this year? If the ice is still there, can you please tell us the day that the pond is ice-free, which should occur (presumably) some time in the next several weeks?
And, if someone is knowledgeable about the pond as it is today, and lives nearby, it might be fun for them to do a guest post that compares the pond then (in Thoreau’s time) and now, especially in relation to climate, perhaps, but also related to any other changes having to do with nature or with human encroachment.
Be Well,
Jeff
“Top FL lawmaker resurrects creationism bill”
http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/03/top-florida-lawmaker-resurrects-creationism-bill
Quote: “Why do we still have apes if we came from them?” state Sen. Stephen Wise of Florida rhetorically asked a Tampa radio host in 2009.
(At least this makes the anti-science GOP gob-smoggle a little easier to understand…)
National Security Demands a “NO” Vote on Upcoming EPA Delay Legislation
It might seem strange to think of the Environmental Protection Agency as an organization working to strengthen our national security. However, with its recent efforts to reduce dependence on oil and combat climate change, the EPA is doing just that.
The EPA is helping to stop the flow of oil funding to extremist organizations and reducing the chance that climate change could create breeding grounds for terrorists who wish to do our nation harm. In light of the EPA’s contribution to our nation’s security at home and abroad, upcoming efforts in Congress to paralyze the EPA are reckless, shortsighted, and dangerous, and I urge Senator Casey to strongly oppose them.
As a proud veteran who served my country for six years in the US Air Force, I am used to following my chain of command. And so last year, when the Department of Defense identified climate change and oil dependence as threats to our national security, I sat up and paid attention.
It is no secret that our dependence on foreign oil funds the terrorists we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. The more oil we use here at home and at our military posts overseas, the more money ends up as IEDs and AK-47s in the hands of the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Furthermore, the aftermath of the massive flooding in Pakistan last year underscores the Department of Defense’s decision to identify climate change as a strategic threat to our national security. As the Pakistani government continues to have trouble delivering aid and assistance to the flood-stricken areas, extremists and terrorists have stepped into the void and gained even greater support for their organizations. If climate change is allowed to proceed unhindered, there is an even greater potential for the droughts, floods, and other catastrophic weather events that destabilize already vulnerable countries and create terrorist breeding grounds.
The threats posed by our oil dependence and climate change may be a topic of debate in Congress, but to the Department of Defense, they are crystal clear. The DOD has taken the lead in developing and implementing new clean energy technology, with every branch of the military following suit. The Navy is shooting to sail a carrier strike group – the “Great Green Fleet” – purely on biofuels by 2016. The Army and Marine Corps are investing in deployable solar generators to cut our use of diesel on the front lines. The Coast Guard is developing tidal energy projects to power remote stations and reduce its dependence on the civilian electrical grid. And the Air Force recently tested an A-10 “Warthog” aircraft running on a blend of fuel derived from camelina oil and conventional JP-8 jet fuel.
The military’s urgency in reducing our oil dependence and minimizing our contribution to climate change demonstrates the crucial role our energy policy plays in our national security strategy. The lives of our troops depend on it. Unfortunately, big-moneyed special interests in Washington are standing in the way of real advances in clean energy because they are invested in the status quo. Their latest scheme involves various pieces of legislation that would limit the EPA’s ability to limit carbon pollution or set emissions standards for automobiles.
This is the worst possible time for this type of legislation. If Congress bows to pressure from Big Coal and Big Oil – with their armies of lobbyists and back-room methods – America will take a step backward in our progress toward becoming a world leader in clean energy. Even a bill like Senator Jay Rockefeller’s, that sets a two-year delay on EPA regulation, would be disastrous for our efforts to combat climate change. Two years is far too long to allow pollution to spew into the air unchecked – the threat to our security is just too serious to ignore. With troops still on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, now is not the time for America to take a step backward – away from the clean energy technology that will reduce dependence on oil and save American lives down the road.
I urge my fellow veterans and other concerned citizens to contact Senator Casey and ask him to oppose this legislation – in order to say no to Big Oil and stand up for our men and women in uniform serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world. After everything they have sacrificed to keep Pennsylvania safe, it is the least we can do in return.
http://www.politicspa.com/guest-commentary-national-security-demands-a-“no”-vote-on-upcoming-epa-delay-legislation/22546/
HARDSHIP
It is poison–rank poison to knuckle down to care and hardships. They must come to us all, albeit in different shapes–and we may not escape them–it is not possible–but we may swindle them out of half of their puissance with a stiff upper lip.
- quoted in Mark Twain’s Letters to Will Bowen
Mercury News interview: George Shultz, former Secretary of State; Distinguished Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution
George P. Shultz is an economist, businessman, statesman and Republican Party strategist who is probably best known as secretary of state during the Reagan administration.
Q The science of climate change has become very political, and many newly elected members of Congress question the scientific evidence. How do you get climate deniers on board?
A Perhaps it’s inevitable, but a lot of the scientists working in this area have become advocates — they feel passionately about it — and then they do things that, when exposed, discredit them. What we want is scientists who don’t become part of the policy discussion: All they do is produce science. If someone becomes an advocate then I won’t pay as much attention to their science. The British thing (the private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a British university that came to be known as “Climategate”) was something of a setback. A lot of people don’t want to do the hard things that need to be done, and they are from coal areas. Unfortunately, it will take something to jolt the system. I don’t know what that will be — my guess it will come from the melting of the ice caps, which is actively going on in the Arctic. The ones who live in Florida, in the Florida Keys, will pay attention.
Q Here in Silicon Valley there’s all kinds of work being done on biofuels, electric vehicles, solar power, the smart grid. What cleantech sector are you particularly optimistic about?
A The source of all the energy is the sun. The big challenge is, how do you use all of that energy? Solar power has to fascinate you. There have been strides to get the costs down, and if this will work you have to get costs down so it is competitive with fossil fuels. We can’t be subsidizing it. I have solar panels on the roof of my house here on the Stanford campus. I installed them four or five years ago, and it cut my electricity bill by about three-fourths.
Q You’ve been an adviser to Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has emerged as a tremendous advocate for the promise of clean energy and its ability to grow jobs here in California. Any thoughts as to what he might do next? And any truth to the rumors that he could be tapped as energy secretary if Steven Chu decides to step down?
A I expect he’ll keep at it. Everyone asks him what will he do next. The answer he gave me was, “I never stop doing anything that I’ve been doing — I still go to the gym and I’m still interested in movies.” He likes politics, despite the fact that he went out not very popular. The energy subject is going to be very important to him as he moves ahead, and he’ll stay involved. I’m not part of the Washington rumor mill, but Arnold is a No. 1 guy. He can’t be president, or he’d want to be president. I can’t see him as energy secretary, reporting to an energy czar in the White House — that would not go well with him.
Q What at the federal level would you like to see in terms of a national energy policy?
A If I was the energy czar and I could have what I wanted, I would want two things. First, a revenue-neutral carbon tax. It collects money that is then redistributed. It’s not a revenue-raising device, it’s a tax on carbon. That creates a level playing field (for renewable energy). A carbon tax is much better than cap-and-trade. Politicians like cap-and-trade because they are afraid to say the word tax, but cap-and-trade is a tax, it just doesn’t sound like it. Second, I’d also support sustained and significant support for energy-oriented R&D. Then I’d go away and let the marketplace sort out the results.
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_17646204?nclick_check=1
Apparently with climategate he is bad informed, the MSM failed.
According to http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/articles/503118?all=yes
“This year’s Environmental Award winner is a scientist fighting to preserve Indonesia’s tropical forests and to bring the country’s orangutans back from the brink. He may also have discovered an important source of renewable energy.” and
“As for the future of the fewer than 300 million acres of tropical forests remaining in Indonesia, Smits is pessimistic. “We are witnessing the extinction of a vast part of the biodiversity in Southeast Asia,” he adds.
“A key to stopping this destruction, Smits says, is the arenga sugar palm, and he is on a messianic mission to spread the word about its virtues. “Palm sugar produces three times more sugar than sugarcane,” he says, noting its advantage over the sugarcane Brazil is using in its successful ethanol program. “It also has a lower glycemic index than regular sugar.” Yet the greatest promise of the sugar palm lies in what Smits says is its vast superiority over the oil palm, which depletes the soil and then fails to thrive. In benign contrast, the sugar palm grows only in mixed, secondary forests, allowing other species of plants and vegetables to exist and flourish. And after the first two or three years, it requires no pesticides or fertilizer—unlike the oil palm. The sugar palm can grow on the side of a mountain, be harvested daily, and, Smits adds, provide 20 times more jobs than oil palm or sugarcane for tappers and farmers. “By 2030, we could replace all of the world’s oil with ethanol from sugar palm,” he claims, adding that it is the only form of renewable energy that can be produced on a large scale and is ready to go today.”
Maher’s main beef with the right wing tonight: a perceived lack of focus on real issues. He rattled off a list of what he called the “useless distractions that make up the Republican Party agenda” – they included public unions, Sharia law, anchor babies, the “Ground Zero mosque,” NPR, and the “war on Christmas,” among others. So bad is this problem, Maher said, that trying to govern with Republicans “is like rooming with a meth addict” who, instead of rent, is worrying that police bugged the air conditioner.
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/bill-maher-governing-with-gop-is-like-rooming-with-a-meth-addict.php?ref=fpb
Yes We Can….
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Zero-Carbon-Australia-2020.html
Thousands of albatrosses and other endangered species at a wildlife sanctuary north-west of Hawaii have been killed by the tsunami which devastated Japan, US officials say.
Thousands of petrels and fish were also killed as huge waves swept over parts of the remote, low-lying Midway atoll.
The sanctuary is home to more than two million birds.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/12756033
Nuclear energy (inherent specific dangers aside) is often mentioned as an energy solution to global warming. I then often hear the counter-argument that the, so to speak, True-Carbon-Cost-of-Ownership shows no benefit at all (that would in my understanding be about conventional energy spent on mining, enrichment, construction, transporting fuel, securing fuel transports – which at least in Germany entails enormous police forces to ‘guard’ against protesters – etc.)
Does anyone know specifics about that?
On another note, I have the impression that there is a comparable professional denier industry in the nuclear business. Paid-for convenient science, PR people to play down risks, a tightly knit web of industry and sympathetic officials to make sure the public is not too aware of nasty details like numerous not-quite-blaringly-obvious radiation leaks and the like.
In the wake of Fukushima there was an interesting documentary on nuclear power on German TV. In Germany, there is some concern that there appear to be clusters of childhood leukemia around NPP sites. The specific case mentioned was NPP Krümmel. The film crew went to interview the director of a national childhood cancer documentation project, who was portrayed as quite friendly with the energy industry. They had published a study saying that while such clusters existed, they could not be conclusively linked to nuclear sites and might pop up anywhere. When the director cited such an ‘inconclusive’ case, the reporter confronted him with proof that it had been linked to a leak at a medical radiological institution and went on to ask for ONE more example of a leukemia cluster NOT near a NPP. The director threw his hands in the air as if in despair over the reporter’s stupidity and left the room, refusing to answer the question.
Seems to me like other industries buy science too.
Then again, we Germans have the reputation of being generally paranoid about nuclear power, whereas it is much less controversial in most other countries.
And on an EVEN MORE different (or weirder) note, I once read that the cultural basis for the successful Godzilla movie franchise was a deep-seated Japanese fear of anything nuclear, probably caused by Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But it appears that until recently, at least, the vast majority was quite comfortable relying energy-wise to a large extent on old and maybe-not-so-well-designed nuclear installations.
Any opinions?
This grew longer and weirder than anticipated, but since this is an open thread…
Today I realized that getting off of foreign oil and getting off of oil completely basically mean the same thing, for one reason. The US has very few oil reserves. It couldn’t go totally independent on oil for very long. Sooner or later people will realize this and that being totally oil independent doesn’t protect against prices shocks since the oil prices are determined by a global market. We will move of off oil, and switch to natural gas cars, electric cars, biofuel cars, and maybe hydrogen cars in the distant future (like at least 40 years later). Our electrical grid would be supplied by solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, landfill gas, biomass, ocean wave, energy efficiency, and natural gas. All this could happen by increasing regulation of traditional pollutants like mercury and ozone, ending energy subsidies, reducing red tape and NIMBYism for renewables, and increasing research into the technologies.
Natural gas is no fix, Liquefied Natural Gas is a major source of greenhouse gases.
And “Several on-site accidents involving or related to LNG are listed below …”
With the extraction, processing, chilling transportation and conversion back to a usable form is taken into account LNG is a major source of greenhouse gases. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquefied_natural_gas
As French jets destroy tanks in Libya, remember that in the Ivory Coast , it’s government is killing it’s people as well, too bad they don’t have oil reserves for the world to care about.
how is that resistance movement-building going against government inaction on global warming, and governmental/court control of trials of climate change activists as in the case of tim dechristopher? take a look at this link and make sure you watch the 2 short videos:
http://www.peacefuluprising.org/rally-at-the-capitol-unlikely-allies-take-unlikely-action-20110311
>>
that’s out in very conservative utah, fellow climate progressives. how are we doing here? log on below, and tell us.
for an easy start on next week’s effort, you can email that link to those 10 enviros you contacted last week.
WWAGD: What Would Andrew Carnegie Do?
GOP to America: Don’t Think About it as We Ask You to Bend Over
“Artic Ozone Loss” We in the mid-latitutes will have to use alot of extra sunblock this summer it seems. I disagree with the last statments made in this artical. With CO2 still rising, and more heat trapped every year this affect of Climate Change like all the others is being under estimated.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-03/haog-aot031411.php
If you like underground rap and groovy beats, check out “The Sign” by Nujabes and Pase Rock. It’s a great song about our current climate situation.
Ziyu #14, your fine expectations are rendered null, I’m sorry to say, by your temporal equivocation, ‘Sooner or later..’. It is already far too late, both from a climatological point of view, but also from the perspective of human behaviour. Take a little trip over to the moronic inferno of ‘The Guardian’s (purportedly of the ‘Left’, but certainly no Left that I recognise)’Comment is Free’ blog, Bill McKibben’s piece, and read the insane, cretinous, arrogant and ignorant rantings of the denialists who have taken over, or, rather, been allowed to take over, that blog (and every other one in the MSM that I know of)and weep for our species. And note how the MSM has quickly decided on the GroupThink narrative it will now mobilise after the Japanese nuclear catastrophe. Nuclear now being out of the question, for the time being, we must burn more coal. THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE, as that other totalitarian Thatcher used to say. Renewables are no longer just lied about, derided and belittled, they are now not even mentioned in most of the MSM. I grow more and more convinced that our masters are absolutely determined that there will be an anthropogenic climate disaster-no other explanation but purposeful determination seems remotely plausible, any longer.
The Ozone Hole Opens Up Again. It’s Still Not The Same as Climate Change
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/the-ozone-hole-opens-up-again-its-still-not-the-same-as-climate-change/
I’d like to hear comments about CFLs and ones carbon footprint. Until today it seemed easy to assume that CFLs reduce ones footprint, but then I ran across this piece
http://www.greenmuze.com/blogs/guest-bloggers/1031-the-dark-side-of-cfls.html
Anyone have knowledgeable commentary to affirm or rebut?
Thanks
Japan’s horror reveals how thin is the edge we live on Bill McKibben 3.18.11
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/18/japan-horror-thin-edge-climate-change
The news about the nuclear reactors in Japan is bad, not trying to sugar coat it. And nuclear waste is a problem, but a mostly political one. But when all is said and done, add up the deaths in the Japanese disaster and compare to the deaths of coal miners in just this country, in just the last year. Make your stats global if you really want lopsided numbers, then add them up over the decades we’ve had nuclear power to make it starkly clear, and even correct for KwH produced by each method. Don’t count black lung, removed mountain tops, asthma, or even the preeminent environmental threat of our time, global warming; just count miners dead in the mines. It’s not even close.
Nuclear energy is a solid choice for transitional base power as we slowly (or quickly) build a smart grid and wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal capacity.
Mark #23 -
Your linked site claims that it takes “1.8 Kwh of electricity to assemble a CFL compared to 0.11 Kwh to assemble an incandescent bulb”. I find that an incomplete number.
“Assemble”
How much energy does each take to totally manufacture? Each contains roughly the same amount of glass and metal. I would guess that if one measures the total amount of energy used to manufacture and ship each the numbers would be fairly similar.
Then there’s lifetime. A CFL would be expected to last 10 times longer so the embedded energy in a CFL (based on the above assumption) would be ten times less than the embedded energy in 10 incandescent bulbs.
Then consider energy used to power the bulb, roughly 75% less. That’s a lot of energy saved. A much lower carbon footprint.
The article brings up the old junk about incandescents being heat sources and that is a good thing. First, for much of the year in much of the country we don’t want extra heat. Extra heat means more air conditioning. Furthermore, light bulbs are an inefficient way to make heat if it is heat that you want.
And the article gets into the mercury issue.
A 6 oz. tuna fish sandwich contains 48 micrograms of mercury. A typical CFL bulb contains .07 micrograms of mercury. We’re talking a very tiny bit of mercury and very infrequently are CFLs broken.
The mercury can be, and often is, recycled. And if we dumped our CFLs into landfills the total amount would be minuscule compared to the amount of mercury we poop into our treatment centers each year.
And speaking of crap, that’s how I’d label the article you linked.
Sarah. Thanks! A lot of nice graphics there.
The very best in denialism – Mörner om sea level (again):
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles_2011/Winter-2010/Morner.pdf
This will truly make your head spin.
James Crissman No. 25
Interesting point about the deaths from coal use vs deaths from nuclear energy use. Do you have those actual numbers? Does anyone? Whatever those numbers might be, however, and they have to be dramatic, they would probably not reflect the economic damage caused by, say, a nuclear plant 35 miles from NY City going into melt down mode and the consequences of evacuating the city for who knows how long.
Must see video…
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=192076784164539&id=139434822741700
Earle: everything in the oceans at risk
“We are committed to developing deepwater energy supplies offshore.” Those blunt words from the US Administration were put to oceanographer Sylvia Earle by Stephen Sackur late in a captivating BBC Hardtalk interview I watched a few days ago. What chance,
Scotland’s government has just given the green light for the world’s largest underwater current farm. Rated at 10 MW, it will supply up to 5000 homes and businesses with clean baseload power.
Perhaps more importantly it will also allow the expansion of the local malt whisky industry.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-scotland-surges-10mw-tidal-farm.html
I’ll drink to that. And I’d also like to propose a toast to Scotland, world leaders in the emissions reduction race.
They are still on track to a 42% cut in emissions by 2020 relative to 1990 levels, a 60% cut by 2030, and an 80% cut by 2050.
http://www.theccc.org.uk/topics/uk-and-regions/scotland
Cheers Scotland !
Keep up the good work.
The Changing Arctic
The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway.
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.
Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds….
Link-
tinyurl.com/4e8rbcx
Hi Orkneygirl,
There was indeed some warming of the Arctic in the 1920s.
Check the fineprint. They were worried about being able to navigate to the unprecedentedly high Latitude of 81N – at any time of year.
Today, you can also navigate to 81N. And it is March.
I realise that this will be a fine point for Wormtongue’s Up With This, but if you really are in the Orkneys, you may have noticed that Winter is often colder than Summer?
Everybody take a last look at that beautiful Arctic ice cap!
And off we go.
No coincidence Watts also decided to take one last look at real data about polar ice in a recent post, before sticking his head back in the sand forever.
What’s up with the tinyurl link Orc @ 31 ?
Trying to save electrons ?
[JR: No, she was trying to sneak a disinformer link by me. Silly.]
I am extremely cynical about the shennaningans in Libya.
Once again we have the major western oil consuming countries invading a Middle East oil producing nation on some fabricated excuse about Gaddafi shooting his own people. What actually happened was that part of the populace tried to take Gaddafi out and, not surpringly, he is fighting back.
Saddam Hussain, Gaddafi and others make easy political targets because they don’t have a democratic government (not even a sham one like ours). I wouldn’t object so much if we were honest about it and said we were invading Libya for oil (and to warn other countries in the region such as Saudi of who is boss).
Far worse things happened in Zimbabwe. Did we invade?
The sooner we get off oil and stop having to interfere in other nation’s internal affairs the better.
Isn’t climate change irreversible for 1,000 years? See Solomon et. al. for the sourcing of this question here: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/01/28/0812721106.abstract
I do not see this assertion discussed much by politicians or policy makers, so I thought I would highlight it.
Policy makers may believe climate change is gradual and reversible; therefore, they believe gradualism in policy makes sense. They rely on the assumption of reversibility to derive political comfort for their efforts to mitigate CO2 emissions. In addition, people in general derive comfort from this assumption. But isn’t this comfort based on the false assumption of reversibility?
If Solomon et. al. is correct, then once a tipping point tips, we cannot go back. More effort, I think, should be made to highlight this particular point.
Robert “…stop having to interfere in other nation’s internal affairs the better.”
But what if hundreds of thousands of people become refugee’s and flood europe and other countries? And if this despot keeps ruling you will keep up the oil flow. Gadaffi seems not like he would suddenly switch to clean tech after 42 years of oil flow. And then there is the need for the MENA region to stabilize the region to establish Desertec and prevent climate refugee’s later. There are actually no other options, if you want to prepare the MENA region for climate change.
But why does it take so long, he was able to rule for 42 years!
Perhaps your site will blog about this upcoming April 2-4 scientific workshop at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on climate change. These scientists are very famous.
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences accepts the science of climate change and has created a Working Group on the Fate of Mountain Glaciers in the Anthropocene.
Wikipedia explains:
The Anthropocene is an informal geological epoch that serves to mark the recent extent of human activities that have had a significant global impact on the Earth’s ecosystems…The term was coined in 2000 by the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen, who regards the influence of human behavior on the Earth in recent centuries as so significant as to constitute a new geological era.
[See Dr. Crutzen's Wikipedia, his homepage at the Pontifical Academy, his homepage at the Max-Planck-Institute, his Nobel Prize autobiography, and an article by James Hansen in Time (10-17-07) about Dr. Crutzen's achievements.]
The Pontifical Academy’s Working Group is having a workshop at the Casina Pio IV on April 2-4, 2011. The Prologue of the program, which was written by Pontifical Academician P.J. Crutzen, L. Bengtsson, and Pontifical Academician V. Ramanathan, states:
Mountain glaciers in Europe, North America, South America, Africa, and the largest of them all in the Himalayan-Tibetan region are retreating, some at alarming rates. The hypothesized causal factors include global warming, atmospheric brown clouds, land surface modification, recovery from the mini ice-age, and large scale drying of the air among other factors. Some glaciers are expected to disappear during this century and others are predicted to experience significant loss of spatial cover and mass. The downstream consequences include glacial lake outburst floods, disrupted availability of water for agriculture and human consumption, changes to mountain eco systems, increased frequency of forest fires, loss of habitat, and other potential catastrophes. A holistic study covering the physical science, social science, and the human dimension sides of the problem has not been attempted thus far. It is our hope that this first of its kind workshop organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences will lay the foundation for studying and monitoring this potential disaster that will impact the entire planet.
The workshop will also explore avenues available for mitigating and adapting to this potential tragedy.
P.J. Crutzen, L. Bengtsson and V. Ramanathan [See the full schedule of the workshop and the speakers.]
LINKS:
http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2011/03/pontifical-academy-of-sciences-hosts.html
Japanese Officials Find Radioactive Contamination
Japanese officials have found radioactive contamination in milk, spinach and the water supply near nuclear plants, David Common reports. http://www.newslook.com/videos/298956-japanese-officials-find-radioactive-contamination?autoplay=true
from the CBC
Procaryotes
“But what if hundreds of thousands of people become refugee’s and flood europe and other countries? And if this despot keeps ruling you will keep up the oil flow. Gadaffi seems not like he would suddenly switch to clean tech after 42 years of oil flow. And then there is the need for the MENA region to stabilize the region to establish Desertec and prevent climate refugee’s later. There are actually no other options, if you want to prepare the MENA region for climate change.”
This has to be tongue in cheek. Whatever regime rules Libya they will continue to exploit oil for as long as possible. It’s just likely to be a whole lot easier for oil companies and European consuming nations if the Gaddafi and the Libyan Nation Oil Company were removed from the picture. Libya is a major part of oil “exportland” and must be viewed as a threat to oil security.
The same logic applied to Iraq. Hussain restricted the flow of oil by keeping Western oil companies out and not developing the fields himself. This was a fantastic long term strategy for Iraq (as they would have retained the largest oil reserves long after everyone else had run out) but obviously not what everyone else wanted. It has taken quite a few years and a lot of dead people, but the Iraqi’s grip on their oil has been loosened so it can flow on to the world markets and into our gas tanks where it belongs (!).
How to predict the next war. Run your eye down this list, discounting countries who have nuclear weapons or close allies with nuclear weapons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_proven_oil_reserves
This leaves, in order of oil reserves, in the top 10:
Iran (in planning)
Iraq (finished)
Libya (underway)
Nigeria (next?)
“This has to be tongue in cheek. Whatever regime rules Libya they will continue to exploit oil for as long as possible.”
I doubt this because we are seeing now a change away from fossil (even if it doesn’t happen in an instant). And how fast that things start to shift we learn from food riots.
If you want to combat climate change you need worldwide clean tech. So in the month and years ahead the developed world will buy clean electricity from nations which today export oil. And this will happen faster one could imagine because of the accelerating progress of climate disrupting disasters. Which show over and over again that clean tech also can deliver much better and safer during tuff times. It comes down to the fact that fossil cannot deliver anymore, for many reason.
btw. Almost 25 years ago … Operation El Dorado Canyon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_El_Dorado_Canyon
CNN shows Reagan speech from that time
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2011/03/20/1986.reagan.us.bombs.libya.cnn?hpt=C2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muammar_Gaddafi
Large and small oil slicks newly
Seen in the gulf of pollution.
Jeff Huggins #4:
A quick search on Walden Pond ice gives some information, didn’t immediately see a long-term scientific record.
For a pretty good record back to the 19th century, search Lake Mendota ice. (Univ of Wisconsin-Madison has a tradition of limnology.) The page with all the date data has a link to a nice graph. No extra credit for predicting which way the trend goes.