4-in-10 see it as evidence of what ‘Bible calls the end times.’
Survey: Religious blame climate change – not sin – for natural disasters
More than half of Americans believe in a personal God who controls everything, yet a survey released today finds that most see natural disasters as increasing in severity because of climate change rather than God’s wrath.
In the wake of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the Public Religion Research Institute surveyed a random sample of 1,008 adults March 17-20. It found that few believe that God punishes nations for its sins or that earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters are a sign from God.
“Americans overall resist drawing a straight line from theological beliefs about a personal God to God’s direct role or judgment in particular natural disasters,” said Robert P. Jones, PRRI’s chief executive officer. “Americans have more natural than supernatural views of disasters.”
Seven in 10 Americans see God as an entity with whom one can have a personal relationship. And 56 percent say God is in control of everything that happens.
Yet the survey found only 38 percent believe natural disasters are a message from God. Only 29 percent believe such calamities are punishment for sins.
However, white evangelical Protestants are the exception, according to the survey, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Almost six in 10 white evangelical Protestants believe God is sending a sign with natural disasters. And 53 percent believe God is judging and punishing nations.
Only one in five white mainline Protestants or Catholics believe disasters signal God’s displeasure.
The severity of recent natural evidence is evidence of global climate change, said 58 percent of those surveyed. And 44 percent said it is evidence of biblically prophesied “end times” or apocalypse.
NASA plans sun-energy project on Eastern Shore
NASA announced plans Thursday to develop a solar-energy facility that would meet part of the energy needs at its Wallops Island Flight Facility. The project, to be built in stages, would have as many as 80 acres of solar panels.
As part of its alternative-energy project at Wallops Island, it also plans to install two residential-scale wind turbines capable of generating 2.4 kilowatts, NASA said. One turbine would be built near the NASA visitor center and one near the entrance gate and security-guard station at the Eastern Shore facility.
NASA said it expects the electricity output to alleviate rising utility costs at its Wallops Island facility and enable the agency to meet energy-conservation requirements imposed by the Federal Energy Policy Act. When complete, the project would generate enough electricity to supply about 850 typical American homes, it said.
NASA said its alternative-energy plan for Wallops Island no longer calls for installing the two utility-scale wind turbines that it proposed earlier. These were dropped, it said, because of concerns that agencies and organizations expressed about the potential impact on birds and bats.
Showdown in Texas over EPA climate rules
There was a showdown in Texas Thursday over Environmental Protection Agency climate regulations.
Gina McCarthy, the EPA’s top air official, came face to face with some of the agency’s staunchest critics during a House Energy and Commerce Committee field hearing in Houston.
“The Environmental Protection Agency has repeatedly exhibited a disturbing pattern of behavior of abuse of their federal authority in the state of Texas, and it needs to stop,” Rep. Pete Olson (R-Texas) said at the hearing of the panel’s Energy and Power subcommittee.
Texas has become ground zero for an increasingly public fight over EPA’s climate regulations “” a fight that has led Republicans (and a handful of Democrats) in Washington to push legislation to permanently block the agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The majority of scientists say climate change is occurring and is caused in large part by human activity.
Texas state officials have refused to comply with EPA permitting requirements that large new facilities, or those facilities that make major modifications, limit their greenhouse gas emissions.
As a result, EPA decided late last year to issue permits on behalf of Texas. The move led to a series of lawsuits aimed at overturning the decision.
“We are not engaged today in a witch hunt against the Environmental Protection Agency, but we do believe that the Environmental Protection Agency, like every other federal agency, should follow the law and not make it,” Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), chairman emeritus of the committee, said Thursday.
McCarthy defended the administration’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and slammed the state of Texas for refusing to comply with key parts of the rules.
Calif. Regulators Scramble in Wake of Court Ruling on Climate Law
California’s climate change law is not in danger of outright reversal following a court decision this week that suspended it, but the deadline for approving a cap-and-trade carbon market later this year is in doubt, according to state government and legal experts following the process.
If that deadline, which requires the state’s Air Resources Board to vote on cap and trade in October, slips even one day into November, a ripple effect could delay greenhouse gas regulations set to go live on Jan. 1, 2012.
That is because the air board adopted a draft version of its cap-and-trade regulation last October that gives the agency a year to finalize the rule. If the agency fails to meet the deadline, board members must go back to square one and likely endure another lengthy public comment process, a former senior ARB official said.
Meeting the deadline “can still happen, but there are still a lot of unknowns,” said Jon Costantino, an architect of the air board’s climate plan who has since become a senior adviser at a Sacramento law firm, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP.
The suspension of all work related to the law stems from a ruling by San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Ernest Goldsmith this week that sent the proposed implementation plan for the law, known as A.B. 32, back to the air board. In a 36-page ruling, Goldsmith said ARB had abused its authority by not doing enough work on alternatives to cap and trade and had failed to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act (ClimateWire, March 22).
The cap-and-trade system, which would apply to 85 percent of emitters by 2020 and enact the largest U.S. carbon market to date, has been challenged by a small but vocal band of environmental justice groups that insist it would disproportionately hurt low-income communities. The Goldsmith ruling effectively freezes action on the state’s low-carbon fuel standard, the cap-and-trade market and a 33 percent renewable portfolio standard for electricity by 2020.
Though ARB plans to appeal, in the short term the ruling means the agency will have to submit a more thorough analysis of alternatives to cap and trade, including a carbon tax, direct regulation of emitters, or both. It is anybody’s guess whether Goldsmith will accept those analyses as adequate under the law.
Moreover, Costantino said the ruling could mean reopening a public comment process that could drag through the summer — all while the air board is supposed to be working to finalize key aspects of cap and trade it left hanging last year. These include how to deal with revenue from carbon credit auctions, how many allowances to give electric utilities and what percentage of the greenhouse gas cap could be met with offsets.
Talks on UN “green fund” set for late April
Delegates from 40 nations tasked with designing a “green fund” to help poor countries cope with climate change will hold their first meeting in late April, U.N. officials said on Thursday.
The meeting to start developing the Green Climate Fund, which had been postponed over disagreements about who should attend, will be held in Mexico City on April 28-29.
Climate talks in December committed rich countries to finance $100 billion a year in climate aid for poor countries from 2020.
That was one of the modest goals achieved during that last major climate summit, which failed to end in a binding deal to limit greenhouses gasses like tailpipe exhaust and industrial smog.
Since that event, held in the Mexican resort city of Cancun, delegates from the 40 nations that will help govern the fund had not been able fix a meeting date.
The fund was part of a package that included steps to protect tropical forests and share clean technologies.
Rising aid is meant to help developing nations curb their greenhouse gas emissions by shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energies and to help them adapt to effects of heat waves, droughts, floods, storms and rising sea levels.
UN climate chief watchful of Japan nuclear mishap
Climate change officials are watching to see if Japan’s nuclear accident will prompt wealthy countries to scrap their own nuclear energy plans in favor of more traditional fuels that worsen global warming, a U.N. official said on Thursday.
The crisis at a Japanese nuclear plant damaged after a March 11 earthquake and tsunami has already led some other nations to reconsider or slow the development of nuclear plants in the near term, said Christiana Figueres, head of the climate change secretariat.
“It is very difficult to predict what we will see from here — whether this will mean a slow development of nuclear energy and what that will mean for some countries’ goals (to curb greenhouse gases),” she told reporters after a two-day conference in the Mexican capital.
Nuclear energy has been promoted by some as a non-carbon source of power and if fewer such plans come online, those countries will have to seek energy from other sources, she said.
“In the best cases, those will be renewable energy sources,” she said.
Figueres’ task is to lay the groundwork for the next U.N.-sponsored climate change summit due to take place in Durban, South Africa, in December. Among the building blocks for that meeting is creating a “green fund” to help poor countries cope with new climate change realities.
The meeting to start developing the Green Climate Fund, which had been postponed over disagreements about who should attend, will be held in Mexico City on April 28 and 29.
Today is the 22nd anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, which until last summer’s BP disaster was the worst oil spill in US history. And to mark it, this week we have another oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico.
The slick reportedly stretched for 30 miles, with oil washing ashore along Louisiana’s Grand Isle. When it was reported earlier this week in the Times-Picayune, officials were puzzled about the source. Then on Tuesday night, the responsible party ‘fessed up. From The Lookout:
Anglo-Suisse Offshore Partners issued a statement last night expressing “surprise” that what it claimed was a minor leak from a well that’s been out of use for some time could have produced miles-long slicks that garnered national media attention. The company has been in the process of permanently plugging the well — located in a shallow area about 30 miles southeast of Grand Isle, La. Anglo-Suisse owned a cluster of five platforms in that area that were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The Times-Picayune reported that the company said it only leaked 5 gallons of oil. But as The Lookout’s Brett Michael Dykes points out, that’s more than a little questionable given the size of the slick and the amount of oil people were reportedly finding on the beaches.
Of course, the oil was “nowhere near the volume of Deepwater Horizon but still significant enough,” as Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said earlier this week (via the Wall Street Journal). But it was a good reminder of something that we reported on last year in the middle of the BP spill, when evidence of additional leaks nearby came to light. Even when there’s not a massive spill underway, there may we be leakage from other wells that isn’t monitored very closely. Companies are required by law to report their spills to the National Response Center, Coast Guard or Environmental Protection Agency if there’s a “visible sheen,” but that requires them to notice the leak, actually report it, and be honest about how much oil has spilled.
A siege against the EPA and environmental progress
How soon we forget.
In 1970, speaking from badly polluted Los Angeles, Bob Hope cracked, “I don’t trust air I can’t see.” Most Americans could see too much of their air. So they demanded that Congress and the president do something about it.
Today the agency President Richard Nixon created in response to the public outcry over visible air pollution and flammable rivers is under siege. The Senate is poised to vote on a bill that would, for the first time, “disapprove” of a scientifically based finding, in this case that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. This finding was extensively reviewed by officials in the administrations of presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. It was finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency in response to a 2007 Supreme Court decision that greenhouse gases fit within the Clean Air Act definition of air pollutants.
As former administrators of the EPA, both under Republican presidents, we have observed firsthand rapid changes in scientific knowledge concerning the dangers posed by particular pollutants, including lead additives in gasoline, benzene and the impact of contaminants on our drinking-water supply. In each of these cases, the authority of our major environmental statutes was essential to protect public health and the most vulnerable members of our society, even in the face of remaining scientific debate.
Earlier this year, the House of Representatives approved a bill that would cut the EPA’s budget by nearly a third and in certain areas impede its ability to protect our air and water.
The EPA was created out of recognition that pollution “” largely an unwanted side effect of an increasingly industrialized society “” needed to be controlled or America’s public health and environment would deteriorate. The public called on our national government to step in and halt what the states could not or would not do.
As the EPA was being established, Congress passed the Clean Air Act in a burst of nonpartisan agreement: 73 to 0 in the Senate and 374 to 1 in the House.
During the 1970s, many other laws were passed to deal with air and water pollution, drinking-water contamination, radiation, solid waste, pesticides and toxic substances. Sixteen major pieces of legislation were enacted to address aspects of industrial, municipal or human activity that were threatening public health or the environment. Most were passed by a Democrat-controlled Congress and signed into law by a Republican president, and the votes were seldom close.
The EPA: Cleaning Up Crappy Water Since 1970
This is a story about crap — literally, tons of it. Piling up in Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and being sprayed onto farm fields, animal manure is polluting the nation’s waterways and is nearly impossible to regulate.
Last week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a ruling [PDF] reversing the decision by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requiring CAFOs to obtain a Clean Water Act permit in order to pollute. The court did uphold the EPA’s right to fine those that do pollute after the fact. Here’s the rub: Farmers are not responsible for manure that exits their property and enters waterways when it rains.
This is one of the many lawsuits against the EPA — issued by both environmental groups and pro-agribusiness organizations like the American Farm Bureau Federation, National Pork Producers Council, and United Egg Producers. For a small agency, with a $10 billion annual budget, it seems a lawsuit is the only way to force the EPA to take action. Hamstringing the EPA, which is high on the national Republican agenda [PDF], is both part of the grand plan of maintaining business as usual for agribusiness interests and a coordinated effort to step up the culture wars ahead of the 2012 election.
The EPA has been taking heat from agribusiness interests for decades, but that heat has been ratcheted up since Republicans took the House this year. Congress has called in EPA head Lisa Jackson to question her so many times, they’ve joked about giving her a parking space. She’s been asked, for example, about her plans to regulate greenhouse gases after a court mandate required it and about a plan to clean up the Chesapeake Bay — the largest estuary in the U.S. — which is surrounded by industrial farms. In fact, the questioning has at times even become absurd, with GOP committee leaders stoking fears of regulating “cow flatulence, farm dust or milk spilled on dairy farms.”
Grant this much to President Obama: he does not pander to mass opinion. In his first year in office, he stood with Wall Street even after its reckless greed produced an economic collapse that left most Americans calling for bankers’ heads. Now, even as the Fukushima power station threatens to unleash the greatest nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl, Obama continues to champion an expansion of nuclear power in the United States. On day five of the Fukushima disaster, the Obama administration reminded Congress that it wanted to triple the amount of taxpayer-funded loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants””and this is after having reduced renewable energy loan guarantees by half last autumn.
If anything demonstrates the blind spots in Obama’s oft-stated support for clean energy””and the nation’s need for a bold alternative vision””it is his response to the Fukushima crisis, which at press time had made tap water in Tokyo, nearly 200 miles away, unsafe for infants to drink. The Fukushima disaster has led such previously firm proponents as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the government of China to announce that they will halt or pause planned expansions of nuclear power; but it’s full speed ahead for Barack Obama.
Testifying to Congress on March 16, when partial meltdowns were reportedly under way at three of the six reactors at Fukushima, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said that US nuclear plants are safe and that the president wants to build more of them. Indeed, Chu added, the administration is proposing $36 billion in taxpayer-guaranteed loans to entice private industry to do just that. What’s more, this $36 billion would be over and above the existing $18.5 billion in loan guarantees approved under the Bush administration.
As health, education and other social services are being sacrificed on the false altar of deficit reduction, $54.5 billion is a massive amount of money. Worse, Obama is shoveling money at nuclear at the very time he has diverted funds from renewable energy. As ABC News revealed in November, the Obama administration last year “quietly drained” more than half of a $6 billion fund intended to provide loan guarantees for cutting-edge wind, solar and other renewable energy projects. Instead, the funds helped to finance the “Cash for Clunkers” program and an unrelated education initiative.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
What ever happened to the fuel cell?
Officials in Japan just released new data on radiation levels in a town about 30 kilometers northwest of the badly damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant: “If you were outside with no protection, you would hit the annual exposure limit for radiation in about one day.” (Mainichi)
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/25/japan-new-radiation.html#comments
Why do we call them “natural disasters”. The Japanese tsunami was only a disaster because man put houses, power stations, roads, cars, boats and so on near the shore. Absent man the water would have washed in, washed out and a few weeks later things would have looked pretty much back to normal.
ScienceDaily (Mar. 25, 2011) — Russia’s boreal forest — the largest continuous expanse of forest in the world, found in the country’s cold northern regions — is undergoing an accelerating large-scale shift in vegetation types as a result of globally and regionally warming climate. That in turn is creating an even warmer climate in the region, according to a new study published in the journal Global Change Biology and highlighted in the April issue of Nature Climate Change.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110325022352.htm
So, how much protection does being inside offer? Obviously, it’s better than outside, but wouldn’t the contaminated air seep in through the cracks and eventually make the inside air just as bad? If you sealed the openings, don’t you risk asphyxiation over time?
I don’t understand why officials didn’t evacuate, or at least recommend evacuation for, a much larger area much sooner. The principle of prudence would suggest it’s better to evacuate a larger area than necessary, and suffer the inconvenience, than it is to evacuate too small an area and suffer the health consequences.
I wonder how many of the officials live near the radiation zone.
Wind speeds and wave heights over the world’s oceans have been rising for the past quarter-century. It’s unclear if this is a short-term trend, or a symptom of longer-term climatic change. Either way, more frequent hurricanes and cyclones could be on the horizon.
Ian Young at the Australian National University in Canberra and colleagues analysed satellite data from 1985 to 2008 to calculate wave heights and wind speeds over the world’s oceans. They found that winds had strengthened – speeding up over most of the world’s oceans by 0.25 to 0.5 per cent, on average, each year. Overall, wind speeds were 5 to 10 per cent faster than they had been 20 years earlier.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20284-worlds-wind-and-waves-have-been-rising-for-decades.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=environment
Wonhyo
Half a million in shelters already due to tsunami… where are the evacuees to go?
This triple catastrophe is unprecidented… but hopefully we’ll learn something from it.
Many superstitions and other things become self-fulfilling prophecies, and so we can only hope (and pray to a God who is loving and not made in Glenn Beck’s image) the Endtimesapocalypsearmaggedonfoxnews is not among them.
If you go with this Dark Ages theology of a hateful God who creates and programs humans only to see most of them suffer eternal torment in hell, then what would the greatest sin be that would most guarantee that outcome?
I’d say dragging everyone down with you by ruining the very atmosphere of our only planet as well as most other life-support systems, including denying that this is happening and doing everything in your power to prevent those who say this is happening (including all caring scientists) from being heard or preventive policies from being implemented.
The “D-oh!”s when this is realized would be the eternal chorus of hell, along with the talk-hate radio of Beck, Limbaugh and other Fox extremophiles.
Come to think of it, maybe we’re already there. Since I believe we make our own metaphoric heavens or hells now and always based on how much we love or hate, I guess the Becks of the world are already there.
I also think everyone can and ultimately will be redeemed, but Buddhists talk about it taking 10,000 lifetimes to do their equivalent, and I think with enough of a complete turnaround, sincerity, humility and repentance I don’t see Beck and everyone at Fox having any trouble making it in that number, maybe times another 10,000 or so.
More Koch-funded attempts at repealing climate legislation.
Yet more evidence of what Obama really stands for. I believe even the greatest die-hard must realise by now that they have been conned. As Nader said ‘Prepare to be disappointed!’. If he runs next year, you’ll have a choice between Palin or Huckabee or worse, and Obama and ‘four more years’ of betrayal.
Sorry, that should be an attempt to repeal renewable energy legislation.
This survey goes to the heart of one thing affecting whether or not we actually do anything about climate change. There are many chritians who believe that the end of times is a good thing, and the rapture will bring them to their god. Why would any of them ‘want’ to stop climate change?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJnvx07rdbU
#1 Beam Me Up Scott – What happened to the Fuel Cell?
I’m guessing you mean the Fuel Cell for cars etc…although there is still alot of lobbyist directed government money (from many countries, the US included) going into these programs, for the most part people watching their development woke up to the fact that they weren’t anywhere close to delivering what the politicians and businessmen said 10 years ago – after billions being poured into this tech.
My person opinion is that the entire US program (which poured billions into the auto industry for Fuel Cell research over the last decade and nothing for EV’s) seemed to be created as a giant PR charade to “keep things like they were” – oil companies selling oil and car makers selling only ICE vehicles – this provided the “cover” that the government and the automakers were working on something to fix oil addition problem, when in reality it was just a show to kick the can down the road and keep us right where we were with oil (which it did very well). There is a reason oil companies have been and continue to be big supporters of Fuel Cell vehicle technology and it isn’t because they think it’ll reduce demand for oil…
Joe Romm, the author of this site, was actually involved in Fuel Cell research at the Department of Energy during the Clinton Administration (not as an attacker of the technology, but as an honest supporter from what I could tell), and he wrote a fantastic book (The Hype about Hydrogen) that layed out the issues Fuel Cells have to surmount for small vehicle transportation purposes – there are other uses where Fuel Cells might make sense.
If you watch the film/DVD “Who Killed the Electric Car” you can actually see Joe elicit in a 2 minute block the main issues that Fuel Cells have to surmount to be “usable” and they aren’t trivial.
Just off the top of my head I can think of few. Hydrogen is a storage medium (and it takes serious energy to split it off from whatever its linked so you can use it – water, natural gas, coal etc.), its not a natural resource like oil that you could immediately find and use (you can’t dig up Hydrogen anywhere).
Its very expensive, an amount of Hydrogen that gives an equivalent amount of energy to a gallon of gasoline is much more expensive than gasoline and is projected to remain so for the foreseeable future (even with the price of oil continuing to go through the roof).
Its very inefficient to make it CO2 free. Say you have a wind turbine that you’re going to use to make CO2 free hydrogen (via electrolysis) for fuel cells, you could take that same amount of power used to make the Hydrogen that would power 1 fuel cell vehicle for 40 miles and instead use that same power to run 3 battery electric vehicles (like the Nissan Leaf or Chevy Volt) those same 40 miles (or one EV vehicle 120 miles) instead.
An entire new infrastructure would have to be built to deliver the Hydrogen – you can’t put Hydrogen in gasoline storage tanks – you’d need a completely new set of Hydrogen delivery and storage stations and of course it’d be more expensive than gasoline – the projected expense is unbelievably huge.
Lastly, most Hydrogen is made by stripping it from natural gas – another inefficient process – because this is the cheapest method at the moment – you get sizable CO2 emissions just from creating it (let alone from compressing it to store it, and transport it and on and on..) and after accounting for the other factors its worse CO2 wise than burning gasoline – it doesn’t help us a wink from a climate change perspective.
On the other hand, using electricity from your house, you can fill up and run an EV (that are now for sale, hard to get, but for sale in the US) at a little less than half the price of gasoline (about $1.50 a gallon in equivalent costs for much of the country), the delivery infrastructure is in place (the electric grid) and you charge the vehicles up at night (for the most part) when the power companies have oodles of excess capacity and actually welcome additional loads because it lowers their costs. If you happen to get your electricity from renewable or nuclear plants then the electricity and your car are CO2 emissions free (for the most part).
Electric Vehicles (EV’s and plug in hybrids) seem to be where the market is headed currently (from a cost and CO2 perspective) but there is still alot of corporate and lobbyist backed money pushing Fool Cells and would seem to continue to do so until they no longer get the funding.
Perhaps, the national debate can be simplified. Is our “sin” environmental destruction or too many gay pride parades?
#9 Mulga, yes you get that sinking feeling that maybe it is so.
Clinton could be in for the running.
It seems that women tend to come to the rescue when necessary.
I would like to live forever too so I would like there to be a God also. Whatever he, she, it is really doesn’t matter. Almost all religions give rules to live by that more or less are blue prints for survival, but to use religion to justify greed, bigotry, hatred, selfishness, and just plain stupidity is wrong in my book. Space is big, what are the odds we are the smartest creatures in the universe? How bad would it be if someday they showed up and decided they had dominion over us. So I’ll end by saying don’t let religion be an excuse.
So 38% of Americans are effectively insane. Seriously, I can only classify the belief in a God explicitly sending natural catastrophes for some unknown reason as a kind of mental illness, akin to schizophrenia and other brain pathologies that make you see things that aren’t there.
I am literally terrified by the idea that these people hold the balance of power in American democracy and thus influence the actions of the most powerful nation on Earth. Hell I am starting to wonder how much of the American support for Israel (and the conflict in engenders in the area) is due to these insane people believing that Israel has to be there so their God can come back, destroy the world, and take them to heaven.
38%. These are numbers I’d expect from an African country with 70% illiteracy and no electricity, not a developed country.
Wonhyo @6 – Suggesting protection from air born toxins (including radiation contaminated particles) by staying in your house makes no sense to me. As a residential architect with deep interest in interior air quality in homes, it takes going way beyond current building code requirements and standard practice to produce a house with less than 3 air changes per hour. That means that the entire volume of air in the house is replaced with outside air 3 times per hour. A typical house changes air maybe 15 times per hour. Commercial buildings are worse. I am in the US of A. I have no experience with Japans construction culture.
In many instances I have heard public officials suggest staying inside and believe the reality of this suggestion has to do with psychological issues rather than physical safety. I, personally would not seek refuge in my house.
Scrooge (#15) and Hypnos (#16) – You both make good points, but I wouldn’t judge genuine spirituality, which I believe exists, by the worst and most dogmatic, simplistic, greedy, selfish, mentally deranged idiots.
I definitely agree that these people exist and have infinitely more power than they should in many countries and especially the U.S. I’ve often said that it appears that Muslim and Christian fundamentalists appear to be having a contest to see who can misunderstand their religion more.
While I support the deep thoughtfulness of many or most atheists, I wouldn’t judge all atheism by the acts of Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler.
Even science has been perverted to the point where Nazi scientists conducted experiments on Jews and others in concentration camps, literally watching their tortures and then deaths due to hypothermia, organ failure and lack of oxygen. Many of the best of these scientists (including, I believe, their director) were completely absolved when they went to work for the Soviets and Americans, going from WWII to Cold Warriors. I wouldn’t judge all science by their actions.
So the worst of everything is absolutely abysmal, but the best of everything, including science, atheism and especially spirituality is absolutely amazing. The problem with spirituality and the best spiritual teachings is that many if not most thinking people see them through the 3000 or 2000 year lenses of accumulated dogma, throwing out the Buddha or Christ baby with the bathwater.
Great video on Sea Level Rise….
note: current forcing due to AGW is at least an order of magnitude larger than the last melt period which had a mean melting rate over 10 millennia 1.2 m/century (4x current rate) and a peak rate of 5m/century (12x current).
any guesses whats going to happen next?
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=151329188264295&id=139434822741700
I am very disappointed in climate change activists for citing the nuclear disaster in Japan as a reason to forsake nuclear power. Wind and solar energy are very important to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but these are weak compared to coal and nuclear. Coal power, of course, we need to terminate urgently, but renewables alone cannot make up for our energy-hungry population’s demands, even if we were to expand wind and solar dramatically.
Nuclear is currently the only answer to this problem, as it is the most powerful source electricity. Our uranium reserves are large enough to last us centuries into the future. Yes, its very important that we learn as much as we can about what went wrong at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant and scrutinize our existing power plants and fortify them with state of the art safety mechanisms.
Transitioning to a carbon-free economy in the near future, in my mind, is not realistic if we were to cut back on nuclear power. All climate change activists should wake up and realize that the nuclear disaster in Japan is an unfortunate victory for fossil fuels.
Nuclear power does not work as a climate change fix. Because plants must be shut down when cooling water gets too hot during the summer, which happens each year in france. And because with climate change earthquake activity rises.
Instead solar and wind have to deliver.
Just look at japan, the prime example.
#21 Siberian, No its not.
Forgetting Fukushima?
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=154765754584734&id=139434822741700
A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=101564929928820&id=139434822741700
scientists call for rationing in developed world
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=210401258975961&id=139434822741700
If nuclear power is so great then why won’t the insurance industry insure it’s risk and why won’t private investors invest the money necessary to make it happen? And no one knows what to do with the waste (except that it is again, the taxpayers responsability). Nuclear power is a classic American business strategy (for a few) where the government (tax payers) assumes the risk and financial responsability while the contractors, operators and owners make all the money. It’s a sucker’s deal. Solving one environmental disaster by planting the seeds for a second worst one is not rational. It is wrong in so many ways.
It will be interesting to see what kind of ‘climate disasters’ await us the rest of this decade… or as I say ‘Fossil Fuel Disasters’.
C02 this week at 392.29— has risen in 10 years from 372.65- unprecedented in geologic terms.
Ice free arctic in mid September?- whole new element of increasing feedback’s in this region. Causing more instability in mid latitudes??
Should be a fascinating scenario to watch. Lets see how the MSM reacts, as well as Obama and the rest in the Washington Zoo.
Martini anyone?
Prokaryotes, I’m not against solar and wind, and I agree completely we must expand these energy sources as much as possible, but these energy sources will have to be supplemented with a much more powerful energy source if we were to phase out coal because solar and wind have a much smaller energy output and are intermittent when the wind stops blowing or when the sun stops shining.
It would wonderful if solar and wind alone could supply enough energy on their own. But unfortunately, these renewables on their own probably will not be able keep up with the world’s skyrocketing energy demands, and nuclear is the only viable alternative.
The 1st priority should be for the “world’s skyrocketing energy demands” to be taught not to skyrocket. This should be done by any and all means necessary. Buidlings, transportation, industry, farming . . .
In the 1970′s US utilities mortgaged their futures to unrealistic growth rates. When energy costs increased the assumed demand never materialized and dozens of costly (and potentially hazardous) nuclear plants were mothballed.
Wind energy scan be stored as compressed air and released later. On land this can cut gas turbine fuel consumption in half, as in the Iowa Energy Park. Such investments would be better, faster and safer than constructing large numbers of nuclear plants. Or store compressed air offshore in deep bladders and release it as necessary. Or any of a number of solar thermal ideas, which are being built.
http://cleanskies.com/videos/mit-demonstrates-offshore-renewable-energy-systems.html
http://thetyee.ca/News/2011/03/22/KochBrothers/
GW is worse, but there is no protest…
200,000 protest nukes
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/26/germany-nuclear-power-protest_n_841023.html
40% believe unusual weather catastrophes is the “end of days”, 58% believe it is global warming. I am certain there is an overlap of people represented by these numbers, those who believe God is perhaps punishing man for his greed and immorality with the consequences of pollution, global warming – climate change. Such an idea makes sense, as other violations of the bible are not intuitive, whereas polluting and hurting your fellow man is somewhat clear in it’s evil. Of course, it will be argued that we already lived this lifestyle before we knew the consequences, but we have the opportunity to greatly reduce our “footprint” without radically changing our ways, and in fact we can even reduce our costs and improve our health by doing so.
The main threat to the world today is not from religious people who believe that God eventually punishes the wicked, the great threat comes from those who commit atrocities to aquire wealth and power, like khadaffy and koch. There is also a threat from people who pervert religion to justify greed (capitalism), but attacking the ideas of faith and morality will not get our cause anywhere, environmentalism and many liberal – progressive causes are based on morality, much of it originating from the judeo – christian bible. It is the capitalists and conservatives who lack morality, they are ruled by money and power.
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/36982/?p1=A5&a=f
Bug Creates Butanol Directly from Cellulose
When I was a kid I lived in Utah, and the Boy Scouts was taken over by Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS Church). This, so called religion, practices underage polygamy, they send the boy s off on missions to divide the underage sisters among the dirty old men of the clan. Now when these underage girls get pregnant, these same dirty old men, send them to the state to get their welfare checks . You should see some of the palace homes that are paid with welfare checks (not on just one of course). By the way this is the newest religion that was created right here in United States of America, I guess their also in AZ, CA, NM, TX, NV, CO, OK. When someone hides behind religion to do or say something that is wrong we should stand up and point it out (right the wrong). Someone should ask Glenn Beck about it, he seems to have all the answers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iisl-xH3Xs