Will Anthropogenic Global Warming Change to Anthropogenic Global Chilling?

Or, perhaps an all inclusive anthropogenic global chaos--better to be safe than sorry.    But the important question is, Will "we the people", still be held responsible/accountable?  And therefore, of course, subject to the imposition of extra taxing, tracking--consumption, population, "footprint"--and toiling.  Keep in mind, anthropogenic is the key word, here.

A garden thermometer reads the daytime temperature of -3 C. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Chicago snow. Pic: Andrew Seaman (Flickr CC)

Sunlight streams through the windows of a building which caught on fire in Plattsmouth,
Neb., Friday, Jan. 3, 2014, and the water sprayed on it by fire fighters froze

Friday, Jan. 3, 2014. John Hart/Wisconsin State Journal/AP

The cold blast that hit much of the East coast- including New York City's
Bryant Park- has left a trail of ice and snow in its wake

The former Odd Fellows Building in downtown North Attleboro, Massachusetts.
It was destroyed by an early morning fire before the deep freeze set in

One of the four fire trucks responding to the North Attleboro fire that became encased
in frozen ice during the rescue

And for those who might say, "This is just a blip on the global warming radar", or "This frigid weather is another example of the kind of violent and abrupt climate change that results from global warming"... not so fast.  As this trend will more than likely continue.

Since the NOAA, back in 2011, projected higher temperatures and reduced sea ice, northern Arctic ice has increased by 29% from 2012 to 2013, despite some 2007 reports claiming the Arctic would be ice-free by the summer of 2013. Even the latest data shows Antarctic sea ice is more than two standard deviations above normal.

To be sure, the powers that be will  not give up so easily, as there is too much money and too much power at stake.

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Exposing REDD: The Agenda to Privatize Nature.

REDD+ claims to be a climate and deforestation solution, a pillar of the so-called "Green Economy."  In reality REDD+ constitutes a worldwide land grab and giant carbon offset scam to profit northern industrialized nations.  

The Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities on Climate Change against REDD+ And For Life  claim the "green economy" is:

“ ….. nothing more than capitalism of nature; a perverse attempt by corporations, extractive industries and governments to cash in on Creation by privatizing, commodifying, and selling off the Sacred and all forms of life and the sky, including the air we breathe, the water we drink and all the genes, plants, traditional seeds, trees, animals, fish, biological and cultural diversity, ecosystems and traditional knowledge that make life on Earth possible and enjoyable.

“ ….. Under the green economy, even the rain, the beauty of a waterfall or a honey bee’s pollen will be reduced to a barcode price tag and sold to the highest bidder. At the same time, the green economy promotes and greenwashes environmentally and socially devastating extractive industries like logging, mining and oil drilling as “sustainable development.

Watch the video below to get the real story of REDD, the deceptive climate ‘solution’ being proposed in California and being implemented within the UN climate negotiations and the World Bank. It sounds good on paper, but the reality is that REDD enforces the global colonization of Mother Earth; allows the polluting industry to expand its toxic emissions creating local toxic hotspots in faraway places; and creates a stolen future for Indigenous peoples, local forest dependent communities, communities living next door to a fossil fuel polluting industry, and a stolen future for the environment and all life.

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Carbon Capitalism and Global Warming Propaganda

Last night, President Obama, in his State of the Union address, stated our nation must do more to fight climate change, urging lawmakers to use market based solutions, and promising executive actions if they did not comply. However, market-based "solutions" to global warming will only line the pockets of the wealthy, while making the poor bear the costs- without even tackling the causes of global warming. In other words, it's a scheme, and a very profitable one.

According to Christopher C. Horner, author of the book 'Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed' Enron came up with the term, "cap and trade". That, right there, should be enough to make you question the whole concept of market-based solutions to global warming or climate change.  Effectively, this approach will only further impoverish those already  in poverty, and profit those who already win in this fixed global casino of ours. In the European Union this system is known as the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

It's not that global warming is not real, it's that global warming is not anthropogenic (man-made), and not as catastrophic, as Oscar winning, Al Gore makes it out to be (the oceans are going to rise 20 feet, yet Al buys a $9 million ocean front home?). As for "An Inconvenient Truth", just do a little research to find out how much Al Gore, who is worth 50 times more than he was when he Vice President, stands to profit from market based solutions to global warming. Filthy rich comes to mind

"Al Gore likes to say that mankind puts 70 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every day. What he probably doesn't know is that mother nature puts 24,000 times that amount of our main greenhouse gas -- water vapor -- into the atmosphere every day, and removes about the same amount every day. While this does not 'prove' that global warming is not man-made, it shows that weather systems have by far the greatest control over the Earth's greenhouse effect, which is dominated by water vapor and clouds." -- Dr. Roy W. Spencer

"With help from friends at Goldman Sachs, Gore has established a network of organizations to promote the “climate crisis”—and keep himself in the spotlight. Gore’s crusade already has had an enormous impact on corporate decision-making and government policies.[...]As for Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president brings emotional fervor to his carbon crusade. He travels the country displaying charts and graphs, quoting scientific experts, and appealing to philosophers and religious leaders to save the planet from global warming. But he says nothing about his business partners who yearn to trade on the emerging carbon market. We know little about his former political associates who now staff the “climate crisis” advocacy groups. And the media pays no attention to the companies offering “carbon advisory services” that will profit from federal carbon emission controls."-- Deborah Corey Barnes, Capital Research Center

Did you know that if you fly to Europe, you pay a tax to offset the carbon your flight emits?

Under protest from US Congress, the EU is dead set on charging a carbon tax for all flights flying in and out of any EU airports, that is, flights that fly over international waters. However, the fact that they do not own the airspace doesn't stop the EU from imposing their tax.  A United Nations organization called ICAO, which regulates global airlines has promised to figure out a way to calculate the carbon emissions for air travel, but has not produced anything as of yet, so the EU will take unilateral action if a global solution is not reached at The United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization multinational meeting in September on the airlines issue.

The nonprofit group Transport and Environment found that last year, airlines in the U.S. collected as much as a billion dollars from its passengers to comply with a European Union law that has yet to go into effect.

Links:

Uprooted

"...in the complex chain of relationships in the carbon market, no-one wants to take responsibility when things go wrong. Even if it means people are being driven out of their homes.

Global Warming: Schnitt Show Global Warming List

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If Fukushima Fuel Pool #4's Collapses it Could Mean Global Catastrophe.

A former Japan Ambassador warned a government committee of “a global catastrophe like we have never before experienced” if No. 4 collapses. Common spent fuel pool with 6,375 fuel rods in jeopardy “would affect us all for centuries.” Yet, the governing class doesn't seem all that concerned. Is it possible they have the technology to deactivate or reverse radiation? I know Brown's gas can neutralize radiation, however, unless you want to destroy whatever it is that you are neutralizing, it's highly impractical.

Most materials are radioactive because the electrons have been stripped off the molecules; the nucleus then ejects particles of various kinds (radioactivity) to try to 'balance' the 'weight' (and transmute to a lighter, glasslike, material). Somehow, the molecules are able to use the special energy in the BG to complete this transmutation in seconds (instead of millennia), when the material is molten and given the shock of the thermite explosion.

So it's impractical to use BG, as far as I know, on anything that you don't want to destroy. The BG 'explodes' the material and does the neutralization during the explosion. You need to affect the material on an atomic level to neutralize the radioactivity.

Also it's impractical to use BG on any material that isn't concentrated radioactive. It takes electrical power to make the BG, plus quantities of iron and aluminum to make the explosive reaction.

Thus, BG works well to neutralize CONCENTRATED nuclear waste, like spent fuel rods or decommissioned warheads, but practically useless at remediation of radioactive materials that have dispersed into the general environment.

BG has been proven (Canada government certified tests) to be an extremely effective, practical and inexpensive method to neutralize the radioactivity of materials generally produced by nuclear powerplants. The neutralization can be done onsite, eliminating the need for transportation and storage of nuclear waste.

According to the Blue Commission Report a fuel assembly contains over 6,000 fuel assemblies and 140,000 fuel rods.

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Extreme Weather: Natural or Nurtured?

The "historically ferocious twister" that destroyed a good part of Joplin, Missouri, leaving at least 125 dead and more than 900 people injured, with initial reports of a staggering 1,500 missing - recently whittled down to 232 missing - appears not to be the end of the nightmare for this tornado prone zone, as the ever-present threat of more tornadoes looms. The National Weather Service issued tornado watches and a series of warnings in a dozen states, stretching northwest from Texas though the Mississippi River valley to Ohio.

The sheer intensity and length of these storm fronts is unbelievable. Video captured in Joplin, Missouri appears to show the tornado triple in size in seconds. Is that normal? Or is something else going on?

Some are trying to blame human beings for this devastating extreme weather seen around the world.  Isn't that convenient?  Especially when so much profit is to be made.  The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) was formed to buy and sell carbon credits , the currency of cap-and-trade. Founder Richard Sandor estimates the climate trading market could be "a $10 trillion dollar market." Maurice Strong, Al Gore, GE, and many other 'global warming' profiteers will reap the enormous rewards should "cap and trade" legislation prevail. In fact, the United Nations is pushing Hollywood to promote this climate alarmist bullsh*t.

Moreover, guess who helped establish the market for, and became the major trader in, EPA’s $20 billion-per-year sulfur dioxide cap-and-trade program? Enron!

This cap and trade exchange of NOx and SO2 emission allowances caused Enron’s stock to rapidly rise. It was the forerunner of today’s CO2 trading, now taken up by CCX. Enron was a promoter of the Kyoto Protocol since it would increase their profits. Enron’s Ken Lay had meetings with Clinton and Gore to try to get Kyoto promoted: “Enron officials later expressed elation at the results of the Kyoto conference. An internal memo said the Kyoto agreement, if implemented, would "do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States."”

Now, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration just published “Forensic Meteorology Solves the Mystery of Record Snows” in which they conclude that there is no human "fingerprint" that implicates human involvement in global warming, or cooling or whatever the hell is happening to the climate.

“They found no evidence — no human “fingerprints” — to implicate our involvement in the snowstorms. If global warming was the culprit, the team would have expected to find a gradual increase in heavy snowstorms in the mid-Atlantic region as temperatures rose during the past century. But historical analysis revealed no such increase in snowfall. Nor did the CSI team find any indication of an upward trend in winter precipitation along the eastern seaboard.”

So, a $10 trillion dollar market is one hell of an incentive to interfere with Mother Nature. However, is weather modification possible...now?

Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally... It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog, and storms on earth or to modify space weather, ... and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of technologies which can provide substantial increase in US, or degraded capability in an adversary, to achieve global awareness, reach, and power. (US Air Force. Air University of the US Air Force, AF 2025 Final Report, http://www.au.af.mil/au/2025/)

Links:


Congress has been notified about 'HAARP Rings' by constituent letter

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Gradual Subversion of the Democratic Party

Many of the traits that we either have or admire in other people...that make us human - loyalty, trustworthiness, faithfulness, a tendency to seek out heroes, etc. - unfortunately, also makes us more likely to ignore evidence that contradicts what we believe to be true. In fact, the evidence to the contrary can manifest itself as large as an elephant, yet we still ignore. In other words, our humanness makes us vulnerable to master manipulators who may very well be less than human.

This brings me to why I believe in the co-option of the left.  The modern liberal – typically associated with the Democratic Party - fears the extremes of wealth and poverty under unrestrained capitalism; thinks all citizens are entitled to the basic necessities of life; champions the protection of the environment, and puts the welfare of all people above the ability of a few to profit enormously from what we’ve been led to believe is the “free market”.

Unlike the Republicans - who,  regardless of their status in life, seem to support the less humanitarian, less "bleeding heart" values of those who dwell at the apex of society - the positions that the Democrats  usually take, make the Democratic Party, in particular, more threatening to the powerful and wealthy. Simply put, the Democrats [used to] believe in speaking truth to power, whereas the ruling class is not interested in truth...only in growing and keeping all of their their wealth and power to themselves.

Therefore, it makes sense, that if the elitists want(ed) to secure their power base, throwing the Democrats/progressives/liberals off their scent...even better, engaging them in the task of defending/supporting their "cause" just might make their road a little easier.  So, why not push their agenda through the Democratic Party; albeit, much more covertly than they do, through the Republican Party.

How?

That's simple, when you consider the aforementioned traits that make us human. It's all about making good use of timing; infiltration, semantics (Orwellian doublespeak); consensus making -  placement of "change agents" or "facilitators" and "divide and conquer" technique (Delphi technique), and let's not forget the Hegelian dialectic (problem-reaction-solution), and/or psychological warfare.  In other words, deceiving the liberals by embedding their operations in issues that appeal to the left.

The evidence for this transformation is right in front of our eyes.  Ever since President Clinton took office, the Democratic Party has gradually moved so far to the right that it's transformed into the Republican party. Moreover, from "the environment" to "family planning", the issues or causes that the Democrats have traditionally supported have been, more or less, co-opted by the ruling class to mask their true motives. 

“I think Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we’ve had in a while.”

MR. RUSSERT: Let me pick up on some interviews that you’ve given this week as you’ve been touring, talking about your book, “The Age of Turbulence.” You said this: “I think Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we’ve had in a while.” Republican?

MR. GREENSPAN: I’m sure he doesn’t like that joke, but if you look at his record compared to what I think appropriate policy ought to be, he’s for free trade, he’s for globalization, he was for welfare reform, fiscal restraint and—true enough, he’s not a Republican. I’m sorry, President Clinton, I didn’t mean to say that. But I must say, I had to follow an awful lot of your particular guidelines and found them very compatible with my own.

Remember DADT/DOMA-signing President Clinton promising that NAFTA wouldn't hurt a bit? Welfare Reform Act of 1996? Repeal of Glass-Steagall Act? DADT?

Fast forward a bit and we have President Bush 2.0 Obama who is a master at cloaking his almost neo-con "actions" in moderate, democratic rhetoric.  Obama, who Jeremy Scahill called "Blackwater's New Sugar Daddy" has upgraded America’s network of overseas detention facilities or ‘black sites’; approved the assassination of American citizens; signed a defense bill that blocks his bid to close Guantanamo Bay;  supports a 3-year extension of Patriot Act surveillance; extending the Bush-era tax cuts for two years, etc. Sure President Obama throws a bone to his base every once in a while, just like the Clinton administration did, but, for the most part, it's just a bone. Unless he's got some super secret strategy I'm unaware,  President Obama is as "Republican" as former President Clinton.

Regarding the co-opting of issues,  take global warming, of which a very strong argument can be made proving it's not man-made.  To be sure, the issue of global warming falls under the category of a "liberal" cause; however, if you dig deep enough and research Agenda 21, "sustainable development" and Global Biodiversity Assessment (the blueprint for Agenda 21) you will find a huge profit motive whose carbon reducing methods exploit all of us, but especially, those who have the least.

In the US, tighter controls on levels of consumption, and standards of living, intrusive carbon taxes, tolls, massive land grabs, conservation easement, zoning restrictions, energy audits, forcing small business to become energy efficient,  etc. are supposed to take place. Some already have.

"... an ‘agricultural world’ in which most human beings are peasants, should be able to support 5 to 7 billion people, probably more if the large agricultural population were supported by an industry-promoting agricultural activity. In contrast, a reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be one billion…” -- U.N. Global Biodiversity Assessment Report, states at page 773:””Whittaker and Likens (1975)

Former President Kennedy defined a liberal as the following:

“ ...someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal', then I’m proud to say I’m a 'Liberal'.

Granted, as a 'Liberal', he didn't make it far, and maybe that's why he was our second to last liberal president. Former President Johnson was probably our last.

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Global Warming: A Pollution Ponzi Scheme?

Global Warming Doomsday Called Off gives very good scientific information on the subject, seldom found.


Over the last few years, how many times have you  heard the following questions: Are the temperatures we're experiencing unusual? Is the climate becoming more variable or extreme? What role does human activity play in the current global warming trend? Does global warming even exist?

Well, in answer to the last question, if it does exist, it's probably not anthropogenic (man-caused) according to Glaciologist Jorgen Peder Steffensen, curator of the Neils Bohr Institute, Department of Geophysics, and scads of other scientists who up until recently, were under a gag-order.  As Steffensen said, those who came to the "global warming is man-made" conclusion, conducted an extremely poor experiment.  They started observing meteorology at the coldest spot in the last 10,000 years - only 140 years ago - so, of course, the 20th century temperature spike looks like an anomaly.  Moreover, when you start following the money (carbon trading: potential multi-trillion dollar business), it becomes all too clear as to why the "global warming is man-made" conclusion was constructed.

Steffensen, extracted ice core samples from Greenland, which bear the fingerprints of climactic conditions over the last 120,000 years. From that sample, the temperature data revealed longer periods with much higher temperatures than we experience today. The coldest point occurred 140 years ago in what they call the "little ice age". Other core samples, from Greenland and elsewhere around the globe, in addition to using other methods such as carbon-14 dating from organic matter from peat bugs and tree-rings confirm the pattern. In other words, major fluctuations in climate are normal, and the recent warming may be a natural consequence of leaving the little ice age in 1875, the lowest point we've had over the last 10,000 years.

Former senior official of the United Nations and billionaire industrialist, otherwise known as the Godfather of the international environmental movement, Maurice Strong,  who played a major role in organizing the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm, Sweden in 1972, thus launching the "Green movement" is the "wizard behind the curtain" regarding the global warming scam.

He organized the U.N. sponsored conferences, including Kyoto, Japan in 1997 (Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gas emissions, aimed at fighting global warming) and he was instrumental in establishing the IPCC  (International Panel on Climate Change). In 2005, Strong stepped down from his UN post because he was involved in the food for oil scandal. Evidence later showed that Strong, in 1997, while working for Kofi Annan, endorsed a check for $988,885, made out to “Mr. M. Strong,” issued by a Jordanian bank.   Strong is also one of the nine directors on the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX)which describes itself as “North America’s only cap and trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide.”  Climate scientist, Dr. Benjamin Santer, supposedly Strong's right-hand man, altered a crucial United Nations report on climate change to convey the misleading impression that there is a "discernible human influence on climate".

And we can't forget Al Gore, appointed poster boy and expert on global warming. Not only is Gore a partner in  Hara Software, who helps companies manage their "carbon footprints," and who admittedly stands to rake in between 10% to 50% of the trillion dollar business its supposed to become in the next few years, but he and David Blood (former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management) co-founded Generation Investment Management (GIM), in 2004 “to take financial advantage of new technologies and solutions related to combating global warming”.

In November 2009, Gore minimized the significance of the so-called "Climategate" scandal that grew out of confirmed reports that the top scientists at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) in England, possessor of the world's largest temperature-data set, had secretly and repeatedly manipulated scientific evidence in order to conceal or destroy data that contradicted their claims.

Links:

The Hockey Stick Illusion

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America Powered by Death?

Van Jones, a globally recognized, award-winning pioneer in human rights and the clean-energy economy explains that our economy is powered by an energy system based on death. Oil is the "ancient blood of our ancestors, underground that we dig out and burn in engines."   Coal is the "broken bones of our ancestors that we drag out of the ground and burn."

He goes on to say,

"It's no wonder when you take death out of the ground and burn it, that the climate scientists are now telling you, now you're going to get death from the skies and that we now have death in our oceans, because you have a society that's addicted to a death-based fuel system. And as a result, we keep pushing our energy workers to drill deeper and deeper holes.[...] Risk your lives. Die in those mines. Blow up those mountains...Go out in the ocean. Risk your life to drill deeper and deeper holes so that we can keep powering America in the same way."

It's your responsibility to tell the people who run this country that America's future is not down those holes. If you want to see the future, look up. Look at the sun. Look at the solar power we can have in our country. Look at the sky. Look at the wind. Imagine the wind turbines that could be created in Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio where industrial workers are sitting idol. Look up into the eyes of those workers..."

Jones also explains why an understanding of history is so important to providing much needed perspective that prevents despair and hopelessness.

"This president has done more and achieved more in a shorter period of time than any President prior to him. The problem is that he's done superhuman levels of achievement but the hole is so much bigger than any other President has faced." -- Van Jones

Here, Van Jones addresses the Campus Progress National Conference in Washington, DC. Jones. He served as White House green jobs advisor in 2009 and is now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, as well as a senior policy advisor at Green For All.

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Harnessing the Fireworks Inside

Okay, this post dates back to December of 2007, but since finding alternative energy sources seems to be more important than ever, and it's the 4th of July, I thought I'd combine both and resurrect.

We the people are loaded with creative potential, more than we'll ever use; much like fireworks loaded with combustible material, just waiting to explode. However, it's possible we're loaded with a lot more than latent genius and...uh..

Anyway, our cells may have more capability than we ever thought possible. They could be the missing link...an "alternative energy" source.

I don't know what that would look like but it sure would solve a lot of problems. Imagine if we could figure out how to tap into the powerful electrical fields inside our own cells...much lower electric bills, bankrupt oil industry, the end of antidepressants and all sorts of pharmaceuticals, and perhaps a bankrupt pharmaceutical industry as well. And last but not least, the end of the Republican party.

Never say never because researchers at University of Michigan have found electric fields inside cells as strong as those produced in lightning bolts. Scientists are not clear as to what causes these strong fields or what their purpose is but by using nano-tools such as voltage sensitive dyes, they can start to measure them.

There may be a lot more to the following expressions than previously thought.

• Shocking experience.
• State of shock.
• It gave me a jolt.
• Sparks flew.
• Blow your fuse.
• Blow your top.
• Get a charge out of something.
• Galvanize into action.
• His speech was electrifying.

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Drown Out the Science With Smear Campaigns and Political Witchhunts

Skeptics are a necessary part of the scientific process, especially when it comes to the climate which is far too complex to predict with 100% accuracy.

However, just because someone doesn't like what the science says, that's no excuse to bully, harass, launch a smear campaign, or better yet, a political witch hunt..

Yet conservative ideologues, even when the biggest environmental disaster in the history of the US continues to threaten the ecosystem in the most profound ways possible, they cling to their ideology and do whatever it takes to triumph, even if that means further destruction to our habitat.

Back in April, Lord Oxburgh, former chair of the House of Lords science and technology select committee, cleared scientists who were involved in the UEA's hacked emails "scandal".

However, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) insisted on completing an inquiry of their own and completed a FOIA request for all emails between NASA staff relating to a mistake in the calculation of the US temperature data series. Then complained NASA was not forthcoming despite the fact that anyone can read all of the released emails here.  Rumor has it that the results of the independent inquiry are in, and  supposedly conclude the same as Lord Oxburth: Scientists were disorganized but did not alter their results.  The CEI decided not to publicize the outcome of their FOIA request.

The National Academy of Sciences has now published a paper, Expert credibility in climate change, showing that almost all the scientists (97-98%) who know the most about climate change believe anthropogenic climate change is real, while the skeptics tended to be scientists who knew significantly less about it.

Global Surface Temperature Change

"We conclude that global temperature continued to rise rapidly in the past decade, despite large year-to-year fluctuations associated with the El Nino-La Nina cycle of tropical ocean temperature. Record high global temperature during the period with instrumental data was reached in 2010."

"Whatever was said in the emails, the basic science seems to have been done fairly and properly." -- Lord Oxburgh

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What About the Super Sized 1000-year Methane Old Bubble?

Apparently "the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history," is something to be concerned about...very concerned,  because methane, in addition to its explosive properties, on a 20-year time scale - as a greenhouse gas - is 56 times more potent, metric ton for metric ton, than carbon dioxide.

Methane or CH4 gas is being released in vast quantities in the Gulf waters. Seismic data shows huge pools of methane gas at the location immediately below and around the damaged "Macondo" oil well. Methane is a colourless, odourless and highly flammable substance which forms a major component in natural gas. This is the same gas that blew the top off Deepwater Horizon and killed 11 people. The "flow team" of the US Geological Survey estimates that 2,900 cubic feet of natural gas, which primarily contains methane, is being released into the Gulf waters with every barrel of oil.

12 scientists from the Texas A&M University, who have been running tests in the area within a 5 mile radius of the drill site, have found levels of methane in the ocean that are through the roof. In some pockets of the ocean the concentrations of methane gas levels are up to 100,000 times the norm and even more incredibly up to 1 million times higher.

The oil emanating from the seafloor contains about 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits, said John Kessler, a Texas A&M University oceanographer who is studying the impact of methane from the spill.

BP and Transocean were warned, a little over a year ago, that putting their exploratory rig directly over the area of seabed containing this massive super-sized bubble of methane  might be unstable and inherently dangerous. 

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Drill Baby Drill! Echoes Despite A Profoundly Ravaged Ecosystem

Thirty-seven of the 64 judges - in Gulf Coast districts, where the bulk of Gulf oil spill-related lawsuits are pending - have financial connections to big oil.  This, of course, complicates matters immensely, because federal judicial rules require judges to disqualify themselves from hearing cases involving a company in which they have a direct financial interest., which brings us to Federal Judge Martin Feldman, appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1983.

On Tuesday, Judge Feldman blocked the temporary moratorium on new offshore exploration and deepwater drilling that the Obama administration imposed last month.  However, this judge, according to the most recent financial disclosure form, had holdings of up to $15,000 in Transocean in 2008 and recently owned stock in Halliburton, Prospect Energy, Hercules Offshore, Parker Drilling Co., and ATP Oil Gas. A financial conflict of interest? Possibly. As of today, most of his recent financial disclosures are not yet available.

Regardless, rather than express humility in the face of forces not fully understood, in the midst of the biggest environmental disaster in US history, this judge, the corporate elite and government officials have chosen to proceed with the same hubris and arrogance that left the earth with a gaping, gushing hole that no one knows how to repair and countless individuals with nowhere to turn.

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Oil Disaster: If It Were My Home

See all 8 photos: Caught in Oil

A bird (left) is mired in oil on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast on Thursday, June 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

As the BP Oil gush makes its way to land, the effects are becoming much more evident. It's bad enough when innocent birds and animals are injured due to either accidental events or acts of nature, however, it's beyond heartbreaking to watch as the Gulf's seabirds and creatures suffer due to an event brought on by human greed, negligence, and if you ask me, downright evil.

At the website Ifitwasmyhome you can visualize the BP oil spill disaster and move it anywhere you want in the world and then move it back again.

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Remember Who Authored this Tragic Script..

As NPR's  Chris Satullo   so eloquently authored and voices in A driller's lament, President Obama is not the "author of this tragedy".

Most of us can agree, I'd imagine, that the Obama administration has made a political hash out of the Gulf oil spill.

The president hasn't nailed either half of the required theatrics: the righteous rage toward BP and the rest, of the Clintonesque quivering lip that shows he feels the Gulf Coast's pain.

But we do understand a few things, don't we? The latest Gallup Poll suggests that many of us do. Such as:

The inability to stem the leak is a technical issue, not one of political will. It is a failure of engineering know-how, not leadership.

It's not that people aren't trying to stop the oil from gushing. They've tried everything they could think of, and nothing worked.

And that's the scary thing.

Which drives you back to deeper points. What in the world were we doing letting corporations drill this deep if we couldn't curb the damage should something go wrong? And why let corporations follow their own judgment when it comes to keeping things from going terribly wrong?

Those mistakes date back to long before the current president.

Some people now deem it very bad form to point out that any current calamity is very significantly the fault of George W. Bush. Of course, many of the people who say that have spent the last 40 years blaming everything that goes wrong in America on a couple of Supreme Court decisions and a few hairy protesters back in the 60s.

Fact is, we do have political parties in this country, and they are different.

Only one party has made a national project out of limiting rules on business and defanging the agencies that enforce those rules. Only one party chants Drill, Baby, Drill!

As you may have heard, the agency that was supposed to help prevent calamities like the spill is a mess, a watchdog put to sleep by bribes as cheap as tickets to a football game.

Ask yourself: Which president was himself a driller, who made it his agenda to to put industry executives in charge of the agencies that regulate industry?

Hint, it wasn't Barack Obama. It was that guy before him.

Just thought I'd mention that before we all swallow hole the emerging media theme that the spill is Obama's Katrina.

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Harvesting Cow Farts

Did you know it takes two cows to power the average California home on what is called "poo power" or cow farts? And that's every day...talk about renewable. How does this work? Methane gas is captured from cow manure. Then, after cleaning it up, the West Coast power company Pacific Gas & Electric will feed it directly into PG&E's natural-gas pipelines.

Currently, the US doesn't regulate greenhouse-gas emissions, mostly because most American businesses oppose a global treaty that would do that, as well as a law curbing emissions. But PG&E does embrace the idea of turning green because it's the law. They have no choice.

Read or listen to the rest of the story on Marketplace website.

Cow power slideshow

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The High Cost of Maintaining American Arse.

15 million trees are sacrificed each year so that we the people can wipe! That's a hell of a lot of trees.

Honestly, I've never given the subject of anal cleansing much thought. But, after hearing about the number of trees that must be pulped on a loggers segment on NPR's Here and Now, I thought I'd look into it.

In addition to the 15 million trees, it takes 473,587,500,000 gallons of water, 253,000 tons of chlorine (for bleaching purposes) to manufacture that which we cannot live without, toilet paper . And that's only the production cost. The entire process, which includes the energy and materials for packaging and transporting the toilet paper uses about 17.3 terrawatts of electricity annually. That's what it takes to produce, package, ship and sell 36.5 billions rolls of toilet paper in the U.S. each year.

And what about after the deed is done? City sewer systems, water treatment plants, septic tanks, clogged pipes, etc. increase the cost even more.

Is there a solution? I don't know, but I do know that not talking about it will prevent a solution for sure.

I don't know what you do with those stones in the picture below, but obviously alternatives to paper exist. Although it doesn't exactly offer the squeezable comfort of Charmain, maybe it's time we look into the possibility of toilet stones. We can resurrect Mr. Whipple. I'm sure he could sell America on whatever those stones do and make it sound squeezably soft.

At the very least, let's try maximize the use we get from this extraordinarily costly product. Suduko, crossword puzzles, tic tac toe, ect. are some ideas. Here's an idea... we could eliminate newspapers all together, something that might happen anyway, and print out newspaper articles on toilet paper rolls. Merge the toilet paper industry with the newspaper industry...

If you are so inclined you can click here for more information regarding the alternatives shown in the picture.

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Stop the Spread of Global Petroaddiction With Pedals for Progress.

As economies like India and China start to demand more oil, the current global oil supply and the infrastructure will not be able to handle the ever increasing demand. Unfortunately, our petroaddictive behavior will definitely speak louder than words. Who are we to tell them they can't live like us?

Fortunately, there is Pedals for Progress who not only donates used bicycles to third world countries, they also help "developing world economies by promoting self-sustaining bicycle repair businesses." Convincing other countries to pedal will not be an easy chore, but someone must do it in order to save our planet.

Aside from saving the earth, pedaling has so many advantages over motoring such as the exercise it provides, the cost factor, the space factor, and the easy care and maintenance. Unlike horses or camels, bicycles do not require any fuel at all except the combustible substance of human calories.

Of course, calories is something most Americans have in spades. This is not the case for billions of people across the globe, especially now as the ripple effect of our fiscal crisis can be felt across this terraqueous ball we all occupy. Not to mention the effects of global warming, in part caused by our compulsive physiological and psychological need for more where oil ranks as the number one requisite.

Climate Change Summary Says Asia And Africa Will See Danger, Death, And Extinction Of Species Unless Countries Adapt:

Global warming's effects now still may be more pesky than catastrophic. But a new scientific report says that when the Earth gets a few degrees hotter, inconvenience will give way to danger, death and extinction of species.

The world faces increased hunger and water shortages in the poorest countries, massive floods and avalanches in Asia, and species extinction unless nations adapt to climate change and halt its progress, according to a report approved Friday by an international conference on global warming.

The poorest parts of the world, especially Africa and Asia, will be hit hardest, says the summary from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, issued Friday after a long, contentious editing session.

In a New York Times article, Scientists Detail Climate Changes, Poles to Tropics, James Kanter and Andrew C. Revkin report on how climate change is already changing the planet and detail how it will get worse.

"In its most detailed portrait of the effects of climate change driven by human activities, the panel predicted widening droughts in southern Europe and the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, the American Southwest and Mexico, and flooding that could imperil low-lying islands and the crowded river deltas of southern Asia. It stressed that many of the regions facing the greatest risks were among the world’s poorest."

Nevertheless, the people who do not have enough calories to burn are of little concern. If they can't afford to feed themselves, they certainly can't afford to motor themselves. Rather, we need to concern ourselves with the people who are past the point of starvation and who are starting to climb out of the depths of deprivation ...these are the people we must meddle in the affairs, to persuade them to pedal and spin their wares....and therein lies the reason I remain anonymous.

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Extend the Federal Clean Energy Tax Credits

The Long-term Extension and Modification of Renewable Energy Production Tax Credit bill will expire December 31, 2009, if the Senate does not vote to extend it further. It has been voted on or attempted to pass eight times. McCain failed to show up to vote all eight times, including one time when the bill failed by one vote and McCain was in Washington DC and could have easily participated. Obama voted to extend the bill three times.

Why is this a big deal?

Aside from obvious reasons, the biggest concentrated solar project, on paper, in the world is ready to go, outside of Phoenix Arizona. This massive undertaking will employ as many as 2,000 people and use as much steel as it took to build the Golden Gate Bridge.

We have one more shot at passing a long-term extension of the critical federal clean energy tax credits. Please call or email your Senators today to urge them to vote YES on S. 3335, which includes an 8 year extension of the commercial and residential solar tax credit, and doubles the residential cap to $4,000.

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Patriotic Bumper Stickers on Hummers Are For Wimps.

Instead, put your money where your mouth is and buy a patriotic car!

"Who Killed the Electric Car" is a powerful documentary on the birth of the electric car or Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) - vehicles that use rechargeable battery packs, electric motors and motor controllers instead of internal combustion engines (ICEs) - and how the combined effort of big oil, the Bush Administration and the California Air Resources Board cave-in to the auto industry killed these cars in 2003.

Fast forward to 2008 and the subject of electric cars (BEV/PHEV) - cars that require no gas and could run for 100 miles on one charge - surface once again.

Anyway, in the meantime, you don't have to wait to get rid of your gas-guzzling, globe heating, Osama Bin Laden enabling terror mobile to sport one of these electric beauties as they are available right now.

Not only will these gems save you money in gas, save planet earth, and stop terrorists right in their tracks, they will cut out any need you may have for anti-depressants.

How can you possibly feel depressed driving around in your own bright, cheery bubble-gum colored bumper car as you relive those wonderful amusement park days.

Electric cars run off a battery and that's it...just quickly recharge and you're good to go. Best of all, these little bubble gum balls on wheels can travel up to 75 mph!


No, I am not advertising these vehicles as I know next to nothing about them...only that they remind me of bubble gum, bumper cars and fun times.

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Freecycle Means to Give as Good as You Get.

Or, one man's junk is another man's jewels or... (insert stupid cliché)

Anyway, Freecycle is a a grassroots, nonprofit effort to keep the good stuff out of our landfills. Give and GET stuff free in your own town and help yourself as well as the environment. Freecycle is made up of 4,343 groups with 4,979,633 members across the planet.

Free is the operative word...membership is free, and everything posted must be FREE, legal and appropriate for all ages.

Make up a user name, submit your email address, join the groups closest to you and you're good to go.

Needless to say, please take reasonable measures to protect your safety and privacy when posting to the list or participating in an exchange. By joining the list, you agree to hold neither the list owners and moderators nor anyone affiliated with Freecycle.org responsible or liable for any circumstance resulting from a Freecycle-related exchange or communication.

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