Contact him now

FNL seeks CCDN for fun and good times

ENVIRONMENT/TODAY: Global Warming Causing More Snow? Come Again? -- FoxNews.com Deadline: Feb 01, 2011 11:00 PM EST
Former Vice President Al Gore told Bill O'Reilly that: "A rise in global temperature can create all sorts of havoc, ranging from hotter dry spells to colder winters, along with increasingly violent storms, flooding, forest fires and loss of endangered species." We need comments from someone who can point out the ridiculousness of his argument, even if you accept the somewhat-implausible argument. I've been assigned this story just now by Fox News in New York for the science and technology desk. I'm looking for comments. Please send comments via e-mail. Please send your name, title and company you represent. Please send comments by 10 p.m. CST. Contact: Gene Koprowski, [redacted]

Come on. Gene is lonely. Can someone please help him out?
For the uninitiated: FNL=Fox News Lunatic, CCDN=Climate Change Denier Nut.

First shot heard...

The US House Global Warming Committee is Officially Dead

We knew it was going to happen, and now it has: Republicans have killed the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming. They did so as promised, shortly after taking office. The committee was designed specifically to shape policy on global warming and energy issues. Since its creation in 2006, it held 80 hearings and briefings, according to Mother Jones.

Knew it would happen, but so soon?

Polar Bears Endangered

No not those guys who jump into frigid waters.  The REAL polar bears.

W.H.: Polar bears not 'endangered'

The Obama administration is sticking with a George W. Bush-era decision to deny polar bears endangered species status.


In a court filing Wednesday, the Fish and Wildlife Service defended the previous administration’s decision to give the polar bear the less-protective “threatened” species designation, a move that will frustrate environmentalists who hoped for stronger protections under the Endangered Species Act.

Boy this admin has been backing off on a little too much lately. But why back off on this topic?

Listing the polar bear as “endangered” as a result of global warming could open the door to using the Endangered Species Act to regulate greenhouse gases, an outcome the Obama administration has opposed.

Sounds like "wallets" and special interest to me.

Modern Life

Laurie David On 'Parker Spitzer': 'Modern Life Is Tearing Us Apart'

In her recent interview on "Parker Spitzer," producer, author, and environmental activist Laurie David discussed her newest book and her fight to raise awareness about global warming.


In David's new book, "The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect With Your Kids, One Meal At A Time," she stresses the importance of eating meals together as a family. "Modern life is tearing us apart," David says, imploring that the ritual of sitting down to regular meals can improve a myriad of areas in our lives and relationships. David has dinner with her children every night, noting that the routine it is especially important for families separated by divorce, saying "the conversation is just as important as the food."


In addition to having family dinners every single night, David has many achievements in environmental activism, including producing the 2006 Academy Award winner, "An Inconvenient Truth."


David admits that she is upset by how little progress is being made toward confronting global warming, but realizes that it is not an easy battle. "I just think the forces against change are so strong, so rich, so powerful, so organized, and they're continuing to keep the public confused and misinformed about this issue," she says.


David expresses concern over the growing trend of Republicans who dismiss the scientific evidence of global warming. She says that she doesn't understand "when science became something you believe in," noting that "facts are facts."


However, David remains hopeful that change will come soon. She tells Parker and Spitzer, "Because I'm an environmentalist, I'm an optimist," and hopes that Obama has a strategy just around the corner to propel environmental progress forward.

Modern life, consumerism and lobbyists. That is it in a nutshell.
Optimist? Gee I wish I was like her. But I think we have reached past the tipping point. Life may go on but changes will definitely be felt by all. With the right skills and attitude - survival is possible.

Ecocide

Evo Morales: 'Ecocide' Will Result From Governments Avoiding Strong Emissions Reductions At COP 16 Climate Change Conference

Delegates from almost 200 nations worked Thursday to clear away a host of disputes and to take small steps forward in easing the impact of climate change at a conference whose limited goals drew an accusation of "ecocide" from Bolivia's President Evo Morales.


Once again this year, as it neared its end, the annual negotiations under the U.N. climate treaty will not produce an overarching deal to slash emissions of global warming gases. From the start, the talks focused instead on secondary areas, including setting up a "green fund" to help poorer countries cope with global warming.


But in that and in a half-dozen other areas, as they approached Friday's final gavel, world environment ministers and other delegates still haggled over the wording of texts. Environmentalists accused the U.S. of holding the green fund hostage until it is satisfied on other items.


Bolivia's Morales, addressing the full conference, cited families already being deprived of water because of warming and drought, and islanders facing the loss of homes from seas rising from global warming.


If governments move away from strong, mandatory emissions reductions, "then we will be responsible for `ecocide,' which is equivalent to genocide because this would be an affront to mankind as a whole," he said.

He's living in a dream world. Worried about lives over wallets and profits. That's not how we roll.

Dire but true view

There's No Longer A Happy Ending Where We Prevent Climate Change Anymore

There's no happy ending where we prevent climate change anymore. Now the question is, is it going to a miserable century or an impossible one, and what comes after that. So we work incredibly hard to build a movement that finally, eventually, is able to take advantage of some opening in, political or natural, in order to drive through real change. And god knows if we can do it. But we will definitely keep trying because there are millions of people around the world who are.

Dire, doom and gloom...reality!

Following the money

Need a perfect example of who is behind the "nothing is wrong with our environment?"
Koch brothers jump into Prop 23 fight

A company controlled by the billionaire Koch brothers, who have bankrolled numerous right-wing causes, has donated $1 million to the campaign to pass Proposition 23, the California ballot initiative that would suspend the state's global-warming law.
The contribution was made Thursday and came from Flint Hills Resources, a Kansas petrochemical company that is a subsidiary of Koch Industries. The Koch brothers were the subject of a recent profile in The New Yorker.
The Koch donation came a day after Tesoro, a Texas oil company that has been bankrolling the pro-Prop 23 campaign, put $1 million into the campaign coffers.
According to the No campaign, 97 percent of the $8.2 million raised by the Yes forces has been given by oil-related interests and 89 percent of that money has come from out of state. Three companies, Koch Industries, Tesoro, and Valero -- another Texas-based oil company -- have provided 80 percent of those funds.
"There are three companies from out of state that have a very specific economic interest in rolling back our clean energy economy and jobs," Thomas Steyer, a San Francisco hedge-fund manger who is co-chair of the No on 23 campaign, said during a conference call Friday.

Why? They would have to change their practices and products - taking some of their profit away. Money is much more important than healthy lives and a healthy future.

The Zen of Green

Image via WikipediaLet Go of The 'Need' to Save the Planet: Thich Nhat Hahn

"Without collective awakening the [environmental] catastrophe will come," he warns. "Civilizations have been destroyed many times and this civilization is no different. It can be destroyed. We can think of time in terms of millions of years and life will resume little by little. The cosmos operates for us very urgently, but geological time is different.
"If you meditate on that, you will not go crazy. You accept that this civilization could be abolished and life will begin later on after a few thousand years because that is something that has happened in the history of this planet. When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair there is no hope.
"It's like the person who is struck with cancer or Aids and they learn they have been given one year or six months to live. They suffer very much and fight. But if they come to accept that they will die and they prepare to live every day peacefully and they enjoy every moment, the situation may change and the illness may go away. That has happened to many people."

And from The Guardian:

"The situation the Earth is in today has been created by unmindful production and unmindful consumption. We consume to forget our worries and our anxieties. Tranquilising ourselves with over-consumption is not the way."

Thay says that the communities his Order of Interbeing is building around the world are intended to show that it is possible to "live simply and happily, having the time to love and help other people. That is why we believe that if there are communities of people like that in the world, we will demonstrate to the people and bring about an awakening so that people will abandon their course of comforts. If we can produce a collective awakening we can solve the problem of global warming. Together we have to provoke that type of awakening."

What Would Vanna Do?

Pat Sajak Says Manmade Global Warming Is Simple to Solve

Pat Sajak? The "Wheel of Fortune" guy? Yes, that Pat Sajak. He says in a post at Ricochet.com that the solution to manmade global warming lies with men (and women). We have to make our own change, suffice it to say, rather than hoping that our government will save us.

What the hell does Pat Sajak know about global warming, other than a green week at Wheel of Fortune last year? A skeptic blog called WattsUpWithThat notes that Sajak was a weather man before he was a game show host. (He's also an active supporter of conservative political causes).

In his Ricochet post, Sajak takes a swipe at Al Gore, and offers this idea:

"... if those True Believers would give up their cars and big homes and truly change the way they live, I can't imagine that there wouldn't be some measurable impact on the Earth in just a few short years. I'm not talking about recycling Evian bottles, but truly simplifying their lives. Even if you were, say, a former Vice President, you would give up extra homes and jets and limos. I see communes with organic farms and lives freed from polluting technology.

Then, when the rest of us saw the results of their actions--you know, the earth cooling, oceans lowering, polar bears frolicking and glaciers growing--we would see the error of our ways and join the crusade voluntarily and enthusiastically."

This reminds me of the old saying, "An Ostrich with his head in the sand." Wouldn't that make a great Fortune puzzle?

But does Sajak have a point? Should there be less talk and more personal action in the green movement? Would you like to buy a vowel?

Would love to find out if he was trying to lessen the climate change problem or really trying to offer a solution. I really agree that he has a very valid point. Individual actions are as important as large scale actions.

Living after the end of oil

You know something is going on when the NY Times starts reporting on Peak Oil.  Getting us ready...


Imagining Life Without Oil, and Being Ready

As oil continued to pour into the Gulf of Mexico on a recent Saturday, Jennifer Wilkerson spent three hours on the phone talking about life after petroleum.

For Mrs. Wilkerson, 33, a moderate Democrat from Oakton, Va., who designs computer interfaces, the spill reinforced what she had been obsessing over for more than a year — that oil use was outstripping the world’s supply. She worried about what would come after: maybe food shortages, a collapse of the economy, a breakdown of civil order. Her call was part of a telephone course about how to live through it all.

In bleak times, there is a boom in doom.

Americans have long been fascinated by disaster scenarios, from the population explosion to the cold war to global warming. These days the doomers, as Mrs. Wilkerson jokingly calls herself and likeminded others, have a new focus: peak oil. They argue that oil supplies peaked as early as 2008 and will decline rapidly, taking the economy with them.

Located somewhere between the environmental movement and the bunkered survivalists, the peak oil crowd is small but growing, reaching from health food stores to Congress, where a Democrat and a Republican formed a Congressional Peak Oil Caucus.

Andre Angelantoni is not taking that chance. In his home in San Rafael, Calif., he has stocked food reserves in case an oil squeeze prevents food from reaching market and has converted his investments into gold and silver.

The effects of peak oil, including high energy prices, will not be gentle, said Mr. Angelantoni, a Web designer whose company, Post Peak Living, offers the telephone class and a handful of online courses for life after a collapse.

“There’s lot of apocalyptic people in environmental circles,” she said. “A lot of those people were outraged that we presented an optimistic view of the future. There’s a dark vision driving us, but we’re about moving toward a positive picture of what can be done.”

For Mrs. Wilkerson, who is now growing vegetables in her kitchen, the course, which cost $175, gave her encouragement to move in that direction.

“Whether or not collapse happens, being able to teach other people to grow food so they can weather any adversity is a good investment of my time,” she said.

It's too late baby...

Lovelock Tells BBC That Mankind Cannot Save Gaia

James Lovelock, the scientist who put forth the Gaia Theory, has told the BBC it is too late for us to save the planet. According to Gaia Theory, the entire earth is a single organism, connected and interactive. Only just over a month ago, Lovelock called for authoritarian intervention while questioning whether humans are clever enough to respond correctly to the complexities of global warming.

In this newest interview, the perpetual pessimist seems to have made his peace with the inevitable, perhaps even with the end of mankind (though not the planet)....

With the BP disaster, freak weather...we may know sooner than later whether he is right.

Eaarth

New from Bill McKibben:

Twenty years ago, with The End of Nature, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded; now, he insists, we need to acknowledge that we've waited too long, and that massive change is not only unavoidable but already under way. Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen. We've created, in very short order, a new planet, still recognizable but fundamentally different. We may as well call it Eaarth.


That new planet is filled with new binds and traps. A changing world costs large sums to defend—think of the money that went to repair New Orleans, or the trillions it will take to transform our energy systems. But the endless economic growth that could underwrite such largesse depends on the stable planet we've managed to damage and degrade. We can't rely on old habits any longer.


Our hope depends, McKibben argues, on scaling back—on building the kind of societies and economies that can hunker down, concentrate on essentials, and create the type of community (in the neighborhood, but also on the Internet) that will allow us to weather trouble on an unprecedented scale. Change—fundamental change—is our best hope on a planet suddenly and violently out of balance.

Gore versus the deniers

We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change

The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth, yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere — thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States. Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm.


Here is what scientists have found is happening to our climate: man-made global-warming pollution traps heat from the sun and increases atmospheric temperatures. These pollutants — especially carbon dioxide — have been increasing rapidly with the growth in the burning of coal, oil, natural gas and forests, and temperatures have increased over the same period. Almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are melting — and seas are rising. Hurricanes are predicted to grow stronger and more destructive, though their number is expected to decrease. Droughts are getting longer and deeper in many mid-continent regions, even as the severity of flooding increases. The seasonal predictability of rainfall and temperatures is being disrupted, posing serious threats to agriculture. The rate of species extinction is accelerating to dangerous levels.

Great op-ed piece. Read it! Send a copy to Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity too.

Reduce your impact

Your Car & Your Meat-Eating: The Biggest Causes of Climate Change

A new study coming out of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that when it comes to the net contribution to climate change on-road transportation, burning biomass for cooking, and raising animals for food are the biggest culprits. Since I don't suspect many TreeHugger readers regularly use biomass stoves to cook, as do millions of people in developing nations, that leaves us with your car and your diet to tackle.

Solution: become a mass-transit riding vegetarian.

Crazy Train rides through Texas

Image via Wikipedia

Gov. Rick Perry Sues The EPA Over Greenhouse Gas Regulation

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) announced at a press conference Tuesday that he's suing the Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of Texas over its December decision to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant. Perry stated the intent of the lawsuit was to "defend Texas' environmental successes against federal overreach."


Perry cited in both the press conference and in his lawsuit the controversial leaked "ClimateGate" emails as evidence that the EPA's decision to regulate carbon emissions was inappropriate -- suggesting the science of global warming is somehow in doubt.

Following in Utah's steps.

The state that gave us "planes into Fed buildings", George W. Bush and the Dallas Cowboys. That explains all.

Global Weirding

Is it Time to Rename Global Warming? The Case for 'Global Weirding'

I prefer the term "global weirding," because that is what actually happens as global temperatures rise and the climate changes. The weather gets weird. The hots are expected to get hotter, the wets wetter, the dries drier and the most violent storms more numerous.
The fact that it has snowed like crazy in Washington -- while it has rained at the Winter Olympics in Canada, while Australia is having a record 13-year drought -- is right in line with what every major study on climate change predicts: The weather will get weird; some areas will get more precipitation than ever; others will become drier than ever.

Sure there are arguments against the name since it...

... carries the connotation of "related to the supernatural"

But it really does paint a true picture. And how can Beck rail against Global Wierding?

The Right's Inability to Grasp Climate Change May Be Funny, But It's Also Very Dangerous

Climate change conspiracies are hardly new, but the so-called Snowpocalypse in Washington D.C. has returned them front-and-center to every single right-wing media outlet.


Fox News anchor smugly claimed that the record snow had not only buried people's cars -- it was also "burying" global warming theories. In a World Net Daily radio segment, someone joked that liberals would soon be claiming the snowfall -- and global warming -- was the Tea Party movement's fault. And the family of Sen. James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, built a six-foot-tall igloo on Capitol Hill and topped it off with a sign that read, "Al Gore's New Home," before posting it on Facebook to the delight of climate change non-believers across the country. (From a commenter: "What if the D.C. tent cities became IGLOO cities?? The irony!" Bashing global warming and the homeless in one fell swoop -- classy.)


Of course, this completely ignores evidence that the last decade was the warmest ever on the meteorological record, and that while in the long-run we can expect winter squalls like the one that just ravaged the Beltway to be far more uncommon, in the meantime, all this snow may very well be the result of warmer air supercharged with moisture that will result in snowstorms rather than in torrential winter rains, as long as the temperature remains below freezing. In fact, precipitation of all kinds is up -- way up. A recent study by the U.S. Global Change Research Program found that levels of very high precipitation from Maine to D.C. rose by 67 percent from 1958 to 2007; the Midwest has seen a 30 percent increase. Global warming holds that weather of all sorts -- warm and cold -- will be extreme, as we trend to an overall hotter planet.

But facts don't get checks placed into your wallet by the oil companies.

Is Utah part of the USA?

Utah House of Reps Passes Resolution Calling Climate Change a Conspiracy

In an effort to urge the Environmental Protection Agency to "cease its carbon dioxide reduction policies, programs, and regulations until climate data and global warming science are substantiated" the Utah House of Representatives has passed a resolution (HRJ012) which basically states the climate change in a conspiracy and efforts to stop it will bankrupt the nation and are precursors to global governance.


WHEREAS, global temperatures have been level and declining in some areas over the past 12 years; WHEREAS, the "hockey stick" global warming assertion has been discredited and climate alarmists' carbon dioxide-related global warming hypothesis is unable to account for the current downturn in global temperatures...

Utah - a State I don't have any interest to visit at this point. The Crazy Train made a stop in Salt Lake City.

Too late?

The United States of America can lead in the development of clean energy technology and manufacturing while we lead in the fight against global warming.


Everyone knows we have a dependence on oil we buy from countries that don't share our values. This threatens our security and our integrity. And it needs to stop. We know it does. Still, we've seen our dependence on foreign oil grow and pollute the air we breathe and endanger our planet. But we can change that. Now.


There's a bill in the Senate that will break foreign oil’s stranglehold on our country, reduce carbon pollution, and create jobs right here in America—good jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced.


It’s one of the most important pieces of legislation of our time. It's a clean energy bill. And it’s been a long time coming.


Email your Senators to pass the Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act. This is our moment.

This is our Moment.

Let's hope it is not too late!

If it's not on American Idol...

Image by genetew via Flickr

Americans' Attitudes Cool Towards Global Warming - Less Than Half Now Think Humans Responsible

Yale University has just released an updated survey about the attitudes of the people in the United States about climate change which quantifies what I'm sure many people in green community have been sensing: Americans are becoming notably more skeptical about the causes of global warming, future effects, and indeed whether its even happening:
The study--conducted in the last week of 2009 and which has a margin or error of +/- 3%--found that the percentage of Americans who think global warming is happening at all has fallen 14 points to 57%.
But back to the issue of growing scientific evidence of warming: The percentage of people who think most scientists think climate change is happening dropped 13 point to 34%, while 40% of the American public believes there is "a lot of disagreement" among scientists about whether warming is happening or not.

Too busy listening to the Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck gospels. Too busy worrying about American Idol. Too concerned that needed changes will affect their buying habits/needs.