One of the best political ads I’ve seen this year.
The anti-science mentality of the right is disgusting. People so dumb, they lack the brain power required to recognize their own stupidity. As an American, I am embarrassed. As a human, I am pissed off.
I’ve heard too many people say they aren’t voting because Obama and Romney are the same. I’m sorry, but that’s cynical bullshit.
If I have to look at his big nodding puppet head much longer I am going to scream.
"
We’ve got approximately half as much sea ice in the Arctic in the fall now as we did say, 30 years or so ago — there’s been this dramatic decrease. There is emerging research — my colleagues and I published a paper last February on this — suggesting that as that sea ice melts it’s changing the jet stream, a current that steers weather in the mid-latitudes, places like New York. As sea ice melts, our research suggests that the jet stream is going to tend to get weaker. As the jet stream gets weaker, it’s easier for storms to stagnate or in some cases, maybe even move to the west, which is what this storm did.
Most hurricanes, as they get as far north as a place like New York, especially late in the season — September, October — [the] standard pattern is for that strong jet stream to push those storms to the east. What we saw with this storm was that it moved to the west. It’s a very unusual track and I would say it’s a big research question whether we might see in general more stormy weather and storms taking a track like that as sea ice melts.
"— Dr. Radley Horton on melting sea ice and how it can steer hurricanes like Sandy in unusual directions (via nprfreshair)
“The sea surface temperatures along the Atlantic coast have been running at over 3 degrees Celsius above normal for a region extending 800 kilometers offshore, all the way from Florida to Canada. Global warming contributes 0.6 degrees Celsius to this. With every 1 degree Celsius, the water-holding of the atmosphere goes up 7 percent, and the moisture provides fuel for the tropical storm, increases its intensity and magnifies the rainfall by double that amount compared with normal conditions.
Global climate change has contributed to the higher sea surface and ocean temperatures and a warmer and moister atmosphere, and its effects are in the range of 5 to 10 percent. Natural variability and weather has provided the perhaps optimal conditions of a hurricane running into extra-tropical conditions to make for a huge intense storm, enhanced by global warming influences.”
- Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth, a senior scientist in the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research:
"I’m here to connect the dots between super storm Sandy and the record heat, drought, and fire we’ve seen this year – and this Tar Sands pipeline, which will make all of these problems much worse. And I’m here to connect the dots between climate devastation and pipeline politicians – both Obama and Romney – who are competing, as we saw in the debates, for the role of Puppet In Chief for the fossil fuel industry. Both deserve that title. Obama’s record of ‘drill baby drill’ has gone beyond the harm done by George Bush. Mitt Romney promises more of the same."
—
Jill Stein
Jill Stein Arrested While Visiting Tar Sands Blockade to Highlight Hurricane Sandy
(via theamericanbear)
(via randomactsofchaos)
The images from the summer of 2010 were undoubtedly gruesome: the carcass of a young sperm whale, decayed and partially eaten by sharks, sighted at sea south of the Deepwater Horizon oil well.
It was the first confirmed sighting of a dead whale since the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April that year – a time of huge public interest in the fate of whales, dolphins, sea turtles and other threatened animals – and yet US government officials supressed the first reports of the discovery and blocked all images until now.
The photographs, along with a cache of emails obtained by the campaign group Greenpeace under freedom of information provisions and made available to the Guardian, offer a rare glimpse into how many whales came into close contact with the gushing BP well during the oil spill.
They also show Obama administration officials tightly controlling information about whales and other wildlife caught up in the disaster.
Half of Word’s Wetlands ‘Destroyed Since 1900’, Threatening Human Welfare
An alarming 50 percent of the world’s wetlands have been destroyed in the last 100 years, threatening human welfare at a time of increasing water scarcity, a new report said.
Wetlands serve as a source of drinking water and provide protection against floods and storms, yet they have been decimated to make space for housing, factories and farms or damaged by unsustainable water use and pollution.
“In just over 100 years we have managed to destroy 50 percent of the world’s wetlands,” said Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme.
“It is a startling figure,” he said at a UN conference in Hyderabad.
The report, compiled by an ongoing research project entitled TEEB, or The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, said coastal wetland losses in some regions, including Asia, have been happening at a rate of 1.6 percent per year.
“Taking mangroves as an example, 20 per cent (3.6 million hectares) of total coverage has been lost since 1980, with recent rates of loss of up to one percent per year,” said the report released Tuesday.
“We need wetlands because our existence, our food and our water is at stake,” said Ritesh Kumar of the environmental group Wetlands International.
Wetlands are known to cover about 13 million square kilometres (five million square miles) of the Earth’s surface, and are a natural sink for Earth-warming carbon dioxide, act as fish nurseries and are important tourist attractions.
In the United States alone, wetlands are estimated to provide $23 billion worth of storm protection every year, the report said.
The report was released at a conference of the UN Convention on Biodiversity, where environment ministers will hold three days of talks from Wednesday to try and raise funds to stop the decline of Earth’s natural resources.
(via randomactsofchaos)
nrdc:
New report details how natural gas extraction is destroying forests in Pennsylvania. This photo says it all.
A new analysis from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) of two counties in Pennsylvania found that natural gas extraction creates “potentially serious patterns of disturbance on the landscape.” Wellpads, roads, pipelines and waste pits are clearcuts in forests. Cumulatively they are very destructive to the natural ecosystem.According to the USGS: “Changes in land use and land cover affect the ability of ecosystems to provide essential ecological goods and services, which, in turn, affect the economic, public health, and social benefits that these ecosystems provide.” Habitat fragmentation decreases a forest’s “abilty to support viable populations of individual species.” Read more.
Photo source: Landscape consequences of natural gas extraction in Bradford and Washington Counties, Pennsylvania, 2004–2010: U.S. Geological Survey
“On October 4th 2010, the wall of a wastewater reservoir (bottom, right) for the Ajka alumina processing plant broke, sending 35 million cubic feet of corrosive ‘red sludge’ downhill into nearby villages and ultimately the Danube River. This ecological disaster has claimed eight lives and devastated many more by destroying homes, livestock, and crops. Meanwhile workers are rushing to build emergency dams to stem a second flood that is expected to occur should another wastewater reservoir wall collapse.
This ongoing situation is the latest reminder of the environmental risks associated with the thousands of hardrock metals and minerals operations around the world. The site in Hungary was listed as “risky” by an environmental non-governmental organization in 2006, yet this warning did not spur the type of response required by regulators and corporate executives to prevent the flood. Last summer the same type of disaster struck at a copper mine in southeastern China, where 2.4 million gallons of waste water laced with acidic copper spilled into the Ting River.”
More @WRI
Garbage Island: An Ocean Full of Plastic
Don’t Worry, Drive On: Some Real Talk About “Peak Oil”
I’ve received a couple of questions from you fine folks about whether it’s true that new technologies have opened up access to untapped oil resources, and that “peak oil” is no longer something we need to worry about.
It’s wonderful news when innovative science and new technologies improve how we harness and use energy, but only when it’s based in reality. So yes, technology has provided new ways of accessing hard-to-reach oil and fossil fuels, and there’s a lot of oil left in the ground. That is true.
But when cost, environmental policies and climate change are added to the equation, just because we can get at it doesn’t make it good, or right, or worth it. We can’t afford it, financially or scientifically. Let’s keep moving forward and come up with a way to stop pumping the biomass of the Jurassic into our gas tanks and power plants.
