I personally believe western civilization, in general, suffers from a serious lack of "Science Literacy". Even though it is Science that has allowed us to achieve so much as a Species, and as a Society -- it is this same Science that far too many treat as "magic", as "geeky", as "Debatable".
Funny that those who most question Science's usefulness, seem to appoint themselves as "Experts", capable of dismissing its "Findings".
(Based on what Expertise? ... one should always ask back.)
Well IF Science is indeed, Debatable -- shouldn't it be ACTUAL Scientists Doing the Debating??? (and not the well paid shills from industry and politics, who's goals are typically to create "more heat than light"?)
Well there is a very interesting Interview conducted by Discover Magazine that attempts to do just that -- Let the Pro and Con Climatologists critique each other ... Let the Scientists Speak for themselves!
I have pulled some of the interesting sections of that "debate" for your elucidation ...
(though I recommend reading the entire article if you are so inclined.)
Scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center have published a study, Evidence for a recent increase in forest growth, suggesting that climate change can quite literally be measured by treehuggers. Like the average American citizen, American trees look to have had increasingly bulging middles in recent decades. Having spent their careers quite literally hugging trees, SERC scientists Geoffrey Parker and Sean McMahon have written a study documenting
evidence that forests in the Eastern United States are growing faster than they have in the past 225 years. The study offers a rare look at how an ecosystem is responding to climate change.
For over 20 years, Parker has gone into a set of forests in the mid-Atlantic, tape measure in hand, and giving them a hug to measure their size. Parker's own hugging has been extended with a robust group of volunteers conducting regular measurements of specified trees. (The boy scout to the right, while in a SERC forest, isn't engaged in actual measurements for the study.) Some 250,000 hugs later, he has quite a database in hand.
that the forest is packing on weight at a much faster rate than expected. ... on average, the forest is growing an additional 2 tons per acre annually. That is the equivalent of a tree with a diameter of 2 feet sprouting up over a year.
Now, there are many things that contribute to plant growth, from soil quality to rainfall to temperatures to CO2 concentrations. Parker and McMahon have concluded that the driver for the bulging middles of the studied groves is best explained through human impacts: the rising levels of CO2 (a nutrition); and the warmer temperatures and extended growing season due to global warming (driven, in no small part, due to the rising CO2 levels).
Veronica Martin always demonstrated this never ending positivity. I think this is what I liked best about him. He was always upbeat- and oftentimes it seemed that nothing could bring him down.
David Martin reminded me of Guthrie, Springsteen, and Dylan. A man who could tell you his story in such a way that you could not deny how it applied to you. It didn't matter if he was telling you about a cause he felt strongly about or what he had for breakfast, if he saw your face every day or you just read his words on a... page, if you even agreed with him or not - There was no denying that his story WAS your story. I feel honored to have been able to have been part of his story, as well as have had him as part of mine.
And, so on ...
What struck me about Martin, repeatedly, was his ability to take such a wide range of issues and communicate them with a clarity and structure that laid the issues out bluntly for any with a mind open enough to listen. While he did so on a plethora of issues, at times his clarity of thought and writing related to energy and climate issues simply stood out. There is a reason that I reached out to cross-post one of his pieces at GESN. In Change in the Weather, Martin tackled ClimateGate with the perspective of a non-expert judging what logic and sensible thinking leads to. And, he concluded:
Even if global warming isn't our fault, it is our responsibility. The United States alone produces 220 to 230 million tons of garbage a year - 4.6 pounds per person. Most of this is not recycled, but simply dumped or buried in landfills, where it contaminates groundwater and produces health hazards for anyone living nearby. This is unquestionably our responsibility. We made this mess, and we must clean it up. And when it comes to global warming, the question must be asked, "Who is going to handle it?" Who else can address the issue of sea levels rising as the polar ice caps melt? Who else can come up with solutions to entire cultures being destroyed due to rapid climate change? The answer is the same. It's up to us. We try to deny the existence of human-caused global warming so as to deny our part in destroying the planet - a concept so vast it renders people utterly helpless. But now's not the time to be helpless, or to be swayed by naysayers who refuse to accept the truth right in front of their eyes. It's a time to be bold, brave, and visionary, and step forward to accept our responsibility to clean up the planet and not let Nature suffer for our mistakes. If that's not being personally responsible, what is?
I agree completely (which is something I normally make a point not to do with anyone, just on principle), and I also want to thank you not only for writing the piece that I was planning for tomorrow morning, but doing such an excellent job.
Mr Luntz is at it again, doing what he does best: Making Stuff Up for purely Politcal Gain!
Wall St Consultant Frank Luntz Pens Memo On How To Channel Economic Anxiety Into Protecting Wall St Abuses Lee Fang, ThinkProgress - 02/01/2010
[...] Luntz, who gained national recognition for his role in shaping the buzzword-heavy Contract for America with Newt Gingrich in 1994, has built a sizable business selling his messaging advice to both corporations and Republican campaigns.
The new memo instructs opponents of financial reform to simply lie about reform legislation, and to twist economic anxiety resulting from the recession into fear of any government effort to fix the underlying cause of the financial crisis. The most dishonest argument is that financial reform would "punish" taxpayers while rewarding "big banks and credit card companies." In reality, top financial industry lobbyists are not only fighting proposed oversight regulations, but have said recently that they are opposed to "any regulation" at all.
As most of you are well aware, last week was a snow week in Washington, DC, and the odds are pretty good that there's something like that going on for you as well.
Our good friends in the conservative community have seized upon the moment as proof that this whole "global warming" thing is just a big scam perpetrated by the likes of Al Gore and his Legion Of Weather Nazis; their mission being only to deprive the American people of their Constitutional right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of a Ford Super Duty F-450 King Ranch Edition with the Heavy Service Suspension Package, Snow Plow Prep Package, Transmission Power Take-Off Provision, dual alternators, and supplemental cab heater.
To drive the point home, last week Senator James Inhofe's family went to the time and trouble to build a little igloo on the National Mall for our amusement.
But here's a question: just what has the weather been like in other places-for example, in my part of the world...or in the Senator's home State of Oklahoma?
It's a good question-and the Senator won't like the answer.
Most of us know that Most Glaciers ARE Melting. Here are some stats:
A Reply to the Attacks on Climate Change Science The science is sound and the glaciers are shrinking, says the Union of Concerned Scientists. 02/10/2010
A 2005 global survey of 442 glaciers from the World Glacier Monitoring Service found that only 26 were advancing, 18 were stationary, and 398 were retreating. Overall, about 90 percent of the world's glaciers that scientists have measured are shrinking as the planet warms.
For our scientifically challenged fellow-citizens, it may hard to understand, but simply experiencing a few record-setting Snow Storms, does NOT automatically disprove the theory of Global Warming (aka Climate Change). Science doesn't work that way. Science takes evidence. Science takes data. Science takes experiments - and lots and lots of Measuring. ... It takes measuring of those boring things, called Facts.
The theory of Climate Change, views weather events from a long-term perspective. Climate varies from year to year. Decade to decade.
Climate is a generational phenomenon. (could be why the younger generation "gets it" -- more so than the older.)
Weather, on the other hand, changes with the wind. Weather is a daily event. Weather is the background noise, upon which we plan our daily lives.
In other words, weather can change - a lot; over the course of a week, or over a Season. ... Weather can even swing wildly over the course of a day sometimes - just ask anyone caught without rain gear, when unexpected downburst rolls in.
Weather is volatile. Weather is constantly changing. Climate not so much.
Today, Americans are engrossed in earthquake coverage. The tremor in Haiti bought unimaginable death and destruction just south of our borders. Events related to the recovery and rescues emerge as banner headlines. Haitians Seek Solace Amid the Ruins. For a week now, the struggle to survive, revive the injured, and retrieve the bodies strewn on the streets of Port-au-Prince was also the central theme of most every broadcast. In the midst of the misery, many Americans, felt desperate for a reprieve from the devastation that emotionally drained them. Millions took time to escape in a welcome distraction. Sassy, former Governor and Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin Made Her Debut appearance on Fox. Tomorrow another reality will replace these stories, just as each superseded the hoopla over Harry Reid's reference to race. Metaphorically, the tales provide persons, policies, and, or practices fifteen minutes of fame. In actuality, these fade from our mind quickly.
Chalk up yet another reason why we have two wars going right now -- the U.S. Military is one of the biggest consumers of petroleum products in the world.
And because of this, it is also one of the world's leading producers of CO2.
By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements.
***
The Feb. 17, 2007, Energy Bulletin detailed the oil consumption just for the Pentagon's aircraft, ships, ground vehicles and facilities that made it the single-largest oil consumer in the world.
***
Even according to rankings in the 2006 CIA World Factbook, only 35 countries (out of 210 in the world) consume more oil per day than the Pentagon.
***
This information is not readily available ... because military emissions abroad are exempt from national reporting requirements under U.S. law and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change" ...
Bryan Farrell in his new book, "The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism," says that "the greatest single assault on the environment, on all of us around the globe, comes from one agency ... the Armed Forces of the United States."
Sixteen gallons of oil. That's how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis -- either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone.
And there's more:
And in 2008, Oil Change International released a report showing that:
The [Iraq] war is responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) since March 2003. To put this in perspective, CO2 released by the war to date equals the emissions from putting 25 million more cars on the road in the US this year.
Between March 2003 and October 2007 the US military in Iraq purchased more than 4 billion gallons of fuel from the Defense Energy Support Center, the agency responsible for procuring and supplying petroleum products to the Department of Defense. Burning these fuels has directly produced nearly 39 million metric tons of CO2 Just transporting 4 billion gallons of fuel to the military in Iraq consumed at least as much fuel as was delivered nearly doubling overall fuel-related emissions.
Emissions from the Iraq War to date are nearly two and a half times greater than what would be avoided between 2009 and 2016 were California to implement the auto emission regulations it has proposed (but that the Bush Administration struck down).
If the war were ranked as a country in terms of annual emissions, it would emit more CO2 each year than 139 of the world's nations do, more than 60% of all countries on the planet...
Wow, no wonder the Powers that Be don't want to put the brakes on this thing. It's a paradise for the oil companies, a dream come true. They take over a country with oil, then spend gargantuan amounts of oil in order to keep the Army there, then when things settle down a bit they just gear up ANOTHER "war" so that they can pump even more and more, all the while charging it to the United States taxpayer.
There are many for if there is an end it doesn't come for decades later for those invaded and occupied by others. The innocent are the ones who suffer the most and in greater numbers by the destruction and death from the moment of invasion and decades later with what's left behind by those who are ordered to invade and then occupy in these Wars of Choice based on lies or for reasons of material worth a small country can add to a power that wants to control.
This is just one of many of the long running destructive remnants of our generations War of Choice, an extremely destructive Weapon of Mass Destruction, Dioxin, Agent Orange and the others used as we occupied a small country Vietnam for over a decade. Destructive not only to the Vietnamese Civilians, then and now, but also to many soldiers who served in country and elsewhere, where it was stored and packaged for shipment to Vietnam and stored at bases to be sprayed over the country at the whim of the commanders of war.
In searching for any semblance of hope and change on the tubes nothing looks more promising than the keyword exopolitics. Exopolitics is not even an offical dictionary word yet but it is a very real global movement. Same as 911 truth. Most of it starts back in 1947, stemming from the crash of a UFO in Roswell New Mexico. The powers that be decided we could not handle the truth but today things are changing.
What does it mean? Everything.
Ending the supression of technologies. Think about that one. Ending the supression of technologies, plural there. What technologies?
MITCHELL: Palin calls it "junk science." She says, "The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won't change the weather, but they would change our economy for the worst."
I thought mistakes at Fox would have consequences?
Guess not.
Last week, Fox and Friends showed a Rasmussen poll graphic revealing that a whopping 120 percent of the American public believes scientists may be falsifying research to support their own theories on global warming:
Fox News' graphics department added together the "very likely" and "somewhat likely" numbers to reach 59 percent, and called that new group "somewhat likely." Then, for some reason, they threw in the 35 percent "very likely" as their own group, even though they already added that number to the "somewhat likely" percentage. Then they mashed together the "not very likely" and "not likely at all" groups, and threw the 15 percent who were unsure into the waste bin. Voila - 120 percent.
In the wake of the illegal hacking of a leading climate scientist's computers, to concoct a false scandal compared to which the birther absurdity is merely amusing, someone is criminally targeting another leading climate scientist.
Attempts have been made to break into the offices of one of Canada's leading climate scientists, it was revealed yesterday. The victim was Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria scientist and a key contributor to the work of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In one incident, an old computer was stolen and papers were disturbed.
In addition, individuals have attempted to impersonate technicians in a bid to access data from his office, said Weaver. The attempted breaches, on top of the hacking of files from British climate researcher Phil Jones, have heightened fears that climate-change deniers are mounting a campaign to discredit the work of leading meteorologists before the start of the Copenhagen climate summit tomorrow.
"The key thing is to try to find anybody who's involved in any aspect of the IPCC and find something that you can ... take out of context," said Weaver. The prospect of more break-ins and hacking has forced researchers to step up computer security.
Someone is getting desperate. And it appears to be becoming a pattern. For more on Weaver, this is his homepage.
For those who don't know about the literally criminal first false scandal, DarkSyde at Daily Kos made two superb posts:
This 40% breakthrough ... has finally become available for your home (maybe?) and office use ...
Solar cell breaks efficiency record Michael Kanellos, CNET News -- December 6, 2006
Boeing-Spectrolab has developed a solar cell that can convert almost 41 percent of the sunlight that strikes it into electricity, the latest step in trying to drop the cost of solar power.
Potentially, the solar cell could bring the cost of solar power down to around $3 a watt, after installation costs and other expenses are factored in, over the life of the panel.
[...]
Current silicon solar cells provide electricity at about $8 a watt, before government rebates. The goal is to bring it to $1 a watt without rebates or incentives.
Severn Suzuki representing ECO, the Environmental Children's Organization addresses the UN regard the environmental issues of great concern, to her generation.
The people who will inherit the global decisions made at Copenhagen, this week ...
The Lord said: "Time [death] I am, the destroyer of the worlds, who has come to annihilate everyone. Even without your taking part all those arrayed in the [two] opposing ranks will be slain!"
Reform Immigration -
March on Washington
and giving them a hug to measure their size. Parker's own hugging has been extended with a robust group of volunteers conducting regular measurements of specified trees. (The boy scout to the right, while in a SERC forest, isn't engaged in actual measurements for the study.) Some 250,000 hugs later, he has quite a database in hand.
