Tag: global warming

Dec 06 2007

Climate Change: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

With the world we know in just a little bit of trouble, thanks to global warming/climate change and other human-caused environmental disasters, three different countries are pursuing three very different approaches to dealing with it.

In Germany, Spiegel Online reports:

The cabinet of German Chancellor Angela Merkel approved a package of emissions reduction policies representing a 2008 commitment of €3.3 billion ($4.8 billion) on Wednesday. Cabinet members say it is among the most ambitious national initiatives of its kind in the world.

“The government is taking a big step forward to achieve its climate protection goals,” government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said, according to the Associated Press. “Germany will maintain its leadership role.”

The plan breaks down into 14 new laws and regulations, each designed to encourage businesses to conserve energy or expand Germany’s production of renewable energy.

Germany’s goals are to cut their greenhouse emissions by 40% by 2020, which would put it in compliance with the the overall European Union’s target, and to increase the share of its energy consumption that comes from renewable sources from a current 14% to 25-30%, by the same date.

Some other countries, however, are backing off previous promises.

(more)

Dec 05 2007

Climate Crisis Future: Danger for Democrats

In a previous Kos post as well as on my Dreaming Up Daily, I speculated on the emerging Republican plan for the Climate Crisis. Basically it is to mix denial with assertions of doing something, in order to essentially do nothing (or not enough) to stop greenhouse gas pollution, while waiting to use the opportunity of a climate-related disaster in the U.S. to shift attention to their version of crisis management, which is disaster capitalism.

The Democrats are much different, yet there are also two sets of problems I foresee for them–one of which has pretty much the same result for the future as the Republican plan, and the other involves a lack of preparation for near-term crisis, and how the Republicans are likely to try to take advantage of that.

Crucial to this analysis is my insistence that the Climate Crisis has two very different parts: the threat of truly catastrophic changes in the future if we don’t stop greenhouse pollution now (the “Stop It” component) and the need to address serious problems and disasters that are going to happen in the relatively near future because of climate change–problems it is too late to stop (the “Fix It” component.) Follow for the analysis.

Dec 05 2007

William F. Buckley Interviews Al Gore

William F. Buckley:  We are so delighted to have you here, Mr. Gore.  I seldom see another conservative like myself with maudlin thoughts dressed up in convoluted prose that the Great Unwashed don’t understand.  Your obfuscation of the issues is majestic.  You even managed to be elected president as a [heh heh] Democrat.  Took Scalia to overrule the electorate.  But perhaps you will tell us why, as one of us, you despise environmentalism so much.  Is it because you are looking forward to owning ocean front property in Tennessee?

Dec 03 2007

As Al Gore Always Says, Who Needs Trees and Spotted Owls?

A warmer planet is what we need most.  Then we won’t need heat in winter.

Al Gore didn’t say that?  Maybe it was somebody else.

I am not a fan of the Conservative Alternative (Al Gore’s own description of himself).  So far I have managed to avoid lynching by idolaters of a great movie maker but lousy scientist.  Just not taken with wingers but to each his own.

Dec 02 2007

Belated Saturday Night Bike Blogging: Breaking Bikes

I was riding my bike hard on Wednesday, before Thanksgiving, and despite leaving after 5:15, managed to get to work around 6:55, in plenty of time to get off my bike commuting gear, and get onto the clock before the horn sounded.

But maybe I was riding my bike too hard, because this last Monday, my chain went off the gear … off the large gear on the wheel side … and that must have been when I was pushing with enough force to loosen or damage something, because the chain derailed four or five more times on the way to work, I got to work late, on the way home it started freewheeling in certain gears, and by the time I was two miles from home it was shot.

When I took the wheel off, the gear set basically just dropped off the cassette, leaving less than half the bearings (I don’t know whether more than half the bearings are presently on the garage floor, or whether only a couple spilled out and the rest were lost earlier).

So after catching a lift on Tuesday and Wednesday, and swapping the 5-speed wheel from my old (failing) department store $55 special, to get to work Thursday and Friday, I am taking that wheel in to see if the bike store can fix it.

I guess that makes this a bike breaking open thread.

Nov 20 2007

Kucinich for President? Ignore the Ugh? You Bet! w/poll

Sure, he’s not popular with our Great Orange Overlod.  Good for Kos.  No, really!  He has set up a ‘progressive’ community, and we have the right to ignore his dissmissive ‘Ughs.’  Why should we ignore those ‘Ughs?’

Nov 16 2007

Federal Fuel Standards Tossed for Ignoring Global Warming

Bravo to the Judiciary branch for doing what the other two can’t or won’t do!

Since the U.S. government announced new fuel efficiency standards in March of 2006, environmentalists and 11 states have argued that the standards do not go far enough to combat the harmful emissions that lead to global warming.

Today, the Ninth Court of Appeals gave a victory to environmentalists and a “rebuke” to the Bush administration in ruling that regulators “failed to properly assess the risk of global warming” in part at least for exempting larger SUVs and trucks.

The court decision is a rebuke to the Bush administration and its refusal to make meaningful steps to reduce global warming pollution from our automobiles,” said Pat Gallagher, director of environmental law at Sierra Club. “The decision tells the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that it can’t monkey the numbers when it sets fuel economy standards by ignoring the cost of carbon emissions.”

The court’s action invalidates the March 2006 fuel standards for minivans, light trucks and smaller SUV’s.

Nov 10 2007

Saturday Night Bike Blogging: Innovate or Die Pedalpower Contest

OK, so I ride my bike to work … when the stupid place calls me in (but enough about me) … so what else can I do to human-power my life?

This is the topic of the “Innovate or Die” pedalpower contest. (h/t to Sarah van Schagen at Grist)

And boy-o-boy do they have a slick announcement video …

(its even better full-screen, if you click through the link, and I suppose if you have all the modern Web 2.0 whiz bang stuff … I doubt it would have the same impact using Lynx over a text terminal link)

… of course, some of the applications seem to exist primarily as a reminder of how efficient a bicycle is as a transport solution … I’ll take a look, after the fold.

Nov 01 2007

The Most Terrifying Halloween Story Ever Told

Imagine there was a beautiful planet.

Imagine it was inhabited by billions of sentient beings.

Imagine the most technologically advanced of those beings was in the process of poisoning that planet for everyone.

Imagine that all life was at risk.

Imagine that those most technologically advanced beings were, as T.S. Eliot once put it, too

distracted from distraction by distraction

to do anything about it.

Imagine those most technologically advanced beings were even putting the survival of their own species at risk.

Imagine time was running out.

Imagine those most technologically advanced beings were actually making things worse, not better.

Imagine.

The horror.

Oct 31 2007

Global Warming: From the Great Dying to humanity at risk

On this Halloween, who needs ghosts and goblins? The real spooky stuff is in the science.

First, from Science Daily:

The greatest mass extinction in Earth’s history also may have been one of the slowest, according to a study that casts further doubt on the extinction-by-meteor theory.

Creeping environmental stress fueled by volcanic eruptions and global warming was the likely cause of the Great Dying 250 million years ago, said USC doctoral student Catherine Powers.

Writing in the November issue of the journal Geology, Powers and her adviser David Bottjer, professor of earth sciences at USC, describe a slow decline in the diversity of some common marine organisms.

Obviously, this wasn’t a human-caused event, but it demonstrates just how catastrophic such a catastrophe can be. As this NASA article explains, in the Great Dying, up to 90% of marine species and up to 70% of land species were wiped out. All life on Earth almost ended, even as it was still beginning, and global warming seems to have been one of the reasons why.

There is such a steady stream of stories on the current era of global warming, but here are just two new examples…

Oct 26 2007

UN Environment Programme: The future of humanity is at risk

It’s more than global warming and climate change.

From the Guardian:

The future of humanity has been put at risk by a failure to address environmental problems including climate change, species extinction and a growing human population, according to a new UN report.

In a sweeping audit of the world’s environmental wellbeing, the study by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) warns that governments are still failing to recognise the seriousness of major environmental issues.

It doesn’t get much more blunt, although don’t expect to hear much about it from the corporate media.

The study, involving more than 1,400 scientists, found that human consumption had far outstripped available resources. Each person on Earth now requires a third more land to supply his or her needs than the planet can supply, it finds.

Meanwhile, biodiversity is seriously threatened by the impact of human activities: 30% of amphibians, 23% of mammals and 12% of birds are under threat of extinction, while one in 10 of the world’s large rivers runs dry every year before it reaches the sea.

This is a follow-up to a similar study, made in 1987. It’s a progress report.

As the UNEP press release explains:

GEO-4, the latest in UNEP’s series of flagship reports, assesses the current state of the global atmosphere, land, water and biodiversity, describes the changes since 1987, and identifies priorities for action. GEO-4 is the most comprehensive UN report on the environment, prepared by about 390 experts and reviewed by more than 1 000 others across the world.

It salutes the world’s progress in tackling some relatively straightforward problems, with the environment now much closer to mainstream politics everywhere. But despite these advances, there remain the harder-to-manage issues, the “persistent” problems. Here, GEO-4 says: “There are no major issues raised in Our Common Future for which the foreseeable trends are favourable.”

Oct 21 2007

Life on Earth 2.0 – with graphics upgrade

Note:  Please forgive the re-post – still seems relevant.

Life on earth, in fact all life (as far as we know) is sustained by the razor thin and fragile atmosphere of a relatively tiny random globe in an obscure and nondescript solar system based on a third rate star hugging the inner edge of one immense spiral arm of a generic spiral galaxy in a far flung region of the vast and only Universe we know (although we are beginning to suspect that there may be others – see Multiverse Theory).

EARTH-atmosphere-MINE

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