Republicans - Learning From Cows
Here’s a great clip from Ed Schultz highlighting more republican stupidity. What an amazingly clueless party.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
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Climate Change - Time to act
As the phony debate created by global warming deniers continues, the threat from climate change continues unimpeded. A climate change conference in Copenhagen was attended by more than 2500 delegates from nearly 80 nations. The International Scientific Congress Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges & Decisions has just released a press release on the draft findings.
Here are the six preliminary key messages as outlined in the release:
Recent observations confirm that, given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realized. For many key parameters, the climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived. These parameters include global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean and ice sheet dynamics, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events. There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts.
The research community is providing much more information to support discussions on dangerous climate change. Recent observations show that societies are highly vulnerable to even modest levels of climate change, with poor nations and communities particularly at risk. Temperature rises above 2oC will be very difficult for contemporary societies to cope with, and will increase the level of climate disruption through the rest of the century.
Rapid, sustained, and effective mitigation based on coordinated global and regional action is required to avoid dangerous climate change regardless of how it is defined. Weaker targets for 2020 increase the risk of crossing tipping points and make the task of meeting 2050 targets more difficult. Delay in initiating effective mitigation actions increases significantly the long-term social and economic costs of both adaptation and mitigation.
Climate change is having, and will have, strongly differential effects on people within and between countries and regions, on this generation and future generations, and on human societies and the natural world. An effective, well-funded adaptation safety net is required for those people least capable of coping with climate change impacts, and a common but differentiated mitigation strategy is needed to protect the poor and most vulnerable.
There is no excuse for inaction. We already have many tools and approaches – economic, technological, behavioral, management – to deal effectively with the climate change challenge. But they must be vigorously and widely implemented to achieve the societal transformation required to de-carbonize economies. A wide range of benefits will flow from a concerted effort to alter our energy economy now, including sustainable energy job growth, reductions in the health and economic costs of climate change, and the restoration of ecosystems and revitalization of ecosystem services.
To achieve the societal transformation required to meet the climate change challenge, we must overcome a number of significant constraints and seize critical opportunities. These include reducing inertia in social and economic systems; building on a growing public desire for governments to act on climate change; removing implicit and explicit subsidies; reducing the influence of vested interests that increase emissions and reduce resilience; enabling the shifts from ineffective governance and weak institutions to innovative leadership in government, the private sector and civil society; and engaging society in the transition to norms and practices that foster sustainability.
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Of special note is key message 5: ‘Inaction is Inexcusable’ Without the concerted effort of nations like the U.S. and China to enact real legislation and implement new policies in combating man’s effect on climate, all of the conferences in the world won’t get us anywhere. With President Obama in the White House, the world is hopefully closer to finally getting down to work and doing what needs to be done.
Simply put…we’re running out of time.
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Tune in and watch Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity and Glen Beck all argue against global warming.
What these cartoon characters are saying is that there is NO global warming issue for any of us to be concerned about! For Fox, it’s not even about man’s role in climate change; it’s that there is no global warming, period! I’m running out of adjectives to describe the idiocy of these guys.
For the record, every scientist of substance will tell you that weather and climate change are not the same thing. Weather is what you see when you look out the window. Climate change deals with long term trends in climate and its repercussions. Global warming science does not tell us that there will never be another snowfall nor does it predict that there won’t be freezing spells. To believe otherwise simply tells us that one does not understand the concept of global warming.
Here’s a simple analogy for you: you have an alcoholic friend who drives at 100 mph while intoxicated and does not wear his seatbelt. You inform him that data shows that he’ll be dead within 5 years. A day later, your friend goes on to Hannity’s show and while chuckling, tells Sean what you told him. He then says that a couple of hours prior, he drank 2 bottles of Jack Daniels, got into his car and drove to the Fox studios at 120 mph…and hey, he’s still alive!
Sean Hannity snickers and tells your friend that you’re a moron for having predicted his death. The next day, Neil Cavuto and Glen Beck have your friend on their shows so that they too can laugh at you.
Sigh.
There’s a comment on the Media Matters site by someone named ‘neon desert’ which pretty much sums it up.
“It’s a pretty simple concept, once you learn conservative physics: When it’s cold, it’s proof that global warming is a hoax. When the stock market goes down, it’s proof that America has no confidence in Obama. When there’s a hurricane, it’s because God hates homos. And when the volcano blows, it’s because we forgot to sacrifice a virgin last month.”
Perfect.
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If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense.
Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t.
And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would.
You see?
Alice from Alice In Wonderland
An amazing thought came to me today. I was watching the announcement of George Mitchel and Richard Holbrooke as special envoys to the Middle East and Afghanistan/Pakistan respectively on CNN. At the podium stood Hillary Clinton speaking eloquently as she always does. Her voice resonated with clarity and confidence as she spoke of the new administration’s plan to bring diplomacy back to the forefront of foreign policy.
On either side of Clinton stood Vice-President Biden and President Obama each looking presidential in their own unique way. And suddenly it dawned on me as I watched the scene I just described, that with the closing of the Bush era, the world had changed in ways we can only begin to understand. With the departure of George Bush and the arrival of Barack Obama, it is a new day. Reason and logic and common sense, which had been pushed aside in favor of bluster and hiddend agendas, was now going to be the tenets which would guide the decision making process.
The feeling of exuberance i was experiencing, I thought, would not be unlike what Alice would have experienced once she left Wonderland and emerged from the rabbit hole. A rabbit hole which had once led her to a place where up was down and down was up and wrong was right and right was wrong. A place not unlike the one we found ourselves in for eight long years.
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