sutton086

Living on Earth: Climate Change Here and Now Mann: "Climate change is already a threat to national security. There’s increased conflict...essentially, a perfect storm for intense conflict and threats to national security... ...that 13-foot [Sandy] surge that flooded a large part of Manhattan, at least one of those 13 feet was due to human caused global warming...we are already seeing climate change take a great toll on our economy here in the U.S...We know that even a little bit of warming in tropical regions leads to a very sharp decrease in agricultural productivity ...if we see seven degrees Fahrenheit warming of the planet, which is within range of the projections if we continue with business as usual fossil fuel burning, then many regions of the globe will literally be unlivable ...you could be forgiven for mistaking this report for a post-apocalyptic plot that Hollywood had written about it."

Obama Talks Climate Change in James Cameron's Showtime Documentary "In what is likely a first for a Showtime series, the program's content was vetted by a panel of nine climate scientists, including Joe Romm of the Center for American Progress and Climate Progress blog, Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University, and Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University."

Sierra Club plans to sue Minnesota Power over pollutants at coal plants  "The Sierra Club’s claims are based on opacity, which measures the thickness of emissions from a smoke stack by how much light passes through it, the AP says. Minnesota Power disputes the contentions in the Sierra Club’s intent-to-sue notice. Officials with the utility tell the AP opacity can be caused by factors other than pollutants, citing water vapor as an example."

Quark Soup by David Appell: Is no one humble anymore? Am I? "Hinderaker is the kind who will always be fellating someone -- at the moment he's a Koch-blowing liar. He choose his side and he's on his knees for the money. It's an old story. Why bang my head against his wall?"

Greenland's Melting Ice Sheets: Climate Change's Disastrous Effects | Rolling Stone "Later that night, after Box had a few sips of Greenlandic whiskey, he talked about his dream of forming a Climate Delta Force, funded by philanthropists, which could be dispatched to study climate catastrophes in real time. “Give me two and a half million dollars,” he told me, “and I could change the world.”"

George Marshall on communicating climate change following extreme weather events | Transition Network "It’s very important to resist the temptation towards the protection of the individual property. There’s a temptation on this to say, I’m protecting myself, I’m making my house flood-proof. Obviously people do that, and that’s fine, but I think the emphasis has to be on how we can protect ourselves collectively."

Climate change is putting world at risk of irreversible changes, scientists warn | Environment | theguardian.com "“The rate of climate change now may be as fast as any extended warming period over the past 65 million years, and it is projected to accelerate in the coming decades,” An 8F rise – among the most likely scenarios could make once rare extreme weather events – 100-year floods, droughts and heat waves – almost annual occurrences, the scientists said. Other sudden systemic changes could lie ahead – such as large scale collapse of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, collapse of part of the Gulf Stream, loss of the Amazon rain forest, die-off of coral reefs, and mass extinctions."

R.I. lawmaker, Brown University students craft bill on climate change - Rhode Island "Both [Timmons Roberts, who runs Brown’s Climate and Development Lab and is an environmental studies and sociology professor] and the students knew [Rep. Arthur Handy, D-Cranston] and had backed his legislative efforts at the General Assembly. They had also previously worked on legislation creating the Rhode Island Climate Change Commission . The financial support that [Brown President Christina Paxson] offered (Roberts declined to specify how much) allowed the group to hire student interns and consultants to help Handy fashion a new bill. The group brought aboard Ken Payne, who once worked in the state’s Energy Resources office, to craft the bill. Meg Kerr, an alumna and environmental scientist, was hired to help organize discussions with groups of environmentalists, state regulators and municipal officials."

Paul Douglas Weather Column: Miserable March "As of Sunday, the average temperature for the month of March was running nearly 8F below average. Interestingly, the last month that was above average was October 2013! According to NOAA, meteorological winter (December-February) was the 6th coldest on record for Minnesota. Unfortunately, the Climate Prediction Center still shows that much of the eastern two-thirds of the nation will be below average through the rest of the month. When will it end?"

Oil trains, cold snap put Plains farmers in a bind | The Columbian "The extremely cold weather caused even more problems for the railroad. BNSF had to run shorter trains -- 4,500 feet long, instead of the normal 7,000-foot length -- to make sure the air brakes still worked. Crews had to manually clear frozen switches and had to spend more time indoors. Trains could not travel as fast."

NASA spends millions to fly first and business class with little oversight "Space agency administrator Bolden charged taxpayers $16,515 one way for a business class ticket from Beijing to Washington D.C. in 2010, NASA confirmed. The agency ‘s reports  list the average coach class fare for the trip at $958. In other cases, Bolden not only upgraded himself, but also flew with his wife, Alexis, charging taxpayers premium fares for her tickets as well. The trips included one from Tokyo to Houston that cost $3,571 per person, and another where the Boldens flew business class from Frankfurt to Washington DC for $4,463 per ticket." Flashback: NASA Chief Bolden Lauds Obama's Climate Change Plan

An Inspiring Day :: SteynOnline "But my white-shoe lawyers in the Michael Mann suit charged half-a-million bucks for a year in which everything they filed on my behalf they lost. Or, rather, I lost. The last thing I heard from them, in late 2013, was a proposal with regards to billing rates for 2015. That doesn't suggest they were planning on reversing their losing streak any time soon. I fired them on Boxing Day, and, when shortly afterwards they filed a formal notice of withdrawal with the court, there were no fewer than five listed lawyers, one of whom I'd never even met. So, when Popehat says Mark Steyn has a fool for a client, I would humbly suggest that for over a year those five lawyers had a fool for a client. I was like most foreigners around the world - all I knew about American "justice" was that it was ruinously expensive and that it took up years of your life. As someone who loves America, I carelessly assumed that there must be more to it than that,...

Gina McCarthy talks carbon, climate and methane with EDF | Environmental Defense Fund "McCarthy is particularly passionate about the health impacts of climate change, saying “people don’t realize [it] is the biggest challenge we face from a public health point of view,” pointing to high asthma rates. She described how warmer temperatures lead to more ozone, which causes more frequent and severe asthma attacks."

Do we call them Nazis or not? | Pointman's "Roy Spencer, like a handful of other people besieged inside climate science, is a person I deeply admire. I do so because they like Mr FOIA have moral courage and that’s a lonely road to walk when you’re forever going up against all the big battalions. It would be so much easier for them, their careers and no doubt their families if they just shut up, gave up or submitted to the relentless intimidation. They don’t, they hang on in year after year and they take a lot of elective bullets for that integrity. They are our true heroes. History will be kind to them and it’ll be at the expense of their detractors, to adapt a very fitting quote. That day is not as far away as people might think."

Sen. Whitehouse takes climate push to Iowa | TheHill "Iowa state Senator Rob Hogg (D) says there is "growing momentum for climate action" in his state, as climate change exacerbates more extreme weather events."

Globetrotting Michelle Obama announces luxurious China trip | The Daily Caller "Fresh off the first family’s sixth annual winter vacation to the Hawaiian island of Oahu — billed to American taxpayers at a cost of $4 million — Michelle Obama and the first daughters Malia and Sasha will now jet off to China for over a week of much-needed sightseeing."

Climate change deniers need to be heard too | Recordnet.com "It is a happy conceit in the climate change community that true believers are sophisticated, fact-based practitioners of science and that skeptics essentially are a bunch of superstitious nitwits who refuse to respect the - all bow - climate change consensus. If that were true, you would expect the science-loving know-it-alls to welcome opportunities to challenge the arguments of "deniers" of global warming. To the contrary, climate change groups have been engaging in a spirited battle to muzzle dissenters and pressure news organizations not to publish skeptical opinion"

John McCain Speaks Out on Ukraine, Syria, Barack Obama, Climate Change "I’m still interested in it. And I think there are a lot of things that we can do like this transition that we’re making to natural gas thanks to our resources and I still believe in nuclear power as one of the big parts of the answers, and that’s almost impossible to get. And I think we need to address greenhouse gas emissions. But I try to get involved in issues were I see a legislative result… But there’s going to be no movement in the Congress of the United States certainly this year and probably next year. So I just leave the issue alone because I don’t see a way through it, and there are certain fundamentals, for example nuke power, that people on the left will never agree with me on. So why should I waste my time when I know the people on the left are going to reject nuclear power? I don’t believe that you can really succeed in reducing greenhouse gases unless you have a lot of nuclear power plants. They...