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#Post#: 906--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: AGelbert Date: April 8, 2014, 6:14 pm
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Glad you liked it Monsta. I found that last scene with the wild
Bass player and xylophone playing ladies was hilarious!
The SF writers are having a ball making money off the
apocalyptic future scenarios, by the way... ;)
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height=380]
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[move]The world as we knew it is gone. :P[/move]
Fahrenheit 451 and rising
Climate change: The hottest thing in science fiction
By Dave Burdick
Even if nobody is talking explicitly about it, it’s clear that
something terrible has happened and in its wake, humanity must
once again reset its priorities. Can we, in this resource-scarce
new world, fashion some kind of idyllic agrarian commune with
shared goods, serene faces, and hemp robes? Or are we doomed to
be selfish hoarders, creating even greater scarcity which we can
then leverage for our own benefit? Also, is that … is that some
kind of genetically modified man-wolfephant?
Post-apocalyptic science fiction isn’t new. But you may have
noticed an uptick in books set in the wake of some kind of major
climate disaster. Some call it “cli-fi” — sci-fi infused with
the increasingly frightening impacts of climate change. The
trope has deep roots, says science fiction scholar Istvan
Csicery-Ronay, and plenty of room to grow.
In fact, of late, cli-fi has been creeping out of the fantasy
and science fiction sections of bookstores and libraries and
into the mainstream. Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam trilogy, for
example, is everywhere. Its simple, cartoon-like, GMO-gone-wrong
future isn’t hard to imagine. Once you get past the brand names
and animal mashup portmanteaus (pigoons, rakunks, wolvogs), you
realize you’re just looking at a version of us, not all that far
in the future. It’s relatable, in a woozy way.
Cli-fi is “getting some interest from folks who are not
necessarily interested in science fiction,” says Csicery-Ronay,
an English professor at DePauw University in Indiana and
co-editor of the journal, Science Fiction Studies. For some
people, it may be even be a sort of gateway into science
fiction, which has a long and proud history of tearing
civilization down and making characters build it back, or deal
with the consequences of living in someone else’s rebuilt world.
The Russians, according to Csicsery-Ronay, were pioneers of the
genre. “They had a category, late 19th century, early 20th
century, called the ‘If-This-Goes-On Fiction,’ kind of a
warning,” he says, “a particular kind of dystopian fiction, that
if a certain trend goes on, and we don’t stop, then this is
what’s going to happen.”
An if-this-goes-on moment actually sparked the anticipated next
novel from Paolo Bacigalupi, critically acclaimed writer of
science fiction novels for young (Ship Breaker, Drowned Cities)
and standard (The Windup Girl) adults.
“This is sort of my fetish,” Bacigalupi says. “Bad decisions
made badly by bad people. What happens next?”
His latest inspiration? Erstwhile Republican presidential
candidate Rick Perry. “I was down in Texas when their drought
was getting going,” Bacigalupi says. “It was sort of biblical,
apocalyptic heat. The cows were being put down because the land
can’t support them. All this great systemic collapse stuff
percolating around, and at the same time, Rick Perry … is
organizing a prayer circle and praying for rain.
“That was the moment,” Bacigalupi says.
The result is The Water Knife, a novel set in a near-future,
drought-stricken southwestern United States — similar to the one
he created in his short story “The Tamarisk Hunter” — and
featuring a water war between Phoenix and Las Vegas. The two
cities have arrived at this point in the future with different
approaches. Good old, cynical Las Vegas recognizes it’s going to
have trouble as water becomes more scarce and prepares for
battles to come, legal and otherwise. Phoenix takes more of a
Rick Perry approach.
The book, and others like it, could provide a model for
scientists and environmentalists who are clamoring for some kind
of approachable yet still awesome — in both senses of the word —
way of communicating a very real if-this-goes-on message. As in,
if this goes on, inland real estate is where it’s at, presuming
we don’t revert to a system of bartering or pillaging or maybe
just asphyxiating.
And this is why there may be more at stake with cli-fi than most
fiction. For Annalee Newitz, editor-in-chief of science fiction
site io9.com, there’s real value in getting climate change
right. In a post on that site, she hails Tobias Buckell’s Arctic
Rising for the way it “explores how the loss of ice in the
Arctic Ocean will change international relations and reverse
some countries’ economic fortunes,” and Kim Stanley Robinson’s
epic 2312, in which humans have colonized much of the solar
system, with a great, moving city that stays on Mercury, but
never on the side the sun hits; moving colonies inside
asteroids; and, of course, a city of canals in what we know now
as New York City. His approach to technology is held in science
fiction circles to be both plausible and cynical — cli-fi
characteristics, to be sure.
Others in the science fiction realm with climate themes you
might consider, according to Csicsery-Ronay: Robinson’s Forty
Signs of Rain trilogy, the aforementioned Atwood Maddaddam
trilogy, Ian McDonald’s River of Gods and The Sea and the
Summer, also published as The Drowning Towers, by George Turner.
And there’s more coming soon. After making a deal for
Bacigalupi’s Water Knife, due out in spring of next year, an
editor at Knopf told the New York Times that he thinks it’ll
“attract a crossover audience beyond Mr. Bacigalupi’s core
readers.”
It’s about time for that crossover, too. Climate fiction
suggests a few things: First, humans are humans, and we’ll have
the same stupid fights on any backdrop spacetime throws at us.
Second, that today’s hero, be it a captain of industry, a
liberation fighter, or a seemingly clever technology, could well
be tomorrow’s villain — a lesson we in the real world tend to
learn 30 years too late. And third, that climate change might be
awfully scary, especially for those of us who’ve grown
accustomed to building sprawling, air-conditioned cities, on
inhospitable terrain, with apparent impunity.
Dave Burdick lives in Denver, where he is the deputy features
editor of the Denver Post. Find him on Twitter at @daveburdick.
HTML http://grist.org/climate-energy/climate-change-the-hottest-thing-in-science-fiction
#Post#: 916--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: AGelbert Date: April 11, 2014, 9:58 pm
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HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzaFzwH4S3k&feature=player_embedded
[move]
Someone should take this film and stuff it down Snowleopard/GW
denier/fossil fuel SHILL's throat until he GETS IT! >:([/move]
Stills from the movie:
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height=480]
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[img width=640
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#Post#: 919--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: AGelbert Date: April 14, 2014, 1:44 pm
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Meet The Surprising Star Of Showtime’s New Climate Change Series
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/>
By Kiley Kroh
Agelbert NOTE: It's NOT surprising to me. In fact, as a
Christian I believe anyone claiming to BE a Christian who denies
GW is NOT a Christian at all!
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On a recent Washington, DC evening, a few hundred people
gathered to catch a sneak peak of Showtime’s new star-studded
series on climate change. The surprisingly action-packed first
episode of “Years Of Living Dangerously” featured big names
doing bigger things: In one scene, Harrison Ford helicopters
over the scorched forests of Indonesia. In another, Thomas
Friedman interviews rebel fighters in war-torn, drought-ridden
Syria. But when the audience stepped out into the unseasonably
warm night, people were buzzing about one person they’d never
seen on the big screen before.
An evangelical Christian, married to a pastor, living in
conservative West Texas, and widely regarded as a top-notch
climate scientist, Dr. Katharine Hayhoe is a rare breed on paper
— in person, she’s even rarer. Deftly moving between topics like
science, religion, and gender with equal parts insight and
levity, Hayhoe is an unassuming force of nature.
“I’ve never heard of anyone like Katharine Hayhoe,” actor Don
Cheadle remarks before meeting her in the episode.
Science has been a guiding force in Hayhoe’s life for as long as
she can remember. One of her earliest memories comes at just
four years old, lying on a blanket with her father, a science
educator, out long past her bedtime so he could show her how to
find the Andromeda galaxy with binoculars. Family vacations
involved driving from Canada all the way to the Outer Banks in
North Carolina to catch a glimpse of Haley’s comet, simply
because that was the only place you could see it. “That kind of
gives you a picture of the level of commitment,” Hayhoe laughed.
As the brother to six sisters and father to three daughters,
Hayhoe describes her father as “gender blind,” meaning she was
never hindered by the feeling girls often have “that science is
too hard or isn’t a girl’s thing.” When she was nine, her family
moved to Cali, Colombia, where both of her parents taught and
worked with the local church. Raised by missionaries and
teachers, Christianity has always been a fundamental part of
Hayhoe’s life — something she simply never saw as being at odds
with her passion for science.
While attending graduate school, Hayhoe met Andrew Farley, a
Ph.D. student who was a member of the same Christian student
group. Even when Hayhoe moved back to Toronto to work as a
consultant after completing her master’s degree, the two
remained good friends. After a couple years, Farley and Hayhoe
ended up getting together and the two were married in 2000.
Having known each other for years, “we just assumed that we had
most of our values in common,” Hayhoe recalls, but “it wasn’t
until after we got married that we realized how different we
were.”
One of the ways we realized we were different … was that he
didn’t think climate change was real.
“One of the ways we realized we were different, besides the fact
that I did not keep butter in the fridge and he did,” Hayhoe
said, “was that he didn’t think climate change was real.” After
pausing for the surprise she knew would follow, Hayhoe offered
an explanation: “I, growing up in Canada, had never really met
anybody that didn’t think it was real and he, growing up in
Virginia and going to southern Baptist school, had never met
anybody who did think it was real.”
Farley and Hayhoe found themselves at an impasse. They both
respected the other person, not only as researchers and
academics, but as people who shared the same deep faith. If
those things were true, then they had to talk about it.
Eventually, Farley came around, but it wasn’t easy. “We are both
first borns who love to argue and will not back down,” Hayhoe
said. In all, Hayhoe guesses Farley, her first climate change
convert, took about two years to convince — though she notes “it
wasn’t like we talked about this every day.”
“A lot of my political opinions are Republican,” Farley tells
Cheadle from the couple’s kitchen table. “The politics, the
questions about God, and then the climate change — it’s all just
become this ball of sound bites and people can’t parse it out.”
The tipping point for Farley? When the two went to the NASA
website, downloaded global temperature data, and plotted it on
their own computer. “It was clearly going up,” Hayhoe said, so
“he had to decide, was NASA, the organization that put people on
the moon, involved in some worldwide massive hoax or were they
telling the truth?”
The same data, simply plotted, makes an appearance in the
Showtime episode. “We see that temperature and carbon dioxide
track together,” Hayhoe tells Cheadle, running her finger along
the jagged line to the sharp uptick at the end. “We also see
that right now we are way out of the ballpark.”
In hindsight, Hayhoe recognizes that the hours spent debating
climate science with her husband were critical to sharpening her
understanding of the fundamental science behind climate change
and, perhaps more importantly, her ability to communicate it to
a doubtful audience.
The science is there, it’s been around and it’s not getting
through so what’s the point of publishing another paper or 10
more papers?
Climate science wasn’t always Hayhoe’s chosen path. When it came
time to go to college, she dove straight into her favorite
subject, astrophysics. Looking to fulfill a course requirement,
she saw a class on climate change and recalls thinking, “Why
don’t I take that? It doesn’t sound too hard.” Not only was she
immediately blown away by the fact that climate science was
grounded in physics, but even more so by the urgency of the
problem, “and this was way back in the early 1990s.”
Hayhoe credits this course and the professor, Danny Harvey, with
opening her eyes to the importance of communicating science,
particularly when it’s as pressing as with climate change. “The
science is there, the science is solid … and it’s not getting
through so what’s the point of publishing one more paper on
climate science — or 10 more papers or even 100 more papers — if
it’s not going to get through?” she realized.
Unable to decide between atmospheric science and astrophysics
for graduate school, Hayhoe decided to apply for both. “Back in
the day” when applications were submitted via mail with money
orders, she had already applied to nine schools and had one
money order left, so she basically flipped a coin and sent her
last application to the University of Illinois. It was a
fortuitous flip.
Unbeknownst to Hayhoe at the time, the school had brought on a
new department chair, who saw her application and asked her to
come visit. Don Wuebbles turned out to be the perfect person for
young Hayhoe to learn from, “somebody who recognized not just
the importance of the science but communicating that science.”
And the feeling was clearly mutual. “Right from the beginning
she was an excellent communicator,” Wuebbles said. “She not only
has an excellent understanding of the science … but being able
to communicate that science clearly is a special skill.”
Wuebbles dropped Hayhoe “right into the deep end, in terms of
working on not just research but communication.” Marking another
important turning point in her career, Wuebbles introduced her
to the Union of Concerned Scientists and brought her on board
for a significant research project assessing the health of the
Great Lakes. Examining the climate projections they were using,
Hayhoe was shocked to discover they were woefully out of date.
“I realized that there was this massive disconnect between the
physical climate science that develops climate projections and
the people who are actually using these projections to figure
out what it means for our world,” she said.
Figuring out how to deliver the best available climate science
to the people who need it the most would become a primary
motivation in Hayhoe’s life.
Continued in next post:
#Post#: 920--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: AGelbert Date: April 14, 2014, 2:32 pm
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Continued from previous post:
Figuring out how to deliver the best available climate science
to the people who need it the most would become a primary
motivation in Hayhoe’s life.
In 2005, Hayhoe and Farley decided to move from South Bend,
Indiana and needed to find a university with both a program in
second language acquisition, Farley’s specialty, and atmospheric
science. Texas Tech University met all of those criteria and
offered Hayhoe a research professor position while she completed
her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, so the couple packed up
and moved to Lubbock, Texas.
In Lubbock, a conservative town in West Texas, “people started
to ask us even more questions about climate change,” Hayhoe
remembers, and shortly after their arrival she received her
first invitation to speak to a women’s group. “Some thought
[climate change] was real, a lot didn’t” but regardless of their
position coming in, Hayhoe realized that they all had questions
and weren’t sure whom to trust.
“In the evangelical community, science is not a key value,”
explained Mitch Hescox, president of the Evangelical
Environmental Network. >:(
An evangelical Christian church in the area had recently lost
its pastor and asked Farley to fill in. Eventually, he was
offered the job. Because he loved it and could continue his
academic work at the same time, Farley accepted and the
questions about climate change became even more frequent. It was
soon routine for him to come home look up the answers to the
questions he received with Hayhoe — things like, how can polar
bears be endangered if there are more of them now? Or, how can
global warming be real if the planet is cooling? In the process,
the couple quickly saw that they “couldn’t find any book or any
resource of any type that started where the people who we were
talking to were at, who were not even convinced that this was a
real problem and also convinced that this problem fundamentally
challenged their core values and beliefs,” Hayhoe said.
So the two decided they needed to create that resource. Farley’s
task was to gather all of the questions he received about
climate change from members of their church and posited in
movies like “The Global Warming Hoax” and together they would
answer them. “Oh, and we had a baby at the same time,” Hayhoe
said. The new baby combined with their decision that nothing
would go into the book unless they both agreed to it led to many
late nights “arguing over one sentence in the book or two
sentences in the book.”
A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based
Decisions was published in 2009 and immediately caught the eye
of Hescox. After buying copies for all of his employees, Hescox
called her up and said, “Katharine, you and I have to get
together.”
Hayhoe’s unique gifts impressed Hescox from the very beginning.
“She’s the best communicator of climate science that I’ve ever
met and she’s also a person of profound faith” — a rare
combination. Hescox recalls inviting her to Washington, DC to
speak with leaders of several Christian relief and development
organizations about what was happening to the Earth’s climate
and the impacts of those changes. Among the attendees was,
according to Hescox, a very conservative Christian who was quite
skeptical of what she had to say. Hearing Hayhoe speak about the
science in terms he was comfortable with, however, sparked a
total 180. “That’s just an example of the kind of typical impact
she has when she can share faith and science at the same time,”
Hescox said.
“Religious communities get confused about which voices to listen
to and trust,” explained Jennifer Wiseman, an astronomer and
Director of the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion at the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. She points
to a recent survey conducted by Rice University sociologist
Elaine Howard Ecklund which found that evangelicals are more
than twice as likely as the rest of the population to turn to a
religious leader or text when they have questions about science
and technology than to a scientist. “It’s here where the
ambassador makes such a difference,” Wiseman said, and
“Katharine is a terrific ambassador.”
As Christians, we already have all of the values we need to care
about climate change.
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/>
The inroads Hayhoe has been able to make with conservative
religious communities focuses around one fundamental guiding
belief: the key to bridging what has become such a divisive,
heated issue is not hoping to present people with enough
information that they adopt new values. “As Christians, we
already have all of the values we need to care about climate
change,” she said. And when climate change is presented in terms
of its impacts on people, impacts that will disproportionately
affect the world’s poor, then the path for engaging Christians
is clear.
“When we tie that to our Christian values there’s no conflict.
In fact, quite the opposite — our faith demands that we act on
this issue,” Hayhoe said.
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/>
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Over the years that she’s been giving her presentation to
religious groups, Hayhoe has seen a noticeable difference. Even
when she knows probably half of the audience doesn’t believe in
climate change, by the time she’s finished, the questions
revolve around solutions: What can we do about this? Will it
ruin the economy? But “I don’t get questions anymore about the
science,” she said.
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing for Hayhoe, however. In 2012,
she agreed to contribute a chapter to a book Newt Gingrich was
writing, a collection of environmental essays that would serve
as a sequel to his 2007 A Contract With The Earth. Conservative
radio host Rush Limbaugh caught wind of Hayhoe’s contribution
when he had Mark Morano, former staffer to longtime climate
denier Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), on as a guest. “Morano has posted
numerous attacks on Hayhoe in the past month and provided her
email address so his readers could contact her,” journalist Kate
Sheppard wrote at the time.
Shortly after Limbaugh attacked Hayhoe, whom he referred to as a
“climate babe,” on air, Gingrich was asked about the chapter at
a campaign stop in Iowa from a woman who was concerned about
what she heard. “That’s not going to be in the book. We didn’t
know that they were doing that and we told them to kill it,”
Gingrich responded. Hayhoe learned that her chapter had been cut
from a reporter.
“Nice [img width=40
height=40]
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-051113192052.png[/img]<br
/>to hear that Gingrich
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is tossing[/I]
[img width=140
height=080]
HTML http://drphilyerboots.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/cherry-picking.jpg[/img]<br
/>my #climate chapter in the trash. 100+ unpaid hrs I cd’ve spe
nt
playing w my baby,” Hayhoe tweeted.
The targeting of Hayhoe led to a dramatic spike in the hate mail
directed her way, to the point where she “received hundreds of
harassing emails in a single day,” >:( E&E reported. According
to Hayhoe, a lot of the vitriol she receives centers around the
fact that she is a woman. “There’s definitely a gender component
to it and we’d be naive to assume that there isn’t,” she said.
There’s definitely a gender component to it and we’d be naive to
assume that there isn’t.
Taking the risk that comes with repeatedly espousing an
unpopular opinion isn’t just unnerving to Hayhoe as an
individual but for her children, as well. “As a mother, it’s
also very scary to feel like you’re putting yourself out there,”
she said. “But also as a mother, that’s one of the main reasons
I care.
HTML http://www.freesmileys.org/emoticons/emoticon-anime-047.gif
[img
width=60
height=60]
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/> [img width=80
height=70]
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/>As a parent, you’d do anything for your child — you’d lay down
your life for your child — and when you see this massive problem
threatening the world that your child will live in, that’s what
makes you want to do something about it.”
The politicization of climate change comes as an unwelcome
surprise for many scientists. “I think there is a tendency for
some scientists to withdraw and not want to be a part of that,”
said Don Wuebbles, Hayhoe’s graduate advisor. “Our lives are
based around the search for truth … and here we’re being
attacked for only the reason that we’re trying to tell people
the truth about the science,” Wuebbles said. The experience with
Gingrich and Limbaugh taught Hayhoe that “politics and science
are about as different as any two areas could be.” Rather than
ignore the politics to pursue the science, however, she now
works in the political science department at Texas Tech.
“Understanding how they can work together … is essential to
solving the climate problem,” she said. “Otherwise, we have no
hope.”
Ian Scott-Fleming, a current student of Hayhoe’s at Texas Tech,
said that one of the reasons Hayhoe is so effective as an
educator is her ability to empower her students with the
knowledge she gives them. Rather than overwhelm students with
too much information, Hayhoe builds a context in which the
information has meaning. “What’s nice about Katharine is she’s
good at presenting that framework, giving you the hooks to hang
the knowledge on, then presenting you with the knowledge so you
know what to do with it when you’ve got it,” he explained.
After starting his career as a consultant for various DC-area
firms working on weapons systems and other projects,
Scott-Fleming “was making lots of money, feeling very important”
but he woke up one day and realized, “the better I am at what I
do … the worse off the world is as a result.” Working with
Hayhoe, Scott-Fleming sees the importance not only of the deep
research and data gathering that occurs at the highest academic
level, but also being able to reach people outside of that
bubble.
“I think that’s one of her strengths,” he said of Hayhoe.
“Communicating this to folks that aren’t already so deeply
buried in it that the arguments are obvious.”
The most memorable example of this occurred on a night of
climate change speakers that was open to interested attendees
from all over Lubbock, not just the university. “This is a very
conservative part of the country and it is also Big Oil
country,” Scott-Fleming notes. There were several people in the
audience who were not receptive to Hayhoe’s statements regarding
the effect of fossil fuels and human activity on the Earth’s
climate — one older fellow in particular who stood up during the
question and answer portion of the evening and “started talking
and got a little bit more and more into his own rant.”
Scott-Fleming remembers being impressed with Hayhoe’s ability to
gently steer what began as a confrontational moment to a more
thoughtful discussion.
“I think the questioner felt like he had been heard, even if the
answer he got wasn’t to his liking,” Scott-Fleming said. “This
is a skill few folks have, and a big part of what makes
Katharine so effective.”
As a person with “about 20 projects on the go at any one time,”
Hayhoe has several irons in the fire these days. With her
research team — “a group of fantastic women post-docs from
Korea, India, Denmark and Romania who all ended up here in West
Texas like me” — Hayhoe is looking at how climate change might
impact specific types of weather and climate events, such as
drought, ice storms, and heat extremes. She’s also working with
a variety of cities, government agencies, and non-profits to
help them figure out how to reduce their vulnerability, as well
as their impact on the climate.
And she just had another paper accepted for publication last
week, this one written with her first science teacher: her dad.
“How cool is that!” she said in an email.
For a person whose life’s work is dedicated to the alarming
changes occurring to the planet, Hayhoe is unwaveringly upbeat
and focused on the cause that drives her.
HTML http://www.freesmileys.org/emoticons/tuzki-bunnys/tuzki-bunny-emoticon-036.gif<br
/>This ebullience makes her approachable and relatable but also
never downplays or sugar-coats the severity of climate change.
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/cowboypistol.gif
“I naively
thought that I would study climate science until we fixed the
problem and then I’d go back to astrophysics,” she said with her
characteristic smile. “Until we have policies in place to
actually start curbing our carbon emissions and reducing the
impact we’re having on our planet, I have to keep
going.”
HTML http://www.websmileys.com/sm/violent/sterb029.gifhttp://www.pic4ever.com/images/19.gif
"Years Of Living Dangerously" airs on Sundays at 10 p.m. EST on
Showtime.
HTML http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/14/3425256/meet-star-showtime-series
#Post#: 1065--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: AGelbert Date: May 6, 2014, 12:03 am
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#Post#: 1066--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: AGelbert Date: May 6, 2014, 12:04 am
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#Post#: 1067--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: AGelbert Date: May 6, 2014, 12:06 am
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HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfEEV3kNQnQ&feature=player_embedded
Later on in the Abu Dhabi Ascent opening ceremony, Sir Trevor
McDonald had the chance to ask Gore a few more questions. Here’s
that more impromptu back and forth:
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHO6Uv9bGOA&feature=player_embedded
Read more at
HTML http://cleantechnica.com/2014/05/04/al-gores-tremendous-presentation-abu-dhabi-ascent-exclusive-videos/#U8w8vsFvH8MuSfXA.99
#Post#: 1131--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: AGelbert Date: May 16, 2014, 11:43 pm
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[quote]Stephen Colbert’s refreshing solution for fighting
climate change
By Amber Cortes ;D
It’s been a bummer couple of weeks when it comes to apocalyptic
climate change news. First, the National Climate Assessment came
out, letting us know that, hey, climate change got our
invitation and may be showing up a little early to the party –
in fact, it’s already in the corner eating all the dip, guzzling
all the drinks, and trying to light the couch on fire. Then,
that darn West Antarctic ice sheet decided it had enough and is
in irreversible collapse.
“It is so terrifying,” Stephen Colbert says, “that it left a
carbon footprint … in my pants.”
So, what can the carbon-soiled among us do? Colbert’s solution:
“Fuck it!” Americans, we can all rest easy and [s]go back to
[/s] continue being our apathetic, indifferent selves. Let the
grandkids fix climate change (as well as Medicare and Social
Security). In fact, the “fuck it” solution can work for just
about everything.
HTML http://www.websmileys.com/sm/fam/fam12.gif
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/gen152.gif
“Are you worried that
money in politics is undermining democracy?” Colbert asks. “Just
do nothing, and soon there will no democracy left to undermine.”
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/d2.gifhttp://www.pic4ever.com/images/acigar.gif
I’m going to use the “fuck it” principle for other painful
realities I’ve been trying to ignore. Crushing student debt?
Fuck it! That should work, right? [img width=50
height=50]
HTML http://www.imgion.com/images/01/Angry-animated-smiley.jpg[/img]<br
/> [img width=40
height=40]
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-051113192052.png[/img]<br
/>
Amber Cortes is a Grist fellow, radio producer, and a digital
media grad student at the University of Washington. Follow her
on Twitter
[/quote]
HTML http://grist.org/climate-energy/find-climate-change-terrifying-stephen-colbert-has-a-refreshing-solution/
#Post#: 1147--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: AGelbert Date: May 18, 2014, 11:16 pm
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Emissions from forests influence very first stage of cloud
formation
[img width=640
height=200]
HTML http://dl7.glitter-graphics.net/pub/2046/2046807qoer9uc27q.gif[/img]
Date: May 15, 2014
Source:Carnegie Mellon University
Clouds play a critical role in Earth's climate. Clouds also are
the largest source of uncertainty in present climate models,
according to the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change. Much of the uncertainty surrounding clouds'
effect on climate stems from the complexity of cloud formation.
New research from scientists at the CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving
OUtdoor Droplets) experiment at CERN, including Carnegie Mellon
University's Neil Donahue, sheds light on new-particle formation
-- the very first step of cloud formation and a critical
component of climate models. The findings, published in the May
16 issue of Science, closely match observations in the
atmosphere and can help make climate prediction models more
accurate.
Cloud droplets form when water vapor in the atmosphere condenses
onto tiny particles. These particles are emitted directly from
natural sources or human activity, or they form from precursors
emitted originally as gaseous pollutants. The transformation of
gas molecules into clusters and then into particles, a process
called nucleation, produces more than half of the particles that
seed cloud formation around the world today. But the mechanisms
underlying nucleation remain unclear.
Although scientists have observed that the nucleation process
nearly always involves sulfuric acid, sulfuric acid
concentrations aren't high enough to explain the rate of new
particle formation that occurs in the atmosphere. This new study
uncovers an indispensable ingredient to the long sought-after
cloud formation recipe -- highly oxidized organic compounds.
"Our measurements connect oxidized organics directly, and in
detail, with the very first steps of new particle formation and
growth," said Donahue, professor of chemistry, chemical
engineering, engineering and public policy, and director of
CMU's Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and
Research. "We had no idea a year ago that this chemistry was
happening. There's a whole branch of oxidation chemistry that we
didn't really understand. ;D It's an exciting time."
The air we breathe is chock-full of organic compounds, tiny
liquid or solid particles that come from hundreds of sources
including trees, volcanoes, cars, trucks and wood fires. Once
they enter the atmosphere, these so-called organics start to
change.
In research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences in 2012, Donahue and colleagues showed conclusively
that organic molecules given off by pine trees, called
alpha-pinene, are chemically transformed multiple times in the
highly oxidizing environment of the atmosphere.[/I]
Additionally, other research, including from Donahue's lab, has
suggested that such oxidized organics might take part in
nucleation -- both in new particle formation and in their
subsequent growth. Donahue and an international team of
researchers with the CLOUD experiment at CERN set out to test
that hypothesis.
The CLOUD project at CERN is a unique facility that allows
scientists to reproduce a typical atmospheric setting inside of
an essentially contaminant-free, stainless steel chamber. By
performing experiments in the precisely controlled environment
of the CLOUD chamber, the project's scientists can change the
concentrations of chemicals involved in nucleation and then
measure the rate at which new particles are created with extreme
precision.
In the current work, the team filled the chamber with sulfur
dioxide and pinnanediol (an oxidation product of alpha-pinene)
and then generated hydroxyl radicals (the dominant oxidant in
Earth's atmosphere). Then they watched the oxidation chemistry
unfold. Using very high-resolution mass spectrometry, the
scientists were able to observe particles growing from single,
gaseous molecules to clusters of up to 10 molecules stuck
together, as they grew molecule by molecule.
"It turns out that sulfuric acid and these oxidized organic
compounds are unusually attracted to each other. This remarkably
strong association may be a big part of why organics are really
drawn to sulfuric acid under modern polluted conditions,"
Donahue said.
Agebert NOTE: ANOTHER invisible SUBSIDY (because WE are paying
when OUR HEALTH is affected by said pollution) give away to the
FOSSIL FUEL WELFARE QUEEN PIGS! >:( At any rate, as Dr. David
Zuzuki says, [i]WE STILL KNOW TOO LITTLE ABOUT NATUIRE TO TRY TO
GEOENGINEER IT WITH OUR CRUDE SCIENCE!
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/301.gif
After confirming that oxidized organics are involved in the
formation and growth of particles under atmospheric conditions,
the scientists incorporated their findings into a global
particle formation model. The fine-tuned model not only
predicted nucleation rates more accurately but also predicted
the increases and decreases of nucleation observed in field
experiments over the course of a year, especially for
measurements near forests. This latter test is a strong
confirmation of the fundamental role of emissions from forests
in the very first stage of cloud formation, and that the new
work may have succeeded in modeling that influence.
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Carnegie
Mellon University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and
length.
HTML http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140515154136.htm
Journal Reference:
F. Riccobono, S. Schobesberger, C. E. Scott, J. Dommen, I. K.
Ortega, L. Rondo, J. Almeida, A. Amorim, F. Bianchi, M.
Breitenlechner, A. David, A. Downard, E. M. Dunne, J. Duplissy,
S. Ehrhart, R. C. Flagan, A. Franchin, A. Hansel, H. Junninen,
M. Kajos, H. Keskinen, A. Kupc, A. Kurten, A. N. Kvashin, A.
Laaksonen, K. Lehtipalo, V. Makhmutov, S. Mathot, T. Nieminen,
A. Onnela, T. Petaja, A. P. Praplan, F. D. Santos, S.
Schallhart, J. H. Seinfeld, M. Sipila, D. V. Spracklen, Y.
Stozhkov, F. Stratmann, A. Tome, G. Tsagkogeorgas, P.
Vaattovaara, Y. Viisanen, A. Vrtala, P. E. Wagner, E.
Weingartner, H. Wex, D. Wimmer, K. S. Carslaw, J. Curtius, N. M.
Donahue, J. Kirkby, M. Kulmala, D. R. Worsnop, U. Baltensperger.
Oxidation Products of Biogenic Emissions Contribute to
Nucleation of Atmospheric Particles. Science, 2014; 344 (6185):
717 DOI: 10.1126/science.1243527
#Post#: 1221--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: AGelbert Date: May 26, 2014, 1:05 am
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HTML http://knowbefore.weatherbug.com/2014/05/19/sao-paulo-brazil-hail/
Video(s) and several great pictures :o at link.
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