Monday, January 21st, 2013
Stephan: The Amazon, the lungs of the planet, as some scientists have called it, is in dire danger because of climate change. We will all pay the price for our folly in not addressing the reality of climate change.
This new research was just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Amazon rainforest has been suffering through the effects of a mega-drought, covering an area more than twice the size of California, since 2005, a new NASA-led study has found.
This new research, ‘when combined with observed recurrences of droughts every few years and associated damage to the forests in southern and western Amazonia in the past decade, suggest these rainforests may be showing the first signs of potential large-scale degradation due to climate change.
No Comments
Monday, January 21st, 2013
MARGARET HARTMANN, - New York Magazine
Stephan: Here is another mass murder. This one isn't getting any coverage but, once again, it reveals the same pattern, the same kind of weapon.
Police arrested 15-year-old Nehemiah Griego on Sunday following the shooting of five people, including three young children, at a home in a rural area near Albuquerque, New Mexico. Police wouldn’t name the victims, but community members identified them as Greg Griego, his wife, their two daughters, and a son. It’s believed that Greg Griego is Nehemiah’s father. According to CNN, police discovered the horrific scene on Saturday night when ‘a party that was called by the suspect’ dialed 911. Each of the victims had several gunshot wounds, and police say they think the shooter used an AR-15, the same gun used in the Colorado theater shooting and the Newtown massacre.
Greg Griego served as a pastor at Calvary, a church in Albuquerque, for years before taking a leave of absence last year. KOB Eyewitness News reports that he also worked as a spiritual conselor at the Albuquerque Fire Department and spent 13 years as a volunteer pastor at the local jail. He was known for starting the jail’s ‘God Pod,’ a unit for inmates interested in studying the Bible, and its ‘Straight Streets’ program, which helped inmates reintegrate into society.
Nehemiah Griego has been placed in a juvenile detention center, according […]
No Comments
Monday, January 21st, 2013
JEFF GOODELL, - Rolling Stone
Stephan: Here is an excellent assessment of what the President faces in terms of climate change politics. It isn't pretty, and I question how much is likely to get done. Our children and grandchildren, I think, will curse us for our failure to act rationally about climate change. Thirty per cent of Americans still don't think it's real.
mong all the tests President Obama faced in his first term, his biggest failure was climate change. After promising in 2008 that his presidency would be ‘the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal,’ President Obama went silent on the most crucial issue of our time. He failed to talk openly with Americans about the risks of continuing to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, failed to put political muscle behind legislation to cap carbon pollution, failed to meaningfully engage in international climate negotiations, failed to use the power of his office to end the fake ‘debate’ about the reality of global warming and failed to prepare Americans – and the world – for life on a rapidly warming planet. It was as if the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced became a political inconvenience for the president once he was elected.
Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math
Now Obama gets another shot at it. ‘The politics of global warming are changing fast,’ says Kevin Knobloch, the president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Thanks to a year of extreme weather and Hurricane Sandy, a large majority of Americans – nearly 90 percent – […]
No Comments
Monday, January 21st, 2013
JIM ERICKSON, - University of Michigan
Stephan: Here is more on the emerging picture of the future that climate change is promising. However, at Federal level, I see very little actually happening. The Republicans, indentured as they are to corporate special interests, particularly carbon based energy, will do everything in their power to block programs that harm their masters.
The draft National Climate Assessment report is available at http://ncadac.globalchange.gov. A summary of associated technical input papers is available at www.glisa.umich.edu.
ANN ARBOR — In the coming decades, climate change will lead to more frequent and more intense Midwest heat waves while degrading air and water quality and threatening public health. Intense rainstorms and floods will become more common, and existing risks to the Great Lakes will be exacerbated.
Those are some of the conclusions contained in the Midwest chapter of a draft report released last week by the federal government that assesses the key impacts of climate change on every region in the country and analyzes its likely effects on human health, water, energy, transportation, agriculture, forests, ecosystems and biodiversity.
Three University of Michigan researchers were lead convening authors of chapters in the 1,100-plus-page National Climate Assessment, which was written by a team of more than 240 scientists.
University of Michigan aquatic ecologist Donald Scavia was a lead convening author of the Midwest chapter. Dan Brown of the School of Natural Resources and Environment was a lead convening author of the chapter on changes in land use and land cover. Rosina Bierbaum of SNRE and the School of Public Health was a lead convening author of the chapter on climate change adaptation. Missy Stults, a research assistant with Bierbaum and a doctoral student […]
No Comments
Monday, January 21st, 2013
Stephan: The actual number is higher, because this does not include the 5 people people murdered in New Mexico. Eighty seven more people will die today from gun fire -- 87! Think about this: 'The slaughter of children by gunfire in the United States is 25 times the rate of the 20 next largest industrial countries in the world combined' according to the British newspaper The Telegraph.
The number of gun-related deaths in the U.S. since the deadly shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012, has gone beyond 1,000.
According to the data collected by a new interactive project between slate.com and the anonymous creator of the Twitter feed @GunDeaths, as of Friday Jan. 18, 5 a.m. GMT, 1013 people have been killed in the U.S. by guns since the Connecticut shooting.
The Connecticut shooting has been described as the deadliest rampage at an elementary school in U.S. history. 20 first-grade students and 6 staff members were killed in the shooting.
On Wednesday, President Barack Obama unveiled his gun control proposals in a response to the shooting. Obama also signed 23 executive orders.
However, the strongest pro-gun lobby group in the U.S., the National Rifle Association, has referred to Obama’s proposals as a ‘war
No Comments
