Bringing It All Back Home

Warming: "People in Latin America were most worried while U.S. citizens were least concerned"

And our thoughtful neighbors in the North Country?
Turns out they feel more reasonable than Americans, too.

An avalanche of evidence greeted with a smug shrug.
What the hell gives?!?!?

More Hogwash from a group calling themselves Environmental Defense

• Rank of 2006 as hottest year on record in the continental United States.

• Rank of America as top global warming polluter, emitting almost as much as the European Union, Russia and Japan combined.

• Percent increase of America's carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels since 1990.

• Percent increase of America's carbon dioxide emissions forecasted by 2020 if we do not cap pollution.

• Percent decrease in America's global warming pollution required by 2050 to prevent the worst consequences of global warming.

• Number of days by which the U.S. fire season has increased over the past 20 years - tied closely to increased temperatures and earlier snowmelt.

• Number of people who could be displaced globally by extreme droughts, sea level rise and flooding by 2080.

• Number of U.S. mayors (representing 55 million Americans) who have signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement pledging to meet or beat Kyoto goals in their communities.

• Number of federal bills passed by Congress to set a mandatory, economy-wide cap on America's global warming pollution.

• Number of times President Bush has mentioned "global warming" or "climate change" in his previous State of the Union speeches.

Hearts and Minds

“Suddenly we forgot that he was a dictator and that he killed thousands of people,” said Roula Haddad, 33, a Lebanese Christian. “All our hatred for him suddenly turned into sympathy, sympathy with someone who was treated unjustly by an occupation force and its collaborators.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/world/middleeast/06arabs.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

from Alternet

Conspiracy Fact: lowest gas prices of 2006 during election week …
January 5, 2007.
Joshua Holland: Just following up.

Now that we have the average gas prices for the final week of 2006 it's official: the lowest prices of the year came during the week of the midterms.
More specifically, in the thirteen short weeks between the year's high of $3.083 per gallon -- during the week of August 8 -- and Election Day, average gas prices dropped by almost 80 cents per gallon -- 26 percent -- and then they did a one-eighty the very next week and crept back up in all but one of the six weeks that followed that. Altogether they rose 14.1 cents, or a bit more than 6 percent, after the election.

Letter to America

-in the Washington Post:

America's Red Ink
Sunday, December 24, 2006; Page B06
The largest employer in the world announced on Dec. 15 that it lost about $450 billion in fiscal 2006. Its auditor found that its financial statements were unreliable and that its controls were inadequate for the 10th straight year. On top of that, the entity's total liabilities and unfunded commitments rose to about $50 trillion, up from $20 trillion in just six years.
If this announcement related to a private company, the news would have been on the front page of major newspapers. Unfortunately, such was not the case -- even though the entity is the U.S. government.
To put the figures in perspective, $50 trillion is $440,000 per American household and is more than nine times as much as the median household income.
The only way elected officials will be able to make the tough choices necessary to put our nation on a more prudent and sustainable long-term fiscal path is if opinion leaders state the facts and speak the truth to the American people.
The Government Accountability Office is working with the Concord Coalition, the Brookings Institution, the Heritage Foundation and others to help educate the public about the facts in a professional, nonpartisan way. We hope the media and other opinion leaders do their part to save the future for our children and grandchildren.
DAVID M. WALKER
Comptroller General of the United States
Government Accountability Office

Intro

to climate

Change in the Weather

Gaia scientist Lovelock predicts planetary wipeout

LONDON (Reuters) - The earth has a fever that could boost temperatures by 8 degrees Celsius making large parts of the surface uninhabitable and threatening billions of peoples' lives, a controversial climate scientist said on Tuesday.

James Lovelock, who angered climate scientists with his Gaia theory of a living planet said a traumatized earth might only be able to support less than a tenth of it's 6 billion people.

"We are not all doomed. An awful lot of people will die, but I don't see the species dying out," he told a news conference. "A hot earth couldn't support much over 500 million."

"Almost all of the systems that have been looked at are in positive feedback ... and soon those effects will be larger than any of the effects of carbon dioxide emissions from industry and so on around the world," he added.

Scientists say that global warming due to carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels for power and transport could boost average temperatures by up to 6C by the end of the century causing floods, famines and violent storms.

But they also say that tough action now to cut carbon emissions could stop atmospheric concentrations of CO2 hitting 450 parts per million -- equivalent to a temperature rise of 2C from pre-industrial levels -- and save the planet.

Lovelock adopted the name Gaia, the Greek mother earth goddess, in the 1960s to apply to his then revolutionary theory that the earth functions as a single, self-sustaining organism. His theory is now widely accepted.

"In short, we have lost our minds."

the concept of free trade practiced by the United States is a myth? Stranger things!

Bushie a Victim of his own Certitude

the Exile

Feelin' Cobby?

Greening Up

the Straight Dope and the latest good news

Having

Lost Count...

Honey

Bee

Debt Again

Done different?

Proud

to be an American, where at least I have the 'right' to not know this
WARNING: It is not sanitized, Disney-fied, or Flomax-ed for your enjoyment. It is the graphic real deal.
Some time in the last week I found myself disgusted at the documentation (irony alert--I don't remember where--it could have been satellite TV or perhaps "Why We Fight", which I recommend), the living example of fellow Americans working in the arms industry. Especially a forty-something highly educated and intellegent Vietnamese-American who'd escaped Saigon as an adolescent in 1975. She worked for one of the giants making well, things explode better. She was excellent in her field.
Why?
Aside, the political not-doing of this Administration as regards Israel. Why would someone do this 'for a living'?!?! Here in America where we define ourselves from as much. Why?

America thinks (myth) of itself as many things. One of our realities is as the largest producer of arms and weapons in the world. From the bullet to the gun to the shell to the tank to the jet to the bomb.
Israel is raining our 'product' on Palestine right now. God bless us, every one.

Homeland

Security?!?

Whose National Guard?

We are the World
Mebbe they could hire Mexicans...

Come back some other day

America says: Go Away

100

miles

Smarter Lawns

Logic?!?

No Shit!

Especially for cyclists...

Before it was "Corrected"(scrubbed), this was the original (far more interesting) story

Win!-

Win?