ralis

Dr. James Hansen comments on the exploitation of the Canadian tar sands reserve and the disastrous effects on the earth's ecosystem. GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.” Enlarge This Image Johnny Selman If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate. Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk. That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels. If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically. President Obama has the power not only to deny tar sands oil additional access to Gulf Coast refining, which Canada desires in part for export markets, but also to encourage economic incentives to leave tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground. The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather, as I predicted would happen by now in the journal Science in 1981. Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they were caused by human-induced climate change. We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life. But add too much, as we are doing now, and temperatures will inevitably rise too high. This is not the result of natural variability, as some argue. The earth is currently in the part of its long-term orbit cycle where temperatures would normally be cooling. But they are rising — and it’s because we are forcing them higher with fossil fuel emissions. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million to 393 p.p.m. over the last 150 years. The tar sands contain enough carbon — 240 gigatons — to add 120 p.p.m. Tar shale, a close cousin of tar sands found mainly in the United States, contains at least an additional 300 gigatons of carbon. If we turn to these dirtiest of fuels, instead of finding ways to phase out our addiction to fossil fuels, there is no hope of keeping carbon concentrations below 500 p.p.m. — a level that would, as earth’s history shows, leave our children a climate system that is out of their control. We need to start reducing emissions significantly, not create new ways to increase them. We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny. This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices. Not only that, the reduction in oil use resulting from the carbon price would be nearly six times as great as the oil supply from the proposed pipeline from Canada, rendering the pipeline superfluous, according to economic models driven by a slowly rising carbon price. But instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to make fossil fuels pay their true costs, leveling the energy playing field, the world’s governments are forcing the public to subsidize fossil fuels with hundreds of billions of dollars per year. This encourages a frantic stampede to extract every fossil fuel through mountaintop removal, longwall mining, hydraulic fracturing, tar sands and tar shale extraction, and deep ocean and Arctic drilling. President Obama speaks of a “planet in peril,” but he does not provide the leadership needed to change the world’s course. Our leaders must speak candidly to the public — which yearns for open, honest discussion — explaining that our continued technological leadership and economic well-being demand a reasoned change of our energy course. History has shown that the American public can rise to the challenge, but leadership is essential. The science of the situation is clear — it’s time for the politics to follow. This is a plan that can unify conservatives and liberals, environmentalists and business. Every major national science academy in the world has reported that global warming is real, caused mostly by humans, and requires urgent action. The cost of acting goes far higher the longer we wait — we can’t wait any longer to avoid the worst and be judged immoral by coming generations. James Hansen directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is the author of “Storms of My Grandchildren.” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/opinion/game-over-for-the-climate.html?_r=1

It is obvious you are the resident 'know it all' and fail to realize that cooperation is the real answer to solving this problem. However, your assumption have no basis in fact that burning every last drop of fossil fuels will not tip the balance to the extreme. Furthermore, you fail to include the health factor and the damage of breathing carbon based particulate matter into the human and animal organism. Given where you live in CT you are accustomed to breathing polluted air and don't notice it. Your knowledge of CO2 and how it affects ph is lacking. Ph is defined as the neg. log of the hydrogen ion concentration. It is a known fact that CO2 in solution increases acidity. Increase CO2 and increase acidic conditions. Acidic conditions affect marine life negatively. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/07/0715_040715_oceancarbon.html

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@Joeblast, I am not interested in you lecturing me. I know what third order processes are. Many here don't. I was speaking for them. You are not a scientist or even a mathematician. So stop pretending that you are. Your post is nothing but a parroting of pseudoscience.

Theory? I assume you are referring to the secondary definition of theory which is defined as conjecture. The climate science of 'global warming'is hardly conjecture. The data that are used in climate models has set forth propositions that can be used to make explanations and predictions of the climate. Search the internet and read for yourself. The radical right has politicized this problem with funding from corporate interests such as the Koch Bros.

Strict tolerances? That statement is contrary to the events that caused the 'five mass extinctions'. The fluctuations in environmental conditions were extreme and did not conform to human ideas of so called tolerances. However, you may believe in 'intelligent design' that created parameters in the biosphere that would never be exceeded. Most readers here on this forum have no idea what 'third order processes' are. I have noticed your posts are replete with generalized terms that are never expounded on by you. Why not explain in detail what you are trying to say?

Joeblast only obtains his information from a radio weatherman who has no academic credentials in climate science. 'Radiative physics' is a meme meant to impress the lay public to believe that 'global warming' is not caused by CO2 in the atmosphere. Anthony Watts who owns the blog http://wattsupwiththat.com/ will entertain any fantasy that fits his world view. All articles debunking 'global warming' that Watts refers to have not been peer reviewed or published in reputable science journals. Any amateur dilettante can post anything on his site and deem it science. Watts is funded by the extreme right wing http://heartland.org/. The Heartland Institute only serves corporate interests. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/06/a-reply-to-vonk-radiative-physics-simplified-ii/ http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/ http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Anthony_Watts http://wottsupwiththat.com/category/just-goofy/

T.E.A.B.A.G.G.E.R. = Totally Enraged About Blacks And Gays Getting Equal Rights

Should I change it back? BTW, I wasn't referring to your posts.

Yes. This is an extremely difficult subject. There are always dilettantes who claim expertise in this area.

With you and your Tea Bagger friends, the almighty dollar reigns supreme. I see no concern at all from the right wing Republican Tea Baggers that children receive a first rate education. Especially poor children that are in school districts that have very little funds to pay for a real education. I believe the Tea Bagger agenda is to keep children ignorant and poorly educated and therefor, easily indoctrinated to right wing propaganda. The U.S. lags behind all industrialized nations in categories such as math and science. A quality education should be free for all. That would be of great benefit to this society. Having a little problem with attachment to money Joe?

As usual you don't provide evidence to back up your claims. Only the Joeblast universal absolute pronouncement, as if that is universal truth. If there were human sacrifices, the bones would provide evidence of such practices.

From my observation of the Tea Bagger movement, there is an obsession with orderliness and the western ideal of the rugged individual. Their obsession with wanting to eliminate social programs which they believe creates a lackadaisical mindset in the recipients of, would be a rapid transformation of this country to neo-feudalism.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120746516 Along with the threat of the Tea Bagger party is a little known group in D.C. known as 'the family'. This right wing fundamentalist group wields much control over certain members of the government especially the House and Senate. Sharlet's book is a well documented expose' on the dangers of right wing religious fundamentalism. Several names mentioned here are members of the Tea Bagger movement. The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power By Jeff Sharlet The Family, or the Fellowship, is in its own words an "invisible" association, though it has always been organized around public men. Senator Sam Brownback (R., Kansas), chair of a weekly, off -the-record meeting of religious right groups called the Values Action Team (VAT), is an active member, as is Representative Joe Pitts (R., Pennsylvania), an avuncular would-be theocrat who chairs the House version of the VAT. Others referred to as members include senators Jim DeMint of South Carolina, chairman of the Senate Steering Committee (the powerful conservative caucus co-founded back in 1974 by another Family associate, the late senator Carl Curtis of Nebraska); Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa); James Inhofe (R., Oklahoma); Tom Coburn (R., Oklahoma); John Thune (R., South Dakota); Mike Enzi (R., Wyoming); and John Ensign, the conservative casino heir elected to the Senate from Nevada, a brightly tanned, hapless figure who uses his Family connections to graft holiness to his gambling-fortune name. Some Democrats are involved: representatives Bart Stupak and Mike Doyle, leading anti-abortion Democrats, are longtime residents of the Family's C Street House, a former convent registered as a church and used to provide Family-subsidized housing for politicians supported by the Family. A centrist occasionally stumbles into the fold, but the Family is mostly conservative. Family stalwarts in the House include Representatives Frank Wolf (R., Virginia), Zach Wamp (R., Tennessee), and Mike McIntyre, a hard right North Carolina Democrat who believes that the Ten Commandments are "the fundamental legal code for the laws of the United States" and thus ought to be on display in schools and court houses. The Family's historic roll call is even more striking: the late senator Strom Thurmond (R., South Carolina), who produced "confidential" reports on legislation for the Family's leadership, presided for a time over the Family's weekly Senate meeting, and the Dixie-crat senators Herman Talmadge of Georgia and Absalom Willis Robertson of Virginia — Pat Robertson's father — served on the behind-the-scenes board of the organization. In 1974, a Family prayer group of Republican congressmen and former secretary of defense Melvin Laird helped convince President Gerald Ford that Richard Nixon deserved not just Christian forgiveness but also a legal pardon. That same year, Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist led the Family's first weekly Bible study for federal judges. "I wish I could say more about it," Ronald Reagan publicly demurred back in 1985, "but it's working precisely because it is private." "We desire to see a leadership led by God," reads a confidential mission statement. "Leaders of all levels of society who direct projects as they are led by the spirit." Another principle expanded upon is stealthiness; members are instructed to pursue political jujitsu by making use of secular leaders "in the work of advancing His kingdom," and to avoid whenever possible the label Christian itself, lest they alert enemies to that advance. Regular prayer groups, or "cells" as they're often called, have met in the Pentagon and at the Department of Defense, and the Family has traditionally fostered strong ties with businessmen in the oil and aerospace industries. The Family's use of the term "cell" long predates the word's current association with terrorism. Its roots are in the Cold War, when leaders of the Family deliberately emulated the organizing techniques of communism. In 1948, a group of Senate staffers met to discuss ways that the Family's "cell and leadership groups" could recruit elites unwilling to participate in the "mass meeting approach" of populist fundamentalism. Two years later, the Family declared that with democracy inadequate to the fight against godlessness, such cells should function to produce political "atomic energy"; that is, deals and alliances that could not be achieved through the clumsy machinations of legislative debate would instead radiate quietly out of political cells. More recently, Senator Sam Brownback told me that the privacy of Family cells makes them safe spaces for men of power — an appropriation of another term borrowed from an enemy, feminism. "In this closer relationship," a document for members reads, "God will give you more insight into your own geographical area and your sphere of influence." One's cell should become "an invisible 'believing group'" out of which "agreements reached in faith and in prayer around the person of Jesus Christ" lead to action that will appear to the world to be unrelated to any centralized organization. In 1979, the former Nixon aide and Watergate felon Charles W. Colson — born again through the guidance of the Family and the ministry of a CEO of arms manufacturer Raytheon — estimated the Family's strength at 20,000, although the number of dedicated "associates" around the globe is much smaller (around 350 as of 2006). The Family maintains a closely guarded database of associates, members, and "key men," but it issues no cards, collects no official dues. Members are asked not to speak about the group or its activities. "The Movement," a member of the Family's inner circle once wrote to the group's chief South African operative, "is simply inexplicable to people who are not intimately acquainted with it." The Family's "political" initiatives, he continues, "have always been misunderstood by 'outsiders.' As a result of very bitter experiences, therefore, we have learned never to commit to paper any discussions or negotiations that are taking place. There is no such thing as a 'confidential' memorandum, and leakage always seems to occur. Thus, I would urge you not to put on paper anything relating to any of the work that you are doing ... [unless] you know the recipient well enough to put at the top of the page 'PLEASE DESTROY AFTER READING.'" "If I told you who has participated and who participates until this day, you would not believe it," the Family's longtime leader, Doug Coe, said in a rare interview in 2001. "You'd say,'You mean that scoundrel? That despot?'" A friendly, plainspoken Oregonian with dark, curly hair, a lazy smile, and the broad, thrown-back shoulders of a man who recognizes few superiors, Coe has worked for the Family since 1959 and been "First Brother" since founder Abraham Vereide was "promoted" to heaven in 1969. (Recently, a successor named Dick Foth, a longtime friend to John Ashcroft, assumed some of Coe's duties, but Coe remains the preeminent figure.) Coe denies possessing any authority, but Family members speak of him with a mixture of intimacy and awe. Doug Coe, they say — most people refer to him by his first and last name — is closer to Jesus than perhaps any other man alive, and thus privy to information the rest of us are too spiritually "immature" to understand. For instance, the necessity of secrecy. Doug Coe says it allows the scoundrels and the despots to turn their talents toward the service of Jesus — who, Doug Coe says, prefers power to piety — by shielding their work on His behalf from a hardhearted public, unwilling to believe in their good intentions. In a sermon posted online by a fundamentalist website, Coe compares this method to the mob's. "His Body" — the Body of Christ, that is, by which he means Christendom — "functions invisibly like the mafia. ... They keep their organization invisible. Everything visible is transitory. Everything invisible is permanent and lasts forever. The more you can make your organization invisible, the more influence it will have." For that very reason, the Family has operated under many guises, some active, some defunct: National Committee for Christian Leadership, International Christian Leadership, National Leadership Council, the Fellowship Foundation, the International Foundation. The Fellowship Foundation alone has an annual budget of nearly $14 million. The bulk of it, $12 million, goes to "mentoring, counseling, and partnering with friends around the world," but that represents only a fraction of the network's finances. The Family does not pay big salaries; one man receives $121,000, while Doug Coe seems to live on almost nothing (his income fluctuates wildly according to the off-the-books support of "friends"), and none of the fourteen men on the board of directors (among them an oil executive, a defense contractor, and government officials past and present) receives a penny. But within the organization money moves in peculiar ways, "man-to-man" financial support that's off the books, a constant proliferation of new nonprofits big and small that submit to the Family's spiritual authority, money flowing up and down the quiet hierarchy. "I give or loan money to hundreds of people, or have my friends do so," says Coe. The Family's only publicized gathering is the National Prayer Breakfast, which it established in 1953 and which, with congressional sponsorship, it continues to organize every February at the Washington, D.C., Hilton. Some 3,000 dignitaries, representing scores of nations and corporate interests, pay $425 each to attend. For most, the breakfast is just that, muffins and prayer, but some stay on for days of seminars organized around Christ's messages for particular industries. In years past, the Family organized such events for executives in oil, defense, insurance, and banking. The 2007 event drew, among others, a contingent of aid-hungry defense ministers from Eastern Europe, Pakistan's famously corrupt Benazir Bhutto, and a Sudanese general linked to genocide in Darfur. Here's how it can work: Dennis Bakke, former CEO of AES, the largest independent power producer in the world, and a Family insider, took the occasion of the 1997 Prayer Breakfast to invite Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, the Family's "key man" in Africa, to a private dinner at a mansion, just up the block from the Family's Arlington headquarters. Bakke, the author of a popular business book titled Joy at Work, has long preached an ethic of social responsibility inspired by his evangelical faith and his free-market convictions: "I am trying to sell a way of life," he has said. "I am a cultural imperialist." That's a phrase he uses to be provocative; he believes that his Jesus is so universal that everyone wants Him. And, apparently, His business opportunities: Bakke was one of the pioneer thinkers of energy deregulation, the laissez-faire fever dream that culminated in the meltdown of Enron. But there was other, less-noticed fallout, such as a no-bid deal Bakke made with Museveni, the result of a relationship that began at the 1997 Prayer Breakfast, for a $500-million dam close to the source of the White Nile — in waters considered sacred by Uganda's 2.5-million–strong Busoga minority. AES announced that the Busoga had agreed to "relocate" the spirits of their dead. They weren't the only ones opposed; first environmentalists (Museveni had one American arrested and deported) and then even other foreign investors revolted against a project that seemed like it might actually increase the price of power for the poor. Bakke didn't worry. "We don't go away," he declared. He dispatched a young man named Christian Wright, the son of one of the Prayer Breakfast's organizers, to be AES's in- country liaison to Museveni; Wright was later accused of authorizing at least $400,000 in bribes. He claimed his signature had been forged. "I'm sure a lot of people use the Fellowship as a way to network, a way to gain entree to all sorts of people," says Michael Cromartie, an evangelical Washington think tanker who's critical of the Family's lack of transparency. "And entree they do get." "Anything can happen," according to an internal planning document, "the Koran could even be read, but JESUS is there! He is infiltrating the world." Too bland most years to merit much press, the breakfast is regarded by the Family as merely a tool in a larger purpose: to recruit the powerful attendees into smaller, more frequent prayer meetings, where they can "meet Jesus man to man." In the process of introducing powerful men to Jesus, the Family has managed to effect a number of behind-the-scenes acts of diplomacy. In 1978 it helped the Carter administration organize a worldwide call to prayer with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. At the 1994 National Prayer Breakfast, Family leaders persuaded their South African client, the Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, to stand down from the possibility of civil war with Nelson Mandela. But such benign acts appear to be the exception to the rule. During the 1960s, the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most oppressive regimes in the world, arranging prayer networks in the U.S. Congress for the likes of General Costa e Silva, dictator of Brazil; General Suharto, dictator of Indonesia; and General Park Chung Hee, dictator of South Korea. "The Fellowship's reach into governments around the world," observes David Kuo, a former special assistant to the president in Bush's first term, "is almost impossible to overstate or even grasp."

Here is the link for the bill just passed by the House. All in the name of internal security! That is the propaganda around this bill and it was pushed through by the right wing republican fascist corporations! http://news.yahoo.com/house-oks-cybersecurity-bill-despite-veto-threat-223445304--finance.html?fb_action_ids=10150701977271724%2C3812588162003%2C3812699364783%2C3812693004624&fb_action_types=news.reads&fb_ref=type%3Aread%2Cuser%3ABCfrw9JdFUy5MjpMXuCFqD7VWG8%2Ctype%3Aread%2Cuser%3Au6F_yM8d32QMkvx64OwFgtxhBWo&fb_source=other_multiline&code=AQCxuXLLU1zzRuKqQQo4oZIFrlIXaoPLLs9A9iDxeg85bFiiKxwlrj8MBy-isykWkBt-DjuPRR-KG7hsPUtHMD2l4HbrcmHT0uqdJ7UJi6I-EUs-KvmLJ2P-IUnCQPNpzVYoWm68tySr9gJCm6bzc6wJ17kgrGmOgH5g-Y57iZyejAkX7Rj8Vb9Y43oeOBtYFlw#_=_

The founding fathers were anti government? That is very contradictory and makes no sense. What they were against was the 'divine right of kings' and this government was created to prevent a monarchy. That is why the 'rule of law' as opposed to the 'rule of a man' was clearly laid out in the Constitution. Have you read it or even have knowledge of what the founding fathers wrote?

The Tea Bagger party represents and is fighting for a return to all the inequities of the past. Discrimination, education only for the privileged few that can afford it, neo-feudalism and a moving away from the enlightenment that this country was founded on.

Just found this about the Tea Bagger David Barton. This guy is extremely dangerous! http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/david-barton

Amazing! Max has crystals in his head? To leap to the conclusion that whatever these deposits are, is a result of certain practices, is really stretching it!

He shows x-rays of his heart and brain? Most people don't have the training to even understand what an x-ray shows.

This is nothing more than conjecture with no documents presented to the public for examination. Anyone can make grandiose claims and there are many who believe such claims. What ever happened in regards to questioning as opposed to being suckered into BS? Max has stated that his chi manipulation only works on his students. What do you mean by irregular blood flows? Does the blood flow move backwards?

Ridley Scott's newest production opens June 8th. I can't wait!

I was being sarcastic.

I could cite a litany of the faults of the children of 'baby boomers', which some of you are. However, that would be counterproductive. However, every generation reacts rather than responds to the previous generation without exception. Such reactions are a normal evolutionary process. That process allows for adaptation to a changing world and equips one to face all the challenges of being an adult. If anyone here believes their children will not indict your generation for the problems of the world, then that is a sadly mistaken illusion.