Scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center have published a study, Evidence for a recent increase in forest growth, suggesting that climate change can quite literally be measured by treehuggers. Like the average American citizen, American trees look to have had increasingly bulging middles in recent decades. Having spent their careers quite literally hugging trees, SERC scientists Geoffrey Parker and Sean McMahon have written a study documenting
evidence that forests in the Eastern United States are growing faster than they have in the past 225 years. The study offers a rare look at how an ecosystem is responding to climate change.
For over 20 years, Parker has gone into a set of forests in the mid-Atlantic, tape measure in hand, and giving them a hug to measure their size. Parker's own hugging has been extended with a robust group of volunteers conducting regular measurements of specified trees. (The boy scout to the right, while in a SERC forest, isn't engaged in actual measurements for the study.) Some 250,000 hugs later, he has quite a database in hand.
that the forest is packing on weight at a much faster rate than expected. ... on average, the forest is growing an additional 2 tons per acre annually. That is the equivalent of a tree with a diameter of 2 feet sprouting up over a year.
Now, there are many things that contribute to plant growth, from soil quality to rainfall to temperatures to CO2 concentrations. Parker and McMahon have concluded that the driver for the bulging middles of the studied groves is best explained through human impacts: the rising levels of CO2 (a nutrition); and the warmer temperatures and extended growing season due to global warming (driven, in no small part, due to the rising CO2 levels).
As most of you are well aware, last week was a snow week in Washington, DC, and the odds are pretty good that there's something like that going on for you as well.
Our good friends in the conservative community have seized upon the moment as proof that this whole "global warming" thing is just a big scam perpetrated by the likes of Al Gore and his Legion Of Weather Nazis; their mission being only to deprive the American people of their Constitutional right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of a Ford Super Duty F-450 King Ranch Edition with the Heavy Service Suspension Package, Snow Plow Prep Package, Transmission Power Take-Off Provision, dual alternators, and supplemental cab heater.
To drive the point home, last week Senator James Inhofe's family went to the time and trouble to build a little igloo on the National Mall for our amusement.
But here's a question: just what has the weather been like in other places-for example, in my part of the world...or in the Senator's home State of Oklahoma?
It's a good question-and the Senator won't like the answer.
Most of us know that Most Glaciers ARE Melting. Here are some stats:
A Reply to the Attacks on Climate Change Science The science is sound and the glaciers are shrinking, says the Union of Concerned Scientists. 02/10/2010
A 2005 global survey of 442 glaciers from the World Glacier Monitoring Service found that only 26 were advancing, 18 were stationary, and 398 were retreating. Overall, about 90 percent of the world's glaciers that scientists have measured are shrinking as the planet warms.
Tigers are on the brink of extinction. This fact brought me initially surprise, and then immediately grief, despair, rage, anger and sadness. So, I've written about it-- this is the fourth essay in a week -- in an effort to alert others to this catastrophe. I consider the extinction of tigers and other big cats an environmental emergency, an impending disaster.
The Tiger is almost extinct. This situation is beyond disquieting. It's a very scary, dire one for our small planet. As Meteor Blades wrote yesterday
"Sometimes fury and despair are the only responses that one can come up with. It seems as if nothing anybody does - laws, scoldings, appeals to people's better nature - will stop this needless, heedless destruction.
Today, Americans are engrossed in earthquake coverage. The tremor in Haiti bought unimaginable death and destruction just south of our borders. Events related to the recovery and rescues emerge as banner headlines. Haitians Seek Solace Amid the Ruins. For a week now, the struggle to survive, revive the injured, and retrieve the bodies strewn on the streets of Port-au-Prince was also the central theme of most every broadcast. In the midst of the misery, many Americans, felt desperate for a reprieve from the devastation that emotionally drained them. Millions took time to escape in a welcome distraction. Sassy, former Governor and Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin Made Her Debut appearance on Fox. Tomorrow another reality will replace these stories, just as each superseded the hoopla over Harry Reid's reference to race. Metaphorically, the tales provide persons, policies, and, or practices fifteen minutes of fame. In actuality, these fade from our mind quickly.
This weekly diary takes a look at the past week's important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.
When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:
1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?
2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?
3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?
The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist's message.
Forty six years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered I Have a Dream. In that speech, even one hundered years after emancipation, he spoke of black communities crippled by segregation and discrimination. They lived, 'on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.'
Today, blacks participate in all levels of professional society and leadership. We have a beautiful first family, former Secretaries of State, and even Supreme Court judges. It is common to see black lawmakers, doctors, lawyers, business professionals, and professors. Perhaps that ocean is embracing the island. One might think that discrimination is a thing of the past -- that America is a place that tends toward racial equality...
Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them. --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
If Dr. King could return and look at America, would he say the same thing today?
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
Doctor Dan Mongiardo, Kentucky's Lieutenant Governor, has announced that he is running for the Democratic nomination for the Kentucky Senate race, to take on whoever wins the Republican nomination to challenge for the seat that Senator Bunning (R-Big$$$) has announced he is giving up.
Lots of politics to unwrap in that paragraph, which I'll leave to the political wise-guys. The Sunday Train today is about Dr. Dan's Rail Plan.
As far as I can tell, Dr. Dan's Rail Plan has four main parts, and regular readers of the Sunday Train will recognize much from each of the four parts:
Support for expanding Kentucky's existing and potential Amtrak routes into 110mph Emerging Higher Speed Rail corridors
Support for regional rail services to complete the above state rail map
"Hybrid Light Rail" to provide cross-metropolitan local rail services, principally to Louisville
Heavy investment in complementary local transit, including bus rapid transit and a high frequency driverless monotrain system for Kentucky.
Daniel J. Weiss is making a very disingenuous argument in his "we should only go for what's possible" approach. He keeps falling back on the "perfect is the enemy of the good" line, as though anyone seriously expects or asks for perfection. He also ignores that when Medicare, Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, and the Clean Air Act were passed, the political environment was very different - Republicans could be rolled far more easily than they can be today. What's more, by starting with the accommodation first and working down from there, substantive policies are not being passed. Weiss doesn't even acknowledge the obvious tactical reality at work: obviously demanding everything from the start is not going to get us everything, but it can lead us to some actual compromise that everyone can live with. Daphne Wysham, who is advocating for stronger policies and takes the opposite argument, could have done a bit more to press the counterarguments I just mentioned, but overall it was a spirited and informative discussion. It's certainly nothing like what you'd see on any of the cable news programs.
Once upon a time, we saw progress, particularly technological and medical progress, as both miraculous and uniformly desired. The romanticized meta-narrative of the the Twentieth Century was that it was the age of startling innovation and that indeed humanity might find its salvation in the latest invention to improve the human condition. The most common utterance at the time to describe this phenomenon was what will they think of next? The airplane and the automobile revolutionized travel and with it the spread of information and population dispersal. Penicillin was considered a wonder drug upon its introduction and indeed many lives were saved when it began being used on a wholesale fashion to combat infectious disease. The first pesticides were considered miraculous because they greatly increased the yield of crops, with the hopes that their introduction would increase the food supply and in time make widespread hunger a thing of the past. It was believed that our own ingenuity would be our salvation and in time, there was no telling what long-standing problem would have a easy, understandable solution.
Later, however, we began to cast suspicion on any advance lauded in messianic or wildly optimistic terms. To our horror we discovered that the drug which took away morning sickness also created tragic, hideous birth defects in babies born to women who took it. Then we read that the pesticides that, though they meant to increase the food supply, actually created major problems in the ecosystem around them---problems that skewed the natural environmental balance quite unintentionally but quite undeniably. In attempting to eradicate one pest, we often caused a huge increase in population of another organism, creating a brand new problem in the process. The system of pest control as set up by Mother Nature then was seen as more desirable as the one shaped by human hands. And this idea began to take shape in the minds of many to the degree that this belief has many adherents in this age. Take a stroll down the aisles of your local Whole Foods if you need a visual demonstration.
But I will say this. Old ways of doing things are not necessarily better ways of doing things. Though we may have swung the pendulum from one side to another in the course of half a century or so, we shouldn't lose sight of the true balance of things. Anyone who has walked down a street where automobiles are not available and where all traffic directed down a major thoroughfare is pulled by horses knows the filth and the stench that fills the air and collects on either side of the roadway. It is for that reason, among others, that the horseless carriage was developed in the first place. We must not ever assume that the motives of those who came before us were summarily evil or distasteful simply because they did not have the ability to measure what they did by the power of hindsight. Any of us could look like geniuses if we had that in our favor. We often look for an easy enemy when the true hard work is to work to reach the point where we recognize that there are no easy answers and no easy targets. Demystifying the past does not imply that we ought to summarily scrap its lessons. The mythology of past ages needs to be removed, but those who view past behaviors and past events without rosy gloss can find many helpful examples for contemplation, provided, one doesn't heave it into the trash can in one go, assuming the whole bunch is rotten all the way through.
The larger point I am making is that it is tempting these days to assume that the advances of the past are purely evil, based on their unforeseen and unintended consequences wrought by best intentions. We have gotten to the point now that we are reluctant at times to modify the world around us even in the slightest, lest we upset the fragile balance of energy, life, and movement that defines existence as any being currently alive. While we are humans, we are also animals, too. Our will dictates the shape and pace of the world around us, of course, but so also does our very existence. Global Warming is the buzzword phrase of the moment and while I do believe that human decision making has modified the climate and weather patterns for the worst, I do also know that the environment has a way of being adaptive that we often do not grant it, nor fully understand. We see things through such selfish, human terms at times, and even our best intentions do not disguise the fact that everything often relates back to us in the end. We were created selfish. Self-preservation is what consumes us above any other preoccupation. Still, this is an impulse we must fight against if we ever wish to live in peace with each other. We have more in common than we admit, but it's often the very things we don't like to admit even to ourselves. There is a limit to our understanding, and in fifty years from now, perhaps we'll set aside Global Warming for the latest theory that defines our guilt and gives us a rallying point that demands we be unselfish not towards each other, but towards all living creatures.
Whether we are kings and queens of the beasts is a matter for debate, but we do have the benefit of higher brain function, and this is what makes us so much more influential than the average mammal. We seem to confuse at times the fact that we are both animals and also beings beholden to reason, somehow simultaneously separate from the fray. We exist in our own orbit and while it is wise to understand that the earth does not strictly belong to us, we do modify it by our very presence. When a butterfly can create a ripple effect just by flapping its wings, imagine what the average person creates by stepping outside on his or her way to work on the morning. I'm not saying that we ought not be aware of our carbon footprint and we ought not recognize that being less wasteful and more protective of nature is worthwhile, but that one can micromanage one's degree of social consciousness to an extent that ending up miserable is the inevitable byproduct.
In a broader context to that, I notice how we lament the slow progress of reform and regulation. Our split loyalties are often to blame for this as well. If we were able to reach a happy medium between the supreme authority of old ways and the supreme authority of new ways, then we might actually get something done in a timely fashion. So much of Liberalism and Progressivism these days is conducted from a defensive posture, with the belief in the back of the mind that no matter what is set in play, it will inevitably blow up in the end and create more problems. Well, with all due respect, this is merely part of being alive. Any decision made will create future problems that no one could ever predict at the outset, but this shouldn't paralyze our needed efforts, either.
Again, reform is a constant process of refining, re-honing, and revision. It's foolish to expect that one bill, one policy statement, or one innovative strategy will come out perfect and never need to be updated to reflect changing times. Rather than seeing this established fact as frustrating or limiting, we need to modify our expectations. As President Obama said last week in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, "...[W]e do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place." We are imperfect. Our ideas, no matter how immaculately crafted at the time, are imperfect, and the passage of time will render them more imperfect.
But there is a difference between expecting individual or communal perfection on a case-by-case basis and not striving to improve the lives of those around us. A century from now, if there is a blogosphere, I'm sure many people will laugh at the nonsensical barbarism of a previous age where every citizen of the Earth did not have health care coverage from cradle to grave. But in this hypothetical example, it would be easy for them to make this judgment if they made it based on a naive, cavalier understanding of our times. If they viewed them purely through the lens of their times without understanding the events, beliefs, and myriad of factors which led us to undertake the great struggle before us, then their own perspectives could not be taken seriously. Again, we might be wise to understand why we always seem to crave an enemy. Voltaire mentioned that if God didn't exist, it would be necessary for humanity to invent Him. Likewise, if enemies didn't exist, it would be necessary for us to invent them. That the very same people who speak of unity and can't understand why we don't have it are among the first to construct an antagonistic force and project all of their frustrations upon it is the deepest irony of all. Our most powerful enemy is us.
Last year, I told VP Joe Biden about the Sustainable Electric High(er) Speed Rail I wanted for Christmas (cf. links below). It involved electrifying the 30,000+ miles of STRACNET, and establishing 100mph Rapid Freight Rail paths, including support for running 110mph or 125mph long haul electric passenger services on the Rapid Freight paths.
In short, I wanted Joe Biden to take Alan Drake's plan and just fracking DO it.
I didn't get it for Christmas last year - but then, I guess he was only VP-elect last 25DEC08. The post today is to look at the progress toward the goal. The answer, surprisingly, is that we have made substantial progress. Certainly we are not halfway there, yet, but we are much further along than I expected to see.
To corporate media hacks, there are no objective facts. Because they are incapable of either researching or comprehending what can be demonstrably proved, they dumb down all issues to mere partisan controversies. There is no scientific method. There are no historical contexts. There are two sides to every story, even when there really aren't. Everything can be a legitimate source of bickering.
It's not just juvenile, and it's not just unprofessional; it is, in fact, dangerous. If a prominent Republican went flat-earther, Wolf Blitzer, David Broder and their ilk would reliably report on the new controversy over the shape of the earth. Andrea Mitchell just proved her credentials as an upstanding member of this upsidedown cult of unreality. On the eve of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, she interviewed Al Gore. Did she ask him about the science of climate change? Did she ask him about the politics? Did she ask him if the politics was dangerous, given the science? Of course not. As reported by Steve Benen:
This morning, Gore appeared on MSNBC, where Andrea Mitchell read from Sarah Palin's Facebook page to ask the former vice president questions about climate change.
Let's think about that, for a moment. Al Gore may be an imperfect messenger, but his understanding of climate change is steeped in science. He's written books about it. Books that he not only read, but actually wrote. He won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work explaining climate change and trying to get the world to deal with it. In contrast, Sarah Palin has no understanding of climate change, whatsoever. Not only does she not understand the science of climate change, she doesn't appear to understand science. Nothing in her resume credibly qualifies her to discuss climate change. To be kind, one could say that her best and most consistent professional qualification is that of a quitter. She's not very good at it, but she does have plenty of experience.
But even more surreal is the context of Mitchell's question. A supposedly serious supposed journalist asks a Nobel Prize winning expert what he thinks of the nitwit ramblings of an ignorant anti-intellectual that were posted to a Facebook page? Has the corporate media really dumbed itself that far down?
Apparently without laughing in her face or being stupefied into horrified silence, Gore gave Mitchell a succinct response:
"Well, you know, the global warming deniers persist in this air of unreality," Gore explained. "After all, the entire north polar icecap, which has been there for most of the last 3 million years, is disappearing before our eyes. Forty percent is already gone. The rest is expected to go completely within the next decade. What do they think is causing this?"
In the wake of the illegal hacking of a leading climate scientist's computers, to concoct a false scandal compared to which the birther absurdity is merely amusing, someone is criminally targeting another leading climate scientist.
Attempts have been made to break into the offices of one of Canada's leading climate scientists, it was revealed yesterday. The victim was Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria scientist and a key contributor to the work of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In one incident, an old computer was stolen and papers were disturbed.
In addition, individuals have attempted to impersonate technicians in a bid to access data from his office, said Weaver. The attempted breaches, on top of the hacking of files from British climate researcher Phil Jones, have heightened fears that climate-change deniers are mounting a campaign to discredit the work of leading meteorologists before the start of the Copenhagen climate summit tomorrow.
"The key thing is to try to find anybody who's involved in any aspect of the IPCC and find something that you can ... take out of context," said Weaver. The prospect of more break-ins and hacking has forced researchers to step up computer security.
Someone is getting desperate. And it appears to be becoming a pattern. For more on Weaver, this is his homepage.
For those who don't know about the literally criminal first false scandal, DarkSyde at Daily Kos made two superb posts:
This 40% breakthrough ... has finally become available for your home (maybe?) and office use ...
Solar cell breaks efficiency record Michael Kanellos, CNET News -- December 6, 2006
Boeing-Spectrolab has developed a solar cell that can convert almost 41 percent of the sunlight that strikes it into electricity, the latest step in trying to drop the cost of solar power.
Potentially, the solar cell could bring the cost of solar power down to around $3 a watt, after installation costs and other expenses are factored in, over the life of the panel.
[...]
Current silicon solar cells provide electricity at about $8 a watt, before government rebates. The goal is to bring it to $1 a watt without rebates or incentives.
Severn Suzuki representing ECO, the Environmental Children's Organization addresses the UN regard the environmental issues of great concern, to her generation.
The people who will inherit the global decisions made at Copenhagen, this week ...
We're diving deep into "geek world" today with a story that combines economic hardball, the periodic table of the elements, and a barely noticed provision of the Defense Authorization Act that seeks to break a monopoly which today gives China near-absolute control over the materials that make cell phones, electric cars, wind turbines, and pretty much every other tool of modern life possible.
If we successfully break the monopoly, we'll be able to create millions of new manufacturing jobs in this country-and if we don't, somebody else owns the 21st Century.
Ironically, the global warming we're trying to fight with new green technologies might be an ally in our efforts to make those very same green technologies happen.
There's a revolution in industrial processing going on, rare earths are at the center of it all...and in today's story, the revolution will be televised.
CANCUN - More than 200 Mayan peasants were arrested during a clash with police who tried to prevent them from blocking the highway between the southeastern Mexican cities of Chetumal and Cancun, officials said.
About 20 peasants sustained minor injuries and a police officer underwent surgery for a head injury suffered in Tuesday's clash, Quintana Roo state Deputy Public Safety Secretary Didier Vazquez said.
&&&
The peasants blocked the highway to demand payment of insurance and subsidies for crops lost in the drought affecting the region.
The insurance company has refused to pay claims for lost crops and Quintana Roo's government has offered to cover only 50 percent of losses, or some 450 pesos (about $34) per hectare affected by the drought.
In "100 Heartbeats," the second premiere in MSNBC's landmark Future Earth series, famed naturalist Jeff Corwin tells the story of the "Sixth Extinction" - caused by people and which can only be stopped by people. Keep checking futureearth.msnbc.com for information about the next premiere, "Future Earth: 2025," which will air on Dec. 20. You can catch "100 Heartbeats" on MSNBC again on Thanksgiving at 11 a.m. ET.
I was glad to see this show in a Sunday evening slot on msnbc and I really wish to god they'd do more like this ... just blanket their whole weekend programming with this instead of the prison porn they usually do. Why not? Perhaps we should think about a write-in campaign to convince them of that!
I'm suffering a ripple-over, a hangover, of thoughts and I'm attempting to share some of these thoughts here.
There is a lot of bloggage currently over the increasing volume on the xtian's idiocy, see this essay from gottlieb. I was struck this morning by the juxtaposition. I am just... so ... aghast at the hypocrisy and the indignity of their whining ... when this is going on.
This is desecration. This is an unholy war. This is ...
Every year tens of millions of sharks die a slow death because of finning. Finning is the inhumane practice of hacking off the shark's fins and throwing its still living body back into the sea. The sharks either starve to death, are eaten alive by other fish, or drown (if they are not in constant movement their gills cannot extract oxygen from the water). Shark fins are being "harvested" in ever greater numbers to feed the growing demand for shark fin soup, an Asian "delicacy".
Not only is the finning of sharks barbaric, but their indiscriminate slaughter at an unsustainable rate is pushing many species to the brink of extinction. Since the 1970s the populations of several species have been decimated by over 95%. source
March on Washington
and giving them a hug to measure their size. Parker's own hugging has been extended with a robust group of volunteers conducting regular measurements of specified trees. (The boy scout to the right, while in a SERC forest, isn't engaged in actual measurements for the study.) Some 250,000 hugs later, he has quite a database in hand.
Doctor Dan Mongiardo, Kentucky's Lieutenant Governor, has announced that he is running for the Democratic nomination for the Kentucky Senate race, to take on whoever wins the Republican nomination to challenge for the seat that Senator Bunning (R-Big$$$) has announced he is giving up.
Last year, I told VP Joe Biden about the Sustainable Electric High(er) Speed Rail I wanted for Christmas (cf. links below). It involved electrifying the 30,000+ miles of STRACNET, and establishing 100mph Rapid Freight Rail paths, including support for running 110mph or 125mph long haul electric passenger services on the Rapid Freight paths.
