The Threat of Climate Change

The Threat of Climate Change

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Energy Firms Come to Terms With Climate Change

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Read complete Post coverage on the science and politics surrounding the threat of human-induced climate change.

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Station 618...

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Special Report...

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Go Green

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Save The Earth; Destroy Humanity

Save The Earth; Destroy Humanity

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It is the crusade of the 20th century. A holy war to reverse the ‘destruction of the ecological balance caused by self-serving, ego-centric human activities’.

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Is this crusade prompted by a concern for humanity, or the opposite? Let’s ask Biology professor Eric Pianka of the University of Texas…

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Professor Pianka just received the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist award at the Texas Academy of Science's annual meeting. He also gave a very enlightening talk at the meeting. Most enlightening:

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"Every one of you who gets to survive has to bury nine," Eric Pianka cautioned students and guests at St. Edward’s University on Friday. Pianka's words are part of what he calls his "doomsday talk" — a 45-minute presentation outlining humanity's ecological misdeeds and Pianka's predictions about how nature, or perhaps humans themselves, will exterminate all but a fraction of civilization.

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Though his statements are admittedly bold, he's not without abundant advocates. But what may set this revered biologist apart from other doomsday soothsayers is this: Humanity's collapse is a notion he embraces.

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Indeed, his words deal, very literally, on a life-and-death scale, yet he smiles and jokes candidly throughout the lecture. Disseminating a message many would call morbid, Pianka's warnings are centered upon awareness rather than fear.

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"This is really an exciting time," he said Friday amid warnings of apocalypse, destruction and disease. Only minutes earlier he declared, "Death. This is what awaits us all. Death." Reflecting on the so-called Ancient Chinese Curse, "May you live in interesting times," he wore, surprisingly, a smile.

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So what's at the heart of Pianka's claim?

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6.5 billion humans is too many.

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In his estimation, "We've grown fat, apathetic and miserable," all the while leaving the planet parched.

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The solution?

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A 90 percent reduction.

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Save The Earth Destroy Humanity .PDF

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The Pearcey Report

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The Gazette-Enterprise

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Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

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Avery and Singer: Unstoppable Hot Air

Avery and Singer: Unstoppable Hot Air

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Filed under: Climate Science Paleoclimate Greenhouse Gases— David @ 4:28 pm
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Last week I attended a talk by Dennis Avery, author with Fred Singer of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years. The talk (and tasty lunch) was sponsored by the Heartland Institute, and was apparently enthusiastically received by its audience. Still whoozy from a bit of contention during the question period, a perplexed member of the audience told me privately that he thought a Point/CounterPoint discussion might be useful (he didn't know I wrote for RealClimate; it was just a hypothetical thought). But here’s my attempt to accommodate.
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Note: The Points are paraphrases from the slides and my notes from Avery’s talk.
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Point: The existence of the medieval warm and the Little Ice Age climate intervals, and the 1500 year D-O cycles in glacial climate, proves that the warming in the past decades is a natural phenomenon, not caused by human industry at all.
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CounterPoint: The existence of climate changes in the past is not news to the climate change scientific community; there is a whole chapter about it in the upcoming IPCC Scientific Assessment. Nor do past; natural variations in climate negate the global warming forecast. Most past climate changes, like the glacial interglacial cycle, can be explained based on changes in solar heating and greenhouse gases, but the warming in the last few decades cannot be explained without the impact of human-released greenhouse gases. Avery was very careful to crop his temperature plots at 1985, rather than show the data to 2005.
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READ ALL Point/CounterPoint
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Point: Environmentalists do what they do because they miss having their mommies reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales to them. They like getting all scared.
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CounterPoint: To hybrid-phrase Thomas Jefferson and Richard Feynman,

I tremble for humanity when I reflect that nature cannot be fooled.

You're damn right I’m scared.
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Filed under: Climate Science Paleoclimate Greenhouse Gases— David @ 4:28 pm

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Federal Leadership Needed To Tackle Climate Change
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Ex-Daley Aide Sentenced To Prison

Read this news story below. This is why corruption runs ramp-pit in are government. You do the crime you don’t do the time; you get your hands slapped. The first thing these convicted elected officials (gangsters) pack when they are going to so call federal prison is their golf clubs, its like a vacation for them. Corrupt elected officials who commit crimes when in office need to go to a state prison and put in with the general population and stripped of all government benefits’ and after they do the maximum sent-tins they need to be kicked out of the USA for the rest of their life and if a government elected official commits a crime in war time they need to be put in front of a firing squad. And if big corporations and lobbyist or who ever are involved in the crime they get the same sentence. Just before a president leaves office he pardons convicted government officials. No more!

The President is doing a lot of cuts in benefits’ for Americans, so why not have cuts in his benefits’?

Ex-Daley aide sentenced to prison
Tribune staff report
Published November 20, 2006, 5:23 PM CST

Mayor Richard Daley's former patronage chief was sentenced today to 46 months in federal prison for his role in a hiring fraud scheme at City Hall. He was also ordered to pay a $10,000 fine.
Robert Sorich showed no emotion as U.S. District Judge David H. Coar delivered a tongue-lashing.
The offense is corruption — corruption with a capital C,'' Coar said. "For people to owe their jobs to political advancement rather than performance on the job stinks.
"I don't give a hoot whether this has been going on for 200 years," the judge said. "It still stinks.''
As Coar handed down Sorich's sentence, the former City Hall insider stood stiff-lipped while his wife and mother broke down behind him.
Sorich could have received as much as 57 months in prison, but Coar gave him the lowest end of the sentencing range.
Prior to the reading of his sentence, Sorich said, "I just want to stand before the court and my family and friends and let them know I am not a broken man."
He did not apologize or otherwise accept responsibility for the crimes a federal jury found he committed.
Sorich and three other former city officials were convicted in July in a trial that highlighted the inner workings of the mayor's political machine.
Prosecutors say Daley aides rigged hiring for thousands of city jobs and promotions in favor of political loyalists. The scheme allegedly was designed to enhance Daley's political power.
Lawyers for Sorich and his three co-defendants in the trial have argued that the requested sentences are unduly harsh.
They have noted that city workers convicted of taking bribes received relatively short sentences.
Sorich and Timothy McCarthy, his former aide in the mayor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, were each convicted on two counts of mail fraud.
Former Streets and Sanitation official Patrick Slattery was convicted of one count of mail fraud, while John Sullivan, a former Streets and Sanitation managing deputy commissioner, was found guilty of one count of lying to federal agents about political hiring.
Today, Slattery was sentenced to 27 months in prison, while Sullivan was given two months in custody and two months of home confinement.

Tribune

It's high time for politicians to be paying attention.

Nancy Pelosi, you just don’t get it do you. Neither did the Republicans and look what happen to them.
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I want government transparency and accountability!
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I am fad up with the corruption in Washington.
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Get corporations out of Washington.
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FIRING ALL members of Congress (regardless of party) who are corrupt,

Nancy Pelosi Wants Total Crap

House Speaker Pelosi's choice for Majority Leader, Draft Loving John Murtha, has this to say about the anti-corruption bill being pushed by Madame Speaker:

Even though I think its total crap, I’ll vote for it and pass it because that’s what Nancy wants.

I think he's brain-damaged but that gives Murtha too much credit. He's just corrupt.

Pelosi’s Endorsement of Murtha. Total Crap

Nancy Pelosi was chosen by acclamation to become speaker of the House. Ninety minutes later, she experienced her first smack down.

Pelosi had only herself to blame for this briefest of honeymoons. Just five days after the Democrats' election victory, she shattered party unity Sunday by urging House Democrats to reject her longtime deputy, Steny Hoyer, in favor of antiwar firebrand Jack Murtha, who proceeded to brand House ethics reforms "total crap."

Yesterday, rank-and-file Democrats told Pelosi her endorsement was total crap: They overwhelmingly chose Hoyer to be majority leader.

Hoyer supporter Maxine Waters was holding forth on the impact of Pelosi's letter Sunday endorsing Murtha. "People just said 'I wonder why' and kept on moving and voted for Mr. Hoyer." It's true: Hoyer wound up with about as many votes as he forecast before Pelosi's endorsement of Murtha.

For Pelosi, who led Democrats back to a majority in the House after 12 years, yesterday should have been a coronation for the first woman to be speaker. Instead, her party had plunged into fratricide, and cable news was running nonstop clips of Murtha talking with FBI agents posing as sheiks in the Abscam sting.

Was this a great moment for Democrats, or "total crap"? "The latter," Pelosi spokeswoman Jennifer Crider had to admit as she surveyed the melee outside the caucus room.

Jack Abramoff Controversy

Jack Abramoff Controversy

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Abramoff Heading To Prison, Prosecutors Want Him To Roll On More Politicians

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Dorgan Tangled in Abramoff Web

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Dorgan has the North Dakota press wrapped around his finger. In a small state like North Dakota, Dorgan, Conrad et cetera are really important people who can really cause problems if the locals do Kiss their Bu**s.

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No brainer. Will be interesting to see how this unfolds. If the Dem’s are even halfway serious about ethics reform all this will come out. If not, then it remains politics as usual. No surprise there.

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READ THE FULL STORY

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Questions Surround Speaker Pelosi's Choice For House Majority Leader

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a Democratic-leaning watchdog group, accused Pelosi of compromising her ethical standards by endorsing Murtha.

Murtha has fought charges for years of using his senior status on the Defense Appropriations subcommittee to award favors to campaign contributors. He voted against a Democratic package of ethics reforms earlier this year

CBS News reporter Allison Davis

Representative Hoyer's supporters are reviving accounts of Murtha's less-than-decisive rejection of a bribe in the 1980 Abscam FBI sting operation. More recently, Murtha has battled allegations that he may have accepted favors from defense contractors.

Most immediately, Murtha's opposition to ethics reform, including past brushes with ethics issues, open Pelosi to charges that she hasn't heard voters on the importance of cleaning up the culture of corruption in Washington.

"Future House Speaker Pelosi's endorsement of Representative Murtha, one of the most unethical members of Congress, shows that she may have prioritized ethics reform merely to win votes, with no real commitment to changing the culture of corruption," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a group that took a lead in criticizing former GOP majority leader Tom DeLay of Texas over corruption charges.

By Gail Russell Chaddock

Who Killed The Electric Car ?

Who Killed The Electric Car ?

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Bush Pledges Bipartisan Cooperation

Reaching out to newly ascendant Democrats for a second day, President Bush promised bipartisan cooperation to the Senate's top Democrats on Friday.

Bush called Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin, to the Oval Office for about 45 minutes of discussions. Afterward, they pledged to put bitter campaign disputes aside and work together.

"The only way to move forward is through bipartisanship and openness," said Reid, D-Nev.

Looking for common ground, Bush noted that both he and Reid hail from the plainspoken West. "We tend to speak the same language," the president said.

READ FULL STORY: By JENNIFER LOVEN
Photo Pablo Martinez Monsivais_AP
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Bush Pledges Bipartisan Cooperation, [Reply, BULL]

"The only way to move forward is through bipartisanship and openness," said Reid, D-Nev. [Reply, BULL]

Looking for common ground, Bush noted that both he and Reid hail from the plainspoken West. "We tend to speak the same language," the president said. [Reply, BULL]

If you think Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Rice and the rest of the Republicans who are making billions of dollars off the war (occupation) are going to lie down just because the Democrats won the election,

“Think Again”.
I wonder what kind of deposits these Democrats made into their checking accounts after this so called “Bipartisan Lunching”.

Reid, Durbin, Pelosi and the rest of you Democrats, I will be keeping an eye on you!

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Nancy Pelosi, Said

Nancy Pelosi has previously said a Democratic-led Congress will not be a rubber stamp for the White House. Nancy Pelosi, said she hoped there would be cooperation with congressional investigations -- part of the checks-and-balances system built into the Constitution. Nancy Pelosi also has said that in the first 100 hours of her speakership she will push for action implementing all 9/11 Commission recommendations on national security, raising the minimum wage to $7.25, eliminating corporate subsidies for oil companies, allowing the government to negotiate Medicare drug prices, imposing new restrictions on lobbyists, cutting interest rates on college loans and supporting embryonic stem-cell research.

Read Full Story: CNN's John King, Dana Bash and Ed Henry.

Nancy Pelosi, photo from Wikipedia