DN - From Funding Climate Deniers to Shadowy Groups, Koch Brothers Network Spent $400 Million in 2012

TYT - Climate Change Is Nothing To Worry About (Until Later)

If Only Man-Made Climate Change Was Real

Trey Smith

When typhoon Haiyan - known in the Philippines as Yolanda - pounded into the islands of Samar and Leyte at 4.40am after picking up speed on a 900-mile track across the Pacific, the US navy's warning center, JTWC, in Honolulu, calculated its winds to be gusting at up to 235mph (380kph).

This would make it the fourth most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded and possibly the strongest to have ever hit land. By comparison, St Jude, the storm that hit in southern England last month, had winds gusting to 99 mph.

As Filipino communities calculated the flood and wind damage done in the 25-mile-wide path of the storm, meteorologists questioned claims that Haiyan was the strongest ever to make landfall. "All we can say at this stage is maybe. The estimates of wind strength and central pressure are just that – estimates – albeit from well-attested satellite techniques developed over decades. Without ground observations right in the centre of the track we can never be totally sure," said Julian Heming, tropical prediction scientist at the Met Office.

Haiyan is the third Category 5 "super typhoon" to hit the Philippines since 2010.
~ from Typhoon Haiyan the Biggest Yet As World's Tropical Storms Gather Force by John Vidal ~

I've asked this before, but how many dots are needed before the vast majority feels confident enough to start connecting them?

Typhoon Haiyan, in and of itself, doesn't prove that man-made global warming is real -- I use the term "man-made" because males are primarily responsible -- but the number of records set for violent storms over the past decade or two should cause people to be concerned -- very concerned. We keep hearing and reading of record droughts, tornadoes, blizzards, floods and hurricanes. Why have many of these records been set in the past few years. There has to be SOME sort of explanation.

Scientists -- not pundits, politicos, religious nuts or the folks who benefit financially from denying climate change -- have zeroed in on the primary cause. That would be human society as it is operated in the industrialized world. They issue dire warnings after another and yet the issue somehow is still open to debate?

What will it take to put this picture into a clearer focus? Really! What will it take?

BP - The Last Hours of Humanity: Warming the World to Extinction

BP - Climate Change: We Now Know The Point of No Return

TRNN - The Cost of Saving the Planet

There's Still a 5 Percent Chance They Are Wrong!

Trey Smith

When it comes to most things in life, 95 percent is considered to be almost a certainty. If the weather forecast calls for a 95 percent chance of precipitation, most people accept it as given and prepare accordingly. If a student scores 95 percent on a test, that student is almost certain to earn an A. Almost any team in any sport that won 95 percent of the time would have the best record.

It seems that the only time when 95 percent is considered far too low of a threshold is when it comes to global warming/climate change. Climate change deniers grab hold of the 5 percent of uncertainty and parade around with it like it means something vastly important. While many see a political candidate who garners 51 percent of the vote as achieving some sort of a mandate, somehow the 95 percent certainty that most of the climate change we are experiencing is human-caused represents no mandate at all!

Odd how it seems to work out that way.

Global Warming? Nah!

Trey Smith

Two months before my community and so many others were overwhelmed this week by epic rains, our state’s chief oil and gas regulator, Matt Lepore, appeared onstage in nearby Loveland with representatives of the fossil fuel industry. During that event, Lepore — an industry-lawyer-turned-public-official — proceeded to berate citizens concerned about the ecological impact of fracking and unbridled drilling. More specifically, he insisted that those asking fossil fuel development to be governed by the precautionary principle are mostly affluent and therefore unconcerned with the economic impact of their environmentalism.

Ignoring public polling data that documented the broad support for tougher environmental regulation, Lepore was making the classic populist argument against the precautionary principle. In this instance, an industry puppet: 1) pretended environmental stewardship is merely a luxury for those fortunate enough to be able to afford it; and 2) insinuated that a lack of such stewardship primarily harms the sensibilities of rich folk, but not much else.

Today, parts of the same city where Lepore delivered his diatribe remain inundated. Same thing for “thousands of oil and gas wells and associated condensate tanks and ponds,” according to the Boulder Daily Camera.

Already, there is at least one confirmed oil pipeline leak. At the same time, the Denver Post reports that “oil drums, tanks and other industrial debris mixed into the swollen (South Platte) river.” Some of this has been caught on camera, as harrowing photos of partially submerged oil and gas sites now hit the Internet. It all suggests that there’s a very real possibility of a slow-motion environmental disaster, one whose potential damage to water supplies, spread of carcinogenic chemicals and contamination of agricultural land should concern both rich and poor.

In retrospect, then, the flood powerfully illustrates the problem with officials like Lepore (who later apologized) pretending that environmental stewardship and the precautionary principle are just aristocratic priorities. They are, in fact, quite the opposite: They are priorities for everyone and if those priorities have any class implications at all, those implications disproportionately involve the middle and lower classes.
~ from Industry Puppets Spew Obscene Lies While People Drown by David Sirota ~

Another odd thing about the situation in Colorado is the overall lack of analysis in the mainstream media of possible causes. I heard many a host and correspondent say words like epic and historic, but I don't think I heard any of them say the most obvious ones: global warming/climate change. When an area that has been dry for hundreds of years experiences torrential rains, one would think that it would be okay to explore the possibility that one of the reasons for this event had to do with climate change.

Too often, unfortunately, the mainstream media treats atypical storms just like they treat mass killings perpetrated by white men -- they utilize the "lone wolf" rationale. In terms of storms, we are told it is a freak occurrence completely unrelated to any number of other so-called freak storms. Though all these huge dots seem to be staring the establishment in the face, they are loathe to connect the dots! It's not that they don't see the obvious connections; it's more that they don't want us to recognize them.

Why? Because, if the majority of people start connecting the dots, we will demand significant changes to business as usual and that might mean a dip in the corporate world's short-term profits. We can't have that now!

BP - Climate Change is Worse than You Have Ever Imagined

TYT - Obama's Promises to Go Over GOP Heads for Climate Change

TYT - Is Climate Change Action Doomed?

What Has Gotten Into Al Gore?

Trey Smith

You remember Al Gore, don't you? He served as Vice President under Bill Clinton for 8 years (1993–2001). Back then, he was a loyal centrist Democrat. Today, however, he almost sounds like a left wing commie -- at least compared to other leading Democrats!

On Friday, he spoke out about two major issues: the Keystone XL Pipeline and the revelations about the NSA. He did not laud President Obama by offering weak nudges. He didn't fall all over himself trying to concoct excuses for why Obama seems to be moving in the wrong direction. No, he voiced his objections strongly.

As reported in The Guardian, here is what Al had to say about the pipeline project.

Al Gore has called on Barack Obama to veto the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, describing it as "an atrocity".

The former vice-president said in an interview on Friday that he hoped Obama would follow the example of British Columbia, which last week rejected a similar pipeline project, and shut down the Keystone XL.

"I certainly hope that he will veto that now that the Canadians have publicly concluded that it is not safe to take a pipeline across British Columbia to ports on the Pacific," he told the Guardian. "I really can't imagine that our country would say: 'Oh well. Take it right over parts of the Ogallala aquifer', our largest and most important source of ground water in the US. It's really a losing proposition."

No equivocating there. No mealy-mouthed platitudes either. He basically threw down a gauntlet.

Turning to The Guardian again, here is what Mr. Gore had to say about spygate.

The National Security Agency's blanket collection of US citizens' phone records was "not really the American way", Al Gore said on Friday, declaring that he believed the practice to be unlawful.

In his most expansive comments to date on the NSA revelations, the former vice-president was unsparing in his criticism of the surveillance apparatus, telling the Guardian security considerations should never overwhelm the basic rights of American citizens.

He also urged Barack Obama and Congress to review and amend the laws under which the NSA operated.

"I quite understand the viewpoint that many have expressed that they are fine with it and they just want to be safe but that is not really the American way," Gore said in a telephone interview. "Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that those who would give up essential liberty to try to gain some temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Once again, Al isn't pulling punches. He is staring the Obama administration in its grill and challenging them to live up to their own rhetoric.

Rather than following in the footsteps of Bill Clinton, it appears Al is borrowing a page from the Jimmy Carter playbook. Carter was only a so-so president, but he's been a great ex-president. Al Gore is turning into a really darn good ex-vice president!

Bigger Isn't Always Better

Trey Smith

Meteorologists know Friday's tornado in the El Reno area was an EF5.

And based on records, they believe it is the widest recorded in the United States.

But there's something they don't want to think about.

“The impacts were horrible of what happened, where it hit and what happened to people and structures,” meteorologist Rick Smith said Tuesday. “We are certainly not minimizing that at all, not at all. But had it gone through the very densely populated areas, this would have been ... I don't even want to imagine what it would have been.”

In the rare category of EF5 tornadoes, the one on Friday in the El Reno area was “super rare,” Smith said.

The National Weather Service's Norman Forecast Office, where Smith works, had rated the storm as an EF3 based on structure damage. Meteorologists updated the estimate Tuesday, determining it was an EF5, the strongest classification for a tornado. It was 2.6 miles wide at its widest point and tracked across 16.2 miles. The storm had wind speeds greater than 295 mph. That 2.6-mile tornado path width is believed to be the widest on record in the United States, according to the Weather Service.
~ from El Reno Tornado Is 'Super Rare' National Record-Breaker by Bryan Painter and Silas Allen ~

One of the questions that we may be able to answer within the next two or three years is whether or not the El Reno, OK tornado turns out to be "super rare." While the Moore, OK tornado wasn't quite as fierce as the El Reno one, both were designated EF5s. That is two major twisters in less than 2 weeks in the same general vicinity.

Does this prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that climate change is real? Of course not. Our scientific knowledge is not advanced enough to pinpoint the precise causes of these violent storms. It could turn out to be nothing more than random chance. But, if other record-setting tornadoes hit this same area later this year or next, it certainly points TOWARD climate change as a likely explanation.

In fact, the growing intensity of a variety of climatic events -- extreme drought, continuous flooding, brutal blizzards and winter warm ups at unexpected times, ferocious hurricanes and record-setting tornadoes -- points toward something amiss in nature. Again, none of this absolutely guarantees that climate change is THE culprit, but over 90 percent of the world's scientists believe it is!

Maybe it's time that we start listening to them.

What Is Left of the Left? II

Trey Smith

Today's posts will feature parsed sections of an excellent editorial, The Silent Death of the American Left, by CounterPunch editor Jeffery St. Clair.

Consider this. Two-thirds of the American electorate oppose the ongoing war in Afghanistan. An equal amount objected to intervention in Libya. Even more recoil at the grim prospect of entering the Syrian theater.

Yet there is no antiwar movement to translate that seething disillusionment into action. There are no mass demonstrations. No systematic efforts to obstruct military recruiting. No nationwide strikes. No campus walkouts. No serious divestment campaigns against companies involved in drone technology.

Similar popular disgust is evident regarding the imposition of stern austerity measures during a prolonged and enervating recession. But once again this smoldering outrage has no political outlet in the current political climate, where both parties have fully embraced the savage bottom line math of neoliberalism.

Homelessness, rampant across America, is a verboten topic, unmentioned in the press, absent from political discourse. Hunger, a deepening crisis in rural and urban America, is a taboo subject, something left to religious pray-to-eat charities or the fickle whims of corporate write-offs.

What do they offer us, instead? Pious homilies about the work ethic, the sanctity of the family unit, the self-correcting laxative of market forces.

The economic immiseration of black America, brutal and unrelenting, is simply elided, erased from the political dialogue, even at jam sessions of the Congressional Black Caucus. Instead, whenever Obama mentions the plight of black Americans (about once every two years by my count), as he did in his patronizing commencement addresses this spring, it is to chide blacks about cleaning up their acts, admonishing them to stop complaining about their circumstances and work harder at adopting the flight plan of white corporate culture.

The self-evident need for large-scale public works projects to green the economy and put people to work goes unmentioned, while the press and the politicians engage in a faux debate over the minutia of sequestration and sharpen each others knives to begin slashing Social Security and Medicare. Where’s the collective outrage? Where are the marches on the Capitol? The sit-ins in congressional offices?

And what about the environmental movement? Where did it go?

At a time when we desperately need to change course to avoid or, at least, mitigate the misery and suffering we are sentencing future generations to, we continue to drive down the same road at breakneck speed!

As readers know, I am passionate about human and civil rights, economic justice, the rule of law and peace over war. While each of these issues is of vital importance to the whole of human society, each pales in the face of climatic calamity. If we render this planet uninhabitable for humans and most of the rest of current life forms, wealth and injustice will no longer be issues. There will no longer be Homo sapiens to argue about them.

That is the direction we are heading. It won't happen in your or my lifetime, but it IS coming down the road IF we don't drastically change our ways. When a future generation looks back at this current generation, they will curse our names. Our generation will be derided as a hedonistic one -- more concerned about our temporal wealth, power and pleasures than the health and safety of those to come after us.

And, for all the fundamentalist Christian out there -- the ones who believe that the second coming of Jesus will save a certain portion of the population from hell on earth -- my guess is that this second coming won't turn out like you think. Jesus will prepare to make his grand entrance, but then he will look at the utter mess we have made of his father's creation. He will decide that our species isn't worth saving! He will appear in the clouds only to give us the finger!

When a Mandate Is Or Isn't

Trey Smith

In the 2004 presidential election, incumbent George W. Bush defeated challenger John Kerry in the the popular vote 50.7% to 48.3% for a winning margin of 2.4%. Despite the fact that Bush barely received a clear majority of the votes cast and less than a majority of eligible votes (a lot of people didn't vote at all), both he and his supporters claimed that the vote represented a mandate for his agenda. This historical fact is interesting when juxtaposed against the so-called controversy about human-caused global warming.

As I am sure readers are well aware, many of the same conservatives who supported George W. Bush claim that the science around climate change is far from settled. If you listen to what they say or read what they write, it sounds like little more than a 50/50 proposition. According to recent research, this supposition doesn't match up well with the facts!

A survey of thousands of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals has found 97.1% agreed that climate change is caused by human activity.

Authors of the survey, published on Thursday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, said the finding of near unanimity provided a powerful rebuttal to climate contrarians who insist the science of climate change remains unsettled.

The survey considered the work of some 29,000 scientists published in 11,994 academic papers. Of the 4,000-plus papers that took a position on the causes of climate change only 0.7% or 83 of those thousands of academic articles, disputed the scientific consensus that climate change is the result of human activity, with the view of the remaining 2.2% unclear.

The study described the dissent as a "vanishingly small proportion" of published research.

So, let's recap. George W. Bush received 50.7% of the vote in 2004 and we are told that this represents a clear mandate or consensus. In 2013, 97.1% of scientists agree that climate change is human-caused and yet we are told that this does not represent any sort of mandate or consensus.

Hmm. The definition of a mandate seems a tad bit inconsistent, doesn't it?

TYT - Belief in Biblical End Times Stops Climate Change Action

By Gum, Let's Pat Ourselves on the Back

Trey Smith

In this competitive dog-eat-dog world, people like to think of themselves as the top dog, the champions, numero uno, the chosen people. We want to feel special. We want to be able to point at ourselves to say that we've accomplished something that no one else has.

Well, humanity as a whole has done just that!! We can now prance around with our chests stuck out. As a group, we just set a record that has never been equaled during the span of time that Homo sapiens have walked this earth. So, let's raise a mug and give ourselves a pat on the back.

For the first time in human history, the concentration of climate-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has passed the milestone level of 400 parts per million (ppm). The last time so much greenhouse gas was in the air was several million years ago, when the Arctic was ice-free, savannah spread across the Sahara desert and sea level was up to 40 metres higher than today.

These conditions are expected to return in time, with devastating consequences for civilisation, unless emissions of CO2 from the burning of coal, gas and oil are rapidly curtailed. But despite increasingly severe warnings from scientists and a major economic recession, global emissions have continued to soar unchecked. (Source: The Guardian)

Now that we've set this "noble" record, we should not rest on our laurels. I say, if we can get to 400 parts per million, 500 or 600 should be no problem. In fact, I have supreme confidence that we can get to 1,000 parts per million in no time at all.

So people, are you with me? If we really put our noses to the grindstone, we could wipe out our entire species in only another generation or two!

Both Sides Now

Trey Smith

The historic drought that laid waste to America's grain and corn belt is unlikely to ease before the middle of this year, a government forecast warned on Thursday.

The annual spring outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted hotter, drier conditions across much of the US, including parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, where farmers have been fighting to hang on to crops of winter wheat.

The three-month forecast noted an additional hazard, however, for the midwest: with heavy, late snows setting up conditions for flooding along the Red and Souris rivers in North Dakota.

"It's a mixed bag of flooding, drought and warm weather," Laura Furgione, the deputy director of NOAA's weather service told a conference call with reporters.

Last year produced the hottest year since record keeping began more than a century ago, with several weeks in a row of 100+degree days. It also brought drought to close to 65% of the country by summer's end.
~ from Drought That Ravaged US Crops Likely to Worsen in 2013, Forecast Warns by Suzanne Goldenberg ~

Isn't that just peachy? Drought AND floods. Maybe locusts will be next!

I am continually amazed that some folks refuse to entertain the notion that global warming/climate change might be the cause of this continued misery. As I have asked before, how bad does it have to get before these people finally say, "OK, maybe the scientists have a point."

Do cows have to start exploding in fields? Do Kansas and Oklahoma have to look like the Mohave Desert? Really, what will it take?

From Red to Green

Trey Smith

With less than transparency, the AFL-CIO just issued a statement endorsing “expanding the nation’s pipeline system.” Although it did not explicitly endorse the Keystone XL pipeline, the labor federation nevertheless managed to extend its blessing to the project while hiding behind vague generalities. However, the logic of its position is unambiguous: the federation is in favor of extending pipelines in general and without qualification; the Keystone XL is a pipeline. Therefore logic compels us to infer that the federation supports the extension of the Keystone XL pipeline.

The duplicity of the gesture is entirely intentional. The building trades unions have embraced the pipeline and have lobbied the AFL-CIO to do the same. However, the AFL-CIO would prefer not to alienate its environmental allies, who strongly oppose the pipeline. For this reason the federation refrains from mentioning the Keystone XL by name. But its vague generality is just enough cover to provide President Obama with an excuse to support the pipeline, which his administration’s State Department has already secretly embraced. Obama can now point to disunity among his liberal supporters as a justification for ignoring them. He can do exactly what the corporations want while pretending to be unable to satisfy the conflicting and inconsistent demands of the liberal left. The AFL-CIO hides behind language, and Obama hides behind the AFL-CIO.
~ from AFL-CIO’s Own Oil Disaster by Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer ~

In a nutshell, the above snippet exemplifies why I changed my political affiliation from red to green. Though I continue to agree with many socialist concepts and policies, I more fully endorse the green vision for the world.

From my perspective, one of the big bugaboos with viewing the world from a strictly economic perspective has been born out again and again by organized labor. When jobs are dangled before their eyes, any other concerns are swept aside. So what if the Keystone Pipeline might mean grave environmental danger? That danger might create more union jobs too!

This narrow focus on jobs and economics has served as a continual barrier between the labor and environmental movements. Greens tend to be suspicious of labor types because there have been many instances when labor lines up with the greens only to abandon them because a few economic tidbits are thrown their way. The politicians who offer these tidbits often don't deliver the goods, but they understand that the offer itself is enough to cause labor to switch sides!

And it is not that greens don't understand economic ramifications either. The difference is that labor -- like the corporate world itself -- focuses almost exclusively on short-term benefits -- the number of jobs available today. They ignore the long-term implications like the overall costs of certain projects to society and the planet as a whole. 

Yes, supporting a new project like the Keystone Pipeline will mean more jobs for the members of the AFL-CIO, but at what costs to everyone else? That's a question they refuse to entertain!

The Real Sticking Point

Trey Smith

I felt genuine satisfaction at having been there, but given what was at stake, given Frankenstorm Sandy, the devastating Midwestern drought and record southwestern fires of 2012, the Snowmageddon winter storm that had recently dropped 40 inches of the white stuff on Hamden, Connecticut, the blistering spring and summer of 2012, the fast-melting Arctic sea ice, and the fact that last year broke all heat records for the continental United States, given the build-up of billion-dollar weather disasters in recent years, and the growing emphasis on “extreme weather” events on the national TV news, shouldn’t hundreds of thousands have been there? After all, I’ve been in antiwar demonstrations in which at least that many marched and in 1982, I found myself in my hometown in a crowd of a million demonstrating against the possibility of a world-ending nuclear war. Is climate change a less important issue?
~ from Where Is Everybody? Why It's So Tough to Get Your Head Around Climate Change by Tom Engelhardt ~

What is Engelhardt referring to? The Forward On Climate Rally on Sunday, February 17. You may have seen it mentioned on your local TV news...or maybe not.

I believe one of the primary reasons that it is so tough for people to get their heads around climate change is that it calls for change on an individual basis. When people take to the streets to demand an end to war or nuclear proliferation, they are trying to apply pressure to political leaders to do something that is beyond the scope of individual citizens.

Climate change is different. You and I -- without any government involvement whatsoever -- can be the catalysts for change. If consumers stopped purchasing GMO frankenfoods, stopped purchasing gas-guzzling vehicles and drove less, stopped spraying carcinogenic muck on our lawns and gardens, and recycled like there is no tomorrow, change would occur. As the corporate behemoths began to see their profits going down, they would change the way they did business to push their market shares in the opposite directions. As political candidates began to see their vote totals slip away, out of their own self-interest, they would jump on the environmental bandwagon.

But in order to serve as the catalysts for this type of change, Americans have to get our fat butts off of the couch! We have to quit stuffing ready-made garbage down our pie holes. We have to change the way WE live. And that's the real sticking point, isn't it?