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Tonight's editor: boatsie
All views expressed by today's editor do not necessarily represent those of eKos or eKos listed diarists.
CDSwarn Action Alert: Protest BBC call for outing of IPCC Chairman
Hey, you! Got the cajones to take expert aim at the mega-Koch & Co. funded perpetrators of climategate and the anti-science CDM? Despite the fact that the IPCC has been cleared of any impropriety after the convenient pre-COP15 leaking of the East Anglia memos, the pugnacious, relentless and unethical plutocracy continues to hold its minions -- the MSM, the right wing blogosphere, the majority of publicly elected officials (who routinely show up "In Character") -- by the short hairs.
Enter climate activist and environment blogger Tenney Naumer, a swashbuckling veteran of numerous campaigns against the CDM. Last week, Naumer unsheethed her épée to initiate a 'finta in tempo' with a flèche directed towards BBC's Chief Environment Correspondent Roger Harrabin. Harrabin is calling for the removal of current IPPC chairman Indian engineer and economist Professor Rajendra Pachauri.
BBC's Harrabin falsely smears IPCC Chief Pachauri, then uses own smear to create news and new smears, while Shell Oil pays for ads on the same BBC internet pages -- my note to Dr. Pachauri: please stay! Please! We need you there at the IPCC. We need someone who will not bend to pressure or money from the Kochs and the Climate Denial Machine!
Dear Readers,
Normally, I don't post the garbage created by the Climate Denial Machine (CDM) on this blog, but I want to show you a classic example of a tactic used by the CDM that has been described in detail in Naomi Oreskes recent book, Merchants of Doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming.
First a misleading story is planted in the mainstream media. Once it is already published, it is used to give credibility to further misleading stories.
Roger Harrabin (a so-called "environment analyst" for the BBC) on September 14, 2010, wrote a story calling for the resignation of the IPCC chair, Pachauri.
On what basis did he make this call?
He used the report issued by the GWPF:
"Lord Turnbull made his comments in a report on Climategate published by the climate-sceptic think-tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), of which he is a trustee."
Note that the above-mentioned "report" was written by Andrew Montford, a bought and paid for denialist whose recent book, The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the corruption of science (yet another false smear on Dr. Michael Mann), was shown by Tamino on RealClimate to be a trove of the leading denialist junk science put out by the CDM (link: http://www.realclimate.org/... ). (continue reading)
Naumer is looking for a contact for the BBC ombudsman. So far, all I've come up with is the UK's Press Complaints Commission. Any ideas? Visit RRT Climate Think Tank Swarm to Save Rajendra Pachauri, IPCC Chair
Note: Harrabin has been -- to put in mildly -- fiddling with content presentation since 2008:
Global Warming Activist Pressures BBC to Significantly Alter Article
... a British "climate activist" was responsible for getting the BBC to radically alter its "Global Temperatures 'To Decrease'" article last Friday.
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/...
On Monday, Jennifer Marohasy, the director of the Environment Unit at Australia's Institute of Public Affairs, received and published an e-mail exchange between the article's author, Roger Harrabin, and a climate activist affiliated with the British Campaign Against Climate Change
The Pre 21st Century CDM
Directives from the American Petroleum Association's 1998 Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan
The advocates of global warming have been successful on the basis of skillfully misrepresenting the science and the extent of agreement on the science, while industry and its partners ceded the science and fought on the economic issues. Yet if we can show that science does not support the Kyoto treaty - which most true climate scientists believe to be the case - this puts the United States in a stronger moral position and frees its negotiators from the need to make concessions as a defense against perceived selfish economic concerns.
(my emphasis added)
Upon this tableau, the Global Climate Science Communications Team (GCSCT) developed an action plan to inform the American public that science does not support the precipitous actions Kyoto would dictate, thereby providing a climate for the right policy decisions to be made. The team considered results from a new public opinion survey in developing the plan.
Charlton Research's survey of 1,100 "informed Americans" suggests that while Americans currently perceive climate change to be a great threat, public opinion is open enough to change on climate science. When informed that "some scientists believe there is not enough evidence to suggest that [what is called global climate change] is a long-term change due to human behavior and activities," 58 percent of those surveyed said they were more likely to oppose the Kyoto treaty. Moreover, half the respondents harbored doubts about climate science.
GCSCT members who contributed to the development of the plan are A. John Adams, John Adams Associates; Candace Crandall, Science and Environmental Policy Project; David Rothbard, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow; Jeffrey Salmon, The Marshall Institute; Lee Garrigan, environmental issues Council; Lynn Bouchey and Myron Ebell, Frontiers of Freedom; Peter Cleary
Sustainable Woman. Arusha, Tanazania. By Lizzy Leighty
At UN, developing nations urge boost in global support to fight climate change
28 September 2010 – Developing nations took to the podium today<at the General Assembly’s annual high-level debate to press for greater global support in responding to climate change.</p>
Ghanaian Foreign Minister Muhammad Mumuni warned world leaders that poorer nations may soon experience a "promise fatigue" if developed countries do not carry through pledged funds, including the $30 billion of fast-track funding for developing countries through 2012 committed at December’s Copenhagen climate change meeting.
At the gathering in the Danish capital, industrialized countries further pledged to find ways and means to raise $100 billion annually by 2020.
Pre- Bioneers Moving Images Film Festival
The Moving Image Festival has expanded to a week of screenings in the Bay area right before the conference, with screenings around the Bay Area of such films as Urban Roots, Freedom Riders, An Ecology of Mind, and Confessions of an Eco Terrorist.
Confessions of an Eco Terrorist follows the daring tactics of Peter Jay Brown (from Animal Planet’s Whale Wars) as he and a group of high seas 'animal saviors' and 'sea rebels' wage eco wars against whalers, illegal drift-netters, & seal hunters in thier illegal ocean operations around the world. These activists engage in inspiring high intrigue and dangerous campaigns, including sinkings, boardings, arrests, and rammings, all with the passionate and noble quest to halt atrocities against sea mammals.
Visit the Bioneers website for more information and films, locations and screening times.
Another Earthship Debut: boatsie's ExpertCommons
First nomination: A guest blog by Chris Colose (e-mail: colose-at-wisc.edu)
Introduction to "Feedbacks
RealClimate has recently featured a series of posts on the greenhouse effect and troposphere, articulating some of the more important physics of global warming from first principles. It is worthwhile reviewing these elements every so often with different slants just so the broad picture is not lost in the disagreement over details. This post extends on this theme to discuss one of the greatest sources of interest and uncertainty in the physical science of climate change: feedbacks. Feedbacks behave in interesting and often counter-intuitive ways, some of which can only be fully appreciated by mathematical demonstration. The previous posts at RC were criticized for being either too complex or too simple, so this post will feature two parts, with the second part providing some more of the technical details.
Feedbacks are components of the climate system that are constrained by the background climate itself; they don’t cause it to depart from its reference norm on their own, but rather may amplify or dampen some other initial push. These original "pushes" are forcings which are typically radiative in nature (such as adding CO2 to the air) and manifest themselves as a climate change when they are large enough or persistent enough to overcome the large heat capacity of the oceans, and thus change the annual mean radiative energy balance of the Earth. In a broad sense, a feedback means that some fraction of the output is fed back into the input, so the radiative perturbation gets an additional nudge (amplifying the forcing, a positive feedback or damping the forcing, a negative feedback). The major examples such as decline in ice extent in a warmer world, thereby reducing the reflected fraction of incident surface radiation are pretty well known at this point.
Another thought experiment can help to appreciate the implications. When we think about the terrestrial greenhouse effect, it is necessary to distinguish between those gases which condense and then precipitate from the air as solid or liquid rather rapidly (on Earth this substance is water) and those gases which can reside in the atmosphere for a very long time, and whose concentration is not so dependent on the temperature. Once you account for the spectral overlap between the various greenhouse gases and clouds in the sky, it is found that water vapor makes up roughly 50% of the modern greenhouse effect, clouds about 25%, CO2 is 20%, and the remaining gases (primarily methane, ozone, and nitrous oxide) make up the rest (Schmidt et al 2010, in press and a discussion of the paper here). This generally leads to popular claims like ‘water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas’ since it makes up the bulk of the infrared absorption in our atmosphere. This simple picture is incomplete however, since the total water vapor concentration is largely set by temperature and thus the non-condensable, long-lived greenhouse gases (chiefly, CO2) really provide the skeleton by which the greenhouse effect is maintained and what governs its capacity for change. In that sense, water vapor is in large part supported by the other gases and then amplifies their effect significantly.
If you could remove all of the CO2 from our atmosphere, aside from making the planet more efficient at losing its heat to space (thus cooling) you would do a couple of things. (continue reading)
Pulling the Plug on Grandma
Living in extreme conditions about two miles above sea level, they have become the oldest trees on the planet. The oldest living bristlecone, named Methuselah, has lived more than 4,800 years.
Now, however, scientists say these ancient trees may soon meet their match in the form of a one-two punch, from white pine blister rust, an Asian fungus that came to the United States from Asia, via Europe, a century ago, and the native pine bark beetle, which is in the midst of a virulent outbreak bolstered by warming in the high-elevation West.
Photo by James R Bouldin |
The bristlecones face even more fundamental changes. Warmer temperatures are significantly altering ecosystems, according to Matthew Salzer, a researcher at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona who studies bristlecone tree rings. Over the last 50 years, bristlecone rings have increased in size, growing 30 percent faster than in any other 50-year period for 3,700 years. "They’ve really taken off," Dr. Salzer said. "The growth rate is really high, and it’s related to the warming occurring at higher elevations."
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
The bristlecone pines were once thought to be the oldest single living organisms known, though some plants such as creosote bush or aspen form clonal colonies which may be many times older.
This link is from an older diary that just missed the rec list.
Massive tree die-offs are not important enough for the rec list, it seems.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
... an excerpt from the NYT article:
Warmer temperatures are significantly altering ecosystems, according to Matthew Salzer, a researcher at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona who studies bristlecone tree rings. Over the last 50 years, bristlecone rings have increased in size, growing 30 percent faster than in any other 50-year period for 3,700 years. "They’ve really taken off," Dr. Salzer said. "The growth rate is really high, and it’s related to the warming occurring at higher elevations."
"I think they risk burning themselves out," he said. "One of the reasons these trees have such longevity is they have a conservative approach. If they are no longer under such harsh conditions it’s possible their life spans will decrease."
Some ecologists think that as warming continues, species that live at the top of mountains may no longer have a niche and simply disappear, something that has been called the "rapture hypothesis."
Month 9, Day 30: Bella, bella, bella!
The New York Timeshad a lovely article on a little Italian town that's moved to wind energy and done itself a huge favor in the process. Go read the piece; it's really inspiring.
At least, it inspired this letter:
The citizens of Tocco De Casauria have chosen wisely in moving their community to renewable energy sources. Perhaps a village that has existed for centuries is better-equipped to plan for an existence hundreds of years in the future. It is a measure of how far the United States has to go in this area that the concept of "sustainability" is still considered the province of tie-dyed back-to-the-landers, rather than a simple piece of common sense. Obviously we should be thinking in the long term rather than the short. But, alas, America is the home of the shortest attention spans on the planet, and sustainability isn't shiny enough to engage the interest of the country that invented "planned obsolescence." We need an energy economy that's built to last...and we won't find it in oil wells and coal mines. Tocco's turbines are a lesson to all of us: "planned obsolescence" is obsolete.
WarrenS
Countdown to 10.10.10.
If you haven't yet signed up for a 10.10.10 event near you, time's a'wasting. Daily Kos is partnering with the 350 and 10.10 Global coalition to promote Global Day of Action workparties on 10.10.10. (See Ecoadvocates series by 10:10 Global Guest Bloggers)
Sign up for an event near you!
Calculate your carbon footprint and download your personal checklist with easy tips on small changes you can make in your lifestyle to reach the desired 10% decrease in one year.
What Can I Do 10.10.10 Resources
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Tonight in EcoAdvocates: Aji bears witness to the state of the world – no blinkers allowed; PDNC on Obama’s critter climte change recovery and more on 10.10.10.
Image of the DAY
Heart in Voh in 1990, New Caledonia (French Overseas Territory) (20°56’S, 164°39’E). Photo by Yann Arthus-Bertrand
(All times Eastern!)
What is eKos?
The eKos project is an effort to distribute environmental content on Daily Kos to a broader audience. When a diary has the 'eKos' tag, its information is collected in a database, which is then published in eKos Earthships and the eKos Library. We also Tweet all eKos diaries using the @eKos350 account, and distribute an RSS widget for use in Daily Kos diaries and comments. Diaries listed on eKos do not necessarily represent the views of the eKos Rangers or any other participating diarist. Participation in eKos is strictly voluntary, please let us know if you do not want the eKos tag!
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If you want to help out with tagging, here are a few simple rules to follow:
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eKos diaries from 09/29/2010 |
Diary | Author | Time (Eastern) | Tags |
No Alien Tort Liability for Corporations?? | rebb | 20:55:28 | eKos, Alien Tort Claims Act, corporate responsibility, crimes against humanity, detention |
EcoAdvocates: Welcome to Your New World. It's Hell. | Aji | 20:36:15 | EcoAdvocates, environment, climate change, eKos |
EnergizeUS: Skills Mismatch, Congressional Style | Energize US | 19:53:39 | EnergizeUS, jobs, economy, environment, ekos |
NtP TV: Makutano Junction | NourishingthePlanet | 10:05:22 | ekos, Nourishing the Planet, State of the World, Innovation, Makutano Junction |
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #397 | Gulf Watchers | 06:06:08 | Recommended, Oilpocalypse, BP, Deepwater Horizon, Macondo, Gulf of Mexico |
eKos diaries from 09/28/2010 |
Diary | Author | Time (Eastern) | Tags |
Spinning fire on the cliffs | erratic | 23:46:55 | ekos, nature, beauty |
Arnold calls out the Big Oil Front Groups in dramatic fashion | jamess | 22:11:04 | Recommended, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Keith Olbermann, Big Oil, Valero, Tesoro |
12,000 Deaths a Year? Who cares. | rfall | 18:49:33 | environment, clean air act, EPA, ekos |
California’s Commitment to Clean Energy – Both Parties Agree | NRDCActionFund | 10:40:32 | nrdc action fund, clean energy, ekos, climate change, global warming |
Clean Energy Whizbang - Quest for Cash | George | 09:35:40 | ekos, energy, Energize America, Rescued |
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #396 | Gulf Watchers | 06:00:00 | Recommended, Oilpocalypse, BP, Deepwater Horizon, Macondo |
On Environmental Communication | George Lakoff | 01:47:08 | George Lakoff, environment, communication, framing, biconceptualism |