Clear and a bit on the chilly side this early Thursday on California’s north coast as we addle on toward the weekend — which isn’t really anything other than a two-day work shutdown.
And, by the way, a longer version is saddled upon the US right now — officially in the 10th day of hating Obamacare.
In an age where bad shit has become seemingly an every-day occurrence, the news media has turned into a lap dog.
Via Aljazeera: Instead journalists have been suckered into embracing “balance” and “neutrality” at all costs, and the consequences of their choice in an era of political extremism will only get worse and worse.
Ditto from politics to climate change — there’s some even-worse bad shit coming and nobody seems to care.
The ‘new-normal’ for being alive on earth will be terrible and unnatural.
(Illustration found here).
US news outlets are way-failing the public in not reporting that the current government chaos is near-about 100-percent GOP handy-work, and this “he said/she said” bullshit doesn’t tell anywhere near the truth. And the same for the environment, which could be soon on the GOP cutting-block like Obamacare and health reform.
A new study by Democracy Corps, a Democrat-leaning research organization, shows the next hurdle for reality in the Republican understanding of the world will be all things climate changed.
Via US News and World Report:
“Evangelicals and tea party Republicans share and are consumed by skepticism about climate science — to the point where they mistrust scientists before they begin to speak,” the survey found.
These constituencies, which dominate the GOP, strongly oppose “the big government and regulations that inevitably result from climate science,” Democracy Corps said.
“Tea party Republicans, in particular, are concerned that climate science is another way to force regulations on individuals and businesses,” the study added.
“And they fear the subsequent costs — both to consumers and taxpayers.”
Even as the science screams.
And yesterday, a loud shout-out report, and this time with some datelines and numbers. Yet, one must keep in mind in reading the report is that for some reason climate change projections always seem to be moving faster than expected, or that the assessment was too optimistic, or. the bullshit cries of nit-twit journalists: In the case of the IPCC, the researchers found that the media steadfastly challenge the predictions on the basis that they are exaggerated, worst-case scenarios. What they fail to speculate on is whether the opposite is true; that it may be equally correct to suggest that things might be far worse.
And they are.
The new research paper, published in Nature magazine, projects some terrible shit in a short while.
Some excerpts via Reuters:
Temperatures in an average year would be hotter by 2047, give or take 14 years, than those in the warmest year from 1860-2005 if the greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, with the tropics the first affected area, a new index indicated.
“The results shocked us. Regardless of the scenario, changes will be coming soon,” lead author Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii said.
“Within my generation whatever climate we were used to will be a thing of the past.”
And Bloomberg:
The forecast assumes that carbon emissions will continue at a “business-as-usual” pace, according to the study.
Under a separate scenario that assumes greenhouse gases are stabilized, the global climate departure is delayed more than two decades, until 2069.
New York, under the more “optimistic” scenario, would experience unprecedented warming by 2072.
The city was pummeled by Hurricane Sandy a year ago, leading to insured losses of about $25 billion in the U.S. according to Munich Re estimates.
President Barack Obama cited the storm in his State of the Union address this year as a sign of the urgent need to address climate change.
Changes will occur in the tropics sooner because they have a less variable climate, so even a small change in average temperature can take an area outside historical norms, according to the study.
That may harm biodiversity in lower latitudes because tropical plants and animals are suited only to smaller variations in the climate, the researchers wrote.
“Conservation practitioners take heed: the climate-change race is not only on, it is fixed, with the extinction finish line looming closest for the tropics,” Eric Post, a professor of biology at Pennsylvania State University, wrote in an accompanying article in Nature.
Despite all this, the whole shebang is coming faster than we figured just a few short years ago — sunscreen anyone for the new normal of soaking up some rays?