‘Scared to Death’
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A small instance of a humongous and worsening situation:
The decline in the chipmunk’s genetic diversity occurred in the relatively short span of 90 years, demonstrating the rapid threat changing climate can represent for a species, a UC Berkeley release said Sunday.
The shift of the living due to a warming environment poses a danger to everything — we and the animals around us can become more vulnerable to the effects of inbreeding, disease and other problems that threaten species survival, and in the sequence of time, can take place very quickly.
(Illustration found here).
And even with our slowest moving living things — trees.
From HuffPost on Saturday:
U.S. Forest Service researchers have confirmed what has long been suspected about a valuable tree in Alaska’s Panhandle: Climate warming is killing off yellow cedar.
Paul Schaberg, a USFS plant pathologist from Burlington, Vt., one of five authors of a paper on the tree that appeared this month in the journal Bioscience:
“As time goes on and climates change even more, other species, other locations, are likely to experience similar kinds of progressions, so you might do well to understand this one so you can address those future things,” Schaberg said.
…
“I’m looking out my window and we have a dusting of snow at best,” Schaberg said from his Vermont office.
“And the soils are frozen all over the place, which is not the norm at all.
So even just this one component of changing climate — reduced snow packs, its influence on soils and the things that are living in soils, like roots — that is not limited to the yellow cedar story and Alaska.
That’s pertinent to many locations.”
Most likely, climate change and its results will be pertinent to all locations.
Especially within the human body, as disease is a silent, ugly partner to a changing environment.
Sherilee Harper, a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar in Aboriginal People’s Health at the University of Guelph, describes a near-future of not nice: “Under any climate change scenario you consider, this is going to increase,” she says. “Waterborne diseases are not just an Arctic issue; they are global. The World Health Organization projects that most of the climate change disease burden in the 21st century will be due to diarrhea and malnutrition.”
Hungry, but still on the toilet — what a shitty fix.
Even with all these horrors of climate change breathing down humanity’s collective neck, there’s a strong and well-funded dark side to the mirror of environmental concerns in the form of an organized, nasty denial to science and its near-scream-like warnings.
Not only is the fight against a changing natural earth, but also against some back-stabbing tactics: Leaked documents from a prominent United States conservative think tank show how it sought to teach schoolchildren scepticism about global warming and planned other behind-the-scenes tactics using millions of dollars in donations from big corporate names.
Hard to grasp how these people sleep at night, or even look at their children and grandchildren without feeling like nasty assholes.
And speaking of nasty assholes, Rick Santorum has pushed the prick deep into religion and daddy/momma earth; there’s no way we have to watch what we do with the planet because humans have the power.
Santorum claims global warming is all bullshit.
From TPM:
“We were put on this Earth as creatures of God to have dominion over the Earth, to use it wisely and steward it wisely, but for our benefit not for the Earth’s benefit,” Santorum told a Colorado crowd earlier this month.
He went on to call climate change “an absolute travesty of scientific research that was motivated by those who, in my opinion, saw this as an opportunity to create a panic and a crisis for government to be able to step in and even more greatly control your life.”
One wonders at the hearts, minds and souls of people who believe this crap.
And the whole denial/anti-science horror is starting to shake the investigators.
From the UK’s the Guardian:
Most scientists, on achieving high office, keep their public remarks to the bland and reassuring.
Last week Nina Fedoroff, the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), broke ranks in a spectacular manner.
She confessed that she was now “scared to death” by the anti-science movement that was spreading, uncontrolled, across the US and the rest of the western world.
“We are sliding back into a dark era,” she said.
“And there seems little we can do about it.
I am profoundly depressed at just how difficult it has become merely to get a realistic conversation started on issues such as climate change or genetically modified organisms.”
…
“Those of us who grew up in the sixties, when we put men on the Moon, now have to watch as every Republican candidate for this year’s presidential election denies the science behind climate change and evolution.
That is a staggering state of affairs and it is very worrying,” said Professor Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California, San Diego.
…
“It has taken the scientific community a long time to realise what it is up against,” says Oreskes.
“In the past, it thought the problem was just a matter of education.
All its practitioners had to do was make an effort to reach out and talk to teachers, the public and business leaders.
Then these people would see the issues and understand the need for action.
“But now they are beginning to realise what they are really up against: massive organised attempts to undermine scientific data by people for whom that data represents a threat to their status quo.
Given the power of these people, scientists will have their work cut out dealing with them.”
First, however, a lot of bad shit will take place, a lot of people will die and a lot of irreparable damage done.
Everybody should most-indeed be ‘scared to death,’ but maybe not so much the coming heat, but the Joseph-Goebbels-cruelty of other humans.
Theology of Disaster
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Religion covers a lot of ground — there’s a church for just about every conceivable thought and emotion, and there’s always somebody willing to kill you for whatever’s sake.
Rick Santorum’s smug view: “In the Christian church there are a lot of different stripes of Christianity. If the president says he’s a Christian, he’s a Christian.”
(Illustration found here).
Santorum is just reflecting the GOP’s self-centered delusion that US peoples will take to all this mastodonic-amount of hypocritical, sanctimonious bullshit.
Of course, Rick has already pooped in his mess kit — in 2008 he slashed and burned all non-Catholics, claiming “…Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it…”
The key words here is the exact same for all religious nutcases, ‘as I see it.’
And it’s not just Christianity, but all religions.
A most-interesting view on this horror comes via Juan Cole yesterday morning: Religion’s reality is in the eye of the beholder, and Santorum ain’t much different than his comrades in the Middle East.
Money bit:
Moreover, Santorum’s approach to religion and social policy is reminiscent of Muslim fundamentalist parties such as al-Nahda in Tunisia.
Just as Santorum has excommunicated Obama and the other mainline Protestants, so Muslim fundamentalists such as Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966) in Egypt declared mainstream Muslims to have departed from the faith.
In Islam this is called Takfir or declaring someone to be an unbeliever even if the person considers him or herself a believer.
Sunni Muslim authorities, and even the Muslim Brotherhood, reject the practice of takfir.
Thus, Santorum is more extreme in this regard than the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
Way-odd, yet way-obvious.
One good thing — this is just the GOP, and Republicans as a whole, unpeeled banana are staying away from the polls during this entire presidential race, like in Florida where voting in the primary earlier this month was down 14 percent from 2008, despite an increase of 25,000 more registered Republicans the last four years: “They are voting with their feet and simply not showing up,” said Christopher Mann, a political science professor at the University of Miami.
And long with Florida, the rank-and-file party people are indeed just just not showing up — turnout down 26 percent in Nevada, 6 percent in Colorado, 23 percent in Minnesota and 58 percent in Missouri.
In November, or maybe way-before then, the GOP wished they’d lost their religion.
Aspirin My Ass
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In the 1965 movie, ‘Harlow,’ was the first time I’d heard the aspirin between the knees routine when the bombshell actress (played by bombshell Carroll Baker) first arrived in Hollywood and wondered how to survive.
Paraphrasing, as I can’t locate a screenplay anywhere online, she asks some slimy producer, who responds with a nasty smile, “Aspirin.”
Harlow kind of goes, “Huh?” Or words to that effect.
Another nasty smile — “Take an aspirin, and hold it tight between your knees.”
In high school when I saw that terrible movie, don’t remember any of it except that little exchange near the beginning, and for some unknown reason, took the whole sequence as very suggestive, and much-image producing, but had never really thought about it until this week.
(Illustration found here).
Slimy assholes are the same down through the ages.
The most-ludicrous, and one-sided debates in recent memory is the current foam-blather over birth control — even maybe one of the most-nefarious institutions around nowadays (with a warped, cruel 2,000-year history), the Catholic Church, has weighted in talking out of their hypocritical ass about it.
Dumbest yet, however, came from Foster Friess, the mega-wealthy shithead who’s been keeping Rick Santorum alive in the GOP presidential sweepstakes.
Friess vomited up this shit yesterday talking with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell– from TPM:
Mitchell: Do you have any concerns about some of his comments on social issues, contraception, about women in combat, and whether that would hurt his general election campaign would he be the nominee?
Friess: I get such a chuckle when these things come out.
Here we have millions of our fellow Americans unemployed, we have jihadist camps being set up in Latin America, which Rick has been warning about, and people seem to be so preoccupied with sex.
I think it says something about our culture.
We maybe need a massive therapy session so we can concentrate on what the real issues are.
And this contraceptive thing, my gosh, it’s such inexpensive.
Back in my day, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives.
The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.
Mitchell: Excuse me, I’m just trying to catch my breath from that, Mr. Friess, frankly.
Frankly, Andrea, you should have first kicked or punched funny-guy Foster right-square in the balls.
He’d then have to eat some aspirin product by the handfuls.
What a horribly-humongous asshole.
Of course, it runs in the family, or in this case, the party.
Also yesterday, the US House Oversight Committee was supposed to hold a hearing on the whole President Obama/contraceptive blather, but the committee chair, Darrell Issa, forbade females from testifying.
Issa, a self-centered, nit-twit Republican, claimed females weren’t needed.
Via Think Progress, Issa blubbered: “As the hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception but instead about the Administration’s actions as they relate to freedom of religion and conscience, he believes that Ms. Fluke (the single female witness) is not an appropriate witness.”…Issa also dismissed the Democrats’ woman witness as a “college student’ who does not “have the appropriate credentials” to testify before his committee.
How could Issa in the same breath use religion and conscience as a showcase for all those one-sided goings-on?
Does make one really pissed off, huh?
This comment by a female from the above post retorted just right: Typical Republicans. We don’t even get dinner before they try to screw us.
Read here about what Ms. Fluke’s testimony what have been — financial, medical and just plain common, compassionate sense.
Republicans as a group are really, really f**ked up.
Santorum for his twitchy part tried to dodge his sugar daddy’s big mouth, claiming Foster just tossed out a “stupid joke,” which was “in bad taste.”
Speaking of bad taste — the entire political spectrum in the US is a showcase for a nasty, ugly bad taste down in the throat which wants to explode out into big, huge, hairy chunks of distaste.
Foster may have gotten “a chuckle” out of this whole thing, US peoples may not think it so funny.
True, but humorless:
(Illustration found here).
Bayer, anyone.
Weather What?
Filed Under Bullshit, Cloud gazing, Environment, Finance | Leave a Comment
Old age don’t excuse.
Seagrass that spans 2,000 miles of the Mediterranean Sea, considered the earth’s oldest living thing and supports “marine ecosystems that rank among the most valuable on earth in terms of biodiversity and production” could be dying due to our deteriorating environment: “The seagrass in the Mediterranean is already in clear decline due to shoreline construction and declining water quality and this decline has been exacerbated by climate change,” Professor Carlos Duarte, a member of the research team, told The Daily Telegraph. “If climate change continues, the outlook for this species is very bad.”
Another fly in the ointment, but ‘this species‘ could just as well be mankind.
And the real-real-big problem (beyond the horror of the environment)?
Greedy assholes, that’s what.
From the abstract of a study at Climate Change: Weather extremes have no effect on aggregate public opinion. Promulgation of scientific information to the public on climate change has a minimal effect. The implication would seem to be that information-based science advocacy has had only a minor effect on public concern, while political mobilization by elites and advocacy groups is critical in influencing climate change concern.
Species destruction by a extremely-small group of that species.
(Illustration found here).
A lot of people have sold their physical souls — and the physical souls of their childlren and grandchildren — all for chunks of cash to fight the wall of evidence and deny mankind has/is creating global warming.
Despite the literal nose on the face of a Texas drought, climate-change deniers are doing more than just creating confusion for the unwashed, nearly-dumb-ass masses who really don’t understand except what blurts off the TV, but hindering/way-slowing any action that could attack this most-likely the greatest threat facing humanity in all of world history.
I shit thee not.
DeSmogBlog has obtained a trove of horrible documents from the Heartland Institute, a massive climate denying operation that spews toxic bullshit at the highest pollution levels.
The documents show how this one lying organization raises funds — has one big anonymous donor that gives millions — plans strategy and works its nefarious magic on various talking points.
From a January 2012 memo:
“We will also pursue additional support from the Charles G. Koch Foundation.
They returned as a Heartland donor in 2011 with a contribution of $200,000.
We expect to push up their level of support in 2012 and gain access to their network of philanthropists, if our focus continues to align with their interests.
Other contributions will be pursued for this work, especially from corporations whose interests are threatened by climate policies.”
Underline my emphasis — these clowns are doing to climate science what they’re also doing to the US political system via Citizens United.
And a post at Climate Central on the Heartland bullshit and this unknown donor-asshole:
The co-ordinated effort to undermine the teaching of climate science in U.S. classrooms has been noted before, but this still takes the breath away.
Let’s just repeat that sentence so it can be fully digested: “His effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain — two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.”
So, we have an anonymous millionaire donor — whose agenda and/or vested interest we know not — funding an effort to discredit the teaching of climate science in schools?
How can that ever be justified or considered democratic, let alone judged to be in the pupils’ best interests?
Of course, who cares about any best interests?
The Heartland Institute bullshit has created a energetic firestorm on the InterWebs — read through a list at just about all the important climate sites, and some newsie ones, too.
Up here on the northern coast of California the early morning is cold and overcast with a little rain predicted for today — whether we can weather the weather is not the question.
What the weather will do next?
Negative Funny
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There’s something way-perverted here — happiness is a warm gun.
Best. Parent. Ever. Tommy Jordan for president.
That’s the response Jordan is getting from tens of thousands of people on the Internet after a YouTube video featuring the North Carolina dad shooting up his 15-year-old daughter’s laptop with a .45 went viral this week.
Sure, there’s a shitload of frustration out there, but dude WTF — that freakin’ laptop ain’t the problem.
(Illustration found here).
As a single parent who raised five kids — four them daughters — the whole scene is demanding, but at least one parent has to be an adult.
And one don’t need to be a gun-slinging asshole to make a point.
This crazed frustration is also warming up the workplace — even on the eve of heart-love day.
Economics and the sense of either drowning or maybe just treading water in a most-unequal financial situation could lead to all kinds of bad shit:
A tight job market, combined with stagnant wages and less upward mobility can leave workers feeling frustrated.
In this environment, animosity between coworkers stemming from personality conflicts, differing work styles, or competition can be amplified, resulting in a wide variety of workplace problems, from lost productivity to increased and open hostility, according to the workplace experts at global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.
“It is no secret that as the economy continues to recover from a deep recession many workplaces are understaffed and overworked.
“With the pace of hiring still relatively slow, a lot of workers feel stuck and may be more sensitive to the negative aspects of their jobs,” said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
“It might be a stretch to call workplaces a ‘powder keg,’ but managers should be on the lookout for signs of worker hostility and be prepared to act.
Often in situations where managers are aware of a problem between two or more coworkers, they merely look the other way, letting the employees work it out amongst themselves.
This may work in some situations, but in others, this hands-off approach can have disastrous results,” said Challenger.
One just needs to chill the f*ck out.
And some phoney frustration, and a lot of drama-queen anger will be coming quick today from Republicans as President Obama unveils his 2013 federal budget, a big cha-chang will be an aim to tax the wealthy, making the rich pay their “far share,” however: But given the intense acrimony in Washington, especially on budget issues, few provisions in the document are likely to ever become law.
Especially upsetting the rich — the GOP won’t have it.
So says nasty-tongued US Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on TV yesterday — McConnell is so full of himself, he’ll introduce the budget bill himself:
“I offered President Obama’s budget, since the Democrats didn’t seem to want to develop their own budget and didn’t want to vote for his. His budget was defeated 97 to nothing,” McConnell said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
…
“Senate Democrats haven’t passed a budget in a thousand days, even though the law requires it,” said McConnell.
Mainly because Republicans say NO to everything that comes from anywhere near Obama.
And it’s all dumb, as witnessed by a speech this weekend by pollster Scott Rasmussen at the GOP CPAC crazy show, who told the knotty crowd they’re way too nasty.
From Dana Milbank at the Washington Post:
Rasmussen had put his finger on a major problem for Republicans in 2012, and conservatives in particular:
At a time when the national mood has begun to improve, they remain nattering nabobs of negativism.
At CPAC, any hint of a “positive step” was buried in vitriol.
And Paul Krugman in his post this morning at at the New York Times says about the same thing, but calling the GOP problem as ‘Severe Conservative Syndrome.’
The money bit:
How did American conservatism end up so detached from, indeed at odds with, facts and rationality?
For it was not always thus.
After all, that health reform Mr. Romney wants us to forget followed a blueprint originally laid out at the Heritage Foundation!
My short answer is that the long-running con game of economic conservatives and the wealthy supporters they serve finally went bad.
For decades the G.O.P. has won elections by appealing to social and racial divisions, only to turn after each victory to deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy — a process that reached its epitome when George W. Bush won re-election by posing as America’s defender against gay married terrorists, then announced that he had a mandate to privatize Social Security.
When one has a mean spirit, it’s hard to soften the edges.