A bit of thin, high overcast this early Thursday morning on California’s northern coast, allowing the near-half moon to glimmer through the clouds — and it’s cold, too.
In this particular set-up, I haven’t seen any of the Quadrantid meteor shower which is supposed to be burning through earth’s upper layers this morning, creating a flare-show of about 100 meteors an hour, but off my back patio and high overhead is nothing but an ordinary calm.
Oh, well — the big show is on ground level.
In a year of terrible weather (via Climate Central): Widespread drought, super-storm Sandy, and a melting ice cap failed to revive the media’s interest in climate change in 2012, with worldwide coverage continuing its three-year slide, according to a media database maintained by the nonprofit journalism site The Daily Climate.
(Illustration: Salvador DalÃ’s ‘Alice,’ found here).
Even as the earth continues to respond to increased heat in many expected/unexpected ways, the report says overall media coverage of climate change dropped 2.4 percent last year as compared to 2011.
And despite the horror already here, not 20-30 years down the highway, it’s money, money, and more money — and still the powers-that-be can’t wrap their repugnant, corrupt and immoral brains around it.
The future is way-more expensive:
The media thrives on this kind of viral shit.
They love to use it with natural disasters especially.
Snowpocalypse, Snowmaggedon, Snowtorious B.I.G., so on and so forth.
The Frankenstorm is only the most recent of a long line of fear-inducing titles created by a media that apparently didn’t think “storm” was dramatic enough.
If you want some actual drama, consider this: The estimated cost of Hurricane Sandy is now more than $60 billion, and that doesn’t take into consideration the amount of money lost in disrupted business.
Moreover, this is the second year in a row that New York has been hit by a hurricane.
A number of environmental conditions were responsible for creating Sandy, and at least one of them, a warmer ocean, isn’t going away.
And as the ocean gets warmer, the likelihood that these storms will become both more common and more severe gets higher.
As water levels rise, coastal cities like New York, Miami, and especially New Orleans are going to be fucked, and dealing with the effects of global warming is going to cost us an unprecedented amount of money.
In other words, by not addressing climate change, we’re walking ourselves off the fiscal plank.
This deep, down, non-Alice hare-hole is horrifying — not only facing this quickly-approaching doomsville scenario in the physical world, we also have to face-down human assholes standing in the way — the current GOP seems to have been placed in position to aid in this planet’s complete destruction.
And they’re eating each other.
Yesterday Chris Christie, a freakin’ Republican, shit-caned his own people in the wake of the US House snubbing the Hurricane Sandy relief bill — he spoke truth to un-caring assholes (via HuffPost):
“There is only one group to blame for the continued suffering of these innocent victims: the House majority and their speaker, John Boehner,” he said.
“This is not a Republican or Democratic issue.
Natural disasters happen in red states and blue states and states with Democratic governors and Republican governors.
We respond to innocent victims of natural disasters, not as Republicans or Democrats, but as Americans.
Or at least we did until last night.
Last night, politics was placed before oaths to serve our citizens.
For me, it was disappointing and disgusting to watch.
Even humongous prick-like people understand: A furious Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) on Wednesday said residents of the states should not donate to House Republicans. “I’m saying right now, anyone from New York or New Jersey who contributes one penny to congressional Republicans is out of their minds,” he said.
King was almost crying when he blubbered all that out.
‘The Boner‘ Boehner jumped the snark and quickly called a vote for tomorrow on a $9 billion relief pact with a second vote Jan. 15 on a $51 billion package.
Assholes know diarrhea when they smell it.
The real horror of our deep drop down the Alice’s famous rabbit hole is the bullshit from the current view of life.
Just to see the future, check out this graphic illustration from the UK’s Guardian of why rural North Dakota glows at night — humanity’s lust for energy is killing all of us.
Go ask Alice…