“MINNEAPOLIS – The Minnesota Department of Public Safety recorded 39 tornadoes, 26 funnel clouds, 11 reports of damage from thunderstorm winds and 69 reports of hail in Thursday’s storms. “

39 tornadoes in one day.

During our heat wave this summer, which seemed to last about two months, we had constant violent storms, downpours and tornado warnings in Minnesota.  We are all relieved that our heat wave and humidity that produced all these storms is finally easing off.   It’s hard not to ascribe our bizarre weather to climate change, especially now that we know for sure that there’s no doubt climate change is happening now and is increasing with time.  This month we had outbreaks of multiple tornadoes, like these:

This multiple-tornado cell was seen near Appleton, Minnesota on August 12, 2010.

The photos below were taken on August 12th in Minnesota too.

Want to see more? There are dozens of tornado videos from this year on Youtube.

I’m now on vacation for at least a week.

Meanwhile, here  is something for everyone to consider.  In 2007, Andrew Revkin wrote a series of articles in the NYT called “The Climate Divide“.  It was about how people all over the world are preparing to “adapt” to climate change.  Adaptation actually just means survival. And we know that the  wealthy are already working to insulate themselves from climate risk.  Are the rest of us?  Not so much, because someone, somewhere, is funding the outrageous myth that climate change isn’t real — even as they themselves prepare for it.

Many people do know it’s happening and are doing what they can.  Here is just one way they are experimenting with survival — the idea of living and working on the water.

For private firms, it means experimenting with new housing, as Dura Vermeer is doing here in Maasbommel [the Netherlands]. The company has also built a floating greenhouse near the Hague and, along with other firms, has received government approval to try other kinds of housing in 15 areas in the country at risk for flooding. Other proposals — for entire floating cities, for instance — are still preliminary, but are being talked about seriously as a possible way forward.

It’s worth thinking about how and where to live in the near future, but I don’t know of any type of building that is really tornado-proof.   I hope someone comes up with a structure that can withstand 300+ mph winds soon.

Must-read editorial of the week: Take Climate Change Off The Back Burner – And Do It Now. Click here to read it.

Media breakthroughs on climate change are happening everywhere this summer due to the extreme weather all over the planet.  It’s like a little lightbulb went off over their heads.   ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer looked amazed last week at the news on global warming, asking, Could this extreme weather be caused by global warming? The answer was less important (a big yes) than the fact that she brought it up, and then actually interviewed a scientist and did not interview a denier.  (Why should anyone interview deniers?)  A weatherman on CNN finally admitted global warming is happening too. This is progress, finally.  Now if only we could get the politicians to pay attention to us.  From ThinkProgress:

One of America’s most influential global warming skeptics, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers, has finally admitted that global warming is “caused by man.” During the hottest year ever recorded, following the hottest decade ever recorded, Russia is burning under heat not seen for at least 1000 years. Heat waves have set records throughout the United States and throughout the world. A monsoon season of unprecedented intensity has displaced tens of millions of people across Asia, threatening the nuclear states of China, Pakistan, India, and North Korea. The largest iceberg to calve from Greenland in fifty years has added to its precipitous decline of ice mass since 1980. Decades ago, scientists predicted these consequences of burning fossil fuels and heating the planet.

Yesterday, in what CNN anchor Rick Sanchez billed a “good, smart conversation,” Myers actually recognized the reality of a “consequential global warming caused by man,” when not repeating climate-denier talking points . . . .

He then sort of ruined it by bringing up “sunspots” and the sun in general, which is notoriously and reliably hot. Of course, climate scientists allow for known factors such as the sun’s cycles and heat.  But the sun has been quiet for two years, not active.

Unfortunately, “scientist expert” Chad Myers (actually a bachelor-degree meteorologist, not a climate scientist) also made the blatantly false claim that we are “now in a very hot sun cycle.” [NOPE]  In fact, the sun is just emerging from an extremely low two-year minimum of activity, with years to go before it will reach another peak. Since 1980, average solar irradiance has been on the decline, even as global temperatures have risen.

Americans believe in global warming, according to new surveys, and contrary to right-wing opinion, so we are wondering why the weather “experts”  often skirt the issue.  Not always, but especially [...]

Facilities on the Iowa State Univ. campus in Ames, Iowa, are flooded on August 12.

What do Pakistan, China, and Ames, Iowa have in common? They are all suffering from torrential rains leading to massive flooding.  Right now, 2/3rds of Pakistan is under water. Of any summer on record, this one is the wettest and hottest ever seen on much of the planet.  This is what climate change looks like.

James Hansen, NASA scientist, climate change scientist and author, and other scientists, released their latest findings on the climate today.  According to Hansen, the graphic below shows that “through the first seven months 2010 is warmer than prior warm years. The difference of +0.08°C compared with 2005, the prior warmest year, is large enough that 2010 is likely, but not certain, to be the warmest year in the GISS record.”

The article from Hansen introducing the findings, which you can download at the bottom after the break.

What Global Warming Looks Like

The July 2010 global map of surface temperature anomalies (Figure 1), relative to the average July in the 1951-1980 period of climatology, provides a useful picture of current climate. It was more than 5°C (about 10°F) warmer than climatology in the eastern European region including Moscow. There was an area in eastern Asia that was similarly unusually hot. The eastern part of the United States was unusually warm, although not to the degree of the hot spots in Eurasia.

There were also substantial areas cooler than climatology, including a region in central Asia and the southern part of South America. The emerging La Nina is now moderately strong, as evidenced by the region cooler than climatology along the equator in the eastern and central Pacific Ocean.

The 12-month running mean of global temperature (Figure 2) achieved a record high level during the past few months. Because the current La Nina will continue at least several months, and likely strengthen somewhat, the 12-month running mean temperature is expected to decline during the second half of 2010.

Will calendar year 2010 be the warmest in the period of instrumental data? Figure 3 shows that through the first seven months 2010 is warmer than prior warm years. The difference of +0.08°C compared with 2005, the prior warmest year, is large enough that 2010 is likely, but not certain, to be the warmest year in the GISS record. However, because of the cooling effect of La Nina in the remainder of the year, there is a strong possibility that the 2005 and 2010 global temperatures will be sufficiently close that they will be practically [...]

Serrada Futurista

August 12 – 17, 2010
Serrada di Folgaria (TN)

Second installment of ‘Serrada Futurista’ – a celebration of Futurism in Folgaria.

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“The annual summertime dead zone caused by low oxygen levels in water along the Gulf of Mexico shoreline this year is twice as big as last year’s, stretching 7,722 square miles across Louisiana’s coast well into Texan waters, scientists with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium announced Monday.

. . . . The size of this year’s dead zone might actually be larger than mapped. LUMCON’s R/V Pelican research ship found a large area of hypoxia, or low-oxygen water, along the coast west of Galveston Bay and offshore in that area, but was unable to finish mapping there before returning to map an area east of the Atchafalaya River.

“This is the largest such area off the upper Texas coast that we have found since we began this work in 1985,” said Nancy Rabalais, executive director of LUMCON and chief scientist for the dead-zone cruise.”

Read more here.

Little by little, we are apparently killing the Gulf of Mexico.  What body of water will be next? Thanks to all the oil and the dispersants now in the Gulf, the dead zone will probably be even bigger next year.  I don’t know at what point people will stop poisoning their environment (and themselves) before they “get it” but obviously we aren’t quite at that point yet.

Along those same lines, that of our destroying our environment willingly, this op-ed piece was published today in the New Orleans newspaper, the Times-Picayune:

“While serving on a panel in Denver discussing media coverage of the Gulf oil spill, I was asked why newspapers hadn’t used the tragedy to start a national discourse about fossil fuel consumption and alternative energy.

I had thought about the idea, but in that moment, I was forced to admit something that no dedicated journalist ever wants to. . . . .

I’m simply overwhelmed by the basic facts: Americans consume the equivalent of 20 million barrels of oil a day. That means that in the 100 days of BP’s spill, we consumed 400 times as much oil as the earth managed to spew out of that broken well.”

The facts are simple: we will never break our addiction to oil as long as oil and coal and other fossil fuels remain less expensive to use than renewable energy. That is why we need a big carbon fee and that is why it’s so hard to get this done. There is no political will in Washington whatsoever to impose a big carbon fee on anyone right now, because 90% (or the majority) of our politicians are  cowards who think only of their next election.  That is political reality clashing hard with environmental reality, and environmental reality is long term so it always loses.

There is oil in (some of) the Gulf’s seafood.  Crabs have oil in them. Last night ABC News ran a story about a fisherman in the Gulf who pulled up oiled shrimp.  This photo is from Nola.com‘s website yesterday, August 9th. If you want to believe President Obama and eat seafood that might have oil in it, that’s up to you, but it is clear that our government is worried more about the economy and jobs reports more than peoples’ health.  That means we all have to be better watchdogs for our own health.

There is also still a lot of oil in the Gulf, despite what the politicians insist is a magical situation with oil vanishing in 2-3 weeks. Here is a list of recent Gulf oil sightings.

Now that we can see that the government is not concerned with oil in the Gulf food chain, as pictured on the left, people need to get involved to end the use of oil, coal and other fossil fuels in favor of clean energy.  Our health depends on it. Crude oil has been linked to cancer. If that’s not enough reason to end our use of oil, I don’t know what would be. A temporary moratorium on deep-water oil drilling in the Gulf is not enough. It should be banned.

It’s sad but true:  The U.S. government is not particularly concerned about our health, despite the FDA and the EPA and various other departments.  In fact, for many years contaminated oil and waste has been dumped in peoples’ neighborhoods.  Usually, these are minority areas.  Can you believe it?  Only in America do officials dump coal ash waste and recent Gulf crude oil waste in poor or minority neighborhoods.  This is documented here and here.

The toll on the climate from oil spills and oil burning is enormous, but the health toll on people is also very high.

Below, two women in a recent video from the Center for American Progress discuss health issues and food safety issues below (after the break). You can decide for yourself if these people are being completely honest. (The Center for American Progress is, in some ways, an extension of the Obama administration). At the moment, I don’t believe that BP, the government, or the EPA have much credibility on the safety of the water in the Gulf. If we are to believe the EPA and Carol Browner, millions of barrels of oil just disappeared in a couple of weeks.  We are now seeing evidence to the contrary, and a lot of it, as fishermen and others document what they are witnessing in the Gulf water and marshes.   Also after the break, an article about the health dangers of oil and dispersants.  The two in the [...]

Corsa Futurista

10k race combining sport and culture

September 4, 2010
9:00pm
Circo Massimo, Rome

Organized by O.S.O. – Old Stars Ostia – GURU project & passion

Plus, you can buy a commemorative t-shirt here.

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HOPEDALE, LA.— In the small towns of coastal Louisiana, the widespread consensus is that the oil is far from gone.

Fishermen return from working on cleanup crews or from recreational angling trips with stories of crabs whose lungs are black with oil, or of oysters with shells covered in sludge. They take photos and carry tarballs home like talismans to show what they have seen. They talk about their fears with anyone who will listen, and often their voices are tinged with panic.

Yet a government report released last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that 75 percent of the oil has been cleaned up, dispersed or otherwise contained. And the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reports that of all the samples of seafood that have been tested since the oil spill, none have shown evidence of contamination.

Confused?  Well, hello. The FDA and the government are misleading you.  Wouldn’t be the first time.  With the economy so bad, they are putting business and industry over your health. Wouldn’t be the first time they did that, either.  Trust the fishermen and eyewitnesses.

Still want some Louisiana oysters? It’s probably best to give up Gulf seafood for a while, and even the fishermen are agreeing with that.   What to replace it with?  Maybe seafood from elsewhere.   The problem is that Chinese seafood, another major source for American seafood eaters,  is not safe either. If you’re concerned about your health, you probably won’t eat fish from China.  Look on any fish package in your grocery story.  If it’s cod or tilapia or another common fish, it’s probably from China or Brazil.  Americans actually don’t get much seafood in their stores from the Gulf.  But thanks to fossil fuels, we are polluting ourselves out of at least one major food supply all over the world.  (See story below this too).

While some in the coastal seafood industry agree with these assessments, a majority seem to view the news with a sense of betrayal.

“The cleanup isn’t even close to being done,” said Karen Hopkins of Dean Blanchard Seafood, which accounts for about 11 percent of the U.S. shrimp supply, on the barrier island of Grand Isle.

Read the rest of the story here.

For instance, my Congresswoman, the climate change denier Michele Bachmann (R-MN), has taken almost $84,000 in dirty oil and coal money.   That’s not all that much for a Senator, but it’s quite a lot for a Congresswoman from one little district in Minnesota.  Even the progressive Al Franken has taken about $21,000 in oil and coal money.  That does influence them, and they should not be taking any of that money.  The reason is that it colors their votes, it prevents clean climate change legislation from even being voted on, and it is harming everyone in the country.  Senator Amy Klobuchar has taken $45,000 in dirty energy money, and most of it from coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel of all.  I have to say that shocks me a little bit.  It’s possible to win elections without taking money from fossil fuels, isn’t it?

It’s not just people running for office that are tainted by their loyalties to Big Oil. This morning on a TV talk show, Carol Browner, the President’s environmental director, claimed that scientists are looking at the Gulf water and the “tests show nothing of concern”. That is an outrageous statement and has to be a deliberately  misleading claim by our government of what is still in the water.  People who live down there report oil being seen every day.

This is no minor political game, because that oil is very dangerous to human health. What does crude oil contain? Cancer-causing agents, for one thing. The next article here will contain more information on the health effects of this oil spill, but meanwhile here is a photo taken by a Gulf resident.  This photo was taken on August 6th, and you can see many more here.

Eat the seafood at your own risk . . . . Photo taken August 6, 2010

Read Carol Browner’s misleading claims on Meet the Press here and see the entire broadcast there too.  She can’t possibly believe her own words when she says that most of the oil is gone — just disappeared. 

MS. BROWNER: I think it’s also important to note that our scientists have done an initial assessment and more than three-quarters of the oil is gone, the vast majority of the oil is gone.

That defies all common sense. Do they really expect us to believe that?

I can’t believe our government is [...]

BP announced that the well had reached a static condition, a ‘significant milestone’, and it was able to stop pumping mud into the well.

Yesterday we got that great news. They continue to cement it shut today, and we can only hope it holds and doesn’t leak from below as they finish the relief wells.  We have also gotten news that most of the oil is gone, the dispersants aren’t really very toxic, and dispersants mixed with oil are no more toxic than oil.  That would be good news too, if only it were true.   Crude oil is horribly toxic and causes cancer, so it’s not saying much about dispersants to say that mixing them with oil makes them no more toxic than something that is extremely toxic. We have also gotten the improbable news that about 75% of the oil has magically disappeared.

Many reports from regular people and trained scientists, not government or media people, are coming in saying that the oil has not disappeared. The dispersants and the oil have killed hundreds if not thousands of animals, and dead wildlife carcasses are being destroyed, and we are far from being out of the woods yet with fish safety.

Read this excellent article at NRDC:

“Several fishermen involved in BP’s cleanup operation have told me that crews who’ve spotted oil on the water and have tried to skim it up but were waived off by BP and told to evacuate the area. They say BP then flew in dispersant planes to spray it so it sank.

“They’re just trying to hide it,” said one cleanup worker. “Then they’ll  leave us with nothing to fish.”’

Dispersants just sink the oil. Photo from NRDC.

Read the interviews after the break.

DemocracyNow interviewed Environmental activist Jerry Cope.

Cope has spent the last few weeks traveling along the Gulf Coast and experiencing firsthand the contamination in the air and water. In an article being published onHuffington Post, Cope argues that instead of celebrating the allegedly vanishing oil, we should be concerned about the disappearance of marine life in the Gulf. He describes the Gulf as a “kill zone” and looks into where the marine animals have gone, given that BP has reported a relatively low number of dead animals from the spill.

Also interviewed was Antonia Juhasz, an oil industry expert, says that  BP’s “Missing Oil” has actually turned up in  St. Mary’s Parish, LA.   That the animal carcasses are disappearing is absolutely not normal.  Rikki Ott, marine toxicologist from the Exxon Valdez spill, said that all the animal carcasses from that spill were kept under lock and key until the lawsuits were completely.  In this case, BP, (or the government), is destroying the evidence.  The interview is below, in abbreviated form, so [...]

The MODIS / Aqua satellite image above, taken at 2 pm Central time on July 28, shows oil slicks and sheen (encircled with orange line) that we think are likely attributable to the BP / Deepwater Horizon oil spill, spread out across 11,832 square miles (30,644 km2) in the Gulf of Mexico.

I have been hearing on radio shows that people in the Gulf are still observing oil, oil sheen, oil in the grass and seaweed, and there are no cleanup people anywhere to be seen.  It’s like if it’s not being recorded on TV every day, most of the country doesn’t see it, and BP is apparently not going to clean it up.

That’s not right. BP needs to be there cleaning up what oil remains. It doesn’t help that our government has already reopening water for fishing.  Has water testing been extensively done? Has the EPA really exhaustively tested the waters where fish is being taken? That would be hard to believe. I would never eat seafood from the Gulf yet — maybe in a year or two.  I don’t care how many businesses close, if that seafood has oil in it, or chemical dispersants, it’s not fit to eat and it could harm people.   A person’s health is more important than an industry’s bottom line. That is my personal viewpoint, and I’m very concerned that fishing is already opening up in many areas of the Gulf where people are observing visible oil nearby.   Oil doesn’t disappear that fast. The Corexit and other dispersants don’t just disappear quickly either.  How about the non-visible oil, the oil in the water column? If the oil has sunk to the bottom, it will stay there, and it’s still in the food chain.

Below is a video of how people are concerned that BP is not sticking around to clean up the oil in the Gulf, as they said they would. The video is from PBS, and it also reports that there is still a great deal of oil in the Gulf.  Are people really eating the seafood from that area?  They are taking a big chance with their lives, if they are. This video is from August 5th, 2010.

Read the Transcript: http://to.pbs.org/9f5T5Q

The government reports that most of the oil is gone from Gulf waters and shorelines but assures that cleanup efforts will continue. Tom Bearden reports from Venice, Louisiana.

One man in this video says: “There is tons of oil in the [...]

350.org co-founder Bill McKibben write the article below on how to change the dynamics of the climate debate in our country. They want it spread around, so here it is. It should probably be published in every newspaper in the country. Why isn’t McKibben a syndicated columnist? If only the general public was interested enough to read articles like this. They are the people who need to read these articles, not McKibben’s many already-fans.

We’re Hot as Hell and We’re Not Going to Take It Any More

Bill McKibben, TomDispatch regular and author of the invaluable new book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, assesses our national moment in the heat and just how wilted we’ve seemed to be.. . . .

Three Steps to Establish a Politics of Global Warming
By Bill McKibben

Try to fit these facts together:

* According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record.

* A “staggering” new study from Canadian researchers has shown that warmer seawater has reduced phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain, by 40% since 1950.

* Nine nations have so far set their all-time temperature records in 2010, including Russia (111 degrees), Niger (118), Sudan (121), Saudi Arabia and Iraq (126 apiece), and Pakistan, which also set the new all-time Asia record in May: a hair under 130 degrees. I can turn my oven to 130 degrees.

* And then, in late July, the U.S. Senate decided to do exactly nothing about climate change. They didn’t do less than they could have — they did nothing, preserving a perfect two-decade bipartisan record of no action. Senate majority leader Harry Reid decided not even to schedule a vote on legislation that would have capped carbon emissions.

I wrote the first book for a general audience on global warming back in 1989, and I’ve spent the subsequent 21 years working on the issue. I’m a mild-mannered guy, a Methodist Sunday School teacher. Not quick to anger. So what I want to say is: this is fucked up. The time has come to get mad, and then to get busy.

For many years, the lobbying fight for climate legislation on Capitol Hill has been led by a collection of the most corporate and moderate environmental groups, outfits like the Environmental Defense Fund. We owe them a [...]

Layout around Deepwater/BP oil well site

The “static kill” procedure reportedly began today, attempting to kill the leaking BP oil well for good.   It’s hard to know whether what we are being told is correct however, because BP has lied to us in the past, and we know now that BP is running the underwater video in loops.  This has been observed by several people.  The rerunning of the video was observed by ‘oil industry expert’ Bob Cavnar, and he reported it tonight on Countdown.    See video here.  Have we ever been sure the video provided by BP was live?

“Based on the results of the injectivity test, BP started pumping drilling mud today at 21:00 (UK) and 15:00 (CDT) as part of the static kill operations. All operations are being carried out with the guidance and approval of the National Incident Commander.”  (See another video here.)

Why they are approaching this with a static kill procedure is something of a mystery. The static kill is coming at the problem via the capping stack at the top of the well again, as opposed to using only the relief wells.  They are also back to using the toxic drilling mud again, which is not normal mud at all.

“…the mud contains ethylene glycol, a highly toxic chemical commonly used in anti-freeze, and caustic soda, a compound more commonly known as lye that is is also toxic. . . . . BP dumped tens of thousands of gallons of the sludge into the well as part of the failed “top-kill” attempt in May, most of which ended up in the ocean.”

Read more about the mud at Mother Jones. Are  they using the same drilling mud in this “static kill” procedure?  There is no reason to believe they are not.  It seems like the EPA can’t tell BP to do anything, including poisoning our land, our water, and our wildlife.  I guess we should feel lucky that BP even felt like stopping the leak at all.

The relief wells, we are told by Thad Allen, will now be used for a “bottom kill”.  Bob Cavnar believes that primarily attacking the well from the top again is a mistake.  Even if the top kill seems to be successful, he feels that we will not be sure the well is stopped on the bottom unless the relief wells are used.

Why aren’t the relief wells being used as the primary well kill method,  after we heard from BP for months that the relief wells are the only way to stop the leak for good?

We may only know the answers to these things several months from now.  One relief well is only about 4 feet from its target.  Meanwhile, there have been some holdups in getting the final “kill” started, but apparently it has begun.  The problem is that at this [...]

A Pakistan boy is knocked down by the force from an aide helicopter

Like most extreme weather events not in the United States, our media isn’t covering this enough, or connecting it to climate change. This is the worst flooding in Pakistan in 100 years or more.  Overall, 2010 storms are bringing record rains to many parts of the world. Some of these storms are expected and seasonal, but this year they are additionally fueled by global warming, which adds extra moisture to monsoons, hurricanes, cyclones, etc.

It won’t just be Pakistan suffering from these wet, violent storms more and more in the future — they will happen in Bangladesh, India, Africa, Central America, and other coastal areas, where millions and millions of people live.  They will also happen to the Gulf coast of the U.S., where all those offshore oil drilling platforms are lined up just waiting  for the next major hurricane.

Oddly enough, “. . . . a Purdue University research group found that future climate change could influence monsoon dynamics and cause less summer precipitation, a delay in the start of monsoon season, and longer breaks between rainy periods.”  (Source)  Yet they are experiencing the opposite of that now.  It’s also possible that Purdue University’s research group was influenced by politics.

Many of these people will have to be relocated. There is also a food shortage already, and diseases like cholera beginning to take hold in the area.  Millions of people will be displaced by this and need to be fed.  This is another scenario that will repeat all over the world as climate change escalates.

“Pakistan issued new flood warnings and the country on Wednesday faced a “serious humanitarian disaster” after downpours which have affected 3.2 million people and killed up to 1,500.

A week into the crisis and as more monsoon rains lashed the country, anger was reaching boiling point among impoverished survivors complaining that they had been abandoned by the government after their livelihoods were swept away.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was to chair an emergency cabinet meeting on Wednesday to estimate the damages — expected to run into millions of dollars — and speed up the relief work”.

Read more here.

I believe severe weather events like this and coming immigration issues are why some politicians in the United States are becoming so anti-immigrant.  They can see some of the results of climate change happening already and know what is to come, even if they don’t want to admit it to the voters. I think that even the climate change deniers in Congress are well aware of the immigration situation we may be facing in 10-20 years due to climate change.  There will be millions of people in Central America and elsewhere that will want to get into the U.S. for survival when crop [...]

China knows about climate change and what a threat it represents.  It’s one reason they are investing so much in solar and wind power.  Other countries are taking action on climate change and renewable energy, more so than in the United States.  The Department of Defense in the U.S. is well aware of the threat of climate change, and they have been preparing for it for years. But it’s another matter with politicians. In the  U.S.,  politics and the mainstream media think there is still a debate that they need to have about the best way forward, and even about climate change science itself.  This dangerous viewpoint is still a part of our popular culture, despite so much evidence that climate change is the main danger we face as a country and as humans.  The DoD knows this, but they don’t communicate directly with the media or the public about it. They do write reports, though.

In its 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) (PDF), released Monday, the Department of Defense says it’s critical to craft a “strategic approach to climate and energy.”

Other countries realize this too, but the U.S. is slow to admit things that may potentially affect the status quo economy in any way.  (Our addiction to super capitalism is as bad as our addiction to fossil fuels).

The EPA has finally come out forcefully against giving climate change deniers the same credibility as people who recognize the science.

EPA Rejects 10 Petitions Charging Climate Science is Flawed

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today denied 10 petitions challenging its 2009 endangerment finding which said that climate change is real, is occurring due to emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities, and threatens human health and the environment.

EPA found no evidence to support the claims of the petitions which assert that a conspiracy invalidates the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program. On the contrary, EPA’s review of the petitions found that climate science is credible, compelling, and growing stronger.

“The endangerment finding is based on years of science from the U.S. and around the world. These petitions — based as they are on selectively edited, out-of-context data and a manufactured controversy — provide no evidence to undermine our determination. Excess greenhouse gases are a threat to our health and welfare,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson.

“Defenders of the status quo will try to slow our efforts to get America running on clean energy. [...]

Cross your fingers — the final static kill procedure begins tomorrow.  Meanwhile, those who don’t live near the Gulf are wondering where the oil in the ocean went.  (To some Americans, if you can’t see it, it must not exist).  I’ve even read columnists sarcastically wonder why everyone was so worried in the first place, and whether the media stories were overblown.   Sadly, the oil is still mostly where BP put it, in the ocean.  Some of it is in the sand on beaches.  If the oil is in the water column, or the sea bed soil, it’s still there, mixed with dispersants.  Like CO2 in the air — you can’t necessarily see it, but you can see its effects on wildlife and in some cases, the marshes are still full of oil, as is the sand.

Oil is elbow-deep under the sand in some areas.  (See photo of this at right)

BP is still defending the unprecedented amount of dispersants used to break up the oil and they are going to great pains to defend dumping poisons in the ocean.  They are getting a lot of facetime on TV too, unfortunately.  The EPA then released a new study saying that dispersants mixed with oil are no more toxic than the oil itself.  The problem with that, if you believe it, is that the oil is very toxic and is still killing wildlife every day. I just read yesterday that frustrated people are cleaning hermit crabs with Q-tips.  The EPA states:

“All eight dispersants were found to be less toxic than the dispersant-oil mixture to both test species. Louisiana Sweet Crude Oil was more toxic to mysid shrimp than the eight dispersants when tested alone. Oil alone had similar toxicity to mysid shrimp as the dispersant-oil mixtures, with exception of the mixture of Nokomis 3-AA and oil, which was found to be more toxic than oil.”

The flow rate estimate was released today and the media is telling us the oil released started out at 62,000 barrels a day, and then later went down to 53,000 barrels a day.  Wait a minute — why can they tell us this now, when the oil flow has stopped, but somehow they couldn’t do it when it was actually measurable?

All in all, we are told 4.9 million barrels of oil flowed into the Gulf.  Many people think it was twice that, or three times or even more.

However much is still there, it is “hovering”.

A Greenwire report published in the The Times put it this way:

That dispersed oil now hovers, diluted in the water column, posing a challenge for scientists to track and measure the subsea plumes. Mapping the long-term effects of the nearly 2 million gallons of dispersant used by BP PLC may well be equally difficult, given the array of unanswered questions that surround the products’ rapid breakdown of oil droplets and their chronic toxicity.

In other words, while dispersants may have helped spare [...]

Auto & Manifesti

May 1 – October 3, 2010
Museo dell’Automobile Bonfanti-Vimar, Romano d’Ezzelino (VI)

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Cartoonist Tom Toles is providing a running commentary on climate change. Will anyone pay attention?  In all seriousness, home schooling adults should not necessarily be trusted with making sure their kids are learning science. Too often, it mixes with the political and religious viewpoints of the “home schooler”.  More and more I’m also thinking that the mainstream media should not be entrusted with the news, because they are leaving far too many things unreported.  When climate change becomes obvious to everyone, far too many people are going to be incredibly surprised.

The adults aren’t alright

Everybody is worked up about the state of education in the United States. The KIDS are FALLING BEHIND. No, it’s not the KIDS, it’s the SCHOOLS. No, it’s not the SCHOOLS it’s the TEACHERS. No, it’s not the TEACHERS, it’s the PARENTS. Okay, so if we fix the schools and the teachers and the parents, will our kids stop falling behind?

I’m inclined to extend the ring of panic out one ring further. If it’s true that the supporting envelope of the home is crucial to education, might it not also be true that the supporting envelope of society is important, too? It’s not just the kids or the schools or the teachers or the parents, it’s the CULTURE. Look around. Where is the support for careful reasoning? Our political/media discourse is a jailhouse cafeteria brawl. TV is now a THOUSAND channels of drivel.

We have all just flunked our big test of dealing with the climate catastrophe because we couldn’t even agree on the science. Everyone feels entitled to their own science now. And it’s no big surprise that we can’t understand climate science, since we’re still arguing about EVOLUTION after 150 years! Good luck, science teacher. –Tom Toles

h/t to Climate Progress

The Sierra Club is working on a Beyond Coal campaign and they are sending groups out to educate the public on the dangers of coal.  The group came to my city and their presentation was worth hearing.   Coal is incredibly toxic and dangerous, and it will never be “clean,” so we have to get off coal as soon as possible.  I’ll write more about this presentation later, but one thing we all discussed was decentralizing the power grid.  Spreading the grid all over with “modules” of power generation would be beneficial for many reasons, and one is that it would prevent major blackouts.  A centralized power grid, which we have now, with large power stations,  means that if it fails, big segments of the country will find themselves without power.  It’s also a large target for terrorists.  Can you imagine a terrorist attack on a large coal ash waste pond?  It could disperse toxins and cancer-causing elements to a very big area.

Getting rid of coal plants, which we eventually have to do,  will mean we have to replace them with various types of power, an “all of the above” answer to energy.  All of the above will mean solar, wind power, geothermal, hydroelectric and probably nuclear — but not fossil fuels.  Unlike huge coal plants, the new nuclear plants can be small, or modular.  One type of small nuclear plant is discussed below, for people who are new to this idea.  The beauty of small reactors is that they can power just a city block, or a large building, or an industrial park.

The article below is an opinion piece that recently appeared in a local newspaper, and it’s unusually informative for an article like this.  From the title, it seems as though the author wants to beat wind, but I think he meant that nuclear power can outperform wind power and can even come in less expensive in the long run.  And to nuclear detractors, I’d tell them that yes, companies are investing in nuclear power. Not the giant nuclear plants of the old days but new, smaller, modular nuclear reactors.

Small reactors can beat wind

“The U.S. wind power market broke records in 2009 with 9.8 gigawatts of new projects, bringing U.S. total wind name plate capacity to 35 GW — the equivalent of 35 large coal or nuclear power plants.

But in 2009, variable winds meant that wind turbines produced an average of 27 percent of name plate power (or capacity factor) to the electric grid. Off-shore wind farms with better wind should gradually raise that capacity factor to 30 percent by 2020.

By comparison, our 104 U.S. nuclear power plants in 2010 have a total name plate capacity of 100 GW, with a capacity factor of 90 percent, providing an effective 90 GW today.

Most forecasts predict continued strong worldwide wind power growth, especially from offshore with its more consistent wind. The Department of Energy projects U.S. [...]

The 2009 State of the Climate report … draws on data for 10 key climate indicators that all point to the same finding: the scientific evidence that our world is warming is unmistakable. More than 300 scientists from 160 research groups in 48 countries contributed to the report, which confirms that the past decade was the warmest on record and that the Earth has been growing warmer over the last 50 years.

Graphic provided by NOAA

Based on comprehensive data from multiple sources, the report defines 10 measurable planet-wide features used to gauge global temperature changes. The relative movement of each of these indicators proves consistent with a warming world. Seven indicators are rising: air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, air temperature over oceans, sea level, ocean heat, humidity and tropospheric temperature in the “active-weather” layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth’s surface. Three indicators are declining: Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern hemisphere.

“For the first time, and in a single compelling comparison, the analysis brings together multiple observational records from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the ocean,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “The records come from many institutions worldwide. They use data collected from diverse sources, including satellites, weather balloons, weather stations, ships, buoys and field surveys. These independently produced lines of evidence all point to the same conclusion: our planet is warming,”

The report emphasizes that human society has developed for thousands of years under one climatic state, and now a new set of climatic conditions are taking shape. These conditions are consistently warmer, and some areas are likely to see more extreme events like severe drought, torrential rain and violent storms.

“Despite the variability caused by short-term changes, the analysis conducted for this report illustrates why we are so confident the world is warming,” said Peter Stott, Ph.D., contributor to the report and head of Climate Monitoring and Attribution of the United Kingdom Met Office Hadley Centre. “When we look at air temperature and other indicators of climate, we see highs and lows in the data from year [...]