Greenland Faces Tipping Point For 23 Foot Sea Level Rise

Why is this not all over the evening news?

Susan Kraemer

Sep 26 |22:08

Last Updated on Sun, 26 Sep 2010 23:05

When a gigantic 100 square mile ice island broke away from Greenland at the beginning of August, during what scientists are calling the hottest year so far globally on record, Congressman Ed Markey invited scientists to testify on the largest such event in nearly 50 years before the House committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.
If the ice on Greenland melts, scientists have long said that there will be a 23 feet rise in sea levels submerging coastal cities like Los Angeles, London and New Orleans. The scientists testifying this month told Rep. Markey's committee, Greenland could reach a tipping point, causing it to melt, once the world's average temperatures rise 2 degrees celsius (3.6 degrees fahrenheit), which one of them said could happen within the next decade.

The US media has completely ignored this testimony, all through August, and now, all through September. It should be household knowledge by now. It is not.
The hearing was held by Rep. Markey (D) who chairs the House committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.
According to the UK Guardian,  Richard Alley, a geosciences professor at Pennsylvania State University, testified ...
"Sometime in the next decade we may pass that tipping point which would put us warmer than temperatures that Greenland can survive," adding that a rise in the range of 2 degrees celsius to 7 degrees celsius would mean the melting of Greenland's ice sheet -which is about 8,400 feet of ice.
Low-lying cities around the planet from Hong Kong to New York would be submerged.
"What is going on in the Arctic now is the biggest and fastest thing that nature has ever done," said Richard Alley,  a geo-sciences professor at Pennsylvania State University.
Robert Bindschadler, a research scientist at the University of Maryland, cautioned "While we don't believe it is possible to lose an ice sheet within a decade, we do believe it is possible to reach a tipping point in a few decades in which we would lose the ice sheet in a century."
Climate change is truly a risk to the human race unlike any we have ever faced. I read of this hearing in an English newspaper - the UK Guardian. And even that news was almost immediately greeted with the usual jeers by deniers in the comment sections, who behave as if it is their job is to get in fast and poison the discourse on climate change. It's almost as if deniers are paid to pounce anytime a climate change story breaks in major news outlets, with their prompt response.
The otherwise inexplicable US media silence on this news is the result of a concerted effort by the only industry that is threatened by a switch to clean energy (the dirty energy industry). Will we just fade from this planet, a has-been race, after just 200,000 years, without our journalists in the US even telling you this news?
Do your job US journalists!

via watercheck.biz

Well, if the MSM won't do its job, we should.

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Permafrost Melts [Can you say "Tipping Point"?]

via youtube.com

We've already committed ourselves to this after pissing away 30 years of chances to head it off... without GeoEngineering and serious adaptation we've condemned ourselves to a much hotter, more violent world.
Hope it was worth it to y'all.

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Your Health Just Isn't Worth It...To Us

via youtube.com

Ah, the American Petroleum Institute, what would we do without their greedy, oily, amoral influence?

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Save Earth, Save Life

Loveland Fire Video from 12 Sep 2010

As we continue to keep an eye on the Loveland "Reservoir Road" fire, the twisty world of the InterTubes has brought a video forth... an excellent effort done by 15 year old young man named Payton Peterson. Payton indicates this video was the product of being "in the moment" and I agree, there was a definite creative spark involved!

Take a look at it, either here or on the original posting at YouTube.

Boehner Proposal Would Cut Non-Security Discretionary Programs 22 Percent, the Deepest Such Cut in Recent U.S. History — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

The Boehner proposal would continue tax cuts that average well over $100,000 a year for people making over $1 million — tax cuts that are double the entire income of the typical American household. He would do so even as his proposal would withdraw funds from basic programs and services that most Americans of ordinary means rely on, and despite the fact that CBO has rated the tax-cut extension dead last in effectiveness among an array of options for boosting the current weak economy.

via cbpp.org

AND it would cut $9 BILLION out of K-12 School Funding, Then there's his 85% claim, that stuff besides invading countries and hassling people, and robbing us of our privacy, we've raised spending on stupied stuff, like trying to get people jobs...
Read the article, and call your representatives... I can't imagine any of us REAL AMERICANS can afford what he's asking for. Oh, did you catch that bit, he wants to give his buddies that contribute to his campaign $100K tax break? I could use a $100K tax break. That would cover several years worth of taxes for me ;)
Read this and then do something about it, call your prepresentatives, your Senators and Representatives.

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Ur Union of Unemployed | BITE BACK

Spread this one around, it's what's happening and no one in the media seems to want to say it!

Taiji Dolphin Season Opens | Mother Jones

Speaking of history, activists have been so (understandably) blindsided by the cruelty and atrociousness of dolphin and whale slaughter that they've forgotten it was only after WWII that Japanese consumption of whale and dolphin meat increased. Gen. Douglas MacArthur was the one who helped Japan set up whaling fleets so Japan could feed people who were facing starvation during the American occupation.

via motherjones.com

Don't you love it when good intentions turn out to be horrible ideas?

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What Sustainable Seafood? | Mother Jones

The world's foremost certifier of safe and sustainable fisheries has just been slapped down in a new op-ed by a top-shelf collection of scientists in the latest issue of Nature. The problem is that the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is ignoring science in favor of bureaucracy, write the authors, researchers from the University of British Columbia, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and elsewhere.
The idea behind the MSC, which was established in 1997 by the World Wildlife Fund and Unilever (one of the world's largest fish retailers), was to help consumers eat fish "guilt-free" by certifying fisheries. Today, major grocery chains—Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, and Europe's Waitrose—carry the MSC's blue check-mark label as a sign of seafood sustainability.

via motherjones.com

Julia Whitty has done a great job of boiling this down for us... follow the link to see more specifics from the scientific community's concerns.

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Koch Industries Funding Fight Against Climate Change Law, Via Subsidiary | Triple Pundit: People, Planet, Profit

The Yes on 23 Committee, a.k.a. the California Jobs Initiative, a.k.a. the November ballot initiative Proposition 23 which would suspend AB32, California’s climate change law, became $2 million richer yesterday. The funding came through $1 million donation from Flint Hills Resources, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, and another $1 million by another oil refiner, Tesoro, reports the Sacramento Bee.

Flint Hills Resources, based in Wichita, Kansas, is an oil refiner and chemical supply company. Katie Stavinoha, a spokesperson for Flint Hills Resources, told Triple Pundit that the company made the $1 million donation to Yes on 23 because it believes that “implementation of AB32 will cause significant job losses and higher energy costs in the state of California and sets a bad precedent for future regulation in other states and by the Federal government.”

Koch Industries, also based in Wichita, and one of the largest private companies in the world, also owns two pipeline companies and a number of firms outside petroleum, including makers or chemicals, polymers and fertilizers. Oh, and paper. Georgia-Pacific is an indirect whole own subsidiary.

via triplepundit.com

Koch Industries Funding Fight Against Climate Change Law, Via Subsidiary | Triple Pundit: People, Planet, Profit

The Koch brothers are at it again... trying to look benevolent while the do their best to protect their piles and piles of money.

What do you think? Should billionaires be allowed to exert huge influence in our 'democratic' process? Throwing money into causes that further their profits while hurting the rest of us?

Are we really becoming a nation of "1 dollar, 1 vote"? Sure feels like it... it would seem that they even own the U. S. Supreme Court.

The "Free Market" that the GOP and most Libertarians are talking about is not a "free market". It's the Peabody Coal company store, writ large across our land.

Take a look at this article, and while you're at it, have a peek at The New Yorker's analysis of where things really stand with the Koch gang. Covert Operations
The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer

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Institute for Policy Studies: Executive Excess 2010: CEO Pay and the Great Recession

The 17th annual executive compensation survey looks at how CEOs laid off thousands while raking in millions.

via ips-dc.org

You want to read this, and think about it... then you want to look up the phone numbers for your CongressPerson and Senators and let them know how you feel about this, since it's your tax dollars that make this whole thing work. Until you get laid off that is.

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Commentary: The dumbing down of America | McClatchy

Maybe we, the people, have lost the intellectual capacity to manage a workable democracy. How else do you explain why nearly one in five Americans believes that President Barack Obama is a Muslim?
A recent poll by the nonpartisan Pew Forum found that 18 percent of all those polled -- and 31 percent of Republicans -- believe the president is a Muslim. That is up from 11 percent of all Americans last year.
Obama's faith is not a matter of public opinion. He's a baptized Christian who routinely prays with fellow Christians and invokes his "risen savior" when speaking of his faith.
He does not practice the Islamic faith. He has never been seen performing the ritual prayer, which Muslims do five times a day. He is not observing Ramadan, which requires Muslims to fast each day from Aug. 11 to Sept. 10. Nor has he made the required pilgrimage to Mecca.
It is ironic that many of the same critics who excoriated Obama for his close ties with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright now are accusing him of being a Muslim.
I suspect that a lot of people enjoy calling Obama a Muslim because they think it marks him as an outsider, an imposter, someone who assumed the presidency illegitimately. Many of those who call Obama a Muslim undoubtedly are "birthers," too, the ones who believe Obama was not born in the United States.
Or perhaps they aren't aware that Hawaii is a state.
That wouldn't surprise me. As noted, it seems that a significant number of Americans are losing the capacity to accept facts, sift through valid evidence and come to reasonable conclusions about things.
Of course, we always have had wacky conspiracy theories and always will. Some people still believe that the Apollo moon landing was a hoax, that someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK and that the government is covering up evidence of UFOs.
A 2007 New York Times-CBS poll indicated that 22 percent of Americans thought President George W. Bush knew of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in advance. A Newsweek poll that same year found that 41 percent of Americans still believed that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in planning and carrying out the Sept. 11 attacks.
Those are disturbing statistics, but the flood of misinformation has only risen, topping the levees of rationality at every turn. To a large extent, we can blame the Internet and the ease with which all the false rumors, misstatements, nutty conspiracies and outright lies are disseminated.
I am bombarded with this stuff all the time, accompanied with urgent pleas to write my congressmen, alert my friends and neighbors, send money and lock and load. Here is one example: Obama has ordered the Justice Department to immediately bar all public broadcasting of Christian religious services because they violate the separation of church and state.
Did any of the people spreading that rumor stop and think before pressing the "send" button that the president might not have the authority to do that? Religious services have been broadcast on radio and TV for decades with no constitutional challenge. In fact, wouldn't any attempt by the federal government to interfere with religious broadcasts be a violation of the separation of church and state?
Some of these rumors have a shred of truth that has been distorted to ridiculous extremes. Others are merely fantasy, the equivalent of the urban myth about alligators in the sewers of New York City.
While the Internet has been the source of many of these tall tales, it also can serve as the source of real information to dispute them. One invaluable source is snopes.com.
Go there and learn that President Bill Clinton never tried to fire "half the cattle guards" in Colorado, that Obama hasn't signed an executive order allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to resettle in the United States, and that the artificial sweetener Aspartame is not responsible for an epidemic of cancer, brain tumors and multiple sclerosis.
But even with Snopes and other legitimate sites, the misinformation continues to flow. And if we can't resolve the really stupid disputes -- like whether Obama is a Muslim or not -- then how are we going to resolve the important issues that require some nuanced thinking?
How can we talk sensibly about complex issues such as health care reform, Social Security, Afghanistan, taxes, anything that can't be summarized on a bumper sticker? How do we get past the anger and the empty-headed slogans?
How do we counteract the cynical willingness to exploit baseless fears for political gain? How do we get back to having a national discussion instead of a national shouting match?
Maybe we could start by acknowledging that Obama isn't a Muslim.

via mcclatchydc.com

I'm directly quoting the entire text, which violates fair use, but I'm thinking the comments here are important enough to make available without anyone having to do another click. Yes, I'm trying to push everyone who encounters this to actually read it.
I'd be interested to know, and I suspect James Werrell would appreciate it as well,, what do people think is the cause of something like this? Intellectual laziness? Bad genetics? Media hypnosis?
Maybe I'll find a way to set up a poll...

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Bill Nye's Climate Lab - a fun place to learn about climate change

via billsclimatelab.org

Use the link above to see this, it's not translating well here!

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Think Progress » Stimulating Hypocrisy: 114 Lawmakers Block Recovery While Taking Credit For Its Success

Congressman Mike Coffman (R-CO) Says He Will Advocate For Benefits Of Recovery Package Despite Opposition. During a segment with KUSA-TV, Rep. Coffman said: “I see myself in two roles as a congressman. I think the first role as a policymaker in Washington and the second as an advocate for people inside this district and there are elements we’ll probably be discussing – the mortgage proposal – there are probably elements that I disagree with that but if there’s somebody in my district eligible for that, I’ll fight to make sure they get them.” Coffman goes on to say, “I certainly supported infrastructure spending because it creates direct jobs in the private sector, clearly I support tax relief…it still puts money into the economy.” [KUSA-TV, 2/22/09]

-Congressman Coffman Voted Against The Recovery Package Twice [Roll Call Vote #46; Roll Call Vote #70]
-Congressman Coffman Attacked The Recovery Package, Stating: “I Think It’s Going To Have The Reverse Effect That It’s Intended To Have.” [CBS4, 2/2/09]

via thinkprogress.org

OK Colorado, were you planning on putting this bald faced liar back into office?

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Think Progress » Stimulating Hypocrisy: 114 Lawmakers Block Recovery While Taking Credit For Its Success

Senator Inhofe (R-OK) Hailed $25 Million In Stimulus Money He Called “No Stimulus … Welfare” As “Necessary Funds.” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) told CNS News last month, “I don’t think it [failed] – I know it. I said at the time, there’s no stimulus in the stimulus bill.” He also called the Recovery Act simply “welfare.” However, as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported, Inhofe has a history of stimulus hypocrisy. For instance, despite attacking the stimulus as a complete waste, Inhofe hailed $25 million dollars in stimulus money for a Tar Creek Superfund site as “great news” and “necessary funds.”

-Senator Inhofe Voted Against The Recovery Package Twice [Record Vote 59; Record Vote 60]

via thinkprogress.org

Can anyone explain to me why these people are getting away with this? Besides the usual litany of "people are stupid", "people are lazy", etc... why isn't there a huge howl coming from the Main Stream Media?

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