Concord, Mass., a town that’s no stranger to progressive, eco-minded thinking, officially becomes one of the first municipalities in the U.S. to outlaw the sale of standard-sized, single-use bottled water.
We have passed a kind of tipping point in our relationship with the world; our actions now influence its workings at every level. It used to be that the world happened to us; now we happen to the world as well. One day, as our children survey the damaged planet they have inherited, we may hear the question ‘Are you responsible?’
reagan-was-a-horrible-president:
September 3, 1964. LBJ signs the Wilderness Act. He praises Congress:
“If the 88th had not earned already so many honorable titles, such as the education Congress, the health Congress, the full prosperity Congress, it would be remembered as the conservation Congress, because in addition to the measures before me this morning, Congress has wisely this year passed the Ozark Rivers National Riverway bill, which I signed last week; the Fire Island National Seashore bill, which is awaiting action; the Canyonlands National Park legislation, which I expect to sign shortly, creating our first new national park on this continent in 17 years.
“But Congress has done even more. Action has been taken to keep our air pure and our water safe and our food free from pesticides; to protect our wildlife; to conserve our precious water resources. No single Congress in my memory has done so much to keep America as a good and wholesome and beautiful place to live.”
Clockwise from top left: Canyonlands National Park, in 2008; Ozark National Scenic Riverways, in 2010; and Fire Island, in 2008. All photos via Flickr Creative Commons.Remember when Congress used to do things for the common good?
They can again. But you have to vote.
If you don’t vote, we get Extremist Republicans.
Man partly to blame for Antarctic ice shelf collapse
Ice extracted from Antarctica yields further evidence of the impact of man-made global warming, fueling concern for the future of ice shelves.
Romney energy policy involves more oil drilling on land, offshore
Romney’s would empower U.S. states to control drilling on federal lands he says could raise trillions of dollars in government revenue.
If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.
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Climate Change Fuels the Perfect Firestorm*
“The root of America’s wildfire crisis goes back a century, to the “Big Blowup” of 1910, which burned 3 million acres in the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana and Idaho. After the Big Blowup, American philosopher William James wrote of extinguishing wildfires as “The Moral Equivalent of War,” suggesting that American youth be conscripted into an “army enlisted against nature.” The U.S. Forest Service complied, eventually implementing an “out by 10 a.m.” policy toward all wildland fires. But in snuffing out every wildfire, managers interrupted one of the forest’s most important processes for maintaining its own health — the regular, small fires that clear out dead timber and fire-prone vegetation from woodlands. In some forests, this suppression of the natural fire cycle effectively stockpiled a century’s worth of fuel, creating explosive forests prone to burn big, fast, and hot. We’re seeing the results right now in Colorado and across the West.
Homebuilding at the edge of the forest has also exploded in recent decades, providing wildfires with new and volatile ignition sources. Census data I analyzed with the I-News Network showed that between 2000 and 2010, more than 100,000 people moved into Colorado’s most flammable forests, as marked on the state’s “red zone” map.
But the greatest impact on the most recent wildfires may well be the changing climate. “What we’re seeing really is a window into what global warming really looks like,” said Princeton University geosciences professor Michael Oppenheimer during a conference call with reporters in the days after the Colorado firestorms. “It looks like heat. It looks like fires.”
And it looks like drought. By June, Colorado’s mountains had just two percent of their normal snowpack for that time of year; with snow, streams, and forests drying up early, fires ignite weeks or months earlier.”
Solid story by a former Colorado forest wildfire firefighter at On Earth
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Bombshell: Koch-Funded Study Finds 'Global Warming Is Real', 'On The High End' And 'Essentially All' Due To Carbon Pollution | ThinkProgress*
The careful analysis by our team is laid out in five scientific papers now online at BerkeleyEarth.org. That site also shows our chart of temperature from 1753 to the present, with its clear fingerprint of volcanoes and carbon dioxide, but containing no component that matches solar activity. Four of our papers have undergone extensive scrutiny by the scientific community, and the newest, a paper with the analysis of the human component, is now posted, along with the data and computer programs used. Such transparency is the heart of the scientific method; if you find our conclusions implausible, tell us of any errors of data or analysis.
What about the future? As carbon dioxide emissions increase, the temperature should continue to rise. I expect the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about one and a half degrees over land in the next 50 years, less if the oceans are included. But if China continues its rapid economic growth (it has averaged 10 percent per year over the last 20 years) and its vast use of coal (it typically adds one new gigawatt per month), then that same warming could take place in less than 20 years.
Science is that narrow realm of knowledge that, in principle, is universally accepted. I embarked on this analysis to answer questions that, to my mind, had not been answered. I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes.
Federal court upholds Obama EPA’s climate change regulations
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concluded that the EPA’s 2009 finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and the environment was based on “an ocean of evidence,” saying the agency’s move to limit those emissions from cars and trucks was “neither arbitrary nor capricious.”
Republican Response:
“This ‘big win’ for the Obama EPA is a huge loss for every American, especially those in the heartland states which rely on fossil fuel development and the affordable energy that comes with it,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla), the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
The Republicans sycophantic worship of greed is as undeniable as global warming. Too bad global warming does not selectively kill only Republicans. Makes our job in protecting life on earth that much more difficult. Republican Inhofe and his fellow climate deniers will go down in history as the asskissingest bottom feeders ever shit on this Earth.
In addition, Mitt Romney supports nullifying EPA’s power to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
One For The EPA and Fuck the Shiteating Republican Party of Cowardly Greed
STUDY: Kardashians Get 40 Times More News Coverage Than Ocean Acidification
Ocean acidification, which is currently at levels of 30% acidity and rising, has been called “global warming’s evil twin” and may be even more deadly and destructive than global warming itself, yet it receives very little media coverage. This is a huge media fail.
Life is very sensitive to pH levels so if the ocean becomes too acidic to sustain life, well, it doesn’t just mean no more seafood. Remember the food web from 1st grade? Yeah, that’s real. It will affect everything. What rich people are wearing kind of pales in comparison. (Not that there’s anything wrong with it but it’s not news, it’s entertainment, so keep it out of news media.)
Don’t wash those jeans, freeze them
A typical pair of blue jeans uses almost 1,000 gallons of water during its lifecycle!
As Arctic tundra warms, shrubs become trees
Scientists became aware of the flourishing plant life when they were informed by indigenous nomads said they were losing sight of reindeer in the trees.
