Welcome! "What's Happenin'?" is a casual community diary (a daily series, 8:30 AM Eastern on weekdays, 10 AM on weekends and holidays) where we hang out and talk about the goings on here and everywhere.
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Good Morning!
"Goldie" Longwood Gardens. (Photo by joanneleon. October 14, 2012)
There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.
~ Willa Cather
The Doors - Riders on the storm
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News and Opinion
Dangerous Hurricane Sandy continues north past North Carolina
Posted by: Dr. Jeff Masters, 9:58 PM GMT on October 28, 2012
Sandy's storm surge a huge threat
This afternoon's 3:30 pm EDT H*Wind analysis from NOAA's Hurricane Research Division put the destructive potential of Sandy's winds at a modest 2.8 on a scale of 0 to 6. However, the destructive potential of the storm surge was record high: 5.8 on a scale of 0 to 6. This is a higher destructive potential than any hurricane observed since 1969, including Category 5 storms like Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Camille, and Andrew. The previous highest destructive potential for storm surge was 5.6 on a scale of 0 to 6, set during Hurricane Isabel of 2003. Sandy is now forecast to bring a near-record storm surge of 6 - 11 feet to Northern New Jersey and Long Island Sound, including the New York City Harbor. This storm surge has the potential to cause many billions of dollars in damage if it hits near high tide at 9 pm EDT on Monday. The full moon is on Monday, which means astronomical high tide will be about 5% higher than the average high tide for the month. This will add another 2 - 3" to water levels. Fortunately, Sandy is now predicted to make a fairly rapid approach to the coast, meaning that the peak storm surge will not affect the coast for multiple high tide cycles. Sandy's storm surge will be capable of overtopping the flood walls in Manhattan, which are only five feet above mean sea level. On August 28, 2011, Tropical Storm Irene brought a storm surge of 4.13' and a storm tide of 9.5' above MLLW to Battery Park on the south side of Manhattan. The waters poured over the flood walls into Lower Manhattan, but came 8 - 12" shy of being able to flood the New York City subway system. According to the latest storm surge forecast for NYC from NHC, Sandy's storm surge is expected to be at least a foot higher than Irene's. If the peak surge arrives near Monday evening's high tide at 9 pm EDT, a portion of New York City's subway system could flood, resulting in billions of dollars in damage. I give a 50% chance that Sandy's storm surge will end up flooding a portion of the New York City subway system.
Bill McKibben on Why ‘Frankenstorm’ Is Just Right for Hurricane Sandy
by Bill McKibben Oct 26, 2012 12:54 PM EDT
And in the process, feeling that fear, I begin to sense what the future may be like, as more and more of the world finds itself facing ever-more-frequent assaults from the amped-up forces of the not-so-natural world.
You can’t, as the climate-change deniers love to say, blame any particular hurricane on global warming. They’re born, as they always have been, when a tropical wave launches off the African coast and heads out into the open ocean. But when that ocean is hot—and at the moment sea surface temperatures off the Northeast are five degrees higher than normal—a storm like Sandy can lurch north longer and stronger, drawing huge quantities of moisture into its clouds, and then dumping them ashore.
NEW YORK -- A group of climate change activists braved the calm before the storm on Sunday afternoon to rally in New York City's Times Square.
Leading environmental activist organization 350.org organized the event, "Connect the Dots between Extreme Weather and Climate Change," in less than 48 hours, according to Phil Aroneanu, the group's co-founder and U.S. campaign director.
"We've never really done anything like this before, but climate change hasn't really reared its head in this kind of way before," Aroneanu told The Huffington Post. "Even though you can't attribute every storm to climate change, the average of 5-degree warmer oceans have created so much more vapor for the storm to pick up and dump on NYC and Boston."
[...]
Aroneanu said that, among other things, the banner is a nod to the lack of attention climate change has received in this year's presidential election season. For the first time in a generation, the issue of climate change was not specifically raised in a presidential debate.
Hmm.
Frankenstorm: Has Climate Change Created A Monster?
For years, most climate scientists would say it's impossible to link an individual weather event with climate change. That, in fact, is the difference between weather and climate. Climate is all about long-term trends — not the 5-day forecast.
Recently, however, some researchers have taken the issue of attribution seriously. Using a variety of techniques, they are attempting to quantify the role human-driven climate change plays in particular events. This is science at the bleeding edge, where framing their questions correctly so that they might lead to meaningful answers is still a hot issue.
[...]
"...we estimate it is very likely (confidence level >90%) that human influence has at least doubled the risk of a heat wave exceeding this threshold magnitude."
[...]
Which brings us to our bottom line. The science of climate attribution is very exciting and full of cool, new ideas. It has already provided us with first steps towards more precision in understanding how climate change is changing climate now, already. For hurricanes, however, sticking to the science means it is still hard to point to an individual storm and say, yes! Climate change! A more reasoned approach is to take the full weight of our understanding about the Earth and its systems and go beyond asking if any particular event is due to global warming or natural variability. As Kevin Ternbeth of NCAR says "Nowadays, there's always an element of both."
How Al Gore Galvanized the Climate Change Movement — On Both Sides
“The climate crisis is not a political issue,” Gore said in a statement after the prize was announced. “It is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.”
In little time, it seemed as though the film had succeeded in galvanizing the general public around the need to address the threat of global warming, re-energizing the environmental movement and making Gore the cause’s public face, its celebrity icon.
And so when the backlash against climate change gained traction, it was in some ways manifested in a personal backlash against the former Democratic politician who had long irked the right, as illustrated in the above clip from tonight’s broadcast Climate of Doubt.
Climate of Doubt
Watch How Al Gore Galvanized a Movement on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.
Ozone Layer (NASA)
Hole in the ozone layer 1979
Hole in the ozone layer 2012
Timeline: The Politics of Climate Change
1979 February: First World Climate Conference
The conference is considered the first major global recognition of man’s role in climate change, and will provide the foundation for the United Nations’ panel to study the issue nine years later.
“Carbon dioxide plays a fundamental role in determining the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere, and it appears plausible that an increased amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can contribute to a gradual warming … but the details of the changes are still poorly understood.”
— Report’s Official Declaration
[ ... ]
1997 December: The Kyoto Protocol Is Adopted
The protocol requires 37 industrialized nations, including the U.S., to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The larger burden falls on developed countries, because, the treaty argues, these nations share more responsibility for the current level of pollution. The treaty will enter into force in 2005.
April: Global Warming Skeptics Make a Plan
Oil and gas giant ExxonMobil had lobbied against the Kyoto Protocol on the grounds that it would be too expensive and that it put too much of the burden on developed nations. Then Lee Raymond, the chief executive, became personally convinced that the science was wrong, too. Exxon begins funding groups to research his theory, including the Global Climate Science Team, which writes up a national plan to challenge the science behind climate change. “Victory will be achieved when … average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science; recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the “conventional wisdom.”
[...]
2007 Oct. 12: Gore Wins Nobel Peace Prize
Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In his acceptance speech, Gore speaks of the problem as an urgent danger:
“Now comes the threat of climate crisis – a threat that is real, rising, imminent, and universal. Once again, it is the 11th hour. The penalties for ignoring this challenge are immense and growing, and at some near point would be unsustainable and unrecoverable.”
[ ... ]
2011 Jan. 5: Republican Majority Eliminates House Committee on Global Warming
Republican House Majority Leader John Boehner says that in order to eliminate waste in the government, climate change will be handled by the science committee.
Jan. 25: Obama’s State of the Union Speech
Obama talks about energy, but makes no mention of global warming or climate change in his third address.
[ ... ]
2012 August: Democratic National Convention
The Democratic Party platform alters its language from 2008, acknowledging the science of climate change, and calling the phenomenon “one of the biggest threats of this generation.” Obama, in his speech, adopts stronger rhetoric, possibly in an answer to Romney’s remarks at the RNC: “Climate change is not a hoax. More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They are a threat to our children’s future.” But the issue will hardly be mentioned in his campaign for the presidency.
This makes no sense to me.
US presidential candidates cool on warming
Though polls show more Americans believe the planet is warming, the issue is seldom discussed on campaign trail.
Republicans’ lack of talk on climate change is understandable - it’s anathema to much of their base.
But what about Democrats? If recent surveys are to be believed, climate change could be a winning electoral issue: one poll found undecided voters are about as likely as pro-Obama voters to say the president should do more to address climate change.
Another survey, conducted by a polling outfit affiliated with the Republican Party, discovered that a majority of hunters and fishermen - who tend to vote for conservatives - want the government to do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
So why have Obama and many other Democrats largely kept mum?
Mann - who pointed out that Obama has made some climate change achievements, such as stricter emissions limits for coal-fired power plants and automobiles - said he thinks there is a “timidity” among Democratic politicians to address climate change. “I think they’re fearful that there’s so much money on the other side that they’ll lose the fight anyways,” he told Al Jazeera, “and [that] they will lose political capital in the process of trying to fight that fight”.
US presidential candidates cool on warming
Though polls show more Americans believe the planet is warming, the issue is seldom discussed on campaign trail.
Sen. Udall: Libya a ‘legitimate issue,’ but GOP politicized probe
Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) said that last month’s attack in Libya had been politicized, and said officials and candidates should come together like they did after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Udall, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” said that “any impartial observer” would say that the response to the assault that left four Americans dead at the consulate in Benghazi had been politicized.
“It is a legitimate issue,” Udall said. “But every story leads to political commentary and trying to point fingers. After 9/11, we came together. There were a lot of questions that had to be answered. Let’s operate in that same spirit.”
The Colorado Democrat also said he thought Mitt Romney, the GOP nominee, would agree with his assessment.
Palestine olive farmers cultivate resistance
Attacks against Palestinian farmers by Israeli settlers have been on the rise since the olive harvest began in October.
Perched on one of its branches, 17-year-old Jalal freed a handful of olives and dropped them onto the tarp, each making a thumping sound as it hit the earth. The day moves by quietly. But the family said the serenity marking this fall morning in the village of Al-Lubban Ash-Sharqiya is an anomaly. For weeks on end, Khalid Daraghmeh, the family’s patriarch, and his eldest son, Jamal, have been in and out of Israeli prisons, following a series of attacks by Israeli settlers.
“We have been beaten and wrestled to the ground by settlers on numerous occasions,” said Khalid Daraghmeh, also known as Abu Jamal. “When they come, they don’t spare us or the plants or animals.” Abu Jamal said the settlers have thus far killed four of his dogs, uprooted 350 seedlings, and removed the irrigation system of pipes used to water the plants. On one occasion, settlers stripped naked and dipped themselves in another well used for drinking, he said.
[...]
This year alone, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that settlers were guilty of vandalising more than 7,500 trees. And according to the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem, Israel has uprooted 1.2 million Palestinian olive trees since 1967.
According to an Israeli spokesperson, “The Israeli army sees the harvest as a very important event that is beneficial for Palestinians in the West Bank, so the army does its utmost to ensure the harvest goes smoothly.”
Finding Zen in a Patch of Nature
David Haskell, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of the South, is taking me through part of the 13,000 acres owned by the university, to a small circle of forest floor a bit over a yard in diameter. He visited this randomly chosen forest “mandala,” as he calls it, many times over the course of a year and recorded his observations in “The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature.”
Blog Posts and Tweets of Interest
HURRICANE (Bob Dylan)
Remember when progressive debate was about our values and not about a "progressive" candidate? Remember when progressive websites championed progressive values and didn't tell progressives to shut up about values so that "progressive" candidates can get elected?
Come to where the debate is not constrained by oaths of fealty to persons or parties.
Come to where the pie is served in a variety of flavors.
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." ~ Noam Chomsky
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