Conservative media keeps saying there have been 83,000 coal mining jobs lost under President Obama. The problem is that there were barely that many coal mining jobs total when President Obama took office.
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OK so there's flowing water on Mars. Yip yip yip yahoo. You know me, I'm science 101, big time guy, tech advance it, you know it, I'm all in. But, NASA has been corrupted by the current regime. I want to find out what they're going to tell us.Rush is explicitly telling us his acceptance or rejection of this science will be entirely based around what it means for his political world view. Do the implications of that science threaten Rush's pre-existing political beliefs? If not, then fine, it's legitimate science. But if that science undermines Rush's ideology, whether that happens tomorrow or a year from now, it will then retroactively become leftist junk science.
OK, flowing water on Mars. If we're even to believe that, what are they going to tell us that means? That's what I'm going to wait for. Because I guarantee, let's just wait and see, this is September 28, let's just wait and see. Don't know how long it's going to take, but this news that there is flowing water on Mars is somehow going to find its way into a technique to advance the leftist agenda. I don't know what it is, I would assume it would be something to do with global warming and you can -- maybe there was once an advanced civilization. If they say they found flowing water, next they're going to find a graveyard.
Besides El Niño, a more worrying, longer-term trend is also taking shape. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is a decades-long periodic warming of the Pacific Ocean that tends to favor bursts of accelerated global warming. As I wrote last October, the Pacific appears to be in the midst of a shift into a new warm phase that could last 20 years or so.CNN's story never mentions global warming - in fact, just when it feels like they're about to, the story abruptly ends. "But other scientists are saying it's more than that," says Jennifer Gray - then it cuts to black. No explanation, CNN just leaves it there.
The PDO—or, “the blob” as it’s been referred to recently—is starting to freak out some scientists. There are emerging signs of a major shift in the Pacific Ocean’s food chain, including a dearth of plankton, tropical fish sightings near Alaska, and thousands of starving sea lion pups stranded on the California coast. As Earth’s largest ocean, what happens in the Pacific affects the weather virtually planet-wide, and that means an “imminent” jump in global warming may have already begun—spurred on by the PDO.
The PDO has skyrocketed to record-high monthly levels over the past four months. In fact, there have only been four other similarly warm four-month bursts of the PDO in the last 115 years (in 1940, 1941, 1993, and 1997). A quick look at the historical record (for both 15 years prior to and 15 years after the bursts) shows that global temperatures rose at twice the rate of the 20th century average immediately after these bursts.
Combined with the overall long-term warming trend from climate change, the emergence of the PDO warm phase means the current state of the world’s oceans has little precedent.
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| The 2015 Los Angeles Marathon was run in record heat, sending 30 runners to hospital |
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| Winter was great for biking in Salt Lake City |
Which is a more interesting story:
From moose to puffins to lobsters, global warming is devastating Maine's wildlife, seafood and economy. Why is it so hard for media to say so?Federal regulators shut down the commercial fishing season for northern shrimp in the Gulf of Maine for a second straight year on Wednesday, citing concerns about the declining population and warmer ocean temperatures.The Associated Press blames "warmer ocean temperatures" but never directly references global warming, never mind connecting the dots to carbon pollution. It did the same thing last year. The Portland Press Herald repeatedly ignored the climate connection in its news coverage, but did editorialize on it.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission's Northern Shrimp Section voted to cancel the upcoming season, a year after the section closed this year's season for the first time in more than 30 years. A technical committee that advises the section recommended extending the moratorium for another year.
The "depleted condition of the resource and poor prospects for the near future" warrant another closure, the committee reported, adding that "long term trends in environmental conditions" for the little pink shrimp are unfavorable. The amount of the shrimp's population that can be fished is at an all-time low, regulators said.
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| Extreme floods in Fall River, March 2010 |
Tom Harris and Bob Carter may claim to speak for Canada and Australia ("Kerry and Patrick off base connecting climate and energy," Oct. 21), but they're really speaking for two climate science denier front groups funded by big polluters. In fact, both groups have even taken money from the Heartland Institute, the dirtiest of them all. Heartland lost most of its allies two years ago after putting up a truly disgraceful billboard comparing climate scientists to the Unabomber.The Providence Journal ran the same op-ed and has just published a blistering response from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).
NASA data shows the last six months have been Earth's hottest ever recorded. Massachusetts, led by Deval Patrick, John Kerry, Ed Markey, and other courageous elected officials, has shown the way in shuttering dirty coal-fired power plants, investing in clean energy, and saving money by making our homes and businesses more efficient. We need to do much more to cut industrial carbon pollution, like building Cape Wind and other offshore wind farms. But we won't get there by letting polluters deliberately cloud the debate.
The New Bedford Standard-Times editorial board recently announced that while it would continue welcoming debate on what to do about global warming, it would no longer accept opinion pieces that deny the established scientific consensus on manmade climate change. I urge you to do the same.
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| Miami families chalk 6' sea level rise at HighWaterLine.org event (Jayme Gershen) |
The event, caused by the alignment of the sun, moon and Earth, provides a taste of the potential impact of a longer-term two-foot sea level rise predicted for south Florida by 2060, according to the United States Geological Survey. The low-lying greater Miami area, with a population of 5.7 million, is one of the world's most at-risk urban communities, scientists told a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing in April.It's a really interesting article, but it leaves you with an unanswered question: Why is sea level rising? It's a critical part of the story. Leaving out the cause makes sea level rise seem like something that's beyond our control, but it most certainly is not. The intensity of future global warming and the height of future sea level rise will be determined by how much and how fast we cut industrial carbon pollution right now.
The King Tide is expected to rise to almost four feet. With seven miles of coastline, Miami Beach is already seeing more frequent salt-water street flooding at high tide, according to Miami Beach City Manager Jimmy Morales.
To combat such widespread flooding, the city has set aside $300 million to 400 million to install up to 50 pumps in the coming years in what some say is a vain effort to protect an estimated $23 billion of real estate.
Bigger sea walls are not an option as Miami Beach's flooding is caused largely by water rising underfoot through porous limestone bedrock. Officials concede pumping water back into the ocean is only a short-term solution.
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| Kids on NYC subway, Flickr's Victor Shoup |
"Yeah, but he seemed comfortable and confident, self-assured," replied one. "He seemed old enough, it's broad daylight, lots of people around."Even if a child looks totally safe and secure, you must still treat them like they're terrified and in grave danger!
But Walsh pointed out: "They're not going to be crying or hysterical. And kids are so vulnerable, at that age particularly. They're so trusting, they're so innocent, and you don't want the bad guy to come up and say, 'I can help you.'"
The experiment continued at a much quieter park where Bjorn walked through a group of adults, passed women pushing strollers, and listened to a musician. No one even looked twice. When the Rossen team had Bjorn sit alone on a bench for many minutes with no guardian in sight, no one said anything.An 11-year-old sitting by himself with no one bothering him in a park filled with parents, and no one called the police? YOU SAVAGES.
The media scrum as the Clintons do the grilling photo op at the Steak Fry, from our live CNN camera in the middle pic.twitter.com/9g0yjy0756
— Steve Brusk (@stevebruskCNN) September 14, 2014
CNN never pretended the science layoffs were about money. CNN turns $600 million annual profits and is owned by Time Warner, a $60 billion company that's reported $3 billion profits in consective years. It could hire 100 science journalists, but it chooses instead to endlessly debate if global warming is fake anytime it's cold in winter.Abrams also says he doesn’t like the shadows the new lights cast either. "There's hundreds of shadows on the sidewalk, these lamps cast, it kind of makes me dizzy," he said.So, crank with an agenda says one thing, who should we put him up against? If you've followed how the media covers climate change, you know anti-science cranks must be juxtaposed with opinionless, objective science:
The U.S. Department of Energy online says it remains unproven that typical exposures to outdoor lighting have negative health impacts, but also say it cannot be ruled out without more data.That's where the skewed idea of "balance" pushes the story towards the crank. The opposite of a crank isn't a scientist - it's a progressive:
The city also points to some light shields they can install to block the light from going in peoples windows. The city says before the most recent yellow lights, the city had bright white lights. They believe it's just a matter of people getting used to them. Other cities such as Boston have converted the bulk of their lights over to LED, and cities like Los Angeles and Seattle have done so as well.Cities with a total population of 5.1 million people have installed these lights with no evidence of problems, but the reporter has to put that at the end, because otherwise the story would be revealed as a waste of time just two sentences in.
When reporters ignore climate change in their stories, they end up sounding like they're blaming the supernatural for events easily connected to climate change. Take this Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot story on a sharp decline in catch of striped bass:They say there are a handful of elements that have lowered the ocean take the past two years.Reporters are often reluctant to connect the dots to climate change because they're not climate science experts and they're worried that doing so will draw the ire of anti-science Tea Party activists.
Weather has been the biggest reason. Warmer starts to the past two winters have caused many rockfish to stay in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, or up the coast around upper Maryland and New Jersey. [...]
"It's been the strangest year," said Rob O'Reilly, chief of fisheries management for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. "The weather has been so screwy that some fish haven't moved south like they usually do, and the ones that have positioned themselves offshore."