Sunday, June 01, 2014

MD Anti-Transgender Petition Fails

The group led by Maryland State Delegate Neil Parrott to re-legalize discrimination against transgender people has failed. Midnight last night was the deadline to get one-third of their signatures filed with the Maryland State Board of Elections, to call for a state referendum on the Fairness for All Marylanders Act of 2014. They needed 18,579 signatures by last night, and their email blast, sent in the wee hours this morning, says they came up about a thousand names short.

And you can be sure a good proportion of their signatures were forged, fraudulent, and otherwise illegal, like when they tried to pull this in Montgomery County.

The group insisted on calling the law "The Bathroom Bill" and focused on the argument that the bill would allow predatory men to lurk in women's restrooms, leering and groping and drooling at women and girls. As they say in this morning's email, "As you probably know, the 'Bathroom Bill' will let men in the women’s bathroom and vise versa if they simply claim to feel like the opposite gender."

The law doesn't do that. At this point we don't need to debunk the argument or even make fun of it. The shower-nuts tried to overturn a law and they could not find enough people to sign their petitions. In a state with approximately six million citizens they couldn't find eighteen thousand registered voters who would add their names to the referendum petition.

Note that there wasn't very much of a fight this time. Groups disagreed on whether to go out and talk to potential petition signers, but in the long run I don't think there was very much of that. The fact is, the "bathroom bill" angle is pure ignorant bigotry, and Maryland residents really don't mind if transgender people can expect to be served at a restaurant, or hired for a job they are qualified for.

OK, people, move along, nothing to see here. You won't be able to discriminate on the basis of gender identity in the state of Maryland.

In the meantime, enjoy the new cover of Time. You have to subscribe to read the article, though there is a nice interview with Laverne Cox outside the paywall HERE.





241 Comments:

Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Another win for the pro-family side! There's no stopping us now!

June 01, 2014 1:03 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Public Religion Research Institute reports Survey | Continued Majority Support for Employer Contraception Mandate, Opposition to Allowing Small Businesses to Refuse Services on Religious Grounds

"...-Roughly 6-in-10 Americans say that publicly-held corporations (61%) and privately-owned corporations (57%) should be required to provide their employees with health insurance that includes contraception at no cost.

-A smaller majority (51%) of the public say privately-owned small businesses should be required to provide health care coverage that includes contraception, while 46% disagree.

-Majorities of Americans say that religiously-affiliated hospitals (56%) and religiously-affiliated colleges (52%) should be required to provide insurance that covers contraception for their employees.

-Only 42% of the public believes that churches or other places of worship should be required to provide health insurance that includes contraception coverage to employees; a majority (53%) oppose requiring churches or other places of worship to provide health insurance that includes contraception coverage to employees..

-There are notable differences in views about the contraception mandate by religious affiliation..."

June 02, 2014 5:01 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Is Global Warming Real? Most Americans Say Yes

The Obama administration announced new regulations Monday meant to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change.

What do Americans believe about climate change, and how have those beliefs changed? Our overview follows.

First, a majority of Americans say that global warming is indeed happening, and the numbers have held relatively steady since the mid-2000s.

Every pollster uses different wording, producing varied results, but the overall pattern is consistent. According to Pew Research Center, 67 percent of Americans say there is “solid evidence that the earth is warming.” Gallup shows that 54 percent say the “effects of global warming have already begun.” In a CBS News poll conducted in May, only 11 percent said global warming did not exist.

The number of Americans who believe in global warming has declined slightly since 2008, but there is reason to suspect that decline may soon reverse.

Temperature trends, not economic trends, seem to drive changes in opinion.

Jon Krosnick of Stanford University and colleagues studied the post-2008 drop in the number of people who think global warming is occurring and concluded it had little to do with two major events of that year: the economic recession or the media coverage of “Climategate” — the release of thousands of emails and documents related to global warming research.

Rather, they found that opinion about global warming seemed to fluctuate with temperature changes. Although the beliefs of people who trust natural scientists remain steady over time, climate beliefs among the one-third of Americans who don’t trust natural scientists are influenced by the prior year’s average world temperature.

“Following record-high-temperature years, low-trust people are more likely to believe that the world has been warming,” Mr. Krosnick said. “Extreme weather events, however, have not had notable impact on public judgments of the existence or the seriousness of global warming.”

There is reason to think that global temperatures, after having been somewhat steady in recent years, are likely to begin rising again, thanks to a buildup of carbon emissions and the arrival of El Niño. If so, belief in global warming may soon rise again, too.

June 03, 2014 9:24 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"There is reason to think that global temperatures, after having been somewhat steady in recent years, are likely to begin rising again,"

lazy Priya has repeatedly denied this inconvenient truth so why does the lazy one post an article that contains what the lazy one claims is wrong?

it's because lazy Priya was intentionally lying when repeatedly denying the global warming halt

to reiterate:

no one seriously denies that planetary temperatures have risen from the turn of the 20th century

the dispute is the degree, the cause, the projected effects, the degree to which we can adapt, and the response necessary and advisable, if any

about those, there is no unanimity

June 03, 2014 1:39 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous, the thing about science is that its true whether you believe it or not. You plugging your ears and saying "la la la la la la" won't stop the harmful effects of global warming and the disaster it will be for future generations.

June 03, 2014 2:38 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And it is the overwhelming concensus of the scientific community that a large response to global warming is necessary.

No serious climatoligist believes no response is warranted.

June 03, 2014 2:40 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

A Washington Post poll shows 70% of Americans support putting limits on greenhouse gases.

Wyatt/bad anonymous is the odd man out.

June 03, 2014 5:29 PM  
Anonymous Robert said...

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), an anti-lgbt group, and others are sponsoring a march in Washington on June 19. Jeremy Hooper at Goodasyou.com is puzzled as to why they chose a random Thursday in June. I wonder whether they chose this date because it is Juneteenth, DC's celebration of emancipation. It could be part of their stated policy of driving a wedge between the lgbt and african-american communities.

Of course, it could just be a random Thursday in June.

June 04, 2014 5:14 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Supreme Court Refuses To Put Gay Marriage On Hold In Oregon

"WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is refusing to halt a federal judge's order declaring Oregon's same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional.

The court issued an order Wednesday declining to block any new same-sex unions in the state while a federal appeals court considers whether an anti-gay marriage group can intervene in the case.

The order follows an emergency appeal by the National Organization for Marriage that seeks to overturn the May 19 ruling of U.S. District Judge Michael McShane. The group had unsuccessfully tried to intervene in the lower court proceeding after Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum declined to defend the same-sex ban.

Hundreds of same-sex Oregon couples have obtained marriage licenses since McShane's order.

The group filed its request with Justice Anthony Kennedy and he referred it to the full court."

June 04, 2014 5:17 PM  
Anonymous Robert said...

I think it's a reasoning by the court that NOM will lose in it's tring to intervene. I'm not sure that it's a statement by the court on the final ruling on the case. Our fingers are crossed for the spring term of 2015. Scalia may be right on this.

June 05, 2014 10:35 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think you're right, Robert

Kennedy, the swing vote, appears to be leaning toward making it a right because of his fallacious belief that homosexuality is a group of people rather than a behavior

did you know that everyone thinks Barack Obama is incompetent?

they do

his latest screw-up, releasing five avowed terrorists to free a man who deserted his country because he sided with the enemy, is only the most recent example

working to get the traitor back is fine but throwing a celebration on the White House lawn just demonstrates how clueless Barry is

A majority of voters say the Obama administration is less competent than Bill Clinton's and a plurality say it is less competent than George W. Bush's according to a new poll released Wednesday.

Sixty-eight percent say the Obama administration is less competent that the Clinton administration. Forty-eight percent say it is less competent than Bush's, compared to 42 percent who say it is more competent. Seven percent judge Obama's and Bush's the same.

Fifty-five percent say that the Obama administration has made the country weaker; 35 percent say his administration has made it stronger.

The poll was conducted June 1-3 by the Democratic Anderson Robbins Research and the Republican Shaw & Company Research.

June 05, 2014 11:06 AM  
Anonymous so much for that said...

"And it is the overwhelming concensus of the scientific community that a large response to global warming is necessary"

on thing I don't think lazy Priya realizes is that if you can't even spell a relatively simple word like "consensus", people are unlikely to trust your grasp and opinion of complex climate science

in short, there's no reason to think you know what you're talking about

concerning climate change, scientists, while recognizing that temperatures are higher than 150 years ago, have varied opinions about the extent of change, the projected further change, the cause, the projected effects, the degree to which we can adapt, and the response necessary and advisable, if any

and Americans, as a whole, agree:

Many environmental activists, fueled by generous support from super-wealthy Democratic donors, are vowing to make climate change a top priority in the 2014 elections and beyond. They won’t be successful.

Let’s look at what the 2014 polls tell us about climate change. Gallup has updated its trends in recent weeks, and several other pollsters have asked Americans how high a priority the issue should be for the President and Congress.

Most Americans think global warming is real. There are very few climate change skeptics among us. As Gallup reported in March 2014, “The majority of Americans continue to believe that the effects of global warming are happening or will begin to happen during their lifetimes.” More than 60 percent have given this response in every Gallup survey since the pollster first posed the question in 1997. Yet only a quarter in Gallup’s polling say they worry a great deal about it, compared to nearly six in ten who worry a lot about the economy and the deficit.

And it isn’t a top priority. In the Pew Research Center’s poll of 20 possible priorities for the President and Congress in 2014, dealing with global warming ranked second from the last.

June 05, 2014 12:54 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonyjmous said "concerning climate change, scientists, while recognizing that temperatures are higher than 150 years ago, have varied opinions about the extent of change, the projected further change, the cause, the projected effects, the degree to which we can adapt, and the response necessary and advisable, if any

and Americans, as a whole, agree:".

A total fabrication on your part. 97% of scientists agree that global warming is man-made. There is a similar concensus that major action is required to prevent a disaster for future generations.

According to Pew Research Center, 67 percent of Americans say there is “solid evidence that the earth is warming.” Gallup shows that 54 percent say the “effects of global warming have already begun.” In a CBS News poll conducted in May, only 11 percent said global warming did not exist.

And a Washington Post poll shows 70% of Americans support putting limits on greenhouse gases.

You're the odd man out Wyatt, the vast majority of Americans disagree with you.

June 05, 2014 1:12 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "[Obama's]latest screw-up, releasing five avowed terrorists to free a man who deserted his country because he sided with the enemy, is only the most recent example".

A perfect example of how disingenous Republicans are. This is 100% political on their part. A few months ago prominent Republicans like John Mccain were condemning Obama for not securing the release of Bergdahl and several implored him to do everything possible to secure his release. Even up until a couple of days after Berdahl's release Republicans were tweeting celibratory messages about the release until the party leaders got together and made everyone toe the new line that this was a mistake. All the tweets celibrating Bergdahls release were deleted but it was too late:

"A grateful nation welcomes the news of the return of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl," Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE) said in a statement that's since been removed from his website. He also tweeted "Yesterday we heard wonderful news of the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. A grateful nation welcomes him home."

Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) seemed excited when he heard the news, too:

"Best news I've heard in a long time!" the Twitter account for the Republican congressman said, including the hashtag "#standwithbowe" and a link to a USA Today story about the soldier's release.

Joni Ernst, the leading Republican candidate hoping to replace retiring Sen. Tom Harkin in Iowa, tweeted at 3:31 p.m. on May 31, "US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl freed after being reported missing 5 yrs in Afghanistan. Thoughts & prayers go out to Sgt. Bergdahl & his family."

Republicans were all for Bergdahls release when they could criticize Obama for not having done it. Now that he has they of course have to change their position to condemn what they'd been demanding he do.

The five prisoners Obama exchanged for Bergdahl would have to have been released soon anyway. The U.S. had nothing on them and couldn't charge them with any crime and was going to have to release them once the war in Afghanistan ended in any event so at least Obama got a POW back for a group that was going to be let go anyway.

The only reason Republicans are now complaining about Bergdahls release is because it suits their desire to criticize Obama - this is a purely political stance.

June 05, 2014 1:28 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The events of the past week illustrate the degree to which Barack Obama has become a failed president.

When Obama burst onto the national scene, he almost immediately became an inspirational figure. His promise spoke to our hearts as Americans and our desire for dramatic change in the wake of the fractious Bush years. His personal story and his optimism about the future sounded an affirming and uplifting note at a time when Americans were losing their hope for what tomorrow could bring. For a moment, it seemed like the promise of a uniter, not a divider, could provide leadership which – whatever Obama’s personal ideology – could lead to a healthier politics and a less fractured society.

Obama’s tenure in office has turned all these hopes into despair – despair in the corruption of our institutions, in the capability of our government, in our ability to manage large systems and more. Consider just the events of the past few days: the slow-rolling scandal of how we care for our Veterans, full of mismanagement, denials, and a growing awareness that this problem was shoved under the rug for years; the White House’s decision to embark on a top-down monopartisan environmental policy which will squeeze the working class and make energy more expensive; and of course, Obama’s decision to trade five high ranking terrorists for an apparent American deserter in Afghanistan, a decision which directly ignores the law of the land and will almost certainly lead to future deaths.

In these arenas, we see the Obama administration at its worst: willing to engage in irresponsible and occasionally illegal acts, bowling their way through mismanagement and cronyism and the rule of law to achieve their aims, no matter the cost. It is the same approach they used in his single domestic policy achievement – Obamacare – and they have not stopped using it since.

And there will be costs. Not for Obama, of course – for him, there are no consequences except bad poll numbers. He doesn’t appear to care about those any more. But the latest CNN numbers are as grim as it gets. For Obama on the issues, the poll finds him on the wrong side of roughly 60 percent of Americans across the board: Economy 38-61, Health care 36-63, Foreign affairs 40-57, Budget 31-67, Immigration 35-61, Guns 33-64, Afghanistan 42-56, VA medical facilities 37-58, Ukraine 38-53. His overall approval is 43-55, down to 34-63 among independents. And when it comes to helping the middle class, the main issue Obama has trumpeted with his rhetoric on inequality and class division, he’s upside down to the tune of 40-58. But why would he care? Anna Wintour doesn’t.

June 05, 2014 1:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So there are no consequences for Obama, other than the occasional dings of the press or jabs from Joel McHale or Jon Stewart. For his party, though, there could be other consequences at the ballot box in 2014 and 2016. The candidates know this – which is why on Obamacare, and on the EPA rules, and on Bergdahl, Democratic candidates in Kentucky and Georgia and elsewhere will be holding Obama at arm’s length, sticking to local issues and promises of pork. But that’s hard to do – John Dickerson has this comparison: “Imagine being a short-order cook in an earthquake. Every time you try to flip a burger or try to plate a fried egg, the freezer door flies open or the gas line gets knocked out. That’s what it’s like to be a Democrat running for the Senate this year. When you’re trying to keep voters focused on the local race, a national issue intrudes.” And not in a good way.

In the end, Obama’s legacy will not be a stronger Democratic party or a nation that is happier, more harmonious, and more free. People will not look back on these years as good for the country, for our politics or our people. And as for his policy legacy, the repeal of his only real domestic achievement of significance, Obamacare, will be a core issue accepted by every Republican presidential candidate in 2016. The opposition to Obamacare is motivated, but its supporters aren’t. And Republicans will absolutely make its deconstruction their central aim should they win.

Why did this happen? Why did Obama fail? The typical answer from the left is one of racism or bigotry or Republican extremism. More even-handed analysts seem to believe that Obama tried to do too much, that he was a poor technocrat or struggled with mismanagement, or that the job of the presidency is just too big.

But I would suggest it’s Obama’s inability to actually live up to his promise as a unifier of people which proved his undoing. Coming up in a Democratic state and a Democratic city, he lacked the ability to work across lines of ideology from the get-go, and if he failed to initially convince people to agree with him on something, he had no desire to keep working at it to convince them otherwise or the personal diplomacy to meet them halfway.

The problem isn’t universal intolerance for other points of view, but intolerance on one side of the debate for any legitimate reasoning to legislate according to their points of view. Where in the absence of national consensus conservatives reject federal law imposing something, typically favoring state level legislation instead, liberals in the Obama era cry racism or bigotry or worse. One side of the American body politic is willing to accept principled disagreement as a signal that an issue is either unsuited to or unripe for a federal response; while the other sees it as authorization to bypass the democratic process and impose their will by any means available.

Under the Constitution, the government is supposed to protect the rights of both the country mouse who opposes cap and trade and the Bergdahl swap equally. But we are seeing the left reject this more and more as it evolves into a formalizing religion of the state, under which error has no rights, dissent must be crushed, and the law can be ignored at whim. Barack Obama has helped drive that process, and that is the legacy he will leave.

“What embitters the world,” G.K. Chesterton wrote, “is not excess of criticism, but an absence of self-criticism.” The Obama of 2008 promised he would end divisiveness by bringing us together – instead, as president, he has sought to end divisiveness by forcing everyone to accept his views. And in the end, he has achieved neither.

June 05, 2014 1:44 PM  
Anonymous the damage done said...

"The only reason Republicans are now complaining about Bergdahls release is because it suits their desire to criticize Obama"

actually, no one is complaining about the release

the complaint is:

1. releasing five unrepentant terrorists

2. calling a deserter a "hero" and throwing a celebration on the White House lawn, including the father of the deserter, who had grown a long beard to see "what the Taliban feels like"

3. not conferring with Congress, as required by law

4. lying about the deserter's health as an excuse for #3

Obama made all these mistakes because he thought this would be viewed as a major accomplishment

he's completely clueless, as always

we took a gamble electing a completely inexperienced person as President

we lost

June 05, 2014 2:01 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

It was never a matter of if the five prisoners would be released, only a matter of when. The U.S. had no evidence that they were involved in terrorist activities, couldn't charge them with anything and would have had to release them in a year regardless.

The U.S. essentially gave up nothing to secure Bergdahl's release. The president was perfectly within his rights to proceed without congress given the exigencies of war.

And of course your claim that Obama was unwilling to negotiate in government is laughable. It was the Republicans who refused to consent to any attempt to move the country forward. Obama initially tried to cooperate with the Republicans in the vain hope that he could secure a bipartisan concensus to help the country. He agreed to slash over a million government jobs at the behest of the Republicans in order to move forward on other policies even though he knew it would hurt the economy (which is exactly what the Republicans wanted). He compromised on the bush tax cuts and tax increases for the wealthy but it was always the Republicans demanding that Obama move while they were never willing to make any concessions themselves.

The Republicans blocked the American Jobs Act that economists including John Mccain's economic advisor said would create 2 million jobs. Republicans held the country hostage and shutdown the government in a hopeless attempt to repeal Obamacare, an issue that they voted on 54 times in a vain display of posing for their base rather than doing anything constructive for the country.

Republican took over 50 anti-women votes and despite repeated promises to make jobs their number one priority never proposed a single job creation legislative effort. They only did everything they could to harm the economy and slow the recovery so they could blame Obama for what they were responsible for.

The Veterans Administration was a problem going back into the Bush years and Republicans were well aware of it. It was never designed to handle all the new casualties from two unpaid for wars and Bush insanely never ramped up the VA to handle the inevitable flood of injured soldiers he knew would be coming.

Democrats tried to increase VA funding by 24 billion to handle the casulties of the two Bush wars and once again Republicans blocked that so they could then hypocritically point the finger at Obama when the inevitable backlog happened. In fact Republicans forced Obama to compromise once again as they implement a 2 billion dollar cut to the VA.

Despite the backlogs at the VA once patients were in the system satisfaction rates with the service were higher than private sector hospitals and those patients being treated had better health outcomes. It is only due to the obstructionism of Republicans that the long backlogs took place.

If Obama had been able to implement a public option for healthcare there wouldn't have been a need for the VA to compete with private sector hospitals overpaying profiteering doctors and insurance companies and the VA would have been able to overcome the shortage of physicians the Republicans insisted on making worse.

June 05, 2014 2:42 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The most fitting symbol of the awesome evilness of the current Republican party is the refusal of state governors to expand Medicaid solely out of political spite. The Federal govenment will initially cover 100% of the costs of the expansion and then after that 90% of the costs.

Republican governors have denied health care coverage to 5 million low income Americans solely because they hate Obama. A study in Massachusetts showed that for every 800 additional people who got health care coverage one life per year was saved. Republicans are sentencing over 6000 Americans per year to death solely so they can oppose the president on what was originally a Republican health care plan.


Republicans - awesome in their evilness. They would rather kill thousands of people than allow Obama to do something good for the country.

June 05, 2014 2:53 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The Republican governors who blocked Medicaid expansion are literally serial killers.

June 05, 2014 3:24 PM  
Anonymous all the silver I let slide down the slot said...

got news for you, Priya

if the Republicans had the obstructive power you claim, it was given them by the American people and it was Obama's job to deal with it and find a compromise with them

the same scenario has happened many times in our history

no one failed like Obama

the truth is he isn't, and never was, someone with good relational skills

he never attempted to develop personal relationships with key lawmakers and, more than once, reneged on negotiated deals with the opposition

no matter, the American people have wearied of his excuses

they now think both Clinton and Bush were more competent

in January 2015, Congress will be controlled by Republicans

in January 2017, so will the White House

just ask Nate Silver

June 05, 2014 3:26 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"on [sic] thing I don't think lazy Priya realizes is that if you can't even spell a relatively simple word like "consensus" , people are unlikely to trust your grasp and opinion of complex climate science "

And look who can't spell an even simpler word than "concensus," the word "one."







June 05, 2014 4:32 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

More than 500 detainees were released or transferred from Guantanamo while George W. Bush was president. A White House executive order issued on the second day of Obama's presidency said, "The federal government has moved more than 500 such detainees from Guantánamo, either by returning them to their home country or by releasing or transferring them to a third country."

That's backed up by a fact sheet from the military task force that runs the detention camp, which says 520 detainees had been released or transferred by March 2009.

June 05, 2014 4:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

2014 Generic Congressional Vote

RCP Average 5/2-6/1...43.2% Dem...41.6% Rep...Spread: Democrats +1.6

Rasmussen Reports has Democrats up by 3 percentage points

"Democrats lead Republicans by three points on the Generic Congressional Ballot for the week ending Sunday, June 1.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 41% of Likely U.S. Voters would vote for the Democrat in their district’s congressional race if the election were held today, while 38% would choose the Republican instead."

June 05, 2014 4:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Gallup reports:

"...The percentage of U.S. adults lacking insurance coverage in the first two months of the second quarter of 2014 is down from 17.1% in the fourth quarter of 2013 and from the 15.6% average in the first quarter of 2014. The current 13.4% average for the second quarter of 2014 is the lowest level recorded since Gallup began tracking this measure...

...The rate could drop if more states elect to expand Medicaid. Gallup research shows that the uninsured rate, on average, has dropped more in states that have elected to expand Medicaid and run their own healthcare exchanges than in states that have not..."

June 05, 2014 4:52 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

that's just wunnerful

why can't the government buy health insurance for uninsured people without telling the rest of us what kind of insurance we are forced to have?

"More than 500 detainees were released or transferred from Guantanamo while George W. Bush was president"

really?

how many deserters did Bush throw a White House lawn party for?

how many deserters did lie and say were sick as an excuse to violate the law?

"And look who can't spell an even simpler word than "concensus," the word "one.""

let you in on a secret:

lazy Priya thinks that's how consensus is spelled

don't tell anyone

people might start to doubt that lazy Priya is fit to explain tricky scientific concepts to us

haha!!


June 06, 2014 1:10 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The current 13.4% average for the second quarter of 2014 is the lowest level recorded since Gallup began tracking this measure..."

hmmmm...Congress passed a law four years ago that everyone is required to buy health insurance and 13.4% of Americans are now violating the law?

sounds like the law didn't work

June 06, 2014 6:27 AM  
Anonymous Robert said...

I agree that a large number of people in this country think our government is disfunctional, and the president, as the point man, gets negative poll numbers.

I would ask, though, whose efforts have been directed towards making the law-making and policy-setting processes so difficult.

June 06, 2014 6:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes, Robert. I think you've found the reason for the Generic Vote having swung back to Democrats.

People are beginning to realize GOPers are like this one:

"What’s a Caucasian Republican to do after two unsuccessful bids for political office in a largely Latino voting district? If your answer is something crazy like “legally change your name to Cesar Chavez,” then you’re probably Scott Fistler… or as he’s now known, Cesar Chavez.

While still using the name Fistler, “Chavez” lost an election for U.S. Congress in 2012 and then another race for City Council in Phoenix the following year. Determined to turn his luck around, Fistler filed for a name change and wrote on the document that he had previously “experienced many hardships because of [his] name.” Presumably, Chavez bets that voters will associate his new name with the original Cesar Chavez, a renowned labor organizer and activist. He is currently seeking a Congressional seat in Arizona’s 7th District.

The trickery doesn’t stop there. Slate noted that Chavez’s own candidacy website includes photos of enthusiastic supporters of Hugo Chavez, the former President of Venezuela.

Since being called out for his attempted ruse, Chavez has gone relatively silent as far as the media is concerned. He claimed he was overwhelmed with questions and said, “There is just simply not enough Cesar Chavez to go around.” Clearly MORE people need to change their names to Cesar Chavez so there is enough to go around. Chavez did make one thing clear, though: he would not be fielding any questions about his name change. Presumably, inquiries about his integrity would also need to be screened.

Sadly, this sort of underhandedness is not unprecedented in American politics. Last November, Dave Wilson, a white conservative won an election by pretending to be African American. Wilson’s campaign flyers and ads all heavily implied that he was black in an effort to appeal to a district comprised largely of African Americans. Wilson has no apologies for his potentially unethical approach. “Every time a politician talks, he’s out there deceiving voters,” Wilson argued.

Meanwhile, it’ll be interesting to see whether Chavez’s name change is enough to fool voters, particularly while opposing “fellow” Democrat Mary Rose Wilcox, an actual Latina with a more traditionally Anglo-sounding name. “My husband and I grew up under the leadership of [the real] Cesar Chavez and he means so much to our community,” Wilcox said. “Voters aren’t going to be fooled. If he thinks he can fool them, it’s a real affront to the community. He should be ashamed.”

There is still a chance that Chavez won’t make it on the ballot. Since Chavez was still a registered Republican when he began collecting signatures to run as a Democrat, that could violate election regulations. “He’s either trying to make a mockery of the system, or of Democrats, or of this Hispanic community,” said DJ Quinlan, head of the Arizona Democratic Party. If there’s a way to prevent Chavez from appearing on the ballot, Democratic Party leaders will likely exercise that option."

June 06, 2014 7:52 AM  
Anonymous My pleasure to teach more facts said...

""The current 13.4% average for the second quarter of 2014 is the lowest level recorded since Gallup began tracking this measure..."

hmmmm...Congress passed a law four years ago that everyone is required to buy health insurance and 13.4% of Americans are now violating the law?

sounds like the law didn't work"


In fact, he Affordable Care Act says everyone is required to buy health insurance unless they qualify for an exemption. Otherwise they will pay a fine if they do not enroll.

Exemptions include:

"-You’re uninsured for less than 3 months of the year
-The lowest-priced coverage available to you would cost more than 8% of your household income
-You don’t have to file a tax return because your income is too low (Learn about the filing limit.)
-You’re a member of a federally recognized tribe or eligible for services through an Indian Health Services provider
-You’re a member of a recognized health care sharing ministry
-You’re a member of a recognized religious sect with religious objections to insurance, including Social Security and Medicare
-You’re incarcerated, and not awaiting the disposition of charges against you
-You’re not lawfully present in the U.S.

Hardship exemptions

If you have any of the circumstances below that affect your ability to purchase health insurance coverage, you may qualify for a “hardship” exemption:

-You were homeless.
-You were evicted in the past 6 months or were facing eviction or foreclosure.
-You received a shut-off notice from a utility company.
-You recently experienced domestic violence.
-You recently experienced the death of a close family member.
-You experienced a fire, flood, or other natural or human-caused disaster that caused substantial damage to your property.
-You filed for bankruptcy in the last 6 months.
-You had medical expenses you couldn’t pay in the last 24 months.
-You experienced unexpected increases in necessary expenses due to caring for an ill, disabled, or aging family member.
-You expect to claim a child as a tax dependent who’s been denied coverage in Medicaid and CHIP, and another person is required by court order to give medical support to the child. In this case, you do not have the pay the penalty for the child.
-As a result of an eligibility appeals decision, you’re eligible for enrollment in a qualified health plan (QHP) through the Marketplace, lower costs on your monthly premiums, or cost-sharing reductions for a time period when you weren’t enrolled in a QHP through the Marketplace.
-You were determined ineligible for Medicaid because your state didn’t expand eligibility for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
-Your individual insurance plan was cancelled and you believe other Marketplace plans are unaffordable.
-You experienced another hardship in obtaining health insurance."


Now there are roughly 11 million formerly uninsured people who gained insurance during the ACA’s implementation and those enrollments contributed to a 22 percent drop in the uninsured rate.

June 06, 2014 8:10 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "if the Republicans had the obstructive power you claim, it was given them by the American people and it was Obama's job to deal with it and find a compromise with them".

Obama did compromise with the Republicans - repeatedly. As his first gesture of magnimity he kept on the Bush appointed Robert Gates as head of defense. He compromised on his stimulus plan by including tax cuts the Republicans asked for. He cut 1 million government jobs at the GOP's insistance even though he knew it would hurt the economy just as the Republicans wanted, he extended the Bush tax cuts for two more years as the Republicans wanted, he didn't raise taxes on the wealthy to the degree he was going to as a compromise with the GOP.

Obama originally wanted a single payer health care plan but compromised with the GOP and went with the republican individual mandate plan for Obamacare. Republicans responded by blocking Obama’s judicial nominees at an unprecedented rate, delaying their being placed on the bench by greater than four times more than Democrats ever did to Bush judicial nominees. Mitch Mcconnel showed where Republicans stand when he responded to this compromise by saying the most important objective of the Republican Party is to make Obama a one-term president, not fixing the budget/debt issues, broken healthcare, education or immigration systems, and certainly not protecting U.S. citizens from terrorist attacks.

On immigration Obama agreed to compromise with Republicans by saying he'd accept an immigration bill even if it lacked a special pathway to citizenship for the 11 million people in the States illegally. Republicans responded by refusing to do anything on immigration.

Deficit cutting was never a part of Obama's plan but he compromised repeatedly with Republicans in making budget cuts they suggested. Those cuts hit the poor and middle class the hardest as Republicans demanded despite Obama's campaign promises to only raise taxes on the wealthy. The federal budget deficit shrunk at an unprecedented rate—the FY2013 shortfall will be less than half of the $1.3 trillion gap George W. Bush left behind.

What illustrated the true nature of Republicans and Democrats was when several Republican candidates for president were asked if they'd accept a deal where there was $1 in tax increases for $10 in spending cuts and all the candidates said they wouldn't accept such a plan.

Obama has repeatedly compromised with Republicans but the Republican position has always been "You accept what we want, we never give you anything you want.". One Republican summed it up by saying "We will compromise but by that I mean we'll accept Democrats compromising but we won't make any changes to our positions.".

A quinnipiac poll in October showed even 49% of Republicans thought the GOP was doing too little to compromise with Obama, only 32% thought they were doing enough.

There is not one single thing the Republicans compromised on with Obama, they have been obstructionist at every possible opportunity, scuttling attempts to create jobs and even increase funding to the Veterans Administration in order to handle the increase in patients cause by the Bush wars. Bush never made any allowance for what he knew would happen and was responsible for the backlog in patients but Republicans blocked attempts to help those people and then dastardly blamed Obama for it.

All the compromises have been one way, Obama compromising and the Republicans refusing to move and demanding ever more concessions to harm the economy, hurt veterans, and give tax cuts to the wealthy.

June 06, 2014 9:59 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And as far as "if the Republicans had the obstructive power you claim, it was given them by the American people" goes, Republican House candidates actually got fewer votes than Democratic House candidates but Republicans circumvented the will of the American people by gerrymandering House districts.

June 06, 2014 10:14 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Republican House candidates actually got fewer votes than Democratic House candidates but Republicans circumvented the will of the American people by gerrymandering House districts"

actually, gerrymandering doesn't subvert the public will

it just makes it last longer

Republicans were able to do this because the people it more states gave them control of those states' governments

it switches over every ten years, so change takes a bit longer, but Americans will eventually change the effect if they disagree

if it bothers you, you might want to consider that Dems do the same when given a chance

it just the American people don't as often give them a chance as they do with Repubs

the hand's-down most bizarrely gerrymandered state is Maryland, also tied with Massachusetts for the most liberal state

(Massachusetts, btw, despite being the most liberal rejected Obamacare when Scott Brown made it an issue, because they were already aware of its horrors, having been the test case)

face it: Republicans are in control of the Congress, as a result of our Democratic processes) and Obama has not had the experience or skills to deal with that

there's nothing new here except that we experimented by electing the most inexperienced President in history

and it's a failed experiment

June 06, 2014 10:55 AM  
Anonymous obama sold us a bill of goods said...

"In fact, he Affordable Care Act says everyone is required to buy health insurance unless they qualify for an exemption. Otherwise they will pay a fine if they do not enroll."

the ACA, which no legislator read before voting for it, was sold as eliminating uninsurance, lowering cost, increasing quality, and increasing choice

it's done none of this

it is a failure

as well as a bill of goods

June 06, 2014 11:13 AM  
Anonymous the year of the Silver lining said...

you know it's funny

I'm a registered Dem and was thinking of voting for Dana

not that I support Dana's position or feel Dana has any leadership skills

I just prefer to see the opposition churning

then, I got a glossy mailing from Dana yesterday with a grim close-up of Madaleno, saying he voted against tax increases

that's enough for me

Madaleno for gay delegate

we all know O'Malley was elected promising to close our state deficit by taxing those despicable millionaires, who had the nerve to succeed

but, as Margaret Thatcher so famously noted, the problem with socialism is that, eventually, you run out of other people's money

and so this year, Maryland raised taxes on the rest of us

if Madaleno had the common sense to resist that, I think we should give him another go-around

June 06, 2014 11:23 AM  
Anonymous Kibg Canute said...

President Barack Obama has decided to make “combating climate change” one of the top priorities of his second term; his EPA has pursued policies that amount to a “war on coal” -- or more specifically on emissions of carbon–dioxide. On June 2, EPA announced a goal of a 30% reduction by 2030 -- focusing mainly on coal-fired powerplants that currently supply well over one-third of US electricity.

The proposed EPA rules would cost approximately $51 billion a year and destroy 224,000 jobs each year through 2030. The poor and people on fixed incomes will be hurt the most. And all this pain will be for absolutely no gain: It will have no impact at all on the global climate, according to reports published by the Heartland Institute – based on peer-reviewed climate science.

Apparently, Mr. Obama has become convinced that CO2 is responsible for Global Warming – and that anthropogenic GW (AGW) is dangerous. Or perhaps, there are more sinister motives.

Never mind the lack of evidence about any significant human influence on climate or the fact that the atmosphere is a “global commons” -- with the US emitting only about one-tenth of all CO2, while China alone emits nearly one-half. [According to official reports released on May 14, China now burns 49% of the world’s supply of coal, the US only 11%.]

But since climate change is nearly all naturally caused, Obama should learn the lesson of King Canute, who supposedly commanded the tides to cease rising and falling.

June 06, 2014 2:08 PM  
Anonymous King Canute said...

Yet on May 4, the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) issued its third National Climate Assessment (NCA), a collection of imagined future climate catastrophes and disasters for every section of the country. Its purpose is to convince the public that only quick action to cut emissions of carbon dioxide could avert these horrible events. The handsome report comes with beautiful pictures and graphs in color, a total of 841 pages. It was expensive, too; representing four years of work by hundreds; but it sank quickly, like a lead balloon. Consequently, the media, with much help from the White House Office of Science and Technology, have done everything possible to keep the excitement going.

Yet daily we read of new discoveries, generally on the front page of the New York Times, which portend some awful calamity: killer heat waves, more droughts and floods, more hurricanes and tornadoes, looming losses of agriculture in poor countries, raising fears of famines and millions of environmental refugees, collapse of Antarctic ice sheets and rise of sea levels flooding coastal cities, etc -- scenarios dreamt up in Hollywood.

The NCA report ambles on about rising rates of heat waves, droughts, floods, severe weather, hurricanes, etc. But there is no evidence whatsoevere to support such claims; the official statistics show no such increase in the rates; there is no recent acceleration in the steady rise of sea level, which has been ongoing since the last ice age -- a 400-foot rise in the past 18,000 years.

A group of retired military brass has rediscovered what they call “strategic climate change.” It is an old fable that started out a few years ago, claiming global warming would enhance conflict over resources throughout the world and create even more environmental refugees,

The media also played up some fairly routine observations about the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) in yet another attempt to convince the public that sea level rise is a much greater problem than rising temperatures -- particularly since most citizens are aware by now that global temperatures have been flat for the past 15 years -- in spite of a 10% rise in the level of CO2.

During the same 15-year period, the UN-created IPCC has issued three Assessment Reports [in 2001, 2007, and 2013]. Hilariously, their politically-oriented Summaries claim increasing certainty [66%, 90%, and even greater than 95%, respectively] for AGW, based on supposed agreement between models and actual data. LOL!

As documented by the independent NIPCC [2013], the discrepancy between what climate models calculate and what the actual observations tell us is striking. Yet all speculation about future climate is based on these models, which obviously have never been validated.

But let me congratulate the USGCRP for not falling into the same trap as in their first report [2000], initiated by then-vice president Al Gore. In order to enhance the scariness of future impacts on different regions of the United States (they chose 18 regions), the report authors selected two climate models that had particularly high "climate sensitivity" and would give more temperature rise for the same increase of carbon-dioxide level

Unfortunately for the (Gore) NCA, the two models gave opposite results for most of the 18 regions. For example, one model would predict that North Dakota would turn into a swamp, while the other predicted that it would turn into a desert. Altogether, about half the results were in opposite directions

June 06, 2014 2:10 PM  
Anonymous King Canute said...

NIPCC can also be read as “Not-IPCC.” And indeed, its conclusions disagree starkly with those of the IPCC. Both groups of climate scientists use the same procedure in summarizing the published literature -- except that NIPCC includes papers which the IPCC ignores since they disagree with the pre-conceived AGW story; these papers also suggest possible natural causes for observed climate changes, such as solar variability and internal oscillations of the atmosphere–ocean system.

On reflection, this third NCA report is probably the worst of all. It represents a full press effort by the White House to scare the public into accepting higher prices for fossil fuels. It goes hand in hand with the effort of the OMB (Office of Management and Budget) to assign a high “social cost” to carbon-based fuels in their so-called SCC (Social Cost of Carbon) calculations. Unfortunately for OMB, the social “cost" of carbon is almost certainly negative: that is, more CO2 is good for us because it benefits agriculture. But the SCC calculations don’t include the benefits of increased CO2. One can learn about these by reading Volume 2 of NIPCC’s “Climate Change Reconsidered-II,” published in April 2014.

The reaction to NCA was not slow in coming. The NCA is more alarming than even the latest IPCC report published in 2013. For example the sea level predictions are about double those of IPCC 2013. Further, the IPCC does not foresee a rise in severe weather, floods, or droughts, based on historical data that show no significant trend with rising temperature. Even the alarmist US National Academy of Sciences has taken a cool stance towards the NCA.

A direct rebuttal of the NCA is provided by an independent group of 15 scientists. It has been picked up by several media outlets -- but of course not by the New York Times or Washington Post. I quote from their rebuttal:


"Unilateral CO2 emission control by the United States promises to damage the economy of the United States without any benefits. In fact, increasing CO2 in the atmosphere facilitates achieving the goal of raising the poor out of poverty through increasing food production."

June 06, 2014 2:11 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

June 06, 2014 2:12 PM  
Anonymous King Canute said...

What of the future?

Sometime this summer, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will issue its decision in South-Eastern Legal Foundation vs. EPA, an important case having to do with whether the EPA’s Endangerment Finding (EF) on CO2 should be upheld. Much is at stake here. SCOTUS can stop the EPA drive to remove plentiful, cheap coal, which the US exports to other nations, and which until recently has provided over half of US electricity. Coal will either remain a preferred fuel or will be replaced and raise the cost of electric generation.

If SCOTUS cannot stop the EPA, perhaps a change in the Senate in the November elections will do the trick. It will certainly put both House and Senate in support of low-cost energy and benefit economic growth and jobs. It would of course go counter to the campaign promise of Barack Obama that “electricity prices would skyrocket”.

Higher energy cost increases poverty

Why would the White House want to make energy more costly for Americans? I don’t really think that they believe in limiting CO2 emission as a way to stop the climate from warming -- if indeed CO2 is as effective as the NCA thinks.

I quote here from a letter submitted to OMB [on SCC]:


“Artificially raising the price of energy is the same thing as impoverishing the American People. It is shocking and disgusting that our government would intentionally pursue this goal, particularly without any scientific basis whatsoever.”

“The currently calculated SCC estimates [by OMB] are being used to justify proposed EPA regulations, and also as input regarding a proper carbon tax levels should a future Congress elect to move in this Direction… and these SCC estimates are for the entire world not just for the US. It matters a great deal what other key countries are to do in these regards…And, in short, the current SCC estimates are not only worthless, they are extremely dangerous… to US energy, economic and national security related policy.”

A final thought

Why would the White House want to make energy more expensive and depress the standard of living for most of the US population? The problem becomes very acute for those in the lower income brackets where they have to decide between food and heat; whether to starve, or to freeze. Of course, they won’t be permitted to starve or freeze; they will now receive energy vouchers in addition to food stamps. These subsidies will have to be paid for by taxes -- mainly from middle-income earners; they are the ones who will lose out in this scenario.

But perhaps that’s the ultimate purpose: To make a larger fraction of the population more dependent on government handouts -- a Machiavellian scheme. So maybe that’s why the NCA is as alarming as it is: to make people more amenable to accept higher energy costs and more dependent on government.

S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project. His specialty is atmospheric and space physics. An expert in remote sensing and satellites, he served as the founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service and, more recently, as vice chair of the US National Advisory Committee on Oceans & Atmosphere.

June 06, 2014 2:13 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "the ACA, which no legislator read before voting for it, was sold as eliminating uninsurance, lowering cost, increasing quality, and increasing choice it's done none of this it is a failureas well as a bill of goods".

What pathetic propaganda. The truth is the Affordable Care Act has been a smashing success, it has increased quality, choice, and lowered insurance premiums by 15%. Over 15 million previously uninsured Americans now have health insurance that didn't before and there'd be another 5 million that do if Republican governors hadn't blocked the Medicaid expansion in their states thus denying 5 million additional Americans the health care coverage they desperately need.

A study on the Republican Massachusetts health care system shows that for every 800 people that get health care insurance 1 life per year is saved. Republicans were for Obamacare before they were against it, the sole reason they now oppose their own idea is because Obama made it happen. If Obama came out and said "Mom and apple pie are great" the Republicans would say "Mom and apple pie are terrorists."

Because Republican governors have blocked Medicaid expansion in 19 states there will be over 6000 deaths per year they are directly responsible for. Republican governors are literally mass murderers.

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "face it: Republicans are in control of the Congress, as a result of our Democratic processes) and Obama has not had the experience or skills to deal with that".

Nonsense. With Republicans doing everything possible to block every attempt to make progress for Americans Obama has done better than any other person could have. With the passage of the Affordable Care Act and pulling the U.S economy out of the devastating Bush recession he will be remembered as one of the greatest presidents in U.S. history.

History will not look kindly on Republican efforts between 2008 and 2016 to tank the economy and deny health care to millions of Americans.

June 06, 2014 2:24 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous posted "S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project. His specialty is atmospheric and space physics. An expert in remote sensing and satellites, he served as the founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service and, more recently, as vice chair of the US National Advisory Committee on Oceans & Atmosphere".

Fred Singer is a climate change denier quack who is paid by the oil and gas industry to produce anti-science propaganda and disinformation. No reputable scientists take him seriously.

His "climate change conference" in Las Vegas relied on physiotherapists, a sheriff's deputy, massage therapists and theologians as "expert" "authorities" in his attempt to dispute the overwhelming concensus of scientists that climate change is man made.

70% of Americans support restrictions on the production of green house gasses. The vast majority of Americans accept that climate change is real - Wyatt is the odd (very odd)man out.

June 06, 2014 2:30 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Let's not forget that the Republican alternative to Obamacare is...nothing.

Americans aren't going back to the broken health care system they used to have where millions with pre-existing conditions were denied insurance and even those with insurance were thrown off because the blood-sucking insurance industry rationed health care by imposing yearly and life-time caps on treatment.

if you ask most people if they like Obamacare they say no, but if you ask them if they like the specific features of Obamacare:

80% support letting young adults stay on their parents plan

77% support free preventative care

74% support the medicaid expansion

70% support ending insurance discrimination based on pre-existing conditions


The vast majority of Americans oppose Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare and take away all the gains its made. They know Republicans have no alternative (the only tentative ideas they've offered are essentially Obamacare anyway) and that's why Republicans have stopped talking about Obamacare and are desperately scrambling to make up some sort of scandal out of whole cloth to distract from their total paucity of ideas to improve the lives of Americans.

June 06, 2014 2:44 PM  
Anonymous amused said...

the ACA is detested by Americans who recognize its failure

no reputable scientist takes Fred Singer seriously?

he is a professor emeritus at University of Virginia, with numerous accomplishments is the field

and, fasten your seat belt, he knows how to spell consensus

btw, the little twerp who beat Dana last time out by smooching up to the teachers' union is denouncing Dana's negative campaigning

this is getting fun:

"I'm going to cut to the chase. Yesterday you may have received a nasty bit of mail from the quixotic campaign against my friend and mentor Senator Rich Madaleno. Do what I did: reject this type of dirty politics, throw it in the garbage where it belongs, then send Rich a quick email letting him know you stand with him.

Like me, Rich is a proud Democrat who has stood up for economic justice and our Montgomery County values. He led the charge to dramatically increase our minimum wage, and voted proudly to make our taxes fairer. He also passed an historic piece of legislation to invest in our transportation infrastructure.

This, of course, is on top of Rich's other accomplishments where he and I have stood shoulder-to-shoulder: securing marriage equality for all Marylanders, passing the nation's strictest gun safety law, and ending a racially biased death penalty.

Are you as angry as I am at these false, dirty attacks lobbed at one of our progressive heroes? Then turn it into a positive with three simple steps:

1) "Like" Rich on Facebook.

2) Donate to his campaign.

3) JOIN ME IN VOTING FOR RICH MADALENO ON JUNE 24.

Your State Delegate,

Delegate Jeff Waldstreicher"

June 06, 2014 2:52 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "the ACA is detested by Americans who recognize its failure".

False. The vast majority of Americans oppose the Republican plan to repeal Obamacare and replace it with NOTHING. Republicans have launched a well funded disinformation campaign about Obamacare telling outrageous lies about it and this campaign has been somewhat successful. Hence if you ask most people if they like Obamacare they say no, but if you ask them if they like the specific features of Obamacare:

80% support letting young adults stay on their parents plan

77% support free preventative care

74% support the medicaid expansion

70% support ending insurance discrimination based on pre-existing conditions

A perfect example of how well the Republican disinformation campaign has worked is shown by polls in Kentucky were the majority oppose Obamacare but the majority support the state version of Obamacare called Kynect. People say things like "That obamacare could learn something from Kynect" without realizing they are the same thing

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "no reputable scientist takes Fred Singer seriously? he is a professor emeritus at University of Virginia, with numerous accomplishments is the field".

Your damn right no reputable scientist takes Fred Singer seriously. He's widely viewed as a sick joke in the scientific community. Fred Singer got his PhD in Physics in 1948 and hasn't produced any new research in over 20 years.

Prior to his climate change denialism activities he worked for the tobacco industry producing fake science that claimed there were no health problems associated with tobacco use

For years, Singer was a professor at the University of Virginia where he was funded by energy companies to pump out glossy pamphlets pooh-poohing climate change. Singer hasn't published original research on climate change in 20 years and is now an 'independent' consultant, who spends his time writing letters to the editor, and testifying before Congress, claiming that ozone-depletion and global warming aren't real problems. (Montague 1995)" '

Singer's organization, the NIPCC is one of those groups that gives itself an authoritative sounding name similar to the real scientific group in order to confuse the public into thinking they are the much larger and well recognized scientific authority. In fact the NIPCC is a tiny group of global warming deniers whose oppinions are rejected by the global scientific community at large.

June 06, 2014 3:19 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Singer has a long history of rejecting peer-reviewed and independently confirmed scientific evidence in his claims concerning public health and environmental issues.

Singer released a climate change report in 2008. Climate scientists from NASA, Stanford, and Princeton who spoke to ABC news about the report dismissed it as "fabricated nonsense."

On September 18, 2013, the NIPCC's fourth report, entitled Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science, was published.[67] As with previous NIPCC reports, environmentalists criticized it upon its publication; for example, David Suzuki wrote that it was "full of long-discredited claims, including that carbon dioxide emissions are good because they stimulate life.". After the report received favorable coverage from Fox News Channel's Doug McKelway, climate scientists Kevin Trenberth and Michael Oppenheimer criticized this coverage, with Trenberth calling it "irresponsible journalism" and Oppenheimer calling it "flat out wrong."

In July 2014 the Heartland global warming denial organization is holding Singer's climate change skeptics conference in Las Vegas. There will be an all star line-up of scientists including a couple of architects, a medical officer from the Texas Sheriff's office, a massage therapist with a B.A. in pyschology and the aformentioned Fred Singer of the NIPCC rump group, a man Rolling Stone called "the grandaddy of fake science" for his theories that the hole in the ozone layer wasn't a big deal and his conclusion that cigarette smoking was actually pretty safe.

June 06, 2014 3:19 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

who are you going to believe?

the lazy one who cites Rolling Stone as a source and can't spell consensus

or

a Professor Emeritus from University of Virginia who was a founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service

?

I don't we need a pollster to figure that out!!

June 06, 2014 3:59 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

June 06, 2014 5:14 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "who are you going to believe? the lazy one who cites Rolling Stone as a source and can't spell consensus or a Professor Emeritus from University of Virginia who was a founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service?".

Who are you going to believe?

The 97 climate scientists who say global warming is man-made or the 3 climate scientists who say it isn't?


The good news just keeps rolling in!:

Judge strikes down Wisconson ban on gay marriage

This now makes 27 states where gays can get married or a judge has ruled they must be allowed to marry.

June 06, 2014 5:15 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

June 06, 2014 5:18 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

In the 1980s and '90s, Fred Singer decided to sell his soul and become a corporate shill. Despite not having published on atmospheric issues since the last decade with the exception of two papers, Singer entered the ozone fray and attempted to pass himself off as a cutting-edge researcher. He decided he didn't need no steenkin' peer-review, employing the classic denialist tactic of side-stepping scientific journals to publish op-eds and give testimonies before Congress. He liberally quote mined the science on ozone depletion and claimed that the measurements were incorrect, that there had always been a hole in the ozone and it was natural. What he "forgot" to mention was that he was being heavily bankrolled by petroleum companies at the time, including Exxon and Shell, through his think tank called The Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP). Singer also downplayed the threat of acid rain in his role on the Acid Rain Peer Review Panel during this period and SEPP has been labeling acid rain as a fake crisis since then. As we now know, Singer was on the wrong side of history – in 1995, the scientists who discovered the chemistry behind the ozone hole were awarded the Nobel Prize for their work. Strike one.

In addition to ozone denial, Singer became involved in Philip Morris front groups as well as other tobacco-backed think tanks in the early '90s. He helped lead the charge in second-hand smoke denial. He wrote a number of articles denying or minimizing any link between second-hand smoke and cancer and accused the EPA of cooking its data when it determined that second-hand smoke posed a risk. Singer, of course, denied any connection to tobacco companies. Strike two for Singer.

Climate denial, or, Singer rides again

Singer used SEPP to open up his final frontier of scientific denialism: Global warming. Besides funding from oil interests, SEPP was taking in money from a Moony front group. Singer later decided that even he shouldn't sink that low and cut ties with them. In 1995, after the second IPCC report was released, Singer put out a bogus petition called the Leipzig Declaration. While not quite as big as the more famous Oregon Petition, it did include a number of people who denied signing it, TV meteorologists, and industry shills. Singer went on to churn out mountains of bullsh*t throughout the '90s and 2000s through SEPP. In 2004, he set up a denialist version of the IPCC called the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). The NIPCC excreted a report primarily authored by Singer in 2008 through the conservative Heartland Institute. In the report, he managed to roll two decades' worth of crankery into one paper, citing his own junk as often as possible. On top of that it referenced nearly every piece of discredited, bogus, or outright fraudulent denialist "research" including papers by such luminaries as Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, Richard Lindzen, Edward Wegman, the Idso family, Patrick Michaels, Christopher Booker, and Bjorn Lomborg. It manages to roll just about every denier talking point into one paper, from solar cycles to "CO2 is plant food!" It is truly a masterwork of denialism. And Singer's out on three consecutive strikes!

Singer has been associated with other libertarian think tanks known for their denialism at various points, including the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.[8] Frederick Seitz also held a position at SEPP for some time and the two published some "research" together.

In 2009, Singer distributed a bogus climate petition asking the American Physical Society (APS) to change its stance on global warming. All he got was a bunch of signatures from other deniers and the APS subsequently blew him off.

June 06, 2014 5:33 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

In the realm of silly petitions, manufactured by a small, agenda-driven group and leveraged to extend the fiction of a legitimate scientific controversy, no document has ever been studied to this degree.

Thanks to John Mashey, a technology consultant, entrepreneur, member of the American Physical Society and tireless researcher, this document lies completely exposed as another phony front group play for attention.


Mashey’s own explanation begins like this:

“The American Physical Society (APS) was petitioned by 206 people, about 0.45% of the 47,000 members, to discard its climate change position and declare decades of climate research non-existent. The Petition was “overwhelmingly” rejected, but this anti-science campaign offers a useful case study. The Petition signers‟ demographics are compared to those of APS in general.

Then, the social network behind the petition is analyzed in detail, person by person for the first 121 signers. This might seem a grassroots groundswell of informed expert argument with the existing position, but it is not.

Rather, it seems to have originated within a small network of people, not field experts, but with a long history of manufacturing such things, plausibly at the Heartland Institute‘s NYC climate conference March 8-10, 2009. APS physicists can, do, and will contribute strongly to solving the 21st century‟s conjoined climate+energy problem, but this petition was a silly distraction, and rightly rejected. However, its existence was widely touted to the public.”

The whole, exhaustive document is attached. Fred Singer should be embarrassed.

June 06, 2014 5:37 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Shorter Wyatt/bad anonymous:

"You misspelled a word and even though I did too that means I'm right and you're wrong."

The true genius of an eight year old.

June 06, 2014 5:46 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

1995 - Fred Singer creates the Leipzig Declaration, a petition signed by scientists which claim there is no consensus on the connection between carbon emissions and global warming. Investigative journalists showed that a bulk of the signatories either had not signed the document or were not scientists dealing with climate issues.

2005 - George Monbiot of The Guardian newspaper uncovers SEPP as the source of the misinformation stating that "555 of all the 625 glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring Service have been growing since 1980."

2012 - Speaks at the Heartland Institutes's annual International Conference on Climate Change. This conference denies human induced global warming exists. Between 1998 and 2010, the co-sponsors of this conference received more than $21 million in funding from ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers. Internal Heartland Institute documents show they pay Singer $5,000 per month for his cimate denial work.

June 06, 2014 6:07 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The climate change crusaders, who have been at it for a quarter-century, appear to be going clinically mad. Start with the rhetorical monotony and worship of authority (“97 percent of all scientists agree!”), add the Salem witch trial-style intimidation and persecution of dissenters, and the categorical demand that debate about science or policy is over because the matter is settled, and you have the profile of a cult-like sectarianism that has descended into paranoia and reflexive bullying. Never mind the scattered and not fully suppressed findings of climate scientists that the narrative of catastrophic global warming is overstated, like nearly every previous predicted environmental apocalypse. It matters not. The recent crescendo of scary government climate reports and dutiful media alarm has paved the way for the Obama administration to throw its weight around in ways that would make Woodrow Wilson blush.

Making sense of this tiresome issue requires stepping back for the long view. If you strip away all of the noise from smaller scientific controversies that clutter the debate—arctic ice, extreme weather events, droughts, and so forth—the central issue is climate sensitivity: How much will average global temperature increase from adding a given level of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere? The most recent “official” estimate of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), given a doubling of greenhouse gases, is a planet 1.1 to 4.8 degrees Celsius warmer a century from now. On the low end of this range—up to as much as 2 degrees—warming would be no big deal, and possibly a net benefit. Warming on the high end of this range would present significant problems, requiring a number of responses. Narrowing the range of outcomes is therefore the most pressing climate science question. Everything else is a sideshow.

June 06, 2014 11:21 PM  
Anonymous it's alarming how charming I am said...

brilliant anon said:

"who are you going to believe?

the lazy one who cites Rolling Stone as a source and can't spell consensus

or a Professor Emeritus from University of Virginia who was a founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service?".

lazy Priya said:

"Who are you going to believe?

The 97 climate scientists who say global warming is man-made or the 3 climate scientists who say it isn't?"

I'm assuming here that lazy Priya means 97%, as is the standard talking deception from alarmists

when you see a 97% vote on something, you know it's a result of an authoritarian process

like the vote on Crimea joining Russia

you might also note that the 97% numbers has been analyzed and debunked

100% of scientists believe the planet is warmer now than in the 1890s and that human activity has played some part

beyond that, there is no consensus other than that we're not on the verge of some enormous catastrophe

here's a great article examining where the 97% number comes from and why it's misleading:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/07/17/that-scientific-global-warming-consensus-not/

one amusing facet is that many of the people I've quoted here, considered climate change deniers by the alarmists, and that lazy Priya invariably characterizes as quacks are part of the 97%

btw, lazy Priya thinks the readers here can't distinguish between a typo and an incorrectly spelled word

lazy Priya, stop making yourself look foolish

everyone knows you didn't know how to spell consensus

it's why they also know you have no idea what you're talking about when you discuss climate change here

97% of predictions by climate alarmists in the past have been wrong

June 07, 2014 9:19 PM  
Anonymous Reginald Superiorator said...

"who are you going to believe?

the lazy one who cites Rolling Stone as a source and can't spell consensus

or a Professor Emeritus from University of Virginia who was a founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service?"

I do say, when the matter is phrased in this manner, the answer seems plain, doesn't it?


June 07, 2014 9:24 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Federal Judge To Wisconsin: You Know 'Traditional' Marriage Was Polygamy, Right?

"WASHINGTON -- The federal judge who struck down Wisconsin's gay marriage ban thinks state officials have a thing or two to learn about the history of marriage as a social institution.

In defending their same-sex marriage ban, state officials claimed that "virtually all cultures through time" have recognized marriage "as the union of an opposite-sex couple."

But as U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb wrote in her 88-page ruling on Friday, that's simply not true.

"As an initial matter, defendants and amici have overstated their argument. Throughout history, the most 'traditional' form of marriage has not been between one man and one woman, but between one man and multiple women, which presumably is not a tradition that defendants and amici would like to continue," Crabb wrote in her opinion.

History alone wasn't enough to justify a ban on same-sex marriage, Crabb said.

"Like moral disapproval, tradition alone proves nothing more than a state's desire to prohibit particular conduct," she wrote, citing Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent in a 2003 sodomy case, which stated that "'preserving the traditional institution of marriage' is just a kinder way of describing the State's moral disapproval of same-sex couples."

Crabb pointed out that tradition was used as an argument to keep women from voting."

June 08, 2014 9:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"History alone wasn't enough to justify a ban on same-sex marriage"

using the word "ban" is yet another rhetorical trick of the gay agenda

marriage isn't an independent act performed by someone that can be forbidden, like driving with an open bottle of bourbon or leaving an old washer in the front yard

marriage is an act in which church, state and individuals act together

it is perfectly legitimate for the government to determine what the definition of marriage they recognize

that's not a ban

people can still do everything they want and, if they find a religious authority willing, get married by them

the state not participating is not a "ban"

it is not an infringement of liberty in any way

June 08, 2014 2:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A religious authority does not enact state laws. This decision was written by a judge, not a religious authority.

The judge's information about the history of marriage is correct. Traditional marriage was between one man and as many wives as he could afford.

We've come a long way, baby

June 08, 2014 6:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"religious authority does not enact state laws. This decision was written by a judge, not a religious authority"

nobody said they did

the comment was that government not recognizing something is not a "ban" on anything a person wants to do

marriage is not an action

it's a process involving church, state, society and the individual

all these parties may decline to not participate

that's not properly called a "ban"

"judge's information about the history of marriage is correct. Traditional marriage was between one man and as many wives as he could afford"

so what?

it's just that some males had more than one marriage

the girls didn't have marital relations with one another

to say you could have more than one marriage doesn't change the definition

it doesn't expand marriage to include relations with arrangements like same gender or dogs

the judge is just trying to be a hipster

"we've come a long way, baby"

sure have

right down the sewer

June 08, 2014 8:09 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

June 08, 2014 9:02 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "one amusing facet is that many of the people I've quoted here, considered climate change deniers by the alarmists, and that lazy Priya invariably characterizes as quacks are part of the 97%".

That's a really pathetic lie. No climate change deniers are part of the 97% that agree that global warming is real and man-made. Wyatt thinks he can just make any preposterous claim and people will take it seriously. The world he inhabits is a fantasy where he can declare anything to be and it magically is, evidence and facts be damned. Grow up little boy.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "nobody said they did the comment was that government not recognizing something is not a "ban" on anything a person wants to do marriage is not an action it's a process involving church, state, society and the individual all these parties may decline to not participate that's not properly called a "ban".

These gay marriage bans were passed for the sole purpose of preventing gay marriages - the only accurate description of this is "a gay marriage ban". Actions and processes are overlapping terms and you can't divorce one from the other.

No church is required to participate in any same sex marriage. The degree to which anyone other than the couple being married "particpates" in that marriage is trivial or inconsequential and in no way can be considered a real infringment on their freedom.

The rights of individuals and society must be balanced. Denying a couple a marriage is a gigantic imposition on their freedom and lives. Giving bigots the trivial satisfaction of thinking they're better than gays in no way balances with the denial of marriage. The only sensible and just balance is that gays and lesbians must be allowed to marry and the anti-gay bigots need to stop acting like spoiled two year olds who fall on the floor crying, kicking and screaming just because a little breeze blew in their faces.

June 08, 2014 9:04 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Let's not forget that the overwhelming concensus of scientists is that global warming is going to be a disaster for future generations if steps aren't taken to deal with it.

According to Pew Research Center, 67 percent of Americans say there is “solid evidence that the earth is warming.” Gallup shows that 54 percent say the “effects of global warming have already begun.” In a CBS News poll conducted in May, only 11 percent said global warming did not exist.

And a Washington post poll shows 70% of Americans support putting limits on greenhouse gases.

Wyatt/bad anonymous is the odd man out, only a minority consisting of quacks and the ignorant think nothing needs to be done about global warming.

June 08, 2014 9:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"No climate change deniers are part of the 97% that agree that global warming is real and man-made"

here is a pathetic misunderstanding by someone who gets their science information from Rolling Stone and can't spell consensus

in fact, scientists who dispute any part of the hyperbole are termed "deniers" by the alarmists

and, yet, anyone who believes that the globe is warmer than 150 years ago and that some part of it, however small, is attributable to human activity is counted part of the 97%

this is a truth inconvenient to alarmists

the 97% is like a bunch string formed into a cat's cradle

no damn cat

no damn cradle

"These gay marriage bans were passed for the sole purpose of preventing gay marriages - the only accurate description of this is "a gay marriage ban". Actions and processes are overlapping terms and you can't divorce one from the other"

wrong

it's just a definition of terms, for the purposes of the governmental guidance

there is no a ban on any third party action

"The degree to which anyone other than the couple being married "particpates" in that marriage is trivial or inconsequential"

then, there's no real rationale for it

"The rights of individuals and society must be balanced. Denying a couple a marriage is a gigantic imposition on their freedom and lives."

the government can't deny a marriage

they can just refuse to recognize it

why is this any more of an imposition than not recognizing brother-sister marriages or dog-human marriages or octogenarian-preteen marriages?

society rightfully declares boundaries

even if lazy Priya doesn't like it

"Let's not forget that the overwhelming concensus of scientists is that global warming is going to be a disaster for future generations if steps aren't taken to deal with it"

no, they don't think any disaster is coming

they are smart enough to know what they don't know

unlike you

"According to Pew Research Center, 67 percent of Americans say there is “solid evidence that the earth is warming.” Gallup shows that 54 percent say the “effects of global warming have already begun.” In a CBS News poll conducted in May, only 11 percent said global warming did not exist."

not saying much

everyone knows that

it's a matter of extent

"And a Washington post poll shows 70% of Americans support putting limits on greenhouse gases"

recent polls show it is considered next to last on a list of twenty possible most important issues for the country

yeah, sounds like they're all reeeeaaaallllly concerned

more lives will be lost from the costs of the actions proposed to stop global warming than ever will from it

another inconvenient fact

who knows how many lives are lost from bad spelling!!

June 08, 2014 10:35 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I said "These gay marriage bans were passed for the sole purpose of preventing gay marriages - the only accurate description of this is "a gay marriage ban". Actions and processes are overlapping terms and you can't divorce one from the other"

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "wrong"

How childish of you. You don't even believe your own B.S, its just a kneejerk reaction to a truth you vainly hope to suppress. There isn't anyone who isn't aware that gay marriage bans were introduced as a result of attempts by gays to get married and whose sole purpose was to prevent gays from marrying. To call it anything other than a gay marriage ban is to deny the obvious reality - something you do all the time and which has left your credibility a laugh riot.

I said "The degree to which anyone other than the couple being married "particpates" in that marriage is trivial or inconsequential"

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "then, there's no real rationale for it".

Again, an utterly absurd comment. Gays ane lesbians benefit from the rights, benefits, and obligations of marriage just as much as any heterosexual couple does. The anti-family side likes to scream about how important marriage is for children, well, the children of lesbian and gay couples benefit just as much from married parents.

I said "The rights of individuals and society must be balanced. Denying a couple a marriage is a gigantic imposition on their freedom and lives."

Wyatt/Bad anonymous said "the government can't deny a marriage they can just refuse to recognize it".

Refusing to recognize a marriage IS denying the right to marry. Without government recognition there is no marriage. Saying you have a right to marry even if the government won't give you a marriage license is the same as saying you have a right to drive on public roads even if the government won't give you a driver's license - such falsehoods couldn't be more obvious.

June 09, 2014 1:10 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "why is this any more of an imposition than not recognizing brother-sister marriages or dog-human marriages or octogenarian-preteen marriages?".

None of those can give informed conscent to marry, not at all the same thing. Besides, gays and lesbians aren't advocating for those types of marriages, if people want them they will have to justify them on their own merits. Gays and lesbians have no obligation to make the case as to why such marriages should or shouldn't be allowed.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "society rightfully declares boundaries".

Whether or not society is justified in declaring a boundary is entirely dependent on what boundary is being proposed. A boundary that denies gays and lesbians the same rights as heterosexuals is unjust.

June 09, 2014 1:10 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I said "Let's not forget that the overwhelming concensus of scientists is that global warming is going to be a disaster for future generations if steps aren't taken to deal with it"

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "no, they don't think any disaster is coming".

Another pathetic attempt by you to declare something to be and think it magically is, evidence and facts be damned. Every scientific report produced by acknowledged experts in global warming says there will be disasterous consequences for future generations if we don't take steps to mitigate it.

Warming report sees violent, sicker, poorer future

"Throughout the 21st century, climate change impacts will slow down economic growth and poverty reduction, further erode food security and trigger new poverty traps, the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hotspots of hunger," the report says. "Climate change will exacerbate poverty in low- and lower-middle income countries and create new poverty pockets in upper-middle to high-income countries with increasing inequality."

For people living in poverty, the report says, "climate-related hazards constitute an additional burden."

The report says scientists have high confidence especially in what it calls certain "key risks":

—People dying from warming- and sea rise-related flooding, especially in big cities.

—Famine because of temperature and rain changes, especially for poorer nations.

—Farmers going broke because of lack of water.

—Infrastructure failures because of extreme weather.

—Dangerous and deadly heat waves worsening.

—Certain land and marine ecosystems failing.

June 09, 2014 1:11 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

A new study called "Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extreme, Regional Impacts, and the Case for Resilience," by the World Bank group predicted the temperature will rise to about seven degree warmer globally by 2100.

The report also showed about 40 percent of currently farmed land would be rendered unusable due to drought by 2030. This could cause the number of under-nourished people to rise by 25 to 90 percent by the year 2050.

"This new report outlines an alarming scenario for the days and years ahead - what we could face in our lifetime. The scientists tell us that if the world warms by 2°C -- warming which may be reached in 20 to 30 years -- that will cause widespread food shortages, unprecedented heat-waves, and more intense cyclones. In the near-term, climate change, which is already unfolding, could batter the slums even more and greatly harm the lives and the hopes of individuals and families who have had little hand in raising the Earth's temperature," said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim in a news release.

Kim added that urgent action is not only needed in reducing greenhouse gases, but also helping poor countries face the consequences of global warming.

According to the report, most of the damages of climate change could be reduced by keeping global warming below 2°C this century.

June 09, 2014 1:12 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Global warming effects are worsening, according to a United Nations scientific panel, and the poor are going to be hit the hardest.

The Nobel Prize-winning scientists note in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released Monday local Japan time, that wildfires in the United States, droughts in Australia and flooding in Mozambique, Pakistan and Thailand are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to deadly, unpredictable weather - all the result of climate change, they say.

"We're all sitting ducks," Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University, one of the main authors of the 32-volume report, said according to Al Jazeera and The Associated Press.

No one can hide from Mother Nature, the panel says, as the risks associated with global warming are going to impact both rural areas and cities, and will affect the price and availability of food as well as the prevalence of certain diseases. But none will be more at risk than the poor, according to researchers.

I said "According to Pew Research Center, 67 percent of Americans say there is “solid evidence that the earth is warming.” Gallup shows that 54 percent say the “effects of global warming have already begun.” In a CBS News poll conducted in May, only 11 percent said global warming did not exist."


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "not saying much everyone knows that, it's a matter of extent".

You keep denying what you say everyone knows. You keep falsely claiming global warming has stopped - the vast majority of Americans disagree with you and the overwhelming scientific concensus is that the extent is currently significant and will be vast if nothing is done to stop the current trajectory.

June 09, 2014 1:12 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I said "And a Washington post poll shows 70% of Americans support putting limits on greenhouse gases"


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "recent polls show it is considered next to last on a list of twenty possible most important issues for the country yeah, sounds like they're all reeeeaaaallllly concerned".

We and future generations will not be free from the disasterous impacts just because people are sticking their heads in the sand and saying "I'm not concerned". Whether people care or not global warming is happening and the effects on future generations will be disasterous if nothing is done about it.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "more lives will be lost from the costs of the actions proposed to stop global warming than ever will from it".

Once again your declaring something to be and thinking it magically is, evidence and facts be damned is a twisted fantasy. The only ones who make your claim are liars and fools. As the information I've posted shows the overwhelming concensus of scientific experts is that failing to take urgent action now will be disasterous and cost millions of lives in the long run. The costs of reducing green-house gases will be relatively low as a percentage of GDP and will ultimately provide a huge boon to mankind in environmentally friendly renewable energy that will eliminate dependency on foreign oil.

A new study by British and Canadian researchers shows that the global temperature rise of the past 15 years has been greatly underestimated. The reason is the data gaps in the weather station network, especially in the Arctic. If you fill these data gaps using satellite measurements, the warming trend is more than doubled in the widely used HadCRUT4 data, and the much-discussed “warming pause” has virtually disappeared.

June 09, 2014 1:13 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

ha-ha!!

nice of the bad speller from up north, who gets science updates from an entertainment magazine, to provide a seven little snippets of comic relief for an overcast afternoon

(cloudy? must be global warmin')

don't worry, Priya, we aren't laughing at you

we're laughing all around you

will provide responses tonight

(yeah, that should be tough! LOL)

June 09, 2014 2:47 PM  
Anonymous warmen said...

Obama tried tried to start war on women:

Hillary Clinton said Tuesday she refused an Obama campaign request in 2008 to attack Sarah Palin, the new Republican vice presidential candidate on the ticket with Sen. John McCain.

"The Obama campaign did contact me and asked me if I would attack her," Clinton told NBC in an interview that aired Tuesday. "I said, `Attack her for what, for being a woman? Attack her for being on a ticket that's ... trying to draw attention?'"

A page from Clinton's new book, "Hard Choices," contains Clinton's description of the episode. In it, Clinton says that the Obama campaign suspected Palin's nomination "was a blatant attempt to scuttle their hope of welcoming the women who had vigorously supported me" in Clinton's own unsuccessful presidential campaign.

"They immediately issued a dismissive statement and reached out to me in hopes I would follow suit," Clinton writes. "But I wouldn't. I was not going to attack Palin just for being a woman appealing for support from other women. I didn't think that made political sense and it didn't feel right. So I said no, telling them there'd be plenty of time for criticism. A few hours later the Obama campaign reversed itself and congratulated Governor Palin."

Palin on Monday tweeted: "Look who fired the 1st shot in the real "war on women". Hint: it wasn't the GOP."

June 10, 2014 10:49 AM  
Anonymous beware the homosexual-regulatory complex said...

evidence that the homosexual is an evil attack on our society, and not just a harmless curiousity, is mounting:

"A Colorado baker found guilty of discrimination for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple must go through sensitivity training as part of his penance and rehabilitation. In December of last year, Administrative Law Judge Robert Spencer found Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cake Shop in the Denver suburb of Lakewood, guilty of discriminating against same-sex couple Dave Mullin and Charlie Craig when he told them in July 2012 that he couldn’t bake them a wedding cake because homosexual behavior conflicted with his Christian beliefs.

Phillips appealed the verdict to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which stood by Spencer’s decision and ordered May 30 that Phillips be required to bake wedding cakes for same-sex couples in conflict with his moral Christian convictions. Additionally, Phillips and his staff will have to submit to a regimen of state-sanctioned sensitivity training.

Over the next two years Phillips will also be required to submit quarterly reports to Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission concerning his business practices. “So if his shop is closed or he’s out of flour, he needs to report to the commission,” explained Nicolle Martin of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the legal advocacy group that represented Phillips in the case.

June 10, 2014 11:52 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Marriage Equality Opponents Don't Have Much Fight In Them

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that opponents of marriage equality are losing their will to fight. Not only are their numbers dwindling, but their zeal for the fight is waning as well. When asked if a candidate’s position on the subject matter when deciding who to vote for, most said not very important.


"A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that 56 percent of Americans support the right of gay people to get married, and another 50 percent believe it’s a constitutional right. That’s pretty much in line with recent polling showing support for gay marriage on the rise.

And while gay marriage opponents are an ever-shrinking portion of the population, just as importantly, they are far less keen on pressing the issue.

The new poll also asked people how important the issue of gay marriage is to their vote for Congress. While 81 percent of strong gay marriage supporters say it’s at least “somewhat” important, just 50 percent of strong opponents say the same.

Nearly half of those who strongly oppose gay marriage (48 percent) say it’s not even somewhat important to them. Just 19 percent of strong gay marriage supporters are so casual about it."

This is what usually happens during a time of relatively rapid change. Most people initially oppose it just because it seems radical and, over time, that position seems less and less tenable. Once it starts to appear inevitable that the change is going to occur, it just ceases to matter as much. And eventually, the opposition fades away. Most people don’t like fighting a battle they know they’re gonna lose.

June 10, 2014 11:57 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "evidence that the homosexual is an evil attack on our society, and not just a harmless curiousity, is mounting:".

There's nothing evil about asking business owners who make their living off the public to serve all of the public - that's called justice.

These business owners are not themselves compelled to engage in the sexual activity they consider objectionable. Their objection is that it is sinful for others to engage in such activity. Therefore the interference with the right of business owners to act in accordance with their religious belief … is trivial or insubstantial, in that it is interference that does not threaten actual religious beliefs or conduct.

What's evil is discriminating against people for harmless characteristics such as skin colour or sexual orientation. Serving gays and lesbians neither breaks the leg or picks the pocket of business owners - they lose nothing by serving all customers.

June 10, 2014 12:03 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "Obama tried tried to start war on women:".

Republicans are pathetically reduced to trying to make the false claim that Democrats have a war on women by trying to gin up isolated comments. The obvious truth is the only party with a war on women is the Republican party.

Despite its promises to have a "relentless focus on jobs", instead of introducing a single job creation bill Republicans spent their time taking over 55 votes on anti-women policies.

According to the report, the House took 17 votes that would "allow health insurance companies to discriminate against women," while 11 votes would have "cut women's access to preventive care."

Ten "restricted or rolled back abortion rights," the report stated, and others cut key nutrition programs or "weakened" violence and discrimination protections for women.

June 10, 2014 12:11 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Regarding the rock solid science and overwhelming concensus of scientists that global warming is man made Wyatt/bad anonymous said "will provide responses tonight (yeah, that should be tough)".

LOL! Yes, it sure isn't tough to pull a bunch of transparent lies, half-truths, distortions, and deslusions out of your butt and post them. Too bad that's all you got. And you didn't even have what it takes to do that like you promised!

June 10, 2014 12:15 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Just between January 2011 and September 2012 Republicans held 55 anti-women votes while ignoring their pledge to be "relentlessy focussed on jobs".

•Seventeen votes which would allow health insurance companies to discriminate against women by charging women higher premiums than men or denying women coverage based on “pre-existing conditions” like being pregnant.
•a vote which would allow hospitals to deny emergency abortions to women’s whose lives are at risk, which NARAL’s Nancy Keenan has called The “Let Women Die” Bill.

•Six votes against protections for women from violence and discrimination,including votes against protecting the confidentiality of domestic violence victims, and votes against additional funding for grants under the Violence Against Women Act

•Votes to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). (Because, you know, they’re the party of family values, which means letting pregnant women, new mothers AND infants go hungry.)

Republicans - relentlessly focused on war against women.

June 10, 2014 12:19 PM  
Anonymous Obama brings us together, in disgust at his incompetence said...

concensus

deslusions

relentlessy

focussed


it's amazing that Priya would think anyone would believe Priya's interpretation of scientific positions when Priya doesn't have the mental discipline to spell correctly

Priya's too lazy to do that!!

so, why would anyone think Priya could sit down and read a scientific paper and understand what's being said?

Priya's too lazy to do that!!

otherwise, Priya would realize that scientists are increasingly distancing themselves from the alarmist hyperbole of the warmists

yes, the planet is warmer than it once was

yes, absent all other factors, human activity might make a small contribution

but the most extreme forecasts of the alarmists have invariably proven incorrect and there are many other factors that could explain the slight temperature rise that halted about 15 yeas ago

the planet has been much warmer in the past and life didn't just survive, it thrived

much more of the planet will produce edible vegetation if a warmer world does occur

when you expect all women to have a certain opinion and attack those who don't, you're sexist

in the first two years of Obama's presidency, the unemployment rate soared and most of the jobs lost were those of women

as abortion becomes a widespread birth control method, more than half of infants killed are female

Obama has waged a relentless war on women

btw, even Democrats have become fed up with Obama

even Diane Feinstein, former confident of Harvey Milk himself, has harshly criticized the Taliban trade

indeed, when Obama threw a party at the White House for an army deserter with a father sporting a Taliban-style beard, it was the moment that everyone came to an irreversible conclusion

Obama has no idea what he's doing

it's now a bipartisan consensus

June 10, 2014 1:11 PM  
Anonymous wiley peyote said...

btw, lazy Priya

I purposely spelled a word wrong in my post

let's do a test and see if you can find it

ha-ha!!

June 10, 2014 1:15 PM  
Anonymous Reginald Superiorator said...

Oh, this should bloody well be fun!!

June 10, 2014 1:18 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"concensus

deslusions

relentlessy

focused"

sure is a shameful list...

June 10, 2014 2:16 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

someone from before: "A Colorado baker found guilty of discrimination … must go through sensitivity training. Jack Phillips [was found] guilty of discriminating against [a] same-sex couple. [H]e told them in July 2012 that he couldn’t bake them a wedding cake because homosexual behavior conflicted with his Christian beliefs.

Not if those beliefs are based on the Bible. All of the bashing quotes deal with only males except Romans where they were first heterosexual and then engaged in homosexual behavior, as you say. That is NOT homosexuality, but I know you need for it to be.

The “practice” of atheism, other religions and any number of “lifestyles” also conflict with Christian beliefs, but he chooses to have a problem with only one so-called conflict.

If supremacist christians don’t want to be found guilty of discriminating, they should stop religiously practicing bigotry.

I don’t remember: evidence that the homosexual is an evil attack on our society … is mounting:

1. 50% of that society would beg to differ. Are there some links, pamphlets or other forms of propaganda you may know of that I could pass around ‘n hopefully set ‘em all straight.?
2. Equal rights for LGBTs is not an attack on society, it is, however, a rightful attack on heterosupremacy. To whom I solemnly proclaim; boo hoo.
3. Which homosexual is causing all this ruckus? I mean, you say, you say you have “evidence” of “the homosexual.” Who is it and how can we stop them? If we get right on it we may just be able to have all this misunderstandingness cleared up by the end of the day.
4. He wanted to hate. He literally made a “stand” against “homosexual behavior,” something as a heterosexual he was pre-programmed to hate anyway, but he regards this as having done God’s Will. When you’re that blind, you’re the one with the problem.
5. Baking cakes can be evil. I’d like to talk to “the” homosexual about that one. And who was the chick who used to dress up like her servants and do plays in the barn and told the common-folk something like “let them eat cake.” I think that cake, or cake incident was definitely evil because I think she was like a princess or something.
--
Obama has waged a relentless war on women

How?

June 11, 2014 6:09 AM  
Anonymous Robert said...

15 of the 51 percent of Americans who oppose the ACA want a stronger system such as a single-payer or socialized medicine.

The overwhelming majority of people support health-care reform. This is why it's a losing issue for republicans. They've been misled by their own talking points.

June 11, 2014 8:44 AM  
Anonymous Rowan said...

Eric Cantor, lol.

June 11, 2014 8:45 AM  
Anonymous why does Robert bother to get up in the morning? said...

Cantor was not strongly enough opposed to the gay agenda so things didn't go well for him

Robert thinks Americans want socialized medicine

if they ever did, the experiences of the VA and the current state of health care in Massachusetts should fix that

The scandal surrounding the Department of Veterans Affairs health care system isn’t making Americans feel more confident about ObamaCare, a just released Fox News Poll finds.

Less than a third of voters believes that the government will do a better job with ObamaCare than the VA did managing care for vets (31 percent). Over half believe it won’t (55 percent).

Meanwhile, a majority regrets ObamaCare ever passed, and more voters than not say the country is worse off under the law.

By a 55-38 percent margin, people wish the Affordable Care Act had never passed and the 2009 system were still in place. That includes a quarter of Democrats (25 percent), a majority of independents (58 percent) and most Republicans (85 percent).

Over half of voters under age 35 (53 percent) along with a majority of those ages 65 and over (58 percent) regret ObamaCare passed.

In addition, by a double-digit margin, more voters say the country is worse off under the new health care law: 44 percent worse off vs. 29 percent better off. Another one voter in four says ObamaCare hasn’t made much of a difference either way (24 percent).

Independents are twice as likely to say we’re worse off under ObamaCare (49 percent worse off vs. 24 percent better off). Almost all Republicans say worse off (72 percent) or no difference (21 percent).

Among Democrats, a 54-percent majority says the country is better off as a result of the law, while 15 percent say worse off and 27 percent say it hasn’t made much of a difference.

Overall, only 39 percent of voters approve of the way President Obama is handling health care, down from 43 percent last month.

A 58-percent majority disapproves of Obama’s job performance on health care.

The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 1,006 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the bipartisan joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from June 1-3, 2014.

June 11, 2014 8:59 AM  
Anonymous Robert said...

Happy King Kamehameha Day!

June 11, 2014 9:57 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...



emproph, we need to ask, in all seriousness, did you drop a lot of acid in your youth?

because your thought processes are a little, uh, quantum

"Not if those beliefs are based on the Bible. All of the bashing quotes deal with only males except Romans where they were first heterosexual and then engaged in homosexual behavior, as you say. That is NOT homosexuality, but I know you need for it to be."

you're making some assumptions here, Improbably Inane

even from your point of view, how do you they weren't homosexuals who had engaged in heterosexual behavior?

but the truth is that the Bible doesn't anywhere mention homosexuality as a innate part of one's identity

it refers to a behavior, one that can be chosen or not to engage in

there's no evidence that homosexuality is any more than that

a chosen behavior

of course, you could make a deterministic or fatalist or no-free-will argument, but there is no reason to limit that to sexual behavior (or desire)

"The “practice” of atheism, other religions and any number of “lifestyles” also conflict with Christian beliefs, but he chooses to have a problem with only one so-called conflict"

no, I believe this baker would also refuse to make cakes that endorse or celebrate atheism, Islam, Buddhism, etc

and he should be able to do that

"If supremacist christians don’t want to be found guilty of discriminating, they should stop religiously practicing bigotry"

why is that "supremacist"?

this baker would not try to seek government intervention if a homosexual didn't want to bake a cake for the "Love Won Out" conference

or if a Muslim baker refused to make a cake that said "Jesus is Lord"

odd that you think the liberty to choose who and what you want to endorse and work for is "supremacist"

maybe it's the acid talking

maybe you need help

"I don’t remember: evidence that the homosexual is an evil attack on our society … is mounting"

I didn't go up and re-read

I must have forgotten "agenda" after "homosexual"

yes, when someone refuses to endorse and support certain behavior, as we were formerly free to do, and the government sends them to re-education camp, that's evil

"1. 50% of that society would beg to differ."

I doubt it

as shown in the Chik-Fil_A and Duck Dynasties episodes, the public supports the right to believe homosexuality is sinful

even if you're right, which you aren't, why would one 50% be given more weight than the other 50%?

"2. Equal rights for LGBTs is not an attack on society,"

no, it isn't

but LGBTs have always had equal rights

what we're discussing special protections and preferences over the rest of society

the baker could refuse to bake cakes for all sorts of reason and no one would object

but if it is because he doesn't want to support sexual immorality, he needs to be trained to not do that and be closely supervised by the government

that's giving a preference to those who engage in sexual immorality

"4. He wanted to hate."

no he didn't

although, if he did, he has that right

emotions are not illegal

"5. Baking cakes can be evil."

if you cake with a slogan "Thank you, Adolf, for the final solution", that would be evil

one thing to remember about all this is that the baker was happy to bake cakes for homosexuals who were willing to pay for them

he just refrained from making cakes that endorsed or celebrated certain behavior that conflicted with his religious and moral beliefs

no individual was discriminated against

only behavior

a world where we are not allowed to be discriminating about behavior is a world few people really want to live in

Obama has waged a relentless war on women

How?

June 11, 2014 10:20 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Happy King Kamehameha Day!"

glad you found something to get up for, Robert

June 11, 2014 10:27 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "concensus deslusions relentlessy focussed it's amazing that Priya would think anyone would believe Priya's interpretation of scientific positions when Priya doesn't have the mental discipline to spell correctly".

LOL! I purposely spell words wrong just to watch your pathetic self get all jazzed over it - thanks for falling for it! Too bad the only thing you can get really excited about is misspelled words and not being able to actually make any cogent arguments.

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "yes, the planet is warmer than it once was yes, absent all other factors, human activity might make a small contribution"

The overwhelming scientific concensus is not that humans might have made a small contribution, it is that humans ARE responsible for global warming.


Wyatt/bad anonhmous said "but the most extreme forecasts of the alarmists have invariably proven incorrect and there are many other factors that could explain the slight temperature rise that halted about 15 yeas ago".

Wrong on both counts. The atmospheric global warming has been greatly underestimated and the overall warming of the entire climate system has continued rapidly over the past 15 years, even faster than the 15 years before that The atmospheric heating represents only 2% of the overall warming of the global climate. The rates of temperature increase for the remaining portions of the global climate such as upper and deep ocean temperatures, and land and ice temperatures have increased at a far greater rate.

Also, Global wamring predictions have proven incredibly accurate. Just as predicted storms have become more frequent and severe. Where they've been wrong, they've UNDERESTIMATED the severity of the changes we've experienced. Scientists originally thought the polar ice cap would disappear by the year 2100, its no on pace to be gone by the year 2050. Sea levels have risen faster than expected and The overall loss of glacier ice has occurred faster than expected.

June 11, 2014 12:10 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "the planet has been much warmer in the past and life didn't just survive, it thrived".

Large changes in climate in the past have always resulted in mass extinctions. Eventually new life evolved but that didn't help the life that existed at the time the changes occurred. And the present global warming is happening at a far faster rate than any climate changes have in the past. There will be no time for people to adjust if we don't do something and the global consequences will be severe - starvation, poverty, flooding, heat waves, droughts, war and disease.

—People dying from warming- and sea rise-related flooding, especially in big cities.

—Famine because of temperature and rain changes, especially for poorer nations.

—Farmers going broke because of lack of water.

—Infrastructure failures because of extreme weather.

—Dangerous and deadly heat waves worsening.

—Certain land and marine ecosystems failing.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "much more of the planet will produce edible vegetation if a warmer world does occur".

False. Much of the planet will be too hot to support human feed crops and droughts will be more severe causing crop failure and starvation. this is already starting to happen just as predicted. The global warming is happening too quickly for people to adapt in time as we've seen with the severe drought going on in California and throughout the U.S. southwest.

June 11, 2014 12:10 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "when you expect all women to have a certain opinion and attack those who don't, you're sexist".

What one or two people in the Democratic party might think about women is irrelevant, what matters is the policies and objectives of the two parties. Democrats have fought for equal pay for women, access to abortion and contraception, nutritional programs for expectant mothers and infants, programs to end domestic violence while Republicans have opposed all such plans and in the brief period between January 2011 and September 2012 taken 55 votes on anti-women policies despite promising a "relentless focus on jobs".

⦁ Seventeen votes which would allow health insurance companies to discriminate against women by charging women higher premiums than men or denying women coverage based on “pre-existing conditions” like being pregnant.

⦁ a vote which would allow hospitals to deny emergency abortions to women’s whose lives are at risk, which NARAL’s Nancy Keenan has ⦁ called The “Let Women Die” Bill.

⦁ Six votes against protections for women from violence and discrimination,including votes against protecting the confidentiality of domestic violence victims, and votes against additional funding for grants under the Violence Against Women Act

⦁ Votes to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). (Because, you know, they’re the party of family values, which means letting pregnant women, new mothers AND infants go hungry.)

June 11, 2014 12:11 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "in the first two years of Obama's presidency, the unemployment rate soared and most of the jobs lost were those of women".

Wrong. The recession was caused by Bush and the severe loss of jobs started while Bush was in office. Its an accepted principle that it takes a year in office for a new presidents policies to start having an effect and as you can see here the rate of job loss started to decrease a few months into Obama's first term after the stimulus spending was passed and by the end of the first year job creation was back and there's been 51 straight months of job growth since despite Republicans forcing Obama to cut 1 million government jobs to get anything done and Republicans blocking the American Jobs Act which economists including John Mccain's economic advisor said would create 2 million jobs.

In Bush’s first term, he created zero job growth, even before the Bush recession. “When Bush began his first term in January 2001, total nonfarm employment was 132.47 million. When his second term began four years later, it was 132.45 million, or effectively zero job growth.”

“From February 2001 to February 2005, the economy created 164,000 jobs, for a 0.1 percent gain during Bush’s first term. From February 2009 through December 2012, the economy created nearly 1.2 million jobs, a 0.9 percent improvement.”

Republicans built that zero to .1 percent gain job growth. In Bush’s entire 8 year term, total job growth was just 1.1 million. Obama created more jobs in his first term than Bush did in his entire 2 terms. Although we have to hand government sector job growth to Bush. Yes, the Big Government Republicans don’t like to talk about reality much. They killed public sector jobs under Obama, in an attempt to make his job numbers look bad and cripple government, but ironically, this is only making Obama the Private Sector Job Growth President.

June 11, 2014 12:11 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

it's always humorous when someone who can't spell and cites Rolling Stone magazine on science lets you know everything they "know"

looks like the death of the Tea Party has been greatly exaggerated

so has the constant liberal whining about the power of money in politics

Cantor spent 5 million

his opponent spent 122,000

put that in your sweet bippy and smoke it

Hillary Clinton's popularity is way down, btw

As she embarks on a tour to promote her new book, former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton's favorability rating is at its lowest point in years, a new Gallup poll released Wednesday shows.

Fifty-four percent of Americans say they hold a favorable opinion of Clinton, according to Gallup, way down from 59 percent in just February and 67 percent when her "husband" left office.

Clinton's "book" "Hard Choices" was released Tuesday. She's been under the media spotlight as speculation swirls over the possibility she will run for president in 2016.

and, yet, if she doesn't run, Dems are up the creek without a paddle

o woe is they!!

btw, isn't funny that lazy Priya couldn't find my planted spelling error

hahahaha!!

June 11, 2014 12:38 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "btw, isn't funny that lazy Priya couldn't find my planted spelling error".

LOL, you had a lot more than one spelling error!

Unlike you I don't get all jazzed over trivial things - I have logic, reason, evidence, and facts on my side.

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "it's always humorous when someone who can't spell and cites Rolling Stone magazine on science lets you know everything they "know"".

I didn't quote Rolling Stone on science, I just noted they brought up your paid-to-lie hero Fred Singer's being known as "the grandaddy of fake science". The science cited was 97% of scientists who's research shows global warming is man-made


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "indeed, when Obama threw a party at the White House for an army deserter with a father sporting a Taliban-style beard, it was the moment that everyone came to an irreversible conclusion Obama has no idea what he's doing".

The hilarious thing is that bad anonymous has no idea what he's talking about. Prior to Bergdahls release Republicans were demanding that everything that could be done should be done to secure his release. When Obama did what Republicans asked they blacktracked (opposing things they were formerly for because Obama is now for it) and hypocritically claimed they opposed the trade. Fact is Bush released over 500 prisoners from Gitmo while Obama has only released 87. You sure didn't here any Republicans crying about all the prisoners Bush released. And the U.S. government had nothing on the five people they traded for Bergdahl, they couldn't charge ;them with anything and would have had to release them in a year anyway when the war ends.

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "Robert thinks Americans want socialized medicine if they ever did, the experiences of the VA and the current state of health care in Massachusetts should fix that The scandal surrounding the Department of Veterans Affairs health care system isn’t making Americans feel more confident about ObamaCare, a just released Fox News Poll finds.".

The problems at the VA are entirely due to Republicans. Bush started two wars and never ramped up Veterans Affairs to deal with the inevitable increase in wounded that would soon be flooding home. Democrats tried to deal with it by increase VA funding by 24 billion. Republicans in their normal game plan blocked the attempt to make things better and then dishonestly blamed the failure on Democrats. Republicans then forced a 2 billion cut to the VA

June 11, 2014 4:19 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "A 58-percent majority disapproves of Obama’s job performance on health care....The Fox News poll"

LOL! Of course a Fox news poll. The truth is Republicans have lied long and loud about Obamacare and have conned people into thinking Obamacare is something it isn't and that it isn't what it is. The perfect example of this is the state Obamacare exchange in Kentucky called Kynect where polls show a majority of Kentuckians opposed to Obamacare but a majority in favour of the Kentucky version called Kynect. Republican lying has been effective but every informed person despises them for doing so.
Yes, Republicans have done a masterful job of deceiving the public about Obamacare, if you ask them about Obamacare most want changes but if you ask them about the features of Obamacare Americans are overwhelmingly in favour of the healthcare law:

80% support letting young adults stay on their parents plan

77% support free preventative care

74% support the medicaid expansion

70% support ending insurance discrimination based on pre-existing conditions

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "but the truth is that the Bible doesn't anywhere mention homosexuality as a innate part of one's identity it refers to a behavior, one that can be chosen or not to engage in there's no evidence that homosexuality is any more than that a chosen behavior".

Not that it matters what the primitive bronze age goatherders who wrote the bible said, but the bible does say gayness is innate. In those days gays were lumped into the category called Eunuchs and Jesus said, "For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother’s womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.". So, Jesus said some people were born gay. Further, all major mental and physical health organizations and most christian churches(even many anti-gay ones) agree that sexual orientation is not chosen. Gayness does not refer to a behavior, it refers to the gender people are attracted to. People are gay, bisexual, lesbian, or heterosexual regardless of whether or not they are virgins. One has a sexual orientation long before one has sex and the gender you have sex with doesn't necessarily reflect your sexual orientation.

June 11, 2014 4:20 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "no, I believe this baker would also refuse to make cakes that endorse or celebrate atheism, Islam, Buddhism, etc and he should be able to do that".

And yet there's never been a publicized case of a baker refusing to bake any cakes other thaqn those for gays. Face it, anti-gay christians save their "sincerely held religious beliefs" for anti-gay actions. Anyone who makes a living off of the public is morally, if not legally, obligated to serve ALL of the public.


Robert said "If supremacist christians don’t want to be found guilty of discriminating, they should stop religiously practicing bigotry"


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "why is that "supremacist"? this baker would not try to seek government intervention if a homosexual didn't want to bake a cake for the "Love Won Out" conference".

First, no gay bakery owner has ever refused to bake a cake for a heterosexual wedding or religious celibration, or even an anti-gay event. Anti-gay christians are heterosexual supremacists, they think heterosexuals should get rights and benefits denied to gays, heterosexuality should be promoted and gayness oppressed, they should be able to discriminate against gays but no one should be able to discriminate against heterosexuals or christians. Supremacists - plain and simple.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "odd that you think the liberty to choose who and what you want to endorse and work for is "supremacist""

Liberty is never absolute. All individuals in society must make compromises to accomodate reasonable freedoms for otthers. There is nothing odd about it, it is supremacist to think you have a right to discriminate against people with harmless characteristics like skin colour or sexual orientation.

June 11, 2014 4:20 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "yes, when someone refuses to endorse and support certain behavior, as we were formerly free to do, and the government sends them to re-education camp, that's evil".

An outrageous lie. No one who doesn't want to is forced to endorse or support gayness. You can hate and denigrate gays all you want, but what you do not have a right to do is to refuse service to the general public because of a person's harmless characteristics. These business people are ;not they themselves required to engage in sexual behavior they find objectionable, their complaint is that it is sinful for others to do so. For this reason such a restriction on their freedom is trivial or inconsequential and cannot in anyway be considered a real restriction on their religious freedom.


Robert said "1. 50% of that society would beg to differ."


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "I doubt it as shown in the Chik-Fil_A and Duck Dynasties episodes, the public supports the right to believe homosexuality is sinful even if you're right, which you aren't, why would one 50% be given more weight than the other 50%?".

What you doubt is of no relevance given that you doubt a wide array of well established facts. The truth is the majority of Americans say gayness is morally acceptable In 2012 54% agreed and in 2013 the number had gone up to 59%


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "but LGBTs have always had equal rights".

One of your worn out ancient lies. Gays and lesbians are still denied the right to marry, adopt, and not be fired from their jobs or evicted from their homes for something other than their ability to be a good employee or tenant. Gays and lesbians in many places are denied the right to see their spouse in the hospital when only family members are allowed, or the ability to make medical decisions on behalf of their spouse.

June 11, 2014 4:21 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "what we're discussing special protections and preferences over the rest of society".

A long standing obnoxious lie by the anti-family bigots. It is not special protections or preferances to get the same rights heterosexuals have. There is nowhere in the globe that gays have rights that heterosexuals don't have.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "the baker could refuse to bake cakes for all sorts of reason and no one would object but if it is because he doesn't want to support sexual immorality, he needs to be trained to not do that and be closely supervised by the government that's giving a preference to those who engage in sexual immorality".

An outrageous lie. If a baker refused to bake a cake for a heterosexual wedding because he opposed heterosexuality he'd have gotten the same penalty. Only heterosexuals ever have rights not given to gays - gays never have rights not given to heterosexuals.

June 11, 2014 4:21 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "one thing to remember about all this is that the baker was happy to bake cakes for homosexuals who were willing to pay for them he just refrained from making cakes that endorsed or celebrated certain behavior that conflicted with his religious and moral beliefs no individual was discriminated against only behavior".

Obviously false. He refused to bake them a cake, there were not having sex, he discriminated agianst them because of their sexual orientation and not their behavior and in any event its evil to discriminate against hamless behaviors or characteristics. The baker was not himself required to engage in sex he finds objectionable, his complaint was that it is sinful for the gay couple to do so. Thus this restriction on his freedom was trivial or inconsequential and in no way can be considered an infringment on his right to practice his religion. As Anton Scalia said:

“Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. … Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief? To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.”

“To make an individual’s obligation to obey such a law contingent upon the law’s coincidence with his religious beliefs, except where the State’s interest is “compelling” — permitting him, by virtue of his beliefs, “to become a law unto himself, [this] contradicts both constitutional tradition and common sense.”

June 11, 2014 4:22 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "a world where we are not allowed to be discriminating about behavior is a world few people really want to live in ".

Absolute nonsense. The best world is one which maximizes individual freedom by balancing the freedoms of individuals and society. The best society is one which does not discriminate against people for harmless characteristics like skin colour or sexual orientation. A just society can never say it is okay to allow the absolute right to disciminate.

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "looks like the death of the Tea Party has been greatly exaggerated so has the constant liberal whining about the power of money in politics".

LOL! Support for the Tea Baggers is at 22%! Its one thing to win a Republican primary with its outrageously low turnout rate and quite another to win a general election as a far right loony who turns off independents. The fact is that almost all GOP establishment candidates beat their Tea Bagger primary challengers and the Cantor election was unique and means very little for other races in other states. Cantor's position was unique, he was in leadership, he owned the House Republicans capitualtion on the government shutdown fight, he owned the House Republicans flirtation with immigration reform and had problems his money couldn't solve. In fact his money probably hurt him as his negative ads against the Tea Bagger candidate helped define him as the sole opposition to the majority leader.

June 11, 2014 4:22 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "Hillary Clinton's popularity is way down, btw.".

LOL! Sure it is. That's why in theoretical presidential matchups she has a 10-12 point lead over all potential Republican nominees.

June 11, 2014 4:33 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

other than not spell and not understand science, lazy Priya also seems unable to focus

is laziness innate?

so, if one says most scientists don't believe global warming is a likely catastrophe, LP counters that 97% of scientists believe global warming is caused by human activity

not the same thing

focus

if one points to the fact that Americans have repeatedly made clear that no one should be banned from society for believing and stating their opposition to gay marriage, LP counters with one poll that shows a slim majority believes homosexuality is morally acceptable

not the same thing

focus

if one points out that refusing to make products endorsing an action they believe is immoral is not discriminatory, LP counters that businesses should have to serve everybody

not the same thing

focus

there are other examples, and there are many problems with what Lazy Priya actually says but ther more underlying issue is the inability to focus on the topic being discussed

it's just laziness!!

June 12, 2014 6:08 AM  
Anonymous Reginald Superiorator said...

Well said, old chap!

June 12, 2014 6:11 AM  
Anonymous Robert said...

Several things:

The poster who said "supremacist christians" was not I.

Eric Cantor's opponent was not a tea-partier.

I wonder whether cross-over votes from Democrats (which are allowed in Virginia) contributed to Cantor's loss. Interesting to me was the breakdown given by the Post, that Cantor won in suburban Fredericksburg and rural central Virginia, but lost in the Richmond suburbs.

June 12, 2014 12:03 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "if one points to the fact that Americans have repeatedly made clear that no one should be banned from society for believing and stating their opposition to gay marriage, LP counters with one poll that shows a slim majority believes homosexuality is morally acceptable".

No American has vever been banned from society for believing and stating their opposition to marriage equality and no one has ever advocated that they should be.

And 59% of Americans believing gayness is morally acceptable is not "a slim majority", its a LARGE majority. You are part of a small and ever shrinking minority of Americans.


Wyatt/bad aonymous if one points out that refusing to make products endorsing an action they believe is immoral is not discriminatory, LP counters that businesses should have to serve everybody|.

Of course its discriminatory. You're refusing services you normally provide to some people merely because you don't like their harmless characteristics - that is the essence of discrimination, it can't be described as anything other than discrimination.

June 12, 2014 5:17 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The baker was not himself required to engage in sex he finds objectionable, his complaint was that it is sinful for the gay couple to do so. Thus this restriction on his freedom was trivial or inconsequential and in no way can be considered an infringment on his right to practice his religion. As Anton Scalia said:

“Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. … Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief? To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.”

“To make an individual’s obligation to obey such a law contingent upon the law’s coincidence with his religious beliefs, except where the State’s interest is “compelling” — permitting him, by virtue of his beliefs, “to become a law unto himself, [this] contradicts both constitutional tradition and common sense.”

If you make your living off of the public you are morally obligated to serve all of the public. Not liking a marriage that has no effect on you or anyone other than the couple getting married is not a valid excuse for discrimination.

June 12, 2014 5:19 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "so, if one says most scientists don't believe global warming is a likely catastrophe, LP counters that 97% of scientists believe global warming is caused by human activity not the same thing".

It is the same thing. It is the overwhelming concensus of climate scientists that there will be devestating consequences for future generations if steps aren't taken now to reign in greenhouse gas emissions:

The devastating effects of global warming:

Major negative effects of climate change are here now and they're only getting worse, as shown by recent reports from the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) and the White House among others.

The greenhouse gas emissions that drive warming "now substantially exceed the highest concentrations recorded in ice cores during the past 800,000 years," the IPCC said. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, which primarily come from the burning of fossil fuels, have risen 40% since pre-industrial times.

We've gathered some notable effects of climate change below.

Unless otherwise noted, each effect assumes a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) by 2100, a number the IPCC has suggested we are "more likely than not" to exceed, and a sea level rise of 0.5 meters (1.5 feet) by 2100, about the average of all the IPCC's most recent climate scenarios. This is a conservative estimate as other studies have suggested that sea level rise will be much greater if climate change continues unmitigated.

Climate change will be insanely expensive.

Asset destruction, forced relocations, droughts, extinctions, and all of the other bad things we're going to discuss will add up in costs to the global economy. Already the Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that the U.S. Climate Disruption Budget — i.e., stuff related to drought, storm, and growing climate disruptions — was nearly $100 billion. And that's just the start.

As climate change continues, costs will go up. Indeed, the release of a 50-billion-ton reservoir of methane from melting Arctic ice, which may advance global warming by 15-to-35 years, could by itself cost $60 trillion to the global economy, researchers told Nature last summer.

June 12, 2014 5:23 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Hundreds of millions of people may be displaced by 2050.


"98% of all displacement in 2012 was related to climate- and weather-related events," according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center. Climate change may become the biggest driver of displaced people, according to António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. In 2008, 36 million people were displaced by natural disasters. At least 20 million of those people were driven from their homes by disasters related to climate change like drought and rising sea level, Guterres said.


Dengue and malaria could spread in the U.S

As summers become longer, temperatures go up, and rainfall patterns change along with species patterns. Mosquitoes carrying diseases will likely have a longer season in a wider area, according to the Natural Resource Defense Council. "The same is true on a global scale: increases in heat, precipitation, and humidity can allow tropical and subtropical insects to move from regions where infectious diseases thrive into new places," they wrote. Increases in international travel, "means that the U.S. is increasingly at risk for becoming home to these new diseases."

Western wildfires could burn up to eight times as much land by 2100

For each one degree Celsius of warming, the area burned by western wildfires will increase by a factor of two to four, according to a report by the National Academy of Sciences.

June 12, 2014 5:23 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

An additional 8% of the world population will experience water scarcity by 2100.

In 2013, about 1.3 billion people lived in water scarce regions, according to one study. The researchers calculated that an additional 8% of the population would enter a state of "new or aggravated water scarcity," solely due to climate change with a temperature increase of 2 degrees C by 2100.


Hurricanes could become up to 11% more intense and 20% wetter by 2100.


The recent National Climate Assessment found that Category 4 and 5 hurricanes (the strongest) have increased in frequency, intensity, and duration since the 1980s. It's not yet clear how much can be attributed human or natural causes but scientists said the "the trend is projected to continue," and that climate change is not going to help the situation moving forward.

Four times as many New Yorkers could live in areas that flood by 2050.

June 12, 2014 5:24 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...


Millions of people and trillions in assets are at risk in coastal cities.
Assuming a sea-level rise of .5 meters by 2070, with an extra .5 to 1.5 meters to account for storms, a 2008 study ranked the most exposed cities in the world. The analysis found staggering potential losses in cities around the world. Calcutta, India, may be the most exposed, with 14 million people and $2 trillion in assets at risk. Miami is also in big trouble with 4.8 million people and $3.5 trillion at risk.

Global wheat and maize yields are already beginning to decline.
While warming temperatures might initially help certain crops, the overall picture is negative. Global crop yields are slowing down as a result of events related to climate change, like reduced rainfall and higher temperatures.

Wheat and maize have already been negatively affected in certain regions, as shown in the chart below. The IPCC points out several scenarios in which food and cereal prices have rapidly increased following extreme weather events since their last report in 2007. The new report predicts continued drops in global wheat and maize production, which could lead to food scarcity and political unrest.

Some small island nations could be destroyed

100% of reefs may be at risk of extinction by 2050.

Besides being biodiversity hotspots and holding potentials for medicine, coral reefs act as a buffer to storms and erosion. One-hundred countries could lose coastal protection along almost 100,000 miles of shoreline, according to the World Resources Institute.

June 12, 2014 5:25 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Some reptiles species could turn mostly female, potentially leading to their extinction.
Because many reptiles rely on ambient temperatures to regulate physiological processes, they will be directly affected by global temperature change. For turtles, nest temperature determines the sex of the offspring. A cooler nest hatches only males while a warmer nest is all females. Changes in sex ratio could effect the potential to produce offspring as well as the evolutionary fitness the species, according to the Forest Service, both factors which do not bode well for the survival of the reptiles.


Atlanta and New York could see twice as many days of thunderstorms a year by 2100 from the 1962 to 1989 average.

One study found that when greenhouse gases increased, conditions prime for intense thunderstorms in the eastern and southern U.S. also increased. Other climate studies have suggested there will be "robust increases in the occurrence of severe thunderstorm environments" in the eastern U.S., often occurring before the 2 degrees C global warming baseline.


Many countries are losing their main dry season water source.

Over one billion people worldwide rely on glaciers and snow for freshwater as they melt, according to the IPCC. When glaciers are in equilibrium with the climate, they act as valuable and stable sources of freshwater for many regions. Because glaciers are currently out of equilibrium, "total meltwater yields from stored glacier ice will increase in many regions during the next decades but decrease thereafter," the IPCC said. This can lead to floods in the immediate future, but result in a lack of meltwater in the long-term.

June 12, 2014 5:25 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Equatorial regions and parts of the Antarctic will see up to a 50% decrease in their fisheries.

When the IPCC modeled about 1,000 marine species, it found almost a 50% decrease in catch in certain areas by 2060, using a scenario with a estimated 2.8 degree C temperature change. These analysis were without even considering ocean acidification or overfishing.

An additional 20 million more children will go hungry by 2050

A report from the World Food Program expects extreme weather events like floods, droughts, forest fires, and tropical cyclones to damage farmlands, threatening food security for millions of people. Climate impacts on crop yields will increase the number of malnourished children by around 11 million in Asia, 10 million in Africa, and 1.4 million in Latin America, the report said.

By 2050, crop yields in Asia are expected to fall by 50% for wheat 17% for rice compared to 2000 levels, according to the report. This will threaten billions of people who rely on agriculture for their livelihoods.

June 12, 2014 5:26 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

India sweltering under record heatwave

June 12, 2014 5:36 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Americans' views of President Barack Obama as a person have turned more negative, with 47% saying they have a favorable opinion of him and 52% an unfavorable one. That net favorable rating of -5 is the least positive personal assessment of Obama to date.

Americans have generally maintained a positive opinion of Obama personally throughout his presidency even as his job approval ratings have averaged no higher than 48% in each of his last four years in office.

In recent weeks, the president has been dogged by a scandal involving medical care for U.S. military veterans at Veterans Affairs hospitals as well as the controversy surrounding the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. These events may be having a negative impact on his personal image.

In addition to his lower favorable rating, Americans now rate Obama less positively on each of six personal characteristics Gallup asked about than they did last year. On all six dimensions, the public's ratings of Obama are now below the majority level and are the worst Gallup has measured for him to date.

Only 48% of Americans say Obama understands the problems they face in their daily lives (48%), that he is honest and trustworthy (47%), and that he is a strong and decisive leader (45%). They are less likely to say he shares their values (43%), can manage government effectively (39%), and has a clear plan for solving the country's problems (34%).

June 13, 2014 5:16 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

“Even Eric Cantor has to admit, if you spend your life cutting programs that help children, you deserve to get beaten by a guy named Brat.”

June 14, 2014 4:16 PM  
Anonymous the laughing gull said...

Hillary Clinton's minions are hard at work assembling a political machine and fine tuning it for another go at the White House. Mrs. Clinton is doing her part preparing for a run as well, churning out a bland memoir about the "hard choices" she faced as secretary of state and coyly positioning herself (again) as the inevitable nominee of the party. But after the troubled beginning to her book tour, we're beginning to see the reasons why Hillary may eventually decide to pull the plug on a 2016 presidential run. Here are five:

1) She's just not that good at campaigning. If the last two gaffe-prone weeks have reminded us of anything about Hillary, it’s that she’s a mediocre politician at best. Her shortcomings are significant: she can be stiff and wooden in public; she lacks the aura of a natural politician; she’s not a great public speaker, and she can come across as politically flat-footed and tone deaf -- as she did with her “dead broke” response to a rather benign question about relating to the financial challenges of the average voter.

2) The “fire in the belly”question. Certainly, Mrs. Clinton shares her husband’s seemingly limitless ambition. It’s been the driving force behind their existence as individuals and as a couple for more than four decades. But Hillary is going to be 67 years old on October 26. Does she really want to spend her golden years working 16 hours a day shaking hands at high school gyms in Dubuque, Iowa, and rubbing elbows at diners in Manchester, New Hampshire?

3) It ain’t gonna be a coronation. Hillary must have been taken aback last week when two members of the traveling sisterhood – Diane Sawyer of ABC News and Terry Gross of NPR – actually pressed her with uncomfortable questions about Benghazi and gay marriage, respectively. Hillary didn’t respond well in either situation, and the ensuing coverage was instructive.

4) Obama is leaving a mess. President Obama’s second term is complicating matters significantly for Hillary. His foreign policy, which Clinton helped direct for four years – is adrift. The situation has unraveled dangerously in Syria and now Iraq. The infamous “reset” with Russia is a joke. Obama’s job approval rating is on the slide, and not only on foreign policy. It’s hard to see how any of these dynamics change for the better in the next two years -- and they may get worse. Hillary will not want to be seen as running for Obama’s third term.

5) The country wants real change. America was mesmerized by Obama’s call for change in 2008. It was one of the narratives that propelled him over Hillary in the first place. Eight years later, Obama has failed to deliver much of what he promised on uniting the country and changing business as usual in Washington. As a result an even stronger populist, anti-establishment, anti-incumbent fervor is coursing through the electorate. That does not bode well for Hillary Clinton, who embodies the elite establishment -- and the past.

Hillary will figure this out and take a pass on 2016.

June 17, 2014 12:04 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Right Now We "Grossly Underestimate" Economic Damage From Climate Change, New Paper Says

Scientists by training are a conservative bunch so once again, almost without exception when scientific predictions about global warming have been wrong they've underestimated its severity:

Our current models “grossly underestimate” the economic damage that will be wrought by climate change, according to British climate change economist Lord Nicholas Stern. So he and a colleague just published a new preliminary paper that makes a few key updates.

A new model of how economies grow. The old DICE model looks at any point in time, measures the economy’s productive capacity, and then gauges how much climate change will dampen that productivity in that moment. But climate change can also reduce that productive capacity itself. Stronger storms can damage infrastructure; sea level rise can force people to abandon homes, businesses or equipment; and climate damage can channel more investment into repairs and away from creating new capital. Stern and Dietz account for that, and the result is a double hit: at any given moment, the effects of climate change are reducing the economy’s ability to produce wealth, but they’re also but also reducing the economy’s overall capacity to produce wealth at future moments.

Considerations of higher climate sensitivity. Other factors in modeling climate change’s economic effects are what scientists call “tipping points” — moments when global warming kicks off feedback loops in the planetary ecology that cause the effects to speed up. Examples of tipping points include the polar ice melting in a way that result in sudden huge collapses rather than gradual melting; or melting permafrost in the northern hemisphere releasing underground methane that in turn speeds up global warming even more. (They can also include second-order social effects that damage economies: drought and food scarcity kicking off wars or mass refugee movements, for instance.) A lot of research suggests tipping points are a real threat, so climate sensitivity in the models should be high. But the DICE model assumes climate sensitivity is only modest. So Stern and Dietz also included a greater range of climate sensitivity metrics that reach higher.

June 17, 2014 12:51 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Considerations of extreme risk. Another key issue in the modeling is how seriously to take unlikely-but-possible cases of extreme damage from unknown and unpredictable changes as the globe heats up. The models that DICE and IPCC rely upon take a relatively simplistic approach to estimating that risk, and thus the appropriate investments to avoid it. So Stern and Dietz took an updated approach to modeling the possibility of those extreme circumstances as well.

These limitations can deliver some ridiculous results. For instance, the traditional DICE model shows a global temperature rise of 18°C would only reduce the global economy by half. But scientists agree this is obviously wrong; such an extreme rise would almost certainly render the planet uninhabitable for humans.

Stern previously oversaw the creation of a landmark report for the British government, that calculated climate change could reduce the global economy by anywhere from 5 to 20 percent. Stern later concluded that report itself likely low-balled the risks, and he’s now working on an update that will likely be published this September.

June 17, 2014 12:52 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "Hillary will figure this out and take a pass on 2016.".

Only a fool asserts future possibilities are a certainty, but then, that's Wyatt/bad anonymous for you. Here's a perfect example of that:

At June 14, 2008 10:17 AM Wyatt/bad anonymous said "Believe me, the voters will be educated about Obama by early November. By then, the polls won't even be a draw as they are now. It'll be a McCain landlside."

http://vigilance.teachthefacts.org/2008/06/two-rulings-more-to-come.html#comments

June 17, 2014 1:05 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And of course who can forget:

"President Huckabee's going to do this and President Huckabee's going to do that".

and

"....the upcoming 16 years of the Romney and Ryan presidencies".

June 17, 2014 1:52 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Ignoring global warming will hurt Republican 2016 chances

The Obama administration is getting a good deal of mileage out of the president’s commencement speech Saturday at the University of California, Irvine, during which he compared deniers of climate science in Congress to those who might have argued, during the race to the moon 50 years ago, that the nation’s celestial obsession was made of cheese.

It was a cheap laugh line, but the speech itself -- which clearly resonated with the thousands of twenty-something voters assembled at Angel Stadium in Anaheim -- underscored what a growing number of surveys and political strategists now make clear: Ignoring the issue of climate change is no longer a viable political strategy, and the GOP risks its fortunes in 2016 and beyond by keeping its collective head in the sand.

Consider just one analysis published earlier this month from left-leaning Public Policy Polling. It asked voters if they would “be willing to support a candidate for President in 2016 who did not believe that global warming was being caused by human activity?” Forty-six percent said no, while only 38 percent said yes.

This is in keeping with findings from the Pew Research Center, which suggest that even though many self-identifying Republicans feel the science is unsettled, a majority -- 52 percent -- nonetheless support addressing climate change with stricter limits on power-plant emissions. A full 67 percent of independent voters also said they support such limits -- a sobering statistic if you’re a GOP candidate looking to run a deregulation platform.

June 17, 2014 3:54 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Critics might be quick to dismiss some of these findings as products of left-leaning research organizations, but GOP pollsters also argue that Republicans deny and avoid the changing climate at their peril. This includes Alex Lundry, a vice president with conservative polling firm Target Point Consulting, who recently acknowledged in the Daily Caller that “current headlines and recent polling confirm climate change’s importance to a broad, bipartisan array of voters.”

How Republican candidates choose to engage on the topic, he continued, “will likely influence election outcomes in the near term, not just the distant future.”

Lundry argues that the GOP could address the issue by embracing the science and pursuing free-market solutions that support energy innovation and economic growth. It’s a path articulated by burgeoning conservative groups such as the Evangelical Environmental Network, which argues that addressing climate change is a Christian obligation, or Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, which is lobbying for comprehensive energy policy that includes measures to address global warming.

“If Republicans insist on listening to those that believe we won’t see the effects of climate change for decades,” Lundry writes, “we are setting ourselves up for a political and a policy mistake that will damage the party, and more importantly, the country.”

In an e-mail message, Rob Sisson, the president of ConservAmerica, a conservative group supporting action on climate change, suggested that deniers like Inhofe are outliers. Most Republican lawmakers, Sisson said, are “between a rock and hard place.” He pointed to the case of Bob Inglis, the former South Carolina congressman who lost his seat in 2010 after acknowledging that climate change is a real problem.

June 17, 2014 3:54 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

“The small portion of our party that disagrees on climate science is the ‘motivated right,’'' Sisson said. “They’re the ones who grill representatives at in-district town hall meetings and get out to vote in primaries. We must build a broader ‘motivated right’ to backstop legislators to make it safe for them to talk to their constituents about climate.”

In other words, if Republicans hope to capture the White House in 2016, they’ll have to find their voice on climate action and stop cowering at the experience of folks like Inglis, who would no doubt support them. Inglis went on to found the Energy and Enterprise Institute, a group aiming to put “free enterprise to work on energy and climate.”

Speaking on Saturday of science deniers in Congress -- those who call global warming a hoax, or a fad -- Obama noted that “at least they have the brass to say what they actually think.” Far worse, he suggested, are those who claim to be unqualified to engage the topic at all, because they are “not scientists” -- a common rhetorical tactic among Republicans hoping to skirt the issue.

"I'll translate that for you,” Obama said. “What that really means is, ‘I know that man made climate change really is happening, but if I admit it I'll be run out of town by a radical fringe that thinks climate science is a liberal plot, so I'm not going to admit it.’"

If the numbers are right, they’d better start admitting it soon.

June 17, 2014 3:54 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

19th out of 20 possible problems facing America

that's where Americans rank addressing global warming

shiver me timbers

what are the Republicans gonna do?

hahahaha!!!

June 17, 2014 4:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

19th out of 20 possible problems facing America

that's where Americans rank addressing global warming

shiver me timbers

what are the Republicans gonna do?

hahahaha!!!

June 17, 2014 4:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

19th out of 20 possible problems facing America

that's where Americans rank addressing global warming

shiver me timbers

what are the Republicans gonna do?

hahahaha!!!

June 17, 2014 4:16 PM  
Anonymous Richard Nixon reincarnated as Barack Obama said...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Internal Revenue Service has lost more emails connected to the tea party investigation, congressional investigators said Tuesday.

The IRS said last Friday it had lost an untold number of emails when Lois Lerner's computer crashed in 2011. Lerner used to head the division that handles applications for tax-exempt status.

On Tuesday, two key lawmakers said the IRS has also lost emails from six additional IRS workers whose computers crashed. Among them was Nikole Flax, who was chief of staff to Lerner's boss, then-deputy commissioner Steven Miller.

Miller later became acting IRS commissioner, but was forced to resign last year after the agency acknowledged that agents had improperly scrutinized tea party and other conservative groups when they applied for tax-exempt status.

Investigators from the House Ways and Means Committee interviewed IRS technicians Monday. The technicians said they first realized that Lerner's emails were lost in February or March - months before they informed congressional investigators, said a statement by two top Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee, chairman Dave Camp of Michigan and subcommittee chairman Charles Boustany of Louisiana.

The two lawmakers called on the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS, something Attorney General Eric Holder has declined to do in the past.

"It looks like the American people were lied to and the IRS tried to cover up the fact it conveniently lost key documents in this investigation," said the statement by Camp and Boustany. "The White House promised full cooperation, the commissioner promised full access to Lois Lerner emails and now the agency claims it cannot produce those materials and they've known for months they couldn't do this."

June 17, 2014 4:46 PM  
Anonymous gay agenda exposed said...

No gays will really want to be married if it is permissible. It's just a political tactic.

Same with the argument that gays can't choose their sexual preferences:

Texas Governor Rick Perry has again made headlines when, speaking at the Commonwealth Club of California last week, he likened homosexuality to alcoholism. "Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that," he said. "I may have the genetic coding that I'm inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way."

Gay-rights groups reacted per usual. "Although he may not have the 'genetic coding' to think before he speaks, Rick Perry, M.D. should have a real conversation with actual doctors before voicing his expertise on these issues,” said Fred Sainz of the Human Rights Campaign.

But here's a thought: What if Rick Perry was right?

Maybe it's time for the LGBT community to start moving beyond genetic predisposition as a tool for gaining mainstream acceptance of gay rights.

For decades now, it's been the most powerful argument in the LGBT arsenal: that we were “born this way.” Certainly there's evidence that the argument has played an important role in the shifting of attitudes towards the LGBT community. Still, this argument may have outgrown its usefulness. With most Americans now in favor of gay marriage, it's time for the argument to shift to one where genetics don't matter. The genetic argument has boxed us into a corner, allowing people like Perry to suggest that we shouldn't act upon our impulses. By insisting with the “we can't help ourselves” argument, isn't the gay community indirectly agreeing with people like Perry that these impulses are somehow wrong?

When AIDS first devastated the LGBT community, the genetic predisposition argument made a lot of sense: faced with hysteria and virulent homophobia, gays and lesbians needed to win the sympathies of a straight population ready to condemn them for their “lifestyle choices.” Now that AIDS has become a manageable disease, and attitudes have shifted, it's entirely possible that the argument can and should shift to one that is more sex-positive and libertarian: maybe some of us do choose to be gay.

It's entirely possible that in a world where homophobia isn't rampant, more people would in fact make that choice. By which I mean: Given the opportunity to change their sexual orientation to heterosexual, would most gays and lesbians actually choose to do so nowadays? Some might. But I, and most other gay people I know, would not—i.e., we would "choose" to remain gay. We are quite comfortable with our sexuality, and have grown tired of others viewing us as an afflicted class. If there's truly nothing wrong with being gay, then there should be nothing wrong with “choosing” to be gay.

Most people, if presented with their sexuality as a choice in a world free of judgment and discrimination, would probably stick to whatever it is they are—which means the roughly 95 percent of people who self-identify as straight would still choose to remain so. In 2014, we no longer need to have the “desire not to do that.” In fact, we might want to consider embracing the choice argument as one that is far more sex-positive. The heterosexuals of the world don't feel compelled to defend themselves on genetic grounds, and neither should we. It behooves us in the LGBT community to accept ourselves as nothing less than equal, our sexuality just one of many markers of our individualism—not shameful, not lesser.

Gays and lesbians should stop defending their sexuality and start enjoying it, openly and without qualification. We'll choose to be gay much the same way that Perry chooses to be straight

June 18, 2014 6:32 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

*THIS IS A MESSAGE FROM ALERT MONTGOMERY*

With hot and humid temperatures forecasted today we encourage Montgomery County residents to find places where they can stay cool and to take precautions to avoid heat-related illnesses.
Most at risk are young children, the elderly, and people with health problems such as asthma, who are susceptible to heat-related illnesses like heat stroke and exhaustion.
Libraries, recreation centers, and pools are good places to cool off, along with shopping malls and movie theaters. To quickly find the location of public facilities, go to the My Montgomery website at http://www2.montgomerycountymd.gov/mymontgomery and type in your location. The website includes locations of pools, parks, libraries, regional services centers, recreation centers, Metro stations, hospitals, and golf courses. Residents with questions about specific locations and hours of operation should call 311.
By taking the following precautions, residents can remain safe and comfortable during this summer’s hot and humid days.

• Stay indoors whenever possible. Avoid strenuous activities that can result in overexposure to the sun. If you must do a strenuous activity, do it during the coolest part of the day, usually before 9 a.m.

• When outdoors, wear proper protection from the sun. Wear light-colored, light weight, and loose fitting clothing, a hat, and sunscreen.

• Drink plenty of water. Dehydration, cramps, exhaustion, or heat stroke can result from not drinking enough fluids. Avoid drinks containing alcohol or caffeine.

• Check frequently on elderly relatives or neighbors and other at-risk individuals.

• Never leave pets or young children in a car, even with the windows cracked.

Knowing the symptoms of heat exposure can prevent a serious heat illness from becoming life threatening. Should any of the following occur, get out of the heat, loosen any tight or heavy clothing, and drink plenty of water:

• Heat cramps: symptoms include painful muscle spasms, usually involving the abdominal muscles or legs;
• Heat exhaustion: first signs are cool, moist, pale or flushed skin, dizziness, nausea, headache
•Heat stroke: the most serious sign of overexposure. Symptoms include red, hot, dry skin, weak pulse, rapid breathing, and changes in consciousness. Seek emergency medical attention by calling 911.
Find more information at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website at http://emergency.cdc.gov/disasters/extremeheat/

June 18, 2014 7:48 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

oh no!!!

it's a hot day in the second half of June

must be global warmin'

ask any inquirin' mind!!

June 18, 2014 9:04 AM  
Anonymous some things just go together said...

Barack Obama 2004:

"I'm a Christian. I do believe that tradition and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman. I don't think marriage is a civil right."

NBC poll 2009:

83 percent approve of the new President

Barack Obama 2014:

"I'm going to overrule Congress and issue an executive order banning sexual orientation discrimination by federal contractors."

NBC poll 2014:

President Obama’s overall approval rating in the poll is at 41 percent, down three points from April. That’s his all-time low in the survey. Perhaps most troubling for the president, 54 percent think he is unable to lead the country and get the job done.

June 18, 2014 9:21 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

well, duh!!

June 18, 2014 11:32 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Majority of Americans Support Obama's Carbon Plan, Accept Science on Climate Change

The majority of Americans support the Obama administration’s new carbon-cutting proposal and say they are willing to shoulder higher electricity costs if it means tackling climate change, a new poll found.

About 67 percent of polling participants either “strongly” or “somewhat” support the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to curb emissions from power plants, while only 29 percent oppose it, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released on Wednesday.

The poll surveyed 1,000 adults from June 11 to 15, about a week after the EPA unveiled its proposal, which would require states to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. A Gallup survey conducted in March found similar results, with more than six in 10 Americans in favor of mandatory controls on carbon dioxide.

The Obama administration has hailed the EPA plan as a critical step for the worldwide fight to slow global temperature rise and said it could prompt other countries like China, the world’s largest emitter, to follow suit.

According to the poll, 57 percent of respondents said they would back a plan requiring companies to reduce emissions, even if it means paying more each month for electricity. That’s 9 percent more respondents than in an October 2009 poll, the WSJ noted.

That increase comes as more Americans accept the scientific conclusions on climate change. Sixty-one percent of Americans, compared with 54 percent five years ago, said that climate change is occurring and that some sort of action should be taken to address it, the poll found. The number of Americans who doubt climate science and oppose taking action dropped slightly to 37 percent, down from 41 percent in 2009.

June 18, 2014 12:57 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The intensity, frequency, and duration of North Atlantic hurricanes, as well as the frequency of the strongest hurricanes, have all increased since the early 1980s

The recent National Climate Assessment found that Category 4 and 5 hurricanes (the strongest) have increased in frequency, intensity, and duration since the 1980s. It's not yet clear how much can be attributed human or natural causes but scientists said the "the trend is projected to continue," and that climate change is not going to help the situation moving forward.
One of the factors responsible for this increase in hurricane intensity is warmer waters, which make great fuel for storms. "Hurricanes tend to be self-limiting, in that they churn up deeper (usually cooler) water that can stop them from gaining strength and also weaken them. So since global warming also warms the deeper ocean, it further helps hurricanes stay stronger longer,"according to climate writer Joseph Romm.

The overall warming of the entire climate system has continued rapidly over the past 15 years, even faster than the 15 years before that. If you look at this graph you can see that while the rate of temperature increase in the atmosphere has slowed, the atmospheric heating represents only 2% of the overall warming of the global climate. The rates of temperature increase for the remaining portions of the global climate such as upper and deep ocean temperatures, and land and ice temperatures have increased at a far greater rate. It is a myth that global warming has paused, or halted.

June 18, 2014 1:07 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Natural factors cannot explain the observed recent warming

Natural drivers of climate cannot explain the recent observed warming. Over the last five decades, natural factors (solar forcing and volcanoes) alone would actually have led to a slight cooling (see Figure 2.3).

The majority of the warming at the global scale over the past 50 years can only be explained by the effects of human influences, especially the emissions from burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) and from deforestation. The emissions from human influences that are affecting climate include heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and nitrous oxide, and particles such as black carbon (soot), which has a warming influence, and sulfates, which have an overall cooling influence.

The conclusion that human influences are the primary driver of recent climate change is based on multiple lines of independent evidence. The first line of evidence is our fundamental understanding of how certain gases trap heat, how the climate system responds to increases in these gases, and how other human and natural factors influence climate. The second line of evidence is from reconstructions of past climates using evidence such as tree rings, ice cores, and corals. These show that global surface temperatures over the last several decades are clearly unusual, with the last decade (2000-2009) warmer than any time in at least the last 1300 years and perhaps much longer.

The third line of evidence comes from using climate models to simulate the climate of the past century, separating the human and natural factors that influence climate. When the human factors are removed, these models show that solar and volcanic activity would have tended to slightly cool the earth, and other natural variations are too small to explain the amount of warming. Only when the human influences are included do the models reproduce the warming observed over the past 50 years.

June 18, 2014 1:12 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Another line of evidence involves so-called “fingerprint” studies that are able to attribute observed climate changes to particular causes. For example, the fact that the stratosphere (the layer above the troposphere) is cooling while the Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere is warming is a fingerprint that the warming is due to increases in heat-trapping gases. In contrast, if the observed warming had been due to increases in solar output, Earth’s atmosphere would have warmed throughout its entire extent, including the stratosphere

Oil used for transportation and coal used for electricity genera­tion are the largest contributors to the rise in carbon dioxide that is the primary driver of observed changes in climate over recent decades.

In addition to such temperature analyses, scientific attribution of observed changes to human influence extends to many other aspects of climate, such as changing patterns in precipitation, increasing humidity, changes in pressure, and increasing ocean heat content. Further discussion of how we know the recent changes in climate are caused by human activity is provided in Appendix 3: Climate Science Supplement.

Natural variations in climate include the effects of cycles such as El Niño, La Niña and other ocean cycles; the 11-year sunspot cycle and other changes in energy from the sun; and the effects of volcanic eruptions. Globally, natural variations can be as large as human-induced climate change over timescales of up to a few decades. However, changes in climate at the global scale observed over the past 50 years are far larger than can be accounted for by natural variability. Changes in climate at the local to regional scale can be influenced by natural variability for multiple decades. This can affect the interpretation of climate trends observed regionally across the U.S.

June 18, 2014 1:12 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Globally averaged surface air temperature has slowed its rate of increase since the late 1990s. This is not in conflict with our basic understanding of global warming and its primary cause. The decade of 2000 to 2009 was still the warmest decade on record. In addition, global surface air temperature does not always increase steadily. This time period is too short to signify a change in the warming trend, as climate trends are measured over periods of decades, not years. Such decade-long slowdowns or even reversals in trend have occurred before in the global instrumental record (for example, 1900-1910 and 1940-1950), including three decade-long periods since 1970, each followed by a sharp temperature rise. Nonetheless, satellite and ocean observations indicate that the Earth-atmosphere climate system has continued to gain heat energy

There are a number of possible contributions to the lower rate of increase over the last 15 years. First, the solar output during the latest 11-year solar cycle has been lower over the past 15 years than the past 60 years. Second, a series of mildly explosive volcanoes, which increased stratospheric particles, likely had more of a cooling effect than previously recognized.\Third, the high incidence of La Niña events in the last 15 years has played a role in the observed trends. Recent analyses suggest that more of the increase in heat energy during this period has been transferred to the deep ocean than previously. While this might temporarily slow the rate of increase in surface air temperature, ultimately it will prolong the effects of global warming because the oceans hold heat for longer than the atmosphere does.

Climate models are not intended to match the real-world timing of natural climate variations – instead, models have their own internal timing for such variations. Most modeling studies do not yet account for the observed changes in solar and volcanic forcing mentioned in the previous paragraph. Therefore, it is not surprising that the timing of such a slowdown in the rate of increase in the models would be different than that observed, although it is important to note that such periods have been simulated by climate models, with the deep oceans absorbing the extra heat during those decades.

June 18, 2014 1:13 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

May Was Hottest on Record

According to NASA, the average global temperature for May was 1.38 degrees Fahrenheit above average, making it the hottest on record. And, these record highs come before El Niño, which is expected to hit this summer. The global average does not mean it was scorching everywhere—for instance, Texas had a colder-than-average May—but it is significant in terms of long-term temperatures. In addition to NASA, the Japan Meteorological Agency said that March, April, and May of 2014 were the warmest on record, dating back to 1891.

June 18, 2014 2:19 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Arrest of Benghazi Attacks Mastermind Spoils GOP’s Benghazi Party

Its a tragedy for Republicans. They are all set to unveil their new select committee to keep the attack in the news, and Obama has to go and bring the alleged ringleader to justice.

The best they can do now is echo the Ayotte line about Miranda rights. The very phrase is guaranteed to spike the blood pressure of right-wingers. But the facts are plain and worth repeating quickly, even though they’re well known: The U.S. track record of convicting terrorists in civilian courts is far superior to the track record of military tribunals.

Republicans are terring their hair out in fear that this is going to boost Obama's poll numbers - they have good reason to be concerned.

June 18, 2014 2:29 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

In the meantime, statistics show Insurers are flocking to Obamacare and a study finds young adults are healthier after the passage of Obamacare.

Millions of Americans are paying less for Obamacare than cable TV. Average premiums paid by those receiving a tax credit under Obamacare are down 51% to 80% depending on which of the four plan levels they've chosen.

Obamacare is working. In practice and in function Obamacare is highly successful but it still doesn't poll very well because of the relentless Republican lies about it. Actually if you ask people if they like The Affordable Care Act they like it better than Obamacare even though they are exactly the same thing. If you ask people about the specific features of it, covering their kids up until the age of 26, no co-pays or deductables for preventative care, no denying people for pre-existing conditions and now the way premiums are comming in, people like each individual part of it. What we see in polling now is still a reaction to the relentless lies about Obamacare from Republicans.

Social security squeaked through congress and was quite unpopular at the time, if you try to take it away now you've touched the third rail of American politics as George Bush proved when he tried to privatize it in 2005. Gradually people come to appreciate the benefits of these programs that involve all of Americans. This is why Republicans have been so desperate to smear Obamacare in the short run, because they know in the long run the American people are going to love Obamacare as they focus on the substance of it rather than their ridiculous rhetoric.

June 18, 2014 3:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"From the beginning, most people on the left were against going into Iraq. I wasn’t.... Liberals, you were right. We shouldn’t have."

Beck made this surprising declaration on his radio show on Tuesday while discussing the widening rift between Republicans and Democrats. He urged both parties to come together to oppose another war in Iraq.

"Not one more life. Not one more life. Not one more dollar, not one more airplane, not one more bullet, not one more Marine, not one more arm or leg or eye. Not one more," he said. "This must end now. Now can't we come together on that?"

June 18, 2014 4:52 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous likes to promote the lie that there is no overpopulation concern on planet earth because there isn't a shortage of physical space for indiviudals. A profoundly stupid position, and here's why:

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - About a quarter of India's land is turning to desert and degradation of agricultural areas is becoming a severe problem, the environment minister said, potentially threatening food security in the world's second most populous country.

India occupies just 2 percent of the world's territory but is home to 17 percent of its population, leading to over-use of land and excessive grazing. Along with changing rainfall patterns, these are the main causes of desertification.

"Land is becoming barren, degradation is happening," said Prakash Javadekar, minister for environment, forests and climate change. "A lot of areas are on the verge of becoming deserts but it can be stopped."

Land degradation - largely defined as loss of productivity - is estimated at 105 million hectares, constituting 32 percent of the total land.

According to the Indian Space Research Organisation that prepared a report on desertification in 2007, about 69 percent of land in the country is dry, making it vulnerable to water and wind erosion, salinization and water logging.

June 18, 2014 6:15 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The new national poll from NBC is stuffed with bad news for President Obama. His job approval rating — 41 percent — is as low as it has ever been. Americans say the performance of his administration has gotten worse over the past year. Large majorities disapprove of how he is handling foreign policy, which has been front and center of late thanks to the eroding situation in Iraq and the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner swap.

And yet, all of those bad numbers pale in comparison to how people responded to this question: "Thinking about the rest of Barack Obama's term as president, do you think he can lead the country and get the job done or do you no longer feel that he is able to lead the country and get the job done?"

Fifty-four percent — let me repeat, 54 percent — said that Obama "cannot lead and get the job done." I asked the pollsters behind the NBC survey for the party ID breakouts on that question, and here's what they sent me: 84 percent of Republicans said that Obama can't lead or get the job done, as did six in ten (61 percent) of independents.

That is an absolutely remarkable vote of no-confidence in Obama's ability to do the job he was elected to do.

June 18, 2014 9:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Denying climate change is like saying the moon is made of cheese, President Obama has said in his latest attempt to persuade an unconvinced world that "global warming" is the most urgent crisis of our time.

Obama was speaking to a crowd of around 30,000 at a commencement ceremony at the University of California, Irvine. Justifying the extravagance of his metaphor he said: "I want to tell you this to light a fire under you."

Here are some lines from his speech which explain why those present would be better off ignoring their pyromaniacal president's entreaties.

"I'm not a scientist."

Possibly the only factually accurate words in the president's entire speech.

"But we've got some good ones at NASA."

"Did have some good ones at NASA" would have been more accurate. Problem is, the organisation that put man on the moon is now in the grip of climate alarmists like Gavin Schmidt, successor to activist James "Death Trains" Hansen. In 2012, 49 former NASA astronauts and scientists wrote to protest against the anti-scientific, alarmist position being adopted by Hansen and Schmidt at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). They wrote: "We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data."

"I do know the overwhelming majority of scientists who work on climate change, including some who once disputed the data, have put the debate to rest."

No, you don't know, Mr President. You're just repeating the multiply discredited "97 per cent" consensus meme. And even that figure were accurate - which it isn't - scientific knowledge is not a numbers game. If it were, we would still be going with the majority view that tectonic plates are a myth, that stomach ulcers are caused by stress, that combustion is caused by phlogiston, that leeches can relieve fever, that malaria comes from the bad air in swamps, etc.
llyoimergaccount

June 18, 2014 9:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

“In some parts of the country, weather-related disasters like droughts, fires, storms and floods are going to get harsher, and they’re going to get costlier.”

Technically accurate, utterly meaningless. Given the chaotic nature of weather, records are always being broken somewhere in the future. Increased costliness is a given as populations grow and more expensive houses and offices are built to accommodate their needs.

"Today's Congress is full of folks who stubbornly and automatically reject the scientific evidence."

Indeed. They're called Democrats and most of them refuse to accept the overwhelming evidence that there has been no global warming since 1997, that the computer models which predicted catastrophic warming have been proved wrong by real world data. If it weren't such an ugly term you might almost call them "deniers."

"They will tell you climate change is a hoax or fad."

There is a name for people who say such things. Truth-tellers.

"One member of Congress actually says the world might be cooling."

Only one? Only one person in the whole of Congress knows that the Earth has entered a prolonged cooling period, the result of weak solar activity?

“It’s pretty rare that you’ll encounter somebody who says the problem you’re trying to solve simply doesn’t exist. When President Kennedy set us on a course to the moon, there were a number of people who made a serious case that it wouldn’t be worth it. But nobody ignored the science. I don’t remember anybody saying the moon wasn’t there or that it was made of cheese.”

As Anthony Watts says, this is 'grade school level logical fallacy.' No one said the moon wasn't there or that it was made of cheese because neither statement is true. There is, on the other hand, a large - and fast-growing - body of evidence, well understood by many distinguished scientists and economists, that the catastrophic man-made global warming "problem" Obama is so keen to fix is, to all intents and purposes, non-existent.

June 18, 2014 10:01 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Americans now view President Obama as less competent than George W. Bush at the same point in his presidency, according to a new poll.

The NBC News survey found that just half of all respondents consider Obama to be competent, even lower than those polled in the wake of Bush's botched response to Hurricane Katrina.

And 54 percent said Obama is no longer able “to lead the country and get the job done.”

June 18, 2014 10:05 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Americans now view President Obama as less competent than George W. Bush at the same point in his presidency, according to a new poll.

The NBC News survey found that just half of all respondents consider Obama to be competent, even lower than those polled in the wake of Bush's botched response to Hurricane Katrina.

And 54 percent said Obama is no longer able “to lead the country and get the job done.”

June 18, 2014 10:06 PM  
Anonymous getting ready for the big party said...

the funniest thing happened last night

some minion of Dana Beyer stopped by to talk me into voting for the deeply flawed candidate

actually, he seemed like a nice guy

when I told him I objected to Dana's negative campaign tactics, with mailings lying about the opponent, he said: "yeah, a lot of people I visit have been telling me that"

when I referred to Dana as she, and then said "or he", the guy starting laughing

I then told him about Dana's posts here, disparaging religious beliefs of others, about Dana's involvement with Duchy, about the abusive interference with the rights of citizens to petition, about the ethics investigation that Dana escaped on a technicality, et al

he said he was going to go think about everything I told him

the day the voters reject Dana and Duchy yet again is close at hand

June 19, 2014 7:31 AM  
Anonymous getting ready for the big party said...

the funniest thing happened last night

some minion of Dana Beyer stopped by to talk me into voting for the deeply flawed candidate

actually, he seemed like a nice guy

when I told him I objected to Dana's negative campaign tactics, with mailings lying about the opponent, he said: "yeah, a lot of people I visit have been telling me that"

when I referred to Dana as she, and then said "or he", the guy starting laughing

I then told him about Dana's posts here, disparaging religious beliefs of others, about Dana's involvement with Duchy, about the abusive interference with the rights of citizens to petition, about the ethics investigation that Dana escaped on a technicality, et al

he said he was going to go think about everything I told him

the day the voters reject Dana and Duchy yet again is close at hand

June 19, 2014 7:31 AM  
Anonymous Robert said...

My friend told me that when he went to his 7-year-olds' birthday party in a DC elementary school, the teacher had the children say grace before eating their snacks.

June 19, 2014 7:55 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

that's great, Robert

thanks for the encouraging story

slowly, the D.C. school system is turning around with a massive commitment to charter schools, which aren't subject to the lunacy and forced political correctness infecting most public schools

June 19, 2014 8:53 AM  
Anonymous the despicable day of Democrats in nearing nightfall said...

A new NBC poll showing Americans with shattered confidence in President Obama's ability to lead may be bad news for him, but it's worse news for liberalism.

In his 2008 campaign, Obama sought to make the election about more than merely voting for another Democrat. He spoke in terms of transforming the country, obliterating the cynicism that Americans had about the federal government, and showing them that it could be effective.

“I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not,” candidate Obama said.

But going into the sixth year of his presidency, Obama still hasn’t sold Americans on his view of the role of government, which could have significant ramifications for the liberal agenda in the future.

The public has not moved closer to the liberal view, or on the overarching question that has been at the center of American politics since the New Deal era.

According to the poll, 50 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that, “Government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.” In February 2009, right after he was sworn into office, the same poll found just 40 percent who thought it was doing too much.

A lot has been made about the poll's finding that the public now views the Obama administration as less competent than that of President George W. Bush in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, as well as another finding that 54 percent of respondents no longer feel that “he is able to lead the country and get the job done.”

But what I found more worrisome for liberals was another question, which asked about the problems with the Department of Veterans Affairs. It found that just 14 percent blamed the problems on “poor management by the Obama administration” compared with 61 percent who blamed “longstanding government bureaucracy.”

On the surface, it would seem to be good news for the left that the public doesn't pin the blame on Obama. But liberals once touted Veterans Affairs hospitals as evidence that government-run health care could work and even outperform the public sector.

To the extent that Americans see problems as connected to Obama’s incompetence, it still provides an opening for another Democrat to implement the liberal agenda. But if Obama-era failures make Americans more skeptical about federal bureaucracy in general, it makes things that much more difficult.

Obama, in his first Inaugural Address, said: “Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. ... What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.”

He continued, “The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.” Obama set out to convince Americans that government could work, and he has failed.

Obama was correct that Bill Clinton didn't change the trajectory of America - but he was constrained because Reagan's small government message still resonated with the public. That's why Clinton had to famously declare an end to the "era of big government."

Just as Bill Clinton was constrained by Reagan’s successes, even if Hillary Clinton gets elected, she will find herself constrained by Obama’s failures and unable to advance a sweeping liberal agenda.

June 19, 2014 9:19 AM  
Anonymous the despicable day of Democrats in nearing nightfall said...

A new NBC poll showing Americans with shattered confidence in President Obama's ability to lead may be bad news for him, but it's worse news for liberalism.

In his 2008 campaign, Obama sought to make the election about more than merely voting for another Democrat. He spoke in terms of transforming the country, obliterating the cynicism that Americans had about the federal government, and showing them that it could be effective.

“I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not,” candidate Obama said.

But going into the sixth year of his presidency, Obama still hasn’t sold Americans on his view of the role of government, which could have significant ramifications for the liberal agenda in the future.

The public has not moved closer to the liberal view, or on the overarching question that has been at the center of American politics since the New Deal era.

According to the poll, 50 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that, “Government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.” In February 2009, right after he was sworn into office, the same poll found just 40 percent who thought it was doing too much.

A lot has been made about the poll's finding that the public now views the Obama administration as less competent than that of President George W. Bush in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, as well as another finding that 54 percent of respondents no longer feel that “he is able to lead the country and get the job done.”

But what I found more worrisome for liberals was another question, which asked about the problems with the Department of Veterans Affairs. It found that just 14 percent blamed the problems on “poor management by the Obama administration” compared with 61 percent who blamed “longstanding government bureaucracy.”

On the surface, it would seem to be good news for the left that the public doesn't pin the blame on Obama. But liberals once touted Veterans Affairs hospitals as evidence that government-run health care could work and even outperform the public sector.

To the extent that Americans see problems as connected to Obama’s incompetence, it still provides an opening for another Democrat to implement the liberal agenda. But if Obama-era failures make Americans more skeptical about federal bureaucracy in general, it makes things that much more difficult.

Obama, in his first Inaugural Address, said: “Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. ... What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.”

He continued, “The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.” Obama set out to convince Americans that government could work, and he has failed.

Obama was correct that Bill Clinton didn't change the trajectory of America - but he was constrained because Reagan's small government message still resonated with the public. That's why Clinton had to famously declare an end to the "era of big government."

Just as Bill Clinton was constrained by Reagan’s successes, even if Hillary Clinton gets elected, she will find herself constrained by Obama’s failures and unable to advance a sweeping liberal agenda.

June 19, 2014 9:20 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"when I told him I objected to Dana's negative campaign tactics, with mailings lying about the opponent, he said: "yeah, a lot of people I visit have been telling me that""

sounds like Dana will lose

again

will have to find another hobby other than the hopeless pursuit of someone stupid enough to vote for a stupid candidate

who has nothing better to do

than sit around the house

get high

and watch the tube

June 19, 2014 11:33 AM  
Anonymous lunatic sayanora said...

"I encourage every Democrat in District 18 to vote for Rich's reelection. He has been a leading progressive voice on every issue to come before the General Assembly during my term."

Governor Martin O'Malley

June 19, 2014 3:32 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And now, for some good news. Contrary to the B.S. global warming deniers like Wyatt/bad anonymous spew, changing from fossil fuels to renewable energy will not have significant economic costs:

The Turning Point: New Hope for the Climate - It's time to accelerate the shift to a low carbon future.


There is surprising – even shocking – good news: Our ability to convert sunshine into usable energy has become much cheaper far more rapidly than anyone had predicted. The cost of electricity from photovoltaic, or PV, solar cells is now equal to or less than the cost of electricity from other sources powering electric grids in at least 79 countries. By 2020 – as the scale of deployments grows and the costs continue to decline – more than 80 percent of the world's people will live in regions where solar will be competitive with electricity from other sources.

No matter what the large carbon polluters and their ideological allies say or do, in markets there is a huge difference between "more expensive than" and "cheaper than." Not unlike the difference between 32 degrees and 33 degrees Fahrenheit. It's not just a difference of a degree, it's the difference between a market that's frozen up and one that's liquid. As a result, all over the world, the executives of companies selling electricity generated from the burning of carbon-based fuels (primarily from coal) are openly discussing their growing fears of a "utility death spiral."

Germany, Europe's industrial powerhouse, where renewable subsidies have been especially high, now generates 37 percent of its daily electricity from wind and solar; and analysts predict that number will rise to 50 percent by 2020. (Indeed, one day this year, renewables created 74 percent of the nation's electricity!)

What's more, Germany's two largest coal-burning utilities have lost 56 percent of their value over the past four years, and the losses have continued into the first half of 2014. And it's not just Germany. Last year, the top 20 utilities throughout Europe reported losing half of their value since 2008. According to the Swiss bank UBS, nine out of 10 European coal and gas plants are now losing money.

June 19, 2014 5:13 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

In the United States, where up to 49 percent of the new generating capacity came from renewables in 2012, 166 coal-fired electricity-generating plants have either closed or have announced they are closing in the past four and a half years. An additional 183 proposed new coal plants have been canceled since 2005.

To be sure, some of these closings have been due to the substitution of gas for coal, but the transition under way in both the American and global energy markets is far more significant than one fossil fuel replacing another. We are witnessing the beginning of a massive shift to a new energy-distribution model – from the "central station" utility-grid model that goes back to the 1880s to a "widely distributed" model with rooftop solar cells, on-site and grid battery storage, and microgrids.

The principal trade group representing U.S. electric utilities, the Edison Electric Institute, has identified distributed generation as the "largest near-term threat to the utility model." Last May, Barclays downgraded the entirety of the U.S. electric sector, warning that "a confluence of declining cost trends in distributed solar­photovoltaic-power generation and residential­scale power storage is likely to disrupt the status quo" and make utility investments less attractive.

This year, Citigroup reported that the widespread belief that natural gas – the supply of which has ballooned in the U.S. with the fracking of shale gas – will continue to be the chosen alternative to coal is mistaken, because it too will fall victim to the continuing decline in the cost of solar and wind electricity. Significantly, the cost of battery storage, long considered a barrier to the new electricity system, has also been declining steadily – even before the introduction of disruptive new battery technologies that are now in advanced development. Along with the impressive gains of clean-energy programs in the past decade, there have been similar improvements in our ability to do more with less. Since 1980, the U.S. has reduced total energy intensity by 49 percent.

June 19, 2014 5:16 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

It is worth remembering this key fact about the supply of the basic "fuel": Enough raw energy reaches the Earth from the sun in one hour to equal all of the energy used by the entire world in a full year.

In poorer countries, where most of the world's people live and most of the growth in energy use is occurring, photovoltaic electricity is not so much displacing carbon-based energy as leapfrogging it altogether. In his first days in office, the government of the newly elected prime minister of India, Narendra Modi (who has authored an e-book on global warming), announced a stunning plan to rely principally upon photovoltaic energy in providing electricity to 400 million Indians who currently do not have it. One of Modi's supporters, S.L. Rao, the former utility regulator of India, added that the industry he once oversaw "has reached a stage where either we change the whole system quickly, or it will collapse."

Nor is India an outlier. Neighboring Bangladesh is installing nearly two new rooftop PV systems every minute — making it the most rapidly growing market for PVs in the world. In West and East Africa, solar-electric cells are beginning what is widely predicted to be a period of explosive growth.

At the turn of the 21st century, some scoffed at projections that the world would be installing one gigawatt of new solar electricity per year by 2010. That goal was exceeded 17 times over; last year it was exceeded 39 times over; and this year the world is on pace to exceed that benchmark as much as 55 times over. In May, China announced that by 2017, it would have the capacity to generate 70 gigawatts of photovoltaic electricity. The state with by far the biggest amount of wind energy is Texas, not historically known for its progressive energy policies.

June 19, 2014 5:16 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The cost of wind energy is also plummeting, having dropped 43 percent in the United States since 2009 – making it now cheaper than coal for new generating capacity. Though the downward cost curve is not quite as steep as that for solar, the projections in 2000 for annual worldwide wind deployments by the end of that decade were exceeded seven times over, and are now more than 10 times that figure. In the United States alone, nearly one-third of all new electricity-generating capacity in the past five years has come from wind, and installed wind capacity in the U.S. has increased more than fivefold since 2006.

For consumers, this good news may soon get even better. While the cost of carbon­based energy continues to increase, the cost of solar electricity has dropped by an average of 20 percent per year since 2010. Some energy economists, including those who produced an authoritative report this past spring for Bernstein Research, are now predicting energy-price deflation as soon as the next decade.

June 19, 2014 5:16 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Famous dumb quotes about global warming:

U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) - "I thought it must be true until I found out what it cost."

Speaking to Rachel Maddow in 2012, he admitted that his rejection of climate science began with realizing how expensive mitigation would be. Not only is it flatly nonsensical to deny that a problem exists because you don't like its cure, delaying climate action is actually the more expensive course. The International Energy Agency has estimated that for every year the world delays taking significant action to curb climate change, we'll end up paying an additional $500 billion later on.

June 19, 2014 5:25 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

We have the policy tools that can dramatically accelerate the transition to clean energy that market forces will eventually produce at a slower pace. The most important has long since been identified: We have to put a price on carbon in our markets, and we need to eliminate the massive subsidies that fuel the profligate emissions of global-warming pollution.

We need to establish "green banks" that provide access to capital investment necessary to develop renewable energy, sustainable agriculture and forestry, an electrified transportation fleet, the retrofitting of buildings to reduce wasteful energy consumption, and the full integration of sustainability in the design and architecture of cities and towns. While the burning of fossil fuels is the largest cause of the climate crisis, deforestation and "factory farming" also play an important role. Financial and technological approaches to addressing these challenges are emerging, but we must continue to make progress in converting to sustainable forestry and agriculture.

In order to accomplish these policy shifts, we must not only put a price on carbon in markets, but also find a way to put a price on climate denial in our politics. We already know the reforms that are needed – and the political will to enact them is a renewable resource. Yet the necessary renewal can only come from an awakened citizenry empowered by a sense of urgency and emboldened with the courage to reject despair and become active. Most importantly, now is the time to support candidates who accept the reality of the climate crisis and are genuinely working hard to solve it – and to bluntly tell candidates who are not on board how much this issue matters to you. If you are willing to summon the resolve to communicate that blunt message forcefully – with dignity and absolute sincerity – you will be amazed at the political power an individual can still wield in America's diminished democracy.

June 19, 2014 5:42 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

It will be essential for the United States and other major historical emitters to commit to strong action. The U.S. is, finally, now beginning to shift its stance. And the European Union has announced its commitment to achieve a 40-percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030. Some individual European nations are acting even more aggressively, including Finland's pledge to reduce emissions 80 percent by 2050.

It will also be crucial for the larger developing and emerging nations – particularly China and India – to play a strong leadership role. Fortunately, there are encouraging signs. China's new president, Xi Jinping, has launched a pilot cap-and-trade system in two cities and five provinces as a model for a nationwide cap-and-trade program in the next few years. He has banned all new coal burning in several cities and required the reporting of CO2 emissions by all major industrial sources. China and the U.S. have jointly reached an important agreement to limit another potent source of global-warming pollution – the chemical compounds known as hydro-fluorocarbons, or HFCs. And the new prime minister of India, as noted earlier, has launched the world's most ambitious plan to accelerate the transition to solar electricity.

A growing number of large investors – including pension funds, university endowments (Stanford announced its decision in May), family offices and others – have announced decisions to divest themselves from carbon­intensive assets. Activist and "impact" investors are pushing for divestment from carbon­rich assets and new investments in renewable and sustainable assets.
Shareholder activists and public campaigners have pressed carbon-dependent corporations to deal with these growing concerns. But the biggest ones are still behaving as if they are in denial. In May 2013, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson responded to those pointing out the need to stop using the Earth's atmosphere as a sewer by asking, "What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?"

I don't even know where to start in responding to that statement, but here is a clue: Pope Francis said in May, "If we destroy creation, creation will destroy us. Never forget this."

June 19, 2014 5:52 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

A growing number of businesses around the world are implementing sustainability plans, as more and more consumers demand a more responsible approach from businesses they patronize. Significantly, many have been pleasantly surprised to find that adopting efficient, low-carbon approaches can lead to major cost savings.

And all the while, the surprising and relentless ongoing decline in the cost of renewable energy and efficiency improvements are driving the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Is there enough time? Yes. Damage has been done, and the period of consequences will continue for some time to come, but there is still time to avoid the catastrophes that most threaten our future. Each of the trends described above – in technology, business, economics and politics – represents a break from the past. Taken together, they add up to genuine and realistic hope that we are finally putting ourselves on a path to solve the climate crisis.

How long will it take? When Martin Luther King Jr. was asked that question during some of the bleakest hours of the U.S. civil rights revolution, he responded, "How long? Not long. Because no lie can live forever. . . . How long? Not long. Because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

June 19, 2014 5:53 PM  
Anonymous it's hard not to laugh said...

"A growing number of businesses around the world are implementing sustainability plans, as more and more consumers demand a more responsible approach from businesses they patronize. Significantly, many have been pleasantly surprised to find that adopting efficient, low-carbon approaches can lead to major cost savings.

And all the while, the surprising and relentless ongoing decline in the cost of renewable energy and efficiency improvements are driving the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Is there enough time? Yes. Damage has been done, and the period of consequences will continue for some time to come, but there is still time to avoid the catastrophes that most threaten our future. Each of the trends described above – in technology, business, economics and politics – represents a break from the past. Taken together, they add up to genuine and realistic hope that we are finally putting ourselves on a path to solve the climate crisis."

in other words, lazy Priya now agrees with what those LP deemed "deniers" have always said

there is no need for governmental intervention

June 20, 2014 8:57 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "in other words, lazy Priya now agrees with what those LP deemed "deniers" have always said
there is no need for governmental intervention".


You obviously didn't read the entire article, the need for and benefit of government intervention is obvious:

We have the policy tools that can dramatically accelerate the transition to clean energy that market forces will eventually produce at a slower pace. The most important has long since been identified: We have to put a price on carbon in our markets, and we need to eliminate the massive subsidies that fuel the profligate emissions of global-warming pollution.

We need to establish "green banks" that provide access to capital investment necessary to develop renewable energy, sustainable agriculture and forestry, an electrified transportation fleet, the retrofitting of buildings to reduce wasteful energy consumption, and the full integration of sustainability in the design and architecture of cities and towns. While the burning of fossil fuels is the largest cause of the climate crisis, deforestation and "factory farming" also play an important role. Financial and technological approaches to addressing these challenges are emerging, but we must continue to make progress in converting to sustainable forestry and agriculture.

In order to accomplish these policy shifts, we must not only put a price on carbon in markets, but also find a way to put a price on climate denial in our politics.

If you go back to the link I posted and read the entire article you'll see leaders in the fossil fuel industry like the Koch brothers are spending millions to prevent legislation that would promote the use of green energy and instead provide subsidies for continued fossil fuel use. They are also trying to get legislation implemented such as high taxes on solar and wind energy in order to not only stop the growth in green energy but to reduce present levels of green energy.

The scientific concensus is that 400 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere is the tipping point for severe environmental damage. We've reached that amount for the first time ever and carbon in the atmosphere is now higher than its been in hundreds of millions of years.

There is no time to waste, we must take action as quickly as possible before the global warming becomes irreversible due to feedback loops where some global warming causes even more global warming such as the oceans absorbing more heat as the reflective ice disappears resulting in even faster ice losses.

You like to pretend the reported increase in Antarctic sea ice means there is no global warming but the rate of ice loss in the Arctic is five times as fast as Antarctic sea ice is increasing and Antarctic sea ice is increasing because of the loss of Antarctic land ice and the dilution of salt in the surrounding ocean.

June 20, 2014 1:32 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Why Solar Energy Is the Key to Solving Global Poverty
Every morning, students in Kunthur, a village outside Bangalore, India, leave home carrying a battery among their books. At Swamy Vivekananda High School, solar panels charge the batteries during the day so the stored energy can be used to power lanterns when the students return home.

With access to light—and the elimination of dirty and costly kerosene-powered lamps—families save $100 a year and children have more time for work and study, offering them a chance to rise out of poverty. Solar energy is emerging as a way to give power to the 1.3 billion people in the world with no reliable access to electricity without spending billions of dollars to build transmission lines.

Despite that potential, international organizations like the World Bank aren’t investing enough
money in the right places to achieve universal electrification, according to a new Sierra Club report.

“The poorest people in the world pay 40 times more for the same energy services but get poor lighting and poor health outcomes,” said Justin Guay, associate director of Sierra Club’s International Climate Program and coauthor of the report. “Instead of building centralized power plants, we need a different approach to solve this problem.”

Guay said the World Bank and other international lenders should start funding projects that provide solar electricity, such as those offered by d.light, a company that develops and distributes products ranging from lanterns to home solar systems in off-grid communities around the world.

June 20, 2014 1:38 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The report notes that the World Bank rarely invests in small energy projects, despite its goal of universal electrification by 2030. The bank also does not measure access to energy the right way, Guay said.

“Rather than measuring services provided and new access to energy for poor populations, they look at the supply of energy created and kilometers of energy transmission lines built,” he says. “Just because you build a coal plant doesn’t mean that access lines are extended to poor people and that they can service their needs and repair the grid lines—or that communities can afford the power.”

World Bank spokesperson Christopher Neal says the bank is supporting hydropower, natural gas, and renewable power sources that expand access to electricity. One such project is a rural home solar initiative in Bangladesh that has installed more than a million solar systems in less than a decade.

In recent months, investors have put $45 million into off-grid solar start-ups, including a $7 million round for Tanzania-based Off.Grid:Electric and $11 million for San Francisco’s d.light.

June 20, 2014 1:40 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Is public money really even needed, given private investments in off-grid solar?

“Absolutely,” said Guay, who noted that the largest barrier to universal electrification is access to finance. “Most of the private finance has been in equity, which gives stakes in private companies and helps to build these companies. What the space needs now is cheap capital from public institutions that enables them to scale their operations.”

The report estimates that $500 million in public financing would spur a $12 billion off-grid solar market by 2030. “Just providing a few hours of solar lighting alone improves the human condition,” Guay said.

Private industry will eventually make the transition to green energy but with current atmospheric carbon levels at the 400 parts per million scientists agree is a critical level if we are going to avoid irreversable climate change action needs to be taken as quickly as possible. That means government action as well as action by private industry.

June 20, 2014 1:43 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt, go and read the whole article

I only printed the good news, there is still plenty of cause for concern. We need to accelerate the rate of adoption of green energy, not wait until private industry grudgingly gets to it eventually. And that means government intervention, which will still cost a fraction of what government currently spends on subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.

June 20, 2014 1:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"the need for and benefit of government intervention is obvious"

yes, it is

the socialist principle:

never waste a crisis

even an imaginary one

June 20, 2014 2:02 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...


Wyatt, look at what Germany has done - that required government intervention. American utilities are trying to stop the installation of solar panels on homes by charging people large sums for hooking up to the grid. Go read the article and see why. It will require government intervention to get electrical utilities to do the right thing as was done in Germany:

Germany gets 50 percent of its electricity from solar for the first time

It can be done.

Germany isn't as sunny as many parts of the U.S; not even close. But Germany has a goal of producing 35 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020 and 100 percent by 2050.

And now for the first time ever, the country has succeeded at generating over 50 percent of its electricity from solar. On Monday June 9, which was a national holiday in Germany, solar power production peaked at 23.1 GW, which equaled 50.6 percent of total electricity demand.

That was less than the 24.24 GW peak hit on Friday, June 6, but it was the first time ever that solar had met 50 percent of German demand.

The week was unusually hot, with highs of 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit). But Germany's stunning rate of solar installations means they are expected to continue to make new records.

Tobias Rothacher, renewable energies expert at Germany Trade & Invest, told The Local: "I think we could break a new record every two to three months now. We are installing more and more PVs."
Germany has encouraged individuals to install solar panels on rooftops rather than building huge solar farms. Ninety percent of solar panels in Germany are located on individuals' roofs.

Atmospheric carbon levels have reached 400 parts per million for the first time in hundreds of millions of years, there will be (and are already starting to be) devastaing consequences to letting global warming get out of control and at current atmospheric carbon levels that could happen. Serious action needs to be taken now, we can't wait for private industry to get its thumb out.

June 20, 2014 2:20 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The devastating effects of global warming:


Major negative effects of climate change are here now and they're only getting worse, as shown by recent reports from the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) and the White House among others.


The greenhouse gas emissions that drive warming "now substantially exceed the highest concentrations recorded in ice cores during the past 800,000 years," the IPCC said. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, which primarily come from the burning of fossil fuels, have risen 40% since pre-industrial times.


We've gathered some notable effects of climate change below.


Unless otherwise noted, each effect assumes a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) by 2100, a number the IPCC has suggested we are "more likely than not" to exceed, and a sea level rise of 0.5 meters (1.5 feet) by 2100, about the average of all the IPCC's most recent climate scenarios. This is a conservative estimate as other studies have suggested that sea level rise will be much greater if climate change continues unmitigated.


Climate change will be insanely expensive.


Asset destruction, forced relocations, droughts, extinctions, and all of the other bad things we're going to discuss will add up in costs to the global economy. Already the Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that the U.S. Climate Disruption Budget — i.e., stuff related to drought, storm, and growing climate disruptions — was nearly $100 billion. And that's just the start.


As climate change continues, costs will go up. Indeed, the release of a 50-billion-ton reservoir of methane from melting Arctic ice, which may advance global warming by 15-to-35 years, could by itself cost $60 trillion to the global economy, researchers told Nature last summer.

June 20, 2014 2:36 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Hundreds of millions of people may be displaced by 2050.


"98% of all displacement in 2012 was related to climate- and weather-related events," according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center. Climate change may become the biggest driver of displaced people, according to António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. In 2008, 36 million people were displaced by natural disasters. At least 20 million of those people were driven from their homes by disasters related to climate change like drought and rising sea level, Guterres said.


Dengue and malaria could spread in the U.S


As summers become longer, temperatures go up, and rainfall patterns change along with species patterns. Mosquitoes carrying diseases will likely have a longer season in a wider area, according to the Natural Resource Defense Council. "The same is true on a global scale: increases in heat, precipitation, and humidity can allow tropical and subtropical insects to move from regions where infectious diseases thrive into new places," they wrote. Increases in international travel, "means that the U.S. is increasingly at risk for becoming home to these new diseases."


Western wildfires could burn up to eight times as much land by 2100


For each one degree Celsius of warming, the area burned by western wildfires will increase by a factor of two to four, according to a report by the National Academy of Sciences.

June 20, 2014 2:36 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

An additional 8% of the world population will experience water scarcity by 2100.


In 2013, about 1.3 billion people lived in water scarce regions, according to one study. The researchers calculated that an additional 8% of the population would enter a state of "new or aggravated water scarcity," solely due to climate change with a temperature increase of 2 degrees C by 2100.


Hurricanes could become up to 11% more intense and 20% wetter by 2100.


The recent National Climate Assessment found that Category 4 and 5 hurricanes (the strongest) have increased in frequency, intensity, and duration since the 1980s. It's not yet clear how much can be attributed human or natural causes but scientists said the "the trend is projected to continue," and that climate change is not going to help the situation moving forward.


Four times as many New Yorkers could live in areas that flood by 2050.

June 20, 2014 2:37 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Millions of people and trillions in assets are at risk in coastal cities.

Assuming a sea-level rise of .5 meters by 2070, with an extra .5 to 1.5 meters to account for storms, a 2008 study ranked the most exposed cities in the world. The analysis found staggering potential losses in cities around the world. Calcutta, India, may be the most exposed, with 14 million people and $2 trillion in assets at risk. Miami is also in big trouble with 4.8 million people and $3.5 trillion at risk.


Global wheat and maize yields are already beginning to decline.


While warming temperatures might initially help certain crops, the overall picture is negative. Global crop yields are slowing down as a result of events related to climate change, like reduced rainfall and higher temperatures.


Wheat and maize have already been negatively affected in certain regions, as shown in the chart below. The IPCC points out several scenarios in which food and cereal prices have rapidly increased following extreme weather events since their last report in 2007. The new report predicts continued drops in global wheat and maize production, which could lead to food scarcity and political unrest.


Some small island nations could be destroyed


100% of reefs may be at risk of extinction by 2050.


Besides being biodiversity hotspots and holding potentials for medicine, coral reefs act as a buffer to storms and erosion. One-hundred countries could lose coastal protection along almost 100,000 miles of shoreline, according to the World Resources Institute.

June 20, 2014 2:38 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous is afraid to read the whole articles I've linked to because he senses he won't be able to continue denying the truth to himself if he does.

That's why he sticks his fingers in his ears and loudly says "Its all imaginary, its a hoax, global warming has stopped, la la la la la la la" instead of actually reading everything I've posted.

June 20, 2014 2:42 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

lazy Priya, you seem to be addressing comment to brilliant anon, judging from the "content"

I have no problem with solar energy if it becomes economically feasible

I'd love to see all the wires disappear

while we're at it, I'd love to see flying cars so we can rid of all the pavement

still doesn't change the fact that alarmists are trying to manipulate

btw, it's a beautiful day here in Washington

if this is global warming, bring it on

just think, when rust belt cities like Detroit become semi-tropical, there's a ton of abandoned neighborhoods just waiting

June 20, 2014 3:55 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

btw, the prestigious Reuters poll today has Obama's approval rating at 36%

must be racism, huh?

June 20, 2014 3:59 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Shorter Wyatt/bad anonymous *fingers in ears* "la la la la la la la la, can't hear the truth, you can't make me look at it and consider it, la la la la".

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a report on how global warming is already affecting the way people live and what will happen in the future, including a worldwide drop in income.

"We've seen a lot of impacts and they've had consequences," Carnegie Institution climate scientist Chris Field, who heads the report, told The Associated Press. "And we will see more in the future."

Cities, where most of the world now lives, have the highest vulnerability, as do the globe's poorest people.

"Throughout the 21st century, climate change impacts will slow down economic growth and poverty reduction, further erode food security and trigger new poverty traps, the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hotspots of hunger," the report says. "Climate change will exacerbate poverty in low- and lower-middle income countries and create new poverty pockets in upper-middle to high-income countries with increasing inequality."

For people living in poverty, the report says, "climate-related hazards constitute an additional burden."
The report says scientists have high confidence especially in what it calls certain "key risks":

—People dying from warming- and sea rise-related flooding, especially in big cities.

—Famine because of temperature and rain changes, especially for poorer nations.

—Farmers going broke because of lack of water.

—Infrastructure failures because of extreme weather.

—Dangerous and deadly heat waves worsening.

—Certain land and marine ecosystems failing.

"Human interface with the climate system is occurring and climate change poses risks for human and natural systems," the 29-page summary says.

"climate change will impact human health mainly by exacerbating health problems that already exist" and then it will lead to worse health compared to a future with no futher warming.
If emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, oil and gas continue at current trajectories, "the combination of high temperature and humidity in some areas for parts of the year will compromise normal human activities including growing food or working outdoors," the report says.

"Climate change indirectly increases risks from violent conflict in the form of civil war, inter-group violence and violent protests by exacerbating well-established drivers of these conflicts such as poverty and economic shocks," the report says.

Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann, who wasn't part of the international study team, told the AP that the report's summary confirms what researchers have known for a long time: "Climate change threatens our health, land, food and water security."
The summary went through each continent detailing risks and possible ways that countries can adapt to them.

For North America, the highest risks over the long term are from wildfires, heat waves and flooding. Water — too much and too little — and heat are the biggest risks for Europe, South America and Asia, with South America and Asia having to deal with drought-related food shortages. Africa gets those risks and more: starvation, pests and disease.

Wyatt likes to pretend everyone is just going to move north as the planet warms and everything will be hunky-dorey. But Northern countries like Canada aren't going to allow in hundreds of millions of imigrants from Central America, Mexico and the United States as the planet warms. Even if we wanted to there isn't the infrastructure here to handle multi-millions of refugees and any attempt to overflow our country would result in a humanitarian disaster. Look no further than Syria with the millions displaced there because of desertification, its lead to war, strife, and widespread starvation.

June 20, 2014 5:35 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "btw, the prestigious Reuters poll today has Obama's approval rating at 36% must be racism, huh?".

Actually it is. No American president has experienced the extraordianry degree of obstructionism and demonization that Barrack Obama has. From their first meeting after Barack Obama was elected in 2008 Republicans got together and agreed their plan of attack was to block every nominee and piece of legislation they could. The goal was to prevent Obama from accomplishing anything and Republicans have had some degree of success in delaying economic recovery, attempts to bolster the Veterans Administration to handle the increase in patients, and Bush signed a status of forces agreement in 2008 that required the removal of all U.S. troops by 2011 which the Republicans now dishonestly blame Obama for.

Koch backed groups spend hundreds of millions on lies about Obamacare, the economy and foreign policy. Republicans have loudly condemned every move made by the president regardless of many of them being previously Republican positions and they've offered no alternatives of their own so they could avoid having their positions scrutinized.

The unprecedented, extreme and unjustified attacks on Obama by Republicans can only be explained by his skin colour. Republicans have done everything they can to hurt the economy and prevent any progress on behalf of Americans because they know most Americans are low information voters. Most Americans operate under the mistaken assumption that if they don't like the way things are it must be the current president's fault. This was Republicans strategy from day one and the tragedy is that they've been rewarded for attacking the American public so Republicans are going to continue obstructing progress for the forseeable future.

Republicans are destroyers, not builders. There is no reason for their unprecedented obstructionism and attacks on this president other than his skin colour. Backed by unlimited funding from big oil they've successfully conned the American public into misplacing the blame for the slow economic recovery, the long wait times at the Veterans Administration, and the collapsing situation in Iraq (a war that Republicans lied the American public into and which was a mistake from the very beginnning).

June 20, 2014 5:53 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

While Germany produced a record 50% of its electrical needs from solar energy only 2.2% of American energy production comes from solar. The difference is government promotion of green energy. In the U.S. you've got big polluters, big coal and oil interests and big utilities who are trying to knock down the effort to move towards solar, wind and other renewable forms of power.

These fossil fuel interests aren't going to get on board with renewable energy without governmental regulations. With the horrible Citizens United supreme court ruling Republican legislators have been carpet bombed in Republican primaries with pressure to undo progress made on renewable energy. Republican legislators are now in the pocket of the polluters and the fossil fuel industry like never before.

June 20, 2014 6:07 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Another sign that Republicans know they've lost their war on marriage:

The Faith and Freedom Coalition is holding their yearly Road To The Majority conference. This is the event in which the entire Republican establishment comes to court the Christian far-right. Although there was one speaker after another talking about how much they hate Obama and someone put a figurine of Obama in a urinal gay marriage wasn't mentioned once. That's quite an about face for a group that's been insisting for years gay marriage would destroy society.

Not much fight left in the anti-gay bigots - they know its over and justice is going to prevail.

June 20, 2014 6:32 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And of course I should have known Wyatt/bad anonymous was attempting to deceive people about Obama's approval rating. He took the lowest number in all the recent polls, Obama's actual approval rating based on an average of polls is 42%.

Typical Wyatt/bad anonymous tactic, look at all the polls and pick the one that shows the lowest rating for the Democrat and try to con people into believing that's the most representative number. Note the Republican leaning Rassmussen Reports has Obama's approval rating at 48%

June 20, 2014 6:42 PM  
Anonymous bread and circuses all around said...

yes, let's stand up for the rights of voters against the gay agenda crowd which continually tries to prevent voting on any gay agenda preferring instead to employ fat-cat lawyers to entice fat-cat judges to overrule the judgment of voters all over our country

the best way to support voters' rights, if you live in Rich Madaleno's district in Montgomery County, is vote against the detestable Dana (ha-ha) Beyer

Beyer, you will remember, as an aide to a Montgomery County council member, a representative of our local government, went out to sites where citizens were peaceably gather petitions and tried to intimidate the petition-takers, telling them their petitions were "illegal", disrupting their activities, and trying to talk property owners into throwing the petitioners off their property

anyone who has served our local government and abused their position to interfere with the rights of voters to call for a vote...

deserves no place in our government

btw, Beyer, sensing yet another humiliating defeat is coming, at the hands of the very voters whose voting rights Beyer attacked, has been sending out increasingly desperate mailers to voters' homes

the latest: "Rich Madaleno has finally found a bill he can support...a 16% increase in his pay"

ha-ha!

let's see what that twerp Waldstreicher, who has repeatedly made a fool of Beyer, has to say about this

party night: Tuesday

this morning's Post has story about how a backlash is beginning to develop against Dems in Maryland, whose voters are tired of being the most taxed citizens in America

June 22, 2014 9:40 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

ho ho ho!!

That last post was really funny!!!

June 22, 2014 5:30 PM  
Anonymous anatole said...

I couldn't agree more. Dana is such a farce!

June 22, 2014 8:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

analysis shows official data has been manipulated to hide the fact that the Earth is cooling:

http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/

When future generations try to understand how the world got carried away around the end of the 20th century by the panic over global warming, few things will amaze them more than the part played in stoking up the scare by the fiddling of official temperature data. There was already much evidence of this seven years ago. But now another damning example has been uncovered by Steven Goddard’s US blog Real Science, showing how shamelessly manipulated has been one of the world’s most influential climate records, the graph of US surface temperature records published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Goddard shows how, in recent years, NOAA’s US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) has been “adjusting” its record by replacing real temperatures with data “fabricated” by computer models. The effect of this has been to downgrade earlier temperatures and to exaggerate those from recent decades, to give the impression that the Earth has been warming up much more than is justified by the actual data. In several posts headed “Data tampering at USHCN/GISS”, Goddard compares the currently published temperature graphs with those based only on temperatures measured at the time. These show that the US has actually been cooling since the Thirties, the hottest decade on record; whereas the latest graph, nearly half of it based on “fabricated” data, shows it to have been warming at a rate equivalent to more than 3 degrees centigrade per century.

When I first began examining the global-warming scare, I found nothing more puzzling than the way officially approved scientists kept on being shown to have finagled their data, as in that ludicrous “hockey stick” graph, pretending to prove that the world had suddenly become much hotter than at any time in 1,000 years. Any theory needing to rely so consistently on fudging the evidence, I concluded, must be looked on not as science at all, but as simply a rather alarming case study in the aberrations of group psychology.

June 23, 2014 5:01 AM  
Anonymous the farce revealed said...

The Supreme Court on Monday placed limits on the sole Obama administration program already in place to deal with power plant and factory emissions of gases blamed for global warming.

The justices said that the Environmental Protection Agency lacks authority to force companies to evaluate ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

June 23, 2014 11:07 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

makes sense

we're having a beautiful summer so far

June 23, 2014 11:25 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous posted some propaganda from "Steven Goddard" falsely claiming temperature numbers had been dishonestly adjusted. The fact is the only time temperature observations are adjusted is when observations are made in cities which have higher temperatures than the surrounding country side because of the pavement and concrete absorbing sunlight at higher rates. So the temperature observations when they are adjusted are adjusted downwards

"Steven Goddard" isn't even his real name, its a fabrication to try to shield himself from criticism. But by his own admission "Steven Goddard" is not a climatoligist but rather has a Bachelor of Science in Geology and a Masters In Electrical Engineering. So academically he is about as qualified as my cat to post his own analysis’s climate change.

He has had some articles published in The Register a British technology news and opinion website. Searching his name at The Reg gives links to just 5 opinion pieces all from several years ago. One of his pieces posted on Friday 15th August 2008 called ‘ “Arctic ice refuses to melt as ordered: There’s something rotten north of Denmark” he attacked the National Snow and Ice Data Center. But after being contacted by Dr. Walt Meier at NSIDC he was forced to issue a retraction;

Steven Goddard writes: “Dr. Walt Meier at NSIDC has convinced me this week that their ice extent numbers are solid…. It is clear that the NSIDC graph is correct, and that 2008 Arctic ice is barely 10% above last year – just as NSIDC had stated.”

As you can see, "Steven Goddard" is just another one of those unqualified dishonest global warming deniers who's at vast odds with the 97% of scientists who's reserach shows global warming is real and man-made.

And of course Wyatt/bad anonymous is doing his ususal lying through ommission about the supreme court rulings on Obama's program for reducing greehouse gases - it was mostly a win for the EPA

June 23, 2014 4:28 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...


Faux Pause: Ocean Warming, Sea Level Rise And Polar Ice Melt Speed Up, Surface Warming To Follow

"Global Warming Has Accelerated In Past 15 Years, New Study Of Oceans Confirms,” as we reported back in March. And “Greenland Ice Melt Up Nearly Five-Fold Since Mid-1990s, Antarctica’s Ice Loss Up 50% In Past Decade,” as we reported last November. Another study that month found “sea level rising 60% faster than projected.”

And yet much of the media believes climate change isn’t what gets measured and reported by scientists, but is somehow a dialectic or a debate between scientists and deniers. So while 2010 was the hottest year on record and the 2000s the hottest decade on record, we are subject to nonsensically framed stories like this one from CBS, headlined “Controversy over U.N. report on climate change as warming appears to slow.”

The drama-driven junkies of the MSM apparently think that the most newsworthy thing in the once-every-several-years literature review by hundreds of the world’s leading scientists is that people who make a living denying climate science … wait for it … deny climate science. That CBS story actually begins, “Climatologists and climate-change deniers agree on at least one thing this week: everyone is awaiting the landmark U.N. report on climate change that will be presented at next week’s meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).” Stop the presses! No, please, stop the damn presses already if you are an editor or reporter who thinks deniers deserve equal billing with scientists.

June 23, 2014 4:29 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Because the media keeps making the same faux pas about the faux pause, scientists and science writers have had to debunk it repeatedly. Anyone in the media who insists on buying into the false dialectic MUST read the new piece at Real Climate by climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf, the Mother Jones piece by Chris Mooney, this piece by Tamino, and almost anything at Skeptical Science (such as this or this). Also, Peter Sinclair has a great video on this.

Let me extract the key points and figures. Back in July, scientist Dana Nuccitelli summarized a new study, “Distinctive climate signals in reanalysis of global ocean heat content“:

⦁ Completely contrary to the popular contrarian myth, global warming has accelerated, with more overall global warming in the past 15 years than the prior 15 years. This is because about 90% of overall global warming goes into heating the oceans, and the oceans have been warming dramatically.

⦁ As suspected, much of the ‘missing heat’ Kevin Trenberth previously talked about has been found in the deep oceans. Consistent with the results of Nuccitelli et al. (2012), this study finds that 30% of the ocean warming over the past decade has occurred in the deeper oceans below 700 meters, which they note is unprecedented over at least the past half century.

⦁ Some recent studies have concluded based on the slowed global surface warming over the past decade that the sensitivity of the climate to the increased greenhouse effect is somewhat lower than the IPCC best estimate. Those studies are fundamentally flawed because they do not account for the warming of the deep oceans.

The slowed surface air warming over the past decade has lulled many people into a false and unwarranted sense of security.

June 23, 2014 4:30 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

For more on the myth of a low climate sensitivity (or the myth that climate sensitivity is the same as projected future warming), see this post. In reality, the best science says that the Earth’s actual sensitivity to carbon pollution is probably on the high side.

The bottom line is provided by Rahmstorf at RealClimate:

The heat content of the oceans is growing and growing. That means that the greenhouse effect has not taken a pause and the cold sun is not noticeably slowing global warming….

The increase in the amount of heat in the oceans amounts to 17 x 1022 Joules over the last 30 years. That is so much energy it is equivalent to exploding a Hiroshima bomb every second in the ocean for thirty years.

“Since 1975, global average surface air temperature has increased at a rate of 0.17 deg.C/decade,” Tamino notes. “But the rate of increase hasn’t been perfectly constant over that entire time span. As a matter of fact, there’s a 15-year time span during which the rate is notably different. Fifteen whole years!!!”

June 23, 2014 4:30 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Rahmstorf replied to one journalist who asked whether there’s a real slowdown or “Do the IPCC authors feel pressured to write about it just because skeptics are making so much noise about it?”

You’d have to ask them but it is quite possible. I think a lot of the interest in this topic in the science community has been triggered by the public debate about it. If you look at the 15-year period up to 2006, the warming trend was almost twice as high as normal (namely 0.3 °C per decade) but nobody cared (you can see a graph with this trend line here [or above]. We published a paper in Science in 2007 where we noted this large trend, and as the first explanation for it we named natural variability. There is a certain asymmetry in that 15 years of high trend don’t raise much interest, whilst 15 years of low trend do. The reason is that interest groups strongly push the latter.

What’s surprising is not that deniers and confusionists keep pushing their denial and confusion — that is, after all, their job — but that much of the mainstream media keeps buying what they are selling.

Let’s return to the speed up in ocean heat content:

Rahmstorf, who is Head of Earth System Analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, explains:

The amount of heat stored in the oceans is one of the most important diagnostics for global warming, because about 90% of the additional heat is stored there (you can read more about this in the last IPCC report from 2007). The atmosphere stores only about 2% because of its small heat capacity. The surface (including the continental ice masses) can only absorb heat slowly because it is a poor heat conductor. Thus, heat absorbed by the oceans accounts for almost all of the planet’s radiative imbalance.

June 23, 2014 4:30 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

What does that mean for our understanding of climate change? Again, here’s Rahmstorf:

If the oceans are warming up, this implies that the Earth must absorb more solar energy than it emits longwave radiation into space. This is the only possible heat source. That’s simply the first law of thermodynamics, conservation of energy. This conservation law is why physicists are so interested in looking at the energy balance of anything. Because we understand the energy balance of our Earth, we also know that global warming is caused by greenhouse gases – which have caused the largest imbalance in the radiative energy budget over the last century.

If the greenhouse effect (that checks the exit of longwave radiation from Earth into space) or the amount of absorbed sunlight diminished, one would see a slowing in the heat uptake of the oceans. The measurements show that this is not the case.

Rahmstorf also notes that “Completely independently of this oceanographic data, a simple correlation analysis (Foster and Rahmstorf ERL 2011) showed that the flatter atmospheric warming trend of the last 10 years was mostly a result of natural variability, namely the recently more frequent appearance of cold La Niña events in the tropical Pacific and a small contribution from decreasing solar activity.”

As you can see, “both the red El Niño years and the blue La Niña years are getting warmer, but given that we have lately experienced a cluster of La Niña years the overall atmospheric warming trend over the last ten years is slower.” (the rate of warming of the oceans has increased) This is the noise “associated with natural variability, not a change in the signal of global warming.”

June 23, 2014 4:31 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And, as it turns out, just last month a major study published in Nature confirmed that “the slowing rise in global atmospheric temperatures during recent years has been a result of prevalent La Niña periods in the tropical Pacific.” The abstract of that study explains:

Our results show that the current hiatus is part of natural climate variability tied specifically to a La Niña like decadal cooling.

Thus there are, as Rahmstorf notes, “at least three independent lines of evidence that confirm we are not dealing with a slowdown in the global warming trend, but rather with progressive global warming with superimposed natural variability.”

And let’s not forget another key indicator of accelerating warming — the accelerating melting of the great ice sheets as documented in the most comprehensive analysis of satellite altimetry, interferometry, and gravimetry data sets to date:

Warming of the whole globe (as opposed to the thin surface layer) has sped up. When the rate of surface warming returns to the trendline, I wonder if the media will report that global warming has accelerated.

June 23, 2014 4:31 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

At the end of a war, some people will remain holed up in the trees, thinking they can still turn the tide of a lost cause. Increasingly, that's the best description of the anti-Obamacare dead-enders, including congressional Republicans, who continue to depict the Affordable Care Act as a failure despite facts like these:.

--Nearly 60% of enrollees in ACA-compliant exchange health plans this year were previously uninsured--most of them for two years or more. (Source: Kaiser Family Foundation.)



“No meaningful performance difference.”
- McKinsey, on the difference between health outcomes of narrow and broad hospital networks

--Obamacare cut costs for buyers eligible for subsidies by an average of 76% compared with non-subsidized premiums. More than 80% of buyers are eligible for government subsidies, and for them the average premium is $82 a month. (Source: Department of Health and Human Services.)

--Most people can save money by choosing plans offering narrower provider networks, and there's "no meaningful" difference in health outcomes between plans with narrow hospital networks and those offering broader networks. (Source: McKinsey & Co.)

--Projected rate increases for 2015 are coming in well below expectations. Anthem Blue Cross rates will rise by less than 10% next year, about in line with health plan rate increases in the individual market in the pre-ACA era. (Source: Anthem Blue Cross.)


But on the general proposition of whether Obamacare has or hasn't worked, the figures are in, and they show that it has changed American healthcare dramatically, for the better.

June 23, 2014 4:35 PM  
Anonymous cool season said...

"So academically he is about as qualified as my cat to post his own analysis’s climate change."

this is rich

some person who never worked a day and has CHOSEN to become some other guy's housewife, calls a guy with degrees in two scientific disciplines less "qualified" than a household pet to evaluate the interpretation of scientific data

then, this "housewife" proceeds to provide more than a half dozen posts of scientific interpretation

while being about as qualified as the goldfish in the bowl on the end table

that's rich!!

Saturday was the first day of summer

it was chilly

June 23, 2014 8:19 PM  

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