The Watering Hole; Thursday september 3 2015; The Science Behind ACD

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I’ll be brief today. Anthropogenic Climate Disruption (ACD) is real, it’s happening, and its consequences are already proving to be formidable at least, potentially terminal. The link below is to one of the best ACD analyses I’ve run across to date. It’s written in familiar lay terms and language, but contains numerous links to scientific papers and data that apply to various aspects of ACD, both cause and effect, both local and global.

The essay is a bit lengthy in itself, and can be made far more lengthy via the embedded scientific and media links. It’s well worth a read, however, also maybe worth sending to uninformed stoneheads like Inhofe, Trump, Cruz — to deniers everywhere. Maybe they’re still able to learn — although I’d have to see it to believe it.

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Dahr Jamail | The World on Fire: Record-Breaking Wildfires, Greenland Melting and Earth’s Hottest Month Ever

A massive wall of wildfire smoke, blowing in from record-breaking fires in eastern Washington State, covers Puget Sound and Seattle. (Photo: Dahr Jamail)

A massive wall of wildfire smoke, blowing in from record-breaking fires in eastern Washington State, covers Puget Sound and Seattle. (Photo: Dahr Jamail)

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OPEN THREAD

92 thoughts on “The Watering Hole; Thursday september 3 2015; The Science Behind ACD”

  1. Some NSFW vindication for your day. It’s been around for four years but I just heard it this morning on Nicole Sandler’s intro to her show.

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  2. Reince Priebus will ask Donald Trump to sign a loyalty pledge this afternoon. I hear that Trump is a rampant cheater at golf so it must be about that.

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    • Why is RNC PRBS wasting his time? Trump already shamelessly told the Fox News moderators he wouldn’t promise to back the GOP candidate in the general election, nor would he rule out an independent run. So unless RNC PRBS grows some balls and tells Trump he can’t run for the GOP nomination, it means nothing.

      Either way, the GOP is going to have to get behind someone other than Trump or Carson. In fact, I’m surprised Carson hasn’t backed out yet. He already said his wife doesn’t want him to run. She’s been looking forward to a nice, quiet retirement.

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      • And that speaks volumes about the R’s miserable condition. At least in the early polling these two cretins are Onesie and Twosie. Neither electable and all the effing R;s know this.

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    • Trump could care less what Prince Reebutz wants him to sign. He’ll probably agree to sign Prince’s arse with a blowtorch.

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  3. Sarah Palin hasn’t weighed in but her devil spawn, Bristol, thinks President Obama should worry about ISIS and the economy, not renaming mountains, pronoun consistency.

    BONUS:
    And as for Alaskans referring to it as Denali for years, Palin says, “I’ve never called the mountain Denali .. and neither does anyone I know.”

    Well, that’s a whopper of a lie, unless she doesn’t know her mom, which is a distinct possibility.

    Palin’s AK Farewell address: “And getting up here I say it is the best road trip in America soaring through nature’s finest show. Denali, the great one, soaring under the midnight sun.”

    http://www.mediaite.com/online/bristol-palin-to-obama-stop-renaming-our-mountains-and-worry-about-jihad-instead/

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  4. Dick Deluded Cheney, on his statecraft
    Significant quote..
    “DICK CHENEY: I’m saying (Obama’s) weak. He conveyed that sense of weakness…
    Remember, Bill, how we have dealt with proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East before. 1981 Saddam Hussein had a program going …the Israelis took it out, military force. 1991, we went in with Desert Storm, we shut down his nuclear program then: military force. When we went in in ’03 and took down Saddam Hussein, himself, one of the byproducts of that was Muammar Qaddafi saw what we did to him and he immediately surrendered his nuclear materials.”

    Only a massive ego and a total absence of conscience could convey such a revision of the horror that was the Iraq war.
    Got ISIL, Dick? You DIck.

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  6. The other day, I was ride sharing with a woman who began telling me about the tomato garden at her church and that these tomatoes needed picking before the rain. Her church planted the garden to provide food to homeless shelters which I think is a good thing. I asked her where she goes to church and she told me. Then she asked me where I attend church. I told her that I don’t go to church and that I am non-religious. She immediately said that she will pray for me. I told her that I didn’t need prayers because I didn’t believe in prayers. Since I didn’t want to offend her further, I added that if she felt the need to pray for me, then she should go ahead and do that for her own satisfaction as it didn’t mean anything to me. I don’t know what she was expecting to come from her prayers. Is Jesus going to drop down from heaven and convert me? Too bad I don’t believe in a god otherwise I would hook up with the new and improved Pope Francis Catholic Church. I think belief in a god is a requirement. Now… a Quaker once told me that I didn’t need to believe in god to be a Quaker. I don’t know how that works. 🙂

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    • “a Quaker once told me that I didn’t need to believe in god to be a Quaker. I don’t know how that works.” — There are various practices amongst The Society of Friends. Terms like “liberal” and “conservative” are profoundly misleading here, since they come with so much contemporary political baggage. But a “conservative” Quaker would insist upon conserving a recognizable theism. Liberal/progressive Quakers are only distinguishable from a UU (Unitarian-Universalist) by the form of their worship service. UU’s have a minister who’ll yack at them. But many UU ministers and congregants are atheists.

      The difference with Quakers is a) their belief in “the Light Within,” and b) worship services organized around silence and Speaking. (My use of capitalization throughout is deliberate.) The Light Within is akin to other forms of spiritual practice, in which each person can be a Voice for the truth, when they Speak from that Light. Which brings me to point b: the service at a Friends’ meeting is conducted w/o any minister or preacher. Rather, the Friends Gather, and sit together in quiet meditation. If this is a genuinely Gathered meeting, the tension in this meditation can reach an extreme pitch, and some one will be moved to Speak. One need not be well practiced in Quaker methods to tell when someone is bullshitting about their walk in the park, and genuinely Speaking. (I’ve sat in a few meetings, and even I can tell the difference.)

      It would be foolish of me to try and describe the difference between bullshit and real Speaking. Analogies that come to mind are all aesthetic: the difference between an ugly and a beautiful mathematical formula; the difference between a clumsy and masterful jazz solo. (I’ve a sense of the first; while jazz makes me want to scream until my ears bleed.) In any event, it is not hard to learn, if one sincerely wants to learn.

      Which finally brings me back to your original question: the Light Within and Speaking do not need any essential theistic interpretation. Conservative Quakers would find such a statement absurd to the point of incoherence. But a thing cannot be necessary if its denial is possible.

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  7. Son’s homework last night was to select his position on many current issues. I was surprised he had positions on some of the subjects, and many of them were well thought out. At the end we added his score and found he was a moderate conservative. I have failed as a parent.

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  8. So I’ve been anxiously waiting to find out what is going to happen to the Clerk in Kentucky, who feels signing a piece of paper (which is in the legislated job description for her job is an affront to her religious freedom. (I’ve noted via this link http://www.lrc.ky.gov/lrcpubs/ib114.pdf (page 53) that other duties of a County Clerk involves issuing licenses for roadhouses and fortune tellers. Apparently, she’s okay with that.

    Anyway, I go to CNN to see if there’s been any decision regarding her. And I kid you not, CNN’s lead is about the missing airliner. They are truly obsessed with it.

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  14. Meanwhile in Kansas . . .

    Kansas Republicans May Have Just Shut Down the State's Court System | Mother Jones

    What happens to a legal appeal when there’s no court to hear it?

    That’s the tricky question before Kansas Republicans today as they grapple with the results of their own law, which threatens to shutter the state court system.

    On Wednesday night, a district judge in Kansas [struck down][0] a 2014 law that stripped the state Supreme Court of some of its administrative powers. The ruling has set off a bizarre constitutional power struggle between the Republican-controlled legislature and the state Supreme Court. At stake is whether or not the Kansas court system itself will lose its funding and shut down.

    [0]: https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/press-releases/2015-CV-156%20Memorandum%20Decision%20and%20Order.pdf

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      • It won’t change this country at all, not one bit….. everyone’s too busy praying for Kim Davis …. but something might happen in Europe. Germany has already agreed to take in 800,000 Syrians – that’s the equivalent of 4m refugees for the USA – can you imagine what that commitment means? Can you imagine the USA doing that… ever?

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        • Even Iceland is volunteering. The government said 50 refugees. The citizens said more, more, more!

          The U.S. should be reporting the hell out of this story, instead of DaffyDonald spouting idiocy.

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  16. The Alabama state senate has voted to reduce marriage to a legal contract. They will still have to recognize out of state marriages, however.

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  17. Donald Trump signed a pledge on today to back the Republican presidential nominee and not to run as an independent should he not win the party’s nomination. He still cheats at golf.

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    • Two things: One, when you work for the public sector, your job is defined by statute and you do not have the option to do the job “as [you] see fit.” Two, you very much do lose your constitutional rights when you are employed by the government. When I was in the Air Force, I lost my 5th Amendment rights under the Constitution and they were replaced by my Article 31 rights under the UCMJ (which were similar, but not identical.) Forget about my 1st Amendment right of free speech while in uniform. I could attend political protests, but only while dressed as a civilian.

      I’m not even going to talk about the Jews in Nazi Germany crap. No one is sending her to the gas chambers or the ovens for refusing to do her public sector job.

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      • I have a friend who had family members die in Belzec concentration camp. I’m sure she’ll “get a kick” out of this comparison.

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      • when I engage with a gun nut I suggest that they join the military. On their very first day they will meet a drill instructor, or equivalent depending on the branch of service, and I suggest that they go up to him and demand to carry a gun whenever and wherever they want. No one has taken me up on it yet but I’m willing to wait for comedy gold!

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    • When is she scheduled for the showers?

      Fascinating that so many are so willing to believe that when “Christians” are asked to support/obey the laws of the land, they’re being “persecuted” and their “religious freedom” is being taken from them. And yet, they’re passionately willing to disallow whichever “sectarian” right they disapprove of to all who don’t believe as they do.

      Fundy Christers really aren’t all that different from fundy Muslims. Only difference is, fundy Christers like Biblical law, not Shariah law. Not even sure that that’s a “difference.”

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      • It’s a bit complicated. When a judge issues a ruling that the whitey-righties don’t like then he/she is a “librul activist judge”. When a judge issues a ruling they do like then he/she is a “godly judge”. What’s really fun is when one judge has ruled both ways, like Roberts or Kennedy, and then they just splutter and turn colors.

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      • So she’s going to play the victim, set up a gofundme account and probably collect more than she would make at her job.
        Sounds to me like she has this well thought out.
        She’s burned through husbands and probably left them with little.
        She does a little time and then the money from xtian fundies rolls in because she was persecuted.
        I hope the IRS puts her under a microscope.

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    • How to watch a horror film: Go to the refrigerator. Get a beer. Sit down in front of the TV set. Find a sitcom to watch. Fuck watching gory macabre bullshit that turns on sick-fuck would-be serial killers.

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            • Oh yeah. Lili is still visiting. My stepson thinks he has a good chance to get a job at the new Polaris assembly plant here in H’ville. If they like him they’re going to fly him to Minnesota for training while the plant is being completed. We recently gained a Remington Arms plant also. Being in a ‘Right To Work (Cheap) State’ at least means a chance to get a job.

              My job may end up being permanent. Two machinists quit last week, so I’m fourth in line there now. The RWNJ supervisor left a week before I hired back on. He had Obama Derangement Syndrome so bad it hurt.

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