Monday blues

Methane danger.

It seems that the entire west coast of the US is on fire.

And if you aren't on fire, you're melting from the heat.

Market crash tied to China?  Paul Krugman: ..."what we’re seeing is what happens when too much money is chasing too few investment opportunities".

Bed bugs.

Or you could just have police crash through your door at 5 in the morning, not let you cover your naked body, and tell you to shut up.... before they realize they have the wrong apartment.

We're having a heat wave.... *wheeze* ...

Hot enough for ya?  Apparently hot enough to melt cats.....

Prairie dogs have a complex language with nouns and adjectives.

Guns! 2016!!

Jeb Bush: ‘Taking Out Saddam Hussein Turned Out To Be A Pretty Good Deal’ and then hear about what actually happened.

Ben Carson and the fetal tissue issue.

Graphene will save the world... if we don't self-destruct first.  (Corn is part of the problem.)

Stuff. Because it's still hot at 11 o'clock at night.

The facts about the Great Pacific Plastic Garbage Gyre.

Your chair is trying to kill you.

Florida... *cough*.. *cough*

An evil plot to create more stupid voters who vote against their own interests.

A Lego bridge in Germany.

Star Trek?!  NO.... ALIENS!!

Contraception saves 250,000 lives each year: study

Odds of record U.S. heat being a random event: 1 in 1.6 million and U.S. Sees Hottest 12 Months And Hottest Half Year On Record and so Climate scientists are finally coming forth and making the connection between human activity and the wild weather.


Woman photographs her own abortion to educate women and fight the ugly fear-mongering anti-choice protesters use.

Rush Limbaugh's phony empire.


Bees are smarter than supercomputers.

Monsanto gets an F.

When climate change affects the weather patterns

People die. We're going to see lots of articles like these as the water wars start, the oceans' rising temperatures make fish die off or stop breeding....:

"No one will call us for work and the children will have to go hungry. We won't have anything to eat."

Devi is among roughly 600 million people in India who make a living off the land. That is about 60 percent of India's population of 1.1 billion.

Most of the country is suffering from a rain deficit. The Monsoon has been delayed in some parts of the country. Usually the season begins around the first of June.

In developed countries, irrigation is common and electricity readily available, but both are a luxury for most Indian farmers.

Rainwater is key to crop survival and the livelihoods of those who work the farms.

Devinder Sharma is a food and trade policy analyst. He says "65 percent of farmers in India rely on rainwater."

Fish will become harder and harder to find:

French fishermen hit back at stars' bid to save bluefin tuna

[snip]

It has been a long few weeks for captain Jean-Louis Donnarel and the crew of the Provence-Côte d'Azur II. Long, rough and not very profitable. After sailing a total of 6,600 nautical miles - first to Cyprus, then the length of the Egyptian coast, to Malta, around the Balearics and then home - the Provence-Côte d'Azur II returned with 84 tonnes of bluefin tuna, a catch that will barely cover the costs of the voyage.

"We found fish on the last day," Donnarel said last week. "Without that, we would have been finished. Someone has to take a decision. Do they want us to fish or not? If not, they should put us out of our misery."

Donnarel and his crew are at the sharp end of an increasingly bitter row: one that links globally known restaurants, top celebrities, huge international conglomerates, sushi shops and supermarkets across half the world to the livelihoods of a few thousand fishermen.

At stake is the survival of the bluefin tuna, a single specimen of which can be sold for tens of thousands of dollars - a price that has seen stocks decline in some areas by up to 90%.

It apparently hasn't dawned on the fishermen that if there are no more fish, there WILL BE no more jobs....

Update:

A severe heatwave has claimed the lives of nearly 100 people across India, reports say.

The eastern Indian state of Orissa appears to be the worst affected with 58 people dying from heat stroke, according to local officials.

Unofficial figures in the Orissa media put the number of dead closer to 200.

For those who mock global warming

By pointing to the US's severe winter storm, here's what's happening in Australia:

South-eastern Australia is experiencing its worst heatwave in decades, with temperatures in excess of 43C (109F).

Health officials in South Australia say the searing heat may be to blame for an apparent increase in the number of sudden deaths among the elderly.

In neighbouring Victoria state, bush fires have destroyed at least 10 homes.

Nearly 500,000 people in the state are reported to have lost their power supplies, following severe pressure on the electricity grid.

An explosion was also reported at a substation in Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city.

"It is an extreme week. The system is not made to operate where you've got temperatures in the suburbs of 46C," said the head of Victoria state, John Brumby.

Commuters are facing long delays after the blackouts added to the problems on the rail network. Hundreds of train services were cancelled after the heat buckled tracks.

The phrase global warming is unfortunate as it should really be called climate change. The weather will become more extreme at both ends of the gauge, extreme heat, extreme cold. There will be more droughts, floods, fires. Meanwhile, glaciers are losing their ice and the poles are melting, the oceans are acidifying, creatures are going extinct.





Even if we negated our carbon footprints right now, this shift in climate will still continue for decades. We can thank the Bush administration for eight more years of delay in addressing this.

George Bush surprised world leaders with a joke about his poor record on the environment as he left the G8 summit in Japan.

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Mr Bush, whose second and final term as President ends at the end of the year, then left the meeting at the Windsor Hotel in Hokkaido where the leaders of the world's richest nations had been discussing new targets to cut carbon emissions.

One official who witnessed the extraordinary scene said afterwards: "Everyone was very surprised that he was making a joke about America's record on pollution."

But maybe we can hope:

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore urged President Barack Obama and other world leaders to seal a quick deal to fight global warming despite the pervasive financial crisis.

Gore called Obama "the greenest person in the room" for making environmental funding a big chunk of the $819 billion economic stimulus bill passed by U.S. lawmakers this week.

"I think it's important for the world leaders gathered here to fully appreciate the magnitude of the change in U.S. leadership," Gore said.

The former U.S. vice president and environmental advocate, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, referred to frustration in many countries at the Bush administration's refusal to sign international pacts on reducing emissions of carbon, blamed for global warming.

For a president who loves fart jokes

His speech about emissions had an isolating effect:

George Bush was castigated by European diplomats and found himself isolated yesterday after a special conference on climate change ended without any progress.

European ministers, diplomats and officials attending the Washington conference were scathing, particularly in private, over Mr Bush's failure once again to commit to binding action on climate change.

[snip]

A senior European diplomat attending the conference, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the meeting confirmed European suspicions that it had been intended by Mr Bush as a spoiler for a major UN conference on climate change in Bali in December.

"It was a total charade and has been exposed as a charade," the diplomat said. "I have never heard a more humiliating speech by a major leader. He [Mr Bush] was trying to present himself as a leader while showing no sign of leadership. It was a total failure."

John Ashton, Britain's special envoy on climate change, who attended the conference, said: "It is striking here how isolated the US has become on this issue. There is no support among the industrialised countries for the proposition that we should proceed on the basis of voluntary commitments.

Meanwhile:

Parts of the Arctic have experienced an unprecedented heatwave this summer, with one research station in the Canadian High Arctic recording temperatures above 20C, about 15C higher than the long-term average. The high temperatures were accompanied by a dramatic melting of Arctic sea ice in September to the lowest levels ever recorded, a further indication of how sensitive this region of the world is to global warming. Scientists from Queen's University in Ontario watched with amazement as their thermometers touched 22C during their July field expedition at the High Arctic camp on Melville Island, usually one of the coldest places in North America.

"This was exceptional for a place where the normal average temperatures are about 5C. This year we frequently recorded daytime temperatures of between 10C and 15C and on some days it went as high as 22C," said Scott Lamoureux, a professor of geography at Queen's.

"Even temperatures of 15C are higher than we'd expect and yet we recorded them for between 10 and 12 days during July. We won't know the August and September recordings until next year when we go back there but it appears the region has continued to be warm through the summer."

The high temperatures on the island caused catastrophic mudslides as the permafrost on hillsides melted, Professor Lamoureux said. "The landscape was being torn to pieces, literally before our eyes."

Other parts of the Arctic also experienced higher-than-normal temperatures, which indicate that the wider polar region may have experienced its hottest summer on record, according to Walt Meir of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.

"It's been warm, with temperatures about 3C or 4C above normal for June, July and August, particularly to the north of Siberia where the temperatures have reached between 4C and 5C above average," Dr Meir said.