climate activist on trial.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

You'd have probably said the same thing in Germany circa 1936.

 

WHAT OTHER IMMINENT DEMISE DO WE ALL FACE PROLE! PLEASE EDUCATE THE MASSES!

 

[prole]

You psychopaths could at least have the balls to admit you just don't give a fuck rather than pretending there's no problem.

[prole]

I do realize that it's a bit unfair to bring "balls" into it, you being so sensitive about your own 'roid shriveled groats and all...

[tvashtarkatena]

Truck Nutz sighting in Ballard! Chromed!

[KaskadskyjKozak]

You psychopaths could at least have the balls to admit you just don't give a fuck rather than pretending there's no problem.

 

"No problem". That's a riot. All you do is wallow in problems. Plural. And not just two or three.

[prole]

I report, you deny.

[AlpineK]

Yet another Spray thread degenerating to

 

• You suck dickhead
• No you suck asswipe
• You suck more dickhead
• I know suck when I see it asswipe
  

 

No matter what your political persuasion or beliefs you all look like idiots.

 

Hey I've got an idea. Maybe y'all should got on a multi day climbing trip together, take youtube videos, then post a Trip Report. Now that would be good Spray/entertainment.

[tvashtarkatena]

I see a reality show in the making.

[j_b]

Yet another Spray thread degenerating to

 

No matter what your political persuasion or beliefs you all look like idiots.

 

Hey I've got an idea. Maybe y'all should got on a multi day climbing trip together, take youtube videos, then post a Trip Report. Now that would be good Spray/entertainment.

 

That's actually one of my pet peeves. Process controls outcome: climb/ski with a dick, and you are pretty much guaranteed to have a terrible time. I know because i have experienced it many times. Why should anyone wish to spend entire days with neanderthals? Just give me one good reason. As for degenerating threads, I think that is the purpose of the trolls.

[AlpineK]

You're a big, but not sole, part of the decline of Spray j_b

 

Why not go climbing then spray about it.

[j_b]

the "decline of spray"? decline from what? tell me you are joking, please. Without us spray would be a morass of juvenile irrelevance and not even funny to boot.

[Jim]

What would be a good choice for an irony emoticon?

[j_b]

I am clearly condemned to having Jim biting at my ankles forever now. LOLZ

[Jim]

Meanfuckingwhile...

 

Scientists Try to Determine Whether Life on Earth is Quickly Heading Toward Extinction

 

Life on Earth is hurtling toward extinction levels comparable with those after the dinosaur-deleting asteroid impact of 65 million years ago, propelled forward by human activities, according to scientists from UC Berkeley.

 

This week, scientists announced that if current extinction rates continue unabated, and vulnerable species disappear, Earth could lose three-quarters of its species as soon as three centuries from now.

 

"That's a geological eyeblink," said Nicholas Matzke, a graduate student at UC Berkeley and author of a paper describing the doom-and-gloom scenario. "Once you lose species, you don't get them back. It takes millions of years to rebound from a mass extinction event."

 

This means that not too far in the future, backyards might not be buzzing with bees, bombarded by seagulls or shaded by redwood trees. And while that might seem far off, species already are disappearing on a global scale. In recent history, we've lost the dodo bird and the passenger pigeon, the Javan tiger and the Japanese sea lion, and now, maybe the eastern cougar -- declared extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday. Amphibians, mammals, plants, fish -- none are immune to going the way of the dinosaurs, courtesy of the human impact on fragile ecosystems.

 

Such enormous losses have only occurred five times in the past half-billion years, during events known as "mass extinctions." The best-known of these events occurred 65 million years ago -- a "really bad day," according to paleontologists -- when an asteroid collided with Earth, sending fiery dust into the atmosphere and rapidly cooling the planet. These "Big Five" events set the extinction bar high: to reach mass-wipeout status, 75 percent of all species need to disappear within a geologically short time frame, meaning that Earth is currently on the brink of the sixth mass extinction.

 

To determine whether current losses could equal these mass extinction rates, scientists compared recent rates with species die-offs during the Big Five, taking into account presently endangered species. They also looked at the number of species lost in recent history and found that while rates are dramatically higher than expected, the percentage of vanishing species is not elevated -- yet. We already are engaged in a seemingly inexorable march toward barren landscapes and empty seas, a procession fueled by human population growth, resource consumption and climate change, according to scientists.

 

"The good news is, we still have most of what we want to save," Berkeley paleobiologist and lead study author Anthony Barnosky said. "But things are clearly going extinct too fast today."

 

The paper, published in this week's issue of Nature, resulted from a graduate seminar Barnosky organized in fall 2009. Together, he and students used fossils to compare extinction rates with more modern data, wanting to answer whether we really are seeing the sixth mass extinction. To make comparisons, scientists used information from well-preserved fossils and modern accounts of disappearing animals, focusing on our milk-bearing relatives: mammals.

 

Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich, who was not involved in the study, said evidence of the sixth extinction is all around. For years, he studied the Bay Checkerspot butterfly on Stanford's campus -- but then, the butterfly disappeared from the campus, more than a decade ago. And, when Ehrlich journeyed to Morocco to sample a different Checkerspot species, he found no butterflies, just "sheep droppings and not one blade of grass."

 

"Anywhere you go around the world," Ehrlich said, "If you're a field biologist, your sites and organisms are disappearing. "

 

One particularly vulnerable group is marine mammals, according to study author and paleobiologist Charles Marshall, who said that while predictions are dire for our swimming relatives, they haven't yet reached the point of no return.

 

"There really is time to reverse habitat destruction or massive overexploitation of resources," Marshall said. "I love sushi, but I just don't eat tuna anymore. I don't want to be part of the decline of that group."

 

Scientists say habitat destruction, global climate change, introducing invasive species, and population growth are contributing to losses.

 

"Those four things working in concert are kind of a perfect storm that's setting up a recipe for disaster," Barnosky said. "But people are the ones who are driving this extinction, so we can fix it."

 

In addition to prioritizing species preservation, Ehrlich suggested starting with caps on human population growth and limiting resource consumption.

 

"We could do something about it, but I don't see that we have the slightest inclination to," he said.--from here.

 

I was at a conference near D.C. last week on conservation planning and one of the speakers was Dr. John Holdren - the presidental advisor on climate change. While I've done some reading on the subject in relation to estuarine restoration efforts and floodplain work - I was, well, stunned by the some of the data and projections. The issue will, by far, be the one that the coming generation will need to deal with. I was not aware of the extent of current sea level rise due to thermal expansion - it is quite depressing. For a primer I'd suggest the book Eaarth by Bill McKibben, who has been writing on the subject for 20 yrs.

[j_b]

so what did John Holdren recommend to Obama?

[prole]

72 pages of critically endangerd species.

[ivan]

so what did John Holdren recommend to Obama?

buy real-estate in colorado?

[j_b]

Hurtling towards Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update in a perfect storm of crises, and the sociopaths get rid of recyclable cups in the house of congress to go back to Styrofoam. Take that eco-terrorists!

[j_b]

A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientist finds that "Nuclear Power is Still Not Viable Without Subsidies". The report found that more than 30 subsidies have supported the nuclear power industry at every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining to long-term waste storage, since the industry was born more than 50 years ago. Added together, these subsidies often have exceeded the average market price of the power produced by nuclear plants. In other words, if the government had purchased power on the open market and given it away free, it would have been less costly than subsidizing nuclear power plant construction and operation.

 

Elected officials are much more bullish about nuclear power than the general public. The Obama administration wants to triple the amount of federal loan guarantees for nuclear projects to $58 billion, which would shift the risk away from Wall Street and place it squarely on taxpayers. Congress, meanwhile, wants to greatly expand other subsidies for new reactors. Two Senate bills introduced last year would have provided incentives worth as much as $5 billion per reactor and tens of billions of dollars to the industry depending on how many plants are built. Those bills died, but will likely resurface.

 

“Despite the fact that the nuclear power industry has benefited from decades of government support, the technology is still uneconomic, so the industry wants a lot more from taxpayers to build new reactors,” said Ellen Vancko, manager of UCS’s Nuclear Energy and Climate Change Project.

http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_and_global_warming/nuclear-power-subsidies-report.html?utm_source=SP&utm_medium=head&utm_campaign=NuclearSubsidies-02-23-11-head

[tvashtarkatena]

One big bundle of CAN'T.

[prole]

 

Given the recent revelations about natural gas, it's obvious that Americans lack the institutional capacities to deal with widespread nuclear. No fucking way.

 

[tvashtarkatena]

Guess we'll keep doing the natural gas/coal/shale oil thing, then.

[prole]

The destructive fallout we're already seeing from fossil fuels in the currently politicized regulatory environment does not suggest to me that we need to move toward an inherently more dangerous form of energy production. When baby shows he can use the potty like a big boy then we take off the diapers. Make sense?

 

[j_b]

Note that I am not necessarily against continued subsidy when there are also external benefits (like transit, etc ..). But, it's an entirely different starting point than assuming that nuclear is cheap when it is in fact very expensive. In the meantime, there are other sources of energy that appear much more likely to provide us with sustained, safe and cheap energy that aren't getting the subsidies they should.

[rob]

Another thing that should definitely get more subsidies is nuclear research. We should be investing into advanced technology, like fusion power. It's just a matter of time.