Critics' review unexpectedly supports scientific consensus on global warming
A UC Berkeley team's preliminary findings in a review of temperature data confirm global warming studies.
. . . The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project was launched by physics professor Richard Muller, a longtime critic of government-led climate studies, to address what he called "the legitimate concerns" of skeptics who believe that global warming is exaggerated.
But Muller unexpectedly told a congressional hearing last week that the work of the three principal groups that have analyzed the temperature trends underlying climate science is "excellent.... We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups."
. . . The Berkeley project's biggest private backer, at $150,000, is the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. Oil billionaires Charles and David Koch are the nation's most prominent funders of efforts to prevent curbs on the burning of fossil fuels, the largest contributor to planet-warming greenhouse gases. . . .
But conservative critics who had expected Muller's group to demonstrate a bias among climate scientists reacted with disappointment.
Anthony Watts, a former TV weatherman who runs the skeptic blog WattsUpWithThat.com, wrote that the Berkeley group is releasing results that are not "fully working and debugged yet.... But, post normal science political theater is like that."
Over the years, Muller has praised Watts' efforts to show that weather station data in official studies are untrustworthy because of the urban heat island effect, which boosts temperature readings in areas that have been encroached on by cities and suburbs.
But leading climatologists said the previous studies accounted for the effect, and the Berkeley analysis is confirming that, Muller acknowledged. "Did such poor station quality exaggerate the estimates of global warming?" he asked in his written testimony. "We've studied this issue, and our preliminary answer is no." . . .
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Reality's well-known liberal bias reveals itself again
You can almost hear the Koch Brothers from here: "Dammit, who put the eggheads on the payroll?"
Friday, April 15, 2011
Join the "No Ivy League," April 23, 9 a.m., Wallace Marine Park
Image by swan corner via FlickrSalem Area "No Ivy" League: Kick-off event April 23rd
English Ivy can cause incredible environmental damage, destroying native vegetation and trees. The best way to combat the noxious weed is to work collaboratively. The Glenn-Gibson Creeks Watershed Council asks that individuals and organizations join us and support the creation of a Salem area "No Ivy" League. The mission of the "No Ivy" League is to restore native habitats by targeting invasive plants, especially areas overrun by English Ivy. See the attached memo for more information.
Please join us for the first "No Ivy" League event April 23rd from 9 am to noon at Wallace Marine Park in West Salem. City of Salem Parks and SOLV will help provide the tools needed and the watershed council will provide refreshments.
Hope to see you there!
Aida Arik, Coordinator
Glenn-Gibson Watershed Council
503.623.9680 x112
580 Main St., Suite A, Dallas, Oregon 97338
glenngibsonwatershedcouncil.org
Taxes due 4/18 -- time to sharpen the pitchforks and prepare the torches
Image by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via FlickrWord from Chris Hedges:. . . We will not halt the laying off of teachers and other public employees, the slashing of unemployment benefits, the closing of public libraries, the reduction of student loans, the foreclosures, the gutting of public education and early childhood programs or the dismantling of basic social services such as heating assistance for the elderly until we start to carry out sustained acts of civil disobedience against the financial institutions responsible for our debacle. The banks and Wall Street, which have erected the corporate state to serve their interests at our expense, caused the financial crisis. The bankers and their lobbyists crafted tax havens that account for up to $1 trillion in tax revenue lost every decade. They rewrote tax laws so the nation’s most profitable corporations, including Bank of America, could avoid paying any federal taxes. They engaged in massive fraud and deception that wiped out an estimated $40 trillion in global wealth. The banks are the ones that should be made to pay for the financial collapse. Not us. . . . “The economy is controlled by a handful of economic elites. The necessities of most Americans are no longer being met. The only way to change this is to shift the power to a culture of resistance. This will be the first in a series of events we will organize to help give people control of their economic and political life.”
If you are among the one in six workers in this country who does not have a job, if you are among the some 6 million people who have lost their homes to repossessions, if you are among the many hundreds of thousands of people who went bankrupt last year because they could not pay their medical bills or if you have simply had enough of the current kleptocracy, join us . . .
We will picket . . . Bank of America, one of the major financial institutions responsible for the theft of roughly $17 trillion in wages, savings and retirement benefits taken from ordinary citizens. We will build a miniature cardboard community that will include what we should have—good public libraries, free health clinics, banks that have been converted into credit unions, free and well-funded public schools and public universities, and shuttered recruiting centers (young men and women should not have to go to Iraq and Afghanistan as soldiers or Marines to find a job with health care). We will call for an end to all foreclosures and bank repossessions, a breaking up of the huge banking monopolies, a fair system of taxation and a government that is accountable to the people.
The 10 major banks, which control 60 percent of the economy, determine how our legislative bills are written, how our courts rule, how we frame our public debates on the airwaves, who is elected to office and how we are governed. The phrase consent of the governed has been turned by our two major political parties into a cruel joke. There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs. And the faster these banks and huge corporations are broken up and regulated the sooner we will become free.
Bank of America is one of the worst. It did not pay any federal taxes last year or the year before. It is currently one of the most aggressive banks in seizing homes, at times using private security teams that carry out brutal home invasions to toss families into the street. The bank refuses to lend small business people and consumers the billions in government money it was handed. It has returned with a vengeance to the flagrant criminal activity and speculation that created the meltdown, behavior made possible because the government refuses to institute effective sanctions or control from regulators, legislators or the courts. Bank of America, like most of the banks that peddled garbage to small shareholders, routinely hid its massive losses through a creative accounting device it called “repurchase agreements.” It used these “repos” during the financial collapse to temporarily erase losses from the books by transferring toxic debt to dummy firms before public filings had to be made. It is called fraud. And Bank of America is very good at it. . . .
Thursday, April 14, 2011
What's behind our budget problems? Tverberg
You don't have to agree with every word to respect the intelligence "Gail the Actuary" Tverberg brings to the task of trying to make sense of what's happening to us. A truly great post that should be read by any person who pays taxes, spends taxes, or enjoys services provided by them.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Important film from Salem Progressive Film Series: "Killing Us Softly"
Killing Us Softly 4
7 p.m., Grand Theater
In this new, highly anticipated update of her pioneering Killing Us Softly series, the first in more than a decade, Jean Kilbourne takes a fresh look at how advertising traffics in distorted and destructive ideals of femininity. The film marshals a range of new print and television advertisements to lay bare a stunning pattern of damaging gender stereotypes -- images and messages that too often reinforce unrealistic, and unhealthy, perceptions of beauty, perfection, and sexuality. By bringing Kilbourne's groundbreaking analysis up to date, Killing Us Softly 4 stands to challenge a new generation of students to take advertising seriously, and to think critically about popular culture and its relationship to sexism, eating disorders, and gender violence.
Grand Theater, 191 High Street NE, Salem, Oregon
Doors open at 6:15p, Films begin at 7p
Adults $4, Students $3
Contact numbers: 503-881-5305, 503-779-5288
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Meanwhile, as the Lords of Finance and Infinite Growth Gamble with the Planet
Image by Cebete via FlickrThey are rewarded for their "value creation" efforts in gold beyond even Midas's dreams:The rich have been getting richer and the poor and middle have been getting poorer in the US recently. Here are seven examples that show how the US is going through Robin Hood in Reverse.
Between 1948 and 1979, the richest 10 percent of families in the US claimed 33 percent of average income growth. Between 2000 and 2007, the richest 10 percent claimed a full 100 percent of average income growth in the US, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Business taxes were cut from 46 to 34 percent 25 years ago, according to Pro Publica. But today 115 of the big 500 companies listed on Standard and Poor’s Stock Index paid federal and other taxes of less than 20 percent over the last 5 years according to David Leonhardt of the New York Times.
General Electric’s tax rate for last year was 7 percent according to Pro Publica.
The top 5 percent US households claim 63 percent of the entire country’s wealth. The bottom 80 percent hold just 13% of the growth, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Last year, John Paulson, a hedge fund manager “earned” $4.9 billion, according to the New York Times. Ten years ago it took 25 such managers to collectively earn that much. Last year the top 25 hedge fund managers pocketed (a much better word) a total of $22 billion. It would take over 440,000 people each earning $50,000 a year to match that amount.
A federal development program intended to help poor communities, the New Market Tax Credit, instead funnels up to ten billion taxpayer dollars to big corporations like JPMorgan Chase & Co, Goldman Sachs and Prudential to build luxury hotels, office buildings and a car museum. Bloomberg Markets Magazine pointed to the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago which was renovated for $116 million. Prudential got $15.6 million in tax credit from the US Treasury for helping fund the project because the hotel was in a census zone that included two colleges which housed a lot of lower income students.
According to the Financial Times, there are now more people living in poverty in the US than at any time in the last 50 years. Foreclosure filings were nearly 4 million in 2010, up 23 percent since 2008 according to RealtyTrac.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Gambling with the Planet: Stiglitz
Word:
Before the Great Recession, America’s economic gurus - from the head of the Federal Reserve to the titans of finance - boasted that we had learned to master risk. "Innovative" financial instruments such as derivatives and credit-default swaps enabled the distribution of risk throughout the economy. We now know that they deluded not only the rest of society, but even themselves.
These wizards of finance, it turned out, didn’t understand the intricacies of risk, let alone the dangers posed by "fat-tail distributions"- a statistical term for rare events with huge consequences, sometimes called "black swans". Events that were supposed to happen once in a century - or even once in the lifetime of the universe - seemed to happen every ten years. Worse, not only was the frequency of these events vastly underestimated; so was the astronomical damage they would cause - something like the meltdowns that keep dogging the nuclear industry.
Research in economics and psychology helps us understand why we do such a bad job in managing these risks. We have little empirical basis for judging rare events, so it is difficult to arrive at good estimates. In such circumstances, more than wishful thinking can come into play: we might have few incentives to think hard at all. On the contrary, when others bear the costs of mistakes, the incentives favour self-delusion. A system that socialises losses and privatises gains is doomed to mismanage risk. . . .
Sunday, April 10, 2011
"Food for Fines" is a fine idea
Do "penne"ance for your overdue-book sins by bringing pasta and other sturdy, long-keeping comestibles to the Salem Public Library between April 10 and 17, and help respond to hunger in Salem!It’s a once-in-every-52-weeks opportunity to clear your library card and help a worthy cause, all in one stroke. During the week of April 10-17 only, both Salem Public Library locations will forgive fines for customers who bring in donations of non-perishable food items and other household necessities for donati on to Marion-Polk Food Share.
This does not apply to lost book charges, rental fees, video/DVD fees, collection fees, or fee cards.
A $1 credit will be applied for canned items 12 ounces or larger. Donors are particularly encouraged to consider these high-need items:
- Soup (canned or dry)
- Canned fruit
- Chili
- Canned vegetables
- Cereal
- Pasta sauce
- Tuna
- Pasta products (20+ ounces)
- Beans (canned or dry) • Rice (20+ ounces)
- Juice (canned or bottled)
A greater credit of $3-5 will be given for these larger high-need items:
• Laundry detergent; • Laundry softener; • Cooking oil; Peanut butter (8+ ounces)
To be used, items must be factory-sealed, commercially processed, dent and rust free, and bear a future expiration date. Top Ramen products cannot be accepted. More information is available from Circulation at 503-588-6090
Thin gruel indeed . . .
The corporate litterers have apparently terrified Salem's City Hall with the empty threat of a suit against a strong ordinance to allow you to opt-out of having them dump junk flyers and other trash on you.The threat is hollow because a content-neutral time, place, and manner restriction on leaving such trash is completely constitutional and would be upheld -- and would pave the way for helping Salem regain control of its politics by showing that we the people do have the right not to be forced to clean up trash that some advertiser decides to dump on us without our consent.
So, this Monday night, head for City Hall and ask for a real junk ad litter ordinance that works just like the "Do Not Call" list (that the telemarketing criminals also threatened to sue over).
Recommended Action: Staff recommends the Unsolicited Written Materials ordinance be considered at a public hearing on April 25, 2011.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
