Three climate change stories today.......I know I go on about it but we aren't taking these changes in our weather due to CO2 seriously, thanks to the power of Fox News and the big oil and coal companies.....oh well.....
1/ An editorial in the UK Guardian on global warming, warning that the situation is becoming "bleaker and bleaker", and how the failure of the world leaders to agree on any measures to cut CO2 emissions is leading us all into the unknown..........
Global Warming: Bleaker and Bleaker
By Guardian UK | Editorial
04 June 11
New figures show we are still hurtling towards dangerous climate change - at a time when policymakers are running out of ideas.
ometimes a quotation really does say it all. As chief economist of the International Energy Agency,Fatih Birol is not given to overstatement - so his comment in our paper today that the latest figures on greenhouse gas emissions are "the worst news" should be taken seriously. It is not just that the statistics showing another record leap in carbon output - 30.6 gigatonnes of CO2 over 2010 - to make the highest annual total in history are grim. They also come at a point when the old centrist certainties about how to tackle climate change are palpably out of date, and yet no new ideas have come along as replacement.Over the past half-decade, three global-warming orthodoxies have pertained: the first diplomatic, the second economic, and the third industrial.
2/ Long and insightful article on the global food supply, and how the climate extremes are cutting food supplies right at the time when we need to be expanding them......this is scary stuff folks......food and clean water supplies are going to be the hot buttons of the next decades.....
The rapid growth in farm output that defined the late 20th century has slowed to the point that it is failing to keep up with the demand for food, driven by population increases and rising affluence in once-poor countries.
Consumption of the four staples that supply most human calories — wheat, rice, corn and soybeans — has outstripped production for much of the past decade, drawing once-large stockpiles down to worrisome levels. The imbalance between supply and demand has resulted in two huge spikes in international grain prices since 2007, with some grains more than doubling in cost.
Those price jumps, though felt only moderately in the West, have worsened hunger for tens of millions of poor people, destabilizing politics in scores of countries, from Mexico to Uzbekistan to Yemen. The Haitian government was ousted in 2008 amid food riots, and anger over high prices has played a role in the recent Arab uprisings.
Now, the latest scientific research suggests that a previously discounted factor is helping to destabilize the food system: climate change.
Many of the failed harvests of the past decade were a consequence of weather disasters, like floods in the United States, drought in Australia and blistering heat waves in Europe and Russia. Scientists believe some, though not all, of those events were caused or worsened by human-induced global warming.
Temperatures are rising rapidly during the growing season in some of the most important agricultural countries, and a paper published several weeks ago found that this had shaved several percentage points off potential yields, adding to the price gyrations.
For nearly two decades, scientists had predicted that climate change would be relatively manageable for agriculture, suggesting that even under worst-case assumptions, it would probably take until 2080 for food prices to double.
3/ This is especially tragic - some of the most beautiful things to see in this world are coral reefs......all in trouble. And this peril the reefs are in will have consequences....
I'm just grateful I got the chance to snorkel over some of the best reefs in the Bahamas while they were still wonderful.....
Under the Sea, Coral Reefs in Peril
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, via Associated Press
By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF
Published: June 4, 2011
A ghostly pallor is overtaking the world’s coral reefs.
Multimedia
This draining of color results when heat-stressed corals expel the algae they rely on for food — and which are responsible for their bright and beautiful hues. Death often follows.
Reefs have long been under threat from destructive fishing practices, sediment and nutrient runoff, coral mining, reckless tourism and coastal development. Now, scientists say, global warming is accelerating the destruction.
One of the worst episodes of coral bleaching began last spring and summer, and affected reefs in virtually all the world’s tropical waters, from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean.
“In Panama, the bleaching was the most graphic I’ve ever seen,” said Nancy Knowlton, a marine biologist with the Smithsonian Institution. “Everything was just bone white.”
4/ Onion News has an autistic reporter who talks about a fatal train crash with Brooke Alvarez....2 minutes.....
5/ The Senate has to confirm Presidential appointments to the Board of the Federal Reserve, and President Obama appointed an MIT Professor of Economics and last year's Nobel Prize winner for Economics.....
A real life illustration of the polarization of our politics and the blatant stupidity of Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama....
A Nobel prize isn't good enough for Republicans?
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
When a Nobel Prize Isn’t Enough
By PETER A. DIAMOND
Published: June 5, 2011
Lexington, Mass.
LAST October, I won the Nobel Prize in economics for my work on unemployment and the labor market. But I am unqualified to serve on the board of the Federal Reserve — at least according to the Republican senators who have blocked my nomination. How can this be?
The easy answer is to point to shortcomings in our confirmation process and to partisan polarization in Washington. The more troubling answer, though, points to a fundamental misunderstanding: a failure to recognize that analysis of unemployment is crucial to conducting monetary policy.
In April 2010, President Obama nominated me to be one of the seven governors of the Fed. He renominated me in September, and again in January, after Senate Republicans blocked a floor vote on my confirmation. When the Senate Banking Committee took up my nomination in July and again in November, three Republican senators voted for me each time. But the third time around, the Republicans on the committee voted in lockstep against my appointment, making it extremely unlikely that the opposition to a full Senate vote can be overcome. It is time for me to withdraw, as I plan to inform the White House.
The leading opponent to my appointment, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the committee, has questioned the relevance of my expertise. “Does Dr. Diamond have any experience in conducting monetary policy? No,” he said in March. “His academic work has been on pensions and labor market theory.”
6/ This Jon Stewart clip from last Thursday is as funny as the one last week [Trump and pizza].... he goes on about the Congressman Weiner issue.....non-political, just funny even with the news this weekend the weiner in the photos was indeed Weiners.....
7/ Think the government isn't at the beck and call of the corporations? Here's a story about Haiti, and when the Haitian government had the audacity to raise the minimum wage to $2 a day the companies using slave labour over there [Hanes, Levi Strauss] got the Obama administration to try to get it changed back....so their costs wouldn't go up....
The Nation has a scoop—or had, actually—from Wikileaks cables showing that the Obama administration pressured Haiti not to raise its minimum wage to 61 cents an hour, or five bucks a day.
The magazine posted the story the other day and has now pulled it, saying it will repost it next Wednesday “To accord with the publishing schedule of Haiti Liberté,” its partner on the piece.
But you can’t stuff the news genie back in the bottle. They already put it in my browser and many others, so I’ll summarize what it said (and I’ll link to it once The Nation republishes it).
Two years ago, Haiti unanimously passed a law sharply raising its minimum wage to 61 cents an hour. That doesn’t sound like much (and it isn’t), but it was two and a half times the then-minimum of 24 cents an hour.
This infuriated contractors for (UPDATE: I originally wrote that the companies themselves did this here, but The Nation wrote that it was contractors for the companies, so I’ve added “contractors for” here) American corporations like Hanes and Levi Strauss that pay Haitians slave wages to sew their clothes. They said they would only fork over a seven-cent-an-hour increase, and they got the State Department involved. The U.S. ambassador put pressure on Haiti’s president, who duly carved out a $3 a day minimum wage for textile companies (the U.S. minimum wage, which itself is very low, works out to $58 a day).
The Nation:
Still the US Embassy wasn’t pleased. A deputy chief of mission, David E. Lindwall, said the $5 per day minimum “did not take economic reality into account” but was a populist measure aimed at appealing to “the unemployed and underpaid masses.”
Well, hey. Imagine Haitians doing things for their “unemployed and underpaid masses” rather than rich Yankee corporations. The outrage! No wonder we have 9.1 percent unemployment and 16 percent underemployment here while the folks who sent the economy in the tank are back making millions.
Let’s do a little math. Haiti has about 25,000 garment workers. If you paid each of them $2 a day more, it would cost their employers $50,000 per working day, or about $12.5 million a year.
Zooming in on specific companies helps clarify this even more. As of last year Hanes had 3,200 Haitians making t-shirts for it. Paying each of them two bucks a day more would cost it about $1.6 million a year. Hanesbrands Incorporated made $211 million on $4.3 billion in sales last year, and presumably it would pass on at least some of its higher labor costs to consumers.
Or better yet, Hanesbrands CEO Richard Noll could forego some of his rich compensation package. He could $10 million package last year He could pay for the raises for those 3,200 t-shirt makers with just one-sixth of the $10 million in salary and bonus he raked in last year.
And that five dollars a day? The Nation reports that a Haitian family of three (two kids) needed $12.50 a day in 2008 to make ends meet.
But, of course, the clothing companies are hardly America’s only imperial beneficiaries in Haiti, as The Nation reports in a story on the oil companies that it hasn’t pulled.
8/ The Graham Norton show on BBC America is sometimes really funny - here he is with some fart jokes, and I defy you to keep a straight face.....3 minutes......
9/ Ah Florida.....corruption central.
The Rick Scott budget slashed Water management District budgets, and much was made of reducing taxes for homeowners....but the real purpose was to cut taxes for the large corporate donors to the Republican party of Florida.....
TALLAHASSEE — The biggest tax break created by Gov. Rick Scott and the Republican-led legislature will let the average home owner in Palm Beach County knock about $28 off his or her property tax bill next year.
But for some of the state's biggest companies, including several that helped power last year's GOP political campaigns, the tax cut will yield tax savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars and maybe even more than $1 million for a few.
Legislative leaders passed a law, signed by Scott on May 26, that cuts the tax revenue collected by the state's five water management districts by $210 million across the state.
Republican leaders say the cut is part of their effort to jump-start Florida's feeble economy, but environmentalists say the declining dollars will erode land, water and flood protection programs.
And like many Democrats, some conservationists see the tax cut in starkly political terms, deriding it as a thank-you from Republicans to some of their powerful contributors.
"It's a flagrant political move and bad public policy," said Kirk Fordham, chief executive officer of the Everglades Foundation. "There's also a huge inequity when you look at its effect on average homeowners in the water districts, compared to what it means to big landowners."
10/ More on our corruption - it's got so bad in Florida the FBI is taking newspaper ads with a hotline to report politicians on the take.....
Here's an idea - let's all call and report Rick Scott......
Scott MaxwellTAKING NAMES
9:09 p.m. EDT, June 4, 2011
To see how bad political corruption in this state is, look no further than the Tallahassee Democrat.
Not the news pages — though there's plenty of evidence there, too. No, I'm talking about a front-page ad that the FBI took out not long ago.
"Dishonest government officials aren't just wasting your tax dollars," the ad said. "They're betraying your trust. Report public corruption to the FBI."
That's right. Crooked officials are so rampant in Florida, we actually have the feds taking out front-page ads … in the state capital, appropriately enough.
Not the news pages — though there's plenty of evidence there, too. No, I'm talking about a front-page ad that the FBI took out not long ago.
"Dishonest government officials aren't just wasting your tax dollars," the ad said. "They're betraying your trust. Report public corruption to the FBI."
That's right. Crooked officials are so rampant in Florida, we actually have the feds taking out front-page ads … in the state capital, appropriately enough.
11/ A scary article - according to research about 44% of Americans could not raise $2000 even when given 30 days to do it.....and 51% of people 41 to 59 years old have not done any research or saving for retirement.....
Better send some anti-depressants to the folks at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Their recent analyses on the ultra-precarious financial state of too many Americans are starting to read like doomsday reports.
Are so many of us as bad off as NBER suggests? If so, this country's heading for rough times. Americans can't or won't save enough for a rainy day or an emergency, much less retirement. And in this nasty economy, the chances of people changing those habits is probably close to zero.
And here we are, talking big at the federal and state levels of trimming safety nets for a needy U.S. population. If these NBER insights hold water, more of us will soon be in need of government help than ever before, at least since the Depression.
What a financial Catch-22.
Florida's plight may be rougher thanks to the state's deeper economic hole, sharp declines in home values that erased so many home equity nest eggs, the volume of older Americans already living here and the anticipated flow of baby boomers heading this way.
NBER's first analysis, called "Financially Fragile Households," is the work of three researchers from George Washington University's Financial Literacy Center, Princeton University and Harvard University.
The trio found that about one quarter of Americans said they would be unable to come up with $2,000 if given 30 days to do so.
Another 19 percent said they could do so only by pawning or selling possessions or taking out payday loans (which are expensive, short-term loans offered by garnishing future paychecks).
So that's more than four in 10 Americans who, given a full month, are unable to assemble $2,000. That's really not all that much money these days.
But that's just part of this troubling story.
Yet another NBER working paper is out that suggests either an astonishing lack of awareness or gross indifference by Americans of their money needs in retirement.
Called "Americans' Financial Capability," the analysis by George Washington University professor Annamaria Lusardi found that the majority of Americans have not done any retirement planning.
That's scary now that old-style pension plans that once guaranteed lifetime retiree payments are largely gone.
Only 42 percent of those surveyed said they have even tried to figure out how much to save for retirement. And 51 percent of those who are 45 to 59 years old said they had yet to calculate how much they'll need.
According to this NBER survey, efforts to make people essentially their own money managers may be a useless exercise. Only 21 to 25 percent of respondents said they have used information sent to them from Social Security.
A third of those surveyed said they experienced a "large and unexpected drop in income" in recent years. Among those earning $25,000 or less, 41 percent reported a drop in income.
So what are the options?
Save more. Cut more costs from your lifestyle.
Think of alternatives to the typical retirement that won't drain your measly savings so quickly.
Can't save $2,000 in 30 days? At this rate, in a couple of years we'll be asking: Can you save $30 in 2,000 days?
Todays love story joke
A VERY SHORT LOVE STORY
A man and a woman who had never met before,
but who were both married to other people,
found themselves assigned to the same sleeping room on a transcontinental train.
Though initially embarrassed and uneasy over sharing a room, they were both very tired and fell asleep quickly, he in the upper berth and she in the lower.
At 1:00 AM, the man leaned down and gently woke the woman saying, "Ma'am, I'm sorry to bother you, but would you be willing to reach into the closet to get me a second blanket? I'm awfully cold."
"I have a better idea," she replied "Just for tonight, let's pretend that
we're married."
"Wow! That's a great idea!", he exclaimed.
"'Good", she replied "Get your own damn blanket."
After a moment of silence, he farted....
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