Month: July 2014

Missed this in theater. Too busy. It was not a huge box office – maybe because it’s so damn disturbing – and includes the most menacing array of solar panels ever captured on film. Nuclear War and Climate Change are certainly the top two existential threats to humanity. After watching this, I’m wondering if we should add Artificial intelligence. Someone talk me down.

Made me think of the recently posted interview of Stephen Hawking by John Oliver – in which he addresses AI as a leading concern at 2:24.

 

Just asking.

Admiral David Titley was formerly Chief Oceanographer for the US Navy. Now retired, he teaches at Penn State University.

Here, he fields questions from a conservative radio jock in Bozeman, Montana.

More from Admiral Titley on climate and National Security, below.

Continue reading “Radio Interview: Admiral David Titley”

Above, new video from this season’s Dark Snow mission in Greenland – first drone flyover shots.

Queue up your Tivos – on Friday,  July 11, Dark Snow Chief Scientist Dr. Jason Box will be a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher. 

One of the greatest ever popularizers of science fact, Isaac Asimov, was aware of the science of climate change long before most understood the dangers.

This year the premier event for online activism comes to Detroit, my back yard. I’ve been fortunate enough to be invited. Next week.

Netrootsnation:

Session Type(s): Panel

Starts: Thursday, Jul. 17 10:30 AM

Ends: Thursday, Jul. 17 11:45 PM

Room: 140 G

This panel will discuss right wing tactics—from climate change deniers to misinformation campaigns on birth control, sex ed, and abortion—that use fake science to try to attack progressive movements. Panelists will present successful strategies devised to counter the right’s attacks, and identify best practices on how to respond when the right comes at you with fake science.

Panelists

Peter Sinclair

Peter Sinclair is the creator of 2 series of Youtube videos on Climate Change and Renewable Energy – “Climate Denial Crock of the Week”, and “This is Not Cool”.
He works and travels regularly with leading climate scientists to push back against the disinformation campaign of the Anti-Science industry.

Felipe Sousa-Rodriguez

Felipe is an advocate for undocumented immigrants and LGBTQ people in the US. He walked from Miami to Washington, DC to highlight the pain of undocumented immigrants. He has spent the last two years working at GetEQUAL, a national social justice LGBTQ organization. He has become a leading voice on the intersection of LGBTQ issues and immigrant rights. He is the current Deputy Managing Director of United We Dream (UWD).

Other sessions:Queer People of Color Caucus, From Underdog to Top Dog: Organizing for Impact While Small and Mighty, Bro-Choice? Where Do Men Fit in the Reproductive Justice Movement?

Erika West

Other sessions:Top-Choice Movies for the Pro-Choice Movement: Film and the Fight for Reproductive Rights

Continue reading “ClimateCrocks at NetRoots!”

Let’s pretend that the original “free enterprise solution for climate change”, Cap and Trade – developed under the Reagan administration, and deployed by George Bush the elder to successfully combat acid rain, is actually a Muslim plot.

Evidence of intelligent life in the conservative movement is sparse, conflicting, but persistent.  Among the most interesting spokespeople for a new dialogue, Former Rep. Bob Inglis, and Eli Lehrer, formerly of the Heartland Institute, now founder of the “R Street” think tank in DC.

Midwest Energy News:

Midwest Energy News: What is your mission at the Energy & Enterprise Initiative –  do you have a greater chance of implementing your program this way than in Congress?

Inglis: We’re about preparing the country for a free enterprise solution on climate change.

Our first task is to show the champions of free enterprise and fellow conservatives the strength of their own ideas, that there really is a free enterprise answer here. It’s a true cost comparison between the competing fuels that will drive innovation faster than government regulations or clumsy mandates and fickle tax incentives.

What we’re proposing is an income tax cutting, EPA-shrinking, China-in carbon tax. Then we can actually repeal some Clean Air Act regulations – not the entire Act, but there are some portions that would become redundant because of the pricing of carbon dioxide.

How do you really quantify the true costs of different energy sources and insert those costs into the market? How would you make sure the costs are passed on to the right parties?

The role for the government is being the honest cop on the beat, that brings accountability to all the fuels, that figures out an effective way to say all fuels have to be fully accountable for all of their negative externalities, all of their hidden costs. We think that’s best done by a 100 percent returnable emissions tax, so it is revenue-neutral.

The emissions tax would be paired with a dollar-for-dollar cut in existing taxes. That could be corporate income tax reduction, individual income tax reduction, or FICA tax reduction. The other part is that the tax be border-adjustable (meaning it would be imposed on imports and rebated on exports).

That’s so very important because we’ve got to figure out a way to make it in our trading partners’ interest to join us in a similar pricing of carbon dioxide. Absent that, we really could end up being the double losers — the country that prices carbon dioxide internally, causing a loss of employment, as companies pick up and move to locales that will let them emit for free; and then in moving to those countries, they actually increase emissions. So a), we lose jobs and b), we lose the race to reduce emissions. Continue reading “Free Enterprise Solutions for Climate Change. Two Views.”

Note; the first 20 seconds are quiet, there is nothing wrong with the sound.  Good background for those questions that start out like, “What about the way the earth’s temperature has changed in the past?….”