Dr.
Joseph J. Romm is an author, lecturer and
scientist, specializing in energy efficiency.
Our mutual brother Dan lived in Gulfport, MS,
where Katrina hit land just after being
downgraded from a Category 5 Hurricane. Dan
asked Joe whether he should continue living on
the Gulf Coast. Hell and High Water is
the result of his research. He is a Senior
Fellow at the Center for American Progress and
writes the blog ClimateProgress:
An Insider's View Of Climate, Science, Politics
and Solutions which is currently running
excerpts from the book. When I visited him in DC
for Thanksgiving, I did a Shockwave Radio iPod
interview with him about Hell and High
Water and related topics. I'll podcast the
entire interview soon.
In the
book, I expose the tactics of conservative
politicians who deny the science and delay
genuine action on alternative energy initiatives.
I examine the media'Äôs sloppy reporting and
unwillingness to probe behind the
rhetoric.
The book
discusses the country'Äôs future if wide-scale
environmental changes are not enacted
immediately. I explain why the environment is
subject to vicious cycles whereby an initial
warming change leads to further warming. The
oceans, soils, Arctic permafrost, and rainforests
may eventually become sources of greenhouse
emissions and I discuss how sea levels are on
course to rise high enough to swallow up numerous
coastal communities and inland areas on both U.S.
coasts by 2100.
The larger
point is that strategies to combat climate change
are all technically possible and can
significantly slow global warming while also
buying more time for the world to develop new
technologies and a consensus for even stronger
action. The book lays out a number of key
solutions to avoiding a climate catastrophe,
including:
capturing carbon dioxide from coal
plants and storing it underground
building 1 million large wind
turbines
launching massive
energy-efficiency programs for homes, office
buildings, and heavy industry
increasing the fuel efficiency of
cars and light trucks to 60 miles per gallon
while also equipping them with advanced hybrid
technology
Halfway into Joseph
Romm's new book on climate change, Hell
and High Water, I started to get
angry.
It didn't
help my mood that we had a Christmas without snow
this year, the planet's hottest year on record,
or that last Thursday we learned that an ancient
arctic ice shelf the size of 11,000 football
fields broke off from Ellesmere Island 'Äì yet
another visible sign of planetary warming and the
shrinking of Canada's northern
geography.
Something
just isn't right, and Romm 'Äì closely following
other important works on the issue, including Tim
Flannery's top selling The
Weather Makers and Al Gore's An
Inconvenient Truth 'Äì tells us why in a way
that the average person can, and ultimately must,
understand.
At
the same time, he convincingly shoots down the
arguments of those who claim global warming is a
hoax or some kind of natural cycle not associated
with human activities.
The
problem, and hence the source of my discontent,
is that those who Romm calls the "deniers and
Delayers" are winning the political battle in the
United States, the world's highest emitter of
greenhouse gases and a saboteur of Kyoto
talks.
Global warming
has been thrust into the national spotlight as
never before. Near daily headlines of dramatic
changes to the climate accentuate the
larger-than-ever threat of super hurricanes,
mega-droughts, and sea levels rising 20 to 80
feet. If we don'Äôt act soon, we may propel
humanity down an irreversible and unprecedented
path.
For decades, a campaign
of skepticism and misinformation has pervaded the
American media and launched political debate into
rhetorical circles. In his latest book, Hell
and High Water: Global Warming - The Solution and
the Politics, Dr. Joseph Romm exposes the
strategy the Bush administration has adopted to
delay action on climate change and funding for
alternative energy solutions. Romm presents the
crucial energy solutions and policies, all of
which are or are soon to be technologically
feasible. These strategies, which have so far
lacked political will, include a California-style
energy efficiency effort, wind farms, carbon
capture and storage, and advanced hybrid vehicles
that can run on both gasoline and electricity.
Romm urges policymakers to recognize the science
and take serious strides to move solutions
forward. According to James Hansen, Director of
NASA'Äôs Goddard Institute for Space Studies,
'ÄúJoe Romm knows what he is talking about. His
message is urgent, reasoned and informative--he
delivers it with surprising clarity. America had
better listen up--this may be our last chance to
stop global warming.'Äù California Energy
Commissioner Arthur Rosenfeld says, 'ÄúIf you buy
only one book on global warming, make it Hell
and High Water.'Äù
Cam's
Commentary. A lukewarm review, presented
here in case you want to read a non-glowing
account. Briefly, he thinks Joe is repeating a
lot of what others have said and dislikes the
blaming of Republicans for the crisis. I think
both of those are strengths: Joe clearly and
concisely articulates the issues, with updated
references, and holds people accountable for
mistakes made.
Debunking conservative
Political Correctness
Two of the
biggest of the Big Lies the right wing Slime
Machine has set into motion are: First, that
there is no consensus among scientists that
global warming even exists (without ever saying
what plurality might convince them) and, second,
that water vapor is a greenhouse gas (implying a
dismissal of human influence on the environment).
Here are a few links that debunk the deniers and
delayers:
The consensus that exists
is that of the IPCC reports, in particular the
working group I report (there are three WG's. By
"IPCC", people tend to mean WG I). Fortunately
that report is available online for all to read
at report.
Its a good idea to realise that though the IPCC
report contains the consensus, it didn't form it.
The IPCC process was supposed to be - and is - a
summary of the science (as available at the
time). Because they did their job well, it really
is a good review/summary/synthesis.
The
main points that most would agree on as "the
consensus" are:
The earth is getting
warmer (0.6 +/- 0.2 oC in the past century; 0.17
oC/decade over the last 30 years (see update)) [ch
2]
If GHG emissions
continue, the warming will continue and indeed
accelerate [ch
9]
(This will be a problem and we ought
to do something about
it)
The January 3, 2006
entry also speaks to the subject: Consensus
as the New Heresy, regarding a
piece in the New York Times. The
conservative news media, even those in the
Science section of the paper, get it wrong.
brief extracts:
However, there is a
big difference between really challenging the
majority opinion and simply stating that you
are.... In reading about the new 'heretics' then,
one might have expected that associated with them
would be statements that would contradict IPCC or
that we (as mainstream scientists who do not
claim to be heretics) would otherwise find
objectionable. So let's consider the specific
tenets of the 'new heresy' mentioned in the
article [details]....The only substantial
disagreement, then, is over a movie review. On
all other points of substance the 'heresy' and
the old orthodoxy are the
same.
Whenever three or more
contrarians are gathered together, one will
inevitably claim that water vapour is being
unjustly neglected by 'IPCC' scientists. "Why
isn't water vapour acknowledged as a greenhouse
gas?", "Why does anyone even care about the other
greenhouse gases since water vapour is 98% of the
effect?", "Why isn't water vapour included in
climate models?", "Why isn't included on the
forcings bar charts?" etc. Any mainstream
scientist present will trot out the standard
response that water vapour is indeed an important
greenhouse gas, it is included in all climate
models, but it is a feedback and not a forcing.
From personal experience, I am aware that these
distinctions are not clear to many, and so here
is a more in-depth response [lengthy details
follow]
Brief news updates on
stories the right-wing press is trying to
ignore:
U.S.
Wants Polar Bears Listed as Threatened:
"[T]he U.S. government on record as saying that
global warming could drive one of the world's
most recognizable animals out of
existence".
Disappearing
world: Global warming claims tropical island:
"Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for
the first time washed an inhabited island off the
face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara
island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where
the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into
the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of
the most apocalyptic predictions of
environmentalists and climate scientists has
started coming true."
zEN mAN (observing the controversial painting of Billy Bob's EX.....I wonder if Brad feels left out? Actually, I really admire and respect Ms. Jolie's work...but I can't believe it's not Restalayne in those heavenly lips)
Join
Erin Hart on
Progressive Talk AM 760
today (8 January) when she fills in for Jay Marvin from 6am - 10am MST (8am - noon EST / 7am - 11am CST / 5am - 9am PST).
Pelosi and Reid and others are throwing down
markers, where are yours? Closer to the latest President hopeful Joe
Biden's? Or nearer to those espoused Molly Ivins in one of her latest
columns? We will aim for the best. Bush will probably announce more of his
worst on Wednesday.
Also we take up Bob S.'s suggestion and have booked President John Rauh of
the website www.just6dollars.org, who want to take the big money out
of politics and urge us into publicly funded elections.
Stay out of the way of avalanches, please. Now if we can just get our
country wrested from the cascading nonsense pouring out of the White House.
Roger Ebert: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (4 stars)
Not only does "Perfume" seem impossible to film, it must have been amost impossible for Patrick Suskind to write. How do you describe the ineffable enigma of a scent in words? The audiobook, read by Sean Barrett, is the best audio performance I have ever heard; he snuffles and sniffles his way to greatness and you almost believe he is inhaling bliss, or the essence of a stone. I once almost destroyed a dinner party by putting it on for "five minutes," after which nobody wanted to stop listening.
Buy David Bruce's "The Funniest People in Dance: 250 Anecdotes"
This book contains anecdotes such as these: 1) Opera singer Mary Garden sometimes watched rehearsals of the Ballets Russes with Sergei Diaghilev, and she noticed just how much attention to detail he paid. On one occasion, he noticed a tiny flower in a dancer's hair and ordered her to remove it because the color wasn't right. Ms. Garden asked him, "Don't you ever rest?" Mr. Diaghilev replied, "My dear Mary, there is all eternity to rest." Ms. Garden writes, "I don't wonder it was the greatest ballet company in the world." 2) Whenever the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performed, many dancers sat in the audience. A non-dancer at a performance looked at the audience members as they walked around during the intermission and said, "I've never seen an audience so erect, with such beautiful posture."
Lesbian Undercover (curvemag.com)
While researching her novel Grave Silence, lesbian mystery writer Rose Beecham went undercover as a fundamentalist Mormon searching a polygamist husband. Here's what she saw.
Tara Maclay (en.wikipedia.org)
As the season progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that the pair are destined for a romantic liaison. Willow realises that Tara is the person she loves, choosing Tara over her ex-boyfriend Oz. The two thus became one of the few lesbian couples on television and the first-ever prime-time lesbian couple which included a starring character. Wicca/spells came to serve as a metaphor for lesbianism, and love.
The kid's winter break is officially over. He's bummed.
Tonight, Monday:
CBS opens the night with a FRESH'How I Met Your Mother', followed by a FRESH'The Class', then a FRESH'2½ Men', followed by a FRESH'Old Christine', then a FRESH'CSI: The 2nd One'.
Scheduled on a FRESHDave are David Arquette and Jennifer Hudson.
Scheduled on a FRESHCraig are Mario Lopez, Ne-Yo, and Shawn Colvin.
NBC begins the night with a FRESH'Deal Or No Deal', followed by a RERUN'Heroes', then nanother RERUN'Heroes'.
Scheduled on a FRESHLeno are Kiefer Sutherland, Betty White, and Chris Daughtry.
Scheduled on a FRESHConan are Matt Lauer, America Ferrera, and Little Big Town.
On a RERUNCarson Daly (R 11/6/06) are Rachel Harris and Dean Edwards.
ABC starts the night with a FRESH'Wife Swap', followed by a FRESH'Supernanny', then a FRESH'What About Brian'.
On a RERUNJimmy Kimmel (from 1/3/07) are Courteney Cox Arquette, Mark Moses, and Twilight Singers.
The CW offers a RERUN'Everybody Hates Chris', followed by a RERUN'All Of Us', then a RERUN'Girlfriends', followed by a RERUN'The Game'.
Faux has LIVE'College Football', then pads the left coast with local crap and maybe an old 'Simpsons'.
MY has a FRESH'Wicked Wicked Games', followed by a FRESH'Watch Over Me'.
A&E has 'CSI: The 2nd One', another 'CSI: The 2nd One', then the movie 'Flight 93'.
AMC offers the movie 'Conan The Barbarian', followed by the movie 'Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines', then the movie 'Rambo: First Blood Part II'.
BBC -
[1:00 pm] As Time Goes By - Episode 3;
[1:40 pm] Are You Being Served - Oh What a Tangled Web;
[2:20 pm] Keeping Up Appearances - Episode 3;
[3:00 pm] The Benny Hill Show - Episode 16;
[4:00 pm] The Saint - The Russian Prisoner;
[5:00 pm] The Avengers - The Winged Avenger;
[6:00 pm] BBC World News;
[6:30 pm] Cash in the Attic - Episode 5;
[7:00 pm] Cash in the Attic - Ep 1 Brandon;
[8:00 pm] Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Episode 1;
[8:30 pm] Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Episode 10;
[9:00 pm] The Return;
[11:00 pm] Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Episode 8;
[11:30 pm] Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Episode 8;
[12:00 am] The Benny Hill Show - Episode 17;
[1:00 am] The Return;
[3:00 am] Wire in the Blood - Ep 2 The Torment of Others;
[5:00 am] Sea of Souls - Episode 2;
[6:00 am] BBC World News. (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has 'West Wing', followed by a FRESH'Inside The Actors Studio', 'Six Feet Under', and another 'Six Feet Under'.
Comedy Central has 'Scrubs', another 'Scrubs', an old 'Jon Stewart', an old 'Colbert Report', 'Mind Of Mencia', 'South Park', 'Scrubs', and another 'Scrubs'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJon Stewart is Louis C.K.
Scheduled on a FRESHColbert Report is Ethan Nadelman.
FX has 'That 70s Show', another 'That 70s Show', followed by the movie 'The Forgotten', then the movie 'The Forgotten', again.
History has 'Modern Marvels', 'UFO Files: Secret UFO Files', 'Engineering An Empire', and 'Lost Worlds'.
IFC -
[07:30 AM] Sound and Fury;
[08:55 AM] Critical Care;
[10:45 AM] Amelie;
[12:50 PM] IFC Short Film Showcase: January;
[01:50 PM] Sound and Fury;
[03:15 PM] Critical Care;
[05:05 PM] Amelie;
[07:10 PM] January Media Lab Results;
[07:20 PM] Shattered Glass;
[09:00 PM] The Boost;
[10:40 PM] All The Little Animals;
[12:40 AM] Short: Disposal;
[01:00 AM] The Boost;
[02:40 AM] All The Little Animals;
[04:35 AM] Making of: The Queen;
[04:45 AM] Shattered Glass. (ALL TIMES EST)
Sundance -
[06:45 AM] Deadline (Director's Cut);
[08:15 AM] The Umbrellas of Cherbourg;
[10:00 AM] Three Seasons;
[12:00 PM] Fearless Freaks;
[01:45 PM] Keep Not Silent;
[02:45 PM] Original Child Bomb;
[03:45 PM] Her Name is Cure;
[04:15 PM] The PSA Project;
[05:00 PM] Deadline (Director's Cut);
[06:30 PM] Dimmer;
[06:45 PM] Fearless Freaks;
[08:30 PM] One Punk Under God: Episode 4;
[09:00 PM] Shakespeare Behind Bars;
[10:35 PM] With No Direction Home;
[11:00 PM] Iconoclasts Season 2: Episode 5: Paul Simon + Lorne Michaels;
[11:45 PM] Dimmer;
[12:00 AM] A Tale of Two Sisters;
[02:00 AM] Bad Guy;
[03:45 AM] Twentynine Palms;
[05:45 AM] Three Seasons. (ALL TIMES EST)
This photo provided by Beach Impeach Project, peace activists lie in the sand to spell out 'IMPEACH!' in 100-foot tall letters on San Francisco's Ocean Beach Saturday, Jan. 6, 2006. Their message, aimed at resident Bush, was engineered by San Francisco cab driver and travel writer Brad Newsham, who recruited volunteers from around the Bay Area.
Photo by John Montgomery
Fans of Muhammad Ali can send personal greetings to the boxing great on his 65th birthday next week.
Well-wishers can leave a message through the Muhammad Ali Center's Web site or get a picture taken with a birthday banner at the center on Jan. 17. School classes and groups are being encouraged to send group photos with signs or banners expressing their regards.
The photos and greetings will become part of the center's archives.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu holds the director of the year award at the 18th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala in Palm Springs, Calif., on Saturday, Jan. 6, 2007.
Photo by Matt Sayles
The Nobel Prize winning novelist Orhan Pamuk took over a Turkish newspaper for a day, and devoted Sunday's front page to criticism of the oppression of artists in his native country.
Pamuk, whose trial last year on a charge of "insulting Turkishness" received international condemnation before it was dropped on a technicality, earned a degree in journalism but had never practiced the profession before becoming the one-day editor in chief at Radikal.
Pamuk, who won the Nobel literature prize last year, is reviled by many in Turkey, where nationalists accuse him of treason for talking about the killings of ethnic Armenians and Kurds.
There was no official reaction to Pamuk's issue of Radikal, which has a circulation of just 33,000 but is considered one of Turkey's most important intellectual newspapers. Its editor in chief, Ismet Berkan, who faced similar charges as Pamuk last year, invited the author to run the paper for a day.
The acclaimed British physicist Professor Stephen Hawking is planning a flight into space, a newspaper reported, in an interview to mark his 65th birthday.
"This year I'm planning a zero-gravity flight and to go into space in 2009," the scientist, who is most famous for his 1988 international best-seller "A Brief History of Time", told The Daily Telegraph newspaper.
Hawking's trip outside the earth's atmosphere depends on the progress of British tycoon Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space tourism programme, which aims to carry passengers into low-Earth orbit from next year.
The Daily Telegraph said Sir Richard will sponsor Hawking's mission, waiving the estimated flight cost of 100,000 pounds (148,000 euros, 193,000 dollars).
The Central Intelligence Agency has shot down a book by former undercover agent Valerie Plame, whose outing led to an investigation of the highest levels of government, a magazine reported.
According to Newsweek magazine, the CIA panel that must approve writings by former employees ruled Plame can't even mention the widely-known fact she worked for the agency because she had "nonofficial cover," posing as a private business-woman instead of a government official.
The magazine noted that while other former CIA officers have published books, all of which cleared the panel, few with nonofficial cover have.
Actors Abigail Breslin (L) and Alan Arkin, stars of the film 'Little Miss Sunshine', pose backstage with the Chairman's Vanguard Award they and the film received at the 18th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival Gala in Palm Springs, California, January 6, 2007.
Photo by Fred Prouser
"Plutoed" was chosen 2006's Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society at its annual meeting Friday.
To "pluto" is "to demote or devalue someone or something," much like what happened to the former planet last year when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto didn't meet its definition of a planet.
"Plutoed" won in a runoff against "climate canary," defined as "an organism or species whose poor health or declining numbers hint at a larger environmental catastrophe on the horizon."
Other words considered: murse (man's purse), flog (a fake blog that promotes products) and macaca (an American citizen treated as an alien).
A Walt Disney World employee dressed as the character "Tigger" was accused of hitting a child while posing for a photo, a spokeswoman for the theme park said Saturday.
Park officials temporarily suspended Michael J. Fedelem while they investigate the accusations, Disney spokeswoman Zoraya Suarez said.
Jerry Monaco of New Hampshire videotaped his son, Jerry Jr., posing with the costumed character at Disney-MGM Studios on Friday and recorded the confrontation, according to a statement from the Orange County Sheriff's Office.
The father said Fedelem intentionally hit his son "on or about the head," said sheriff's spokesman Carlos M. Padilla. "The tape only shows a fraction of what happened. Now it's up to us to find out what led up to that."
People of the Miao ethnic minority group play the lusheng, a traditional Chinese musical instrument, during a performance in Rongshui county, southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region January 6, 2007.
Author Jeffrey Archer, who was cast out of Britain's Conservative Party after being jailed on perjury charges, is coming to the defense of another noted black sheep - Judas Iscariot.
Archer announced Sunday that his new novel chronicling the life of the man who betrayed Jesus, "The Gospel According to Judas, by Benjamin Iscariot," will be published in March.
He said he wrote the book in collaboration with religious scholar Frank Moloney, formerly of the Catholic University of America.
A Filipino protester wears a mask of U.S. resident George W. Bush as he sits in front of a pictures of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in a dogs body during a rally at the University of the Philippines in suburban Quezon City, north of Manila, on Sunday Jan. 7, 2007. Philippine official, Zozimo Paredes, Visiting Forces Agreement executive director, said he has decided to resign his post after disagreeing with a government decision to abruptly transfer a U.S. Marine convicted of raping a Filipino woman to U.S. custody without a local court order. Also in photo at back is a picture bearing convicted U.S. marine Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith.
Photo by Aaron Favila
Temperatures in rugged Tibet have hit record highs in recent days, China's state press has reported, as a scientific survey warned of the impact of global warming in the Himalayan region.
Friday's temperature in the Qamdo area of eastern Tibet was 21.8 degrees Celsius (71 degrees Fahrenheit), 1.7 degrees higher than the previous record set for the same day in 1996, Xinhua news agency reported.
In Dengqen county, also in eastern Tibet, the mercury reached 16.6 degrees Celsius on Thursday, 2.5 degrees higher than the previous record for the same day set in 2001, it said.
Eight other places across the region also recorded record-breaking daily temperatures over the past few days, it added.
Evangelina Carrozo of the Kamarr carnival group dances during the annual El Carnaval del Pais (country's carnival) in Gualeguaychu, some 230 km (143 miles) north of Buenos Aires, January 7 , 2007. Around 1,000 dancers participated in the event which is considered to be one of the most important carnivals in Argentina.
Photo by Enrique Marcarian
Snowzilla may be a smash hit with shutterbugs, but the towering snowman has detractors closer to home.
"When you get 20 people out there in their cars, now the whole street comes to a stop and nobody can get through," said Anthony Bahler, who can see Snowzilla from his front window. "They just stand out there, in the middle of road, talking about a snowman."
This year Bahler's neighbor, Billy Powers resurrected the snowman and its giant hat made from tomato cages, corncob pipe and beer-bottle eyes. At 22 feet, the new Snowzilla is six feet taller than its predecessor.
A man dressed as a snowman poses in front of a snow sculpture for the upcoming China Harbin international ice and snow festival in Harbin, northeastern China's Heilongjiang province, January 3, 2007.
Photo by Jason Lee
You have reached the Home page of BartCop Entertainment.
Make yourself home, take your shoes off...
Go ahead, scratch it if it itches.
The idea is to have fun.
Do you have something to say?
Anything that increased your blood pressure, or, even better,
amused or entertained?
Do you have a great album no one's heard?
How about a favorite TV show, movie, book, play, cartoon, or legal amusement?
A popular artist that just plain pisses you off?
A box set the whole world should own?
Vile, filthy rumors about Republican musicians?
Just plain vile, filthy rumors?
This is your place.
