Reliance on oil brings a stream of calls to “break our addiction” and find “alternative sources.” Reliance on coal brings a stream of paeans to the importance of coal.
Deep thought 5
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Posted 8:56 PM on 23 Jan 2009
by David Roberts -
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David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.
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spaceshaper Posted 2:17 pm
23 Jan 2009
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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kmp Posted 2:33 pm
23 Jan 2009
In different eyes, oil = handing $$$ to Evil Muslim Foreigners Who Want to Destroy Our Way of Life. Coal = Apple Pie, Hot Dogs, Baseball on the 4th of July.
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Pompey Road Posted 2:05 am
24 Jan 2009
The coal corporations use a combined force of Madison Avenue "to push the apple pie and nationalistic view", the corporate lobby, coal bought scientist to muddy the water and are cognizant of who they give the megaphone to. The Obama campaign commercial they are running now with Obama touting the virtues of clean coal was a brilliant move on the part of the coal corporations. A president with an 87% approval rating talking to his base and grassroots organization he built before the election.
The no such thing as clean coal ads are a start in staying even in the ad wars. We need lobby reform to counter the influence of corporations in government and change this corpocracy we live in. We need to use the preponderance of the evidence that coal is destroying the planet and not try to counter every coal bought scientific study that says it is not. We just fought this style 40 year battle with the cigarette/tobacco industry.
Armed with preponderance of evidence we need to target the people whose hands we stick the megaphone in. As I have said in another post when Walter Cronkite stood in Saigon and declared the Vietnam war could not be won Johnson lost the support of the majority of Americans aside from the college campus youth driven sector he had already lost. Johnson said so himself as soon as he had seen the Cronkite report.
Armed with a preponderance of evidence if a Tim Russert could have been convinced to come out against coal he would have brought the same sector of society with him. Society is to fragmented now to pull the majority needed to influence government action against coal. You will have to find people who will have a strong impact on the sector they represent convince them with the preponderance of evidence and put the megaphone in her hand.
What I would not give to have Oprah do a show on Mountain Top Removal. I would also like to see them get into it on the view. When 60 Minutes does a piece on it and Meet the Press I know I will be almost home.
As they say, you know you are having a bad day when you wake up and find a 60 Minutes crew on the front lawn. This will be the least we can do just to counter the Fox Network.
Sun Tzu `The Art of War" required reading for some MBA degrees and Corporate CEO's
It should become a required reading for all environmentalist.
Know your enemy and all the ways he may come at you, this will allow you to develop counter measures to negate their effect.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:28 am
24 Jan 2009
The unusual climatic aberrations of 1816 had the greatest effect on the American northeast, New England, the Canadian Maritimes, Newfoundland, and northern Europe. Typically, the late spring and summer of the northeastern U.S. and southeastern Canada are relatively stable: temperatures (average of both day and night) average about 68-77 °F (20-25 °C), and rarely fall below 41 °F (5 °C). Summer snow is an extreme rarity, though May flurries sometimes occur.
In May 1816,[4] however, frost killed off most of the crops that had been planted, and in June two large snowstorms in eastern Canada and New England resulted in many human deaths. Nearly a foot (30 cm) of snow was observed in Quebec City in early June, with consequent additional loss of crops--most summer growing plants have cell walls which rupture in a mild frost, let alone a snowstorm coating the soils. The result was widespread localized famines, and further deaths from those who, in a hunger-weakened state, then succumbed to disease.
The devestating results follow along down the page. Imagine a few degrees of warming, compared to only 0.7 degrees drop in the average.
The increase in extreme weather events might even be worse on our highly vulnerable techno civilization. We depend upon a power grid where the transformers melt and power plants shut down in 120 degree F heat waves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Pompey Road Posted 2:19 am
25 Jan 2009
Article on MSN home page today, on clean coal.
With Comment section....Get a post in if you have time.
Sun-25th
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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