freezing weather

In the upside-down world of Right Wing politics today, one can count on any event that disproves their propaganda…to be used as an argument that proves it.

When voter fraud is proven not to be occurring, that’s the reason we need Voter ID. When states keep passing laws to suppress votes of minorities, the Civil Rights Act is correctly hobbled.

And when there is no dispute that the U.S. and the world are experiencing extreme weather conditions, severe droughts are rampant, the North Pole and glaciers are melting at frightening speeds and sea level is rising, all as predicted by Climate Change scientists, it only goes to prove that Climate Change is a fraud.

This current “Polar Vortex” is producing a windchill in some states up to 60 degrees below zero. So, the Right Wingers just pull out their handy…

Right Wing Cheat Sheet for Climate Change

a. If there is an extreme weather event which produces excessively frigid conditions: “So much for liberals and their Global Warming lies!”

b. If there is an extreme weather event which produces excessively hot conditions: “Big deal, we’ve had heat waves before in history, it’s not man-made!”

c. If there are extreme natural disasters such as huge swarms of tornadoes or city-destroying hurricanes and floods: “There is a much more reasonable explanation for this than the outrageous claim of human-caused Climate Change. Clearly, God is punishing America for having a black President and allowing gay marriage.”

It is kind of interesting to see this intersection between the pro-pollution energy corporations in the GOP and the religious extremists who see it as anti-Christian to believe that human beings can have an effect on the Earth.

Despite the simple clarity of asking them to dump a tiny piece of garbage in their back yard each day for twenty years then seeing if they understood the concept of a cumulative effect, there doesn’t seem any way to convince the intentionally ignorant about scientific facts that they don’t want to believe.

In many cases, it just leads to social conflicts, over textbooks teaching evolution or creationism and such but in this case, they are co-conspirators in the long-term destruction of the planet.

People who are able to reason do need to be reminded that they’re getting accustomed to the increasing ravages of Climate Change. It didn’t used to be like this. We didn’t have each new year bringing record cold or record heat, we didn’t always have season after season of monstrous tornadoes and hurricanes  wrecking one major city after another (New Orleans, southern New Jersey, New York City, Joplin, etc.). We didn’t always have massive wildfires raging across states nearly every year. We didn’t always have winters with windchill factors that were colder than those at the South Pole.

Human beings are incredibly adaptable which has been a boon at many times but a curse in other times. This is one of those times, we shouldn’t be simply acclimating to the destruction Climate Change is bringing, we need to become active in slowing it down and trying to reverse it. Such efforts require the support of a population because in its absence, the power of the pro-polluting corporations dictates what will or won’t be done with regards to Climate Change.

The sociopathic thinking of those running these corporations and their wealthy Right Wing allies, is that they need to wring out every last drop of gold out they can out of society because when things become really bad, they’ll have all the money they need to fly wherever is best for them and live safely and luxuriously while the rest of the world is in turmoil with too much of the population freezing, drowning, starving and dying in wars brought on by a lack of food and potable water.

This is the future that they are happily steering us towards as they dispute Climate Change and fight any efforts to rein it in or reverse it. Which is why it is once again up to the people to prevent corporately engineered suffering, in ways that can only be imagined today, from taking hold for generations.

And if you’re short of ten New Year’s Resolutions, this could help you round them out.

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jjgravitas
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jjgravitas

Even Niagra Falls is partially frozen over.
Photos and coverage are Here:

http://news.yahoo.com/niagara-falls-freezes-photos-142401177.html

Nirek
Member

JJ, those are some incredible images. Mother nature does some startling things.

Nirek
Member

My dream is electric cars with interchangeable batteries and solar recharging stations on south facing intersections. Add to that solar panels set along the right-of-way of the interstate highway tying into the grid where there is a power line crossover.

We could use far less fossil fuels if we did those things and other conservation efforts.

This leads me to a pet peeve, the use of the term “conservative” to describe GOPers. The only thing they want to conserve is their money!
Also, what is wrong with “progressive” , I’m for progress, aren’t you?

Nirek
Member

Let me add that the solar recharging stations could trade batteries with a driver for a small fee. I think it would work well.

KillgoreTrout
Member
PocketWatch
Member

Why all the carbon haters out there?

Aren’t we all carbon-based lifeforms? Carbon MUST be good for ya!

Can’t we all just get along? Us carbon guys have to stick together!

Diamonds are carbon! So, carbon has to be good for ya! Yeah! (I could make a case the other way, but I digress)

[thought I’d just toss out a couple of trollpoints for anyone that’s feeling a little HP withdrawal]

KillgoreTrout
Member

LOL! Sarah Palin actually said that since we exhale CO2, it must not be a poison. She actually said that.

choicelady
Member

Right up there with Reagan’s ‘trees emit pollution’. Uh huh.

KillgoreTrout
Member

LOL! Amazing.

Nirek
Member

CL, I knew raygun was dumb but I never knew he said that.
Too funny.

choicelady
Member

Yup – he insisted trees CAUSE pollution.

Nirek
Member

KT, you can’t make this stuff up. Raygun said trees pollute and she says CO2 is not poison? Science seems to mean nothing to them.

jjgravitas
Member
jjgravitas

Anyone who would argue seriously that carbon is not bad for you has never been stuck in gridlocked traffic in a tiny car in the middle of summer with the windows open. I have. Breathe in all those thick heavy carbon emissions. Mmmmmmmmmmmm, choke-ey! That says a lot for how privileged the global warming naysayers are.

escribacat
Member

Check out this petition on change.org: “Support fracking to cut carbon emissions.” !!

https://www.change.org/suggested?petition_id=1404273

Meanwhile,

Drilling Contamination Found in Well Water in 4 States
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/states-confirm-water-pollution-drilling-21427257

This is how “they” operate, folks.

PocketWatch
Member

You see, when people say “Run government like a business,” this is exactly what they are talking about.

Short term gains, next year’s profits, and how to advance yourself in the organization. Those are critical priorities in any corporate upper management, and not necessarily in that order.

Sell fracking as good = short term gains.
Down side, decades from now, no drinking water. Not my problem.

Corporate thinking. Sounds good, right?

escribacat
Member

I’ve spent years in corporate America and that’s exactly how they think, PW. Also, if you study the history of the west, you’ll see that this is merely a continuation of the old “anything goes” attitude: “Let’s kill ALL the buffalo as quickly as possible and maybe the Indians will all die!!” And “Let’s dump these toxic chemicals in that stream below our mine. We don’t care who lives downstream. Not our problem.” And “Let’s cut ALL the trees down.” To quote GWB, it’s the “shock and awe” school of “development.”

PocketWatch
Member

While I have no doubt whatsoever that there is a link between CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, the warming of the planetary average temperature, the immense contribution of humans to those CO2 levels, and the extreme weather events that will inevitably result from such disturbances, I do have to point out a couple of things.

At the total risk of sounding like the old fart sitting next to the fireplace and telling tall tales of how tough it was when *he* was a boy, it is true that much more severe low temperatures were very common in the mid-to-late 60s and earlier. I remember clearly that nearly every January had a week or two of sub-30 days, never getting warmer than maybe -20F. Sometimes three weeks. I once saw -56F real temp… scary… I could tell you how and why I remember that, nothing mysterious, just boring, so I won’t.

My point is, a.) this is nothing, really, in the history of cold, but it *is* unusual if you are looking back 25 years, it’s the old weather/climate thing, and b.) the weather HAS been changing. The snow patterns are much more southern now. We used to get FEET of snow at a time. I shoveled that shit as a kids for years. I remember. By comparison now, we get very little. Have had a couple of semi-droughts over it. Storm systems track 300 miles to the south now that used to go right over us 50 years ago. That’s what I’ve noticed. The loops of the jet stream over time are much more pronounced now. Farther north-and-south.

And lastly, I always say this… we HAVE to stop burning stuff…. any stuff (except maybe hydrogen) for energy. Period. It’s millennia- and centuries-old technology that just isn’t good for us and we already have better ways. Much of it is off-the-shelf technology. We are just never gonna build it until something really bad happens. My guess is a huge methane release from the tundras around the world might just do it. Frankly, I think we already crossed the tipping point and our kids and grandkids are gonna be dealing with this.

“May you live in interesting times…”

escribacat
Member

I am also worried that we’ve already crossed the tipping point, PW. I don’t see us stopping the glaciers from melting at this point. It’s possible we could slow it down and/or prevent a sudden acceleration of the process, but….. with the deniers still apparently controlling policy, I really don’t see much to be hopeful about.

Nirek
Member

PW, hydrogen, solar,and , geothermal are some of the best energy we can use and avoid burning coal , oil, and gas (think fracking). To me fracking is one of the worst things we could possibly do to our kids and theirs. What will they do for clean potable water if we contaminate it now with the chemicals used for fracking?

SallyT
Member

Okay, once we make those solar energy manufacturers, electric car manufacturers,and recharging stations on more corners people making lots of money, watch those attitudes change. They follow the money! The more self-efficient people become, the worst for the rich. You see, they need us more than we need them, once we are self contained. They will still need to protect their riches and that cost money. They’ll have to protect them because there won’t be many in the position to buy them or probably even want them because we won’t want the burden of protecting them! They will have to make that money somewhere. The good news is that the smart people are still smart and I am sure that they will out number the dumb in time if not already. You want to protect those riches, it is going to cost you more money in salaries and your greed has caused us to live with less, so, we are now more demanding ourselves. Okay, perhaps I am dreaming but I think a change is coming from the bottom up sooner everyday. I don’t waste my time trying to change the deniers, you can’t. But, I encourage those that are smart enough to know the truth.

choicelady
Member

We do have to watch what goes INTO those products. They cause pollution at the point of extraction for silicon, mercury, etc. Nukes aren’t clean – the carbon emitted to extract uranium is horrific, and ‘breeder reactors’ are impossibly dangerous. We need NOW to start policies that prevent uses of materials that make them ‘blood minerals’ – contributing to slave labor, to war, to all kinds of violence.

Nothing is without impact. That’s why we need to reduce USE – overall very little will help if we dam every river for geothermal, impede every flyway for wind, destroy all the coast for wave. We simply have to stop USING so damned much and focus on reducing demands -and that is what the GOP cannot abide.

Long uphill battle. It will never end unless we MAKE it end with sensible policies that help people go about their daily lives with as little upheaval as possible. That’s how we got into this mess. It is how we have to project getting out of it.

escribacat
Member

There’s a great movie out and about called “Chasing Ice.” A team posted cameras at various spots near glaciers and maintained them there over a period of several years. You don’t even need science and statistics to convey the image that these cameras record. The glaciers are disappearing at an alarming rate. It’s right there in front of you. How the hell can anyone deny it?

jjgravitas
Member
jjgravitas

Well said, Adlib. The melting of the glacial and polar icecaps has led to the extreme weather we have today. This year it happens to be extreme cold. Earth is beginning to feel like an entirely different planet, a less hospitable one. This year’s winter is beginning to feel like the one in this movie:

The Day After Tomorrow (trailer)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs56_GqTyIQ

On the plus side I recently read an article on ThinkProgress that claims that there has bee a lot more progress on clean energy than has been reported. A lot of good news in this article, which you can read it at

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/05/3120311/60-minutes-cleantech-hit-job/

Good news to be sure. The thing to remember is the clean energy investments today could be as ground-breaking as the investments 100 years ago in electricity and the internal combustion engine.

choicelady
Member

When the sneering naysayers pounce on this storm, I mention this film. It’s worth seeing and makes the ‘warming-freezing’ issue quit clear.

jjgravitas
Member
jjgravitas

When I was in middle school back in the 1960’s I learned how the glaciers and polar ice caps helped keep the Earth’s temperature mediated, kept the temperature from going to extremes. Now that the glaciers and caps are receding, we are seeing how true that is. There are no quick fixes for this one, just gradual common sense (how ironic that term seems today) ones.

Kalima
Admin

Permanent “Brain Freeze” sums them up perfectly AdLib. Most of those who claim to disbelieve it have no clue. They think when it’s cold and snows then there can’t be climate change, but these unusual highs and lows are exactly what climate change and global warming is all about, but they would rather play follow the leader, it’s easier for them that way. They have no evidence to back these claims of course, just like the cuts to unemployment benefits is actually costing your country’s economy over 1 billion dollars a week, they still chant that paying it will ruin the economy. Hello??

They should come to Tokyo in our long summer months and see the difference in our oppressive heat in the last 10 years. If there were no buildings in Tokyo, it would be a bloody tropical jungle by now.

The number of people to die from heatstroke has tripled in the last 3 years and that hole in our Ozone layer just keeps growing bigger while energy firms all over the world just keep stuffing their pockets with money that is ruining our planet and the health of billions.

In the U.K. the evil plan is to use 40% of the land for fracking even though there is enough data to prove that it destroys the environment. There are plans to build at least 20 new nuclear plants even though there is considerable contamination from the old ones and no plan to clean them up. The Green Energy plans have been defunded too. Why? Because it’s a conservative government too and MPs are being bought up like cheap corporate whores to deny climate change for the big energy groups. Meanwhile Shell and other giants continue to rape land in Africa, don’t clean up their spills so that poor people have to relocate from homes they have lived in for generations with hardly any monetary compensation, and Fukushima never happened you know.

KillgoreTrout
Member

I wish I could magically send these science deniers back to the dark ages, where there was no science, disease ran rampant, people had to live in very poorly lit rooms, with lanterns or, oil lamps, no air conditioning in the hot summers and no real heating in the winter, except a fire place. I would love to be able to ask them how they liked living in a world without science.

Beatlex
Member
Beatlex

Great post as usual AdLib.There is no rhyme or reason to the deniers arguments,and no changing their “minds”I even have people I call friends who are deniers.I avoid the conversation altogether with them.Common sense should tell you that you don’t release trillions of tons of carbon into what is a thin envelope that surrounds the earth,and expect there to be no consequences.But common sense is foreign to the deniers.
While right wingers go around saying that the biggest problem facing America is debt and deficits(thus burdening our grandchildren)The debt will seem like small potatoes in comparison to the costs of doing nothing about climate change.Coastal cities with tens of millions living there,will be on the leading edge of the battle.It is already happening

Nirek
Member

Beatlex, everything you say is true but lets keep talking to those boneheads and educate them. Facts are on our side and if we discuss the climate change issue with those deniers we can point to facts where they cannot! Keep pounding on those facts and we can change some of those minds.

escribacat
Member

I am surrounded by the same boneheads as Beatlex and I can assure, there is no way to discuss the topic with them. Their denial isn’t just denial. It’s self defensive rage. They go absolutely berserk when the subject comes up. “It’s all a plot by Al Gore to make money!” There is no reasoning with them. They will have to be bypassed and overruled.

Beatlex
Member
Beatlex

Thanks escribacat,there is NO reasoning with them,period

Nirek
Member

Ecat, I know we can’t win over all the deniers but there are some who will be convinced by facts. Any of them that can be reasoned with is a good thing. I never give up.
That said , here in Vermont we don’t have very many deniers.

escribacat
Member

Nirek, I agree we should never give up. I think the target is what they euphemistically call the “independent voters,” whom I refer to as the “don’t have a clue what’s going on and change their minds often depending on the latest news report they saw.” I currently live in Colorado (not for long) and it’s a crazy mixture of redneck and progressives here. Our state is ground zero for fracking and pot these days.

Nirek
Member

AdLib, THANK you for writing this article!

This morning I wrote about climate change on the off topic thread. I guess we are both on the same wave length. These deniers are mostly just sheep being lead by the “money changers” that Kalima and I were discussing. Corporate greed is the “money changers”. Big oil, coal, and the new GAS “fracking” corporations. All of them are trying to get every drop of fossil fuel out of the ground at the expense of our water and environment. They want all of it before they go to the clean and renewable energy. Solar, bio fuel, wind, hydrogen, and other renewable alternatives are being and have been slowed by these GREEDY corporations.

Ad, you hit a nerve with me on this subject. I hope many of our members will join in this discussion.

I have a solar array in my back yard on two poles where I can adjust the angle four times a year to get the most out of them. They have made all my power plus some since August 2008.

I also have a hybrid car 40+MPH. I’m trying to do my part. Let me know how you are doing, everyone.

Thanks again Ad.

Dbos
Member
Dbos

Can’t fool those global warming deniers; the fidiots think this freeze proves them right in their globally warmed heads.

KillgoreTrout
Member

It happens every winter. These people don’t know the difference between weather and climate.