The Wall Street Journal published a letter expressing skepticism about anthropogenic climate change signed by a group of engineers, retired weathermen, and scientists from fields other than climate science. In response, a much larger group of actual climate scientists signed onto a letter rebutting the first letter. The WSJ rejected it. Instead, the pre-eminent science journal Science, which is know for its rigor in treatments of science, published it, as "Climate change and the Integrity of Science" on January 27th, 2012.
Climate scientists slam the WSJ in this long rebuttal to a trashy editorial on climate denial. The first half of the piece are dozens of signatures, so you’l have to scroll scroll scroll to get to the red meat. But it’s well worth your time. A sampling:
(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.
(ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.
(iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth’s climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.
(iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.
(v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.
Check out this must read piece at ScienceBlogs
+500 Science, as though it needed any more points
…and +1000 bad media
dvdp:
Astronomical is a scale model of our solar system in twelve 500 page volumes printed-on-demand. On page 1 the Sun, on page 6,000 Pluto. The width of each page equals one million kilometres. -
//via olena
(Source: vimeo.com)
ZING! Homelessness!
It was probably just spaghett!
Looks like somebody’s never heard of freegans.
Lily Herman: Words I use too muchDepending on the contextconspiring or conspiracy,...
Words I use too much
Depending on the context
conspiring or conspiracy, usually
in a positive light, like two people
pitching a tent in their own bedroom
just to have somewhere to put
their heads closer together, inhabit
where live would do just as well,
altar, not like change
but in…
I was trying to remember the word ‘haphazard’ the other day, and then I was reading through your poems and stumbled across it 2 or 3 times and remembered. Didn’t notice any ‘thick’s this time though.
“Really, I’m not trying to be rosy about things like the atom bomb and war and the failure of the Presbyterian Church. Those things are awful. All I’m trying to say is that those things don’t alter one bit a writer’s fundamental problems, which are Love, Requited and Unrequited, Insult, et cetera.”
William Styron (The Paris Review)
“-Do you enjoy writing?
-I certainly don’t. I get a fine, warm feeling when I’m doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let’s face it, writing is hell.
”
“For if it is rash to walk into a lion’s den unarmed, rash to navigate the Atlantic in a rowing boat, rash to stand on one foot on top of the St. Paul’s, it is still more rash to go home alone with a poet.”
“We will send word when we may, and some of us may yet meet at times, but I fear that we shall not all be gathered together ever again.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King. How many times have I been in a room with friends and felt this? (via lherman)
Lily, why do I always like everything you like
“It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.”
