The scariest thing about climate change
In What the Public Doesn’t Get About Climate Change, Time’s Bryan Walsh says that as he reports on climate change, he comes across a lot of scary facts, like the possibility that thawing permafrost in Siberia could release gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere or the risk that Greenland could pass a tipping point and begin to melt rapidly.
The scariest thing he has found though is that our intuition is bad about climate change – most folks don’t seem to grasp that it’s not enough to cap emissions/spending, you have to dramatically reduce.
It may seem to many like good common sense to wait until we see proof of the serious damage global warming is doing before we take action. But it’s not — we can’t “wait and see” on global warming because the climate has a momentum all its own, and if we wait for decades to finally act to reduce carbon emissions, it could well be too late. Yet this simply isn’t understood. Someone as smart as Bill Gates doesn’t seem to get it. “Fortunately climate change, although it’s a huge challenge, it’s a challenge that happens over a long period of time,” he said at a forum in Beijing last year. “You know, we have time to work on it.” But the truth is we don’t.
If élite scientists could simply solve climate change on their own, public misunderstanding wouldn’t be such a problem. But they can’t. Reducing carbon emissions sharply will require all 6.5 billion (and growing) of us on the planet to hugely change the way we use energy and travel. We’ll also need to change the way we vote, rewarding politicians willing to make the tough choices on climate. Instead of a new Manhattan Project — the metaphor often used for global warming — Sterman believes that what is needed is closer to a new civil rights movement, a large-scale campaign that dramatically changes the public’s beliefs and behaviors.
Then photo is Jack O’Lantern hell by Plutor. It’s part of his Mostest Interesting set.
Boo.
Song for Sarah: You betcha dog on it
Hello Sarah Palin we wrote this song for you because we see you from Russia! Plz respond to our emails!! We like to hear from you!!
WPA 2.0: Work Pays America
WIRED has a feature telling the next President that a Modern-Day WPA Will Save the Economy. They say that while alternative fuels and transportation are getting the speech time, they won’t mean jack if there’s no infrastructure to support it:
“(Congress) should invest in the more than 3,000 ready-to-go highway projects that could be under contract within the next 30 to 90 days,” says John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. “Funding these ready to go projects offers Congress a tremendous opportunity to put Americans to work and help cash-strapped states repair and replace our crumbling infrastructure.”
History shows us the time to act is now.
The state of America’s infrastructure — roads, bridges, drinking water, even schools and transit systems — couldn’t be much worse. A report card issued three years ago by the American Society of Civil Engineers gives it all a D. The society says we’ve got to spend about $1.6 trillion just to bring things up to a B-.
Thusfar, solutions to our current economic mess are pretty much of the “give the people who made the mess a pile of money to figure out how to fix it” variety. While I like forking over my future earnings to irresponsible millionaires as much as the next guy, it seems to me that solutions that rely on already existing components of our economy that are working should definitely get a good look.
Furthermore, solutions that address multiple goals (public works and employment and funds to pay mortgages) have been proven to be very effective. Wikipedia’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) entry begins:
The Works Progress Administration (renamed in 1939 the Work Projects Administration; WPA) was the largest New Deal agency, employing millions of people and affecting most every locality in the United States, especially rural and western mountain populations. It was created in April 1935 by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidential order, and activated with congressional funding in July of that year (the U.S. Congress funded it annually but did not set it up).
It continued and extended relief programs similar to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) started by Herbert Hoover and the U.S. Congress in 1932. Headed by Harry L. Hopkins, the WPA provided jobs and income to the unemployed during the Great Depression in the United States. The program built many public buildings, projects and roads and operated large arts, drama, media and literacy projects. It fed children and redistributed food, clothing and housing.
Until closed down by Congress and the war boom in 1943, the various programs of the WPA added up to the largest employment base in the country — indeed, the largest cluster of government employment opportunities in most states. Anyone who needed a job could become eligible for most of its jobs. Hourly wages were the prevailing wages in the area; the rules said workers could not work more than 30 hours a week but many projects included months in the field, with workers eating and sleeping on worksites.
The poster above (LC-USZC2-837) was one of thousands developed through the Works Progress Administration. You can see some of them at the Library of Congress.
Stayin’ Alive (with Hands Only CPR)
On Lifehacker, a comment by AnonJr on the Key to CPR is Stayin’ Alive had this video and some great information about something that is simple (but vital) to know about – please share it around.
Somewhere in the vicinity of 33% of those who go into sudden cardiac arrest don’t receive any help even though there are bystanders available to help.
Most either don’t know what to do or are afraid of doing something. Please, if an adult suddenly collapses, call the emergency number (911 in most of the US) and push hard and fast on the chest.
Depending on the study you look at, an adult who suddenly collapses has around 18 to 22 min. worth of oxygen in his system. Circulating that by pushing hard and fast (~100 compressions per min.) can help keep the body sufficiently oxygenated to increase the chance that a defibrillatory shock will work.
More about Hands Only CPR.
What is the sound of 100,000 people?
farlane.blog › Edit — WordPressIf the front pages of CNN or FOX are to be believed, somewhat quieter than Palin on SNL or the profound life changes experienced by Joe “The Plumber” the Plumber.
One. Hundred. Thousand.
Hard to fathom how that could not be THE story for today. Here’s NPR’s report on the largest rally from the campaign, These Photos and That Video and This Video of That One in St. Louis:
Raise your hand if you’re a bit nervous
In Palin Rallies Ignite Widespread Talk of ‘Fascism’, Jeffrey Feldman says that because he published a book recently on the harm done to U.S. democracy by violent rhetoric, he gets called a lot when it’s published a book recently on the harm done to U.S. democracy by violent rhetoric, I get lots of calls when people here it. He says that while fascist isn’t an accurate description of Sarah Palin, the concern and conditions that her rallies engender is worth noting.
The most common point brought to my attention in this new concern for Palin is that her events remind people of the kind of ‘rallies’ people have seen in old newsreels and exhibition photographs in history museums about the fascist period.
Many people have said to me, in so many words, ‘I went to a Holocaust museum, recently, and the kinds of rallies they had in the 1930s are exactly what we are seeing now at these Palin events.’
…Interestingly, I have heard these observations from Democrats and Republicans. The logic is that it is not just one feature of the Palin events that leads people see them as ‘rallies’ of the sort they have learned about in history museums, but three elements combining together: claims of Obama’s covert terrorist ties and desire to see the military fail, combined with voiced calls for harm to Sen. Obama.
I confess that I was a lot less nervous about Palinmania before I saw this photo titled Put her out of her misery, please from bobster1985. I’m guessing he’s not going to be voting for her. These people probably won’t either.
Blame the poor?
Subprime Suspects in Slate says that while there appears to be a concerted effort to lay the fault of the subprime crisis at loans through Fannie & Freddie, the dumb-lending virus originated in Greenwich, Conn., midtown Manhattan, and Southern California, not Eastchester, Brownsville, and Washington, D.C.
…lending money to poor people and minorities isn’t inherently risky. There’s plenty of evidence that in fact it’s not that risky at all. That’s what we’ve learned from several decades of microlending programs, at home and abroad, with their very high repayment rates. And as the New York Times recently reported, Nehemiah Homes, a long-running initiative to build homes and sell them to the working poor in subprime areas of New York’s outer boroughs, has a repayment rate that lenders in Greenwich, Conn., would envy. In 27 years, there have been fewer than 10 defaults on the project’s 3,900 homes. That’s a rate of 0.25 percent.
On the other hand, lending money recklessly to obscenely rich white guys, such as Richard Fuld of Lehman Bros. or Jimmy Cayne of Bear Stearns, can be really risky. In fact, it’s even more risky, since they have a lot more borrowing capacity.
I’m guessing that the amount of money required to buy up the really bad loans is just a candle in the mighty wind o’ greed that’s howling through the financial markets.
The photo is Takin’ it to the BANK$Y by guano and you should click over to read the backstory, and maybe also check out the Banksy group on Flickr and/or Banksy’s Wikipedia entry.
Graveyard Shift
As you may be aware, Neil Gaiman is my favorite writer. In addition to the fact that he can spin a tale like nobody I know, he also seems to be testing the bounds of the process of storytelling with his unabashed use of blogs, video and other web tech. On his wondrously weird website Mouse Circus, he is posting videos of his 9-city video tour (Oct 1-9). At each stop, he reads one chapter from his new work The Graveyard Book.
Check out Neil reading of The Graveyard Book. If you haven’t read one of his books, might I recommend fixing that with this.
The photo is Untitled by Jenny Murray, who says that while it wouldn’t normally occur to her, she thinks that this photo should be viewed on black. She’s a serial violater of Rule #6, so watch your step.
Dive into her Flickriver because she’s one of the best. Word.
A bucketfull of bailout
Democracy Now has a great podcast today that will simultaneously inform and upset you about the bailout, its cost (which is likely to be very much higher) and its likely success (which is unlikely). You can watch it too if that’s more your style.
I like this show a lot – very informative.
