The Exercise Of Executive And Judicial Power, Both To The Public's Detriment

First, the Executive branch, in which the DNI threatens to use the "internet of things" to spy on Americans in their home or at work:

US intelligence chief: we might use the internet of things to spy on you

(Warning: your refrigerator is telling the spooks what you snack on at midnight!)

Not to be outdone, the Supreme Court throws a spanner in the works of Obama's executive orders reducing carbon emissions:

Carbon pollution controls put on hold

(Note: today's Big Event may change what the Supreme Court does about a lot of things. See more recent post above.)

It's not so much that we need [booming Republican voice] LESS GOVERNMENT as that we need more constraints on all branches of government. Say, I know what... we need a Constitution; that should provide the necessary... oh, right; we've got one of those, and it doesn't seem to constrain much of anybody in government...

Rain!

Thank goodness we arrived home today at the very moment a downpour started. Carrying in groceries and bottles of my first Two (Three?) Buck Chuck, I was literally soaked to the skin... and delighted to be so! Every day and evening of the coming week is forecast to bring rain. I realize this is not the last manifestation of global climate change, but even to have that initial three-week drought behind us is a great relief.

Miami Houston Heat — Peak Temp And Hot Miscellany

No, as far as I know, Miami's NBA team has not moved here, which is just as well; we already have the Rockets, thankyouverymuch. But the heat... not the Heat... has moved in on us and set up housekeeping. Yesterday's high was (gasps for breath) 106°F. I had stuff to do and I did it, but as I looked at various laborers in the street I was very glad that their jobs were not my job. At least we finally got some rain, for the first time in several weeks. And today is forecast to be a bit cooler. You know all that talk about climate change? I think maybe it has arrived...

Houstonians, here are a few items for you to read while you are stuck indoors, saving yourself from the heat from 1:00pm to 4:00pm, more or less:

• Akil Awan at Informed Comment writes on "Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the single greatest acts of terrorism in human history?"
  

  As I was born three years to the day after the bombing of Hiroshima, I cannot avoid a certain morbid fascination with the event. Terrorism or the saving of our nation? Dad and I used to debate the subject of whether any of our family would be living if the Bomb had not been used; to no one's surprise, I always took the "terrorism" position (without using the word).

• Tan Copsy of Risky Business, writing at Informed Comment offers the irony: "Deep South, biggest Climate Deniers, will be among worst hit by Global Warming"
  

  As the evidence emerges, it becomes clear that it is a good thing so many words have been spoken in vehement denial of climate change: the region is going to need to eat those words, or starve...

• Kevin Gosztola at Shadowproof ("the new FDL") offers us a "Podcast: Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter & Problem of Identity Politics"
  

  No one, not even Sen. Sanders, can please all the people all the time. Sensibly enough, his event organizers allowed the Black Lives Matter activists to take the mic for a period of time; after all, theirs is a compelling and legitimate issue, and though I am not Black, I too would be glad to hear Bernie address race issues more firmly... he isn't going to lose any votes already committed to him by doing so, and there's much to be gained if Sanders gains the reputation as "the fair one."

• Motoko Rich at NYT notes with grim smile and shake of the head: "Teacher Shortages Spur a Nationwide Hiring Scramble (Credentials Optional)"
  

  Never forget my two-parent two-schoolteacher household in my youth: that environment formed much of my political outlook, and I admit freely that it gladdens my heart when Republicans (and even some Democrats these days) try to cut corners on education costs and methods, blame teachers for the failure of a system pared to the bone and beyond in an attempt to pocket the tax money for their own purposes, and yet gaze drop‑jawed as teachers, counselors and even administrators flock to other occupations that pay better salaries for work involving a great deal less outright aggravation than schoolteaching. The ghosts of Bill and Irma are grinning at the sight!

In The Heat Of The Night Day

... and this episode doesn't feature a small Mississippi town in the mid-1980s but rather the largest city in Texas in the all-too-present day. Neither does it star the late lamented Carroll O'Connor but instead every suffering Houstonian who has to leave her or his air-conditioned home for more than 10 minutes during the afternoon.

But the good Dog knows the heat part is certainly here. One of Houston's broadcast TV meteorologists has forecast, starting today, not less than a solid week of temperatures 100°F or greater. That's actual temp, not heat index. And we're not talking about a Dallas 100°F, but the typical humidity-laden Houston 100°F. The kind of heat that regularly kills people: old people who exhibit poor judgment in leaving home without their hats, sunscreen, heavy-duty sunglasses, etc., or children whose parents show even worse judgment by leaving them in the unairconditioned car "for only 10 minutes" while they run into a convenience store for a carton of something more carcinogenic, but no more deadly, than the excessive heat buildup inside that car.

Speaking of people sensible enough NOT to live in hot climates, Happy Birthday to NTodd; may this bright and still quite young man live to see many more!

Naomi Klein Speaks To Meeting In Vatican Re: Climate Change

Here. Scroll down to the middle of the page for a video of a meeting on July 1 among five people convened by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, or watch the same video on YouTube. Klein's main presentation starts at around 39:25 into the video. Most of the council members speak Italian; Klein's presentation and occasional comments are in English.

It is good to see that the Catholic Church recognizes its considerable responsibility to communicate with people of all faiths (or no faith at all) on the matter of climate change. Either everybody starts talking to everybody else, or humankind may well not survive. Yes, it's that important.

Owen Jones Interviews Naomi Klein On This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

Naomi Klein

Here is the interview. It begins with a presentation by Klein of the essentials of the book, and concludes with a Q-and-A session driven by Jones. I am increasingly convinced that Klein is one of the dozen most articulate people (journalists, scholars, activists... choose your own term for her) alive today; the result is not nearly as subjectively interminable as its 1½-hour length might suggest. And unless you are a professional in some environment-related field, I can pretty much guarantee you that you will learn something.

Once you have viewed the interview, please find and read the book. The further into the book I read, the more I am convinced it is one of the essential books of our time. (One reviewer compared its impact to that of Silent Spring; most of you are probably too young to have encountered it when it was new, but I agree This Changes Everything is comparably powerful and, one can hope, influential.

Can't afford to run out and buy a copy? Public libraries seem to have it, though demand is high and you may have to queue up. Or you can try Amazon; several of their many affiliate bookstores offer quite inexpensive used copies... my experience on the one in my hand is that "Used - Like New" meant exactly that. And of course fans of e-books can find one, probably at a good price. (I don't have an e-reader.)

(Once again, the YouTube video is one of those restricted to being visible only through its YouTube page; sorry about the additional click.)

Naomi Klein On Oil Prices, Fossil Fuel Divestment, Better Climate Movement

Some of you know that my admiration for Naomi Klein is such that when my attempt to place a hold at Houston Public Library on her newest book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, failed, I actually promptly purchased the book, far out of my planned sequence of books to buy. Knowing that, it should hardly surprise you that I found an interview of Klein by May Boeve, executive director of 350.org, at a conference on divestment as an activist tactic, to be well worth reading. The interview is in three parts, dealing with oil prices, how to build a better climate movement, and fossil fuel divestment.

And if any old geezer (like me) says "they don't make activists like they used to," point them to Ms. Klein as an example: no, they don't make 'em like they used to; they make 'em better.

Global Climate Change: The Science CANNOT Be Treated As A Matter Of Religion... Or Politics

Tim McDonnell at Grist:

Scientists and science journalists like to say that one of the best ways to tell that climate change is real is to take a look at the changes we can already see: This year is on track to be the hottest ever recorded, and glaciers, corn, and even grizzly bears are responding to the warming. But all those shifts won’t be enough to convince most conservative climate skeptics, a new study in Nature Climate Change finds.

A growing body of recent research suggests a person’s political ideology, economic philosophy, and religious beliefs tend to overwhelm observed facts about global warming. The new study, which was released Monday, put that hypothesis to the test by analyzing Gallup polls taken just after the unusually warm winter of 2012. It found that both Democrats’ and Republicans’ perceptions of the warmer weather in their state tracked fairly well with actual satellite temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But “for people who said their local winter was warming, the observed temperature anomalies had no effect on the tendency to attribute that to global warming,” explains Aaron McCright, a sociologist at Michigan State University who authored the study.

In other words, the actual temperature had no bearing on whether people believed in climate change. Instead, McCright says, “one of the strongest predictors” is party affiliation: Republicans were far less likely to attribute the warming they felt to human-made climate change than were Democrats. Other variables — gender, age, and level of education — were far less reliable as predictors of a person’s global warming beliefs.

...

NASA Temp's Feb 2015
(hottest on record)

This result aligns with my personal observations: Republicans or conservatives with whom I am still on speaking terms (i.e., those who are not so irrational moment-to-moment as to preclude reasonable conversation) frequently take the attitude, "You believe one thing; I believe another. So it's a matter of faith, and in America, we have a constitutional requirement to treat all faiths equally under the law. So my belief is as good as your belief, and I don't have to change my life to conform to your belief."

There's literally no arguing with that. But it's wrong.

Florida Sea Level Rise

The problem is, the physical universe does not operate on that basis. Its actual physical behavior, on the grandest and the most microscopic scales, takes no account of what anyone "believes" in a religious sense of the term. The physics of the universe is not a matter of faith, nor an issue to be decided democratically. And that's what we're talking about here: conservatives treat global climate change as if it were a matter of religion.

It's going to be a long, hot century...

Could Global Climate Change Be Backed Out By Science, Technology? Short Answer: No

Zoë Carpenter at The Nation:

When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, the volcano shot 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. Those particles reflected enough sunlight to cool the earth by about one degree [Fahrenheit] ... Why not, some scientists have asked in the decades since, counter climate change by reproducing the effects of Mount Pinatubo ... ?

That question was held up for scrutiny on Tuesday by the National Academy of Sciences, which released a study (funded, in part, by the CIA) of two ideas for staving off the worst effects of climate change via technological manipulation of the climate: to remove carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it elsewhere, or to reflect sunlight away from the planet by what’s known as albedo modification, à la Mount Pinatubo. The unequivocal message from the committee was that the world cannot expect to geoengineer its way out of the climate crisis. [Bolds mine. - SB]

“There is no silver bullet here. We cannot continue to release carbon dioxide and hope to clean it up later,” said committee chair and Science Editor-in-Chief Marcia McNutt at a press briefing in Washington. [Bolds mine. - SB] The climate “doesn’t go backwards. It goes different. And we don’t even understand where that different state ends up,” said another member of the panel. ...

There is real irony here: human science is sufficiently advanced to understand, more or less, what needs to be done... but is not capable of doing it, and cannot become capable of doing it. 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the behavior McNutt describes is characteristic of chaotic systems: you cannot "back up" their motion by applying the same forces but in reverse order and direction, each for the same duration.  Ask your favorite applied mathematician about the term "chaotic" in a scientific context. Many of the dynamic systems Isaac Newton and the crew thought they understood and had complete mathematical descriptions of, were in fact chaotic. For example, weather and climate events are chaotic. Good luck trying to reverse all of last season's hurricanes, let alone backing out all the thermodynamics of the oceans.

Oh well, I suppose it was worth a few minutes' thought. But please understand: it's not that scientists lack the techniques or technology... it's that reversing climate events cannot be done in principle. Remember the wag who recited to you the whimsical "three laws of thermodynamics" in your college course in that subject? Right:

1. You can't win,
2. You can't even break even, and
3. You can't get out of the game.

Your climate, and welcome to it!

The Real Bad News: Methane

I awoke this morning from a nightmare of witnessing the crash of an airliner. The real nightmare threatens a lot more people: methane vents are bubbling from the floor of the Atlantic off the East Coast.

Gotta go get my car fixed; gotta keep doing my two cents worth to pollute the atmosphere...

NOAA: ‘Tropical’ Storms Move Northward With Climate Change

Pakalolo at Kos describes in some detail the phenomenon NOAA has documented, with helpful diagrams, and explains why it's dangerous to human existence... not to mention most business activity in the Arctic. We can take this seriously now, or we can pay an unthinkable price later. Given how many damned fools there are in our declining nation, I'm betting on the latter.

Climate Change: The Ultimate WMD

Tom Engelhardt at billmoyers.com (originally at TomDispatch) explains how all the efforts to avoid the world's major national powers' use of nuclear, biological and/or chemical weapons in wars, wars which would unleash "nuclear winter" or worse, are in vain... if those same major nations extract and burn all the fossil fuels to which they (most certainly including the US) have access.

We are close enough to a tipping point that it may already be impossible to stave off significant global climate change in the coming century... but there seems to be insufficient political will to quite literally save the planet. 

The basics of global climate change

This is really fairly simple, outright do-or-die. And so far... we aren't doing.

'Unstoppable' Global Sea Level Rise Triggered By Fragmentation, Melting Of West Antarctica

Via Dahr Jamail at truthout (whose article is itself worth your time to read), from Justin Gillis and Kenneth Chang at NYT, we learn that part of the West Antarctica ice sheet is falling apart, and if findings and predictions are confirmed, its disintegration could cause a rise in sea level of 10 feet in the coming century. Gillis and Chang:

A large section of the mighty West Antarctica ice sheet has begun falling apart and its continued melting now appears to be unstoppable, two groups of scientists reported on Monday. If the findings hold up, they suggest that the melting could destabilize neighboring parts of the ice sheet and a rise in sea level of 10 feet or more may be unavoidable in coming centuries.

Global warming caused by the human-driven release of greenhouse gases has helped to destabilize the ice sheet, though other factors may also be involved, the scientists said.

The rise of the sea is likely to continue to be relatively slow for the rest of the 21st century, the scientists added, but in the more distant future it may accelerate markedly, potentially throwing society into crisis.

“This is really happening,” Thomas P. Wagner, who runs NASA’s programs on polar ice and helped oversee some of the research, said in an interview. “There’s nothing to stop it now. But you are still limited by the physics of how fast the ice can flow.”

...

Thwaites Ice Shelf, late 2013
(Photo: James Yungel, NASA)

So... if I had bought a house here in Houston, and if I had married and had kids, my heirs, perhaps my great-grandchildren, could have had beach‑front property...

Seriously: Al Gore told us all of this. He became our modern-day Cassandra, prophesying catastrophe only to be ignored by everyone in a position to do anything to prevent it. And now, pending confirmation, it looks as if it's too late.

Oh well, whatthehell, we won't live to see it, so whothefuck cares, right? <irony />

AFTERTHOUGHT: There is considerable disagreement over the timetable of the sea level rise... some say 100 or 200 years; some say 1000+ years. But practically no one not on the payroll of the oil companies thinks it won't happen. If you're worried about your great-grandkids but willing to see the inevitable suffering inflicted on your great⁴‑grandkids, you may be OK... aside from being a cold bastard for feeling that way.

War Houston Is Hell

Tomorrow it is forecast to reach 100°F in Houston inside Loop 610. At night, we're supposed to get a tiny amount of rain, and as a consequence the high on Sunday will be only 97°F. Jeebus, it isn't even July yet! Do you still want to try to convince me the climate isn't changing?

The Putts Putz Stopped Here

... and probably not just the putz, but more than a few bucks, stopped here: Last weekend, Obama golfed with oil executives, at the very moment 40,000 protesters besieged the White House regarding the Keystone XL pipeline.

An old union song from almost a century ago came to my mind: Which Side Are You On? (YouTube, Pete Seeger) One could well ask Obama that question, based not only on his campaign promises and inaugural speech, but even on the climate change references in his State of the Union speech... and I, at least, would not feel a great deal of confidence if he were to answer, "Yours!"

It's time to prove that, Mr. President. Stop playing with the petroleum pro's. Stop contributing to climate change!

Antarctica Unable To Say No To Crack

Carl Franzen at TPM:

NASA really rocked the boat around the world in February when it announced the discovery of a 19-mile-long crack off the Western side of Antarctica, a crack poised to calve off an iceberg the size of New York City.

On Monday, NASA released a new video of the latest aerial observations of the crack — located on Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier. What NASA discovered was not only has the crack widened and lengthened, but it’s also led to a smaller, secondary crack.

NASA Goddard Flight Center calving specialist Kelly Brunt explained in the video that although the cracks in the glacier are evidence that the ice in region is thinning and the flow accelerating, and in turn, adding to a rise in sea level, it’s still within what can be considered “normal” annual fluctuations in the ice levels.

“Even calving when we use small states of the island or Manhattan as a unit of measure, this is generally normal, it’s part of the process,” Brunt said.
That said, the new calving site is the furthest inland that’s been observed in the past 40 years.

...

NASA expects the New York City-sized glacier to calve off any day now.

TPM has a photo and a video.

Do I even need to comment on this?

National Geographic: 'Climate Change Back On Political Radar After Sandy, Election'

Tim Profeta of Duke University, writing at National Geographic, reminds us of perhaps the most important issue you never heard mentioned by the presidential campaigns:

In his re-election victory speech, President Barack Obama finally touched on a seldom-mentioned issue of the campaign—climate change: “We want our children to live in an America … that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.” ... New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg made the issue the centerpiece of his endorsement of Obama last week...

A number of environmental groups have expressed hope Obama will finally be at liberty to take steps to address the issue. “I do think there’s an opportunity, if the president chooses to take it, to show leadership and get attention on the cost that climate change is likely to cause,” said Kevin Kennedy of the U.S. Climate Initiative of the World Resources Institute. ...

But the future of U.S. climate policy is far from certain. With comprehensive climate legislation dead in Congress, many see the path forward in continued regulation of carbon emissions from power plants. Sen. Harry Reid said he hopes the Senate, where the Democrats have expanded their majority, can address climate change, but he didn’t offer any specifics. ...

...

The article is short and worth your time to read, but it is also discouraging. After the election, Mr. Obama is theoretically free, indeed arguably has a mandate, to act on this most significant of all issues. But he is surely still beholden to corporate interests which funded his campaign and which anticipate direct or indirect profits from older, dirtier methods of energy generation. Coal isn't going away on its own!

I don't even need to say that an Obama presidency opens the possibility of addressing climate change in a way that a Rmoney presidency would have shut off within five minutes of his election. But even with Obama, this will not be easy; it is incumbent (heh) on us to make sure the president is under as much pressure from environmentally concerned citizens as from big-money contributors. We have to sell our politicians on renewable sources of energy... sell them, and sell them again, until they are irrevocably sold on them.

Another approach, one at which Americans have proven themselves time and time again over more than a century, doesn't get mentioned often enough. That is building devices that use less energy. From computers to cars to industrial plants, we can provide incentives for technology companies to build energy conservation measures into their products from the moment they are designed. Are you, say, 50 years old or more? Chances are good the first computer you ever used filled a sizable room, required A/C in immense amounts, and drew power in quantities comparable to a small housing subdivision. Today, there's your iPad... even if your company has 50 employees each with an iPad or a small laptop, with a local network, all together they don't begin to touch the energy requirements of one old-fashioned room-sized computer. This can be done with other technologies. It can even be done with cars... the Tesla is just the beginning. Energy conservation... what a concept!

T.S. Isaac Forces Delay Of GOP Convention Opening

Hey, GOPer guys and (damn few) gals, maybe you should take it as a Sign from God that She doesn't like the shit you've been slinging! (I know I don't!)

Opening verbal terrorism has been delayed from Monday (though an immediate opening and recess will take place then) to Tuesday. Pasty-faced RNC chair Reince Priebus made the announcement. I know that's irrelevant, but his name is so much fun... lather Reince, repeat.

Meanwhile, the Floridians  I  know are hunkered down for another round of the same old same-old. The GOPers are just a buncha whining wusses.

It Isn't Just Your Imagination: It's HOT

Via Dr. Jeff Masters of Weather Underground, it's official (if preliminary): July 2012 is America's hottest month on record, ever. It was slightly hotter than July 1936, which inflicted drought and brought on the great Dust Bowl, devastating farms and more. This follows a succession of other "hottest month" records in 2011 and 2012, and is reflected in 24 state "hottest 12 months" records; please read Dr. Masters's post.

We did this. If you doubt it, see the recent post on Dr. James Hansen's NASA Goddard report. And I seriously doubt it's going to get any better. We made our bed, and now a lot of people are going to have to lie about it.

Why 'Free Market Solutions' Will Not... Cannot... Address Global Climate Change

David Atkins (thereisnospoon) at Hullabaloo expands on a theme by David Roberts at Grist: not only is global climate change worse than you think, not only is some degree of it inevitable even at this point, but there is, at ground, no solution as long as we insist on approaching the problem through nation-states and (allegedly) free markets. Please go read those two posts before you undertake any serious dispute of that assertion on threads here. (Warning: at the moment, the Roberts/Grist article is serving atrociously badly on their web site. Expect a long wait.)

Many of you will quite understandably shrug, acknowledging the assertion as having already long since proved itself.

Some of you, though... probably not many who bother to read this blog... will object to the whole thesis of global climate change, or dispute its inevitability, or use old science or current papers by pseudo-scientists to dispute the fact of impending climate change, or tell me that God is going to save us. To those few of you, I say this: save your breath; if you're young now, you're going to need it when the shit hits the fan in a few decades.

Contrary to claims you've almost surely heard, science is not a matter of opinion (though there's no shortage of opinions among scientists) nor is it something you believe or don't believe, like a religion. Science is a collection of methods for creating effective explanations, together with the current versions of those explanations themselves. Science contains few if any eternal truths, but it offers the best way of obtaining the current best assessment of what is factually true, and how those facts interrelate. And in matters of global climate change, the best science indicates that, sooner rather than later, a lot of our coastal towns and cities will be under a lot of water, the life cycles and breeding patterns of many species will be unable to accommodate regional temperature changes (with extinction the likely consequence), and humans will continue to ignore the most basic markers of the human condition by fighting wars over what is left, and by suffering plagues we can only imagine. It is not a pretty picture, and it is already underway.

I wish I could propose some marvelous action you could take to avert this catastrophe, but I am afraid that flight departed a while ago. As for "free market solutions," I cannot even fathom what kind of virtuous investment strategy would induce corporations to take the needed actions soon enough to mitigate the worst effects of climate change... the free market is designed to operate on an extremely compressed time scale, and anything that happens a century from now, even if predictable, simply does not seem real to the people and institutions investing in industries whose actions may or may not make climate change happen.

So I have no preachy advice for you. Being who I am, I can't even provide you a tip on a hot new stock, and besides, the heat of that stock would contribute to the problem...