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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 2/14/2012 6:16:34 PM
	Watch A Century Of Global Warming In Less Than 30 Seconds by Beth Buczynski February 13, 2012 2011 was the ninth warmest year on record since the 1800′s, meaning that the 21st century already contains nine of the 10 warmest years in the modern meteorological record. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York released a visual analysis of how temperatures around the globe in 2011 compared to the average global temperature from the mid-20th century. The comparison shows how Earth continues to experience higher temperatures than several decades ago. “We know the planet is absorbing more energy than it is emitting,” said GISS director James E. Hansen. “So we are continuing to see a trend toward higher temperatures. Even with the cooling effects of a strong La Nina influence and low solar activity for the past several years, 2011 was one of the 10 warmest years on record.” In the time-lapse animation below, watch as temperatures flare and then wane during periods of global development. Then watch as the entire map clouds with red during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Reminds me of that folk tale about the frog and boiling pot of water… Related Reading: Scientists Predict Extreme Heat Will Be The Norm In 20 Years NYC Cancels Winter Jam: Citing Lack Of Winter Natural Disasters of 2010: The Wrath Of Global Warming [Videos] Image Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Center Read more: climate change, global temperatures, global warming, hottest years, nasa, storms, weather Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/watch-a-century-of-global-warming-in-less-than-30-seconds.html#ixzz1mNhoo6IW
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Luis Miguel

1162

61587

Lima

RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?

2/15/2012 1:15:27 AM

NASA satellites reveal colossal ice melt, greenhouse gasses blamed

Until now, satellite measurements from only selected places were used to extrapolate the overall ice loss outside Greenland and Antarctica.

By Wynne Parry, LiveScience Senior Writer / February 8, 2012

The average yearly change in mass, in centimeters of water, during 2003-2010, for all the world’s glaciers and ice caps (excluding Greenland & Antarctica). Glaciated regions with large ice loss rates stand out clearly.

Thomas Jacob, John Wahr, W. Tad Pfeffer, and Sean Swenson

The melt-off from the world's ice sheets, ice caps and glaciers over eight years of the past decade would have been enough to cover the United States in about 18 inches (46 centimeters) of water, according to new research based on the most-comprehensive analysis of satellite data yet.

Data, collected for the years 2003 through 2010, indicates that melting ice raised sea levels worldwide by an average of 1.48 millimeters (0.06 inches) each year. The loss of ice from Greenland and Antarctica has already been measured using satellite data, but the new analysis revealed that melting ice elsewhere accounted for about 0.41 mm (0.016 inches) of the annual rise.

Until now, satellite measurements from only selected places were used to extrapolate the overall ice loss outside Greenland and Antarctica. [Stunning Photos of Antarctic Ice]

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"The Earth is losing an incredible amount of ice to the oceans annually, and these new results will help us answer important questions in terms of both sea rise and how the planet's cold regions are responding to global change," study researcher John Wahr, a professor of physics at theUniversity of Colorado, said in a press release issued by the Boulder campus.

Climate change, spurred by greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere by humans, is believed to be the culprit. Warming raises sea levels not only by melting ice — the aspect examined in this study — but by causing water to expand.

For the first time, the researchers used the satellite system called GRACE (for "Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment") to look at loss of ice by glaciers and ice caps around the world.

GRACE, operated by NASA and Germany, already had been used to study ice sheets on Antarctica, Greenland and other large ice-covered areas.

"But so far the data have not been analyzed simultaneously and consistently for all areas," Jonathan Bamber, of the Glaciology Centre at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, wrote in a commentary published along with the study in the Feb. 9 issue of the journal Nature.

The new data confirmed that most of the melting happened on ice-covered Greenland and Antarctica, where enough ice melted to raise sea levels by 1.06 millimeters (0.042 inches) per year between January 2003 and December 2010, the study period.

There are more than 160,000 glaciers and ice caps worldwide, but annual changes in mass have been directly measured for only 120 of them, and in most cases only within the last 30 years, according to Bamber.

GRACE consists of two satellites that travel around the Earth together, picking up on changes in the Earth's gravitational field, which are linked to changes in mass. The researchers devised a way to separate out the changes in mass for ice-covered regions around the globe.

Their results yielded two surprises: The melt rate for glaciers and ice caps outside Antarctica and Greenland made a smaller contribution to sea-level rise than had been estimated, and the melt rate in the Asian mountains, including the Himalayas, was dramatically lower: 4 billion tons annually versus up to 50 billion.

In his commentary, Bamber notes that the study period was too brief to capture large fluctuations in melting from some areas, such as in the Gulf of Alaska and the high Asian mountains.

"Nonetheless, Jacob and colleagues have dramatically altered our understanding of recent global (glacier and ice cap) volume changes, and their contribution to sea-level rise," Bamber wrote, referring to study researcher Thomas Jacob of Colorado-Boulder. "Now we need to work out what this means for estimating their future response."

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Wynne Parry on Twitter @Wynne_Parry. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

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As President Obama unveiled the 2013 fiscal year budget, the nation's financial situation came back into sharp focus. Experts say partisan gridlock in Washington means the budget will probably go nowhere.

Considering this is an election year, however, expect politicians to harp on facts, figures and terms that most Americans weren't taught in high school. To help out, it's time to dredge up lots of scary facts to make you pay attention.

Before we get going, a quick primer on the number TRILLION:

$1 trillion = $1,000 billion or $1,000,000,000,000 (that's 12 zeros)

How hard is it to spend a trillion dollars? If you spent one dollar every second, you would have spent a million dollars in 12 days. At that same rate, it would take you 32 years to spend a billion dollars. But it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars.

And now, some scary facts about the debt and the deficit -- some basics:

Deficit = money government takes in -- money government spends

2012 US deficit = $1.33 trillion

2013 Proposed budget deficit = $901 billion

National debt = Total amount borrowed over time to fund the annual deficit

Current national debt = $15.3 trillion (or $49,030 per every man, woman and child in the US or $135,773 per taxpayer)

[Also see: Who Benefits From the Safety Net]

OK, let's get started!

1. The U.S. national debt on Jan. 1, 1791, was just $75 million dollars. Today, the U.S. national debt rises by that amount about once an hour.

2. Our nation began its existence in debt after borrowing money to finance the Revolutionary War. President Andrew Jackson nearly eliminated the debt, calling it a "national curse." Jackson railed against borrowing, spending and even banks, for that matter, and he tried to eliminate all federal debt. By Jan. 1, 1835, under Jackson, the debt was just $33,733.

3. When World War II ended, the debt equaled 122 percent of GDP (GDP is a measure of the entire economy). In the 1950s and 1960s, the economy grew at an average rate of 4.3 percent a year and the debt gradually declined to 38 percent of GDP in 1970. This year, the Office of Budget and Management expects that the debt will equal nearly 100 percent of GDP.

4. Since 1938, the national debt has increased at an average annual rate of 8.5 percent. The only exceptions to the constant annual increase over the last 62 years were during the administrations of Clinton and Johnson. (Note that this is the rate of growth; the national debt still existed under both presidents.) During the Clinton presidency, debt growth was almost zero. Johnson averaged 3 percent growth of debt for the six years he served (1963-69).

5. When Ronald Reagan took office, the U.S. national debt was just under $1 trillion. When he left office, it was $2.6 trillion. During the eight Regan years, the US moved from being the world's largest international creditor to the largest debtor nation.

6. The U.S. national debt has more than doubled since the year 2000.

Under President Bush: At the end of calendar year 2000, the debt stood at $5.629 trillion. Eight years later, the federal debt stood at $9.986 trillion.

Under President Obama: The debt started at $9.986 trillion and escalated to $15.3 trillion, a 53 percent increase over three years.

7. FY 2013 budget projects a deficit of $901 billion in 2013, representing 5.5 percent of GDP, down from a deficit of $1.33 trillion in FY 2012, which was the fourth consecutive year of more than $1 trillion dollar deficits.

8. The U.S. national debt rises at an average of approximately $3.8 billion per day.

9. The US government now borrows approximately $5 billion every business day.

[Also see: States with the most homes in foreclosure]

10. A trillion $10 bills, if they were taped end to end, would wrap around the globe more than 380 times. That amount of money would still not be enough to pay off the U.S. national debt.

11. The debt ceiling is the maximum amount of debt that Congress allows for the government. The current debt ceiling is $16.394 trillion effective Jan. 30, 2012.

12. The U.S. government has to borrow 43 cents of every dollar that it currently spends, four times the rate in 1980.

You can track the national debt on a daily basis here.

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 2/17/2012 4:16:35 PM
	Leaked Documents From Climate Denialism Lobbyists Revealed by Joel Boyce February 16, 2012 The Heartland Climate Institute, a US-based organization that dubs itself a “think tank” has recently had a number of internal documents publicly released by an anonymous “Heartland insider.” The documents include proposed budgets, lists of donors, plans for developing an anti-climate change school curriculum and more. The documents are being carefully dissected by serious climate change commentators and bloggers all over. Here’s a list of posts made about the documents so far (courtesy of Richard Littlemore’s blog, which also has all the leaked documents available for download): Deep Climate – Heartland Institute Budget and Strategy Revealed Greg Laden – Anti-Science Institute’s Insider Reveals Secrets Planet 3.0 – Is turnabout Fair Play? Climate Crocks – How is Joe Bast like Joe Camel? Climate Progress – Heartland Documents Reveal Fringe Denial Group Plans to Pursue Koch Money, Dupe Children and Cultivate Revkin Is turnabout fair play, indeed? Many who closely follow both news of climate science and the politics of climate denialism will recall the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia a couple of years ago. Many on the right hailed them as proof of a massive conspiracy of climate scientists. Yet a closer look at the emails (which are still freely available), revealed nothing of the kind. The most controversial statement was one scientist talking about using a trick of plotting data logarithmically to tease out a trend in the data. Climate deniers wildly misinterpreted this as “we’ll trick everything into seeing something in the data that isn’t there”, which is, of course, impossible. Plotting the data in a different way cannot produce a trend that isn’t there. The raw data, like most scientific data, is freely available to anyone to double-check, question or otherwise check their work, which is something that scientists do constantly. Of course, the sorts of people who get their information from anti-scientific sources tend to take it at face value. If they had the basic knowledge or inclination to confirm or deny ideological claims by checking them against original sources, we wouldn’t have such a large section of the population believing demonstrably false statements around the world. Thus, when lobbyists for climate denial and slanted news organizations reported things in the email that weren’t really there, true believers simply accepted it. So on the one side there is science, and on the other side, political organizations who simply like to make unfounded statements to discredit climate change. Self-described “think tanks” on the other side are misleadingly labelled. The only way to really think about a scientific topic is to collect and analyze data. But “climate skeptic think tanks” don’t do science. They’ve already decided they don’t want to believe, or at least don’t want to admit, that climate change is happening. And this is basically what these leaked documents demonstrate. The list of funders includes big business interests who don’t want to change the way they do things because it might cost them money. (By the way, the Heartland Institute doesn’t just lie about climate change, they get paid by Reynolds American, a tobacco company, for saying that cigarettes are good for you, so now you know you can trust them.) Heartland’s expenditures include paying several people they consider “high profile” to keep spouting off about climate change being a hoax. Craig Idso is receiving some $135, 000 a year for this crap. Fred Singer receives not quite half as much, but $60, 000 simply for making stuff up? In this economy? Not too shabby. Oh, and they’ve found a coal-industry consultant, a Dr. Wojick, who they’re paying $100, 000 to write their “climate change is a hoax” school curriculum, though no good teacher would let these documents get within 10 feet of their classroom. Wojick’s doctorate is in mathematical logic. He has no background in the physical sciences at all, let alone the climate sciences. Of course, there’s no science in the proposed curriculum, so I suppose that works out. But again, what would we expect? The Heartland Institute is a group of lobbyists whose agenda is profit for its donors. People lie for money. Hardly breaking news. Related stories: “Climate Skeptic” Think Tank Asked to Reveal Secret Funders Climate Change Deniers Set School Policy, Forecast Weather How “Climategate” Exposed Our Ambivalence About Science Read more: big oil, climate change, climate denialism, climategate, coal industry, conservative thinktanks, fossil fuels, global warming, Heartland Climate Insitute, leaked documents, oil industry, politics, tobacco industry Photo credit: NASA Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/leaked-documents-from-climate-denialism-lobbyists-revealed.html#ixzz1melPmGMy
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 2/17/2012 4:37:03 PM
	Climate Denial Crock of the Week with Peter Sinclair How is Joe Bast Like Joe Camel? Looks Like We’re Going to Find Out….. February 15, 2012 How is Joe Bast like Joe Camel? Well, let’s see – they both promote the sale of addictive poisons to children, they both are funded by the tobacco industry, and they both are leading proponents of the anti-science movement that threatens to cripple our education system and our economy. Joe Bast is the President and CEO of the Heartland Institute, a right wing “think” tank in Chicago that has been the prime mover behind major disinformation initiatives on both global climate and tobacco dangers. Mr. Bast is well known for insisting that the science of climate change is “science is very sketchy, very uncertain..”, as well as famously asserting that “No victim of cancer, heart disease, etc. can “prove” his or her cancer or heart disease was caused by exposure to secondhand smoke.” Not surprisingly, the Heartland has been the recipient of major funding from bothtobacco and fossil fuel interests over the years. We’re going to be finding out a lot more about the Heartland Institute and their operations in coming weeks and months, thanks to an anonymous whistleblower who, on Valentine’s Day, opened a gmail account, sent a bundle of damning internal documents to key climate bloggers and researchers around the country, then closed the account and disappeared. Now, in a statement, Heartland is admitting that the budget and donor documents are genuine, but claiming that an alleged “Policy” paper is a forgery. *See the Documents here* Desmogblog: It is clear from the documents that Heartland advocates against responsible climate mitigation and then uses that advocacy to raise money from oil companies and “other corporations whose interests are threatened by climate policies.” Heartland particularly celebrates the funding that it receives from the fossil fuel fortune being the Charles G. Koch Foundation. Heartland also continues to collect money from Philip Morris parent company Altria as well as from the tobacco giant Reynolds American, while maintaining ongoing advocacy against policies related to smoking and health. Heartland’s policy positions, strategies and budget distinguish it clear as a lobby firm that is misrepresenting itself as a “think tank” – it budgets $4.1 million of its $6.4 million in projected expenditures for Editorial, Government Relations, Communications, Fundraising, and Publications, and the only activity it plans that could vaguely be considered policy development is the writing of a curriculum package for use in confusing high schoolers about climate change. Among the documents were tantalizing clues as to where major funding for the climate denial movement is coming from, and who it’s going to. The information is flying faster than any one person can keep up. As stated above, Heartland has now released a statement claiming that one of the alleged internal documents is a fake. It’s worth noting that several credible sources have pronounced the material genuine. I will keep updating the situation as best I can. Joe Romm at ClimateProgress: Racing around the internet are some internal documents that appear to be from the Heartland Institute, a relatively obscure hard-core anti-science think tank. As DeSmogBlog explains, “An anonymous donor calling him (or her)self ‘Heartland Insider’ has released the Heartland Institute’s budget, fundraising plan… and sundry other documents (all attached) that prove all of the worst allegations that have been levelled against the organization.” Personally, I was skeptical of these docs, at least until I read the 2012 Fundraising Plan, which attacks the temperature station data of the “the National Aeronautics and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).” That kind of error is classic Heartland. And here’s another apparent blunder: “The Charles G. Koch Foundation returned as a Heartland donor in 2011. We expect to ramp up their level of support in 2012 and gain access to the network of philanthropists they work with.” Those Heartland folks are such satirists. Philanthropy “etymologically means the love of humanity,” whereas funding climate denial and inaction, as the Kochs do, is perhaps the cruelest thing you could possibly do to humanity. My colleague Brad Johnson has just blogged on Heartland’s “Secret, Corporate-Funded Plan To Teach Children That Climate Change Is A Hoax,” which I’ll excerpt at the end. It’s funny in the way that The Shining was funny. *These documents just make no sense, kind of like climate science denial itself. Perhaps this is a spoof put out by The Onion.* An alleged document that is being examined, and which Heartland now states is a fake– describes a plan to pay a consultant 100,000 dollars to prepare a program designed for ”dissuading teachers from teaching science”. Earlier today, ThinkProgress reported that a Heartland insider had confirmed the document and explained its rationale: James M. Taylor, a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute, told ThinkProgress Green in an e-mail why the group is developing its denier curriculum: We are concerned that schools are teaching climate change issues in a manner that is not consistent with sound science and that is designed to lead students to the erroneous belief that humans are causing a global warming crisis. We hope that our efforts will restore sound science to climate change education and discourage the political propaganda that too often passes as “education”. In Heartland’s statement, it is acknowledged that that budget and donor information are genuine, and apologizes for the security breach. Apologies: The Heartland Institute apologizes to the donors whose identities were revealed by this theft. We promise anonymity to many of our donors, and we realize that the major reason these documents were stolen and faked was to make it more difficult for donors to support our work. We also apologize to Heartland staff, directors, and our allies in the fight to bring sound science to the global warming debate, who have had their privacy violated and their integrity impugned. Ironically, Heartland’s position seems to be that stealing electronic documents from right wing think tanks are viewed as a serious crime, while stealing emails from climate scientists and University labs are considered behavior to be lauded and encouraged. How did this happen? The stolen documents were obtained by an unknown person who fraudulently assumed the identity of a Heartland board member and persuaded a staff member here to “re-send” board materials to a new email address. Identity theft and computer fraud are criminal offenses subject to imprisonment. We intend to find this person and see him or her put in prison for these crimes. UPDATES: More good takes sprouting up all over - Susan Goldenberg, the Guardian – Leak Exposes Heartland Chris Mooney – “Dissuading Teachers” Leo Hickman in the Guardian – Documents Pull Back the Curtain James Hrynyshyn – Heart(land) of Climate Denial Think Progress – Heartland Docs Deep Climate – Heartland Institute Budget and Strategy Revealed Greg Laden – Anti-Science Institute’s Insider Reveals Secrets Planet 3.0 – Is turnabout Fair Play?
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Until now, satellite measurements from only selected places were used to extrapolate the overall ice loss outside Greenland and Antarctica.

Related stories

Scary facts about the national debt

Leaked Documents From Climate Denialism Lobbyists Revealed

How is Joe Bast Like Joe Camel? Looks Like We’re Going to Find Out…..

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