Tag Archives: google

Even George W. Bush’s Environment Chief Thinks Trump’s Energy Plan Is Bonkers

by LashawnGeorgina Posted on June 9, 2016

green4us

“He’s talking about rolling back the clock, which I think is very dangerous.” Joseph Sohm/Shutterstock A couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump took a stage in Bismarck, North Dakota, and laid out his vision for addressing climate change and energy issues should he win the White House. It was about what you might expect from a candidate who has previously claimed that global warming is a hoax invented by Chinese bureaucrats to disadvantage US manufacturers. He railed against the historic global agreement on climate change struck in Paris last year, called President Barack Obama’s cornerstone climate policy “stupid,” and said that his administration “will focus on real environmental challenges, not the phony ones we’ve been looking at.” Though after he fulfills his promise to dismantle the “Department of Environmental,” it is hard to imagine how he would make that happen. The Washington Post called Trump’s proposals “dangerous and nonsensical,” and Christine Todd Whitman, a former Republican governor of New Jersey and head of the Environmental Protection Agency during George W. Bush’s first term, agreed. Whitman has always been a bit of a nonconformist among conservatives on climate change: She pushed hard for Bush to let the United States join the Kyoto Protocol, the last significant stab at global climate action prior to Paris, and she infamously told the Post that she left the EPA after coming under intense pressure from then-Vice President Dick Cheney to implement lax regulations on emissions from coal-fired power plants. These days, she co-chairs the CASEnergy Coalition, an educational coalition that promotes the use of nuclear power as a solution to climate change. In earlier, more innocent days of the Republican primary race, she endorsed Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Now she “will not vote for Trump,” but is on the fence about Hillary Clinton. The Democratic nominee, she said, “has real flaws, but hers are more within the normal parameters we’re used to. Trump’s are way outside, as far as I’m concerned.” I had a chat with Gov. Whitman about the threat Trump’s candidacy poses to Obama’s climate legacy and why his energy “plan” makes no sense: Climate Desk: What did you make of Trump’s energy speech in North Dakota? Christine Whitman: Not surprised, but disappointed. I don’t think he has a full grasp, not surprisingly, of the issues. He’s taking moves that I believe are totally contrary to the health and well-being of the country and the citizens, when you talk about walking away from [the Paris Agreement], when you talk about having a need to restart coal plants. He should know that the reason a lot of the coal plants are shutting down now has nothing to do with environmental regulations and everything to do with economics and the low price of natural gas, which he also wants to encourage. So those two things run counter to one another in a way. He’s talking about rolling back the clock, which I think is very dangerous. CD: Trump’s comments on climate and energy might seem radical, but aren’t they really just a more extreme, less articulate version of sentiments we hear from Mitch McConnell and other prominent Republicans frequently: Climate change isn’t a threat, we need to save coal and the fossil fuel industry, etc.? CW: Well, first of all, environmental protection is a Republican issue. The first president to set aside public land was Lincoln. It was Nixon who established, with a Democratic Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency. This is in our DNA. Conservation is inherently conservative, and it should be something that we embrace. So I would like to see Republicans understand this and also recognize facts. You can have economic growth and a clean and green environment. We’ve done it. It’s not a zero-sum game. They’ve just got to get off this attitude that you can’t have them both at the same time. [During the Nixon era] the public said, “We don’t like being told not to go outside from 10 to 4 because of bad air quality,” and “We don’t like seeing our land turned into a garbage dump.” That’s what drove Congress and the president to actually take action. To walk away from [environmental issues] is a very dangerous political move, if nothing else, because the public still doesn’t want dirty air and dirty water and trashed land. You really don’t have any credible scientists who say that climate change isn’t occurring, and you don’t have any credible scientists who say humans don’t play a role. If you want to ignore it, you do so at your peril. CD: And yet, here we are with a Republican nominee for president who is a climate change denier. What do you think the effect of Trump’s candidacy on Obama’s climate legacy will be? Is he lending a sense of urgency to formally finalize the Paris Agreement? CW: Well, I hope he’s not representative of the party as a whole. I mean, he’s off the charts as far as what you can expect him to do or say. He is scaring other countries, and that’s pushing a desire to get [the Paris Agreement] done while we can—and make it that much harder for him to roll back. He says he’s going to roll back a lot of things, but he can’t do it. He’s not an emperor, but he doesn’t seem to get it. He is going to try to push the powers of the presidency, the boundaries. He doesn’t seem to understand the Constitution or really care much about it. But still, some of those who oppose taking dramatic action [on climate change] in India or in China are saying, “Wait a minute, the United States is going to back out. Do we still want to be a part of this?” So it’s making it much more difficult and confusing for people. CD: What are you hoping to see from the candidates on climate change as the election moves forward? CW: Truth? I hope they don’t get into it. [An election] is the worst time to discuss serious policy, because people politicize everything. I really don’t want to see a deep dive into climate change or into these issues, other than a recognition that they exist, that they’re important, and that we have to take action. Right now, on every issue, the extremes are pushing the agendas. What I’m really scared about is that people get dug in too far. And they’ll have to move further to the left, further to the right, the lines will get harder, and then once someone is elected there will be an inability to move back to the center or to really get things done. We all know that people will say things during campaigns that they don’t really mean. Or they’ll be willing, when they come into office, to look at what the reality is. So when they get in, if they’ve really painted themselves into a corner, then we’re not going to be able to have the kind of discussion that we need to get these issues solved.

See original article:

Even George W. Bush’s Environment Chief Thinks Trump’s Energy Plan Is Bonkers

Related Posts

Obama’s Budget Calls for Billions in Climate Funding
13 Tweets That Definitively Prove That Donald Trump Is Not a Scientist
Obama Just Vetoed the GOP’s Keystone Bill
BREAKING: President Obama Will Veto Congress’ Keystone XL Pipeline Bill
Scientists Bash EPA’s Take On Burning Wood For Power
Care about global climate change? Then fight local air pollution

Share this:






View original article – 

Even George W. Bush’s Environment Chief Thinks Trump’s Energy Plan Is Bonkers

Posted in Black & Decker, Citizen, eco-friendly, FF, For Dummies, G & F, GE, global climate change, LAI, LG, Monterey, ONA, Oster, OXO, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Even George W. Bush’s Environment Chief Thinks Trump’s Energy Plan Is Bonkers

The Super-Rich Tech Elite Is Just Fine With Big Government

by SwenDaneit Posted on May 2, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Gregory Ferenstein, in the course of arguing that super-rich donors are about equally split between Democrats and Republicans (although the Republicans donate more in absolute dollars), points out that the super rich in Silicon Valley are almost exclusively Democrats. Why?

I think the more likely explanation is that the nation’s new industrial titans are pro-government.

Google, Facebook, and most Internet titans are fueled by government projects: the Internet began in a defense department lab, public universities educate a skilled workforce and environmental policies benefit high tech green industries. The CEO of Uber, Travis Kalanick, is a fan of Obamacare, which helps his entrepreneurial drivers keep their health insurance as they transition between jobs.

In other words, the Democratic party is good for emerging industries and billionaires recognize it. Donald Trump is a candidate known to go after major figures in tech; a trend that may further the Democrats friendship with new industrial titans.

Perhaps more importantly, I’ve argued that the modern emerging workforce of Silicon Valley, urbanized professionals, and “gig economy” laborers all represent an entirely new political demographic redefining the Democratic party to be more about education, research and entrepreneurship, and less about regulations and labor unions.

There’s something to this, but I suspect culture has a lot more to do with it. Most of these folks have spent their lives marinating in social liberalism, and being situated in the Bay Area just adds to that. So they start out with a visceral loathing of conservative social policies that pushes them in the direction of the Democratic Party. From there, tribalism does most of the additional work: once you’ve chosen a team, you tend to adopt all of the team’s views.

Beyond that, yes, I imagine that tech zillionaires are more than normally aware of how much they rely on government: for basic research, for standards setting, for regulation that protects them from getting crushed by old-school dinosaurs, and so forth. And let’s be honest: most of the really rich ones have their wealth tied up almost entirely in capital gains, which doesn’t get taxed much anyway. So endorsing candidates who happen to favor higher tax rates on ordinary income (which they probably won’t get anyway) doesn’t really cost them much.

For most folks in Silicon Valley, even the super rich, there’s very little personal cost to supporting Democrats. Combine that with an almost instinctive revulsion at both troglodyte Republican policies and the Fox News base of the party, and there just aren’t going to be many Republican supporters in this crowd.

Link: 

The Super-Rich Tech Elite Is Just Fine With Big Government

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Super-Rich Tech Elite Is Just Fine With Big Government

Pop Goes The Digital Media Bubble

by NorineAlison Posted on April 28, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

You don’t always hear the bubble burst. Often, it’s more a gradual escaping of air, signaled by nothing more than the occasional queasy feeling you bat away: One house for sale on the block, oh well. Two, three—maybe just a robust market? Five, six, seven—and suddenly everyone’s underwater and the sheriff is at your door.

That’s kind of how it’s feeling in the digital media business. For a few years now, investors have been pouring money into online news with the kind of fervor that once fueled the minimansion boom. But in the past year, the boarded-up windows have started showing up: The Guardian, which bet heavily on expanding its digital presence in the United States, announced it needed to cut costs by 20 percent. The tech news site Gigaom shut down suddenly, with its founder warning that “it is a very dangerous time” to be in digital media. Mobile-first Circa put itself on “indefinite hiatus.” Al Jazeera America, once hailed as the hottest thing in bringing together cable news and digital publishing, shut down and laid off hundreds of journalists.

Pop.

And it’s been getting worse. As the New York Times’ John Herrman put it, “in recent weeks, what had been a simmering worry among publishers has turned into borderline panic.” Mashable, which had made a big investment in news and current affairs, laid off dozens of journalists and pivoted to a new, video-heavy strategy. Investor darling BuzzFeed fought reports that it had slashed earnings projections by nearly 50 percent. Salon laid off a string of veteran staffers. Yahoo put its core business, including its news and search features, up for sale.

Pop. Pop.

Here’s the thing: It was not hard to see this coming. For years now, smooth-talking guys (yes, mostly guys) with PowerPoint decks have offered up one magic formula after another to save the business of news. Citizen journalism—all the reporting done by users, for free, with newsrooms simply curating it all. “Brand You”—each journo out there on her own, drawing legions of followers to her personal output. (Even Andrew Sullivan couldn’t make that work.) Viral headlines—every news shop Upworthy-ing its way into the Facebook swarm. Aggregation, curation, explainer journalism, explainer video, branded content, text bots, video, branded video, branded virtual reality video…each fueling the hope that here, at last, was the way to make news profitable again. A whole class of future-of-news pundits made a living pontificating about how “legacy media” were getting their lunch eaten by digital-native startups.

And the investor money kept coming. BuzzFeed, Vox, Vice, Fusion, Mic (not to mention their 1stGen cousins Salon, Slate, Huffington Post, and Gawker)—for a while they all were too fast to fail, hiring Twitter-famous names out of established newsrooms, rolling out sexy technology systems, and exploding watermelons on live video. As Josh Topolsky, a veteran of digital media (most recently at Bloomberg) wrote the other day, “I can tell you from personal experience over the last several months, having met with countless investors and leaders of media companies and editors and writers and technologists in the media world that there is a desperate belief that The Problem can be solved with the New Thing. And goddammit someone must have it in their pitch deck.”

But while a ton of great work has come (and continues to come) out of all the New Things, none of them have answered the burning question of how to pay for journalism—especially the public-interest, watchdog, feet-to-the-fire kind that democracy needs to function. For one thing, all the big new digital shops today employ, between them, a few thousand journalists—compared with the ten-thousand-plus laid off in the great retrenchment of 2007 to 2010. For another, like virtually every other hot property across the internet, digital media startups are better at growing than at showing a profit. And since a profit is what the people supplying those giant piles of cash are ultimately looking for…

Pop. Pop. Pop.

Mother Jones is a nonprofit—precisely to avoid this fate. Tax-deductible donations from readers give us stability.

Remember when Chris Hughes put The New Republic up for sale earlier this year? His letter to TNR staff subtly blamed the very same people it was addressed to: “I will be the first to admit that when I took on this challenge nearly four years ago, I underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate.”

Bullshit. “Transitioning” was not The New Republic‘s main challenge. Refusing to work on, with, and for the internet was once a pervasive problem in news organizations, but while vestiges of that still linger, it is no longer what keeps publications from succeeding financially.

What keeps them from making money now is that online advertising pays pennies. (Actually, a penny per reader is pretty good these days—CPM, or “cost per thousand” ads, is often far less than half that.) And there are a ton of people competing for those fractions of a penny—including Google and Facebook, which collectively pulled in a whopping 85 percent of new ad spending in the first quarter of this year. The only way to make ends meet in that environment is to turn up the fire hose of fast and cheap content or rent your pages out to native advertising (sorry, branded content).

Look at it this way: A reporter doing even modestly original work might produce five stories a week (and that’s not allowing for anything more than a few phone calls and a couple of rounds of editing per piece). If each of those stories gets, on average, 50,000 readers, and each of those page views generates 0.01 cents (again, a very generous rate), you’ll end up grossing $2,500 a week, or $130,000 a year, with which you’ll have to pay the reporter and her editor, their benefits, web tech, sales and ops staff, taxes, insurance, electricity, rent, laptops, phones…

And this calculus assumes a brutal pace of hour-by-hour filing and publishing, with journalists constantly looking over their shoulder at the traffic numbers. (When a New York Daily News editor was fired last week for dropping attributions from columnist Shaun King’s stories, he noted that he was expected to process 20 stories from five reporters each day.) And the kind of digging that an investigative story requires—months of research and reporting, plus fact-checking, editing, and maybe multimedia production—forget it. The math just doesn’t work.

So what does? At MoJo, the answer is: You.

From the very beginning, 40 years ago this year, our newsroom has been built on the belief that journalism needs to be untethered from corporate interests or deep-pocketed funders—that the only way a free press can be paid for is by its readers. This can take a few different forms: subscriptions, donations, micropayments, all of which we’re experimenting with. It can be something the audience is forced to do (via the paywalls you’ll find at the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal) or something they choose to do, as in public radio.

At Mother Jones, we’ve gone the latter route: Our mission is to make our journalism accessible to as many people as possible. Instead of requiring you to pay, we bet on trust: We trust you’ll recognize the value of the reporting and pitch in what you can. And you trust us to put that money to work—by going out there and kicking ass.

Because of your trust, we can choose which stories we go after, rather than chasing the spin du jour. We can look where others in the media do not. We can, as our colleague David Corn puts it, get off the spinning hamster wheel and dig deep.

And we can do it without fearing that some corporate overlord will pull the plug. Remember what happened when casino magnate and Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson bought Nevada’s largest daily newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal: as the sale was being negotiated, reporters were mysteriously tasked with digging up dirt on a judge who’d antagonized Adelson. Then the newsroom was told to back off covering the biggest story in town—their boss. This was a paper where a columnist had already been hounded into bankruptcy by Adelson over a few words. (We faced a similar attack recently from another billionaire upset about our critical coverage of his past.) Your support is what keeps Mother Jones‘ journalists from having to fear that kind of intimidation and control.

If you’re a regular reader of Mother Jones, you’ll have noticed that we’ve been in the equivalent of a pledge drive this month: We need to bring in $175,000 by Saturday to stay on track. This is something we do three times a year, and it’s the most important way we raise money to pay for everything we do.

But we’re not crazy about these monthlong fundraisers, and maybe you aren’t either. So we’re looking at ways to make it easier (“frictionless,” as they say in the tech world) for you to support the journalism you believe in. One of our big initiatives is an online sustainer program, where readers agree to give us a bit of money every month. That could make a big difference for our stability: Just 1,200 more readers who value our reporting enough to pitch in $20 a month would get our “sustaining” revenue up to $50,000 a month, or $600,000 every year. If that’s an option for you, it would be a big help.

Become a monthly donor.

Make a one-time gift.

Meanwhile, that $175,000 by the end of the month? It’s not some arbitrary goal, but the cold, hard number required in our budget to keep our reporters on the beat. In the first 26 days of this month we’ve raised about 75 percent of that, so we need $45,000 in the next four days. But that’s how these campaigns typically work: Everyone waits until the last minute to pitch in.

If that’s you, remember that ultimately this is about something bigger than MoJo. If we’re going to have a functioning democracy, we’ll need a press that can turn over rocks, and the days of that being financed by deep-pocketed media companies are drawing to a close. The new moguls are in the technology business, not the journalism business. And while some of them say wonderful things about journalism, money talks—and right now, the money is saying “pop.”

See more here: 

Pop Goes The Digital Media Bubble

Posted in alo, Anchor, Casio, Citizen, Everyone, FF, Free Press, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Pop Goes The Digital Media Bubble

Middle East Summers Could Become Unlivable By End Of Century

by Myrna Posted on March 9, 2016

The “father of global warming” has a dire warning for people living in hot, tropical locales. Meryll/Shutterstock James Hansen has a dire warning for the Middle East and tropical areas: Summer is coming. By the end of the century, the so-called “father of global warming“ predicts that rising temperatures caused by human-induced climate change will render the countries that already experience hot summers unlivable during those months. “The tropics and the Middle East in summer are in danger of becoming practically uninhabitable by the end of the century if business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions continue, because wet bulb temperature could approach the level at which the human body is unable to cool itself even under well-ventilated outdoor conditions,” Hansen, an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, wrote in anew paper published Wednesday and co-authored with his colleague Makiko Sato. Read the rest at The Huffington Post. From:  Middle East Summers Could Become Unlivable By End Of Century ; ; ;

Read this article: 

Middle East Summers Could Become Unlivable By End Of Century

Posted in cannabis, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, growing marijuana, horticulture, LAI, Monterey, ONA, organic, organic gardening, OXO, Ringer, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Middle East Summers Could Become Unlivable By End Of Century

How to make money by saving monarch butterflies

by BarneyL89nav Posted on February 18, 2016

green4us

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – Instaread

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo | Key Takeaways, Analysis & Review  Preview : The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (2011) by Marie Kondo helps readers discard unnecessary items, reorganize their possessions, and properly store items in a home. The procedures Kondo developed for organization […]

iTunes Store
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – Marie Kondo

This New York Times best-selling guide to decluttering your home from Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes readers step-by-step through her revolutionary KonMari Method for simplifying, organizing, and storing. Despite constant efforts to declutter your home, do papers still accumulate like snowdrifts and clothes pile up like a tangled mess of noodles? Japanese cleaning consultant […]

iTunes Store
Spark Joy – Marie Kondo

Japanese decluttering guru Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up  has revolutionized homes—and lives—across the world. Now, Kondo presents an illustrated guide to her acclaimed KonMari Method, with step-by-step folding illustrations for everything from shirts to socks, plus drawings of perfectly organized drawers and closets. She also provides advice on frequently asked questions, such as whether to […]

iTunes Store
White Dwarf Issue 107: 13th February 2016 (Tablet Edition) – White Dwarf

The ancient Space Wolf returns! That’s right, Ulric the Slayer, greatest and most ancient of the Space Wolves’ Wolf Priests returns, and alongside him a brand new Space Wolves Iron Priest. We’ve got a first look at these heroes of Fenris, including painting guides for each of them in Paint Splatter and full rules for […]

iTunes Store
Marie Kondo’s The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up Summary – Ant Hive Media

Made for those who find themselves drowning in clutter, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo is a must have. What makes this book special is that it delivers a whole new approach called the KonMari method when decluttering, arranging and storing items at home. Author, Marie Kondo, is a Japanese cleaning […]

iTunes Store
How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel's Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, […]

iTunes Store
Codex: Space Wolves – Wulfen Edition (Enhanced Edition) – Games Workshop

Codex: Space Wolves: Wulfen Edition is your complete guide to the armies of the Space Wolves. Inside you will find the ancient origins and glorious history of this First Founding Chapter, their frozen home world of Fenris, and their unique weapons of war. As well as rules for fielding a Space Wolves army in your […]

iTunes Store
Cesar’s Way – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

“I rehabilitate dogs. I train people.” —Cesar Millan There are at least 68 million dogs in America, and their owners lavish billions of dollars on them every year. So why do so many pampered pets have problems? In this definitive and accessible guide, Cesar Millan—star of National Geographic Channel’s hit show Dog Whisperer with Cesar […]

iTunes Store
Warzone Fenris: Curse of the Wulfen (Tablet Edition) – Games Workshop

For ten millennia, the fate of the 13th Company has been a mystery. Now, as strange Warp storms roar into being across the Imperium, the truth of the Wulfenkind is about to be dramatically revealed. The Space Wolves race to the rescue of their lost brothers, doing battle with tides of Daemons and scribing bold […]

iTunes Store
Inside of a Dog – Alexandra Horowitz

The bestselling book that asks what dogs know and how they think. The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human. Horowitz introduces the reader to dogs’ perceptual and cognitive abilities and then draws a […]

iTunes Store

Jump to original: 

How to make money by saving monarch butterflies

Posted in alo, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Monterey, ONA, organic, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How to make money by saving monarch butterflies

Breaking: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Is Dead at 79

by JohnnieVernon5 Posted on February 13, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead at a ranch outside Marfa, Texas, on Saturday, according to multiple news reports. He was 79. The death was confirmed by Texas governor Greg Abbott, in a statement posted to Twitter on Saturday afternoon:

According to an ABC affiliate, KVIA, Scalia died in his sleep last night after a hunting trip.

This is a breaking news post, and we will be updating it with new information as it becomes available.

More: 

Breaking: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Is Dead at 79

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Breaking: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Is Dead at 79

Show your love with earth-friendly flowers

by ElsaCoventry Posted on February 13, 2016

green4us

White Dwarf Issue 107: 13th February 2016 (Tablet Edition) – White Dwarf

The ancient Space Wolf returns! That’s right, Ulric the Slayer, greatest and most ancient of the Space Wolves’ Wolf Priests returns, and alongside him a brand new Space Wolves Iron Priest. We’ve got a first look at these heroes of Fenris, including painting guides for each of them in Paint Splatter and full rules for […]

iTunes Store
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – Marie Kondo

This New York Times best-selling guide to decluttering your home from Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes readers step-by-step through her revolutionary KonMari Method for simplifying, organizing, and storing. Despite constant efforts to declutter your home, do papers still accumulate like snowdrifts and clothes pile up like a tangled mess of noodles? Japanese cleaning consultant […]

iTunes Store
Codex: Space Wolves – Wulfen Edition (Enhanced Edition) – Games Workshop

Codex: Space Wolves: Wulfen Edition is your complete guide to the armies of the Space Wolves. Inside you will find the ancient origins and glorious history of this First Founding Chapter, their frozen home world of Fenris, and their unique weapons of war. As well as rules for fielding a Space Wolves army in your […]

iTunes Store
How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel's Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, […]

iTunes Store
Spark Joy – Marie Kondo

Japanese decluttering guru Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up  has revolutionized homes—and lives—across the world. Now, Kondo presents an illustrated guide to her acclaimed KonMari Method, with step-by-step folding illustrations for everything from shirts to socks, plus drawings of perfectly organized drawers and closets. She also provides advice on frequently asked questions, such as whether to […]

iTunes Store
Codex: Space Wolves – Wulfen Edition (Tablet Edition) – Games Workshop

Codex: Space Wolves: Wulfen Edition is your complete guide to the armies of the Space Wolves. Inside you will find the ancient origins and glorious history of this First Founding Chapter, their frozen home world of Fenris, and their unique weapons of war. As well as rules for fielding a Space Wolves army in your […]

iTunes Store
Warzone Fenris: Curse of the Wulfen (Tablet Edition) – Games Workshop

For ten millennia, the fate of the 13th Company has been a mystery. Now, as strange Warp storms roar into being across the Imperium, the truth of the Wulfenkind is about to be dramatically revealed. The Space Wolves race to the rescue of their lost brothers, doing battle with tides of Daemons and scribing bold […]

iTunes Store
Warzone Fenris: Curse of the Wulfen (Mobile Edition) – Games Workshop

For ten millennia, the fate of the 13th Company has been a mystery. Now, as strange Warp storms roar into being across the Imperium, the truth of the Wulfenkind is about to be dramatically revealed. The Space Wolves race to the rescue of their lost brothers, doing battle with tides of Daemons and scribing bold […]

iTunes Store
Dogtology – J. Lazarus

Dog· tol· o· gy noun 1. The belief in Dog. 2. The system of rituals, practices, and behaviors engaged in by Dogtologists. Chew on this. As humans, we have a deep need to believe . . . a need to relate to something greater and more ideal than ourselves. Perhaps that’s why so many millions […]

iTunes Store
The Art of Raising a Puppy (Revised Edition) – Monks of New Skete

For more than thirty years the Monks of New Skete have been among America's most trusted authorities on dog training, canine behavior, and the animal/human bond. In their two now-classic bestsellers, How to be Your Dog's Best Friend and The Art of Raising a Puppy, the Monks draw on their experience as long-time breeders of […]

iTunes Store

Read article here: 

Show your love with earth-friendly flowers

Posted in alo, aquaponics, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, Monterey, ONA, organic, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Show your love with earth-friendly flowers

How to Protect Your Photos and Files from Natural Disasters

by RozellaMccune Posted on January 4, 2016

If your home is unexpectedly hit by fire, floods, a hurricane, a tornado or even a crashing tree, will your photos and important papers be safe?

If you take some smart precautions before disaster strikes, you can minimize your losses and save yourself a lot of worry, too. Here’s what to do:

1) Digitize photographs. If you still maintainphoto albums that are important to you, be forewarned that they are heavy, bulky and if you have a lot of them, probably too voluminous to move quickly. If you don’t have time to evacuate before a disaster hits, you could lose them all. The solution is to digitize your photos while you have the time and peace of mind to do so. Get an inexpensive scanner and set it up next to your computer screen. Go through your albums, but don’t scan every single image. Most albums show multiple pictures from the same scene. Pick one or two that are most representative, scan those, then file them into folders you can easily sort through and retrieve. The initial scanning process will take time, but once it’s done, you will breathe easier knowing your photos are secure. You can also create a list in Word or other word processing file to remind yourself what pictures are where.

2) Digitize documents. Scan insurance policies, last wills and testaments, passports, bank records, birth certificates, your mortgage and any other documents you wouldn’t want to lose in the event a natural disaster occurs.

3) Set up a back-up hard drive. I have an external hard drive that constantly backs up my files. When I scan a photo, it not only goes to a file on my laptop, it also ends up on the backed-up hard drive. The hard drive is light and portable, so in the event of a disaster, I could easily carry it as well as my laptop out of the house. NOTE: Some people back up to thumb drives, and of course, this works and is better than nothing. But I have a tendency to lose thumb drives or get them confused. The hard drive keeps everything in one place and nicely organized.

4) Back up to “the cloud.” Even though I have a back-up hard drive in my home, I also back up my computer constantly to a secure file in the internet cloud. I had this lesson reinforced a couple of years ago, before I had my own external hard drive back up. I decided I would back up everything to the cloud “just in case.” The day after the back-up was complete, a massive electrical storm in my area completely fried my computer. When I replaced the computer, the backup files were easily re-installed from my file in the cloud, with nothing lost. Companies like Carbonite.com offer good cloud back-up services.

5) Store original documents in a safety deposit box or in a fire-proof bank vault. If you have original documents at home, even after you’ve scanned them, you might want to secure them in a secure safety deposit box in a safe place ora fire-proof bank vault. If you had a lawyer draw up your will, or you have a financial adviser who helps with investments, both of them should also have copies of these documents; check to make sure they’re taking proper precautions.

6) Use the photo back-up options available on your phone. I have an Android phone, so the photos I take on my phone frequently and automatically back up to my Google photos folder. You can do the same on a Mac. By the way, using this feature is also handy in the event your phone is stolen.

7) Store documents and photos on your second floor or higher, if you have one. This is an especially good precaution if you live in an area that is prone to flooding.

8) Identify the most valuable documents, images, files and records to protect, recommends Polygon. Most of us have far more files than we need. Know which ones you need to keep, and which ones aren’t of primary importance. Winnowing out the extras has an added bonus: it will reduce clutter.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security offers useful guidance on how to prepare for natural disasters generally here.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Original post:  

How to Protect Your Photos and Files from Natural Disasters

Posted in alo, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How to Protect Your Photos and Files from Natural Disasters

Here’s a Video Showing the Very Worst Anti-Science Bullshit of 2015

by Myrna Posted on December 23, 2015

Snowballs, witch-hunts, and a big measles outbreak. In 2015, science was a favorite punching bag for many of America’s politicians. While leaders of nearly 200 nations met in Paris to hammer out a historic deal to combat climate change, the US Senate held a hearing—hosted by presidential hopeful Ted Cruz (R-Texas)—to debunk the science. It had a subtle title: “Data or Dogma?” In fact, 2015 did nothing to alter the notion that one whole American political party—and nearly all of its candidates for the White House—remains stuck on a murky spectrum from outright climate denial to the policy version of ¯_(ツ)_/¯, as we wrote about all-too often this year. There was, of course, the infamous snowball thrown on the floor of the Senate. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) claimed that global warming wasn’t happening because it was cold when he made the snowball. (Repeat after me: Weather does not a climate trend make.) But perhaps the more insidious attack on science was directed by Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. Smith accused government scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of rigging climate data to disprove the so-called “global warming pause” (a contested but popular talking point often used to attack the science). He then attempted to depose the scientists and subpoena their documents. “Political operatives and other NOAA employees likely played a large role in approving NOAA’s decision to adjust data that allegedly refutes the hiatus in warming,” he told the Washington Post. But if you can’t fight the science outright in public, why not simply try to ban the words? That was the ingenious tactic allegedly employed by the state of Florida, under Gov. Rick Scott (R). Employees from several state departments said they had been told not to use the phrases “climate change” and “global warming” in official state business. (The governor denied the allegations.) 2015 also saw yet another round of measles outbreaks, including one that spread at Disneyland in California. Public health officials blamed parents who don’t vaccinate their kids. That anti-vaxxer sentiment found a powerful megaphone in Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who at September’s televised GOP debate repeated the totally discredited—and dangerous—theory that vaccines cause autism. “Autism has become an epidemic,” Trump claimed. “Twenty-five years ago, 35 years ago, you look at the statistics, not even close. It has gotten totally out of control.” (Trump insisted he’s still in favor of vaccines, despite warning a national TV audience that they are endangering children.) Watch the whole, not-so-splendid, anti-science show above. Front-page image credit: Smoke: Claire McAdams/Shutterstock; Man: Everett Collection/Shutterstock Follow this link:  Here’s a Video Showing the Very Worst Anti-Science Bullshit of 2015 ; ; ;

View article: 

Here’s a Video Showing the Very Worst Anti-Science Bullshit of 2015

Posted in eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, Hagen, LAI, Monterey, ONA, OXO, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s a Video Showing the Very Worst Anti-Science Bullshit of 2015

Explained in 90 Seconds: Why 1.5 Degrees Matters

by BrittneyMyrick6 Posted on December 10, 2015

green4us

Negotiators are pursuing a far more ambitious limit on global warming. But can that really be achieved? Update—December 10, 2015, 4:50 pm ET: Delegates in Paris appear to have agreed on Thursday to “pursue efforts” to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit)—a target that US negotiators had been pushing for. That’s substantially less warming than the 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) limit that was agreed to in Copenhagen in 2009. Here’s the latest text from Thursday evening’s draft agreement: However, the document also “notes with concern” that the actual actions that countries have so far agreed to take to reduce their emissions fall well short of both the 1.5 degrees C target and the 2 degrees C limit. Original story: The international climate summit in Paris may be getting too ambitious for its own good. There are a lot of numbers flying around at Le Bourget, the modified airport in the northern Paris suburbs where diplomats from around the world are racing toward an unprecedented international agreement to limit climate change. Many of the most important are dollar figures: the need for wealthy countries to raise $100 billion annually to help vulnerable countries deal with climate impacts; promises by the US to double spending on clean energy research and climate adaptation grants for developing countries. But right at the top of the draft agreement is another number that, in the big picture, could be the most important. That’s the overall limit on global temperature increase that the accord is designed to achieve. At the last major climate summit, in 2009 in Copenhagen, world leaders agreed to cap global warming at 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, based largely on findings from scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that anything above that level would be totally catastrophic for billions of people around the world, from small island nations to coastal cities such as New York. All the other moving pieces in the agreement, which officials here hope to conclude by late Friday or Saturday, are more or less aimed at achieving that target. It’s the number that is really driving the sense of urgency here, since earlier this year the world crossed the halfway point toward it. In other words, time is running out to keep climate change in check. As the negotiations push into their final hours, something unexpected is unfolding: That target might get actually get even more ambitious. There’s a very good chance, analysts and diplomats say, that the final agreement will call for a limit of 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F)—a crucial half-degree less global warming. Here’s the relevant section of the text; negotiators need to pick one of these options: The US delegation is supporting Option 2, according to an official in the office of Christiana Figueres, the head of the UN agency overseeing the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official is not authorized to speak to the press about the negotiations. That aligns with the announcement, made yesterday by Secretary of State John Kerry, that the US will join the European Union and dozens of developing countries in the so-called “High Ambition Coalition,” a negotiating bloc that has emerged to push for the strongest outcome on several key points, including the temperature limit. Negotiators in that bloc have realized, the official said, that “if they move the long-term goal further out, it will move politics in the short term closer to where they need to be.” If the 1.5 degrees C target makes it into the final agreement, that would be a massive win for climate activists and delegates from many of the most vulnerable nations, especially the small island nations. Since the 2 degrees C goal was set in Copenhagen, the leaders of low-lying countries like the Marshall Islands and the Maldives have increasingly protested that even that level of warming would essentially guarantee the destruction of their islands. The fact that the US is now backing a more ambitious target is a sign that President Barack Obama is hearing that message, said Mohamed Adow, a Kenyan climate activist with Christian Aid. “Paris is meant to indicate the direction of travel, and the US giving in on this point demonstrates their solidarity,” he said. “You’re talking about a level of warming that we can actually adapt to.” But here’s where things get problematic. There’s a huge difference between including the 1.5 degrees C limit in the agreement, and ensuring that it could actually be met. That’s because other key pieces of the agreement, that could actually make that level of ambition possible, are still far from clear. The biggest obstacle could be the hotly debated “ratchet mechanism,” which would require countries to boost their targets for greenhouse gas reductions over time, and which the US delegation appears to be resisting. The current draft of the text includes language directing countries to provide an update of their progress every five years or so, which would be compiled into a global “stock-take,” a kind of collated update, sometime after 2020. But the enforcement stops there; there’s nothing in the agreement to penalize countries that lag behind or to compel them to boost their ambitions. Yesterday, Kerry offered a confusing take on that problem when he said that in the agreement, “there’s no punishment, no penalty, but there has to be oversight.” Everyone here seems to agree that Paris is only a starting place: Without an incremental ramping-up of climate goals, 2 degrees C—not to mention 1.5—will remain out of reach. The current set of global greenhouse gas reduction targets only limit global warming to roughly 2.7 degrees C (4.9 degrees F). That’s a big gap. “It’s not looking good,” Adow said. “If the US means business, are true to their support, they need to agree to an annual review starting in 2018.” Instead, it seems that the US could be trading a concession on the 1.5 degrees C target for steadfast resistance to increasing its funding for climate adaptation in developing countries. The US is also standing in the way of a “loss and damage” component, which would require heavily polluting countries to compensate countries that have been wracked by climate impacts. Without extra money on the table to invest in clean energy, developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere won’t be able to contribute to the 1.5 degrees C target, said Victor Menotti, executive director of the International Forum on Globalization, a San Francisco-based activist group. “The US is pretty clear they want 1.5,” he said. “The question is what’s going to accompany it, and at what price. They’ll be able to claim climate leadership, but without any means of implementation.” The upshot is that the whole Paris accord risks losing credibility if it comes up with a really ambitious target and no way to reach it. All of these pieces are essential, because even with the best possible outcome in Paris, 1.5 degrees C is going to be really hard to meet, said Guido Schmidt-Traub, executive director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. In a recent report, Schmidt-Traub found that meeting the 2 degrees C limit means ceasing all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide by 2070. And because most coal- and natural gas-fired power plants have multi-decade lifespans, that means we need to start planning to cease building them as soon as possible. “The bottom line is that 2C requires all countries to decarbonize their economy at a very rapid rate, but in our analysis there is some wiggle room,” he said. “If you go to 1.5C, it becomes very hard to have any wiggle room left. This is a very fundamental point that is not being discussed at all in the negotiations.” Master image: A climate activist at the Paris conference calls for limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Michel Euler/AP

Read this article:  

Explained in 90 Seconds: Why 1.5 Degrees Matters

Related Posts

The Paris Climate Agreement Could Be More Ambitious Than Anyone Expected
A Diplomatic, Apocalyptic Game of Jenga
Paris Talks May Set an Ambitious—and Meaningless—Goal on Climate Change
2014 Was the Year We Finally Started to Do Something About Climate Change
A Massive Climate Summit Is About to Happen in Paris. Here’s What You Need to Know.
A Massive Climate Summit Just Started in Paris. Here’s What You Need to Know.

Share this:






See original article here: 

Explained in 90 Seconds: Why 1.5 Degrees Matters

Posted in eco-friendly, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, Hagen, LAI, Monterey, ONA, OXO, PUR, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Explained in 90 Seconds: Why 1.5 Degrees Matters