Friday, March 2, 2018

CRISIS... when I was a kid...some of these were the same as all of us are facing today.. but oh, there's now so many more!!!..



..we had some really pressing 'on-your-mind' issues those decades ago..
...and guess what, they are all still on our list, and on our minds today:


NUCLEAR WEAPONS
When I was a kid.. this was a HUGE deal.. vividly remember diving under the desks whenever tests of the outdoor street sirens went off. (warning of a possible nuke attack.. like those desks were capable of holding back the building to be landing on top of us...sure.)

OVER-POPULATION - FOOD & WATER
With the one never having gotten under control.. it is not to be too much longer, hell, it's NOW.. we're going to be running out of the others. This was another 'biggie' from childhood. Yea.. they were screaming about it even when the population was a third of what it is today.
 "If the current rate of extinction continues, Homo sapiens will be one of the few life-forms left on the planet, its members scrambling violently among themselves for water, food, fossil fuels and perhaps air until they too disappear."

"As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race.. we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland."


MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX  (MIC)

MAJOR WAR (& THE DRAFT)
The draft is included here as really a major item, for its elimination opened the door for the military to take over.. pretty much everything.  
Their purpose and paychecks swell on conflict... they thrive on it, and should they trip over peace, they'd just ignore it, and keep right on fighting.
So now we're into a half-dozen MAJOR conflicts.. and they're itching to start new wars with..
Before this latest round of nuclear saber-rattling, it would have been that climate was our #1 threat. But now, should it keep escalating, it would appear nuclear war is back in contention.

RACISM.. MISOGYNY... BIGOTRY.. EXTREMISM.. ETAL
We've never truly made a serious dent in R-M-B in this country. We talk a good game, but reality proves otherwise. We're completely ineffectual at altering the status-quo belief system.
And probably extremism should be out in its own major category, for many times in history it's been an underlying central cause of World War conflagrations.  
"Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white.. separate and unequal."
We tackle it right, and head-on.. or it has the power to overwhelm and destroy us.
  • They're will be no U.S. to come to the rescue... 'civil war' has potential to be exceptionally horrendous.

___________________________________________________________________

..then came along some new additions to be added to all of the above..
..some were present already, although not like the intensity levels they have reached today:


GLOBAL WARMING & CLIMATE DISRUPTION

We haven't that long left to get our act together, and the way things are now accelerating, in all probability, it might be extremely optimistic it could happen at all.
So the climate were now experiencing is really from what happened 30-40 years ago. We stop burning ALL fossil fuels tomorrow.. we'll still have to deal with temperature increases for all that upcoming time.
And we have not really figured in the rise of methane gases.  

CAPITALISM - CONSUMERISM
We can't keep chewing up resources world-wide at present rates.. NOT even close to them.. we're running out of some already. We are 5% of the world's population, and every one of the seven and a half BILLION people on the planet want our 'lifestyle.'
You don't need to be very in-tune to dope this one out.

TERRORISM
We're amplifying this issue by our direct hand in so many different wars all over the globe.
Pretend for a moment:  You're an Afghan..Iraqi.. Syrian.. Et al. .. living in one of these countries we're regularly bombing the crap out of.. and having lots of your FnF killed & maimed at our hand.. 
...what would be your thinkin about the U.S. being one of the 'good-guys.'
Much is now working in terrorists' favor.. their message craves conflict.. and our present system of government is now all to willing to give it to them in spades.
Talk about the endless ramifications of 'Blowback-War.'
Tell me this is not a blowback world! And as the world sinks deeper into chaos.. the potential numbers of their believers-followers grows exponentially. You have to consider this might really be what these warmongers everywhere actually want to happen.

ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHE - 6TH MASS EXTINCTION
Earth is suffering... badly!!..  
It's happened 5x before.. only this time it will go down as self-inflicted... no asteroids-meteors or volcanic eruptions to lay the blame off on.  

The kids & grand-kids might not yet fully understand how badly they're being screwed, but they surely will soon enough.  

Pollution of all types in this country (and around the world) is reaching exceedingly dangerous levels:

GEOENGINEERING
This is going to very soon sneak up on us, and become one of the leading causes of healthcare crisis IN-THE-WORLD !!!
For every square inch of the planet is being bombarded by toxic chemicals nearly 24/7... in the desperate & false-futile hope of staving-off global warming.  
And the general population has not even begun to look up at the skies.  

DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT - HUMAN RIGHTS
We're on the cusp with this one.. and once again, it's self-inflicted agony. And with only a quarter of the population unwittingly pulling the trigger on everyone.. (including themselves).
We're in a precarious situation:

INEQUALITY - GREED
The 99.0000%-whatever are 'getting-by'.. some LOTS better than others..

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."


ENERGY - FOSSIL FUELS
This is as important as climate, and mass species-extinction, for it is so tied together with these other issues.  
If we have not already reached and gone over 'the edge'.. we're very close to that apocalyptic time.. and advancing at a rate of speed that has hardly slowed one bit since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Today, it takes about one barrel of conventional U.S. oil to produce the equivalent of nine barrels, or 378 gallons of gasoline. When it comes to shale oil.. it's a loss.. one barrel produces less than five (the loss point).
And have been resisting, trying to kill-off all the ones would get us longevity.. renewable-energy. When the guys in charge first knew 40 years ago about ACD, had they gone huge into alternate-energy, they'd be even wildly richer than they are today... and it would have been sustainable.. infinite sources of energy!!

  • It forever will remain the most costly/short-sighted/greedy decision humankind has made...ultimately forcing humanity to an early exit.

MASS MIGRATION
All these peoples do not readily 'choose' to leave their homes & homeland!!  
They'll be ten of millions.. then hundreds of millions of migrants.. with no end in sight.
Today will be increasingly remembered, and longed for as.. 'the-good-old-days.'


GUNS - 2nd AMMENDMENT
Right now issues deal with them are a major category:

GOVERNMENT-IN-CHAOS
When first starting to write this post, did not have intention of including this as a 'crisis.' But in the course of the last year.. and in the course of putting together this recap.. it has become quite evident.. a very grave and dangerous one.
The chaos and corruption are getting worse and there's no end in sight. And when considering how serious all the other major crisis are.. this only makes them all THAT MUCH MORE INCREDIBLY WORSE!!!

All this mayhem really falls squarely on the shoulders of the Democrats. They once had on the ticket, while not the most perfect of candidates (none ever are or will be).. but he was the embodiment of what this country needed at this precise point in history (and he would have won!).. and they got totally GOP stupid, and royally fucked it all up.
God do we desperately need another major political party!!


************************

..you're getting the picture, right.. we can keep adding on without any problem..
.. what we appear incapable of doing is knocking any of the items off the list..

..right now there's a bakers-dozen-plus, and God that sure is enough.. but if history teaches us anything, man is not capable (especially at this present moment) of not adding more items to this apocalyptic list.. 

..and there must be a point when we get all ages up-to-speed-educated & intensely involved in all these issues.. maybe now's gotta be that time..
.. it's not just about guns... it's WAY-MORE-BIGGER than that !!!!

 ..and believe me.. we'd give every dime owned to be wrong on all or any of this..
..but.. the obvious is just that.






This is being posted as a work-in-progress.. there's LOTS of links here, with more being added. So take your time reading them.. and frequently return to see what's been added/altered/deleted.. 
...and feel free to send comments by social media, or personal correspondence.. to get something said/added/debated.


TO BE CONTINUED...




Posted by at 5:59 PM

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

..Happy Valentines Day..

..there are too many political leaders having no business holding office.. as their politics stink!!!
..she's not perfect but her beliefs in helping average Americans set her apart..

..on her subscription list, this is her most recent email..


******************
 
BJ
I’m fighting my heart out this week to pass a clean Dream Act – to keep our country’s promise to 800,000 young people who have grown up herein America and who want to stay in the only home most of them have ever known. And I’m fighting my heart out in a zillion other ways to level the playing field for working families in Massachusetts and across the country.

But I did take a little time this weekend – while watching Pittsfield’s own Chris Mazdzer win the silver medal in men’s luge (WOO-HOO!) – to bake a heart-shaped cake.

My mother was born on February 14, 1912 – 106 years ago today. She loved her special connection to Valentine’s Day, and when I was a little girl, I bought some heart-shaped pans at the dime store to bake her birthday cake.

Many years later, when my mother was in her 80s, she had some surgery for a cancerous polyp – nothing serious. The day before she was scheduled to go home, the whole family came to the hospital, had wheelchair races in the hallways, and laughed and joked and had good fun.

Later that night after Daddy sent all of us home, she was watching TV in bed with Daddy holding her hand. She sat up and said, “Don, there’s that gas pain again.” Then she fell back dead.

The autopsy showed that my mother had advanced heart disease – never diagnosed and never treated. My daddy had a heart attack when I was 12, and my mother and I had spent our whole lives worrying about him. No one had any idea we should worry about my mother.

Too often we think of heart disease as a “man’s disease,” but it’s the #1 killer of women – causing 1 in 3 deaths every year. 90% of women have one or more risk factors for heart disease or stroke. But because heart disease can often go undiagnosed, and because the symptoms of a heart attack can be different for men and women, fewer women than men survive their first heart attack. African American and Latina women are especially at risk.

Access to good medical care – regular check-ups and preventative care – is the first step to fighting heart disease. That’s why I fight so hard for community health centers. They provide the best possible basic health care at lower costs to anyone who walks through their doors.

Part of what makes community health centers special is that each one adapts to their community’s needs. In Brockton, Massachusetts, for example, the community health center partners with a local, family-owned Cape Verdean supermarket to teach residents about healthy cooking and active lifestyles. In East Boston, which is geographically isolated from the rest of the city, the community health center operates a 24/7 emergency room. And community health centers like the one in New Bedford have a pharmacy right on-site, so patients can pick up their medications right away with less chance that they’ll go unfilled.

For more than four months, the Republicans let federal funding for our community health centers expire. They were so focused on stripping health care coverage from many of the people who rely on community health centers that they ran right past the funding deadline. The community health center professionals that I spoke to from Massachusetts and across the country were horrified that they’d have to lay off doctors and nurses, cut services, or reduce hours.

We fought tooth and nail for that funding for more than 100 days, and I have some good news: as part of last week’s budget deal, we secured $7 billion for community health centers over the next two years. That was a $600 million bump in funding to support their powerfully important work.

I still have my heart-shaped pans – and even though my mother is gone now, I still bake a heart-shaped cake every Valentine’s Day to remember her. But now I’m doing something more: I’m fighting to make sure everyone’s mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, wife, partner, friend and neighbor can get the basic health care they need to live long, healthy lives with the people they love.

 
Click 'Display Images' to see this photo!

Thank you for being a part of this, and Happy Valentine's Day!

Elizabeth
Posted by at 10:44 AM

Sunday, January 21, 2018

... stop accepting the extremes of capitalism... CivicAction.com


The top one percent controls nearly 40% of the wealth in the United States. Globally, eight men -- and yes, they’re all men -- now own the same amount of wealth as 3.6 billion people.

What. The. Heck.

It’s not just ridiculously rich individuals who are taking advantage of the system. Corporations are not sharing the prosperity, either.

Corporate profits are at all-time highs, while most Americans don’t have $1,000 in savings.

Has it finally come to this -- do we just accept this behavior as “just how the economy works”?

Only a few people are really benefiting from today’s economic gains. That must change.

We’re not talking about creating a purely equal society. We’re simply suggesting that the prosperity needs to be widely shared.

We’re not simply making a moral argument -- we’re making an economic one.

Our economy will grow much faster if more Americans are included in the economy. When people have enough money to not go shopping for new shoes, or go on a vacation.

Right now, due to corporate greed, people are living paycheck to paycheck. And guess what? They don’t buy as many things! When a large number of people are excluded from the economy as consumers, growth slows down and the economy weakens.

It’s ultimately in the best interests of all of us -- working class, middle class, and yes, businesses -- for people to be paid more.

That’s why you need to support a higher minimum wage, paid paternity and maternity leave, and time-and-a-half pay for every hour worked over 40 hours.

These are policies which empower Americans up and down the economic ladder.

The engine of our economy is you -- not some corporation.

Remember that. Remember that every time a politician tells you that small businesses drive an economy. Or when they prioritize policies that place profits above your economic well-being.

You are the economy. It’s time our politicians prioritize your bank account, not corporations.

Let’s re-imagine what a “successful” economy looks like.


... keep holding corporations accountable.

CivicAction.com

-
Posted by at 12:06 PM

Thursday, December 28, 2017

..this could be our Fukishima.. and much more..

Should you have decided not to read (or not all of it) Michael Lewis's brilliant article..  

"Why the Scariest Nuclear Threat May Be Coming from Inside the White House"

 I'm sharing this blog post with you, in hopes of changing your mind. 
Here below is just a briefly outlined facet of his insightful, very important piece. It is so much more than just about Hanford, on several different levels.. and maybe helps gets the world to understand and question what we need to know and do heading towards our very dubious future.

**********


The Hanford Site (here are pictures) is a mostly decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the United States federal government on the Columbia River in the state of Washington.
The Hanford Site occupies 586 square miles —roughly equivalent to half of the total area of Rhode Island—within Benton County, Washington. Closed to the general public, it is a desert environment receiving under 10 inches of annual precipitation, covered mostly by shrub-steppe vegetation. The Columbia River flows along the site for approximately 50 miles, forming its northern and eastern boundary.


Established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project in Hanford, south-central Washington, the site was home to the B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. During the Cold War, the project expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five large plutonium processing complexes, which over almost a half-century produced plutonium for most of the more than 60,000+ weapons built for the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

The weapons production reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, and decades of manufacturing left behind 53 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste stored within 177 storage tanks, an additional 25 million cubic feet of solid radioactive waste, and 200 square miles of contaminated groundwater beneath the 
site.



“Nobody in the world has waste like ours”..  No one has so much strontium 90, which behaves a lot like calcium and lodges inside the bones of any living creatures it penetrates, basically forever. Along with chromium and tritium and carbon tetrachloride and iodine 129 and the other waste products of a plutonium factory, it is already present in Hanford’s groundwater.

In 2007, the Hanford site represented two-thirds of the nation's high-level radioactive waste by volume. Hanford is currently the most contaminated nuclear site in the U.S. 
Beneath Hanford is a massive underground glacier of radioactive sludge moving slowly, but relentlessly, toward the Columbia River.


The place is now an eerie deconstruction site, with ghost towns on top of ghost towns. Much of the old plutonium plant still stands: the husks of the original nine reactors, built in the 1940s, still line the Columbia River, like grain elevators. Their doors have been welded shut, and they have been left to decay—for another century.

Three years ago the D.O.E. sent local Indian tribes a letter to say they shouldn’t eat the fish they caught in the river more than once a week. And downwind of Hanford, people experienced unusually high rates of certain kinds of cancer, miscarriages, and genetic disorders that went largely ignored.

They call it T-plant, the long gray concrete building where they brought the irradiated material from the reactors, to cull the plutonium that went into the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki. Because it, too, is cold and dark, it is of less concern than the land surrounding it, for that is where the waste from the plant got dumped. The Nagasaki bomb contained about 14 pounds of plutonium (each gram of plutonium leaves a ton of solid and liquid waste), and the radioactive waste generated fills acres of manicured dirt (plutonium production ended in 1989 after 70 metric tons of plutonium had been produced), the texture of a baseball infield, just downhill from the plant. “The tank farm,” it's called.


On these farms lay buried 177 tanks, each roughly the size of a four-story apartment building and capable of holding a million gallons of “high-level waste.” Fifty-six million gallons now in the tanks are classified as “high-level waste.” What, you might ask, is high-level waste? “Incredibly dangerous stuff,” says Tom Carpenter, executive director of the Hanford Challenge, the organization which has monitored the site since the late 1980s. “If you’re exposed to it for even a few seconds you probably got a fatal dose.”

Hanford turns out to be a good example of an American impulse: to avoid knowledge that conflicts with whatever your narrow, short-term interests might be. What we know about Hanford we know mainly from whistle-blowers who worked inside the nuclear facility—and who have been ostracized by their community for threatening the industry in a one-industry town.

One hundred and forty-nine of the tanks in the Hanford farms are made of a single shell of a steel ill-designed to contain highly acidic nuclear waste. Sixty-seven of them have failed in some way and allowed waste or vapors to seep out. Each tank contains its own particular stew of chemicals, so no two tanks can be managed in the same way. At the top of many tanks accumulates a hydrogen gas, which, if not vented, might cause the tank to explode. “There are Fukushima-level events that could happen at any moment,” says Carpenter. “You’d be releasing millions of curies of strontium 90 and cesium. And once it’s out there it doesn’t go away—not for hundreds and hundreds (or thousands) of years.”

The people who created the plutonium for the first bombs, in the 1940s and early 1950s, were understandably in too much of a rush to worry about what might happen afterward. They simply dumped 120 million gallons of high-level waste, and another 444 billion gallons of contaminated liquid, into the ground. They piled uranium (half-life: 4.5 billion years) into unlined pits near the Columbia River. They dug 42 miles of trenches to dispose of solid radioactive waste—and left no good records of what’s in those trenches.

In early May of this year a tunnel at Hanford collapsed, built in the 1950s to bury low-level waste. In response, the workers dumped truckloads of dirt into the hole. That dirt is now classified as low-level radioactive waste and needs to be disposed of. “The reason the Hanford cleanup sucks—in a word—is shortcuts,” said Carpenter. “Too many goddamn shortcuts.”


Toward the end of his time as secretary of energy, Ernie Moniz suggested the department, for the first time ever, conduct a serious study of the risks at Hanford. Once the risks were spelled out, perhaps everyone would agree that it was folly to try to turn it into, say, a playground. Maybe the U.S. government should just keep a giant fence around the place and call it a monument to mismanagement. Maybe the people at the labs could figure out how to keep the radioactivity from seeping into the Columbia River and leave it at that. Maybe it shouldn’t be the D.O.E.’s job to deal with the problem at all, as the problem had no good solution, and the political costs of constant failure interfered with the D.O.E.’s ability to address problems it might actually solve.

It turned out no one wanted to make a serious study of the risks at Hanford. Not the contractors who stood to make lots of money from things chugging along as they have. Not the career people inside the D.O.E. who oversaw the project and who feared that an open acknowledgment of all the risks was an invitation to even more lawsuits. Not the citizens of Eastern Washington, who count on the $3 billion a year flowing into their region from the federal government. Only one stakeholder in the place wanted to know what was going on beneath its soil: ..the local Indian tribes. These tribes have inhabited these lands for thirteen thousand years, and they deal with this incursion with the dignity and determination of an ancient people. 
A radioactive ruin does not crumble without consequences, and yet, even now, no one can say what these are.


Here is where the Trump administration’s willful ignorance plays a role. If your ambition is to maximize short-term gains without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing those costs. If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it’s better never to really understand those problems. 
 There is a downside to knowledge. It makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a certain worldview.

***********

As of April 2017, 31 countries worldwide are operating 449 nuclear reactors for electricity generation.. and 60 new nuclear plants are under construction in 15 countries. It was not that long ago, that there were nine processing reactors at this one site in Hanford.
All of these nuclear reactors, as they keep aging (shelf-life is 40-50 years) become greater and greater risks. Hanford is so dangerous, because it just contains so much more radioactive material.. is so old.. and may soon be, through the actions of this administration, without necessary funds to do the utmost to contain itself.. to ultimately protect all of us.

It might take a little while (or not), but this Pandora's box definitely has all the earmarks of becoming the largest man-made disaster the world has ever seen, or potentially ever will see... and NO one wants to deal with that possibility... not yesterday, today, not ever..   as always, nature eventually will.

The Pacific Ocean is being attacked by Fukushima on one side, and still to come, Hanford on the other. Over time all the oceans, and then the entire planet will be subjected to ever increasing levels of deadly radiation... taking hundreds, thousands, even millions of years to lessen the threat to life.

Were we the 'intelligent' species we claim to be, we would have understood nuclear technology is distinctly two-fold.. to get energy... you also get massive amounts of extremely dangerous radioactive waste as a by-product from production of that energy.
Trying to have the one without the ability to control the other was (and is) insanely dangerous, and completely reckless to start with. Yet here we are.. continuing to try and use a technology we might not have effective control over for a completely undetermined length of time.. if ever. And whenever it is the real sh*t-hits-the-fan in Hanford, it's then going to be way too late to put the genie back in the bottle.

Either way, we'll probably all eventually come to realize, it would have been our unwavering demand for energy (fossil fuels and nuclear) that was to bring about our ultimate demise.






(now seriously.. be sure to read carefully the entire article by Michael Lewis)
 



Posted by at 3:33 AM

Wednesday, December 27, 2017

“Michael Lewis knows how to tell a story. ” —Vanity Fair


Michael Lewis has published many New York Times bestselling books on various subjects. His most recent works are Flash Boys, The Big Short, and Boomerang, narratives set in the global financial crisis. The Blind Side, published in 2006, tells the story of Michael Oher, a poor, illiterate African-American kid living on the streets of Memphis whose life is transformed after he is adopted by white Evangelical Christians.

Before that he wrote Moneyball, a book ostensibly about baseball but also about the way markets value people. Both of his books about sports became movies, nominated for Academy Awards, as did his book about the 2008 financial crisis, The Big Short. His other works include The New New Thing, about Silicon Valley during the Internet boom; Coach, about the transformative powers of his own high school baseball coach; Losers, about the 1996 Presidential campaign; and Liar’s Poker, a Wall Street story based in part on his own experience working as a bond salesman for Salomon Brothers.

Mr. Lewis is a columnist for Bloomberg View and a contributing writer to Vanity Fair. His articles have also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Gourmet, Slate, Sports Illustrated, Foreign Affairs, and Poetry Magazine. He has served as editor and columnist for the British weekly The Spectator and as senior editor and campaign correspondent for The New Republic. He has filmed and narrated short pieces for ABC-TV’s “Nightline;” created and presented a four part documentary on the social consequences of the internet for the British Broadcasting Corporation; and recorded stories for the American public radio show, This American Life.

Mr. Lewis grew up in New Orleans and remains deeply interested and involved in the city. He holds a bachelor’s degree in art history from Princeton and a master’s degree in economics from the London School of Economics. He lives in Berkeley, California with his wife, Tabitha Soren, and their three children: Quinn, Dixie and Walker. In 2009 he published Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood, about his attempts to raise them.




...the one to read first is the July 26th, 2017 piece.. 'Scariest Nuclear Threat'...
..understandably it has caused quite the stir.. you know where.. to you know who !!

 
Posted by at 9:38 AM

..right now, as a species... we don't appear to be quite ready for what we have conceived..

Climate Change Is Happening Faster Than Expected, and It’s More Extreme

...human-caused emissions will lead to bigger impacts on heat and extreme weather, and much sooner than expected


..if we had really been concerned, we would have taken this last election to act..
..and now it's most evident we're not going to be making meaningful change in time..
..the leadership in charge at the moment does not have the spine to go up against the oligarchs bribing them and leading them on, and so our fate is sealed..

..ten more years of this.. twenty at the most, and miracles will be necessary..
..there was a candidate that could have started enacting the changes needed, but his party was shortsighted and would not heed the message, and get behind the progressive cause..

..money without wisdom always makes bad decisions.. why so many with it are not capable of such insight is a question for the ages..
..civilizations before us have come to similar ends.. but this time the scale will be unmatched in human history..

..there are billions of us, and no way to guess how many, if any, will pull through.. and what their life will be like in a very dubious future..
..but getting there is going to be long, and hell-on-earth.. many of those futuristic films we've been watching for all these years will have been windows into our future..

.."the most ominous risks of surprises like "tipping points" or "compound extremes"—sucker punches, combination punches, and even knockout punches...the more climate changes, the greater the potential for these...
 ...uncertainty is not our friend... we are seeing increases in extreme weather going well beyond what has been predicted or projected in the past... we're learning that there are factors we were not previously aware of that may be magnifying the impacts of human-caused climate change"

.."increasingly, science suggests many of the impacts are occurring earlier and with greater amplitude than was predicted..
...there should be more monitoring of global warming impacts, but all those programs are threatened under the current administration.. continued funding to support research is critical.. and here, again, we encounter a very unfavorable political environment where fossil fuel-beholden politicians that run the White House and Congress are doing everything they can to defund and suppress research on climate change science and impact assessments."


... "climate change threatens us all, regardless of political affiliation... with serious consequences for people and the ecosystems of the only planet that can support us."

 
..we are nothing short of.. 'very serious trouble'.. and as every time-frame gets shortened, eventually there comes an end.. and none is left for us..





 


Posted by at 4:59 AM

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

The "Nickname" Narrative

Nicknames can be tricky things... most times chosen for us, not by us.. some are liked (by us).. others, not so much.

Being born Bernard Joseph (Anthony was the later confirmation-addition) in Yonkers, New York.. when brought home, I was instantly declared to be "Brother" by my four year old sister, Diane.
When I was very small, we moved from Westchester County to upper Riverside Drive in Manhattan, so my father (Bernard.. aka "Benny") could be closer to his work as a blacktop construction foreman.

As I grew older, and he would sometimes take me to job sites to help with odd jobs (cleaning 'smudge-pots' was NOT a personal favorite), I became "Benny Jr" to all his friends and co-workers.
When he transferred work locations up to the Bronx, we then moved to 169th Street on Jerome Avenue, a few blocks north of Yankee Stadium. It was at that time when in middle school that I first became "Bernie."

My mom, Josephine, always disliked Bernie, she didn't like being called "Josie," and so my new handle to her was none better. She wanted to have me go around telling everyone to call me Bernard.. for that's all she ever called me her entire life.
Good luck with that... young people, especially teenagers, will most times call you what they know you don't especially care for, no matter WHAT you ask them !!

That stuck through most of high school and early years of college until I met (later to become a life-long good friend). Mike Hart, at Iona College in New Rochelle, NY. It was Mike that first started calling me "BJ".. and I preferred that moniker to all the others.
So from then on, most times when someone asked.. I was BJ.
(There have been exceptions, where folks make assumptions, and I don't always correct them.. and I take full responsibility.)

Trying to get old dogs (or people) to change ways at best has mixed results. One or two balk incessantly.. some over time will adjust to the change.. and others just say ok right from the time you tell them (my favorite)... and a good portion will flip back and forth (like Mike), one to the other.. at times, in the course of the same conversation.

So on my headstone, don't be surprised to find...Bernard.. Brother.. Benny Jr... Bernie.. & BJ (w/ the largest lettering).

..and BTW.. Bernadette has similar feelings regarding her nickname(s).. she accepts "Bern".. but could totally take a pass on the "other" one...(but will respond).

 
Posted by at 6:35 AM

Saturday, December 2, 2017

..tweeting is good.. calling is better..

Six key senators haven’t finally decided whether or not to support a tax bill that puts health coverage on the line for millions — and they could cast a deciding vote this week.

These key lawmakers need to hear from as many of us as possible before they vote. Tweet at them now and make sure they reject any tax bill that puts coverage at risk. 
 
Tweet at Senator Collins Tweet at Senator Corker
Tweet at Senator Flake Tweet at Senator Johnson
Tweet at Senator McCain Tweet at Senator Moran

The Senate’s tax bill would repeal the individual mandate, which is critical to ensuring as many people as possible stay enrolled. Without the individual mandate, fewer people will sign up for health insurance. Costs would then go up for others signed up for health coverage. That could force more Americans to forego coverage.

The Senate’s tax bill could lead to a domino effect that could result in the loss of coverage for millions of people and result in significant cuts to Medicare.

That’s why we’re speaking up now — and letting key senators know that their vote could seriously harm their constituents, and all Americans.

Make a call and stop this bill !!   
Phone the United States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121. 
A switchboard operator will connect you directly with the Senate office you request.

 
 
Posted by at 10:07 AM

Friday, December 1, 2017

..KEEP LOOKING UP..!!!

..have posted about this catastrophe-in-progress numerous times..
..yet talking with many, and they have no clue as to what's happening..

..the most widespread experiment the world has ever seen..
..we do not have the wisdom to comprehend what we are attempting..
..long term effects will be devastating and irreversible for many lifetimes..

.watch the entire film.. it's a pretty good one for explanation..

FRANKENSKIES FULL LENGTH DOCUMENTARY (GEOENGINEERING / CHEMTRAILS) DIRECTOR'S CUT

..as we 'advance'.. we abandon logic out of desperation and fear..
..dumping millions of tons of toxic aerosols into the atmosphere, in the hope of what..
..it's ass-backwards to the ultimate degree..

..we're experiencing huge insect (and other species) population crashes..
..not rocket science.. it ain't good for 'living' things..
..breathing this shit in is seriously dangerous..

Geoengineering..More Harm Than Good

 ..collected these guys from out on our deck in 'one' day several months back..
..they just don't fall out of the sky together meaninglessly..

..our 'canary-in-the-mine'.. has been conferred
..we're lots bigger.. so we'll take longer..
..as for avoiding it.. the ultimate effect has to be the same..
...'detrimental towards all living things'..

..ps.. the article's talkin like it's not yet a foregone conclusion..
..dispelling that falsehood.. just look up at the skies most every day, no matter where you are in the world..




..toxins.. sprayed in the air.. and applied on the ground..
..chem-companies rule..

Researchers Warn Massive Insect Die-off Is Harbinger Of “Ecological Armageddon”


..KEEP LOOKING UP..!!!



 
Posted by at 11:16 AM

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

..strange happens..

.. and there are certain unexplained occurrences in life.
..have told this story numerous times.. it always has a weird effect..

..once out of college, during the last years of the Vietnam War..
..I was 1A draft status.. waiting to be called to active duty (and undoubtedly head off to Indochina)..

..no corporate employers would bother with me, so a job hacking a NYC cab filled the bill during that time..
..on a day-off, was shopping in New Rochell in Westchester, not far from Iona where I had gone to school..
..I ran into someone who indicated they knew me very well from college, acting as if we had been something like best friends..
..to this day I honestly have no recollection as ever having met him previously..

..anyway, we chatted for a bit, and of course the topic came up about what was happening with me and the war..
..once he knew, he straight off said he was a member of a local Naval Reserve unit, and that his unit was looking for new recruits... and would I be interested.. 
..I've never had such a desire to suck a man's face before or since..

..that evening I went and signed right up.. two weeks later found myself in Norfolk, Virginia part of the 'plank-owner' pre-com crew for the USS John F Kennedy CVA-67 aircraft carrier...
..for the next year was stationed in Virginia while the ship was being made ready for sea-duty, and coming home every weekend on leave..
..then a year in the Mediterranean on the ship's maiden showboat cruise to all the NATO countries of Europe.. it was a whirlwind, and lots of good times..

..never saw that guy again after running into him on the street that fateful day.. even though this was a very small unit I had signed up with..
..it still remains one of the most surreal happenings of my life..


ps.. ..in all the years attending Iona, I never ever remember shopping in New Rochelle... (just sayin).. was a city kid, day-hoppin to college.



 
Posted by at 12:57 PM

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Should we all hate them... you better believe we should !!

What is absolutely repulsive is that they all knew and did nothing !!
..and these freakin bastards are still at it today !!

Instead of decades ago changing course, and being out in the forefront, using their enormous power and profits to research and bring us into a new and better energy world..
....greed and shortsightedness ruled, and stayed the course for ultimate planetary doom.


Exxon Knew...

...more than 45 years ago.

... and Exxon didn’t just “know” about climate change: it conducted some of the original research.

Scientists from numerous American and multinational oil companies (American Petroleum Institute (API)) were very much aware of global warming in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

..all the while continuing to hard fight against any and all regulations..


The list goes on and on.. anyone getting their head out-from, and truly wanting to know..
...just do research, all the evidence is there for any and all to see...
...but you first must abandon your denial !!


Investors may continue choosing to ignore the truth, and profit from the blood-money of these morally bankrupt and utterly ruthless companies. 
Just as they did with the big tobacco companies, when they were denying and obfuscating the facts years ago.
It is just as repulsive.. no, it's really soooo much worse.. 
...for it will ultimately result in costing much of humanity its future !!!!



 
Posted by at 6:30 AM

Monday, May 1, 2017

This is an ALL-OF-US-ISSUE... and is going to be the FIGHT-OF-OUR-LIVES !!

Why do we do so little when we know so much?

The film DISRUPTION looks at the consequences of our inaction... arguing this is an issue EVERYONE can and should be involved in.

This is the story of our unique moment in history. We are living through an age of tipping points, and rapid social and planetary change.
Disruption takes an unflinching look at the devastating consequences of our inaction. The exploration lays bare the terrifying science, the shattered political process, the unrelenting industry special interests, and the civic stasis that have brought us to this social, moral and ecological crossroads.

This film enlarges the issue beyond climate impacts, and makes a compelling call for bold action, that is strong enough to tip the balance to build a clean energy future.

“In the past, masses of people have taken the wheel of history and turned it. We have a responsibility to rise to our historic moment.” ... THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE !!


 
(watch full-screen)

,,, now it is 2017.. and the most powerful and influential country on the planet has just elected the utmost climate change denying administration possible.
Posted by at 4:50 AM

Sunday, April 30, 2017

...the earth has natural warming cycles... this is just one of them..

..."the earth has natural warming cycles... this is just one of them"..
..we hear this mantra over and over from climate skeptics/ deniers as justification for their beliefs..

..well.. April, 2015 was the first time in 800,000 years that CO2 levels went above 400ppm... (from what we are able to measure..see below**)

The last time the concentration of Earth's main greenhouse gas reached this mark, horses and camels lived in the high Arctic. Seas were at least 30 feet higher.. at a level that today would inundate major cities around the world.

The planet was about 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer. But the Earth then was in the final stage of a prolonged greenhouse epoch, and CO2 concentrations were on their way down. This time, 400 ppm is a milepost on a far more rapid uphill climb toward an uncertain climate future.

The last time the concentration of CO2 was as high as 400 ppm was probably in the Pliocene Epoch, between 2.6 and 5.3 million years ago. Until the 20th century, it certainly hadn't exceeded 300 ppm, let alone 400 ppm, for at least 800,000 years**.
(**That's how far back scientists have been able to measure CO2 directly in bubbles of ancient air trapped in Antarctic ice cores.)

"What everything is telling you is that the system is very sensitive. The threshold for losing the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets is very close to where we are now."

Everything in the geologic record says we're very close. You don't need a lot of CO2.. you just need a little bit of warming, and it doesn't matter how you get it."
The Earth does not care how CO2 originates.. it reacts the exact same way irregardless of origin.

And... "it took between a thousand and a few thousand years to melt all or most of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. The whole inter-glacial lasted 30,000 years, nearly three times as long as ours has lasted so far. So the warming had a long time to build up.

We've brought up our CO2 levels from 280ppm to 400ppm in the amazingly short span of less than 200 years... THAT's ACD!! ... (Anthropogenic Climate Disruption)

At 400 ppm, CO2 is much higher now, and it's still climbing fast. And even if we could stop that rise tomorrow, the planet's temperature will still be climbing for (many decades, if not) centuries.
"For [us] personally that's the scary thing.. we really don't know what we've already committed ourselves to."... and we're still making it very much worse.


Why do climate deniers have such an impossible time accepting what 97% of all scientists have agreed upon?

The facts are undeniable. Sea levels and global temperatures are rising (year after year is the hottest on record), glaciers are melting, and ice sheets are shrinking at unprecedented rates. CO2 levels have also shot up dramatically since the Industrial Revolution.

How is it possible to deny this overwhelming evidence that global warming is real and humans contribute to it?

For starters, many leaders and fossil fuel corporations.. (as well as their investors).. have a strong financial incentive to ignore (and obfuscate) facts.
But there are many other subtle reasons why people might turn a blind eye to research.

They seek out information that confirms their beliefs.. and ignore anything that challenges them.
At the core of climate change denial is the brain’s confirmation bias.. a natural tendency to seek and interpret facts in a way that confirms our pre-existing beliefs.
“Nobody wants to be wrong, and that elicits confirmation bias, which is when we seek out information that confirms that we believe to be true.” We believe what we choose and want to believe.

They don’t trust scientists, and listen instead to high-profile skeptics.
Add to this equation a distrust of experts and scientists (a psychological phenomenon known as “discredence”), and you’ve got a recipe for denial.

Climate change denial hit a six-year high in 2014, with 23% of Americans saying they do not believe in global warming, and 53% saying they do not believe global warming is human-caused.
This is likely due, in large part, to the influence of high-profile climate skeptics.

“Social scientists have documented that the public follows ‘elite cues’ when forming opinions on topics, especially those for which they don’t have a lot of information. So when Republican politicians and pundits, whose voices are amplified by conservative media figures, deny climate change, this readily filters down to party activists and eventually many lay Republicans.”

“A single exposure to a denial message significantly reduces subjects’ belief in and concern about climate change.. when issues become more politically polarized, there’s a greater gap between scientists and public opinion."

“In order to be in denial, we kind of need others to participate. So we need to recognize so much of what we’re looking at is a social process, not an individual issue.”
It’s easy for people to expose themselves only to beliefs that reinforce their own through media exposure and their own social networks, which may reinforce their views while shielding them from dissenters. This is also known as the “echo chamber” effect.

“The conservative echo chamber.. Fox News, talk radio, conservative columnists and bloggers.. combine to create a ‘bubble’ in which many committed Republicans live, and when it comes to scientific issues we find that they literally create an ‘alternative reality’ in which human-caused climate change is a hoax. The problem is that this conservative worldview is deeply at odds with empirical reality.”

So does the science suggest any ways of combating denial?
Experts agree the best step forward may be to rally those who do understand the issue around potential solutions. After all, the debate has never really been about the science.

“It would be far more productive for all of us if we would have a national discussion about these differing belief systems, identifying where we disagree but, more importantly, identifying where we agree, and then try to govern in ways that effectively solve the problems we collectively face.”

The planet continues to heat up VERY fast.. the longer we wait to begin holding the line on increasing CO2 levels in our atmosphere.. the worse climate effects will still  keep coming.


... our future...
 


Additional Note: ... as for those who unequivocally 'despise' the fossil fuel giants for the part they're playing in the ultimate destruction of most all existing life on the planet.. what must be said is we need lots more like them, waking up and getting on board.. feeling the exact same way.

Exxon Knew (do a search... they ALL did !!) about Climate Change almost 40 years ago.

All the fuel companies know fully what they're doing, and the havoc they are wreaking on the planet... AND THEY DON'T GIVE A DAMN !!.. PROFITS-GREED RULE!!

They should all be prosecuted for the greatest of crimes ever committed against humanity. But like Wall Street 'Masters-of-the-Universe,' little is being done, or likely will be done.. especially with the fossil-fuel loving cabal presently holding office.. (hell.. they ARE them!!).

And should their day of reckoning very soon not come.. only 'The Almighty' will then be able to save us.





Posted by at 7:28 AM

Thursday, March 2, 2017

..."There was fear in the room when they took on another demagogue."


"His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of [Immigration & Terrorism]. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men – not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

This is no time for men who oppose [Trump's] methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

The actions of the [President] have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it – and rather successfully. Cassius was right. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”


..three small changes above [in brackets]... all the other words are the same, and their ultimate meaning still holds true over a half century later..

..we are in very serious trouble, lest we act quickly to correct the enormous blunder we've made..

 ..here is the original article...
Good Night and Good Luck: There was fear in the room when they took on another demagogue....from Daily Kos - Feb 25th, 2017

  
Posted by at 1:59 PM
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