Countering Copenhagen’s Carbon Footprint - Science News

For those who want to whine about carbon use for the Copenhagen conference: Offsets are being set in place. The estimated 40,000 tons of carbon used by the convention will be offset by 100,000 tons of savings annually by replacing energy-inefficient brick kiln units around the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka. They'll be replaced with efficient kilns called hybrid Hoffman kilns. - td

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The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, has tentatively estimated that energy expenditures associated with the meeting will likely lead to emissions of around 40,000 tons of CO₂.(or its equivalent). So the Danish Energy Agency and World Bank are working with a Bangladeshi investment bank (Industrial and Infrastructure Development Finance Company) to arrange financing for the replacement of 20 dirty and very energy-inefficient brick kiln units around the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka.

Only four of the new kilns are currently in place. “But when all 20 are up and running they’ll reduce an estimated 100,000 tons of CO₂ annually,” says Christian van Maarschalkerweerd. He’s the chief program coordinator on climate and energy with the Danish Energy Agency in Copenhagen.

Countering Copenhagen’s Carbon Footprint - Science News

"Climategate" exposed: Conservative media distort stolen emails in latest attack on global warming consensus | Media Matters for America

I wish I could find the tongue-in-cheek rant directed from a scientist to the skeptics...maybe in NYT?
td

"Climategate" exposed: Conservative media distort stolen emails in latest attack on global warming consensus

December 01, 2009 7:20 am ET — 156 Comments

Since the reported theft of emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, conservative media figures have aggressively claimed that those emails undermine the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activities are causing climate change, dubbing the supposed scandal "Climategate." But these critics have largely rested their claims on outlandish distortions and misrepresentations of the contents of the stolen emails, greatly undermining their dubious smears.

"Climategate" exposed: Conservative media distort stolen emails in latest attack on global warming consensus | Media Matters for America

How to achieve affordable health care

For the libertarian in me...

How to achieve affordable health care By John Silveira

Despite all the hubbub about health care, the United States can have affordable health care tomorrow if we want it. There have been real solutions available, solutions that have been right under our noses for decades, but you don't often hear about them and the prospects of getting them are rather grim unless the public is apprised of them. Today's debates and town hall meetings have not been about reducing the overall cost of health care, but about who's going to pay for it.

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/silveira120.html

Meat grown in laboratory - Telegraph

Meat grown in laboratory in world first - Telegraph

Man...there's something a bit "Soylent" about this...

No one has yet tasted their produce, but it is believed the artificial meat could be on sale within five years.

It's a Brave New World and I'm not sure I want to go there...

Vegetarian groups welcomed the news, saying there was “no ethical objection” if meat was not a piece of a dead animal.

Wonder what the energy inputs to the vat of meat will be...that is what's the calories in/out vs. live critters?

“This product will be good for the environment and will reduce animal suffering. If it feels and tastes like meat, people will buy it.

Meat grown in laboratory in world first - Telegraph

Hypocrisy Watch: RNC Insurance Plan Has Covered Abortions for 18 Years | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet

This from AlterNet...
Hypocrisy Watch: RNC Insurance Plan Has Covered Abortions for 18 Years | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet

RNC SUBSIDIZES ABORTIONS FOR 18 YEARS -- AND COUNTING.... The debate over financing of abortions -- the basis for the offensive Stupak amendment -- is all about money being fungible. Amy Sullivan explained the problem nicely recently: "The problem, they say, is that if any insurance plan that covers abortion is allowed to participate in a public exchange, then premiums paid to that plan in the form of taxpayer-funded subsidies help support that abortion coverage even if individual abortion procedures are paid for out of a separate pool of privately-paid premium dollars."

But applying this argument can prove problematic. Focus on the Family, for example, one of the nation's largest religious right organizations and a fierce opponent of abortion rights, has health insurance for its employees through a company that covers "abortion services." The far-right outfit, by its own standards, indirectly subsidizes abortions.

Norm Stamper: Ending the "War on Drugs": The Fierce Urgency of...When?

Norm Stamper: Ending the "War on Drugs": The Fierce Urgency of...When?: "The nation's longest running armed conflict, the drug war, financed to the tune of about $70 billion a year, is an unmitigated economic disaster. Think of the money that could be invested, right now, in 'shovel-ready' infrastructure improvements, or in the credit crisis, the home mortgage crisis, the energy crisis, the automobile industry crisis, the banking crisis, the education crisis, the deficit crisis...

And consider terrorism. I almost fell out of my La-Z-Boy when then-Attorney General John Ashcroft informed us that terrorist missions are financed by drug trafficking."

Can we stand up, uncover our eyes and look at cold reality a bit. The short-sighted, religious right influenced neo-conservative formula of the past 40 years is driving us into the ground. More to come, film at 11.

Can Obama give 'em hell before it's too late?

Can Obama give 'em hell before it's too late? | Salon:
"Sept. 1, 2009 | 'We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace: business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering,' President Franklin Roosevelt told an audience in Madison Square Garden in 1936. 'They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.[my emphasis] Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred.'

Can anyone imagine President Barack Obama saying anything like that? The nickname of Roosevelt's successor in the White House, Harry Truman, was 'Give-'Em-Hell Harry.' As the Republican minority, backed by an avalanche of special-interest money, mobilizes to thwart the health reform agenda of the Democratic majority, maybe the time has come for 'Give-'Em-Hell Barry.'

The most dangerous deficit that the United States faces is not the budget deficit or the trade deficit. It is the Democrats' demagogy deficit. Franklin Roosevelt, looking down from that Hyde Park in the sky, would not be surprised that conservatives are seeking to channel populist anger and anxiety, not against the Wall Street elites who wrecked the economy, but against reformers promoting healthcare reform and economic security for ordinary people.[my emphasis] As he told his audience in 1936, 'It is an old strategy of tyrants to delude their victims into fighting their battles for them.' But FDR would be shocked by the inability of his party to mobilize the public on behalf of reform."

Read the rest at Salon.com from the links above.

t

The value of doing No-Thing

"Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering." PIGLET

Despite the advice of my Taoist friend Piglet, which I value, here I will Do Some-Things.

Among them may be:
-- play with this blogging and figure out WTF it is, how it's useful, or not
-- sharing with myself and 'the rest of out there' useful and not so useful Things and NoThings
-- adding my $0.02 to the general melee' -- I've rarely been shy about doing so - it's in my Irish blood

td

Welcome to the monkey house...

...with apologies to k. vonnegut.

The first post of my first 'blog --
I don't know what's coming next, or how often, but here is my soapbox.
I set it up in the park for all to listen...or ignore.

enjoy