“Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in the United States from January through March were the lowest of any recorded for the first quarter of the year since 1992, the federal Energy Information Administration reports. The agency attributed the decline to a combination of three factors: a mild winter, reduced demand for gasoline and, most significantly, a drop in coal-fired electricity generation because of historically low natural gas prices. Whether emissions will continue to drop or begin to rise again, however, remains to be seen, experts said Friday.”
Great news, for what’s its worth, however…
Of course, wind and solar energy greatly outperform any fossil fuel when it comes to efficiency. But last year those sectors supplied less than 5 percent of the nation’s electricity in 2011.
Dr. Apt is among those who believes that government intervention would be needed to cut emissions to acceptable levels. “If we see more and more variability in the climate, not just droughts but also more storms, there may very well emerge a consensus that we need to finally do something to stop this very dangerous unprecedented experiment that we’re doing on the planet,†he said.
We need government regulations at this point. The private sector will not steer us away from this. (Though it will be part of the solution, the innovations needed to solve this crisis will come from all sectors)
Toy camera app company Hipstamatic has fired all but 5 of its
core staff, including engineers and designers, The Next Web
has learned. The company had been staffed up and working on a
new release, but has only released one update in the last
several months.
It has been a while since I have taken the political compass test, but I love taking little tests like this. (There is a good religion one out there as well, I’ll post that when I find it)
Now first off, I obviously don’t vote this way, nor do I necessarily think that a society of this nature would even work properly. It would probably be total chaos.
If you want to read in to my score – I think what it says is this: I’m pretty libertarian about things in general, but I don’t think you can be a hypocrite about it. Too much government is not a good thing, but limited government to me means something like let people marry who they want. It means that you shouldn’t track my cell phone’s GPS without a warrant.
The socialist in me looks at things like health care and says, look, something like “insurance” works best when you have the biggest pool of insured folks, and thus, something like an individual mandate to buy health insurance makes sense. (You still get to go to whatever doctor you’d like, and it was a republican idea first, FYI) I think single-payer health care makes way MORE sense but that’s for another time.
I guess my views on things like carbon taxes, zoning rules, bike lanes, gun control, and others are really economic questions, and not social questions. I’ll have to think about that.
Anyways, if you take the test, I’d love to hear where you score and what you think!
“In the late 1990s, Mann developed a graph that demonstrated a recent and dramatic uptick in global mean surface temperatures. The hockey-stick-shaped curve has become emblematic to both sides of the climate debate. To the vast majority of climate scientists, it represents evidence, corroborated by decades of peer-reviewed research, of global warming. To climate-change skeptics, the hockey stick is the most grievous of many illusions fabricated by thousands of conspiring scientists to support an iniquitous political agenda.”
If you “believe” in global warming, this article will just be mind-boggling to you. It is funny to even have to say “believe”. We can’t even talk about solutions in this country – we’re still debating whether we “believe” the overwhelming evidence of climate change.
Had a good discussion with Doug the other day about climate change and factors contributing to it. I was discussing my goal to cut back on driving and he pointed out (correctly) that personal transportation is not the majority of the problem. (Though it is about 30% of it)
Luckily, it seems, that presented will silly hot temperatures and brain-eating amoebas, wild fires, droughts, public opinion is shifting on the issue.
So why has it not been made an issue in the presidential campaign? (Rhetorical question) Obama should seize on this and let Romney and Ryan writhe around in denial, trying to speak to their base. As governor, Romney was pretty moderate, but as a republican presidential candidate you have to worry about things, like appeasing the oil and gas industry.
Amazon.com
Apple
Hosted by Dreamhost
Mozilla.org
NetNewsWire
NPR