Global Warming

[Sef]

Yes, the numbers are staggering, and we may never know the full extent of the casualties -- including emotional scars/PTSD. I just meant that the US used 9/11 as justification to go to war. A needless, senseless, illegal war. One can't but wonder if, under Al Gore, the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon that led to the invasion of Afghanistan and the devastating war in Iraq, might have been averted.

[Bookfan]

You mean because of FBI reports & red flags that were ignored during the summer before 9/11 by Bush?

[Sef]

Precisely.

[GPIG]

I'm no supporter of George Jr but 911 happens with or without him. He didn't ignore the threats. The threat was "chatter" there wasn't any concrete intel to act on despite all the hindsight claims. It was taken seriously, and he told his people to get him "actionable" intelligence. They didn't. He followed up, they still didn't because they din't understand it. You can listen to the women of Alec Station now say "we knew it was going to be bad" We warned everyone" Yeah, they warned everyone it was going to be bad but that's it. There wasn't a shred of actionable intelligence, that's a fact.

And it goes back to Clinton's presidency also. Billy lobbed a couple hundred cruise missiles (at a million dollars a pop) at Bin Laden camps and he was long gone from all of them - then he did nothing else (not blaming him either) We couldn't act on a threat we didn't understand, Should we have understood? You bet, but you really can't say one president dropped the ball, they didn't get what they needed from the people who were suppose to give it to them. Our intel on Bin Laden was late at every turn except when we had him at Tora Bora AFTER 911 You can blame Bush for that but not before.

The FBI and CIA were not sharing information and that is what caused the problem. If they had worked together they probably could have put it together prior to 911. Unfortunately, agencies like the FBI and CIA don't make radical policy changes in a couple months time because a president tells them to.

[Bookfan]

As always, thanks for the insights, GPIG. There always seem to be subtleties (actionable intel vs chatter). I do remember talk about "chatter", but most of us can't put that into context because we don't know or understand the context.

[Sef]

Agree. But I still maintain this would be a very different world now, had Gore been President. Ah well...water under the bridge.

[GPIG]

It absolutely would be a different world Sef. If Gore had been president we would not have gone to war with Iraq for one thing. The consequences of the big Iraq WMD lie will be with the world for a long time to come.

[Lynx]

I'm going to add a link to a review of Bob Henson's of Wunderground (my fave weather site) newest edition of his book on climate change. I have no doubt it is as good as it looks like it is!

https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Review-Bob-Hensons-Awesome ... =cat6-widget

[Sef]

Thanks, Lynx! I'd really like to read that. I put it in my Amazon.com cart for now.

[Lynx]

Sometimes you can convince your local library to get a book and then just check it out to read later. It does sound like it's the kind of thing that would make a good reference for addressing arguments on climate change.

[Lynx]

Take it for what you will:

I ran across an analysis of 7 personal actions that can make a difference regarding climate change. Some are small. There aren't really any surprises but this pdf summarizes things well:
https://rare.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Changing-behaviors-to-reduce-U.S.-emissions-digital.pdf

And much more interesting!
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/09/farmers-climate-change-074024
How a closed-door meeting shows farmers are waking up on climate change
Perdue, Vilsack and leading agricultural groups gathered in a Maryland barn to talk about the farm-country issue that dare not speak its name.

The Politico article details changes in the farming community and more regarding acceptance of climate change as a really big problem and what to do about it.
Conventional farming techniques are change. Many solutions will have hugely positive effects on the climate. Maps show the extent of the changes.

[Sef]

I live in a largely agricultural area myself, but nobody around here ever mentions the effects of climate change on crop yield, or even openly acknowledges that it exists. I'm glad to hear that this isn't the case in other places.

[Lynx]

It sounds like farmers are at least taking notice that climate/weather is having a devastating impact on their livelihood. Methods of farming that have long been promoted for improving the soil (like cover crops) have the added benefit of sequestering carbon AND helping the land absorb more water during heavy rain events. There are other methods that help too.

One thing the Politico article does is show some maps that demonstrate the increase in use of cover crops across the US in a 5 year time period (I think). Maryland is doing the best.

The East Coast supports the greatest portion of commodity acres with cover crops ...

Plotted here are states with significant acreage of the commodities corn, soybeans or cotton. In most of the included states, cover crops were likely planted on some acreage with other crops, such as small grains, sorghum, vegetables, vineyards and orchards. Since 2017, Maryland’s Department of Agriculture has reported cover crop acreage at more than 50 percent.

Cover crops also mean not so much fertilizer runoff, like is happening in Florida resulting in their red tide.

[Sef]

BRAVO!



https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/11/media/time-person-of-the-year-2019/index.html

[Lynx]

Bravo times two! I so admire her.

https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2019-greta-thunberg/

[Bookfan]

Bravo times 3!

[Lynx]

I ran across a claim that getting our protein from plants rather than animals would have a huge impact on global warming and the environment.

I'm sticking a link to an article at the Guardian which unfortunately does not include milk. The data compares foods by the amount of protein they have in them. I am really sad dairy is on the list.

Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding ... act-on-earth

This page includes milk but uses weight comparisons which include all the water in milk so it looks good but is not as helpful because of all the water in milk.
http://www.greeneatz.com/foods-carbon-footprint.html

Information from this study was used in the Guardian article:
http://environmath.org/2018/06/17/paper-of-the-day-poore-nem ... tal-impacts/

Some other analyses from the Evironmental Working Group.
https://static.ewg.org/reports/2011/meateaters/pdf/methodolo ... ate_2011.pdf

[lisam]

Dang. I love cheese so much.

[GPIG]

I agree cliamte change is happening for all the reasons being given but to add to it there is some evidence both The US and Russia have the ability to impact weather with HARP and are in fact experimenting with it. What's next?

[GPIG]

I agree cliamte change is happening for all the reasons being given but to add to it there is some evidence both The US and Russia have the ability to impact weather with HARP and are in fact experimenting with it. What's next?