Glenn Beck is Very Stupid

From doonesbury.com:

Any commentary on this would be unnecessary.

What Do We Want? A Better Slogan!

So I went to a Step It Up rally in Chicago yesterday. Lots of earnest and bland speakers with a pleasantly chipper woman doing MC duties. Readers of this blog will know that I'm all in favor of cutting carbon emissions and not above a bit of bland earnestness myself, but it became clear that Step It Up urgently needs a better slogan. This doesn't cut it:

EMCEE: What will we do?
CROWD: Step it up!
EMCEE: What do we want?
CROWD: Cut carbon emissions!
EMCEE: When do we want it?
CROWD: Eighty percent by 2050.

Nope. When you're trying to get several hundred pepole to chant in unison, a slogan like "We discourage a foreign policy that requires people to die to ensure our petroleum supply" doesn't quite have the punch of "No blood for oil."

So, if anybody can think of a better chant, please post it here.

Weather Report

So after a mildly insomniac night, I woke up this morning, April 11, and staggered into the street to move the car before I got a street cleaning ticket.

And I discovered this morning, April 11, that before moving the car I would have to scrape off the half-inch of snow that had accumulated on it during the night (April 11).

The semi-strident, didactic blogger in me wants to point out that global warming doesn't mean the planet will be a little bit warmer everywhere but rather that a generally warmer planet means disrupted and unfamiliar weather patterns that might well include the half-inch of snow I found on my car this morning, April 11. The sad, sun-seeking part of me, however, just wants to say that it just snowed on April 11. Goddamnit.

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UPDATE: Two and a half hours later, it's still April 11 and still snowing. Great, fat insolent flakes. Chicago, you are a spiteful beast.

Counting Carbon

Manufacturers and environmentalists in the UK are doing a trial run of a plan to label consumer goods with information about the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere as a result of the manufacture and transportation of the products. Carbon released into the atmosphere generally becomes carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, so this is the first set-up (that I'm aware of) that will let consumers make informed choices about their contributions to global warming. Sounds like a great idea. Hope it works.

Global Warming

In an astonishingly thorough survey of scientists and scientific literature, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has declared that global warming is real and that it is "very likely" caused by human intervention.

According to these scientists, if we don't change our ways now (which we really can do), the problem won't just be higher temperatures and sea levels but all of the consequences of those changes--including harder rains in some places, droughts in others, and more severe storms almost everywhere.

In a political process often driven by a longing for certainty, it's important to understand that "very likely" here is the cautious scientific version of "very nearly beyond doubt." Scientists, unlike certain Presidents, allow that there might be things that they don't know, things that would radically change their understanding of the physical world (hence they have the "theory" of gravity). But it sounds like it would take a revolution in thought almost that big to change their minds at this point.

More on this here, here, here, here, and here.

Albuquerque, Jewel of the Caribbean Sea

Tonight at a Trader Joe's in Chicago, I overheard the following exchange between an intensely bearded young checkout clerk and the young woman he was trying to impress:

BEARD BOY: Global warming is totally disrupting the planet, you know. I mean, like, they tracked this storm from, you know, the South Pole all the way up to Albuquerque, and so there was this big snowstorm, like yesterday, in Albuquerque that totally covered the city in snow. And it's like 19 degrees there, you know? In Albuquerque.

CUSTOMER: How cold is it there usually this time of year?

BEARD BOY: Well... I mean they don't even have heaters in Albuquerque, you know, in the houses. They don't install them. They'll have like a fireplace sometimes, you know, but that's all.


It's weird because until I heard this conversation, I'd remembered everybody above (and most of those below) the poverty line in Albuquerque having central heat in their houses because it was a mile above sea level and got cold in the winter. But that must have just been the gentle, warming breezes drifting off the Caribbean.

(You're from New Mexico? Really? You speak such good English.)