Wikipedia Favorite: Urban Legend

Urban legend

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"Urban tale" redirects here. For the rock band, see Urban Tales. For other uses, see Urban legend (disambiguation).

The "Bunny Man Bridge", an example of legend tripping.

An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true.^[1] As with all folklore and mythology, the designation suggests nothing about the story's veracity, but merely that it is in circulation, exhibits variation over time, and carries some significance that motivates the community in preserving and propagating it.

Despite its name, an urban legend does not necessarily originate in an urban area. Rather, the term is used to differentiate modern legend from traditional folklore in pre-industrial times. For this reason, sociologists and folklorists prefer the term contemporary legend.

Urban legends are sometimes repeated in news stories and, in recent years, distributed by e-mail. People frequently allege that such tales happened to a "friend of a friend"; so often, in fact, that "friend of a friend," ("FOAF") has become a commonly used term when recounting this type of story.

Some urban legends have passed through the years with only minor changes to suit regional variations. One example is the story of a woman killed by spiders nesting in her elaborate hairdo.

More recent legends tend to reflect modern circumstances, like the story of people ambushed, anesthetized, and waking up minus one kidney, which was surgically removed for transplantation (a story which folklorists refer to as "The Kidney Heist").<sup>[2]

Please read more at Wikipedia</sup>

Thawing tundra a new climate threat

by Jared Sagoff/PhysOrg.com/Jan. 20, 2012



(PhysOrg.com) -- A significant source of greenhouse gases has started leaking into the Earth's atmosphere from an unlikely place. Above the Arctic Circle, land frozen for tens of thousands of years has begun to thaw for the first time. Current estimates indicate that perennially frozen ground, called permafrost, holds more than twice the amount of carbon present in today's atmosphere. As permafrost thaws, a huge amount of this stored carbon could be released as carbon dioxide or methane gas.

"The issue is that there's lots of relatively easy-to-decompose carbon that's buried down there, but it's protected by being in a frozen state. If it thaws and the microbes act on it, then—just like the burning of fossil fuels— you're going to release carbon that has been out of the global cycle for a long time, and it really can't be put back where it came from. What we don't know yet is how much of this ancient carbon will be released, how fast, and in which form— carbon dioxide or methane?" 
~Julie Jastrow, an ecologist at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory

Read more at PhysOrg.com

Report forecasts fracking climb to ebb

by Erich Schwartzel/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/Jan. 21, 2012




The worldwide industry of hydraulic fracturing is expected to increase 19 percent and hit $37 billion in 2012 -- a record-breaking figure but a pace that's expected to slow considerably as natural gas prices continue to fall, according to a new report from Spears & Associates Inc.
North America will account for more than $30 billion of that money as development in the Marcellus Shale formation above Appalachia and other natural gas fields accelerates, said the report from the Tulsa, Okla.-based oil industry analysis firm.


Read more: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

EPA supplying drinking water after fracking contamination

by Abrahm Lustgarten/Pro Publica/Jan. 21, 2012
-------------------------------------

First, the earth around the rural town of Dimock, Pa., was cracked open as gas drillers used fracking to tap the vast energy supplies of the Marcellus Shale.

Then, in April 2009, residents there lost their access to fresh drinking water. Wells turned fetid. Some blew up. Tap water caught fire.

Now, nearly three years later — and after a string of lawsuits and state investigations has ushered Dimock to the forefront of the environmental debate over drilling but failed to resolve the water problem — the Environmental Protection Agency is stepping in to supply drinking water itself.
On Friday, the agency announced it would bring tanks of drinking water to four homes, including that of Julie Sautner, whom ProPublica first interviewed about her water problems in 2009.

“Data reviewed by EPA indicates that residents’ well water contains levels of contaminants that pose a health concern,” the agency said in a statement. Tests showed dangerous levels of arsenic, a carcinogen, as well as glycols and barium in at least four wells, and the EPA is apparently concerned that the contamination may be more widespread.

Read more at Alaska Dispatch

Methane: a worse worst-case scenario

by Idiot Tracker/Jan. 19, 2012
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"The worst-case scenario is what's happening now." Indeed it is. And we shouldn't allow ourselves to be distracted from the certain disaster of BAU CO2 emissions by the possible disaster of the rapid release of methyl hydrates.

That said -- and at the risk of sounding like stick-figure Michael Bay -- their worst-case scenario is pretty tame -- they increased Arctic emissions by a factor of a hundred compared to today. While that sounds like a lot, a mere 10% annual increase starting in 2010 would push us past that mark in 2060. That's a fair "nasty surprise" scenario, but I don't see how you can really call it "worst-case."

Helpfully, Real Climate rapidly followed the original post with a second one providing an online methane release model. So we can easily look at a Mississippi-rerouting, flaming alligator scenario. Here goes:

While we have estimated the Arctic methyl hydrates at about 2,000Gt, those estimates have varied by a factor of eight from one study to another. In the worst case, we have underestimated the amount of methane, and there is about 8,000Gt under the Arctic, and 40,000Gt worldwide.

For further explanation please go to Idiot Tracker

Greedy Lying Bastards: US filmmaker attacks oil industry

by Guardian/Jan. 20, 2012
-------------------

Provocative, frank and impossible to ignore. And that's just the title.

Craig Rosebraugh, a US filmmaker and political activist, has produced a feature-length documentary that demands to be seen. Greedy Lying Bastards is still awaiting a firm release date – sometime in 2012 is the current promise – but, if the trailer and impressive roster of interviewees are anything to go by, it's likely to cause quite a stir.

Filmed over the past two years and across nine countries, Greedy Lying Bastards claims to be a "searing indictment of the influence, deceit and corruption that defines the fossil fuel industry":

Rosebraugh documents the impact of an industry that puts profits before people, wages a campaign of lies to thwart measures to combat climate change, uses its clout to minimize infringing regulations and undermined the political process in the U.S. and abroad…By interweaving the stories of the victims of the Gulf oil spill and the global climate crisis, he lays bare the industry's deliberate pattern of irresponsibility. And, while oil companies worldwide exert influence over policies that will protect their revenues, those who speak out against the industry's reckless practices risk their livelihoods, and in some instances, their lives.

Please read more at Guardian

A 'crystal ball' for predicting the effects of global climate change

e! Science Daily/Aug. 5, 2010
---------------------

In trying to predict how species will respond to climate change caused by global warming, researchers and scientists are turning to comparative physiology, a sub-discipline of physiology that studies how different organisms function and adapt to diverse and changing environments. By comparing different species to each other, as well as to members within a species that live in different environments, researchers are learning which physiologic features establish environmental optima and tolerance limits. This approach gives the scientific community a "crystal ball" for predicting the effects of global warming, according to George N. Somero, Associate Director of Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station.

Read more at e! Science Daily

Ecologists gain insight into the likely consequences of global warming

by e! Science News/Jan. 21, 2012
------------------------

A new insight into the impact that warmer temperatures could have across the world has been uncovered by scientists at Queen Mary, University of London. The research, published in the journal Global Change Biology on January 20, found that the impact of global warming could be similar across ecosystems, regardless of local environmental conditions and species.

The team, based at Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, went to Iceland to study a set of geothermally-heated streams.

The streams provided scientists with a unique environment to conduct their research; they were able to isolate the effects of temperature from other confounding variables found in nature.

Lead author, Queen Mary's Dr Daniel Perkins, explains: "The streams in Iceland are all very similar, in terms of their physical and chemical environment, but maintain very different temperatures to each other all year round.

"This enabled us to explore how temperature, both past and present, affects the rate at which respiration responds to temperature in ecosystems."

Read more at e! Science News

Scrapping fossil-fule subsidies would get us halfway there on climate change

by Brad Plumer/Washington Post/Jan. 20, 2012
-----------------------------

Here’s one free-market way to tackle global warming. In 2010, the world spent $409 billion on fossil-fuel subsidies to artificially lower the price of coal, gas and oil. Eliminating those subsidies would curb fuel use and lead to half the emissions cuts necessary to avoid 2°C of warming.

That’s all according to Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency. The Guardian’s Datablog supplies the chart. By Birol’s calculations, scrapping all subsidies for fossil-fuel consumption would avoid 2.56 gigatons of carbon-dioxide per year by 2035 — or about 70 percent of what the European Union currently emits. That could provide almost half of the extra cuts the world needs to stay within its carbon budget:

Read more at Washington Post

Feds launch wildlife adaption plan

by Bob Berwyn/Summit County Voice/Jan. 21, 2012


SUMMIT COUNTY —The Obama administration is launching an ambitious effort to create a climate-change adaptation strategy aimed at reducing the vulnerability and increase the resilience of fish, wildlife, plants and the communities that depend on them in the face of climate change.

Starting with identifying and describing the current and projected climate change impacts on the eight major ecosystems of the United States, the administration hopes to develop collaborative strategies and actions that agriculture, energy, transportation and other sectors can take to promote adaptation of fish, wildlife and plants.

“The impacts of climate change are already here and those who manage our landscapes are already dealing with them,” said Deputy Secretary of the Interior David J. Hayes. “The reality is that rising sea levels, warmer temperatures, loss of sea ice and changing precipitation patterns — trends scientists have definitively connected to climate change — are already affecting the species we care about, the services we value, and the places we call home. A national strategy will help us prepare and adapt.”

Read more at Summit County Voice

Global Warming: Welcome to the age of man

by William Marsden/Montreal Gazette/Jan. 21, 2012
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MONTREAL - For the last 11,700 years, mankind has lived in what geologists refer to as the Holocene epoch.

This interglacial period has been defined by its stable warm climatic conditions that have allowed Homo sapiens to populate the Earth and become its dominant species.

Many scientists now believe that over the last 200 years, mankind’s impact on the Earth has become so powerful that we have ushered in a whole new geological age, which they call the Anthropocene, or Age of Man.

British geologist Jan Zalasiewicz says there is a “widespread realization among Earth and environmental scientists” that man-made changes to the Earth now rival some of the great forces of nature that have changed the planet’s environment and caused mass extinctions in the 4.56 billion years since the planet was created.

In other words, mankind has become a sort of in-house asteroid that has struck the planet from within and set it on a new and irrevocable course in geological time.

Read more at the Montreal Gazette

Wikipedia Favorite: Moral Panic

Moral panic

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Preparing to burn a witch in 1544. Witch-hunts are an example of mass behavior fueled by moral panic.

A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order.^[1] According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972) and credited as creator of the term, a moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests."^[2] Those who start the panic when they fear a threat to prevailing social or cultural values are known by researchers as "moral entrepreneurs," while people who supposedly threaten the social order have been described as "folk devils."

Moral panics are in essence controversies that involve arguments and social tension and in which disagreement is difficult because the matter at its center is taboo.^[3] The media have long operated as agents of moral indignation, even when they are not self-consciously engaged in crusading or muckraking. Simply reporting the facts can be enough to generate concern, anxiety or panic.^[4]

Characteristics

Moral panics have several distinct features. According to Goode and Ben-Yehuda, moral panic consists of the following characteristics:

• Concern – There must be awareness that the behaviour of the group or category in question is likely to have a negative impact on society.
• Hostility – Hostility towards the group in question increases, and they become "folk devils". A clear division forms between "them" and "us".
• Consensus – Though concern does not have to be nationwide, there must be widespread acceptance that the group in question poses a very real threat to society. It is important at this stage that the "moral entrepreneurs" are vocal and the "folk devils" appear weak and disorganised.
• Disproportionality – The action taken is disproportionate to the actual threat posed by the accused group.
• Volatility – Moral panics are highly volatile and tend to disappear as quickly as they appeared due to a wane in public interest or news reports changing to another topic.^[1

^{Please read more about this article at Wikipedia}

German newspaper Bild becomes powerful propaganda tool to push political agenda

Pandango: Bild is a tabloid newspaper in Germany that could probably be closely compared to our own Fox News here in the United States.  This newspaper is a good example of how yellow journalism propaganda can sway people who are short on facts and careless about where they get their information  from.

by Michael Steininger/Christian Science Monitor/Jan. 18, 2012
-------------------------------------


German tabloid Bild, Europe's largest newspaper, drives the political agenda of the most influential economic power on the continent. Its latest target: President Christian Wulff.

Berlin

It's notorious for its mix of gossip, inflammatory language, and sensationalism, which includes a daily picture of a topless woman on the front page. It receives more reprimands from Germany's independent press watchdog than any other paper. And it engenders fear in the hearts of politicians, who rarely dare to cross Bild – Europe's largest newspaper – which reaches 12 million readers daily.

Just ask Christian Wulff.

The German president found himself the subject of heated debate after articles appeared about the propriety of a private loan to finance his home. Having survived the initial storm, Mr. Wulff then made what may have been an even bigger mistake: threatening Bild. Since the spat started, his popularity has dropped precipitously and there have been calls for his resignation.
Bild has the undisputed ability to shape the careers of politicians from across the ideological spectrum. But its power to channel and magnify perceived public sentiments and its readiness to support or reject public figures is also highly controversial, with many observers charging that the paper abuses its clout.

Please read more about this story at Christian Science Monitor

Forecast The Facts Exposes America’s Climate-Denier TV Weathermen

by Brad Johnson/Think Progress Green/Jan. 20, 2012
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America’s television meteorologists are the primary source of climate information for most Americans, and are second only to scientists — who have much less access to the general public — in the level of trust they are given. Yet more than half of TV weather reporters don’t believe in human-induced climate change, even as our poisoned weather grows more extreme.
Forecast the Facts, a new campaign of 350.org, the League of Conservation Voters, and the new Citizen Engagement Lab, aims to turn the tide. The first call to action challenges the American Meteorological Society to vote next week for a strong climate change statement that rejects science denial:

It’s a big problem: weather reporters reach millions of people every night, and right now they’re not telling their viewers the full story. We can change that. Meteorologists are meeting this month at the annual conference of the American Meteorological Society, where the AMS Council will vote on a new official statement on climate change. Denier meteorologists don’t want the statement to pass, and are doing everything they can to derail the process. We can’t let that happen.

Please read more about this story at Think Progress Green

Humans Are by Far the Dominant Cause of Global Warming: A Comprehensive Review of the Science

by Dana Nuccitelli/Climate Progress via Skeptical Science/Jan. 20, 2012
------------------------------------

Skeptical Science reviews the scientific literature, which shows humans are the dominant cause of global warming.

At Skeptical Science, we have several recent studies which have used a number of diverse approaches to tease out the contributions of various natural and human effects to global warming. Here we will review the results of these various studies, and a few others which we have not previously examined, to see what the scientific literature and data have to say about exactly what is causing global warming.
All of these studies, using a wide range of independent methods, provide multiple lines of evidence that humans are the dominant cause of global warming over the past century, and especially over the past 50 to 65 years (Figure 1).

Please read more of this story at Climate Progress or Skeptical Science

Extreme Weather in 2011

by Dan Huber/Pew Climate/Jan. 21, 2012
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For the second year in a row, unprecedented numbers of extreme weather events have occurred across the globe. However, more of 2011’s impacts occurred in the United States. From the drought in Texas to the floods in the Midwest and Northeast, this past year underscored the huge economic costs associated with extreme weather. While specific weather events are not solely caused by climate change, the risks of droughts, floods, extreme precipitation events, and heat waves are already climbing as a result of climate change. This year reminded us of our vulnerability to those events.

Please read more at Pew Climate

Why Fracking and Other Disasters Are So Hard to Stop

by Peter Montague/Huffington Post Green/Jan. 20, 2012
-----------------------------------

new report offers compelling evidence that fracking for natural gas is killing domestic animals like horses, cattle, goats, sheep. The dead animals provide a strong warning that fracking can harm humans -- something the fracking industry has consistently denied.

"Fracking" is short for "hydraulic fracturing" -- a well-drilling process that pumps water, sand and numerous toxic chemicals a mile or so below ground to release natural gas trapped in rocks. If all goes well, the deep rocks shatter, releasing gas, which is piped directly to the surface where it becomes part of the nation's energy supply or is exported. If all doesn't go so well, some of the fracked gas and toxic chemicals start moving around through cracks and fissures below ground, where they sometimes mix with underground water supplies, perhaps ruining a valuable aquifer forever.

Read more at Huffington Post Green

Oklahoma senators want federal fracking study to meet strict scientific standards

Pandango: The only thing worth reading in this story is how Sens. Inhofe and Coburn are about oil and gas industry profits over the protection of clean drinking water.  Forget about the people that are poisoned by this process or the environmental devastation it causes.  It's also laughable that Inhofe is demanding the strictest of scientific standards in determining if fracking is causing groundwater pollution.  Give me a break... his scientific standards are urban myths and junk science that agrees with the oil and gas industries.  I'm so sorry that the EPA Administrator won't return your phone call.

by Chris Casteel/newsok.com/Jan. 20, 2012
---------------------

Sens. Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn are among 10 Republican senators who sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on Friday about a report that linked hydraulic fracturing to groundwater contamination.
WASHINGTON — Oklahoma's senators joined eight other Republicans on Friday in urging the Environmental Protection Agency to require the strictest scientific standards in judging a high-stakes study over whether hydraulic fracturing contaminated ground water in Wyoming.
Sens. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa, and Tom Coburn, R-Muskogee, joined a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson saying the outcome of the agency's report could have a major financial impact on the oil and gas industry.

Read more about this story at newsok.com

Fracking Would Emit Large Quantities of Greenhouse Gases

by Mark Fischetti/Scientific American/Jan. 20, 2012
---------------------------------

Robert Howarth, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist, and Anthony Ingraffea, a civil and environmental engineer, reported that fracked wells leak 40 to 60 percent more methane than conventional natural gas wells. When water with its chemical load is forced down a well to break the shale, it flows back up and is stored in large ponds or tanks. But volumes of methane also flow back up the well at the same time and are released into the atmosphere before they can be captured for use. This giant belch of "fugitive methane" can be seen in infrared videos taken at well sites.

Molecule for molecule, methane traps 20 to 25 times more heat in the atmosphere than does carbon dioxide. The effect dissipates faster, however: airborne methane remains in the atmosphere for about 12 years before being scrubbed out by ongoing chemical reactions, whereas CO2 lasts 30 to 95 years. Nevertheless, recent data from the two Cornell scientists and others indicate that within the next 20 years, methane will contribute 44 percent of the greenhouse gas load produced by the U.S. Of that portion, 17 percent will come from all natural gas operations.

Currently, pipeline leaks are the main culprit, but fracking is a quickly growing contributor....

Read more about this story at Scientific American

A Graphical Tour Through The Climate Of 2011

Jan. 20, 2012
-------------------

The website, Climate Central, walks the reader through graphs and charts of climate data from 2011 illustrating how our climate and world are changing.

Please visit Climate Central to view their research.

Weather warmer, worse worldwide in 2011 while flooding fills Oregon roadways

Pandango: I don't hear much about the weather in the northwest since I'm here in Texas, so I find these kinds of extreme weather stories fairly interesting.  One severe weather incident is not proof of global warming, but an increase in more extreme weather incidents is a definite indicator of global warming.

by Dave Masko/HULIQ/Jan. 20, 2012
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Marine Operations Center-Pacific here in the coastal community of Newport has gotten a first-hand look at the wrath of Mother Nature this past week. NOAA then released the startling news that “the average global temperature was 57.9 degrees Fahrenheit,” making 2011 the 11th hottest on record.” NOAA’s weather reporting agency, both here in Newport and nationwide, noted the main reason for 2011 being so warm is “the La Nina cooling the nearby central Pacific Ocean,” that, in turn, is blamed for deaths and destruction across Oregon this week. Also, the Oregonian newspaper in nearby Portland reported Jan. 20 that “raging waters” from flooded creeks, rivers and the Pacific Ocean are to blame for the deaths of several people in the state -- including an Albany, Oregon, mother and her toddler -- while other deaths and hundreds of injuries are being reported Jan. 20 due to this ongoing winter storm that locals state "won't let up!"
Meanwhile, the Oregonian reported many other deaths statewide “are blamed on a brutal storm that has hit the Pacific Northwest and forced evacuations” both Jan. 19 and Jan. 20 in dozens of communities in western Oregon, “where normally-peaceful rivers have swelled into rushing rapids.”
"It would be premature to make any conclusion that we would see any hiatus of the longer-term warming trend," said Tom Karl, director of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. "Global temperatures are continuing to increase."

Please read more about this story at HULIQ

NASA: 2011 9th Hottest year on Record

by NASA/Jan. 19, 2011
----------------

The global average surface temperature in 2011 was the ninth warmest since 1880, according to NASA scientists. The finding continues a trend in which nine of the 10 warmest years in the modern meteorological record have occurred since the year 2000.

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, which monitors global surface temperatures on an ongoing basis, released an updated analysis that shows temperatures around the globe in 2011 compared to the average global temperature from the mid-20th century. The comparison shows how Earth continues to experience warmer temperatures than several decades ago. The average temperature around the globe in 2011 was 0.92 degrees F (0.51 C) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline.....

Hansen said he expects record-breaking global average temperature in the next two to three years because solar activity is on the upswing and the next El Niño will increase tropical Pacific temperatures. The warmest years on record were 2005 and 2010, in a virtual tie.

"It's always dangerous to make predictions about El Niño, but it's safe to say we'll see one in the next three years," Hansen said. "It won't take a very strong El Niño to push temperatures above 2010."
Please read more about this story at NASA

South Florida Climate Change Plan Attacked

Pandango: The deniers quoted in this story are incredibly stupid -- of course, they think the same thing about me, too.

by David Fleshler/Sun Sentinel/Jan. 20, 2012
----------------------------

South Florida plan to prepare for rising sea levels and other consequences of climate change has drawn intense criticism from a small segment of the public who see a conspiracy to weaken the United States.
"Bogus science." "Socialist power grab." "A UN-based manmade global warming agenda that will tangle us all up in a nightmare."

These are among the public comments received in response to the Draft Southeast Florida Regional Climate Action Plan, produced by Broward, Miami-Dade, Monroe and Palm Beach counties. The plan contains 108 recommendations, including redesigning low-lying roads and moving drinking-water wells inland.

Like similar actions elsewhere in the United States, it has run into the intensely held belief among a portion of the public that climate change is a fraud, perpetrated to destroy property rights, raise taxes and ruin the economy. Although national and international scientific panels have concluded that climate change is real and human-caused, critics disagree.

"Anyone of even modest intelligence should be able to see that it is nothing more than One-World, global, Socialist power grab to deny rights and exert control over everyone and everything on the entire planet under control of a so-called Intelligentsia or Power Elite," wrote one commenter, Jeff Vanderslice. "If you really believe this Climate Change/Global Warming BS, you're either part of the conspiracy, incredibly duped, or outright stupid."

Wrote Donald Sexauer: "The whole global warming theory is based on bogus findings that tried to hold down the beliefs of dissenting scientists."

"The Progressive Elite need taxes … and we all know they will lie, cheat and steal to get it," wrote Doug Weber. "Forget it folks, the science is a fraud."

Please read more about this story at Sun-Sentinel

Why Global Warming Means... More Snow

by Clive Cookson/Financial Times/Jan. 20, 2012
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The severe cold experienced in 2009 and 2010 could become a feature of northern hemisphere winters.

This winter is turning out mild over the mid-latitudes of Europe and north America but we should not feel complacent. The severe cold experienced in 2009/10 and 2010/11 could turn out to be a feature of northern hemisphere winters over the next few years, according to research by US climatologists.

Their study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, explains the apparent contradiction between recent harsh winters, global warming and the loss of Arctic sea ice.

Please read more at Financial Times

Wikipedia Favorite: Propaganda techniques

Techniques

See also: doublespeak, cult of personality, spin (politics), demonization, and factoid

 

Common media for transmitting propaganda messages include news reports, government reports, books, leaflets, movies, r announce "spots" or as long-running advertorials. Propaganda campaigns often follow a strategic transmission pattern to indoctrinate the target group. This may begin with a simple transmission such as a leaflet dropped from a plane or an advertisement. Generally these messages will contain directions on how to obtain more information, via a web site, hot line, radio program, etc. (as it is seen also for selling purposes among other goals). The strategy intends to initiate the individual from information recipient to information seeker through reinforcement, and then from information seeker to opinion leader through indoctrination.
A number of techniques based in social psychological research are used to generate propaganda. Many of these same techniques can be found under logical fallacies, since propagandists use arguments that, while sometimes convincing, are not necessarily valid.
Some time has been spent analyzing the means by which propaganda messages are transmitted. That work is important but it is clear that information dissemination strategies only become propaganda strategies when coupled with propagandistic messages. Identifying these messages is a necessary prerequisite to study the methods by which those messages are spread. Below are a number of techniques for generating propaganda:

"The Pope is Antichrist" - 1521 propaganda print by Lucas Cranach the Elder, commissioned by Martin Luther.

• Ad hominem

A Latin phrase which has come to mean attacking your opponent, as opposed to attacking their arguments.

• Ad nauseam

This argument approach uses tireless repetition of an idea. An idea, especially a simple slogan, that is repeated enough times, may begin to be taken as the truth. This approach works best when media sources are limited and controlled by the propagator.

• Appeal to authority

Appeals to authority cite prominent figures to support a position, idea, argument, or course of action.

• Appeal to fear

Appeals to fear seek to build support by instilling anxieties and panic in the general population, for example, Joseph Goebbels exploited Theodore N. Kaufman's Germany Must Perish! to claim that the Allies sought the extermination of the German people.

• Appeal to prejudice

Using loaded or emotive terms to attach value or moral goodness to believing the proposition. For example, the phrase: "Any hard-working taxpayer would have to agree that those who do not work, and who do not support the community do not deserve the community's support through social assistance."

• Bandwagon

Bandwagon and "inevitable-victory" appeals attempt to persuade the target audience to join in and take the course of action that "everyone else is taking."

• Inevitable victory: invites those not already on the bandwagon to join those already on the road to certain victory. Those already or at least partially on the bandwagon are reassured that staying aboard is their best course of action.
• Join the crowd: This technique reinforces people's natural desire to be on the winning side. This technique is used to convince the audience that a program is an expression of an irresistible mass movement and that it is in their best interest to join.

• Black-and-White fallacy

Presenting only two choices, with the product or idea being propagated as the better choice. (e.g., "You are either with us, or you are with the enemy")

Ohio voters want fracking halted for safety studies: poll

by Kim Palmer/Reuters/Jan. 19, 2012
-------------------------------

(Reuters) - Ohio voters by a wide margin want a halt to hydrofracking until more impact studies are conducted, though they believe there are economic benefits to drilling for natural gas and oil, a Quinnipiac University poll released on Thursday found.
The poll comes just weeks after Ohio ordered the shutdown of five wells around Youngstown that accept waste materials from the fracking process, after a series of earthquakes that could be related to their operation.

Seventy-two percent of voters polled said there should be a halt in hydraulic fracturing, or simply fracking, in Ohio until more was known about the impact of the process, Quinnipiac found. Fracking uses massive, high-pressure injections of water, chemicals and sand to release trapped oil and gas.

Sixty four percent of respondents supported drilling for natural gas and oil because of the potential economic benefits to Ohio, and 29 percent opposed drilling due to the possible environmental impact.

Read more at Reuters

Like Fracking? You'll Love 'Super Fracking'

by David Wethe/Businessweek/Jan. 19, 2012
-----------------------------------

Few energy industry practices have sparked more controversy than hydraulic fracking. First, wells are drilled horizontally below the surface, allowing a single bore or pathway to reach vertical pockets of oil and natural gas trapped between formations of shale and other rock. Then high-pressure jets of water, sand, and chemicals are pumped into the ground to create fissures through the rock so oil can seep out and be retrieved. Regulators, environmentalists, and academics are studying whether the practice can damage the environment.

Undeterred, oil services companies including Baker Hughes and Schlumberger are continuing their quest to devise ways to create longer, deeper cracks in the earth to release more oil and gas. These companies are no longer content to frack—they want to super frack.

High crude prices and newly accessible oil and gas embedded in shale rock in North America are driving the wave of innovation. The more thoroughly that petroleum-saturated rock is cracked, the more oil and gas is freed to flow from each well, raising the efficiency—and profit—of the expensive process. For example, the growing use of movable sleeves, a tubelike device with holes that fits inside a well bore, lets drillers target multiple spots to dislodge entrapped oil. This technique can reduce the $2.5 million startup cost of a fracking well near the Canadian border by up to two-thirds, according to a recent analysis by JPMorgan Chase. Multiply such savings by hundreds of wells added in that area each year, and you start to understand why the industry is so eager to hone the process.

Read more at Businessweek

EPA to test water near Penn. fracking site

by Edward McAllister/Reuters/Jan. 19, 2012
---------------------------


(Reuters) - Regulators said on Thursday they will perform water tests at about 60 homes in the small town of Dimock in northern Pennsylvania where residents say natural gas drilling has polluted wells.

The Environmental Protection Agency also plans to truck water to four homes in the town where some households have relied on water deliveries since drilling by Cabot Oil & Gas Corp began there three years ago, it said in a statement on Thursday.

The tests, which will begin in the coming days, are being carried out "to further assess whether any residents are being exposed to hazardous substances that cause health concerns," the EPA said.

The announcement represents a reversal for the EPA, which six weeks ago declared the water in the 1,400-person town safe to drink before receiving more data provided by residents.

It is also the clearest sign yet that regulators are concerned about the effect of drilling on drinking water there.

Read more at Reuters

Inuit hunters buttress theory Arctic Ocean is approaching 'tipping point'

by Doug O'Harra/Alaska Dispatch/ January 16, 2012
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The Arctic Ocean might look like an isolated body at the top of the world, but several multi-year investigations have found deep interconnections with the Pacific and Atlantic oceans -- and new evidence that the polar sea may be poised to undergo a dramatic change in structure and life, senior climate oceanographer Eddy Carmack told the opening session of an annual marine science conference in Anchorage.

“Are we approaching a tipping point -- a new state?” Carmack said to several hundred scientists gathered at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium in the Hotel Captain Cook ballroom. “In the Arctic, the non-linear future is here.”

Carmack presented detailed oceanographic results from Canada’s Three Oceans project and a joint Canadian-American survey -- over the past five years, teams of scientists have sampled the sea at 600 different stations around the rim of North America. Among other things, they’ve found that the deep layers of Pacific and Atlantic waters north of Alaska are warming and that creatures at the bottom of the marine food chain are changing.

But disturbing changes noticed by two different Inuit hunters might be even more telling.

One man told Carmack that the ocean remained ice-free in a locale despite 50-below temperatures -- and the Arctic char disappeared from local lakes. Another man told Carmack that 69 of 70 seals he butchered over the winter had bellies full of krill -- a tiny shrimp-like crustacean -- instead of capelin, a common forage fish.

“He’d never seen that before,” Carmack said.

Read more at Alaska Dispatch

Giant Methane Plumes Could Fast-Track Planetary Warming

by Tafline Laylin/The Cutting Edge/Dec. 25, 2011
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Recent discoveries have confirmed scientists’ longstanding fears that global warming would catalyze the release of millions of tons of potential greenhouse gas emissions locked up in ice and permafrost in the great white north.

Layer after layer of plant debris that has not yet decomposed lies trapped in arctic and subarctic permafrost. As global temperatures rise and this perennial ice begins to melt, previously frozen organic matter will thaw out and decompose, releasing huge quantities of greenhouse gases into our already saturated atmosphere.

This may not seem like such an earth-shattering phenomenon, but scientists are deeply troubled since there’s a strong chance that methane (CH₄) will be released—as it is in anaerobic wetland conditions—which does not bode well for planetary warming since it is 21 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide (CO₂).

Nearly a quarter of the northern hemisphere is underlain by permafrost that contains twice as much carbon as the entire atmosphere, according an article in The New York Times. This amounts to nearly 2 trillion tons of carbon in soils of the northern regions, 88 percent of which is “locked in permafrost,” according to Canadian scientist Charles Tarnocai and colleagues.

Read more at The Cutting Edge

In 1962 Humble Oil Company Boasts Being Able to Melt Glaciers with It's Energy Output from Petroleum

by Snopes/July 14, 2010
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The ad reads as follows with a huge glacier looming in the background:

This giant glacier has remained unmelted for centuries. Yet, the petroleum energy Humble supplies - if converted into heat - could melt it at the rate of 80 tons each second! To meet the nation's growing needs for energy, Humble has supplied science to nature's resources to become America's Leading Energy Company.  Working wonders with oil through research, Humble provides energy in many forms - to help heat our homes, power our transportation, and to furnish industry with a great variety of versatile chemicals.  Stop at a Humble station for new Enco Extra gasoline, and see why the "Happy Motoring" Sign is the World's first Choice!

See the glacier and read more about this ad at Snopes

Climate Change Brings Alien Species to Canada: Study

by The Canadian Press/Jan. 19, 2012
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A newly published study says alien plants and animals are already invading Canada through doors opened by climate change, and research and policy lag far behind.

Neither Ottawa nor any of the provinces are looking at the interaction between global warming and invasive species with a view to preventing further harm to the economy, says the report published Thursday in the journal Environmental Reviews.

"We need to be focusing on working out what species are potential threats under climate change and directing more research toward predicting where they're going to be," said Andrea Smith, a biologist at York University in Toronto.

"(We should be) directing our resources to those areas so that we have monitoring programs in place and early detection and rapid response programs in place so we can prevent them from getting in to Canada and, if they do get into Canada, from establishing and spreading."

Smith examined and summarized what is already known about the interaction between climate change and the entry of non-native species into Canada. The answer is, not much.

After searching decades worth of published scientific papers, she found only a few dozen that specifically addressed how new species are taking advantage of environmental change in Canada.


Read more at CTVNews

Amazon Basin Shifting to Carbon Emitter: Study

Pandango: Another tipping point is being reached.
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by AFP/France24/Jan. 19, 2012

AFP - The Amazon Basin, traditionally considered a bulwark against global warming, may be becoming a net contributor of carbon dioxide (CO2) as a result of deforestation, researchers said on Wednesday.

In an overview published in the journal Nature, scientists led by Eric Davidson of the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts say the Amazon is "in transition" as a result of human activity.
Over 50 years, the population has risen from six million to 25 million, triggering massive land clearance for logging and agriculture, they said.

The Amazon's carbon budget -- the amount of CO2 that it releases into the atmosphere or takes from it -- is changing although it is hard to estimate accurately, they said.

"Deforestation has moved the net basin-wide budget away from a possible late 20th-century net carbon sink and towards a net source," according to their paper.

Read more at France24

La Nina Cooled Globe in 2011

Pandango: I hate to think what temps would have been like without La Nina.
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By Doyle Rice/Tucson Citizen via USA Today/Jan. 19, 2012

A strong La Niña lowered the world’s temperature last year to its second-coolest reading of the 2000s, federal scientists announced Thursday.

The nations’s two primary climate data sets — from the National Climatic Data Center and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) — both had the Earth as much warmer than average, but not as warm as recent years have been.

The climate center reported that the globe had its 11th-warmest year on record, while NASA marked the year as the 9th warmest on record.

Climate records go back to 1880.

La Niña is a natural, periodic cooling of tropical Pacific Ocean water that affects weather and climate around the world.

Since 2011 was the second-coolest year of the 2000s, does this mean global warming has slowed?
“Global temperature in 2011 was lower than in 1998,” NASA climate scientist James Hansen admits in the GISS report. However, he adds that nine of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred in the 21st century, and that 2011 was cooled by a moderately strong La Niña.

Read more at Tucson Citizen

Snopes.com: Comments by Weather Channel founder John Coleman refuting global warming are an Urban Myth

Pandango: Snopes.com is a website dedicated to exposing urban myths that have been repeated so many times in our society, that people have begun to believe they are real.

Comments made by John Coleman - founder of the Weather Channel - in 2008 about global warming have been extensively rebutted and refuted and have made it into the Snopes.com website as an urban myth, yet we still hear these urban myths being repeated by the Conservative media as well as the Republican party and their presidential candidates today in 2012. Do they realize that the information they are repeating about global warming is so bizarre that it has made the pages of urban legend? Do they realize that their science policy is based on urban myth?  I don't want the future of our planet to be based on global warming science myths documented in Snopes.com. 
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Snopes.com/June 20, 2008

Origins: John Coleman is a meteorologist who currently works as a weathercaster at station KUSI-TV in San Diego, California, and was the founder of the Weather Channel (with which he is no longer affiliated).  Coleman has been an outspoken critic on the subject of global warming, labeling it "the greatest scam in history" and "a fictional, manufactured crisis."....

Critics of John Coleman have produced detailed rebuttals of his arguments against global warming.

To read more about the urban myth that you are hearing repeated today almost verbatim by every Conservative and Republican and Conservative talk show and radio host, please visit Snopes.com

Why can’t scientists say whether climate change “caused” a given weather event?

by Daniel G. Huber and Jay Gulledge, Ph.D./Center for Climate and Energy Solutions/Dec. 2011
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Climate is the average of many weather events over of a span of years. By definition, therefore, an isolated event lacks useful information about climate trends. Consider a hypothetical example: Prior to any change in the climate, there was one category 5 hurricane per year, but after the climate warmed for some decades, there were two category 5 hurricanes per year. In a given year, which of the two hurricanes was caused by climate change? Since the two events are indistinguishable, this question is nonsense. It is not the occurrence of either of the two events that matters. The two events together – or more accurately, the average of two events per year – define the change in the climate.

Read the full paper at Center for Climate and Energy Solutions

Republicans: The EPA to Regulate Dust in 2012

Pandango: I was hearing about this issue on conservative tv and radio programs, and wondered where this information might be coming from?  So I looked it up on PolitiFact.  Their explanation is below.
-----------------------------------------

by PolitiFact

Herman Cain: EPA to regulate dust in 2012

It was the kind of question that any politician who opposes big government would love to field during a GOP presidential debate.

"My question is, if you were forced to eliminate one department from the federal government, which one would you eliminate and why?" asked a man from Arlington, Va., via YouTube during the Sept. 22 debate in Orlando.

A moderator chose metro Atlantan Herman Cain to answer it, and to the delight of the audience, he turned his hypothetical ax on a favorite target of big government foes: the Environmental Protection Agency.

"Now, I know that makes some people nervous, but the EPA has gone wild. The fact that they have a regulation that goes into effect Jan. 1, 2012, to regulate dust says that they've gone too far," Cain replied.

Dust? The EPA will start regulating dust in January?

We contacted the Cain camp for evidence, but they didn’t reply. Fortunately, the EPA posted its reports on the issue online. Factcheck.org, a fact-checking operation similar to PolitiFact, looked into Cain’s comment as well.

We found that the EPA has long regulated a category of air pollution called "particulate matter," which includes dust. There’s no new regulation scheduled for Jan. 1, 2012.

Particle pollution is a floating mix of solid particles and liquid droplets. Sometimes, the particles are visible, like smoke from a power plant, haze, or the dust that Cain mentioned. Other times, they’re so small they’re invisible to the naked eye. 
Read more about this story at PolitiFact

Wind Turbine Syndrome Is a Hoax

by Zachary Rybarczyk and Stephen Lacey/Climate Progress/Jan. 19, 2012
----------------------------

There is “No Evidence” that Wind Turbine Syndrome Exists, Concludes Expert Panel

If we want wind to continue growing, more turbines will need to be placed in our communities and close to our backyards. And that will inevitably cause more social friction.

Wind supporters cannot discount concerns from local residents about noise and
visual impact. With proper communication between developers and communities, many of the potential conflicts can be mitigated or avoided.

But there’s a huge difference between concerns of neighbors to wind projects and the faux medical conditions pushed by advocates who claim turbines are a serious threat to human health.

Read more at Climate Progress

Situation Normal, All Fracked Up: Obama Embraces Fracking

by RL Miller/Daily Kos/Jan. 19, 2012
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Last week, the Obama administration gave what may be its first formal statement favoring hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of natural gas in a report, Investing in America (pdf). Until now, the Environmental Protection Agency has, generally, been moving slowly on the issue, with initial study results due out this year and a final report in 2014. However, the Investing in America report endorses the safe and environmentally responsible extraction of natural gas.
Key paragraphs:

Since the mid‐2000s, however, the discovery of new natural gas reserves, such as the Marcellus Shale, and the development of hydraulic fracturing techniques to extract natural gas from these reserves has led to rapidly growing domestic production and relatively low domestic prices for households and downstream industrial users. Appropriate care must to be taken to ensure that America's natural resources are extracted in a safe and environmentally responsible manner with the safeguards in place to protect public health and safety. Provided these precautions are taken, the potential benefits to the U.S. economy are substantial.

Read more at Daily Kos

Trusting your source is crucial when debating climate change

by John Nielsen-Gammon/Climate Abyss/Jan. 19, 2012
------------------------

Or Maybe People Don’t Reason Logically.

Last month I summarized a climate communication session at AGU, in which, among other things, two points were made: first, that the same arguments against climate scientists were employed by many of the same people, for the same reasons, against restrictions on tobacco, and second, that scientists must become better communicators to combat this. I wondered about point number two in the context of point number one: if we’ve been down this road before with tobacco, were the same improved communication skills being urged upon climate scientists successfully adopted and employed by medical doctors to sway public opinion against tobacco smoke, or did something else do the trick?

I saw a trailer today for a new documentary on tobacco whistleblowers and was reminded of the answer. Public opinion finally shifted permanently when it was demonstrated that tobacco companies were intentionally concealing its harmful attributes. Better communication had nothing to do with it. The determining factor was trust. When the pro-smokers suddenly had nobody trustworthy arguing that tobacco was fine, they had no choice but to change their opinions. Not everyone, but enough to establish a public consensus.

So it seems that demonstrating that the other side is scientifically inept and untrustworthy does have an appropriate place in the climate change debate strategy. Likewise, anyone hoping to win public opinion must help ensure that their side is trustworthy. For something as potentially important as climate change, scientists must be as clean and honest as possible, the better to give the public a legitimate choice.

Read John Nielsen-Gammon's full article at his blog, Climate Abyss

Global warming related sea level rise poses big threat to Washington, D.C.

by Andrew Freedman/Washington Post/Jan. 17, 2012
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Global warming-related sea level rise constitutes a major threat to the nation’s capital, with the potential to inundate national monuments, museums, military bases, and parts of the Metro Rail system during the next several decades and beyond, according to a recent study published in the journal “Risk Analysis.” The study helps localize a problem that is more typically discussed at the global level, and makes clear that public officials must make decisions in the near-term in order to minimize future losses.

Considering the city’s history, it should come as no surprise to learn that Washington, D.C. is vulnerable to sea level rise. The National Mall and Foggy Bottom were originally marshland, and the area between the Anacostia River and I-295 used to be open water. What is rather disturbing and less well known, though, is just how vulnerable D.C. is to even minor amounts of sea level rise, which according to some studies is virtually guaranteed as the amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue to climb, temperatures rise, and mountain glaciers and ice caps melt.

Read more at the Washington Post

Climate Proposal Puts Practicality Ahead of Sacrifice

by John Tierney/New York Times/Jan. 16, 2012
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The current issue of the journal Science contains a proposal to slow global warming that is extraordinary for a couple of reasons:      

1. In theory, it would help people living in poor countries now, instead of mainly benefiting their descendants.

2. In practice, it might actually work.
This proposal comes from an international team of researchers — in climate modeling, atmospheric chemistry, economics, agriculture and public health — who started off with a question that borders on heresy in some green circles: Could something be done about global warming besides forcing everyone around the world to use less fossil fuel?

Ever since the Kyoto Protocol imposed restrictions in industrial countries, the first priority of environmentalists has been to further limit the emission of carbon dioxide. Burning fewer fossil fuels is the most obvious way to counteract the greenhouse effect, and the notion has always had a wonderfully virtuous political appeal — as long as it’s being done by someone else.

But as soon as people are asked to do it themselves, they follow a principle identified by Roger Pielke Jr. in his book “The Climate Fix.” Dr. Pielke, a political scientist at the University of Colorado, calls it iron law of climate policy: When there’s a conflict between policies promoting economic growth and policies restricting carbon dioxide, economic growth wins every time.

Read more at the New York Times

Global warming moving faster, UGA ecologist says: 'This is not scary science fiction. Everything that makes this planet a hospitable place is at risk'

by Lee Shearer/Online Athens/Jan. 19, 2012
---------------------------------

Global warming is advancing faster than even the worst predictions of a few years ago, and the pace is likely to pick up sharply, a prominent University of Georgia ecologist said Wednesday.

A few years ago, climate scientists were predicting the Arctic Ocean might be ice-free during summer by about 2040. Now, scientists believe the summer Arctic could be open ocean as soon as next year, ecologist Jim Porter told a crowd of more than 100 on the UGA campus....

“This is not scary science fiction. Everything that makes this planet a hospitable place is at risk,” he said.

Read more about this story at Online Athens

Where Republicans join Democrats in fighting global warming

by Geoffrey Lean/Telegraph/Jan. 19, 2012
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Here’s a surprise in store. After slugging it out in South Carolina, the Republican presidential hopefuls – all but one of whom strongly reject man-made climate change (Romney’s flipflopping position is less clear)– will descend on Florida for the next primary. And there they will find conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats working together to try to minimise the threat of global warming.

Four neighbouring counties, spanning the political spectrum – Broward, Miami-Dade, Monroe and Palm Beach, home to 5.6 million people – have combined in the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact. And last month, just as the Durban climate summit was drawing to a close, they adopted a bipartisan Climate Action Plan. That’s quite a departure at a time of polarised politics and ideological deadlock in Washington DC, which has done much to ensure little is being done nationally on the issue. The plan’s 100 recommendations include raising coastal roads and installing pumps to considering a 10-foot high sea wall along the entire coast – all to protect against the rises in sea-level expected as the world warms up.

Read more at the Telegraph

Michael Mann: 'The dirty secret is that we tend to understate what we find in science'

by Scott Marshall/The News & Andvance/Jan. 18, 2012
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Scientist says greenhouse gasses causing global warming

A noted climate scientist and Nobel laureate says “there essentially isn’t any uncertainty” that greenhouse gases, or carbon dioxide emissions, are causing global warming.

“Scientists don’t debate that anymore,” said Michael Mann, who appeared at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in the Clifford community of Amherst Wednesday night as part of a speaker’s series to help people understand global warming.

The global temperature rose 1 1/2 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century. If nothing changes for the better, the temperature could rise by 7 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100, Mann said, citing research and climate models.

“The dirty secret is that we tend to understate what we find in science,” Mann said.

One example he cited was a dramatic plunge in the amount of arctic ice in 2007 — the level now stands at 30 percent of what it was in 1980 and the ice that remains is thinner, he said.

Warmer temperatures can change wind patterns, cause longer droughts and change rainfall patterns. The situation could affect national security if the Northwest Passage is opened, creating a new coastline to defend. It could threaten water and food security and create a loss of fresh water and land.

Read more at  The News & Advance

Marcellus [Shale] boom threatens climate change action, study says

by Ken Ward Jr./Sunday Gazette Mail/Jan. 18, 2012
--------------------------------------

Read the study

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The boom in drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale and other similar formations will likely suppress the development of alternative energies that are urgently needed to combat global warming, according to a new study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology.

Researchers highlighted some positive aspects of the boom in drilling for "shale-gas" reserves, such as help in lowering gas prices and stimulating the economy.

But they warned that a switch from coal to natural gas alone isn't nearly enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the levels scientists believe are needed to curb the worst impacts of global warming.
"People speak of gas as a bridge to the future, but there had better be something at the other end of the bridge," said Henry Jacoby, an engineer and economist and lead author of the paper, which was published in the inaugural issue of a new journal, "Economics of Energy and Environmental Policy."

In West Virginia and some surrounding states, business and political leaders are pushing hard to encourage continued growth in natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation. The drive is heating up, as states race each other to offer economic incentives to lure a natural gas "cracker" plant to one of their communities.

Industry supporters say little about recent scientific papers that question whether natural gas really provides improvements over coal in terms of greenhouse emissions or concerns that the gas boom diverts resources and attention from developing renewable energy sources.

Read more at Sunday Gazette Mail

(video) Bill Maher and Keith Olbermann on the Typical Republican Voter

Carbon emissions creating acidic oceans not seen since dinosaurs

Pandango: This article was written almost 3 years ago in 2009.  Ocean acidification is a tipping point of global warming.  After you read this article, scroll down my blog and read the other entry I just posted about acid oceans written just a couple of weeks ago.  These articles say the exact same thing.  We are hitting climate tipping points and no one seems to notice! 
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by David Adam/Guardian/March 9, 2009


Ken Caldeira, an expert on ocean acidification at the Carnegie Institution in California, will tell the conference that the next few decades could produce "profound" changes in the oceans. He will say: "The choice to continue emitting carbon dioxide means that we will be an agent of biological change of a force and magnitude exceeded only by the causes of the great mass extinction events. If we do not cut carbon dioxide emissions deeply and soon, the consequences of ocean acidification will stand out against the broad reaches of geologic time. Those consequences will remain embedded in the geologic record as testimony from a civilisation that had the wisdom to develop high technology, but did not develop the wisdom to use it wisely."

Other experts will report that acidification is already affecting marine life in the Arctic and Antarctic. They will also discuss a bizarre finding that acid waters carry sound more efficiently, so the ocean will be a much noisier place in future.

Read more at the Guardian

New study to probe corrosiveness of Canada oil

by Roberta Rampton/Reuters/Jan. 17, 2012
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(Reuters) - A U.S. safety regulator will look at whether pipelines carrying petroleum from Canada's oil sands are at greater risk for spills than those carrying other types of crude, and whether any changes are needed to its rules.

The new study, to be completed by July 2013, could address some of the issues in play in the debate between environmental groups and the oil industry about TransCanada Corp's $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline project, designed to feed 700,000 barrels of oil a day from the Canadian oil sands into the United States.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and other environmental groups have said they believe diluted bitumen from Canadian oil sands is more corrosive than other grades of oil, fueling their concerns about spills.

Read more at Reuters