UN Secretary General puts world on "Red Alert."

As we begin 2018, I am issuing a red alert for our world. I call for unity – our future depends on it. pic.twitter.com/fWtTa1irM3

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) December 31, 2017

Courtesy of HuffPo:

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres issued a grim warning as 2017 drew to a close. 

In a somber video address posted to Twitter on New Year’s Eve, he cautioned that the globe was on “red alert” following a year marked by deepening conflicts and “new dangers.” 

“When I took office a year ago, I appealed for 2017 to be a year for peace,” Guterres said in the clip. “Unfortunately, in fundamental ways, the world has gone in reverse. ... Global anxieties over nuclear weapons are the highest since the Cold War, and climate change is moving faster than we are. Inequalities are growing, and we see horrific violations of human rights. Nationalism and xenophobia are on the rise.” 

Facing such challenges, Guterres said he was “not issuing an appeal” but a “red alert for our world.” Only international unity and cooperation, he stressed, could now help solve these many crises.

“I truly believe we can make our world more safe and secure. We can settle conflicts, overcome hatred and defend shared values but we can only do that together,” the U.N. chief said. “I urge leaders everywhere to make this New Year’s resolution: Narrow the gaps. Bridge the divides. Rebuild trust by bringing people together around common goals. Unity is the path. Our future depends on it.”

As you can read Guterres does not mention the Russian military buildup, and the back and forth between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un outright, but clearly that is the subtext. 

In decades past the United States was expected to be the voice of reason in working to make the world a safer place, but now that we have our own out of control oligarch in office, we are now seen as perhaps the number one threat to the people on this planet. 

When they coined the term "elections have consequences" I am not sure they ever envisioned consequences of this magnitude.

More than 700 employees have left the EPA since Scott Pruitt took over.

Courtesy of Think Progress: 

Since Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt took over the top job at the agency in March, more than 700 employees have either retired, taken voluntary buyouts, or quit, signaling the second-highest exodus of employees from the agency in nearly a decade. 

According to agency documents and federal employment statistics, 770 EPA employees departed the agency between April and December, leaving employment levels close to Reagan-era levels of staffing. According to the EPA’s contingency shutdown plan for December, the agency currently has 14,449 employees on board — a marked change from the April contingency plan, which showed a staff of 15,219. 

“There has been a drop of employees of 770 between April and December. While several hundred of those are buyouts, the rest of those are either people that are retiring or quitting in disgust,” Kyla Bennett, director of New England Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), told ThinkProgress. “Is that number higher than it would normally be? I think it is.”

I imagine the number of exiting employees will only continue to grow. 

After all how many employees do you need at the Environmental Protection Agency if they have no intention of protecting the environment?

President Obama put a lot of effort into plans to protect this planet, so of course Donald Trump's focus is on undoing everything that he tried to accomplish even if it means the death of every creature in existence.

California man's plan to launch himself 1,800 feet into the air to prove the earth is flat has been postponed. Wait, what's happening?

Courtesy of Fox News: 

Mike Hughes said the Bureau of Land Management wouldn't approve his plan to use public land for Saturday's planned experiment, so he'll have to move the project to private land next week, the Washington Post reported. 

The 61-year-old limo driver said he had received verval approval from the same federal agency just last year, pending an OK from the federal Aviation Commission, the paper reported. 

Hughes added that engine trouble in his motor home, which was converted into a ramp, also affected his original launch plans. 

“It’s still happening. We’re just moving it three miles down the road,” Hughes told the Post on Friday. “This is what happens any time you have to deal with any kind of government agency.” 

Hughes said the rocket will take flight next week, from private property near the Mojave Desert, along Route 66.

If all goes according to plan, Hughes said his stunt will be the first phase of the flat-Earth space program, sponsored by Research Flat Earth, a group that believes Earth is flat.

Climate change deniers,  anti-evolutionists, and these flat earth idiots probably feel that with Donald Trump in office this is their time.

After all clearly facts no longer matter, and denying reality seems to be a winning strategy.

 However after taking a look at the rocket in that picture up above I think the only thing this Mike Hughes is going to prove is that the human body can disintegrate on impact.

As another deadly storm threatens our citizens creationist Ken Ham would like to take a moment to remind you that it's all your fault you unrepentant sinners.

Devastating Hurricanes-reminder we live in a fallen groaning world as a result of our sin against a Holy God-it's our fault not God's fault pic.twitter.com/JwAJWN8oQ0

— Ken Ham (@aigkenham) September 6, 2017

World we live is not original world God made. God made a perfect world-we now live in a fallen world cause of sin- look forward to new earth pic.twitter.com/MUQw5eKikn

— Ken Ham (@aigkenham) September 6, 2017

For those who reject God & believe evolution, all the bad things in the world are a result of the supposed continuing process of evolution

— Ken Ham (@aigkenham) September 6, 2017

For the record people do not "believe" in Evolution, but rather than accept and understand the facts of science.

Facts don't require faith.

Secularists like to mock the Christian God when we see tragedy cause they don't want to acknowledge our sinful state before a Holy God

— Ken Ham (@aigkenham) September 6, 2017

Acknowledge my sinful state, buddy I celebrate my sinful state.

It is so hard to believe that in the 21st Century there are still so many idiots condemned to remain trapped in such primitive thought processes and so willing to embrace superstitious nonsense instead of expanding their minds and gaining release from the prison of their fears.

(H/T to Joe My God.)

Yesterday Donald Trump stripped away much of the protections that President Obama put in place to protect our planet.

(Did you see Mike Pence nodding his fundamentalist head in the background. Dumb shit thinks Jesus Christ is coming back tomorrow so he has no sense of the need to preserve earth's future.)

Courtesy of Reuters:

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an order to undo Obama-era regulations to curb climate change, keeping a campaign promise to support the coal industry while calling into question U.S. support for an international deal to fight global warming. 

Flanked by coal miners, Trump enacted his "Energy Independence" executive order at the Environmental Protection Agency. A coalition of 23 states and local governments vowed to fight the order in court. 

The order's main target is former President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, which required states to slash carbon emissions from power plants - a key factor in the United States' ability to meet its commitments under a climate change accord reached by nearly 200 countries in Paris in 2015. 

Trump's decree also reverses a ban on coal leasing on federal lands, undoes rules to curb methane emissions from oil and gas production and reduces the weight of climate change and carbon emissions in policy and infrastructure permitting decisions. 

Carbon dioxide and methane are two of the main greenhouse gases blamed by scientists for heating the earth. 

"I am taking historic steps to lift restrictions on American energy, to reverse government intrusion and to cancel job-killing regulations," Trump said at the EPA.

In the past Trump's executive orders have mostly hurt certain groups of people one at a time, Muslims and Mexicans for instance, but this order....this order affects all of us and even endangers future generations.

My hope is that many of these policy ideas will be challenged in court and will not survive legal scrutiny.

Of course if Neil Gorsuch gets confirmed to the Supreme Court even that final obstacle may be removed.

Among those who are hopeful about a Trump presidency, the folks behind the Pebble Mine.

Courtesy of ADN: 

The companies behind a decade-long effort to build a massive gold and copper mine in Alaska's Bristol Bay region are hoping the new administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump will breath new life into their struggling efforts. 

Trump was adamant during his campaign that he would pull back government oversight for natural resource projects, limiting the scope of environmental regulations and slowdowns that stand in their way. His pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, has been a staunch courtroom opponent of what he sees as federal overreach. 

So now, the company is "hopeful," said Mike Heatwole, vice president for public affairs with Pebble Limited Partnership, the company created to ferry the project through to its golden end.

I imagine this is how a lot of companies behind potentially environmentally hazardous projects.

The Pebble Mine, the Keystone Pipeline, drilling in ANWR, there is no telling the number of environmentally damaging programs the Trump administration might okay before they are replaced with a more intelligent and Eco-friendly administration.

In other words, a Democratic one.

March was so hot it shattered a century long record.

Courtesy of The Guardian:  

The global temperature in March has shattered a century-long record and by the greatest margin yet seen for any month. 

February was far above the long-term average globally, driven largely by climate change, and was described by scientists as a “shocker” and signalling “a kind of climate emergency”. But data released by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) shows that March was even hotter. 

Compared with the 20th-century average, March was 1.07C hotter across the globe, according to the JMA figures, while February was 1.04C higher. The JMA measurements go back to 1891 and show that every one of the past 11 months has been the hottest ever recorded for that month. 

But remember according to Sarah Palin Bill Nye is only a "kids' show actor" so clearly nobody should be an "alarmist" is response to this data.

I wonder if when people start to spontaneously combust in the sun if that will be enough to convince these idiots that we have a problem and that man is responsible for it?

Temperatures were so high in the month of February this year that scientists were using adjectives such as "astronomical" and "staggering" to describe them.

Courtesy of Yahoo News:

Earth got so hot last month that federal scientists struggled to find words, describing temperatures as "astronomical," ''staggering" and "strange." They warned that the climate may have moved into a new and hotter neighborhood. 

This was not just another of the drumbeat of 10 straight broken monthly global heat records, triggered by a super El Nino and man-made global warming. February 2016 obliterated old marks by such a margin that it was the most above-normal month since meteorologists started keeping track in 1880, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

The old record was set just last December and the last three months have been the most above-normal months on record, said NOAA climate scientist Jessica Blunden. And it's not just NOAA. NASA, which uses different statistical techniques, as well as a University of Alabama Huntsville team and the private Remote Sensing System team, which measure using satellites, also said February 2016 had the biggest departure from normal on record.

But remember kids, man made global warming is only a myth.

I think it has become crystal clear that we are no longer in any position to stop global warming, or really to significantly slow it down, now it would seem to me that our only recourse is to adequately prepare to protect our species from what comes next.

Also if I had my choice I would put politicians like Senator Roy Blunt, Jim Inhofe, and Alaska's own Congressman Don Young, just to name a few, out in the middle of the Mojave Desert so that they could enjoy the temperature changes that their denial of peer reviewed science helped to usher in.

Neil deGrasse Tyson schools rapper promoting the flat earth theory.

Okay that was sweet.

The true story of the origin of the universe. So much more beautiful and awe inspiring than those imagined by the religions of man.

It's just a touch over eight minutes long, but do yourself a favor and sit through it sipping your coffee and just marvel at the magnificence of our beginnings.

And then afterward you can go through your day empowered with the knowledge that you are the universe searching to understand itself.

North Vancouver, British Columbia now mandates warning labels on gas pumps.

Courtesy of Think Progress:  

The city of North Vancouver, British Columbia passed a law this week that mandates climate change warning stickers be applied to gas pumps in the city. The vote makes the city the first in the world to implement such a law. The City Council still has to approve designs for the stickers, but a city staff report recommended including messages such as “Get $5,000 toward a purchase of a new electric car” or “Idling your vehicle for more than 10 seconds wastes more gas than restarting your engine” on the stickers. 

“The message is that burning fossil fuels causes climate change and … to add a positive spin, here are some tips when using your automobile on how to make it more fuel efficient,” North Vancouver Mayor Darrell Mussatto told the CBC. 

The effort to get the stickers on gas pumps is being spearheaded by a Toronto-based group called Our Horizon. Rob Shirkey, executive director of the group, told ThinkProgress that the main point of the stickers isn’t to get people to completely stop driving — it’s to change their way of thinking about climate change.

Hey, it worked with cigarettes. 

And remember just like cigarette companies oil companies also hired their own scientists to spread misinformation, and worked to downplay any science which demonstrated safety concerns associated with their product.

Personally I would love to see these all over the world.

The new face of climate change. Update!

Courtesy of All That's Interesting: 

This devastating photo of an emaciated polar bear presents us with yet another ugly view of a climate-changed future. Just this August, wildlife photographer Kerstin Langenberger captured this heartbreaking image off the shores of Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. 

The islands that compose the archipelago are home to one of the world’s largest populations of polar bears. But as rising temperatures melt sea ice, polar bears’ natural environment for seal hunting also diminishes, leaving the bears to hunt for less abundant food sources on land such as snow geese and caribou. Such a shift in diet disrupts the entire Arctic food chain — and can leave the bears quite hungry, as seen above. 

Said Dr. Ian Stirling, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Alberta and a member of Scientific Advisory Council at Polar Bears International, in an interview, “[Polar bears are] kind of in the worst situation in an evolutionary sense. They’re large mammals and they’re very highly specialised to very specific ecological requirements. If the ecology changes, especially if it happens quickly, there’s just simply no time for the bears to even try and adapt. They can’t go out and swim in the open water and catch [seals] so they need that ice and that’s why the ice is critical.” 

I have seen a lot of pictures of polar bears in my time, but I have NEVER seen anything like this.

We are several decades late in taking climate change seriously, and one can only hope that now when we are finally starting to respond in a significant manner that it is not too late for some of our fellow inhabitants.

But sadly I think that it might be.

Update: There are some claiming the picture is photoshopped, but it is not. 

Did July feel hot to you? Well that's because it was the hottest month on record.

Courtesy of Slate:  

Earlier this week, data from NASA and the Japan Meteorological Agency showed July was the hottest July on record, globally. Thanks to a particularly strong El Niño, these sorts of monthly records have been coming fast and furiously lately, so that news like this almost seemed like nbd. But then, on Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed that not only was last month the hottest July on record globally, it was also the hottest month on record overall. Since NOAA started keeping track in 1880, there has never been a hotter month. That’s a very big deal. 

The month was hot from start to finish. July 1st was the hottest day in the U.K.’s history—the Guardian briefly had to pause its liveblog of the heatwave because its computer servers overheated. On July 31st, the city of Bandar-e Mahshahr, Iran reached an unfathomable heat index of 165°F, nearly a world record.

Personally I cannot even fathom a heat index as high as 165 degrees, but I will tell you that I damn near melted in my house all through late June and July.

If this keeps up there will be no global warming naysayers left. They will have all died from heat stroke.

21 kids are suing President Obama over Climate Change.

Courtesy of MSNBC:  

One kid says that his family’s farm has been damaged by drought and wildfire. Another says that his childhood home has been devalued by rising sea levels. A third alleges an assault on his whole culture as man-made climate change upends the natural world. 

These and 18 other “youth plaintiffs” (ages 8 to 19) sued the federal government on Wednesday, walking a first-of-its-kind constitutional claim up the courthouse steps in Eugene, Oregon. The kids argue that inaction on climate change is a violation of their right to life, liberty and property. And they demand that President Obama, seven federal departments and the Environmental Protection Agency act immediately to preserve the climate for “future generations.” 

The White House was not immediately available for comment. A spokesperson for the EPA declined to address the specific merits of the lawsuit, but agreed that the government has “a moral obligation to leave a healthy planet for future generations.” The agency pointed to the White House’s Climate Action Plan – and the EPA’s controversial Clean Power Plan – as examples of remedies already underway. But the lawsuit portrays these efforts as “ineffectual” and “demonstrably short of what is needed.” 

While I think the President is probably doing more to protect our environment than any other administration since the Jimmy Carter's I still support what these kids are doing.

They have every right to demand more from those of us who are in charge today, and to call us out for not doing enough to protect their planet.

Personally I hope more young people stand up to make their voices heard on this topic as well.

President Obama to take the strongest actions ever taken to combat climate change.

Courtesy of The New York Times: 

In the strongest action ever taken in the United States to combat climate change, President Obama will unveil on Monday a set of environmental regulations devised to sharply cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from the nation’s power plants and ultimately transform America’s electricity industry. 

The rules are the final, tougher versions of proposed regulations that the Environmental Protection Agency announced in 2012 and 2014. If they withstand the expected legal challenges, the regulations will set in motion sweeping policy changes that could shut down hundreds of coal-fired power plants, freeze construction of new coal plants and create a boom in the production of wind and solar power and other renewable energy sources. 

“Climate change is not a problem for another generation, not anymore,” Mr. Obama said in a video posted on Facebook at midnight Saturday. He called the new rules “the biggest, most important step we’ve ever taken to combat climate change.” 

The most aggressive of the regulations requires the nation’s existing power plants to cut emissions 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, an increase from the 30 percent target proposed in the draft regulation. 

That new rule also demands that power plants use more renewable sources of energy like wind and solar power. While the proposed rule would have allowed states to lower emissions by transitioning from plants fired by coal to plants fired by natural gas, which produces about half the carbon pollution of coal, the final rule is intended to push electric utilities to invest more quickly in renewable sources, raising to 28 percent from 22 percent the share of generating capacity that would come from such sources.

Well holy crap! I guess we should start referring to Obama as the "Environmentalist-in-Chief."

People have been complaining for decades that politicians have been much too slow to respond to the dangers facing this planet due to man made climate change, now it looks like we finally have a President who is willing to tackle the problem head on.

Man am I glad I voted for this guy!

A little perspective.

Personally I find this somewhat humbling.

However I consider myself lucky to have ever spent time in the top portion of the hourglass, making it harder to regret my eventual tumble into the bottom.

President Obama interviews the great Sir David Attenborough at the White House. A very pleasant way to end our day.

 Courtesy of the BBC:

In an extraordinary meeting of minds, President Barack Obama has interviewed Sir David Attenborough at the White House. 

During the meeting, the two men discussed the future of the planet, their passion for nature and what can be done to protect it. Excerpts can be viewed below. 

The interview was recorded in May on Sir David's 89th birthday.

As you can see my headline was not backwards, the President is actually conducting this interview because as he says he has been a huge admirer of his work for a long time.

And he is certainly not alone.

I am also a huge fan of Sir. David Attenborough and his amazing body of work.

If you watch the video, which is a touch over forty eight minutes long, you can almost hear the conservative heads in the background exploding as Attenborough and the President address the impact that man made climate change has had on our planet over and over again. 

Food for thought in a high school science classroom.

Clearly this is in a science classroom NOT located in the deep south.

Dear future generations, sorry.

That young man is Prince Ea, an American rapper and activist.

Here is some excerpts courtesy of the Daily Kos:  

"Dear Future Generations, I think I speak for the rest of us when I say, 'Sorry.' Sorry that we left you with a mess of a planet. Sorry that we were so caught up in our own doings - to do something." 

"Let me tell you, trees are amazing. We literally breathe the air they are creating They clean up our pollution, our carbon, store and purify our water, give us medicine that cures our disease, food that feeds us…" 

"I'm sorry that we put profits above people, greed above need, the rule of gold above the Golden Rule. I'm sorry we used nature as a credit card with no spending limit…" 

"Hey Fox News, If you don't think climate change is a threat, I dare you to interview the thousands of homeless people in Bangladesh. See while you were in your penthouse nestled, their homes were literally washed away beneath their feet due to the rising sea levels." 

"And Sarah Palin. You said you loved the smell of fossil fuels. Well, I urge you to talk to the kids of Beijing who are forced to wear pollution masks just to go to school." 

"Cut the beat." 

"I'm not sorry. This future, I do not accept it. Because an error does not become a mistake, until you refuse to correct it."

And they say our millennials are lazy and uninvolved.

Go ahead tell that to this young man. 

Kind of telling that he felt the need to call out Fox News and Sarah Palin specifically don't you think?

Are we at the beginning of the end of our reliance on fossil fuels? Just might be.

Courtesy of Bloomberg:  

The race for renewable energy has passed a turning point. The world is now adding more capacity for renewable power each year than coal, natural gas, and oil combined. And there's no going back. 

The shift occurred in 2013, when the world added 143 gigawatts of renewable electricity capacity, compared with 141 gigawatts in new plants that burn fossil fuels, according to an analysis presented Tuesday at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance annual summit in New York. The shift will continue to accelerate, and by 2030 more than four times as much renewable capacity will be added. 

"The electricity system is shifting to clean,'' Michael Liebreich, founder of BNEF, said in his keynote address. "Despite the change in oil and gas prices there is going to be a substantial buildout of renewable energy that is likely to be an order of magnitude larger than the buildout of coal and gas."

Well that is nothing but good news for our planet, our children, and our children's children. 

As for those of us living in states that are almost totally reliant on oil or coal production?

Well we better put on our thinking caps and find ourselves another source of revenue.

Hopefully one that does not help to destroy our planet.