WashPost Columnist: People Who Give Flowers ‘Are Terrible For Mother Earth’
… While it’s difficult to calculate the carbon footprint of a single bouquet, experts estimate that sending 100 million roses (the number believed to be given in the United States on Valentine’s Day, another big flower holiday) produces some 9,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions from field to florist. The average American household has a carbon footprint of 48 tons a year. – See more at: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2015/05/10/washpost-columnist-people-who-give-flowers-dont-care-about-mother-earth#sthash.ymmCwm20.dpuf…
Naomi Klein: To fight climate change we must fight capitalism
So is there no way to fight climate change without fighting capitalism?
Klein: No, I don’t think there is a way. We’ve been trying that for a long time. But there’s still a really strong strain of the green movement that thinks that it’s going to find a way to move forward that doesn’t offend those in power. I frankly think it’s just a bad strategy. If capitalism was working really well for the majority for people except for this problem of climate change, then we’d really need some kind of a strategy that protected that capitalist system, if such a strategy existed, which I don’t think it does. The fact is, that’s not where we are at. We’re at a point where there is a widespread popular understanding that this economic system is failing even on its own terms, more widespread than there ever has been in my lifetime. There is a huge debate about the neoliberal legacy of massive inequality. People understand that these policies that were supposed to create more efficiency actually created less. So the need for another economic model is urgent, and if the climate justice movement can show that responding to climate change is the best chance for a more just economic system, that creates more and better jobs, greater social equality, more and better social services, public transit, all these things that improve peoples daily lives, people will be ready to fight for those policies. The problem is that we have enemies: fossil fuel companies, who fight like hell to protect their interests. They fight like they mean it, they fight with creativity, they fight dirty, they do whatever it takes to win. And opposite them you have this sort of mushy middle that doesn’t really fight, because its not sure what the results will be. But if you can marry an economic justice agenda with climate action, then you create a constituency of people that will fight for that future, because they will directly benefit from it.’…
Watch: CFACT’s Paul Driessen on TV discusses the case for climate skepticism
https://youtu.be/t1DNF4yT1C8…
British Journal of Psychiatry: Climate change ‘to harm communities’ psychosocial well-being’
http://takimag.com/article/the_theology_of_climate_change_theodore_dalrymple/print#axzz3ZitdN7Wy…
Mean Cosmic Radiation Over Past 8 Years Highest Since 1958 …Current Solar Cycle Weakest In Almost Two Centuries!
Mean Cosmic Radiation Over Past 8 Years Highest Since 1958 …Current Solar Cycle Weakest In Almost Two Centuries!
The Sun in April By Frank Bosse and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt [Translated, edited by P Gosselin] The sole real source of energy for our planet also was also below normal in April: The sunspot number (SSN) was 54.4. Taking the average of the previous 23 cycles, that is only 70% of what is average for this month into the cycle. Compared to March activity rose some 46%. These short-term changes however are usual noise in the overall signal, which says the entire activity since the current cycle began has been only 53% of the mean value since 1750. Figure 1: Current solar cycle 24 (red), the mean solar cycle (blue) and the similar solar cycle no. 7, which took place from 1823 to 1833 and was the last in the Dalton Minimum. The comparison with solar cycle no. 7 could see increasingly large deviations in the months ahead, as solar activity increased markedly, as depicted by sharp peaks of the black line in Figure 1. Such a development appears highly improbable for solar cycle no. 24. What follows is a comparison of all cycles: Figure 2: The accumulated solar cycle sunspot anomaly for all cycles 77 months into the cycle. The current cycle began in December 2008. Figure 3: The speed of the solar wind, which impacts the Earth’s upper atmospheric layers, has fallen off since the early 1990s. It is expressed as the geomagnetic Ap Index. It is a measure of the sun’s impact on the Earth’s magnetic field. Source of the image: Climate4you. Not only the Earth is impacted by the solar winds, but also the entire sun’s surroundings far out in space. The heliosphere reacts to the stream of particles from the sun. When it is weaker – as is the case during times of solar minima – more cosmic radiation from the Milky Way can penetrate into the Earth’s atmosphere. This is measured here on Earth, e.g. in Moscow since 1958: Figure 4: Changes in cosmic radiation During the solar sunspot number maxima (compared to 2000) the solar wind is stronger and thus reduces cosmic radiation by up to 20% when compared to the minima in activity. The current cycle (maximum is already over) is bringing only about an 8% reduction. Over the entire period since 2006 …