the definition of hypocrisy

[Andrew B.]

http://www.onenewsnow.com/culture/2014/09/23/the-height-of-hypocrisy-climate-change-marchers-trash-nyc#.VC1jTxbxhBw

“Do people who honestly believe the planet is in jeopardy behave this way?” Nolte asks. “Or drive to protests in cars? Or live in the Hollywood Hills [environmentalist actor Leonardo DeCaprio]? Or star in carbon-belching Hollywood blockbusters [The Avengers’ Mark Ruffalo who played the Hulk]? Or fly in private jets [global-warming lecturer Al Gore]?

[Andrew B.]

Good for the goose = Good for the gander

I dont sweat driving my 'burban skiing every weekend

[EXILED]

All anyone needs to know:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c

[vcskier]

So how biodigradable are the batteries in a Prius? I know a firm that makes a mint on disposal aka storing old batteries in a hazardous waste dump!

[redrider]

Interesting article

By RYAN GORMAN

Antarctic sea ice has hit a new record maximum, but scientists say this is even more proof of global warming.

Satellite imagery from last month shows the ice shelf surrounding the planet's southern-most continent passed 20 million-square-kilometers (7.72 million-square-miles) for the first time since 1979, according to NASA.

Scientists only began keeping track of Antarctic sea ice in 1979, so this represents a new known-record.

Despite this development, experts still believe it is proof the planet is warming.

"The planet as a whole is doing what was expected in terms of warming," said Claire Parkinson, a senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

"Sea ice as a whole is decreasing as expected, but just like with global warming, not every location with sea ice will have a downward trend in ice extent."

Arctic sea ice has decreased at a rate of about 21,000 square-miles per year since the 1970s, according to the space agency, but Antarctic sea ice has gained about 7,300 square-miles annually.

Despite these gains, the southern ice shelf had never exceeded 7.2 million-square miles, experts said.

Another expert believes the southern shelf has expanded because Antarctica does not have the natural barriers present around the North Pole.

"Part of it is just the geography and geometry. With no northern barrier around the whole perimeter of the ice, the ice can easily expand if conditions are favorable," said Walt Meier, a research scientist at Goddard.

Other factors at play could be changing wind patterns, a hole in the Ozone layer and even a constant low-pressure system over the continent.

"The winds really play a big role," Meier said. Gusts from Antarctica's interior push colder temperatures further out to sea and can cause the ice to rapidly expand.

Snow falling onto thin, barely noticeable ice can also play a part, scientists say. As it pushed the thin layer of slush and ice below the surface, it causes more water to cool and thickens the frozen layer at the top.

Initially warmer waters created by the Ozone hole only serve to further strengthen these storms before their snowfall causes the water to freeze over.

Warmer oceans have also been fingered as the main culprit in the Polar Vortex slamming the United States with bitter cold air last winter.

Scientists believe warmer water from global warming is destabilizing polar air masses and causing them to shift south, causing colder and snowier winters in many regions.

But these are all just theories. No one knows for sure what is causing the Antarctic ice sheet to expand so rapidly.

"There hasn't been one explanation yet that I'd say has become a consensus," said Parkinson. The Antarctic sea ice is one of those areas where things have not gone entirely as expected.

"So it's natural for scientists to ask, 'OK, this isn't what we expected, now how can we explain it?'"

[Andrew B.]

Interesting article
"So it's natural for scientists to ask, 'OK, this isn't what we expected, now how can we explain it?'"

settled science my @ss
I hate pompous @ss hat$

[gondicar]

http://www.upworthy.com/they-took-a-cam ... terrifying

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC3VTgIPoGU

Narrator: I'm on the phone with Jim on one of our regular check-ins.

Jim, just nothing is happening. Hey, Jim. It's going well. We had some serious bouts of wind, but other than things are fairly well set up here. We've got some continuous time lapse going...

Male: It's starting Adam, I think. Adam, it's starting.

Narrator: Oh, wait, Jim, Jim. The big piece is starting to calve. Let me call you back.

Male: Hold that.

Narrator: Okay, bye. Is it still going?

Male: Yeah, in that V-section right there. Holy **** , look at that big bird rolling.

Narrator: All four are running, right? Look at that. You see how... Look at the whole thing. The calving face is 300, sometimes 400 feet tall. Pieces of ice were shooting up out of the ocean 600 feet, and then falling. The only way that you can really try to put it into scale with human reference is if you imagine Manhattan, and all of a sudden, all of those buildings just start to rumble, and quake, and peel off and just fall over, fall over and roll around. This whole massive city just breaking apart in front of your eyes. We're just observers. It's two little dots on this side of it now. And we watched and recorded the largest witness calving event ever caught on tape.

Presenter: So how big was this calving event that we just looked at? We'll resort to some illustrations again to give you a sense of scale. It's as if the entire lower tip of Manhattan broke off, except that the thickness, the height of it, is equivalent to buildings that are two-and-a-half or three times higher than they are.

Narrator: That's a magical, miraculous, horrible, scary thing. I don't know that anybody has really seen the miracle and horror of that.

Presenter: It took a hundred years for it to retreat eight miles from 1900 to 2000. From 2000 to 2010 it retreated nine miles. So in ten years it retreated more than it had in the previous 100.

[jimskime]

All anyone needs to know:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c

I agree it's disgusting but any time you have that number of people anywhere you're gonna have a mess.

[gondicar]

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-oc ... acidifying

The Oceans Are Warming, Expanding, and Becoming Dangerously Acidic
Written by
Brian Merchant
Senior Editor
October 10, 2014 // 06:15 AM EST

We already know that climate change is warming, acidifying, and expanding the oceans. We just didn't know how fast, or how drastically. We still don't, exactly, but we know this: Things are looking as grim below the ever-rising waves as they are above.

This week brought an onslaught of bad news for the planet's oceans—no fewer than four major scientific studies and reports were released detailing the deleterious effect humanity's relentless carbon habit is having on the marine world.

Every time I sat down to write about one of them, it seemed, another one was already making headlines (in the tiny, 'green' corner of the internet where people read about things like the impending collapse of vast ecosystems, anyway). So our oceans haven't exactly turned into hot acid baths—but they're a lot closer to that than they used to be.

Warmer

First, the heat: Two landmark studies revealed that the oceans are warming up to twice as fast as we previously thought—which is a big deal, because oceans absorb some 90 percent of the heat generated by human activity. The 'missing' warming comes from the world's southern oceans, which had never received a proper comprehensive survey—shipping vessels had already collected plenty of data in northern oceans.

To fill the void, scientists floated hundreds of ocean-faring drones called Argos, which bob and dive beneath the surface to take measurements, around the globe. Their measurements indicate that in total, the globe's oceans are sucking down 24 to 58 percent more energy than was previously on the books.

As the authors of the Nature Climate Change study note, their findings "have important implications for sea level, the planetary energy budget and climate sensitivity assessments." (The second study, published in the same journal, found that the warming was primarily confined to shallow waters, and that deep sea temperatures seemed largely stable.)

So oceans—the shallower parts, anyway—will not only be warmer, which will impact marine life in unknown ways, but climate change as a whole is likely happening faster than was suspected before. It also means we can probably expect sea levels to rise more rapidly, as water expands as it warms.

Higher

Meanwhile, another report found that those higher sea levels will bring severe impacts—like more frequent floods—to coastal cities. High tides will be even higher, after all, and increasingly they will be so high that they will flood entire neighborhoods. The study, "Encroaching Tides," compiled by the Union of Concerned Scientists, assessed the likely impact of tidal flooding on cities effected by rising sea levels.

"By 2045, many coastal communities are expected to see roughly one foot of sea level rise," it concluded. "The resulting increases in tidal flooding will be substantial and nearly universal in the 52 communities analyzed."

Researchers with the UCS told Climate Central that tidal flooding was likely to become "the new normal," and stood to ruin infrastructure, threaten homes, and disrupt transit lines.


Never turn your back on the ocean

The cities that UCS examined were all in the US, but similar effects can be expected worldwide. Sometimes, as in low-lying coastal nations like Bangladesh, where citizens have far fewer resources than Americans to cope, they will be much worse.

"A growing proportion of these floods would be extensive, and as floods reach farther into communities, they would also last longer," the authors continued. "Flood-prone areas in five of the mid-Atlantic communities studied could be inundated more than 10 percent of the time."

Coastal dwellers, many of whom live where they do because they enjoy or need the bounty and beauty of the ocean, are going to be seeing a lot more of it than they might like.

More Acidic

I've saved the most disturbing oceanic detriment for last: a major review of hundreds of studies has confirmed that the ocean's acidity has increased 26 percent since pre-industrial times.

The Convention on Biological Diversity, which met this week in South Korea, concluded as much in an extensive 102-page report detailing the latest findings on ocean acidification.

"In the past 200 years, it is estimated that the ocean has absorbed more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide released by human activity, increasing ocean acidity by a similar proportion," the authors wrote. "It is now nearly inevitable that within 50 to 100 years, continued anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions will further increase ocean acidity to levels that will have widespread impacts, mostly deleterious, on marine organisms and ecosystems, and the goods and services they provide."


The ocean's acidity has increased 26 percent since pre-industrial times

Sea creatures with calcium-based shells are already having trouble growing them in parts of the world, and coral reefs are already facing a rapid decline.

The scientists tried to put a price tag on the economic damage that the phenomenon would inflict, and the total was, predictably, depressing: The authors estimate acidification will cost "$1 trillion annually by 2100," and will pose a direct threat to those who rely on seafood for nutrition or income.

Taken together, it's hard to overstate the significance of these findings—the next generation will come to grips with an ocean entirely different in character. Already a violent force, it will invariably seem more hostile; more prone to flooding city streets, to dissolving sea creatures whole, to swallowing low-lying land masses.

It will be an ocean home to dying coral reefs and fearsome tidal surges, one that will probably feed plenty more hurricanes like Sandy, and leave plenty more physical and psychological scarring across the populace that must cope with it.

One of the most memorable and allegory-friendly bits of advice my father gave me when I was young applies here: "Never turn your back on the ocean." Now, it seems we have no choice.

[EXILED]

http://www.upworthy.com/they-took-a-camera-to-a-remote-area-in-greenland-and-what-they-recorded-is-simply-terrifying

Easily one of the most amazing videos I've seen...WOW