At a public briefing to discuss the reports, Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, will deliver opening remarks, and members of the panels that wrote the reports will discuss their recommendations and take questions. The briefing starts at 10 a.m. EDT Wednesday, May 19, in the Lecture Room of the National Academy of Sciences building at 2100 C Street, NW, Washington, DC. Those unable to attend the event can watch the live webcast at The National Academies website.
The National Academy is releasing reports tomorrow from three panels on “America’s Climate Choices“:
Panel on Advancing the Science of Climate Change. This panel will address the question: “What can be done to better understand climate change and its interactions with human and ecological systems?”
NAS panels tend to be quite conservative in their articulation of the science, but the reports are timely so it will be interesting to see just how much or how little coverage they get from the media.
While our main goal here is to help you best use your current BlackBerry device, we also love to see new devices in use. RIM has satiated us to that end, releasing a handful of models each year. That creates a conundrum for users, though. Do you want to buy the current model, knowing that RIM will release an upgrade in a year? I discussed this in a guest post at RIMarkable, but didn’t draw any concrete conclusions. That’s because the question is of a personal nature. No one guideline can inform your decision of whether to upgrade now or wait for the next model. We can lay things out, though, and perhaps make the decision a bit easier. Today we’ll do just that, looking at the latest releases.
Yesterday afternoon we went over the basic tip of how to add contacts to your BlackBerry. The next thought in that process is of how to sync your Blackberry contacts to your Outlook ones. This also works for Outlook Express users. The process is pretty simple, as all you need is a USB cable and Desktop Manager. Once you have those two, you’re ready for a quick syncing process.
President Barack Obama will establish the commission by executive order. It will be similar to panels created to investigate the space shuttle Challenger disaster and the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a public announcement.
The president will create the panel by executive order “in coming days,” a White House official said. “The commission will take into account the investigations underway concerning the causes of the spill and explore a range of issues including: industry practices; rig safety; Federal, state, and local regulatory regimes; federal governmental oversight, including the structure and functions of M.M.S.; and environmental review and other protections,” the official said, requesting anonymity to discuss the matter in advance of the presidential announcement.
An hour ago White House sources indicated to CAP that an official announcement about this executive order could occur on Tuesday or Wednesday.
In addition to the horrible loss of eleven lives on the now sunken Deepwater Horizon oil rig, the BP oil disaster could be the most devastating environmental disaster to ever befall the United States. To understand what caused this oil nightmare, in early May CAP proposed that President Obama appoint appoint “an independent commission to completely examine the causes of the BP disaster and offer guidance for how we can make sure it never happens again.
This would enable investigators to conduct an independent assessment of the causes of the disaster, and determine the responsibilities born by BP, Transocean, and Halliburton. An independent inquiry would also be able to determine whether the Minerals Management Service of the Department of Interior fulfilled its oversight duties.
These were discrete incidents, while the BP oil disaster is an ongoing event so it may take longer to investigate and draw conclusions about the causes and damages. By using an executive order, President Obama can get this inquiry started much more quickly than by waiting for Congress to pass legislation. This will enable investigators to question witnesses while their memories are still fresh, and promptly order BP, Transocean, and Halliburton to preserve all relevant communications and documents.
An emeritus physics professor writes me cautioning against the use of the word ‘anomaly’ since, “In many people’s mind, the word ‘anomaly’ means something unusual that is a temporary phenomenon.” He suggests “change,” which is probably better.
Certainly for those who are communicating to the general public, like NOAA and NASA, ‘anomaly’ is a confusing word as used in these charts. And that is especially true because the recent temperature trend is anything but an anomaly — it is in fact a prediction of basic climate science.
Indeed, besides the record April and record Jan-April, NOAA itself explain:
This was also the 34th consecutive April with global land and ocean temperatures above the 20th century average.
So, yes, that isn’t really an anomaly any more — unless of course you are in the anti-science crowd, in which case the whole thing is one big mysterious deviation from the norm.
As for the oceans, NOAA points out:
The worldwide ocean surface temperature was 0.57°C (1.03°F) above the 20th century average of 16.0°C (60.9°F) and the warmest April on record. The warmth was most pronounced in the equatorial portions of the major oceans, especially the Atlantic.
Meteorologist Jeff Masters discusses the implications in his WunderBlog:
Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) in the Atlantic’s Main Development Region for hurricanes had their warmest April on record…. The area between 10°N and 20°N, between the coast of Africa and Central America (20°W – 80°W), is called the Main Development Region (MDR) because virtually all African waves originate in this region. These African waves account for 85% of all Atlantic major hurricanes and 60% of all named storms.
When SSTs in the MDR are much above average during hurricane season, a very active season typically results (if there is no El Niño event present.) SSTs in the Main Development Region (10°N to 20°N and 20°W to 85°W) were an eye-opening 1.46°C above average during April. This is the third straight record warm month, and the warmest anomaly measured for any month–by a remarkable 0.2°C. The previous record warmest anomalies for the Atlantic MDR were set in June 2005 and March 2010, at 1.26°C.
Figure. The departure of sea surface temperature (SST) from average for May 13, 2010. Image credit: NOAA/NESDIS.
What is the cause of the high SSTs in the MDR?
During December – February, we had the most negative AO/NAO since records began in 1950, and this caused trade winds between Africa and the Lesser Antilles Islands in the hurricane Main Development Region to slow to 1 – 2 m/s (2.2 – 4.5 mph) below average. Slower trade winds mean less mixing of the surface waters with cooler waters down deep, plus less evaporational cooling of the surface water. As a result, the ocean heated up significantly, relative to normal, over the winter. Negative AO/NAO conditions have been dominant much of this spring as well, resulting in further anomalous heating of the MDR waters.
This heating is superimposed on the very warm global SSTs we’ve been seeing over the past few decades due to global warming. Global and Northern Hemisphere SSTs were the 2nd warmest on record this past December, January, and February, the warmest on record in March, and will likely be classified as the warmest or second warmest on record for April, since NASA just classified April as the warmest April on record for the globe. We are also in the warm phase of a decades-long natural oscillation in Atlantic ocean temperatures called the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO). This warm phase began in 1995, and has been partially responsible for the high levels of hurricane activity we’ve seen since 1995.
What does this mean for the 2010 hurricane season?
The high April SST anomaly does not bode well for the coming hurricane season. The three past seasons with record warm April SST anomalies all had abnormally high numbers of intense hurricanes. Past hurricane seasons that had high March SST anomalies include 1969 (0.90°C anomaly), 2005 (1.19°C anomaly), and 1958 (0.97°C anomaly). These three years had 5, 7, and 5 intense hurricanes, respectively. Just two intense hurricanes occur in an average year. The total averaged activity for the three seasons was 15 named storms, 11 hurricanes, and 6 intense hurricanes (an average hurricane season has 10, 6, and 2.) Both 1958 and 2005 saw neutral El Niño conditions, while 1969 had a weak El Niño.
The SSTs are already as warm as we normally see in July between Africa and the Caribbean, and we have a very July-like tropical wave approaching the Lesser Antilles Islands this weekend. However, wind shear is still seasonably high, and the tropical waves coming off of Africa are still too far south to have much of a chance of developing. The GFS model is indicating that shear will start to drop over the Caribbean the last week of May, so we may have to be on the watch for tropical storms forming in the Caribbean then.
The anti-science crowd have been cheering the death of El Niño, but in fact it it quite bad news for those in hurricane alley, including the long-suffering Gulf Coast.
10. Change “BP” from “British Petroleum” to “Bunnies and Puppies.”
9. Scrap the snotty British accents.
8. Cry on “Oprah.”
7. Take a page from AFLAC. New mascot: wise-cranking oil-soaked duck.
6. Find Bin Laden.
5. Start making cookies. Who doesn’t love cookies?
4. What’s wrong with our image?
3. Switch from “Drill Baby Drill” to “Help Daddy Help.”
2. Instead of their image, maybe they can focus on fixing the damn leak!
1. For goodness sakes, get Iron Man to do something! (CBS, 5/17).
We’re fitting in this tip late on Monday because it’s meant for beginners only. If you’ve been using your BlackBerry for a while, you clearly know how to add a contact. If you’re looking for an answer, there are a couple of ways.
If you had any lingering doubts about who was to blame for the disastrous undersea volcano of oil in the Gulf, last night’s 60 Minutes utterly dispels them:
This makes clear that BP’s cost- and corner-cutting caused this disaster. Equally shocking is the story of BP’s willful and “fundamentally wrong” approach to safety on another well, the Atlantis. Part 1 is well worth watching too. A full transcript is here.
Bottom line: BP is responsible, as Bea says. And Bea “investigated the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster for NASA and the Hurricane Katrina disaster for the National Science Foundation” and “Last week, the White House asked Bea to help analyze the Deepwater Horizon accident.”
BP’s response to the disaster is as outrageous as its pre-disaster corner-cutting.
Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.
“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”
Scientists studying video of the gushing oil well have tentatively calculated that it could be flowing at a rate of 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day. The latter figure would be 3.4 million gallons a day. But the government, working from satellite images of the ocean surface, has calculated a flow rate of only 5,000 barrels a day.
BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.
“The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”
BP’s Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles told CNN that about 1,000 barrels of oil per day is being suctioned up by the tube, out of about 5,000 barrels that the company believes is gushing out daily.
“I’m really pleased we’ve had success now. We’ve actually had what we call this rise insertion tube working more than 24 hours now,” he told CNN.
“This morning we were producing over 1,000 barrels of oil into the drill ship. So it’s good progress.”
Suttles acknowledged that most of the oil continues to spill into the open Gulf waters, but said he hoped to be able over time to increase the ratio of captured oil….
Uhh, the fact that BP is asserting it it knows what fraction of oil it is collecting is prima facie proof that the flow rate is incredibly relevant to the response — as if that weren’t obvious from the fact that you can’t possibly know what the toxicological risk is if you don’t know the full volume of toxic fluid you’ve put into the ocean.
On ABC’s Good Morning America today, Prof. Wereley made this on-air statement:
I am very skeptical it could collect most of the oil and gas because the connection will be leaky under the tremendous pressure that will be inside the pipe.
The Obama administration needs to insist that BP make available all of its videos of underwater gusher and that independent scientists be allowed to analyze the data.
BP’s falsehoods are apparently going to have very serious consequences for public health.
Marine toxicologist and Exxon Valdez survivor Riki Ott has a shocking piece on HuffPost, which opens:
Venice, Louisiana — Local fishermen hired to work on BP’s uncontrolled oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico are scared and confused. Fishermen here and in other small communities dotting the southern marshes and swamplands of Barataria Bay are getting sick from the working on the cleanup, yet BP is assuring them they don’t need respirators or other special protection from the crude oil, strong hydrocarbon vapors, or chemical dispersants being sprayed in massive quantities on the oil slick.
Fishermen have never seen the results from the air-quality monitoring patches some of them wear on their rain gear when they are out booming and skimming the giant oil slick. However, more and more fishermen are suffering from bad headaches, burning eyes, persistent coughs, sore throats, stuffy sinuses, nausea, and dizziness. They are starting to suspect that BP is not telling them the truth.
And based on air monitoring conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a Louisiana coastal community, those workers seem to be correct. The EPA findings show that airborne levels of toxic chemicals like hydrogen sulfide, and volatile organic compounds like benzene, for instance, now far exceed safety standards for human exposure.
The answer to the headline question is an unequivocal “no.”
BP is clearly guilty of gross negligence and outright falsehoods. They must be held accountable.
In the current Alabama gubernatorial primary race, there’s some serious mudslinging and general ugliness going on. True Republican PAC recently produced this campaign ad attacking conservative candidate Bradley Byrne for not being conservative enough. His crime? Bradley Byrne might believe in evolution!
Technorati reports the story and posts the “True Republican” TV ad:
Not to fear. GOP gubernatorial candidate Byrne quickly defended his beliefs:
As a Christian and as a public servant, I have never wavered in my belief that this world and everything in it is a masterpiece created by the hands of God. As a member of the Alabama Board of Education, the record clearly shows that I fought to ensure the teaching of creationism in our school text books.
I’m so glad he had the courage of his convictions to set the record straight here.
Back in the day, when I used to drive a car, I used to be obsessed with fuel economy. When I started driving gas was 99 cents a gallon. Not long after it was up around $2, and now it can get over $3 per gallon. There’s nothing I can do to lower fuel prices, but I can do everything in my power to make sure my car uses fuel efficiently. This usually means entering data into a spreadsheet, but by the time I get to my computer I often forget to do it. In this case, a BlackBerry app makes sense. Thankfully, developer LSphone has created a low-cost application that lets you track many aspects of your fuel consumption.
It’s WES week, so you know there’s plenty to talk about in the BlackBerry world. We did see two devices announces, ones that we’ve been anticipating for months. CDMA carriers will get the BlackBerry Bold 9650 next month, while GSM carriers will get the Pearls 9100 and 9105. That’s not the big topic of discussion, though. No, that would be OS 6.0.
If you ned a case for your BlackBerry Curve 8520 or 8530, then maybe you’ll be interested in this new case from OtterBox. It’s not new-new, as in a new design, but rather a pink version of their Commuter Series case. It costs $34.95, but 10 percent of those proceeds go to the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade. This foundation uses funds to promote, per their website, “awareness and education; screening and diagnosis; access to treatment; support services; and scientific research.”
You can purchase the OtterBox Strength case at the company’s website. We also have one unit to give away. You know the drill. Leave a comment and we’ll pick a random winner. Because we’re encouraging the purchase of this case, and because we have only one to give away, we’re closing this one at 3 p.m. EDT today (Friday).
This post originated at BBGeeks.com – home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.
Well, that was quick. It was just a couple of days ago that we first heard about the BlackBerry podcast app. It seems like a great way to access the BBGeekcast, coming up this afternoon. There was no real word of release date, and while I thought it would come some time in the near future I didn’t exactly expect this. If you’re a member of BlackBerry Beta Zone, you might be able to get your hands on it right now. It’s not available to everyone, but select users will be able to test it and provide feedback.
And it gets more ironic: CBS reports that last year BP won an award for “promoting improved medical care and evacuation capabilities for offshore facilities.”
The photo “provided by the U.S. Coast Guard shows fire boat response crews battling the blazing remnants of the off shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon, April 21, 2010.”
I wish I had more time to write a longer post, but I’m doing a couple of interviews on this tonight, including Countdown.
By the way, Halliburton appears to have been involved in the spill. They have been named in two lawsuits by Louisiana fishermen and shrimpers, Climate Wire (subs. req’d) reports:
The oil spill is floating miles from Louisiana’s coastline, home to a huge commercial and recreational fishing industry. It comes as a particularly fragile time for fisheries, since Gulf shrimp are in their spawning season.
Louisiana claims a $2.6-billion-a-year commercial fishing industry, which provides a quarter of the U.S. seafood supply, exclusive of Alaska and Hawaii.
The two lawsuits target BP, which holds the lease to the offshore well; Swiss-based Transocean Ltd., owner of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform that exploded last week; and Halliburton Energy Services Inc., which the lawsuit says was responsible for capping the well.
I knowyou are shocked that Halliburton is involved.
Now what is really rich is that FoxNews and the GOP are working to spin this as Obama’s Katrina, somehow suggesting that the administration’s response was delayed.
Except, of course, in the case of Katrina, the Bush administration ignored its own administration’s weather forecasts — and ignored the videos of brutal devastation and suffering people — for days.
In the case of the spill, the reverse is true. BP basically misled everybody about the size of the spill — by a factor of 5 — and hence their ability to control it. It was NOAA — which is to say the Obama administration — that realized BP was lowballing the leak, that the problem was beyond the company’s resources, and that much broader action was needed.
The leak rate is now estimated at more than 200,000 gallons a day — which means it will exceed the Exxon Valdez disaster within 2 months. I just heard on ABC news that 400 species are threatened and that Louisiana coastline contains 40% of the US wetlands.
And, of course, the BP and the entire industry has been pushing for weaker safety regulations for a long time — HuffPost piece is here:
WashPost’s Ezra Klein has posted an interview with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) about the immigration and climate bills. Since my Monday post, it’s been hard to tell whether the Senator has been principled or petulant — or perhaps a bit of both.
I’ll excerpt the parts of his interview with Klein about the climate bill and you can decide:
EK: You told Talking Points Memo that you would filibuster your own climate change bill if immigration moves this year.
LG: Yeah, I was asked a question. They said, “You would vote against your own bill?” And I said yes. I care equally about immigration and climate change. But if you stack them together this year you’ll compromise climate and energy. You’ll compromise my ability to get votes on climate change. When I told everyone I would do climate, in fact, I was assured we also wouldn’t be doing immigration….
EK: So what allows climate to move forward now? What do you need to hear from Reid?LG: Here’s the problem with climate. Do you have any chance of bringing it up and getting 60 votes in this environment? There’s a controversial provision in the transportation section. We have done as good a job as we can to get oil and gas companies to pay for their pollution. Some of that cost will be passed onto consumers. But it’s not a gas tax. I need Harry Reid to say I agree with you. I support that. I won’t introduce a bill and have the majority leader, who I have less than a strong bond with, say, “I can’t support that gas tax.” There was also a Fox News article where the White House said they couldn’t support Graham’s gas-tax gambit. I will not let this get blamed on me. It would be the worst thing in the world to take the one Republican working with you and make him own the one thing you don’t like.
I must say this is a semi-lame excuse. First, this was a Fox News White House blog report! Presumably one can’t entirely trust them to get the story exactly right. It might be the case that there are people in the administration who are not thrilled at going forward with the climate bill and might have said something like what the story says.
BUT the story clearly quotes a White House spokesperson on the record saying “The Senators don’t support a gas tax, and neither does the White House.” What else is there to say?
EK: So what you need isn’t just an assurance on immigration. It’s an assurance that if you’re going to do the dangerous things on climate reform, you won’t be hung out to dry on it.
LG: Right. Ask yourself: Why did they leak the story to Fox News? That told me they weren’t committed to this issue. Why let a story start on a venue that would hurt your partner the most?
Again, since when do people in the White House “leak” stories to Fox News? LG ain’t making a compelling case here.
EK: Have you asked the White House?
LG: Yeah. They say, “Oh, we didn’t do it.” And it’s true: Rahm and David didn’t. But somebody involved in energy and climate there did. They’ve always worried about being in a bad spot on this. So someone pretty clever said, “Okay, we’re going to get on the record against this.”
Uhh, how about three other theories. First, Fox News basically spun this non-story up out of nothing. Second, maybe they spoke to somebody who doesn’t really follow the issue closely, and doesn’t realize all the ins and outs about what you all are doing in the transportation sector. Third, maybe they spoke to somebody who doesn’t want a climate bill, a view that doesn’t represent that of the President or Rahm.
EK: Do these assurances go in the other direction, though? You want to make sure the Democrats don’t leave you hanging on this. But they’re worried that this bill comes out, and you’re with them, but 40 other Republicans are hammering them for supporting what they’ll call a gas tax, cap-and-tax.
LG: This is exactly what they’re going to say. I have never suggested they won’t. And they’ll say it about me, too. So we have to hold hands so I can make a credible argument, alongside business, saying it’s not a gas tax. But you can’t make this into my idea alone. It wasn’t my idea.
EK: Do you think there’s a chance for climate to move forward this year?
LG: Yeah.
EK: And for more Republican support on it?
LG: Maybe if business gets involved. It’s all about business. I can say I changed the face of the debate. This is no longer about economy-wide cap-and-trade. The business community is on-board with this proposal and they were against Waxman-Markey. I’ll sit down with my colleagues: If you believe we need more domestic energy supply, we’ve got offshore drilling. We preempt the EPA from regulating carbon. That’s a big get for business. About 80 percent or 90 percent of our caucus believes nuclear power is the way to go. We triple the current program of loan guarantees, do regulatory reform to make building plants easier. T. Boone Pickens’s plan is in here.
And what do we give the other side? A cap on emissions from utilities. It takes four years to come into play so they have time. On the transportation side, we take them out of cap-and-trade but they pay a fee, it’s their idea this fee, and the money helps you solve the overall problem. It goes into the transportation trust fund, or goes back to the consumer, or to business people, because that’s where all the money goes. The money will be passed on just like the cost of cleaning up an oil slick is passed on. It could be up to 15 cents a gallon, but not for many years. I really believe in this product. I think it’s a damn good solution.
Hard to know exactly where this is going to go. It’s pretty clear that both the President and Reid doubt a bill could make it to the Senate floor even by the election. So I remain somewhat hopeful Graham will join the effort before the bill gets back from EPA analysis in June.
It’s WES week, and surely you’ve heard all the big news. Yes, we’ve finally heard something official on the upcoming BlackBerry devices, the Bold 9650 and the Pearls 9100 and 9105. We’ll touch on them, just because we love any kind of news on devices, plus reveal some other developments from the week. It looks like we could see plenty new from RIM during the next eight months.
If a climate bill doesn’t become law this year, the inclination among many progressives will be to blame President Obama for his lack of leadership. And frankly progressives should be critical of Obama: In a bunch of pretty speeches he has repeatedly said the climate and clean energy jobs bill was a signature issue that would determine whether America achieves “lasting prosperity” or “decline” (see “Success or failure for Obama Presidency hangs in the balance” with climate bill).
But two recent stories remind us of who really is to blame for two decades of inaction. The first is “House Republicans Organize to Thwart Climate Legislation” in Roll Call (subs. req’d), which opens, “House Republicans have launched a new ‘real-time’ e-mail, Internet and media offensive aimed at fueling public opposition to Democrats’ climate proposals.”
The second is an article in UK’s Telegraph, “Britain’s silent, green revolution: “All the major parties are signed up to transforming Britain into a green, low-carbon economy to boost growth, as well as to combat climate change.”
Together they underscore a central point that I make in my new book, Straight Up (click here to purchase):
Only one political force could stop a climate bill in 2010, the same force that has impeded action for more than a decade — the hard-core antiscience crowd that dominates much of conservative politics these days and that demagogues against even the most modest efforts to promote clean energy and reduce pollution
This emerging conservative litmus on climate is in many respects unique to U.S. politics, as the book notes. In the British reaction to the stolen emails, the top environmental leader for the conservatives in Parliament made clear that party understands both the science and the urgent need for action:
But tonight the shadow climate change secretary, Greg Clark, made clear the party line remains that climate change is a serious man-made threat. “Research into climate change has involved thousands of different scientists, pursuing many separate lines of independent inquiry over many years. The case for a global deal is still strong and in many aspects, such as the daily destruction of the Earth’s rainforests, desperately urgent,” he said.
In the election, all three major parties “are signed up to transforming Britain into a green, low-carbon economy to boost growth, as well as to combat climate change,” as the Telegraph just reported:
If they meet their promises – global warming and rising fossil fuel prices will make it hard for them to avoid it for long – they will effect the biggest change in Britain since the Industrial Revolution steamed into life in a blaze of coal.
It’s all there in the manifestos. The Conservatives aim to make Britain the “world’s first low-carbon economy”; the Lib Dems want Britain to “lead the new green economy that the world needs”; and Labour maintains that ours is already “a transition economy from high carbon to low carbon”. And all have set out more or less far reaching policies to put the promises into practice.
This will have a more profound and lasting effect on our lives than anything else in their manifestos.
Yes, there is nothing genuinely “conservative” about refusing to conserve resources, refusing to conserve a livable climate.
If we don’t get a climate bill this year — and we still have a fighting chance — the blame rests squarely on the hard-core antiscience crowd.
Today an unprecedented 33 retired US military generals and admirals announced that they support comprehensive climate and energy legislation in a letter to Senators Reid and McConnell as well as a full page ad (click to enlarge). The news release points out:
It was the largest such announcement of support ever, reflecting the consensus of the national security community that climate change and oil dependence pose a threat American security.
Here is the full text of the letters signed by these generals and admirals:
Dear Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell,
Climate change is threatening America’s security. The Pentagon and security leaders of both parties consider climate disruption to be a “threat multiplier” – it exacerbates existing problems by decreasing stability, increasing conflict, and incubating the socioeconomic conditions that foster terrorist recruitment. The State Department, the National Intelligence Council and the CIA all agree, and all are planning for future climate-based threats.
America’s billion-dollar-a-day dependence on oil makes us vulnerable to unstable and unfriendly regimes. A substantial amount of that oil money ends up in the hands of terrorists. Consequently, our military is forced to operate in hostile territory, and our troops are attacked by terrorists funded by U. S. oil dollars, while rogue regimes profit off of our dependence. As long as the American public is beholden to global energy prices, we will be at the mercy of these rogue regimes. Taking control of our energy future means preventing future conflicts around the world and protecting Americas here at home.
It is time to secure America with clean energy. We can create millions of jobs in a clean energy economy while mitigating the effects of climate change across the globe. We call on Congress and the administration to enact strong, comprehensive climate and energy legislation to reduce carbon pollution and lead the world in clean energy technology.
The anti-science crowd is blind to the growing threat and forced to offer the most ridiculous explanations of why so many of the nation’s military leaders have come together to warn the public and call on Congress to act. Senator Inhofe (R-OIL) actually trashed generals who advocate for bipartisan clean energy legislation, saying they crave “the limelight.”
A few months ago I touted ProOnGo Expense as an excellent personal finance manager. Not only does it take care of routine budgetary matters, but it also features a receipt readers. Using your camera you can snap a picture of a receipt, and the application would convert it, cutting out the manual entering process. Their new application, Business Card Reader, uses the came concept. All you have to do is snap a picture of a business card and you’ll get the information necessary to create a BlackBerry contact.
At a public briefing to discuss the reports, Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, will deliver opening remarks, and members of the panels that wrote the reports will discuss their recommendations and take questions. The briefing starts at 10 a.m. EDT Wednesday, May 19, in the Lecture Room of the National Academy of Sciences building at 2100 C Street, NW, Washington, DC. Those unable to attend the event can watch the live webcast at The National Academies website.
And it gets more ironic: CBS reports that last year BP won an award for “promoting improved medical care and evacuation capabilities for offshore facilities.”
