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AAA Promotes Pollution, Fights Clean Air Regulations
(Sierra Club, January 14, 2003)
AAA may be the first name in roadside assistance, but there's more to the century-old automobile association than meets the eye. . . . An early player in America's Good Roads movement, the organization is now a major force in pushing for more highway spending, fewer pollution controls and less money for mass transit. As investigative journalist Michael Rivlin has written, the 43-million-member-strong organization "is on the record against virtually every proposal for cutting automobile pollution." . . . Even Tom Magliozzi, the co-host of NPR's Car Talk, confesses that he "had no idea that part of our AAA dues were being spent on lobbyists who oppose just about everything having to do with public transportation. If AAA thinks that it's a good idea for every single person to get to work in 3,000 pounds of iron, we sure don't want to help support such a silly idea." . . . AAA is essentially part of the highway lobby. If you look back at their track record over the last 50 years, they've consistently opposed funding any alternatives to highways and roads. They've never met a road they didn't like, and they've even opposed bicycle paths. At various times, they've also opposed clean air legislation.

posted by LoZo 12:06 PM

 

Peak Oil panic makes cover of National Geographic Magazine
(By Tim Appenzeller, National Geographic Magazine, June, 2004)

Yet as the Enterprise drillers know, slaking the world's oil thirst is harder than it used to be. The old sources can't be counted on anymore. On land the lower 48 states of the U.S. are tapped out, producing less than half the oil they did at their peak in 1970. Production from the North Slope of Alaska and the North Sea of Europe, burgeoning oil regions 20 years ago, is in decline. Unrest in Venezuela and Nigeria threatens the flow of oil. The Middle East remains the mother lode of crude, but war and instability underscore the perils of depending on that region.

And so oil companies are searching for new supplies and braving high costs, both human and economic. Making gambles like Thunder Horse and venturing into West Africa and Russia, they are still finding oil in quantities to gladden a Hummer owner's heart. But in the end the quest for more cheap oil will prove a losing game: Not just because oil consumption imposes severe costs on the environment, health, and taxpayers, but also because the world's oil addiction is hastening a day of reckoning.

>>see online for public forums<<<
>>see magazine for new graphic charts<<<

posted by moshido 12:53 PM

 

Globe Grows Darker as Sunshine Diminishes 10% to 37%
(KENNETH CHANG, NYT, May 13, 2004)
In the second half of the 20th century, the world became, quite literally, a darker place. Defying expectation and easy explanation, hundreds of instruments around the world recorded a drop in sunshine reaching the surface of Earth, as much as 10 percent from the late 1950's to the early 90's, or 2 percent to 3 percent a decade. In some regions like Asia, the United States and Europe, the drop was even steeper. In Hong Kong, sunlight decreased 37 percent. No one is predicting that it may soon be night all day, and some scientists theorize that the skies have brightened in the last decade as the suspected cause of global dimming, air pollution, clears up in many parts of the world. Yet the dimming trend - noticed by a handful of scientists 20 years ago but dismissed then as unbelievable - is attracting wide attention. "There are many, many issues that it raises." Dr. James E. Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, said that scientists had long known that pollution particles reflected some sunlight, but that they were now realizing the magnitude of the effect. "It's occurred over a long time period," Dr. Hansen said. "So it's not something that, perhaps, jumps out at you as a person in the street. But it's a large effect." Satellite measurements show that the sun remains as bright as ever, but that less and less sunlight has been making it through the atmosphere to the ground. Pollution dims sunlight in two ways, scientists theorize. Some light bounces off soot particles in the air and goes back into outer space. The pollution also causes more water droplets to condense out of air, leading to thicker, darker clouds, which also block more light. For that reason, the dimming appears to be more pronounced on cloudy days than sunny ones. Some less polluted regions have had little or no dimming. The dynamics of global dimming are not completely understood. Antarctica, which would be expected to have clean air, has also dimmed. "In general, we don't really understand this thing that's going on," said Dr. Shabtai Cohen, a scientist in the Israeli Agriculture Ministry who has studied dimming for a decade. "And we don't have the whole story."

******* How many red flags must be waving before we clean up our act?? (no pun intended...) *******

posted by A Curmudgeon 7:31 AM

 

Busting big fat liars
( Eric Boehlert, Salon.com, May 11, 2004)

David Brock talks about why the media seems embarrassed to report on Bush's failures, why TV pundit shows are stacked to the right -- and his new media watchdog group.


In his 2003 book, "Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative," former self-described "right-wing hit man" David Brock chronicled his flight of disillusionment from the conservative movement. Now, with his new book, "The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy," about to be published and the launching of his Web-based research and information center, Media Matters for America, Brock sees himself engaged in a 24/7 political war of images and ideas. It's a war, as Brock details in his new book, that conservatives have been waging, often brilliantly and effectively, for more than 30 years.

The right-wing media warfare naturally is most visible during presidential election years. "I've been saying for six months, no matter who was running for office this year, the right has a system in place to caricature that person," says Brock. "This is what I realized after 2000 -- that what happened to the Clintons during the '90s really had very little to do with the Clintons because the same thing happened to Gore in 2000. And then it happened to [Sen. Tom] Daschle when the Senate changed hands in 2001, and it happened to the mourners of [the late Sen.] Paul Wellstone in 2002. It goes on and on." After witnessing how this Republican "noise machine" again worked so well in shaping the caustic and undermining press coverage of Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000, Brock is trying to awaken the public from slumber about these techniques.


>from Salon.com Premium site: requires clicking thru adverts>

posted by moshido 12:45 PM

 

Cold Turkey
(Kurt Vonnegut, InTheseTimes, May 10, 2004)
Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.

*****A thoroughly lovely piece by Vonnegut, vintage Vonnegut, worth the read.******

posted by A Curmudgeon 11:58 AM

 

Why Antarctica will soon be the only place to live - literally
(Geoffrey Lean, The Independent, 02 May 2004)
Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the Government's chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, said last week. . . . He said the Earth was entering the "first hot period" for 60 million years, when there was no ice on the planet and "the rest of the globe could not sustain human life". The warning - one of the starkest delivered by a top scientist - comes as ministers decide next week whether to weaken measures to cut the pollution that causes climate change, even though Tony Blair last week described the situation as "very, very critical indeed". . . . Sir David said that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - the main "green- house gas" causing climate change - were already 50 per cent higher than at any time in the past 420,000 years. The last time they were at this level - 379 parts per million - was 60 million years ago during a rapid period of global warming, he said. Levels soared to 1,000 parts per million, causing a massive reduction of life. . . . "No ice was left on Earth. Antarctica was the best place for mammals to live, and the rest of the world would not sustain human life," he said. . . . Sir David warned that if the world did not curb its burning of fossil fuels "we will reach that level by 2100".

posted by LoZo 3:31 PM