GSD @ 316

The world is spiraling in a headlong descent into madness and The Decider is all puffed up again after some hand-job rallies with a pack of sycophantic bloggers.

Bush has turned the world into his alcoholic, co-dependent household.

-GSD

…and the Congress are his enablers.

Actually, I have thought about this a little at the time that we were getting ready to invade Iraq. Giving Bush full faith and credit for his kicking the alcohol jones — I don’t really believe this but let’s just say. I think he believed that since he had a major transformation in his life, he believes that everyone can have a similar transformation. He believes that Iraq can decide one day to give itself over to Jeffersonian democracy in the same way that one day he decided to give himself over to Christ.

Evening all.

God, I hate baseball.

I feel for you!

RockPaperScizzors @ 310

I agree. It seems that the insinuation is the FED would hand back control if they are unable to prevent a worldwide monetary crisis, I’m guessing. “the original deal in 1913 creating the Federal Reserve Bank had a simple backout clause. The investors loaned the United States Government $1 billion. And the backout clause allows the United States to buy out the system for that $1 billion. If the Federal Reserve Bank were demolished and the Congress of the United States took control of the currency, as required in the Constitution”
http://sonic.net/sentinel/naij2.html

Here’s interesting news: Northern Rock has effectively been nationalised by the Treasury’s unprecedented guarantee this week to protect all deposits at the beleaguered mortgage lender.
‘They can’t go bust now,’ one banker said.
‘Were back to the 1970s.’ Details of the arrangement, published yesterday, revealed that the bank’s commercial paper has been entirely underwritten by the taxpayer.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/mon…..tviewedbox

It has happened a couple of times here after the S and L thing and before this one, under Clinton IIRC. Currency speculation, one of them was. A mid sized New York bank had most of the deposits of the upstate and new england banks overnight and lost em all when a currency spread went south. Greenspan got a call at 11 pm saying, “we need 9 billion dollars by 8 am or no bank north of Buffalo will open tomorrow.” Congress was gotten into rump session and ink was on paper by 4 am. The investors lost everything, but nobody else took a hit and there was no publicity except in a few banking circles.

Trouble is, you can only do that so many times. And Bernanke has said today the subprime crisis is MUCH worse than anyone thinks. And Saudi Arabia is unpegging from the dollar.

What happens when we try to sell treasuries and nobody will buy them?

T E O T W A W K I

How likely are we to reach it?

91-99%.

And then…

….our planet heats up faster and faster….

Why is 2.0 critical?

That’s the point of positive feedback – where the warming begets more warming (melting permafrost’s methane comes into play here).

And we’re coming on it far, far faster than anyone expected:

* Wednesday September 19 2007
The effects of climate change will be felt sooner than scientists realised and the world must learn to live with the effects, experts said yesterday.

Martin Parry, a climate scientist with the Met Office, said destructive changes in temperature, rainfall and agriculture were now forecast to occur several decades earlier than thought.

[snip]

Speaking at a meeting to launch the full report on the impacts of global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Professor Parry, co-chairman of the IPCC working group that wrote the report, said: “We are all used to talking about these impacts coming in the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren. Now we know that it’s us.”

[snip]

That speed-up? Unimaginable two years ago.

That’s how fast the warming is accelerating – and how late we are in admitting it.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, said: “Wheat production in India is already in decline, for no other reason than climate change. Everyone thought we didn’t have to worry about Indian agriculture for several decades. Now we know it’s being affected now.” There are signs a similar shift is under way in China, he added.

[snip]

Oh – yesterday Australia announced this year’s wheat harvest is down from drought.

Thirty percent down.

Almost one-third less wheat this harvest than last.

Global grain reserves are at record lows – grain prices are rising (We burn our food for Hummer fuel! Clever primates…)

The report warns that Africa and the Arctic will bear the brunt of climate impacts, along with small islands such as Fiji, and Asian river megadeltas including the Mekong.

It says extreme weather events are likely to become more intense and more frequent, and the effect on ecosystems could be severe, with up to 30% of plant and animal species at risk of extinction if the average rise in global temperatures exceeds 1.5C-2.5C. The consequences of rising temperatures are already being felt on every continent, it adds.

Prof Parry said it was “very unlikely” that average temperature rise could be limited to 2C, as sought by European governments. That would place 2 billion more people at risk of water shortages, and hundreds of millions more will face hunger, the report says.

What comes after 2 C?

2.4°C Coral reefs almost extinct

In North America, a dust-bowl brings deserts to life in the high plains states, centred on Nebraska, but also wipes out agriculture and cattle ranching as sand dunes appear across five US states, from Texas in the south to Montana in the north.

Rising sea levels accelerate as the Greenland ice sheet tips into irreversible melt, submerging atoll nations and low-lying deltas. In Peru, disappearing Andean glaciers mean 10 million people face water shortages.

Warming seas wipe out the Great Barrier Reef and make coral reefs virtually extinct throughout the tropics. Worldwide, a third of all species on the planet face extinction.

3.4°C Rainforest turns to desert

The Amazon rainforest burns in a firestorm of catastrophic ferocity, covering South America with ash and smoke. Once the smoke clears, the interior of Brazil becomes desert, and huge amounts of extra carbon enter the atmosphere, boosting global warming more. The entire Arctic ice-cap disappears in the summer months.

The North Pole becomes ice-free for the first time in 3 million years. Polar bears, walruses and ringed seals all go extinct. Water supplies run short in California as the Sierra Nevada snowpack melts away. Tens of millions are displaced as the Kalahari desert expands across southern Africa.

[snip]

5.4°C Sea levels rise by five metres

The West Antarctic ice sheet breaks up, eventually adding another five metres to global sea levels. If these temperatures are sustained, the entire planet will become ice-free, and sea levels will rise 70 metres higher than today. South Asian society collapses due to the disappearance of glaciers in the Himalayas, drying up the Indus river.

In east India and Bangladesh, monsoon floods threaten millions. Super-El Niños spark global weather chaos. Most of humanity begins to seek refuge away from higher temperatures closer to the poles. Tens of millions of refugees force their way into the British Isles and Scandanavia. World food supplies run out.

6.4°C Most of life is exterminated

Warming seas lead to the possible release of methane hydrates trapped in sub-oceanic sediments: methane fireballs tear across the sky, causing further warming. The oceans lose oxygen and turn stagnant, releasing poisonous hydrogen sulphide gas and destroying the ozone layer.

Deserts extend almost to the Arctic. “Hypercanes” (hurricanes of unimaginable ferocity) circum-navigate the globe, causing flash floods which strip the land of soil.

Humanity reduced to a few survivors eking out a living in polar refuges. Most of life on Earth has been snuffed out, as temperatures rise higher than for hundreds of millions of years.

PS – Al, I hope I don’t seem to be trying to single you out for disagreement (not my desire in any way).

The world is spiraling in a headlong descent into madness and The Decider is all puffed up again after some hand-job rallies with a pack of sycophantic bloggers.

Bush has turned the world into his alcoholic, co-dependent household.

-GSD

…and the Congress are his enablers.

Photos of pot leads to arrest
from United Press International – NewsTrack

An Ohio man who took photos of marijuana plants to a pharmacy to be developed faces charges in connection with growing the plants.

http://www.google.com/reader/v…..sTrack.rss

Y’all are using digital cameras, right?

He thinks he is living in Northern Cal.

An Ohio man who took photos of marijuana plants to a pharmacy to be developed faces charges in connection with growing the plants.

http://www.google.com/reader/v…..sTrack.rss

Y’all are using digital cameras, right?

i still have an hour to wait, mary mc – enjoy

Me, too. I was confused.

[For the paper, “shallow” = buried under 900-2100 feet of permafrost!]

“Solids” are substances in which the component atoms/molecules are lazy – they stay together in one place.

“Gases” are substances in which the components are off flying about in space.

To force a “gas” to become a “solid”, it has to be cooled and/or squished.

(The fancy physics words are “temperature” and “pressure”.)

So solid methane is lying around our planet – but under so much permafrost or so much water that a 20 foot hole just won’t get there.

Methane hydrates occur within and beneath 300–700m thick
permafrost in Alaska, Siberia, and other arctic regions, and they
can occur anywhere that relatively low-temperature, high-
pressure conditions combine with water and methane, such as
in sediments near the ocean floor in deep-water basins (Collett,
1993). The source of the methane can be from leakage of light
gas from deeper hydrocarbon accumulations along fractures or
fault zones (thermogenic methane) or from the breakdown of
organic matter by bacterial action (biogenic methane). In 2000,
a surprised commercial fishing crew pulled up their net with a
catch of odd-looking, foaming ice that was snagged from a gas-
hydrate pinnacle at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean southeast
of Vancouver Island, British Columbia (Spence et al., 2001).
Although generally occurring within sediments, it’s clear that
gas hydrates can remain stable under the right pressures and
temperatures even at the sea floor.

Except, like, better.