Weather aside, it doesn’t look good in Auroa, CO. What is it about that movie?

Hopefully it’s not related to Rush’s most recent nonsense.

Simple solution: defund NOAA. No reason to alarm “you people” with numbers and stuff.

From some one who lived through last year’s hellacious summer in TX, it’s hard on your nerves and pocketbook too. Really bad is yet to come, as predictions now are that this goes on until October.

Making climate change a priority might help.

Comic book superheroes seem to be fantasy versions of the standard Charles Bronson/Clint Eastwood justice/vengeance flick. Isn’t this kind of acting out by the criminally insane just what these movies are supposd to provoke? This may not be a bug — it may be a feature.

One thing’s for sure — by 10:00 PST this morning Warner Bros. will have figured out a way to sell this.

Somebody asked Vilsack if the drought was connected to global warming and he said, “I’m not a scientist”. No, Mr. Vilsack, you’re not. You’re a weasel.

Apparently the Obama administration has told it’s minions to keep any discussion of global climate change under wraps.

Good morning, pups. Today we have Brooks and Krugman. It may be a portent of the end of the world. Bobo has something nice to say about a Democrat. In “Where Obama Shines” he says in a world characterized more by anxiety than overt conflict, President Obama’s situation-specific foreign policy strategy has been nimble and effective. Prof. Krugman, in “Pathos of the Plutocrat,” says the very rich don’t just have more money. They expect a level of deference the Average Joe never experiences. And that has become a major factor in America’s politics. And don’t “you people” forget it.

Here they are.

The coffee and tea are ready, and I’ve got your favorite omelet for breakfast. I guess we had all better be prepared for much higher food prices, since the corn and soybean crops are withering and dying. But that has nothing to do with climate change… And Al Gore has a big house and wears earth tones. Have a great day.

When we all have to live in a dome, we must kill and eat the global-warming deniers. Otherwise, they’ll just pollute the dome.

http://youtu.be/tmPOdszK688

the really sad part is that whether one believes all of science that humans are causing serious climate change or the denier whores funded by the disgusting prigs of the fossil fuel industry doesn’t matter at all – the “climate change debate” [cough] is superfluous. The solution to climate change: conversion to a sustainable energy economy is immensely better in EVERY WAY – economically, environmentally, and morally than fossil fuel based energy. EVERY SINGLE MEASURE sustainable energy is far, far superior. So you don’t even have to believe in human caused climate change to support it. The whole climate change thing is a distraction to what should have continued in earnest from the what President Carter started in the late 1970s. But than the dolt reagan ushered in the republican plutocratic demise of humanity and its been downhill ever since.

Morning all,

Since they are all God all the time why don’t they pray for rain and their God , whom they reflect in their everyday life, will spare them. Maybe they really worship Baal afteralll.

Or maybe god’s fed up with Southern idiocy like “God plan” for Trayvon to die” so maybe it’s God’s plan to let the south shrivel up and blow away.

why don’t they pray for rain

Our former governor did. You can’t make this shit up…

Okay, I fully agree with you that sustainable energy is the way to go and that we should have continued Carter’s initiatives but characterizing climate change or the “debate” as “superfluous” and as a “distraction” is specious. The “debate” may be over, except to a few well funded, die hard deniers and their toady media but discussing it seriously has never been more important.

So did Perry. It didn’t work either time.

Gotta go to work. Happy Friday!

And as in the case, as Margaret mentions, of Perry praying for rain and not getting it, shouldn’t we realize that the answer is NO?

Well, either that or that nagging doesn’t work…

Off to work. Thank heaven it’s Friday — it’s been a horrendous week.

If our lefties had the chutzpah, they’d mention that obviously the prayers of the righties are not getting a good reception in those heavens, so they must not be Of The Body.

Of course what is happening today is most important –
Whether heat, hurricanes, blizzards, or Lady Gaga.

Although I certainly agree that human activity has had a profound negative impact on the environment and has led to increased temperatures, extreme heat waves and droughts have been cyclical in mid America for centuries. They are evident in Plains Indian culture – for ex. part of Pawnee cosmology. Land boomers of the 1880s promoted “Rain Follows the Plow” until devastating droughts of the 1890s drove people off the Plains. The first twenty years of the 1900s were a “Golden Age” – followed by the “Dust Bowl” – followed by good years in the 1940s – followed by drought in the extreme in the mid 1950s.

I cycled across the country in the summer of 1988. It was brutal. (BTW – I’ve cycled 100,000 miles so I have multiple comparison points.) Temps topping 100 day after day – the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers reduced to puddles. Thousands died in the heat wave. Arctic ice was at its peak.
http://localtvwqad.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/july1988drought.jpg

Here are the high temps in Des Moines for July 13 thru 31 1988 –
99,99,97,97,94,95,90,89,82,85,87,88,89,86,93,93,93,96,102
http://www.geodata.us/weather/show_full.php?usaf=725460&uban=14933&m=7&c=&y=1988
It was even hotter in the Plains.

Yes, this year is extremely hot and dry – - but it doesn;t fall outside of the parameters of other extreme drought years in the past century. In fact, they come along every 20 to 25 years.

In the history of recorded temps, this past half year stands out. Worst. Ever.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/first-half-hottest-ever-record-214906847.html

It’s the Zimmerman case: it’s god’s will that the crops should fail & the poor should be unable to afford food.

This is very effective argument against charities and their interference with gods’ will.

NOAA’s National Climate Data Center has more like this. From their June 2012 State of the Climate report:

The average combined global land and ocean surface temperature for June 2012 was 0.63°C (1.13°F) above the 20th century average of 15.5°C (59.9°F). This is the fourth warmest June since records began in 1880.

The Northern Hemisphere land and ocean average surface temperature for June 2012 was the all-time warmest June on record, at 1.30°C (2.34°F) above average.

The globally-averaged land surface temperature for June 2012 was also the all-time warmest June on record, at 1.07°C (1.93°F) above average.

[snip]

June 2012 also marks the 36th consecutive June and 328th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last below-average June temperature was June 1976 and the last below-average temperature for any month was February 1985. It was the second warmest June in the Northern Hemisphere, behind only the record warmth of 2010.

Shorter global warming denier trolls:

As we said last year, and the year before, and the year before, and the year before, and the year before, and the year before and the year before…the hotter weather we’re seeing isn’t a trend.

Let’s stop blaming global warming for this and put the blame where it belongs, on god.

That’s right god is doing this. So if you people don’t like the droughts, the heatwaves, the fires, the crop failure your not praying hard enough.

Sorry guys, but when tens of millions of working people in developed nations – from Australia to France to the U.S. – are facing joblessness and a descent into lifelong poverty, the clarion calls for eliminating coal in a decade or doubling the price of gasoline do not resonate. Not to mention all of the face-to-face confabbing at Copenhagen and Rio.

Fact is, disenfranchised working people who used to be strongly Democratic or Labour or Socialist are now increasingly attracted to right-wing populist parties – the Tea Party, the National Front, the Sweden Democrats in Scandinavia of all places. (Breivik is not a single outlier.) And although there is clearly an element of racism, I would suggest that the more fundamental issue is economic security.

If you haven;t looked lately, since the late 1990s left-liberal parties have taken a beating in the developed world. And unless you have majorities in Congress, POarliament, or the Bundestag – you ain’t gonna get very far.

There is a huge difference between proportional response and Chicken Littlism.

A change in the ratio of nitrogen/oxygen, a minor change in the ability of the atmosphere to filter out the solar radiation, that would cook us like spiders on a hot stove(even inside), plants may lose ability to supply us breathable oxygen…….hell, there is so much more to consider than just high temps……..and those who seem to think that if it is not human caused they will then be ok…….lets remember some junior high science here……we should be kissing the earth’s ass for letting us live, throughout known time, humans have been able to live here for the blink of an eye…..we are such self destructive idiots………

The Swedish “Democrats” got 5.7% of the vote in 2011. Why, it’s a right-wing mandate!!! It’s official, the tea party is taking over the world!

So let’s start eating our seed-corn now, because, you know, proportional response.
.

I think his point was that you can’t extrapolate local data to global conditions or vice versa. Lowering emissions won’t turn a desert into a rainforest. It might make it a little less “intense”.
Where I live we are seeing unusual rainfall (East TN). Its rained every day for the last week and a half. I don’t remember it raining this much continuously since I was a kid. The temperatures are generally well above the averages, but that’s not causing a drought. It seems to be the opposite.

“I cycled across the country in the summer of 1988. It was brutal. (BTW – I’ve cycled 100,000 miles so I have multiple comparison points.) Temps topping 100 day after day”

and

so and so smoked cigarettes all his life, and lived to be 97. so smoking cigarettes doesn’t cause lung cancer.

“Sorry guys, but when tens of millions of working people in developed nations – from Australia to France to the U.S. – are facing joblessness and a descent into lifelong poverty, the clarion calls for eliminating coal in a decade or doubling the price of gasoline do not resonate”

I agree, it would be almost impossible to give working people a job say, building, solar panels. It just isn’t possible at this time.

Hey smarty pants –

It ain’t just the Sweden Democrats – in case you have the remotest political sense at all. In Finland, the right-wing True Finns got 19% – from 5 to 39 seats. Until last year, the center-right Danish government depended upon the support of the right-wing Danish People’s Party to govern. And the biggie is the Netherlands – the profoundly cosmopolitan Dutch people – ya know? Geert Wilders reactionary Party for Freedom more than doubled its representation – - making a governing coalition nearly impossible to create from the traditional left and right blocs.

And then there’s Harper in Canada – where the new Conservatives are geometrically more right-wing than Mulroney’s PCs. And Gillard in Australia is looking at the worst election loss in Australian history next year – - that’s after Labor was devastated in NSW and Queensland. Marine Le Pen had the best showing ever for the National Front in France. Meanwhile, Central European states like Hungary and the Jobbik Party are at the forefront of a neofascist resurgence.

So, go ahead. Ignore the political realities at your peril.

The job promises have, historically, failed to materialize. Certainly that was the case in the 1970s and 1980s with Sierra Club promises to loggers in the Pacific Northwest. Working people may have limited educations, but they do tend to realize when their basic welfare is at risk. And they have fewer opportunities to transition into the new economy, as well.

Nearly all the promises of bazillions of green jobs have failed to materialize. In fact, the solar and wind industries have faced major retrenchments. If you want to count recent energy jobs, they have been in oil & gas. Please check North Dakota employment stats.

I have no great love for the oil & gas industry. They have historically abused workers, repeatedly harmed the environment, and generally gotten a free ride. But when you play fast and loose with the basic employment data, you gut your core argument for all but the most gullible of listeners.

Hate to break it to you, but the price of coal or any other individual commodity has absolutely nothing to do with unemployment (except in coal mines). Go back to bicycling. It doesn’t take any brains which obviously makes it your comparative advantage.

I see little difference between Tea Partiers and some of the people who post here. True believerism. Damn anyone who ventures to challenge the accepted wisdom. The issues and positions may differ – but the temperment is nearly identical.

If Obama loses Ohio, it may be because he loses the coal counties of southeastern Ohio which have traditionally voted Democratic for almost a hundred years. Are you so adamant that you do not even acknowledge what has taken place on the ground?

And, sweetheart, I have done doctoral and post doc research on coal communities – - so I know a thing or two about them. That coal has, until recently, produced 50% of U.S. electricity and is being replaced by fracked gas, not renewables. That the transition in coal mining over the past two generations has been from underground to surface – from East to West. That Thatcher’s union-breaking frontman, Ian MacGregor, got his start in the new western coal regions in the U.S. – and took his skills back to the U.K.

Oh, and that the Democratic Party – which once used to give a shit about working people – appears to care less about them anymore. Not that the GOP remotely cares. But working people on the edge of survival will take Walmart jobs over nothing. And, yes, many times they have to drive twice as far to make half as much.

The left has become so preoccupied with climate issues to the exclusion of fundamental material conditions – that they have sacrificied one of their core, historical constituencies.

How has the “left” in this country (whatever that is — the main distinction of “leftists” here appears to be that they consider Barack Obama to be one of their kind) become “so preoccupied with climate issues”? I don’t see much of any preoccupation at all.

And how is this “preoccup(ation)” “to the exclusion of fundamental material conditions”? Huh? When drought kills off Phoenix and Las Vegas, when rising sea levels drown Florida, and when heatwaves destroy the crop in the Great Plains, those are going to be some serious material conditions, much more so than this socially-constructed crap about money and property that could have been mitigated with a better stimulus package.

And how has “the left” sacrificed any “constituency” at all? There is practically nothing of “the left” in the Federal government. Jane Hamsher noticed this when she discovered that the entire “Progressive Caucus” voted for one version or another of austerity planning last year.

Or maybe I should just phrase the question this way. What are you talking about? Please rephrase without using dubious fictions such as “the left.”

Spare me the postmodernist semantics.
Perhaps you would prefer “What passes for the left”?

Whether in the U.S., Britain, France, Scandinavia – parties of the political left (which granted have become increasingly rightist over the past 50 years) such as the Dems, Labour, Socialists, Social Democrats have moved away from core economic issues, especially those facing working people and have promoted issues which have greated resonance with the educated upper-middle class. The fact that Hollande swore off any fundamental challenge to the ECB’s neoliberal orthodoxy – even before he was sworn in – is a smoking gun of the above transition.

The Democrats have been almost as quick to advocate neoliberalism as their GOP comrades in Congress – from Clinton forward. Perhaps with a little more window dressing and/or job retraining programs, extended unemployment benefits. But nothing to alter the inexorable collapse of the economic base of working people – a base which at one time allowed for a decent, liveable income – and a broad social cohesion to accompany it.

And you wonder why working people in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan helped vote in the Tea Partiers?

Yes, when times get tough the fascists tend to gain a little ground.

And that’s going to cool down the earth how again?

Sweetheart? Smarty Pants? I wonder who you think you are to be so belligerent and condescending….and No, most of the commenters here are
not like the Tea Baggers. You should know better or maybe you just don’t
worry about the truth. Insults and name calling are more like the TeaBaggers, dontcha know?

C’mon, you know what the jam man is talking about. Ask him what he thinks about crapitalism.

You are correct. Tony Blair would have been a Tory in the ’50s and’60s and it is unlikely he would have been able to join the UK Labor party, which was then socialist to the core.

The destruction of the representation of the working people went hand in glove with the destruction of the unions.

The unions, whose militancy was fueled and driven by the bad behavior of management.

Institutions get the unions they deserve.

Hitler & Mussolini put their people to work. Hitler’s Germany built infrastructure.

jamawani makes some very good points, and inflaming a few FDL posters is not a sin. But it seems to me that he falls into the trap of all who would make labor, and economic justice, the be-all and end-all of progressive movement. Neoliberalism hammered the unions and the left, but neoliberalism itself was not a leftist movement, even though so-called progressive liberals Clinton and Blair were pushing it. Corporate unionism fell flat in response, as illustrated most recently in the Wisconsin screw-up. Another co-optation from them was no surprise to anyone.

The trap here is translating income as life, In fact, I even have problems with the term economic security. Ignoring the obvious climate chaos, and even worse, moving from immediate response to ocean acidification (where the vast ocean regions will become the playground of jellyfish while the worlds ‘workers’ starve) to some recommitment of engaging polluting industries to bolster labor will only tighten our collective noose. People are frightened, and will get more frightened. Bush saw this and used it successfully. The newer fascists will too. It is the only thing they can count on.

Labor, and corporate unions, will continue to make phone calls and hang out with Obama. Marginalized workers, angry at the intricacy and design of their traps, will listen to those promises of those pies in the sky as they watch their kids wreck themselves on bath salts or the newer poisons to be distributed soon…probably until it is too late. The answer is not doing another post-doc white paper on labor history, but in organizing the unorganized, perhaps using the infiltration techniques so favored by right wing bible-thumpers, and then forcing the issue of acknowledging the devastation that climate change will bring, especially if it reaches the next stages of disequilibrium.

Regardless though, it is happening, and confused FDLers or bitter academics will not make it go away.

“Spare me the postmodernist semantics”

Maybe you can get around it by just saying “you people”

Yes, you are dripping “understanding” for working people. Your concern trolling is duly noted. Tell us, from all that doctoral research on coal mining communities – what eventually happens to the towns around the surface mines? Or does your concern stop once the the profits have been secured by the coal operators?

You’re right about one thing – parties like the Dems shift right in pursuit of campaign money from big business. What are you planning to do with your trolling payments? I’m guessing new boat.

Um, it’s only by virtue of the sort of postmodern semantics you’re employing here that the Democratic Party counts as a “part(y) of the political left.” And, as RFShunt pointed out, while your idea of the political trajectory is basically correct, it still doesn’t seem to have a place for global warming.

As I said in this diary:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/30/1079054/-What-if-Barack-Obama-weren-t-a-leftist

(nobody reads these things unless I quote them)

Barack Obama, then, would be conceived by the public (in this fantasyland universe of mine) as a different sort of conservative, rather than being anything close to “liberal.” Americans would then think of government power as being contested by two different types of conservatives:

1) Antipublic conservatives — conservatives who are interested in destroying the public sphere and the commons for the sake of some idea of radical, disconnected individualism that imagines everyone as individuals defending property with guns, or as beholden ideologically to the church of their choice (see e.g. Rick Santorum). In this version of conservatism, losers without property or religion don’t matter.

This is the conservatism we call “conservatism” today. Skipping past the examples, the quote continues:

2) Corporate conservatives — conservatives who are mainly interested in “saving capitalism” (Obama’s primary mandate) and who do so by maintaining corporate hegemony but who are also interested in buying off the mass public to the extent necessary to preserve the social order.

This is the other type of conservatism, and like the first type, this conservatism aims primarily to save capitalism from itself. If you want to get past the postmodern attitude which deems the Democratic Party a “left” party, you’ll have to redefine “left.” Here and elsewhere, I’ve suggested that the “left” only becomes real when it starts to imagine a world after capitalism, at which point the political classes no longer will feel obliged to carry the banners of the “left” only to enforce right-wing policies upon the attainment of offices.

The idea of POSTCAPITALISM also has applications re: global warming, which is the connection you’re missing. Without the compulsion to profit, we can eventually move ahead to forswear coal-mining and oil-drilling, and thereby limit the devastation caused by drastically increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

NB: about my use of the word “postmodernism” — please see this article for more:

http://www.theglobalsite.ac.uk/press/212vanderpijl.htm

using the infiltration techniques so favored by right wing bible-thumpers

Dream on comrade. Those idiots have backing.

Very good, comrade, but this is not just about ideology, it’s about PROPERTY.

See @46 below.

Right there with you, comrade.

Somebody played God before the drought, because they caused “drought prices” in the grain markets in 08 and 2011. You can go here and click on corn and soybeans.

http://wp.me/p2vRlu-4

My Dear Rev –

Unlike some, I don’t hanker towards turning the other cheek.
So if Knut says I lack any brains, then “smarty pants” is timid in response.

I always love it when you guys do what the Red Staters do –
Toss around “denier” and “shill” – (different terms, same result)
But run behind Mama’s skirts when anyopne else says, “Boo!”

All because I had the temerity to suggest that temps were elevated in 1988, too.

Of course it has a place.

Politically, working people have been marginalized in the political process when once they were represented – however poorly – by parties of the so-called political left. As those parties moved towards neoliberalism – led by such illustrious folks as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, working people in traditional industries found themselves increasingly under threat with fewer and fewer political options. I abhor the racist, anti-immigrant cant of all of the neo-right parties; however, I can see why it might have traction with working people facing long-term unemployment and impoverishment.

I happen to place the material before the environmental. Marx stated that all value came from labor. Environmental historian Donald Worster stated that all value came from nature. Both are true. However, the former has greater immediacy. One must have basic material needs addressed before it is possible to move to other, higher-order issues – - as crucial as they may be.

And if these are misordered, then you end up with growing Tea Parties, National Fronts, and Parties of Freedom – - which preclude political majorities not only for progressive climate issues but for the entire range of political affairs.

Have you seen anything remote close to Copenhagen or Rio about unemployment?
When you do, call me.

Actually, Gillette, Wyoming has continued to grow and has things such as a planetarium at its junior high school. Gillette has one of the highest rates of first time college attendance. Gillette has working class family incomes comparable to those of Detroit and Pittsburgh in the 1960s – which is a rarity nowadays in the U.S. for working people.

But I don’t know why I am bothering to respond to someone who accuses me of being a shill (which is bannable on some web sites) and who spouts off fascist innuendos. Which simply goes to further my point of the ideological rigidity of the climate camp. It all revolves around climate – except, politically, especially right now, it doesn’t. And if you can’t understand that, you deserve the political wilderness you will find yourself in.

How can you organize the unorganized when you have allowed the organized to fall apart? Must one reinvent the wheel in every generation? It would be a hell of a lot easier to organize Walmart if the UMWA, the UAW, and the USW were powerful – instead of negotiating give-backs simply to stay alive.

Nota Bene – the article today abour the Nevada Culinary Union’s reluctance to support the Dems. Case in point – which is a rare contradiction of what you said above about unions supporting the Dems regardless.

Thank you for continuing coverage. No, it does not look good. Not a drop. Corn all dried up. And today, well it is ‘cooler,’ only in the 90s.

No, not good at all.

Organizing the unorganized is key. Corporate unions have allowed unorganized workers to become the majority of workers in the US. Sorry, but watching Trumka paling around with Obama while West Virginia is leveled for Blankeship or Dem Senator Manchins payola, and people are dying of cancer shows, to me, the inadequacy of organizing in American union structures. And Walmart is the perfect neoliberal exercise of the Democrat elite. I am not anti-union, far from it. I do feel it is essential to

1) Return to militant union organizing;
2) Link labors objectives with ecological realities, and
3) Organize unorganized workers

As far as the last, the right wing has been very effective destroying the labor base while corporate unions have focused on lobbying in DC. Meanwhile coal and oil are using labor to extract more capital from all of us, and confusing the workers that their only hope is more destructive fossil-fuel based industrial expansion. Deindustiralization is as unavoidable as polar bear extinction. Moving towards organizing the unorganized, transforming corporate unions into militancy by running militant slates, and creating massive green energy jobs is what labor needs to be pushing for, not contracts with ExMo or Cheney/Koch fracking companies. But, hey, the local ILWU (UMW,AFL-CIO, IBEW, etc.) won’t even allow a dialogue. I’ve tried to start the dialogue. Some of them even promote the right wing denier nonsense, and, will vote for Romney!

Nothing to say about Letcher County, Ky – where children have skyrocketing rates of nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, and shortness of breath. But hey, maybe they could take field trip to that planitarium in Wyoming.

How about a few words about Prenter Hollow, West Virginia? They’re suing the coal operators because the coal slurry’s contaminated their water.

Or maybe a mention of Mingo County, West Virginia, where they’ve had 19 floods in 11 years caused by mine runoff.

It’s a very clever game of divide and conquer – saying that talking about the environment and the health damaged caused by coal mining makes you a one issue person. But then, you are just making an assumption about me aren’t you.

An assumption that’s wrong – you can ask my union associates.

First off, nobody in the 99% cares about Copenhagen or Rio. The people who attend those things are merely trying to save capitalism from itself. And it’s not even going to work.

Secondly, re: Marx and value, you said:

I happen to place the material before the environmental. Marx stated that all value came from labor.

But for Marx “the material” and “the environmental” are both part of “nature,” as is labor-power itself. From Critique of the Gotha Programme:

Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power.

If we kill off the natural world through global warming and other byproducts of capitalist exploitation, there will be no nature to claim for use-value. There will be neither material nor environmental wealth. And as for this statement of yours:

One must have basic material needs addressed before it is possible to move to other, higher-order issues

The lack of basic material needs caused by climate disaster is not going to be a “higher-order issue.”

Oh, and I said what EVENTUALLY happens to those towns.

That planitarium in Wyoming won’t have near the gee-whiz factor when ground-water contamination of the Powder River basin starts to make everyone sick.

No, it had to do with name-calling, not the weather.

the so-called “discussion” isn’t a discussion – its idiocy. Its a strategy to create the confusion and hence inaction that is so disastrous.

Nice weather forecast… for Vegas. :(