No time to blog, but time enough for outrage

There are times when blogging is out of the question, but I come across amazingly bloggable things.

Aaron Datesman discovers that “ every day, 3 million pounds of explosives are used to blow the tops off ancient mountain ridges in southern West Virginia to access thin seams of coal underneath.” and calculates that it’s the equivalent of dropping 3 atom bombs per month in West Virginia.

Here’s some great climate change videos. Climate Denial Crock of the Week, a dozen or so refutations of global warming canards.

Monbiot summarizes some research about the irreversibility of climate change. (The original paper is here: PDF):

The first one, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February, set the scene(1). It showed that the climate change we cause today “is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop”. Around 40% of the carbon dioxide produced by humans this century will remain in the atmosphere until at least the year 3000*. Moreover, thanks to the peculiar ways in which the oceans absorb heat from the atmosphere, global average temperatures are likely to “remain approximately constant … until the end of the millennium despite zero further emissions”.

In other words, governments’ hopes about the trajectory of temperature change are ill-founded. Most, including the UK’s, are working on the assumption that we can overshoot the desired targets for temperature and atmospheric concentrations of CO2, then watch them settle back later. What this paper shows is that wherever temperatures peak, that is more or less where they will stay. There is no going back.

Mark McClish analyzes the substance of the bizarre ransom note for Jon Benet Ramsey. I have had a fascination with this case, especially this ransom note. Here’s wikipedia updates.

A good summary of the number of the outrages of Gitmo. Read some of the interviews to see the people whose life were destroyed by Gitmo.

95% of Fox News  viewers are white according to Nielson.

I saw a great movie from Netflix instant viewing: Man from Earth.  Philosophic science fiction. I like the fact that it basically takes place in a single room. (Another movie that does this is Linklater’s Tape).