I'm a good ways into the "2 or more" category
An interesting prospect in the news this morning...
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/thehuddle/post/2010/01/la-papers-pete-carroll-has-resigned-as-usc-coach-poised-to-join-seahawks/1
A power plant provides a safe haven during Florida's 'Big
Chill'
More than 200 manatees are wintering in a balmy canal
outside a power plant, the latest exotic Florida animals
seeking refuge from the state's frigid temperatures.
Giant eagle rays and spinner sharks joined them in the
70-degree waters Thursday as onlookers watched them frolic.
"This is a spa for them," said Wendy Anastasiou, an
environmental specialist for the Tampa Electric Company.
With temperatures up to 20 degrees below normal, some
less resourceful animals needed help from humans to survive.
Turtles seem to be the hardest hit, with some 200
rescued Thursday from St. Joseph's Bay in the Panhandle.
They were brought to Gulf World Marine Park, where they will
stay warm in a holding pool until they can be released back
into more pleasant water.
Along Florida's Atlantic
Coast, 93 sea turtles were found floating a lagoon and
experts said the cold water shocked their tropically
inclined systems. Most were endangered green sea turtles who
were sent to research facilities for some TLC.
"We
try to collect them and get them to a warm location so we
can check them out," said Roger Pszonowsky, a volunteer with
the Sea Turtle Preservation Society in Brevard County, Fla.
Freshwater turtles can go into mud and hibernate, he
said, but sea turtles don't have the same advantage and
that's why they suffer from "cold stunning."
Animals
that live in the water weren't the only ones affected.
Iguanas fell out of trees in South Florida because the
cold-blooded reptiles become immobilized and lose their grip
when the temperature falls into the 40s or below.
Read more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/01/08/national/a000047S04.DTL#ixzz0c333rbTH
Google following Enron into the 'Green'
You know... Google isn't going to do
anything to reduce the amount of Energy it uses... its
simply going to play the 'cap and trade' game with the
'carbon units', and use that to be "neutral"... and of
course make some money.
But, in the end it'll consume
MORE energy, because all of that trading and activity will
require more energy, more employees to drive their cars to
work... but hey, they're carbon neutral, so its ok, right?
What a scam! I'm not faulting Google here --
attaboy goes to them for figuring out a way to make money
off the biggest scam of human history.
How are they
following Enron? Well, that's what Enron is doing,
too... and they're apparently doing it pretty well.
Can't you tell? There's more green going around.
Google
is stepping up its forays into the energy world.
The
Internet search company, which consumes vast amounts of
electricity to run the computers in its data centers,
created a subsidiary last month called Google Energy. It
then applied for approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission to be allowed to buy and sell power much like
utilities do.
Google said it did not have specific
plans to become an energy trader and that its primary goal
was to gain flexibility for buying more renewable energy for
its power-hungry data centers.
“We want to have the
ability to procure renewable energy to offset power usage of
our operations,” said Niki Fenwick, a Google spokeswoman.
Ms. Fenwick said that having access to more renewable energy
could help the company fulfill its goal to become “carbon
neutral.”
MORE:http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/google-applies-to-become-power-marketer/
It would seem that it's not
the CO2, after all (hmmm... I think I've said that a
few times, actually)
The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern
Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards
cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years,
say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.
Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural
cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic
oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s
most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the
North Pole will be free of ice in
summer by 2013.
According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in
Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000
square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most
committed global warming activists do not dispute this.
The scientists’ predictions also undermine the standard
climate computer models, which assert that the warming of
the Earth since 1900 has been driven solely by man-made
greenhouse gas emissions and will continue as long as carbon
dioxide levels rise.
They say that their research
shows that much of the warming was caused by oceanic cycles
when they were in a ‘warm mode’ as opposed to the present
‘cold mode’.
This challenge to the widespread view
that the planet is on the brink of an irreversible
catastrophe is all the greater because the scientists could
never be described as global warming ‘deniers’ or sceptics.
'They amount to massive rearrangements in the dominant
patterns of the weather,’ he said yesterday, ‘and their
shifts explain all the major changes in world temperatures
during the 20th and 21st Centuries.
'We have such a
change now and can therefore expect 20 or 30 years of cooler
temperatures.’
Prof Tsonis said that the period from
1915 to 1940 saw a strong warm mode, reflected in rising
temperatures.
But from 1940 until the late
Seventies, the last MDO cold-mode era, the world cooled,
despite the fact that carbon dioxide levels in the
atmosphere continued to rise.
Many of the
consequences of the recent warm mode were also observed 90
years ago.
For example, in 1922, the Washington Post
reported that Greenland’s glaciers were fast disappearing,
while Arctic seals were ‘finding the water too hot’.
He recalled that towards the end of the last cold mode,
the world’s media were preoccupied by fears of freezing.
For example, in 1974, a Time magazine cover story
predicted ‘Another Ice Age’, saying: ‘Man may be somewhat
responsible – as a result of farming and fuel burning [which
is] blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and
heating the Earth.’
Prof Tsonis said: ‘Perhaps we
will see talk of an ice age again by the early 2030s, just
as the MDOs shift once more and temperatures begin to rise.’
MORE:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html
Greetings!
