Sunday, July 29, 2012

Why even climate activists are in denial about the need for polar cities in the future for survivors of global warming: A WARNING

Why is that most climate activists like Bill McKibben and Elizabeth Kolbert and many many others,
don't get it yet, and as still in denial about the fate of the EArth, ie, that our goose is already cooked, and
it's all over now, so we asked Danny Bloom, director of the Polar Cities Research Institute which is
studying the feasibility of polar cities as safe refuges for climate refugee survivors in the future, and he said to us in a sit down interivew on August 1, 2012:


Danny BLOOM; ''You see, most of these professionals get MONEY from giving lectures at


conferences and seminars, from


Bill McKibben to Andrew Revkin at the NYTimes, Joseph Romm and david Roberts, virutally
everyone, Dr Muller too. and in addition to


lecture fees, from $5000 to $50,000 per lecture,


they also teach at universities which hire them because they are


dependable and legitimate and because


these people STILL OFFER HOPE,.....they STILL OFFER SOLUTIONS.....so


the lecture organizers and the mainstream media like the NYTimes and the AP want


people who offer SOLUTIONS so the audiecne will go home happy.....same


with college courses, they msut'


make the students HAPPY by offerering soltuions -- geoengineering,


wind farms, solar power, etc...-- and


nobody wants to HIRE a lecturer like me or author Jim Laughter who wrote POLAR CITY RED this year, just a fiction novel, nothing to be afraid of, yet nobody will review the book or inteerview him, because me and Jim we say ITS OVER, the


bAD STUFF is coming, BUT we can


still prepare to help survivors SURVIVE in poalr cities.....THAT IS


NOT A HAPPY MESSAGE, nobody wants


to pay for a lecture on that theme, or to teach a class at colelge on


that theme, or to buy a book on that theme./...SIGh..






they only wants SOLUTUIONS to get us out of this mess. BUT THERE ARE


NO soltuions, it is too late...but


even McKibbien is in denial, ...., they are all in denial, even my friend Andrew Revkin, he has
a future to think about, and I don't, that is why my mind can go as far as the POLAR CITIES eventuality, bceause i can see the future, sicne I have no future, even the


climate activists are in denail because they


still seek SOLUTIONS to stopping CO2......but...there are NO


solutions...the only REAL solution is to PREPARE


for what is coming 100 years from now or later, and start THINKING


about poalr citis Now, as survival SOLUTIONS..


but nobody wants to go there YET..






there is NO MONEY is telling people there is NO HOPE....for


humankind,....but THERE IS HOPE in PREPARING with polar cities


for our descedabntrs 200 years from now.....nobody wants to look at


that in the face...... i get it Jim Laughter gets it, READ his bool but .....99 percent DO NOT GET


IT.''

Monday, July 23, 2012

Greenpeace Polar Cities Campaign Creates Online Petition for Planning and Pre-siting Polar Cities for Survivors of Global Warming Chaos in Future Centuries

Staff reporter

JULY 14, 2312

Greenpeace World yesterday promoted its campaign for Planning and Pre-siting Polar Cities for Survivors of Global Warming Chaos in Future Centuries.



“The melting Arctic is under threat from oil drilling, industrial fishing and conflict. Only polar cities can save mankind! We must start planning and pre-siting them now," the group said in an online campaign initiated by Greenpeace World.



Greenpeace said the Arctic ocean has been frozen for more than 800,000 years. However, as much as three-quarters of the floating ice cap at the top of the world has been lost in the past 30 years, mainly because of the use of dirty fuels.



It is estimated that the Arctic conceals about 90 billion barrels of oil, which could supply global demand for about three years, the organization said, adding that there is a 20 percent spillage rate in Arctic oil explorations and it takes two years for leaks to be stopped, causing serious harm to natural ecology and threatening wildlife in the area.



The group cited research results in saying that the poles are warming at twice the speed of the rest of the world, so the Arctic is the most sensitive area facing global climate change.



“Planning and pre-siting polar cities for survivors of climate chaos in the future means protecting us all,” the organization said, adding that Arctic ice reflects much of the sun’s heat back into space and keeps the whole planet cool, stabilizing weather systems that people depend on to grow food.



Moreover, there are only about 20,000 polar bears in the wild at present, but the rapid melting is making it difficult for them to survive. Scientists estimate that about 65 percent of the bears will be lost in the next 30 years, it added.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

''Polartrons'' Will Be Havens in Warming World?


Danny Bloom is on a one-man campaign to get people to seriously

consider a worst-case prediction of the British chemist and inventor

James Lovelock: life in “polartons" arrayed around the shores of an

ice-free Arctic Ocean in a greenhouse-warmed world.



Dr. Lovelock, who in 1972 conceived of Earth’s crust, climate and

veneer of life as a unified self-sustaining entity, Gaia, foresees

humanity in full pole-bound retreat within a century as areas around

the tropics roast — a scenario far outside even the worst-case

projections of climate scientists.



After reading a newspaper column in which Dr. Lovelock predicted

disastrous warming, Mr. Bloom teamed up with Deng Cheng-hong, a Taiwanese artist, and

set up Web sites showing “polartons" designs for self-sufficient Arctic

communities.



Mr. Bloom told me his intent was to conduct a thought experiment that

might prod people out of their comfort zone on climate — which

remains, for many, a someday, somewhere issue.



“At six going on eight billion people,” Dr. Lovelock says, “the

idea of any further development is almost obscene. We’ve got to learn

how to retreat from the world that we’re in. Planning a good retreat

is always a good measure of generalship.”



The retreat, he insists, will be toward the poles. Therefore, says Bloom, “polartons" ....



It’s a dubious scenario, particularly on time scales shorter than

centuries. But — as we’ve written extensively in recent years — there

is already an intensifying push to develop Arctic resources and test

shipping routes that could soon become practical should the floating

sea ice in the Arctic routinely vanish in summers.



Sensing the shift, the Coast Guard has proposed establishing its first

permanent Arctic presence, a helicopter station in Barrow, Alaska, the

northernmost town in the United States.



It’s not a stretch to think of Barrow as a hub for expanding

commercial fishing and trade through the Bering Strait.



The strategic significance of an opening Arctic recently made the

pages of Foreign Affairs magazine, in an article by Scott Borgerson, a former Coast Guard officer

who is now a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations.



“It is no longer a matter of if, but when, the Arctic Ocean will open

to regular marine transportation and exploration of its lucrative

natural-resource deposits,” he wrote.



So even if humanity isn’t driven to Arctic shores by climate calamity

at lower latitudes, it’s a sure bet that the far north will be an ever

busier place. Urban planners, get out your mukluks, the “polartons" are coming.



In the meantime, scientists, marathon runners, and others are already

making the North Pole a busy place.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Twitter feed re SCARE QUOTES

https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%22scare%20quotes%22

Home Connect Discover Leinad Moolb View my profile page Direct messages ListsHelpKeyboard shortcuts SettingsSign out Tweets People Trends· Change


#Freeh Sandusky #PSU Penn State Bain Joe Paterno #jealous Henry David Thoreau The Prisoner of Heaven Fleetwood Mac © 2012 TwitterAboutHelpTermsPrivacyBlogStatusAppsResourcesJobsAdvertisersBusinessesMediaDevelopers

Save searchAdvanced searchResults for "scare quotes"Tweets Top / All / People you follow 4m Leinad Moolb ‏@leinadmoolb

more scare quotes reax: -- http://pcofftherails101.blogspot.tw/2012/07/scare-quotes-editorial-reactions-by-san.html



Expand Collapse Reply Delete FavoritedFavorite 4m Leinad Moolb ‏@leinadmoolb

scare quotes - http://pcofftherails101.blogspot.tw/2012/07/toms-view-on-scare-quotes.html



Expand Collapse Reply Delete FavoritedFavorite 53m Matthew Blasi ‏@matthewblasi

@Chargrock What’s with the scare quotes?



View conversation Hide conversation Reply RetweetedRetweet Delete FavoritedFavorite 1h a tiny bug ‏@buglamp

yo zyra's abilities have been "leaked" (scare quotes bc it's the internet so WHO REALLY KNOWS) and she sounds fun as HELL holy crap



Expand Collapse Reply RetweetedRetweet Delete FavoritedFavorite 1h Jinxy ‏@Jinxy1984

Why isn't "fair share" ever in scare quotes? @jamestaranto



Expand Collapse Reply RetweetedRetweet Delete FavoritedFavorite 1h Rob White ‏@FilmQuarterly

Paul Julian Smith's column, on AWAKE and CABIN IN THE WOODS, in the latest FQ and online: http://bit.ly/M4AfZA @pauljuliansmith



Expand Collapse Reply RetweetedRetweet Delete FavoritedFavorite 2h Daniel Wahl ‏@daniel_wahl

@tferriss I agree with this article but think it's mis-titled (for the same reason you probably put the "too much" in scare quotes).



View conversation Hide conversation Reply RetweetedRetweet

Delete

FavoritedFavorite 9h Leinad Moolb ‏@leinadmoolb

Want to ask everyone on Twitter: do you know what scare quotes term MEANS and who coined it and when and why? DISH!



Expand Collapse Reply Delete FavoritedFavorite 12h Natalie St. John ‏@NatalieStJohn

@fredamoon Ha! Scare quotes! Erroneous quote are the New Black. Multiple exclamation points are soooo last year.



View conversation Hide conversation Reply RetweetedRetweet Delete FavoritedFavorite 13h tom p ‏@tombomp

@a_hectic_bloke 4 scare quotes in the first sentence. good start



View conversation Hide conversation Reply RetweetedRetweet Delete FavoritedFavorite 13h Monica ‏@shutupmonica

Thank you, @NBCNews, for not using scare quotes around mood disorder. @washingtonpost #noshame



Expand Collapse Reply RetweetedRetweet Delete FavoritedFavorite 14h Monica ‏@shutupmonica

@washingtonpost mood disorder is a clinically used term, WaPo. What's with the scare quotes?



View conversation Hide conversation Reply RetweetedRetweet Delete FavoritedFavorite 14h Freda Moon ‏@fredamoon

@NatalieStJohn It's all about the scare quotes.



View conversation Hide conversation Reply RetweetedRetweet Delete FavoritedFavorite 14h Chris Cardinal ‏@chriscardinal

@Burningcow putting "we care" in scare quotes makes me think they don't really care



View conversation Hide conversation Reply RetweetedRetweet Delete FavoritedFavorite 18h Christopher Schaefer ‏@ChrisSchaef

I don't get why young married women put their maiden names in scare quotes now. That's what I do when I make up a funny fake middle name



Expand Collapse Reply RetweetedRetweet Delete FavoritedFavorite 20h Bob Churchill ‏@bobchurchill

@ArriannaMarie @malichidaniels @litmajor Good, question them, but putting "humanitarian" in scare quotes isn't a sufficient criticism.



View conversation Hide conversation Reply RetweetedRetweet Delete FavoritedFavorite 21h Jed Sundwall ‏@jedsundwall

@nathangibbs @AndrewDonohue so many scare quotes! "development assistant" terrifying!



View conversation Hide conversation Reply RetweetedRetweet Delete FavoritedFavorite 21h bowerbird ‏@bbirdiman

@edbott @GlennF -- you mean the article google had the w.s.j. write, labeling the books as _their_ books? i woulda used "scare quotes". :+)



View conversation Hide conversation Reply RetweetedRetweet Delete FavoritedFavorite 21h Ken Lowery ‏@kenlowery

Maybe with some Kirby scare quotes and all-caps



Expand Collapse Reply RetweetedRetweet Delete FavoritedFavorite 23h Rebekah ‏@notpiecebypiece

I wonder if god is offended by scare quotes.



Expand Collapse Reply RetweetedRetweet Delete FavoritedFavorite

Tom's view on Scare Quotes

Dear Sir

I spent some time thinking today about your charming request and thought you just eccentric

enough to want to look into the origins of the scare quote term. I doubt anyone else in America
cares one bit about this. Why do you care?
For what it is worth, perhaps your search for the true meaning and origins of the scare quotes term is not a worthy endeavor for someone based in Taiwan who has "no internet access" to attempt a web research project on an etymological question.

If I ever see an Op Ed about scare quotes in the New York Times, as you propose for someone
to write, perhaps Ben Zimmer or Geoff Pullum,  I will eat my hat.


- Tom

Scare quotes: editorial reactions by a San Francisco newsman


Dear Sir,

I tried researching this a bit, your query about the origins and meaning of "scare quotes," as I have also vaguely wondered about it myself in the past, ot be honest. You are a lone voice out there asking
a good question.
Words and phrases are used all the time without people knowing their
precise origins and scare quotes just might another one of them but again, your
questions are worth thinking about, although I doubt most people could care at all.
Since I employed the phrase in my recent piece according to its ''universally accepted
meaning'', the way it has always been used, and since
there is no other meaning for it, you can't really call the term of scare quotes a
"misnomer" or a "wrong term." In any case, your interset in all this served to wake me up
just a bit but in the end I don't give a ''rat's ass'' about this at all. scare quotes mine.

Sincerely,

Dan Mooring
San Francisco newspaper veteran

The "Polar City Red" movie, set for a 2017 release, bags Academy Award winner Hoffman.

The "Polar City Red" movie, set for a 2017 release, has bagged an Academy Award winner.




Philip Seymour Hoffman, who earned the best-actor Oscar for 2005's Capote, has joined the cast for the futuristic climate dystopia adventure series, "Polar City Red".



Lionsgrate Films announced that Hoffman will play the lead role as Carson Moore in the post-apocalyptic Alaska movie.



Last week it was announced that Sucker Punch actress Jena Malone had been chosen for the role of LouEllen Moore.



Fans still excitedly awaiting the casting for hunk Finnick Odair. Taylor Kitsch, Garret Hedlund and Armie Hammer have been rumoured to be in the run for the role, but producers have yet to make a decision.



"Polar City Red" is a cli fi movie and takes place in 2075 in a severely climate chaos hit North America.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

DERECHO first used in 1888 by Gustavus Hinrichs

Derecho (pronounced as /dəˈreɪtʃoʊ/ , “day-ray-cho”) is a loanword


from Spanish, in which it means “straight”. It refers to a fast-moving

storm with a straight or slightly bowed wavefront that travels long

distances across country, the linear equivalent of a rotating tornado.

The term was first used in 1888 by Professor Gustavus Hinrichs of the

University of Ohio in a paper titled ''Tornados and Derechos''.



Friday, July 6, 2012

A boom in oil production has made a mockery of earlier 'peak oil' predictions" therefore POLAR CITIES will save humankind in 500 years, predicts Danny Bloom

A boom in oil production has made a mockery of earlier peak oil predictions, says George Monbiot, in a recent column in the Guardian newspaper in July 2012. That's good news for capitalists, he says, but a disaster for humanity.

He writes:

"There's enough oil in the ground to deep-fry all of us, and no obvious means to prevail on governments or industry to leave it in the ground. 20 years of moral persusasion efforts have failed."

He concludes:

"I don't like raising problems when I cannot see a solution. However, right now, I am not sure I can look my children in the eyes."

Jim Laughter just did a 4 minute interview in studio in Tulsa TV station for ABC-TV:

Jim Laughter just did a 4 minute interview in studio in Tulsa TV station for ABC-TV:




http://www.ktul.com/video?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=7471125

TV HOST: The book is set in 2075, give us a little background, Jim, set it up for us.

JIM: It's 2075 in Alaska and global warming has destroyed the Earth's ecosystems worldwide, and mllions of people have had to trek north to find shelter polar cities in the Arctic region. Not everyone gets in: there are scavengers out on the tundra murdering for good and supplies. It's a character-driven novel, and a fast read. And it's more than just explosions and murders. Lots of interesting stuff, too.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Coming soon: a review of POLAR CITY RED by Jim Laughter

HERE:

‘Melting Edge’ shows Alaska in crosshairs of climate change

David A. James writes from Alaska in the Fairbanks Daily News Miner

[June 30, 2012 A.D.]


IN A REVIEW OF "The Melting Edge: Alaska at the Frontier of Climate Change" by Michael Collier and published by Alaska Geographic magazine

[116 pages]  US$20

"Alaska is changing, and it’s changing fast. Mountain glaciers are retreating. Ground frozen solid for thousands of years is melting into mush. Lakes that once perched atop permafrost are draining as though their plugs had been pulled. In a state with more than 33,000 miles of shoreline, sea level is rising. Coastal communities are awash in waves. Plants and animals struggle to adapt, not always successfully. This alteration of the Alaska landscape is impossible to ignore.”

This paragraph, found early in “The Melting Edge: Alaska at the Frontier of Climate Change,” serves as a good summary of what author Michael Collier sets out to explore in this latest publication from Alaska Geographic. This brief, magazine-style book documents the ways, often subtle but sometimes abrupt, that the ecosystems of our state are responding to the slow but steady rise of temperatures as our climate seeks to adapt to forces both natural and manmade that are pressuring it.

In a series of short essays, Collier travels around the state, meeting with various researchers and showing the differing ways that climate changes are impacting human, animal, and plant life.

The most dramatic impacts on people are being found in the more northerly coastal communities, where the combination of rising sea levels and melting permafrost are causing the land to erode right out from under townsites. Shishmaref and Newtok are two such settlements that will ultimately have to be moved because their present locations are washing away. The costs of these relocations are intimidating and annual incomes are low. Who will pay for moving the towns is an open question. The larger community of Barrow, meanwhile, is now sandbagging its beach in a short-term effort at staving off ground loss.

Human and animal fates are intertwined along the Yukon River, where a slight rise in water temperature in recent decades has likely been the trigger for the increasing occurrence of the Icthyophonus hoferi parasite that is attacking salmon, leading to lower runs as the diseased fish struggle to reach their upstream spawning grounds.

Arctic marine animals are the most immediately threatened by current changes. The rapidly melting sea ice is robbing them of crucial habitat. Walruses and polar bears both depend on the presence of the ice to rest while hunting. Unable to find haul-out spots, they are forced to swim tremendous distances, exhausting themselves and finding it increasingly difficult to successfully raise their young.

On shore, Collier notes that musk oxen are also faced with growing pressures as the methods they have developed to survive in extreme cold are inapplicable to less severe temperatures. Caribou, on the other hand, may be the big winners, since their migratory behavior will likely play in their favor.

Plant life is also being hit hard. The spruce bark beetle has always been present on the Kenai Peninsula, but until the 1980s it was kept in check by the cold. As temperatures rose its lifecycle was lengthened (it even developed the capacity for adults to overwinter) and the region’s forests were demolished. Further north, the spruce budworm is beginning to threaten Interior forests with similar devastation.

Across the northern reaches of the state, tundra is slowly being displaced by advancing forests, and wildfires are becoming increasingly frequent. Thunderstorms, once a rarity in the Arctic, are now routine in summer, and lightning strikes cause of most of the fire activity.

Underneath the plants, the permafrost found in much of the state is thawing out, causing lakes to drain and disappear in some places, bogs to form in others, and surface grounds to buckle. This is creating headaches for road construction and other development projects since the methods of building in these areas are dependent on the ground remaining frozen.

The melting of sea ice has been dramatic and well publicized. Collier notes that 2008 saw the greatest retreat on record, although the book went into publication too soon to report that 2011, depending on which study is cited, was either worse or equal in overall loss.

Collier does a good job of explaining how open water absorbs solar heat that the ice would have reflected, warming the water and melting the ice from beneath, creating a feedback loop that accelerates the process. He also describes the crucial difference between multi-year and seasonal ice, showing why wintertime ice recovery is only temporary and shouldn’t be confused with an indication that the problem is resolving itself.

Glaciers are also retreating, although Collier is careful to point out that this is due as much to the long twilight of the last Ice Age as it is to current climate shifts. That said, the rate of melting has picked up considerably in recent years, indicating that something more is going on.

Collier’s text is accompanied by numerous photographs that show the changes he documents, although there aren’t any older pictures included that would illustrate the landscape alterations more vividly. One needn’t look far before finding photographs of areas in Alaska that looked significantly different a century ago than they do today, and it would have been nice to have some of these included.

He’s also written what is essentially an introductory book, so the science of what is occurring, as well as the magnitude of it, are only minimally explained. Those who wish to learn more are advised to consult Homer author Nancy Lord’s “Early Warming” for what is still the best exploration of northern ''warming'' written for a general audience. [NOTE: They might also like to check out Danny Bloom's blogs about POLAR CITIES FOR SURVIVORS OF GLOBAL WARMING IN ALASKA at http://pcillu101.blogspot.com/].



That said, this is a valuable book. As Collier writes early on, “Alaska lies squarely in the crosshairs of climate change.” We need to quit ignoring this reality and decide how we will deal with it.



David A. James lives in Fairbanks.