Expect increasingly violent cyclones, weather experts warn

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

The reporter is full of shit, because of course there are scientists who directly link global warming to these increasingly frequent extreme storms. But that’s how successfully the plutocrats have backed off the media from doing their jobs:

Expect increasingly violent cyclones, weather experts warn (via AFP)

Meteorologists have yet to formally link global warming to typhoons like the one that devastated the Philippines, but they expect increasingly extreme weather phenomena due to a rise in ocean temperatures. The trail of death and destruction left in…

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How do you solve a problem like Maria?

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

I thoroughly approve of anything that encourages people to sing show tunes, so this is fine with me:

Belting out classic numbers from hit musicals can boost the brain function of people with Alzheimer’s disease, according to researchers who worked with elderly residents at a US care home.

Over a four-month study, the mental performance of patients who took part in regular group singing sessions improved compared with others who just listened.

In the sessions, patients were led through familiar songs from The Sound of Music, Oklahoma, The Wizard of Oz and Pinocchio.

The sessions appeared to have the most striking effect on people with moderate to severe dementia, with patients scoring higher on cognitive and drawing tests, and also on a satisfaction-with-life questionnaire at the end of the study.

Caribou Barbie’s at it again

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

http://youtu.be/ZIhj0axRsBA

Uh huh. Yes, Sarah. Sharing in the costs and benefits of a federal government is exactly like slavery.

Paying taxes is just like being chained naked in a boat, taken to a foreign country where you’re sold at public auction, having your wife used as a sex toy by your master, and your children taken away to be sold.

It’s not coincidental that she used this phrase. (That’s why she assured the crowd it “wasn’t racist.”) Notice the “free stuff” theme that plays into their anger that unworthy brown people are getting a free ride. (Obamacare! Obama phones!) The white, angry, middle-aged men who make up her base are obsessed with the notion of their own oppression. It fuels their rage.

It’s the cry of a whiny toddler who doesn’t want to share.

He took my stuff!

Stop being ‘rational’ and ‘reasonable’ with these people

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

First of all, let’s get the terms straight. They’re not climate change “deniers”. They’re climate change enablers. And I don’t care if they’re sincerely misinformed Christianists, Teabaggers, plutocrats or just stupid. Stop treating them as if they might have a point. They don’t.

This legalistic game of insisting that no particular weather event can be linked to global warming is just a strategy, and if we play by their rules (and God knows, liberals are nothing if not rule followers), they will win. They’re winning now. Ask the citizens who are waking up to devastation in the Philippines this week.

We need to call out, harangue and punish every single politician who even hints at the idea that global warming is not settled science, that nothing can be done, and is not doing everything in his or her power to stop it. (i.e. anyone who supports the Keystone XL pipeline).

They need to be trained, like the dogs they are.

Like Chris Christie, for instance. I mean, here’s this governor whose crummy ratings ironically went sky-high as the result of a monstrous storm amplified by global warming — something for which his policy decisions are at least partially to blame.

That’s right: He’s to blame. I don’t care if it’s one fraction of one thousandth, because our world is dying the death of a million paper cuts. After meeting with David Koch, the New Jersey governor suddenly pulled his state out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a regional cap-and-trade program for 10 states working together to meet carbon emission goals. Think Progress:

Yes, Christie showed his “commitment to the free enterprise system” by pulling out of a market-based system invented by Republicans and economists, championed by President George H. W. Bush, and originally supported at a regional level by GOP Governors like Pataki of New York.
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Global warming in action

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Storm chasers James Reynolds, Josh Morgerman and Mark Thomas were in the capital of Leyte Province, Tacloban, which received a direct hit from Super Typhoon Haiyan. This video shows some of the extreme winds of the eyewall, as filmed by James Reynolds. You can read an account of their escape from Tacloban on CNN.

Look at that storm. It’s like a giant tornado passing through.