Dear Chris Hayes: Good Job. Now Let’s Get Real.

Published on Tuesday, August 20, 2013 by The Nation

Dear Chris Hayes: Good Job. Now Let’s Get Real.

by Wen Stephenson

 

 

(Image: Courtesy of msnbc.com)Dear Chris,



First off, since we’ve never met, I want to say how much I appreciate your work, and in particular what you’re doing with All In. You’re holding down some vital turf in the media landscape, and doing it with distinction—and I know how challenging that can be.

And I especially want to offer big, sincere thanks for The Politics of Power—it’s no small thing to air an hour of prime-time television like what we saw on Friday night. Your commitment to elevating climate, and climate politics, as a regular part of the show’s coverage is hugely encouraging. And I’m glad, speaking as someone who’s deeply engaged in the climate fight, that you don’t shy from suggesting the severity and urgency of the climate crisis—or at least, that you begin to suggest it. Which is far more than can be said of most of our media.

It’s precisely because I respect what you’re trying to do that I feel moved to write here with what I hope is constructive feedback. I don’t expect you to respond to this. I mean, if you have time, great. If not, I completely understand. (I used to produce a two-hour daily talk show on NPR, so I know the kind of pace at which you work.)

I felt there were three pretty important things missing from The Politics of Power.

The first is what I’d call a full dose of climate reality. I would’ve liked to see you explain to viewers the real carbon math, and the true magnitude of the challenge we face—as spelled out so starkly and effectively by folks like Bill McKibben, Joe Romm, David Roberts, The Nation’s Mark Hertsgaard and others, not to mention the IEA, World Bank, even PwC and HSBC—and to explain what it means for the kind of planet our children, yours and mine, will inherit this century if we don’t radically change course. I’m referring to the fact that something to the tune of 80 percent of existing fossil fuel reserves need to stay in the ground, over the next four decades, if we’re going to have a shot at a livable climate. Not only that, but the IPCC reported in 2007 (in its most recent assessment report) that global emissions need to be cut some 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 in order to have a reasonable chance of making the required 80 percent reductions (or more) by 2050. The IPCC’s new assessment report, due out this year and next, may paint an even more urgent picture.
So, given all that, the second thing I found missing was a full dose of political reality: the fact that even the most ambitious policies currently on the table in Washington—or even imaginable in Washington, such as an economy-wide price on carbon—don’t come close to addressing that fundamental carbon math. You rightly point to congressional obstruction, bought and paid for by the fossil-fuel lobby, forcing Obama to act unilaterally. But even if Obama’s climate plan is wildly successful (in Washington terms) and he manages to fulfill his Copenhagen pledge of 17 percent reductions (below 2005 levels) by 2020, do your viewers understand how far that is from what science tells us is necessary? And do they understand the full implications of this gap between the politically “possible” and the scientifically necessary? In other words, do they understand the kind of profound political change needed in order for us to begin addressing the climate crisis in a serious way? It’s not just about getting the climate-science denying obstructionists out of the way, it’s about forcing even our strongest climate champions, at all levels of government, to confront the actual scale and urgency of the crisis.

I felt the program could have been stronger if it had acknowledged those two stark realities, the scientific and the political, head on. But the thing that really struck me more than anything was this third omission: there was no mention of the climate movement, despite the fact that you interviewed both Bill McKibben and May Boeve of 350.org. Bill may in fact be “our most important environmentalist,” but the reason he belonged there on your show is that he and his colleagues at 350 have done far more than create just another environmental organization, in any conventional sense—it’s that they, together with many partners and allies, have spearheaded a global, grassroots, people-powered climate-justice movement that is as much about human rights as “environmentalism.” And this movement, while still relatively new and small, is gaining unmistakable momentum as it takes on the entrenched power of the fossil fuel interests. Just look at what they’ve accomplished in the Keystone fight.

That’s the real story. The movement. [UPDATE: McKibben has just posted a new essay on this very subject, which I managed to miss, and it's pretty essential reading.] Of course, there’s plenty of room for debate about what kind of movement it should be, and how to build it. But I was deeply puzzled by the lack of any acknowledgment that this movement even exists.

In the end, you exhorted viewers to vote politicians out of office if they won’t take action—which is commendable! And yet, conventional electoral politics only scratches the surface of the sort of political engagement we need if we’re going to build a movement that can retake our democracy and fundamentally transform our politics to address this crisis in a meaningful way.

Is it hard to imagine that sort of deep transformation? Yes, it’s very hard. Damn near impossible. But it’s our only hope.
I don’t want to presume anything about what’s going through your mind, but I worry that you may be trying not to sound “politically naïve,” or “unreasonable,” or “unserious”—or for that matter, that you’re trying not to bum people out too much by letting on that the current situation is hopeless.

But, Chris, under any currently imaginable political scenario—that is, under anything resembling politics as usual—the situation is hopeless.

And unless you’re willing to look your viewers in the eye and tell them as much, you’re not truly leveling with them about what it will take to make a real difference in the climate crisis.

I don’t know whether it’s too late for us to avert full-blown climate catastrophe, or what “too late” would even mean. But I know this: it’s too late for us to worry about sounding “reasonable” by Washington or mainstream media standards. The situation we face is utterly insane—and any serious response to it is going to sound completely radical and crazy (as I wrote in a Boston Phoenix cover story that was quoted at length in a Nation editorial on Keystone last February), or at the very least hopelessly naïve. So be it. The question is, are we going to tell the truth—or not?

We heard just a hint of this sort of unvarnished truth-telling in Bill’s voice when he told you that there is no solution other than to stop burning coal, oil and gas—and fast. How are we going to do that? I’m afraid your viewers were left with the impression that an eventual price on carbon, combined with some EPA regulations and some entrepreneurial pluck, will somehow be enough—as opposed to the kind of society-wide, WWII-scale mobilization that many believe it will take.
And if we’re not willing to call for that kind of full-scale solution, then we need to be honest about our willingness to accept the consequences. Which are pretty grim.

Sometimes I think the only people in this country who are really willing to face up to the situation we’re in, and to act accordingly, are the folks I know, most of them young, who’ve engaged in nonviolent direct action—spending days and nights eighty feet up in a tree, or locked-down to construction equipment, or barricaded inside a section of pipeline to stop planet-destroying fossil-fuel infrastructure like the Keystone XL from being built. Or putting themselves in the way of a coal shipment. Or chaining themselves to a mining truck on a West Virginia mountaintop.

At this late date, engaging in the climate fight in a serious way requires some serious courage and commitment and risk-taking—and not necessarily of the physical kind (only a comparatively few people can be expected to have that kind of courage), but certainly of the moral and political kind. And the journalistic kind. I believe the burden falls as much on us as journalists as on anyone else. Maybe more so.

We need you out there, Chris, telling the truth.

With respect and gratitude,

Wen

© 2013 The Nation

Freelance journalist and climate activist Wen Stephenson, a former editor at The Atlantic and The Boston Globe, contributes frequently to Grist and has written about climate and culture for the Globe, The New York Times, The Nation and Slate. On Twitter: @wenstephenson

Is Climate Change Driving the Southwest Toward a Dust Bowl?

 

 

 

 

   Environment  

The Nation / By Sasha Abramsky

Is Climate Change Driving the Southwest Toward a Dust Bowl?

A severe drought in the Southwest is devastating crops and farm communities—and sending a warning about climate change.

 

 

Photo Credit: vesilvio/ Shutterstock.com

July 22, 2013  |  

 

 

The following article first appeared inthe Nation. For more great content from the Nation, sign up for theiremail newsletters here.

Ed Moore’s ranch sits on the flatlands of the Texas panhandle, east of Lubbock, just outside the tiny town of Ralls. On a clear day, you can see for miles in any direction. Most days, however, the dust blows—and when it does, the sky becomes a dull orange haze and the scene becomes impressionistic. The high gray towers of grain elevators dot the landscape. Cattle graze in silhouette. Farmers ride through the gloom on tractors with vast “sand fighters” that gather the earth into big clods so the soil won’t blow away. It’s daytime, yet it’s dark—not as black as it gets during the worst of the dust storms, like those that tore through southeastern Colorado in the spring and the ones that swept across Phoenix a few years ago, and maybe not as bleak as the land-destroying Dust Bowl days of the 1930s, but nevertheless eerily subdued. Something clearly isn’t right.

In a typical year, the winds ease up in mid-spring, and the dust tamps down. In the past three years, however, as the rains have failed and the land has dried up, the winds have continued into the searingly hot summers. As they blow, the soil disintegrates, and what little moisture there is in the earth evaporates. The soil quality is now so poor that on the few occasions when it does rain, the next day’s wind simply blows the newly moistened topsoil away. Across the area you can see rows of cotton, black and dead in the orange earth—entire fields burned by the static electricity generated by the sandstorms.

Locals have started calling the storms by their Arabic name, haboobs—presumably a nomenclature brought back by returning Iraq War veterans. Lately the haboobs have been visiting themselves on the High Plains with a depressing regularity. They are no longer considered an episodic menace but rather a fixture of the landscape, the calling card of an emerging climatological crisis.

Moore, who was born in a farmhouse on his family’s land just north of Ralls, is 73 years old. His balding head is deeply tanned, his forearms mottled by the sun and wind. When he was a young man, he got an aeronautical engineering degree and headed to Seattle to work for Boeing. In 1971, however, his heart called him back to West Texas. It was, after all, the land to which his mother and her family had trekked in a covered wagon in the 1920s. Moore recalled being told that his mother, at age 5, had walked alongside the wagon all the way from Comanche, Texas, 250 miles away. They were lured to the region by the promise of cheap, fertile land—the promise that drew so many to the High Plains during the boom years that preceded the catastrophic onset of the Dust Bowl.

“This land, I love it,” says the old farmer softly, his eyes staring far off in the distance. “It means essentially the world to me. I want to make sure I take care of it and make sure my sons can have it. The only thing we worry about is the water supply.”

Last summer, the water table in Moore’s area dropped by about a foot. The White River Reservoir, which supplies water to four towns in the area, is at its lowest point since it was built in the 1960s, Moore says. About ten feet at its deepest, “it’s just pollywog water.” His two wells, which used to pump up to 500 gallons per minute, are putting out only about 150 gallons per minute.
Like the haboobs, water scarcity here is starting to seem like something other than a passing concern. It’s a troubling sign of a long-term trend, a problem exacerbated by drought but more complex than annual precipitation. After decades of overuse—tapping into aquifers and removing more water than nature could add back in, even during the abnormally wet 1980s and ’90s—the water-credit system in this part of the country seems to be running out. “We’ve used much more water in the last couple years than we normally would because of the drought,” explains Robert Hagevoort, a dairy specialist at New Mexico State University’s agricultural science center. Water tables have dropped quickly, he says, and as a result irrigated agriculture is under severe threat.

Moore largely uses dryland farming techniques, since there isn’t enough water to irrigate his fields. If it rains, he can grow crops and keep cattle. If it doesn’t, he can’t. “I like a challenge,” he explains. “Every day is different. That’s what farming is. Do we plant cotton? Do we plant milo? Do we fight sand? When do we quit it all and get on a horse and ride?”

The question is not merely rhetorical. As Moore and his neighbors confront the grim possibility that this year’s rains will again fall far short of the twenty-five inches he says are necessary, with dwindling underground reserves to draw from, they are simply facing the facts. “We hope the rains start up again,” he says. If they don’t, “these little towns will disappear.”

A similar lament can be heard across the Southwest, in bone-dry communities in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas. Thanks to record drought and heat, Arizona and Colorado have been plagued by fierce forest fires in recent months—nineteen elite forest firefighters died in an Arizona blaze in late June. And it’s not just rural areas under threat; cities are also at risk. Las Cruces, New Mexico, has to drill wells 1,000 feet deep to extract water. Smaller municipalities like Magdalena, south of Albuquerque, are trucking it in.
What we’re seeing in these regions is a harbinger. Around the world, as climate change accelerates and population growth bumps up against natural limits, water access is becoming increasingly important—and increasingly precarious. The economic impact is immediate and severe.

“Right now, there ain’t anything underneath that dry land,” says Johnny Shepard, who manages a cotton gin near Lubbock. In 2011, the drought was so extreme that 60 percent of the state’s cotton crop was lost, according to the Department of Agriculture (USDA). The numbers have improved since then, but only marginally. More than 40 percent of the Texas cotton crop was lost in 2012, and given current conditions, the losses are likely to be similar this year. Nationally, cotton production declined from 18 million bales in 2010 to 17 million in 2012—with much of that drop in the Southwest.

As hay and alfalfa prices skyrocket in response to the drought, farmers are selling off animals they can no longer afford to feed. The cattle herd in Texas is down by more than 1 million. Nationally, the figure has declined from more than 98 million head a few years ago to about 89 million. The tight supply sets up the prospect that consumers will pay far more for beef in the years to come. In eastern New Mexico and the Texas panhandle, about 20 percent of the dairies have gone belly up for similar reasons. Milk production costs have risen 50 percent in recent years, a portion of which has been passed on to consumers.

Last year the corn crop was about 25 percent shy of its potential. After years of heady expansion (fueled in part by the introduction of genetically modified crops), US corn production has dropped to its 2000 level, according to the USDA. The production of many strains of wheat has also declined since 2011, largely because of crop failures in the High Plains, and soy production in 2012 was nearly 10 percent down from its 2010 level.

These days, much of the nation’s corn crop is being used not for food but for ethanol fuel. Not coincidentally, as competition for the produce has increased since 2008, corn prices have jacked up sharply. This has led to rising food prices and, as important, put a strain on exports—which has ricochet effects, especially in poorer communities around the world.

Because US food production anchors the international food system, a drop in exports leads to price inflation in countries where poorer populations spend a larger percentage of their income on staples. Markets overseas have also been hit by US drought–induced shipping disruptions. Sixty percent of all grain exported through the Gulf of Mexico is shipped to ports via the Mississippi River. But for a few weeks late last year, the river levels around Thebes, Illinois, fell so low that barges filled with grain destined for export had to lighten their loads. Much of the $7 billion in commodities that the American Waterways Operators and the Waterways Council estimate normally travel down the Mississippi in December and January either backed up or had to be transported by more expensive methods.

* * *

American agriculture is extraordinarily resilient, engineered to withstand regional droughts and even prolonged national weather crises. Even so, farmers who must adapt need time to familiarize themselves with new crops, and scientists need time to learn what grows best during years of extreme water scarcity. But with weather patterns shifting more rapidly and water resources drying up, time isn’t on their side.

There is no consensus on how much of today’s drought in the Southwest can be attributed to climate change. But there’s little doubt among climatologists that a warming planet is at least partly to blame. The journal Nature Climate Change has published studies suggesting that the United States is likely in for a series of severe droughts over the next thirty years. In 2010 Climate Central chief climatologist Heidi Cullen explained that “the weather of the future is going to be more extreme. That means more extreme heat, extreme storms, extreme drought.” When a drought devastated Russian agricultural production that year, European researchers concluded that human activity–induced climate change had made it three times more likely to occur. An EU commission also predicted that severe heat waves of the sort that hit much of Europe in the summer of 2003 could become a biannual occurrence by 2040.

According to USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey, the lack of snow and rain in 2012 was caused by a confluence of factors, including, in 2010 and 2011, back-to-back Las Niñas, a North Atlantic high-pressure system that blocked moisture from the eastern half of the country, and a Pacific oscillation resulting in a drier West—as well as the broader changes produced by global climate change. By the end of 2012, the USDA had declared 2,245 counties (representing 71 percent of the country’s landmass) disaster areas because of drought. No other year in history has come close to having so many USDA-designated disaster areas. Although the drought broke in much of the country last spring, those conditions still hold across the Southwest.

“The water supply conditions we have right now are by far the worst we’ve had in the last hundred years,” explains New Mexico State University professor of civil engineering Phil King. In a normal year, the Rio Grande Project releases 790,000 acre-feet of water to farmers and rural communities. In 1964, until now the worst year for releases from the project, only 206,000 acre-feet were released. This year, says King, only 163,000 acre-feet are likely to be released, making it the worst year on record for local farmers. “We just had the river dry for eight months,” he adds. “Next year it could be dry ten months.”

The drought has led to increasingly bitter legal squabbles over water rights. Each state designs its own water-access rules, so the feds can do little more than sit back and watch as the battles intensify. In New Mexico, the districts within the Rio Grande Project have been fighting over how much water should be allocated to farmers in each area. Texas has gotten into legal tiffs with New Mexico and Oklahoma over water access. And an increasing number of lawsuits are being filed between farmers competing for limited access to rivers.

Long term, there’s a strong prospect for broader social disruption brought on by resource scarcity. What scares King and other hydrologists is that the Southwest is becoming the epicenter of several overlapping crises. Rapid climate change is occurring amid a huge population shift. Agriculture (which in a state like New Mexico has traditionally accounted for more than three-quarters of all water use) is competing with oil, gas and other industries for increasingly scarce water. And all players, whether small-town water districts or state governments, cities booming on oil revenues or rural hamlets struggling simply to stay alive, are jostling for access to aquifers that aren’t generating anywhere near the amount of water they used to.

During the big storms, the farmers wage a Sisyphean fight against the sand. When the sand isn’t blowing so hard, many tally up the fields they’ve lost and file crop insurance claims. Fourth-generation Texas farmer Ray Johnston simply decamps to one of his favorite sports bars on the outskirts of Lubbock, where he drinks Coors Light and ponders his situation.

“It’s kinda depressing,” says Johnston, who lost his crop last year to drought and planted 500 acres of cotton again this year, only to watch as eighty-five-mile-per-hour winds brought in a June hailstorm that destroyed his crop. “You sit out here and do all this hard work, and you’ve nothing to show for it.” In the past three years, the amount of land Johnston has been able to farm has declined from 1,200 acres to about 600. He spends between $10,000 and $15,000 per month to irrigate the half that’s left.

The luckier farmers, Ed Moore among them, are surviving in relatively decent financial condition because there are oil derricks on their land that pump up and down nonstop, indifferent to the dust storms. But even those sitting on oil are increasingly reliant on payouts from their crop insurance simply to cover basic operating costs. And water has to be pumped in to keep the pressure of the oil wells constant. In many parts of the country, including Texas and New Mexico, the introduction of water-intensive fracking techniques has worsened this problem. Entire towns are springing up overnight to cater to the oil and natural gas boom. In these areas, population growth and the rise of heavy industry are dramatically increasing pressure on already strained agricultural water supplies.

Hundreds of miles southwest of Ralls, on an alfalfa and small-grains farm near Roswell, New Mexico, Craig Ogden is facing a similar set of challenges—and a similar risk of heartbreak. The 55-year-old relies on irrigation from the Carlsbad Irrigation District to water his 800 acres. But the water allotments are pitifully small. In the past few years, he has been able to grow on only about 10 percent of his acreage.

“We had eighteen months of no rainfall,” says Ogden, whose curly gray hair, ready smile and blue eyes make him look startlingly like the actor Gene Wilder. “We sold a lot of equipment last year. When you’ve had people who have worked for you, it’s hard to let them go.” As he considers what will happen to his family if his farm fails, he starts to cry. “I’ve got college degrees, but with my age it’s going to be hard to find something in this job market.”

Ogden’s friend Matt Rush is also struggling to make ends meet. He recently took a job with the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau in Albuquerque, four hours from home. He, too, cries as he considers his prospects. “This is who we are,” he says. “When your livelihood becomes your identity, you can’t just stop.” He pauses, tries to talk himself into optimism. “It’ll take a while to get her Sunday clothes on,” he says, referring to the land. “But she’ll look good. It’s so wide open. You can see the sun coming up and the sun going down. You can see every star in the heavens at night. When it’s green, it just feels so alive to me. When it rains, you can see it in everybody’s faces—how relieved they are. Contributions go up in church on a Sunday after it rains.”

* * *

Eddie Speer homesteads a small farm outside Lubbock. His wells have almost run dry; his wife, Laura, worries that she might not have enough water for cooking, washing the dishes and bathing. “We wake up every morning, and if we didn’t know God was taking care of us, we couldn’t get through the day,” he says. “We pray for rain—in church and privately. We ask God to bring rain and bless our farms.”

Speer walks me down his rows of dead crops, showing me the texture of the soil. It’s dry, as fine as the red desert sand in Utah’s Arches National Park. “That won’t grow a seed,” he says resignedly. To make it through the year, Speer has had to sell off his cattle and file a crop insurance claim. He pays more than $30,000 per year to insure his crop. But he can’t leave his land. It’s his home. It’s where his grandfather died, of a massive heart attack, and where his father died.

Thanks to the national crop insurance system, which grew out of the wreckage of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, farmers can buy insurance worth up to 75 percent of the value of their crop, averaged over a set number of years. They buy it from private companies, but those companies are guaranteed by the government, which covers more than 60 percent of the cost. Like all insurance programs, it works as long as it isn’t chronically overused. Right now, it’s being used as never before.

Congress has an opportunity to address this crisis through the farm bill, which is currently the topic of robust debate in Washington. On July 11, with help from the powerful agribusiness lobby, the House passed legislation giving large farms the ability to buy “shallow loss insurance,” which would guarantee up to 90 percent of their income—thus providing a perverse incentive for agribusiness to try to cultivate land manifestly unsuited to the crops in question. The House also set up new profit insurance systems for large-scale dairies. But it provided no funding stream for the federal food stamps program. To appease right-wing conservatives, nutritional assistance—a central pillar of previous farm bills, which remains at the heart of the proposed Senate bill—was stripped out.

The White House has promised to veto the bill. But the proposal to expand short-term subsidies to agribusiness on the backs of tens of millions of food stamp recipients reveals a fundamental problem with US agriculture. The current model relies on two sets of subsidies: to farmers during years when crops fail, so that they have an incentive to produce enough food even when it’s not profitable; and to the tens of millions of Americans who otherwise could not afford to feed themselves. Take either of these props away, and producers as well as consumers get hurt.

Even if funding for food stamps is ultimately approved, the crop insurance model may be in jeopardy. As droughts become longer and more severe, and as the agribusiness lobby skews policies even further in favor of big combines, the program could become unaffordable to small-scale farmers like Moore and Johnston—and unsustainable for the government.

By the end of spring, 597 counties had been declared disaster areas, which qualifies them for low-interest federal loans and other financial assistance. US Drought Monitor maps show most of the center and west of the country in moderate to extreme drought conditions. The rains have returned to the eastern and northern regions; the Mississippi River flooded in the late spring, and in San Antonio, so much rain fell in May that it, too, was inundated. But in the West and Southwest, the drought is getting worse, and too often the remaining water is getting saltier and thus less suitable for growing many kinds of crops.

At the moment, farmers are surviving on grittiness, technological creativity and crop insurance. But the payouts are subject to a law of diminishing returns: each year’s payout is based on the average value of the previous ten years’ crops. Meanwhile, because insurance companies are disbursing record amounts to farmers, premiums are going up. It’s not uncommon to hear stories of farmers receiving $150,000 in payouts only to return more than $30,000 in premium payments. That makes sense for large agribusiness enterprises concerned with protecting revenues rather than protecting fields, but it’s a heavy burden for small farmers. And while agribusiness has the means to pay for supplemental coverage options that protect up to 90 percent of the value of its crops, such options are beyond the means of men like Eddie Speer.

* * *

The effects of this transformation go far beyond the farms and ranches. In January, Cargill announced it was closing a huge beef-processing plant in Plainview, Texas, because so few cattle remained in the area. With only two weeks’ notice, about 2,300 workers lost their livelihoods. Overnight, Hale County’s unemployment rate spiked from about 6 percent to nearly 13 percent. Texas A&M’s Agrilife Extension Service estimated that the loss of jobs at Cargill, combined with secondary effects as related businesses suffered and residents bought less in local stores, would cost the county more than $97 million.

Many of the unemployed workers—who used to earn good wages and enjoy strong union benefits in a largely nonunion, low-wage state—now make a daily trek to the Workforce Solutions office, in a run-down strip mall on the edge of town, to look for jobs. Others have turned to service sector jobs at Walmart and other superstores. “It was a big old shock,” says Rachel, a young woman standing with friends in front of Workforce Solutions. Rachel used to work for a sanitation company that was brought in every evening to clean the slaughterhouse. “It was the end—the end of life in Plainview as we know it. A lot of people left, a lot weren’t able to leave because of family. When God said in the Bible we need to live day to day—boy, He wasn’t kidding.”

Just like in the days of the Dust Bowl, a way of life is under threat here, as are the livelihoods of millions of people. If the weather chaos of the past few years becomes a new norm, the stability of the US and global food systems could come under threat—tightening supplies, increasing prices and pushing the Eddie Speers of the world into uncertain futures separated from the land they love.

I want Speer’s prayers to be answered. But I fear that Ed Moore might be more realistic. Moore looks over the land on which he rides his 15-year-old Appaloosa, Lady, at the end of each workday. You can almost see the sigh forming in his chest. “I don’t think we’ll ever run out of water [entirely]. But it’ll get so expensive we’ll have to quit,” he says. He stops to gather his thoughts. “You ask about this land. I don’t have a clue why I love it. It’s flat. Very hard to make a living. If I were really smart, I’d go somewhere where the average rainfall is forty inches. But this is home. And I don’t like to fail.”

Sasha Abramsky, a Nation contributing writer, is the author of several books, including, most recently, Inside Obama’s Brain, Breadline USA and American Furies. His next book, The American Way of Poverty, will be published by Nation Books in the fall

New study finds that sea-level will rise 2.3 meters for each increase in degree

Published on Tuesday, July 16, 2013 by Common Dreams

What Burns Today, Melts Tomorrow: Report

New study finds that sea-level will rise 2.3 meters for each increase in degree

- Lauren McCauley, staff writer

Over the next two millennia, the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet is projected to contribute to half of all sea-level rise. (Photo: Rita Williaert/ cc/ Flickr)


"Greenhouse gases emitted today will cause sea level to rise for centuries to come," concluded a team of scientists behind a new study published Monday in the National Academy of Sciences.

The study, conducted by a group from Germany's Pottsdam Institute for Climate Impact, found the sea levels may rise by as much as 2.3 meters (roughly 7.5 feet) with each degree Celsius that global temperatures increase.

"Sea-level rise might be slow on time scales on which we elect governments, but it is inevitable and therefore highly relevant for almost everything we build along our coastlines, for many generations to come,” cautioned Anders Levermann, lead author of the study.

The study is the first of its kind to combine evidence from climate history with computer simulations of contributing factors to long-term sea-level increases: thermal expansion of oceans, the melting of mountain glaciers and the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

According to their findings, though thermal expansion and melting glaciers are thus far the greatest contributing factors to sea-level change, the melting of the ice sheets will be the dominant contributors within the next two millennia.

As Levermann explains, because of their enormous mass, the oceans and ice sheets are slow in responding to the global temperature increase. However, like a rolling stone, "once heated out of balance, they simply don’t stop."

“CO2, once emitted by burning fossil fuels, stays an awful long time in the atmosphere,” he adds. “Consequently, the warming it causes also persists.”

Scientists predict that as much as half of total sea-level rise will come from ice-loss in Antarctica, with Greenland melting contributing another 25 percent.

Describing the impact of the study's predictions, David Vaughan, head of the ice2sea project, told Reuters the most grave consequences will be seen in the frequency and severity of storms.

"It's not about chasing people up the beach or the changing shape of coastlines," he said. "The big issue is how the storms will damage our coasts and how often they occur. That'll increase even with small levels of sea rise in coming decades."

“Continuous sea-level rise is something we cannot avoid unless global temperatures go down again,” Levermann adds. “Thus we can be absolutely certain that we need to adapt.”

_____________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Can we estimate the tipping point into irreversible climate change? We assess the One Hundred Months campaign

The
Carbon
Brief

              

Blog

Can we estimate the tipping point into irreversible climate change? We assess the One Hundred Months campaign

• 04 Oct 2012, 12:00
• Roz Pidcock

Is it possible to forecast the date at which we can no longer reverse the effects of manmade climate change? This tipping point is the basis of the New Economics Foundation (NEF)'s One Hundred Months campaign, now at its halfway point. But how solid is the science behind the 100-month countdown?

An open letter, signed by 50 politicians, thinktank representatives and non-governmental organisations appeared in Monday's Guardian. The letter stated that in 50 months from now, human activity will have released enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to push the earth past a critical threshold into uncontrollable climate change.

The letter marks the halfway stage in the One Hundred Months campaign, which
NEF launched in August 2008 to galvanise efforts to combat climate change.

NEF predicts that by December 2016, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will be high enough to trigger a new phase of global climate change from which the chances of recovery are slim. The campaign website frames this prediction rather alarmingly, featuring a digital countdown and the statement:

"[W]hen the clock stops ticking, we could be beyond our climate's tipping point, to the point of no return".

We take a closer look at the predictions by " global warming experts" that underpin the campaign. Does the 100-month deadline hold any water?

Tipping points

The thinking behind the 100-month deadline is that it represents a critical point, known as a tipping point, beyond which the earth's climate system undergoes an irreversible shift from one physical state to another. The concept of tipping points is well established in climate science and some examples include the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, the thawing of Arctic permafrost and the slowdown of the global ocean conveyor belt that transports heat around the globe - called thermohaline circulation.

But while scientists are confident that tipping points exist in theory, predicting when they might occur is far more difficult. The One Hundred Months campaigners base their calculations on a 2006 analysis in which scientists estimated that once the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere surpasses 400 parts per million (ppm), it's unlikely we'll be able to stabilise global mean surface temperature at two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Two degrees is the maximum acceptable figure adopted by the European Union as a manageable level of warming, based on IPCC findings, beyond which it becomes unlikely that serious negative effects can be avoided. In calculations like these, greenhouse gas concentration is expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent, which is a way of including all greenhouse gases, not just carbon dioxide. In an IPCC context, the term "likely" refers specifically to a probability of 66-90 per cent.

Forecasting the future

Scientists have used many different techniques, including looking at historical climate change - known as palaeoclimatology - and forecast models, to estimate when the earth will reach one or more tipping points. And recent research has suggested that not all tipping points can be ruled out below two degrees of warming.

In any case, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide as of August 2012 were already 392 ppm - well on the way to the 400 ppm mark for greenhouse gases. Research suggests that if we end up following the IPCC's highest emission scenario, which is still plausible, we could be on course for a global temperature rise of four degrees above pre-industrial levels by 2060.

To estimate the length of time until the 400 ppm threshold would be reached, the campaigners combined atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2007 with an estimated annual growth rate in emissions of of 3.3 per cent. They also assumed no change in other natural and manmade factors that affect the climate system, such as the amount of radiation reaching earth from the sun and tiny particles in the atmosphere (aerosols), which could have a warming or cooling effect.

Positive feedbacks

A complicating factor is that as the climate warms, the warming could trigger changes in the climate system that further reinforce global warming, accelerating progress towards climatic tipping points. One example is that melting ice reduces the ability of the earth's surface to reflect incoming radiation, known as albedo, allowing more heat to be absorbed. Despite their negative consequences, such self-reinforcing events are known in science terms as positive feedbacks.

To account for the emissions that these positive feedbacks would cause on top of direct emissions to the atmosphere, the One Hundred Months campaign included in their calculation an additional concentration of carbon dioxide of 19 ppm by the end of the century. This is at the lower end of the range put forward by 11 studies using different climate models, which suggested the figure could be anywhere between 19 and 200 ppm. The campaign's estimate is therefore the most optimistic in terms of emissions until the end of the century.

Calculating 100 months

Drawing together atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide equivalent, predictions of the annual growth rate and the contribution of positive feedbacks, the campaigners arrived at a figure of 100 months from the start date until atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations reached 400 ppm, giving them a countdown to the end of December 2016.

Amid a large amount of scientific uncertainty, the idea of translating a narrow selection of research on potential tipping points into an countdown to irreversible climate change is unlikely to sit comfortably with many climate scientists. As Professor Timothy Lenton, a climate change scientist at the University of Exeter, explains in a recent paper :

"There is currently a huge gulf between natural scientists' understanding of climate tipping points and economists' representations of climate catastrophes".

Dr Joe Smith, a senior lecturer in environmental change at the Open University and a co-signatory on the Guardian open letter, seems to share these concerns. He says:

"For sure media and politics love a clear claim and a clear date... [but] I don't think the science of climate change allows us to put a number on when a critical climate threshold has been passed."

100 months: a scientific or a political statement?

But given that the One Hundred Months campaign makes a prediction where scientists are yet to find agreement and that we are already approaching the 400 ppm target at the halfway point of the campaign, does it still have any relevance?

Supporters say that highlighting the need for politicians and society to think differently about the effect of their actions on the climate is the the One Hundred Months campaign's main aim. Smith says:

"I see any definition of 'dangerous climate change' as a political act not a scientific fact. That doesn't make it any less urgent. Indeed politics is the right place for urgency once the science has provided a pretty robust risk analysis (it has)".

As the One Hundred Months campaign passes its halfway point, it's worth reflecting on the science that lies behind it. Although the 100-month deadline is more of a media tool than a scientific one, it's clear that the evidence base has moved on in the 50 months since the campaign started.
Update 04/10/2012, 10.00: This article has been updated to clarify in which circumstances greenhouse gas concentration is expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent. Thanks to Andy Wiltshire for pointing this out.

Tags |

• Climate science, 
• Science communication

Western US Swelters Under Blistering, Record-Breaking Heat

Published on Saturday, June 29, 2013 by Common Dreams

Western US Swelters Under Blistering, Record-Breaking Heat

National Weather Service's Stuart Seto: the current heatwave is "a huge one"

- Andrea Germanos, staff writer

Sweltering heat is baking areas of the western and southwestern United States this weekend.
The planet's record-high temperature—134 degrees Fahrenheit recorded in Death Valley in California a century ago—is close to being met this weekend as is forecast to reach 129 degrees.
The National Weather Service reports on Saturday:

Scorching heat will continue underneath an expansive upper ridge parked over the Western U.S. this weekend. Temperatures will yet again approach or exceed records on Saturday and Sunday across much of the Southwest and Great Basin. Staring late this weekend and into early next week...the upper ridge will begin building northward and triple digit temperatures will spread north all the way to the Canadian border. Heat advisories have already been posted for portions of Washington...Idaho...and western Montana.

National Weather Service specialist Stuart Seto said warned that the current heatwave was "a huge one."
 "We haven't seen one like this for several years, probably the mid- to late 2000s," said Seto.
"It's going to be baking hot across much of the entire West," adds National Weather Service meteorologist Mark O'Malley.
USA Today reports that

In some cities, record highs for any date throughout the year could be equaled or surpassed, AccuWeather meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said. Cities that could set all-time high temperature marks include Flagstaff, Ariz., Las Vegas and Reno, he added.

Las Vegas, currently under an excessive heat warning, could see temperatures reach 118 degrees this weekend, and on Friday at an outdoor concert in the city, 115 degree temperatures  caused 170 people to be treated for heat-related injuries, with 34 more sent to local hospitals, Reuters reports.




Pittsburgh resident Dan Kail, who was vacationing in Las Vegas, headed out to Death Valley to experience the possible record heat first hand, and said, "The wind out here is like being in front of a blast furnace."
Phoenix's ABC15 reports on areas in Arizona that already broke heat records on Friday:

Flagstaff: 96 (Previously 94)
Winslow: 107 (Previously 104)
Prescott: 104 (Previously 100)
Page: 109 (Previously 103)
Cottonwood: 114 (Previously 114)
Grand Canyon: 89 (Previously 88)
Yuma: 118 (Previously 116)

And as runaway climate change continues to heat up the planet, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned earlier this month, be prepared for more heatwaves:

Think last summer was bad? You better get used to it, federal health officials warned Thursday. Climate change means hotter summers and more intense storms that could knock power out for days -- and kill people.
New data on heat-related deaths suggest that public health officials have been underestimating them, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. It’s an especially important message as summers get longer and hotter due to climate change, and as storms that can cause widespread blackouts become more common and more intense.

NBC has video:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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The 10 Dumbest Things Ever Said About Global Warming

Rolling Stone

POLITICS

The 10 Dumbest Things Ever Said About Global Warming

The most egregious myths, misconceptions and flat-out lies about the future of the planet

Climate change denial makes this polar bear sad.

Pete Foley/Getty Images/Flickr RF

 

By Brooke Jarvis

 

June 19, 2013 11:00 AM ET

A list of the dumbest things ever said about global warming is, sadly, almost impossible to curate in any comprehensive fashion. Politicians, talk show hosts, economists, pundits – people are saying dumb things about climate change all the time. But after much exhaustive research, we narrowed it down to 10 prize-winningly idiotic statements on this subject.

1. Carbon dioxide "literally cannot cause global warming."

People have tried to deny climate science in a lot of ways, but it's hard to beat a complete rejection of well-established atmospheric physics. Joe Bastardi, a meteorologist appearing on Fox News, argued that CO2 "literally" cannot cause warming because it doesn't "mix well in the atmosphere" (it does). He's also claimed that warming would violate the First Law of Thermodynamics, which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. (In fact, global warming has nothing to do with newly created energy, but with the atmosphere trapping energy that's already around.)

2. "Snow skiing will be hurt – but water skiing will benefit."

In 1990, as the world was beginning to grapple with the devastating predictions of climate models, a Yale economist set out to determine how much was a reasonable amount to spend on combating the problem. Not that much, he concluded, since "Humans thrive in a wide variety of climate zones. Cities are increasingly climate-proofed by technological changes like air-conditioning and shopping malls." Further, he argued, the hardest-hit sectors – like, say, agriculture – are relatively small parts of the economy anyway. And economic growth in other sectors could compensate: "Snow skiing will be hurt – but water skiing will benefit." How reassuring!

The Fossil Fuel Resistance: Meet the New Green Heroes

RS contributor Bill McKibben lambasted this analysis in his 2007 book, Deep Economy. "It's nice to have microelectronics; it's necessary to have lunch," wrote McKibben. "If global warming 'only' damages agriculture, the rest may not matter much."

3. "We must demand that more coal be burned to save the Earth from global cooling."

The "global cooling" myth is another favorite of climate deniers, despite broad scientific consensus that the planet is in fact warming. But it's got to be an especially appealing fiction when you're the CEO of a coal company – this statement is from a tweet by Don Blankenship, then the head of Massey Energy.

4. Climate change is impossible because "God's still up there." 

In 2012, U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) contended that acceptance of climate science was at odds with Christianity – never mind that many Christian leaders and institutions take climate change very seriously. "My point is, God's still up there," he told Voice of Christian Youth America. "The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."

A close runner-up in this category: In 2009, Rep. John Shimkus (R-Illinois) cited God's post-flood promise to Noah as evidence we shouldn't be worried. "The Earth will end only when God declares it's time to be over," he declared. "Man will not destroy this Earth." Well, that must be nice to know.

5. God buried fossil fuels "because he loves to see us find them."

Bryan Fischer, a director at the American Family Association, compared efforts to burn less fossil fuels to telling a friend that you don't like their birthday present. "That's kind of how we're treating God when he's given us these gifts of abundant and inexpensive and effective fuel sources," he observed. "God has buried those treasures there because he loves to see us find them." And everyone knows it's bad manners to turn down a divine treasure hunt.

6. "The President was wearing a trench coat it was so cold, but he's talking about global warming."

This gem, from U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) in reference to President Obama's 2013 inauguration speech, is part of a long, confused tradition: The conviction that anecdotally observed cold weather of any kind debunks the science of climate change. See also the igloo that James Inhofe's family built on the National Mall (they called it "Al Gore's new home") or the ad from the Virginia Republican Party, aired before the same snowstorm, advising voters to call legislators who supported climate actions and "tell them how much global warming you get this weekend. Maybe they'll come help you shovel." With probably thousands of articles out there now explaining the simple fact that weather is not the same thing as climate, this joke gets dumber every time it's made.

7. "I thought it must be true until I found out what it cost."

Yes, Sen. Inhofe gets two entries. Speaking to Rachel Maddow in 2012, he admitted that his rejection of climate science began with realizing how expensive mitigation would be. Not only is it flatly nonsensical to deny that a problem exists because you don't like its cure, delaying climate action is actually the more expensive course. The International Energy Agency has estimated that for every year the world delays taking significant action to curb climate change, we'll end up paying an additional $500 billion later on.

8. Safeguarding the climate is "a worldview that elevates the Earth above man."

Rick Santorum was a front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination when he called climate science a "phony theology" – "a worldview that elevates the Earth above man and says that we can't take those resources because we're going to harm the Earth." (Santorum has also said, "We were put on this Earth as creatures of God to have dominion over the Earth, to use it wisely and steward it wisely, but for our benefit not for the Earth's benefit.") This people-vs.-planet idea is another common refrain from climate skeptics. They rarely seem to have considered the fairly obvious point that functioning human society depends on a healthy planet.

9. "100 years is a long time . . . There is an extremely high chance that the very nature of human society itself will have changed by that time in ways that render this entire issue moot."

This novel bit of reasoning is from an essay called "In Praise of Dirty Energy: There Are Worse Things Than Pollution and We Have Them," by economist and blogger Karl W. Smith, now a writer for Forbes. Smith accepts the science of climate change – but argues that we should burn more fossil fuels anyway, in order to spur economic growth. As the climate changes, he believes that people will simply build new cities or move north to Siberia, and build a society so technologically advanced it's somehow progressed beyond the need for a stable climate. Piece of cake!

10. "I have a theory about global warming and why people think it's real. Go back 30, 40 years when there was much less air conditioning in the country. When you didn't have air conditioning and you left the house, it may in fact have gotten a little cooler out there, because sometimes houses become hot boxes. Especially if you're on the second or third floor of a house in the summer time and all you've got is open windows and maybe a window fan. Or you have some servant standing there fanning you with a piece of paper. When you walked outside, no big deal, it's still hot as hell. Now, 30, 40 years later, all this air conditioning, and it's a huge difference when you go outside. When you go outside now, my golly, is it hot. Oh. Global warming. It's all about the baseline you're using for comparison."

Oh, OK: All those scientists who have confirmed a pattern of long-term climate change were just getting confused by their air conditioning. Right. Thanks, Rush Limbaugh, for the low-hanging fruit.

Related

• Global Warming's Terrifying New Math
• The Fossil Fuel Resistance

While temperatures rise, denialists reach lower

Bad Astronomy 

« Strange yet cool VLA time lapse video Q&BA: Getting kids into science »

While temperatures rise, denialists reach lower

By Phil Plait | January 30, 2012 12:20 pm 

 

 

Over the weekend, two amazingly bad articles were published about climate change. Both were loaded with mistakes, misinterpretations, and outright misinformation, and are simply so factually wrong that they almost read like parodies.

Just so we’re clear here.

The first was in the Wall Street Journal. The article, called No Need to Panic About Global Warming, is a textbook example of misleading prose. It’s laden to bursting with factual errors, but the one that stood out to me most was this whopper: "Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now."

What the what?

That statement, to put it bluntly, is dead wrong. It relies on blatantly misinterpreting long term trends, instead wearing blinders and only looking at year-to-year variations in temperature. The Skeptical Science website destroyed this argument in November 2011, in fact. The OpEd also ignores the fact that nine of the ten hottest years on record all occurred since the year 2000.






The WSJ OpEd makes a lot of hay from having 16 scientists sign it, but of those only 4 are actually climate scientists. And that bragging right is crushed to dust when you find out that the WSJ turned down an article about the reality of global warming that was signed by 255 actual climate scientists. In fact, as Media Matters reports, more of the signers of the WSJ OpEd have ties to oil interests than actually publish peer-reviewed climate research.
Shame on the WSJ for publishing that nonsense.

When I read it, I thought that OpEd was really scraping the bottom of the barrel. But then the Daily Mail chimed in and I discovered that barrel gets a lot deeper. They printed an article by David Rose called Forget global warming — it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again).

By "Cycle 25" he’s referring to the solar activity cycle — which I’ll get to in a moment. But first, the most egregiously awful thing about the Mail article is the angle it takes on new results released by The Met Office, the National Weather Service for the UK. The subheadline for the Mail article is "Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years", which is a bit odd given that the very first two paragraphs of the Met’s press release say:

2012 is expected to be around 0.48 °C warmer than the long-term (1961-1990) global average of 14.0 °C, with a predicted likely range of between 0.34 °C and 0.62 °C, according to the Met Office annual global temperature forecast.
The middle of this range would place 2012 within the top 10 warmest years in a series which goes back to 1850.

[Emphasis mine, but done for obvious reasons.]

If you can square that with "new figures… show no warming" then congrats! You can write for the Mail.

The article is so fallacious that the Met offices decided to publish another release stating clearly that the Mail article "includes numerous errors", is "misleading", and that the author chose "… to not fully include the answers we gave him".

And we’re not done. A big part of Rose’s Mail article talks about the Sun’s influence on climate. However, the solar activity cycle is something which has been shown over and again to have very little to do with climate, and is certainly not anywhere near the main driver of climate change.

The Mail article bases its argument on some research that may indicate the Sun will enter a quiet period after this next peak, and that will cool the Earth. First, the research is by no means anywhere near verified, and in fact at least one well-respected solar physicist doesn’t agree with the findings (I think he’s right; the work is interesting but very, very preliminary). Second, even if it’s true, there’s no reason to think it will cause an ice age as the Mail article attests; that takes many factors occurring all at once. Also, the Little Ice Age — a cold period during the 17th and 18th centuries — was not a global effect; it only affected Europe. It also coincided with several large volcanic events that helped drive it. I explain all that in the link above.

So where does Rose get this idea that the Sun will cool us down? From another Met Office release. And guess what? Again, that release states in the first paragraph the exact opposite of what Rose claims:

New research has found that solar output is likely to reduce over the next 90 years but that will not substantially delay expected increases in global temperatures caused by greenhouse gases.

Amazing, isn’t it?

Happily, the cavalry has ridden in; the reality-based community has come out swinging against these two articles:

- Andrew Revkin at The New York Times
- The Intersection
- Get Energy Smart Now
- DeSmogBlog
- Planet3.0
- Anti climate change extremism in Utah
- Greg Laden
- Climate scientist Michael Mann has been tweeting furiously about it, too.
[Update: more for you:
- The Environmental Defense Fund
- Scholars and Rogues (specifically taking on Burt Rutan, one of the 16 signers of the WSJ OpEd; Rutan replies in the comments)]

In the head-asplodey irony department, how do you think the editors at the WSJ feel that their OpEd was reprinted in The Tehran Times?

It’s rare to be 100% certain of something in science, but I have no doubt at all that the comments to this post will be filled with noise from denialists. It happens every single time I post about this, and they almost always use long-debunked arguments. But as these attacks on reality get more brazen, we have to be ever more alert.

---

Related posts:
- 2011: The 9th hottest year on record
- New independent climate study confirms global warming is real
- Climategate 2: More ado about nothing. Again.
- Arctic ice at second-lowest extent since 1979
- As arctic ice shrinks, so does a denier claim

 

CATEGORIZED UNDER: Antiscience, Debunking, Piece of mind, Politics, Skepticism, Top Post

 

MORE ABOUT: climate change, David Rose, denialism, global warming, Met Office, The Daily Mail, Wall Street Journal

 

Links to this Post

1. TRC Regrets its acknowledgment of the WSJ Op-Ed on Climate Denial « The Relative Comment | January 30, 2012
2. More on Global Warming « Enjoyment and Contemplation | January 30, 2012
3. Mientras las temperaturas suben, los negacionistas publican falsedades (eng) | January 31, 2012
4. Jumping….Long Jumping and Jumping to conclusions « blueollie | January 31, 2012
5. Darwiniana » While temperatures rise, denialists reach lower | January 31, 2012
6. William M. Briggs, Statistician » Bad Astronomer Does Bad Statistics: That Wall Street Journal Editorial | February 1, 2012
7. Oh hello February. You snuck up on me there. | The Nanigans | February 1, 2012
8. Briggs schools the “Bad Astronomer” on statistics | Watts Up With That? | February 1, 2012
9. Deniers gotta deny | ***Dave Does the Blog | February 1, 2012
10. 2/2/12 Links « James’ Ramblings | February 2, 2012
11. Yes, it’s not getting colder today. | Thus knowledge flows like water | February 2, 2012
12. Still Going Down the Up Escalator | February 3, 2012
13. Briggs schools the “Bad Astronomer” on statistics | TaJnB | TheAverageJoeNewsBlogg | February 3, 2012
14. Precipitate « That isn’t Background Noise. That’s Reality Banging on the Door. | February 7, 2012
15. alQpr » Blog Archive » Who’s Doing Bad Statistics? | February 29, 2012