Storms

Storms of the unusual kind

Lest you forget, Pakistan is still flooding here and here

...the World Health Organization estimates that 150,000 people are killed by climate change-related issues every year, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said that global warming poses as much of a threat to the world as war

8 ways climate change can kill you


Hurricane Igor made to Newfoundland!


Heard on PBS News hour

Parts of western Wisconsin and southern Minnesota were paralyzed today
after severe flooding. Remnants of Tropical Storm Georgette have dumped nearly a foot of rain this week. That sent rivers and streams rising out of their banks, washing out roads, and forcing hundreds of people to evacuate. The governors of both states have declared emergencies.

Actually Georgette is off the southern tip of Baja.


Lisa, who has been meandering around the Atlantic for weeks, has strengthened into a hurricane, again.

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Financial Storm brewing


PBS talked to Greenspan about letting the Bush era tax cuts lapse.

JEFFREY BROWN: You don't?


ALAN GREENSPAN: I think it will have a negative impact. I'm not -- I don't deny that. This is a tradeoff between bad and worse...


JEFFREY BROWN: Bad and worse.


ALAN GREENSPAN: ... not between good and bad. In fact, I sometimes put it between terrible and catastrophic.


JEFFREY BROWN: Really, I mean, catastrophic?


ALAN GREENSPAN: Oh, indeed. I mean, we have never been in this position before. And you don't have any evidence that we're in control of the budget. There has been no cut that I can -- that I'm aware of in any significant program in recent years, either -- by any Congress.

You ever have a day when nothing went right? You had a dinner party planned and the sink clogged, the refigerator went on the friz and the car broke down? Well mankind is having one of those eras.

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Rex Nutting has it right

The economy can’t grow forever

Some people are in denial. They believe that the Earth’s resources are limitless and that a bean stalk can grow to the sky. Or perhaps they know deep in their heart that we are on the road to an environmental and economic catastrophe, one that they think they alone will survive through wits, gold, and guns.
...
We can downsize the right way, or the wrong way. The right way is to voluntarily rearrange our priorities so we don’t consume more than the Earth can produce, but to do that some of us will have to sacrifice and we’ll all have to share the only planet we’ll ever have. We’ll have to consume to live, not live to consume.


The wrong way is Malthus’s way: War, famine and plague.


Neither way will be easy. Nothing is more important.

Bravo