Ideas

• Have cities open sections of the city parks to communal gardens.
  
• City ordinances that require abandon sites to be converted to parks until another use is established. (HB has acres of sad abandon buildings like the old Monkey Wards building.
  

Russian Fires

Will Russia's Heat Wave End Its Global-Warming Doubts?
By Simon Shuster / Moscow

At a meeting of international sporting officials in Moscow on July 30, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced that in 14 regions of the country, "practically everything is burning. The weather is anomalously hot." Then, as TV cameras zoomed in on the perspiration shining on his forehead, Medvedev announced, "What's happening with the planet's climate right now needs to be a wake-up call to all of us, meaning all heads of state, all heads of social organizations, in order to take a more energetic approach to countering the global changes to the climate."

Medvedev has not been the only person in Russia to link the ongoing heat wave to climate change. Alexei Lyakhov, head of Moscow's meteorological center, tells TIME it is "clearly part of a global phenomenon" that is hitting Russia. "We have to start taking systemic measures of adaptation. It's obvious now. Just like human beings at one point took steps to adapt to the Ice Age, we now have to adapt to this," he says, citing cuts to carbon emissions as one of the necessary adaptations.

Now that Medvedev is also acknowledging the effects of climate change, Russia's official line on the subject could start to change, Chuprov says. But he warns that convincing the public of the threat from global warming may be difficult. "The status quo can change quickly in the minds of bureaucrats if the leadership gives the signal. But in the minds of the people, myths are much more difficult to uproot," he says. As if to prove the point, Russia's largest circulation newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, ran a headline on July 31 that asked, "Is the Russian heat wave the result of the USA testing its climate weapon?" The daily's answer was "Yes, probably."

Read the whole thing here


No other MSM connecting the dots though... so nobody is trying to uproot the myths planted by big oil and big coal.

Somebody needs to think of how to mitigate the painful adaptations we'll have to go through to survive.


Update

Fire threatening the forests around Chernobyl.

The Russian government warned on Thursday that the country's deadliest wildfires in nearly four decades posed a nuclear threat if they are not contained, as the death toll rose to 50 and the blazes continued to spread.

Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu said heat from fires in the Bryansk region, which already has nuclear contamination from the Chernobyl disaster more than 20 years ago, could release harmful radioactive particles into the atmosphere

whole story

Hawkings - repost

Smartest guy on the planet recommends we build an ark.

Social Security

As population growth goes to zero, the population becomes older. When Social Security was implemented there were lots more young folk than old folk, and due to rapid population growth rates, the ratio was increasing.
Now, with near zero growth, the number of young people paying into SS is decreasing while the number of old folk is increasing.

You do the math.

Conservatively, in the developed world, there will be about 2 workers for every SS recipient by 2050.

Of course that's not accounting for potentially huge losses due to drought, flood, heatwaves, storms and desease brought on by the warming climate.

On Age Distribution of Zero-growth Population

Global Heat Waves

Seems this story would have more legs than the Gulf spill or OJ trial for MSM, why aren't they covering it.

















Google Time Line Floods

Google Time Line Heat Waves

Google Time Line Droughts