Individual and Community

By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: January 17, 2007

The human mind isn’t very well equipped to make sense of a figure like $1.2 trillion. We don’t deal with a trillion of anything in our daily lives, and so when we come across such a big number, it is hard to distinguish it from any other big number. Millions, billions, a trillion — they all start to sound the same.

The way to come to grips with $1.2 trillion is to forget about the number itself and think instead about what you could buy with the money. When you do that, a trillion stops sounding anything like millions or billions.

For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.
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complete address is at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070123-2.html

Extending hope and opportunity depends on a stable supply of energy that keeps America’s economy running and America’s environment clean. For too long our nation has been dependent on foreign oil. And this dependence leaves us more vulnerable to hostile regimes, and to terrorists — who could cause huge disruptions of oil shipments, and raise the price of oil, and do great harm to our economy.

It’s in our vital interest to diversify America’s energy supply — the way forward is through technology. We must continue changing the way America generates electric power, by even greater use of clean coal technology, solar and wind energy, and clean, safe nuclear power. (Applause.) We need to press on with battery research for plug-in and hybrid vehicles, and expand the use of clean diesel vehicles and biodiesel fuel. (Applause.) We must continue investing in new methods of producing ethanol — (applause) — using everything from wood chips to grasses, to agricultural wastes.

We made a lot of progress, thanks to good policies here in Washington and the strong response of the market. And now even more dramatic advances are within reach. Tonight, I ask Congress to join me in pursuing a great goal. Let us build on the work we’ve done and reduce gasoline usage in the United States by 20 percent in the next 10 years. (Applause.) When we do that we will have cut our total imports by the equivalent of three-quarters of all the oil we now import from the Middle East.

To reach this goal, we must increase the supply of alternative fuels, by setting a mandatory fuels standard to require 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels in 2017 — and that is nearly five times the current target. (Applause.) At the same time, we need to reform and modernize fuel economy standards for cars the way we did for light trucks — and conserve up to 8.5 billion more gallons of gasoline by 2017.

Achieving these ambitious goals will dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but it’s not going to eliminate it. And so as we continue to diversify our fuel supply, we must step up domestic oil production in environmentally sensitive ways. (Applause.) And to further protect America against severe disruptions to our oil supply, I ask Congress to double the current capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. (Applause.)

America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. And these technologies will help us be better stewards of the environment, and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change. (Applause.)

The complete State of the Union address is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070123-2.html . Includes vide excerpts as well.

Google ‘failure’ and see results

You can go to www.google.com and enter the word “failure” and note the 1st result. Because so many people refer to this failure of a president as a failure,George Bush’s white house is the number 1 result in Google search results for the term ‘failure’.

This began in the fall of 2005 . Google itself even offers an explanation as to the reason for this result in their post ‘Googlebombing ‘failure’.

In this case, a number of webmasters use the phrases [failure] and [miserable failure] to describe and link to President Bush’s website, thus pushing it to the top of searches for those phrases. We don’t condone the practice of googlebombing, or any other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search results, but we’re also reluctant to alter our results by hand in order to prevent such items from showing up.
source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/googlebombing-failure.html

Is this Terrorism on the rise or the voice of a discontent populace?

Posts that contain "kill George Bush" per day for the last 30 days.

Bullshit! (also known as Penn & Teller: Bullshit!) is an American, Emmy-nominated television series, running since 2003 on the premium cable channel Showtime. It is hosted by professional magicians/comedians Penn & Teller and inherits their characteristically blunt, aggressive presentation. The show aims to debunk an array of popular misconceptions, sometimes supernatural in nature. It criticizes proponents of such things, often citing ulterior or financial motives. The stated aim of the show is to apply critical thinking to misconceptions. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit!)

Episode Summary
Penn & Teller contend that American public has been misled about the need for recycling, and that recycling is not energy or cost effective. They point out that over $8billion US are spent on subsidizing recycling programs in the US. Aluminum is given as the only practical waste product that can be recycled (as they say “follow the homeless people; this will tell you what trash is worth saving ..”). Their primary argument seems to rest on market costs. If recycling costs less than the costs of creating from new, then recycling is desirable. If not, then recycling is undesirable.

Replies and Responses

One reply from one of those interviewed which makes claims of distortion and misrepresentation, but no substantial rebuttals:

• http://wasteage.com/mag/waste_bullshit

Over time, perhaps recycling consumes less energy as technology improves. For example, In contrast to Penn’s argument that only aluminum recycling is cost and energy effective, glass and paper now appear to join the list.

From wikipedia entry on recycling:

Comparing recycling with normal extraction
Aluminium

* Recycling 1 kg of aluminium saves up to 8 kg of bauxite, four kg of chemical products and 14 kW·h of electricity.[2][3]
* It takes 20 times more energy to make aluminum from bauxite ore than using recycled aluminum.[4]

Glass

* A 20% reduction in emissions from glass furnaces and up to 32% reduction in energy usage. [citation needed]
* For every 1000 kg of recycled glass used, approx 315 kg of carbon dioxide and 1,200 kg of raw materials are spared.[5]

Paper

* 1000 kg of paper from recycled material conserves about 7,000 US gal (26,000 L) of water, 17-31 trees and 4,000 kW·h of electricity.[6]
* Milling paper from recycled paper uses 20% less energy than it does to make paper from fresh paper trees grown on tree farms at the cost of more pollution caused by additional transportation and chemical cleaning treatment.

(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling)

What do you think of Penn & Teller and their position?

Big Tobacco Boosting Nicotine in Cigarettes: Study
01.18.07, 12:00 AM ET

THURSDAY, Jan. 18 (HealthDay News) — U.S. tobacco companies increased the level of addictive nicotine in their cigarettes by 11 percent from 1998 to 2005, and did so in a variety of ways, new research shows.

The tobacco companies accomplished the increase not only be intensifying the concentration of nicotine in the tobacco but also by modifying several design features of cigarettes to increase the number of puffs per cigarette taken by smokers, according to a Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) study.

Analyzing major brand name cigarettes sold in Massachusetts, the researchers found that increases in smoke nicotine yield per cigarette averaged 1.6 percent each year over those seven years. Nicotine is the primary addictive ingredient in cigarettes.

Increases in smoke-nicotine yields occurred in each of the four major manufacturers and across all the major cigarette market categories, including light and ultralight.

Increases in smoke-nicotine yields occurred in each of the four major manufacturers and across all the major cigarette market categories, including light and ultralight.
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LONDON, England (AP) — The world has nudged closer to a nuclear apocalypse and environmental disaster, a trans-Atlantic group of prominent scientists warned Wednesday, pushing the hand of its symbolic Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight.

It was the fourth time since the end of the Cold War that the clock has ticked forward, this time from 11:53 to 11:55, amid fears over what the scientists are describing as “a second nuclear age” prompted largely by atomic standoffs with Iran and North Korea.

But the organization added that the “dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons.” (Video in original link below shows the hands of time are moved closer to global disaster Video)

The Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded in 1945 as a newsletter distributed among nuclear physicists concerned by the possibility of nuclear war, has since grown into an organization focused more generally on manmade threats to the survival of human civilization.
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(NewsTarget) The stance of the Bush administration is that global warming does not have an effect on the world environment, but on Dec. 28, the administration agreed that protection was needed for polar bears, whose habitat is in peril from rapidly melting Arctic sea ice.

“Polar bears are one of nature’s ultimate survivors, able to live and thrive in one of the world’s harshest environments,” said U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne in a news release. “But we are concerned the polar bears’ habitat may literally be melting.” Kempthorne also said polar bears should be listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
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Scientists predict 2007 will be hottest year yet
By Raphael G. Satter
ASSOCIATED PRESS

LONDON - Deepening drought in Australia. Stronger typhoons in Asia. Floods in Latin America.

British climate scientists predict that a resurgent El Niño climate trend combined with higher levels of greenhouse gases could touch off a fresh round of ecological disasters — and make 2007 the world’s hottest year on record.

There is a 60 percent chance that the average global temperature for 2007 will match or break the record, Britain’s Meteorological Office said Thursday. The consequences of the high temperatures could be felt worldwide.

“Even a moderate (El Niño) warming event is enough to push the global temperatures over the top,” said Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research unit at the University of East Anglia.

The warmest year on record is 1998, when the average global temperature was 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the long-term average of 57 degrees. Though such a change appears small, incremental differences can, for example, add to the ferocity of storms by evaporating more steam off the ocean.

There is a 60 percent chance that the average global temperature for 2007 will match or break the record, Britain’s Meteorological Office said Thursday. The consequences of the high temperatures could be felt worldwide.

complete article at: http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/nation/16398056.htm

ExxonMobil Accused of Using Big Tobacco Tactics on Global Warming

WASHINGTON, DC, January 5, 2007 (ENS) - ExxonMobil has adopted the tobacco industry’s disinformation tactics to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change and delay action on the issue, the Union of Concerned Scientists claims in a new report published Wednesday.

ExxonMobil, the world’s largest publicly traded corporation, responded Thursday by calling the Union of Concerned Scientists’ paper “deeply offensive and wrong.”

Tillerson
Rex Tillerson is chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil.
“ExxonMobil engages in public policy discussions by encouraging serious inquiry, analysis, the sharing of information and transparency,” the company said in a statement.

According to the report, between 1998 and 2005 ExxonMobil “directed nearly $16 million to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science.”

“ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a 200,000 member organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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