Do you believe! I say again! Do you believe! Wonderful! Send money!

Gentle Readers:

 Once again the Religious holidays are upon us and once again they, the marketers, will attempt to convince you that your computers need updating. If you bought your computer last month, don't fall for the hype but if you bought your computer Twenty years ago like I did, also don't fall for the hype. And now for some holiday brain teasers that prove how dumb we humans truly are!

True or False:
1. Once upon a time nothing exploded with a big Bang and the universe began.
2. Once upon a time God created everything except, of course, herself.
3. Once upon a time man created a Sundial to measure changing energy.
4. Once upon a Time, man created Time clocks.
5. Time does not exist except as a human cultural invention to measure constantly changing energy.
6. The timeless universe always was and always will be constantly changing eternal energy.
7. Eternal energy must be explained therefore go and ask a VOO DOO witch doctor or any person who claims to understand the universe and then cut down a Tree and place Chinese made ornaments upon it and then have a merry little Turkey sandwich.

 And now for one final theory.

  Before Time began, Mrs. God warned her son, Junior, not to play with eternal energy or it would explode and create a big Bang, causing evolution and releasing disruptive little creatures known as human beings but Junior didn't listen and then one day... Bang!     Happy Holidays!  :-)
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 Jokes aside, religious faith brings out the very best in people as well as the very worst. Here is one of the very best songs from Nana Mouskouri.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1kQ5xJAJFw

Carbon pollution is linked to global warming and drought and the Syrian social disaster!

Why Bernie Sanders Was Right To Link Climate Change To National Security

BY JOE ROMM NOV 16, 2015 2:52PM

CREDIT: AP PHOTO/CHARLIE NEIBERGALL

Bernie Sanders makes a point during a Democratic presidential primary debate, Saturday, Nov. 14, 2015, in Des Moines, Iowa.

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Friday’s terrorist attacks have made the Paris climate talks “even more” important now, according to Christiana Figueres, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

And on Sunday, Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders elaborated on why climate change remains “the biggest national security threat facing the United States,” afterremarks he made in Saturday’s Democratic debate were criticized by people who apparently don’t understand the existential nature the climate threat poses to this country and the world.

What kind of security will Americans have if the Paris climate talks fail and we turn much of the U.S., Mexico and Central America into a near-permanent Dust Bowl, as NASA warned in February?

“Sorry, conservatives: when President Obama describes climate change as the greatest threat we face, he’s exactly right,” as Paul Krugman explains in his latest New York Times op-ed. “Terrorism can’t and won’t destroy our civilization, but global warming could and might.”

Both the UN and France have made clear that Friday’s despicable terrorist attacks won’t deter the big Paris climate talks that start in two weeks, as we’ve reported. Security will be much tighter. Ancillary marches and festivities will be pared back. And that means the focus will be on the global negotiations, which offer the world the first serious chance at getting off a path of unrestricted carbon pollution that would indeed destroy modern civilization as we know it.

The civilized world stands in solidarity with the French after this senseless slaughter, much as it did after the Charlie Hebdo shootings earlier this year. Success at COP21 (the 21st Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC) is thus even more important for the world, as Figueres tweeted Sunday: The nations of the world must work together to address the biggest threat to our security. Yes, terrorism and the Islamic State (ISIS) are grave threats. But if COP21 were to fail, then conflicts like the Syrian civil war will become more common, along with disasters that war helped spawn, including ISIS and the refugee crisis.

“In fact, climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism,” Bernie Sanders said during Saturday’s debate. “And if we do not get our act together and listen to what the scientists say you’re going to see countries all over the world — this is what the CIA says — they’re going to be struggling over limited amounts of water, limited amounts of land to grow their crops. And you’re going to see all kinds of international conflict.”

Since the overwhelming majority of pundits and policymakers don’t understand the existential threat climate change poses, Sanders remarks were criticized, much as fellow presidential candidate Martin O’Malley’s were back in July. Yet for over three years, leading security and climate experts — and Syrians themselves — have made the connection between climate change and the Syrian civil war. Indeed, when amajor peer-reviewed study came out on in March making this very case, Retired Navy Rear Admiral David Titley said it identifies “a pretty convincing climate fingerprint” for the Syrian drought.

Titley, a meteorologist who led the U.S. Navy’s Task Force on Climate Change when he was at the Pentagon, also said, “you can draw a very credible climate connection to this disaster we call ISIS right now.”

The study, “Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought,” found that global warming made Syria’s 2006 to 2010 drought two to three times more likely.

“While we’re not saying the drought caused the war,” lead author Colin Kelleyexplained. “We are saying that it certainly contributed to other factors — agricultural collapse and mass migration among them — that caused the uprising.”

Events leading up to 2011 Syrian uprising, with chart of net migration of displaced Syrians and Iraqi refugees into urban areas (in millions) since 2005. Source: Kelley et al. (2015)

Sanders explained the reasoning behind his comments on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday.

“When you have drought, when people can’t grow their crops, they’re going to migrate into cities, and when people migrate into cities and they don’t have jobs, there’s going to be a lot more instability, a lot more unemployment and people will be subject to the types of propaganda that al-Qaeda and ISIS are using right now,” Sanders said. “So where you have discontent, where you have instability, that’s where problems arise, and certainly, without a doubt, climate change will lead to that.”

In the case of Syria, it was what one expert called perhaps “the worst long-term drought and most severe set of crop failures since agricultural civilizations began in the Fertile Crescent.” It destroyed the livelihoods of 800,000 people and sent vastly more into poverty. The poor and displaced fled to cities, “where poverty, government mismanagement and other factors created unrest that exploded in spring 2011,” the study’s news release explains.

The study concludes climate change is already drying the region, as climate models had long predicted. In 2011, a major NOAA study concluded that “human-caused climate change [is now] a major factor in more frequent Mediterranean droughts.”

Reds and oranges highlight lands around the Mediterranean that experienced significantly drier winters during 1971-2010 than the comparison period of 1902-2010. Via NOAA [Click to enlarge].

“The magnitude and frequency of the drying that has occurred is too great to be explained by natural variability alone,” explained NOAA’s Martin Hoerling in 2011.

The connection between the conflict in Syria and climate change is not new. In March 2012, Climate Progress published a piece by Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell, co-founders and directors of the Center for Climate and Security, which made the case for the link between climate change and events in Syria.

In 2013, Tom Friedman went to Syria to learn firsthand about the connection between the drought and the civil war. His New York Times column, “Without Water, Revolution,” explains what he discovered. Friedman also filmed his visit, where he talked to Syrians about the causes of the civil war. It was for the premiere episode of last year’s Emmy-winning Showtime series, “Years of Living Dangerously.”

Dust-Bowlification and the threat to our food supplies and hence global security are the greatest dangers to humanity this century from human-caused climate change.

That’s because large parts of the most inhabited and arable parts of the planet — including the U.S. breadbasket — face the exact same heating and drying that have already affected the Mediterranean. A 2014 study projected this bleak future:

Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) for 2080-2099 with business-as-usual warming. By comparison, during the 1930s Dust Bowl, the PDSI in the Great Plains rarely exceeded -3 (see here). Source: Cook et al. and Climate Progress.

The bottom line: Climate change is the gravest threat to our security, and that’s why the nations of the world must succeed at COP21 and beyond in working together to minimize the danger.

TAGS

• Climate Change
• Dust Bowl
• Paris 2015
• Paris Attacks

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How I learned 9 languages fluently

Babbel

Urgent: Torture can be stopped with the stroke of a pen‏


Urgent: Torture can be stopped with the stroke of a pen
Amnesty International Canada 11/10/15 Keep this message at the top of your inbox Newsletters
To: human4us@bell.net
members@amnesty.ca
View this email online

Torture: You can help us make it stop with the stroke of a pen

Together, we can end the de-humanizing act of torture.


Dear Joseph,

I’m writing to you because we face a unique moment to prevent torture with the simple stroke of the pen: the stroke of Canada’s pen on a vital global treaty, and the strokes of millions of pens braced to protect those who have been tortured while wrongfully in prison and must be released.

Please help us seize the moment:

1. Demand that the new Canadian government signs on to the global treaty allowing inspections of detention centres

Amnesty International believes that government commitment to this treaty is the single most important step we can make to help put an end to this needless, cruel, illegal act of torture.

If our collective voices can convince Canada’s new government to sign on to this global treaty, we’ll close a loophole that allows torture to go undetected, and Canada will regain its influence and credibility when it speaks out to prevent torture from happening elsewhere in the world.

>> Ask our new government to make this a priority.


2. Help us prevent the torture of Yecinia Armenta

Yecinia Armenta was tortured and raped by undercover policemen in Mexico. She was hung upside down by her ankles, suffocated and beaten.

“They said they would bring my two children, rape them and cut them up into pieces,” she told Amnesty. “After many hours of torture and after they’d raped me, I signed the confession. I was still blindfolded. I never even read what I had signed.” Her ordeal lasted 15 hours.

Join us in taking action for Yecinia and other victims of torture. In five weeks, on December 10th, we’ll be speaking out with a powerful, unified voice on International Human Rights Day to stop torture and release prisoners of conscience during Amnesty’s global event Write for Rights.

>> Sign up to Write for Rights


3. Your financial support can make the difference

Joseph, if you’ve taken a moment through the past year to follow our campaign to Stop Torture, or if you saw us mobilize 3.2 million actions in 138 countries last year on Human Rights Day, you’ll know how much good can come from your support to Amnesty.

>> PLEASE DONATE NOW

When we work together – our campaigning backed by your activism and financial support - we can get results. I can promise you this because I've seen the absolute human magic created when millions of us speak with one voice against injustice:

All charges were dropped against Claudia Medina Tamariz who had been tortured and forced into a false confession in Mexico; hers is a story eerily similar to Yecinia’s

Your support helped me visit a prison in Mexico with a team of Amnesty researchers and film Angel Colon who had been wrongfully detained – and tortured. Our presence there helped tell Angel's story, and this summer Angel made a trip to Canada to thank Amnesty supporters - as a free man. It brought tears to our eyes.

Young Moses Akatugba was released from prison in Nigeria after being sentenced to death and tortured as a 16-year old. He's now reaching out to Amnesty activists around the world to urge us to get involved in Write for Rights, to help others like him

Please help us seize this moment.

We’re so close to a breakthrough on the treaty to prevent torture in detention centres. And, with your help, we’re pulling out all the stops for Yecinia Armenta, and ending the torture that goes on behind closed doors where no one watching.

>> Please give your voice to stop torture in detention centres

>> Please give generously to help Amnesty International lead a loud and robust campaign to protect people from torture

Thank you for taking action at this important moment and helping us seize this crucial moment in our campaign to Stop Torture.



Alex Neve
Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada

P.S. You can see how we're organizing right now to defend Yecinia Armenta and other victims of torture during our International Human Rights Day event Write for Rights. Your support will make our voice more powerful.



You received this email because you requested to be informed about opportunities to take action to protect human rights. If you do not wish to receive emails from Amnesty, click here.
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Amnesty International Canadian Section (English Speaking) - Charitable Registration # 11878 5914 RR0001 312 Laurier Avenue East, Ottawa, ON, K1N 1H9 1-800-AMNESTY (1-800-266-3789)

"Cities produce 70% of anthropogenic global carbon dioxide emissions."

Earth Observatory

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acquired October 3 - 11, 2015download large image (16 MB, JPEG, 10085x6723)

acquired September 27, 2015download large image (9 MB, JPEG, 6734x4489)

If you are concerned about the effects of climate change or simply want to understand why the climate is changing, there are good reasons to pay close attention to cities, particularly large cities.

Cities produce 70 percent of anthropogenic global carbon dioxide emissions. The 50 largest cities together emit greenhouse gases equivalent to 2,600 megatons of carbon dioxide per year. That is more than some countries. For instance, Russia emits about 2,200 megatons and Japan about 1,400 megatons per year.

Meanwhile, many cities around the world are growing at astounding rates. Several in Asia boast population growth rates around 4 percent per year, with emissions growth of 10 percent per year. Demographers expect the number of megacities—urban areas with populations higher than 10 million—to increase by at least a dozen by 2025.

Recognizing their impact on climate, some megacities have taken aggressive steps to curtail emissions. By 2030, the GreenLA plan aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from Los Angeles by 35 percent (in comparison to 1990 levels). The Paris Climate Plan aims to reduce emissions by 25 percent by 2020 (in comparison to 2004 levels). Many other megacities have set or are in the process of setting similar goals as part of Climate 40, a plan to reduce urban greenhouse gas emissions.

However, for most of these megacities, tracking emissions remains a major challenge. Estimates of greenhouse emission are unavailable in many cases; in others, estimates are based on ground sensors that do not offer a complete portrait of a city’s emissions. So called “bottom-up” estimates of emissions regularly differ by as much as 50 percent in comparison to “top-down” observations from aircraft and satellites.

To address the lack of reliable emissions inventories, the Megacities Carbon Project will develop and test methods for monitoring city emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and carbon monoxide, with a particular emphasis on power plant emissions. Led by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists Riley Duren and Charles Miller, the team plans to deploy sensors that collect data from the ground, from airplanes, and from satellites. The effort will focus first on Los Angeles and Paris, then potentially expand into a city in South America or Asia.

“For robust verification of emission changes due to growth or stabilization policies, we need to establish measurement baselines and begin monitoring representative megacities immediately,” noted Duren and Miller in a commentary published in Nature Climate Change.

The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured these images of Los Angeles and Paris. The Los Angeles image is a mosaic based on data acquired on October 3 and October 11, 2015. The Paris image was captured on September 27, 2015. As part of the project, an instrument on Mount Wilson scans Los Angeles basin multiple times a day.

• References

• Duren, R. M. & Miller, C.E. (2012, August) Measuring the carbon emissions of megacities. Nature Climate Change, 2, 560-562.
• NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Megacities Carbon Project. Accessed November 10, 2015.
• NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASA, Partners Target Megacities Carbon Emissions. Accessed November 10, 2015.
• Tollefson, J. (2012, December) Megacities move to track emissions. Nature, 492 (7427), 560-562.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Caption by Adam Voiland.

Instrument(s): 

Landsat 8 - OLI

Canada, an example for the world...Not!

Gentle readers:

  If Canada as a country is an example to world, it is a bad example! A country so filthy and polluted and unimaginative, it has recently allowed one of it's provinces, Quebec, to dump 5 Billion Litres of raw sewage into the once magnificent St. Lawrence river!

 For Ten long years, the Conservative and money oriented Federal government of Canada,  has catered exclusively to industrial economic expansion without a thought or a care for the Natural environment.
For one sad example, the ' Tar Sands ' a  prime minister Stephen Harper protected project in Alberta, continues to be a pollution filled eye-sore from outer space. If we begin tomorrow the Tar Sands will take over a century to clean up and restore to pristine wilderness, however, and less understood is the constant expansion of Condominium buildings across Canada.
  These Bee-Hive style buildings are popping up in every Canadian city and the new inhabitans occupying these buildings will create a desperate need for sewage removal infrastructure. Infrastructure most cities like Montreal,  cannot afford and often allow to deteriorate before doing emergency repair work. It's been Thirty Years from the time we thought of balancing the economy with the environment and nothing was done to mitigate the pollution! The natural environment took a back seat to big business. Instead of creating national sewage cleaning facilities using new sewage pipes leading to brand new sewage treatment plants, the federal government under Stephen Harper, backed by private international financiers, focused on extracting as much Oil as they could from the Tar Sands to sell to Asia and China and they attempted to create cross-country pipelines to pump the bitumen to shipping harbours using money gleaned from Canadian Tax revenue! This became headline news and a social problem as both Canadians and Americans began to realize they were being duped. To mitigate their pollution tracks based on Oil, companies began Green-washing their products. Every product sold in print and on television become ecologically friendly while the truth and the facts behind the truth were hidden from public view and often forcefully suppressed.

 Greenwashing is not over, but now we are going to name names. Beginning in Canada and the United States, we are going around the world to spotlight the individuals and their companies behind the pollution. Polluting companies are going to be exposed for the dangers they create to human health and for the destruction they cause to the natural environment. They will have a chance to save themselves from humiliation, however, by creating projects and products that help nature and do not cause pollution. We will again be offering imaginative and creative as well as practical solutions to pollution but this time we expect honest changes and if not, the spotlight will shine constantly on the losers who refuse to change!

 Fossil fuels are finally close to depletion but their legacy continues in the form of gas burning vehicles. That is changing quickly as Electric vehicles enter the marketplace. The faster the better!

  In Canada, the companies and individuals involved in creating pollution will see their products boycotted.  Their Puppet members of parliament will be hounded and exposed. We Canadians have had it with polluters and with their economic greed. We demand a better lifestyle based on a clean and healthy and Natural Environment.

A VERY BAD DEAL FOR CANADA!

Emma Pullman, SumOfUs.org

11/10/15

 Newsletters

To: Joseph Raglione

When former tech CEOs are lining up against a trade deal, you know it has to be bad. Tell Prime Minister Trudeau to reject Harper’s trade deal. Sign the petition Joseph, Last month Canada ushered in a new political era. But on his way out, Harper signed us onto the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), the biggest trade deal in world history. It may be a new era, but the shadow of Harper’s legacy still looms large. And just this week, Jim Balsillie (former CEO of the company behind BlackBerry) said that the TPP is the “worst thing the Harper government ever did for Canada”. When even former tech CEOs like Balsillie are lining up against a trade deal, you know it’s bad. Here’s the thing, the deal isn’t finalized yet and Prime Minister Trudeau can still reject the TPP. Click here to tell Prime Minister Trudeau to make a clean break with Harper’s government and reject the TPP. Balsillie -- who is also the founder of Canada’s Center for International Governance Innovation -- believes the deal could make Canada a “permanent underclass” when it comes to innovation and intellectual property. “I think in 10 years from now, we’ll call that signature the worst thing in policy that Canada’s ever done,” Balsillie says. Here’s the thing: the TPP is actually that bad. It’s so bad that even a CEO like Balsillie can find something to be worried about in the deal. And it doesn’t end there. It also spells bad news for environmental protections, workers’ rights, human rights, affordable medicine, and the list goes on. It’s great that people like Balsillie are standing up, but it’s going to take more than one tech CEO speaking truth to stop this deal. Right now it’s incredibly important that we pile on to show the Prime Minister that Canadians elected him to get Harper out of office -- and we don’t want Harper’s trade deal either. Tell Prime Minister Trudeau that he should reject the TPP. For years, the SumOfUs community in Canada has been fighting against deals like the TPP because they hand massive powers to corporations. Together, thousands of us have taken action.  If enough of us show Prime Minister Trudeau that we won’t settle for Harper-like priorities, he will have no choice but to scrap the deal. Thanks for all that you do, Emma, Hannah, Rachel and the rest of us More information: Jim Balsillie fears TPP could cost Canada billions and become worst-ever policy move, CBC, 6 April 2015 SumOfUs is a worldwide movement of people like you, working together to hold corporations accountable for their actions and forge a new, sustainable path for our global economy. Please help keep SumOfUs strong by chipping in CA$3 . Have a great idea for a SumOfUs campaign? Start your own petition and the best ones could be emailed to the whole SumOfUs community. This email was sent to human4us@bell.net.