Go anywhere in North America and you will be
near a charging station. The car will guide you
there without a problem and the last excuse used
by Electric Car deniers 'range anxiety'
is no longer valid. Good buy Gas and Oil!

SOS TO ALL BOAT AND SHIPPING TRAFFIC NEAR THE ISLANDS OF VANUATU.

Hello Gentle People:

Please use your computers to pass on this message via the World Wide Web.  This is an SOS to all boat and shipping traffic near Vanuatu and the Islands hit by  catagory 5 Hurricane Pam. Please dock and unload any spare food and clean water you may have and are willing to share with the Islanders who were struck by Pam.
It will help them survive the next few weeks and months until they can stabilize themselves.
Thank you for the help!
Signed: Joseph Raglione
Executive Director: The World Humanitarian Peace and Ecology Movement.

This is a wonderful Utube site with absolutely fantastic music!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiwI5k-gFwc

Gentle People:

 Once in a while I receive some great news and I like to share and so here it is>

Joseph,

Breaking news: in an historic victory of global importance, the US Federal Communications Commission just passed rock solid rules to ensure the Internet stays open and free for generations to come.

Can you click here to share this image and spread the good news?

Big Cable TV and Internet companies have spent millions of dollars to push “Internet slow lanes” that would let them charge us more money to use the Internet, and control what we could access. But after millions of public comments, emails, phone calls, and demonstrations across the country -- loads of it driven by SumOfUs members -- theFederal Communications Commission (FCC) has just said an emphatic “no” to a corporate-controlled Internet, and committed to protect Net Neutrality.

With so many websites based in the US, free and open Internet around the world was at stake. This victory will have a lasting impact towards protecting free speech and social movements across the globe. And that is worth celebrating.

Gentle readers of this blog. The most intelligent human beings on the face of this earth are measuring the Earth's temperature on a daily basis. They provide the facts I distribute to you.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/EnergyBalance/?src=features-fromthearchives

Make your own conclusions. 

Climate Forcings and Global Warming

Any changes to the Earth’s climate system that affect how much energy enters or leaves the system alters Earth’s radiative equilibrium and can force temperatures to rise or fall. These destabilizing influences are called climate forcings. Natural climate forcings include changes in the Sun’s brightness, Milankovitch cycles (small variations in the shape of Earth’s orbit and its axis of rotation that occur over thousands of years), and large volcanic eruptions that inject light-reflecting particles as high as the stratosphere. Manmade forcings include particle pollution (aerosols), which absorb and reflect incoming sunlight; deforestation, which changes how the surface reflects and absorbs sunlight; and the rising concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which decrease heat radiated to space. A forcing can trigger feedbacks that intensify or weaken the original forcing. The loss of ice at the poles, which makes them less reflective, is an example of a feedback.

Things that change the balance between incoming and outgoing energy in the climate system are called forcings. Natural forcings include volcanic eruptions. Manmade forcings include air pollution and greenhouse gases. A climate forcing, such as greenhouse gas increases, may trigger feedbacks like the loss of sunlight-reflecting ice. (Photographs ©2008 antonio,©2008 haglundc, and courtesyMike Embree/National Science Foundation.)

Carbon dioxide forces the Earth’s energy budget out of balance by absorbing thermal infrared energy (heat) radiated by the surface. It absorbs thermal infrared energy with wavelengths in a part of the energy spectrum that other gases, such as water vapor, do not. Although water vapor is a powerful absorber of many wavelengths of thermal infrared energy, it is almost transparent to others. The transparency at those wavelengths is like a window the atmosphere leaves open for radiative cooling of the Earth’s surface. The most important of these “water vapor windows” is for thermal infrared with wavelengths centered around 10 micrometers. (The maximum transparency occurs at 10 micrometers, but partial transparency occurs for wavelengths between about 8 and about 14 micrometers.)

Carbon dioxide is a very strong absorber of thermal infrared energy with wavelengths longer than 12-13 micrometers, which means that increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide partially “close” the atmospheric window. In other words, wavelengths of outgoing thermal infrared energy that our atmosphere’s most abundant greenhouse gas—water vapor—would have let escape to space are instead absorbed by carbon dioxide.

All atmospheric gases have a unique pattern of energy absorption: they absorb some wavelengths of energy but are transparent to others. The absorption patterns of water vapor (blue peaks) and carbon dioxide (pink peaks) overlap in some wavelengths. Carbon dioxide is not as strong a greenhouse gas as water vapor, but it absorbs energy in wavelengths (12-15 micrometers) that water vapor does not, partially closing the “window” through which heat radiated by the surface would normally escape to space. (Illustration adapted from Robert Rohde.)

The absorption of outgoing thermal infrared by carbon dioxide means that Earth still absorbs about 70 percent of the incoming solar energy, but an equivalent amount of heat is no longer leaving. The exact amount of the energy imbalance is very hard to measure, but it appears to be a little over 0.8 watts per square meter. The imbalance is inferred from a combination of measurements, including satellite and ocean-based observations of sea level rise and warming.

When a forcing like increasing greenhouse gas concentrations bumps the energy budget out of balance, it doesn’t change the global average surface temperature instantaneously. It may take years or even decades for the full impact of a forcing to be felt. This lag between when an imbalance occurs and when the impact on surface temperature becomes fully apparent is mostly because of the immense heat capacity of the global ocean. The heat capacity of the oceans gives the climate a thermal inertia that can make surface warming or cooling more gradual, but it can’t stop a change from occurring.

The changes we have seen in the climate so far are only part of the full response we can expect from the current energy imbalance, caused only by the greenhouse gases we have released so far. Global average surface temperature has risen between 0.6 and 0.9 degrees Celsius in the past century, and it will likely rise at least 0.6 degrees in response to the existing energy imbalance.

As the surface temperature rises, the amount of heat the surface radiates will increase rapidly (see description of radiative cooling on Page 4). If the concentration of greenhouse gases stabilizes, then Earth’s climate will once again come into equilibrium, albeit with the “thermostat”—global average surface temperature—set at a higher temperature than it was before the Industrial Revolution.

However, as long as greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise, the amount of absorbed solar energy will continue to exceed the amount of thermal infrared energy that can escape to space. The energy imbalance will continue to grow, and surface temperatures will continue to rise.

1. References

2. Cahalan, R. (n.d.) Solar and Earth Radiation. Accessed December 12, 2008.
3. Hansen, J., Nazarenko, L., Ruedy, R., Sato, M., Willis, J., Del Genio, A., Koch, D., Lacis, A., Lo, K., Menon, S., Novakov, T., Perlwitz, J., Russell, G., Schmidt, G.A., and Tausnev, N. (2005). Earth’s Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications. Science, (308) 1431-1435.
4. Kushnir, Y. (2000). Solar Radiation and the Earth’s Energy Balance. Published on The Climate System, complete online course material from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. Accessed December 12, 2008.
5. Peixoto, J., and Oort, A. (1992). Chapter 6: Radiation balance. In Physics of Climate (pp. 91-130). Woodbury, NY: American Institute of Physics Press.
6. Peixoto, J., and Oort, A. (1992). Chapter 14: The ocean-atmosphere heat engine. In Physics of Climate (pp. 365-400). Woodbury, NY: American Institute of Physics Press.
7. Marshall, J., and Plumb, R.A. (2008). Chapter 2: The global energy balance. InAtmosphere, Ocean, and Climate Dynamics: an Introductory Text (pp. 9-22).
8. Marshall, J., and Plumb, R.A. (2008). Chapter 4: Convection. In Atmosphere, Ocean, and Climate Dynamics: an Introductory Text (pp. 31-60).
9. Marshall, J., and Plumb, R.A. (2008). Chapter 8: The general circulation of the atmosphere. In Atmosphere, Ocean, and Climate Dynamics: an Introductory Text (pp. 139-161).
10. Trenberth, K., Fasullo, J., Kiehl, J. (2009). Earth’s global energy budget. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM GREENPEACE.

Gentle readers of this blog.
Greenpeace has an important message for all of us.
 http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/energyeast/

Demand a People's Intervention for Energy East!

Over the past few months more than 100,000 people have sent messages to the National Energy Board (NEB) demanding that the NEB include climate change in its review of the Energy East tar sands pipeline.

While the board is expecting applications for people to intervene in the review they still refuse to listen to the thousands of voices calling for a climate review. To make the NEB listen, we need your help. We're trying to flood the intervention process with thousands of applications demanding that Energy East’s climate change impact be included in the pipeline’s review.

Add your voice, apply to intervene!posed, so we've put together this guide to try and make the process as easy as possible. You can download it here and follow the step-by-step instructions. Once you've filed, let us know so we can track how many

cSTEP-BY-STEP APPLICATION GUIDE

1. Apply online:

The NEB's online application process has become more and more complicated with each pipeline that's proposed, so we've put together this guide to try and make the process as easy as possible. You can download it here and follow the step-by-step instructions. Once you've filed, let us know so we can track how many climate applications are sent in.

STEP-BY-STEP APPLICATION GUIDE

LET US KNOW WHEN YOU'VE APPLIED

LET US KNOW WHEN YOU'VE APPLIED

2. Host or Attend an Application Party:

People all along the pipeline route are coming together to take on Energy East, and so we want to help bring communities together to fileas many applications as possible. We encourage you to host an application party, it could be in your kitchen or living room, at a community hall or on campus. Anywhere where folks from your community can gather to fill out and file 10, 20, 50 or even hundreds of applications!

REGISTER YOUR EVENT

JOIN AN EVENT

While these events are a chance to file applications, they are also a great opportunity to do some energy education, plan local actions and strenghten your community group. Not sure where to start? We have some suggestions, from experience.

• Host a film screening, a speaking event or panel on the local, national and global impacts of Energy East.
• Host a Potluck or community dinner to bring people together to plan and discuss next steps over food.
• Organize an art build and invite local artists to help make some beautiful images of your opposition to Energy East.

An Intervention Gathering is also a great opportunity to bring out local media to cover the story about your community organizing and call for a climate review of Energy East!

An important message from GREENPEACE.

Why Apply?

Stephen Harper has stacked the National Energy Board with oil executives and their political allies, people that will happily ignore climate change and community voices in order to rubber stamp Energy East. The rules of the game are stacked against us, but if thousands of people apply to intervene in the Energy East process on climate, we will force the NEB to make their commitment to excluding climate science public.

We’ll probably be rejected by the thousands. If that happens, we’ll bring our demand for a climate review and real participation by communities directly to the doors of their hearings. We’ll take action to ensure that the review process cannot go forward without considering climate change.

What to do Next?

Ask a friend, colleague or family member to file a climate application. Now that you’ve done it, help more people raise their voice and demand a climate review of Energy East.

Help spread the word by sharing this initiative on social media.

 Resources:

Application Toolkit

Latest blogs on Tar sands / Climate

http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/energyeast/

Share on

Gentle People:

I am having too much of a good time not to share my feelings with everybody. When I spend a few hours enjoying marvelous and beautiful pictures from around the world, it makes me feel great even as I sit through the coldest days of Winter alone with my computer!