Sea level rise chart
Curious about when your coastal town or property will go back to the sea?
“To establish a timeline, choose a location … and find out its elevation. You can then use the graph to determine if the area will be underwater at any particular date between 1990 and 2100.”
Don't worry kids, Big Oil says a magical sea creature symphony awaits you!
Here is a distinction a country would want to avoid – first to disappear under the seas due to the rising sea level stemming from global warming. The population of Tuvalu has already started to abandon their sinking island as increasingly high tides smash up their houses and a salty water table kills off their crops.
So does the ‘country’ still exist after the last Tuvaluan has left? Do they keep their U.N. seat? How about their lucrative “.tv” top-level domain?
Joking aside, we should round up the prominent loud-mouth global warming deniers and shove them onto the soggy uninhabitable land as punishment for their crimes against humanity.
The opening paragraphs of this Washington Post story on Sunday sound more like a pitch for a science-fiction movie:
For plants designed in a lab a little more than a decade ago, they’ve come a long way: Today, the vast majority of the nation’s two primary crops grow from seeds genetically altered according to Monsanto company patents.
Ninety-three percent of soybeans. Eighty percent of corn.
The seeds represent “probably the most revolutionary event in grain crops over the last 30 years,” said Geno Lowe, a Salisbury, Md., soybean farmer.
From there, the story goes on to what it sees as the important issue — Monsanto is steadily raising the prices of the seeds, and the Obama administration is considering antitrust actions.
But me, I’m still stuck on this 80-90% of seeds being genetically altered based on a single company’s patents. And it gets even more disturbing when you learn the reason why these seeds dominate the market:
The modified plants can stand up to the powerful herbicide glyphosate, best known commercially as Roundup, allowing them to use the weedkiller not just before planting but also after the crops have come up.
And who makes Roundup? Why, Monsanto, of course!
Before it jumped into biotechnology, Monsanto was already one of the nation’s largest chemical companies and had patented glyphosate, bringing it to market as Roundup in the ’70s.
The product kills just about all weeds, and for farmers it served as a wonderfully effective herbicide. Instead of tilling the earth, they could simply blanket it with Roundup. . . .
If there was a practical drawback with Roundup, it was that it couldn’t be used after planting: Applying Roundup at that point would kill the crops, too.
But where there’s science and profit involved, there’s always a solution:
Monsanto was producing Roundup at a plant in Luling, La., and the water and sludge in the waste ponds around the plant were exposed to the chemical. . . . After bacteria discovered in the pond sludge proved resistant to the chemical, scientists isolated the gene that gave the bacteria Roundup tolerance and placed that gene, known as CPS4, into soybeans, then corn.
The resulting plants, called “Roundup Ready,” represented a billion-dollar breakthrough and, as Monsanto sees it, a just reward for its $1.5 billion investment in biotech research.
Got that? A chemical company develops a near-monopoly on the weedkiller market… and before too long, it’s an agriculture company with a near-monopoly on corn and soybeans that are compatible with the weedkiller. And the only problem anyone seems to have with it would be if Monsanto gets a little too greedy in its pricing.
“Everybody likes Roundup Ready,” said William Layton, a grain farmer on the Eastern Shore. “Maybe it costs a little more than we like. But everybody’s going to keep using it.“
It’s not hard for me to imagine this going horribly, catastrophically wrong at some point. And I don’t even read that much science fiction.
A couple of weeks ago, a trashy movie was released that hypothesized the year 2012 would see all sorts with unspeakable catastrophes unleashed, in keeping with a supposed ancient Mayan prophecy.
Kind of a ridiculous premise. But then again (via CNN):
A new group wants former Vice President Dick Cheney back in the White House.
The organization – “Draft Dick Cheney 2012″ – launched on Friday, and unveiled their new Web site. Their aim: To convince the former vice president to seek the Republican presidential nomination in the next race for the White House….
“The 2012 race for the Republican nomination for President will be about much more then who will be the party’s standard bearer against Barack Obama, the race is about the heart and soul of the GOP,” said Christopher Barron, one of the organizers of the Draft Cheney movement. “There is only one person in our party with the experience, political courage and unwavering commitment to the values that made our party strong – and that person is Dick Cheney.”
Few people take this seriously, of course. As I noted back in September, this draft-Dick chatter is just a facade to justify the continuing media presence of his daughter, Liz (lest anyone ask, “Why, exactly, are you relevant?”) as she unsubtly positions herself for a future electoral career.
But as long as they’re going to play this game, it seems reasonable that we should call their bluff. If Liz Cheney’s going to keep getting invited onto the cable talk shows and the public-speaking circuit based on the excuse that her dad might run for the White House, some noisy folks should start insisting on equal time for the questions Dick Cheney would have to answer if he weren’t too cowardly to show his own face in an open forum.
You know, the implausible amnesia, the sleeping on the job (literally and figuratively), the evidence hidden in safes intended for classified information, etc… anyone want to start compiling the list?
If he wants to haunt our nightmares, there’s no reason we shouldn’t try to haunt his.
(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)
Some tea bagger dumbass and his accomplice beg for a beat-down and get it. I don’t condone the violence, but I watched this a few times through and I believe the first ‘hit’ goes to the tea bagger.
I mused a few times during the darkest days of the Shrubya Reign of Error that the wrong-wingers really want us to devolve into a place like Brazil where people are armed, the rule of law is tenuous, the streets are dangerous and where political passions run high.
In fact, this kinda reminds me of growing up in Puerto Rico. Around elections, little vans and micro-busses would cruise around the streets with megaphones blaring the party and candidate messages. One day I remember two rival vans turn onto the same street – and young toughs piled out, started screaming and then quickly bashing each other.
The danger of doing that here in the U.S. is that the wrong-wingers are well armed and apparently consider the use of firearms ‘politics by other means.’
Still, it’s nice to see a reactionary punk get beat down.
Answers here:
Come on Senator Reid, you milquetoast – you can’t play nice with scoundrels - it’s time for the nuclear option.
*Update 11/25/09* The Nation agrees
It’s gonna cost us about a $1 million per year for every soldier we send to Afghanistan. Seems like a crappy investment for a war we are going to lose.
Update on that Pakistan thing (from the link) – their push against the Taliban strongholds appears to have limits, and they are concerned that our escalation will break those limits.
*Update 11/25/09* Juan Cole believes Afghanistan ‘escalation’ will be the albatross around the neck of the Democratic Party in 2012
Trial by Monster Truck
I can’t determine which is crazier – the claim that Obama shouldn’t be President because he wasn’t born here, or the belief by a large majority of Repugs that he didn’t wind because little old ACORN managed to steal 9.5 million votes.
Are they stupid, crazy or does this just demonstrate the success of the big lie technique as applied by Faux News and the Wrong-Wing Media Echo Chamber? Or all three?
Combine this with the obvious popularity of Caribou Barbie among the wingnut set, and you come to realize that Idiocracy is closer at hand than 500 years in the future.
Maybe we could make the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial more popular with the Palin crowd by including monster trucks, flamethrowers and chainsaws.
*Update 11/24/09* case in point:
This: 
Or this:
Who's the Saudi's beeatch?
I sure hope there was no tongue involved *shudder*
