What about that weird spiral phenomena from the rocket that took off from Russia? (supposedly)

I would never think that a rocket could make a spiral trail like that.

http://www.youtube.com/w...6KC0&feature=related

That is fucked up

I think it was something having to do with all the weather control stuff they have been doing in Russia, Flo. I did a little poking around last night... but have been seeing headlines about it for a while... none of which I pursued because I thought it was just the Russian media's fascination with whacky science. I'm starting to wonder if they are not experimenting with atmospheric ionization. The descriptions of that seem consistent with what was observed in Norway yesterday... and in China before that....

Googling it brings up all manner of conspiracy stuff connecting it with HAARP... which happens to be another of Governor Ventura's "Conspiracy Theory" episodes....

And "no action, no peace"? Hypocritical much?

When's the Nobel Committee going to hand out a medal for disingenuous planet fucker of the millennium?

Thanks 99, The Russkies are playing around with something, all I can think of is Stargate...pretty cool. If a scientist ever cracks the gravity formula, it'll probably look something like that IMO.

Re polar ice caps melting

-- I don't think many are denying that there is global warming
-- but questioning if lowering CO2 emissions will make much difference

A different issue, no?

Can't say I can say either way, just what scientists say, and interestingly Lovelock and some others who were the initial alarm bell ringers are now saying that it won't make a difference.

Cutting down CO2 might delay the global warming effects a bit - but not stop it....

That said,
ironically by dealing with changes in Electricity and Transport sectors alone - for very different and local advantages, whatever about flooding in Madagascar -
CO2 reduction takes place anyway, since they account for 80% of CO2 emissions.
I go through that on http://www.ceolas.net/#cc1x

Unfortunately Copenhagen and US Congress instead focus on

1.Emission trading (Cap and Trade) which achieves nothing, particularly in the short term that's supposed to be so important - because it takes many years for the allowance permit squeeze to kick in.
http://www.ceolas.net/#cce5x

2. Cut-down-and-save bans on Light Bulbs, TV sets etc that people can or can't use, that just increases alienation and resistance to cooperation,
rather than having a policy dealing directly
with the actual supply side problems, with finance help if required by taxation (as you said before, tax unpopular too, but obviously preferable to bans on what people want to buy, and more energy using products could have current tax lowered)
Anyway, as explained on the ceolas.net website,
long term state guaranteed industry loans can keep down the cost of emission processing and/or energy substitution by utility and transport (incl auto) companies.

Where there is a problem - deal with the problem!

99 @ #4: When's the Nobel Committee going to hand out a medal for disingenuous planet fucker of the millennium?

Maybe 'cuz someone else is still using it? Karl Rove says "Bush was a Green Leader"

>And "no action, no peace"? Hypocritical much?

Yeah, the leak of the "Danish text" was interesting. Most of the reporting I've seen from COP15 suggests that the the leak was a lot less disruptive than portrayed in the Guardian piece, that they saw no signs of "disarray".

But the LA Times is reporting that some of the developing countries that were so incensed by the draft text took part in drafting it, which Mother Jones suggests may be "evidence of some early agreement bridging the developed-developing chasm".

Good overview from David Corn at MoJo on the emerging split among the developing nations bloc --- between the poor developing nations and the fast-growing developing nations. Quite a lot of maneuvering going on...

Peter, no one is saying that we can "stop" the affects of CO2 (and other GHG) forcing. It's too late for that --- a certain amount of warming is already baked in. The work now is to mitigate how bad it's gonna get, by cutting down how much more will go into the atmosphere in the coming years. The difference between 2C and 4C of warming is substantial, so.... yeah, cutting down on emissions, of which energy efficiency is a major component, is kinda important. That's the reasoning underlying the 'all of the above' approach these days for reductions at both the industry level (big) and the consumer level (small).

The arguments for and against a 'carbon tax' vs. a 'cap & trade' system are now focused on what's politically feasible in the Senate. Regardless of the merits of a 'carbon tax', at best it appears to be politically unattainable --- not just "unpopular" as you say, but actually more along the lines of "impossible". As in, not going to happen. So the thinking behind the push for cap & trade seem to be that we really don't have time to wait for a 'tax' scheme to become politically possible, due to the uncertainties over just how sensitive the climate system would be to additional CO2/GHG forcing and the political reality of passing anything in the Senate. The thinking seems to be that it's better to get something in place and underway. At this point they seem to be saying that cap & trade is the closest achievable thing to changing our current perverse incentive structure that has more than a snowball's chance in hell of actually happening.

I've also seen some commentators express suspicion that, at worst, the sudden support for a 'carbon tax' over 'cap & trade' from some industry bigwigs is really a set-up --- handing them the word and an actual 'tax' to use in perpetuity as a political bludgeon, claiming they "might" support it (like Congressional Republicans' input on health care reform) --- then pull a Lucy with the football...

Well, Desi, it has become apparent to me since originally freaking over the Danish Text that most seem to be taking it in stride... mostly because it isn't a finalized done-deal and everyone is trained on the goal of getting as much as they can in this process. But the part that nailed me was that we would propose yanking any of it from the U.N. at all... no matter what comes of it... but what comes of that sort of action by "our country" is almost always precisely what "our country" proposes. Someone on Democracy Now! put forth that Obama wouldn't agree to show up in Copenhagen without that.... It's actually upsetting me more that the original uproar died down so quickly and maybe one of your links will help me with that, but trying to move this off the international stage and into a tighter-knit association of the perps to hammer this out doesn't seem any nicer than the perps getting their lawyers to give them legal opinions that torture isn't torture.

I'm sick of being the bad guy on the world stage.

I don't think we should bother comparing to Bush anymore because Obama is outdoing him in so many nefarious things already... including lying his fucking head off about what "we're" doing, and what he's accomplishing. "Our" side is used to Rove's and O'Reilly's partisan bullshitting, but is also about as avid to excuse or rename or explain away somehow "our" side's dirty deeds as "their" side ever is.

I'm getting to the place where I can appreciate Bush's openness about his dishonesty, the transparency of his lies. It's waaaay harder to bust Obama on his whoppers because he's so much smoother and sneakier and disingenuous about it. But one tiny example, Bush came right out in public and called the have-mores his base, while Obama went on with his crap about Main Street not being eaten by Wall Street... when Goldman Sachs was his base.

The nicest thing you can say about him is that he's a limp sister, a weakling who caves in to any powerful people who don't like his airy-fairy populist inclinations if they're anything at all more than merely rhetorical. He's doing a shit job for The People, but a fabulous one for our owners.

It pisses me off the more because of all the heartless and greedy and taxophobic Republicans who have bitched about our sneaky elitism all this time. That's what we've got now. We've got just what they said we'd get, despite all the lying and psychotic stuff that ever comes out of them, they weren't wrong about that part.

This is a global catastrophe and so all the talk about what is "politically feasible" fills me with rage. It makes me crazier because those who insist on inserting this "politically feasible" stuff into it usually call themselves "realists"... when that's about as far from realism as it gets. What's real is what's happening to our planet. What's unreal is the competing "interests" butting in to the process of fixing it... meaning: If political interests are what's being served, the planet itself is ignored, but everybody can be happy to have seemed to be working their butts off to save our planet.

Not gonna cut it.

Thanks Des,

While I think Carbon tax (as Emission tax rather than Fuel tax) is better than emission trading,
really for utilities the current EPA idea of simply setting phased in CO2 limits - as they've done with coal power mercury emissions - is
in my view more logical

(the tax I mentioned was product tax eg efficiency based tax on light bulbs rather than
efficiency based bans, but I did'nt say that so clearly )

RE emission trading the irony is as said that it pushes everything years into the future, when any actual squeeze on allowance permits kicks in.

I see your political take on it,
and I think senators like house reps secretly love the allowance system with all the wrangling involved.
Whenever I question any Congressmen about it they point out what they "achieved for" Montana or Virginia etc in the bloated bills

Emission Reduction Alternatives
http://ceolas.net/#cce1x
Introduction: The need - or not - to deal with emissions
The Overall Picture
Emission sources, land and ocean cycles, agriculture and deforestation
1. Direct Industrial Emission Regulation
Mandated reduction of CO2, monitored like other emission substances
2. Carbon Taxation
Fuel Tax --- Emission Tax
3. Emission Trading (Cap and Trade)
Basic Idea
Offsets --- Tree Planting --- Manufacture Shift --- Fair Trading
Allowances: Auctions + Hand-Outs --- Allowance Trading
Companies: Business Stability + Cost
In Conclusion
4. Contracted CO2 Reduction
Private companies compete for contracts to lower CO2 emissions.

I mean, here's a little taste of how frantic the rest of the world is getting... and, even if China and India had a hand in the Danish Text, which would mollify some that it least the worst offenders are on board to do something, which is actually more likely to turn out to be an extremely ornate not nearly enough, it's taking all the wrath of the victims of our greed and stupidity out of the what process we have for addressing the catastrophe, taking the global out of globalization, putting the privileged in charge of deciding who lives and who dies in this wise too. The bottomless sense of entitlement at work on the world never ceases to amaze in the realization of the ever-greater depth that bottomlessness really entails.

From The Nation today:

The emissions reductions included in the AOSIS proposal go far beyond what is currently on the table in Copenhagen. AOSIS calls for global emissions to peak "no later than 2015," which aligns with statements made by IPCC Chair Ranjendra Pachauri. But AOSIS then demands that the US and other developed nations cut emissions by 45 percent (compared to 1990 levels) by 2020. Furthermore, global emissions, including from large developing countries such as China and India, are to fall at least 85 percent by 2050.

Noting that Pachauri, NASA scientist James Hansen and other experts have endorsed reducing carbon dioxide levels to 350 parts per million as soon as possible, McKibben hailed the AOSIS proposal as "the first truly rational attempt to grapple with what the science of climate change tells us."

But the US, China and other big emitters are backing much smaller cuts. The EU has offered to cut its emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, and by 30 percent if other nations do the same. Japan has made a similar pledge, while the Obama administration, facing congressional resistance, has offered to cut by a mere 4 percent. China and India have said they will limit the growth of their emissions but that population growth and the need to fight poverty require absolute emissions to grow for years to come.

Floridiot and 99, here's one follow-up on the Russian missile test/weird phenomenon in the Norwegian sky story:

Norway spiral: A rocket scientist explains the mystery: After watching the Norway spiral video, a US rocket scientist is convinced it was a missile. That blue plume? "Tiny sapphires," he says.

Specific details at the link...

Thanks, Desi. I hadn't checked the Russian papers over the last day or so to see if they'd weighed in on it, and still haven't, but, though I'd read this guy's explanation for it already, there wasn't the part about the Russians saying they were testing missiles.

If true, that probably nails it.

What we saw still seems to comport with the atmospheric ionization stuff they're talking more than this intricate missile explanation, and there isn't any mention of the Chinese sighting of something almost identical... only switching directions on its axis in mid-spiraling... but it at least seems there's enough other explanation floating around to keep it earthly in our feverish imaginations....

I'm only remaining skeptical because this weather control/weapon, whatever, is all so secretive, more so on our side, HAARP, but it's really hard to wade through all the stuff googling yields up because there are so many outright paranoid people trying to speculate on it and give intricate explanations to back up their speculation. I just know I've seen some headlines about Russian efforts to control weather recently and thought it was probably something like Russian efforts at faith healing... until this thing made me start looking into it a little more.

Just confirmed they were testing Bulava missiles that day....

Now I gotta see if the Chinese sighting comports with their graphic here... if I can manage to wade through the Chinese....

Its all about chasing shadows.
By that I mean latching on to this or that latest, most innovative idea that some self styled money making guru has put out in the hope it’ll go viral and make them a lot of money off the backs of all the headless chickens who will follow them blindly down a blind alley. Its a shame but a truism nonetheless that people will follow where someone they see as an expert leads. Even if they lead them to certain disaster, which is what most of the gurus tend to do to their flocks.
The trick is to recognize a shadow when you see it!