I’m Glad I Haven’t Been Forgotten Completely
It’s been a long time since I got one of these in my inbox!
Attn Please:
Payment of your Contract/Inheritance Fund Value US$7.7M.
SORRY FOR THE DELAY OF YOUR PAYMENT.
We have on the 13th of April 2011 received a payment credit instruction from The acting president of the Federal Government of Nigeria and in Collaboration with International Monetary Fund (IMF) to credit your account With your contract funds valued at $7.7m (Seven Million Seven Hundred Thousand United State Dollars) from the government reserve account through ATM CARD or BANK TO BANK transfer.
These funds have been programmed for immediate release but we can not Transfer it directly to you, as we are having a little problem with International Monetary Fund (IMF) and secondly a woman from the united States by name (Mrs. Janet White) came to our office with an application Letter stating that you gave her the power of attorney to be the beneficiary Of your Outstanding Contract/Inheritance fund, she made us to believe that You are dead and that she is your next of kin.
We got your email address from the initial contract file and decided to send You a notice mail through this address hoping to find out if you are dead or Alive and to find out if you, at any time gave this woman the power of Attorney to represent you because we are almost ready to transfer part Payment of US$7.7m part of your outstanding funds to her nominated bank Account stated below:
Bank Name: Washington Mutual Bank
Address: 1723 Palmdale Bulv.
Palmdale Ca. 93550, USA
Acct #: 3573813158
Rout #: 322271627
Swift code #: WMSBUS66
Beneficiary: JANET WHITE.Be informed that every arrangement regarding your cash payment through ATM has been made and will be released to you as soon as you reply this email .
If you are not aware of these above instruction and development, do respond to this email immediately by contacting the Payment Officer for Debt Management Office, Remittance Dept Central Bank Of Nigeria,
Mr.GEORGE GREG
Email Address is:(georgegregmax@gmail.com)
PHONE NUMBER:+234-806-390-4037Finally you are required to forward to him an Acknowledgement email with your full details below:
1) Your Full Name__________________
2) Married/Single_________________________
3) Current Home Address_______________________
4) Your Telephone Number_________________________
5) Age and Sex_______________________
6) Occupation______________________
7) Copy ID or International Passport for IdentificationRegards
The Governor Central Bank of Nigeria
SANUSI LAMIDO SANUSI
Therefore, I offer you this:
environment: assholes capitalism denialists greed idiots IPCC
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 22: If You’re So Rich, How Come You Ain’t Smart?
The Wall Street Journal runs a piece on the latest IPCC report, which is chock full of hideous news:
KAMPALA Uganda—Climate change is leading to at least some cases of more extreme weather events across the globe, according to a report released on Friday by a United Nations-led scientific panel on the subject.
The scientific link between climate change and extreme weather isn’t uniformly clear, according to the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body established in 1988 to assist global policy makers with climate change.
As usual with WSJ articles, the comments on this piece are a critical mass of stupidity. What’s with these people? Sent November 18, from Logan Airport while waiting for my plane:
You’d think that once a critical mass of evidence has accumulated, climate-change denialists would have no choice but to change their minds. Indeed, it’s interesting to ask self-styled “skeptics” what evidence would suffice to convince them that human-caused climate change is genuinely dangerous. Many say that nothing will alter their opinions — in which case they cannot be “skeptics.” Some require proof so definitive as to be unachievable — in which case they misunderstand both scientific consensus and the nature of the situation.
Even before the most recent IPCC report, evidence supporting anthropogenic global warming far exceeded the critical threshold required for unilateral action in other policy areas. The “Cheney doctrine” held that even a 1% chance of Iraqi WMDs was sufficient to justify an invasion, a level of likelihood acknowledged by even the stubbornest denialists. Our only remaining excuse for inaction is a toxic combination of cupidity and willful ignorance.
Warren Senders
environment: cheer up! denialists extinction nacred ladies Santa Claus is coming to town
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 21: Listen Up, All You Swine!
The Washington Post reports on yet another study, this one addressing a much earlier climate change event that effectively wiped the Earthly slate pretty clean — about 252 million years ago last Thursday.
Ick:
WASHINGTON — During the world’s biggest mass extinction, Earth seemed pretty close to a description of hell — fiery, smoky and explosive — created by massive volcanic eruptions, according to research dug up in China.
In geologic terms, it was surprisingly quick, and it may provide a scary lesson about climate change for our future, authors of the new study say. It was the third of five extinctions in world history, occurring even before dinosaurs roamed.
This extinction killed off more than three-quarters of life on the planet in an event scientists have called the Great Dying. The Chinese dig sites provide new dates and details of the event, which occurred at the end of the Permian Era. It happened 252 million years ago and may have lasted less than 100,000 years, far shorter than scientists had thought, according to the study published Thursday in the journal Science.
I managed to create a nice metaphor. Enjoy it while you can. Sent November 17:
One of the arguments most commonly hurled against those of us who are justifiably concerned about life in a post-greenhouse-effect future is that, after all, “Climate change has happened previously in Earth’s history.”
Indeed. But such rapid climatic transformations are traumatic, to put it mildly. Just because climate change has happened before is no reason to welcome it back; last time, it appears to have extinguished the overwhelming majority of life on the planet.
A related argument is that climate change “…happens all the time.” As with many denialist shibboleths, a tiny kernel of logic is thickly coated with misleading rhetorical nacre. By analogy, the fact that death is universal among living things is no justification for genocide.
The scientific evidence is overwhelming: human beings are causing climate change. If our species is to avoid what biologists coyly term an “evolutionary bottleneck,” we need to change our ways without delay.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialism idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 20: New York, New York — It’s A Helluva Town. The Bronx Is Up And The Battery Down.
The New York Times reports on a new study on climate change’s effects on New York State:
While the long-term outlook for grape-growers in the Finger Lakes region is favorable, it is less than optimal for skiers and other winter sports enthusiasts in the Adirondacks. Fir and spruce trees are expected to die out in the Catskills, and New York City’s backup drinking water supply may well be contaminated as a result of seawater making its way farther up the Hudson River.
These possibilities — modeled deep into this century — are detailed in a new assessment of the impact that climate change will have in New York State. The 600-page report, published on Wednesday, was commissioned by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, a public-benefit corporation, and is a result of three years of work by scientists at state academic institutions, including Columbia and Cornell Universities and the City University of New York.
The Wall Street Journal ran an article on this report also; the comments section of their piece has started to attract the usual denialist stupidity. I almost sent this letter there but finally thought better of it. Sent November 16:
Who could have anticipated that contempt for education and expertise would eventually have negative repercussions? Exploiting the American public’s historically low tolerance for intellectuals has certainly paid off for conservative politicians.
As we approach the 2012 elections there has never been a political organization so firmly dedicated to the notion that reality can be altered by ideology as today’s GOP; the thought of their primary voters offering even the slightest lip service to scientific opinion is utterly risible.
Well, it would be risible, if its consequences weren’t likely to be so tragic. As experts again sound the warning that runaway climate change will wreak unimaginable havoc on our nation’s crumbling infrastructure and vulnerable food supply system, perhaps it’s time to wonder if anti-intellectualism is really the best strategy for America’s long-term happiness and prosperity. What will it take for Republican politicians to once again pay attention to scientists? A submerged Manhattan?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: fee and dividend idiots Pete Stark Republican obstructionism Richard Muller
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 19: Not With A Whim, But A Banker
The Concord Monitor (NH) discusses both Richard Muller’s apostasy and the sensible approach espoused by a few brave Democratic Reps:
A few weeks ago, after conducting a multi-year study funded in fair measure by the ultra-conservative billionaire Koch brothers, University of California professor Richard Muller, one of the more credible skeptics of global warming, announced his findings. The great majority of scientists who claimed that the world’s climate was warming at a fair clip, Muller said, are right.
Muller’s findings produced a gamut of responses. In climate skeptic circles, he had committed apostasy. In the broader scientific community the reaction was essentially, “What took you so long? Didn’t you notice that the glaciers are disappearing, permafrost melting, sea level rising and polar bears drowning?”
Last month, nine Democrats in the U.S. House decided to swim upstream through the sewage that is Washington politics to introduce the Save Our Climate Act, a bill that would impose, at its onset, a $10 per ton tax on carbon dioxide emissions. Their goal is to reduce emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels.
Pete Stark (the only “out” atheist in Congress, just so you know) is a good guy; he’s the originator of this doomed legislative initiative. I’m so tired I can’t even think straight…but my letter appears to make a species of sense, combining a wee dram of S.O.C.A. advocacy with a big glass of Republicans Are Idiots. Sent November 15:
Now that Dr. Richard Muller’s career as a “climate skeptic” has foundered on the facts, one wonders how the GOP can continue to ignore those stubbornly inconvenient truths that have the rest of us losing sleep at night. But they will, they surely will.
Climate change is one of the least ambiguous problems America faces, for the laws of physics and chemistry are utterly oblivious to the exigencies of electoral politics. If we wish to pass a habitable world to our descendants, we need to stop burning carbon and putting it into the atmosphere. Period. And as a spate of recent reports have indicated, our window of opportunity is rapidly closing.
Congressional Republicans should support Rep. Stark’s Save Our Climate Act, which is environmentally sound and fiscally sensible. But they won’t, because their entire ideology is based on the idea that a profitable lie beats a costly truth every time.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Ban ki-Moon Climate Vulnerable Forum United Nations
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 18: It’s Cheap, Considering The Alternative
USA Today runs an AP article on Ban Ki-Moon’s statement to the Climate Vulnerable Forum:
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged world leaders Monday to finalize the financing for a multibillion-dollar fund to fight the effects of climate change.
Delegates at a U.N.-sponsored climate change conference that starts Nov. 28 in Durban, South Africa, are to consider ways to raise $100 billion a year for the Green Climate Fund created last December to help countries cope with global warming.
Ban told the opening session of a climate meeting in Bangladesh’s capital that the world should make a concerted effort to finance the fund.
Read more about the CVF here. Naturally the only comments on the USA Today website at the time of writing were from wingnuts prating that we should defund the UN, or something. Sheesh.
Sent November 14:
The nations of the Climate Vulnerable Forum are among the world’s least significant contributors to the greenhouse effect — a sad irony, given the fact of their susceptibility to the rising ocean levels and extreme weather events brought in global warming’s wake. It is a further demonstration of the inherent inequity of a globalized consumer economy that the lands and lives of the planet’s poorest citizens are now at profound risk from the activity of the richest.
But while the CVF’s members may be cash-poor, they’re second to none in their moral authority. Countries like Kiribati, Bangladesh and the Maldives are working hard to reduce their own CO2 emissions despite the fact that it is the wealthiest members of the global community who’ve made such a mess of things.
America’s politicians and their corporate masters ignore the simple and obvious principle we all learned as children: clean up after yourself.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: greenhouse gases idiots NOAA Republicans
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 17: If We Stop Giving Money To The Oil Companies…
The NOAA has more exciting news for connoisseurs of impending doom:
Greenhouse gases are building at a steep rate in the atmosphere, the nation’s top climate agency reported, renewing concern that global warming may be accelerating.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, which indexes the key gases known to trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, rose 1.5% from 2009 to 2010, the agency reported.
The reported rise comes on top of an analysis by the Energy Department last week saying that global emissions of carbon dioxide, a key, long-lived greenhouse gas, had jumped by the biggest increment on record in 2010. The figures showed a 6% increase from the year before, a steeper rise than worst-case scenarios that had been laid out by climate experts four years before.
This started out as a revision of the letter I sent to the Boston Globe a few days ago. It’s always fun to mock Rick Perry a bit, so that wound up as the lede. Sent November 13:
It was just a few days ago that Rick Perry finally — oops! — remembered his intention to defund the Department of Energy — coincidentally, the agency responsible for one of the most alarming recent reports on climate change. Can anyone doubt that every single Republican presidential candidate would enthusiastically endorse a similar response to the NOAA, whose Annual Greenhouse Gas Index is reporting equally bad news?
The NOAA report is terrifying to anyone willing to read the numbers. The consequences of such drastic increases in GHG emissions include devastating storms, droughts, out-of-season precipitation and other forms of extreme weather — all leading inevitably to disrupted agriculture and infrastructure on the regional level. Climate change’s geopolitical effects include resource wars and increased political instability, according to both military and CIA analyses.
In the GOP’s world, bad news disappears when you stop paying for it. If only it were that easy.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Keystone XL NIMBY NOMP Tar Sands
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 16: Who Put The NOMP In The Bomp Bomp Bomp?
The Nebraska Journal-Star talks about the pipeline postponement:
Break out the champagne! The State Department decision to study routes to avoid Nebraska’s beautiful and ecologically sensitive Sandhills is a victory against long odds.
It’s hard to imagine a decision that could and would be hailed by everyone from conservative Gov. Dave Heineman to liberal Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska to environmentalist Ken Winston of the Sierra Club, but that’s the case in this rare confluence of concerns and priorities.
Now there’s a reasonable chance that the Keystone XL pipeline project will never rip a slow-to-heal gash across the Sandhills.
The statement from the State Department emphasized that the concern expressed by Nebraskans had been a key factor in the decision to delay the project.
{snip}
This is a one-time opportunity. Cynics wonder whether it would have been granted at all if it had not provided a convenient excuse for the Obama administration to delay a final decision until after the elections next year.
As readers of this page know, the Journal Star editorial board called more than a year ago for the pipeline route to be moved to avoid the Sandhills. We think the pipeline needs to be built, just not through the Sandhills.
I wanted to expand on the “Not On My Planet” theme, and this editorial was a perfect hook. Sent November 12:
NIMBY — “Not In My Backyard.” When your editorial writers say, “We think the pipeline needs to be built, just not through the Sandhills,” it’s a classic example of this way of thinking.
It’s often reasonable to relocate obvious hazards and inconveniences so they don’t endanger lives or disrupt communities, but the Keystone XL pipeline is not such a case. The likely impact of leaks and spillage on sensitive aquifers is only one of many reasons to block the project; while relocation may reduce the chance of water contamination, this doesn’t do a thing about the destruction of huge amounts of Canadian boreal forest, or the devastating CO2 emissions that are an inevitable consequence of burning the dirty crude of the tar sands. And it won’t do a thing about weaning our nation from its addiction to oil.
NIMBY is an inadequate response to the Keystone XL. We need to say NOMP — “Not On My Planet!”
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Keystone XL Tar Sands
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 15: This Hurts You More Than It Hurts Me. Or Something.
The San Francisco Chronicle reprints an article from the Houston Chronicle on the Good Decision Rationalized Stupidly:
The Obama administration said Thursday that it will consider alternative routes for the Keystone XL oil pipeline to avoid ecologically sensitive areas of America’s heartland – a move that delays a final decision on the controversial project until after the 2012 election.
The move solves a political dilemma for President Obama, who risked alienating key voting blocs no matter what decision he made on the pipeline that would carry Canadian oil sands crude from Alberta to Port Arthur, Texas. The project pitted environmentalists against some labor unions and the oil industry, and Obama would have been delivering a verdict before an election that could turn on who can do the most to turn around the nation’s ailing economy.
Sheesh. Sent November 10:
Eternally cautious, the Obama administration continues to hedge on the feasibility of the Keystone XL pipeline. While the postponement of a final decision on tar sands development until 2013 was cheered by environmentalists, the White House’s public rationale ducks the issue of climate change entirely, focusing on possible damage to water supplies.
Here’s the thing: the pipeline’s a terrible idea on multiple levels. The inevitable leaks will contaminate one of the nation’s most important aquifers with carcinogens; extracting tar sands oil is going to devastate huge expanses of forest, leaving a moonscape behind and eliminating a critical carbon sink — and putting all that CO2 into the atmosphere will kick global warming into overdrive, pushing the Earth down the path to an ever-bleaker future.
Usually, “not in my back yard” denotes a local or regional concern. When it comes to the Keystone XL, we need to say “Not In My Planet.”
Warren Senders
environment: denialists International Energy Agency
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 14: Driving The Limo Off The Cliff
The Wall Street Journal reports from the soft white (very white) underbelly of global capitalism, with their perspective on the IEA report:
LONDON—Dangerous climate change will be essentially irreversible within a little over five years, the International Energy Agency said in an annual report urging governments to do what they can to prevent this outcome.
To prevent long-term average global temperatures rising more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels—seen as the maximum possible increase without serious climate disruption—immediate, drastic changes to energy and industrial policies are needed, the IEA said in its World Energy Outlook.
Such a shift looks unlikely given current global economic problems and the move away from low-carbon nuclear power in some countries after the …
Well, that was one of the quickest remakes I’ve ever done. Sent November 9:
It’s been almost two hundred years since scientists first discovered the greenhouse effect, and more than fifty years since Arctic ice melt caused by increased atmospheric CO2 was predicted (in a 1953 edition of Popular Mechanics!). During that time an entire scientific discipline has developed, and climatologists have been steadily developing analytical and predictive tools of ever-greater precision and sophistication, as evidenced by their unsettling tendency to be right more and more often.
For five decades these scientists have warned American lawmakers about the looming climate crisis, only to see the problem get shelved for more electorally immediate concerns. No more. The International Energy Agency’s analysis is clear and sobering: we’re out of time. If our descendants are to have a world that’s fit to live in, climate-change denialists must relinquish their improbable conspiracy theories and join the rest of us in effecting a profound restructuring of our planetary energy economy.
Warren Senders