Ironic isn’t it? Due to a bulge in the rising oceans DC could see 5 meters of water if the ice shelf collapses. That might wake them up a bit.

Money quote:

“The upshot is that the North American continent and the Indian Ocean will experience the greatest changes in sea level – adding 1 or 2 metres to the current estimates. Washington DC sits squarely in this area, meaning it could face a 6.3-metre sea level rise in total. California will also be in the target zone.

“Policy-makers must realise that the effects could be greater or smaller in different areas,” says team member Natalya Gomez. The team have so far only considered one ice sheet, so the effects of other ice sheets across the world could also have a similar impact, she says.”"

From New Scientist

Listening to NPR last night and heard a great story about Kind of Blue on it’s 50th anniversary. I believe this may be the best recording ever made and I’ve been listening to it for 30 of those years without tiring a bit. The record is a kind of miracle confluence of the very best players, the most amazing writing, the vision of the leader and truly magical live-in-the-studio (no tracking or remixing) performance. Cannonball Adderly said his playing was the best he had ever done. This could probably be said fairly of any of the others.

What really stands out is the lyrical beauty of the overall sound, filled with cool emotion. Love it.

I hope Sterling is wrong but he makes a compelling case.

“1. The climate. People still behave as if it’s okay. Every scientist in the world who isn’t the late Michael Crichton knows that it’s not. The climate is in terrible shape; something’s gone wrong with the sky. The bone-chilling implications haven’t soaked into the populace, even though Al Gore put together a PowerPoint about it that won him a Nobel. Al was soft-peddling the problem.

It’s become an item of fundamentalist faith to maintain that the climate crisis is a weird leftist hoax. Yet, since the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike, an honest fear of the consequences will prove hard to repress. Since the fear has been methodically obscured, its emergence from the mists of superstition will be all the more powerful. Unlike mere shibboleths of finance, this is a situation that’s objectively terrifying and likely to remain so indefinitely.”

And that’s just one of seven…

Not a single House Republican broke ranks to vote yes for the economic recovery package. Some things never change for the Party of No: They’re still saying no while the country is saying yes.

All they want is tax cuts, in spite of the fact that tax cuts (combined with wildly out of control spending by a Republican administration) were part of the reason we’re in this mess. No infrastructure investments, no alternative energy, no extensions of unemployment, just tax cuts.

Republican House Members, I ask you:

What good is a tax cut if you’re not paying taxes because you lost your job?

And check this out:

Reliably Blue States now represent only 2% of the population and 35 electoral votes. Can’t these guys read?