New Harvard Study targets Bayer Neonicotinoids as cause of Colony Collapse Disorder

The bee colony collapse disorder mystery has been solved.
In spite of denials that claim neonicatinoid pesticides are not lethal to bees, a new Harvard study fingers neonics as the key driver of colony collapse disorder. The experiment couldn't have been simpler. Working with nearby beekeepers, Harvard researcher Chensheng Lu and his team treated 12 colonies with tiny levels of neonics and kept six control hives free of the popular chemicals. All 18 hives made it through summer without any apparent trouble. Come winter, though, the bees in six of the treated hives vanished, leaving behind empty colonies—the classic behavior of colony collapse disorder. None of the six control hives experienced a CCD-style disappearing act, although one did succumb to a common-to-bees gut pathogen called nosema.

This year, beekeepers in Ohio, for example, reported winter losses of 50 percent to 80 percent.

Last year, Europe placed a two-year moratorium on most neonic uses, pending more research on their effect on honeybees. The US Environmental Protection Agency, for its part, is reviewing its registration of the chemicals, and won't be done until 2016 at the earliest.
http://www.bulletinofinsectology.org/pdfarticles/vol67-2014-125-130lu.pdf

Timothy Geithner Extended Interview

Timothy Geithner Extended Interview: Former Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner discusses his book "Stress Test," and suggests that the bailout was necessary to avoid a depression.

From Bill Moyers and Company

CONNECTING THE DOTS

Eight Pseudoscientific Climate Claims Debunked by Real Scientists

May 16, 2014

by Joshua Holland

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Jonathan Tucker in a cave beneath a glacier. (Photo: Rex Features via AP Images)

Most people who deny that human activity is warming the planet just dismiss a massive body of scientific evidence as a big hoax.

But there’s a more sophisticated set of climate “skeptics” who make arguments that, at least to the lay ear, sound like they’re grounded in scientific evidence. And because most of us lack the background to evaluate their claims, they can muddy the waters around an issue that’s been settled in the scientific community.

So, as a public service, we gathered eight of the most common of these pseudoscientific arguments and asked some serious climate scientists — all working climatologists who have been widely published — to help us understand what makes these claims so misleading.

Time history of atmospheric carbon dioxide from 800,000 years before unt...

BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change - by Naomi Oreskes

How come, in the face of all Scientific Evidence, we have lost the battle of public opinion for the last decade?

Reprinted from Science Dec. 2004

Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain. Some have used this as an argument against adopting strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, while discussing a major U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report on the risks of climate change, then-EPA administrator Christine Whitman argued, “As [the report] went through review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate change” (1). Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major uncertainties in the science (2). Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.

The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature (3). In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: “Human activities … are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents … that absorb or scatter radiant energy. … [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations” [p. 21 in (4)].

IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: “Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise” [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: “The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue” [p. 3 in (5)].

Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).

The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies' members. Nevertheless, they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords “climate change” (9).

The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.

Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point.

This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect.

The scientific consensus might, of course, be wrong. If the history of science teaches anything, it is humility, and no one can be faulted for failing to act on what is not known. But our grandchildren will surely blame us if they find that we understood the reality of anthropogenic climate change and failed to do anything about it.

Many details about climate interactions are not well understood, and there are ample grounds for continued research to provide a better basis for understanding climate dynamics. The question of what to do about climate change is also still open. But there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to listen.

References and Notes

1. 1.↵ 
   1. A. C. Revkin, 
   2. K. Q. Seelye

   , New York Times A1 (19 June 2003).

    

   Search Google Scholar
2. 2.↵ 
   1. S. van den Hove, 
   2. M. Le Menestrel, 
   3. H.-C. de Bettignies

   , Climate Policy 2(1), 3 (2003).

   Web of ScienceSearch Google Scholar
3. 3.↵ 
   See www.ipcc.ch/about/about.htm.
4. 4.↵ 
   1. J. J. McCarthy

   , Ed. Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2001).

    

   Search Google Scholar
5. 5.↵ 
   1. National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Science of Climate Change

   , Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2001).
6. 6.↵ 
   1. American Meteorological Society

   , Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 84, 508 (2003).
7. 7.↵ 
   1. American Geophysical Union

   , Eos 84(51), 574 (2003).
8. 8.↵ 
   See www.ourplanet.com/aaas/pages/atmos02.html.
9. 9.↵ 
   The first year for which the database consistently published abstracts was 1993. Some abstracts were deleted from our analysis because, although the authors had put “climate change” in their key words, the paper was not about climate change.
10. 10. 
    This essay is excerpted from the 2004 George Sarton Memorial Lecture, “Consensus in science: How do we know we're not wrong,” presented at the AAAS meeting on 13 February 2004. I am grateful to AAAS and the History of Science Society for their support of this lectureship; to my research assistants S. Luis and G. Law; and to D. C. Agnew, K. Belitz, J. R. Fleming, M. T. Greene, H. Leifert, and R. C. J. Somerville for helpful discussions.

The Yes Men Prank Homeland Security into Adopting 100% Renewable Energy

Using the very kind of Corporate Profit Paradigm and Government Bureaucracy that keeps destroying the environment and creating world wide resource wars, the "YES MEN" challenge the USA to create a 100% Renewable Energy Economy by 2030, using Native American lands, and thus employing unemployed minorities that have been traditionally repressed. If only we had such leadership in real life.

CO2 >400ppm

Over the years, Scientists have sounded the alarm and even taken political positions about the levels of carbon-pollution we pump into our atmosphere and it's long term effects on global climate. In April, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) observatory, which sits atop a 11,000-foot-tall Hawaiian volcano, released data that shows that we are now in a world where Carbon-dioxide levels are twice their historic level. (see Mashable article)

Have you ever heard of geometric feedback? You see, even though CO2 makes up a very small percentage of the total atmosphere, it is NOT the only Green House Gas (GHG). It works with methane and water vapor to keep the Earth warm at night, else we would have wild temperature swings, and freezing temperatures across the globe every day. When you add a small (25%) increase in this CO2 factor, that traps just a little more heat in the atmosphere each day, but it is accumulative.

Each day the Earth is hit by radiant energy from the Sun, equivalent to about 2.5 X 10 to the 9th Atomic Bombs (10,000 exajoules / day). Thus, keeping just a fraction of 1% of that energy / year is enough to melt the polar ice, warm the world's oceans, and evaporate enough water (including our lakes and groundwater) to add much more water vapor (a strong GHG) to the atmosphere, creating a feedback loop (I will not even mention how the melting permafrost and undersea hydrocarbons will add to the green-house effect with methane).

This "CO2 = 0.04%" is thus non-trivial. Just 2-degrees Celsius will change life on Earth as we know it, by inducing global climate change. Most of the species will not survive.