Thanks to the Examiner.com!

We here at USDemocrazy are cold.  I mean, it’s really, really cold here, with the snowdrifts eight feet high during the Snowmageddon.  It’s so cold that our brains are a little frozen… But not as frozen as Fox News’, apparently.

Fox made a little boo boo with several statements about the lack of global warming due to the recent winter storms all along the East coast.

In fact, Eric Bolling, host of Your World on Fox News, repeatedly showed “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore’s book about global warming.  He buried the book in the snow, talking about how, because of the snow, global warming cannot be true.

At the end of the section, Bolling interviewed a global warming skeptic, Phelim McAleer, who was dressed in just a t-shirt, shorts, and sandals, while standing in the snow.  McAleer stated,

“It’s nonsense that carbon dioxide is dangerous.”

Stephen Colbert, expert newscaster (or hilarious comedian), disagreed with this “scientific” report.

Stephen Colbert stated, sparring against Fox News’ latest comments,

“According to my Dopplest 9000, it is dark outside.  Now based on this latest data, we can only assume that the sun has been destroyed.  The world has been plunged into total darkness…”

Basically, Fox News may themselves be in the dark.  The climate change that we are seeing, the global warming, is a trend that is looked at over years and decades, not over days or weeks.

Plus, climate change scientists believe that global warming will bring about more extreme weather events, including really heavy snowstorms.

Why is it important for us to pay attention to climate change?

Well, the snow on the east coast has been debilitating for business and school, for starters. (Not that we are complaining… We have had a full week off of classes so far!)

This is unusual and could cause trouble for low-income families who are not making any money at work, push students so far behind in work that they may not catch up, and create extremely hazardous, even deathly conditions on the road.

And, this may continue.

Scientists have never said that global warming would equal no snow or ice.  Instead, higher temperatures will allow the air to hold more moisture, which can lead to even more precipitation.

Who said global warming always had to be so… warm?

Thangs to COP15

Well it’s here, Folks!  The biggest climate change party of the year (and typically US Democrazy wasn’t even invited).

Yesterday, Monday, December 7, the 2009 U.N. Climate Change Conference opened its doors to 15,000 delegates from 192 countries.  The goal of this meeting is to form a global agreement to combat greenhouse gases.

So what’s the problem with greenhouse gases?

Well, as this great video from the BBC shows, we humans have been gassing away for awhile now.   Most scientists agree that this increase in greenhouse gases is causing a rise of global temperature.

To combat this rise in temperatures many have called for global action.  None have been louder (or more Nobel Prize winning) than that of former VP Al Gore.

Mr. Gore, writing at the Huffington Post, states that the time has come for action as the US is currently

trapped in a dangerous cycle—borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf, and then burn it in ways that destroy the planet.

The US Environmental Protection Agency agrees. Yesterday the agency announced that greenhouse gases are a health hazard.

We are told that this EPA announcement is a big deal…

Marc Ambinder, at The Atlantic explains,

the executive branch now believes it has the power to unilaterally impose carbon and greenhouse gas emissions caps on industry in the United States

especially if the US Congress fails to act.

Still, this is a global summit.

To be a success, the world needs to take action together and as Lisa Lerer points out in an article for Politico

China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has long resisted adopting binding emissions limits. Its position has made reaching a deal extremely difficult because the United States is reluctant to act unless China takes some serious steps.

Greenhouse gas restrictions are not applauded by everyone.  George F. Will, in an Op-Ed for the Washington Post, thinks this is all nonsense.

With such resistance to a climate change treaty at both home and abroad, is this Climate Summit doomed??

The New York Times

Doesn’t expect a planet-saving agreement from the negotiations that begin this week in Copenhagen aimed at reducing global emissions of greenhouse gases.

They do add a hopeful note that

there is a good chance for at least an interim deal, mainly because the United States and China, the world’s two biggest emitters, have promised to reduce or slow their emissions and their two leaders have agreed to attend.

So are we going to see a climate treaty at this meeting?  Is a global greenhouse gases a real threat?

We don’t have a clue, do you?  If you do hve an opinion on this subject, we’d love to read it (and even if you don’thave an opinion… feel free to post your thoughts anyways).

Thanks to Wikicommons.

Well I guess the African ski trip is out of the question. Mt. Kilimanjaro’s ice flees the heat and disappears.

Hats off to Afghanistan’s almost-fairly elected president. Obama congratulates Karzai on his second term.

America’s favorite partisan pastime? Does Major League Baseball favor the Yankees?

We at USDemocrazy love a good hoax, especially if it involves balloons.  This latest (balloon-free) hoax however takes the cake.

Yesterday the US Chamber of Commerce (who represents the interests business folk) announced that they were supporting the Kerry-Boxer bill, combating global warming (see above video).

This came as a shock to many. Why? Because the pro-business Chamber of Commerce thinks fighting Global warming will be bad for American businesses. In fact recently, they demanded that global warming be put on trial.

Why would the Chamber of Commerce make such a shocking turnaround?

Well because this wasn’t the real Chamber of Commerce.    Instead it was the Yes Men, a group of environmentally motivated pranksters.

The hoax was so well done that some news sources (not us, of course) ran the story as true.

So how did the Yes Men pull this off?  Well partially it was their excellently crafted email they sent out to news agencies.

The Chamber was not happy with this prank.  They fired back that

Public relations hoaxes undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change.

So what do you think?  Was this a harmless hoax or a pernicious prank?

Is this the Sun or the Earth?

We at USDemocrazy love colors… particularly in the spring. The world blossoms with lovely blues, reds and greens.

But now this world full of color is giving us the blues…

Despite the steps around the globe to go “green”, planet earth is still turning red.

This red is heat and this red is anger. This red may also be a warning—an ultimatum (play scary music).

We first red read about our planet’s growing redness earlier this year when Oxford professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, a noted scholar on the subject, discussed the daunting danger of greenhouse gasses.

Prof. Hans tells us parts of the ocean are becoming oxygen free zones.  No oxygen means no life. There are some 600-2,400 feet deep oxygen depleted holes in the open seas that are disrupting the aquatic food chain (and we don’t mean Safeway, SuperFresh or Giant).

Dr. Schellnhuber also warned of the looming disappearance of the rainforest, disruption of monsoon rain patterns, and rapid melting of the ice sheets in Greenland.

So (gulp) what does this environmental mayhem mean?

The buildup of greenhouse gasses will cause earth’s overall temperature to rise by 9 degrees Fahrenheit.

Don’t get too excited… This does not mean a longer summer and a darker tan. This means drought, devastation, and death.

“In a very cynical way, it’s a triumph for science because at least we have stabilized something—namely the estimates for the carrying capacity of the planet, namely below 1 billion people,” Schellenhuber noted. “No fluctuations anymore.”

Yes, you read that number correctly. The earth’s population would shrink from the present 9 billion inhabitants to 1 billion.

Schellnuber jokingly added that though the population would decrease, on the upside the world’s usable land would greatly increase… (finally we at USDemocrazy might be able to afford some property… assuming we are not victims of that drought, devastation, and death).

To view more on this study, click here.

To find out what YOU can do to stop the effects of global warming, visit the Green Guide.

Scientists weigh in on global warming…

Cleopatra, is that you? (A buried news story.)

We found some unsightly satire…