Hotel ordered to remove Gore book from Sarah Palin's room

By GottaLaff

Ew! Gore cooties! Somebody fumigate so Drilly McOilGlug doesn't get a whiff of environmental friendliness... or an education:

The customary copy of "An Inconvenient Truth" was conveniently missing from Palin's room at the eco-friendly Gaia Shasta Hotel & Spa, where she and her daughter freshened up before Palin's sold-out appearances at the recent Sierra Cascade Logging Conference in Redding.

"We were under strict instructions" to make sure the Gore books were removed from rooms used by Palin and other conference VIPs, a hotel staffer told me last night.

No kidding. Seems, despite her protests to the contrary, she really does ban books after all.

So, yes, she's that insulated, that closed-minded, and that disconnected from reality.

Well, at least the next time someone asks her what she reads, she can tell them, um, what she doesn't read.

H/t: Markos

Cue the shrieks-- It Came from Wasilla: Miss Personality...Disorder

By GottaLaff

Illustration by Risko.
The pattern is inescapable: she takes disagreements personally, and swiftly deals vengeance on enemies, real or perceived.

It never ends with Sarah Louise. Day after day, week after week, month after month, we are spoon-fed gift after gift:

She passes the press pen, where at least eight television cameras and a passel of reporters and photographers are corralled, and spots a reporter for a local community newspaper getting ready to take a happy snap with his pocket camera. For a split second she stops, pauses, turns her head and shoulders just so, and smiles. She holds the pose until she’s sure the man has his shot and then moves on. [...]

The brutal reality is that many people who have worked closely with Palin have found themselves disillusioned.

More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—“a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy”—and thought it fit her perfectly. When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig’s condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God’s, and signed it “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.”

Disorder

VIDEO-- Arctic methane: Bubble, bubble, toil and.... real trouble

By GottaLaff

Bubbles of warming, beneath the ice
As permafrost thaws in the Arctic, huge pockets of methane -- a potent greenhouse gas -- could be released into the atmosphere. Experts are only beginning to understand how disastrous that could be.

Inconvenient truths are bubbling up everywhere:

"Every time I see bubbles, I have the same feeling," says Katey Walter, a University of Alaska researcher. "They are amazing and beautiful."

Beautiful, yes. But ominous. When her pick breaks through the surface, the orbs burst with a low gurgle, spewing methane, a potent greenhouse gas that could accelerate the pace of climate change across the globe.

International experts are alarmed. "Methane release due to thawing permafrost in the Arctic is a global warming wild card," warned a report by the United Nations Environment Programme last year. Large amounts entering the atmosphere, it concluded, could lead to "abrupt changes in the climate that would likely be irreversible."

Methane (CH₄) has at least 20 times the heat-trapping effect of an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂). As warmer air thaws Arctic soils, as much as 55 billion metric tons of methane could be released from beneath Siberian lakes alone, according to Walter’s research. That would amount to 10 times the amount currently in the atmosphere. [...]

That gurgling gas could change the entire model for predicting global warming.

I woke up to way too much scary news today. I have no choice but to share it (reality sucks), with apologies for bumming you all out.

The inconvenient truth hurts

By GottaLaff

This is why it matters who is in the White House. To all those Neanderthal ignorami who scoffed at Al Gore:

Even if by some miracle the nations of the world could bring carbon dioxide levels back to those of the pre-industrial era, it would still take 1,000 years or longer for the climate changes already triggered to be reversed, scientists said Monday.

Not 10, not 100, but 1,000 years. 1,000.

The gas already here and the heat that has been absorbed by the ocean will exert their effects for centuries, according to an analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Here are a few examples of Bush's war on science. Out of contact with reality much? While tin-eared naysayers were busy protecting special interests, things were getting seriously out of hand.

No, BushCo isn't solely responsible for this crisis, but they wasted 8 precious years ignoring the Inconvenient Truth and destroying the environment with their ugly Bush stains.

[C]hanges in rainfall patterns will bring droughts to the American Southwest, southern Europe, northern Africa and western Australia comparable to those that caused the 1930s Dust Bowl in the U.S.

"People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide, the climate would go back to normal in 100 years, 200 years," lead author Susan Solomon, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a telephone news conference. "That's not true."

The changes will persist until at least the year 3000, said Solomon, who conducted the study with colleagues in Switzerland and France.

Scientists familiar with the report said it emphasized the need for immediate action to control emissions. [...]

"The policy relevance is clear: We need to act sooner, even if there is some doubt about exactly what will happen, because by the time the public and policymakers really realize the changes are here, it is far too late to do anything about it," Trenberth said. [...]

The slowness with which ocean water circulates is central to the new findings. [...] That gas accounts for about half of the global warming caused by greenhouse gases, but the other gases are removed from the atmosphere more quickly. Thus, the long-term influence of carbon dioxide will have the greatest effect on climate change, the report said.

Moreover, heat absorbed by the ocean is released slowly, and will continue to contribute to global warming even if the concentration of greenhouse gases should decline, the authors said. [...]

Melting of the icecaps could increase sea levels even more, inundating low-lying islands and continental shorelines, but the effects are too uncertain to quantify, Solomon said.

Reductions in rainfall would also last centuries, the report said, decreasing drinking water supplies, increasing fire frequency and devastating dry-season farming of wheat and maize.

Sleep well.

What next, "Carbon: The Musical"?

By GottaLaff

It's not exactly like a carbon footprint doing a little soft shoe, but think of the possibilities!

Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth,” first a film and then a book, is now becoming an opera. Officials of the Milan opera house La Scala say the Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli has been commissioned to write it for the 2011 season, The Associated Press reported. Mr. Battistelli is currently the artistic director of the Arena in Verona.

It's only over when the Exxon Mobil fatcat sings.