Largest ever growth in carbon emissions and some unscientific reporting

The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.

The world pumped about 564 million more tons (512 million metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009. That’s an increase of 6 percent. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries — China, the United States and India, the world’s top producers of greenhouse gases.

Source: Associated Press on Google News

A classic case of unscientific reporting. Counting carbon emission by country doesn’t represent an accurate picture. Comparing the states of the U.S. and to the single country of Germany is wrong.

A little research on the site that created the map above shows that Europe combined has over 1,500 million metric tons, with Western Europe producing 700+. Add in Germany and you’re at over 900 million metric tons.

India doesn’t seem so bad now at 564.

Further, if you start comparing land mass or GDP the story changes even more. For example, here are the countries by land mass:

  • Japan – 820.2 (metric tons/sq km)
  • Germany – 582.6
  • China – 233.2
  • India – 171.6
  • US – 152.4
Of course, the important story here is the rapid growth in emissions, but it’s also important to get our facts straight. Education will play just as big a role as technological advances in solving this global crisis. It’s time to move the discussion forward to a more mature understanding of the situation.

Occupy Wall Street: Finding a voice, a message and an audience

** This is a guest post by Bernie Lee **

Trying to write a blog post about Occupy Wall Street that’s fair a balanced has become an endeavor that has led me around in circles. It’s unlike other protest movements such the anti-war hippie movement or the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s. In those there were clear leaders and a clear message and the voice was of an identifiable demographic of the American public.

Two historic movements have the same complications that plague Occupy Wall Street: the American and French Revolutions.

I hate revisionist history. It’s also difficult to enumerate all of the reasons and events that led to the American Revolution. It’s really hard to take off “presentism” goggles as we try to look back into history and learn from the events of the past.

Fact: George Washington was the leader of the American armies during the revolution.
Opinion: George Washington was a badass and an impeccable leader of men.

For many people in the US, my statement that George Washington was a badass is merely an opinion and may be refuted is tantamount to speaking heresy in front of an inquisitor during the Spanish Inquisition or having gone up to McCarthy with the news that I’m a communist. Now that I’ve put that seed of thought in your mind, let me try to amend your opinion by saying that I’m not a communist. Of course whether you believe that or not remains to be seen. Hopefully you haven’t passed judgement on me and decided the rest of this post is not worth reading.

In his book, The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama explains that there is only one right that a human being can protect on his/her own – his/her right to life. Any other “right” that we believe we have is given to us by the social system we live under. I don’t have a right to speak my mind. In a different community, I could be silenced via censorship, incapacitation, imprisonment or death. However, the US Constitution is a social contract that states that as a citizen of the US, I have the right to speak my mind. My government protects my freedom of speech.

Continue reading “Occupy Wall Street: Finding a voice, a message and an audience”

Star Wars opening title re-imagined as an animated motion picture

If Star Wars was filmed two decades earlier and Saul Bass did the opening title sequence, it “might” look like this…

Saul Bass (May 8, 1920 – April 25, 1996) was a Jewish-American graphic designer and filmmaker, best known for his design of animated motion picture title sequences.

During his 40-year career Bass worked for some of Hollywood’s greatest filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese.

From Wikipedia

and a video response:

Hollywood insider event – hang out with celebrities as they read your favorite scripts

I shouldn’t be telling you this because our undiscovered gem may become even more popular. As it stands now the tickets are sold out within hours of release.

Anyway, it’s late on a Friday so maybe no one will read this…

Last night, a crowd of industry insiders and excited film enthusiasts gathered at the Bing Theater at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) for a live table-read of John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club.

This time, instead of Molly Ringwald and the gang, Up in the Air director Jason Reitman gathered an equally eclectic group of actors to reimagine the diverse sterotypes portrayed in the film. A lovely and very pregnant Jennifer Garner was beauty queen Claire (Molly Ringwald), James Van Der Beek was Andy the jock (Emilio Estevez), Mindy Kaling was basket case Allison (Ally Sheedy), Patton Oswalt was Brian the geek (Anthony Michael Hall), and, probably best of all, Breaking Bad‘s Aaron Paul was the criminal Bender (Judd Nelson).

Rounding up the cast as those ever-meddling adults (cue eye-roll) were J.K. Simmons as Carl the janitor, and Michael Chiklis as Mr. Vernon. Reitman himself called out the directions on stage, while images from the film flashed on stage to signal a change of scene.

from PopWatch

The event has the boring title of Live Read of the Breakfast Club, directed by Jason Reitman. They are anything but boring as 100 movie-goers sit in a small theater with eight super-star celebrities, and watch while they make movie magic.

The latest one, The Apartment, brought in a whole new cadre of actors and actresses, including Pierce Brosnan, Natalie Portman, and Steve Carell.

The next one in the monthly series, The Princess Bride, should be even better than the first two. But, don’t worry the tickets are completely sold out.

Keep your eyes open for the next one and don’t steal my ticket!

The Earth is filling up, by NPR (video)

It was just over two centuries ago that the global population was 1 billion — in 1804. But better medicine and improved agriculture resulted in higher life expectancy for children, dramatically increasing the world population, especially in the West.

As higher standards of living and better health care are reaching more parts of the world, the rates of fertility — and population growth — have started to slow down, though the population will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

U.N. forecasts suggest the world population could hit a peak of 10.1 billion by 2100 before beginning to decline. But exact numbers are hard to come by — just small variations in fertility rates could mean a population of 15 billion by the end of the century.