Lincoln Didn’t Fight The Civil War to Free The Corporations: Thom Hartmann

TEDx Talks

Published on May 9, 2014

Thom Hartmann is a progressive syndicated talk show host heard in over a half-billion homes worldwide. He’s a New York Times best-selling, 4-time Project Censored Award-winning author of 24 books. One of his books sparked a national debate on ADD/ADHD and neurological differences ranging from giftedness to autism. Another book so inspired a U.S. Senator that he delivered copies of the book to his 99 colleagues in the Senate and read from it extensively on the floor of the Senate.

Thom has spent much of his life working with and for the relief organization, Salem International. He and his wife Louise also founded a community for abused children in New Hampshire, as well as a school for learning disabled and ADHD kids. A Michigan native with strong ties to the Midwest—but currently living on a boat in Washington D.C.—Hartmann is an inveterate traveler and occasional risk-taker and has often found himself in the world’s hot spots during pivotal moments in history.

Environmental Justice
Environment Ethics

EV & N – 152 – CCTV | Real Problems – False Solutions: Climate Change, Food Security & “Bio-technology”

https://www.cctvcambridge.org/node/242458
https://www.cctvcambridge.org/user/ccra

Climate change will cause food shortages. But wide-spread use of GMOs can make the global food system even more vulnerable and less reliable with the threat of larger scale famines and a more inequitable-world wide food distribution.   GMOs and the industrial agriculture that they depend upon create more petro-intensive food systems which contribute massively to further carbon emissions and inevitably become more expensive as the price of petroleum increases.

Photosynthesis should capture solar energy and, thus, be a net energy producer in the global ecosystem.  For this reason, the introduction of GMOs and the greater dependence upon fossil fuel-based production that these organisms require is forcing the global food system in the wrong direction with dangerous implications for the sustainability of human societies.  There is no such thing as a post-agricultural civilization.  If humans tie their agriculture irretrievably to a non-renewable resource, they will guarantee their own non-renewal.

Human communities need instead to use the diminishing fossil fuels to design and re-enstate a solar-sustainable food system that can support our complex civilization indefinitely into the future.

Posted by CCRA on May 18, 2014.

Global Climate Change
Environmental Justice
Environment Ethics
Food-Matters

2005 Report Urges Action Against Ecosystem Damage : NPR

by David Malakoff

March 30, 2005 12:00 AM ET

A new report by more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries finds that unless governments act now, environmental damage will doom efforts to reduce hunger, poverty and disease. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment draws on the work of environmental scientists who have shown that ecosystems such forests, coral reefs and salt marshes are key for human survival.

Global Climate Change
Environmental Justice
Environment Ethics
Food-Matters

Eight Pseudoscientific Climate Claims Debunked by Real Scientists | Connecting the Dots

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

May 16, 2014
by Joshua Holland

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.

…(read more).

Global Climate Change
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The Relentless Attack on Climate Scientist Ben Santer | Blog, We’re Not Making This Up! | BillMoyers.com

Dr. Benjamin D. Santer, who was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for research supporting the finding that human activity contributes to global warming, is currently a climate researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. (Photo: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

May 16, 2014

The following is an excerpt from Merchants of Doubt by Erik M. Conway and Naomi Oreskes.

Ever since scientists first began to explain the evidence that our climate was warming — and that human activities were probably to blame — people have been questioning the data, doubting the evidence and attacking the scientists who collect and explain it. And no one has been more brutally — or more unfairly — attacked than Ben Santer.

Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the world’s leading authority on climate issues. Established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program, it was created in response to early warnings about global warming. Scientists had known for a long time that increased greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels could cause climate change — they had explained this to Lyndon Johnson in 1965 — but most thought that changes were far off in the future. It wasn’t until the 1980s that scientists started to worry — to think that the future was perhaps almost here — and a few mavericks began to argue that anthropogenic climate change was actually already underway. So the IPCC was created to evaluate the evidence and consider what the impacts would be if the mavericks were right.

….(read more).

Global Climate Change
Environmental Justice
Environment Ethics

NorthWest Indian News – Coal Train Protest +

http://nwin.tv/NWIN58.html

NWIN 58 stories:

“Coal Train Protest”

“Yakama Power”

“Lamprey Harvest”

“Suquamish Museum”

Environmental Justice
Environment Ethics

“Pale Blue Dot – An Unauthorized View”…Episode 1: “Wanderers”

kasranov

Published on Aug 21, 2012

Originally uploaded to Google Video in July of 2007 (with very nearly 50,000 views to its credit there), “Wanderers” finally makes its official, full-length (40 minutes), full-resolution, “unmodified” debut on YouTube. A quick scan of the other videos in the righthand column reveals a good many random, lower-resolution “versions” of this video (including one version very kindly subbed in Spanish!) that have been uploaded by others over the years. Thanks to all for keeping the fire burning. With Google Video’s migration to YouTube now underway, I’m pleased to finally be able to bring this old war horse back to the stable.

-=-

Some time before he died in 1996, Carl Sagan recorded a partial audio version of his 1994 book “Pale Blue Dot”. Often described as the “sequel” to Cosmos, the audio version of Pale Blue Dot is, at this moment, regrettably out of print.

This video represents an “episode one” of sorts, the beginning of an unauthorized video series based on Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” audio book, combined with a soundtrack and appropriate images intended to recall the feel of classic BBC/PBS documentary series, such as “Ascent of Man” and “Cosmos”. Episode two, in production seemingly forever, is on its way.

-=-

Please visit the project website: http://kasranov.blogspot.com. Sincere thanks to all for their messages of support and encouragement regarding the next episode. A project update and additional details about Episode 2 will be released soon.

Pale Blue Dot: Wanderers
Author, Narrator: Carl Sagan
Editor, Director: Kasranov
Soundtrack: Vangelis, Moszkowski
July 7th, 2007

Global Climate Change
Environmental Justice
Environment Ethics

THE SAGAN SERIES – The Pale Blue Dot

Reid Gower

Published on Oct 21, 2013

Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/thesaganseries
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G+ – http://bit.ly/VpHzQh

The Sagan Series is an educational project working in the hopes of promoting scientific literacy in the general population. Created by @ReidGower http://twitter.com/reidgower

Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. All copyrighted materials contained herein belong to their respective copyright holders, I do not claim ownership over any of these materials. I realize no profit, monetary or otherwise, from the exhibition of these videos.

Global Climate Change
Environmental Justice
Environment Ethics

Doomed by Displacement- A Short Film on the displaced affected by Hirakud Dam

IndiaWater Portal

Published on May 17, 2014

Hirakud dam is the oldest dam in India and it has displaced more than one lakh people without proper resettlement.

As far as basic amenities are concerned, the displaced still do not have a water connection, permanent job, schools and other basic services including health.

This is a short film on the condition of Hirakud dam displaced people. Read more: http://www.indiawaterportal.org/artic…

Global Climate Change
Environmental Justice
Environment Ethics
Food-Matters

GMO ‘Terrorists’: Russia seeks criminal punishment for bio-tech companies

RT

Published on May 17, 2014

Genetically modified food is accused of dangerously toying with nature. Its potential negative health effects are making Russia take steps. A draft law submitted to the Russian parliament seeks to impose punishment up to criminal prosecution to producers of genetically-modified organisms harmful to health or the environment. RT’s Egor Piskunov reports.

Global Climate Change
Environmental Justice
Environment Ethics
Food-Matters