Monday, November 11, 2013
CONTACT ME AT: manessmorrison2@yahoo.com


News Clips For The Day


Illinois AG and neighbors sue over humongous heaps of 'petcoke' – NBC
By Lisa Riordan Seville
Investigative Reporter, NBC News

Along the banks of Chicago’s Calumet River, growing piles of black dust up to five stories high – a byproduct of oil refining called “petcoke” -- have sparked two lawsuits that allege the towering mounds pose grave threats to the environment and people of the city’s Southeast side.

“When the wind picks up and there’s a little breeze you’re getting black dust everywhere -- you can’t even open your back windows,” said Lilly Martin, 50, a plaintiff in one of the suits who lives just blocks from one of the piles.
Martin said the dust turns her pool water black and forces her to power wash her house weekly. But her real concern is for the health of her 21-year-old daughter, who suffers from asthma. “She can’t even go out and breathe the fresh air,” she said. “Where do we go if it’s all in the area here?”

The granular, coal-like material -- a carbon-rich residue from crude oil refining called petroleum coke, but often referred to as “petcoke” -- is used as an industrial fuel and has long been stored in open lots in Midwestern cities. There is little U.S. market for petcoke because it burns “dirty,” producing more emissions than coal.  But as refineries across the country have begun processing more heavy, carbon-rich crude oil from Canada’s “oil sands” fields, they have likewise been producing more petcoke. And though American entrepreneurs, led by the Koch brothers, have discovered a booming market for petcoke in China, the piles have grown larger.
Now residents of Chicago fear a repeat of what happened this summer in Detroit, when a high wind caught a mountain of petcoke on the lakefront and created a swirling tornado-shaped black cloud that stretched to the sky and blew into Ontario. The cloud made the national news in Canada.

The mountain that unleashed the cloud was owned by Koch Carbon, a subsidiary of Koch Industries. The resulting outcry reportedly led the company to relocate the pile to Ohio.
The mountains in Chicago are owned by a different Koch Industries subsidiary, KCBX, which now faces lawsuits from the Illinois attorney general, who is alleging violations of the state’s Environmental Protection Act, and neighbors of the petcoke piles. The residents of the South Deering and East Side neighborhoods are seeking damages in a class-action lawsuit for alleged harm to property and health. Both lawsuits also seek force the companies involved in storage and moving the petcoke to put in measures to control the dust that residents say has become a constant nuisance. 
“There will be a growing amount of petcoke that is coming to these areas,” said Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. “To the extent that there is already a problem, there is grave concern that there will be a much larger problem very soon.”
The AG’s suit, filed this week, alleges that the company failed to control dust on its storage site, which it said at times held as much as 350,000 tons of petcoke in piles up to 60 feet high. When the dust blows into the nearby neighborhoods, including two schools and a park within a mile, it “gets into people’s eyes, is inhaled and coats people’s homes...threatening human health,” the complaint states. Inhaling petcoke dust could potentially cause “serious health problems,” it adds, including asthma and other respiratory problems.

The suit is seeking civil penalties of $50,000 for each violation of the state environmental law, and $10,000 for each day of the violation.
KCBX has not responded to the lawsuits and did not reply to an NBC News request for comment on them. 

The clashes over the petcoke piles in the Midwest are the latest example of the wide-reaching consequences of the North American energy boom, which can impact municipalities in unexpected ways.

While the U.S. is now producing more domestic high quality, "sweet light" crude oil than at any time in the past 20 years, several large Midwest refineries have recently switched to processing lower-grade, “heavy” crude from Canada’s oil sand fields. Transportation bottlenecks that crimp the movement of Canadian crude from the oil sands to refineries have created a glut of the tarry crude, pushing down prices.
To take advantage of the supply, refineries on the Gulf Coast and in the Midwest have altered their operations – increasing the size of “coker” units that break carbon away from lighter materials used in gas and diesel --- to process the Canadian crude, which produces more petcoke than almost any other type of oil.
“More and more heavy crude is available in their neighborhood,” Rob Smith, a managing director at PFC Energy, a consulting group that specializes in the oil and gas industry, said of the refineries. “The more coking capacity you have, the more petcoke there will be.”

While petcoke can also be used as industrial fuel, along with or instead of coal, there is little domestic demand for it because it produces increased greenhouse gas emissions when burned. That means most of it is exported, but only after being collected in massive piles and then transported to ports.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has set rules that apply to controlling dust from petcoke, but it has not sought to regulate it as a hazardous substance. 
Petroleum industry safety guidelines recommend that it be stored to “avoid generating heavy concentrations of airborne, finely-ground petroleum coke dust (and) … accumulations of finely ground dust on surfaces of equipment or buildings."

Last winter, Marathon Oil completed a $2.2 billion upgrade to its Detroit refinery, which included a near doubling of its coking capacity. By spring, Detroiters were protesting the mountains of black pebbly material rising up along the waterfront.
In August the city cited the company that owns the storage facility for violating city regulations and barred storage of petcoke at the riverside site. Koch Industries later reportedly moved the pile to a site in Toledo, Ohio, according to the Detroit Free Press. A spokesman for the Koch Companies Public Sector did not respond to NBC News’ requests for comment about the move.
Koch Industries is also the parent company of KCBX, which owns the controversial petcoke piles in Chicago. The Koch family is known for its generous financial support for conservative and libertarian causes and active opposition to environmental regulations.

Chicago’s petcoke comes from a refinery in Whiting, Ind., which is poised to bring on what owner BP (formerly British Petroleum) says is the country’s second-largest coker by the end of the year. The refinery has long processed some heavy crude, but will now devote itself to refining product from the Canadian oil sands. The $3.8 million expansion will increase petcoke production from 600,000 tons per year to 2.2 million, according to a company spokesman.
Petcoke is used by some U.S. industries, notably in making steel and aluminum. But most of the fuel-grade product being produced by the Midwest refineries is eventually exported to China and other Asian countries. Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show petcoke exports to China have hit record levels since 2011.
Some environmental groups worry that rock-bottom prices for petcoke will prompt power plants here to make use of it despite the higher emissions.

“They have to dump it in the market cheap,” said Lorne Stockman, author of a critical report on petcoke for the environmental group Oil Change International. “Not all of the U.S. production could be used here, but all of BP Whiting and Marathon’s production could be soaked up in the Midwest.”

DTE Energy, a Detroit-based energy company, has experimented with using petcoke in an industrial fuel mix to reduce energy costs, according to its website. A power plant in Nova Scotia, Canada, has also made use of some of the coke once piled in Detroit, the New York Times reported last summer.

For Chicago residents, broader concerns about petcoke take a backseat to those close to home. Terms of BP’s Clean Air Act permit and a federal legal settlement require the oil company keep the petcoke walled in while on the refinery property, but no such regulations exist for areas where it is stored before being moved to market.

Complaints to the Illinois EPA about the massive mounds of petcoke along the Calumet River increased markedly in December, when KCBX, the Koch subsidiary, acquired the riverfront terminal from DTE Energy, which previously held the contract to move the petcoke from BP’s Whiting refinery, according to the lawsuit filed by the state attorney general.

KCBX is in the process of upgrading the terminal, Paul Baltzer, spokesman for its parent company, Koch Companies Public Sector, said in an email statement.
“We are in the final stages of constructing more than $10 million in upgrades, including improvements to the site’s dust suppression capabilities,” said Baltzer.
In an emailed statement, a spokesman for BP said the company has “been told by KCBX that they are in compliance with Illinois regulations.”

Methods of controlling dust with water sprayers have long been in place in California and the Gulf coasts, but rules in Midwestern states are generally less strict. That puts neighbors of the petcoke mounds at risk, said Tom Zimmerman, a lawyer representing residents in the Chicago class-action lawsuit. 
“This dust is blowing all throughout the neighborhood,” he said of his clients. “There’s nowhere to go, unless they want to be prisoners within their own homes.”


Several things in this article stand out to me. First, the Koch family allegedly supports conservative and libertarian causes generously and they have an active opposition to environmental regulations. Second, the BP contract requires the piles of petcoke to be walled in at the refinery, but not at storage points. Third, rules on the storing of petcoke are less stringent in the Midwestern states than in California, where water has to be sprayed on the piles to keep the dust from blowing.

The Koch family is against environmental regulations, but it is clear in this instance that it is the absence of tight regulations in the Midwest that is causing the problem of airborne dust. Where there is a loophole in the law or regulations, the slippery eels of big business will slide right through.

Another thing “conservative” people in the country don't like is class action law suits because they allow poor people to bring a suit and allow minority issues to be aired. I've heard a number of Republicans speak against trial lawyers, especially since trial lawyers are often Democrats. I think the courts sometimes award too much money in suits, more than is fair, but it was a class action suit that stopped the cigarette companies from marketing their products without warning labels. Policemen and lawyers should sometimes be tough guys, because the opposition is somewhere between “tough” and criminal in so many cases. O. J. Simpson won in court, but was hit with a law suit. It's one way of achieving justice, and I do believe in justice.





Pope commemorates Nazi's Kristallnacht attack on Jewish 'big brothers' – NBC

By Naomi O'Leary, Reuters
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis described the Jewish people as the "big brothers" of his Roman Catholic flock on Sunday in words of solidarity marking the 75th anniversary of the Kristallnacht attacks on Jews and their property in Nazi Germany.
Francis said the state-sponsored ransacking of Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues, on the night of November 9, 1938, in which scores of Jewish people were killed, marked a step towards the Holocaust and should not be forgotten.
"We renew our closeness and solidarity to the Jewish people, our big brothers, and pray to God that the memory of the past and of the sins of the past helps us to be always vigilant against every form of hate and intolerance," Francis told thousands in St. Peter's Square in his Sunday mass.
The leader of the Roman Catholic Church has pledged good relations with Jews and his March election was welcomed by the world's Jewish associations.

Francis co-authored a book on inter-faith dialogue with Argentine Rabbi Abraham Skorka while he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires.


The fact that the Christian populations in Europe have, down through the centuries, killed Jews en masse from time to time and made laws against them, forcing them to live in ghettos, while the Jews have never retaliated in kind, makes me sympathize almost completely with the Jews. I don't like their behavior against the Arabs in Palestine, especially their insisting on building Jewish settlements in the disputed territories. I think they should cease that practice and deal more fairly, but by and large, they have been treated very unfairly by others, as have the blacks in the Southern US.

Then in more recent times there has emerged a movement that denies that the Holocaust ever happened, which some very biased individuals are happy to claim, though I'm sure they know it isn't true. To me, this Pope keeps showing himself to be what I consider to be a good Christian, more like Christ himself was, showing mercy and love. I am following the Pope with growing respect. It takes courage to stand up against centuries of hard line thinking, especially within a power structure like the Catholic Church. I hope no paid assassin or deranged person tries to kill him. Sometimes courage is very dangerous, and I sense that it may be in this case. I am keeping him in my thoughts.






PG-13 movies are now more violent than R-rated '80s flicks -study – NBC

Melissa Dahl TODAY

Movies from the 1980s like “Terminator” or “Die Hard” were rated R at the time of their release – but if they were released today, they’d probably be rated PG-13, a new study suggests.
That's because PG-13 movies today — such as “The Hunger Games” or “The Avengers” — contain more violence than the R-rated films of the 1980s, according to a new report published today in the journal Pediatrics. In particular, gun violence in PG-13 films has tripled since 1985, the year the PG-13 rating was first introduced. And overall, violence in movies has nearly quadrupled since the 1950s.
Psychologists say it’s a worrisome trend that we should take seriously, because there is evidence that watching violence on screen increases aggression in real life.
“Of course it’s not the only factor, and it may not even be the most important factor, but it isn’t a trivial factor — and it’s one we can change," says Brad Bushman, an Ohio State University psychologist and lead author of the new report.
Bushman and colleagues analyzed 945 popular films released from 1950 to 2012. Each movie was among the 30 top-grossing films of that year, and they randomly chose 15 of those top 30 movies to scrutinize. Undergrads watched every film and counted every violent act — they defined a violent sequence as “physical acts where the aggressor makes or attempts to make some physical contact with the intention of causing injury or death.”
They found that since 2009, PG-13 movies have featured as much or more violence than the R-rated films released those same years. And in 2012, there was more gun violence in PG-13 films than in the R-rated ones out that year.
Take the “Die Hard” sequels. One of the films the undergrads analyzed was 1990’s “Die Hard 2,” which was rated R. But a later sequel in the series, 2007’s “Live Free or Die Hard,” actually had more gun violence and a comparable amount of overall violence—and yet it was rated PG-13.

Same idea with the “Terminator” movies: The third one in the series, “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” was included in the study— it got an R rating in 2003. But they found that it had less gun violence than 2009’s “Terminator Salvation,” which received a PG-13 rating.
One more example that really jumped out at study co-author Dan Romer was the famously violent 1987 film “The Untouchables.”
“It had gun violence in it that was comparable to a lot of the movies we’re calling PG-13 in the last five years,” says Romer, director of the Adolescent Communication Institute at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center. 
“I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘The Untouchables’ today would get a PG-13.” He thinks the same would apply to the Eddie Murphy comedy “Beverly Hills Cop,” which was rated R in 1984, but feels more like today’s PG-13 movies in terms of violence.

“There are exceptions, but in the top-grossing films, over 90 percent of them have some violence,” Romer says. “Violence is very good for Hollywood. And PG-13 is good for Hollywood, because it doesn’t restrict anyone from going into the theater.”
There are a few things that might explain the remarkable rise in violence in PG-13 films. Ratings are determined by the Motion Picture Association of America — which means, Bushman says, they’re “assigned by the industry.” (The MPAA declined to comment on the study, but you can read more about the ratings system here.) 
And a movie rated PG-13 will attract more theatergoers than an R, of course, because kids can go see it. Romer also thinks the rise in sci-fi and comic book movies has something to do with it —violence may be easier for us to handle if it’s got a fantasy element to it. And violence is understandable in every language, which means violence-fueled action movies are more marketable overseas than comedies.

The researchers also examined graphic sexual scenes in the movies they analyzed, and found that sex was much more likely to earn a film an R-rating than violence. “Take a film like ‘Ted.’ There’s hardly any violence in that. But because he has sex—not even very graphic sex, they just show him having sex — that gets an R,” Romer says. 
It's worth noting that there is also a lot of crude language in that movie, which can also garner a film an R rating. “(Sex) consistently gets an R rating if it’s at all explicit, but that’s not the case with violence," Romer says.

We don’t like the idea that violent movies —or TV shows or video games — influence our behavior. But many studies have suggested that they do. One often-cited 1967 study found that the mere sight of a gun made people act with more hostility, deciding to deliver a harsher electric shock to another study participant. More than 50 other studies since have found similar evidence of the “weapons effect” — the idea that just seeing a weapon can increase aggression.

“People tell me all the time, I watch violent media and I’ve never killed anyone. Well, big deal. Nobody kills anyone; murder is a very rare event,” says Bushman. “So you’ve never murdered anyone. What I want to know is —how do you treat other people?”
Watching violent images doesn’t always make us more likely to want to punch things; it can also make us less likely to help people in need, Bushman found in a 2009 study. This is true for all of us, but psychologists agree that children are particularly vulnerable.

Bushman would like to eventually see movie ratings in the U.S. decided by a panel that includes child psychologists, with ratings that clearly spell out which ages the movie is appropriate for. But until then, parents who are worried about their kids seeing violent images on screen can take a few pages from Bushman’s book. 
For one, he blocks all violent and sexual content online. He also encourages parents to do their homework – if the kids want to see a movie or buy a video game, Google it first. Scenes from many popular video games are available on YouTube, for example. And parents should also always explain their decision to their kids
Recently, after reviewing his own son’s birthday wish list, he told him, “You listed five games, and these three are OK. These other two are not good, and let me show you why. We try to give you healthy choices, and not just for food, but for your media diet as well.”


It seems to me it's time to change the PG-13 movie rating category to exclude violence again. This article suggests having child psychologists on the panel who are reviewing the movies. The 2009 study that found violence in films and the showing of a gun increase aggression and make viewers less likely to help people in need. I think we are seeing the results of this in the US – there is more violence on the news than when I was a child and these terrible bullying incidents usually have an audience as they occur, who generally don't interfere. Of course, there is also the fact that people are more and more crowded up into cities now, where we know fewer of our neighbors personally and the very fact of living too close to other families removes privacy and peacefulness from our lives. Many of our problems as a society are beyond our control,for instance the tendency is for cities to grow larger and larger, but we can control what the negative content of films is, so we should do it.




Keeper killed at Oregon wildcat sanctuary was alone in cage, director says – NBC

By Daniel Arkin, Staff Writer, NBC News
An employee at an Oregon animal sanctuary was killed when she alone in a wildcat cage, the organization said Sunday.
Renee Radziwon-Chapman, 36, of Portland, Ore., had been the head keeper at WildCat Haven Sanctuary for nearly a decade before she was killed Saturday evening.
"Right now, our thoughts and prayers are with the family of our dear colleague and friend who we have so sadly lost," said WildCat Haven Executive Director Cheryl Tuller in a statement. "We are devastated by this loss."
The sanctuary, which rescues captive-born wild cats, has stringent safety measures for employees and volunteers, according to the statement.
Sanctuary officials believe that at the time of the fatal attack Radziwon-Chapman was alone at the sanctuary and alone in the enclosure with cats.

"The sanctuary's handbook specifies that "two qualified staff members shall work together during the lock out of dangerous animals. Once the animals are locked out, one staff member can safely enter the enclosure to clean or make repairs. Two qualified staff members shall be available when releasing animals from lockout areas," the statement said.
Officials said they are still investigating the incident.
At the time of the attack, no cat had escaped from the enclosures, which are surrounded on all sides by 14-foot tall walls of six-gauge wire and are safeguarded by secure ceilings, lockout area and double-door entries, according to the statement. Larger enclosures are also surrounded by four-foot concrete walkways.
“The enclosures exceed what is required by the U.S Department of Agriculture, which inspects the facility yearly,” the statement said.
Sheriff's Sgt. Robert Wurpes told the Associated Press on Saturday that the animal was locked in a cage after the attack.
Radziwon-Chapman was remembered by a colleague as a seasoned worker with an affinity for animals who may have just mysteriously slipped up.
"Her relationship with the cats was amazing," Jim Caliva, a WildCat Haven Sanctuary board member, told The Oregonian newspaper. "She knew exactly what she was doing, but apparently there was a mistake. I don't know what it could be."
The sanctuary is located in the suburb of Sherwood, just outside the city of Portland



The zoo keeper in this case may have seen something alarming in the animal's cage and gone in to intervene. I can't think of another likelihood to cause her to enter alone, against the rules of the Wild Cat Haven. This article doesn't say what kind of cat killed her, but I looked on the website of the Haven and saw photographs of a tiger, a cougar and a small cat that looked like a type that is found in Europe, with tabby stripes, which is simply called a European Wildcat. They are thought to be the origin of our domestic cats.

Zoo work is always potentially dangerous. Even animals like pandas can attack. This is a sad story. Zoos are in some cases housing the last remainders of animals that are endangered in the wild, and will become more and more important as poachers kill tigers to sell in China to make “medicine.” I wish human societies would live with nature, not despoil it.





Pakistani private schools ban Malala Yousafzai autobiography – NBC

By Daniel Arkin, Staff Writer, NBC News

Pakistani private schools have been barred from buying a book written by Malala Yousafzai, the 16-year-old activist who was shot in the head by Taliban militants last year for defying the Islamist militant group and advocating for girls' right to an education.
"Yes we have banned Malala's book because it carries the content which is against our country's ideology and Islamic values," Kashif Mirza, chief of All Pakistan Private Schools Federation, told the Agence France-Presse news agency.
And Mirza told the Associated Press that Malala, who has received significant global media attention, had betrayed Pakistan.
She "was a role model for children, but this book has made her controversial," he said, according to the AP. "Through this book, she became a tool in the hands of the Western powers."

He added that the book did not show sufficient respect for Islam because it used the Prophet Mohammed's name without the abbreviation PBUH — "Peace Be Unto Him" — afterward, as is customary in many regions of the Muslim world.
Malala Yousafzai opens the new Library of Birmingham at Centenary Square in September in Birmingham, England.
Marzi also took issue with paragraphs in the book about Salman Rushdie, the British novelist who in 1989 became the target of a fatwa — religious edict — issued by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini calling for his death due to allegedly blasphemous references to the Prophet Mohammed in his novel "The Satanic Verses."

He told AFP that roughly 152,000 private schools across Pakistan defended Malala after she was shot in the head Oct. 9, 2012, by Tehreek-e-Taliban militants while on a school bus near her village in Swat in northwestern Pakistan.
But he added that officials cannot abide the opinions expressed in her autobiography, "I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban."

Yousafzai began her education campaign by starting a blog in 2009, describing the obstacles faced by girls who wanted to attend school in Pakistan. She said being shot had only strengthened her resolve. 
Malala was a favorite to win the Nobel Peace Prize last month — but the honor went instead to the Netherlands-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which is working to destroy the chemical weapons arsenal held by Syrian President Bashar Assad. 

Meanwhile, just three days ago, the Taliban commander whose fighters were blamed for shooting Malala was named the new leader of the Pakistani Taliban, the militant group told NBC News.
Maulana Fazlullah, who is known as “Radio Mullah” due to his incendiary on-air statements, succeeds Hakimullah Mehsud, who was killed by a U.S.-launched drone strike Friday.


The US wants Pakistan as an ally, but their people are miles away from our positions on cultural issues, and seem to be firmly controlled by the Taliban. I hope Malala will make the West her home and continue to write. England is a good place for her to live.






U.N. climate panel corrects carbon numbers in influential report – NBC
Alister Doyle Reuters

WARSAW, Nov 11 (Reuters) - The United Nation's panel of climate experts revised estimates of historical greenhouse gas emissions, made in September, both up and down on Monday but said the errors did not affect conclusions that time was running out to limit global warming.
More heatwaves, floods and rising sea levels are forecast in the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC), which guides governments on shifting towards cleaner energy sources.
The panel had hoped to avoid more corrections after an embarrassing error about Himalayan ice-melt in its 2007 report.
"I don't see it as a significant change," IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, told Reuters on the sidelines of a Nov. 11-22 meeting of almost 200 nations in Warsaw, Poland.

Among changes, the IPCC revised down the cumulative amount of carbon emitted since 1860-1881 to 515 billion tonnes from 531 billion given in September, and revised up the amount emitted since 1750 to 555 billion tonnes from 545 billion.

Global emissions are now running at about 10 billion tonnes of carbon a year, meaning those change are equivalent to about a year to a year and a half of emissions.
"Errors in the summary for policymakers were discovered by the authors of the report after its approval and acceptance by the IPCC," it said in a statement.
It did not say how the errors had been made.
The IPCC says the world has emitted more than half the estimated 1 trillion tonne of carbon viewed as the maximum to keep temperatures within safe limits at below two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above the period 1861-1880 with more than a two-thirds probability, it said.

Many experts say that the world has only a few decades left before breaching the IPCC safety limits unless tough action is taken to cut emissions.

When asked if the correction would affect the credibility of the IPCC, Pachauri said, "I don't think so."
The IPCC's September report said the probability that most climate change since 1950 is manmade increased to 95 percent from 90 percent in 2007.
Bob Ward, of the London School of Economics, said Monday's correction made little difference to the overall carbon budget of a trillion tonnes.
"Climate change 'sceptics' will no doubt desperately seize on these corrections and falsely allege that it undermines the whole report, but the public and policy-makers should not be fooled by such claims," he said in a statement. (Editing by Louise Ireland and Nina Chestney)


List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Listing criteria: The notable scientists listed in this article have made statements since the publication of the Third Assessment Report which disagree with one or more of these 3 main conclusions. Each scientist included in this list has published at least one peer-reviewed article in the broad field of natural sciences, although not necessarily in a field relevant to climatology. To be included on this list it is not enough for a scientist to be merely included on a petition, survey, or list. Instead, the scientist must make their own statement.

As of August 2012[update], fewer than 10 of the statements in the references for this list are part of the peer-reviewed scientific literature. The rest are statements from other sources such as interviews, opinion pieces, online essays and presentations. Academic papers almost never reject the view that human impacts have contributed to climate change. In 2004, a review of published abstracts from 928 peer-reviewed papers addressing "global climate change" found that none of them disputed the IPCC's conclusion that "Earth's climate is being affected by human activities" and that "most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations"[8] A 2013 survey of 3984 abstracts from peer-reviewed papers published between 1991 and 2011 that expressed an opinion on anthropogenic global warming found that 97.1% agreed that climate change is caused by human activity.[9]


This article from Wikipedia shows that by far the majority of scientific statements in peer-reviewed sources do not dispute the claim that human activity is causing the current trend of global warming, particularly the increase in greenhouse gases. Perhaps the influence of the UN climate panel will help to reduce the emissions of these gases on a worldwide basis. It's an uphill fight, though, because even when the intention to make positive changes is there it will still be difficult to accomplish. People need electricity and gasoline powered vehicles nowadays to carry on their lives. We may be on an inevitable downhill slide if global warming causes crops to fail and sea levels to rise, forcing people from their homes and bringing on famines. I hope these terrible possibilities don't come to pass.




White candidate wins after leading Tex. voters to think he's black – CBS
By Jake Miller
If you're a conservative white Republican running for public office in an overwhelmingly African-American area, you'll almost certainly face an uphill climb to victory.
The road might be a bit easier, however, if your campaign advertisements strongly imply that you're black.

That's what happened during a recent race for a seat on the Houston Community College Board of Trustees, when Dave Wilson -- a white, anti-gay activist and former fringe candidate for mayor -- defeated 24-year incumbent Bruce Austin by only 26 votes to claim the win, CBS affiliate KHOU reports.

Wilson, who said he was fed up with "all the shenanigans" within the community college system, circulated campaign flyers featuring smiling African-American faces lifted from the Internet and accompanied by the text "Please vote for our friend and neighbor Dave Wilson."

One campaign flyer said Wilson had been "Endorsed by Ron Wilson" -- an apparent nod to a popular black former state representative by that name. But in a bait and switch, the "Ron Wilson" referred to on the direct mail piece was Wilson's cousin, who just happens to share a name with the former lawmaker.
"He's a nice cousin," Wilson told KHOU, stifling a laugh. "We played baseball in high school together, and he's endorsed me."

His opponent denounced Wilson's tactics as "disgusting" and vowed to seek a recount.
"I don't think it's good for both democracy and the whole concept of fair play," Austin said. "But that was not his intent, apparently."

"He never put out to voters that he was white," Austin added in a statement, according to the Houston Chronicle. "The problem is his picture was not in the League of Voters [pamphlet] or anywhere. This is one of the few times a white guy has pretended to be a black guy and fooled black people."

Austin even circulated his own fliers, lambasting Wilson as a "right wing hate monger," but he ultimately proved unable to halt Wilson's rise.
Despite the razor-thin margin, some wondered whether the election results might have had more to do with the sorry state of Houston's community college system, which has recently come under fire for insider business deals, than a deceptive campaign by one of the candidates.
"I suspect it's more than just race," says Bob Stein, a Rice University political scientist told KHOU. "The Houston Community College was under some criticism for bad performance. And others on the board also had very serious challenges."


This story really takes the cake! I've never seen anything this deceptive before. They should hold the election over to correct the result. Luckily it wasn't an election for a high-level public office. It's so bizarre it's funny. This guy gives Republicans, who are always trying to find evidence of cheating among the Democrats, a bad name. He is even laughing about it. No conscience!