...the civilian in charge of a Worcester police station's surveillance team was suspended after detectives found, among one day's footage, a 20-minute sequence of close-ups of a woman's cleavage and backside as she walked oblivious through the streets. Whether the woman ever discovered she was the star of a kind of pervert Truman Show is not recorded. But the offending monitor escaped with a warning and was - unbelievably - back in post within weeks.
From next year the new Independent Safeguarding Authority will require any adult who come into contact with children or vulnerable adults either through their work or in voluntary groups to be vetted.
But Prof Furedi's report, Licensed to Hug, highlighted examples of when adult-child relationships were distorted by the need for CRB checks already being required by schools and other organisations.
In one example, a woman could not kiss her daughter goodbye on a school trip because she had not been vetted.
You parents MAKE ME SICK. You should all be torn apart by a lynch mob, and, God willing, one day you will be.
Are you a British parent? You could be a PEDO! TEST THEM ALL!
How did the UK fall so far, so fast? We could blame it on "New Labour", or Tony Blair - but let us not forget that Margaret Thatcher described "New Labour" as her "greatest achievement". Enter Steve Bell:
Keep breathing, Maggie, keep breathing. There's a special place in Hell awaiting thee. Oh yes, there is.
Taking a laptop through a US airport? Be prepared to hand it over for 2 weeks. Note: enough time for them to be thorough, and find everything you've ever done on that machine - including recover files that you "deleted".
Beautiful artwork of London Flooded. Images taken by submerged CCTV cameras, no doubt.
Here's a great George Carlin clip. It starts out sounding like a "normal" routine, and then turns into something very different. You're watching an audience being mugged - you can hear the phase change in their reaction when he drops the payload. Marvellous.
Thousands of Navajo have developed lung cancer, kidney disease and other serious illnesses linked to uranium mining — which has supplied the U.S. government with material for nuclear weapons and power plants from the 1940s through the ’80s. (Agencies such as the World Health Organization have documented the severe health effects of uranium exposure.)
Uranium mining in the United States came to a near halt in the early ’90s because of low uranium prices, related largely to the cooling of the arms race and public disillusionment with nuclear power. But now, thanks to skyrocketing oil prices and renewed interest in nuclear energy, companies are once again planning to mine uranium in and around Navajo land.
Whatever your plans are, I hope that you’re ready to execute them (or, better yet, are executing them). I’m pretty sure that most people have done nothing, and I don’t know why this continues to amaze me.
How can so many people, even those who should know better, be content to hit the wall without doing anything at all to change course? This includes my own family, who lives in Southern California.
I view Southern California as one of the most dangerous death traps in the world.
The fact that I've been yelling at people to get ready for years shouldn't numb you from the necessity of getting your act together. I don't have as much food as I'd like, but I've got enought to live for ~5 months, in a total collapse scenario. Do you?
Devastated by the subprime mortgage crisis, hundreds of homes have been foreclosed and thousands of residents have been forced to move, leaving in their wake a not-so-pleasant path of empty houses, unkempt lawns, vacant strip malls, graffiti-sprayed desolate sidewalks and even increased crime.
In Elk Grove, some homeowners not only cut their own grass but also trim the yards of vacant homes on their streets, hoping to deter gangs and criminals from moving in.
Other residents discovered that with some of the empty houses, it wasn't what was growing outside that was the problem. Susan McDonald, president of a local neighborhood association aimed at saving the lost suburban paradise, told CNN that around her cul-de-sac, federal agents recently busted several pot homes with vast crops of marijuana growing from floor to ceiling.
"The American dream is absolutely changing," he told CNN.
This change can be witnessed in places like Atlanta, Georgia, Detroit, Michigan, and Dallas, Texas, said Leinberger, where once rundown downtowns are being revitalized by well-educated, young professionals who have no desire to live in a detached single family home typical of a suburbia where life is often centered around long commutes and cars.
Instead, they are looking for what Leinberger calls "walkable urbanism" -- both small communities and big cities characterized by efficient mass transit systems and high density developments enabling residents to walk virtually everywhere for everything -- from home to work to restaurants to movie theaters.
The so-called New Urbanism movement emerged in the mid-90s and has been steadily gaining momentum, especially with rising energy costs, environmental concerns and health problems associated with what Leinberger calls "drivable suburbanism" -- a low-density built environment plan that emerged around the end of the World War II and has been the dominant design in the U.S. ever since.
The Internet is often thought an egalitarian blessing by those who would hold high criminals accountable, yet the only accounting rendered is online. I don't think the guilty regard this as an unfortunate development. I think we've been corralled into cyberspace, taken as freedom its "free speech zones," and adopted its virtual and vulnerable bantustans as our "domains." (Appropriately so called, since its mastery entered mass culture as a euphemism for masturbaton.) We can win the blog wars, but we may as well have been playing World of Warcraft for all the difference it will make when the power goes out and we lose our connection. The connection for which we may have forsaken many others of much higher worth.
So this is my dilemma, and my paralysis. It's not every day you get to spectate the real-time collapse of a planetary civilization and biosphere. (Or, I suppose I should say, I remember a time when it wasn't.) But watching this unfold with fascination feels complicit and worse than if I were blithely ignorant, and analyzing it at this seeming late stage futile and ridiculous. What's important now, what's more important than ever, are the close-to-home matters: being a good father and husband, and learning how to best cushion the crash of our coddled urban lives.
Mish Shedlock has a disturbing entry on Tent cities of former homeowners, now springing up in the US. Residents in Ontario's tent city were color-coded by police, who decided who could stay, and who leave. Mayhem, and most likely a small foretaste of things to come:
Large, often confused, crowds formed ragged lines behind police barricades where officers handed out color-coded wristbands. Blue meant they were from Ontario and could remain. Orange indicated they had to provide more proof to avoid ejection, and white meant they had a week to leave.
Pattie Barnes, 47, who had her motor home towed away last week, shook with anger.
"They are tagging us because we are homeless," she said, staring at her orange wristband. "It feels like a concentration camp."
Even before the large-scale action Monday, police last week moved out parolees and towed about 20 dilapidated motor homes. A list of safety rules, including one banning pets, has been posted. The city says there is a threat of dog bites and possible disease from the animals.
The no-pet order caused widespread anger and tears Monday as some homeless people said they could not imagine life without their dogs. Many have three or four and vowed to leave Tent City before giving the dogs up.
Davis also set out the ideas on which he will campaign in the by-election he has forced in his Haltemprice and Howden constituency, calling for the DNA of up to a million people who are innocent of any crime to be removed from the police database, but for anyone who has served a prison sentence to be added.
He called for stronger safeguards on the use of evidence gained from CCTV cameras and new regulations to ensure they are capable of producing images good enough to use in court. At present, a large number of cameras cannot produce sufficiently high-quality evidence to be used in prosecutions.
Funny, no? They spend millions (billions?) on a system that deprives people of privacy, but without offering security. Davis, who resigned in protest at Draconian new Police State laws supports higher quality cameras! Baffling.
Obama had already offered his genuflection [to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac)] , but on 4 June went further. He promised to support an "undivided Jerusalem" as Israel's capital. Not a single government on earth supports the Israeli annexation of all of Jerusalem, including the Bush regime, which recognises the UN resolution designating Jerusalem an international city...
...It is time the wishful-thinkers grew up politically and debated the world of great power as it is, not as they hope it will be. Like all serious presidential candidates, past and present, Obama is a hawk and an expansionist. He comes from an unbroken Democratic tradition, as the war-making of presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton demonstrates. Obama's difference may be that he feels an even greater need to show how tough he is.
Beautifully written description of America then and now, contrasting the nation's preparedness for disaster in the 1970s and today.
Let's go back to the 70s... The midwest was still served by a thick web of railroads, and if the mainline was flooded out there were plenty of branch lines to detour on. The Interstate System was pretty much complete, but was still used at less than capacity so you could actually drive the speed limit. Back then I drove truck for Continental Baking, a typical big company of the era. We had bakeries every couple hundred miles, with 70 of them spread around the country. In Iowa alone we had bakeries in Davenport, Sioux City, and Waterloo, and 3 in Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Rochester, and St.Louis in surrounding states...
...Back to this century ... Continental Baking has merged with Interstate Bakeries, but the only bakery they have left in Iowa is in Waterloo- it's shut down by the flooding and who knows when it'll be back up. Only 4 of those 9 bakeries in surrounding states are still baking. The old engineers who maybe spent too much time munching donuts and guzzling coffee but were right there when something broke have pretty much retired but not been replaced.
Most of that web of rails is gone too. What's left is overloaded "main lines" that are often just single track, the second track having been pulled up and sold for scrap. "Branch Lines" that used to parallel the main lines and serve as detours now run a few miles and dead end, if they haven't been torn out entirely. Dozens of rail yards have been torn out and the land sold at huge profits for development- As a result backed up trains plug the main lines because there aren't enough yards to park them in. Despite most railroads now being quite profitable, profits that should have been reinvested in upgrading century old routes through river valleys have instead gone into dividends to satisfy short sighted investors.
After eight years of Texas oil magnate rule, the system desperately required rebranding, and millions of consumers wanted to believe that the system still worked. Obama and Hillary served both functions and more. Not only are countless Americans filled with PR-enhanced pride, the country's owners are probably breathing a sigh of relief. The rubes are back in the star spangled tent, tossing flowers, smiling, dancing.
It pains me to see young(ish) people full of enthusiasm for Obama. I bump into them on the way to the Post Office or the Liquor Store, eyes gleaming, full of hope for a fresh start. Poor things - they'll learn, soon enough, one way or another.
More mysteriousness!
Ah George, yer off the meds again: I freed millions from barbarism. I know what this is about: Mister Ex-President is preparing his insanity defence when he's brought to trial for War Crimes in 2012. What will Cheney's excuse be?
Isn't it about time that Fox News Anchors started wearing white pointy hats?
Europe is about Democracy, and freedom, and tolerance. Until you vote against the EU. Then they figure out ways to f*ck your sh*t up, bad.
Conservative MP and shadow Home Secretary David Davis stuns Westminster by resigning his seat in protest at the Blair/Brown Police State. It seems that he's sacrificed a senior cabinet post in the next government over an issue of conscience. Ooh, goosepimples!
"And we will have shortly the most intrusive identity card system in the world. A CCTV camera for every 14 citizens, a DNA database bigger than any dictatorship has, with thousands of innocent children and millions of innocent citizens on it.
"We have witnessed an assault on jury trials, a bolt against bad law and its arbitrary use by the state. And short cuts with our justice system, which will make our system neither firm nor fair and a creation of a database state opening up our private lives to the prying eyes of official snoopers and exposing our personal data to careless civil servants and criminal hackers. The state has security powers to clamp down on peaceful protest and so-called hate laws to stifle legitimate debate, whilst those who incite violence get off scot-free. This cannot go on... and for that reason today I feel it is incumbent on me to take a stand.
"I will be resigning my membership of this House and I intend to force a by-election... I will fight it, I will argue this by-election against the slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms by this Government.
"Now, that may mean I have made my last speech to the House ... But at least my electorate and the nation ... would have had the opportunity to debate and consider one of the most fundamental issues of our day... And if they do send me back here, it will be with a single message – that the monstrosity of a law that we passed yesterday will not stand."
Ah, if only a few more MPs would do likewise and give Gordon the finger...but that's probably asking too much from the herd.
Here's a different specimen of humanity: Running Fan, the Chinese teacher who fled his classroom when the quake struck, leaving his students to fend for themselves.
"I am a person that seeks freedom and justice, but I am not the kind of person that puts people first and is willing to sacrifice himself," Fan wrote on tianya.cn, a social web portal.
"In this fleeting moment of life and death, I could only consider sacrificing myself for my daughter, I would not care about other people, even if it were my mother, under this type of circumstance."
So, how are your personal conservation efforts going? I hope they're really really good, because you share a planet with a Tycoon who can chop down 230,000 trees in the Amazon and not bat an eyelid. Don't forget kids - RECYCLE! Pfft.
The scariest thing about McCain isn't McCain - it's the fact that he'll probably have to pick a batshit crazy Christofacist as his running mate, if he wants to get the hairy-knuckle/six-finger vote. Introducing Bobby Jindal, Lord Protector, Witch-hunter and EXORCIST of CANCER.
But it’s now come to light that Jindal believes that an exorcism he performed with some college friends not only cast out a demon from a young woman, but also cured her skin cancer.
Let’s be especially clear on this: a potential VP candidate thinks that an exorcism cured cancer.
Cancer. Cured. By an exorcism.
Ah, what a beautiful Friday. Well done Ireland. If only I were home, I'd be off to the pub for a pint or three to watch the results roll in on the telly.
Lisbon treaty set to be rejected. No vote shocks Europe. No surges ahead in Referendem.
I suspect the biggest negative for Lisbon was the military integration baloney. Only a fool would vote for a militarised EU:
"Men of Ireland! Queue here, and receive your draft papers! Prepare to fight for the defense of the Slyvanian Homeland! All hail President Klyghzrog!"
Same happened with the Nice treaty in 2002 - the people voted no - rightly dubious of anything that might compromise our military independence; the Irish PM took some time off from gambling on horses and building extensions to his house to ask for a few extras from our EU overlords:
The Irish government, having obtained the Seville Declaration on Ireland's policy of military neutrality from the European Council, decided to have another referendum on the Treaty of Nice on Saturday, 19 October 2002. Two significant qualifications were included in the second proposed amendment, one requiring the consent of the Dáil for "enhanced cooperation" under the treaty, and another preventing Ireland from joining any EU common defence policy.
The second Nice referendum won a Yes vote.
So here's my suggestion:
(1) Another clause guaranteeing Irish neutrality (to be sure to be sure).
(2) Renegotiate the fishing quotas, which currently are little more than the legalised rape of Irish fishermen. (Ireland gave Europe far more in fishing rights than we ever got back from them). Gratitude Shmratitude - it's about time we started chewing up some Brussels sprouts.
The Rebel (extract) by Padraig Pearse
And I say to my people's masters: Beware
Beware of the thing that is coming, beware of the risen people
Who shall take what ye would not give.
Did ye think to conquer the people, or that law is stronger than life,
And than men's desire to be free?
We will try it out with you ye that have harried and held,
Ye that have bullied and bribed,
Tyrants...hypocrites...liars!
Oil may never be cheap again. If anyone actually wants to see us transition to renewables or alternatives to fossil fuels, then they should be praying for the price of oil to remain high - as that's the best incentive to stop using the stuff. Everyone hates global warming, but everyone wants cheap oil. Silly monkeys.
Oil shortage a myth, says "industry insider". I find this very hard to believe. Jeremy Legget gets a miserly paragraph to refute the extraordinary claims, none of which have citations. Awful journalism, whatever the case may be.
Dmitri Orlov on US politics. Read, Obamaniacs!
Please don't send me to Washington: it's not the place to go to get anything useful accomplished. Centralized, political efforts are about as likely to succeed as Gorbachev's Perestroika. There, there was the one Communist party, which killed all private initiative and entrepreneurship. Here, we have the two Capitalist parties, which kill all public initiatives that impinge on the prerogatives of private capital or the free market. This makes just about any good proposal politically impossible. The best thing to do about national politicians is to completely ignore them and wait until they go away. This approach worked really well with the Communists in Russia.
"In [Victorian explorer] Burton's day they were itching to get into the fray. Now it is the opposite. They are always whining about the dangers of being killed. Oh my God, they are such wimps now!
"The whole point of being in the Army is wanting to get killed, wanting to test yourself to the limits. Now you have to fly 15,000ft above the war zone to avoid getting hit. I don't think there is any point in having wars if that's how you're going to behave. It's pathetic. All this whining!"
You can't say that, Rupert! "You can. The whole point of being in the Army is going to war and getting yourself blown up. That and p-ing on prisoners. Yet we all get shocked by Abu Ghraib. Oooh!" He puts his hand to his mouth as if scandalised.
Israeli attack on Iran unavoidable, according to Olmert deputy.
Poor John McCain. Those awful singers won't let him use their songs in his campaign.
Here's a video tutorial on how to animate a Flash walk cycle. It's fairly advanced, and is about an hour and a half long. I recorded this about six months ago. "This as yet my ease and comfort is, Though I speed not, I cannot miss."
Families should brace themselves for drop in the standard of living not seen since the oil shocks of the 1970s, economists warned after official figures showed the price of oil and food had hit a record high.
The price of food, clothes, petrol and other goods are set to climb far faster than most salaries – leading to a severe downturn in families' standard of living.
The warning came after the Office of National Statistics released "absolutely horrendous" factory inflation figures, which showed that prices last month increased at the fastest rate since records began 22 years ago, and most probably since 1976.
The slide in house prices will continue for at least three years and crush the value of a home by almost 50% in real terms, according to a key index of property price futures. Indications from futures trading on long term property prices shows that the average UK home will recover its current value only in 2017.
When asked how their summer vacation plans have been altered, half said they are either staying locally or are not vacationing at all. Almost two-thirds of Americans said they would support a "holiday," or repeal, of the federal gas tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Of this group, none said they would drive less, and nearly 20 per cent said they would actually drive more because they could afford to. [This is why we are screwed, and why "the market" will never solve this problem.]
Heh. Looks like a good time to sell your shares in Tasers. Amazing - you kill people by the dozen, and you get sued for millions? The peasants are revolting...
A San Jose, California, jury yesterday said Taser had failed to warn police in Salinas, California, that prolonged exposure to electric shock from the device could cause a risk of cardiac arrest. The jury awarded $1 million in compensatory damages and $5.2 million in punitive damages to the estate of Robert Heston, 40, and his parents. The jury cleared the police officers of any liability.
Now that the cops have been warned of the risks of cardiac arrest, they'll be free to start zapping again, with their usual gusto.
Could Methane trigger a sudden climate shift?
A new paper published appearing Thursday in the prestigious scientific journal Nature presents the worst-case scenario for runaway climate change that could leave the Earth entirely ice-free within a generation...
...The new paper suggests that exactly this type of cascading release of methane reserves rapidly warmed the Earth 635 million years ago, replacing an Ice Age with a period of tropical heat. The study's lead author suggests it could happen again, and fast -- not over thousands or millions of years, but possibly within a century.
Research leader Jason Hall-Spencer from the University of Plymouth said that atmospheric CO2 concentrations were now so high that even a sharp fall in emissions would not prevent some further acidification.
"It's clear that marine food webs as we know them are going to alter, and biodiversity will decrease," he told BBC News.
"Those impacts are inevitable because acidification is inevitable - we've started it, and we can't stop it."
A disturbing series of nuclear war games has some depressing outcomes:
The lower yield and less accurate Iranian volley, sparing Jerusalem due to its centrality to the Moslem faith, would inflict between 200,000 to 800,000 Israeli fatalities along the coastal plain in the first 21 days. These are called "prompt" casualties; it's who dies before people start dropping from longer-term radiation exposure. Any surviving residents of the central core of urban Tel Aviv would still be exposed to 300 REM (roentgen equivalent man) of radiation 96 hours after the blasts, as opposed to an exposure during an average dental X-ray of about .010 REM.
The more accurate and bigger Israeli nukes, the report speculates, would inflict a far greater toll on Iranian cities - in between 16 million and 28 million in just "prompt" fatalities. The report says that that an Israeli recovery from its damage would be "theoretically possible in population and economic terms", whereas an Iranian recovery would be "not possible in normal terms"; in essence, the Iranian nation will be destroyed.
Since 9/11, there has been an increasing war on photography. Photographers have been harrassed, questioned, detained, arrested or worse, and declared to be unwelcome. We've been repeatedly told to watch out for photographers, especially suspicious ones. Clearly any terrorist is going to first photograph his target, so vigilance is required.
Except that it's nonsense. The 9/11 terrorists didn't photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn't photograph the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Unabomber didn't photograph anything; neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Photographs aren't being found amongst the papers of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IRA wasn't known for its photography. Even those manufactured terrorist plots that the US government likes to talk about -- the Ft. Dix terrorists, the JFK airport bombers, the Miami 7, the Lackawanna 6 -- no photography.
Fatih Birol of the IEA on Peak Oil / Speculation. (Note: Oil at time of posting has shot back up to ~$134 a barrel).
Global oil resources are limited. We have conventional oil; we have unconventional oil. We have oil in the North Sea, in the Gulf of Mexico. We have more oil in the OPEC countries. What I can tell you is that one day global conventional oil will peak. This will depend on many factors, including the role of technology, investment, and production policies. When we look at oil outside of the OPEC countries, when you put all of them together, I think it is going to peak very soon. But we have unconventional oil, and we have oil in the Middle East as well. How much will come to the market from unconventional oil?...
...There is definitely financial speculation, but the main reason for the high prices is the growing perception in the markets that the future demand growth may not be met by the supply growth. This provides fertile ground for speculators, and they play a triggering role in increasing prices.
Clams, Man descended from them according to "History of Man" by L. Ron Hubbard, and the incident gives us painful engrams (memories) of being dropped onto rocks by birds, and extreme jaw pain from the bivalve's hinge. This has been a running joke on ars for some time, with threads about clambakes, clam chowder, snapping clams, clams in .sig files, etc., although some now see it as a pejorative and have quit using it.
PTS, Potential Trouble Source. Someone who is in contact with an SP, a Suppressive or anti-Scientology person, and therefore may cause trouble for the cult. "Mary is a PTS Type III." Adjective; "She is PTS to that Wholetrack SP on her lines." See also individual types of PTS - 1 to 3, and A to J, SP, Disconnection.
Wog, a derogatory and racist term the cult co-opted from British slang, and now uses to refer to people outside of Scientology's purview.
Wog world, the mundane society away from the totally free supermen inside the cult of Scientology, seen as an aberrated sea of insanity and criminality to be feared and avoided.
I was talking to some friends about Scientology last year. They were laughing about the sci-fi aspects of Scientology - Xenu the Galactic overlord, thetans in volcanoes, all that. I agreed that yes, it is pretty far fetched.
"There's another cult out there, just as crazy". I said. Everyone turned to listen.
"These guys believe that God created this entire universe in six days, and made a single man and woman to live in a magic garden. There was a talking snake in the garden, who told the woman to eat a forbidden fruit. God got angry and kicked them out of the garden. Then there was a flood that covered the entire world in water, but another man made a boat that could hold 2 of every animal and insect on the face of the planet. Then god had to send his son to purge humans of the sin of the first woman eating the fruit in the garden - and the only way that this omnipotent god could achieve this was by having his son nailed to a cross as a blood sacrifice. Then he rose from the dead and flew back to heaven. Crazy, huh?"
I think they got my point. Scientology. Judaism. Christianity. Islam. Hinduism. Is there really a difference?
Hey, we're all one big happy global family of f*cked up idiot loons.
But at least we've got the internet. And nukes.
I have finally resumed work on my animated documentary on energy/growth. Sequence 1 is 5 and a half minutes long - now I begin on sequence 2 - which will be about 6 and a half. It's looking like the final runtime will be about 25 minutes.
I rewrote the second sequence to make it a little less doomy, which took some thought - but I'm finally back to animating. The work is eating up much of the time that I'd usually spend surfing for links. Once I get the thing moving and the scenes start rolling in, I'll post clips and screenshots here, so you can see the work in progress. Here's one of the first scenes - a collection of various forms of energy. The sequence will zoom in on each, and show the pros and cons as a primary energy source. You'll notice a slight glitch...as this scene isn't going to loop in the final work, which it's doing here:
Of course, generating the artwork for the scene took most of the time - there was a good amount of detail on some of those ojbects. If you right-click on the scene you can zoom in and see the objects much larger.
My goal with this film is not to convince people that we're doomed - instead, I'll deal with concepts that most folk don't seem to be aware of, e.g. energy density; EROEI, the exponential function, etc. I won't sugar coat anything, but I'm not going to dunk their face in the toilet bowl of collapse either. My goal is for people to come away with a slightly better understanding of the factors that shape energy generation, and the implications of runaway growth.
Some meatiness:
An ambitious plan to put more than 10 percent of Brazil's Amazon forest beyond the grasp of loggers and agribusiness could slash carbon emissions by 1.1 billion tonnes by mid-century, according to a study released Wednesday.
Deforestation in the tropics accounts for 20 percent of global emissions of CO2, making it the second largest driver of global warming after the burning of fossil fuels.
Imagine how much CO2 we'd prevent if we - bear with me here - preserved 100% of the remaining rainforest, instead of just 10%! I know, I know, I'm a crazy stupid lunatic hippy tree hugger. What do I know? Me want hardwood floor! Me want cheap burgers! Me want sugar cane! Me want! Me want! Me want!
BBC: Images reveal 'rapid forest loss'
An ambitious plan to put more than 10 percent of Brazil's Amazon forest beyond the grasp of loggers and agribusiness could slash carbon emissions by 1.1 billion tonnes by mid-century, according to a study released Wednesday.
Deforestation in the tropics accounts for 20 percent of global emissions of CO2, making it the second largest driver of global warming after the burning of fossil fuels.
Imagine how much CO2 we'd prevent if we - bear with me here - preserved 100% of the remaining rainforest, instead of just 10%! I know, I know, I'm a crazy stupid lunatic hippy tree hugger. What do I know? Me want hardwood floor! Me want cheap burgers! Me want sugar cane! Me want! Me want! Me want!
BBC: Images reveal 'rapid forest loss'
Pack up your troubles in your old kitbag,
And smile, smile, smile,
While you’ve a lucifer to light your fag,
Smile, boys, that’s the style.
What’s the use of worrying?
It never was worth while, so
Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile.
