Last Monday I wrote a diary on the state of the Arctic sea ice in response to a picture I received at my job from a friend of mine. The picture came from this site run by NOAA.  Here's today's picture:

Temperature at 2.5°C.  This view is probably 180° turned around from last week's.  Rather cloudy and gloomy this time, compared to the sunny conditions last week.  Examining the video from the camera shows that it was turned on 9 July.  The last slide in the animation at 14:41 Greenwich (London) time today showed a temperature of 7°C ... pretty warm, I suspect.  Follow me below to see the condition of the Arctic Ocean sea ice as of today's observations.

We at Daily Kos are well-informed about the impacts of anthropogenic global warming, or AGW for those who love acronyms.  Well, a colleague of mine here at work sent me a web cam picture (NOAA Arctic NetCam XL #1) of the North Pole taken at 03:48 UTC 7 July 2008.  Note the weather is quite pleasant and sunny; 3.5°C (about 38°F) with a relative humidity of 84% (the dew point is probably at 32°F, the freezing point). That it is sunny is an important point I'll get to shortly.

The picture and some ruminations based on last summer's record minimum in polar ice cover can be seen below the fold.

Earlier this week I was reading my morning e-mail from the Obama brigade, and one entry stated that ads in swing states were to be purchased to give voice to Sinclair claims which don't even deserve the light of day; that need to be kept in the cesspool of lies that seem to be fed by the darkest, most profound fears of every human being, and that we apparently (according to the Supreme Court) can do nothing about, as Obama is a public figure. I won't even write what lie is here.

Afterward, I was driving to work and the Bette Midler CD in my player started up (I know, how stereotypical!).  Once it got to track 7, From a Distance began to play.  I'd heard it many times, of course, though I'd not let the CD get to track 7 recently.  

For some reason, this time tears welled up in my eyes as I was trying to go down the Baltimore-Washington Parkway toward the Beltway, during the second verse:

From a distance, we all have enough
and no one is in need.
And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease,
no hungry mouths to feed.

Is there a connection between that e-mail, these lyrics, and my reaction? Follow me below while I do a little thought experiment to figure out what was going on here.

On NPR's "Fresh Air" today was an interview by Terri Gross with Seymour Hersh regarding his story in the next issue of the New Yorker regarding a big escalation in covert activity by the U.S. in Iran through the issuance of a "presidential finding", strangely enough at about the same time that the Combined Intelligence report on Iran NOT being a threat was issued late last year. (Hersh didn't think this was a coincidence, either.)

The most difficult and horrifying thing to listen to during the interview was the complicity of members of Congress in approving the funds ($400 million) to do this, and their rationale. For more, follow me below the jump for an approximation of transcript highlights (by the way, the interview can be found here).

Hi all ... this is going to be quick and dirty (so to speak).  TPM is reporting an AP story that Scott McClellan has accepted Rep. Conyers' invitation to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on 20 June. McClellan says he is willing to be sworn in before his testimony.

Sorry for the short diary...but I saw no one has brought attention to this.  If someone else publishes later with some more analysis, I'll gladly delete.

One of the advantages to being on vacation and having trouble getting a move on is having time to do things I'd otherwise not be able to do.  Such as watching C-SPAN. Well, I stumbled on the C-SPAN channel here in Provincetown and what did I see but Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Amy Klubuchar (D-MN) opening a hearing that I later found out was called "Energy Market Manipulation and Federal Enforcement Regimes".  

Oh, how very very DRY.  But very very important.  Some impressions I had (caveat, as a non- economist) of the content of the part of the hearing I watched appears below.

The BillLaurelMD household has been hit by big utility bills since deregulation went through in MD in 2006.  In the winter of 2005-6, I spent about $0.06/kWhr on electricity in an all-electric house.  Well, deregulation hit and now I'm paying $0.156/kWh, about 260% more.  From the CA experience (and my parents live out in suburban LA, so they've been through this), one can say I and other Marylanders have been Enronized, or maybe more appropriately, Enronicated.  

See more below the fold.

A quick diary.  Not sure how important it'll be.  Ralph is likely to announce on Meet The Press again on Sunday, just as he did in 2000 and 2004.  Just heard this on Progressive Radio KPHX.  

Update [2008-2-5 13:29:29 by billlaurelMD]:  I should have been more careful with my title.  I guess it sounded like I was pushing a meme.

I was listening to a political forum on Sirius Out-Q In the Morning between 9:15 and 10:00 a.m. this morning while driving to work; the discussion included a representative from the Stonewall Dems., the Log Cabin Republicans, and a member of the National Black Justice Campaign.  They also had Rep. Barney Frank, a man I greatly admire, on the air after the first three guests were on in a separate segment.  After all of that and a break, the host, Larry Flick, said that he thought white liberals were voting for Barack Obama out of what he called "white guilt".  

I know it's a bit disingenuous to make believe that this election is totally NOT about race. I'm one of those who believes that racism has not magically disappeared from American society. But to make such a generalization about "white liberals" is at best misguided and at worst racist to the core.  Follow me below the jump.

I'm a member of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), and am excited to let all the environmentalists at DK know that AMS policy forums presented on Capital Hill are now podcast (and hopefully streaming video when available from CSPAN or elsewhere), starting with the December 18, 2007 seminar titled "The Frame and Scale of the Climate/Energy Challenge: Issues and Implications". The website for getting the scoop on these seminars is here. You can also get on a mailing list to be notified of them in advance in case you can find time to attend.  It's billed on the website as

Live real time exchanges on the Hill between environmental scientists & policy experts.

However, even those of us who live and work in the DC area (such as moi) don't have time to get down to the Hill for these forums because they're held during the week as a mid-day kind of thing (usually 12 noon for light snacks, then the lecture, and after the Q&A you're now at about 3 pm!). See more, including points presented in the above seminar, below the jump.

I've noticed that there are a number of diaries in the last few days stating why a particular diarist has decided on a particular Democratic candidate. An example on the recommended list when I started writing this diary can be found here. Here's the deal: I am still undecided. Why?  See below the fold.

I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis even though I was only 7 years old at the time. We were doing the duck and cover routine at the Catholic school I attended in East New York which basically was a waste of time against a multiple-megaton nuke blasted about 5-6 mi. away in Manhattan. As I became an adult, the nightmares I remember were of nuclear war and either death by blast or by slow torture via radiation poisoning.

Once the Soviet Union dissolved without much consequence (at least for us), those fears faded. Noises were being made regarding destruction of nuclear weapons, not destruction by nuclear weapons. It appeared that the possibility of Armageddon had receded. But the dark side of human nature seems never to be contained: the grasping, greedy side that wants and wants and never has enough, no matter how much that human has.

Maybe I need to up my depression meds. But the possible consequences of what we've unleashed by not doing enough to defeat Mr. Cheney/Bush have been haunting me the last few weeks. Follow me below the jump.

I just got back yesterday from a work-related trip to South Africa, where I spent almost 2 weeks. Since it was only my second trip overseas (the other one was to Geneva, Switzerland), I obviously was excited about having such an opportunity (and admittedly, a little bit frightened as well, because I had no idea what I'd be confronting once there). I promised myself I'd write a diary about this trip before I left, upon my return.  

Well, I decided I'd need more than one diary to cover my impressions. This is part 1, which goes into my first impressions after landing at the O.R. Tombo airport in Johannesburg, and what happened the next few days. Follow me below the jump.

I've been spending a bit more time writing and calling my representatives since the 2006 election, especially in light of what I see to be what would be considered (pre-global warming) a "glacial" pace in dealing with the serious issues that have resulted from the actions of Dear Leader.  I wrote an e-mail via Congressman Steny Hoyer's website about my concerns about Iraq when the funding resolution was being voted on by the House. I was going to delete this diary, but now that that travesty of a bill was passed just prior to the recess that congress should not have taken, I think it might inform folks of what we might get if we didn't have Nancy Pelosi as speaker.

I'm putting his response to me below, with my comments highlighted. While this was from more than a month ago, I think it's informative on what Mr. Hoyer believes about how we got into the war, and how we should get out.  See after the jump for details. (By the way, if this is bad form to publish a letter in a diary, please let me know and I'll delete it.)

I was driving to work today and once again saw one of those signs overhead with the following admonition:

REPORT SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY

CALL 1-800-xxx-xxxx

I'd been hearing more and more reports of suspicious activity since the beginning of the year ... I'd even seen some rumored about on the news! Being the patriotic individual that I am, and wanting to make darned sure that they government was aware of the threat (after all, I didn't want us to have another 9-11!), I pulled over to the side of the road and called the number using my cellphone. A transcript of the call appears below the fold.

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) has just advertised a new permanent position in its Climate and Global Dynamics division (CGD).  Given my profession, of course I checked it out ... and what I found was quite interesting:

This position involves the use and development of the Community Climate System Model (CCSM) for climate change research. This position involves the exploration of the impact of changes in solar energy reaching the Earth's surface (by, for example, various geo-engineering methods that have recently been proposed in the scientific community) in changing the climate system. The position requires developing and using climate models and their components for the project. (Emphasis mine).

Follow me below to learn more, and to get my take on all this.  By the way, there has been exactly one diary on this topic (by Kossack Rimjob) in the past year.

Talking Points Memo has a great post up about how the past is prelude to the present.  It's with respect to the Vietnam War, and refers to an item passed along to TPM by a reader with the transcript of a conversation between Lyndon Johnson and McGeorge Bundy in May of 1964.  You're just gonna LOVE this...

Update:  Boy I must be upset...I had the title all fouled up.  PAST IS PRELUDE, not PRELUDE IS PAST. (sigh)

The cryosphere is defined as the frozen water portion of the earth's climate system, and includes the land and sea based polar ice caps (sea ice, Antarctic and Greenland ice caps), other land glaciers, and snow cover.  We've all heard about the proposed placement of the polar bears on the endangered species list by the Bush administration.  The cynical part of me says they've done it only because so many people love bears of all kinds, and they couldn't afford politically to ignore it after all that information came out in February 2006 in National Geographic, among other places. The state of the cryosphere at this date is, taken as a whole, scaring the daylights out of me!  Follow me below to get a handle on the state of the earth's cryosphere via recent news stories.  Be afraid ... be very afraid.