Guess who is addressing the NAACP convention tomorrow in Houston? None other than Mitt Romney. That will be interesting....

Trust me, Pat Caddell was an idiot back in 1972, when I first ran across him. He was decidedly unimpressive to Willie Brown and to my political boss, who said of him, "If McGovern's listening to him, no wonder they're in trouble." His stupidity has only gotten more obvious in the intervening 40 years.

Hmm: "Russia, which seems intent on positioning itself as an increasingly decisive broker in the Syrian crisis, announced on Tuesday that a flotilla of navy vessels had sailed to the Mediterranean Sea and some would dock in the Syrian port of Tartus."

Yes, the fleet of rusting hulks that is today's Russian Navy is bound to be decisive in its Syrian intervention. I wonder how many will break down enroute.

Global Warming Will Lead to An Ice Age.

How did an ice sheet over 1 mile thick accumulate over Canada and Europe? Current precipitation over the Arctic is too small to create that ice.

Polar Ice kept the Northwest Passage closed for 50,000 years. Something that no longer exists had to make that ice.

Commercial shipping began between Europe and Asia through the Arctic for the first time in 2009.

Ice Age

People did not melt the ice that ended the last ice age. Global warming has dominated our climate for 20,000 years.

The arctic is bone-dry because air from high altitude sinks over both poles. This effectively blocks precipitation over the ice caps.

Not enough snow to build an ice sheet.

Arctic and antarctic precipitation can be less than 1 inch/year. That doesn't even keep up with summertime ice melting.

Recent information indicates ice accumulated fast during the last ice age. Very fast.

How could the Arctic ice cap form during the last ice age?

Jet Streams

Precipitation depends upon jet streams that were discovered in the 1940s.

The average location of the jet streams in the northern hemisphere have been moving toward the pole at about 1 mile/year since their discovery.

The jet stream at 30 degrees is where cold-dry air from high altitude sinks so deserts form - like the Sahara and the American Southwest. The jet stream at 60 degrees is where warm-moist air rises to hight altitude so rain clouds form - like over Canada and Europe. Air rises at the equator and that makes rain forrests.

Shifting average position of the jet stream means our air is transporting more heat to the poles every year. Solar heating has declined since 1700, and less energy has been coming from the sun. This movement is the result of air masses that expand as they are being heated, and this heating is due to carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere.

Here is the important question - what happens if extra heat drives the northern-most jet stream all the way to the pole?

Answer - over 100 inches of ice accumulation every year over Canada and Northern Europe.

One foot of unmelted snowfall over the pole every week during fall, winter and spring.

This kind of perpetual ice storm would freeze animals inside a glacier while they have undigested vegitation in their stomach.

Entire cities could be buried under an ice sheet during a single storm if this kind of thing happens.

Ice Caps

Canada and Europe under 1000 feet of ice within 1 generation if jet streams move - just like the geological evidence.

Accumulating ice will run all the way south to Oregon, Spain, and Pensylvania.

The rain forrest zone of the equator would expand 1000 miles toward the poles, creating fertile land in the Sahara and in the American Southwest from Los Angeles soutward to the equator. Everything north of San Francisco and the Mediteranean would become desert all the way north to the ice cap.

Evidence indicates this happens about every 100 thousand years, and the last cycle began 70,000 years ago.

There is no evidence that indicates this will not happen again.

Accumulating carbon dioxide could accelerate this change.

Evidence

Archaologist, geologists and climatologists all agree sea level was about 400 feet below present until about 20,000 years ago. The Arctic polar ice cap had to be at least 1 mile thick at that time. Global warming has already raised sea level by 400 feet when the arctic polar ice cap melted during the last 20,000 years.

This melting never stopped.

The Northwest Passage opened in 2009. It was impossible to cross the Arctic by boat because the Arctic Ocean used to be covered by ice all year long. Many arctic explorers perished looking for the Northwest Passage. Enough Arctic ice has melted to open a passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific. The remnants of the Arctic polar ice cap began to float on the surface of the sea a few thousand years ago, so sea level stopped rising while Arctic melting continued. There has been no observable rise in sea level as the remaining Arctic ice cap melted during the last few centuries.

Floating ice makes our climate constant the same way melting ice keeps a drink at a steady temperature. Fluid level does not change as floating ice melts.

Water is responsible for melting the Arctic ice. The Gulf Stream carries much of the equatorial solar heat absorbed in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans straight to the Arctic. That is why Europe is warm with significant rainfall and not icy cold and dry most of the time. The thickness of air covering earth has a mass equivalent to about 33 feet of water. Water covers about 70% of the surface with an average depth of about 5000 feet. This means about 99% of the heat from the sun is contained in water and not in air. A rise in sea temperature of 0.01 degree is the equivalent of a rise in air temperature of about 1.0 degree.

Arctic ice keeps the Arctic sea temperature low. Low temperature over the pole helps to maintain the present jet stream positions.

There is not enough precipitation over the Arctic pole or over the Antarctic pole to accumulate the amount of ice that had to be present during the last ice age. Polar areas have the equivalent of about 1 inch of rainfall each year, just like the deseerts of the Sahara and Amercian Southwest. It would take at 60,000 years (or more) to accumulate the ice caps from the last ice age at that rate, and that little snow fall is not enough to freeze the ocean covering the whole Arctic no mater how cold it gets. Ice is a good insulator, and sea surface freezing stops after a few dozen feet of ice accumulates on the surface.

The archaological record and the science of ice formation indicates the only way a one mile thick ice cap could form is if there is much greater Arctic precipitation.

People recorded observations during the end of the last ice age. Oral traditions from about 20,000 years ago were handed down from generation to generation until about 6,000 years ago when these traditions were recorded in writing.

People that wrote the Bible, Torah and Kuran documented what they saw. Most of the Genesis story matches the geologic and archaologic record. The Garden of Eden is described as an area in the Middle East between Iraq and Kuwait. The book of Genesis clearly describes the Tigris and the Euphrates as flowing in an area that had lush vegitation and plentiful rainfall. That is the Persian Gulf as it looked over 10,000 years ago. The depth of the Persian Gulf is about 400 feet, so the botom of the Persian Gulf was above sea level until about 20,000 years ago. Areas of the Sahara Desert have petroglyphs drawn on rocks by people that show animals that live only where there is water and vegitation - hippopotomus & alagators.

The Sahara was covered with vegitation and rivers.

The Genesis story of the naming of the animals in the Arabian Peninsula area agrees with these rock drawings. This describes a period about 20,000 years ago. RARAR imaging of the Sahara Desert shows river beds that are now submerged below sand. Almost all of the Sahara Desert region has a large body of fresh water beneath the surface that could not possibly be there unless there was much greater rainfall.

Rainfall has shifted to create arid deserts in areas that had no deserts 20,000 years ago.

Shifting rainfall means the jet streams have moved.

The difficulty is that rising sea level and shifting sand has buried much of the evidence.

All human settlements on river deltas from over 10,000 years ago are now under water. That includes the area of the world described in Geneis that is now submerged or covered by sand. All people that lived near rivers until a few thousand years ago because they could not drill wells or transport large quantities of water over land. All people require about 1 gallon/day of fresh drinking water, and we can only go about 3 days without water before we suffer kidney damage. This means human populations were restricted within a few miles of flowing water until domesticated animals and kiln fired ceramics about 10,000 years ago.

Sea floor sediments accumulate at a rate of about 2mm/century near continents.

Things that were submerged during sea level rise from the last ice age are no longer visible because they have been covered by at least one foot of sediment. Every spec of organic material for carbon 14 dating would have been devoured by sea creatures long ago. The only way ogranic material could survive underwater is sterilized in a leak-proof containers invented during the French Revolution. The only other things that survive are bone and things made from stone, like carved rock.

Systems Engineering

Global warming engineering is fairly obvious.

The Gulf Stream acts like the fluid in a refrigerator.

Refrigerator cooling fluid speeds up when you add more heat. Refrigerator cooling fluid slows down when you add less heat. The fluid temperature doesn't change. Same cooling fluid temperature both ways.

Adding more heat to equatorial ocean water will speed up the Gulf Stream and create more clouds to reduce solar heating. Cooling equatorial water temperature will slow down the Gulf Stream and reduce rainfall. Same phenomenon as found in refrigerator colling fluid.

The Gulf Stream performs exactly the same function as the cooling fluid in a refrigerator. Ocean heat from the equator is brought to the arctic where it melts ice. Gulf Stream water flows from the Atlantic to the Pacific at a rate of 2 cubic-mile/hour.

Arctic ice keeps our climate reasonably constant as it sacrifices heat to cool the Gulf Stream. This ice would have melted naturally within several hundred years if humans contributed no carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. That melting has sped up to the point that ice will be gone within about 20 years.

Declining polar ice will cause the Gulf Stream to heat up the Arctic Ocean.

Rising North Pacific, North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean heat will create greater precipitation over North America and western Europe.

Declining polar ice will also reduce sunlight reflection and increase Arctic Ocean heating.

Polar air will heat up as the Arctic Ocean accumulates more heat.

When polar air heats up enough, the rainfall from the northern most jet stream will most likely move over the pole.

This will create enormous seasonal lake-effect storms similar to hurricanes over Canada, the United States, Russia, and Europe. As much as a foot of ice will accumulate from a single storm.

These storms will be strong enough to redistribute air cells that establish monsoon patterns over the rest of the world.

Risk

The global loss in terms of economy, famine, warfare, and human life will be unimaginable when this occurs.

There is no competent model of global heating.

There has been no attempt to systematically evaluate ice age climate conditions.

Some information indicates ice-age climate is warmer than our current climate.

The risk is unknown, but past ice ages prove that this phenomenon is very real.

No possible excuse exists for why a competent climate model does not exist given the possibility of this kind of catostrophic outcome.

With no climate model, there is no way to predict the outcome of global heating.

The kinds of predictions provided by a competent climate model are needed to plan the redistribution of resources so that global warfare, global famine, and catostrophic loss of life can be avoided.

Lack of a global climate model to predict the outcome of atmospheric carbon dioxide accumulation is profoundly reckless.

References

Carnegie Institute; Jet Stream Movement

NOAA; Paleoclimatology

Cambridge; Ice Age Interrupted

National Academy of Science; Evidence of Abrupt Climate Change

Scientific American: Air Tides

NASA: The Day After Tomorrow

Indiana; Earth Systems

UOM: Paleoclimatology

NOAA; Ocean Service Education

NOAA; Global Warming

NOAA; Jet Stream

NOAA; Ocean Effects

2040? In 28 years we'll have trains as fast as those already running in Japan, France, Germany and China? This is a turn-key technology. The idea that Amtrak is "planning" for it three decades from now is nonsense. Amtrak just doesn't have the money to plan for high-speed rail - all it can do is fantasize about what might be possible when almost everyone now in Congress is dead.

For what Amtrak is really capable of doing, there's something about that in today's announcement:

"Another major ongoing effort is a $450 million project funded by the FRA high-speed and intercity passenger rail program to improve service reliability for intercity and commuter trains, modernize the electrical system and boost top speeds from 135 mph (217 kph) to 160 mph (257 kph) along a 24-mile section of the NEC between Trenton and New Brunswick, N.J. ... Major construction work is to begin in 2013 with anticipated project completion in 2017."

Although this is pathetic by the standards of any other industrialized country, for Amtrak it's not so bad.

http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer/Page/1237608337144/1237608345018?passedMonth=July&passedYear=2012

reading anything republicans write about anything at all makes my brain hurt. I cannot digest word salad any longer

To Steve and TRMS blog crew,

Can I make a suggestion for your blog format? It doesn't involve any coding by your site designers, so it's an easy fix.

Since this blog doesn't have the news post volume of, say, Gawker, can you limit the amount of post space taken by individual posts on the main/1st page so that by the end of the day, all news posts made that day, from Morning Maddow to post-show links can all be seen on the main page? This would make the dailies easier to find without having to navigate all the way to the bottom to click a tiny link to get to the next page.

This can be done by (1) shortening the teaser text of news posts, inserting the post break sooner. Ideally, I'd like to enable an option to only show post titles (and if there is one, please let me know), but barring that, most posts only need the title and short teaser text.

The other idea (2) is to shrink down embedded video space to a smaller screen cap, and pictures to smaller thumbnails. Neither need to be tiny, but there's definitely room to make them smaller. And you can probable expand them back to their original size in the full post. That Vimeo video today of Cassie? It's huge! And takes up a lot of main page space; nearly a full screen's height on a 1920x1080 res monitor.

You guys probably have the site traffic numbers, but I'd guess that once news gets to that 2nd page, it's overlooked, lost, and forgotten. And it's a shame to lose good info and reading that soon, in less than one day.

Thanks TRMS blog crew. Keep up the fight.

the link to wapo has since been updated to reflect 1 in 100k odds. Also, great Biden line.

Rachael and Steve, Can you address the story on Truthout.org about the following

http://truth-out.org/news/item/10195-america-the-beautiful-a-fire-sale-for-foreign-corporations

"...the unfolding business agreement among the US and eight Pacific nations -the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) ... have been going on for two years under extreme secrecy, no information has been made available to either the press or Congress about the US position. But on June 12, a document was leaked to the watchdog group, Public Citizen...which reveals that the trade agreement would give unprecedented political authority and legal protection to foreign corporations. Specifically, TPP would (1) severely limit regulation of foreign corporations operating within US boundaries, giving them greater rights than domestic firms; (2) extend incentives for US firms to move investments and jobs to lower-wage countries; and (3) establish an alternative legal system that gives foreign corporations and investors new rights to circumvent US courts and laws, allowing them to sue the US government before foreign tribunals and demand compensation for lost revenue due to US laws they claim undermine their TPP privileges or their investment "expectations."

If true, yikes.... Shed light please. thanks.

Wait until some enterprising progressive pundit points out that Eisenhower raised taxes on the rich to 93% to pay off the war deficit and improve the infrastructure which provided jobs for the returning vets...and created the biggest expansion in our economy in history.

Ike believed in the American Dream.

Not so much Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, and John Boehner and the rest of the incumbent Congressional Republicans. From the way they have been obstructing the recovery since their failed policies caused the September, 2008 economic meltdown some might say not at all?

Say what you will about Joe Biden, but the guy can deliver a memorable line.

"Fitch Ratings on Tuesday affirmed its AAA credit rating on the United States and maintained a negative outlook, citing a diversified and wealthy economy that is undermined by the government's inability to agree on deficit reduction measures."

that says it in a nutshell. very simple way to get our good credit rating back guys.......just let the bush tax cuts on the rich expire. and don't start talking to me about more budget cuts. we've been on that bandwagon far too long. it's time to stop cutting the lifeline for those less fortunate.