OSLO (Reuters) – Scientists are sucking carbon dioxide from the air with giant fans and preparing to release chemicals from a balloon to dim the sun’s rays as part of a climate engineering push to cool the planet.
Backers say the risky, often expensive projects are urgently needed to find ways of meeting the goals of the Paris climate deal to curb global warming that researchers blame for causing more heatwaves, downpours and rising sea levels.
The United Nations says the targets are way off track and will not be met simply by reducing emissions for example from factories or cars – particularly after U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the 2015 pact.
They are pushing for other ways to keep temperatures down.
In the countryside near Zurich, Swiss company Climeworks began to suck greenhouse gases from thin air in May with giant fans and filters in a $23 million project that it calls the world’s first “commercial carbon dioxide capture plant”.
Worldwide, “direct air capture” research by a handful of companies such as Climeworks has gained tens of millions of dollars in recent years from sources including governments, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and the European Space Agency. […]
This is very good news.
The Congressman has a lot of therapy ahead of him but he is on his way to a blessed recovery…
(FOX News) – House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was discharged from the hospital on Tuesday and was moved to an inpatient rehabilitation facility after more than a month of surgeries, Fox News confirmed.
Scalise, R-La., had been treated at MedStar Washington Hospital since June 14, when he and four others were shot during a congressional baseball practice.
“Congressman Steve Scalise has made excellent progress in his recovery from a life-threatening gunshot wound six weeks ago,” the hospital said in a statement Wednesday. “Yesterday, he was discharged from MedStar Washington Hospital Center and is now beginning a period of intensive rehabilitation.”
The hospital said that Scalise is “in good spirits” and is “looking forward to his return to work” once his rehabilitation is complete.
“He and his family are grateful for the care he received from the trauma team as well as the other doctors, nurses, and staff of MedStar Washington Hospital Center,” the statement said. “The family also appreciates the outpouring of support during this time.”
President Trump touched off a firestorm Wednesday after tweeting that he wants to ban transgender people from serving in the U.S. military in any capacity- citing advice from his “generals” and medical costs.
In a series of tweets, he wrote:
“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow…Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming..victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you.”
[…]
The president’s tweets came only a few weeks after Defense Secretary James Mattis said he would give military chiefs another six months to conduct a review to determine if allowing transgender individuals to enlist in the armed services will affect the “readiness or lethality” of the force. The deadline for that review was Dec. 1, 2017. […]
I have taken a bit of a vacation from the internet in the last couple weeks, just a bit saturated by all the bullshit and deliberate stupidity I am exposed to every time I log onto the web. Also, aside from the continuing “Trump-Russia collusion” rabid media mouth-frothing there has not been too much real news being presented.
However, when there is real news the pathetic excuse for a “watchdog media” refuses to actually report on it with even 1/4 the interest or intensity that they do the fake Russia fiction … That’s if the MSM bothers even mentioning and not burying these real stories the American people deserve and expect to see reported.
Take the ongoing Debbie Wasserman-Schultz scandal the MSM refuses to cover, much as they refused and continue to refuse to cover Hillary Clinton’s similar issue. You see, DWS has a major computer/hard drive/IT scandal.
Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s top information technology (IT) aide was arrested Monday attempting to board a flight to Pakistan after wiring $283,000 from the Congressional Federal Credit Union to that country.
He attempted to leave the country hours after The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group revealed that he is the target of an FBI investigation, and the FBI apprehended him at the airport.
Credit union officials permitted the wire to go through, and his wife has already fled the country to Pakistan, after police confronted her at the airport and found $12,000 in cash hidden in her suitcase but did not stop her from boarding, court documents show.
Just think of broadcast news as Democrat operatives with Chyrons, and it all makes sense.
Meanwhile, Nick Confessore of the New York Times calls the story “remarkable,” Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post describes it as “Wild,”’ and curiously, neither seems very upset that both of their papers missed it.
And remember, the DNC would NOT allow the FBI to look into their computers/servers after their campaign ‘hacking’ … AND a couple months ago DWS threatened Capitol police to force them to return laptops to her/her IT guys…
Imran Awan, a Pakistani-born IT aide, had access to all emails and files of dozens of members of Congress, as well as the password to the iPad that Wasserman Schultz used for Democratic National Committee business before she resigned as its head in July 2016.
And all along, over eight terrible years, our media did a whole lot more than just let Obama get away with it. They wholeheartedly colluded. They allowed Obama to persecute them through the Department of Justice and to lie to our face (remember: I just now read about it in the newspaper, the IRS did nothing wrong, you can keep your insurance). And when that wasn’t enough, the media mercilessly attacked as racist anyone who criticized the Precious and ginned up nothingburgers like Todd Akin to distract from those four dead Americans. And when even that wasn’t enough, they themselves lied and obfuscated, covered up and dissembled, and most of all they set all kinds of precedents that, in a delicious form of irony, are now driving this utterly failed institution to the edge of insanity.
The very same media that shrugged when Hillary Clinton set up a secret server, deleted 33,000 government emails, BleachBit’d whatever remained and then literally took a hammer to the devices — the media that set that precedent now wants us to get all worked up over Trump’s tweets?
The very same media that buried Bill Clinton’s perjury and his numerous victims of sexual abuse — the media that set those precedents now wants us to consider an Access Hollywood video a disqualifier for the presidency? Now wants us to freak out over an awkward handshake?
The very same media that gushed over Barack Obama’s magical ability to “slow-walk the truth” — the media that set that precedent now wants us to impeach Trump over how the details of his son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer have been released?
The very same media that joined Obama in pointing and laughing at Mitt Romney’s concern over Russia, the very same media that told us Obama’s serial-appeasement of Russia (refusing Poland missile defense, “more flexibility after the election”) was in reality an extraordinary form of statesmanship — the media that set those precedents now wants us to toss Trump out on his ear because he’s hoping to work with Putin?
Republicans didn’t always scoff dismissively at the self-destructive, reactionary, fractious collection of malcontents who call themselves The Resistance. The hundreds of thousands who marched in the streets following Donald Trump’s election once honestly unnerved the GOP. This grassroots energy culminated in January’s Women’s March, a multi-day event in which nearly two million people mobilized peacefully and, most importantly, sympathetically in opposition to the president. It was the perfect antidote to the violent anti-Trump demonstrations that typified Inauguration Day, and it might have formed the nucleus of a politically potent movement. The fall of the Women’s March exposes the blight weakening the left and crippling the Democratic Party.
The fever sapping Trump’s opposition was evident in microcosm on Monday in the meltdown of the Women’s March’s social-media presence on Twitter. “Happy birthday to the revolutionary #AssataShakur,” the organization wrote, dedicating the day’s resistance-related activities in her “honor.” Shakur is perhaps better known as Joanne Chesimard, the name that appeared on the court documents in connection with her being tried and convicted of eight felonies, including the execution-style murder of a New Jersey State Trooper. She currently resides in communist Cuba, a fugitive from American justice.
The outrage that followed the Women’s March’s endorsement of a cop-killer, exile, and unrepentant black nationalist was such that the organization was compelled to explain itself. “[T]his is not to say that #AssataShakur has never committed a crime, and not to endorse all of her actions,” the group flailed. “We say this to demonstrate the ongoing history of government [and] right-wing attempts to criminalize and discredit political activists.” This fanatical display of befuddlement perfectly encapsulates the logic of “intersectionality.” It demonstrates why this vogue ideology shackles its devotees to doomed causes and sinking ships. […]
"10 weeks of PAID maternity leave in Saudi Arabia. Yes PAID. And ur worrying about women driving. Puts us to shame." – Linda Sarsour https://t.co/QSo6eWRlVn
Having made its name as a home for liberals and the blog posts of coastal elites, the recently renamed HuffPost is seeking to reinforce its new, less partisan image with a seven-week bus tour through Middle America to “listen and learn what it means to be American today,” the site will announce on Thursday.
Starting in September, a traveling party of rotating HuffPost staff members led by editor-in-chief Lydia Polgreen will visit more than 20 cities, eschewing the coasts for the likes of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Oxford, Mississippi and Odessa, Texas. At each city, the site will host events, roll out planned stories with local media outlets, send out reporters to write about the communities and collect stories from residents “in their own words.”
It’s a unique project for a media organization that made its name as the crusading home for progressives, even attaching a note to each story during the election about then-candidate Donald Trump calling him a “xenophobe,” “racist” and “misogynist.” (The tag was removed on Election Day.) Founder Arianna Huffington created The Huffington Post in 2004 to be a liberal version of the Drudge Report.
[…]
And did said HuffPoo staffers check with HR to see if they needed booster updates on their vaccines before heading out with their bottled mineral water supply, crate of hand sanitizer, and emergency freeze-dried tofu jerky into the dark lands of the ‘unwashed masses’?
Though many of the cities the group is visiting voted for Hillary Clinton in last year’s election, all but two of the states went to Trump. But Polgreen says they’re not visiting “Trump country,” pointing to a reason for each city or state on the tour like an interesting community college system in Fort Wayne or Detroit’s large Arab-American population. Hillary Frey, HuffPost’s director of editorial strategy who came up with the bus tour idea, also pointed out that logistically it didn’t make sense to go to the corners of the country where the distance from one city to the next would be too far.
“We were basically looking at a pretty eclectic mix of communities that represent a lot of different facets of American life,” Polgreen said. “All of these ideological divisions [in the media] are confusing right now and for me it’s less about left or right — it’s who are you more oriented toward, more oriented to the interest of the wealthy and powerful or are you orientated toward the people who are not in the top 20 percent.”
For Polgreen HuffPost has always been “about listening and having an ear to the ground” through their contributor network. The bus tour, she said, would give a real-life version of that contributor network “to go out into the country and really listen to these people’s voices in a direct and in-person way.”
In other words it’s just a big leftist dog-whistle. They will be extremely selective in who they are talking with? Sounds like they have chosen to look only to ‘minority’ democrats apparently cruelly trapped/hostage in the vast wasteland. They don’t give a flying fig about anyone else and what we have to say. HuffPo is NOT being “journalistic” in this exercise.
We grow/raise/produce the food they live off of.
We provide the fuel they burn.
We raise children who become the backbone of our brave military.
Our children grow up to be doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers, firefighters, police officers, farmers, factory workers, writers, artists, astronauts, builders, industrialists, etc.
Oh, football at the college level and the pro level, that they love to watch and bet on, would be nothing without our sons.
You ever notice it’s always the coastal prog-elites that scold the rest of us we need to get out of the USA to experience the rest of the world, yet, they themselves know absolutely nothing about the majority land mass between their liberal east and west coast armpits?
Yes, we have poverty, broken families, crime, financial woes, school dropout rates, drug problems … just like the coasts.
Yeah, they’ll come. They’ll see. They’ll report every stinking negative thing they can misrepresent in their reportage.
There’s a whole # thread on this over on Twitter. It’s hilarious: #HuffPoInTheHeartland
How out of touch with real Americans and life/hardwork are our progressive overlords?
I give you the mastermind behind Facebook who is now an elitist know-it-all mega-millionaire and wants a universal wage for everyone else…
There are a lot of people who I think would have profited with having spent at least a little time in a real job. By “real job”, here, I mean something that isn’t primarily practiced at a keyboard, doesn’t require a degree, and is paid by the hour…
You’ll note the HuffPo bunch will be going to those cities/areas that Hillary won in the election and talking to those who presumably voted for her. See, they only want to hear how horrible those people’s have been since January 20, 2017 when she was not being sworn in as POTUS, but grumbling about her aging letch of a husband ogling the Trump women.
They’re the only people willingly hooked up to the MSM’s “Trump-Russia collusion” IV…
I’m not sure if I’ve posted at all about this sorta-kinda prequel show to “The Walking Dead” since its introduction on AMC a couple years ago. Just to summarize, the series takes place on the west coast from LA and into Mexico, and began at the very start of when the zombie apocalypse infection began. Basically its the “when the world went to shit” phase that Rick Grimes slept through during his post-shooting coma in a Georgia hospital. FTWD follows a woman, Madison Clark, and her two grown kids and the various few others that they have collected along their trek out of Los Angeles into Mexico and the South West border.
Along the way of this series we have seen things we did not see in TWD. Planes falling out of the sky. Whole cities being firebombed by the military in an attempt to contain the infection and zombie uprising (we saw a glimpse of this in TWD when Lori and Shane watched Atlanta get firebombed from a highway hilltop.) We realize the ocean does not stop the zombies, that they can float beneath the water until they reach shore and you are not safe even if you fall off a boat into the Pacific. We see makeshift facilities where the alarmed military held people suspected of being infected or vulnerable to become infected, where they collected and exterminated walkers, and where medical staff figured out a blow to the brain was the only way to stop a recently deceased human from turning into a zombie, and the only method to kill a zombie. We watch as civilized society completely breaks down and finally collapses and total confusion and anarchy take over.
In the first season of FTWD we see the Clark family struggling to find focus in their fleeing the constant danger, destruction, death, and the growing walking-biting dead population in the congested, and now lawless, city. they and their group meet up with a high-rolling smooth-talking conman named Strand who tells them all he has a boat. They escape LA and head to Strand’s boyfriends elite compound in the hills of Mexico, only to find his boyfriend is dying and soon to turn, and his mother cloistering away walkers and protecting them as holy souls.
After a massive cluster-fuck at the posh Mexican compound and a blaze the group ends up scattered and on the road again. Fast-forward to this season…
After a dangerous and deadly crossing over the Mexican border back into the U.S. the Clark family finds themselves in the company of a family of survivalists and their massed militia who have their own huge compound of “stolen” Indian land. We also discover the lone Strand comes upon some thugs that have taken over a dammed reservoir and are playing god with the water as multitudes of people file there everyday.
Back at the militia ranch Madison decides she will accumulate power over the set-up and eventually take it over.
The mid-season finale had The Nation, a compound of a tribe of Native Americans, is threatening war on the survivalist compound because the founder stole the land from his grandfather and father. We later find out the militia leader of the compound actually murdered the two Indians decades ago. So what we have during this chapter of FTWD is an old fashioned Indians vs white man situation, the apocalypse having thrown everyone back to the old west mentality. Now, city dweller Madison Clark takes full advantage of the major land rift and does her own deal with the head of the tribe to broker a peace … and it involves not only the death of the faltering militia leader, Jeremiah Otto, but his head.
Through all of this the lone-wolf Victor Strand is trying to find his purpose, if any, in this cruel world order where any power of skills-power to wheel and deal are gone. The meek have inherited the Earth and they no longer recognize the former world people like Strand is still holding onto. Of all the episodes thus far of FTWD, especially this season which I have found more annoying than interesting, there was one golden moment and it involved the tall, dark and arrogant Strand.
He found his way back to the shoreline and discovered the yacht that had brought him and the Clark family and others to Mexico, but it is hopelessly stranded in the shallows. Those that had been guarding it and using it for a party boat were now zombies. Strand methodically goes about exterminating the once human vermin. However, he soon discovers the boat is useless, even outside the scuttled situation. He puts on his old white tuxedo jacket and begins drowning his sorrows on a final bottle of Champaign.
When he wakes the next morning he discovers the radio still works and is stunned at the voice on the other end. It is a Russian cosmonaut stranded far above the end of the world in space. He was supposed to have returned to Earth by now, but it all went to shit just days before his scheduled return from the presumed space station. This is where Strand is awakened to the stark and horrifying reality of the global extent of this vile infection and its undead aftermath…
For all Strand’s loneliness and isolation he is to realize the cosmonaut is either the loneliest man still alive … or the luckiest human not to be directly experiencing the extinction of mankind and life as they knew it. The Russian will die in his spacecraft alone and eventually crash to Earth when it loses orbit. Was he spared whatever infection that befell the Earth while so far above the stratosphere? And what of the rest of the crew that might have been with him? He has resigned himself to the fact that no matter how much he would like to have a chance to live life for as long as possible, his situation has him in a slow death timeline as his supplies run out. The Russian has resigned himself to the fact he sits in his coffin in a grave far above the human chaos and carnage on the ground below. Strand sobs for the man, for himself, for humanity, for the world, and for the fact that he must bury his own past in order to deal with his situation still on the spinning infected globe. He sets fire to the yacht and leaves it behind as he walks away to return to the struggle ahead.
The episode had a few dialogue ‘Easter eggs’ I caught that harkened to other movies, but the Strand-Russian cosmonaut unworldly exchange was very “Gravity” when astronaut Ryan Stone believed she was dying in space and managed to pick up an Eskimo out on the Earthen frozen tundra far below and had a brief conversation with him. I am sure the writers did this on purpose, as TWD writers and producers tend to pay partially hidden homage to their own favorites from time to time. In the theatrical version of the feature film we only saw Dr. Stone’s end of the conversation, much like with Strand on the yacht. There was a spin-off mini-film of the “Gravity” scene that did involve showing us the other side of the conversation on the frozen ground below. Neither party could understand the other because of the language barrier, unlike Victor Strand and the English-abled Russian cosmonaut who instead of a soothing lullaby exchanged lines from classic books from memory, and realizing all memory of such things would all die with them…
As we saw in “Gravity” Stone decides not to die but to leave the ship in order to try for a return to life. Strand’s torching of the yacht and hauling his loaded backpack away from it in the dark was very akin to that. This was Victor Strand’s TWD CDC moment of truth, as Rick had when he was told the whole world had fallen to the infection/infected and there was no way out but to just forge forward and live with it. At the end of the radio exchange with Strand and the cosmonaut I, atleast, was left unsure if the spaceman had committed suicide. I will re-watch the scene a couple times and decide if that was a real possibility, as Strand’s reaction at the end of the conversation and the Russian’s silence brought him to a breakdown of sobs and tears…
Last words are for fools who have not said enough. Marx. Karl Marx. Tell me about your champagne, Victor Strand.
Strand: It’s a 1985 Dom Perignon vintage.
Russian: Hello?
Strand: Mr. Vachenko?
Russian: You are breaking up my friend. The world turns. [static]
Were these be the last words Strand might ever hear from a fellow human?
We know odds were it would be for the Russian cosmonaut.
This is why out of the entirety of “Fear The Walking Dead” I find this the most, and possibly the only, poignant moment of the series that appears to be as disorganized and chaotic as the apocalypse itself. In my opinion, Victor Strand needs to be made more of a central part of the series. While the writers look to make Madison Clark the Rick/Carol of this series (and there is running speculation she could be a relative of one of those two), it is Strand who offers more of an interesting dynamic to the post-apocalyptic world ahead, removed from anything we have experienced from the various “The Walking Dead” characters over so many seasons.
MORE:
We see the inklings of Victor Strand’s passage into this new world disorder.
While Madison’s inner leader is emerging we also see changes in her kids.
The drug addict Nick cuts his long greasy hair and picks up a gun, even killing a living man.
Alecia buys into some of the Native American prophecy of the world righting itself of man’s wrongs, and sheds her LA girl existence for the rugged frontier maiden amid the battles of men. Neither she nor her brother Nick is quite ready to give up cultural norms of right and wrong, until they realize it means survival and Nick does what needs to be done to bring peace between the tribes.
