Dog nearly dies eating mushrooms, owners face $10k in medical bills

Quite a moving story.  From CBS New York (they have a video of the news broadcast they did on this):

Sandy, a 13-week-old Golden Retriever, was rushed to the East End Veterinary Emergency Center after eating mushrooms from her backyard, CBS 2′s Carolyn Gusoff reported.

“We spent four days not sure she would make it,” said Sandy’s owner, Richard D’Alsace, of Manorville.

D’Alsace found mushrooms in his puppy’s mouth but didn’t think they were poisonous. By morning Sandy was vomiting and on the verge of kidney and liver failure, Gusoff reported

“She was practically on the verge of death,” said Dr. Gal Vatash of East End Veterinary Emergency Center.

After 10 days of blood transfusions and medication, Sandy is now well enough to go home. But the danger remains: poisonous mushrooms grow everywhere.

The owners have set up a Facebook page for Sandy, and are asking for donations. You can donate via this site. They're even happy to have the donations sent directly to the vet, so that, along with the CBS story, makes me think this is legit.  They posted a short, and heartbreaking video of the dog at the vet while she was still touch and go:

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Amazing anti-gun rant by Seinfeld's Jason Alexander

This came out the other day, via Twitter of all things, but I hadn't had time to read it until now. Here are a few excerpts:

Then there are the folks who write that if everyone in Colorado had a weapon, this maniac would have been stopped. Perhaps. But I do believe that the element of surprise, tear gas and head to toe kevlar protection might have given him a distinct edge. Not only that, but a crowd of people firing away in a chaotic arena without training or planning – I tend to think that scenario could produce even more victims.

Lastly, there are these well-intended realists that say that people like this evil animal would get these weapons even if we regulated them. And they may be right. But he wouldn’t have strolled down the road to Kmart and picked them up. Regulated, he would have had to go to illegal sources – sources that could possibly be traced, watched, overseen. Or he would have to go deeper online and those transactions could be monitored. “Hm, some guy in Aurora is buying guns, tons of ammo and kevlar – plus bomb-making ingredients and tear gas. Maybe we should check that out.”

But that won’t happen as long as all that activity is legal and unrestricted.

We will not prevent every tragedy. We cannot stop every maniac. But we certainly have done ourselves no good by allowing these particular weapons to be acquired freely by just about anyone.

I’ll say it plainly – if someone wants these weapons, they intend to use them. And if they are willing to force others to “pry it from my cold, dead hand,” then they are probably planning on using them on people

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One in three conservatives now think Obama is Muslim

The stupid, it breeds.

Most of the growth in Obama-Muslim theorizing has occured among Republicans. One in six of them used to think Obama was Muslim; one in three of them now do. There's no follow-up, but you can count off the things that conservative Republicans haven't liked about Obama. The Cairo speech. "Apologizing for America." Wanting to close Gitmo. Afghanistan timetable. Siding with rebels in the "Arab Spring," and watching the Muslim Brotherhood take the lead from the rebels in classic Bolshevik/Menshevik tradition. Then, most recently, you've got theories about the Muslim Brotherhood infilitrating the government. The people who don't like Obama start with policy, then make assumptions about religion.

This is what happens when you have a political party that subsists off of its own false version of reality. The lies spread, and the populace becomes even less informed than it was before. Read the rest of this post...

What is left for Romney?

When Romney ran for President in 2008, he based his claim on what were generally considered to be three success stories: founder of Bain Capital; rescuing the Salt Lake City Olympics; and his achievements as Governor of Massachusetts.

This time around, Romney has won the nomination by repudiating 'Romneycare', the main achievement of his only time in elected office. This was always going to create a problem for Romney in the general election, as voters expect Presidential political campaigns to run on political achievements, not experience in business or public administration.

Having walked away from his first success story, Romney has just thrown away his Olympic story, turning it into a source of embarrassment. His graceless behavior in London was an unforced error, he only has himself to blame.

That leaves Romney with only Bain Capital left on his resume, a legacy that Obama has already successfully framed as a career as a corporate raider rather than a captain of industry.

From a campaign perspective, Romney's resume is shot. His policy platform consists of promising to cut taxes, increase military spending and balance the budget without any explanation of how he would accomplish this feat. What has Romney got left? Read the rest of this post...

Illustrating global warming—What does "a 2°C increase" refer to?

UPDATE 1: For fans of the bottom line, click here. For fans of the political bottom line, click here.

UPDATE 2: A complete list of climate series pieces is available here:
The Climate series: a reference post.
________

The last few posts about global warming (the fast road to climate catastrophe) have referred to a 2°C (3.6°F) or 3°C (5.4°F) increase in global temperature as really really bad — not for the planet (she will do just fine), but for us. Those posts include:

  ■ Quarter to half of species on earth may die from global warming
  ■ What is "climate catastrophe"?
  ■ McKibben 1: Three Numbers—Measuring the march toward climate catastrophe

The first discusses James Hansen's recent paper, in which a 3°C rise in global temperature is seen as catastrophic.

The second spells out what that catastrophe looks like (not pretty).

The third talks about Bill McKibben's Rolling Stone piece and the 2009 Copenhagen conference, which confirmed the previous ceiling of 2°C as the upper limit of acceptable temperature increase.

But this leaves a lot of questions — for example, the temperature increase "ceiling" relative to what? What's our rate of increase? And so on.

So this post will serve to anchor those 2°C and 3°C temperature increase number, and to provide a nice picture to help you sleep at night while you decide how you can help out. (Thanks to Dr. Michael Mann for pointers to all of the following. You can get to know Dr. Mann's thinking, as I did, via this conversation at Virtually Speaking.)

Where does "global temperature increase" start from?

We know from James Hansen that a "global temperature increase" of 3°C (5.4°F) would be an outright disaster — that 20–50% of species would go extinct.

The Copenhagen climate conference of 2009 urged no more than 2°C (3.6°F).

But two degrees from what? There are measurements from any number of starting points (I'll show a few). But the most commonly accepted starting point is the start of the Industrial Revolution (you'll see why in the chart below).

This means, unless otherwise noted, the "zero" point for measuring temperature increase is 1800.

What do graphs of "global temperature increase" show?

Here's an illustration to show what "global temperature increase" looks like. There are many others, but this will get you started.

This is from an excellent (and must-read) report — "The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Climate Science Report" — a scientific paper prepared in advance of the Copenhagen conference in December 2009. Twenty-six scientists contributed to this report. (Full pdf here; figures-only pdf here; other download formats here.)

This recent chart shows observed temperature increase from 1800–2008, with projections backward and forward.

Figure 21. Reconstructed global-average temperature relative to 1800-1900 (blue) and projected global-average temperature out to 2100 (the latter from IPCC AR4). The envelopes B1, A2, A1FI refer to the IPCC AR4 projections using those scenarios. The reconstruction record is taken from Mann et al. (2008).

Four things to notice:

• The "zero" reference mark is 1800.
• The fuzzy blue line extending back from 1800 is a reconstruction relative to the 1800 reference index.
• Starting in 1900, the temperature increase kicks off in earnest. Since this chart is taken from 2008 data, the observations stop at that point.
• By 2008 according to this chart, we've indeed used up about 0.8°C of the 2°C ceiling. (2008, by the way, was four years ago. We haven't stopped.)

Now look at the projections, the three colored bands.

Those represent scenarios presented in the "IPPC AR4" report ("Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Fourth Assessment Report"), one of the most important climate reports available.

Note the range of temperature increase in these projections — from 2°C to 7°C global temperature rise. For reference, James Hansen's 20–50% mass extinction scenario is a 3°C increase.

About those projections, the Copenhagen Diagnosis says (page 51; my emphasis and paragraphing):

The latest estimates of global mean air temperature projected out to 2100 are shown in Figure 21. The wide range in the projection envelope is primarily due to uncertainty in future emissions.

At the high end of emissions, with business as usual for several decades to come, global mean warming is estimated to reach 4-7°C by 2100, locking in climate change at a scale that would profoundly and adversely affect all of human civilization and all of the world’s major ecosystems.

At the lower end of emissions, something that would require urgent, deep and long-lasting cuts in fossil fuel use, and active preservation of the world’s forests, global mean warming is projected to reach 2-3°C by century’s end. ...

[A] 2°C global temperature rise could lead to sufficient warming over Greenland to eventually melt much of its ice sheet (Oppenheimer and Alley 2005), raising sea level by over six meters and displacing hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

One last thing to note — the long-term average increase will be relentless unless we make changes, but the increases won't be steady year by year. There will be lurches (page 51 again):

Despite the certainty of a long-term warming trend in response to rising greenhouse gases, there is no expectation that the warming will be monotonic and follow the emissions pathway on a year-to-year basis. This is because natural variability and the 11-year solar cycle, as well as sporadic volcanic eruptions, generate short-term variations superimposed on the long term trend (Lean and Rind 2009).

Bottom line

I'm showing you all of this (and there will be more) for a reason. First, your take-aways:

  1. The do-nothing scenario ("business as usual") gives us a global temperature increase of 4°-7°C by 2100. That upper number is an astounding 12½°F.

  2. James Hansen's mass-extinction occurs at 3°C (5½°F).

  3. Staying below 2°C (3½°F) will take "urgent, deep and long-lasting cuts in fossil fuel use, and active preservation of the world’s forests".

  4. This is at heart a political problem, not a scientific one.

If you memorize nothing else, those four points will keep you completely oriented.

About point four — Unless you're a climate professional, I would waste zero time worrying about the science. You can show this information to the curious, but at the first sign of resistance, walk away.

This is no longer about science, but power.

The Koch Bros don't want to be reasonable — they want to force their will on the world. Your crazy right-wing cousin doesn't want to learn anything — he wants to see his social enemies ground under Daddy's big boot. The crazed pre-Raptured "Christian" across the street is just one of the rubes, following the other rubes as they listen to the Preacher praise the rich and help him pick their own pockets.

For none of these groups is the mind involved. This can be solved, but not by talking science. That's how they win.

We win by doing what always works for progressives — finding pressure points and using leverage. Something we rarely do, but something we can learn. In this game, I think there are three pressure points, three groups of actors, each of whom wants something. It's a place to start.

McKibben has thoughts along these lines. I'll add mine as well. The game is not yet over.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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