Some accounting matters:
The 9.0 magnitude quake (the fourth-largest recorded since 1900) was caused when the Pacific tectonic plate dove under the North American plate, which shifted Eastern Japan towards North America by about 13 feet. The quake also shifted the earth’s axis by 6.5 inches, shortened the day by 1.6 microseconds, and sank Japan downward by about two feet.
Extensive, detailed account of the GOP’s efforts to smother the economy for the benefit of their own short term political ends come 2012. Absolutely required reading summed up in these two quotes:
“Where Are The Jobs?”
–134 House Republicans, 7/22/09
“And if some of those jobs are lost in this, so be it.”
–Speaker John Boehner, 2/15/11
John McCain, 2008: We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers [of climate change] are great. The most relevant question now is whether our own government is equal to the challenge.
John McCain, 2010: It’s an inexact science.
Ezra Klein, 2011: I take that as an exact answer to McCain’s original question: No, our government is not equal to the challenge.
Lemkin: The moment people are even one one hundredth as irrationally terrified of carbon emissions as they are of dread “radiation” (regardless of source, quantity, exposure, time, distance, shielding, or any other mitigating factor: sweet merciful Flying Spaghetti Monster, it’s RADIATION!!!!!) then we’ll be getting somewhere on the issue. Until then: Al Gore is fat. It snowed today. And etc… The fact is: carbon emissions (and the associated other outputs of fossil fuel use) have a real, daily, and quantifiable health impact upon us all over and above the impacts on the broader global environment. That’s a collective impact that is almost certainly immeasurably greater in terms of real damage to lives, lifespan, and property than that of all nuclear accidents everywhere and forever combined. But, hey: Charlie Sheen everyone!
Lemkin 