Results tagged “climatechange”

The US Conference of Mayors will hold their fall leadership meeting this weekend in downtown Seattle.

UW was awarded $126 million from the National Science Foundation to build an ocean observatory to study the Pacific Ocean. The $126M is part of $385 million being parcelled out by the NSF over 5½ years as part of its ocean observatories initiative, which is intended to build an underwater network to study climate variability and issues in circulation and acidification. UW will get $35 million in 2010 to install about 500 miles of cabling and sensor nodes on the sea floor, which will give researchers real-time access to oceanic data. They'll have their hands full.

Seattle weather guru Cliff Mass has some unsettling news: May 20 to June 30 was the driest such period in the 116-year history of Seattle weather-record-keeping. Seattle got a mere .18 inches of rain--not enough to chase a whiskey--deblitermashing the previous record by a full .1 inch! Suck it, 1934.

Seattlest reader Nick would like to know what Seattle has to offer in the way of budget recording studios. We imagine he's asking for the best value, not just someone with a walk-in closet and fuzzy microphone. We used Jackstraw way back in the '90s for a project. They seemed reasonable, and it worked out well. What else you got? Also, if you have a second, why not vote for a Seattle entry in the "America's Best Restrooms" competition. Finally, if you're between the ages of 16-25, HotDish on Facebook is holding a competition for eco-warriors. Ends May 3.

UW atmospheric scientist Cliff Mass became a local internet celebrity seemingly overnight during last year's Snowmageddon, when he was forecasting weather in circles around all the other so-called weathermen. In addition to his blog, he's got a book, The Weather of the Pacific Northwest, that came out last fall. His next lecture, "The Secrets of Northwest Weather Prediction," is tomorrow night at Town Hall (7:30 p.m.). Tickets are $5.

So progressive-for-a-police-chief Gil Kerlikowske has been tapped to be our nation's new drug czar and you can bet questions will be asked about I-75. Meanwhile, a Federal Way lawmaker wants to tax your porn, reports the Seattle Times: "Democratic Rep. Mark Miloscia said an 18 ½ percent sales tax should be levied against Playboy and other adult magazines, as well as pornographic photographs, movies, videos, cable-television services, telephone services, audiotapes, computer programs and paraphernalia." This kind of thing is why we're likely to burn for all eternity.

We just ran across the Seattle Times comparison of Gregoire's and Rossi's positions on the environment, largely cribbed from our exhaustive Seattlest coverage of the same topic. Republican Dino Rossi says maybe human activity is to blame for climate change, so operating on the theory than an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, "He...wants to spend $15 billion to expand highways and reduce traffic congestion, which he argues would reduce emissions." Seriously. He also thinks you should fix your leaky water hose by buying a much larger one and leaving it running all the time.

There are 12 weeks until Election Day, and 12 issues in our state's gubernatorial race (13 if you count Eastern Washington's concerns). Each week we'll be taking an award-winning look at where the candidates stand.

Yesterday's stormy weather left over 35,000 homes in Western Washington without power. Nearly 20,000 of the homes affected were in Seattle and South King County. The National Weather Service warned of gusts of over 55 mph yesterday and, while it's no scientific measure, the windows of our house were rattling and the power flickered more than once last night. Thankfully, it never went out. The Washington State Ferry Service reported "steady winds at nearly 40 mph" off Alki Beach, which must have made for some unpleasantly rough weather on the Sound.

On this, the 26th day of March, it was snowing at 8pm on Capitol Hill--and it was even sticking to cars, to the grass, to the trees. WTF? It is nearly April, right?

You can't quite tell from today's weather, but it's the first day of spring. Pike Place Market celebrated this seasonal milestone with their 11th annual Daffodil Day. We spent a couple of hours downtown, at our station in front of Pacific Place, handing out our share of 30,000 daffodils to complete strangers.

Boom! Governor Gregoire comes right out of the gate at the new legislative session with a new bill laying "the groundwork for concrete limits on greenhouse gas emissions beginning in 2012." And, in just four short (or long, depending on how you look at it) years, the bill "would give the state Department of Ecology the authority to regulate those emissions," reports the P-I.

Behind our couch lives what we refer to as our "third cat." Much more well-behaved and definitely lower-maintenance, petting-wise, than the two actual cats from whence it came, but more or less inert unless there's a breeze. When we sweep behind the couch every three or four years we generally don't carry the third cat down to the Sound and chuck him in, but that's what storm runoff is doing right now to a lot of people.

Seattlest loves the planet with a lusty and soulful passion. Just wanted to say that up front. But the Green stuff is getting to be too much. Maybe we should say "greenwashing" as, of course, we have no problem with actual, beneficial efforts to protect the Earth. You want to read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, compost in your kitchen and load your groceries into your little burlap sack, fine. It's gonna take you a hell of a lot of trips to QFC to make a dent, but you're trying, and we're not going to say that you're greenwashing yourself by doing those things. What you should do is pedal your ass back home and get cracking on that perpetual motion machine, because what it's going to take at this point is an actual energy revolution, but we understand you're trying and we love you for it.

We gotta admit to being kind of a sci-fi nerd. We own all the Star Wars movies in most of their various formats and edits, have read The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and its sequels numerous times (including the atrocious Mostly Harmless), and actively seek out any books and films that depict any kind of a dystopic view of our future. So when we heard that yet another cut of Blade Runner was playing at the Cinerama, AKA: God's Gift to Seattle, you can bet we made plans to get down there.

A few weeks ago, Nobel Prize Laureate and co-discoverer of DNA Dr. James Watson blew through town, reflecting on how he's stayed away from stupid people, then delving into his now-customary slurry of sexist patois. Apparently he waited until he got across the pond to London to pull out the big guns:

The 79-year-old geneticist said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really." He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.”

Remember SimCity? Seattlest had some incredible towns built in that game, with commercial and residential districts packed full of shiny, tall towers and trains and street traffic all flowing as effortlessly as rivers. Scroll way over to the left to the edge of the city grid; now that is a healthy industrial district, perfectly bisected by a pollution-eating green belt. The landmarks sprouted everywhere and the money and accolades poured in. Of course, it took many hours to bring the little guys to the pinnacle of urban development, and then, since the game never ends, it took another many hours to tinker the place into slums and ruin, rezoning here, tearing out a transportation hub there, until finally you had to unleash natural disasters upon the land just to keep yourself interested.

I love Al Gore and I was really looking forward to seeing him talk at Town Hall on Monday night, but I was under no illusions that I would get to see him announce that he was running for President. I fell for that one before. When Barack Obama came through town on a book tour I got in a blood-boiling, fist-pumping frenzy for some kind of announcement, but what I got was a tepid book tour speech that was more brains than brawn. Same thing Monday night, except this time I knew what I was getting into. Besides, no politician (or “recovering politician” as Gore referred to himself) is going to make a major announcement in the latte-sippin’, Volvo-drivin’, tree-humpin’ Pacific Northwest. Sorry, Seattle.

This weekend the National Weather service is calling for mid-70s to 80 degrees. You may want to recover from heatstroke by rehydrating in an air-conditioned theater with other bepinkenned Seattleites, and their melanin-endowed friends savoring their little moment of schadenfreude. (Here's the Seattle Times cheat sheet on the various venues.)

7:30pm Tuesday // Town Hall // $5

TONIGHT at Meany Hall, it's "Climate Change and the Future of Life on Earth," a two-hour multi-media presentation designed to freak your climatological shit out. It stars the world-famous paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and environmental activist: Dr. Richard Leakey. Shazam! (What? We never get to say "Shazam"!) Author of The Sixth Extinction, Dr. Leakey will talk "about our impact on the environment"...um, no, he's gonna open up a can of knowledgifying whup-ass is what.

BOOK CRUSH: Librarian Nancy Pearl´s latest book is Book Crush, a guide to books you loved when you were growing up. How does she know? Head over to the launch party and find out.

THIS MONTH we've been talking about Seattle author Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time. We went over the big plow-up of the prairie, the hard-scrabble living, and Egan's decision to tell the story novelistically, rather than textbookily.

This Saturday offers at least three ways to make a difference in Seattle, or at least look like you care whilst furthering your own selfish interests.

They can handle uncertainty--it is a professional requirement, in fact--but they tend to avoid speaking about their research unless they are very certain about something. (At least the good ones do.) Increasingly so, the precision and certainty of science are being put on trial on a public scale never before experienced. And to a degree, the admirable tendency of scientists to demand certainty is in conflict with our need as the public to potentially act on less inviolable evidence.

LESS IS MORE: In Trance of Scarcity: Stop Holding Your Breath and Start Living Your Life, Victoria Castle asks why we feel that nothing is ever enough. Castle's book shows us how to escape this malaise and become more relaxed and alive. Hopefully it doesn't involve crisscrossing the U.S. on a book tour.

SEATTLE ARTS & LECTURES: Art Spiegelman's 1992 Holocaust tale Maus (based on a true story) won the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a comic book. Its success paved the way for the graphic novels thriving today and led to Spiegelman's ten years on the staff of the New Yorker. In the Shadow of No Towers (2004) gathers his recent broadsheets of disenchantment with the war on terror.

Sightline's Eric de Place celebrated his own private Kyoto on Friday by congratulating the region for their collective environmental work. British Columbia, which has been slow to catch up with even the rest of Canada, has finally been pushed in the right direction by the Prime Minister's recent green initiative talk. Oregon's governor Ted Kulongoski has recently said that he wants the state to become the "clean energy capital of the nation" and released an action plan that focuses on renewable energy sources, biofuels, conservation and tax credits for investors supporting renewable energy. All great stuff.

That was the clear message at Benaroya Hall last night, where New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert presented a sampling of the climate change research she covers in her much-lauded book (Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change), and then joined a few colleagues on-stage for a panel discussion. Touching on a few of the main locations and research findings from her book, the punchline is a real punch in the gut, or as Kolbert summarized: "Society is not essential, it is contingent."