DOOM-O-RAMA -- Thursday Edition

[Speck Tater]

While global warming becomes more serious...

NASA maps show global warming since 1880

As we wait to see if 2010 ends up as the Earth's warmest year on record, an intriguing series of maps from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies shows how the average global temperature on Earth has increased by about 1.4 degrees since 1880 (click "play" under the map on the NASA page to see the animation).
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/12/nasa-global-warming-climate-change-maps/1

Fewer and fewer people take it seriously

Governments cooling to global warming

Politicians are emitting a lot of hot air to appear to be doing something about a successor to this accord without actually doing anything, because they are backing away from the global-warming agenda.

Why? Because evidence shows that policies to stop global warming, such as carbon taxes and cap and trade schemes, slow down economic growth.

Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/business/Guest+column+Governments+cooling+global+warming/3985157/story.html#ixzz18IOfr6y1

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Pixie Dust Loses Magic as Foreclosures Slam Utopian Disney Town

Walt Disney Co. built Celebration, Florida, as an idealized version of a circa-World War II small town, where litter-free streets are lined with white picket fences and front porches entice neighbors to sit after dinner.

Now, there’s trouble in the 16-year-old paradise set within earshot of the nightly fireworks at Walt Disney World Resort.

Celebration’s foreclosure rate is about double the state’s pace as homeowners who paid a premium for a vision of utopia fall behind on their mortgages. Earlier this month, a resident on the verge of losing his house shot himself after a 14-hour standoff with police. Three days before that, the town had its first murder when a man was bludgeoned with an ax.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-14/pixie-dust-loses-magic-as-foreclosures-slam-utopian-disney-town.html

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Safe sales soar as worried bank customers keep money at home

SAFE sales are soaring as more and more worried bank customers stash their cash at home.

AIB said last month that the amount of money on deposit at the bank has fallen by €13bn since the start of the year -- although it blamed most of the reduction on withdrawals by companies and financial institutions.

Another reason for the increased use of home security safes is a growing fear of burglaries because of the recession.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/safe-sales-soar-as-worried-bank-customers-keep-money-at-home-2459569.html

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Tyler Durden: The U.S. Is Free Falling Into Bankruptcy

Having written so much about what's wrong with our current economic/financial/political system, what specific actions do you think need to be undertaken to fix things? Is an all-out collapse avoidable?

This is a question that we ask ourselves every day, and no matter how we spin it, we fail to see how an unwind to a previous “restore point” to borrow a computer analogy, is possible at this very late stage in the global Ponzi scheme. We tend to simplify the world: When everything else is stripped, the only two things that matter are a) where is the money coming from? and b) where is it going? And never in the history of the world have so many assets created so little cash flow.
...
... most incremental dollars go not to organic business growth and economic output, but to satisfying what has become the biggest debt burden in the history of the world, whereby the labor and intellectual output of most goes to fund the living standards of a very few.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/zero-hedges-tyler-durden-the-us-is-free-falling-into-bankruptcy-2010-12#ixzz18ISFSvi1

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New Study Forecasts Rising Sea Level Impacts on New York

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Its bottom line is that every coastal community in New York will be affected by rising sea levels, including those along the 315-mile Hudson River, the Long Island Sound, and the Atlantic Coast. If you couple that with the fact that more than 60 percent of New Yorkers live in homes on or near a waterfront, the implications for New York's coastal communities are profound.

The report also rightfully included a section on public health impacts, since sea level rise has the potential to significantly affect community health. It warns that storm surges and coastal flooding can introduce a host of environmental hazards, including: contaminated drinking water, disrupted sewage and solid waste systems, hazardous material spills, increased or displaced populations of disease-carrying insects and rodents, and moldy houses. It also has the potential to lower quality of life. What would happen if a storm collapsed a community's only hospital or ruined someone's small business?
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kknowlton/new_study_forecasts_rising_sea.html

[hatrack]

1. Awesome - a truly Doomtastic summation!

:hi: