Dave Chandler

The American Rescue Plan

Dave Votes: 2020

Two years ago I posted my votes as I did in 2016.

Here we go again.

Each election is different ... different issues, different choices, different political/economic/culture milieu. So, my approach to voting is that each election has to be assessed uniquely for what needs to be accomplished. Sometimes there are strictly issues elections where candidates' policy stands are all important; sometimes there are elections that hinge on the character and honesty of the candidates and their parties. The 2020 election, in my estimation, is all about Americanism, the Constitution, the values of the Declaration of Independence ... and whether or not we will continue as a free republic.

Trump and Trumpism have enveloped the 2020 election -- Trump's selfishness, incompetence, arrogance, corruption, and divisiveness have made all other considerations this year secondary. As patriotic Americans and decent human beings we really have only one choice and that is to replace Trump and his corrupt administration with Vice President Biden.

Joe Biden is a centrist who has displayed in his long political career a dedication to civil society and the functioning of the federal government in a manner that at least tries to make it work for all residents of the nation. I think Biden will make a good president and will get the country back on track.

Sadly, Trumpism has infected every aspect of the once respectable 'Party of Lincoln' -- it just isn't that party since Trump came along -- Lincoln would be aghast. So, my general principle for 2020 is that all Trumpican/Republican candidates have to be defeated. Trumpism must be excised root-and-branch from the American body politic.

I live in the western Denver suburb of Arvada, Colorado, and this list reflects the contests in my area.

 

President and Vice President of the United States
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris

Colorado United States Senator
John Hickenlooper

U.S. Representative - Colorado 7th Congressional District
Ed Perlmutter

State Board of Education - 7th CD
Karla Esser

Regent of the University of Colorado - 7th CD
Nolbert Chavez

State Senator - District 19
No vote

State Representative - District 29
Lindsey N. Daugherty

State Representative - District 27
Recommendation
Brianna Titone

District Attorney - 1st Judicial District
Alexis King

Jefferson County Commissioner - District 1
Tracy Kraft-Tharp

Jefferson County Commissioner - District 2
Andy Kerr

Ballot Measures

Amendment B - Repealing the Gallagher Amendment
No

Amendment C - Bingo-Raffle Liberalization
No

Amendment 76 - Redundant Citizen Voting Qualification
No

Amendment 77 - Allow Localities with Gaming to Set Limit on Gambling Stakes
No

Proposition EE - Increase Taxes on Nicotine Vaping Liquids and Tobacco
Yes

Proposition 113 - National Popular Vote for President
Yes

Proposition 114 - Restoration of Gray Wolves
Yes

Proposition 115 - Mind Other People's Business Abortion Proposal
No

Proposition 116 - Reduce Colorado Income Tax Rate
No

Proposition 117 - Make Us Vote on Government Fee Increases
No

Proposition 118 - Paid Family Leave
Yes

 

 

Global Warming: Yes, It is Up to US ... Now!

Record Tropical Storms September 2019

The United State is the largest per person emitter of carbon dioxide in the world ... and we have been for decades.

It is up to us to lead, up to us to innovate.

No more passing the buck or making excuses.

We change our behavior or we invite massive disruption and suffering.

We have derived tremendous benefits from fossil fuels, our modern technological society; however, there is no such thing as a free lunch. In the course of just two hundred years we have burned up literally millions and millions of years of solar energy stored in the form of fossil fuels, we humans have done that -- there are negative consequences and they are evident. Denying or resisting the common sense evidence of global warming is foolish.

 

Agitate.
Vote.
Encourage and support mutual action to mitigate global warming.
We are all in this together.

 

The climate crisis explained in 10 charts
From the rise and rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to possible solutions
The Guardian - September 20, 2019

 

This GIF captures just how gigantic the U.S. carbon footprint is
Grist - April 23, 2019

 

CO2 Emission Per Capita
Our World in Data

 

New climate models predict a warming surge
Science/Paul Voosen - April 16, 2019 

For nearly 40 years, the massive computer models used to simulate global climate have delivered a fairly consistent picture of how fast human carbon emissions might warm the world. But a host of global climate models developed for the United Nations’s next major assessment of global warming, due in 2021, are now showing a puzzling but undeniable trend. They are running hotter than they have in the past. Soon the world could be, too.

'Our House is Burning'

 

"Our house is burning. Literally.
The Amazon rain forest – the lungs which produces 20% of our planet's oxygen – is on fire."

President Emmanuel Macron, France - August 23, 2019

 

The deleterious effects of anthropogenic global warming have never been more starkly witnessed before our very eyes than they have this summer of 2019. Fires in Alaska; dramatic ice cap melting in Greenland; ice shelf deterioration in the Antarctic; hottest July temperatures ever recorded ... now the fires in the Amazon.

It is part of human survival tactics to think that tomorrow is pretty much going to be just like today; we couldn't provide for ourselves if we operated in perpetual crisis mode. Yet, it is a fact of existence that change is always happening, usually slowly for the human lifespan, but occasionally there are catastrophes, sometimes natural, sometimes caused by us. The 2004 tsunami was a natural occurring event ... World War 2 was solely a disaster of human origins.

Anthropogenic global warming is definitionally "human caused"; we are doing this to ourselves and we are doing it rapidly and even now accelerating the warming. 'Our' global warming an effect of the Industrial Revolution, of our discovery of how to burn millions of years of solar energy stored in the form of fossil fuels in just 200 years. There is no such thing as a free lunch, common sense tells us that there will be consequences to such a prodigious release of carbon into the atmosphere in such a short period of time.

And now the effects are closing in on us.

The timeframe in which we can mitigate the effects of global warming as individuals or even communities is passing by. We are going to have to act as a species, as humans upon the Earth, together.

Agitate and vote.
Only mutual action enacted on state, national, and international levels will help us now.

 

Amazon rainforest fires: global leaders urged to divert Brazil from 'suicide' path
The Guardian - August 23, 2019

Carlos Nobre, a senior researcher with the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of São Paulo, said the surge in deforestation was taking the rainforest closer to a tipping point beyond which swaths of the usually humid forest would become a dry savannah, with dire consequences for the climate, wildlife and forest dwellers. ...

Nobre co-authored a study last year that predicted the southern, eastern and central regions of the Amazon would reach an irreversible stage of degradation once 20%-25% of the forest was cleared. This was not expected for 20-25 years, but Nobre said the tipping point was likely to be brought forward by about five years if this year’s rate of forest destruction continued.

 

Amazon fires: Bolsonaro actively trying to devastate rainforest, leaked documents show
Brazil’s government plans to build bridge, motorway and hydroelectric plant through world's largest jungle
Independent - August 23, 2019

 

In Bolsonaro’s burning Brazilian Amazon, all our futures are being consumed
Eliane Brum, The Guardian - August 23, 2019

 

The Amazon in Brazil is on fire - how bad is it?
Visual and Data Journalism Team, BBC - August 23, 2019

 

The Brazilian fires provide an example of how quickly politics can potentially affect the world environment and humankind's immediate future.

This is serious.
There isn't going to be an adaptability option for humans and many other species of life if the current pace of warming continues. I still hear this notion expressed from some deniers ... "We'll adapt." But has been pointed out many times before, the problem is the rapid rate of warming, that is what makes this episode of climate change unprecedented and so dangerous for us.

 

Will I be able to tell when we’ve reached a climate tipping point?
Eve Andrews, Grist - August 15, 2019

Simply put, a climate “tipping point” would mean that an ecosystem or social system has reached a degree of change that results in a new state of reality. That kind of milestone is the result of “feedback loops” — some kind of mechanism that causes change to compound on itself, like melting sea ice creating more water that melts more ice. The system could become so transformed that the rules governing it would be fundamentally changed: “Hundred-year storms” become regular occurrences, temperatures across the U.S. regularly exceed the current National Weather Service heat index range, and a delta becomes a gulf.

That is a new world for which humans are not currently ready. We are barely able to wrap our heads around the ecosystem changes going on right now. But pretending we don’t understand what’s going on isn’t going to make the situation any better, so we might as well get into what kinds of apocalyptic predictions pave the path of climate inaction. ...

The “tipping point” that I believe we should look out for is the one at which we have no idea what’s coming, and we can’t possibly prepare for it. And make no mistake, some communities are already reaching something very close to that reality. We’re currently at 1 degree C of warming, but barring some swift and comprehensive change, our business-as-usual policies and practices have us on track for as much as 3.5 degrees C.

 

Scientists Have Been Underestimating the Pace of Climate Change
Naomi Oreskes, Michael Oppenheimer, Dale Jamieson, Scientific American - August 19, 2019

First, climate skeptics and deniers have often accused scientists of exaggerating the threat of climate change, but the evidence shows that not only have they not exaggerated, they have underestimated. This is important for the interpretation of the scientific evidence, for the defense of the integrity of climate science, and for public comprehension of the urgency of the climate issue. Second, objectivity is an essential ideal in scientific work, so if we have evidence that findings are biased in any direction—towards alarmism or complacency—this should concern us. We should seek to identify the sources of that bias and correct them if we can.

 

 

Quote

 

The first desperate wail of a beleaguered reactionary nationalist:
“Socialist! Communist!”

Dave Chandler, July 2019
With acknowledgement to Samuel Johnson

More Verification: Humans Cause Global Warming

 

Anthropogenic climate change is a fact ... global warming caused by human beings is real. The science demonstrates this incontrovertibly. And ... common sense makes this phenomenon apparent: In the course of just two hundred years we have burned up literally millions and millions of years of solar energy stored in the form of fossil fuels, there will be consequences.

For all the positives humanity has gained from fossil fuels there is a price to pay -- there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Global warming deniers imperil us all by impeding efforts to change human activities that are causing climate change. Increasingly they don't even try to offer alternative scientific explanations, their response is reactionary, it is merely political and alarmist: global warming is a communist plot.

The scientific research keeps coming in to help us understand what is happening -- and what is happening in front of our very own eyes keeps showing us the predicament we are in and how much it will ultimately cost us and our children and grandchildren.

What to do.
Make a difference.
Climate change: 12 years to save the planet? Make that 18 months
Matt McGrath, BBC - July 24, 2019

 

Climate change: Current warming 'unparalleled' in 2,000 years
BBC - July 24, 2019

The speed and extent of current global warming exceeds any similar event in the past 2,000 years, researchers say.

They show that famous historic events like the "Little Ice Age" don't compare with the scale of warming seen over the last century.

The research suggests that the current warming rate is higher than any observed previously.
The scientists say it shows many of the arguments used by climate sceptics are no longer valid. ...

"This provides strong evidence that anthropogenic (human induced) global warming is not only unparalleled in terms of absolute temperatures but also unprecedented in spatial consistency within the context of the past 2,000 years."

 

Climate scientists drive stake through heart of skeptics' argument
NBC News - July 24, 2019

Global warming skeptics sometimes say rising temperatures are just another naturally occurring shift in Earth’s climate, like the Medieval Warm Period of the years 800 to 1200 or the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling that spanned from roughly 1300 to 1850.

But a pair of studies published Wednesday provides stark evidence that the rise in global temperatures over the past 150 years has been far more rapid and widespread than any warming period in the past 2,000 years — a finding that undercuts claims that today’s global warming isn’t necessarily the result of human activity.

 

I'm a scientist. Under Trump I lost my job for refusing to hide climate crisis facts
Maria Caffrey, The Guardian - July 25, 2019

The Trump administration’s hostility towards climate science is not new. Interior climate staffer Joel Clement’s reassignment and the blocking of intelligence aide Rod Schoonover’s climate testimony, which forced both federal employees to resign in protest, are just two of the innumerable examples. These attempts to suppress climate science can manifest themselves in many ways. It starts with burying important climate reports and becomes something more insidious like stopping climate scientists from doing their jobs. In February 2019, I lost my job because I was a climate scientist in a climate-denying administration. And yet my story is no longer unique. ...

Ultimately it will be the taxpayers who will pay the true price for our apathy towards these violations. It will become progressively costlier to alter our infrastructure to accommodate the incoming tides. And we will watch as our historic structures are swallowed by the sea. As these things are happening, remember that there were probably multiple scientists like me who warned of these dangers but were silenced. The current administration may only last a matter of years, but its actions may potentially impact our planet for centuries.

 

Last Month Was the Hottest June on Earth Ever Recorded
LiveScience.com  - July 18, 2019

If you thought last month felt really, really hot, you were right. June 2019 was the hottest June on record for the globe. And, it was the second month in a row that balmy temperatures caused Antarctic sea ice coverage to reach a record low. ...

Are these record high temperatures a result of climate change? Yup.

"Climate is, by definition, the long-term average of weather, over many years," Josef Werne, a professor of geology and environmental science at the University of Pittsburgh, previously told Live Science. "One cold (or warm) year or season has little to do with overall climate. It is when those cold (or warm) years become more and more regular that we start to recognize it as a change in climate rather than simply an anomalous year of weather," he said.

We All Have to Pay: The Carbon 'Free Lunch' Era is Over

 

The most important thing you can do as an American is vote for candidates committed to international and national policies to deal forthrightly with global warming. Personal actions are admirable, but we are now at the point where we must act together, globally, for the benefit of our posterity. That's all there is to it.

The carbon 'free lunch' socio-economic experiment is over.

For all the positives humanity has gained from fossil fuels -- nothing is free -- there is a price to pay. We are not off the hook for the effects of burning millions of years of stored solar energy in just over two centuries ... just because we did not have sufficient foresight to anticipate the cost does not mean that the bill is not due. It is simple common sense and no amount of denial or political obstinance will alter reality.

Here I link to some particularly salient information to further an understanding of what is going on, what is at stake, and hopefully motivate all of us to do the only thing we can to preserve ourselves and future generations: organize, vote, and support mitigation policies. We are all in this together.

---

Weather is explained by climate ... and we are witnessing changes in weather patterns and in the intensity of weather phenomenon that demonstrate the effects of anthropogenic global warming.

This video explains this succinctly.

 

 

Last month was the hottest June ever recorded — as climate groups warn of an ‘ecological emergency’
CNBC - July 3, 2019

Soaring temperatures worldwide made last month the hottest June ever recorded, according to data collected by the EU’s satellite agency.

Data provided by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which is tasked with providing comprehensive climate information for the EU, showed global average temperatures for June 2019 were the highest on record for the month.

 

Baked Alaska: record heat fuels wildfires and sends tourists to the beach
The Guardian - July 3, 2019

Anchorage experienced higher than average temperatures nearly every day of June, reaching a balmy 80F on days that once maxed out at a mild 67.

The weather is forecasted to heat up further through and after the Fourth of July, with temperatures expected to climb to nearly 90F in Fairbanks and Anchorage over the weekend.

If the forecasts are correct, the state could set several new local heat records before the week is out.

 

CO2 emissions are on track to take us beyond 1.5 degrees of global warming
ScienceNews.org - July 1, 2019

A new study shows just how hard it may be to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial times.

The world’s existing power plants, industrial equipment, vehicles and other CO₂-emitters are on track to pump out enough carbon dioxide to blow past that target by midcentury, researchers report July 1 in Nature. Add in future power plants that are already planned, permitted or under construction, and we could emit enough by 2033 to raise average global atmospheric temperatures by 1.5 degrees, the researchers say. ...

... Human activity has already increased global temperatures by 1 degree. Emitting an additional 420 to 580 gigatons of CO2 could warm the planet to 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated in 2018. Current infrastructure could emit that much CO2 between 2018 and as early as 2035, though it could take until 2046 to reach those totals, the new study found.

 

Rising heat stress could cost 80 million jobs by 2030 - U.N.
Thomson Reuters Foundation - July 1, 2019

Rising heat due to climate change could lead to the loss of 80 million jobs by 2030, with poor countries worst hit, the United Nations said on Monday, as Europe sweltered in record temperatures.

A temperature rise of 1.5C by the end of century could lead to a 2.2% drop in working hours - equal to 80 million full-time jobs - costing the global economy $2.4 trillion, according to projections by the U.N. International Labour Organization (ILO).

 

 

And ... cognitive dissonance for climate change deniers who are also aggrieved about immigration: these realities are mutually inclusive. There is no such thing as a 'free lunch'.

 

We’ll Never Solve Immigration If We Don’t Solve Climate Change
Fortune/Penny Pritzker - June 18, 2019

Climate change and immigration have become more inextricably linked than ever. As of the end of May in fiscal year 2019, almost 150,000 migrants from Guatemala traveling with family members had been apprehended at our southwest border. That represents roughly 1% of the country’s total population. While there are a number of reasons driving this migration, including violence, poverty, and corruption, researchers now believe that climate change represents a significant underlying factor. In Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, 2.2 million people have lost their crops due to excessive rain and drought, according to the World Food Programme. These are also some of the world’s most susceptible countries to drought.

Rising temperatures have severely impacted weather patterns, rainfall, soil quality, and crops’ vulnerability to disease, and thus have had a significant negative effect on farmers and local economies. Since 1950, the average temperature in Central America has increased by 0.5 degrees Celsius, and it is projected to climb another 1 to 2 degrees by 2050. More broadly, data also shows that global migration due to climate change will only grow in the years ahead. According to the World Bank, climate change could displace as many as 140 million people by 2050 in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia.