The Kelleher Family Blog: Chris, Bridget and Siobhán Kelleher from West Chester, PA
From the category archives:
So I have been neglecting this blog a little bit, sorry! I am going to work on being a bit more active with the posts. Since the big first birthday party, a bunch of things have happened. I just added a bunch of new posts with video and pictures!
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Yesterday I was in a meeting about 4p or so, my last of the day and right before it was time to head off to the hotel for the shuttle to the airport, when it started getting really dark outside. I was looking at the weather radar on my iPhone, and saw a very nasty storm moving in.
Scott, my coworker, was asking if there were tornado warnings issued, and at that time there weren’t, just some flooding and severe weather warnings. We went back to our desks on the other side of the building and started to hear the tornado warning sirens… they sound just like air raid sirens, and it was very eerie. Everyone was standing up in their cubes looking around and on the phone calling loved ones to check in and tell them to find shelter.
Everyone had live weather radar and streaming from the local Television stations up on their computers. There were at least 2 tornadoes that were being tracked by the local TV stations and on radar when I left work. One was near downtown Memphis headed north, and there was another heading south around the airport on its way to the suburbs. Both of them were within a couple of miles of my office. Within minutes, they started having everyone at work go into the stairwells to take shelter. A number of other people decided to head on out to get home.
I got a ride down the street with a co worker and went back to the hotel because I needed to take the shuttle to the airport… The manager there had them call me a cab, he didn’t want them to have to go out and drive me. The cab driver was good, and he didn’t seem to mind much, although the rain was coming down so hard at times he only had 20 or 30 feet viability in front of him. I was a little surprised to see the highways were packed just like any typical rush hour… lots of people trying to get home to family I guess.
On the entire ride you could continuously hear the sirens no matter where you were. When we finally got to the airport, there were no planes taking off or landing of course. They also had sirens on as well, along with all kinds of special blue emergency lights flashing all over the air fields. When I got inside, they weren’t letting anyone in through security. I found out later that airport personal were evacuated into an underground shelter for about 10-15 minutes shortly before I got there.
Overall it was an experience! I think that’s the closest I’ve ever been to a tornado before. At least I was able to get to the airport, and my flight was only slightly delayed.
Here are some links to the news coverage:
WREG Tornado Damage Update
WREG Tornado Damage
Local Pictures
USA Today Coverage
Eyewitness News Updated story
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I attended a diversity event at work today and was shocked and saddened that PA is one of 30 states that still allows employers to fire someone because of their sexual orientation. Boo! Check out pflag.org (parents and friends of lesbians and gays) for info on how to contact your representative if this shocks and saddens you also.
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Friday the 13th just got a little scarier. Here are 13 facts about the realities of global warming. Even Jason would be scared.
The numbers speak for themselves — we must make 2009 the showdown year for global warming action. There is no time to lose.
You can help by spreading the word any way you can — through email, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, whatever works for you.
Increase in the global carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels since the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1992.
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Coal-fired power plants like this one near Jewett, Texas, contribute to carbon dioxide emissions tied to warming. A NASA scientist is urging President Barack Obama to phase out all coal power that does not capture and store CO2.
Why bother reducing my carbon footprint? That’s probably what many people asked after reading about a new study that predicts that even if carbon emissions were drastically reduced, droughts and other severe climate changes tied to the emissions would persist for 1,000 years.
So why drive less? Why buy a hybrid? Why promote renewable energy?
Because doing nothing, or doing less, would mean even more dire consequences, the study’s authors and other scientists argue.
“If we don’t slow down or stop emissions, the climate changes will get much larger and quite intolerable,” Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said in an interview with msnbc.com.
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The economy, terrorism and the Iraq and Afghan wars “are linked by a common thread — our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels,” former Vice President Al Gore told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday in testimony that included his signature images on climate signals.
Arguing that recent climate signals are cause for greater alarm, former Vice President Al Gore testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday that lawmakers must “take decisive action this year” to curb carbon emissions.
Gore urged lawmakers not to be sidetracked by the current financial crisis, adding that a bill capping greenhouse gas emissions is needed this year if the United States is to play a leading role in negotiations for a new international climate treaty.
Gore was invited to testify before the committee by its chairman, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who said he wanted to send the message that his panel would be “super-focused” on rejoining those international talks.
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When I first started hearing the term clean coal both during the presidential debates and in commericals from energy companies on TV, I just had to roll my eyes. But these ads must be working, because some people think that there is such a thing as clean coal. That’s pretty much the same thing as light cigarettes being a “more healthy” alternative to regulars.
The technology that they are talking about when using the “clean coal” term is Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). This technology, while exciting in its potential to eliminate global warming causing carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal, is still not in use by any of the over 600 coal powered electric plants in the US.
I would urge you to look at these 2 commerical videos from This Is Reality. The first is already showing on some channels, and the other I imagine will probably be showing up soon:
There are no homes in America powered by “clean” coal today. There are no “clean” coal power plants selling electricity in America today. In fact, America does not have a single demonstration “clean” coal plant that captures and safely stores its carbon pollution. The technologies that capture or safely store CO2 have not yet been integrated with coal power at commercial scale. This means that the roughly 600 coal plants producing electricity in the US today are not preventing their global warming pollution from entering the atmosphere. Although the technologies are being developed and tested, in reality, there is no such thing as “clean” coal power in America today.
Burning coal for electricity is a leading source of global warming pollution in the US. Emissions from coal combustion for electricity contribute 32% of US CO2 emissions. The CO2 emissions from this coal combustion are larger than the emissions from gasoline and diesel transportation, which together contribute 27% of US CO2 emissions.1
Coal is also disproportionately more polluting than other fuels used in the US to produce electricity. 83% of the CO2 emissions produced from making electricity come from coal even though coal is the fuel source for only about half of US electricity generation.2 Per unit of electricity produced, CO2 emissions from coal are more than 1.5 times those of natural gas, the other major fossil fuel source of electricity in the US.3
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I guess some good news on the topic of global warming is only appropriate after my last 2 posts on “The Big Melt” and Global Warming Mythbusters.
Sen. Barack Obama, center, visits a solar power installation in Las Vegas in June. During his presidential campaign, Obama periodically stopped at renewable energy sites or companies to make his point about creating green jobs to help drive the economy.
Al Gore has a competitor for title of America’s climate crusader. His name is Barack Obama, and of all his immediate foreign policy changes none will mark as big a shift from the Bush administration as his approach to cutting carbon emissions, the leading cause of global warming.
“President Obama will be like night and day compared to President Bush,” Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., told reporters this week at U.N.-sponsored climate talks in Poznan, Poland.
Obama’s administration will mark a new era in U.S. climate policy, one eagerly awaited by countries and environmental groups that believe global warming is the most urgent problem facing the world today.
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Can you imagine how much 2 trillion tons of ice is? I sure can’t, but the amount of melting of land based ice (which will also cause sea levels to rise) is just unbelievable and very scarry. This is enough water to fill up the Chesapeake Bay over 11 times!
An melting iceberg is seen off Ammassalik Island in Greenland in this photo taken on July 19, 2007.
WASHINGTON – More than 2 trillion tons of land ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted since 2003, according to new NASA satellite data that show the latest signs of what scientists say is global warming.
More than half of the loss of landlocked ice in the past five years has occurred in Greenland, based on measurements of ice weight by NASA’s GRACE satellite, said NASA geophysicist Scott Luthcke. The water melting from Greenland in the past five years would fill up about 11 Chesapeake Bays, he said, and the Greenland melt seems to be accelerating.
NASA scientists planned to present their findings Thursday at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco. Luthcke said Greenland figures for the summer of 2008 aren’t complete yet, but this year’s ice loss, while still significant, won’t be as severe as 2007.
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Here are some popular global warming myths and the facts.
The science of global warming is too uncertain to act on.
There is no debate among scientists about the basic facts of global warming.
The most respected scientific bodies have stated unequivocally that global warming is occurring, and people are causing it by burning fossil fuels (like coal, oil and natural gas) and cutting down forests. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, which in 2005 the White House called “the gold standard of objective scientific assessment,” issued a joint statement with 10 other National Academies of Science saying “the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action. It is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions.” (Joint Statement of Science Academies: Global Response to Climate Change [PDF], 2005)
The only debate in the science community about global warming is about how much and how fast warming will continue as a result of heat-trapping emissions. Scientists have given a clear warning about global warming, and we have more than enough facts — about causes and fixes — to implement solutions right now.
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