Global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations from Oct. 1 through Nov. 11, as recorded by NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2. Carbon dioxide concentrations are highest above northern Australia, southern Africa and eastern Brazil. Preliminary analysis of the African data shows the high levels there are largely driven by the burning of savannas and forests. Elevated carbon dioxide can also be seen above industrialized Northern Hemisphere regions in China, Europe and North America.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Sporting News has published a scathing critique of Brazil’s attempt to prop up its rather shaky green credentials by wedging a “buzzkill” climate message into their Olympic opening ceremony.
Global warming message had no place at Rio Olympics’ opening ceremony
The organizers of the Opening Ceremony of Rio Olympics 2016 should give themselves a medal for hypocrisy.
Their preachy warnings about global warming brought a feel-good evening to a screeching halt Friday night. It was an unforced error that unfortunately marred NBC’s otherwise solid coverage from Brazil.
Things were going pretty well. NBC’s excellent opening video had glibly chalked up to the problem of polluted waters, zika and street crime to the struggles of “modernization.”
We had parkour athletes put on a dazzling show — despite Rio having a much-lower production budget than the London or Beijing Summer Games
We had Brazilian super model Gisele Bundchen strutting across iconic Maracanã Stadium to the bossa nova classic, “The Girl from Ipanema.” That set off a huge party. After the catwalk of her life, NBC cameras seemed to cut back to views of Bundchen, who is married to Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, dancing in the crowd every 30 seconds.
…
Prime-time host Bob Costas added his usual deft touch, saluting Rio de Janeiro’s “spirit for revelry.”
Then it happened just like that. Boom. The joyous ceremony took a hard turn with a bleak message about global warming and climate change.
Talk about a buzzkill. The dancing stopped.
Brazil, until recently hailed as a rising tiger economy, has in the last few years collapsed into a morass of multi-billion dollar political scandals, impeachment, corruption, third world levels of street crime and a total failure to control sickening levels of water pollution and the Zika crisis. Our water sport athletes are literally competing in a sea of human filth.
Why aren’t green groups vigorously protesting Brazil’s environmental hypocrisy? I suspect they are getting so desperate for signs of political support, they’re willing to accept anything, overlook anything, in return for a few kind words.
Brazil is not the first government to try to use climate hypocrisy to distract attention from their sickening pollution levels, rampant corruption and political incompetence. They won’t be the last.
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I noticed that one of the Egyptian female beach volleyball participants was wearing a “burka”, or what ever. Those two lost their match….
[snip – off color comment -mod]
no, no, no. it was clever and funny and harmed nobody.
you are scared.
and that makes you a worthless coward – not to mention humorless.
pussy.
you don’t like the color of my comments, bite me.
Nonsense they wear Hijabs. Ignorance is no excuse. Hijab wont restrict your view in volleyball. Stop being a clown
They lost because they were not as good as the other team.
When the global warming bs came on, I shut it off. So did my parents, and my kids. I am disconnecting my satellite over this. I am so sick and tired of the PC bulls**t. Bye bye TV. Everybody I know is disconnecting from it. I am the last.
Good stuff. I gave up television a long time ago and have not looked back. I can’t stand it now, nor radio. You’ll notice that a lot of tension disappears when you’re not soaking up a daily dose of human misery.
Disconnect your land line, too. Saves me $35 a month, and 5 calls a day from people I don’t know and I don’t like. Can’t believe I didn’t do it years ago.
I hope I wasn’t the only one who burst out laughing when the narrator stated that “Greenland is melting”. Really? A land mass is melting? And then they showed “scary” animations of Florida, Northern Europe, and other coastal areas being completely covered in water over some indeterminate time frame. Apparently the entire state of Florida will soon be covered by rapidly rising ocean water from a “melting Greenland”. Of course the narrator failed to mention the expanding Antarctic ice sheets.
“Of course the narrator failed to mention the expanding Antarctic ice sheets.” Umm…. no it’s not.
…Ummmm, yes it is….
Simon, even NASA concedes this point: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses/
Two things worth pointing out.
1 Brazil just had a political coup before the Olympics
2 People at the Olympics holding “Temer” out signs were forced to remove them by Brazilian security forces.
Spirit of Athens eh.
The current “interim” PM made millions from bribes from construction for the Olympics
El Nino always gives Brazil a nice roasting, the 1877 El Nino pumped Brazil’s worst drought ever
the link to the sad n sorry climate clip is blank on the media page..
maybe on the no seeum list for us downunder?
anyone else from Aus able to view it at all?
I turned on the TV to watch the opening ceremony long after it started.
The first thing I saw was a computer graphic showing parts of the world flooding from sea level rise.
I turned off the TV less than one minute later.
That one minute may be my entire elapsed time viewing the olympics this year.
I found it amusing that after all the global warming pearl-clutching they blew off 28 billion fireworks.
In any beach volleyball game I will be pulling for the girls in the bikinis.
“pulling”???
That seems to be my favorite Olympic sport so far…
Being in the tropics, global warming, if it were to occur at all, would show up the least.
I guess the NHS did not have the influence to march in the opening ceremony this time. That left a political messaging slot open.
Wonder how much they got donated to include the Climate Change arrangement ?
Sure glad I quit watching before the propaganda came on.
RE: Money. Does money have anything to do with the fact that Ben Johnson was the only one caught in Korea? Ben noted that all the top athletes were on something.
If you watch the video closely I believe the dates of the polar ice caps melting ends in 2005 — for obvious reasons
Here is the latest climate propaganda from the Olympics…
H/T commenter 007 on the tips page.
http://www.bloomberg.com//news/articles/2016-08-08/olympic-records-won-t-come-easy-in-rio-because-of-climate-change
My bad if anybody already mentioned this, but Rio is in the SH which is cooling. Reminding the world that the NH has warmed using Greenland summer ice loss and applying it to the SH is using apple crops to warn of an orange shortage.
Amen. You can put peanut butter in my chocolate. I don’t even mind ham in my beef chow mein. But keep your politics out of my sports.