We all know nice, smart people who become agitated and irrational when they think about Islamic religion, immigration and criminal justice.  A recent study reported in Scientific American, indicates that these people become fearful when exposed to new and ambiguous information. Which, of course, means they are particularly vulnerable to right-wing scare tactics and slogans like “if we don’t fight them over there, we will have to fight them over here.” See the Scientific American article below:

How we react to faces could be linked to our political affiliations. Psychologist Jacob M. Vigil of the University of North Florida had 740 college students look at 12 photographs of faces digitally blurred to not display any clear emotion.  The volunteers were then asked if these faces expressed sadness, joy, disgust, surprise, fear or anger.  The students who identified themselves as Republicans were more likely than those who identified themselves as Democrats to interpret these vague faces as more threatening, as measured by anger or disgust, and less submissive, as conveyed by fear or surprise.

These findings, which appeared online October 21 in Nature Precedings, are consistent with research linking conservative political views on military spending and capital punishment with heightened reactions to disturbing images and sounds.  Vigil conjectures that the political ideologies we advocate could be linked with the way that we respond to ambiguous details.

This article is from Scientific American, January 2009.

-Alfred Adler

Ken Saro-Wiwa was an Ogoni, an ethnic group of Nigerians whose homes and health were (and still are) endangered by oil extraction practices in their native land. He took to organizing, writing and activism to bring light to his people’s plight.

Shell of course despised and feared the negative PR beginning to swell around their activities, and the Nigerian government felt economically bound to the giant company. And so what happened next was yet another atrocity in the sad and despicable history of powerful conglomerates protecting their interests.  Click here to see the full article.

This article is from www.treehugger.com.

And it is infuriating – as a public relations professional – to watch my colleagues use their skills, their training and their considerable intellect to poison the international debate on climate change.

That’s what is happening today, and I think it’s a disgrace. On one hand, you have the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – as well as the science academies of every developed nation in the world – confirming that:

* climate change is real;

* it is caused by human activity; and

* it is threatening the planet in ways we can only begin to imagine.

On the other hand, you have an ongoing public debate – not about how to respond, but about whether we should bother, about whether climate change is even a scientific certainty. While those who stand in denial of climate change have failed in the last 15 years to produce a single, peer-reviewed scientific journal article that challenges the theory and evidence of human-induced climate change. Mainstream media was, until very recently, covering the story (in more than half the cases, according to the academic researchers Boykoff and Boykoff) by quoting one scientist talking about the risks and one purported expert saying that climate change was not happening – or might actually be a good thing. Click here to see the full article.

This article is from www.desmogblog.com.

Click here to download a guide to facts and fictions about climate change.

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About Time

Imagine a global economy offering fair opportunities to everyone and hope of a better future for all of our children. Efforts to attain that dream will do more to stop terrorism and avoid war than would any homeland security system or deadly weapon.

Burning coal is a leading source of global warming pollution.

-”GHG Emissions and Sinks 1990–2006,” US EPA 2008.

Burning coal is the dirtiest way we produce electricity.

-“Carbon Dioxide Emissions from the Generation of Electric Power in the United States,” US DOE 2000.; “GHG Emissions and Sinks 1990-2006,” US EPA 2008.

There are no homes in America powered by “clean” coal.

-IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme CO2 Capture and Storage Database; Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies Program at MIT, CO2 Capture and Storage Project Database.

CO2 emissions from U.S. coal-based electricity are greater than emissions from all the cars and trucks in America.

-“GHG Emissions and Sinks 1990-2006,” US EPA 2008.

The coal industry is spending millions advertising “clean” coal, but not a single “clean” coal power plant exists in the U.S. today.

-“Big Coal Campaigning to Keep Its Industry on Candidates’ Minds,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 20, 2008 (link); IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme CO2 Capture and Storage Database; Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies Program at MIT, CO2 Capture and Storage Project Database.

“While you might have heard the phrase ‘clean’ coal during the presidential campaign, it’s actually an oxymoron.”

-Brian Williams, NBC News, Nov 18, 2008

This article is from www.coal-is-dirty.com.