Sushpective Chat Club: Thread #6 - Page 54

Sri Srinivasan: The First Hindu on the Supreme Court?

Hindus around the world are wondering whether Sri Srinivasan " the name atop many a list of potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees " will be the first Hindu to serve on the high court.

The India-born Srinivasan put his hand on the Hindu holy book, the Bhagavad Gita, held by his mother, when he was sworn in to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2013. The Senate had confirmed him to the court " often a launching pad to the Supreme Court " by a 97-0 vote.

Now the Times of India, The Hindu and other Indian newspapers " as well as scores of American legal pundits " are speculating that Srinivasan could be Obama's nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, whose death was announced Feb. 13.

The appeal of Srinivasan, who clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and argued more than two dozen cases before the high court as a deputy solicitor general, lies in his reputation as a moderate and the ease with which the Senate confirmed him to the appeals court.

Srinivasan, 48, who immigrated to the U.S. as a child, was raised in Kansas, and graduated from Stanford University with degrees in business and law. He has a pro-business pedigree, and defended former Enron chief Jeffrey Skilling. But he has also argued for liberal causes " as deputy solicitor general he argued that the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between one man and one woman for federal purposes, was unconstitutional.

CREDIT: NASA

Hot on the heels of the hottest year on record globally, NASA reported Saturday last month was the hottest January on record " by far. January 2016 blew out the previous record for hottest January (2007) by nearly 0.3F.

In January the Arctic averaged a staggering 13.5F (7.5C) above average, leading to a new record low of Arctic sea ice extent for the month.

There has never been as hot a 12-month period in NASA's database as the previous 12 months (February 2015-January 2016). This is using a 12-month moving average, so we can "see the march of temperature change over time," rather than just once every calendar year.

CREDIT: NASA VIA GREG LADEN

Significantly, January had the single biggest recorded monthly temperature anomaly (deviation from the 1951-1980 average temperature) " a whopping 2F above the average January temperature. This means it's even more likely that 2016 will not just be one of the hottest years on record, but very possibly even hotter than 2015, which itself was the hottest year on record since ... 2014.

If you detect a pattern here of human-caused global warming, you are in the company of more than 97 percent of climate scientists. True, every year is not going to be warmer than the last " but we do appear to be in the long-awaited global warming speed up. And a recent analysis of 2015's record warming by Climate Central makes clear that virtually all of the warming " some 95 percent " is due to human activity.

A graph showing how much greenhouse gases dominate global temperatures compared to natural factors like El Nio. Almost all of 2015's record heat is due to human activity.

Finally, it isn't just how remarkably warm January was, but where it was warm. As the NASA temperature map on top shows, parts of the Arctic, northern Greenland, and the Siberian permafrost were simply off the charts warm " up to a staggering 12.9C (23F!) warmer than normal. That is worrisome for several reasons.

First, the permafrost contains twice as much carbon as the atmosphere, and as it defrosts, it releases that carbon in the form of either CO2 or methane (CH4), which is 84 more times more potent at trapping heat than CO2 over a 20-year period. Second, the Greenland Ice Sheet, which contains enough landlocked ice to raise sea levels some 20 feet, is already disintegrating at an accelerating rate.

Finally, the faster the Arctic warms, the faster the sea ice melts. The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reports that January saw its smallest Arctic sea ice extent last month.

A great deal of recent research suggests that rapid Arctic warming, driven in part by sea ice loss, is already worsening extreme weather.

As devastating as climate change-driven extreme weather has been in recent years, the worst is yet to come.

http://www.reuters.com/article/india-protests-flag-jnu-idUSKCN0VR22Q