Climate Monday: A Humble Media Suggestion

Trump White House issues climate change report undermining its own policy https://t.co/SZb2vFpdJg

— Vox (@voxdotcom) November 26, 2018

I don't think that the narrative that the Trump Administration is necessarily "hiding" their National Climate Assessment report is correct because I don't think news cycles really have a "Friday news dump" lacuna anymore, but I definitely agree that the actions of the administration serve to undermine it (or as they probably see it, the damned scientists are trying to undermine them). But this isn't something that's just peculiar to President Trump's anti-intellectual, conspiracy-minded, staring up at eclipses sort of nonsense. This is a problem we specifically have with US conservatives, and sadly, with how our media screws up reporting fact-based issues "for balance".

Take the Sunday shows. It's not hard for the chatty journalism format of the designated serious newsy shows to work in a "Friday news dump" item and give it a going over. Meet the Press, the ancient and venerable, bothered to mention it.

And they fucked it up. They let Senator Mike Lee get away with being stupid regarding the financial aspects of the substance of the report. The report specifically addressed the fact-based reality that real economic damage would be the fall-out of climate change, but libertarian Lee was able to burble that he saw no policy proposals that would not be economically damaging.

Let me rephrase that: is it that he sees no proposals that immediately address climate change that also permit entrepreneurs to capitalize on the deal? First off, that's short-sighted, but second, the turning a buck is their problem, not as a law-maker, his. His job would be legislation aimed at mitigating the effects for the safety and welfare of his constituents, which might not always be direct regulations (if he's so ideologically opposed), but could mean tax penalties or credits as a carrot and stick incentivization scheme to encourage better environmental practices. He doesn't seem to understand the question. He is, unquestionably, not a scientist--but you'd think he might understand the policy end a bit more, no?

Questions regarding the report were also put to regular MTP panel-member Danielle Pletka, of the AEI think tank. Her answers were also god-awful stupid.  And of course, she is not a scientist, and the AEI think tank she hails from gets a not-inconsiderable subsidy from Exxon, and maybe for all I know, other fossil fuel companies. This merits a disclaimer, I would think. But that MTP asked Pletka, and not, say, Tom Steyer, who was also on the program and actually has a committed and informed point of view on climate change, but was only asked about the 2020 horse race (really?) is, well.

Stupid.

But this isn't the worst stupidest thing. CNN actually pays my former senator, Rick Santorum of PA, for opinions about things when there is no evidence that he is actually, in any respect, a person with worthwhile and well-considered opinions. He actually fatuously repeated the dumb thing that Trump said about forest-raking, even though, once again, California does not manage all the forests, but the Federal government is in charge of most of it, and no, no one ever rakes forests because that is fucking stupid. Droughts are about less rain, and raking would actually pull more moisture out of the forest floor, and, you know, just read a book or something if you don't know why that is stupid. In the history of ever, there has never been a time when forest fires were managed by troops of people sent out into tens of thousands of acreage of trees, raking up shit.

But he also said a funny thing regarding climate change and the scientists who study it, to wit: they propound that global warming is real because of the sweet cash involved:

"I think the point that Donald Trump made is true, which is, uh… Look, if there was no climate change we’d have a lot of scientists looking for work," Santorum said. "The reality is that a lot of these scientists are driven by the money they receive, and of course they don’t receive money from corporations and Exxon and the like. Why? Because they’re not allowed to because it’s tainted, but they can receive (money) from people who support their agenda and that, I believe, is what’s really going on here."

Is he saying the people who support the thing where the established companies with all the money are going to have to make less money are somehow offering more compensation than the companies with all the money?* Because that is either really stupid or exactly what somebody who has been getting fossil fuel money and is also really stupid would say. And if Exxon and the coal companies and the natural gas guys and them could pay for Rick Santorum to say stupid stuff on tv (and also get paid by CNN, and provide no disclaimer about that whatsoever), than frankly, whatever stopped them from paying an actually very intelligent person or a hundred to put a scientifically shut-up-shutting up empirical stake in the heart of climate change science for once and for all?

Except, you know, the empirical facts?

So, my humble suggestion is this: If you have a political operative who might be swayed because of their income streams into siding with a corporate enterprise or entire industry opine on a subject pertaining to that industry, make it abundantly clear or don't have their asses on at all. And it you want balance, instead of "not a scientist" viewpoints dueling in a nebulous policy arena, maybe try to actually be informative and have a scientist weigh in! Also, maybe dedicate more of your staff to knowing this shit cold so they can respond to actually brain-damaged statements about raking forests and the glamorous pay of research scientists in real time.

I think it could be very helpful and serve the public a lot more than this farcical coverage.

*No. Tom Steyer is not paying all the other guys. It's, like 97% of scientists. He and Al Gore are not behind the whole global warming thing. The greenhouse effect was first described in 1824.

Climate Sunday: Revisiting the Paris Accord

Trump administration won't pull out of Paris accord, offers to re-engage in climate deal, EU official says https://t.co/v9eHLcRtZH

— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) September 16, 2017

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said today that Trump might be open to staying in the Paris Accord under the right conditions, after a WSJ story suggested Trump was staying in. Is it possible that someone finally explained to Trump that each country sets their own carbon emissions targets and there is nothing unfavorable in staying?

Who even knows? I just think this might, maybe, be a statement with a definite possibility of a glimmer of almost getting it with respects to climate. It's stupid. But it's...something.

A Little Economics Lesson

DOE Rick Perry at coal plant:"Here’s a little economics lesson: supply and demand. You put the supply out there and the demand will follow."

— Taylor Kuykendall (@taykuy) July 6, 2017

Just to use coal as an example, if I had a gas furnace, I could have several tons of coal at my disposal at a very low price, and want exactly none of it, because my heat does not depend on coal. I would have to consider whether it would be worth it to me to switch from a city utility to a coal delivery scheme where I get a coal burning furnace for some reason. But coal being available and cheap isn't necessarily going to sell me if it isn't a reliably-priced, environmentally-better choice than what I'm already using. I suppose you could find a market for condom-vending machines in Vatican City if you had the gumption to try it, but I think there are a lot of problems with a model of "supply creating demand".

This Trumpworld Grab-Bag is a Showboat

There's a certain frustration that goes with seeing a beautiful lie get destroyed and the realization that so many people--like VP Mike Pence, like Sean Spicer's gifted understudy Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and all the folks who went to bat for the idea that Donald Trump was acting on the advice of AG Jeff Sessions and Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, who both submitted letters about why James Comey had to go--was just so much stage dressing for the real decision-making, which was Trump and Trump alone. He decided Comey had to go, for whatever reason he did decide, which almost certainly still could not possibly be about his treatment of Hillary Clinton's email investigation, and equally almost certainly had to do with the Russian hacking inquiry. It's frustrating because we may never know how clowned those people must have felt when their careful story got blown.

I think the best part of the Lester Holt interview is where Trump calls Comey a "showboat", mostly I suppose for appearing on Trump's television giving testimony for this and that--because the House or Senate had requested him to. Comey is a "showboat" coming from gold-plated everything celebrity tv reality show-guy seems, I don't know...just mighty rich. Comey investigating Trump was this thing called "a job", and briefing Congress was a part of it (see "checks and balances" and "Constitution" and stuff).

For an even more bizarre take on what Trump even expected from Comey, we have a report that he wanted him to "pledge loyalty" to him. (Yes, I linked to Ben Shapiro's take deliberately. This thing should be as perplexing to folks on the right as on the left because of a thing called a "republic" where public servants don't pledge loyalty to any person, but to the Constitution--this sounds very much like a cult of personality, not like patriotism.)

But there's more: Trump explained his claims that Comey had admitted three times that Trump was not under FBI investigation for the Russia hacking inquiry by explaining that Comey had sought contact with him in hopes of "staying on" and that Trump also sought him out to be sure of where the inquiry stood with respects to himself.  Both of these things are pretty awkward. For one thing, Comey had a ten year appointment and so did not have a reason to automatically suspect he wouldn't be "kept on" (like an old family retainer once the young laird has come into his inheritance, one did not add). Also, remember how some people saw former President Bill Clinton speaking with Obama's AG Loretta Lynch on the tarmac in Phoenix? Well, maybe President Trump reaching out to the lead in the investigation into the Russian interference is also a cause for a kind of concern. But Comey's associates say Trump's tale is bosh altogether.

But this is just speculation--the more instant obvious thing Trump's admissions does is cast doubt on all the stories other people in Trump's circle tried to tell to explain something that only really was clear in the mind of Trump, himself. This is not great leadership because he doesn't explain and doesn't seem to grasp that he is a public servant: meaning explanation and accountability to the people are part of the job.

There is more concerning business regarding Trump and his understanding of his job, though. Two other recent interviews are a little alarming. In one, to The Economist, he seems to think he came up with the idea of "priming the pump', which has been a colloquialism since the 1800s and an economic term since the 1920s. 

And to Time Magazine?  There's this one really odd passage everyone has seen by now, right? It's this:

On the future USS Ford-class carriers

You know the catapult is quite important. So I said what is this? Sir, this is our digital catapult system. He said well, we’re going to this because we wanted to keep up with modern [technology]. I said you don’t use steam anymore for catapult? No sir. I said, "Ah, how is it working?" "Sir, not good. Not good. Doesn’t have the power. You know the steam is just brutal. You see that sucker going and steam’s going all over the place, there’s planes thrown in the air." 

It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said–and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers. I said what system are you going to be–"Sir, we’re staying with digital." I said no you’re not. You going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good.

No, I get this; you don't, but I do. Trump is going to insist carriers use coal-fueled steam-boilers for the catapults, which will create who knows how many coal-related jobs. Capital thinking, old chap. Why aren't we steaming everything? Planes, boats, rice, trains, infrastructure. Gilt and steam. That's some trans-continental railway to the 21st century he's talking about! Next stop--Jim Crow 2.0! Who's a showboat now?

Climate Sunday: What's up with the EPA?

You know, I worry a little bit about an agency charged with protecting the environment when it is now being headed by someone who made many lawsuits against it. I'm funny that way. So when I hear that a number of folks have been forced off of the EPA advisory board, I feel like it's good odds they'll be replaced by people like Mandy Gunesekara, who is totally there for the coal industry, or folks who don't really care if a pesticide is shown to be detrimental to children's development.

I really don't have anything to add to that--there are just some pretty worrying signs, right there.

Climate Tuesday: Clean Energy is the Future, Anyway

What outgoing president of a major economic powerhouse nation just wrote an article that provided significant economic justification for pushing ahead with a clean energy agenda? Our outgoing bad-ass intelligent president, Barack Obama, who has tried on the environmental question and I think has done pretty ok. Mostly because his core strategy was making his difference, where he could, last.

And there's only so much a Trump presidency could do, to, for example, bring back coal.  The thing is--I don't understand why people with intimate experience with this industry would want it to be revitalized--let's talk about black lung.  This disease is a way an industry gets profit off of neglecting the safety and health of employees. It's not some romantic cross some blue collar workers have to bear--it's systemic abuse that leaves people thinking getting maimed by their job is part of their right to have a paypacket at all. Add to this a withholding of access to health care, and you have a horrific situation for hard-working Americans.  

Or sometimes people get caved in and blown up. Or their pretty home is razed and poisoned. There's only so much damage a Rex Tillerson, oil exec, could do. Or any other Trump appointee, who prefers an exploitation model of energy extraction and sale. Disregarding workers. And their lives.

Hopefully, the various industries recognize the real future is in renewables and clean fuels. Because without this understanding, real folks will suffer.

Climate Sunday: The Fossil Fool

This week, Donald Trump gave a speech about his energy policy, which, if you think about it, would be a speech that should intersect with environmental policy and foreign policy and trade deals and all the stuff this guy thinks he knows stuff about and, well, doesn't.

His speech left something to be desired--like any competence at all with any of the matters at hand.

Coal jobs aren't coming back. We're not bringing them back because to do it, we'd have to deregulate to the point where we accept a callous loss of life, lower wages, and somehow make coal a desirable fuel source again in the developed world where most energy gets consumed. Do you see high-rise buildings put up with a coal furnace in the basement these days? I don't think you see that so much anymore, but Donald Trump builds great buildings, so maybe he knows.

He criticizes the wind industry for killing birds. I've joked before about his Quixotic attempts to tilt at windmills in Scotland, but do you want to know what really kills lots of birds? Large buildings.  As a builder of great big edifices, you think he'd know about this particular edifice dysfunction.

He also rather peculiarly seems to think we are shipping random bits of water out to sea in California to save fish and that there is no such thing as a drought.  This was dumb as hell when Carly Fiorina tried it, right?  If you are a farmer--which there are an awful lot of in California, you know your best water source isn't a spigot somewhere that magically sends you water. It's clouds, in the sky, that rain on your land.  Yeah, pumping groundwater and turning a knob somewhere to get the water flowing sounds nice--but we can't retroactively build reservoirs back when to catch the water that isn't falling right now. If someone somewhere wants to cough up money for a time machine and some building reservoir money--awesome sauce. But until you can--guess what? Realize the whole water situation changed in a vulnerable area where population expansion cause a higher demand than the local sources probably could sustain even under the best of circumstances.

He wants to back out of the Paris Accord, and I don't even think he knows what it is. He's looking at it like a trade deal--but to be quite honest, if he thinks there's a way to get anyone to sign up to behave responsibly without mutual cooperation, he's not dumb, he's delusional. There's no leverage in backing out. You lose all authority to tell anyone else what to do. But this doesn't bother him, most likely, because he is a nutter who believes shit from tabloids, and not climate science.

This guy? I environmentally can not with this guy.

Don Blankenship Sentenced to One Year

Former coal CEO Don Blankenship sentenced to 1 year in prison https://t.co/2smwau2w4J pic.twitter.com/um2GPKiv67

— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) April 7, 2016

I think the salient point is that 29 people lost their lives because a CEO viewed his employees as an abstraction--work units, not human beings whose safety mattered. And one year in prison and a fine of $250,000 probably will not change that kind of mindset. Not for Blankenship, not for similar-minded people in the industry.

Climate Sunday: The Big Freaking Deal

I couldn't address a Climate Sunday post this weekend without taking a look at the COP21 Paris agreement, considered the best chance at saving the planet. You can consider me, personally, on board with the idea of all nations being responsible for reducing their carbon emissions and for any assistance wealthier nations can provide to get, and keep, a working array of renewable resources for the energy needs of poorer nations. I'm well-persuaded that the science of anthropogenic climate change is sound, and I recognize that good change does not come about for free. If anything of value is to be achieved, it will have costs. And everyone ought to recognize that not understanding the importance of climate change and the necessity of paying those costs, now, will mean having a higher price to pay in the future.

I like to look long-term. This is because, in temperament if not politics, I am basically conservative. I don't believe in letting bad bets ride. So when someone like Karl Rove scoffs at the COP21 deal, because in 2080 we'll all be dead--I don't know who he is trying to persuade. Rove might be dead by then, but I'll only be 108 years old, and still quite interested in seeing a healthy planet for those babies born in 2016, and their children born in the 2040's and 50's, and their grandkids of the 2070's and so on. Who in the world thinks nothing will matter after 2080?

But then again, we have a lot of short-term thinkers around, and this isn't new. Sen. Jim Inhofe, whose grandbabies once laughed at Al Gore while building igloos (and are probably wearing shorts this fine December weekend), made a statement that reminds us that the US Senate never ratified Kyoto. And even if all other participatory nations to that agreement signed on, besides the US, the emissions of the top economies cancelled out any of the benefits of an other nation's goodwill carbon-sparing.

Climate Sunday: The End of Breathable Air?

While the COP21 talks continue, let's take a minute to talk about breathable air. Normally, when I talk about breathable air around here, I'm talking about the kind of air pollution in Beijing that makes simple breathing the equivalent of smoking 40 cigarettes a day. (And wouldn't you know, it's about as bad as it ever was.) This time, however, what I want to talk about is a recent finding that at 6 degrees C increase in oceanic temperature, we could be seeing the end of actually breathable air--not air that is too dirty to safely breathe, but air without enough oxygen to sustain aerobic life. This comes about due to a die-off of the phytoplanktons that produce most of the oxygen in our atmosphere, similar to the die-offs we see in the current mass coral bleaching event.

This is why it's imperative that fossil fuels like coal are quickly phased out in countries like India, which has made the case that as a matter of economic justice, they will continue to use coal due to its price point over other energy sources. Leaving aside that coal has been determined to be irredeemably "dirty" in CO2 terms, and that increasingly severe weather events from climate change, such at the devastating floods occurring just now in the Tamil Nadu region are not without economic impact, they have a point--and my feeling is that economic aid should be gathered in a trust managed by the UN for the purposes of subsidizing the necessary transitions, which needn't be painful, and which may prove to be even more outstandingly effective than low-cost coal use from an economic point of view, once it's off and running. It's necessary to think in these terms, because India's energy needs show no signs of decrease any time soon. (On the other hand, China, which is still using coal hand over fist, should basically just stop because they should, and shouldn't need paying off to do so.)

Climate Sunday: The Death of Coal?

I remember in 2012 seeing a handful of signs like the one depicted above saying "Stop the War on Coal, Fire Obama". They might have made a little more sense posted in Western PA than in Philadelphia.  For that matter, I know a house in Mt. Airy that proudly boasts a "No Fracking" sign. President Obama's "All of the Above" strategy has never outright been antithetical to coal, except in tightening emissions. It's really the market that is making coal a bad deal economically as the natural gas boom has just left coal in the, well, dust.

So it doesn't come as that much of a surprise that one thing countries are planning to do to lower CO2 emissions is phasing out coal plants. (They were probably likely to do that anyway.) The UK is planning to switch over to gas-fired plants altogether, although they maddeningly seem to be turning their backs on renewables.  This would be a real missed opportunity, as wind power looks like it has a great future there.

All is not over for coal, just yet, anyway, for those of you who have romantic feelings about black lung: China is, absurdly, still developing coal plants. (China really needs to do a bit better. The link makes China look like if Volkswagen was a whole country. ) As carbon dioxide has come to be 400 ppm or above on a steady basis, this is a damn shame, because the planet might just be more susceptible to CO2 than previously thought.

We need to stop dithering, and switch to clean renewables. Everything is in the balance.


Update: Hollah, Alberta!

Climate Sunday: Don Blankenship Edition

Greetings and Happy Sunday to you all, and thanks for tuning in to my semi-regular environmental musings. This week's round-up is brought to us by Don Blankenship, who was recently told by a judge to shut his flapping yap up about how politically persecuted he was. It might very well be true that under the Obama Administration, investigators spent more time inspecting his mines and pointing out the very tragically wrong things that led to the deaths of miners at his mines. But this might have been for a lot of reasons, such as, the pattern emerging that Blankenship was awful, the Obama Administration being less likely to ignore these kinds of abuses, and, I don't know--the deaths of 29 miners in a preventable accident due to Blankenship's pathological management? (Not a big fan of Blankenship, this blogger right here.)

But this individual's beef with the government over what he considers to have been job-killing regulations versus what appear to have been employee-killing violations, sets the tone for this week's rumination on--what about the fossil fuel industries, anyway? For example, it looks like Exxon, who apparently knew enough about global warming science in the 1970s and 1980s to have considerable private information on it, basically "gamed" the Bush Administration to sow doubt and confusion. (Although don't let the big bad oil company take the total blame for that--the Bush Administration was very willing to be had. I mean, leave it to these pricks to have a "Safe Water Drinking Act" that lets frackers screw up drinking water however they want.)

But this conflict in knowing full well climate change was real, and also working to sow doubt, is pretty unnerving. They could only act like that if profits entirely outweighed any sense that they should be responsible corporate and global citizens, and exposes a real weakness of the capitalist system.

Climate Sunday: Partisan Witch Hunt Edition

 

The GOP-lead (well, kind of, anymore) House of Representatives has been on a bit of a depressing trend that's come to light regarding basically using a branch of the federal government to grind political axes, so, call it "serendipity", but it looks like they're doing that regarding climate change science as well. Jagadish Shukla, a climate scientist, is going to get a House going-over for...well...writing a letter.

Yep. Writing a letter. He signed on to a letter requesting that the government investigate, it turns out, fossil fuel companies, to find out what they knew about man-made climate change, and when they knew it. It's come to light that Exxon, for one, has known about man-made climate change for thirty years. It's probably more than just them. (BP, for one, did a weird thing where they dropped denialism as being their bag and took up greenwashing their image, while still be dirty as hell.) So it should seem like a reasonable inquiry. They knew something that impacted billions of people (all the people on this planet) and kept a very tight lid on it to maintain their profits. That's some seriously horrible stuff, right?

Well, if you are a hard-core climate change doubter (which I think is becoming the new standard, since the poor dears fret so at being called denialists--my choice of calling them "feckless gas-holes" was, alas, ignored), like Rep. Lamar Smith, the Republican who chairs the House Committee on Space, Science and Technology, what is really awful is being a climate change scientist who also has a political opinion regarding what to do about science change based on one's research. Where in the world would a scientist get the idea that he should have a political opinion--or challenge those precious fossil fuel companies who fund denialism propaganda and political campaigns, like, for example, Lamar Smith's?  Can we think of a better reason than that why Lamar Smith thinks scientists' business is his business?

But let me not beat up on the House GOP denialists--or is that doubters?--alone. The GOP Senate is not without their oddball hearings and ridiculous misinformation. Sen. Ted Cruz, 2016 presidential candidate and possible Speaker of the House contender, is such a showoff of his own ignorance he berated the Sierra Club president in a show hearing with denialism that wasn't even new, un-debunked, high-quality denialism. We already know you aren't Galileo, Senator, your mis-information doesn't need to be as old as him!

This politicization of climate science is so needless though. What if we could come to an agreement that accepting climate change doesn't give you liberal cooties? What a wonderful--and healthier--world that would be!

(UPDATE: Sorry, I had meant to explain my use of the above graph--the Hockey Stick graph--in the context of this post. Well, remember that thing when Climategate happened and all climate science was debunked because there was such a scandal and conservative blogs and publications were spiking the ball left and right like "We got you! We scored the political point, so now the science isn't true!" Right. Well, eight investigations later exonerating the scientists, and climate change is still a thing, that was apparently a monster waste of breath. Because, it turns out, science does not care about your politics.  It's about data. You can't lawsuit and FOIA request it away.)

Climate Sunday: I've Seen the Future and It's Murder

I'm back with another Pessimist's Club update about the planet and what we're doing to it--and this one is going out to the EPA, who couldn't very well dump bunches of heavy metal-laden mining waste into the Animas River unless it was there to be dumped, not that I'm letting them off the hook. Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper drank that weird yellow water, but then he has guzzled fracking water, too. He might be a little weird. But basically, mining is dirty business for water, and the risk of contamination can continue long after mines have gone defunct.

But anyway, did you know we hit Earth Overshoot Day just recently? We're taking more from the planet then it can afford to give. When we get the bill for the overdraft fees, it's gonna be a headache.

Air pollution in China is determined to be the cause of over 4,000 deaths a day.  That's 1.6 million people a year. That's worse than a war. A lot of that problem is coal--there is no tech that makes burning that stuff 100% clean.

Rolling Stone has a pretty good article on the abundant evidence that global warming is totally a thing, which is a lot of what I've been talking about on this humble surfactant container. The title has the scariest words: The Point of No Return.

If you were wondering, was this July hot enough for ya? Goddamn it was hot enough. The hottest on record. The global heat wave is good for germs. But if you aren't a bacillus, it kind of sucks to be you. Especially if that "you" is in one of those canary in a coal mine countries that is especially hard-hit by climate change.

What do we have to do about this? Change everything. When do we have to do this? Yesterday. But I'll settle for more coalmines going bankrupt, more solar power everywhere, and a drive to treat conservation sort of how people dealt with sweetless, wheatless and meatless days during WWI and the recycling drives of WWII.  We can lick climate change! Win the global war on US with Us-Power! And let's get it done with the help of the Sun!

Oh, That "Just a Theory" Thing Again!

(Image via Wikimedia Commons--image created by NASA)

I think one of the weakest of all possible arguments against climate change is, "Well, maybe human activity does influence it, but we don't know by how much and anyhow, what are you gonna do?" That's the sort of gambit OH Governor John Kasich has tried on, with my favorite "not-a-scientist" add-on: "It's just a theory."

My stars and garters how that "just a theory" thing does get around! The Big Bang--just a theory. Evolution--just a theory. Oh, and gravity--it's just a theory, too. (That's from Ellery Schempp, a local physicist who has tangled with the idiotarian types before, and whose piece is intended as a send-up of how "just a theory" is used with gravity in the way it has commonly been used with evolution. Or, as I've said before, if the "just a theory" argument persuades you that man doesn't have a common ancestor with apes, maybe the "just a theory" argument regarding gravity should lead you to an appropriate experiment with an upper-story window? )

Climate Sunday: Walmart is All About Coal

Since we are this close to Black Friday anyway, and Walmart often comes up as a big old capitalist cultural debaser, what better time than now to point out they love one of the dirtier fuels, coal, so very much? 

And we aren't just talking about selling manufactured crap from China, which uses so much coal. They serve areas where they hook up to a grid where the local plants produce coal energy. They have talked about renewable energy but they could do better. Solar is actually pretty cost-effective to install right now, and while we're at it, I find there's a lot to be said for them not going for growth so much as sustainability as an important aspect of their enterprise. They could pay their workers better and live up to their green-washing, and still make a tidy profit because of their size.

Then, I might even be tempted back into one.

Climate Round-up: This US/China Deal is A Big Thing!

This supercut of politicians using China as a boogeyman to chase away the specter of doing something about cutting GHG emissions is something to keep in mind as Republicans are spoiling for a fight against the recent US/China deal to cut emissions.  One important thing to know about the deal, though, is that China has pledged a greater curtailment in their activities than we have.  There may be some room to be skeptical of their ability to see it through, but coal is unsustainable for them, and the effects of pollution in China are readily apparent in the sightings of people wearing air quality masks on the street.  The effects of the kind of air quality seen in congested areas of China are an obvious health hazard that nation has every reason to find concerning.

In other news, the Obama Administration is coming to the G20 in Brisbane with a pledge of $3 billion to assist developing nations with adapting to climate change and transitioning to renewable energy. There's a terrible inequality to the issue--the countries most responsible for carbon outputs aren't the ones who will experience the worst of it. This will be the most any developed nation has put in the kitty to help equalize things.

As Congress continues to discuss the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline (the House has already voted to authorize it, the current whip count looks like it might fall short in the Senate), here's a useful backgrounder on what the pipeline is and the arguments for and against. It is true that most Americans kinda-sorta support it, but here's one neat thing--

Public support is dropping for fracking. I'm kind of very anti "shit where one eats", so I look at people being utter NIMBY's over fracking as a terrifically sensible thing. It's good to know that spoiled groundwater and the possibility of earthquakes and sinkholes are enough to make people have second thoughts. So maybe showing people what happens when a dilbit pipeline goes pear-shaped can be useful for people who want to know whether this thing could be very bad for the groundwater in just the area it is very needed.

On the tech horizon, solar cells are getting mighty flexible and car companies are trying to get mileage out of frankenfuels.

I'll probably actually even have more for a Climate Sunday post. We will see.

Don Blankenship Indicted Regarding Upper Big Branch Mine Violations

It's good to hear that Don Blankenship, who was CEO of Massey Energy when the Upper Big Branch Mine blast killed 29 workers, has been indicted for what really always looked to me like a criminal disregard for the lives of his employees. His poor ability to separate regard for  profit from duty to ensure mine safety seemed to me of a piece with a sense that employees were property--owned by the company. So why did it matter if some got killed here and there? He didn't just cost the company millions in fines and settlements--he's possibly cost himself his freedom.

Since the disaster never did cost him a place in the industry, maybe this is the message that was required that miners' safety matters.

Climate Sunday: Time for a Revolution

There has been a kind of lazy thinking regarding climate change regarding the cost, and as part of my Climate (mostly) Sunday posts, I've often tried to track how the idea that converting our economy to a more sustainable and egalitarian track was proper and necessary.

Oil isn't the future once you've met peak oil--when tar sands or dilbit or whatever you want to call it means more effort and money is put into extracting more polluting fuels. It isn't even the future when you realize burning it is harming the atmosphere. Coal isn't the future when mountaintop removal dumps arsenic into groundwater, and high-sulfur coal produces sickening levels of particulate pollution. Fracking isn't the answer when groundwater is polluted and local farms and residences experience sickness.

The climate science deniers hedge their bets with the refuge that doing something about climate change will cost a lot anyway, so why be out of pocket just for the sake of trees and polar bears and poor people? The answer is that not addressing climate change will cost plenty in the long run. Denialists are basically screwing themselves. It's possible that addressing climate change could very well be beneficial to growth--if we get serious, creative, and on point.

I don't think we have time to waste--I'm enough of a cynic to believe that tipping points are real, and that we could reach a point of no return--but this can not mean that we don't try.

So I have very little time for people who want to blame climate scientists for "being in it for the money".  Seriously? I mean, seriously? Then you can't say addressing climate change is also communism. Sorry. The future might have to be local action, clean energy, water protection, and sustainable food systems. In other words, getting a better quality of life by not supporting pollution and destructive business practices.

And surprisingly, the only ones really hurt by that would be the people disproportionately benefitting from the current tilted and earth-damaging system.

Something has to give.

Climate Thursday: Drilling for Lava? And "The End of the World"!

People are stubborn, which is I think one of the main arguments going for climate science denialism--people prefer not to be told what to do, even if what they are planning to do is probably dumb. Example--Smokey the Bear should not have to tell people to be careful not to set forests on fire. But people go halfway peeing out campfires and flicking cigars around during wildfire season anyway.

In other words, yes, people sometimes do need to be told. For example, we do need to have boundaries on where oil and gas drilling takes place. And I don't just mean being careful about draining aquifers from fracking or running the risk of contaminating wells--although those are pretty dumb things people are already doing. I mean things like deciding we need to drill for oil in Yellowstone Park.

There's a supervolcano under Yellowstone that hasn't gone off for some hundreds of thousands of years, but given that the area is geologically volatile, I'd say there's a good argument about avoiding making the land angry. Drilling for oil is bad enough without drilling for lava. (Although the gentleman from Wyoming isn't the first mook to suggest drilling in Yellowstone was perfectly viable, and I guess he won't be the last.)