The Dangerous Playground

 

I just want you to do a thought experiment with me for a little bit. You are a park administrator. The town council has allocated certain funds to build a playground in the park you administrate. They want, specifically, a jungle gym, slide, and swing set--the sorts of things that would be attractive and fun for children. There is already a designated space and it has been partially paved. There is no compelling reason not to use the allocated funds to build the jungle gym, slide and swing set. 

However, you don't especially love the idea of the playground itself on general principles and are trying to save park administration money because you have as yet to be determined reasons and saving money looks great on your personal resume.

So you hire three, let's call them-- "Stooges". They say they are builders, and that's good enough for you, because they seem bright enough. And they use some pre-made kits to get the ball rolling and build something that looks like the promised picture--but there are lots of unused parts. They have no idea how those go together, and assume they are just extras and cart them off. 

They are, actually, reinforcing beams, retaining straps, cement screws--parts intended to ensure the whole apparatus doesn't cave in under the weight of child bodies, fall over in a stiff breeze, or send children flying. But these budget builder fly-by-nights had no idea how anything worked, and now, we have kids approaching a rickety playground of doom. 

Kiddie carnage awaits. 

Coleoptera

Minus the Southern patois that sounds like Senator John Kennedy as rendered by bad AI, Donald Trump talking about groceries sounds like Jerry Lewis talking about "coleoptera" at about 2 minutes in. 

Just so we are clear, Trump thinks no one can afford bacon and we need to show ID at the grocery store to buy anything.  But long story short, if we made more gas and had less windmills and had huge tariffs on food not made here, you could probably buy a banana for ten dollars. Isn't that what a banana should cost? 

Now, I totally understand how windmills are killing the pork industry because that is exactly what you would expect--when pigs fly. Somewhere in Trump's mind, he's got it imbedded that if the costs for goods in the US market were higher because of tariffs, they (I think, China) would have to produce at a lower cost, which means they deregulate (snerk), and try to whoop up more "productivity" at lower costs from their workers. 

Keystone Problems

 

U.S. pipeline regulator reviewing special permits after Keystone oil spills -source https://t.co/QOLs8JNV2O pic.twitter.com/Ghi2ZJkKLk

— Reuters (@Reuters) December 21, 2022

This is the third spill in five years. It's spilling into Kansas Mill Creek. 

Operators were alerted to an issue with the pipeline on Dec. 7. As of Friday morning, TC Energy says, 4,125 barrels of oil from the creek have been recovered of the estimated 14,000 barrels (about 588,000 gallons) reportedly lost in the spill.

Aerial footage of the leak from Nebraska Public Media shows the leak has affected a nearby pasture and residents' farmland.

Many initial details, like the cause for the spill, are still not clear. What is known is the type of oil that was being transported through the pipeline: tar sands oil, also called diluted bitumen.

Because it's tar sands oil, it's thick and hard to clean up. (It's not easy to convert to gasoline for this reason, too.)

Republicans have been blaming Biden for cancelling further work on the project and claiming it had anything to do with higher energy costs this year (it doesn't--at all)--but this hammers home why this kind of pipeline is a problem: we don't eat or drink oil, and this kind of spill can damage farmland and poison water. For years, my objection to it has been that it runs too close to the Ogallala aquifer, right in the nation's breadbasket. 

Anyway, when Republicans want to start in on Keystone XL--the pipeline that runs through the US to ship Canadian oil for export and complain that Democrats hate cheap energy, I think my response is something along the lines of what my dad told me when he despaired of the sloppy condition of my room. He said, "Only a sick animal shits where it eats." 

That probably won't make a dent in the hard heads of people who doubled-down on "Drill here, drill now" after the Deepwater Horizon spill. But I don't know how much more obvious the keystone problems have to be.

The Russian Mobilization Here in the US

 

After suggesting the US blew up the pipelines, Tucker starts listing possible options for the Russian retaliation pic.twitter.com/XvmHolSSg4

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 28, 2022

There are fifty-somethings being re-enlisted back in Russia, past their prime, grizzled, about to be re-introduced to materiel that they were handling back in their previous service. There are young men, many of them from the various ethnic hinterlands of the Russian Federation, who will be mobilized with barely days of basic training--hardly enough time to acquaint themselves with concepts like, "Here's your left foot, here's your right foot, this is the end the bullets go in, and this is the end the bullets come out." And it's sketchy how well the bullets come out from rusted over rifles, anyway. 

But let me pretend for minute that I was as full of Putinist cope as occasional Tucker Carlson guest Col. Doug McGregor--isn't it likely that Russia is making their mobilization look like a clusterfuck so that everyone will be taken unawares by the crafty scheme of--

Sending underprepared humans who don't want to be fighting a war in Ukraine to either be killed or surrender ignominiously?  Slowing the Ukraine advance to reclaim lost territory by stacking Russian bodies in their way? 

I'm not seeing a strategy in that, and I don't see a strategy in a US led false flag damaging Russian pipelines to Europe to trigger a NATO response. It seems like it's been Russia who has been suggesting that much of northern Europe couldn't do without their fuel--but is it not worth it to consider that dealing with Russia is financing genocide anyway? Maybe Russia shouldn't think they have all of Europe's ass over a barrel, or a pipeline. I don't think it matters. For the sake of our democratic ideals, for the sake of acknowledging sovereignty and rejecting bullies, there is no question but to support Ukraine. 

I don't know what the effect of maybe 300,000 warm bodies (for however long they stay warm) joining the fray is (if they get there, given how many are trying to leave for Mongolia, Finland, Georgia, etc. ) I suspect when the bodies start returning home, regardless of the mobile crematoria and the idea that field deaths are a part of op sec, as well as propaganda, and the people know for sure that Mad Vlad decided to fuck over at least a generation to stay in power and to see a stupid vision of Russian greatness come to fruition. And failed and kept failing. And offered bodies to fail some more.  

The one thing that Russia has effectively mobilized, I guess by their own media paying attention to him, is Tucker Carlson's mouth. Of course, he's never facing bullets. I just wonder at what juncture he faces facts. Or when Fox News decides his version of the news is a perversion of it and can't take his lies anymore. 

Texas GOP are Making Special Choices

 

Apparently, the Log Cabin (I always fight my fingers not to type "Log Closet") Republicans are a little bit mad that the Texas GOP shut them out of their little get together. Like, yeah you can be disappointed but how are you surprised? Did Gov. Abbott not just criminalize basically treating trans kids at all? Make families where trans kids exist basically have to consider where they will move? In a state where the Governor basically puts a target on LGBT families, (the threat is real everywhere) are Gay Republican Texans thinking they are up above this mess? 

Tell you what, the "besieged" party that has been running Texas for the past couple decades thinks the answer is letting the queers know they are abnormal.  Forget what you think you know about what ails the state-- it's at least a little bit about LGBT people and maybe the whole weather thing is about prayer. (I'm just saying--same religious signifying, now with more scapegoating.) Could Texas Republicans do actual things that matter policy-wise for their citizens?*

Hahahahah-nope. They want a constitutional convention to prevent the federal government from stopping them from being as shitty as they want to be for marginalized people. They would greatly prefer no one ever taught their kids non-Confederate-loving history and worry the church is threatened by education existing. 

And Proud Boys attacked Dan Crenshaw of all conservative people as being John McCain with an eyepatch because their golden White Supremacist media god Tucker Carlson told them to. That's fucking crazy. 

But again--not surprising. The thing with a monster is, if you feed it, it grows, and that is what happens when you feed fascism. It grows. And that means that eliminationism becomes a fact, and the "management" of political figures by violent correction becomes a fact. When you encourage conspiracy theories, the truth becomes hairy. When you scapegoat, anyone can come under the onus. When you enable bullying, the bully boys become the only government that exists. And they suck. 

That means people need to make better choices while choices are still available. 

* (Yes, if they chose Beto O'Rourke and give him some Democrats in the State leg. Otherwise, probably not, all things like this considered.) 

UPDATE: I know full well they put some bullshit about wanting to secede from the Union and not accepting Joe Biden as their president into that document. But in the grand scheme of things, there's less they can immediately do about that shit than they can about fucking up marginalized peoples' lives and so on. And I know there are people who are like "Let Texas secede." Yeah, well, let me tell you about the people who don't vote Republican/don't vote at all. They don't deserve that life. It's a shame to suggest it. But yeah, the only out I see is the people make the stupids go away by taking their asses out of office. 

UPDATE: I know it's kind of fucked up that I didn't even reference the election denialism and the implied secessionism, but after the Tea Party and Birtherism, that's kind of old hat, isn't it? The Big Lie invalidates Biden because Biden is an old white guy and you can't pretend he wasn't born here. But I take for granted all Republicans believe that any Democratic president is somehow, some way, invalid. President Clinton's first term was supposed to be problematic because he didn't have a majority, with there being a third party candidate (that was trashed when he decisively won his second term, and the Whitewater investigation had to get nastier). And when Obama had Bin Laden taken out and issued his birth certificate, you know, Benghazi became this major thing. Republicans don't believe Democrats should exist be in office. I believe one of their pundits once said a fewliberals should be kept around in cages to remind people of what we were like but I can't remember who it was at the moment. Probably Ann Coulter.

The Jumper Reality

 

Mario Draghi: “Do you prefer peace or the air conditioning on? That’s the question we should ask ourself”. pic.twitter.com/ErT6E5X4aq

— David Carretta (@davcarretta) April 6, 2022

There is a similar complaint--would we be willing to freeze if Russian oil demanded it? Like, seriously--is it worth freezing not to support genocide? Is it worth putting on a jumper and extra blankets?  When portable crematoria might be disappearing the evidence of bodies in Mariupol? So, now that it is spring, and we don't need to think about the cold as much, what if summer was a good reason to partially fund genocide? 

I would say, no. The temperature is never a reason to actually ever support genocide. Supporting genocide is always bad. Air conditioning can also be contributing to climate change so we should think good and hard about how we achieve our very temporary tolerable temperatures, and what we are willing to sacrifice for that limited comfort. 

We aren't presented with peace or AC, however. We are presented with genocide and an eventual desert called peace, and the future where we are always getting our commodified energy resources from monsters unless we try to do better and fully engage in renewable energy and become really self-sufficient. Anywhere. 

I like the idea of energy that isn't monster-fueled and doesn't fuck up the environment. We can do it. We seriously can. 

American Gasbags

 

This week, scads of people formed huge lines at gas stations filling up containers that had no business holding liquid fuel because of a very temporary supply hiccup. Because of the kind of country we happen to have, this was characterized in the media as President Biden's problem. Which is kind of is, as in, his administration had to deal with it, but also is wasn't, in the sense that a major driver of shortages was panic-buying because people with a very particular set of political skills used the opportunity to make this about energy policies that had nothing to do with what was...to be perfectly clear...a criminal hack on our gas supply infrastructure. 

This kind of thoughtless, kneejerk jerkery has unfortunately had badly destructive consequences, already. (I'm going to leave alone whether the owner of a Hummer already had some wasteful notions about gas consumption, and ignore whether or not a lit cigarette had anything to do with the conflagration.) I can easily imagine worse situations--storing this fuel in sheds or garages, leaks, sparks, fumes. And accidents while siphoning the badly-stored fuel into gas tanks. I guess if it all makes it into cars there isn't too much risk of serious damage that your fuel filter wouldn't catch--but that's an "if" and I don't know if I'd want my garage-baby nursed on petrol with drowned dust-bunnies in it. (I'm no mechanic, so I don't know what the repercussions of a sludgy fuel pump are.)

The "Joe Biden's Green New Deal caused 1970's-like gas lines" stuff reminds me a lot of this February's "Joe Biden's Green New Deal caused Texas energy failures". It was another weird bunch of lies that seem to cohere around not understanding how anything works and wanting to blame libs when anything goes wrong. And yet some people accept that kind of twaddle, as poorly-stored and unsafely packaged, combustible and laden with debris as it is.

Which makes me wonder just which kind of American gasbag is ultimately more dangerous. While the damage isn't as obvious as a melted suburban assault vehicle is, I worry about the bullshit in our rhetorical gas tank.

UPDATE: In the interest of not being a part of the problem while trying to be part of the solution, I'll concede the above picture is not from this crisis. But yes, the panic-buying was real, and ill-considered. And the government isn't telling folks not to put gas in plastic bags unless that nonsense was out there.

STAY THE F*CK CALM!!

On one hand, Trump doesn't want people to PANIC about COVID-19, like the Churchillian stateman that he calls himself, but on the other hand, liberals are going to ban energy (because with wind, you know, on a breezeless day you won't be able to watch your seven-eight hours of Fox News), take your guns, shutdown the economy and auto production, destroy the suburbs, get rid of cows, and kill you with soup. (And apparently do a "reverse racism" by teaching kids history I think he's saying, right?)

I feel like we are getting very mixed and very silly messages here. Is it possible that Trump....always lies? Wow. Stay tuned, folks.

UPDATE: Brief addendum--Trump has said a shit-ton lately about the destruction of the suburbs and about Democrat-led cities being "on fire". You know what can destroy suburbs? Wildfires. You know what's on fire? The fucking West Coast. If Trump wants to do presidenting, now would be a pretty good time to pull his big-boy pants up and try it, right?

Is Stable Genius Joking, Though?

Pres. Trump jokes about windmills in speech on energy: "All of a sudden it stops, the wind and the televisions go off, and your wives and husbands say, 'Darling, I want to watch Donald Trump on television tonight, but the wind stopped blowing." https://t.co/JsAo4rT8TM pic.twitter.com/H3ERYkZ5CR

— ABC News (@ABC) August 13, 2019

In a relentlessly false speech, like many of Trump's other, relentlessly false speeches, Trump repeated a laugh line about the power going out if the wind stops, but honestly? Why do we give him the benefit of the doubt on this one? I can easily see him rejecting buying an electric car because he'd never find a cord long enough for where he wants to go.

His thing about windmills--I still say it is nearly quixotic.

Anyway, Trump also reminded us about how much he loves trucks, and okay--we know, kiddo. We know.

Stay Bull Jean Yuss 2: Code Orange

Trump at NRCC dinner:
-vows to "take back the House"
-says “They say the noise [from wind farms] causes cancer”
-tells crowd he's just sure someone will leak "his whole damn speech" to the media while it's being broadcast on C-SPAN

But everyone just sits and grins cause money. pic.twitter.com/73yQXBEfjT

— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) April 3, 2019

Donald Trump is having a bit of a "normal one" today, I'm afraid. I mentioned earlier that he was reprehensibly lying (as was his minion, Hogan Gidley) regarding Puerto Rico, but did not also mention that he was also going volte-face over his earlier claims that he was fully exonerated by the Mueller report. Now, he says Dems are crazy for wanting the full report that allegedly fully exonerates him, which does suggest that crowing over not-quite four pages of a summary of a summary might have been overselling things a bit. This was, sadly, not the entirety of Trump's dysfunction and incompetence on display.

In an event with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Trump was simply bizarre. He was unable to say the word "origins", saying instead "oranges". He stated his own father was born in a nice place in Germany (he was born in the Bronx). He also seemed to indicate that part of the problem with immigration was judges.

Judges. Mkay.

I've joked recently about Trump being a "Stay Bull Jean Yuss" because of his quite obvious ignorance about how wind power even works and his own crowing about his supposed intelligence. Indicating that wind power causes cancer comes from the same place anti-vax bullshit does (oh, wait up, he's about that bullshit, too)--the fake news sewer of the internet.

I've also kidded that maybe some part of Trump's ignorance and apparent incapacity is a work, not a shoot, on the off chance that he needs an insanity plea for whatever shit he fears all the investigations surrounding him will eventually lead to.

Yeah. But it still isn't funny and needs to be looked into, though. There is something very not okay with this picture. It looks bad because it is bad, you guys.

Stay Bull Jean Yuss

Donald Trump is glad the U.S. is not powered by wind "because it only blows sometimes" https://t.co/8Ny2VzhHL5 pic.twitter.com/n5fkOavVvw

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) March 29, 2019

The wind may only blow some of the time, but Trump blows all of the time.

UPDATE: I mean, seriously....

TRUMP: "If Hillary got in... you'd be doing wind. Windmills. Weeeee. And if it doesn't blow, you can forget about television for that night. 'Darling, I want to watch television.' 'I'm sorry! The wind isn't blowing.' I know a lot about wind." pic.twitter.com/tGsUIoUmUQ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 29, 2019

Rick Perry May Not Be All that Bright

JUST IN: Rick Perry suggests fossil fuels help prevent sexual assault https://t.co/JQsuTpCGea pic.twitter.com/dKkoZxKgmN

— The Hill (@thehill) November 2, 2017

The idea that light prevents sexual assault is just dumb--hell, people have been sexually assaulted in broad daylight! But to use the already really dumb idea that people don't get assaulted because the lights are on to support a particular industry is, let's face it, insultingly dumb: You fiends! Attacking the righteousness of the fossil fuel industry! Will no one think of the assault victims?

It's making light of a grim damaging reality, I think, because sexual assault happens to be in the news lately.

But hey, politics. It's not like it's nuclear science or anything, right?

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".

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.

And After the Solar Panels Comes Ragnarok!

I will take a moment on Sunday (of course!) to go over the COP21 climate deal, but I saw this story being Tweeted and RT'd today and couldn't quite get over it. A town rejected allowing a solar farm to be built with some fascinating reasoning:

Bobby Mann said he watched communities dry up when I-95 came along and warned that would happen to Woodland because of the solar farms.

“You’re killing your town,” he said. “All the young people are going to move out.”

He said the solar farms would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not come to Woodland.

It reminds me of when Rep. Joe Barton cited a study to propose the conclusion that wind turbines could slow the wind down. And possibly use it all up?

Did that citizen think the solar farm would act like, I don't know, a solar dimmer switch?

I just can't even.

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!

The Keystone Pipeline Has Been Rejected

When TransCanada requested a suspension of the XL pipeline application, I think they forced the White House to go ahead and reject that sonovagun, to environmentalist acclaim.

For some reason, even though this never would have produced many jobs (probably about 35, about the same as a Denny's) or even appreciably affected prices at the gas pump and even though pipelines can be a mess and why in the hell should helping Canada sell their tar sands oil to China be our problem?

Maybe this tiresome anti-environmental GOP fetish is totally dead, now. I dunno. Just, tiny little note to people who think Obama caved to "special interests" in rejecting the pipeline bid--people who care about the planet that they live on are not a "special interest". Oil companies are. If you think people who care about who care about the planet on which they live have a special interest, and don't get that oil companies' interests in getting their way over sooooo much protest is "special", then I am tempted to believe you don't think that much about regular folks, who are interested in clean air, water, and having a livable climate, and believe corps are the only people whose "interests" are important to you.

 And also you probably suck.  Because you, too, need clean air and water and a livable planet, as do your loved ones. But for some reason, you think caring for the planet is "special"--not "essential".

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: Mike Huckabee's Sunburn Edition

They believe climate change is a greater threat than Islamic extremism, that a sunburn is worse than a beheading. It's nonsense! #DemDebate

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) October 14, 2015

Welcome to another edition of our Sunday Climate Round-up, this time named after Mike Huckabee's go-to "hot take" on how terrorism is scarier than...a sunburn, which is what absolutely no one who is discussing climate change is seriously talking about, ever. But I'll bite, because I've hit this one before, poll your friends and neighbors and see who can admit to having had a really terrible sunburn. Go on to see how many of them have had a skin lesion looked at or removed.

Now think about how many of your friends and neighbors have been beheaded. Statistically, it is way more likely for a US American that everyone you know has had sunburn, and a few of them have had something suspicious scraped. Skin cancer is pretty scary. But you are less likely to know someone who was beheaded by terrorists--which isn't to minimize the threat of terror at all, only to put it in perspective.