Lafeminista’s Global Warming: Are you f***ing scared yet? highlights yet another reason for grave concern about the impacts of our using the atmosphere as a trash pit: we are killing life in the ocean as
Scientists have discovered that the phytoplankton of the oceans has declined by about 40 per cent over the past century, with much of the loss occurring since the 1950s. They believe the change is linked with rising sea temperatures and global warming.
Should we mention acidification of the oceans? Accelerating extinction rates? Ever-more disrupted weather patterns globally that, among other things, are hurting agricultural production? Stronger storms? Rising seas? ….
At a core level, if you are a parent and unconcerned about what this means for your child’s life (your own as well), well, you are living with blinders on.
Global Warming should effing scare us …
Yet, it doesn’t because it also so complex …
And, sigh, it shouldn’t have to because the solution paths are so clear …
Despite all the green washing out there (and there is lots of it, lets be clear), corn-based ethanol is far from a panacea in terms of reducing America’s dependence on imported oil, dependency on fossil fuels, reducing greenhouse gases and representing a good investment for the taxpayer. While supporting corn ethanol is, it seems, great politics to get through the Iowa primary, independent study after independent study shows that it is not a good deal for the taxpayer, the economy, and the environment. The absolute ‘best’ case, from honest analysis, is that this is a very costly and inefficient path for very marginal reductions in fossil-foolish dependencies and minimal greenhouse-gas emission reductions. Other analysts come out with the conclusion that we actually lose ground in GHG emissions in returns for the $billions being pumped into corn ethanol.
Right now, we seem to be watching (in slow motion?) a headlong rush into another “ethanol”-like boondoggle driven, in no small part, by the $70 million or so that T Boone Pickens has put behind promotion of The Pickens’ Plan.
In response to our nation's vast economic and ecological problems, Green Change has launched a campaign for a Green New Deal.
The Green New Deal is an ambitious program to create economic prosperity together with ecological sustainability.
We are building a coalition of candidates, individuals and organizations to support the Green New Deal – starting today. Join the Green New Deal Coalition now.
Here are the ten policies you endorse by joining the Green New Deal Coalition:
1) Cut military spending at least 70%;
2) Create millions of green union jobs through massive public investment in renewable energy, mass transit and conservation;
3) Set ambitious, science-based greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, and enact a revenue-neutral carbon tax to meet them;
4) Establish single-payer “Medicare for all” health care;
5) Provide tuition-free public higher education;
6) Change trade agreements to improve labor, environmental, consumer, health and safety standards;
7) End counterproductive prohibition policies and legalize marijuana;
8) Enact tough limits on credit interest and lending rates, progressive tax reform and strict financial regulation;
9) Amend the U.S. Constitution to abolish corporate personhood; and
10) Pass sweeping electoral, campaign finance and anti-corruption reforms.
The Further Adventures of Macondo, the Misbehaving Well.
Oh, Macondo, you were supposed to save us, and now look what you’ve done!
Can you hear the drums, Fernando ? I remember long ago another starry night like this
In the firelight Fernando, You were humming to yourself and softly strumming your guitar
I could hear the distant drums , and the sound of bugle calls were coming from afar
They were closer now, Fernando, every hour every minute, seemed to last eternally. I was so afraid Fernando, We were young and full of life and none of us prepared to die
and I’m not afraid to say, the roar of guns and cannons almost made me cry
There was something in the air that night, the stars were bright, they were shining there for you and me, For Liberty, tho we never thought that we could lose, there’s no regret, if I had to do the same again, I would my friend, Fernando
Enjoying a stroll today at Acadia National Park in Maine, Properly Attired for the Neighborhood.
A small earthquake hit Washington DC, this morning. The 3.6 magnitude rattler was the largest recorded within 30 miles of the nation’s capitol since 1974. There were no reports of damage from the 2.0 aftershocklette.
Matt Simpson’s Prediction Comes True at Last.
The House of Congress adjourned the day before, and scheduled its next meeting for lunchtime on Monday, July 19, 2010. The Senate also adjourned at 6:33 pm Thursday, and vowed to return next Monday afternoon, whereby they will take up the Jobs Bill. Or the Energy Bill. Or something.
It was the 87th day since the pierced earth in block 252 of the Macondo prospect in Mississippi Canyon, nearly a mile under the sea, had bled out all the ancient dead liquified souls that it had held for eons, and covered it, shifted it back and forth by wind, strangled it in its carbon and sulfur stench, and mired its living things in tar and fed the swimming things the liquid toxins. People of the coastal Gulf waters watched with cynical eyes as the British Petroleum company and the government told them that first they had shut it off, and then they would wait and see, and then maybe they would turn it back on, after all.
“There’s a couple of weak points at 9,000 feet, and one at 17,000 feet, that they might be particularly interested in looking at watching in the seismic. ”
Another telegenic oil wonk, Rob Cavner, of Houston, put it thus:
“they are just sitting there circulating on the bottom at 17,840 (feet). Just sitting there. Wells claims they are doing that for “safety reasons” during the well integrity test. What ? …. what the hell are they doing ? They now have an ability to capture all the oil and stop this massive pollution of the Gulf, as well as measure it. We have great weather to get the relief well completed. We already know without the “well integrity test” that they have severe damage to the BOP and other surface equipment and casing. If that were not true, it wouldn’t have blown out in the first place.”
____
“As soon as they do capture all the flow, then a real, measurable number will be in front of the public, and that’s the last thing BP wants, since that number will then be used to extrapolate environmental damage, hence per barrel fines that will likely run to the tens of billions anyway.”
But for those who need help before a heart is available, or for whom a transplant is too risky, we have a gizmo called the left ventricular assist device, a $200,000 item. The LVAD is a cumbersome almost-artificial heart that requires the recipient to wear heavy batteries, a shoulder sling with various parts, tubes going through the chest and into the heart and abdomen, and other substantial inconveniences. It helps push a portion of the heart’s blood forward, doing the work the failing ventricle no longer can accomplish. Once used only to stabilize people awaiting heart transplant, it now is referred to, not ironically, as a “destination therapy”-the exact intervention that you want, not the half-assed loaner you are stuck with till the real McCoy arrives.
Six years ago, the doctor and medical historian Howard Markel, writing in The Atlantic, assembled seven fancy cardiologists and discussed Anonymous Patient C’s medical history with them; all were surprised that he was still puttering along, and even more surprised to then be informed that he was at the time their vice president. Stated most simply, he should have died long, long ago. Most people with his heart, his weight and sedentary habits, his history of cigarette smoking and who knows what else already have heard the bell toll. But not Cheney-pointing out that, though useful to define national trends, population-based statistics are completely useless for predicting the fate of an individual. The extremely unlikely happens every day, all of the time: Just as it’s the rare person who wins the lottery, or is struck by lightning, or rolls snake eyes 50 times in a row, so too does a bad guy with a worse heart beat all the odds to stay alive.
So too does a destructive national energy policy, with a bad deepwater oil well, beat all the odds to stay alive.
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Saturday Dawning:
Break out the champaign for brunch, darlings!
BP announces at its only press briefing of the day that :
[13:39] “This is quite normal. First piece of pipe put in down to 500′. Build well on top of that”
[13:39] “There are 6 or 8 valves around this piece of pipe, it’s quite caution. But we’ll go take a sample and make sure it’s not gas from deeper down in the riser”
[13:40] ahh
[13:40] “Could be nitrogen or biodegrading methane”
[13:40] “As the well cools down, that’s probably what caused those bubbles”
Next technical update will be tomorrow (July 18) at 7:30 am CT. Any other updates btwn now & then will be announced.
It’s been a while since we had to have a real heart-to-heart, the Obama Administration and I, and last time it was because Rahm Emanuel had been a bit snippy toward those of us who are carrying the water for this Administration.
We need to have another one of those conversations today; this time the circumstances are a lot more positive-in fact, if the Administration follows my suggestions here, we have a real chance to put the Democrats on the road to victory, not just this November, but also in 2012.
What I’m proposing will create hundreds of thousands, if not millions of jobs, and it will stimulate millions more as we create a national source of discount electrical power that can be used by business and consumers alike.
Here’s the best part: it’s no “pie in the sky” promotion I’m offering here; we’ve already done the same thing before, it’s been working out well for almost three quarters of a century…and even better than all that…my idea first pays for itself, and then…it actually makes the Federal Government a profit, forever after.
At present, oil saturates the Gulf Stream. An official six-month cessation of permits for new drilling did not actually affect the industry or government decisions. Despite Moratorium, Drilling Projects Move Ahead. To explain such an authorization and waiver, the Department of the Interior and the Minerals Management Services Division which regulates drilling, pointed to public statements by Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar. He did not intend to forbid all first cuts in the Earth’s crust. Absolutely not. The Federal Government approved wells off the coast of Louisiana in June. Regardless of the day, or realities that are anathema to our citizenry, little has truly changed. Today, just as in yesteryear, we, the people of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect Union, polishpolicies to appear as though our civilization would wish to protect and defend all beings, equally.
Read the article at HuffPo yesterday, got pissed and wrote something angry, then went to work. While at work I read some comments, though, admittedly, not all of them, and realized why so many people have a beef with HuffPo. I’m not trying to throw HuffPo under the bus, writing in anger leads to this, and I wrote in anger and put too much trust into a single source. Just because you are using a BIG NAME for a source doesn’t mean that source is right, they are just as likely to misinterpret something as you are. That is human. But there is a difference between misinterpreting and deliberately misconstruing, and since our political guard is always up about deception, and since many of us are partisans, we often frame things within our own pre-made narrative. All of these things I have been guilty of, but who among us can plead innocent among such charges?
Can we, as a nation, make the transformational conversion to New Clean Renewable Energy, with a goal of eliminating those energy monsters sources that foul our oceans, gulfs, lakes, waters, mountains, valleys, and planet? Can we as communal inhabitants of this great earth, the only one we have, choose to nurture and honor her in our global decisions to milk her energies?
Our combined energy and climate challenges and opportunities are incredibly complex and interrelated issues. Throw in other resource challenges, economic challenges, and a myriad of other factors and, well, the complexity can overwhelm any and all.
In the face of Deepwater Horizon, the political obstacles to climate legislation, etc …, perhaps it is time to look for a straightforward statement as to how we should move forward to address our energy and climate challenges while improving our economic and security systems … Perhaps it is time to turn to
The Five Percent Solution
… a path toward energy security, economic prosperity, and climate change mitigation.
The giant oil spill caused by an oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico is wreaking ecological havoc on the Gulf Coast.
A Coast Guard report that the leak could be five times bigger than previously thought has sparked fears that this may become the “biggest oil spill in the world”, far worse than the Exxon Valdez spill. [1]
This heart-wrenching disaster highlights the danger of President Obama’s plan to open vast expanses of pristine ocean for the massively polluting oil industry.
I feel a bit late to the party writing about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Had I chosen to focus on this subject a few days ago, I might have been inclined to draft a personal narrative about the summers I spent on Alabama’s Gulf Coast as a boy and young teenager. My post would have certainly have been in good company; it heartens me to recognize just how many people have an emotional and personal connection to the region. I myself didn’t realize how much the warm salt water and white sand meant to me until I began to contemplate what both might look like covered in oil. It is very unfortunate that tragedies like these have to happen before we ever seriously consider the long term consequences. Off-shore drilling was, until very recently, touted as some kind of snake-oil panacea or fix-all curative. One hopes that we now understand the complexities and potentially catastrophic drawbacks in tapping the reserves present in our coastline.
Senator Lindsey Graham(R, SC) has dutifully assumed his cloak and dagger as the Village Villain du Jour, thrown a last minute hissyfit on the Saturday before Sen. John Kerry was to reveal the long anticipated Climate and Energy Bill on Monday, and is holding his breath and threatening to turn beet red unless the Senate ignores the immigration issue this year. http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wi…
The support of Graham was sought because it was assumed that of Senators Ben Nelson(D, Mutual of Omaha) and Blanche Lincoln(D, Walmart of Bentonville) would not automatically be forthcoming, after their performances during the health insurance bailout bill which was passed earlier this spring.
Our combined energy and climate challenges and opportunities are incredibly complex and interrelated issues. Throw in other resource challenges, economic challenges, and a myriad of other factors and, well, the complexity can overwhelm any and all.