Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy. Are you as sick of this stuff as I am?
Conservatives are jumping up and down over a report by an EPA analyst expressing skepticism about climate change, which, they claim, was suppressed by agency brass because it didn’t conform to Obama administration orthodoxy on global warming.
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But it’s hard to blame EPA for not paying much attention to the study. And it’s more than a little ironic that DC Republicans have chosen its author as their new standard-bearer in the defense of pure science against politics. Because the author, EPA veteran Al Carlin, is an economist, not a climate scientist. EPA says no one at the agency solicited the report. And Carlin appears to have taken up the global warming topic largely as a hobby on his own time.
…discuss global climate change in good faith, it seems. His attempt to portray concerned scientists and environmentally-conscious citizens as deluded alarmists (”Dark Green Doomsayers”) is being met, however, with significant opposition. And some of that opposition is coming from his own colleagues at WaPo. TPM Muckrakerreports that there have been “three separate efforts, from three separate sections of the paper, to push back against the bow-tied columnist’s well-chronicleddeceptions on global warming. ” For example, this piece, by Andrew Freedman, examines Will’s attempt to engage in global warming denial by cherry-picking data. And in the video below, WaPo columnist Eugene Robinson accuses Will of making a climate change report sound as if it said “the exact opposite of what it actually said” and of crossing a journalistic line.
The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild.
Completing a journey nearly as rocky as some of the land involved, Congress passed sweeping conservation legislation Wednesday that protects 200,000 acres of popular mountains and forests in Oregon and millions more nationwide.
The 285-140 House vote sent the 1,300-page public lands bill to President Barack Obama, who is expected to sign it as early as next week.
Advocates said the protections bestowed by the bill are the biggest advance in wilderness preservation in a generation — and the signal of a new era of congressional support for conservation.
The final law was a collection of 170 separate lands, parks and conservation bills — including some that lawmakers had been working on for decades — all balled into one. It establishes three new national parks (including one for the birthplace of President Bill Clinton in Hope, Ark.) and protects more than 1,000 miles of wild and scenic rivers and streams from development, including about 9 miles of rivers at the headwaters of the North Fork of the Elk River in Oregon.
The Oregonian
While the bill touches every corner of the nation, its impact will be especially pronounced in Oregon. In addition to Mount Hood, the law will protect 13,700 acres of old-growth forest in Oregon’s Siskiyou National Forest, 23,000 acres in southwestern Oregon’s Soda Mountain region, nearly 31,000 acres of wilderness in the Badlands east of Bend, and 8,600 acres of wilderness overlooking the John Day Wild and Scenic River.
Could this be the best thing that has happened since Obama became president?
Remember how, during his big prime-time speech last month, Lousiana’s Republican governor Bobby Jindal, in addition to making stuff up about what he did during Hurricane Katrina, also found time to mock the Obama administration for “wasteful spending” in the stimulus bill, including “$140 million for something called ‘volcano monitoring’”?
That line immediately drew criticism from just about everyone who understands what volcano monitoring involves. And now, it’s looking even dumber.
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Why is Jindal’s line looking even worse now? Because, as you’ve likely heard, Alaska’s Mount Redoubt, 100 miles southwest of Anchorage, erupted last night. And a USGS geologist confirmed to TPMmuckraker that a portion of the stimulus spending for volcano monitoring that Jindal lampooned has been slated to go to USGS monitoring Redoubt.
Michael Steele, the entertaining Chair of the RNCUC - the Republican National Committee for Unintentional Comedy - is at it again. First, he weighs in on global climate change:
“We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process. Greenland, which is now covered in ice, it was once called Greenland for a reason, right? Iceland, which is now green. Oh I love this. Like we know what this planet is all about. How long have we been here? How long? Not very long.”
(Hey, Michael - I’m using my finger here, too. And I’m not making quotation marks). But Steele isn’t just an expert on scientific matters, he’s also a keen historian, with a deep appreciation for education:
“Education is key,” said the RNC Chair. “It is where it begins, for all of us… If we understand the difference between Marxism, socialism and capitalism; if we understand the difference between a Roberto Mussolini, an Adolf Hitler, and a Franklin Roosevelt, and his honor the honorable Winston Churchill, if we know those differences than we can appreciate what these times mean. And how history is a precursor of things to come.”
It is good to see that there are some people out there, like Will Bunch, trying to trying to add some sanity into our national memory of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Reagan’s legacy is deeply problematic at best, despite his canonization by the right. And one of Reagan’s most ridiculous acts as president was his appointment of noted lunatic James G. Watt as secretary of the interior. (That’s a bit like putting Michael Milken in charge of the S.E.C., or making C. Montgomery Burns Secretary of Labor. Except with more Jesus-ness). And now, Reagan-myth purveyor John McCain is apparently interfering with President Obama’s nomination of David Hayes to a high-level position at the Interior Department, because Hayes had the audacity to question Reagan’s environmental policies. I think Brian Beutler’s comment on the matter sums things up nicely:
…as McCain should recall, Reagan’s own Interior Secretary was James Watt, who’s a weird man in all kinds of ways, but, on the issues, held that federal land should just be handed over to private, polluting interests to do whatever they wanted with, particularly if that involved mining or drilling or any unsustainable practice. He didn’t care about endangered species or the water supply or anything else, not simply because he was cold hearted, but because he thought the rapture was extremely nigh! Watt hinted at those dispensationalist religious views in testimony before Congress, when he said, “That is the delicate balance the Secretary of the Interior must have, to be steward for the natural resources for this generation as well as future generations. I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations.”
I guess we should only be mildly surprised. After all, Reagan was the guy who told us that conservation wasn’t a good idea, because it would mean we’d be too hot in the summer, and too cold in winter. (If there’s a Hall of Fame for Shortsightedness, Reagan could get in on that statement alone).
The tenderness of the delicate American buttock is causing more environmental devastation than the country’s love of gas-guzzling cars, fast food or McMansions, according to green campaigners. At fault, they say, is the US public’s insistence on extra-soft, quilted and multi-ply products when they use the bathroom.
From the “undoing the damage of W” department comes good news about the EPA and global warming. From the editorial page at the NYT:
Less than a month into the job, and with only a skeleton staff, Lisa Jackson, the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, has already engineered an astonishing turnaround.
She has pledged to reverse or review three Bush administration directives that had slowed the government’s response to global warming and has brought a new sense of urgency to an issue that President Bush treated indifferently. She has also boosted morale at an agency badly demoralized after eight years of political meddling.
This sort of un-glamorous but crucial bureaucratic change is going to be an important part of putting our country back on track after the Bush years. And when it comes to environmental policy and enforcement, it appears that science is back in fashion. That is a good thing. Because it was beginning to look like the Bush adminstration was trying to staff the entire federal government with the good people of Heavenly Hillsboro.
Here’s a new energy program that combines alternative fuels, a re-use/recycle ethic, and the British love of roast beef. With help from the Low Carbon Innovation Centre at the University of East Anglia, the people of Reepham have found a new way to, er, “beef up” their heating fuel:
Of course, that’s as long as the animals were already being slaughtered for food. In that case, the fuel created by rendering beef tallow and pig lard is relatively low-carbon in comparison to traditional heating oil, or even crop fuels. In many ways, heating buildings with cow juice is similar to using cooking oil to drive a diesel car.
This plan isn’t universally applicable or desirable, of course, but it could be a lower-carbon alternative for cattle-raising areas. So, if your town has a lot of cows, burning them could be a good way to “meat” your energy needs. That way, you won’t have to “cow tow” to the big oil companies. Because we all have a “steak” in the environment.
In honor of Darwin’s profound scientific contributions, here’s a video featuring the BBC’s comfortingly educational nature show presenter David Attenborough. My favorite line in the video comes when Attenborough discusses the obvious evidence for evolution that surrounds us in the natural world: “You would have to be extrordinarily blinkered if you didn’t stub your toe against the theory of evolution very early on in your life.”
Former Vice-President Albert Gore recently addressed a group of children to discuss the environment and global climate change. He uttered the following statement during his remarks:
“There are some things about our world that you know that older people don’t know.”
Upon hearing such words, a reasonable person might assume that Gore was merely stating the obvious fact that there is a generational divide separating young persons from old fogies with respect to knowledge about such things as global warming.
But if your name is Glenn Beck, this seemingly innocuous remark can signify only one thing: Gore desires to use proven Nazi propaganda techniques to create a new generation of Hitler Youth (and Hitler Pre-Teens):
I love Beck’s final rhetorical question:
“This is the first time a lot of people have heard of this. How can you get 3,000 kids into the room, have the former Vice-President say this, and nobody [in the media] is covering it?”
I don’t know, Glenn, maybe because your response to a transparently inoffensive remark was the most insane and incomprehensible fabrication that could possibly be constructed with the English language? Nobody understands what the hell you’re talking about!
The task of repairing the profound and far-reaching damage done by the Bush Administration is an unenviable one. President Obama and all federal employees have, as the somewhat annoying phrase goes, “a lot on their plate.” But on issues like torture, health care for children, and the environment, Obama’s administration has already shown that important and effectual steps can be taken quickly. Here’s an example:
The Obama administration signaled yesterday that it will seek more stringent controls on mercury pollution from the nation’s power plants, abandoning a Bush administration approach that the industry supported.
The Justice Department yesterday submitted papers to the Supreme Court to dismiss the Bush administration’s appeal of a lower court ruling striking down its plan to allow some power plants to release more mercury pollution than others. That would create localized “hot spots” where concentrations are higher, states and environmental groups argued.
The Environmental Protection Agency said it would begin crafting a new rule limiting mercury emissions from power plants, which are the biggest source of mercury, which finds its way into the food supply. It is commonly found in high concentrations in fish. Mercury can damage developing brains of fetuses and very young children.
Despite controversies and minor scandals involving some of his apointees, and despite the circus surrounding the stimulus debate, the Obama administration has already made some progress on important matters of policy. Here’s hoping that changes like this one continue. It is good to see the new administration begin dismantling Bush’s legacy - piece by piece.
If there aren’t yet enough reasons to be worried about global climate change, the Economist forecasts the scramble for shipping routes and natural resources that will accompany retreating sea ice:
The most troubling part of the video: “Even more potentially valuable than shipping routes are the oil and gas deposits thought to lie [under the retreating Arctic ice]…the United States Geological Survey published some pretty big estimates.” Because of the unique geographical position of the Arctic, surrounded as it is by six nations who can make competing drilling claims, the retreating ice could cause some serious and worrying international disputes.
This, of course, is in addition to the potential for massive environmental damage. Quite fitting, isn’t it? The burning of fossil fuels creates global warming, which causes the retreat of sea ice, thus making available more fossil fuels…which will be burned…this adding to…global warming. And maybe a war or two.
P.S. - this story, if it works out as forecasted, is yet another example of the myth of market economics - that the market always works out for the best. In this case, the market incentives (saving money and making profits through new shipping lanes and access to gas and oil) all favor the continuation of global warming. In brief, the market dynamic here says that global warming is good. And then the activities that result from the environmental crisis (shipping, drilling, burning oil) will compound the problem. Beware of false prophets and false profits!
At the Guardian, Michael Tomasky has published his list of “the 19 worst Americans of 2008.” (Damn - it has got to be hard to narrow it down to 19, don’t you think?) Here are a few of the highlights:
19 ED Hill. Ms Hill is the Fox News anchor who referred to Barack and Michelle Obama’s on-stage fist bump in early June as a “terrorist fist jab”. I guess she’s well familiar with the various and sundry ways in which couples express intimacy - she’s been married three times herself. Fox announced in November that it wasn’t renewing her contract.
18 Don Blankenship. Who? He’s the head of a huge coal-mining company that is an industry leader, if one must put it that way, in so-called mountain-top removal mining. It’s a hideous practice that destroys mountains and communities, and Blankenship is its poster child. Our supreme court has agreed to hear a case in which Blankenship financed the election of a state judge who, in a $50m lawsuit, ruled for Blankenship’s company. Google Caperton v Massey, read more about Massey, and tell me if this fellow shouldn’t perhaps be even higher.
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11 David Addington. Dick Cheney’s top aide told Congress in June that he didn’t even know what the unitary executive theory of presidential power was. This would be rather like Lavrenti Beria insisting that Lubyanka prison was actually a hotel.
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5 Michele Bachmann. Of the many memorable moments the campaign produced, I will never forget watching this Minnesota congresswoman say on national TV in October that Obama “may have anti-American views” and endorse the idea of a media investigation of all members of Congress to determine whether their views were sufficiently pro-American. The single most appalling political statement of the year.
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3 George Bush. There were years when he would have been higher - 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. I’ll give him a slight pass for 2001, what with the attacks and all that. In those previous years, he stole an election, started an unnecessary war, lied about it, approved torture, let a great US city drown and so on. This year he merely presided over the bankruptcy of the global economy. Twenty days and counting.
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The top two are a powerful combination of baffling incompetence on the one hand, and profound thievery on the other - Sarah Palin and Bernard Madoff.
I would suggest one addition to Tomasky’s list: Mitt Romney. I realize that he suspended his campaign rather early in 2008, thus sparing us from a full year of his hair and his bullshit. But his campaign, as long as it lasted, was grotesque. Is there a less sincere or more disingenuous person on the planet? He could not even tell the truth about his days as a great white (varmint) hunter. He took the political flip-flop to new levels. Case in point: gay marraige. When he ran for senate in 1994, he promised the Log Cabin Republicans that he’d be a better friend to the gay community than Ted Kennedy. But when he had to court the troglodyte right in the presidential primary, he got all homophobic-er than thou on us. And he just spouted nonsense, and was seldom called on it. He told us that he wanted to defend “traditional marriage,” because he agreed with “three thousand years of recorded history,” in which marriage was always the same - one man and one woman. “Marriage is not an ‘evolving paradigm,’” he told us. Always the same.
Dude. His great-grandfather had five wives. His great-great grandfather had twelve wives.
So which “traditional” marriage does he want to defend? Traditional plural marriage? Traditional arranged marriage? The kind of traditional marriage where all property and political rights revert to the husband alone? Or the tradition in which people of different races can’t marry each other? (Thank goodness for “evolving paradigms,” no?)
Romney would have to be wildly historically illiterate to believe the things he was saying. And I don’t think he is that stupid. And he would also have to be totally unaware of his own family history to believe those things, too. So I guess he was, as usual, just being his regular old dishonest self.
Sorry. I guess I used this post as an excuse to rant about Mitt Romney one last time. Man, I hate what he just said. Always.
Why does this idiot have his own show? Glenn Beck needs your help to screw the Democrats, even if it destroys the planet in the process:
This week the Democratic party will attempt to hold its first convention that is totally green. They will talk about recycling, buying carbon offsets, and even serve multi-colored foods for some reason.
What’s the problem with their going green? Well, the Democrats know all of these things are pointless gestures, but they’re using them to try and convince voters that they love the earth more than Republicans. If this works they will put into place policies that will hurt our economy and cause real disaster–not the fraudulent type they constantly whine about.
What can you to help? Take part in our carbon ONset program. We are asking you to make just a few small sacrifices to completely wipe out any potential energy savings the Democrats claim credit for.
The “sacrifices” include driving extra miles, running empty dishwashers, taking long showers, and replacing CFL bulbs with incandescent ones.
Today, we bring you a yummy little tasting flight of stupidity.
We’ll start with Representative Michele Bachman, Republican of Minnesota:
“[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said that she’s just trying to save the planet,” Bachmann told the right-wing news site OneNewsNow. “We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago, they saved the planet — we didn’t need Nancy Pelosi to do that.”
Whew! What a relief. Glad to know that’s sorted out. Because I was starting to get a little worried about that whole global warming thing. (Also - “they?” Is Jesus plural now?) Hey - do you think “they” could do anything about my gout?
Next, a little video. Stuart Shepard of Focus on the Family asks “would it be so wrong if we asked people to pray for rain” during Obama’s convention acceptance speech?
Best line: “If God decides - and it’s always up to God to decide…” That’s good stuff, no? In the event that he exists, God must be thinking, “thanks, Stu.”
I know this guy was trying to be funny, sort of, but Stuart Shepard and his ilk make me embarrassed to be a mammal.
And finally, Jabberin’ Joe Lieberman implicitly questions Barack Obama’s patriotism:
“In my opinion, the choice could not be more clear: between one candidate, John McCain, who’s had experience, been tested in war and tried in peace, another candidate who has not,’’ Mr. Lieberman said. “Between one candidate, John McCain, who has always put the country first, worked across party lines to get things done, and one candidate who has not. Between one candidate who’s a talker, and the other candidate who’s the leader America needs as our next president.” [Italics added]
John McCain’s energy plan includes taking big bucks from big oil companies, and then doing their bidding. But it apparently also includes this sort of complete bullshit (italics added):
We need oil drilling and we need it now offshore. We need it now. [Barack Obama] has consistently opposed it. He has opposed nuclear power. He has opposed reprocessing. He has opposed storage. The only thing I’ve heard him say is that we should inflate our tires. So he has no plan for addressing the energy challenges that we face. And we need drilling everywhere that the states and the governors, such as in the state of Florida, approve of.
This is what passes for political discourse in America today. Instead of honestly debating Obama on the merits of his energy plan, Oily McWar would rather just trivialize the whole issue with misleading cutesy sound-bite garbage.
We all know that Oily isn’t terribly proficient with a computer, but if one looks at Obama’s website, one would find that the democratic candidate has a pretty detailed series of policy positions regarding energy and the environment. You know, not just the tire-inflation part. Just a few of Obama’s many proposals:
Invest $150 Billion over 10 Years in Clean Energy: Obama will invest $150 billion over 10 years to advance the next generation of biofuels and fuel infrastructure, accelerate the commercialization of plug-in hybrids, promote development of commercial-scale renewable energy, invest in low-emissions coal plants, and begin the transition to a new digital electricity grid. A principal focus of this fund will be devoted to ensuring that technologies that are developed in the U.S. are rapidly commercialized in the U.S. and deployed around the globe.
Double Energy Research and Development Funding: Obama will double science and research funding for clean energy projects including those that make use of our biomass, solar and wind resources.
Invest in a Skilled Clean Technologies Workforce: Obama will use proceeds from the cap-and-trade auction program to invest in job training and transition programs to help workers and industries adapt to clean technology development and production. Obama will also create an energy-focused Green Jobs Corps to connect disconnected and disadvantaged youth with job skills for a high-growth industry.
Convert our Manufacturing Centers into Clean Technology Leaders: Obama will establish a federal investment program to help manufacturing centers modernize and Americans learn the new skills they need to produce green products.
Clean Technologies Deployment Venture Capital Fund: Obama will create a Clean Technologies Venture Capital Fund to fill a critical gap in U.S. technology development. Obama will invest $10 billion per year into this fund for five years. The fund will partner with existing investment funds and our National Laboratories to ensure that promising technologies move beyond the lab and are commercialized in the U.S
Require 25 Percent of Renewable Electricity by 2025: Obama will establish a 25 percent federal Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to require that 25 percent of electricity consumed in the U.S. is derived from clean, sustainable energy sources, like solar, wind and geothermal by 2025.
Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology: Obama will significantly increase the resources devoted to the commercialization and deployment of low-carbon coal technologies. Obama will consider whatever policy tools are necessary, including standards that ban new traditional coal facilities, to ensure that we move quickly to commercialize and deploy low carbon coal technology
There’s a lot more, too. Like setting national building efficiency goals, establishing a grant program for early adopters of energy-efficient construction codes, and investing in a digital smart grid system.
See? More than just keeping your tires inflated. Though, as it happens, that is a really good idea.
What else can I say? Our president is a dick who thinks that he’s funny. Sure, you argue, Bush gave some ground at the talks, agreeing for the first time to reduce greenhouse emissions by 50% by 2050 after extracting signatures from China and India. But these targets are well below those set by Kyoto protocol and such emissions are still on the rise worldwide and in the U.S.
Yeah, things are looking up, good times ahead. We’re finally headed in the right direction and the G8 is showing the kind of leadership necessary to get the job done:
One day, in particular, he said, was “gloriously incoherent.” At a meeting in the morning, participants focused on finding ways to reduce gas prices, he said, while a session that afternoon focused on raising them through caps or taxes on fossil fuels.
The most discouraging aspect of the statements out of Japan, for many experts, was seeing the persistent gap between what science is saying about global warming and what countries are doing.
While the White House refuses to open official emails from the EPA containing policy recommendations they don’t like, the Pentagon is busy refusing orders from the EPA to clean up toxic chemical spills on several military bases.
The Washington Post reports that chemicals posing “imminent and substantial” dangers to the health of the public and the environment are present in the soil and groundwater at several military installations. The EPA has ordered to Pentagon to add the sites to the Superfund list and begin a clean-up of the affected areas.
Apparently, cleaning up is with the terrorists:
The Pentagon has . . . declined to sign agreements required by law that cover 12 other military sites on the Superfund list of the most polluted places in the country. The contracts would spell out a remediation plan, set schedules, and allow the EPA to oversee the work and assess penalties if milestones are missed.
Experts in the field of environmental law say that this move is extraordinary:
“This is stunning,” said Rena Steinzor, who helped write the Superfund laws as a congressional staffer and now teaches at the University of Maryland Law School and is president of the nonprofit Center for Progressive Reform. “The idea that they would refuse to sign a final order — that is the height of amazing nerve.”
Yes, the “height of amazing nerve.” Pretty much sums up the past 7 years.
I would venture a guess that most Americans think that the Environmental Protection Agency is involved in, you know, protecting the environment.
Not under the Bush administration.
Take this example. According to today’s Washington Post, last December the EPA tried to submit a proposed rule to “limit greenhouse-gas emissions on the grounds that they pose a threat to public welfare.”
The EPA emailed the proposal over to the White House for inspection. According to the Post,
[U]pon learning that EPA had hit the “send” button just minutes earlier, the White House called again to demand that the e-mail be recalled.
“I’m sorry, Mr. President, I just sent that official, scientifically-vetted policy proposal seconds ago!”
Not to worry, the White House has a plan for this kind of thing. The New York Times explains what happened next:
The White House . . . refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.
“What email? Anyone see an email from the EPA about CO2 around here?”
“Do you mean the study that was the direct result of the 2007 Supreme Court ruling that stated ‘greenhouse gases are a pollutant’ and subsequently ‘ordered federal environmental officials to re-examine their refusal to limit emissions of the gases from cars and trucks’?
“Yeah, that one.”
“Nope, haven’t seen it anywhere.”
Don’t worry, America; the Bush administration is in the reality business. Everything is going to be OK in the end:
Over the past five days, the officials said, the White House successfully put pressure on the E.P.A. to eliminate large sections of the original analysis that supported regulation, including a finding that tough regulation of motor vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 32 years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
If you’re in the White House and see a plan that makes us healthier, saves the environment, AND is good for the economy, there is only one thing to do: Delete.
