Didn’t Environmentalists Cheer the Demise of the Keystone XL Pipeline?

Yes, yes environmentalists did cheer the demise of the Keystone XL pipeline.  By stopping a Republican amendment earlier this year, the decision on whether to build the pipeline from Canada through the central US was left in President Obama’s hands, which was “rejected“.

It turns out that both the “rejection” wasn’t really a rejection and the cheerleading probably happened too soon.  I say that because today, Obama pushed for the southern branch of the pipeline to be finished faster than originally projected.  Many of the same environmentalists who cheered the original “decision” (read: delay) are the same ones who are now decrying this latest call.

I would put more stock into those complaints if those environmentalists hadn’t spent so much time and energy earlier this year trying to convince me that Obama’s “decision” was really and truly final and Keystone wouldn’t get built.  I argued then, and was proven correct today, that Obama’s “decision” was indeed a delay – it was enough action to get the topic out of the headlines in an election year when he can’t afford to piss off elements of his base too much.

The pipeline was always going to be and in fact will be built in the US.  The part that people should be paying attention to is this: the fossil fuels the pipeline delivers will not be sold in the US – it will be sold overseas because it can fetch a higher price that way.  In return, the “environmentally conscious” President who “cares about the economy” will gladly oversee an increase in deliverable fossil fuels to a largely unregulated, subsidized marketplace which will result in higher fuel prices for every American.  Those fossil fuels will be burned faster than they otherwise would have been and the resultant global warming forcing will be left to future generations to deal with.

But please vote for President Obama in November because who knows what would have happened to the Keystone pipeline if a Republican was in office – it might have gotten built or something horrible like that!  It will be better to get just a little tiny bit of what you want instead of more of what you want if you stop voting for politicians who take your interests for granted.

Would Romney Run Country Like His Campaign?

If so, we would be in deep trouble financially if he got elected.

For the month of January, Romney’s campaign was negative $12.2 million in funds, which beat … George W Bush’s record in January 2000.

Given the thrashing that Bush did to the U.S. deficit and debt, it’s not a stretch to say we couldn’t afford another Republican President whose campaign spends more than it makes.

Economics Reading Generates Climate-Related Analogy

While reading some background material for an economics course, I ran across the following:

“But for the monthly or quarterly time spans that economists usually deal with, it seems unlikely that a particular consumer’s tastes would change radically”  [Source: Intermediate Microeconomics A Modern Approach 5th Edition by Hal R. Varian, 1987; 1999; p.118]

This is, of course, proven incorrect when economic conditions change rapidly.  Witness the shifts in consumer behavior after $4.00 gas a few years ago as well as some shifts post-Great Recession.  Now, I am not making a value judgment regarding the inability of economic models to accurately predict consumer behavior after various tipping points were passed.  What I am doing is pointing out that economic models weren’t designed to handle situations in which extreme forces are exerted quickly on the economic system.  Economic models were designed to handle conditions that are much more often found: stable and slowly changing.

By way of analogy, climate models aren’t necessarily designed to handle situations in which extreme forces are exerted quickly on the climate system either.  There is chance (a significant one?) that important aspects of the system will not be well captured by the model.  That is just as alright for climate models as it is for economic models – no value judgment need be made.

Finally, I will point out again that a key feature of any model is to evaluate how well its projections perform by comparing them with observations.  To that end, climate models have historically demonstrated skill; that skill has increased over time as climatologists have made models more sophisticated.  Similarly, economic models have historically demonstrated skill.  What is different about them in this case is that they have failed spectacularly when the situation demanded the most of out them: as rapid change has taken place.  So how prevalent are non-economist comments that economists don’t know what they’re doing and they’re only working because of the incredible amount of money involved and economic models are all bunk because they don’t include fundamental aspects of their system and economics is all a big hoax?  I would say they’re not very prevalent, but then I don’t blog about economics.  I would sure like to know the answer to that question though.

Boulder City Council Looking At Climate Plan 2.0

News out of Boulder, CO: a reassessment of the city’s climate plan started this week.  There are a couple of reasons for this reassessment.  First, Bolder voters approved plans to move forward with municipalization of utility services due in part to friction with Xcel Energy.  Second, the city’s carbon tax is set to expire in 2013 and Councilmembers want to figure out if they can/should ask voters to extend the tax.  The following is an important component of the news:

The city in 2002 adopted the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Now that 2012 has arrived, the city still needs to cut the equivalent of about 521,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide to meet its goal.

That’s quite a bit of CO2.  It would take approximately 744 GWh of electricity generation to emit that much CO2.  Obviously some commentators jumped on this announcement and declared Boulder’s effort a complete failure.  What it constitutes is what the official interviewed declared:

“It’s not quite as easy as we thought,” Huntley said.

There is no problem with that – it’s a frank admission and better it’s made now than never.  It’s the same lesson I learned through analysis on a project in graduate school last semester.  The scale of the mitigation problem is many times larger than most people, even experts, realize – simply because they haven’t looked at the problem from every vantage point before.  As more and more people realize the enormity of the situation, the goals we set will become more and more realistic.

This is one of the topics I will write additional posts on moving forward.  Now that people have a solid grasp on the fact that anthropogenic global warming is increasingly making its presence felt around the globe, people need to realize how enormous the mitigation problem really is.  Only then will viable solutions be developed and implemented.  Kudos to Boulder and other cities for taking this issue on, even without having all the requisite information at their fingertips.

Tropical Storm Don Will Land Along Far Southern Texas Coast; Will Drought Be Impacted?

Tropical Storm Don continues to fight dry air and northerly wind shear as it moves WNW across the Gulf of Mexico.  As of this morning, it looks increasingly likely that T.S. Don will make landfall somewhere along the far southern Texas or far northeastern Mexican coast late tonight or early tomorrow morning (local time).

This track is somewhat unfortunate for most of Texas, since T.S. Don is expected to curve toward the WSW as it continues moving inland over Mexico.  The far southern portion of Texas is experiencing drought conditions (see map from yesterday), but they are of lesser magnitude than portions of Texas to the  north.  Still, rainfall is needed in southern Texas and northern Mexico also.  Hopefully T.S. Don will begin shifting conditions in the region.  Tropical moisture entering the region can be recycled a number of times as the North American monsoon continues to push storms up from Mexico into the southern U.S.

For those interested in tropical meteorology, another tropical disturbance is moving across the Atlantic, moving west toward the Lesser Antilles.  The National Hurricane Center is giving the system a 30% chance of developing into a named storm in the next 48 hours.

Polar Bear Cubs Die More Often With Less Arctic Ice

As Arctic ice thins and melts more and more every year, polar bear cub mortality is rising.  Compared to cubs that don’t have to swim as far to reach sea ice, which had a 19% mortality rate, cubs that are being forced to swim for days without reaching ice had a 45% mortality rate in a recent study.

With less body fat, the cubs can’t maintain their internal body heat as long as adults and they aren’t as buoyant in the water.  The cubs either drown because they can’t keep their noses above water or they succumb to the colder water.

I will point out that this is only one species.  There are many other species we didn’t even know existed that are under similar pressures from our greenhouse pollution.  On top of that, there are yet more species whose fate are being sealed every day we don’t reduce that pollution.

The Anthropocene is underway.  What happens in this Epoch is up to us.

John Holdren Said What?!

President Obama’s Chief Science Advisor, John Holdren, said in an interview recently that:

I think in the new Congress, there will unquestionably be hearings on climate science — I think those hearings are going to end up being educational. I think we’ll probably move the opinions of some of the members of Congress who currently call themselves skeptics, because I think a lot of good scientists are going to come in and explain very clearly what we know and how we know it and what it means, and it’s a very persuasive case.

Seriously?

John Holdren might be the President’s Science Advisor.  He likely understands to a reasonable degree the threat that global warming poses to the U.S. and the world.  But it’s undeniably obvious with this quote that he has no idea what kind of opponents he and the President are facing.  And that’s likely the primary reason why the President botched the best opportunity in a generation to deal with global warming.  Scientists will not convince the climate zombies that were elected in 2010 that the science is sound and it’s their too-rigid belief system that is wrong.  When these hearings start, a lot of unbearable nonsense is going to be spewed and it’s not like the corporate stenographers are going to put more credit on the people’s statements whose jobs are studying the climate system.  No, the anti-science climate zombies are going to be placed on pedestals and it will be the climate scientists who will have to waste time publicly defending their work.

h/t ClimateProgress.

Republican Teabaggers Played Americans For Fools In 2010 Election

And Americans fell for it, unfortunately.  The latest example?

Repblican Teabagger Sens. Cornyn and Thune Defend the Earmarks They Requested and Will Vote Against

No, I’m not kidding.  These guys are so idiotic that they requested earmarks that they rail against yet now say they will vote against them?  The only people more idiotic are those who sent more Republican Teabaggers to Washington.  What, you think the new ones will be any less elitist than to tell Republican Teabagger voters one thing and then do the opposite once elected?  Classic.

The Rich Default More Often On Mortgages; Where Is The Outrage From The Right-Wing?

News came this morning about the rate at which people in different demographics default on their mortgages.  There has been a couple of years’ worth of right-wing rage directed at people who took loans out and ended up not being able to make their payments.  I won’t hold my breath waiting for them to direct that rage at the folks who can’t (won’t) pay most often: the super-rich.

More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent, according to data compiled for The New York Times by the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic.

By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender. About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent.

Over 14% of million dollar-plus loans are delinquent (and the number is rising).

Only 8% of the rest of loans are delinquent (and the number, which hasn’t been much higher is shrinking).

Guess which demographic is the recipient of the faux rage of the lunatic right-wing.  It’s poor people who are lazy and who want to take advantage of the rest of us, according to them.  Observe the immoral mission right-wingers took upon themselves to take down the agency that helped some of the non-rich figure out how to buy a house (ACORN).  That agency had its government funding revoked.  Will they demand that rich people get their wealth (which was transferred from the lower- and middle-class by Con economic policies) revoked?  Fat chance.

Why are there people who go out of their way to protect the interests of millionaires and billionaires?  Because some people think they’ll actually be one of those millionaires one day, despite the overwhelming evidence that they’ll very likely never achieve that status.

Health Insurance Legislation: $250 Million To Failed Abstinence-Only Education

Thank goodness Obama is playing 11-dimensional chess while the rest of us scoot around in the mud with our sticks.  Thank goodness real health care legislation was passed and the health insurance industries will have real competition.  Thank goodness funding abstinence-only education stopped after the Bush Regime finally left.

All of the above are false.  Thanks to the Master Rhetorician Obama and our fearless “leaders” in the Senate, the health insurance legislation included a $50 million line for five years to abstinence-only education programs that have been proven to fail.

Thanks to Bush’s idiotic pandering to the religious right-wing, the number of teen pregnancies rose and STDs spread faster than they did in the 1990s.

Thanks to Obama’s idiotic pre-negotiating Democratic principles in health care, those trends will continue.