Koch Pile Grows

Mountain of Petroleum Coke From Oil Sands Rises in Detroit - NYTimes.com:

...Detroit’s ever-growing black mountain is the unloved, unwanted and long overlooked byproduct of Canada’s oil sands boom...

Atlas Galting

James Moore: Atlas Has Shrugged: West, Texas:

 ...Why the obvious, even more attendant risks were ignored in West, is a more unsettling question. The state issues the permits for nursing homes and it appears there was one virtually across the street from West Fertilizer, in spite of the known dangers of the manufacture of ammonium nitrate. Not far away, a building permit was granted for a small, two story apartment complex. Is this good judgment by state and federal, and even local agencies? It's not like ammonium nitrate fertilizer hasn't been known to detonate in the past. The 1947 explosion in Texas City of a ship carrying the compound killed 500 people and remains the largest industrial disaster in American history. West happened 66 years and one day after Texas City...

Global Cooling?

Twenty-year hiatus in rising temperatures has climate scientists puzzled | The Australian

...Whitehouse argues that whatever has happened to make temperatures remain constant requires an explanation because the pause in temperature rise has occurred despite a sharp increase in global carbon emissions...

Saudi America

America, the Saudi Arabia of tomorrow - CNN.com

...America still needs imported oil. But growing production and shrinking consumption have created a most promising trend. According to the International Energy Agency, the United States will become the world's leading oil producer in just a few years. Imagine that. The United States could produce more oil than Saudi Arabia as early as 2017 and become a net oil exporter by 2030...

Nuts On The Right, Nuts On The Left

Magical thinking is not limited to Fundamentalist Christians:apostates on the left « The Confluence

...As someone who grew up in one of the least rational religious cults out there, I can see a lot of similarities between the anti-GMO, anti-nuke, anti-vacc crew and the glassy eyed, Watchtower bearing door knockers. I can’t take either set seriously. It’s hard to reason with people who are committed to a point of view regardless of the evidence or the damage they are doing to their own cause. It would be great if more people on the left would follow Lynas’ example because right now, it’s easy to ignore the lefty activists. They’re not doing environmentalism any good. To some of us on the left, such as myself, the anti-GMO, anti-nuclear energy crowd is as embarrassing, nutty and non-productive as the Tea Partiers are to the right. It’s one of the reasons I will never vote Green...

Evil Apple: ReGreen Edition

City of San Francisco Will No Longer Buy Apple Products

Apple’s Cupertino headquarters may just be a few miles away from San Francisco, but the city won’t be spending any more cash on its products...

Apple Returns to Green Registry After ‘Mistake’ - Businessweek

Apple Inc. (AAPL) (AAPL) said it’s rejoining an environmental rating system after its exit from the group threatened to halt sales to governments and universities that use the registry when making purchasing decisions...

It's Just Summer!

From Crooks & Liars:

Update:Officials: Past 12 months warmest ever for U.S. - CNN.com
Update:Scientists attribute extreme weather to man-made climate change | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Climate change researchers have been able to attribute recent examples of extreme weather to the effects of human activity on the planet's climate systems for the first time, marking a major step forward in climate research...

The Golden Age Of (Natural) Gas

Zakaria: The game-changer in the geopolitics of energy – Global Public Square - CNN.com Blogs

Lest We Forget: Leaking Edition

From jimbo123 @ White House Leak Inquiry Sought - The Daily Beast re: evil Democrats giving up government secrets:

jimbo123

35 Minutes Ago

yes of course, what in the world would make you think one is less than the other? 

Here's a list of a number of republican leaks and scandals throughout the Bush admim. Might interest you.

Philip Cooney – chief of staff, White House Council on Environmental Quality – a former oil industry lawyer with no scientific expertise, Cooney resigned after it was revealed he had watered down reports on global warming.

* George Deutsch – press aide, NASA – resigned amid allegations he prevented the agency’s top climate scientist from speaking publicly about global warming.

* Michael Elston – chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty – announced his resignation on June 15, 2007. Despite allegations that he’d threatened at least four of the eight fired US Attorneys, McNulty said Elston had served the Justice Department “with distinction for nearly eight years.”

* Kyle Dustin “Dusty” Foggo – appointed executive director of the CIA, the agency’s third-highest post, in October 2004 – resigned and was ultimately indicted on bribery charges related to the Duke Cunningham scandal.

* Alberto Gonzales – former Attorney General – resigned without explanation amidst investigations of the firings of U.S. Attorneys, the politicization of the Justice Department, warrantless surveillance, and the torture and mistreatment of detainees.

* Monica Goodling – former Justice Department liaison to the White House and senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales – resigned on April 7, 2007 amidst the investigation of the firings of U.S. Attorneys.

* Michelle Larson Korsmo – deputy chief of staff, Department of Labor – Helped her husband (see John Korsmo, above) with his donor scam. Quietly left her Labor plum job in February 2004, about two weeks before news broke that she and her husband were the targets of a criminal probe.

* Howard “Cookie” Krongard – former State Department inspector general — accused of not properly investigating State Department contractor fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan; of retaliating against whistleblowers in his own office; and of not telling the truth about his knowledge of his brother’s ties with Blackwater, a State Department contractor. Faced with a possible perjury investigation, Howard Krongard resigned on December 7, 2007.

* Julie Macdonald – former deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks at the Interior Department – resigned in May 2007 after an “inspector general’s report found she had improperly leaked information to private organizations, bullied staff scientists and broken federal rules.” The Department of the Interior is investigating many of her decisions regarding endangered species; so far seven have been overturned.

* Paul McNulty – Deputy Attorney General for the Department of Justice – resigned, after questions about his involvement in the U.S. attorney firings and his testimony to Congress about the firings.

* Richard Perle – Chairman, Defense Policy Board – resigned from Pentagon advisory panel amid conflict-of-interest charges.

* Susan Ralston – assistant, White House – resigned amidst revelations that she had accepted thousands of dollars in gifts from Abramoff without compensating him, counter to White House ethics rules.

* Janet Rehnquist – inspector general, Department of Health and Human Services – resigned on June 1, 2003 in the face of an investigation into her alleged efforts to block a politically dangerous probe on behalf of the Bush family.

* James Roche – secretary, U.S. Air Force – resigned in the wake of the Boeing tanker lease scandal, after it was revealed he had rather crudely pushed for Boeing to win a $23 billion contract.

* Kyle Sampson -former chief of staff for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales – resigned amidst the investigation of the firings of U.S. Attorneys.

* Joseph Schmitz – Inspector General, Defense – Resigned amid charges he personally intervened to protect top political appointees.

* Bradley Schlozman – resigned from his third and final post with the Justice Department after accusations of actively politicizing the department. He’s currently under investigation by the Department’s inspector general.

* Thomas Scully – Administrator, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services – shortly after Scully resigned in 2003, an investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general found that Scully had pressured the agency’s actuary to underestimate the full cost of the Medicare reform bill by approximately $100 billion until after Congress passed the bill into law. Scully was also hit with conflict of interest charges by the U.S. attorney’s office for billing CMS for expenses incurred during a job search while he still headed the agency. He settled those charges by paying $9,782. 

Oh, and don't forget Scooter and Dead Eye Dick destroyed an entire intelligence network and probably got people murdered via the Plame scandal.

No Global Warming On Fox

Fox Tries To Debunk Global Warming, Fails Miserably | Media Matters for America:

"In an article titled, 'Five Reasons the Planet May Not Be Its Hottest Ever,' FoxNews.com sought to debunk the fact that Earth has warmed over the past 30 years, as well as the notion that human activity has contributed to the warming. But Fox largely ignored climate science and botched basic facts in the article, portions of which 'are utter nonsense' and 'do not make sense' according to climatologists consulted by Media Matters, including one of the skeptics cited by Fox..."

So what else is new?

Bambism Alive And Well In Hollywood

Charlotte Front and Center: Ashley Judd's Attacks on Sarah Palin and Wolf Hunts.

Oh, and if you don't like rodeos either, ask yourself where those bulls and broncs would be if not otherwise employed for 8 seconds a week?

Deguzzling

U.S. Driving Continues to Decrease - WSJ.com: "U.S. driving slid for the eighth straight month in June, making the decline more pronounced that the drop that occurred during the 1970s oil shock.

The U.S. Department of Transportation said Americans drove 12.2 billion miles less in June than a year earlier. With that, the decline since November is now 53.2 billion miles, topping the 49.3 billion decline three decades ago. Rural travel has fallen 4% since late last year, while urban driving is off just 1.2%. (See the Federal highway Administration data.)..."

Save The Planet

I have a birthday coming up...

The Long View On Global Warming

Praise for Netherlands' 200-year water defense plan to deal with global warming - International Herald Tribune:

"AMSTERDAM, Netherlands: With two-thirds of the Dutch population living below sea level, the country's government sees the risk of rising seas caused by global warming as a matter of life and death. So it's taking a long term view of the problem — a two hundred-year view, to be exact.

The Cabinet announced plans Friday for a new commission to begin preparing water defenses through the year 2200.

'We want to make sure that there's still a Netherlands a century from now,' Tineke Huizinga, the country's top water official, told state broadcaster NOS..."

I was stationed in Holland for a time in the late 60's and fell in love with the country. I've never been back, though I'd love to, but I will always have fond memories of the Dutch, the government, and their general disposition toward life, which seemed to say: "Show me a problem, and I will attend to it."

Hail, Simon Stevin!

Sullivan Polls

The Daily Dish: Polling The Netroots Right: "02 Mar 2007 12:37 pm

The rightwing blogosphere is almost certainly to the right of most Republican voters, let alone independent voters who are open to the GOP. But I didn't expect quite this amount of loopiness. Of 63 blogs queried, we get survey results like this:

Do you think that a majority of Democrats in Congress would like to see us lose in Iraq for political reasons?

Yes (53)-- 84%
No (10) -- 16%

Do you think that a majority of Democrats in Congress would like to see us lose in Iraq for political reasons?

Yes (53)-- 84%
No (10) -- 16%

Do you think mankind is the primary cause of global warming?

Yes (0) -- 0%
No (59) -- 100%

The last one strikes me as astonishing. Some skepticism is warranted in climate change science. But the fact that the scientific community overwhelmingly believes that humans are primarily responsible for current climate change and none of the right-wing bloggers does suggests to me another sign of severe conservative meltdown. (Hat tip: Ann.)"

What Global Warming?

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Snowless winter first for Tokyo: "The Japanese capital has experienced its first winter without snow for 131 years, weather officials say.

The Japan Meteorological Agency said it had recorded no snow in central Tokyo between December and the end of February, the official winter months.

This the first time no snow has fallen in winter since records began in 1876, the agency said..."

Ok. Great. Can we get back to shaven singers or better yet-- Al Gore's power bill?