The Hidden Costs of Fossil Fuel Use

Charleston, WV

Hundreds of thousands of West Virginians are now without water due to a chemical spill. Freedom Industries (ever notice how frequently companies involved with these disasters use patriotic names?) says they're "confident" that only 5,000 gallons of MCHM (4-methylcyclohexane methanol) spilled from a 35,000-gallon tank. The spill has made the tap water in nine counties smell like licorice.

The president of the company, Gary Southern, doesn't know how the leak occurred, but he assures us that the chemical has "very low toxicity." MCHM is used in processing coal. It's a form of alcohol, and an article at CNN says that it causes rashes, headaches, dizziness, vomiting, nausea, etc., etc. There's basically no research about what it does to people. Animal tests indicate that it causes heart, liver and kidney damage.  The bigger questions are what the long-term effects will be at low levels, and how long low-level concentrations will remain in the affected water systems.

The governor of West Virginia has advised everyone in the affected area to avoid drinking and bathing; the water should only be used for flushing. Thousands of businesses are shut down, including all restaurants and even carwashes. Bottled water is being shipped in, and there are accusations of local merchants gouging residents. In the end this man-made disaster will cost millions of dollars in lost productivity and cleanup, and an unknown number of health problems that may stay with the victims for years.

As far as coal-related spills go, this was relatively minor. But problems like this happen all the time, across the country, and even though they get wall-to-wall coverage in the media when they occur, we forget about them before the next big one, leaving us with no incentive to deal with the underlying problems. For example:

Harriman, TN

In 2008, the Kingston Fossil Plant spill in Tennessee released a billion gallons of coal fly ash slurry from a pond along the Clinch River where the solid waste from the coal-fired power plant was stored. Local neighborhoods were covered by as much as 6 feet of sludge. A similar coal spurry spill occurred in 2000 when one of Massey Energy's (that of the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster) slurry impoundments collapsed, flooding local neighborhoods and creeks with 300 million gallons of poisonous black gunk. All life in the Wolf Creek and Coldwater Fork was killed. Slurry spills happen so frequently that it's impossible to enumerate them all. There's simply not enough space to put all the ash that burning millions of tons of coal produces.

San Bruno, CA

Energy production is a dirty, dangerous business. Coal mines and oil rigs are extremely dangerous places to work; the fatality rate on oil rigs is seven times higher than for all US workers. The BP oil spill in the Gulf was one of the biggest spills in years, costing tens of billions of dollars. In San Bruno, CA, a natural gas pipeline blew up in a neighborhood, killing eight and injuring 58.

Oklahoma was rocked by more than 3,000 earthquakes in 2013,  due to injection of fracking waste deep underground. Before fracking they had 50 a year.

Casselton, ND

In the past six months alone there have been three train derailments in which huge conflagrations occurred. The first was in Quebec, when a train carrying oil from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota exploded in the town of Lac-Megantic, killing 47 people. The second was in Alabama two months ago, when a train carrying North Dakota crude derailed and burned for four days. The third was less than two weeks ago in the town of Casselton, North Dakota, when a train carrying Bakken crude exploded after running into another derailed train. Thousands of local residents were evacuated, though no one was hurt. Trains derail all the time, but they rarely burst into flame. There's clearly something different and dangerous about the oil coming from the Bakken Oil Patch.

Kalamazoo River

Oil pipelines are little better: in September a pipeline in North Dakota leaked 20,000 barrels of oil onto a farm, and the pipeline company didn't realize the pipeline was leaking till the farmer called them, and neglected to inform the public for 11 days. The same Canadian company that wants to build the Keystone XL pipeline, Enbridge, has a pipeline that ruptured in Michigan in 2010, releasing almost a million gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River. One of Exxon Mobil's pipelines burst in Arkansas last March, forcing the evacuation of 22 homes. The Keystone XL pipeline is supposed to carry that same kind of crude oil. Would you want that pipeline coming through your neighborhood?

The railway responsible for Quebec disaster declared bankruptcy in two countries to shield their assets and avoid paying for the deaths and damage they caused. The companies in these industries simply don't have the resources to pay for the huge potential damage that their activities can cause. They're often subsidiaries of bigger companies, intentionally walled off from the parent so that they can quickly declare bankruptcy and avoid paying for the damage they cause.

Local residents, cities, counties and states wind up with gigantic cleanup bills, often asking the federal government to declare them disaster areas.

Fossil fuels are messy and dangerous to extract, messy and dangerous to transport, messy and dangerous to use (consider how many homes blow up every year in natural gas explosions). Their waste products are messy and dangerous to dispose of, and cause air pollution, mercury pollution, acid rain, etc. Not to mention the CO2 that's causing climate change.

At every juncture the expenses involved with cleaning up these messes are frequently not borne by the people profiting from fossil fuel extraction. It's probably the best example of an industry that has privatized profit while socializing the risk.

It is clear that exploitation of fossil fuels has a huge range of deleterious effects on the lives of Americans. Shouldn't they be paying for all the problems they're causing?

All these ancillary costs should be rolled into the taxes that the fossil fuel energy industry pays. That would make the electricity and transportation that rely on those sources cost more, but it would make the people who benefit from its use bear the actual costs. Eliminating the hidden subsidies of these industries would create more incentives for developing alternate energy sources that don't create such hazardous messes.

Humans Are Dangerous!

Great short film on what our planet might look like from an alien species point of view. Perhaps this is why they have not made contact:)

Awesome!

Check out this piece on Tokyo-born, London-based photographer Chino Otsuka. She photoshopped herself into photographs from the past when she was a young girl. Here is an example.

Transparency?

The Right seems to take a great amount of glee by sarcastically pointing out that President Obama has the "most transparent administration ever." I realize that it takes a great deal of effort to put down their copy of Atlas Shrugged, unbuckled their bathrobe and spend a few minutes away from right wing blogs to conjure up an attack like this.

As is invariably the case, however, I have to wonder if these denizens of classical liberalism are as familiar and knowledgeable with US History as they bloviate to be. Would it surprise them to learn this?

In early 1787, Congress called for a special convention of all the states to revise the Articles of Confederation. On September 17, 1787, after four months of secret meetings, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention emerged from their Philadelphia meetingroom with an entirely new plan of government–the U.S. Constitution–that they hoped would ensure the survival of the experiment they had launched in 1776.

WTF??!!?? It can't possibly be that our founding fathers, whom they claim to have a direct connection to in the afterlife, were not at all transparent about the formation of the document they claim to make love to on a nightly basis (missionary position, of course). Why on earth would they be so secretive? Could it be that they wanted to speak their minds without public pressure?

The delegates also agreed that the deliberations would be kept secret. The case in favor of secrecy was that the issues at hand were so important that honest discourse needed to be encouraged and delegates ought to feel free to speak their mind, and change their mind, as they saw fit. Thus, despite the hot summer weather in Philadelphia, and delegates who, on the whole, were rather overweight and hardly “dressed down” for the occasion, the windows were closed and heavy drapes drawn. The merits and demerits of the secrecy rule have been a subject of considerable debate throughout American history.

Feel free to speak their mind and CHANGE their mind as they saw fit? Oh. My. GOSH!!!

Cue the boiling pit of sewage...:)

Aligning Interests

Could our next ally in the Middle East be Iran? This latest piece in the Times posits that it may end up being true.

While the two governments quietly continue to pursue their often conflicting interests, they are being drawn together by their mutual opposition to an international movement of young Sunni fighters, who with their pickup trucks and Kalashnikovs are raising the black flag of Al Qaeda along sectarian fault lines in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.

Given the new moderate government in Iran, I think it's more than possible. When I read this article, I was instantly reminded of CSM's cover story from a few weeks ago that offers incredible insight into the real Iran as opposed to what we see in our media. Editor in Chief of CSM, John Yemma, had this to say as an introduction to Scott Peterson's piece.

Iran is not just any nation. It is a pillar of civilization. In its 2,700-year history, Persian culture has contributed richly to human knowledge in math, medicine, chemistry, religion, philosophy, poetry, agriculture, and architecture. Modern Iranians prize education, intellect, science, and the arts. However divided Iranians may be about the course their nation should take, however drawn to Western ideas and values many are, there is no doubt within Iran about Iran’s worth and dignity.

We do indeed have a great deal in common with the Iranian people. This is not a backwards culture but a pillar of human civilization dating back to our dawn as a people. As CSM points out as well, they may indeed be our new best friend.

A Whole Lot of Phony Bullshit.

Check out this revelation about the Duck Dynasty clan.

Wow.

I realize reality shows are fake but this can't even be classified as "reality." Why didn't they just say it was a mockumentary a la Spinal Tap from the get go? At least they would have been more respected.

The Bible and Homosexuality

I found this site on religious tolerance a while back and recently rediscovered it when I had to go to a backup of my bookmarks (beware of the "search conduit" malware---grrrr). Check out what they have to say about the Bible and homosexuality.

Seven or eight main biblical passages that may deal with same-gender sexual behavior are described below. They are often referred to as "clobber" passages, because they are often used to attack persons with a homosexual or bisexual orientation. They have been interpreted very differently by various religious denominations, para-church groups, and traditions. All groups recognize that these biblical passages condemn some types of sexual behavior but there is no consensus within a given religion whether they refer to consensual sexual behavior by persons with a homosexual or bisexual orientation, and whether it refers to all people or only to persons with a heterosexual orientation.

Clobber passages...love it...

Here's an interesting comparison...

Among the full spectrum of faith groups, from the most conservative to the most liberal:

• Most conservative faith groups tend to interpret all of the clobber passages as condemning all forms of same-gender sexual behavior, whether by men or women. They do this, even though only one of the seven or eight passages actually refers to women, and that sole passage refers only to women with a heterosexual orientation. 
• Most liberal and progressive faith groups tend to interpret the same passages -- in their original languages of Hebrew and Greek -- as referring to: temple prostitution, how it is unacceptable for two men to have sex if they do it on a woman's bed, kidnapping slaves, adults sexually abusing children, engaging in sexual behavior that is against one's sexual orientation and basic nature, and/or engaging in bestiality -- sexual activity with a non-human species. 
• Most mainline denominations and faith groups are split on these passages' interpretation with part of the membership taking the conservative position, and another part taking the liberal/progressive interpretation. 
• We have never found a faith group that accepts same-gender sexual behavior by lesbians while condemning such behavior by males, even though that could be a logical interpretation of Romans 1.

That pretty much sums it up. Check out all the sub links as well, especially this one:)

Brainiacs

Stunning piece in the Times about the human brain and an NIH study that will help to answer the following questions: How do differences between you and me, and how our brains are wired up, relate to differences in our behaviors, our thoughts, our emotions, our feelings, our experiences? Does that help us understand how disorders of connectivity, or disorders of wiring, contribute to or cause neurological problems and psychiatric problems?

With the exponential growth of technology, I say that within the next two decades we are going to know far more about the human brain than has been thought possible up to this point in human history. Honestly, I think what we discover is going to be very frightening some people as I think we will discover how we were made.

And why.

What Are They Talking About?

One would think it was Christmas in January for conservatives with their reaction to the forthcoming book by former defense secretary Robert Gates. My conservative friends on Facebook are falling all over themselves as is the rest of Bubble Land over Gates' criticism of the president and, in particular, Vice President Biden. As is usually the case, they are only telling part of the story if even that at all.

In a new memoir, Mr. Gates, a Republican holdover from the Bush administration who served for two years under Mr. Obama, praises the president as a rigorous thinker who frequently made decisions “opposed by his political advisers or that would be unpopular with his fellow Democrats.”

That doesn't really sound like criticism. Neither does this.

Mr. Gates acknowledges that he initially opposed sending Special Operations forces to attack a housing compound in Pakistan where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding. Mr. Gates writes that Mr. Obama’s approval for the Navy SEAL mission, despite strong doubts that Bin Laden was even there, was “one of the most courageous decisions I had ever witnessed in the White House.”

Yes, it was.

What does he say about the president in the last chapter?

In his final chapter, Mr. Gates makes clear his verdict on the president’s overall Afghan strategy: “I believe Obama was right in each of these decisions.”

Huh. So wtf are they talking about?

Dirty Tricks in New Jersey

As has long been alleged, recently released emails prove that New Jersey governor Chris Christie shut down lanes of the George Washington to retaliate against the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee.

Christie had demanded Mayor Mark Sokolich endorse him for governor. When Sokolich refused, Christie's deputy chief of staff, Bridgett Anne Kelly, sent an email to David Wildstein, an official appointed by Christie to the New Jersey Port authority, who happens to be a high-school pal of the governor.

The email read simply, "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee." Wildstein replied, "Got it." The New Jersey Port Authority then shut down three lanes on the bridge, creating a terrible traffic mess for the town of Fort Lee.

As the traffic piled up Kelly and Wildstein had the following exchange:

“Is it wrong that I am smiling?” Mr. Wildstein texted Ms. Kelly.

“No,” she texted back.

“I feel badly about the kids,” he texted.

“They are the children of Buono voters,” she said, referring to Mr. Christie’s Democratic opponent, Barbara Buono, who was trailing consistently in the polls and lost by a wide margin.

You can just imagine this same conversation replaying every time Republicans pull their dirty tricks: pulling funding from underperforming inner-city schools with No Child Left Behind, cutting food stamps from the farm bill, enacting voter ID laws that make it hard for old ladies and college students to vote.

The incident shows that Christie is petty little man (figuratively speaking, obviously). He's an egocentric conceited liar who will inflict misery on innocent people in order to strong-arm erstwhile "allies" to get what he wants. This demonstrates why the man should never be president: he cannot be trusted to wield any kind of power fairly.

Christie's integrity has long been questionable. When New Jersey senator Frank Lautenberg died, Christie called for a special election to be held on October 16, 2013, three weeks before the general election.

Why didn't Christie wait till November and roll the Senate election into the general election, saving New Jersey taxpayers a few million dollars? Christie wanted to increase his chances of reelection: Cory Booker, the popular mayor of Newark, was running for Lautenberg's seat. Christie was afraid that if Booker ran at the same time that he was, Booker's presence on the Democratic ticket would increase Democratic turnout and help Christie's opponent win.

I'm sure the Tea Party is crowing about Christie's comeupance. They hate the man more than Democrats do, because despite all his flaws, Christie does occasionally put the people of New Jersey ahead of conservative ideology (especially when it makes him look good).

But Christie's dirty tricks are straight out of the Republican playbook: sabotage your enemies, blackmail potential allies. It's the same Nixonian script Republicans have been following for the entirety of the Obama presidency.

Most Republicans have the good sense to plot in smoke-filled rooms behind closed doors, though sometimes the truth spills out. Like when they claimed voter ID laws weren't created to prevent minorities from voting in Texas, they were created to prevent Democrats from voting.

Christie's flunkies made the mistake of having extended email and texting exchanges about their dirty tricks, using non-work email accounts to hatch their plot. They apparently thought this would avoid the embarrassing "lost emails" scandal that sank the plot by Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzalez and the gang who were torpedoing US attorneys who wouldn't play ball with their voter suppression efforts.

As far as dirty tricks go, Christie's lane closures might not seem very dangerous. That would be incorrect. Traffic jams cause car accidents, which can cause deaths and injuries. Ambulances caught in traffic jams may be carrying patients who may die because they failed to reach the hospital in time. Everyone stuck in the traffic jam is wasting time and money, reducing productivity.

Whether any great harm came of Christie's dirty trick is really beside the point. Anyone who would use these sorts of tactics to blackmail public officials into supporting them lacks the judgment to be governor. Who could trust this man in the Oval Office not to abuse the presidency for personal gain? Christie would be another Nixon, bringing shame upon this nation, not to mention the Republican Party.

I think that flushing sound coming from New Jersey is Christie's presidential campaign going down the toilet.

Still Slow

A recent report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services shows that health care spending is down for the fourth year in a row. Patients have greatly benefited from this considering past increases in medical and premium costs. The Affordable Care Act has had minimal impact on this slowed growth even though the White House has taken credit for it in terms of lowering Medicare spending by penalizing hospitals with high readmission rates, for example.

Regardless of why it is happening, we are heading in the right direction. Reducing the growth of health care is vital to the overall integrity of our economy. People can't live their lives being one crisis away from losing everything they own.

We ♥ The Aristocracy!

The season premiere of the fourth season of Downton Abbey brought with it all the usual overblown publicity and hysterical Facebook posts about all of the latest doings in the Yorkshire county estate in the early part of the 20th century. I enjoy the show a great deal from an historical perspective but see it for what it is: Melrose Place with Brits.

As I was watching the premiere on Sunday night, I thought about this Fox News Clip in which all the conservatives hilariously championed... the benefits of an aristocracy! Don't they realize that they can't both support our founding fathers AND champion the generosity of rich folk who help out the poor folk? Especially British folk? They probably don't and that's when I had an epiphany.

Most conservatives today are from the south and pine for those lost days of antebellum. In particular, they miss the hierarchy of the aristocracy that was present in that region during that time. The top of that hierarchy is available only to those individuals born of a certain stature and ideology. In short, that means, NO FUCKING LIBERALS. And only those who are pure in all the ways the Right sees fit.

So, the real reason why conservatives hate Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as much as they do is because the office of the president is a close to "king" as we get in this country. The very idea that someone who is not pure gets to be "king" as a major affront to those inner dreams of aristocratic fantasy. People like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama simply don't belong up there. No Democrat does. Throw in the fact that President Obama is black and it's even more of an insult.

Go deeper and one can really see the problem. Conservatives both pine for the aristocracy (whining about tradition and the ways things used to be juxtaposed with screams of class warfare anytime anyone mentions inequality)  and then turn around in the same breath and bitch about the political class and how individual rights are being trampled. Can't they see their hypocrisy? No wonder they act like children all the time. They are fucking bipolar and being driven crazy by their inner struggle.

Considering that they define themselves as the "haves and soon to haves", it makes even more sense that they are as nuts as they are. Someday (see: very likely never) they will be at the top of the heap and they don't want any of those peasants creeping on their dough (see: hard earned money pilfered by lazy non whites). Yet how can they get there without freedom or liberty?

What a puzzler!

Not Banned On These Premises

Looks like City Council Member Leslie LeCuyer just learned a lesson about how FUBAR gun laws are in this country.

Even though she’s a self-described gun enthusiast, LeCuyer later suggested the city put up a sign forbidding guns from the premises like those found near the doors of so many businesses around the state. She was shocked to learn that, legally, the city couldn’t. People sometimes come to City Hall angry, she pointed out.

“Our decisions can impact people: Whether or not they can build onto their home, whether they can put up a building on their property,” she said. “That’s what we put our name on the line to do. But we don’t put our name on the line to be killed … People have to do these jobs. We don’t want it to be so unsafe that no one will do it anymore.”

Well, it's not like someone is going to charge into a city hall and shoot up the place. Especially when there are good guys with guns who always save the day, right?

Ah well, Leslie can rest comfortable knowing that there are armed civilians there to protect her from bad guys.

Bringing In The Big Guns

These days, politicians in DC can't seem to get their message across. Americans seem to not want to listen if you are a politician and it certainly shows in the polls with Congress's rating at continued lows. So, what do you do? Enter Bernie Sanders.

When the majority leader, Harry Reid, exhorted colleagues to “deal with the issue of income inequality,” the talk took a spiritual turn. “You know,” declared Senator Bernard Sanders, the Vermont independent, who caucuses with Democrats, “we have a strong ally on our side in this issue — and that is the pope.” That Mr. Sanders, who is Jewish, would invoke the pope to Mr. Reid, a Mormon, delighted Roman Catholics in the room. (“Bernie! You’re quoting my pope; this is good!” Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois recalled thinking.) Beyond interfaith banter, the comment underscored a larger truth: From 4,500 miles away at the Vatican, Pope Francis, who has captivated the world with a message of economic justice and tolerance, has become a presence in Washington’s policy debate.

Currently, there are around 2 billion Catholics in the world and they all look to the pope as their leader. Pope Francis is not only changing the face of Christianity today but he is clearly affecting politics. He has made inequality his core issue and I think that's going to change economic policy of the United States for the better.

How this all plays out remains to be seen but it's definitely the right direction!

It's the Day After Tomorrow Today!

Oh, no! The Polar Vortex is everywhere! Just like the movie The Day After Tomorrow. This proves climate change isn't happening!

Well, not exactly everywhere. The temperature in Moscow, for example, was 34 degrees when I checked earlier today. In Sochi, where the Winter Olympics are going to be held, it's going to be in the 50s this week (30s in the mountains where the skiing takes place). While we've been getting socked by cold and snow, it was 36 and raining in Lillehammer, Norway, where the 1994 Winter Olympics were held. Australia's recent spring was the hottest on record and the country has been hit this year by searing heat (more than 100 degrees in the agricultural areas) and more bushfires. In December Alaska was setting record high temperatures while the rest of the United States was cold. This last November was the hottest on record world-wide.

But, the deniers say, global warming isn't happening because it's the coldest it's been in 20 years!

Exactly. Average temperatures have been rising so steadily that what used to be a typical cold snap for places like Minnesota is now the exception rather than the rule. When I was a kid most every year we'd get a week or two of -20 degree temperatures. Now we freak out when it gets that cold and cancel school.

Checking current temps on weather.com around the world is interesting. The high for the North Pole today is going to be 27 above zero! The high in Duluth, Minnesota is going to be -15. Yes, the North Pole is going to be 42 degrees warmer than Duluth.

Why is the weather so weird? Well, when the North Pole is so warm, it pushes the jet stream south, which pushes cold arctic air south into the United States. A warmer North Pole was one of the reasons Hurricane Sandy was so much bigger and veered west instead of east.

If temperatures rise a few degrees worldwide, they will increase 10 or 20 degrees at the poles, causing more melting and more weird changes to the jet stream.

A lot of people have been citing stories like this (More Record Lows than Highs in USA in 2013) as "proof" that climate change isn't happening. But they neglect to read the actual story:

Through Dec. 28, there have been 11,852 daily record lows in 2013, compared with 10,073 daily record highs, according to Walton.

A "daily" record occurs when a specific location sets a record high or low temperature for a particular day; other types of records include monthly and all-time.

Walton said that an unusually cold spring was the main factor in the "cool" 2013.

The year 2013 was a stunning turnaround from the USA's amazingly warm year of 2012, when more than 34,000 record highs were measured across the country, as compared with only about 6,600 record lows.

In 2013 there were slightly more record highs than record lows, while in 2012 there were five times as many record highs than record lows. And then there's this:

Through November, the most recent month for which national and global climate statistics are available, the world was having its 4th-warmest year on record, while the USA was seeing its 35th-warmest on record, the NCDC reports.

The upshot: global warming is global. We can expect fluctuations from one region to another, from one year to another, but the overall trend is increased temperatures, which causes more forest fires, heat waves, and paradoxically, cold snaps as the warming North Pole pushes the jet stream south.