EarthFire08’s Recent Comments

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  There is no other way to introduce a bill in the Senate or the House -- all bills, by definition, have one sponsor listed, all other names are "co-sponsors." However, if they introduced it together, which they did, then it's considered the Kerry/Boxer bill. John Kerry indeed HAS "kerried" (carried) the climate issue longer and with more depth and substance over the years than has Barbara Boxer, though she has certainly done her part. As for the ability to shepherd such a bill all the way to Senate passage, and ultimate signature into law, the combined management skills of Kerry and Boxer probably aren't up to par. But to be fair, very few could pull off such a herculean feat. If only the Dems could harness the ballsy tactical skills of, say, Tom "the hammer" DeLay, for benevolent purposes, and stop giving away the store everytime the Repubs set off a stink bomb, we might see actual progress in the form of good governance. (Not holding breath on that one.) At this point, the better bet is on "Plan B" -- an aggressive set of measures within the executive branch, starting with a strong EPA ruling on major sources, but extending across all of the major agencies and departments with a stake in climate change, so that no matter what Congress is or isn't able to pull off, we at least begin to move in the right direction.On CEJAPA is Kerry's bill posted 1 month, 1 week ago 3 Responses

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  Jack Gerard is in high-pitch drill-baby-drill mode, complaining about the "delays" in more offshore drilling. He also appears to be in lie-baby-lie mode, condemning the Woodrow Wilson report as "ludicrous" because it includes money for LIHEAP (a program to assist poor people with their energy bills) and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The lies are too many to count in the following paragraph quoting Gerard, from an article in the Oil and Gas Journal: “Despite the public’s clear desire for more domestic energy development and the industry’s years of experience operating offshore in an environmentally sensitive way, this administration repeatedly has slow-pedaled this plan which would benefit all Americans, especially in these tough economic times,” he said. “New oil and gas development could create thousands of jobs, add over a trillion dollars to government coffers, strengthen America’s energy security and encourage our economic recovery. It’s time to end the delays.” www.ogj.com/index/blogs/washington-pulse/s-blogs/s-OGJ/s-washington-pulse/s-post987_5311474413428470551.html My question is -- would Jack and his oil/gas companies be willing to do all of this drilling MINUS all of the subsidies that make it profitable -- and perhaps even to factor in the externalities associated with GHG emissions / climate change? Does he know that federal dollars are being expended right now to improve hurricane forecasting so that operators of oil rigs along the Gulf Coast might have a few extra hours to hunker down and protect the rigs from fiercer and more damaging hurricanes, a result of burning the oil these rigs produce? It's time for the fossil fuel industry and its mouthpieces to come clean and admit that it has had a long, free ride on the back of the taxpayer, and the real delay has been in letting it go on much too long for the health of the energy economy and the health of the planet.On Fossil fuel subsidies dwarf clean energy subsidies; Obama wants to eliminate them posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago 13 Responses

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  Let's get real (real accurate, that is)

  Merriam Webster defines a heretic as "1: a dissenter from established religious dogma; especially : a baptized member of the Roman Catholic Church who disavows a revealed truth or 2: one who dissents from an accepted belief or doctrine : nonconformist."  

  "Global climatic disruption" -- borrowing from John Holdren's more apt description of climate change -- is neither religion, belief, nor doctrine. It has this in common with heart disease, cancer, and gravity.  Was James Hansen a conformist when he testified in 1988 that global warming had arrived? Are Nobel Prize winning IPCC scientists conformists? (No one I've met believes this.)

  "Adaptation," like global warming, is also a misleading misnomer:  starving children "adapt" to hunger with inflated bellies and emaciated arms and legs; cancer patients adapt to their disease with suffering and survival or death; and the dinosaurs adapted (some say poorly) to a changing climate with extinction.  Is premature death an effective (and morally acceptable) adaptation strategy?  No humans?  No problem!  Sea level rise?  Massive droughts, floods, storm surges?  To  plagiarize (tastelessly)... bring 'em on!      

  The LA Times article was a confusing and confounding journey into semantics, presenting (an apparently misleading) "either/or" frame when in fact none really exists -- we all know that it's gotta be "and/and" with extra doses of each, of course setting priorities along the way, when it comes to avoiding the catastrophes we can't manage (mitigation), and managing the impacts we can't avoid (adaptation).  Maybe our good friends Joe Romm and David Roberts should host a renaming contest for "adaptation."  "Suffering" is a good start.  In my view, this thread of discourse is at level 101 arithmetic when we need to be in advanced calculus, or at least basic geometry.  I am reminded of a cutting remark made by Katrina hero Russel Honore' to the press in the aftermath of hurricane Rita:  "Don't get stuck on stupid."  That's good advice for all of us.  

  Anne

  On Pielke labels adaptation what is actually mitigation posted 1 year, 7 months ago 4 Responses