The opacity of tropes

by Laurence Lewis

There was some good in President Obama's energy speech, and there was much that was missing, including the clarion call on climate change that this entire world so desperately needs to hear, and evidence of the action that this entire world so desperately needs. At Climate Progress, Joe Romm summarized:

The President has either not tried to get senior Democrats to stop bad mouthing climate action in public — or he has tried and failed.  Either way, that demonstrates an absence of serious leadership on this most important of issues.

The President should have spoken to Dorgan and Feinstein months ago, and said, "We need to do this.  We’re going to do this.  I need your help.  What do you need from me?"  Indeed, he should have made a couple dozen such calls after the House passed the bill a year ago.

So, sure, feel free to criticize him for not using a few beltway code-words in his big speech, but actions speak louder than words — and so far one sees very little sign of action.

There also was very little sign of interest in the climate bill. He supports it, and he did mention that the House has passed it, but there was no emphasis indicating that he considers it a high priority. At the end of the week, with the Senate seemingly set to kill it, Robin Bravender of the New York Times made a blunt observation:

It is unclear whether Obama and Senate Democratic leadership intend to push aggressively for cap and trade or any mechanism to price carbon this year. Obama failed to call for it directly in his Oval Office address this week and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) yesterday declined to promise to include a price on carbon in an energy package slated for floor debate next month.

Given that the president didn't even mention cap and trade, or carbon pricing, it does actually seem pretty clear. He didn't mention emissions, either. He spoke well about BP, and MMS, and the clean-up, all of which was good and necessary. He also slapped down the hyperbolic criticism from the right, which also was good and necessary. And he did it the right way, not by emoting, by explaining. He also said this:

The transition away from fossil fuels will take some time, but over the last year and a half, we have already taken unprecedented action to jumpstart the clean energy industry. As we speak, old factories are reopening to produce wind turbines, people are going back to work installing energy-efficient windows, and small businesses are making solar panels. Consumers are buying more efficient cars and trucks, and families are making their homes more energy-efficient. Scientists and researchers are discovering clean energy technologies that will someday lead to entire new industries.

Each of us has a part to play in a new future that will benefit all of us. As we recover from this recession, the transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of good, middle-class jobs - but only if we accelerate that transition. Only if we seize the moment. And only if we rally together and act as one nation - workers and entrepreneurs; scientists and citizens; the public and private sectors.

But as good as it was to hear those words, their vagueness was, in fact, part of the problem. Once again, he didn't make any effort to explain what must be done, or how it will be done. It's still not even clear what he means by the word, "clean." He used to talk about "clean" coal. He hasn't mentioned it lately, and we can hope that means he's abandoned the idea, but it could mean he just doesn't want to talk about it. We don't know. At Carnegie-Mellon, two weeks ago, he spoke of the need for a clean energy future, then only mentioned natural gas and nuclear, which was astonishing. In his energy speech, he dropped those and specifically mentioned solar and wind, which was very good to hear. But the question remains: Does that signal a shift in policy strategy, or was it but a shift in political strategy? A rhetorical device? We don't know.

Reactions to the speech have varied, and there has been much criticism from the left. But in the end, it was only a speech. Perhaps digby had the most concisely cogent response: Speeches don't impress her. They're but political theater. Romm nailed it: The actions will be the real story. And the bottom line is that we don't know what those actions will be. Proponents of the climate bill appear to be on their own. The meaning of "clean" remains anyone's guess. Opacity rules. As it so often does.

continued at Daily Kos....

MMS still approving Gulf drilling without safety standards

by Laurence Lewis

Demonstrating that a culture of corruption and incompetence is hard to break, the Minerals Management Service is continuing to approve offshore drilling projects in the Gulf of Mexico that don't meet the new safety standards defined by President Obama. McClatchy's Shashank Bengali has the story:

The Department of Interior's Minerals Management Service has signed off on at least five new offshore drilling projects since June 2, when the agency's acting director announced tougher safety regulations for drilling in the Gulf, a McClatchy review of public records has discovered.

Three of the projects were approved with waivers exempting them from detailed studies of their environmental impact — the same waiver the MMS granted to BP for the ill-fated well that's been fouling the Gulf with crude for two months.

Bengali refers to President Obama's May 14 statement:

We’re also closing the loophole that has allowed some oil companies to bypass some critical environmental reviews, and today we’re announcing a new examination of the environmental procedures for oil and gas exploration and development.

Bengali:

"It's just outrageous," said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation organization. "The whole world is screaming and . . . they're just continuing to move this stuff through the system."

Of the three projects that were granted waivers, two are to be drilled in deep water, one by Exxon Mobil and one by Marathon Oil. A shallow-water project by Houston's Rooster Petroleum also was granted a waiver.

Defenders of Wildlife and the Southern Environmental Law Center have launched a legal challenge to the continuing policy of approving new leases. From the SELC website (emphasis mine):

The groups say current policies create an incentive to allow drilling even in the face of evident risks because once a lease is issued by MMS, the U.S. government is obligated to pay the lessee either the fair market value of the lease or the amount spent to obtain the bid plus costs and interest if the government cancels the lease or refuses to allow drilling. MMS approved new leases for deepwater tracts as recently as June 10 under the same lax oversight complicit in the current Gulf spill.

"MMS quietly granted oil companies the right to drill 198 more deepwater wells as if the spill wasn’t devastating the Gulf," said Derb Carter, senior attorney and director, Carolinas Office, Southern Environmental Law Center. "If it’s too deep to stop a spill, it’s too deep to drill. BP is under criminal investigation for its explosion and dumping millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf, yet MMS approved 13 new leases for BP to drill in deepwater without any better oversight."

The groups’ lawsuit challenges MMS approval of leases, including 198 deepwater leases, in the Central Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20 and ongoing spill.

Assuming that the President doesn't know these details, let's hope he soon does, because Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has some explaining to do.

continued at Daily Kos....

Tell the people

by Laurence Lewis

The president will speak tonight, and let's hope he doesn't just mention climate change in passing. Let's hope he really focuses on the big picture. All he has to do is point to some recent news. A deadly flood in Arkansas. Record rains in Oklahoma City. Record flooding in Tennessee and New England.

As one observer noted:

I find it systematically tends to get underplayed and it often gets underplayed by my fellow scientists. Because one of the opening statements, which I’m sure you’ve probably heard is "Well you can’t attribute a single event to climate change." But there is a systematic influence on all of these weather events now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago. It’s about a 4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms and it’s unfortunate that the public is not associating these with the fact that this is one manifestation of climate change. And the prospects are that these kinds of things will only get bigger and worse in the future.

Some radical leftist enviro type who doesn't understand basic science? Actually, that quote is from Dr. Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. From an interview he just gave Joseph Romm, of Climate Progress. Who explains:

The latest record-smashing superstorm makes his comments even more timely — see Capital Climate’s "Oklahoma City Paralyzed By Flash Floods."  As with Tennessee, New England, and Georgia, what makes OK’s deluge doubly remarkable is that it was not the remnant of a tropical storm (see "Weather Channel expert on Georgia’s record-smashing global-warming-type deluge").

Extreme weather without the usual extreme causes. But the extreme causes will be getting even more extreme. It's been known for years that climate change could lead to stronger than ever hurricanes. And now, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting a stronger than usual hurricane season, for this year. The International Research Institute for Climate and Society, at Columbia University, elaborates:

The forecast for above-normal hurricane activity has remained high in part because of the dissipation of the 2009-10 El Niño and increased likelihood for La Niña conditions starting in the fall of 2010. In general, La Niña conditions tend to increase the chances for hurricanes in the Atlantic, while El Niño conditions tend to suppress them.

But the strongest influence on the forecast has to do with what's going on in the surface waters of the Atlantic Ocean. During the month of April, the surface temperatures in the Atlantic, where the majority of hurricanes develop, rose to nearly 1.5 degrees Celsius above the 30 year average- the highest levels ever recorded. In fact, April marks the third consecutive month that temperatures in this region of the Atlantic broke long term records. This is important because in general, hurricanes use warm-water temperatures as fuel to grow and get stronger.

"These abnormally high sea-surface temperatures do not bode well for a quiet start to the hurricane season," says Tony Barnston, IRI's lead forecaster. "Taken in combination with the increased likelihood for a developing La Niña during the latter stages of the hurricane season, the entire season may be lengthened this year."

And just to bring it all home, Science Daily had this, last month:

Hurricanes could snap offshore oil pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico and other hurricane-prone areas, since the storms whip up strong underwater currents, a new study suggests.

These pipelines could crack or rupture unless they are buried or their supporting foundations are built to withstand these hurricane-induced currents. "Major oil leaks from damaged pipelines could have irreversible impacts on the ocean environment," the researchers warn in their study, to be published on 10 June in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

The message is simple and easy to explain. You like what you're seeing in the Gulf of Mexico? Well, climate change has a very good chance of making this but the beginning. The crisis in the Gulf is about offshore oil drilling, but it's also about oil. It's about climate change. It's about our addiction to fossil fuels. And this is the moment to do something about it.

This is the moment to seize the moment, to galvanize the nation into being ready to do something about climate change. Something real. Finally. This is the moment to tell the people.

continued at Daily Kos....

"From Abstract Speculation To Miserable Reality"

by Laurence Lewis

The backlash from the BP Oil Spill has only begun. As more and more oil hits shore, more and more people will realize the depth of the disaster. It's beginning to happen. Fred Grimm, of the Miami Herald, reports from Grand Isle, Louisiana: Grand Isle, a mile wide, hardly eight miles long, offers a brutal model in miniature of what a giant oil spill brings to a tourism economy built around the beach and the sea. The town, with only 1,500 permanent residents, lives off the 300,000 visitors a year who come to fish and swim and play on the beach and bath in the Gulf of Mexico waters. None of that was evident Friday. The tourist hotels are empty but for cleanup crews. All the local businesses, both large and small, will suffer for this. All the people that work for those businesses will suffer. All the businesses that do business with those directly impacted will suffer. If Florida wants to regard Grand Isle as a laboratory to study the effects on tourism from that dark swill vomiting up from the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon, early indications look damn near fatal. Grand Isle's mayor closed the beach Friday afternoon but his order was not much more than an empty gesture. An obvious question hung over a mostly empty strand: Closed to whom? The popular beach and wildlife refuge on Elmer's Island was being kept off-limits, even to the press. The Herald sent a reporter and a photographer, and they were turned away. Why? But the mood all along the Louisiana coast was turning bitter this week, a month after the oil rig exploded 50 miles out in the Gulf, as the spill finally reached the coast. The ecological and economic damage was finally transformed from abstract speculation to miserable reality. And it's going to get worse. An enormous mass of oil is just miles off Grand Isle's shore, and is heading its way. But Grand Isle is just a beginning. As the oil works its way into the Loop Current, Florida likely will be next. And even that will be but a beginning. Matthew Brown, of the Associated Press, explains: The gooey oil washing into the maze of marshes along the Gulf Coast could prove impossible to remove, leaving a toxic stew lethal to fish and wildlife, government officials and independent scientists said. Officials are considering some drastic and risky solutions: They could set the wetlands on fire or flood areas in hopes of floating out the oil. They warn an aggressive cleanup could ruin the marshes and do more harm than good. The only viable option for many impacted areas is to do nothing and let nature break down the spill. Fifty miles of Louisiana's coastline already have been hit, including a major pelican rookery. The Louisiana marshes served as nurseries for shrimp, crab and oysters. Will the local fishing industry survive? Even if it does, how long will it take for even moderate recovery, and how many jobs will be lost, both temporarily and permanently? Those marshes also served as a buffer for New Orleans, when hurricanes hit. This just keeps getting worse. And it will take many years for nature to break this mess down. Among other ominous developments, BP is responding to the EPA's order that it seek an alternative to the dangerous chemical dispersant it had been using by saying it intends to continue with the one it has. Who is in charge, here? Gulf Islands National Seashore is imminently threatened not only by the oil, but by those chemicals. And the government official leading the response to the disaster says only BP has the expertise to plug the leak, and he trusts they are doing their best. Which raises the question of why we entrust entire ecosystems to the expertise of a corporation whose best is a continuing catastrophe. The magnitude of this disaster is so overwhelmingly large that it's easy to overlook the ways in which it is very small. As in the human scale. The people on Grand Isle who will lose their businesses and their jobs. Those employed in the Louisiana fishing industry. Those employed in the industries that depend on the catch. Those living and working on the coast of Florida, and beyond. The people for whom this disaster could not be much larger. And all the fragile ecosystems that will be destroyed. This is a teaching moment, for us all. It should be a learning moment. If someone would take this moment to teach. So that enough people would learn. So that we could, collectively, do what needs be done. On the large scale. On the small.

continued at Daily Kos....