How much does beef production contribute to global warming?

From Quora: I was surprised when I was attacked for saying that beef production contributes to global warming worldwide. The attacks came in the form of misinformation, primarily from a white paper by Frank Mitloehner, a professor at UC Davis. Mitloehner’s opinions are published in the form of a white paper, not an article in a peer-reviewed journal. But a group of scientists from Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future has provided a detailed response that fills in some of the details that Mitloehner omitted from his paper.

http://www.jhsph.edu/research/ce...

In looking over their response, I find their points well-taken. Mitloehner concentrates on improvements the meat industry has made in their production methods over the past 50–70 years. But these improvements do not address major problems that will always exist in an industry that slaughters 15 billion animals each year (total of all animals, including chickens).

The US meat industry fails to account for the fact that the US imports large quantities of beef from overseas. Thus, some of the efficiencies claimed by the industry merely result from the export of problems—such as emissions from deforestation and feed-crop production—to other countries. The US currently imports about 2 billion pounds of beef annually.

USDA ERS - Trade

Mitloehner’s figure of 4.2% greenhouse gas emissions resulting from livestock refers to US figures and doesn't represent the true scale of the problem. GHG is a world-wide problem where it is impossible to separate the US contribution from the rest of the world. World-wide, animal agriculture accounts for 14.5% of GHG, while world-wide production of GHG from transportation is slightly less.

The reason I described that cutting beef consumption is “low-hanging fruit” is because cutting consumption does not require an onerous life-style change. Clearly, since according to Dr. Mitloehner’s paper transportation accounts for 27% of US GHG production, there are many larger cuts that must be made in the transportation sector. These necessary cuts, however, will require lifestyle changes that Americans will find it difficult to make.

$52 trillion: That's how much denying climate change may cost the world

Charles Koch believes in the free market. His objections to government regulations are always the same: "They distort the free market". But what if the market itself is distorted? Economists call this "failure of the market".

One example of market failure is the dust bowl on the American Great Plains in the 1930s. Farmers pursued practices that destroyed the topsoil until it was blown away. This market failure happened because short-term profits (cash crops) kept farmers from using sustainable methods until the soil was ruined and people had to abandon their farms.

A similar market failure led to the collapse of the Sumerian civilization, which was based on advanced farming using irrigation. The civilization thrived until the soil became too salty to produce crops. Then the Sumerian civilizations failed, big-time.

Is this the destiny in store for us? Will our civilization, so large and impressive, be destroyed by market failure?

Climate change is the biggest failure of the market in the history of the world. It is the first one we know of that affects the entire planet. It is also the first market failure caused by polluting the atmosphere as opposed to being produced by destroying the ecosystem.

Scientists have studied the current climate change for the last 50 years. They have become aware of what is happening and why. Economists have only recently begun to study the possible effects of climate change. Since economists are well-versed in making predictions about the future, their predictions should be taken seriously, no matter how extreme they may sound to our ears. This is especially true when the economists in question work for citi, one of the Big Four banks of the US. Citi has just produced an extensive study of the economic effects of Climate Change. Their conclusions are eye-opening.

The report issued by citi economists measures the economic effects of ignoring climate change as opposed to doing something about it right away. The effects of ignoring it, as you might imagine, are horrendous. The report uses three scenarios of action. In one, the green path, the planet is able to keep the temperature from rising more than1.5 degrees Centigrade. In that case, the global GDP will be reduced by 0.7% or $20 trillion by 2060. In the worst-case scenario, the temperature will rise 4.5 degrees Centigrade and global GDP will be reduced by $72 trillion.

In brief, the citi report predicts that doing nothing would cost the world $52 trillion more than spending the money now to reduce our fossil fuel use and take other steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But here again, we may run into the problem of market failure, because the people who make money by producing CO2--primarily fossil fuel producing companies--will not be the ones who will have to pay for the mess they are creating. Instead, those who pay will be our children and grandchildren.

There will be a summit meeting in Paris in December to decide what actions to take globally to avert such a catastrophe. We will all need to take action.

Marco Rubio: Get ready for a return to the Cold War

In 1946, after World War II had ended, the US was faced with a choice: It could disarm and join other nations in seeking to maintain peace through negotiations and treaties and international organizations like the United Nations. Or, it could continue adding more weapons to its arsenal, make ever larger bombs, fight more wars in far-flung places, and scare the bejezus out of everyone in the world.

As we now know, the US chose the second course of action and took a series of aggressive postures all over the world that led to animosity, fear, and war. That period of world history is known as the Cold War, an era in which the major military powers stared each other down while trying to seize territory and influence from each other. The Cold War was characterized by intense regional warfare in Korea, Vietnam, Israel, and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, and at the same time, the rest of the world was taking the first course, building the United Nations, developing international treaties to avoid war and, especially, to avoid committing crimes against humanity. The US was in the forefront of this movement in the aftermath of WWII, when Eleanor Roosevelt lent her considerable influence to the UN and the Geneva Accords on human rights. But later presidents--Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower--decided to treat Russia and China as enemies and developed a policy of "containment".

This policy of containment and use of force to deter enemies is exactly what Marco Rubio prescribes as a foreign policy--not surprisingly, since his advisors were also advisors to George W. Bush. So Rubio tells us that

physical strength and an active foreign policy to back it up are a means of preserving peace, not promoting conflict.

Rubio thus makes clear that he did not learn anything from the disastrous wars of G. W. Bush. If physical strength and an active foreign policy are a means of preserving peace, why did Bush's presidency take over a generally peaceful world from his predecessor and turn it into two major wars that continued during his entire administration? The answer is, of course, that Marco Rubio and the neoconservatives who advise him are completely wrong, that his policy will lead to war, not peace, and trying to intimidate nations is a good way to consolidate the power of despots who rule them.

Worse than simply advocating a foreign policy of belligerence against one country, Rubio proposes to attack (either physically or diplomatically) three powerful nations at the same time: Iran, Russia, and China. This policy, if carried out, would undoubtedly complete the destruction of the American economy begun so calamitously under G. W. Bush.

Rubio seems in love with the idea of a powerful US dominating the world's nations and dictating the terms of peace. The world has become too large for that, however. The techniques of asymmetric warfare are too well-known. The rebels in Afghanistan successfully fended off the Russian army. The Communist forces in Vietnam threw off the yoke of colonial oppression and sent the better-equipped and better-trained American forces back home.

Rubio and his neo-con advisors criticize Obama for being too risk-averse. They do not explain, however, how the US could prevent Russia from prevailing in the Ukraine, or prevent China from dominating the South China Sea. Rubio seems to believe the simple posting of military force in opposition would convince the Russians to abandon Ukraine or the Chinese to give up their designs on Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The problem that Rubio faces is not that his plan would fail, but that it would lead inevitably to hostilities between the US and countries whose assistance we will need to meet the challenges of global climate change and growing shortages of water and agricultural land. In an era when nature has provided mankind with a challenge we may not survive, we need to abandon our territorial ambitions and lust for wealth in the name of a greater good, the survival of the planet. Rubio and his pals ignore this fact. Their election to power would bring disaster, not just to the US, but to the whole world and all its inhabitants.

No to the Kochs and the Keystone Pipeline XL

Holly Masri wrote an email to Mark Warner, Senator from Virginia, where she lives:

STEAMED. Senator Mark Warner just sent me a lo-ong response for why he supports Keystone XL, and will continue to support it. Full of every talking point in the Republican arsenal, all of them long disproved. Some of you may enjoy my response... even though he'll almost certainly never see it: Mr. Warner: Oh, please. Your talking points are insupportable, scientifically, economically, morally, and in all other ways except that they apparently support YOU, and those who pay you. It's obvious you bend over plenty far enough... I just hope the petroleum industry supplies you with good grease, you heinous, pandering, bastard!!

This was the email that Warner sent her:

Dear Ms. Masri,

Thank you for contacting me regarding the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.

After six years of study and debate on this project, I believe it is time we move forward, which is why I voted in favor of approving construction for the Keystone XL pipeline on November 18, 2014. The legislation fell one vote short of the 60 it needed to pass. A State Department environmental review found the project will not significantly add to global warming, it will create jobs, and it will allow the U.S. to increase its energy security. I support an all of the above approach to energy policy, including alternative energy, solar, wind, certain biofuels, and nuclear. 

Canadian pipeline company TransCanada filed an application with the U.S. Department of State in 2008 to build the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport crude oil from the oil sands region of Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast for export. The pipeline requires a Presidential permit from the State Department because it is part of the infrastructure that connects the United States with a foreign county. 

Following TransCanada's application, the State Department prepared an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) identifying potential impacts of the pipeline and opened a 90-day public review period. During this time the State Department received a wide range of comments both supporting and opposing the pipeline project. The State Department Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental Scientific Affairs took into consideration comments from more than "400,000 e-mails, letters, and other communications submitted throughout the scoping process by public citizens, government agencies, tribal governments, and interested nongovernmental organizations as well as over one million e-mails, letters, and other communications submitted to the Department during its consideration of the previous Keystone XL application." One of the primary concerns from Nebraska residents was the pipeline's proposed route through the Sand Hills region of their state.

TransCanada then reapplied for a Presidential permit and proposed an alternate route. The State Department conducted a subsequent final Environment Impact Statement (EIS) and issued a report on January 31, 2014. Many groups and individuals have commented on the report, and a broad interagency group of eight federal agencies including the Departments of Defense, Energy, Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) evaluated a variety of factors prior to making  recommendations on the permit application. The President's Executive Order (EO) specifically mandates that in order to receive a permit the pipeline must be in the "national interest." 

I will continue to monitor developments on this important issue, and will work with my colleagues to put together a sustainable energy policy that will meet the needs of the American people, now and in the years to come. Again, thank you for contacting me. For further information or to sign up for my newsletter please visit my website at http://warner.senate.gov. 

Sincerely,

MARK R. WARNER

United States Senator

In this email, Warner reveals the primary reason for the Keystone Pipeline XL project. The pipeline would transport crude oil from Canada to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico for export. This statement clearly means that the only benefit to the US will be to oil refineries on the Gulf of Mexico, which will profit by refining the oil and selling it to foreigners.

The State Department's Environmental Impact Report, which I will call the Whitewash, states plainly that oil refiners in Texas and Louisiana need to find more crude oil to refine, because oil production has been declining in Mexico and Venezuela. The XL project thus lets fossil fuel exploiters keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere when there is a possibility to produce less. Furthermore, all the US benefits will be going to a few oil billionaires in Texas and Louisiana, the very same vermin who have been using dark money and huge campaign donations to thwart the will of the people. (Whitewash §1.3.1)

We should be crystal clear on this point: the fossil fuel industry will profit by this pipeline. It will not affect oil prices in the US because the oil produced is too dirty to use here. The effect on oil self-sufficiency will only benefit the fossil fuel industry that needs more oil to keep its refineries running. Not only is tar sands oil too dirty to burn in the US, it also uses more energy than other, low-sulfur oil, because it has to be processed in Canada by cooking it with natural gas. The process adds even more CO2 to the Earth's atmosphere.

Warner cites President Obama's statement that in order to receive a permit, the pipeline must be in the national interest. Warner does not explain how enriching a few oil billionaires in Texas and Louisiana is in the national interest. He also does not address the latest scientific findings, published in Nature (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v517/n7533/full/nature14016.html), that none (NONE) of the unconventional oil reserves in Canada can be burned if the world intends to keep global warming less than 2 degrees.

Warner blithely notes that the State Department took testimony from groups and individuals, but does not mention that every single environment-preservation organization in the world opposed Keystone XL Nor does he bother to explain why, since that is the case, the Congress should approve its construction anyway.

Bad Form, Senator Warner, Bad Form. 

Huge holes appear in Siberia: Climate Change is Accelerating

I do not ascribe every warm day or tornado to the effects of global climate change. I do not look at each heavy rainfall and announce, "That happened because of global climate change." I do not consider myself an expert on climatology. It annoys me when someone says they looked in the rain gauge chart and discovered rainfall was normal, or that they looked at a temperature chart and discovered that there were several low temperatures during a hot spell and therefore the scientists who study global climate change are wrong. This is equivalent to going to a doctor's office and looking at x-rays of cancer and saying, nope, that doctor is wrong, there is no cancer, because I feel fine.

But I do look at each natural event and judge whether it could be influenced by global warming. Many events seem to be influenced by global climate change, while others are indirectly influenced. For example, Hurricane Sandy came very far north for a tropical storm while still maintaining hurricane-force winds. The increased warmth of the Atlantic Ocean may have influenced this northern thrust.

The height of the storm surge was affected by the sea level rising at New York City by 12 inches during the last century and the land there subsiding 3-4 inches during that time. The subsidence is caused by the melting of glaciers after the last Ice Age. The land that used to be covered by ice is now rising slowly, relieved of the massive weight. The land around NYC was not covered by ice, so it is sinking, like the other side of a seesaw from the rising ground to the north.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) states that, while Global Warming may not have caused Hurricane Sandy, it did cause the flooding in Manhattan and nearby coastal areas.

In many places around the world, like Miami, Florida, and Hampton Roads, Virginia, subsidence is a severe problem that makes the incremental increases in ocean level much more damaging to the local infrastructure.

We can't be certain, in many cases, how much an event is affected by global warming. In the case of the recently discovered sinkhole-like holes in Siberia, however, we can be fairly certain they were caused by global warming.

In the first place, the phenomenon of holes in permafrost is unprecedented in the historical record. This phenomenon is something new, just as global climate change is new. In the second place, global climate change theory has predicted the melting of permafrost. We didn't know how it would happen until now. We supposed that the permafrost layer, which consists of undecayed vegetation that has been frozen by perpetual frost, would slowly melt and gradually release its carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Now it appears that another, much more disturbing process may be underway.

The Siberian holes appear to have been caused by eruptions of methane gas bubbles, although an unknown amount of carbon dioxide was also released. Pound for pound, the effect of methane on global warming is 20 times as much as carbon dioxide. It appears that melting permafrost will release large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane. An estimated amount of 300 billion tons of carbon will be released by melting permafrost, about 2/3 of all the carbon released into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

That sounds dangerous, though it could be spread out over the next 200 years. The effects of methane alone are impossible to predict because we don't know how much methane is trapped in the permafrost layers. What we do know is that huge bubbles of methane--the hole in Siberia is 200 feet in diameter--can burst into the atmosphere. According to this article at realclimate.org, the potential for temperature rise from methane is catastrophically large.

I have been called a global warming alarmist. This latest news is the most alarming yet.

No, Politico, criticism of Monsanto is not at all like climate change denialism

One seeks in vain for neutrality in the popular press these days. But neutrality is what science requires for considerations of its ideas and, more importantly, their implementation. Far more Republicans than Democrats are climate change deniers. Only last month, 227 of 232 House Republicans voted for an amendment that would prevent the US military from using any funds to fight the effects of global warming.

This action goes far beyond mere climate change denial. The House Republicans sought to prevent the military from taking any action that might reduce the impact of greenhouse gases on the environment. Republicans do not merely deny the possibility of man-made climate change. They seek to hasten it. They take this action despite the fact that nearly every single climate scientist on the planet urges them to do the exact opposite.

But Tara Haelle has written in Politico Magazine that it's the Democrats who have a problem with science. She is looking through her own, small lens at a minuscule part of the scientific world. Her theory is like saying that scientists have discovered a huge comet that will strike the earth within 20 years but emphasizing the discovery of a new species of marmot. One of these things is not like the other.

Haelle admits that Republicans object to evolution and climate science, but her article is almost entirely taken up with the premise that Democrats also have a "problem" with science. Haelle is not specific about what the "problem" is. In fact Democrats do not have a problem with science at all.  What they actually have is an awareness, and it is this: large corporations that profit from science frequently falsify study results and hide facts from the public.

Haelle begins her attack on liberals by citing the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) position paper on Genetically Modified Organism (GMO), a Monsanto product. The AAAS paper might have been written by the Monsanto marketing department, and perhaps it was. It states that no studies have found anything toxic about food that contains GMO. Toxicity is by no means the only issue with GMOs, however.  There is plenty wrong with the system that produces GMO and generates profits for Monsanto.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), the GMO system has created weeds and insects resistant to the Monsanto weedkiller, Roundup. In addition, Monsanto focuses on only a few crops and so decreases biodiversity and discourages organic farming methods. Rather than protecting plants and farmers, Monsanto's GMO "solution" actually makes the entire environment more vulnerable to pests and disease, and creates plants that cannot survive without permanent (and expensive) chemical support.  The problem that Democrats have with GMO is not faulty science but rather that they recognize the dangers inherent in corporate farming and monoculture methods. This "problem" has nothing in common with Republican rejection of global warming science, which was generated by a multi-million dollar campaign financed by corporations that profit by producing greenhouse gases, including Exxon/Mobil and Koch Industries.

Haelle has not thoroughly investigated her topic. Instead, she has added to the false equivalency between Republican obstructionism and Democratic skepticism. We all need to get on the same page with the issue of greenhouse gas production. The reduction and reversal of global warming will require an effort similar to that of the New Deal, where all the resources of the nation will be dedicated to preserving the planet.

Rupert Murdoch keeps trying to kill us all

The Wall Street Journal ran another opinion piece that is skeptical of climate scientists. This one was written by Joseph Bast of the Heartland Institute and infamous denier, Roy Spencer. Rupert Murdoch published this article as an "opinion", though he knows it's not an opinion at all, but a virtual press release for the energy industry. He should not publish it except as an advertisement, and the WSJ should be paid for it. At least he should if he cared about journalistic ethics, but apparently he does not.

Rupert is flying high these days. He owns most of the newspapers in Australia, where 85% of the articles he runs on global warming are skeptical. Murdoch's long-term campaign has influenced the Australian electorate so well that the new, Conservative prime minister has proposed repealing the carbon tax, which will result in accelerated global warming and more unnecessary deaths.

Bast works for an organization which is neither a think tank nor a research institute. It is a public relations firm, bought and paid for by oil company money. Heartland has a long history of attacking scientists whose opinion is inconvenient to corporations. They are strong supporters of the tobacco companies, preaching that second-hand smoke is harmless. They are strong supporters of asbestos companies, preaching that asbestos is almost harmless, and even, in the long run, beneficial.

Now Heartland has taken on global warming, which it claims is unimportant, harmless, and exaggerated. It is using the same tactics it used against scientists who warned against the harmful effects of tobacco and asbestos. It takes money from the companies without giving any indication of where their money comes from. Check the Wall Street Journal article. Do you see any mention that Heartland takes major funding from the Koch brothers? Of course not. The whole purpose of this kind of PR campaign is to smear the honest scientists and reward dishonest ones for their assault on truth. Heartland does it very well. They should, because they have been doing the same thing for 30 years. 

Spencer does not deny his role in this charade. The only job of a scientist is to discover the truth. But Spencer says his job is

a little like a legislator, supported by the taxpayer, to protect the interests of the taxpayer and to minimize the role of government.

Spencer--a University professor--is supported by the government, but he gets extra income from climate deniers like the Koch brothers. Serious scientists have ignored Spencer for years because he has been wrong so many times in so many different ways. But he keeps on getting published in the popular press because it suits the purpose of those who profit from filling our atmosphere with deadly greenhouse gases.

The point of view of the WSJ article is that the claim that 97% of climate scientists accept global warming is a myth. The number comes from counting the number of articles that oppose man-made global warming which were published in peer-reviewed journals during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Ninety-seven per cent of those articles either supported the theory of man-made global warming or didn't mention the topic. Only 3% of the articles opposed the theory, though not all of them dismissed it out of hand.

That 97% is an outdated figure. Between 1991 and 2012,  13,950 peer-reviewed articles have been published. Only 24 of them rejected the theory of global warming. Using the same method that led to the 97% figure mentioned in the article, we find the total percentage of scientific articles written by scientists who support the theory of man-made climate change is 99.8%.

Bast and Spencer argue with that figure. I suppose they must, since it makes the situation quite clear and they don't like the situation, nor do their energy-industry clients. But the figure is actually meaningless, because science is not determined by democratic vote. It is determined by scientific studies that can be repeated by other scientists. Using that measure, there is not a single study that contradicts the theory of man-made global warming. Not one.

Climate change deniers are not scientists. They do not care whether the temperature of the earth rises 10 degrees or sea level rises 50 feet. Their attitude is the same as the investment who abbreviated their rationale for capsizing the world economy: IBGYBG. I'll be gone, you'll be gone. This was their justification for causing millions of people to lose their life savings and millions more to lose their jobs. It didn't matter because the investment bankers would not suffer personally, someone else would suffer. IBGYBG.

When it comes to climate change, the lack of morality in that phrase, "I'll be gone, you'll be gone", reaches the level of obscenity. Yes, Rupert Murdoch will be gone. David Koch will be gone. You and I may also be gone. But we will be leaving our children and grandchildren to suffer. Many of they will die, from hunger, thirst, heat, or violence caused by the vicious struggle for survival in an uncertain future.

IBGYBG means many will die. Rupert Murdoch, by continuing to publish such propaganda, is causing people to die, just as certainly as if he took a gun and pulled the trigger. Rupert Murdoch is trying to kill us all.

Robert J. Samuelson reminds us of his ignorance: Washington Post lets him do it

In an article that appeared in the Washington Post opinion section,  Robert J. Samuelson, who is already known for denying a link between climate-change deniers and the oil industry, again puts on the blinders that only come from an unwillingness to seek solutions. Samuelson tells us that climate-change is inevitable and that we have no solution.

Samuelson belongs to a class of pundit known as denier-deniers. They don't deny the existence of global warming; they deny that we can do anything about it. This means they deny that they are climate change deniers, but they embrace all the conclusions that deniers draw while claiming not to agree with them.

The original denier-denier was G.W. Bush. As President, Bush announced that he agreed with scientists that global warming existed but refused to adopt the Kyoto Protocols on CO2 emissions reductions because, among other things, the protocols were not fair to the US. Bush overlooked the greater progress made by the Europeans toward energy conservation. The Europeans had been moved to action by the oil embargo of 1979; the Americans had ignored it.

Bush and his supporters also complained about the lack of standards that applied to developing nations like India and China. The denier-deniers claimed that they were holding out for better and fairer standards. In the event, no other standards were proposed or approved by the Americans.

In his article, where his position is almost identical to Bush's in 2001, 13 years earlier, Samuelson made the claim that the technology does not exist to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He made the same claim in a Newsweek article in 2007. This claim is demonstrably false. The average passenger car in 2012 was 27% more efficient (mpg) than that produced in 2001. Much greater efficiencies are already possible but not yet implemented.  For example, people could be coaxed out of their SUVs (2012 avg. mpg. 23.5) into regular passenger vehicles with average mpg of 35.6, resulting in an efficiency improvement of approximately 50%.

A wind turbine in 2012 produced 15 times as much electricity as one produced in 1980; at times, wind energy accounts for 25% of the Texas energy grid. Solar electricity installation costs have fallen dramatically in recent years, but remain nearly twice as high as in Germany, showing that large cost reductions are possible with current technology.

I have two issues with the Washington Post publishing Samuelson's column on its opinion page. First, Samuelson claims that technology does not yet exist to solve global warming problems. But such technology does exist; if current technology does not solve the entire global warming problem, it can solve much of it. Since this is a fact, Samuelson's opinion is demonstrably false and the Post should explain this falsehood to its readers. Instead, the Post's editors permit Samuelson to make up his own facts.

Second, the Washington Post bills itself as a newspaper. As such, its articles, in order to be newsworthy, must contain new and important information. Samuelson's opinions have not changed since 2007. They are not new. The Post does not usually publish editorials from 7 years ago as if they contained new information. The Post permits Samuelson to publish this nonsense out of shear laziness.

There is a great deal to be said about improving technology to combat global warming. Samuelson has not said it, and the Post has not published it, at least not in this article.

Obama speaks at Walmart store, says nothing about unions, benefits, or wages

President Obama spoke at a Walmart store in Mountain View, CA, today.Obama spoke at this store because it uses advanced technology like solar panels and LEDs to supply 15% of its electrical needs. The company would have to pay its employees a lot more to let the employees afford solar panels and LEDs. The one percent can afford to use solar electricity. The rest of us have to use what we can get.

Nor can a Walmart employee afford a family home within 20 miles of the Mountain View Walmart. Families may supplement their meager incomes with food stamps but they won't come anywhere near the going rate for a 2-bedroom apartment in Mountain View, which is somewhere around $3 thousand a month.

According to Walmart, half of its employees earn less than $25,000 a year. A 2-bedroom apartment in Silicon Valley costs about $36,000 a year. The employees do not live in Silicon Valley, of course. They commute from far away. This long commute by car further adds to the absurdity of Obama's message. Obama doesn't address how much energy these low-wage workers waste while driving to work, or how this affects the savings in energy (15%) claimed by the company for its energy-efficient store. The average commute in Silicon Valley is about 20 miles.

The place boasts the second-worst commute in the nation, over 40 minutes each way. Many of my fellow workers took much longer than that. Even using ethanol-laced gasoline and a car that gets 40 mpg, each 40-mile-a-day commuter would put around 10,000 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere during the course of a year. Walmart must count all the energy required by its business model, not just the amount used in a store.

Obama used this speaking opportunity to criticize congress for failing to move on global climate change legislation. This is a fair charge, though Obama himself has been lukewarm on environmental issues, despite the latest report from the GlobalChange.gov. Obama has yet to block building of the Keystone Pipeline XL. The EPA has yet to release its standards for CO2 emissions on coal burning electricity plants, which will only apply to future coal burning plants, not to those currently in operation.

It is all very well for the EPA to release regulations that will limit new coal-burning plants or close existing ones, but these plants will only be replaced by gas-burning plants that will be just as dirty as the ones being closed. The difference between coal-burning and gas-burning plants is that the CO2 from burning natural gas is released when the gas is extracted from the ground.

Obama calls this move from coal to natural gas part of an "all-of-the-above" strategy to fight global climate change. Since this move may actually increase the amount of CO2 that the US injects into the atmosphere, the whole concept of "all-of-the-above" is a fraud.

Chris Hayes survives beat-down from Jonathan Chait

Chris Hays appears in Years of Living Dangerously, Showtime's great series on Global Warming. Hayes has called Global Warming the most important issue of our time and has done a great deal of research on it, so he knows what he's talking about.

Jonathan Chait knows very little about Global Warming, which he appears to regard as about as important as a smudge on your newspaper. Nevertheless, he takes Hayes to task in a New York Magazine piece entitled, "Chris Hayes is not making sense on Keystone". Chait has two basic complaints to make about Hays's latest article in the Nation: Keystone's total load of carbon, he says, is only one-tenth as much as its opponents believe, and President Obama has comparable options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Chait's problem is simple. He doesn't believe Global Warming is a crucial issue. For him, the Alberta tar sands become harmless if they release "only" 22 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Chait wants to support Obama's nonsensical, "all of the above" energy policy. But he and Obama somehow believe that increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is ok if it only increases "a little bit." This is nonsense.

The president should be fighting against every gram of carbon injected into the already dangerously loaded atmosphere. "All of the above" is a great energy policy if it means stopping tar-sand development, imposing a carbon tax, raising emission standards, and making polluters pay for the damage they are doing to the environment instead of forcing our children and grandchildren to pay for it.

I said Chait knows very little about Global Warming because he takes his 22 billion tons figure from an article in Scientific American that he has clearly not read. Taking only the parts of scientific studies that support your viewpoint is called cherry-picking. That's obviously what Chait has done, because that same article includes a quote from James Hansen (a scientist, not a journalist) who says:

Moving to tar sands, one of the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive fuels on the planet, is a step in exactly the opposite direction, indicating either that governments don't understand the situation or that they just don't give a damn.

Read the article, Jonathan, don't just steal favorable statistics from it.

Chait is generally considered a liberal, but in this article he adopts the tactics favored by the extreme right: denial, cherry-picking data, and attacking the messenger. He wants the reader to believe that Global Warming isn't as bad as we thought it was, writing:

First, the environmental impact of Keystone is far smaller than Hayes implies...And second, the practical alternative, far from being nonexistent, is actually quite potent.

Chait needs to do a bit more reading in the literature before he sets himself up as an expert. The opinion among scientists is that the situation is worse, not better, because the US and other governments are dragging their feet and failing to take the drastic measures necessary to avert catastrophe. The steps that Obama is taking are fine, and he deserves our gratitude for taking them, but they fall far short of what the world needs, not in the distant future, but right now.

Obama's actions come after two decades of inaction on climate change, and time is our enemy. His two predecessors did almost nothing to combat the problem. The Bush administration and his cronies assured us that the problem was not real, that scientists were lying to us, and anyway global warming was good for business. In other words, they intentionally made the problem worse for their own private gain. So Obama needs to see this as an issue on which compromise has already been tried with terrible results. The free market has had its chance and failed utterly.

Obama needs to take the same stance he did on raising the debt limit: no debate, no compromise, no games. Chait, as Obama's media surrogate, needs to urge Obama to heed the warnings of reputable scientists. Instead, he attacks Hayes, a journalist like himself, for faulty reasoning.

Do not attack journalists, Jonathan. Attack the scientists who are pimping themselves to the energy industry. Attack the Kochs, who are saturating the media with misleading advertisements using the same arguments that you are using. You have a platform. Use it for the good of humankind.

Give a damn.

Chris Hayes understands the threat of global warming; Tim Cavanaugh understands nothing

Chris Hayes must be used to this by now. Whenever Hayes--or anyone else, for that matter--mentions the catastrophe of global warming, he gets smacked down by someone. There are usual suspects in this game of whack-a-mole. The criticisms usually come from right-wing sources that are heavily financed by the energy industry.

One of the usual suspects is National Review. National Review Online published a critique of Hayes's latest essay in the Nation, headlined "Chris Hayes Wants to Kill About 5.7 Billion People." The headline has nothing to do with the article, but it sure catches your eye. The author, Tim Cavanaugh, presents no evidence that Hayes wants to kill anyone. There are no meaningful statistics presented, nor are there quotes from Hayes's article indicating how many people he wants to kill and why.

Cavanaugh's article is typical anti-science blather. He is no scientist. He does post the International Energy Agency's graph showing how much energy the world generates and how little of it comes from renewable or non-polluting sources. The graph is meaningless in itself because it does not predict how fast or at what cost polluting sources of energy can be replaced by non-polluting ones. It's possible they could all be replaced in 50 years, but Cavanaugh doesn't go into this because it would destroy his entire argument, or even his entire reason for living.

Since Cavanaugh doesn't explain how he arrives at the 5.7 billion killings figure, I will give it a shot. The total number of people on the planet in 2011 was about 8 billion, so Cavanaugh's estimate would be about 2/3 of that. Cavanaugh is simply stating that we can't possibly replace polluting energy sources with non-polluting ones and that therefore 2/3 of the people on the planet will die. A daunting thought, even though most of the energy we use does not go directly toward keeping us alive. Most of the energy we use is wasted on unnecessary items like NASCAR, barbecues and airplane flights to Bermuda. So we could probably cut 2/3 of it without killing anyone.

On the other hand, 40 percent of the energy we consume is used by industrialized countries, whose total population is about 1.2 billion. Therefore, we could easily reach a 40 percent reduction in energy use in industrialized countries without killing more that 1 billion people. Cavanaugh's prediction of mass extinction could only be true is each person on the planet used approximately the same amount of energy. But they don't.

Cavanaugh argues that the use of fossil fuels made rapid population growth possible. He calls this growth "progress". It follows from this assumption (implicitly) that stopping fossil fuel use would reverse "progress", resulting in the predicted number (5.7 billion) of deaths.

Cavanaugh uses some of his article to attack Hayes's writing style, calling it "tricked out with quasi-erudition and broad claims". He charges that Hayes uses "overflowing adjectives", "lethal compound modifiers", and "cascades of adverbs." Cavanaugh does not explain how this style negates the logic of Hays's article. I suspect he was just having fun with words. But his description of common compound modifiers like "heart-stopping" and "full-throated" as lethal is perhaps over the top.

I've spent far too much time dissecting Cavanaugh's article, but I was having too much fun. I'll discuss Jonathan Chait's more important critique in New York Magazine tomorrow.

Charles Koch spills his guts in WSJ Op-Ed

Charles Koch believes that everything he does is good. Other people are not to be trusted to make decisions that he disagrees with. He is the most conceited, self-righteous, and misguided person in the headlines today.

Koch makes several dubious claims in his Wall Street Journal Op-Ed. Koch claims he has spent his life studying the principles that enable people to improve their lives. This statement is demonstrably false. Koch has spent his entire life running a multi-national corporation. This occupation has left him little time for reflection.

Koch lists these principles as dignity, respect, equality before the law, and personal freedom. These are not the principles listed in our founding documents, where the authors discuss life, liberty and the the pursuit of happiness. The Constitution includes a bill of rights that nowhere mentions dignity or respect. Those principles are too vague and ill-defined to serve as the cornerstone of any philosophy. Dignity is an attribute of authority. A judge has dignity, a king has dignity. Respect is a two-edged sword: Respect is earned as well as granted.

Koch lists equality before the law as a fundamental principle, but he has not spent his life donating to legal services for the poor, to ensure that everyone is equal before the law. He lists personal freedom as another fundamental principle, but he runs an organization, a corporation, which tells each employee exactly what he or she should do. Each corporate employee has a written job description that describes exactly what the corporation expects the employee to do for 40 hours a week. There's not much personal freedom there.

Furthermore, the corporation has unwritten rules that restrict personal freedom. The employees must obey all the edicts imposed on them by the executives of the company. They must never question authority, since insubordination is grounds for immediate dismissal. In many ways, a corporation limits the personal liberty of its employees, in the clothes they wear, in the language they use, and in the opinions they must hold about the company and its place in the world.

Koch apparently finds it acceptable to control his employees in this way, but believes that the elected government should never make any rules that affect its citizens. The citizens of a country vote to choose the government and the laws they wish to follow. The citizens of this country choose representatives to make those laws and enforce them. Koch's corporation is a dictatorship. One man makes all the decisions for everyone.

The worst thing that our current government does, according to Koch, is tell people how to run their lives. It does this because it does not trust them to run their own lives, he says. It is Koch who does not trust the people, however. He does not believe a government should rule with the consent of the governed. According to him, no one should have to obey any law he or she disagrees with. This is not a prescription for any real-world government, and it is certainly not a description of how Koch runs his company.

Koch's most egregious lie is when he pretends that his company cares about the environment. The company has won environmental awards, it is true, but these are awards for such things as keeping their oil tankers from leaking. They are not awards for fighting against global warming, because Koch does not acknowledge that greenhouse gases are a problem that has anything to do with him.

Koch is concerned about rearranging deck furniture while the ship is sinking. His refineries only release low levels of greenhouse gases, he says. His company has a fine safety record. He argued for the demise of the ethanol tax credit. But Koch industries is fighting to stop conversion of our energy grid to renewable energy.

Koch has no sympathy for the plight of people all over the world who find their homes threatened by rising sea levels, or watch their crops wither in the ever-hotter sun. Instead, he claims that he is not his brother's keeper. He takes no responsibility for his own actions. He spends vast sums of money to defeat politicians who might be tempted to listen to their constituents and limit the influence of undemocratic corporations.

Charles Koch is the face of evil in our world today.

Rand Paul advocates segregation, Paul Ryan advocates decimation.

Adherents of libertarian philosophies enjoy wide-spread popularity these days. Their views coincide generally with American ideals. Patrick Henry summed up his animus against the British crown in 1775 by saying, "Give me liberty or give me death." America's schoolchildren conclude each pledge to the flag with the words, "With liberty and justice for all."

As much as Americans idealize liberty, they seldom offer a realistic definition of the word, which means many things to different people. So Rand Paul, a self-identifying libertarian, has stated that liberty means the freedom to refuse service to African Americans at lunch counters and hotels. This comment has endeared him to the crypto-racists of the Republican heartland. I call them crypto-racists because they refuse to admit their own obvious racism and steadfastly maintain, contrary to all available evidence, that white racism no longer exists.

Rand Paul's extreme views place him in the forefront of Republican presidential hopefuls, largely because billionaire David Koch is an ardent libertarian. Koch is likely to spend $100 million or more of his vast fortune to insure the election of a libertarian Republican president. For David and his brother Charles, liberty means the freedom to pollute the environment and endanger the future of the planet by denying the influence of humans—especially himself—on global warming.

Paul Ryan, another Republican politician with libertarian ideals, has attacked the federal government for giving lunch money to disadvantaged children. He says this practice feeds their bodies but starves their souls. The soul, however, cannot be separated from the body except by death.  Whatever benefit a child may gain from refusing a subsidized lunch will be destroyed by malnutrition and ultimate starvation.

Here the philosophy of libertarianism jumps the tracks and starts gnawing at the roots of our democracy. Ryan is apparently applying the views of Patrick Henry, since he unequivocally states that a child would be better off dead than enslaved by free food from the government. Ryan does not betray an iota of satire here, as did Jonathan Swift when he proposed a similar solution to the problem of poverty. He is deadly serious when he advocates helping poor children by refusing them food.

Wealthy businessmen have been the core of Republican power since the party's inception. Their philosophy has always been that whatever is good for business is good for the USA. The Kochs have added a new wrinkle to this self-serving attitude, for they maintain that whatever is good for the Kochs is good for the world. They express this belief repeatedly, by their public pronouncements and their secret donations to organizations and candidates that happily envisage the death of civilization rather than pay an extra dime to protect the environment.

Iron Fertilization: Get ready for radical assaults on global warming

The world has been looking for ways to stop increasingly large amounts of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere. Iron fertilization has been studied for over 20 years and is now ready to go to work for us.

Adding small amounts of iron to the ocean in order to increase the amount of phytoplankton is called iron fertilization. Phytoplankton are microscopic organisms that absorb carbon. So increasing the amount of iron increases the absorption of carbon. This much is accepted science.

Only a small amount of iron is needed to make vast increases in the absorption of carbon. One ton of iron can remove 83,000 tons of carbon from the atmosphere.  Once the phytoplankton have absorbed the iron, they are consumed by other organisms. Some of the carbon will sink to the ocean floor, where it will remain untouched for thousands of years.

It may be possible to absorb a large percentage of the carbon dioxide generated by human activities. We do not know precisely how much because it has only been tried in small experiments. Estimates are as high as 25%, however. This reduction in greenhouse gases, together with the reduction of these gases that can be achieved through conservation and government regulation, could reduce the rate of global warming.

This change in temperature has happened before. About 49 million years ago, when temperatures on earth were much higher than they are today, carbon dioxide was trapped by a fast-growing fern called azolla. Azolla is able to absorb 6 tons of carbon per acre per year. At that time, conditions were right for the growth of large quantities of Azolla and also the burial of the resultant plants at the bottom of the ocean. The growth and burial of azolla may have been largely responsible for the decline in temperature--and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere--that led to the emergence of mammals and ultimately human civilization.

There are risks associated with iron fertilization, primarily because it has never been tried on a large scale. Because of the capability of this process to slow or even to reverse global warming in a short period of time, more experiments on a larger scale will be undertaken soon. If these are successful, we may see the introduction of large-scale iron-fertilization projects within the next 20 years.

Heartland Institute: Slick and Sleazy

While much of the world was waiting for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control (IPCC) to release its fifth report on global warming, the Heartland Institute released its fake report, issued under a fake name, with plenty of deception inside as well.

The Heartland Institute has been around for a long time. It has always remained true to its original mission. Heartland takes money from corporations and writes misleading articles on their behalf. Heartland also works with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to write laws that favor their donors. Heartland considers its primary audience to be lawmakers, just as ALEC does. They do not trouble themselves to convince scientists or the public. They merely want to confuse legislators and make sure they don't pass any regulations on CO2.

The fun begins with the intentionally confusing name of the group issuing the report. It's the Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Control (NIPCC). The fake report has a slick color cover. Just like the real report, the fake report has articles written by scientists, only instead of actual climate scientists who are contributing to the advancement of knowledge, they are scientists in name only, who draw paychecks from Heartland so long as they spew meaningless articles with scientific jargon.

Fred S. Singer is the head scientist at Heritage. He helped them in their campaign against regulations on second-hand smoke. Singer took money from front groups for the Tobacco Companies, but claims he never took money from the tobacco companies themselves. Nowadays Singer is the scientific front man for the oil companies that contribute to Heritage, including the Koch Brothers.

In addition to fake experts, the fake report has a number of testimonials. It does not include what Nature, the preeminent British scientific journal said about Heritage, In a 2011 editorial, Nature said

Many climate sceptics seem to review scientific data and studies not as scientists but as attorneys, magnifying doubts and treating incomplete explanations as falsehoods rather than signs of progress towards the truth. ... The Heartland Institute and its ilk are not trying to build a theory of anything. They have set the bar much lower, and are happy muddying the waters.¹

That description by Nature fits the current fake report as well.

The general tenor of goofiness continues on the Heartland home page. There you will see a picture of David Suzuki, world-famous environmentalist, with the headline, “David Suzuki Attacks Climate Science”. If you click on the article you will find that Suzuki does not attack climate science. Instead he attacks “Climate Change Reconsidered II”--the fake report just issued by Heartland.

Accept no substitutes. The real IPCC Fifth Assessment Report on Climate Change is here.

1Heart of the Matter, Nature 475, 432-424 (28 July 2011), http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v475/n7357/full/475423b.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20110728. The complete editorial is also informative.

IPCC Report: Global Warming Demystified

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its fifth report on Friday. Nothing much has changed since the last report. The biggest difference that I can see is the amount of certainty around some of the conclusions. Since this is science and happens in the real world, unanimity on everything is not possible. But there is unanimity, among the 800 scientists who helped prepare the report, on the following:

1. “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal...The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.”¹

There is unanimous agreement, therefore, that the world has warmed. This has nothing to do with the past, before we had ways to measure such things, or the future, which must rely on predictions that may be disputed.

Another way of expressing this statement is that global warming is real and it is happening right now.

2. “Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth's surface [in the atmosphere] than any preceding decade since 1850.”²

This statement indicates that we are on the forefront of this problem and it shows no signs of reversing. There is unanimity among climate scientists on this point.

Many climate skeptics point to isolated incidents of cooling, such as an increase in Arctic Sea Ice or a particularly cool year, to challenge global warming. Note, however, that scientists do not claim that every year will be the warmest ever, or that sea ice will decrease every year. These kinds of data are best collected over a period of decades, not years. It would also help if observers take into account cyclic phenomena, such as the el Nino current, or volcanic eruptions. A simple glance at a falling thermometer will not make any difference to the overall trends.

As a result of this increased warmth generally, there are also specific results. Not everyone agrees on these events, but the IPCC considers them likely or very likely. The number of cold days and cold nights have decreased and the number of warm days and warm nights has increased on the global scale. The frequency of heat waves has increased in Europe, Asia, and Australia. There are more land regions where the number of heavy precipitation events has increased than where it has decreased. This includes North America and Europe.

3. “Ocean warming dominates the increase in energy stored in the climate system, accounting for more than 90% of the energy accumulated between 1971 and 2010.”

Humans live on land and are thus confronted daily with atmospheric weather. We do not often consider that the oceans contain much more substance than the atmosphere above us, and that therefore the oceans have absorbed far more energy from excess CO2 than the air. This is a lucky thing, since without the ocean's ability to absorb CO2, we would be in far worse shape than we are.

4. “Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in some climate extremes.”³

Evidence for human influence has increased in the last 5 years.

5. “Continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system. Limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.”⁴

Up to this point in the summary, IPCC has only considered what has happened in the past and what is happening now. Predictions for the future are much less definite. Some of the computer models are better than others. IPCC predicts weather for land masses better than for local areas. Predictions of melting icecaps are particularly elusive, resulting in huge variations of outcome. For instance, the melting of the Greenland Icecap would contribute 15 to 30 feet to ocean levels, but we cannot as yet predict when that will occur.

What we know is that longer rainy seasons and shorter growing seasons will not bring us more crops. Longer droughts will require better planning and inventions to save energy and maintain our standard of living.

One of the new features of this version of the IPCC report is the addition of scenarios that could alleviate the worst effects of global warming. These scenarios will be of vital importance in the years ahead.

We can hope that we do not follow the lead of Australia, which has just abandoned all its governmental planning for global warming. There seems to be a strong Luddite wind blowing in the world right now. People fear the future and don't trust Science to help them find a way forward. The question to ask ourselves is this, if we don't trust Science, who can we trust? The Bible and the Qur’an will no doubt give us solace as quality of life erodes on our planet. Only Science can offer us a way to fight that erosion.

We need leaders who will tell the truth and make plans for the future. Let us hope we will find them.

1Working Group I Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis

Summary for Policymakers 2, IPCC, 2013, http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5-SPM_Approved27Sep2013.pdf.

2Ibid.

3Ibid, 12.

4Ibid, 14.

Vladimir Putin: World's most dangerous person

"Dickhead Putin" by H. Masri

[The picture I had posted here of Vladimir Putin was taken down from the web. It may be that it happened because this post has had over 1,000 views, or more likely because Putin found the picture, which showed him with an automatic rifle, too close to the truth. Recently, many
people in Turkey and Ukraine have been reading MasriZone. I hope I have played a small part in revealing to the world what a dangerous man he is.] 

Vladimir Putin is the most dangerous man in the world. North Korea has been considered the most dangerous country in the world because their autocratic rulers, the Kim family, had both great power and nuclear weapons technology. The truth is, however, that a couple of nuclear devices are hardly a danger comparable to the oil reserves of Russia. Russia is now the largest producer of oil in the world.  More on this later.

Vladimir Putin is the ruler of Russia. Russia has a long history of authoritarian rule, and Putin has moved to follow that model. He has carefully built a cult of personality, similar to those created by the North Korean dictator Kim Il-Sung and China's ruler, Mao Tse-Tung. But Putin's model is most likely Joseph Stalin.

Joseph Stalin, another Russian strong man, also built a cult of personality. Nearly all the portraits of Stalin showed him in an army uniform looking heroically into the distance. He is generally shown holding a pistol, with clenched fist, or with hands folded across his stomach. Most of the pictures show him from a low camera angle, nearly always alone. This made him appear taller than his actual height of 5 feet, four inches. Stalin had a penchant for erecting statues of himself. Hundreds of them stood in prominent locations in Russia and her empire. Many statues were colossal, standing on high pedestals.

Stalin's efforts to create a cult of personality worked. Russians believed him heroic, strong, capable of protecting them in a violent world. They also feared him, knowing he was capable of murdering his adversaries or anyone he believed was an enemy. Stalin was a violent man, and a narcissist, as revealed by the vast array of statues, photos, and posters bearing his image; he was a killer without conscience. Modern estimates place the number of his victims at more than 3 million people.  

Putin is building his own cult of personality. His photos in various poses strike Americans as odd, even amusing. Like a super model or movie star, he poses in all sorts of roles, all intended to make him appear powerful, vital, capable. He poses with symbols of power, guns, motorcycles, airplanes, even a bathyscaphe. He likes to show off his bare, clean-shaven chest. He shows no weakness in public, ever, refusing even to smile, or to pose with a woman.

Putin divorced his wife of 30 years and has been rumored to be involved with a 30-year-old rhythmic gymnast. He makes no comment about this and is careful not to be seen in compromising positions with the younger woman. There is no freedom of the press when it comes to covering Putin's private life. Putin may reinforce his masculine image by having a much younger mistress, but he obviously doesn't want to share the spotlight with a woman.

Putin has undermined democracy in Russia. After serving two terms as president, he picked Medvedev as his stand-in while Putin continued to make the decisions. Putin has now been re-elected president for a six-year term. He has bought a great deal of popularity by distributing the oil revenues of Russia to its citizens. He has further increased his popularity by passing laws that persecute dissenters and gays, actions that appeal to the conservative adherents of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Russian authorities arrested a punk rock group called Pussy Riot for disrupting a church service by singing a song mocking Putin. A court sentenced three young female members of the rock band to two-year sentences in prison for hooliganism, a crime similar to disorderly conduct, except that in America we don't put people in prison for two years for disorderly conduct, or for singing mocking songs about our politicians.

Stalin had the backing of the Communist Party, which is now defunct. In its place, Putin uses the revived Orthodox Church as his power base. He has to reinforce his appeal to this base just as Republican politicians must satisfy the Tea Party. Putin's chief ally in this endeavor is Yelena Mizulina, a middle aged female legislator who proposes laws to enforce morality. One of her laws puts a tax on divorce; this is a stroke of irony, not just because Putin recently divorced his own wife, but also because Russia has the highest divorce rate in the world. Other laws under consideration would ban abortions and morning after pills.  Mizulina, a devout Christian, believes she can redeem Russian society (and increase the declining population) by passing laws that support "traditional family values".

Mizulina, with Putin's support, proposed a bill to prohibit gays from spreading pro-gay “propaganda”. She claimed that the phrase “gay men are people too” needed to be investigated as subversive by the Russian bureau of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare. Anyone who disagrees with her views is likely to be accused of being part of a “pedophile lobby” that she claims exists in the political party opposed to hers. She defends her laws by saying they are only intended to keep information about homosexuality away from children.

The penalty for spreading gay propaganda is relatively small, about $150, but the law legitimizes anti-gay activities. The laws are so vague that they can be used to persecute almost any non-traditional speech or actions. Russian police have attacked and arrested demonstrators at gay pride events, while anti-gay groups have attacked and tortured gays and gay sympathizers. The anti-gay attackers have posted videos of their activities on YouTube, where you can see young men assaulted, placed in hammerlocks, held down, stepped on, and threatened.  

Putin signed the anti-gay legislation into law. Putin's support of this and other legislation of morality reinforces his own support of traditional masculine values. It makes him look like a tough guy. Neither he nor Mizulina have shown any sympathy for young gays who are attacked by Christian thugs. Putin asks that both sides refrain from violence, but he equates a non-violent demonstration with an assault. The Pussy Riot demonstration in a church is the closest that anti-government protestors have come to violence; they were only making music.  Yet there are many graphic photos of the violence done to anti-government demonstrators by police and Christian thugs.

Putin has shown his indifference to human suffering on a large scale by supporting the Syrian government as it massacres its own people. His support has resulted in thousands of innocent deaths. Putin seems to act only to prove his own toughness and his willingness to stand up to the Americans. This demonstration of his own bravado also seems to be his only reason for offering asylum to the American fugitive, Edward Snowden; Putin has used Snowden’s high-profile case to figuratively tweak the noses of the Americans.  

Russian Oil and Global Warming

Putin is cementing his hold on power by outlawing protests, freedom of assembly, and freedom of speech. What makes him most dangerous, though, is not how he oppresses the Russian people, but how this affects the rest of the world and its future. Putin's popularity is due to his handling of the Russian economy. Putin must continue increasing production of oil to meet the rising expectations of the Russian people.

The world's governments must work together to avert global warming, and they must do it soon. However, so long as Putin controls Russia, there will be no cooperation, since his continuation in power requires more oil production and Russia has no other profitable industries.  

Scientists have estimated that burning the 1.8 billion barrels of tar sands oil in Alberta (if fully developed) will raise global temperatures by 0.42 degrees Centigrade. By comparison, burning the 75 billion barrels of Russian tar sands oil could theoretically raise worldwide temperatures fifty times as much,  an increase of up to 21 degrees.  This estimate does not take into account the quality of the Russian deposits, which is as yet unknown.

Putin has no incentive to decrease emissions of greenhouse gases. There is no possibility of using force against Russia because it would cost too many lives and resources the world can ill afford to lose. Therefore, we must develop strategies that do not depend on Russia's cooperation. Some possibilities are: 

1. Make renewable, non-carbon polluting energy sources cheaper than oil. This is not impossible, although oil prices are determined by a cartel, not the free market.

2. Create abundant, affordable consumer devices (everything from cars and trains to barbecues) that do not use carbon-based fuel. Part of this solution would be to replace all fossil fuel electrical generators with generators that cannot use fossil fuel.

3. Put a tax on devices that generate greenhouse gases (including electricity generators) so that their energy costs more than comparable "green" sources.

     4.  Cooperate with the family of nations to convince Russia to abandon its irresponsible ways.

Whatever strategy we use, we must realize that Vladimir Putin will not help us. But more than that, unless we work together to prevent it, he has more power to destroy the future of our planet than any single man in history. That is why he is now the most dangerous person in the world.

Keystone Pipeline XL: Costs rise, questions proliferate

The Keystone Pipeline XL is not dead yet, but it's on life support. Last year, the State Department released an environmental impact statement prepared by Energy Resource Management (ERM) that was criticized by environmentalists. Mother Jones Magazine published information that the State Department had removed from the report that revealed possible conflicts of interest within ERM. But the project appears to have grave flaws that go beyond the discovered discrepancies in ERM's Environmental Report, which are only procedural mistakes (whether intentional or not) and hence do not affect the basic value of the project.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sent a letter, dated April 22, 2013, to State Department. EPA agreed with the report that oil produced from tar sands is dirtier than comparable oil from the US. State thanked ERM for some of the findings published in their report, including the attempt to quantify the amount of green house gases that would be produced by the Keystone Pipeline XL project. But Neither State nor ERM explained what these figures mean.

In the letter, State quotes the report as estimating that the oil from tar sands well-to-tank contributes 81% more to global warming than oil from other sources. This means that oil from tar sands has 81% more capability of producing green-house gases when it arrives in the refinery tanks, prior to being refined into gasoline. But the letter goes on to say that the oil from well-to-wheels has only 17% more green-house gases than conventional oil. This means that when your car burns the gas, it produces only 64% less green-house gases than it had before it was refined. Neither ERM nor State explains what happened to 64% of the green-house gases between the tank and the wheels. This is a critical question because President Obama made it clear that he would not approve the project if it contributed “significantly” to global warming. While 81% is significant, 17% may not be.

The difference between the two figures is due to one of the peculiarities of oil from tar sands. The chemical process (“cracking”) of turning tar oil into usable oil results in a byproduct, called petroleum coke. This coke contains most of the 64% of green-house gases lost before the refining in complete. Oil companies argue, and State tacitly agrees, that this coke will never be used for energy production.

This argument is not believable. Oil companies are in the business of selling hydrocarbons for money. That is their business model. It is unlikely that oil companies will let such a large amount of salable merchandise go to waste. In fact the Koch brothers' company, Koch Carbon, collects this coke and sells it overseas as a lower quality, dirtier form of coal. This fact became public knowledge recently when a huge cloud of coke dust, illegally stored by Koch Carbon in Detroit, blew over the Detroit River into Windsor, Canada.

Job loss from Keystone XL

President Obama recently noted that as few as 50 permanent jobs may be produced by the pipeline. The Washington Post Fact Checker awarded him two pinocchios for lowballing the jobs figure. The Post criticized Obama was using a jobs figure from an organization that opposed the pipeline instead of his own State Department.

The State Department is ill-equipped to prepare a report about oil pipelines. They found it necessary to hire outside consultants because they have no one on staff who is qualified to do the job. State could not find a consultant with no ties to the oil industry because any outside consultant qualified to evaluate an oil pipeline must necessarily have ties to the oil industry.

The accusation that Obama is “lowballing” the number of jobs to be created by Keystone XL is false. As usual, Obama is using a moderate estimate. The Cornell report the Post refers to in its criticism of Obama makes some persuasive arguments that Keystone will actually raise unemployment, not lower it:

1. TransCanada, the oil company responsible for Keystone XL, predicted that completion of the pipeline will end the glut of oil in the Midwest and raise the price of gasoline 10-20 cents a gallon for several years.¹ This will have a ripple effect throughout the entire economy and result in the loss of thousands of jobs. The profits will go to the oil companies, which will ship the oil to China.
2. Keystone XL will likely leak, causing oil spills, although it is hard to predict how often and how severe these leaks will be. Since the publication of the Cornell report, TransCanada has rerouted the pipeline away from sensitive watersheds in eastern Nebraska, so the Cornell report is out of date. A major leak, such as the one in Kalamazoo, costs millions to clean up. This will cut into the company's profit and decrease the number of permanent jobs it creates.
3. Keystone XL will contribute to global warming, which is responsible for ecocatastrophes costing billions of dollars. One study places the global warming potential of the Keystone tar sands oil deposits at 0.42 degrees centigrade. We can't predict how many jobs this will cost. We will only know that after global warming has occurred, but we can predict that the cost will be huge.
4. Operation of Keystone XL will impede progress in creating a green-jobs economy. Green companies that are just starting up will have trouble finding sources of capital if the financial interests believe they can make more money investing in new energy extraction projects.

President Obama has proposed an “all of the above” strategy that includes both increased fossil fuel production and subsidies for green industries. Politicians who support the oil companies have adopted this phrase, saying they support an all-of-the-above strategy when in reality they only support more fossil fuel production. There is no all-of-the-above strategy. Oil interests and green interests are competing for the same market, a market in which the well-entrenched and extremely profitable oil industry has an immense advantage.

Keystone XL is looking more dubious all the time.

1Cornell university Global Labor Institute, Pipe dreams: Jobs Gained, Jobs Lost by the Construction of Keystone XL, 27, http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/globallaborinstitute/research/upload/GLI_KeystoneXL_012312_FIN.pdf. Note that this prediction comes from TransCanada itself, not a source opposed to the pipeline, as claimed in the Post.