Here’s a shocker, the US Government is likely understating the amount of oil flowing out of that busted well in the Caribbean by at least a factor of 10.
Also, they are starting to recover oiled birds on the Gulf coast.
Category: environment
Well, Here’s a Shocker
It looks like the explosion and subsequent oil spill that is threatening Louisiana and other Gulf coast coastal regions may have been caused by a failure to properly seal the pipes with cement, a procedure that was performed by Halliburton:
The scrutiny on cementing will focus attention on Halliburton Co., the oilfield-services firm that was handling the cementing process on the rig, which burned and sank last week. The disaster, which killed 11, has left a gusher of oil streaming into the Gulf from a mile under the surface.
Halliburton is the Vampire Squid of the oil services industry.
Good Writing
Matt Taibbi, once again, this time on how the banks used complex products to rape Jefferson County, Alabama when they wanted to issue debt to upgrade their sewer system:
What happened here in Jefferson County would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for the peculiar alchemy of modern oligarchical capitalism: A mob of corrupt local officials and morally absent financiers got together to build a giant device that converted human sh%$ into billions of dollars of profit for Wall Street — and misery for people like Lisa Pack. [a county employee laid off when the debt exploded]
………And once the giant sh%$ machine was built and the note on all that fancy construction started to come due, Wall Street came back to the local politicians and doubled down on the scam. They showed up in droves to help the poor, broke citizens of Jefferson County cut their toilet finance charges using a blizzard of incomprehensible swaps and refinance schemes — schemes that only served to postpone the repayment date a year or two while sinking the county deeper into debt. In the end, every time Jefferson County so much as breathed near one of the banks, it got charged millions in fees. There was so much money to be made bilking these dizzy Southerners that banks like JP Morgan spent millions paying middlemen who bribed — yes, that’s right, bribed, criminally bribed — the county commissioners and their buddies just to keep their business. Hell, the money was so good, JP Morgan at one point even paid Goldman Sachs $3 million just to back the f%$# off, so they could have the rubes of Jefferson County to fleece all for themselves.
(%$# mine, emphasis original)
I believe that I have described him as this generation’s Hunter S. Thompson, but I was wrong.
He is this generation’s Upton Sinclair, though there is certainly a lot of Thompson in his prose.
It’s a fairly long read, and the twists and turns of the deal, where Morgan Stanley paid a middleman to bribe people, and now will be getting off Scott free, and I really can’t do justice with a summary, so just read the whole thing, and at the end, you will agree with him when he says, “This isn’t capitalism. It’s nomadic thievery.”
I wish that I could write like him.
Shocker of the Day: Global Warming Deniers Funded by Oil Company
I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!
It turns out that Koch Industries has funneled millions of dollars to a veritable alphabet soup of anti-global warming front groups.
I’ve been aware of this for a while, it just pops up every now and again that the Koch family is seriously right wing (see their backing of the teabaggers), but Greenpeace has connected the dots:
A Greenpeace investigation has identified a little-known, privately owned US oil company as the paymaster of global warming sceptics in the US and Europe.
The environmental campaign group accuses Kansas-based Koch Industries, which owns refineries and operates oil pipelines, of funding 35 conservative and libertarian groups, as well as more than 20 congressmen and senators. Between them, Greenpeace says, these groups and individuals have spread misinformation about climate science and led a sustained assault on climate scientists and green alternatives to fossil fuels.
Greenpeace says that Koch Industries donated nearly $48m (£31.8m) to climate opposition groups between 1997-2008. From 2005-2008, it donated $25m to groups opposed to climate change, nearly three times as much as higher-profile funders that time such as oil company ExxonMobil. Koch also spent $5.7m on political campaigns and $37m on direct lobbying to support fossil fuels.
I put this down as a “Captain Renault” moment. It’s been clear for a very long time that the global warming skeptics are a “rent a crowd.”
pHarmony #1 Trusted Matchmaking Site for Polluters, Industry Lobbyists and Politicians
Fast, easy, and off-the-record.
Heh. A cutting funny about Lisa Murkowski from Greenpeace.
Yet More Evidence that Cap & Trade Sucks
The latest is that the EU is looking to declare cutting down rain forests for farming are actually the maintenance of forests:
The European Commission and some EU member states hope to redefine palm oil plantations as “forests,” according to a leaked document from the EU executive.
Rules governing the use of biofuels were supposed to be designed to sort out the sustainable versions of the technology from their dirtier cousins following a massive backlash against it in 2008. At the time, an avalanche of reports revealed that many forms of the fuel source both increase greenhouse gas emissions and put pressure on food prices.
…………
But in a manoeuvre that has shocked environmental campaigners, a draft commission communication offering guidance to EU member states on the use of biofuels has classified palm oil plantations – the source of one of the most destructive forms of biofuels – as “forests.”
Essentially, the document argues that because palm oil plantations are tall enough and shady enough, they count as forests.
(emphasis mine)
This is why you go with a carbon tax: Because cap and trade, and the offsets that are inherent in the system are going to be dominated by forces that will use fraud and political influence peddling to make themselves money.
If you tax carbon when it comes from the ground, you disincentivize using fossil fuels. If you allow for offsets, you create phony carbon offsets, like palm oil forests, and Chinese hydroelectric dams that do not hook into the grid.
This is going to be a disaster.
Idiot
So, Barack Obama is offering millions billions in subsidies loan guarantees for the nuclear industry as a part of his cap and trade carbon emissions bill:
President Barack Obama is endorsing nuclear energy like never before, trying to win over Republicans and moderate Democrats on climate and energy legislation.
Obama singled out nuclear power in his State of the Union address, and his spending plan for the next budget year is expected to include billions of more dollars in federal guarantees for new nuclear reactors. This emphasis reflects both the political difficulties of passing a climate bill in an election year and a shift from his once cautious embrace of nuclear energy.
He’s now calling for a new generation of nuclear power plants.
I understand how he might have to cut a deal with lawmakers who are bought and paid for by supporters of the nuclear power industry in order to get a global warming emissions bill passed, but you don’t start the negotiations by giving into them.
You make them come to you to get a deal. If you give them everything they need at the start of the process, then they will just knife you later to get more, see Nelson, Ben, and Lieberman, Joe.
Even if you support nuclear power, you keep it in your back pocket until the time is right to get the votes.
At this point in the process, you have the threat of a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) hanging over the heads of coal and oil companies, and you use that to twist arms.
Unbelievably stupid.
Japan Proposing Carbon Tax
Well, it’s nice that that the conservative Liberal Democratic Party is not in power, because now the Japanese government is proposing a carbon levy on marine fuel:
Japan, one of the world’s top shipping operators, will submit details of its proposal for an international levy on marine fuel ahead of a meeting of the U.N.’s shipping agency in March, a government official said on Friday.
Under the proposal, which was first touted last year as an alternative to an idea supported by some European countries to introduce an emissions trading system in the sector, money raised would be used to help cut carbon dioxide emissions relating to shipping in developing countries.
Funds would be spent in areas including improving conditions at ship recycling yards, many of which are located in India and Bangladesh, the official said.
Ships that improve their fuel efficiency and new ships that exceed efficiency requirements would be offered partial refunds on the levy.
(emphasis mine)
Everyone wins, except, of course, the traders on Wall Street, the City, and the Nihombashi in Tokyo, because they don’t get to charge commissions on the fees for carbon trading, charge yet more fees for creating carbon based derivatives, and then get bailed out by the taxpayers when their house of cards collapses.
I can live with that.
Another Report on How We are Destroying Ourselves-
It appears that methane is leaking from the arctic permafrost at rapidly accelerating rates, and methane is a significant contributor to the greenhouse effect.
Of course, it also includes one of my pet peeves:
The discovery follows a string of reports from the region in recent years that previously frozen boggy soils are melting and releasing methane in greater quantities. Such Arctic soils currently lock away billions of tonnes of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, leading some scientists to describe melting permafrost as a ticking time bomb that could overwhelm efforts to tackle climate change.
(emphasis mine)
Frequently, you have people saying that methane is 20 times more effective at trapping greenhouse gasses than CO2, and while technically true, it leaves out an important fact, that methane’s persistence is far less than that of CO2.
Methane, CH4, has a molecular weight of 16, far less than that of the atmosphere, roughly 30, so it tends to migrate towards the upper atmosphere, where ultra-violet light breaks it down.
Here is the equation:
CH4 + 2O2 ⇒ CO2 +2H2O
Methane’s persistence is far less than CO2, on the order of a 1-2 decades, as opposed to the centuries for a CO2 molecule, which needs to go through the Byzantinely complex biochemistry that is photosynthesis.
So, basically, methane is something on the order of 10% worse, a short period in which that carbon atom part of a methane molecule, followed by a longer period in which it is CO2.
Global warming is real, and methane is an issue, though it is one roughly the same as CO2. There really isn’t a need to go all “20 times” (2nd link) do describe the issue. It is imprecise and disingenuous.
Our planet is going to hell in a hand-basket in either case.
The Inuit Can Go Pound Sand
It appears that the Inuit of Greenland and Canada are upset about the EU ban on the importation of seal products, so they are suing the European Union over the recently passed law.
I can understand how the hunting of seals might be a part of a thousands year old tradition for the Inuit, but selling those products to Europe is a modern phenomenon.
Has Fail Written All Over It
Headline at Bloomberg:
A Good Primer on Why Cap & Trade Sucks
It’s 10:07, and well worth it.
Elections Have Consequences
The EPA has officially declared that C02 is a danger to public health, which means that it can begin writing regulations to restrict emissions.
Honestly, I think that this is a better idea than waiting for either Congress, or the Copenhagen process to get their respective sh%$ together.
The 8th Least Likely Thing for Me to Ever Say
Al Gore is hysterically funny.
Punk’d
Click for full size
Yes, Man, the Main Stream Media Just Ate it Up
So it looks like the the activist/guerrilla theater team, the Yes Men, along with the Avaaz Action Factory, hoaxed the main stream media by getting them to cover a phony press release,and phony press conference, where the chamber reversed themselves on CO2/global warming legislation, saying that, “Without a stable climate, there will be no business.” (see also here and here)
And about the only thing that could make this episode more cruelly embarrassing for the US Chamber of Commerce? Why, that would be demanding a for a criminal investigation of the hoax, which, of course, is exactly what the chamber is doing:
“We will be asking law enforcement authorities to investigate this event. Beyond that, the Chamber will simply continue to focus on a positive vision for getting people back to work and growing our economy.”
So, Major Pwn36e* followed up by self Pwn36e*, but that’s not all:
The U.S. Chamber is the world’s largest business federation representing more than 3 million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region.
Ummm….You are only over-reporting your membership by a factor of 10, as has been revealed by numerous sources, and stipulated as true by the Chamber itself.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of running-dog Republican lackeys.
*Ownage.
Why Tax and Trade (Cap and Trade) is a Really Bad idea
In just one headline:
Private Capital Looks To Cash In On Carbon Trading
Yep, letting the hedgies in on this is such a good idea.
Got Snow Today
Not much, it just basically covered grass and shrubs, but it’s before Halloween.
Odd weather this.
Why to Hate Iceland*
If you have cable, or satellite, or FIOS, you have doubtless seen Whale Wars, a show about the (almost completely lily white) members of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society pursuing the Japanese whaling fleet down around Antarctica.
Japan, is, of course a bad guy in all of this, classifying commercial whaling as “research”, and bribing countries to join the IWC to overturn the moratorium on commercial whaling.
But, as Needlenose notes, Iceland pulled completely out of the IWC, and is butchering whales as quickly as possible and shipping the meat to Japan.
So, we have two bad players, one is gaming the system, and the other is operating completely outside the law.
Also note that Iceland, which has told the world to go pound sand, is also begging for money from the IMF, World Bank, EU, and pretty much any other acronym with two cents together, which means that they are in a position where world opinion is crucial to them.
So, which one are all the anti-whaling forces going after?
Why, the ones who aren’t alabaster white, of course.
In all fairness, the Icelandic catch is limited to about 250, as versus the about 600 for Japan, but I do think that there is a bit of bigotry behind not going after the low hanging fruit.
*Besides Bjork, of course.
Carbon Tax Update
Well, it’s beginning to look like France will impose its own carbon tax €17 ($24.90) per ton of CO2.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to move France toward greater reductions in carbon emissions, but it is also a reflection of just how big a failure that Europe’s cap and trade regime has been, with the creation of false offsets overseas, construction of hydroelectric plants without transmission lines in China, and paying farmers not to grow food.
In addition to that, there is the detail that the markets simply do not work, creating a “pollution fire sale,”* which makes this system a joke.
In any case, I ran the numbers,† and got about $0.2212/gallon, which in the scheme of things is not a huge chunk of change, particularly in France, where the price of a gallon of gas is about $6.00 including tax, but it is likely to make coal powered electricity much less competitive, particularly if the tax goes up over time.
France is emulating Finland and Sweden, who implemented carbon taxes over a decade ago, and got reductions in emissions, as opposed to the EU cap and trade, which hasn’t ever worked.
On a related note, both Caterpillar and Federal Express are lobbying for a carbon tax instead of a cap and trade too.
They mention a number of reasons, not the least of which is the giveaways to big coal, but the big reason is buried a few paragraphs down here:
A predictable, graduated tax would have an impact on the role of the military overseas, improve the environment and be good for the economy, [FedEx CEO] Smith argued.
(emphasis mine)
Simply put, they don’t want to live in a world where the cost of carbon credits will fluctuate day to day because of the machinations of that great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,‡ Goldman Sachs.
FedEx and Caterpillar, and pretty much everyone but the coal burning utilities can live with a carbon tax, it effects them all equally.
If you make carbon permits a trade able market commodity, and suddenly you have where the difference between survival and bankruptcy are choices in an opaque and volatile market.
You end up diverting enormous resources from upgrading equipment and doing research on more efficient ways to do things, and drive it into the blood funnel of the vampire squid.
*Original author’s pun, not mine.
†I assume that the tax is actually per tonne (metric ton), so that is 1000 kg of CO2, which is 273 kg of carbon. This means that the actual tax for a kg of carbon is about €0.0623 per kilo of carbon.
A good approximation of the formula for gasoline is C8H18 (It’s actually a witches brew of different hydrocarbons), and the weight of a liter of gasoline 0.76, so the weight of carbon in a liter is about 0.64 kg.
This gives a tax of about €0.03989/liter, or about $0.2212/gallon
‡Alas, I cannot claim credit for this bon mot, it was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.
Life on Mars
Click images for full size
When the World Ends, All that Will Be Left are Cockroaches and Australian Surfers
Odd Day at the Playground
The Iconic Opera House
Satellite Image
If you want to see more, your best bet is Google Images, though you can get the proverbial, “rest of the story,” from the Mail Online (and here), BBC NEWS, the CSM, and see this video at the bottom.
Whatever the case, it is clear that the mars analogies seem almost universal.