Haunting the Web Since 1999
With a fortnight left in the melting season, Arctic ice hits a record low. Oh, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, just like the 327 months in a row of above-average temperatures we’ve had of late. Nothing to see here, move along. (Picture via here.)
Coal Cares. Come for the free inhaler — dibs on the Batman one — stay for the truth about alternative energy. “Sustainable, long-term government programs mean safety for all investors. Investing in coal will always be a smart move, especially with well-supported, long-term government subsidies driving down costs, and a near-complete absence of subsidies for so-called “alternative” energies.”
Republican Rep. Joe Barton, the Ranking Member of the Energy & Commerce committee, decides to use the out-loud voice and genuflects before BP’s Tony Hayward, causing all kinds of messaging trouble for Republicans today. (Then again, if they had a problem with Barton openly professing his fealty to his biggest donor, maybe they shouldn’t have put it in today’s talking points.) In any case, this one was right over the middle of the plate for the WH today. [Pic via Greg Greene.]
This may just seem like King-of-the-World hubris, but Cameron is a smart and demanding technical innovator who has spent a great deal of time over 25 years studying deep-sea technology.) I’d at least hear what he had to say. “‘The government really needs to have its own independent ability to go down there and image the site, survey the site and do its own investigation,’ he said. ‘Because if you’re not monitoring it independently, you’re asking the perpetrator to give you the video of the crime scene,’ Cameron added.“
“The relationship between the federal government and the oil company has been an awkward collaboration all along — “We have them by the neck,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said of BP in congressional testimony last week — but it reached a turning point Monday when the administration said it no longer wants to share a podium with BP at the daily briefing in Louisiana. Instead, the national incident commander, Coast Guard Adm. Thad W. Allen, will give a solo briefing wherever he happens to be.“
With “Top Kill” a failure, the way forward murky, the environmental impact likely irrevocable, and oil still flowing into the Gulf at a rate three times what BP tried to spin, the Obama administration begins to move toward a more confrontational footing, including having Attorney General Holder look into a possible criminal investigation. Yeah, I’d say there’s a case there. And it’d be a much better use of Justice’s time than its flat-out reprehensible war on whistleblowers. (Aquaman cover via Graphic Policy. And Spongebob fared little better.)
Update 2: “‘We will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law, anyone who has violated the law,’ Holder said. ‘This disaster is nothing less than a tragedy.’” I’m all for it — Let’s get some accountability here for once. But, hey, you know what else is a tragedy? Torture. And you know what else? Indefinite detentions. And you know what else? The fraud-fueled Wall St. meltdown. As I noted above, the only folks this Justice Dept. seems to have been cracking down on so far, in full defiance of 2008 campaign promises about transparency, are whistleblowers. Their priorities have seemed awfully screwed-up thus far, to say the least.
As the Gulf runs black, it’s the same old story: FDL’s David Dayen brings us up-to-date on the idiotic and/or corrupt shenanigans coming to light in the wake of the (still-gushing) Deepwater Horizon gusher. “This is all a consequence of aggressive deregulation by industry, the maneuvers whereby powerful interests save billions in safety costs. They follow the rules at their discretion, they practically own the regulatory agency. It’s amazing how much this mirrors the problems on Wall Street. And just like with Goldman Sachs, the criminal justice system may get involved.” (Pic via TBP.)
Update: “‘We don’t have any idea how to stop this,’ Simmons said of the Gulf leak. Some of the proposed strategies — such as temporarily plugging the leaking pipe with a jet of golf balls and other material — are a ‘joke,’ he added. ‘We really are in unprecedented waters.’“
Well, I say “the Fates,” but it sounds like Halliburton may have royally screwed up also. But, hey, maybe they’ll acquire another no-bid clean-up contract for their troubles. And speaking of our old friends on the right, it seems the “Drill Baby Drill!” camp has gone mysteriously silent…for now. [Image via Boston’s Big Picture.]
Update: “The problem with the April 20 spill is that it isn’t really a spill: It’s a gush, like an underwater oil volcano. A hot column of oil and gas is spurting into freezing, black waters nearly a mile down, where the pressure nears a ton per inch, impossible for divers to endure. Experts call it a continuous, round-the-clock calamity, unlike a leaking tanker, which might empty in hours or days.” It’s even worse than it sounds, and that’s assuming the wellhead isn’t lost. [Track the spill here.]
“According to the board, the looming dangers included: the perils of 27,000 nuclear weapons, 2,000 of them ready to launch within minutes; and the destruction of human habitats from climate change.” Paging Dr. Manhattan: Tomorrow at 3pm, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists will move the minute hand on the Doomsday Clock, currently set (since 2007) at five minutes to midnight. (The official site is here.)
No word yet on which way we’re headed, but I presume they wouldn’t be going to all this media-event trouble if the news is good. Update: I stand corrected. We’re at six minutes to midnight now. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.
So, as you likely heard, John McCain recently took time off from pretending to be Mr. Environment to join Dubya in calling for the resumption of offshore drilling (thus prompting his possible No. 2, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, to also rethink the issue.) As many writers have pointed out, this just so happens to be a switch from what he said three weeks earlier, in keeping with McCain’s usual m.o.
Well, the environmental consequences notwithstanding, TIME’s Bryan Walsh asks the pertinent question: “Will more drilling mean cheaper gas?” Nope. “Even if tomorrow we opened up every square mile of the outer Continental Shelf to offshore rigs, even if we drilled the entire state of Alaska and pulled new refineries out of thin air, the impact on gas prices would be minimal and delayed at best. A 2004 study by the government’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that drilling in ANWR would trim the price of gas by 3.5 cents a gallon by 2027.” In other words, this is the gas tax holiday all over again. (TIME link via Dangerous Meta.)
“In The Atlantic’s very first issue, in 1857, the magazine’s founders — an illustrious group that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell — declared that they would dedicate their new publication to monitoring the development, and advancing the cause, of what they called ‘the American idea.’ And for the last century and a half, the magazine has been preoccupied with the fundamental subjects of the American experience: war and peace, science and religion, the conundrum of race, the role of women, the plight of the cities, the struggle to preserve the environment, the strengths and failings of our politics, and especially, America’s proper place in the world.” To commemorate the magazine’s 150th anniversary, The Atlantic Monthly publishes The American Idea, an anthology of articles which includes republished writings by TR, W.E.B. DuBois, Albert Einstein, John Muir, Helen Keller, and Vannevar Bush. (Alas, only ten of the included articles are online.)