Gonna get hot this summer.
Heat dome setting records in US West.
An unusually strong and sprawling heat dome is the catalyst for the heat, but the magnitude is undoubtedly being worsened by planet-warming pollution. Heat waves are becoming more frequent, more severe and lasting longer as the world warms.
Continue reading “Extreme Heat Warnings Under Western Dome”Resurfaced comments made by Gregg Phillips, the head of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, have sparked concern about the new leader’s competency and mental state.
Phillips, a conservative activist who spread voter fraud conspiracies, was appointed to lead the federal government’s storm disaster response under the Department of Homeland Security in December. Previously, he oddly claimed that he involuntarily teleported to a Waffle House in Georgia that was 50 miles away.
“Teleporting is no fun,” Phillips said on one podcast last year. “It was real.”
Continue reading “FEMA Response Chief “Teleports to Waffle House”. You Heard Me.”In the last 72 hours the world has changed in a significant way, that still might not be apparent to many.
Glancing at the Wall Street Journal this morning I see the usual war-porn visuals of exploding boats, planes and installations, assurances from US military sources that Iranian assets are being degraded, followed by a significant paragraph.
Despite the strikes, Iran is still believed to have a vast stockpile of mines, cruise missiles on trucks and hundreds of undamaged boats in hidden facilities with deeply dug tunnels along the coast and on islands, said Farzin Nadimi, an expert on Iranian defenses at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“I think it will take weeks to reach a point where there can be safe operations in the strait,” he said. “Even then, a lot of the Iranian assets will survive.”
Iran has attacked dozens of vessels in the strait, often with small, unmanned boats carrying explosive charges or airborne drones. Other ships have been hit by projectiles, in the strait and in the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf.
This is a wonderful conversation, but to save some time I’ve set the link to start about halfway in just before the main event.
Edward Norton and Stephen Colbert agree on their mutual love of Walt Whitman, someone who, Colbert says, is not read nearly enough anymore.
As a long time worshipful follower of the Good Gray Poet, this was like an unexpected lightning stroke from heaven.
We’re at the equinox, so as good a time as any to repost an excerpt from one of Whitman’s greatest – “Song of the Rolling Earth”.
I did this last some years ago on an Autumn Equinox, and had kind of forgotten, but since it’s Spring Equinox tomorrow, seems appropriate.
I think we need it now as much as ever.
Song of the Rolling Earth:
I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall
be complete,
The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who
remains jagged and broken.
It’s said that if anything pushes to its furthest infinite expression, it transforms into its opposite.
Is it possible that Trump’s sheer stupidity, greed and narcissism is so extreme that it flips the world to an accelerated Green transition?
Iran has now proven that control of the strait “gives it a stranglehold over the world economy . . . Even if the Islamic republic decides, at some point, that it has an interest in reopening the Strait of Hormuz — it will always want to retain the option of closing it again as a visible threat to ward off aggressors.”
Heavy reliance on imported oil and gas, in short, means a chronic risk of severe and unpredictable economic shocks. The Iran crisis has focused the minds of governments around the world on this problem — and on how clean energy could help them address it.
Senator Angus King questioned Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (also known on Russian State TV as “our girlfriend”) on the impacts of climate change on mass migration.
Jesus, what a colossal fraud this woman is.
Diesel hits 5 dollars. Price of everything to go up.
Farmers, truckers upset.
Who’d ya vote for, Bro?
Although the average American likely isn’t driving a vehicle that runs on diesel, the heavier gasoline is crucial to fueling the global supply chain.
“Diesel is what moves the real economy. It hauls the food, the packages, the building supplies and the inventory sitting on store shelves,” said Paul Dietrich, chief investment strategist at Wedbush Securities.
“If the Iran war keeps diesel prices elevated, this becomes a direct hit on consumer prices. Groceries get more expensive, delivery costs rise and household budgets are tightened,” he said.
The latest diesel prices are especially jarring because of how quickly they have risen. Just a month ago, the average cost of a gallon of diesel was about $3.65, according to daily AAA fuel pricing data.
Farmers were some of the first Americans to feel the shock from skyrocketing diesel costs.
John Boyd Jr. is a fourth-generation farmer in Virginia who grows soybeans, corn and wheat. Like thousands of other family farms across the country, Boyd’s business is under increased financial pressure this year because of price hikes triggered by events halfway around the world.
Continue reading “Diesel Prices Hit Hard by Gulf War”Peace candidate.
Remember, this is the guy that thought we should drop a nuclear bomb on a Hurricane.
Paul Krugman (via email):
But when I look into the larger picture of Trump administration policy — not just the attack on Iran but domestic policies, especially the administration’s seemingly irrational hatred of renewable energy and its determination to keep America burning fossil fuels no matter what — I keep coming back to the huge influence now being wielded by oil money.
I don’t mostly mean the domestic U.S. oil industry, although them too. The U.S. oil and gas sector spent large sums helping Republicans in the 2024 election, while giving very little to Democrats.
But what really stands out is the centrality of oil money from the Persian Gulf, money that has been crucial in two areas: Trump’s international economic schemes and his personal enrichment.
Continue reading “Is Trump Considering Nuking Iran?”Detroit news station report on Northern Michigan’s severe ice storm, the second spring ice storm in a row to batter power lines and forests.
Just so we’re clear on what The New York Times is reporting today.
Instead of just letting a company that is all ready to build a US wind farm, with US labor, for US consumers, in US waters, bringing their own money, the Trump administration plans to allocate a billion dollars of taxpayers money to pay the company to go away.
During the biggest energy crisis in history, that they caused, and continue to exacerbate.
Got it.
The Trump administration is considering a new strategy for throttling the country’s offshore wind industry, after federal judges blocked its five previous attempts to stop wind farms under construction off the East Coast.
Senior administration officials are drafting settlement agreements that would pay nearly $1 billion to TotalEnergies, the French energy company behind two wind farms off New York State and North Carolina, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times, including copies of the agreements.
Under the terms of the proposed settlements, the Interior Department would cancel the leases in federal waters for the two projects, known as Attentive Energy and Carolina Long Bay, the documents show. The Justice Department would then pay more than $928 million to TotalEnergies, reimbursing the company for its winning bids in lease sales during the Biden administration.
In exchange, TotalEnergies would abandon its plans to begin building the wind farms. It would also commit to investing in natural gas infrastructure in Texas, as the Trump administration prioritizes the production of fossil fuels over renewables like wind and solar power.
