Month: January 2015

Wikipedia:

The Fabian strategy is a military strategy where pitched battles and frontal assaults are avoided in favor of wearing down an opponent through a war of attrition and indirection. While avoiding decisive battles, the side employing this strategy harasses its enemy through skirmishes to cause attrition, disrupt supply and affect morale. Employment of this strategy implies that the side adopting this strategy believes time is on its side, but it may also be adopted when no feasible alternative strategy can be devised.

On tuesday President Obama’s press secretary signaled that the POTUS would veto congressional bills aimed at jumpstarting the blocked Keystone pipeline project.
In  the several years while this  process has ground on, a number of factors critical to the success of the pipeline have been in flux. Public awareness of global climate change is increasing, and although nationally, most polls show approval for the idea of a pipeline, much of that has been related to the idea that a pipeline was needed to lower gasoline prices. Now those prices have come down, for a number of (most likely temporary) reasons.

I’ve argued that the extreme volatility in oil prices is an achilles heel of the fossil fuel industry.  The uncertainty around fuel prices, in an era when alternatives are increasingly available, hastens the adoption of those renewable alternatives.  The hapless boobs who are running out to buy SUVs during this hiatus will make good cautionary examples when the whipsaw of prices catches up in 18 months or so.
But for investors expected to pony up billions for this supposedly indispensable energy lifeline, uncertainty is poisonous.

Toronto Globe and Mail:

The first thing Canadians should recognize about the new world order for oil prices is that – contrary to what we’re being told by our federal government – the economy is no longer in dire need of any new pipelines. For that matter, it can live without the new rail terminals being built to move oil as well. Yesterday’s transportation bottlenecks aren’t relevant in today’s marketplace.

At current prices there won’t be any massive expansion of oil sands production because those projects, which would produce some of the world’s most expensive crude, no longer make economic sense.

The recent spate of project cancellations by global oil giants – Total’s Joslyn mine, Shell’s at Pierre River, and Statoil’s Corner oil sands venture – is only the beginning. As oil prices grind lower, we can expect to hear about tens of billions of dollars of proposed spending that will be cancelled or indefinitely postponed.

Not long ago, the grand vision for the oil sands saw production doubling over the next 20 years. Now that dream is in the rear-view mirror. Rather than expanding production, the industry’s new economic imperative will be attempting to cut costs in a bid to maintain current output.

Continue reading “Killing Keystone Softly”

Renewables International:

In 2014, renewable electricity generation increased only slightly. Meanwhile, electricity generation from fossil fuels declined to the lowest value in at least 35 years. However, the change in domestic electricity demand is properly the biggest news.

Power plants located in Germany generate electricity to meet demand from domestic and foreign customers. As you can see in the chart above, German electricity demand peaked in 2007 and has declined ever since demand bounced back after the 2009 recession. Foreign demand (or net electricity exports) on the other hand, has been rising. In recent years so much so, increasing exports have overcompensated the decline in domestic consumption, requiring more electricity to be generated by German power plants.

According to preliminary data released by AG Energiebilanzen (AGEB), domestic electricity demand in 2014 dropped to 576 TWh. This is not only a 23 TWh (or 3.9%) decline compared to the 599 TWh consumed in 2013, but also the lowest consumption since 2000. At the same time, net exports have stagnated, leading to the lowest demand for German power in over a decade. In other words, the market volume for electricity produced in Germany contracted, so somebody had to reduce their output.

Continue reading “Germany: Lowest Fossil Fuel Use in Decades”

A striking signature of the millennial generation is the widespread acceptance of the sharing economy, in particular the take-it-or-leave it attitude towards car ownership.

FastCoExist:

Numbers don’t lie, and over the last few years statistics have shown a significant drop in young people who own cars, as well as those with driver’s licenses–and that decline continues among the youngest millennials, meaning this is not a trend that’s going away anytime soon. From 2007 to 2011, the number of cars purchased by people aged 18 to 34, fell almost 30%, and according to a study from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, only 44% of teens obtain a driver’s license within the first year of becoming eligible and just half, 54% are licensed before turning 18. This is a major break with the past, considering how most teens of the two previous generations would race to the DMV for their license or permit on the day of their 16th birthday.

A number of social media powered car sharing business models have sprung up to take advantage of this dynamic, notably Zip Car and Uber. Now a new company is updating the college ride-board for longer distance travelers who want to share a ride, without the uncertainties of relying on a stranger.

TechCrunch:

Tripda was founded to connect passengers who wish to go to a certain place with drivers who are traveling in that direction. But unlike Uber or Lyft, Tripda isn’t about short rides in a particular city — it’s more about long-range trips between cities. In that way Tripda is a lot more like Europe’s BlaBlaCar or Zimride, the ride-sharing startup that eventually became Lyft.

Through its marketplace, users will be able to sign up with their Facebook accounts and search for a route between New York City and Philadelphia, for instance, based on when they would like to travel. The company doesn’t specify the cost of rides — those are set by the driver — but eventually it will take a small cut of the transaction, just as Airbnb does when someone completes a stay in a host’s home.

Tripda first launched in May, initially going after emerging markets in Latin America and Southeast Asia. It’s currently available in 10 countries, including Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, The Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and India. But opening up operations in the U.S. was always a part of the company’s plan, according to CEO of North America Adi Vaxman.

That’s because the company sees a huge opportunity to serve a part of the market that Uber, Lyft, and other companies have largely left behind. Vaxman notes that the trend of car ownership going down amongst millennials is creating a largely untapped market segment for people needing to find ways to travel between longer distances.

USAToday:

Unlike Uber and Lyft — which feature semiprofessional drivers offering immediate rides over moderate distances — Tripda helps those in the planning stages of longer city-to-city treks find passengers willing to defray expenses.

Continue reading “The Ride Board Goes Digital”

One of the cruel ironies of the fossil fuel addiction is that the most severe impacts of coal and oil burning land on those who are least responsible for fuel consumption.

Its one of the factors that makes it so easy and cost free for climate denying politicians in the US and elsewhere to operate.
Mercury has long been known as a dangerous environmental contaminant, but many don’t know that it comes in large part from burning coal and oil, and an awful lot of it is ending up in the supposedly pristine Arctic. This video from the Scandinavian Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) covers the issue.

AMAP:

Studies, such as the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) 2011 Assessment of Mercury in the Arctic, has shown that toxic mercury levels found in Arctic wildlife is high above natural levels, and the levels are rising at a disturbing rate.

Mercury is a highly toxic element, that is present in liquid form at standard temperatures. The element is absorbed and accumulated in the food chain, causing problems for top-level predators and humans. Among the symptoms for mercury poisoning is birth defects and neurological damage.

Although mercury is present in our environment, most of the rising levels are attributed to mining and burning of coal and oil. Pollution is occurring world-wide and transported by winds and ocean currents to the Arctic.

Washington Post:

President Obama would veto a bill that would allow for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, the White House said Tuesday.

“If this bill passes this Congress, the president wouldn’t sign it,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.

The White House’s announcement came as the Republican-controlled Congress was being sworn in. GOP leaders have pledged to pass a bill authorizing the pipeline’s construction. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.) introduced legislation Tuesday authorizing the pipeline’s construction.

“The president is going to see the Keystone XL pipeline on his desk,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

Senate Democrats narrowly blocked passage of the bill in November. The White House said at the time that the bill was something Obama “doesn’t support.”

“If this bill passes this Congress, the president wouldn’t sign it either,” Earnest said.

2015 may well be the year when the retreat of climate denial turns into a stampede.  The National Journal reports today on “Legislators to Watch if you Care About Climate Change”.  These include some that I’ve already reported on here, and a few others.  Clearly there is mounting concern among congressional staffers, who may have a boss who is wedded to denial, but who also know that 2015 is likely to be an El Nino year, all but guaranteeing yet another “hottest year” record, right on the heels of the 2014’s new mark.

I’ve  reported before that, as changes in climate become all the more obvious, and extreme events more common, an easy pivot for a significant fraction of climate deniers, those not particularly interested in policy, will be to appeal the the base of fundamentalist religionists who wish to believe we are in Biblical “end times”, and that extreme events, sea level rise, and melting ice are evidence of one’s apocalypse of choice.

The “Prayer Guide’ for a coming conference of conservative Evangelicals in Louisiana, which, as noted above, was removed from the event web site after raising some eyebrows among local media, is still available online.

Prayer Guide for “The Response” conference:

Day 2

–

Locust plagues

CONSIDERATION

In (Biblical prophet) Joel’s day Israel experienced the destruction of a massive locust plague. The nationʼs economy was crippled because of the decimation of the agriculture. The reason these plagues came was because of the peopleʼs negligence to worship and serve God with their whole heart. Because the people grew cold and eventually departed from God, they experienced incredible hardships. The result of their inner departure was multiple external crises.

In America today we face a similar crisis. We have watched sin escalate to a proportion the nation has

never seen before. We live in the first generation in which the wholesale murder of infants through abortion is not only accepted but protected by law. Homosexuality has been embraced as an alternative lifestyle. Same-sex marriage is legal in six states and Washington, D. C. Pornography is available on

demand through the internet. Biblical signs of apostasy are before our very eyes. While the United States still claims to be a nation “under God” it is obvious that we have greatly strayed from our foundations in Christianity

This year we have seen a dramatic increase in tornadoes that have taken the lives of many and crippled entire cities, such as Tuscaloosa, AL & Joplin, MO. And let us not forget that we are only six years from the tragic events of hurricane Katrina, which rendered the entire Gulf Coast powerless.

If you’re like me, you enjoy listening to little drive-time informational spots on NPR stations while on the road – there are several, notably Sandra Tsing Loh’s Lohdown on Science, and Stardate from the University of Texas.

If you have not been hearing the Yale Climate Connections spots on an NPR station in your area, might be time to call your local station and ask for them.

The spots started running a few months ago, voiced by Tony Leiserowitz, Director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. I believe they are in at least 60 markets at this time, and expanding rapidly.  These are the same folks I work with on the “This is Not Cool” video series, so they are really doing a nice job reaching out to different audiences thru different mediums.

Joe Romm in ClimateProgress:

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) has announced that 2014 was the hottest year in more than 120 years of record-keeping — by far. NOAA is expected to make a similar call in a couple of weeks and so is NASA.

As the JMA graph shows, there has been no “hiatus” or “pause” in warming. In fact, there has not even been a slowdown. Yes, in JMA’s ranking of hottest years, 1998 is in (a distant) second place — but 1998 was an outlier as the graph shows. In fact, 1998 was boosted above the trendline by an unusual super-El Niño. It is usually the combination of the underlying long-term warming trend and the regional El Niño warming pattern that leads to new global temperature records.

What makes setting the record for hottest year in 2014 doubly impressive is that it occurred despite the fact we’re still waiting for the start of El Niño. But this is what happens when a species keeps spewing record amounts of heat-trapping carbon pollution into the air, driving CO2 to levels in the air not seen for millions of years, when the planet was far hotter and sea levels tens of feet higher.

The JMA is a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Regional Climate Center of excellence. The WMO had announced a month ago that 2014 was on track to be hottest year on record. Different climate-tracking groups around the world use different data sets, so they can show different results for 2014 depending on how warm December turns out to be.

But in mid-December, NOAA said it’s all but certain 2014 will be a record setter. It released this figure showing that all plausible scenarios for December still leave last year as the hottest ever (click to enlarge):

Continue reading “2014 is the Hottest Year in the Record, By Far”

Recent political history reinforces the maxim that it’s better to be lucky than smart.
What happens when you are both smart, and lucky?
Recent economic events related to falling oil prices have had one thing in common. The chaos and pain in global markets and economic impacts seem to have fallen disproportionately on countries, groups, and interests that have been thorns in Barack Obama’s side. Go figure.

One does not have to suppose that there has been formal, specific collusion between the Obama administration and the Saudi’s, whose recent decision to let oil prices continue falling has been a key driver in price drops.  These folks are all astute enough to know who their competitors are, who their friends are, and who is the enemy of their enemy.

NYTimes:

BRUSSELS — A plunge in oil prices has sent tremors through the global political and economic order, setting off an abrupt shift in fortunes that has bolstered the interests of the United States and pushed several big oil-exporting nations — particularly those hostile to the West, like Russia, Iran and Venezuela — to the brink of financial crisis.

The nearly 50 percent decline in oil prices since June has had the most conspicuous impact on the Russian economy and President Vladimir V. Putin. The former finance minister Aleksei L. Kudrin, a longtime friend of Mr. Putin’s, warned this week of a “full-blown economic crisis” and called for better relations with Europe and the United States.

But the ripple effects are spreading much more broadly than that. The price plunge may also influence Iran’s deliberations over whether to agree to a deal on its nuclear program with the West; force the oil-rich nations of the Middle East to reassess their role in managing global supply; and give a boost to the economies of the biggest oil-consuming nations, notably the United States and China.

Politico:

But now that Russia’s economy is rapidly imploding, with oil prices plunging and the ruble collapsing, Putin is the one feeling the pain. And the question already being debated in Washington is whether President Barack Obama’s strategy of economically sanctioning and isolating Russia deserves any credit.

“It’s hard to disaggregate out the independent effects of the sanctions from the bigger story. Obviously the driver is oil prices,” said Obama’s former ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul.

“That said, there is no doubt that sanctions raise uncertainty about the Russian economy. Their own minister of economic development said today that the ruble is falling faster than the macroeconomic indicators would suggest it should be,” McFaul added.

Wall Street Journal:

MOSCOW—As Russian President Vladimir Putin has ratcheted up the conflict with the West for most of the year, the economic fallout on ordinary Russians has been limited.

Suddenly, though, the plunging ruble is reawakening fears of rising prices and the kind of financial crisis Mr. Putin has sought to put behind his country. As the ruble hit a record low, falling as much as 20% against the dollar Tuesday, Moscow residents rushed to buy electronics and other big-ticket items and drained rubles from ATMs to swap them for dollars and euros—signaling a new feeling of vulnerability among Russians and a fresh challenge to their leader.

From St. Petersburg to Siberia, money changers ran out of foreign currency and were raising exchange rates. Sberbank , Russia’s state savings bank, and Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest private lender, said they were experiencing a rush for dollars and euros.

Continue reading “Obama and Oil Prices. Is Anyone That Lucky?”

I’m sure readers know that Pope Francis made news over the holiday with news that he will be releasing a letter on the danger of climate change to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics – among them many millions of politically critical hispanics in the US and elsewhere, who are already much more concerned about climate change than other sectors of the electorate.   The Pope is also extremely influential among many in the US midwest, and his words carry weight with a large number of politically active, socially conscious believers around the world.

Joseph Stalin once famously asked “How many divisions does the Pope have?”. This was decades before another Pope was arguably instrumental in the collapse of the seemingly invincible Soviet empire in the late 20th century.

NYTimes:

But John Paul was, in the view of historians and historical leaders alike, crucial to the creation of the Solidarity labor movement in 1980. That, after a long and often tragic course, led to the collapse of Communism in Poland in the summer of 1989. And that, in turn, initiated the collapses of the other Communist governments of Eastern Europe from East Germany to Bulgaria.

Newt Gingrich in the National Catholic Reporter:

“But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations.” — John Adams, “Letter to Hezekiah Niles,” Feb. 13, 1818

What John Adams observed about the American Revolution of the 1770s was also true about the Polish Revolution of the 1980s that helped bring about the end of the Cold War.

Before there was a Solidarity trade union with 10 million members that ultimately toppled Soviet Communism, there was a revolution in the minds and hearts of the Polish people that made Solidarity possible.

In August 1980, striking shipyard workers in Gdansk, Poland, sparked a wave of strikes across the entire country. They demanded the reinstatement of fired shipyard worker Anna Walentynowicz, better working conditions and the right to form independent trade unions.

The strike ended peacefully on Aug. 31, 1980, when the workers and the government signed a landmark agreement that included the right to form independent trade unions.

Two weeks later, Solidarity was born, and within 16 months more than 10 million Poles joined.

Nine years later, in June 1989, Solidarity candidates won overwhelming victories in the first semi-free elections in Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe in 40 years and formed the first non-communist-led government in the Eastern bloc. Five months later, the Berlin Wall fell, and, in December 1991, the Soviet Union disappeared.

But what was the revolution in the Polish hearts that led them so decisively to embrace Solidarity and endure nine years of hardship, including martial law and murder, to see this peaceful revolution through to fruition?

It became evident to my wife, Callista, and me while working on the documentary film Nine Days That Changed the World that spiritual factors were decisive, especially the nine-day pilgrimage of Pope John Paul II to Poland in June 1979, just 14 months prior to the August 1980 strikes.

As the world joyfully anticipates the upcoming beatification of Pope John Paul II on May 1 and remembers and celebrates his life of holiness, it’s worthwhile to remember how his Christian witness also fundamentally reshaped the political landscape of the 20th century.

For conservatives like Mr. Gingrich, the prospect of another Pope, exerting moral authority against another, even deadlier tyranny – that has become rooted as an article of faith among the American right wing, cannot be a welcome one. Continue reading “The Messenger: How Many Divisions Does the Pope Have?”