Posted on 04/10/2013 2:00:50 PM PDT by neverdem
If decision-makers take as long to act on this issue as they did on gay rights, we will all be wearing scuba masks to rallies
A few weeks ago, Time magazine called the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline that will bring some of the dirtiest energy on the planet from Alberta, Canada, to the US Gulf coast the "Selma and Stonewall" of the climate movement.
Which, if you think about it, may be both good news and bad news. Yes, those of us fighting the pipeline have mobilised record numbers of activists: the largest civil disobedience action in 30 years and 40,000 people on the Mall in February for the biggest climate rally in American history. Right now, we're aiming to get a million people to send in public comments about the "environmental review" the state department is conducting on the feasibility and advisability of building the pipeline. And there's good reason to put pressure on. After all, it's the same state department that, as on a previous round of reviews, hired "experts" who had once worked as consultants for TransCanada, the pipeline's builder.
Still, let's put things in perspective: Stonewall took place in 1969, and as of last week the supreme court was still trying to decide if gay people should be allowed to marry each other. If the climate movement takes that long, we'll be rallying in scuba masks. (I'm not kidding. The section of the Washington Mall where we rallied against the pipeline this winter already has a big construction project under way: a flood barrier to keep the rising Potomac river out of downtown DC.)
It was certainly joyful to see marriage equality being considered by our top judicial body. In some ways, however, the most depressing spectacle of the week was...
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
How about the same morons in the 70s who said that the glaciers would be back by now? Give 'em more money to "study" it!
I’ve never understood the logic of “point of no return” on climate change. Some estimates are that we could remove CO2 from the atmosphere for as little as $20 a ton. That would mean one year of emissions would cost 660 billion. Pricey, but if we were truly headed for disaster, it would be doable. Anyway, carbon gas has some practical uses, so sales of the gas could recoup some of the costs.
If every country paid on their share of emissions, we’d be on the hook for about 100 billion minus any revenues from sales. (Also, total emissions will likely fall as fracking of natural gas spreads around the world.) Cut Obamacare, and we could do it.
Now $20 a ton is the low estimate. I do support government research in this area to make it a reality. As Bjorn Lornborg has shown, government research tends to give the most bang for the buck in emissions reduction, as compared to cap-and-trade, new taxes, rationing, etc.
He won’t approve the pipeline for the simple reason that Buffet and his, BNSF Railroad, won’t be able to make $$$$$$$$$$$, by moving the oil by rail.
Right now, BNSF-meaning Buffett, has the market on moving that stuff out of Canada and down to the US.
If there’s a pipeline, then no worky for the railroad.
“How about the same morons in the 70s...”
We are far enough into all the global warming hysteria of the 90s that sea-levels should be at least 5 feet higher. They’re not, of course, and won’t be.
I have a cousin who believes all the global warming lies. I simply ask him every time I see him why New York isn’t already flooded like Al Gore told us would have happened by now. Wasn’t that in a movie or something?
OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, “the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.”
Wow! This chump is a whackadoo.
Bill McKibben is out there with former NASA nutjob James Hansen. I think they both were arrested protesting Keystone in D.C.
Good point. I was just saying “if it was bad.” I was starting with the “let’s say you’re right” hypothesis and showed that McKibben is still full of it.
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