East Coast Snow Bomb, Meet Global Warming Gasoline

Warm water fuels storms, whether summer hurricanes or winter blizzards. As a major winter snowstorm looks set to race up the East Coast this weekend, take a look at how warm the Atlantic water is right now:

Will any of the media coverage mention climate change, or will we spend another winter wrapping ourselves in a blanket of denial?

Don't Spend the Extra Money on Grassfed Milk

Organic Valley Grassfed Milk recently hit the shelves of my local Market Basket, retailing for $1 more per half-gallon than standard organic milk. Since I'm a strange person who can't go grocery shopping without coming home with a research project, I wanted to see if it was actually worth the extra money.

If you're buying milk, it's worth it to buy organic, and Organic Valley is one of the better national brands. But is it worth paying that much more for grassfed milk?

The short answer is no:

• Grassfed cows seem to be no less destructive to the environment than standard cows
• The evidence grassfed milk is healthier is pretty limited. It's a bit of a Rorchach - if you're inclined to believe grassfed is healthier, you'll find evidence to back you up. If you're more skeptical, you'll wonder if it's worth paying 25 percent more just for a slightly better omega-6 to omega-3 ratio.
• Organic milk is already better for you and the environment than standard milk, and whole milk is better for you than you think
• If you really want to cut the environmental impact of your milk drinking, switch to soy

Grassfed milk seems to be more of a marketing gimmick than a health or environmental benefit. Oh, you won't spend an extra $1 per half-gallon on grassfed milk? I guess you don't really love your children, huh?

If you have $1 a week to help yourself & the planet, I'd rather you switch to clean electricity.

Michigan GOP Begs Big Government to Solve Flint Water Crisis

After Michigan officials tried to cut corners and ended up turning Flint's water supply toxic, Gov. Rick Snyder is now asking the Obama administration to step in to help.

Whether it's the deficit, the Iraq war, climate change or any of a list of hundreds of other problems big and small, it's a pattern we see time after time:

1. Elect Republicans who brashly slash regulations and public investments
2. Beg Democrats to use big government to save them from the resulting disaster

Considering how badly so many people in Flint have been poisoned, I don't know how Gov. Snyder doesn't go to prison for this.

2015's Most Popular Posts at The Green Miles

The top posts of 2015 by page views here at The Green Miles:

1. Comcast's New "Power Save" X1 Boxes Still Waste Tons of Energy  
2. Parking Lot Historic, Solar Farm Not  
3. New England Coalition for Affordable Energy: The Latest Fracked Gas Pipeline Front Group  

I've now received over 330,000 page views since starting this blog back in 2006. Thanks for reading!

And since I haven't gotten to brag about him here yet, here's our family's 2015 addition: Harry the mini goldendoodle:

A video posted by Miles Grant (@thegreenmilesgrant) on Nov 1, 2015 at 3:11pm PST

"Market Forces" Aren't Boosting SUVs - Congress is Subsidizing Them

With gas prices plummeting below $2 a gallon, SUV and pickup sales are skyrocketing while sales of fuel-efficient and electric cars stall. The conventional wisdom among auto writers is that greenie efforts to cut gas consumption are failing in the face of the Free Market:

It’s the classic battle between market forces and regulators. [...]

Even if you’re a die-hard green car person—or at the very least, someone who sees the long-term value in weaning cars off fossil fuels, as I certainly can—you can see what a tough situation this is for automakers. Standards are forcing them to make cars that people may not necessarily buy, and that they may not necessarily profit from. But what’s the alternative, the government backs off on making cars more efficient? That’s not likely to happen anytime soon.

It is completely false to call this a battle between “market forces and regulators.” The free market hasn’t kept the gas tax artificially low - Congress has done that.

Congress hasn't raised the federal gas tax in more than 20 years. Since it's a set rate of 18.4 cents a gallon that's not indexted to inflation, the tax has effectively fallen 34 percent since 1993. It’s now totally insufficient even to cover the costs of building & maintaining highways, never mind the social costs of burning gas, from local air pollution to global warming.

That low gas tax acts as a subsidy for SUVs and a disincentive for buying electric cars, one it has nothing to do with the free market and everything to do with oil companies’ friends in Congress.

On top of that, the Obama administration has adopted a drill baby drill stance, with active US oil rigs more than doubling under his watch. Again - regulators, not "market forces," putting a thumb on the scale for flooding the market with cheap gas.

Opposing My Project Doesn't Make Yours Any More Likely

The stupidest argument I hear on transit is this: "(Progressive idea A) isn't all that great - (progressive idea B) is what we should get behind!"

We should do both - in fact, we can only do both. Opposing A makes the success of B less likely, because losing drains political power.

If you lose on A, the money isn't any more likely to go to B - in fact, it's less likely to do so because you just lost, so GFY. It's a myth that project funding is zero-sum - budgets are made up by politicians, and if you have power there'll be more, and if you don't have power there'll always be less.

In contrast, winning on A makes B even more likely, because winning builds political power, and again, there's always exactly as much money as we're willing to fight for & have the power to deliver.

See:

• Christie killed NJ train tunnel in 2010 - 5 years later, still no Plan B, and the money instead went to finance tax cuts
• Arlington killing Columbia Pike streetcar - over a year later, still no other transit investments

What other examples did I miss?

December Warmth Breaking Records, But Media Largely Silent on Causes

An El Nino getting a boost from global warming is breaking winter warmth and lack of snowfall records across a huge swath of the country. As I write in a new post for Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, the media is talking about the warmth but is mostly ignoring its causes.

Coal Causing Climate Change Was Settled Science In 1912

How did today's climate scientists travel back in time more than 100 years to implant the greenhouse effect hoax so that they could load up on lavish research grants in 2015? The conspiracy is truly dizzying in scope.

I'm stopping at 1912: "Coal consumption affecting climate" #climatechange pic.twitter.com/BH3uRVYT0F

— Cameron Muir (@cimuir) December 11, 2015

Don't Be Garbage People: Funny or Die Video on Climate Action

Watch this new Funny or Die video called "The Fixer" starring Jeff Goldblum and Ed Begley, Jr., then sign the petition in support of President Obama's Clean Power plan at LCV.org/TheFixer:

Front Group Flips on Fracked Gas Pipeline

In 2013 and 2014, lobbyist Marc Brown's "New England Ratepayers Association" opposed Kinder Morgan's proposed fracked gas pipeline expansion plans through Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Then just this month, Brown flipped and suddenly supports more fracked gas pipelines.

As I asked in a recent letter to the editor in my local New Bedford Standard-Times, what changed, Marc? Or should I say, whose check cleared?

The Green Miles Hosts Rhode Island Wind Energy Panel

I recently hosted a panel on wind energy for RenewableNow.Biz featuring Jeff Grybowski of Deepwater Wind, Hannah Morini of Wind Energy Development, West Warwick Town Manager Fred Presley, and Providence Journal columnist Robert Whitcomb, who's the co-author of Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics, and the Battle for Our Energy Future on Nantucket Sound. Watch it here:

Global Warming Already Worsening Extreme Weather - New US Government Report

Via CBS Evening News:

Volkswagen is a Scam

How can anyone buy a Volkswagen after this?

Volkswagen’s pollution problems took a costly new turn on Tuesday when the company said it had understated emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, for about 800,000 of its vehicles sold in Europe, and overstated the cars’ fuel economy. A limited number of gasoline-powered cars are affected, said Eric Felber, a company spokesman, expanding the focus of Volkswagen’s crisis beyond its diesel engines.

It is the latest in a series of emissions revelations shaking the company, raising questions about the quality of its internal corporate controls and its reputation for engineering prowess, and undermining a carefully crafted image as a maker of efficient and environmentally friendly cars. The latest problem will force the company to incur an estimated 2 billion euros, or about $2.2 billion, in possible financial penalties, a spokesman said, because of tax breaks granted in Europe on cars with low carbon dioxide emissions.

Those costs would be on top of the €6.7 billion the company has already set aside to address its central emissions crisis, revealed in September when Volkswagen admitted that it had installed deceptive software in 11 million diesel vehicles to make it appear as if they met air-quality standards for nitrogen oxide, which poses a threat to human health. Volkswagen’s troubles have led to lawsuits from investors and car owners that are likely to cost the company billions of dollars beyond the money already set aside.

Is there any aspect of its vehicles that Volkswagen hasn't been lying about? These problems go so far beyond "whoops, we screwed up one thing!" Its entire corporate culture has embraced systematically lying about a range of performance items, from polluting emissions to fuel efficiency. How do we know they haven't been cheating on safety tests, too?

One of the world's biggest corporations has been running as a scam, intentionally selling shoddy vehicles to its customers. It's hard for people to get their minds around something that big and that evil, but welcome to Griftopia.

Official Admits Iowa Needs to Go on a Road Diet

The first step to getting your highway budget back to a sane level is admitting you have a problem. As Charles Marohn reports at StrongTowns.org, Iowa Dept. of Transportation Director Paul Trombino recently did just that, pointing out Iowa can't afford to maintain all the roads & bridges it's built:

I said the numbers before. 114,000 lane miles, 25,000 bridges, 4,000 miles of rail. I said this a lot in my conversation when we were talking about fuel tax increases. It’s not affordable. Nobody’s going to pay.

We are. We’re the ones. Look in the mirror. We’re not going to pay to rebuild that entire system.

And my personal belief is that the entire system is unneeded. And so the reality is, the system is going to shrink.

There’s nothing I have to do. Bridges close themselves. Roads deteriorate and go away. That’s what happens.

And reality is, for us, let’s not let the system degrade and then we’re left with sorta whatever’s left. Let’s try to make a conscious choice – it’s not going to be perfect, I would agree it’s going to be complex and messy – but let’s figure out which ones we really want to keep.

As Congressional budget negotiators come up with increasingly bizarre tricks to try to pay for a transportation budget that's mostly spent on building new roads, the question remains: What if voters don't want to pay for it?

We should talking about building fewer new, unneeded highways and focusing our resources on maintaining what we have. We know urban roads can lose lanes, with Austin recently showing that many urban roads can be slimmed down while improving safety and cutting speeding.

What can we do about expensive and little-used rural highways? How many could lose a lane and no one would ever miss it?

Tainted Halloween Candy is an Urban Legend: Annual Reminder Edition

Don't inspect your kids' Halloween candy - it scares them for no reason. This year's reminder comes from AboveAverage.com:

How To Spot Suspicious Halloween Treats

Be on the lookout this Halloween! Here's how to spot suspicious treats.Watch more here: http://bit.ly/1Fyoseh

Posted by Above Average on Tuesday, October 27, 2015

NBD, Just a Tropical Storm Heading for Alaska

Just after South Carolina was hit with biblical flooding, breaking monthly rainfall records in a matter of days, post-Tropical Storm Oho is now heading for Alaska. You know things are bad when the media is openly talking about how climate change is influencing Oho.

"Although tropical systems do, on occasion, move to the northeast in the central Pacific, since 1949, no late season (October or later) system has formed south of Hawaii and moved to the northeast," reports Weather.com's Chris Dolce.

Not only has Alaska been baking in record-shattering heat, but as the AP's Becky Bohrer reports, it's flooding and burning as well:

Eight of the 10 wettest summers in Juneau have occurred since 2000, he said. Records for the site date to the early 1940s. The frequency of wildfire seasons where at least a million acres have been burned has roughly doubled since the early 1990s, he said.

Better drill the last of the oil out of there before it becomes completely uninhabitable.

The Climate Tell Hidden in Rush Limbaugh Politicizing Water on Mars

Lots of folks are LOLing today at Rush Limbaugh politicizing water on Mars, accusing NASA and the Obama administration of plotting to use it to "advance the leftist agenda," as first reported by Media Matters. But within Rush's rant is a tip-off about how and why extreme conservatives reject science on other issues such as climate change:

OK so there's flowing water on Mars. Yip yip yip yahoo. You know me, I'm science 101, big time guy, tech advance it, you know it, I'm all in. But, NASA has been corrupted by the current regime. I want to find out what they're going to tell us.

OK, flowing water on Mars. If we're even to believe that, what are they going to tell us that means? That's what I'm going to wait for. Because I guarantee, let's just wait and see, this is September 28, let's just wait and see. Don't know how long it's going to take, but this news that there is flowing water on Mars is somehow going to find its way into a technique to advance the leftist agenda. I don't know what it is, I would assume it would be something to do with global warming and you can -- maybe there was once an advanced civilization. If they say they found flowing water, next they're going to find a graveyard.

Rush is explicitly telling us his acceptance or rejection of this science will be entirely based around what it means for his political world view. Do the implications of that science threaten Rush's pre-existing political beliefs? If not, then fine, it's legitimate science. But if that science undermines Rush's ideology, whether that happens tomorrow or a year from now, it will then retroactively become leftist junk science.

Climate science deniers like Sen. Jim Inhofe admit this all the time: They only reject the climate science because the carbon-cutting government policy it prescribes is incompatible with their political ideology.

But as David Roberts writes at Vox, the Associated Press and other news organizations continue to bend over backwards to frame the climate debate around science rather than around identity protection and motivated reasoning - which is what Limbaugh himself is saying here it's really all about.

The Internet is a Puppy Mill

My wife and I recently tried to answer a question: Is it possible to find a reputable dog breeder via the internet? In short, no.

Adopting a dog is usually preferable to a breeder and the Internet helps put you in touch with far more dogs and shelters than just your local one. Petfinder.com is a particularly useful site. But if you have a young child (as we do) or if you're picky on what type of dog would be the best fit for your home, a local puppy may be hard to find or rescues may not be willing to place with you. In that case, you may find yourself searching for a breeder.

At best, the Internet can help you identify breeder in your area. Then you can do the work to verify and get to know the breeder just as you would've in the pre-Internet era.

But at its worst, the Internet provides a new, gleaming facade and marked-up prices for the same old puppy mills. Websites often charge broker fees of 100% or more, then offer to wash off that puppy mill smell and ship the dog right to your doorstep so you never have to see where it came from.

Here's where the Internet can add value: If you're at all suspicious, google the breeder or site name and "puppy mill." If you see anything negative, run the other way. If you don't, that's not an endorsement, but you can then do your usual due diligence.

Make sure the dogs are raised in the house (not in the basement, garage, etc.) with constant interaction with a wide range of adults, children and typical household activity and noise. Ask about mom & dad, history of genetic diseases, and have your vet give the puppy a clean bill of health.

More on what to avoid:

• ASPCA: Why You Should Never Buy a Puppy Online
• Dozens of Former Customers Join Consumer Lawsuit Against Nation’s Largest Online Dog Seller, Purebred Breeders LLC
• Humane Society: 101 Puppy Mills

And what to do instead:

• Humane Society: Where to Get a Puppy
• How to Find a Responsible Dog Breeder
• American Kennel Club's Breeder Referral Search

Exxon Has Known It's Warming Our Climate Since Before I Was Born

And I'm not that young anymore! As InsideClimateNews.org reports, Exxon was aware of the looming climate crisis and its own role in fomenting it as far back as July 1977.

But in 2015, it's a real mystery why climate change is happening! Wait, I mean, WHETHER it's happening!

Local Medical Center Has Infrastructure For Smoking, But Not Biking

The other day I rode my bike to my local medical facility, Southcoast Health in Fairhaven, to get blood drawn for my annual physical. While it has a massive parking lot for somewhere around 500 vehicles, Southcoast Health in Fairhaven doesn't have even one bicycle rack.

 But it does have a picnic table outside of its back door for smoke breaks.