Erick Erickson: Screw Our Children, I Want Cheap Coal Now

"Let the seas rise. Let the wind blow." That's top Republican commentator Erick Erickson's position on climate change. I would say he's a "conservative" commentator, but there's absolutely nothing conservative about gas up your SUV cheaply now and leave the bill for future generations to pay. It's pure selfishness - "I've got mine so screw you" presented as profound political philosophy.

Erickson may just be one blogger, but here he gets to the core motivations of today's Congressional Republican leadership - America isn't worth investing in. Energy? Just give me what's cheapest today, if we need alternatives tomorrow, someone else can spend the money on it. Education? If my family needs that, I can pay to send my children to private school, but I won't volunteer a dime in additional taxes to improve our community. The environment? I can buy home air filters and bottled water - if you can't, too bad for you & yours.

"We are all going to die," Erickson cynically concludes. "Just not today." And by then, it'll be up to our children and grandchildren to build massive hurricane barriers outside every East Coast city to keep out the rising seas and monster storms as the bill comes due for all that cheap coal, oil and fracked gas.

How TV News "Balance" Slants Towards Cranks, Against Science

Why do TV news stories about anti-science cranks tend to slant towards the cranks and against science? It's mostly because of the same wrong idea about balance that skews climate change stories - but it's also revealing of how TV news forces reporters to do stories fast & cheap.

Here's an example of a crank profile from New England Cable News, which devoted an entire segment to a Cambridge, MA resident who doesn't like new street lights. But "I don't like to look at them" is no more of a winning argument against street lights that are saving taxpayers $500,000 a year than it is against wind turbines, so the guy is also claiming they're making him sick:

Abrams also says he doesn’t like the shadows the new lights cast either. "There's hundreds of shadows on the sidewalk, these lamps cast, it kind of makes me dizzy," he said.

So, crank with an agenda says one thing, who should we put him up against? If you've followed how the media covers climate change, you know anti-science cranks must be juxtaposed with opinionless, objective science:

The U.S. Department of Energy online says it remains unproven that typical exposures to outdoor lighting have negative health impacts, but also say it cannot be ruled out without more data.

That's where the skewed idea of "balance" pushes the story towards the crank. The opposite of a crank isn't a scientist - it's a progressive:

But in the constraints of one eight-hour night shift, finding that progressive to defend science can be hard. Gotta just make the Cambridge city worker the "other side" and call the story done.

Another problem with crank stories is that often the reporter must hold back key facts to prevent the reporter from looking stupid for doing a crank story in the first place. Check out the very last line of this story:

The city also points to some light shields they can install to block the light from going in peoples windows. The city says before the most recent yellow lights, the city had bright white lights. They believe it's just a matter of people getting used to them. Other cities such as Boston have converted the bulk of their lights over to LED, and cities like Los Angeles and Seattle have done so as well.

Cities with a total population of 5.1 million people have installed these lights with no evidence of problems, but the reporter has to put that at the end, because otherwise the story would be revealed as a waste of time just two sentences in.

One final thing the reporter never talks about: How scientists long ago cracked the mystery of how to keep out unwanted light ...

A New Surprise Benefit of Cutting Lead Pollution

Studies have shown a strong connection between the phase-out of lead in gasoline starting in the mid-1970s and a plunge in violent crime in the following decades. As Kevin Drum reports at Mother Jones, a new study is connecting lower levels of childhood lead exposure to a later drop in the teen pregnancy rate:

For years conservatives bemoaned the problem of risky and violent behavior among children and teens of the post-60s era, mostly blaming it on the breakdown of the family and a general decline in discipline. Liberals tended to take this less seriously, and in any case mostly blamed it on societal problems. In the end, though, it turned out that conservatives were right. It wasn't just a bunch of oldsters complaining about the kids these days. Crime was up, drug use was up, and teen pregnancy was up. It was a genuine phenomenon and a genuine problem.

But liberals were right that it wasn't related to the disintegration of the family or lower rates of churchgoing or any of that. After all, families didn't suddenly start getting back together in the 90s and churchgoing didn't suddenly rise. But teenage crime, drug use, and pregnancy rates all went down. And down. And down.

Most likely, there was a real problem, but it was a problem no one had a clue about. We were poisoning our children with a well-known neurotoxin, and this toxin lowered their IQs, made them into fidgety kids, wrecked their educations, and then turned them into juvenile delinquents, teen mothers, and violent criminals. When we got rid of the toxin, all of these problems magically started to decline.

Today, we're debating whether to cut the toxic heavy metal and carbon pollution from coal by shutting down the oldest, dirtiest coal-fired power plants. But the benefits aren't hidden - we know coal kills thousands of people every year and causes thousands more asthma attacks in children.

Electricity rates and jobs are obviously important, but why do reporters talk almost exclusively about those, and hardly at all about these very real impacts on our lives? When did human health become a sidebar story?

MA's Secret Plan to Make Regional Bus Commuting More Awesome

Given the "Plus" AND +, how do you say this
out loud? Bus Plus Plus?

I say "secret" because it seems like it's gotten virtually no news coverage - it's been ignored by the statewide standard-bearer Boston Globe and my local New Bedford Standard Times.

The Massachusetts Department of Transportation is making it much more fun, productive and comfy to ride longer-distance regional commuter buses with a program called BusPlus+:

The initial BusPlus+ regional bus purchase will provide thirty one of the new buses to carriers that currently or previously operated an IBCAP regional bus, including Peter Pan Bus Lines, Plymouth & Brockton Street Railway Company, DATTCO, The Coach Company, Bloom Bus Lines, and Yankee Line. In addition, MassDOT is proud to welcome Greyhound as its newest private sector partner.

Customers will experience a more comfortable and convenient service, with new buses that include the latest advances in safety and equipped with fully outfitted restrooms, increased leg room, new comfortable seating, Wi-Fi, and 110V power outlets at every seat.

Through the BusPlus+ program, MassDOT will also work toward the goal of providing a universal smart phone ticketing application to all riders.

I'd noticed the Dattco buses between New Bedford and Boston were newer, roomy enough to fully open my laptop, and with much more reliable WiFi, but had no idea why until I noticed the BusPlus+ sticker on the side of the bus as I was boarding the other day.

At first I wondered about giving taxpayer-purchased buses to private companies. But then again, no one expects public transit to turn a profit, so this may actually be the more fiscally conservative move - instead of taxpayers having to fund a whole new route, they get the benefit of increased service for a relatively small one-time cost.

In the long term, SouthCoast Rail is still the best solution, but until then, small steps to promote bus service make sense.

Ignoring Climate Change Enters 26th Year of Failing to Stop Climate Change

Since climate scientist Michael Mann warned Congress of the emerging climate crisis in 1988, Congress has wholeheartedly embraced the strategy of ignoring climate change in hopes it goes away.

As Eric Holthaus reports at Slate today, ignoring climate change just had its strongest quarter ever of failing to stop climate change, with April to June 2014 going into the books as Earth's warmest three months on record.

But switching to solar and wind power might cost you an extra dollar a month on your electricity bill. Best to stick to ignorance! /hits self in head with hammer

Striped Bass Shift Linked to Climate Change? Don't Ask Virginian-Pilot

When reporters ignore climate change in their stories, they end up sounding like they're blaming the supernatural for events easily connected to climate change. Take this Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot story on a sharp decline in catch of striped bass:

They say there are a handful of elements that have lowered the ocean take the past two years.

Weather has been the biggest reason. Warmer starts to the past two winters have caused many rockfish to stay in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, or up the coast around upper Maryland and New Jersey. [...]

"It's been the strangest year," said Rob O'Reilly, chief of fisheries management for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. "The weather has been so screwy that some fish haven't moved south like they usually do, and the ones that have positioned themselves offshore."

Reporters are often reluctant to connect the dots to climate change because they're not climate science experts and they're worried that doing so will draw the ire of anti-science Tea Party activists.

But when reporters ignore reality, they leave their audience in the dark. Strange! Screwy! Don't ask me for answers, you're on your own!

And then newspapers wonder why half of their audience has stopped paying $15 a month for a subscription. If you have to go find the truth yourself anyway, might as well do it for free on the internet.

Massachusetts Scores Big on Best Complete Streets Policies

It seems like common sense: Make policies to help people get around, not just to help vehicles get around. Massachusetts does a better job of getting it right than many places, with Littleton and MassDOT earning recognition from Smart Growth America.

Then again, even here, many communities still have a long way to go. Why is it so hard?

Almost all of the key decision makers drive everywhere. At the top, governors and state agency heads are often chauffeured in SUVs and only wait for public transit in photo ops. And studies show politicians at all levels are most responsive to the concerns of wealthy constituents, who are much less likely to have to wait for a bus or bike to work or school than low-income families.

But Hurricanes Wouldn't Dare Hit Our Nuclear Plants, Because MURRICA

Japanese nuclear power plants the path of Super Typhoon Neoguri: Two

Nuclear power plants on America's hurricane-vulnerable East and Gulf Coasts: Thirteen

Ohio's Pro-Fracking Governor Ignores Fracking Earthquakes

Ohio is being hit by earthquakes in areas where gas fracking operations are underway, but Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) is best buddies with big polluters, so you end up with stories like this:

State regulators ordered a gas drilling company to halt operations in an area of northeastern Ohio after three minor earthquakes were felt in the area. No property damage had been reported from the earthquakes that happened Monday morning just west of Youngstown. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources says there's nothing indicating that the earthquakes are connected to any injection wells.

Who'd be so crazy as to say Ohio's brand-new earthquake zone is connected to fracking? Oh yeah - the Ohio Department of Natural Resources said that two years ago. Multiple studies have also linked Oklahoma's outbreak of more than 2,500 small quakes to fracking.

But Kasich has state employees spending taxpayer dollars on doing public relations for gas fracking, so state regulators have to do the bizarre dance of shutting down fracking wells while not saying the wells are causing the earthquakes. Then why shut them down at all?

Learn more about the risks to land and drinking water at the Ohio Environmental Council.

The "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" Con: Newt Won, America Lost

Back in the summer of 2008, incurable Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich pushed the slogan "drill here, drill now, pay less," claiming that making the U.S. more oil-independent would be a solution to high gas prices. Democrats, worried voters would reject the reality there's nothing we can do to lower market-set gas prices and absolutely terrified of saying no to Big Oil, embraced the slogan. Later, President Barack Obama implemented it as our national policy. Six years later, how's drill baby drill working out for you?

Today, while U.S. oil production is near all-time highs, gas prices also remain near all-time highs. Drill baby drill has been great for multinational oil companies, but terrible for American consumers. Meanwhile, we continue shoveling billions in annual taxpayer subsidies to those same oil companies.

A side effect of higher oil production is that oil transportation disasters are also at record highs. Oil train wrecks and spills, gas pipeline explosions, and oil pipeline ruptures are skyrocketing. Our communities, wildlife and clean air and water are now at the mercy of our national petro-state.

Note that gas prices hit their all-time high of $4.46 in July 2008 under President George W. "Texas Oilman Who'll Lasso Those Saudi Arabians Into Submission" Bush, well above the prior peak of $3.70 under President Ronald "Yes Another Oil-Friendly Republican Are You Seeing The Pattern Yet" Reagan.

Aside from Big Oil's record profits, there was one other winner from Newt's drilling push. Gingrich got 1.5 million people to sign his petition, allowing him to cash in by spamming his big new email list. As Chris Hayes has said, "much of movement conservatism is a con and the base are the marks."

Today in Phony Food: Turkey Hill's "Light" Ice Cream

On the left is Turkey Hill Moose Tracks Light Recipe, billed as "the creamy, rich taste you'd expect from Turkey Hill Ice Cream, but it is lower in fat and sugar." The label claims it has 50% less fat and 22% fewer calories than regular ice cream.

On the right is Turkey Hill Moose Tracks Stuff'd, billed as "frozen dairy dessert that is jam-packed with nuts, candies, and flavor" and "stuffed to the lid with all of your favorite ingredients."

"Light" and "Stuff'd" have exactly same amounts of calories, total fat and sugar:

Ice cream is my favorite thing to eat in the whole world. But it's bad for you and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. 

Your Cable Boxes Secretly Cost You an Extra $100 a Year. Each.

Cable boxes are the biggest energy users in many homes, each one sucking nearly $100 a year out of your wallet. "The seemingly innocuous appliances — all 224 million of them across the nation — together consume as much electricity as produced by four giant nuclear reactors, running around the clock," reports Ralph Vartabedian reports for the Los Angeles Times.

I thought I'd see how much heat is needlessly thrown off by my Comcast box made by Motorola, so I put a thermometer on it and went out to run some errands. When I came home, it registered 86 on top of the box (compared to 75 in the room), but apparently at some point it had hit an astounding 94 degrees.

As I've covered before, this a failure of the free market, which gives cable companies no incentive to provide you anything more energy efficient than the crappy boxes they currently give you. It's not them who has to pay the electricity bill for these energy hogs.

That's why cutting the cord and getting rid of cable not only will save you big money on your cable bill, it'll save you small but noticeable money on your electricity bill. While cable boxes use 35 watts of power even in standby mode, streaming devices like Apple TV and Roku only use a maximum of 3 watts even when in use.

Congress could pass legislation mandating efficient boxes, which would save us money twice - once on our electricity bill, and again in infrastructure (those power plants) that we wouldn't need to build to power the boxes. But then the cable companies would give money to Americans for Prosperity to gin up outrage promote freedom and run attack ads. Best not to do anything - and by best I mean "best for Republican politicians' continued employment."

The Circle of Lies: Koch Money, Front Groups & Conservative Media

The Heartland Institute lost its credibility with journalists after comparing climate scientists to the Unabomber. But in conservative media, credibility doesn't matter as long as you have huge piles of cash from polluters like Koch Industries to buy expensive advertising sections:

As you may know, The Heartland Institute is hosting a Washington Times Special section to showcase organizations and scientists from around the world who question whether “man-made global warming” will be harmful to plants, animals, or human welfare. This section will be featured prominently at the 9th International Conference on Climate Change next week.

With this, you are invited to be a part of this special print and digital section with an op-ed in print and digital formats.

You can support the section and have the chance to write an edit and compliment the issue with a full page, full color display ad for your organization for just $10,000. The section will appear online at www.washingtontimes.com and will be advertised with over a million impressions online and with over 500,000 emails.

SPACE IS LIMITED and we are closing space on the issue very soon - Deadline is END OF DAY FRIDAY for a reservation and next Monday to coordinate details/edit/Ad.

Anyway, please call or email as soon as possible if you would like to participate.

Thanks and look forward to our discussion.

Joe Corbe
The Washington Times

For the low low price of $10,000, grifters like you can have access to the Heartland Institute's marks! But ACT NOW, because SPACE IS LIMITED to any polluter front groups willing to pony up $10,000!

Wind Energy Opponents Don't Want to Talk About Global Warming

Clean energy opponents fit Oscar Wilde's definition of a cynic - they know the price of everything and the value of nothing. In my new op-ed for the New Bedford Standard-Times, I talk about how wind energy opponents don't want to talk about the value of fighting the climate crisis.

It's OK To Hit Pedestrians As Long As You're Not Paying Attention

Via NewBedfordGuide.com

Exactly how much leeway should drivers get when they hit a person trying to cross the street?

[New Bedford Police Det. Capt. Steven] Vicente said the victim was heading west from Tedeschi's and across Brock Avenue as she walked to her home nearby. A northbound car stopped to let her cross the street and was about to make a left turn.

A Nissan Sentra, also traveling north on Brock Avenue, passed on the inside of the first car and struck the victim as she crossed the street, according to Vicente. He said no charges have been brought and the accident remains under investigation.

"There is a good possibility the second vehicle didn't see her crossing in front of the first vehicle," Vicente said.

I would certainly hope the driver did not see her and still hit her anyway, but that seems to be an extremely low bar for negligently operating your one-ton gas-powered steel box.

Brock Avenue is one lane in each direction, so the driver had to swerve to try to pass the turning vehicle, and was STILL going fast enough to critically injure the 36-year-old woman. I'm not a police officer, and I'm not saying they should lock up the driver and throw away the key, but ... NO charges? Nothing at all?

South Portland Tells Off Big Oil Over Tar Sands

American Petroleum Institute letter tells South Portland, Maine not to ban tar sands as part of an effort to keep Exxon Mobil and Enbridge from reversing the Portland-Montreal pipeline.

South Portland responds by marking up letter telling Big Oil to fuck off.

Eric Cantor and The Only Real Tea Party Litmus Test

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor openly brags about gridlocking Washington. He's such a staunch enemy of conservation, he was named the #2 enemy of the Earth in Congress. He's refused to compromise his pro-tax cuts for rich people, anti-economic growth fiscal strategy even when Wall Street told him it was bone-headed. He stood by Tea Party principles even when it meant screwing superstorm Sandy victims in his own district.

And Cantor doesn't just stand with the Tea Party on policy positions - he does it with a pride that says we're better than those people.

But Cantor lost his Republican primary because ... apparently he'd "gone Washington," or something. Too willing to compromise! ... on what, exactly, no one can say.

Sure, he blocked immigration reform, but he didn't get it, man! It's not just about a federal policy that keeps immigrants as a permanent underclass - it's about wanting to get rid of all the brown people.

The truth is that Cantor failed the only real Tea Party litmus test, which is "Do you just want to watch the world burn?"

Osprey Immune to "Wind Turbine Syndrome"

Three osprey were out fishing in the wetlands near the Fairhaven wind turbines the other day. (As is the usual rule of bird watching, I came across them when I only had my camera phone on me.)

Unlike the many other unusual animal behaviors wind opponents have blamed on turbines, the osprey (and the fish they were eating) didn't seem to mind the turbines one bit.

Raptors can have run-ins with wind turbines, but in this case we know the osprey are steering clear because there's a small but extremely dedicated band of wind turbine opponents looking for dead birds who'd go running to the nearest reporter if they found a dead or injured osprey.

And it's not physical encounters that form the basis of "wind turbine syndrome" - it's some unseen transmission of malice, often blamed "infrasound," that can cause just about any ailment.

Osprey have hearing that's 8 to 10 times more acute than humans, but it didn't bother them - and when science looks into it, they find infrasound doesn't actually bother people, either.

Remember How Acid Rain Rules Destroyed the Economy?

When you're hearing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce complain about limits on industrial carbon pollution using discredited numbers, remember that more than two decades ago, polluters and their allies predicted limits on acid rain pollution would destroy the economy. How'd that work out?

Those limits on the sulfur pollution from coal-fired power plants that causes acid rain were part of the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990, the same legislation under which the Environmental Protection Agency is now limiting industrial carbon pollution. According to EDF, acid rain-causing emissions have gone down faster than predicted and at a fraction of the projected cost.

How much cheaper will cutting carbon pollution be than the Chamber of Commerce projects?

US Chamber of Commerce Concern Trolls on Climate and Jobs

The US Chamber of Commerce is putting the full force of its polluter-funded war chest behind fighting limits on industrial carbon pollution set to be announced by the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday. Paul Krugman dives into their numbers and finds even by the Chamber's biased analysis, the cost of climate action would be just 0.2% of economic growth:

You might ask why the Chamber of Commerce is so fiercely opposed to action against global warming, if the cost of action is so small. The answer, of course, is that the chamber is serving special interests, notably the coal industry — what’s good for America isn’t good for the Koch brothers, and vice versa — and also catering to the ever more powerful anti-science sentiments of the Republican Party.

Finally, let me take on the anti-environmentalists’ last line of defense — the claim that whatever we do won’t matter, because other countries, China in particular, will just keep on burning ever more coal. This gets things exactly wrong. Yes, we need an international agreement to reduce emissions, including sanctions on countries that don’t sign on. But U.S. unwillingness to act has been the biggest obstacle to such an agreement. If we start taking serious steps against global warming, the stage will be set for Europe and Japan to follow suit, and for concerted pressure on the rest of the world as well.

Now, we haven’t yet seen the details of the new climate action proposal, and a full analysis — both economic and environmental — will have to wait. We can be reasonably sure, however, that the economic costs of the proposal will be small, because that’s what the research — even research paid for by anti-environmentalists, who clearly wanted to find the opposite — tells us. Saving the planet would be remarkably cheap.

Remember, this is the same U.S. Chamber of Commerce that has fought every single Obama administration effort to create jobs. Either the US Chamber's sudden concern for jobs is a fraud, or they only care about saving jobs in the polluting industries that fund the Chamber. But you will never hear a reporter point this out, because connecting the dots has a well-known liberal bias.