The latest on the gulf oil spill is that 75% of it is gone. This is a mathematically interesting claim

This is because we don’t know how much spilled. I gave up science a few years ago, but as I recall the percentage of vanished oil would be determined by the following:

(remaining oil)/(total oil spilled) – (1) x (100) = (% oil vanished)

The problem with this is the only numbers we actually have to work with are “1″,  “100″, and maybe remaining oil. To be honest I’m not sure why all the King’s men couldn’t figure out how much oil was coming out, as I assume someone in the camp graduated high school and could have gotten info on the pipe’s radius.

Alternatively, I think it is more likely that the people who came up with 75% use the following formula:

(exaggerated environmental impact) x (unicorns) – (remaining oil) = (look how good we did!)

There seem to be one or a combination of three possibilities here: (1) the spill was not as bad as we were lead to believe, (2) despite the Federal government’s best efforts, the dispersants and skimmers worked and/or (3) the extent of improvement is exaggerated.

Regardless, the great tragedy was the loss of 11 lives followed by the loss of livelihood on the coast. The coral whose feelings were hurt lands somewhere later in the line.

A little James Brown in honor of Al “Mr. Stone” Gore.  C’mon baby, release my second chakra!  (Levez-vous!)

Drudge’s headline, “Crude-Sucking Barges Stopped by Coast Guard,” points to this ABC story about barges being forced to stop operation in Louisiana while they verified life preservers and fire extinguishers.  The stoppage only lasted twenty-four hours thanks to Jindal’s hell-raising, but this is a symptom of a much wider problem and one that could, and should, be addressed by the president.

He may not be able to “suck it up with a straw,’ but he can damn sure let it be known from the Cabinet on down that we are on an emergency footing.  A twenty-four hour delay in one operation is no big deal, but when you add up the delays in countless state and local efforts around the Gulf, it’s no longer minor.  Supporting creative state and local efforts should be the order of the day; often that just means getting the multiple federal agencies involved out of the way or tasked with supporting the most promising initiatives, whatever their source.

Unfortunately, that isn’t in the nature of a bureaucracy and fostering state and local innovation isn’t the first (or last) impulse of statists and technocrats.  They are looking for a Big solution, when the reality is that our best hope lies in thousands of little solutions.

Now is not the time to be fretting about life jackets on barges or the environmental impact of building sand berms or the union status of deckhands.  But that is precisely what we are doing time and again.

Nate Beeler in the Washington Examiner with the perfect fusion:

In one of the oddest decisions yet for this administration, Obama is pushing to lift the international ban on whaling for the three countries that still hunt whales:  Japan, Norway, and Iceland.

The argument is that this move will save whales by closing the loopholes in the moratorium:

Under Obama’s deal, the three whaling countries would be allowed to keep hunting whales for a 10-year period in reduced numbers. The whaling countries in return would agree to tighter oversight of their operations, including participation in a whale DNA registry.

What we really have here is an amnesty for whale hunting nations.  Let’s bring them out from the shadows and regulate their activity.  We already provide clean needles for drug addicts, and what is a harpoon, I ask ye, but a grand needle with which to prick leviathan?

This is a move with no political upside.  It’s one thing to consider an exception for a few eskimos hunting the occasional whales in traditional hunts; it’s quite another to legitimize the industrialized slaughter of thousands of these creatures annually.  It will anger not just the radical environmentalists, but most folks with a smidgen of conscience.

Are we really saying that three advanced nations can’t be made to give up a barbaric practice?  There is no economic justification for whaling, unless we are considering whale oil as a possible substitute for fossil fuels.  I would imagine Japan is more concerned about exporting Toyotas than the value of flukes or liver extract in the exotic foods market.

Obama has created a rare opportunity for the Republicans.  Save the Whales in 2012!  The ban, after all, was championed by the Gipper.

Glad he wasn’t around when they were looking for the original Volunteers…

HT Jonah in The Corner

My absence ’round here lately is due to my being afflicted with law exams. Mercifully I will be done on Monday. My last exam for environmental law. In the spirit of discipline, join with me enjoying Randy Newman singing about the time the our over-industrialized neighbors to the north polluted the  Cuyahoga River to the point that it caught fire.

I grew up along the Gulf Coast and hardly a day goes by when my thoughts don’t drift down below the Salt Line.  The BP oil spill has me thinking about things we did growing up like going floundering, crabbing and fishing for specs and reds.  My kids are are about the age where I started to do that and I really wonder whether they will get to at least in the forseeable future given the likely environmental impact of the spill.  I wonder when or even if the Gulf Coast will fully recover from this. 

I recognize the need for off-shore oil drilling (and have advocated for it) but if we are going to do it we have to insist that the companies doing the drilling use every possible precaution to prevent spills like this and are adequately prepared to respond if they do.  Here, BP refused to install an acoustic shut-off like those used in the waters off of Norway and Brazil – and even opposed a proposed U.S. regulation which would have required the use of the device because of cost.

**Except, well, if you are in Great Britain. And Anglican. Because your Bishops want you to repent of your carbon excesses. Instead of turning off that ipod and TV so you can tune in God, they want you to “carbon fast” this lent. Yes. Delightful. It’s like people who give things up for the sake of just giving things up; or avoid the sweets during lent to loose a few pounds. No. No. No. Lent is NOT about reducing our carbon footprint! After all, “remember man that you are carbon and to carbon you shall return.”

Minnesotans for Global Warming has come up with a brilliant take-off on The Who in honor of the severe winter we’ve had.  I came across these guys through Powerline, and they evidently have a lot of time on their hands up there in Minnesota.  The best part of this song is the banjo replacing the synthesizer–it’s astoundingly close.

From the “I feel safer already” file (via AP):

The Air Force Academy has set aside an outdoor worship area for Pagans, Wiccans, Druids and other Earth-centered believers, school officials said Monday.

A double circle of stones atop a hill on the campus near Colorado Springs has been designated for the group, which previously met indoors.

“Being with nature and connecting with it is kind of the whole point,” said Tech. Sgt. Brandon Longcrier, who sponsors the group and describes himself as a Pagan. “It will dramatically improve that atmosphere, the mindset and the actual connection.”

Pat Robertson has been accused of blaming the Haiti earthquake on” God’s wrath” and Haiti’s “pact with the Devil” – though if you actually listen to his comments, that isn’t’ exactly true – though I would agree that his words, and their timing, were poorly chosen at best. Nothing really new for Reverend Robertson. Now, Danny Glover is blaming the Haiti earthquake on Gaia. So, my question to all you theologians: Who’s running this world, Father God or mother nature? Will Glover suffer the same scorn? Of course, the questions are rhetorical ones.

And, in a very strange providence, I watched a PBS documentary last night about Haiti and her revolutionary military leader, François-Dominique Toussaint L’ouverture. It was a fascinating film. Part of the narrative went into some detail about Haiti’s voodooism and their so-called “pact with the devil.” At about 6:11 into the following clip–and until the end of the clip taken from the PBS special–the connection between voodoo and Haiti’s revolution against France is quite plainly made by the narrative–the same connection to which Robertson referred in his now infamous comments. Hmmm . . . did the producers of this documentary consult with Pat Robertson or are they simply saying the same thing without the charismatic, evangelical “flair”?

While we’re on the subject of faith and conservation, Robert Royal’s wonderful AEI lecture “The Virgin and the Dynamo: The Use and Abuse of Religion in Environmental Debates” is available through the Catholic Conservation Center (HT reader The Sheepcat).  Here are two sample paragraphs, but read the whole thing or read his book of the same title.

On the other side, many pro-development people, seeing the often nutty New Age leaders of religious environmentalism, or the non-biblical ways in which even Christian and Jewish environmentalists sometimes argue, assume that modern religious environmentalism is an anti-Western, left-wing movement with Marxist overtones. Often, that’s true. But sometimes a conservative dislike of industrialism and modernity energizes environmental concerns. In an earlier age, orthodox Christians like G.K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis championed nature and organic societies. More recently, Jacques Ellul in France, Francis Schaeffer, Russell Kirk, George Grant in Canada, Wendell Berry in the American South (preceded by the Fugitives and the Agrarians) have made similar arguments. Even Paul Johnson, firmly in the capitalist camp, announced last year his leanings toward vegetarianism and his awe at the destruction of complex, divine order that occurs in the mere swatting of a fly.⁷ So it is wrong to dismiss religious environmentalists as mere New Age tree-huggers. Some are, but the real struggle continues to be what we think of the overall record and prospects of industrialism and markets.

The modern problem is how to reconcile material abundance with simplicity of life and a renewed appreciation of nature. (One of the uses of monasteries and convents is that it gave people with a strong need for simplicity a place where it could be lived out.) Making the pursuit of material wealth an end in itself leads to an obtuse spirit. And lack of contact with the immeasurable, unclassifiable richness of the Creation stunts our imaginations. We first learned to imagine human flight from watching birds, long before we had the technical capacity to try imitating them. Anyone who knows the ancient and medieval bestiaries, the rich literature of nature, or some of the remarkable naturalist writing by people like Annie Dillard–to say nothing of taking a walk in the woods oneself–will suspect that nature does something good for our minds and hearts. A good part of the Western religious tradition has always maintained that God speaks to us in two ways: in the book of nature and in the book of revelation. In a pluralistic society there should be room for people who read more deeply in one or the other, but if we entirely lose touch with either, we are living in a different world than the one God created. That world has room for both extensive use of nature and contemplation of nature’s natural richness.

Science fiction writer Margaret Atwood was interviewed by NPR about the relationship of science and religion.  Atwood is most famous, of course, for her novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian novel set in an America that has become a fundamentalist theocracy (which explains its popularity in schools).  Evidently, she envisions a very different sort of church in her latest novel, The Year of the Flood.

Set in a world destroyed by genetic engineering run amok, the novel treats a group of survivors called “God’s Gardeners” who have created a religion around conservation and environmental awareness.  Based on the interview, Atwood seems to take her role as guru of a new religion fairly seriously:

Atwood points out that the beginnings of her religion of the future have already appeared in the present.

“Indeed, we now have the Green Bible among us, which I did not know when I was writing this book,” Atwood marvels. “[It] has tasteful linen covers, ecologically correct paper … and a list at the end of useful things which you can do to be a more worthy ‘green’ person.”

For her novel, Atwood created a new pantheon of saints, including Rachel Carson, Al Gore and the murdered conservationist Dian Fossey. Fossey figures into one of the hymns Atwood wrote for God’s Gardeners:

Today we praise our Saint Dian
Whose blood for bounteous life was spilled
Although She interposed her faith
One species more was killed …

Ah yes, Saint Rachel, whose book stirred the hysteria that has resulted in millions of needless deaths in the Third World.  And the Blessed Algore, the first man to walk on the sun, if his figures are right.

I wonder if the Green Bible has the first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” (Actually, I think it does, since it’s NRSV and probably a very fine project, though it looks like a facsimile edition of Leaves of Grass.)

“Terminator Smurfs…” —Glenn Reynolds

Instapundit shoots and scores, and I hope that’s how James Cameron’s half-zillion-dollar Avatar will come to be remembered.

The world doesn’t need yet another morality tale of amoral corporate greed, moral and noble savages, and the morality of ecological moral purity.

[Well actually, some of the world believes it does, and they're gathered in Copenhagen presently...]

King Kong was king because it was a morality tale of man’s inhumanity to man, even if it was to a near-human beast. Its theme was similar, but there were no villains—only men doing what men do out of folly or thoughtlessness, and the unfortunate consequences ensue.

That’s tragedy; and poor Kong, regardless of his animal purity, had to be brought down off the Empire State Building, if only to save the exquisite Fay Wray. You just can’t have gorillas stealing your women and taking over your biggest building. You just can’t, even if it’s ultimately your fault and not his.

Sorry, Kong. But that’s tragedy.

Today, cardboard corporate villains have become the modern Hollywood substitute for the guy twirling his mustache.

Snidely Whiplash, c. 1960

That’s melodrama. Kong was not melodrama; Avatar clearly is, and there you have it.

As for computer-generated ick [CGI], frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. The Na’vi are not people, they are Smurfs. As Reynolds puts it, they’re action figures put into computer motion, as “unrealistic as a kid’s diorama.”

No, I won’t be seeing Avatar, at least until it comes on cable, if ever. I got Al Gore and President Obama and Prince Charles and the whole Copenhagen crowd in my face back here in the real world, saying all the same stuff.

Now, the Avatar the video game looks interesting—you can choose to play an “invading human” and plunk Na’vi to your heart’s content.

If only Al Gore were among the targets. Cameron says it’s boring to shoot zombies, but Copenhagen is a gathering of them like flies on offal, and I’d so much more enjoy a virtual zombie-shoot there than on Cameron’s Planet Pandora. Or Shooting Smurfs.

Now that sounds like fun, unlike Avatar. I might even give my mustache a twirl. Hahaha…

Best to all,
TVD

Who doesn’t love an energy efficient light bulb? Yes. I know. I know. Some of them have dangerous toxins in them, but seriously, how backwards can you be to use a high energy bulb when there is a low energy bulb. What’s that you say? High-energy bulbs give off more heat? Well! Duh! More heat is produced when more energy is used. You’re not going to heat your house with a light-bulb now are you, nim-wit? Of course not! So let’s get rid of all high-energy light bulbs starting with traffic lights:

Cities around the country that have installed energy-efficient traffic lights are discovering a hazardous downside: The bulbs don’t burn hot enough to melt snow and can become crusted over in a storm — a problem blamed for dozens of accidents and at least one death.

“I’ve never had to put up with this in the past,” said Duane Kassens, a driver from West Bend who got into a fender-bender recently because he couldn’t see the lights. “The police officer told me the new lights weren’t melting the snow. How is that safe?”

D’oh!!!!

While the Chinese have no intention of reducing their emissions, they are more than willing to accept Western concessions and political cover.  In a brilliant bit of spin, the Chinese are now claiming a place on the vanguard of carbon reduction because of their unmatched efforts at ‘population control.’

They will find a sympathetic hearing in Copenhagen. What’s an unborn child worth in carbon offsets?

COPENHAGEN: Population and climate change are intertwined but the population issue has remained a blind spot when countries discuss ways to mitigate climate change and slow down global warming, according to Zhao Baige, vice-minister of National Population and Family Planning Commission of China (NPFPC) .

“Dealing with climate change is not simply an issue of CO2 emission reduction but a comprehensive challenge involving political, economic, social, cultural and ecological issues, and the population concern fits right into the picture,” said Zhao, who is a member of the Chinese government delegation.

Many studies link population growth with emissions and the effect of climate change….

As a result of the family planning policy, China has seen 400 million fewer births, which has resulted in 18 million fewer tons of CO2 emissions a year, Zhao said.

Shocking though it may be, Fox News reports a high level of moonbattery in Copenhagen. Here’s a sampling:

• A group called GenderCC (Women for Climate Justice) rejects using distractions like “numbers” and “target dates” to track and fight climate change, and doesn’t appear very interested in the environment itself. Instead, it hopes to implement “gender-mainstreaming” and ensure that the U.N. guarantees the fullest participation of “feminist scientists” at every level.

• The Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University is putting on an exhibit to “explore how thoughts affect matter and how a shift in consciousness can transform current deteriorating conditions” for the environment.

• International Planned Parenthood is putting on a show about how to increase contraception in the third world to stop babies — who later become adults — from ruining the environment.

You’ve just got to love the addition “who later become adults.”  It has that wry Shep Smith quality.

Just in case you missed this.  It’s a sample of the kind of thinking we can expect in Copenhagen.

ADDRESS BY H.E. Mr. EVO MORALES AYMA, THE PRESIDENT OF THE PLURINATIONAL STATE OF BOLIVIA GENERAL DISCUSSION ON THE OCCASION OF THE 64th SESSION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE UNITED NATIONS

(The Permanent Mission of Bolivia to the United Nations) September 23, 2009

After hearing many speeches, I’ve concluded that in this new twenty-first century, defending Mother Earth will be more important than defending human rights. If we do not defend the rights of Mother Earth, there is no use in defending human rights. I am willing to debate this concept, but now or later it will be proven that the rights of Mother Earth supersede the rights of human beings. We must protect what gives us life.

Anyone out there interested in setting up a lobbying group to defend other elements in the periodic table: Oxygen? Neon? Zinc? Carbon emissions are now declared a hazard. This is interesting, scientifically speaking. Carbon emissions, per se, are not what is damaging to the environment. It is the cumulative emission of  too much carbon that is being theorized as being hazardous. This is different, say, from CFCs, raw sewage, nuclear waste, etc. which even in small quantities pose a threat, by the nature of what these pollutants are. Carbon by its basic nature is not a pollutant. Is not carbon, in fact, the most essential element to life and therefore, to some degree aren’t we implying it is life itself that is the true threat to the environment? Mind numbing.

Over at NRO’s Planet Gore, Greg Pollowitz has a piece from the enviro-mag Grist on the President’s decision to descend on Copenhagen for the final day of the climate talks rather than stopping by earlier.   Even they see the danger here; when the environmental left is more level-headed and savvy than the White House staff, we’ve got a problem.

The first week of every COP meeting consists of posturing, speeches, protests, and NGO reports. Everything of significance to the treaty is announced late in the meetings, often on the last day, after a flurry of last-minute negotiations. Coming to Copenhagen at the climax of the talks, specifically to push negotiations “over the top,” as the White House statement says, is a risky move for Obama. He’s got skin in the game now; he’ll look foolish if he rides in at the last minute and fails to broker an agreement.

Well, it worked so well with the Olympic bid…

Much as I will enjoy the spectacle of another colossal public failure by Obama, it will unfortunately involve another public humiliation for the United States.  The man (or his advisors) simply doesn’t understand that you do not put the prestige of the office on the line unless you are certain of the outcome.

Btw, Planet Gore is a great place to sit back, mix a toddy, and enjoy the continuing fallout from Climategate.

From today’s The Hill:

Leaked e-mails allegedly undermining climate change science should be treated as a criminal matter, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Wednesday afternoon.

Boxer, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said that the recently released e-mails, showing scientists allegedly overstating the case for climate change, should be treated as a crime.

“You call it ‘Climategate’; I call it ‘E-mail-theft-gate,’” she said during a committee meeting. “Whatever it is, the main issue is, Are we facing global warming or are we not? I’m looking at these e-mails, that, even though they were stolen, are now out in the public.”

Now, this is what she said about climate change whistle-blowing in 2007 on the Chris Matthews Show:
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Rush was talking today about Al Gore’s ridiculous cover illustration for his new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.  As reported by Infowars.com, Gore has a rather sexed-up image of the globe conforming to his notion of the coming apocalypse.

Yes, hurricanes will spin the wrong way, they will cross the equator with abandon, and Cuba will disappear entirely.

And you thought snake-handlers were crazy. (Warning, turn your speakers down at about 1:40 into this video.) Hat tip to  http://biggovernment.com/

From Powerline.  Just devastating.  Here’s a sample:

The upshot? The Danes retain the title of world’s most prolific wind producer, and President Obama cites their experience as a path to be followed. The cost? Danish ratepayers are forced to pay the highest utility rates in Europe. And the American people are led to believe that, though wind may only provide a little more than one percent of our electricity now, reaching a 20 percent platform – as the Danes have allegedly done – will come at no cost, with no jobs lost and no externalities to consider.

Speaking of jobs, the report also pulls back the curtain on the wind power industry’s near-complete dependence on taxpayer subsidies to support the fairly modest workforce it presently maintains. Just as in Spain, where per-job taxpayer subsidies for so-called “green jobs” exceeds $1,000,000 per worker in some cases, wind-related jobs in Denmark on average are subsidized at a rate of 175 to 250 percent above the average pay per worker. All told, each new wind job created by the government costs Danish taxpayers between 600,000-900,000 krone a year, roughly equivalent to $90,000-$140,000 USD.

Any thoughts on the subject?

It’s such a simple concept, but difficult to drive home — you cannot simply impose a costly mandate on society and claim that the jobs created to deal with the mandate will foster greater economic growth.

As Ronald Bailey complains: “Proponents need to stop pretending cap-and-trade will cost nothing and create tons of jobs.”

I think the problem here, as with so many other regulatory issues, is that nobody fully understands the economy and it’s a complex beast. There are many factors affecting the economy, which tends to be cyclical, and so messing around with various regulations does not have an obvious and direct effect on economic growth.  In two years, we could pass cap and trade, enact draconian CAFE standards and burn Bill Gates at the stake for having too much money, and the the economy still might be chugging along at a good tick.

However, the economy wouldn’t be doing as well as it could, or should, be doing. Costly new regulations effectively change the baseline, so while the economy would still go through highs and lows, you would be cutting growth overall.

And then, before you know it, you’re Europe.  That’s why I shudder when I hear the phrase “Green Jobs.”

These days I’m looking a bit peaked—a little green in the face you might say—so sick am I of that haranguing ubiquity know as the “green” movement.  When checking my personal email last evening, I found three successive advertisements about being green: one from Sam’s Club, one from Home Depot, and one inviting me to an NFP class on “Why Green Sex Is Best”.  On second thought, the last one may require further study. (more…)