Seriously misguided students are up in arms over the possible revival of the Keystone Pipeline project from Canada to the US. Their concern is greenhouse gas and global warming.
The notion that global warming is caused by man-made greenhouse gasses is questionable enough. The globe has gone through periods of glaciation and melting over hundreds of millions of years. Scientists think they can model changes over a period of hundreds or thousands of years when even 100,000 years may be insufficient.
Anything that happened in the last 100 or 1,000 years can be nothing more than a random fluctuation given the million-year cycles in play.
Trilobite Mass Extinction
I have a fossil of a trilobite on my desk.
They are now extinct, wiped out in a mass extinction about 250 million years ago. Trilobites flourished for 270 million years before that.
Climate change may have been a cause of extinction. Rest assured it was not man-made. Nor could there have been a man-made solution.
It's So Cold ... Polar Bears Taken Inside
To pretend we can track global warming over the last 100 years and attribute that to man-made global warming is ludicrous.
Indeed, scientists are now scrambling to explain why there has been global cooling for the last 17 years.
Global warming is nowhere to be found. The mean global temperature has not risen in 17 years and has been slowly falling for approximately the past 10 years. In 2013, there were more record-low temperatures than record-high temperatures in the United States.
At the end of the first week in January, a brutal spell of cold weather settled over most of the country. Multiple cold-temperature records were shattered across the country. Some sites experienced frigid conditions not seen since the 19th century. Chicago and New York City broke temperature records set in 1894 and 1896, respectively. These extremes were not singular, but exemplary of conditions throughout much of the continent. Temperatures in Chicago were so cold that a polar bear at the Lincoln Park Zoo had to be taken inside.
Global Cooling?
I am as skeptical about global cooling as I am about global warming. Both notions are silly given the eons involved in long-term warming and cooling trends.
Assume Mish is Wrong
Let's assume I am totally wrong. Let's assume man-made global warming is happening.
If so, what is the likelihood of politicians doing anything reasonable about it? I propose the odds border on zero.
To date, governments generally worsen every problem they have thrown money at. Affordable housing is a key example. I can come up with countless other examples.
So even if you do believe in man-made global warming, arguably the best thing to do is leave it alone, waiting for a free market solution, not a government solution.
With that lengthy backdrop I received an interesting email this evening from
Meltwater Press for which I do not have a link.
Progressive Groups Fighting Keystone XL Pledge Strong Resistance
San Francisco, CA -- As Friday's deadline nears to submit public comments opposing the Keystone XL pipeline, progressive groups CREDO and Rainforest Action Network have collected more than 169,000 comments to the State Department urging Sec. Kerry to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, while simultaneously preparing to unleash a massive wave of civil disobedience if Sec. Kerry allows the State Department to continue ignoring the facts on Keystone XL, and recommends approval of the toxic tar sands pipeline to President Obama.
“If Secretary Kerry truly believes that climate change is a weapon of mass destruction -- then he must oppose the carbon bomb that is Keystone XL," said Elijah Zarlin, CREDO's senior campaign manager and formerly a senior national email writer on President Obama's 2008 campaign. "Secretary Kerry inherited a mess in the State Department's evaluation process, and more than 86,000 Americans stand ready to risk arrest if he fails to recognize the climate impact of this disastrous project.”
To date, CREDO has collected 141,428 public comments and Rainforest Action Network has collected 27,638 public comments to the State Department in opposition of the Keystone XL pipeline. CREDO and Rainforest Action Network will join a host of other groups in delivering large numbers of public comments on Friday.
Climate Change a Weapon of Mass Destruction
Please note the misguided lunacy: Climate change is now allegedly a weapon of mass destruction.
Hundreds of Students Arrested at White House Protesting Keystone XL
Two days ago the
Huffington Post reported
Hundreds of Students Arrested at White House Protesting Keystone XL.
I just came back from the White House, where the police are still arresting the hundreds of students who are taking part in what will likely be the largest act of youth civil disobedience at the White House in a generation.
Photo: Kristina Banks
This is XL Dissent: a massive surge of protest against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and a powerful show of solidarity with all communities who are fighting the fossil fuel industry and confronting the impacts of the climate crisis.
"An entire movement has thrown itself into in this Keystone fight, from local frontline groups to big national green organizations," 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben wrote in an email. "But this weekend shows the power and bravery of some of the most crucial elements: young people, and activists who understand the centrality of environmental justice."
The scene down at the White House this afternoon was incredible. There were just over a thousand students that rallied in Lafayette Park, but it sounded like 10 thousand. This wasn't your parents' protest, but the spark-shooting dynamo of student movement that is beginning to embrace its true power.
"Obama was the first President I voted for, and I want real climate action and a rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline," said Nick Stracco, a Senior at Tulane University and one of the lead organizers of XL Dissent. "The people that voted him into office have made it absolutely clear what we want, and that's to reject Keystone XL."
President Obama has a choice to make. He can side with Big Oil and approve Keystone XL, tarnishing his environmental legacy and getting little political benefit in the process. Or he can stand with the generation of young people that helped power him into office and reject this XL climate disaster. It's time to make the right call.
Wow.
Forced to make a choice, I side with the polar bears: Stay indoors. Even if man-made global warming is a reality and not a myth, do you really want Al Gore or Obama in charge of doing something about it?
Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
