A Sad Day for Our Oceans

Tomorrow is World Oceans Day. Although proposed by Canada at the Earth Summit in 1992, it was made official only last year.

Tomorrow is also Day 50 of the the worst ecological disaster in US history. (My opinion--there is some depressing competition.)

This year's Oceans Day theme, ironically enough, is "Oceans of Life."

Meanwhile, back at the Wingnut Wurlitzer: Jindal wants to keep drilling. Chevron agrees. Murkowski worries about liability exposure for big oil. Inhofe too. Cornyn thinks we shouldn't try for bold steps on energy policy. Shell Oil says drilling in ANWR is safe. Palin asserts the spill validates "drill, baby, drill." BP remains a corporate psychopath.

Words fail.

Rapa Nui's Descent into Darkness

Many people insist, with all manner of justifications, that we can not, we should not, change the way we generate or use energy because we're not running out of oil, the climate isn't changing, and we aren't destroying our ecosystems everywhere one looks. Cornucopia forever.

What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?

[snip]

In fact, the question can be asked more broadly: “What were the thought processes and discussions amongst the inhabitants of Easter Island leading up to the removal of the last remnants of forest?” This could be seen, perhaps, as a hypothetical exploration, rooted in a real historical event, of “the psychology of resource depletion denial.”

A foreshadowing of the looming twilight of the Oil Age. The way of life on Easter Island wasn't negotiable either. The result?

As the forests shrunk in area and the annual percentage rate of depletion steadily increased, at some point, someone must have realised that the situation was not sustainable and said as much. The island is not that big and what was happening at one end would have been common knowledge at the other end.

Yet the inhabitants continued on. The forest dwindled to nothing and the soil washed away, depleted. Crop yields dropped. Felling trees destroyed animal habitat and then the animals. Food became scarce, leading to famine, inter-tribal warfare and eventually cannibalism. The population crashed in a mass die-off.

The Euthanasia of Reason

Goya created the famous etching with the even more famous caption "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters." While he may perhaps have sought to convey sleep as unleashing creativity, the caption as well as the imagery of foolish owls and ignorant bats is now used mostly as metaphor for the disasters that result from a lack of critical thinking.

It is a sleeping sickness for it renders its victims at length incapable of exercising their faculties' full function. The sickness is virulent, as it is readily contagious to those with a mental immune system weakened by atrophy. Even the somewhat more hale of mind are also susceptible to those evangelizing the joys of dimwittery who are as vectors for the pathology of embraced ignorance.

Perhaps, gentle reader, you think I wax over-much and with an excess of alarm? Sadly, no. These monsters of unreason have been so widely loosed that the resulting grotesqueries are everywhere visible. For example, behold the rich vein of raw unreason displayed in this recent piece: "Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets." (The reporter, Leslie Kaufman, does not much heap irrationality on the idiocies of those quoted, but is, alas, guilty of journalistic stenography: can not the most absurd and ridiculous of statements be tagged for the utter nonsense that it is?)

How deep is our sleep? Let's bestir ourselves and see...

HCE Day 2

Day 2 of the Harvesting Clean Energy Conference kicked off at 8:00 a.m. here in Kennewick. There were quite a few more people in attendance than on Day 1, no doubt due to the full-day schedule, its being a Monday, and there being no distracting sporting events. Hal Calborn, Conference Emcee, summarized one of yesterday's key messages, that the focus on many attendees was on energy security being the key economic and policy driver and the need to create jobs in the burgeoning global clean energy economy. However, "it doesn't mean that climate change is not an issue."

---

Next up was US Representative Doc Hastings (R-WA) and the contrast of his "special remarks" to those yesterday by US Representative Jay Inslee (D-WA) was stark. Inslee supported the Waxman-Markey and Stimulus bills; Hastings opposed them. Inslee is one Congress' most impassioned and articulate champions of renewable energy and clean technology; Hastings said he is "in favor" of renewables, but spent most of his time advocating for the primacy of oil and gas.

HCE Day 1

US Representative Jay Inslee (D-WA) gave the keynote at today's opening session of the Harvesting Clean Energy Conference. He had many interesting things to say, and the predominantly friendly audience was liking what they heard.

His most important point: There will be clean energy jobs--lots of them--in the future. It is not a question of whether, but where.

While he was also quick to praise Washington State's largest trade partner in general, he was pointed in his criticism of how they were competing and had harsh words for what he called their "strange attitudes about trade." They trade from us, "reverse engineer" it, then close their market as they create their own competitive products. It is "unacceptable and non-sustainable." We cannot allow them to "illegally dominate the clean energy future."

Significantly, the fault is squarely our own: we have yet to aggressively compete in return. The Chinese have a "national goal" to dominate the cleantech sector, and the US as a nation needs to "stand up to them."

Fiddling

President Obama never uttered the words "cap and trade" in his State of the Union address. He said only a bit more on climate change, the impetus for such legislation either, calling for passage of

...a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.

An interesting rationale considering the amount of clean energy development already happening. Even with the wretched economy of 2009,  the US added more wind power capacity last year than ever, and the country now leads the world. Lots of money is already being made in clean energy.

Planets Don't Lie, People Do

"Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"
--Chico Marx, Duck Soup

There are several kinds of opponents of a meaningful response to the threat of climate change. But the prize for intellectual dishonesty goes to those who, with unwitting hilarity, suggest we ignore evidence in front of our faces in favor of their insistent fiction.

There's plenty of evidence that comes straight from the Earth:

One can argue for hours whether this year was warmer or colder than last... [but] it doesn't matter. We should be reading the earth, not thermometers. The earth is clearly warming, and sea level is clearly rising.

The physical evidence can be measured, and generally has been measured over decades or centuries. Look at sea level rise, antarctic ice sheet collapse, retreat of glaciers, permafrost melting, ocean acidification, or any number of other indicators that don't require settling an interminable shouting match over temperature trends.

Skeptics confuse weather with climate, blather about putative "global cooling", mount endless ad hominem attacks against scientists, pretend to be authoritative, distort economic effects, strew red herrings, and cling tenaciously to comfortable fantasies. To believe such charlatans is to choose delusion.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

Missing the Forest for the Trees

The usual suspects are reiterating the usual ignorant bunk about how recent cold weather, particularly in Europe, somehow disproves climate change. It's not true of course.

First, there is the tiresomely repeated fallacy of confusing weather with climate. We expect it to be cold in January; it's winter you know.

Second, some of the wingnuts just lie about it.

Third, it's not as if it's cold everywhere. When you look at the whole world, it's actually warmer than normal overall (via):

Finally, the trend is much clearer if you literally look at the 10,000-foot view. Temperature data in the layers just above the surface tell a pretty clear story. It's getting hot in here.

Then there is the change in atmospheric carbon and what it's doing to the oceans.

Peak Oil Refuted

We will never run out of oil.

This according to Peter Davies, Chief Economist at BP. Why?

...ideas of peak oil supply are not true. Doomsayers have exaggerated the issue. The bell-shaped curve of production over time does not apply to the world's oil resources.

Because the rules don't apply to oil! Apparently you just can't use up all of the stuff, even if it is in finite supply and even if, as he admits, "a barrel can only be produced once."

The reason of course is faith in technology and markets. Davies believes that as long as demand doesn't slacken, the economic benefit of increased production and the marvels of ever-better (and ever more feasible) extraction technology imply that there will always be supply to meet any demand:

Those who believe in peak oil tend to believe that technology and economics don't matter, and I think this is false. The application of technology, the innovation of new technology and economic forces especially mean that recoverable oil resources can increase. If there is a peak in oil, it will come from the demand side.

Well, of course technology and economics matter, but then, so does geology.

Future technological advances and oil selling for $500 per barrel have a high likelihood of allowing more production from reserves not currently feasible. But so what? They won't, as Davies laughably asserts, increase "oil resources." There is only so much oil in the ground, and no amount of money or technological innovation will create more to meet relentlessly and arbitrarily increasing demand. It's a bit like Peak Buffalo.

Perhaps Davies misunderstands the concept of peak oil. (This is not unlikely given his antiquated economist's viewpoint that EROEI is "meaningless.") It is not about using up the last drop. Instead, we pass (or have passed) the point where the easy oil has been had, and what remains is increasingly hard to find, hard to reach, poor quality, in smaller concentrations and, critically, enormously expensive. The limits of technology are pushed and the economics become infeasible, but the driver is geology--there's a finite amount of oil, only a fraction of which will ever be plausibly produced and used. The idea that future technology will enable a never-ending cornucopia is absurd. Moon rocks can be obtained using technology, but no one will ever bring them to Earth to make a garden wall.

Peak oil will not be caused by demand. Slackening of demand will occur, but as demand destruction, a symptom of soaring prices caused by shrinking production at escalating cost.

I found Davies' rationalizations in a piece from Emirates Business 24/7 (via). The author, one Nadim Kawach, clearly also a true believer in a permanent Age of Oil, dismisses claims of any eventual peak:

...such scenarios have been refuted by most oil producers, mainly the Arab countries on the grounds their region actually contains much more oil, which could be extracted by advanced technology in the future.

Can more oil be produced in future? Quite possibly. At endlessly affordable cost? Unlikely. Peak oil refuted? Only if you believe in magic ponies.

Blowing Harder

Behold the recent trifecta of climate change denial know-nothingness.

First there was half-term Gov. Sarah Palin's screed, rushed into print without seeming benefit of any fact-checking by the WaPo. What will she write about next? The Large Hadron Collider and the mysteries of dark matter?

Next was Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) who, despite stiff competition for the title, can fairly lay claim to being the Most Embarrassing Member of the US Senate. Inhofe threatened for months to lead a "truth squad" to the Copenhagen Conference, but in the end showed up as a truthiness squad of ... himself, with no real plan, no meetings with delegates ... nothing. His aides cobbled together some reporters whom Inhofe addressed from the top of a staircase, inveighing against the "hoax" of global warming. Asked one reporter, “If there’s a hoax, then who’s putting on this hoax, and what’s the motive?” Inhofe responded that it was "perpetrated on the world by the UN" and sold to Americans "by the Hollywood elite." The European press, unlike many of its US counterparts, did not give such unsupported ravings equal time with the peer-reviewed findings of scientists. Said a reporter from Der Spiegel, "that's ridiculous. You're ridiculous."

Finally, we have Sean Hannity of Fox News in a momemt of unintentional lucidity during a bombastic exchange with former Education Secretary Bill Bennett on climate change and SwiftHack:

Why would a scientist -- and I have really not gotten a satisfactory answer from anybody -- why would scientists risk their careers and their reputations to lie and manipulate data if there wasn't some agenda? And if they are, and there is an agenda, what is it?

Here's a quick lesson in logic for Hannity called modus tollens:

If Scientists lie and manipulate data
Then Scientists have some agenda

But:

Scientists do not have some agenda

Therefore:

Scientists do not lie and manipulate data

There is ample evidence to discredit the SwiftHack allegations for what they are--a smear campaign--but without even getting into those details, the whole notion fails any analysis of cui bono: to whom is the good, i.e. who benefits? It is easy to see how one side benefits: the constellation of carbon spewing industries, their funded "think" tanks, advocating pols and sycophantic press apologists. On the other side the scientists ... benefit how? No wonder Hannity cannot get "a satisfactory answer."

I'm no expert on climate change but, unlike the nincompoops quoted above, at least I can research sources and weigh competing viewpoints based on their logic, reasoning, veracity of sources, use of verifiable facts and appearance of conflicts of interest. Ultimately, however:

Most of us, most of the time, are like historian and blogger Josh Marshall: "The fact that the vast majority of people with specialized knowledge in the field think there's a problem is good enough for me," he wrote. "I can't be knowledgeable about everything. And I'm comfortable with the modern system in which the opinions of really knowledgeable people with expertise counts more in cases like this than people who know nothing at all."

If I had a medical condition I would seek the advice of doctors, not politicians or millionaire TV infotainers. I also wouldn't decide what to believe based on a poll. If the Earth doctors (climatologists) tell us in overwhelming numbers that the planet is ailing and intervention is necessary, why would we not trust them? They owe allegiance to their profession and to the truth, rather than, to paraphrase Upton Sinclair, to those who pay their salaries.

More Doctors Smoke Camels

Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of the journal Science, wrote in the WaPo on-line (via):

Don't be fooled about climate science. In April, 1994 -- long after scientists had clearly demonstrated the addictive quality and devastating health impacts of cigarette smoking -- seven chief executives of major tobacco companies denied the evidence, swearing under oath that nicotine was not addictive. Now, the American public is again being subjected to those kinds of denials, this time about global climate change.

It is not surprising that corporate interests flack for their own financial advantage with no regard to anyone or anything else.

It is not surprising that mendacious pols write shabby op-ed pieces like the one to which this is a response.

It is not surprising that stenographic hacks publish them. (Kathleen Graham would be mortified.)

What is surprising is that so many find such people more credible than the thousands of scientists whose work has been subjected to decades of peer review and who have nothing to gain and everything to lose by the slightest misstep. Even when we've seen this movie before.

Did the tobacco companies pay the Camel-loving Doctors and Marlboro Men enough to compensate them for their shortened lives?

There is a big difference, however, between the paid tobacco shills and those gaining advantage (political, pecuniary or both) today--in the past they put their own future at risk; today they imperil it for everyone, for generations to come.

Senator Inhofe: Oil and Gas Don't Pollute

How did this man become a US Senator?



Says James Inhofe, the Senate's biggest climate change denier (via):

People complain that we are buying — importing from the Middle East — oil and gas. And then they find out that we have it all right here. We don’t have to do that. If their argument there is “Well, we don’t want to use oil and gas because we think it pollutes” — which it doesn’t — but if that’s their argument, then why are we willing to import it from Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East?

Oil and gas aren't polluting!? Is there something else in the water in Oklahoma that causes this kind of insanity? How can anyone take this man seriously? Of course, only in Oklahoma did every single county vote for John McCain over Barack Obama, so re-electing Inhofe twice may seem, well, OK.

Math is Math

Looks like this will be an El Nino year, perhaps a strong one, which pleases some for the schadenfreude it provides:

1998 was the hottest year on record because of an extraordinarily powerful el Nino that heated up the entire planet dramatically. But because it was so hot, climate disruption deniers have been using it as the starting point from which they claim, wrongly, that “the global temperature has been cooling for a decade now.” This false claim was strengthened by the lucky coincidence that 2008 turned out to be a la Nina year, when the global temperature dropped significantly. Climate disruption deniers then took advantage of an unfortunate fact of least-squares linear trend estimates - they’re VERY sensitive to endpoint variation, especially in short, noisy datasets. And not only is global temperature noisy on a monthly and yearly basis, but ten years is a woefully short amount of data. And don’t even get me started on Joe D’Aleo’s, Lord Monckton’s, and Ross McKitrick’s 5-year “trend” from 2003 to 2008 which, conveniently enough, has another el Nino to la Nina transition.

So now, with a new el Nino heating up the summer and autumn global temperatures by some as-yet-unknown amount, climate disruption scientists and activists have their own convenient endpoints to the data. 1999 was a la Nina year, after all, and 2009 is an el Nino year, so any trend calculated from 1999 to 2009 will be huge, given that global temperatures for July through December are significantly warmer on average than January through June. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that 2009 could be warm enough to turn the supposed “cooling trend” into a “warming trend” all by itself. And that’s the first reason I’m happy about a new el Nino.

Of course, we’re talking weather here, not climate, and the exact same statistical tools that I and others use to debunk the bogus cooling trends touted by deniers could be used against any climate scientist who touts a hot 2009. But that brings me to the second reason I’m happy about el Nino - I’m actually looking forward to climate disruption deniers screaming “a hot year in 2009 is only weather, the cooling trend since 1998 is a real trend!” Because in return, I get to call the denier a hypocrite.

Math is math, after all. If the data statistics says that there’s too much noise in the data to extract a meaningful trend from 1998 to 2008, the the same will almost certainly be true from 1999 to 2009. And as a result, any denier who looks at the 99-09 trend and says “that’s just weather, not climate” or “the trend has endpoint problems that make it inaccurate” or even “you cherry-picked your endpoints” will immediately be revealed as a liar and a hypocrite.

Yes, it will be amusing to see the responses from those who confuse weather and climate, have been shouting about supposed global cooling, how Al Gore got it wrong, how cold spring has been this year, blah blah. No, I won't link to them, but they're easy to find if you search on something like "global cooling trend".

Curiouser and Curiouser

Said Alice, in Wonderland:

It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.

Alice could just as easily have said this listening to any of Exxon's climate change deniers, which the oil giant, despite repeated promises to stop, continues to fund. The latest? An Ivy professor claims we are suffering from a carbon "famine". You can't make this stuff up.

Dr. William Happer of Princeton University testified last Wednesday before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last week. He had an utterly novel take on atmospheric CO2 levels, saying that today represents a CO2 "famine" compared to levels of "80 million" years ago. Incredibly, Happer stated that higher CO2 levels would be beneficial to humankind. More CO2, a little warming--it's really all "fine". You really have to watch the video to get the full measure of his glib fatuousity:

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chair of the committee was nonplussed at the specious comparison, but had the good sense to note afterwards that Happer is chair of the George C. Marshall Institute, which receives a large part of its funding from Exxon Mobil. Exxon is well known for its greenwashing, spin and self-serving PR. It is really laughable what that funding can buy!

Happer provided another weird equivalence: carbon restrictions and Prohibition:

Prohibition [of liquor] was a mistake and our country has probably still not fully recovered from the damage it did... Institutions like organized crime got their start in that era. Drastic limitations on CO2 are likely to damage our country in analogous ways.

Yes, I can see it now. Illicit gasoline using homemade refining techniques in backwoods stills. Carbon revenuers chasing them down. Speakeasies filled with furtive patrons giddy from the use of oil lamps. A black market for plastic packaging clamshells. Will organized crime be smuggling petrochemical fertilizers to the family farm? What "analogous ways" is Happer imagining?

What's really ridiculous about this pathetic attempt at fear-mongering is that carbon crime is already happening repeatedly.

Happer also warns about the supposedly ruinous costs of carbon restraint, again without any evidence. The costs of not dealing with the problem, including desertification, rising sea levels, etc. are not considered. In comparison, the cost of a carbon regimen seem modest.

Happer, like many denialists, has no degree or other evident credentials in climatology; instead Happer is the Cyrus Fogg Brackett "I am not a climatologist" Professor of Physics at Princeton University. In his testimony he is literally hand-waving as he throws out wild numbers of alleged CO2 concentrations of "a thousand" and "3 or 4 times" what they are today. He states without attribution that, while there has been warming historically, it has "ceased" in "the past ten years," a fabrication at odds with the data. His grasp of geologic time periods is equally reality-free. After derisively dismissing "propaganda" in children's books about climate change one wonders where he gets his information--perhaps a book showing cheerful cave dwellers gamboling about in a tropical idyll with their pet dinosaurs? Treehugger provides a snarky summary on what those times were really like. Happer's prepared text [pdf] cites Orwell and Voltaire as authorities, attacks the usual strawmen like "inaccuracies" in Al Gore's slide show, and rehashes long discredited denier talking points as if they were fresh insights. Nothing new here.

Increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHG) and especially carbon dioxide (CO2) alarm respected researchers because they believe, based on their broad, inclusive and peer-reviewed scientific assessment, that the resulting temperature increases will produce tipping point events that will be very damaging to humankind and will not be easily mitigated or reversed for many generations. There is a broad scientific consensus on climate change.

However, there will always be sceptics for whom no amount of scientific vetting will ever be enough. For these people, climate change remains and will forever remain an "unproven theory", a "hypothesis", etc. One wonders if they understand the scientific method, the way in which scientists create systems for understanding natural phenomena based on observation, hypothesis and experimental verification. If they applied the same level of scepticism to other areas of science they would be equally unconvinced by such "theories" as gravity, the roundness of the earth, or evolution. (Well, that last one is also a favorite of the "unproven!" crowd.)

Beyond the unscientific sceptics, for whom there is never enough evidence, there are also the anecdotal sceptics, for whom irrelevant data has exalted meaning. However, my favorite are the fantasy sceptics, for whom fictional data, whether derived from literature, cranks, or sheer conjecture of their own febrile imaginations ("what if!") has enough import to doubt anything.
Some of these people even get to rave to Congress as "experts". Imagine.

The George C Marshall Institution (GMI), which provides Happer's soapbox, says on its home page:

Our mission is to improve the use of science in making public policy about important issues for which science and technology are major considerations.

They go on in a very high-minded fashion about the importance of unbiased, impartial, accurate scientific fact to guide and inform policy decisions:

Where science is misused and distorted to promote special interests, GMI works to improve the situation:

• by communicating scientific information clearly,
• by identifying key linkages between science and policy issues,
• and by providing balanced and accurate assessments on specific science-based
  policy issues.

The Institute's accurate and impartial analyses are designed to help policy makers distinguish between opinion and scientific fact so that decisions on public policy issues can be based on solid, factual information, rather than opinion or unproven hypotheses.

Says the George C Marshall Foundation of the former General, Cabinet Secretary and Nobel Laureate for which it is named:

His principles of honesty and truth gained the trust of millions of Americans and the respect of world leaders throughout his years of service.

Truthfully, one wonders what George C Marshall the man would make of his namesake Institute's current Chair and his bizarre claims. Honestly.

Update: Just to clarify, the George C Marshall Foundation seeks to "promote the values and beliefs that encompass George Marshall's legacy for the benefit of future generations". The George C Marshall Institute is not affiliated with the Foundation and claims to "conduct technical assessments of scientific issues with an impact on public policy."

(h/t the future is green)

Anecdotal Reasoning on Climate Change

There's an old joke about the weather: Everyone talks about it, but no one ever does anything about it. When it comes to the climate, however, we really are doing something, and not in a good way. The distinction between weather and climate is important; treating them interchangeably confers undue importance to the transient weather while it trivializes the significance of consequential climate trends.

Many people are confused about climate change. It's not hard to understand some of the confusion because many laypeople find the numbers of climate change small or largely meaningless. How can measurements of invisible gases in parts per million have any real significance? (Too bad greenhouse gases aren't bright pink so everyone could see their accumulation.) Why should anyone care about a temperature change of a few degrees? (If it were your body you would have a fever.) Besides, wouldn't a little warming be a good thing anyway, since we'd spend less to heat our homes? (The effects go far beyond temperature; other costs will dwarf any such savings.)

The most pernicious of these "common sense" arguments against the significance of climate change draws on the unfortunate popularization of it as "global warming." People smirk, "Quite a cold snap lately, eh? Well, so much for global warming!" Otherwise intelligent people utter such nonsense perhaps because it seems innocuous--just a throw-away comment about the weather, everyone's favorite small talk subject.

Others are ideologically motivated to distort the importance of weather observations. A current favorite is claiming that 2008 "was the coldest year this century." This disingenuous phrasing is crafted to imply that 2008 was the coldest in a hundred years, rather than what it really was: the (marginally) coldest of the 8 years of the current century. The statement also avoids the deeper truth, that every year this century is on the top-10 hottest list, and 2008 was warmer than all but two years of the 20th century.

Similar foolishness, drawing climate trend conclusions from recent cold weather, was recently dashed out by the Telegraph, one the leading bastions of dotty UK wingnuttery. (The "Telegraph"? Isn't that like getting your science news from the "Buggy Whip"?)

George Monbiot at the Guardian dispatches:

The weather of the past few weeks would have been unexceptional in the early 1980s. Today it is being cited as definitive proof that man-made climate change can't be happening. There's a splendid example of such blithering idiocy here: Gerald Warner, writing in the Telegraph, contends that the cold snap lends more support to the idea of a new ice age than to global warming theory. Were he to apply this reasoning consistently, he would have to write another blog on Sunday showing that, due to the unseasonably warm temperatures the Met Office forecasts for the UK this weekend, global warming is definitely happening. And the following week, if there's another cold snap, he should predict a new ice age again.

To infer long term climate trends from the immediate weather is to generalize from a single instance. It's reasoning by anecdote.

There's an evident need for factual, clear and straightforward education about climate change (as distinct from the weather) to correct uninformed comment and to counteract the depressingly relentless logorrhea of deliberate misinformation from climate change deniers. Sensible information that debunks climate change myths can readily be found online here and here, as well as routinely on many excellent blogs, including Climate Progress, Gristmill, DeSmogBlog, and Real Climate, amongst numerous others. The 70% of the public that relies on TV for most of their news will need to be disabused of such lazy notions, gently but firmly, by the rest of us.

Exxon Mobil Spins, NYT Gets Dizzy

Another nail in the coffin of the liberal media meme.

What Me Worry as an Energy Policy

Some ostriches apparently pull their heads out of the sand only to put on their tinfoil hats. Don't they know that they look ridiculous?

The lack of awareness by many Republicans on energy policy is breath-taking in its obtuse and obstinate ignorance. From where does such willful ignorance come? As Boss Jim Gettys put it to Charles Foster Kane in the Orson Welles classic Citizen Kane, when Kane refused to face reality:

You're the greatest fool I've ever known, Kane. If it was anybody else, I'd say what's going to happen to you would be a lesson to you. Only you're going to need more than one lesson. And you're going to get more than one lesson.

Apparently the elections of 2006 and 2008 and recent polling are not enough lessons. Independent thinking would help, but only if there is first an end to the celebratory anti-intellectualism masquerading as common-sense populism. Some of us would like our leaders to be smarter than a fifth grader. Seriously smart in fact. Not Know-Nothings and proud of it. Our very future depends on it.