No More White Guys, No Matter How Great. Just No.

The Democratic Party cannot win without the votes of black women.  Every national Democratic victory since 2006 has been driven by the votes of black women. And now that there are so many excellent female and non-white options, black women are not going to turn out for yet another white guy,  Not Beto, not Bernie, not Biden.  

 

And not Jay Inslee, as intriguing as Digby finds him:

I've been asking people what they think about Washington Governor Jay Inslee for president for the last two years and mostly they say, "who?" Personally, I think that's a selling point. A well-known national profile isn't always such a good thing in presidential politics. (Ask Hillary Clinton ...)

I've followed his career with interest and people I know from the state admire his leadership. So, I'm glad to see that he's decided to enter the presidential fray and he's doing it in an interesting and important way:

What if a meteor were hurtling toward the Earth, about to kill millions and reshape life on the planet as we know it?

And what if the president, instead of doing anything to help, made it worse in just about every way, and called it a hoax (and any solutions a scam) instead of the very real, very clear disaster taking shape?

And what if all the Democrats running to beat him in the next election went on and on about how concerned they were and how it’s our most pressing problem—but none had ever done much more than talk about the problem, and for the most part only started doing that in just the past few years?

That’s where Jay Inslee thinks America is when it comes to climate change. And that’s why he’s going to run for president. The question is whether he can convince anyone else that he’s a big-enough player to be a serious candidate.

Rising seas are 500 miles east and 700 feet down, but Global Warming will destroy Kentucky, too

Everywhere on the planet, humanity's days are numbered and the number is few.  Kentucky's distance and elevation from the ocean is not going to save us.

It's all here in Chapter 19 of the official U.S. Government report the Pumpkin Traitor tried to hide on Friday. 


Regarding the Southeast, including Kentucky, the report reads:

While all regional residents and communities are potentially at risk for some impacts, some communities or populations are at greater risk due to their locations, services available, and economic situations. In fact, a recent economic study using a higher scenario (RCP8.5)¹¹ suggests that the southern and midwestern populations are likely to suffer the largest losses from projected climate changes in the United States.

Yep, Governor I Got Mine Fuck You, by stripping Kentucky's treasury, education system and support programs thus keeping us poor, sick and stupid, is making our suffering from global warming even worse than the coasts.

People Like This Vote. Do You?

Yes, it's from Australia.  But you can easily find a majority of repug voters here who agree.

From Pharyngula:

Is Bevin Joking or is the Orange Menace's Stupidity Catching?

Or is Governor I Got Mine Fuck You delivering an epic rim job in hopes of getting a administration job?

From the Courier:

Citing the deep freeze gripping much of the U.S., Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin is crediting President Donald Trump with having “fixed global warming.”

With temperatures falling to near zero degrees across much of Kentucky on Friday night, Bevin took to Twitter to mock mainstream climate science and defend Trump. In a tweet with echoes of a recent one by the president that longed for some “good old global warming,” the governor tweeted: “Trump has been in office 1 year and has already fixed global warming.”

That statement on Bevin’s personal Twitter account was superimposed over a weather map showing frigid temperatures gripping much of the country.

I guess he thinks his billions of dollars will protect his nine children from the end of civilization as global warming make the planet literally lethal for human beings.

Don't Pray; Vote

From Brad Blog:

Failing

Now in Kentucky, unfortunately, it's called failing if you don't believe in bibble.

Divine Irony:

No, Hurricane Harvey Is Not Going to Persuade Any Climate Change Deniers

Oh, D.R. Tucker, you are so cute.  

Even the most vocal of climate-change deniers in the US House and Senate have to know that in the wake of this horrific storm, denying the reality of human-caused climate change will be regarded as absurd. Harvey is the exact sort of storm that climate scientists have long predicted would come as a consequence of the unrestrained release of heat-trapping gases due to the burning of fossil fuels. Basic physics and common sense dictate that if we keep proceeding with business-as-usual energy policies, the storms will only become more devastating and more deadly.

Republicans have no excuses left, not when the consequences of carbon pollution are affecting their own voters. Sooner or later, they’re going to have to come to the table.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, stop you're killing me.

Physics? Common sense?  These are repugs we're talking about.  They know their voters don't care about physics or common sense.  Their voters care about making liberals cry. And nothing makes liberals cry harder than climate change denial. 

The trump voters in Houston are sitting on their roofs waiting for rescue and singing "liberal tears are soooo delicious!" as their lives wash into the ocean.

No, hurricanes are sent by babby jeebus' daddy. That's what they're saying. It's "god's will."  Just like it's god's will that we burn every iota of carbon on the planet so babby jeebus can come back and kill all the homos and feminists and abortion doctors.

There are a bunch of liberals in Houston.  Rescue them first. Then we can watch the trump voters drown in the floods their denial caused.

So When the Vaccine for Climate-Change-Caused Yellow Fever Is Rationed, Trumpies Go to the Back of the Line

Dr. Walter Reed was a government employee.  A government-employed scientist.  A government-employed scientist using government funding to put an end to a millenias-old scourge that killed millions until government-funded scientific research attacked it.

 

Charlie Pierce:

Reed's discovery of its source ranks in medical history just a little bit behind the eradication of smallpox. But it never really went away—it killed almost 350 people in Angola last year. One of the reasons that outbreak got out of hand is that there happens to be a worldwide shortage of the vaccine against Yellow Fever. Can we have a show of hands from everyone who thinks the current administration is prepared to have epidemic disease land on its doorstep?

Pay no attention to the ridiculously-out-of-season tornadoes.

The National Weather Service just issued a fucking Tornado Warning for Western and Southwestern Kentucky.

On the seven-fucking-teenth of De-fucking-cember.

Tornado season in Kentucky is April 1 to June 30.  Always has been.  Never will be again.

No, this is not global warming.  Nothing is ever global warming.

But if, after January 20, the National Weather Service suddenly stops reporting weather that does not fit the climate change denialists' fantasies, you'll know why.

Nobody "Believes" in Climate Change

Nobody "believes" in gravity, heliocentrism or evolution, either.  Either you accept the scientific fact or you're an irredeemable moron.

Everybody who claims to not "believe" in scientific facts, please report immediately to the roof of the closest 10-story building and then jump off. 

HaHa! Oh, those crazy scientists. What kidders they are.

Brush up on your landscaping skills, y'all: there's no place for you in the post-trumpian dystopia.

James Bruggers at the Courier:

At least 15 Kentucky scientists – several of them from Louisville – have joined 2,300 other scientists from across the country in signing a letter to President-elect Donald Trump urging him to rely on science as a key input for crafting public policy.

The letter, posted on the website of the Union of Concerned Scientists, is also addressed to the incoming Congress. It asks these political leaders to make sure "science continues to play a strong role in protecting public health and well-being." From disease outbreaks to climate change to national security to technology innovation, people benefit when our nation’s policies are informed by science unfettered by inappropriate political or corporate influence," the letter says, while also calling for scientists to be able to do their jobs "without fear of reprisals or retaliation."

Opinion vs. Theory

Every time I hear some repug or freakazoid say she doesn't "believe" in a scientific fact like global warming or evolution - or even the non-existence of biological "race" - because it's just a theory, I want to ask if she "believes" in the theory of gravity. 

 

Juanita Jean:

I have a theory, too.  My theory is that creationists are people who did not do well at science in school and want the answer to every question on the science test to be, “You know, God.”

PZ Myers:

I sure wish more people understood the meaning of theory in science, but at least Piers Sellers does a good job of explaining the concept. I try to hammer into my students (as my teachers hammered into me) the primacy of evidence — observation and measurement — but evidence always has to be for or against something, and that something is theory. You can’t have a theory without evidence, and you can’t have evidence without a theory to give it meaning. So I’m always happy to see another explanation of this core concept of science.

Fundamentally, a theory in science is not just a whim or an opinion; it is a logical construct of how we think something works, generally agreed upon by scientists and always in agreement with the available observations. A good example is Isaac Newton’s theory of gravitation, which says that every physical object in the universe exerts a gravity force field around itself, with the strength of that field depending on its mass. The theory—one simple equation—does a superb job of explaining our observations of how planets orbit around the sun, and was more than good enough to make the calculations we needed to send spacecraft to the moon and elsewhere. Einstein improved on Newton’s theory when it comes to large-scale astronomical phenomena, but, for everyday engineering use, Newton’s physics works perfectly well, even though it is more than three hundred years old.

One danger of the public misunderstanding of this idea is that they do equate theory and opinion; they tear down successful theories with rhetoric and ignorance, and they also elevate nonsense by labeling it, without comprehension, a theory. And I could piss in the snow and call it a book, too.

But theories are abstract, after all, so it’s easy for people to get tricked into thinking that because something is based on theory, it could very likely be wrong or is debatable in the same way that a social issue is debatable. This is incorrect. Almost all the accepted theories that we use in the physical and biological sciences are not open to different interpretations depending on someone’s opinion, internal beliefs, gut feelings, or lobbying. In the science world, two and two make four. To change or modify a theory, as Einstein’s theories modified Newton’s, takes tremendous effort and a huge weight of experimental evidence.

This is something that should be explained to everyone visiting Answers in Genesis and their horrible dishonest “museum” and “ark park”. The central argument Ken Ham always makes is a demolition of the whole concept of theory — he claims that any alternative explanation, no matter how much it ignores the evidence, is a theory, and all theories are equal, and therefore, his bizarre, highly subjective and ideologically driven interpretation of the words of his holy book are just as much deserving of the title of “theory” as the hard-earned, constantly tested, well-supported by evidence theory of evolution.

And that’s dangerous. Ken Ham uses the degradation of theory to peddle nonsense to the rubes and make money and promote his narrow religion, but as the article explains, it’s also being used to corrupt decision-making about climate that endangers every human being on the planet.

Don't Fall For Fracking Lies

Genuine renewable energy - solar and wind especially - is already cheap and efficient enough to beat out coal and natural gas for electricity generation.

 

But the desperate fossil fuel dead-enders are still spreading lies about how we can't have renewables unless we use natural gas, which is so kind to the environment.

 

Motherfucking liars lying about fucking their mothers, like they always do.

 

Joe Romm at Think Progress:

Fracking is not good for the climate. Or, to put it a tad more scientifically, “By The Time Natural Gas Has A Net Climate Benefit You’ll Likely Be Dead And The Climate Ruined,” as I wrote two years ago.

New satellite data and surface observations analyzed by Harvard researchers confirm previous data and observations: U.S. methane emissions are considerably higher than the official numbers from the EPA. Significantly, the EPA numbers are mostly based on industry-provided estimates, not actual measurements.

While this new study doesn’t attribute a specific source to the remarkable 30 percent increase in U.S. methane emissions from 2002–2014, many other studies have identified the source of those emissions as leakage of methane from the natural gas production and delivery system.

The central problem for the climate is that natural gas is mostly methane (CH4), a super-potent greenhouse gas, which traps 86 times as much heat as CO2 over a 20-year period. That’s why many studies find that even a very small leakage rate can have a large climate impact — enough to gut the entire benefit of switching from coal-fired power to gas for a long, long time.

Even worse, other studies find — surprise, surprise — natural gas plants don’t replace only high-carbon coal plants. They often replace very low carbon power sources like solar, wind, nuclear, and even energy efficiency. That means even a very low leakage rate wipes out the climate benefit of fracking.

Indeed, researchers confirmed in 2014 that — even if methane leakage were zero percent — “increased natural gas use for electricity will not substantially reduce US GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions, and by delaying deployment of renewable energy technologies, may actually exacerbate the climate change problem in the long term.” Exactly. In fact, a study just last month found that natural gas and renewables are competing directly with each other to replace coal plants in this country.

All of these findings taken together vindicate the concerns of high leakage rates raised by Cornell professors Howarth, Santoro and Ingraffea, which I reported on back in 2011. Howarth told Climate Central this week that the increase in methane emissions “almost certainly must be coming from the fracking and from the increase in use of natural gas.” Howarth notes that even with deep CO2 cuts, we’re headed toward dangerous 2°C warming by mid-century.

“But the planet responds much more rapidly to methane, so a reduction in methane emissions now would slow the rate of global warming immediately,” he said.

The good news is that renewables are ready to handle the job of running a modern economy, so we don’t need to rely on natural gas as a “bridge” to a carbon-free future. The bad news is that many people still tout the supposed climate benefits of the fracking revolution — despite a paucity of observations and analysis to support that view and a plethora of data and research undermining it.

Nuclear Power Still the Worst

Nuclear power is one of the few things - along with smallpox and climate change - that really is even worse than its most hysterical opponents claim.

Zandar:

As I mentioned this morning, today is the anniversary of the Fukushima disaster in Japan, which resulted in tens of thousands dead, tens of thousands more displaced, and a nuclear plant meltdown that will continue to cause detrimental environmental effects for generations.

Reactor number one at Fukushima Daiichi is still so hot that five years later, robots still can't enter.

The robots sent in to find highly radioactive fuel at Fukushima's nuclear reactors have “died”; a subterranean "ice wall" around the crippled plant meant to stop groundwater from becoming contaminated has yet to be finished. And authorities still don’t know how to dispose of highly radioactive water stored in an ever mounting number of tanks around the site. 

Five years ago, one of the worst earthquakes in history triggered a 10-meter high tsunami that crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station causing multiple meltdowns. Nearly 19,000 people were killed or left missing and 160,000 lost their homes and livelihoods in the quake and tsunami. 

Today, the radiation at the Fukushima plant is still so powerful it has proven impossible to get into its bowels to find and remove the extremely dangerous blobs of melted fuel rods, weighing hundreds of tonnes. Five robots sent into the reactors have failed to return. 

The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco)  has made some progress, such as removing hundreds of spent fuel roads in one damaged building. But the technology needed to establish the location of the melted fuel rods in the other three reactors at the plant has not been developed. 

“It is extremely difficult to access the inside of the nuclear plant," Naohiro Masuda, Tepco's head of decommissioning said in an interview. "The biggest obstacle is the radiation.” 

The fuel rods melted through their containment vessels in the reactors, and no one knows exactly where they are now. This part of the plant is so dangerous to humans, Tepco has been developing robots, which can swim under water and negotiate obstacles in damaged tunnels and piping to search for the melted fuel rods. 

But as soon as they get close to the reactors, the radiation destroys their wiring and renders them useless, causing long delays, Masuda said. 

Each robot has to be custom-built for each building.“It takes two years to develop a single-function robot,” Masuda said.

And so the cleanup will continue, probably for the rest of the lives of the people there working to decontaminate the site now.  It's a massive environmental disaster that should have been the end, worldwide, of nuclear power technology.  It's not.  And there are hundreds more potential Fukushima meltdowns waiting to happen.  We do this to ourselves and see the results, and we still do it.

We only get one planet, and we've killed it multiple times over.

But wait!  Nuclear power gets worse.  As has been  true from the birth of nuclear power, nuke plants are never, ever, EVER cost-effective.  They always cost more and charge their customers more than any other kind of electricity generation - even solar and wind in the infancy of those technologies when they cost a mint, but nuclear cost a dozen mints.

But don't be relieved - there's one way to make nuclear energy economical: make the government - that would be you and me as taxpayers, but not the profit-taking nuke industry - subsidize it.

Joe Romm at Think Progress:

In the modern era, nuclear power plants have almost always become more and more expensive over time. They have a “negative learning curve” — along with massive delays and cost overruns in market economies. This is confirmed both by recent studies and by the ongoing cost escalations of nuclear plants around the world, as I’ll detail in this post.

The cost escalation curse of nuclear power

“Ever since the completion of the first wave of nuclear reactors in 1970, and continuing with the ongoing construction of new reactors in Europe, nuclear power seems to be doomed with the curse of cost escalation,” read one 2015 journal article, “Revisiting the Cost Escalation Curse of Nuclear Power.”

In the United States, the cost of Georgia Power’s newest twin Vogtle reactors may top initial estimates of $14 billion and reach $21 billion, according to recent Georgia Public Service Commission testimony. Of course, the first two Vogtle Units begun in 1971 took 18 years to build (a decade over schedule) at a final price of $9 billion — ten times the original price tag. BloombergBusiness wrote last fall, “Even as sympathetic an observer as John Rowe [former chair of the U.S.’s largest nuclear utility] warns that the new units at Vogtle will be uneconomical when — or if — they’re completed.”

 Nuclear power: worse than coal, worse than fracking, worse than Saudi oil, worse than anything.

Matt Bevin Is Killing His Own Children and Yours

Because that's what celebrating the failure of actions to reduce climate warming does: it guarantees that young people are going to be living on a planet that no longer supports human civilization.

From the Herald:

FRANKFORT, Ky (Feb. 9, 2016) - Today, Governor Matt Bevin made the following statement applauding the Supreme Court decision to freeze the Obama Administration's Clean Power Plan regulations:

“Today's Supreme Court ruling is a huge win in the fight against Obama's disastrous Clean Power Plan. The Court's decision to freeze these illegal climate regulations is a victory in our efforts to save our coal jobs and protect Kentucky families from skyrocketing energy prices. We will continue to challenge these regulations as the litigations continue in court.”

Kentucky is among a coalition of states challenging the EPA rules. On January 21st, the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet joined with other states and stakeholders to submit comments to the EPA regarding the Federal Plan Requirements for Greenhouse Gas Emissions and implementation of the Clean Power Plan. 

Not to mention that Governor Lying Coward is still refusing to establish a working relationship with the truth.  Climate regulations are not illegal, the rotting carcass of Big Coal will never create jobs, conservatards have been predicting skyrocketing energy prices for thirty years and it ain't happened yet.  Bought gas lately?  

This Fucking Weather Proves Weather is Fucked

Global Warming, Climate Change, whatever you call it, does not mean it's always warmer.  It means a warming planet causes fucked-up weather.  Floods, droughts, snowstorms.

Just count on the weather always being fucked up, and you'll always be right.

Joe Romm at Think Progress:

Another epic blizzard threatens 50 million people on the East Coast, with a bulls-eye on Washington DC. And leading climatologists again explain how human-induced climate change, especially warming-fueled ocean temperatures, are super-charging the amount of moisture in the atmosphere the storm will dump on us.

First, though, I think the name, Winter Storm Jonas, doesn’t do justice to this blizzard, especially since the Jonas brothers are a pretty harmless pop rock band. I’m suggesting the name, Superstorm (Edward) Snowed-In: Because it will turn DC upside down, bring the government to a standstill, and then flee the country.

Seriously, though, please take this superstorm seriously. As meteorologist Paul Douglas notes, “The Washington D.C. office of the National Weather Service issued a Blizzard Watch for the first time since 1986.” Besides upwards of two feet of snow and high winds over a 36-hour period, coastal regions can also expect some record storm surges.

I asked two of the country’s top climatologists, Michael Mann and Kevin Trenberth, to comment on the role climate change has on this latest superstorm, which is forecast to break records.


Mann, Director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center, explained: “There is peer-reviewed science that now suggests that climate change will lead to more of these intense, blizzard-producing nor’easters, for precisely the reason we’re seeing this massive storm — unusually warm Atlantic ocean surface temperatures (temperatures are in the 70s off the coast of Virginia).”

When you mix extra moisture with “a cold Arctic outbreak (something we’ll continue to get even as global warming proceeds),” as Mann points out, “you get huge amounts of energy and moisture, and monster snowfalls, like we’re about to see here.”
Mann’s bottom line:

While critics like to claim that these massive winter storms are evidence against climate change, they are actually favored by climate change.

I Am Too Cynical to Celebrate, But You Should Not Be

I don't know how old D.R.Tucker is, but my guess is at least a generation younger than me.  He hasn't watched the fossil fuel industry win every single battle for the last 40 years.  He doesn't know that all Exxon-Mobil has to do when some little country - and compared to Exxon-Mobil, even the U.S. and China are little countries - demands it stop drilling/fracking/mining is say "Make me."

Because I don't think we can.  But I do sincerely hope D.R. Tucker is right.

The next time somebody tells you change cannot happen, that hope is a hoax, that good men and women cannot win the biggest fights of the day, remind them of December 12, 2015.

Representatives of 195 countries reached a landmark climate accord on Saturday that would, for the first time, commit nearly every country to lowering planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions to help stave off the most drastic effects of climate change.

Delegates who have been negotiating intensely in this Paris suburb for two weeks gathered for the final plenary session where, suddenly, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius of France asked for opposition to the deal and, hearing none, gaveled the session closed.

With that the delegates achieved what had been unreachable for two decades: a consensus on the need to move away from carbon-based fuels and a plan for the 195 nations to do so.

Thought the final deal did not achieve all that environmentalists, scientists and some countries had hoped for, it set the table for further efforts to slow down the slide toward an unlivable planet.

In the end, it was an extraordinary effort at international diplomacy. Supporters of a deal have argued that no less than the future of the planet was at stake, and in the days leading up to the final session worked relentlessly to push skeptical nations to join their ranks.

I am fighting back tears as I write this. Do you know what this moment means? It means the most rapacious and destructive industry on the face of this warming Earth is on the downfall. It means that we will finally race towards the day where fossil fuels are kept in the ground where they belong, and children born today can have clean air, clean water and a stable future.

Do you know what this moment means? It means men and women of goodwill can succeed in the face of impossible odds.

Do you know what this moment means? It means that the deniers, the disinformers and the demagogues have been humiliated and humbled once and for all.

This is history’s golden moment. This is a moment where hope won in a blowout against cynicism. This is a day to be proud, damn proud, of being alive, of being compassionate, of being human.

Caring won. Hope won. Science won. The better angels of our nature won.

CA Stops Investing in Rotting Corpse of Big Coal

Divestment is no joke. Divestment brought down South African apartheid.

Not that it's really necessary, given that Big Coal has been walking around dead for a couple of decades now

Think Progress:

The California Assembly passed a bill Wednesday that prompts the state’s public employee pension funds to divest from coal.

The bill passed the Assemby with a vote of 43 to 27, and will require the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) and California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) — which combined are responsible for $476 billion in assets — to remove all holdings in companies that get at least half of their revenue from coal mining. The divestment would have to be completed by July 2017. If signed into law, the measure would be the first of its kind in the United States.

“Coal is the fuel of the past and it’s no longer a wise investment for our pensioners,” California assemblyman Rob Bonta, who presented the bill, said in a statement. “I’m pleased that my colleagues agree: it’s time to move on from this dirty energy source.”

California’s Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, who introduced the bill, also praised its passage.

“Coal is losing value quickly and investing in coal is a losing proposition for our retirees; it’s a nuisance to public health; and it’s inconsistent with our values as a state on the forefront of efforts to address global climate change,” de León said. “California’s utilities are phasing out coal, and it’s time our pension funds did the same.”

The bill now heads to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk. The governor has been vocal about the need to act on climate change — he said in June that, when talking about climate action, “we are talking about extinction. We are talking about climate regimes that have not been seen for tens of millions of years. We’re not there yet, but we’re on our way.” The governor is expected to sign the divestment bill.

Forget Tree-Hugging: DoD Says Global Warming Is A Security Threat

The Pentagon is a funny old dog.  When it says stuff like "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction," conservatards cheer and liberals scoff.  (Guess who was right.) 

But conservatards scoff and liberals cheer when it says stuff like this (and guess who's right again):

DOD Releases Report on Security Implications of Climate Change

The "Report on National Security Implications of Climate-Related Risks and a Changing Climate" was provided to Congress yesterday.

The report responds to the request by the Senate Committee on Appropriations for information on the National Security Implications of Climate Change made in the report to accompany H.R. 4870, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2015.

Specifically, the committee requested that the undersecretary of defense for policy provide a report that identifies the most serious and likely climate-related security risks for each combatant command and the ways those commands integrate risk mitigation into their planning processes. Further, the report was to provide resources required for effective responses and the timeline of resource needs.

The report reinforces the fact that global climate change will have wide-ranging implications for U.S. national security interests over the foreseeable future because it will aggravate existing problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions that threaten domestic stability in a number of countries.

The report finds that climate change is a security risk because it degrades living conditions, human security, and the ability of governments to meet the basic needs of their populations. Communities and states that are already fragile and have limited resources are significantly more vulnerable to disruption and far less likely to respond effectively and be resilient to new challenges.

The Department of Defense's primary responsibility is to protect national security interests around the world. This involves considering all aspects of the global security environment and planning appropriately for potential contingencies and the possibility of unexpected developments both in the near and the longer terms. It is in this context that the department must consider the effects of climate change -- such as sea level rise, shifting climate zones, and more frequent and intense severe weather events -- and how these effects could impact national security.

To reduce the national security implications of climate change, combatant commands are already integrating climate-related impacts into their planning cycles. The ability of the United States and other countries to cope with the risks and implications of climate change requires monitoring, analysis, and integration of those risks into existing overall risk management measures, as appropriate for each combatant command.

The report concludes the department is already observing the impacts of climate change in shocks and stressors to vulnerable nations and communities, including in the United States, the Arctic, Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South America.

The report is posted at http://www.defense.gov/pubs/150724-Congressional-Report-on-National-Implications-of-Climate-Change.pdf.

Remember that catastrophic global warming is not, repeat not, a threat to the planet.  The planet will survive no matter what we do.  What's at risk is human civilization.  A super-heated, runaway-greenhouse-effect planet will keep orbiting the sun and many of its organisms will continue to live and reproduce, albeit under vastly different conditions.

But it will finally be rid, after several million years, of the parasite that thought itself beyond destruction simply because it had the power to destroy itself.

Beshear Whines Like a Little Bitch About Weak-Ass New Coal Rules

If every ounce of coal vanished tomorrow, life in Kentucky would go on without a hiccup. Steve Beshear, Jack Conway, Matt Bevin, Mitch McConnell and every other Big-Coal-cock-gobbling politician in the state knows it.

Gov. Beshear’s Statement on EPA Rule Announced Today

FRANKFORT, Ky. (Aug. 3, 2015) – “I am extremely disappointed and frustrated by the huge changes the EPA made from the proposed rule. What is being proposed for Kentucky is disastrous – disastrous for our declining coal economy and equally disastrous for our very important manufacturing economy. The EPA claimed that it listened to the comments received on the proposed rule for the Clean Power Plan. It is clear from the emissions numbers the EPA has set for Kentucky that the agency did not listen to us. This rule leaves the Commonwealth with few, if any, alternatives to formulate a plan without significant harmful impact to rate payers, manufacturing companies and the overall economy.

Attorney General Jack Conway and I will continue to fight this onerous rule in the courts. During my entire term as Governor, I have remained steadfast in my support of Kentucky’s important coal and manufacturing industries, and the affordable energy and good jobs they provide the Commonwealth and the nation.

This is an extensive rule, and we will be meeting with stakeholders to assess its potential impacts. We will, however, continue to explore ways for Kentucky to comply with the rule should it become law, because we believe that a Kentucky specific plan would be better than a federal plan imposed on us.” – Gov. Steve Beshear.

Lies, motherfucking lies, and motherfucking liars lying about fucking their mothers.

Meanwhile in Reality World, here's Kevin Drum:

But Michael Grunwald isn't buying the hype. He's not impressed with Obama's plan to reduce power plant emissions 32 percent by 2030:

That’s nice, but by the end of this year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the power sector’s emissions will already be down 15.4 percent from 2005 levels — about half the anticipated reductions in just a decade, and before the plan goes into effect. In other words, even under the strengthened plan, the rate of decarbonization is expected to slow over the next 15 years. What, did you think the strongest action ever taken to combat climate change would actually accelerate the nation’s efforts to combat climate change?

....If you’re really ranking them, the Clean Power Plan is at best the fourth-strongest action that Obama has taken to combat climate change, behind his much-maligned 2009 stimulus package, which poured $90 billion into clean energy and jump-started a green revolution; his dramatic increases in fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks, which should reduce our oil consumption by 2 million barrels per day; and his crackdown on mercury and other air pollutants, which has helped inspire utilities to retire 200 coal-fired power plants in just five years.

Kevin thinks that's a little unfair, but generally agrees on the main point.

In the meantime, Grunwald is right to say that the new mandates aren't really all that tough. At the same time, the fact that we have any power plant mandates at all really is a big deal. Just setting the precedent that the federal government should regulate carbon emissions from power plants is a critical first step, and if it survives court challenges and congressional temper tantrums it will likely lead to further cutbacks in the future. And that's a big deal.

No. Outlawing all fossil fuel use starting yesterday would be a big deal. Anything short of that is sucking Big Oil cock while the oceans rise.