In the Pipeline: 4/17/13

My very strong suspicion is that half of everything they sell is made with petroleum products. And everything they sell is transported with petroleum products. I also suspect that they are really, really inane. Politico (4/15/13) reports: “APPAREL COMPANY PATAGONIA ORGANIZING AGAINST KEYSTONE: The gear, clothing and apparel company Patagonia is blasting the proposed Keystone XL pipeline in a new email to customers. ‘Tar sands oil in the Keystone XL pipeline will cross more than 1,000 bodies of water through three states, threatening freshwater with a devastating oil spill. We want to get a million comments against Keystone XL to the State Department by April 22. The clock is ticking,’ the company writes. On the lobbying side, Patagonia has not retained a lobbying firm since 2008.”

It’s got to be hard trying to keep building up the myth of scarcity when reality continues to knock it down. Denver Business Journal (4/15/13) reports: “The two biggest oil and gas companies working in Colorado’s Niobrara oil play could be drilling new wells nearly 20 years from now, based on the number of locations they’ve identified and the number of wells they plan to drill every year.”

You know, the tragic thing is that some Republicans are definitely that stupid. The good news is that most of them belonged to previous Administrations, or previous losing campaigns. And I used to have a lot more respect for Nobel laureates, before they started to give them out to people like Paul Krugman. Forbes (4/16/13) reports: “And You Thought Income Redistribution Was Just a Liberal Democrat Thing? Yeah, and the amount of the tax would then rise or fall on the basis of the subsequent increase or lessoning of ‘climate effects’… and ‘should be supplemented by a reasonable and sustained support for research and development in the energy area.’… Sadly, they aren’t the only prominent and usually brilliant conservatives who seem to have sampled the carbon tax Kool-Aid. Reagan economist Arthur Laffer has said he would support such a tax in exchange for a payroll or income tax reduction; Bush 43 economist Greg Mankiw supports a global tax; and Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior advisor to John McCain in 2008, wants a tax to provide the energy industry with regulatory ‘certainty.’”

Mike Brune is going to run the Sierra Club off the cliff. That may not be a bad thing. PoliticoPro (4/16/13) reports: “The Democratic Party could suffer if President Barack Obama approves the Keystone XL oil pipeline, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune warned Tuesday… Brune, whose 1.4 million-member group was a major Obama supporter in last year’s election, said major Democratic donors are keeping a watchful eye on the president’s Keystone decision. An approval, he said, could affect fundraising and make activists less inclined to campaign for Democrats facing reelection in 2014.”

Evidently, this dude has not paid attention for the last 15 years or so. Science is the last thing this conversation is about. Examiner (4/15/13) reports: “Yesterday we reported on a new study by the U.S. Federal Drought Task Force that stated global warming was not to blame for the much-politicized 2012 drought in the Great Plains. As the New York Times notes:…‘By contradicting the established and widely accepted theory…that the drought was a palpable and detrimental sign of climate change, the [drought] report grabbed headlines in the American press and prompted sharp retorts from climate change scientists and climate activists.’”

Reports now suggest that the Abominable Snowman is actually responsible for “unsettling” the science. The Telegraph (4/16/13) reports: “The European Union’s climate change policy is on the brink of collapse today after MEPs torpedoed Europe’s flagship CO2 emissions trading scheme by voting against a measure to support the price of carbon permits.”