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Aftermath of Joplin MO Tornado 2011

It is innately human for us to recall and assess this past year’s major events and review the memories, as the end of the year winds down to the last few days. After that, the new year starts up and we supposedly have something to look forward to, as we turn our heads and point to the future, though not quite putting last year’s memories in a lock box. Whether this transition is cultural or more subtly linked to the events like the Winter Solstice, the transition we make on or about New Year’s day is a change from looking in the rear view mirror for a few moments, to catch a few fading memories and then switching to focus our eyes on the road ahead. Barack Obama will have to do that as he prepares for his re-election campaign. Right now, resting in Hawaii, he is probably soaking up the impact of his recent speech in Osawatomie, Kansas and trying to estimate how effectively it went down with the Millennial crowd, those for whom it was designed. I agree with other assessments that he will benefit more from the Millennial generation in the coming election compared to any other age group and that’s why his Osawatomie speech was so important. He currently holds a 25 point lead over Romney among Millennials–they alone will hold the key to his re-election and I think he finally knows this–they are strongly in support of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, but he will have to make a few more left turns in order to convince them and keep his big margin, enough so that the millennials will massively get out and vote in November 2012: they went missing in 2010.  This is an historic election coming up. Let’s hope that this election proves to be the year that we put the Republican Party, at least this iteration of it, in our rear view mirror on a more permanent basis.  On the other hand, for the older crowd, those that are in the pre-Baby Boomer generation, many of whom are members of the Tea party,  Obama trails Mitt Romney by a 54-41 margin, a very wide gap. Perhaps he can whittle away and gain a few points with this group, because as soon as Romney gets the nomination, he will shift his focus towards cutting benefits for Social Security and Medicare and eliminating the new healthcare bill he refers to as “Obamacare.” Those are issues that touch many of the Tea Party members–what they are actually mad about is not their benefits, but the idea that illegal immigrants and lazy young people will step in to get a share of the American pie while their own is increasingly at risk–that’s why they are conflicted with Romney’s candidacy. At the very moment Romney gets the nomination, many Tea Party members might be uttering “Hell hath no fury like a former private equity manager running for President.”

Not only do we as individuals assess the recent past, but it makes sense that our government agencies  try to do the same; one assessment among the U.S. government agencies stands out: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has tallied the cost of the many weather disasters we have been through in the past year. Justin Gillis reports on this in the New York Times: as he describes it, a typical year in this country for weather disasters usually has three or four incidents which reach the threshold of $1 billion or more each. But this year NOAA has done the math and, while the agency has not yet finished adding it all up, the final cost is likely to exceed $ 50 billion. It includes wildfires, floods, heat waves, dust storms and several deadly tornadoes, the likes of which have not been seen before.  According to  a weather expert who co-founded the website called “Weather Underground,” a search of the historical weather patterns going back to the late 1800s did not reveal anything comparable to 2011 for weather disasters. Though most climate scientists are certain that the heating of the earth from greenhouse gases accounts for many of these catastrophic events, right now it isn’t possible to say which events are global-climate-change-related and which are not. Climate scientists know that we are changing the scale of atmospheric events, because we are putting more energy into the atmosphere. This additional energy has to be dissipated in some way and more frequent and violent interactions with the Earth’s surface, whether over water or land, are about the only options. But things like tornadoes are hard to pinpoint in terms of their genesis because they are relatively small on a global scale and seem random. However, less random is the fact that funnels in some of the recent tornadoes, like that in Joplin Missouri, were a mile wide and touched down for much longer stretches than one’s experience would indicate. This was a violent tornado, destroying virtually everything in its path. Right now climate scientists are retooling climate models to deal with smaller regions and study more effectively the impact that global climate change has on these events. But there is some doubt about the accuracy with which these more refined models can be predictive and with public interest in global climate change at such a low ebb, and the economy in the tank, needed research resources to address these kinds of problems are not available.

In case you were thinking about serious mountain climbing this coming year, you might want to check out what has been happening to the large mountains on the planet, those with glaciers on top, most of which are in full retreat. One climber even reported seeing running water near the top of Mt. Everest, something never reported before. You might want to visit Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa before its glacier completely disappears, perhaps as early as 2015. Glaciers on major mountain tops have had serious erosion during the past few decades and because snow and ice have been the glue that keeps loose rocks and boulders bound together, hiking in many places has become more dangerous. While some climbing can be more accessible, it is often longer and more treacherous. To top it all off, a new report indicates that emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere had the largest increase ever recorded, with an increase of 5.9 percent in 2010.  This contrasts with  the 1.4 percent drop in emissions in 2009, the year the recession generated a significant drop in the economy and greenhouse gas emissions. Most climate scientists agree that we have reached a tipping point in the sense that we will have to live through a significant period of  impact from global climate change and that our planet is likely to change in irreversible ways as this century progresses. Here’s hoping that our fondest memories each year are not related to the weather patterns we enjoyed, but may never see again.

RFM

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Iran Hostage Crisis U.S. Embassy Nov 4, 1979

It is the DNA of our foreign policy apparatus that forces us, perhaps in sync with some kind of diplomatic circadian rhythm, to periodically promote the idea that Iran is secretly building a nuclear bomb, in addition to the fact that they are the greatest satanic threat to world peace since the rise of fascism in Europe. Though we don’t officially use the term anymore, GW Bush’s characterization of Iran as part of the axis-of-evil is still emblematic of how we view and diplomatically treat Iran today. We can’t say enough bad things about the country and we are always looking for ways to tighten the sanctions against them we have already imposed (we are going to strengthen our sanctions since the British closed their embassy in Tehran terminated Iran’s foreign office in London). Yes the Iranian regime is a brutal dictatorship and no we don’t want them to develop a nuclear weapon. In fact, we want to eliminate all nuclear weapons. But ever since radicals overthrew the Shah and took our embassy members as hostages (we installed the Shah by overthrowing their democratically elected leader Mossadegh in 1953, as a favor to British oil interests and what eventually became BP (British Petroleum) and is now bp (beyond petroleum)), we cannot shake the fact that we once had the Middle East oil situation fairly well worked out, with rulers who generally did our bidding, especially in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Kuwait until Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah and established an Islamic Republic in 1979. We just can’t accept the humiliation we suffered in that episode and we want and need the current regime to topple. It’s obvious that the United States will not be happy until Iran goes through a change in leadership and we would obviously prefer someone more compliant with our own interests compared with the today’s intolerable situation: we demand regime change. But the reactionary posture we unavoidably display towards Iran, and refresh with predictable synchrony, is aided by our partner in sinister delusions, Likudian Israel, who shares in this paranoia and regularly feeds us information reinforcing our satanic interpretation of the country. But a definite pause was recently injected into the conversation about Iran: a recent report by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), the watchdog of non-weapons nuclear technology transfer, claimed “the possible existence of undeclared nuclear facilities and material in Iran.” This was new because the same agency had reported in 2007 that there was no evidence for a nuclear weapons program in Iran (see below). But, that’s all it took. A lead story in the New York Times the day after the IAEA report came out advanced the idea that “United Nations weapons inspectors [IAEA] have amassed a trove of new evidence that they say makes a “credible” case that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device.” You know that when the New York Times comes out with a forceful article like that, the story has legs and war chants begin, typically originating on Faux News (I didn’t check). Yet, later on the same day, the Times came out with a second, more cautionary report admitting “It is true that the basic allegations in the report are not substantially new, and have been discussed by experts for years. Many of them appear to be those first uncovered in the laptop stolen in 2004, said Muhammad Sahimi, a professor of chemical engineering and materials science at the University of Southern California who has written extensively on Iran’s nuclear program.“

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Mountaintop removal eliminates the mountain and fills the valley below

I have been waiting for the documentary “The Last Mountain” to be released to my  Netflix streaming queue for sometime and then it suddenly showed up, so I watched it a few nights ago. Directed by Bill Haney, it tells the gripping story of the fight to keep Coal River Mountain West Virginia from being destroyed by the Massey Energy  Company.  The residents of Coal River Valley have been threatened for years by mountain top removal in a region of the state that has breath-taking, tree-covered hills and valleys; this region however has been progressively destroyed by coal mining through the technique of  mountaintop removal, based on massive, mechanized  machinery and explosives. Although Robert Kennedy played a major role as an activist and adviser in the documentary, and clearly adds a sense of national urgency to the issues addressed, the story is also about how local residents of Coal River Valley got together and formed an activist resistance to the Massey Coal Company’s plan to remove Coal River Mountain, a mountain that serves as a watershed for residents of the valleys below.  Many other mountains in the region have already been destroyed by coal mining, such that Coal River Mountain was and is the “last mountain standing”  of significance for the region. The removal of this mountain will destroy the water system of people living downstream and increase the severity of flooding, two well-known, obligatory features of mountaintop removal.  Many residents believe that Massey Coal wants to depopulate the Coal River Valley and eliminate downstream community occupancy, to give them more space for strip-mining. It is a very ugly process.

While the Obama administration has been more sensitive to the destruction of the water supply by mountaintop coal mining and violations of environmental laws, the original permits to remove Coal River Mountain were given during the Bush administration and Massey Coal has proceeded to execute its march towards mountain destruction. However, in a somewhat duplicitous manner, the Obama administration continues to issue permits for more mountaintop removal in the region. An interesting feature of this controversy was revealed in the documentary based on studies  that raise the feasibility of putting windmill generators across the top of Coal River Mountain. Those who have studied this suggest that wind power generation would produce more jobs and give the neighboring communities more long-term income through power generation and improvements in the tax base, when compared to the resources generated by the Massey mountaintop removal project,  which  of course will end at some time in the future. The demonstrations, sit-ins and tree sitting by environmentalists and residents are greeted with hostility by the miners who still have jobs working for Massey Coal. Oddly enough, I didn’t see many of the mountain top removal defenders (50 percent of our electricity comes from coal) argue that the future of the industry depends on the development of new clean coal technologies, none of which were on display or even discussed. Many coal-based power plants claim that they are ready for “carbon-capture” technology when it becomes available. But that possibility is very remote because once in service, the public will not tolerate retrofitting for carbon-capture, even if the technique becomes feasible, as it would add enormous costs to existing energy production. If carbon-capture or some similar clean coal technology ever comes along, it is likely to increase the cost of coal-based power plants to a prohibitively high level. Coal is currently the worst source of air pollution and the long list of its pollution offenses  goes beyond carbon dioxide and includes such things as mercury contamination, which accounts for warnings we get about eating fish too often because of their high mercury content. Mercury is toxic to the brain and impacts on brain development. It might be that Republicans have been eating too much fish.

Robert Kennedy is articulate in pointing out that the impact of Massey Coal has been to increase the poverty of the region, first by destroying the unions in the 1980s (companies close mines, send unionized workers home and then reopened the mines with non-union miners, complete with reduced salary and benefits) and second, by reducing the labor force through automation and modernization of equipment and techniques: strip mining is replacing deep hole mining, with a reduction in the labor force needed.  But if the true cost of coal mining was reflected in the price of coal, including the serious health care costs and safety issues, the cost of this form of energy would be prohibitively expensive. We are not just trapped by the history of the region as a long-standing coal-mining center, but also by the powerful lobbying interests of coal mining and transportation (trains) that thrive on their operations in West Virginia and other coal-intensive states.  One can add that Wall Street has billions invested in these companies because they are profitable and seem to be free from serious regulatory control. Add to that formula the corrupt organization of the state’s environmental protection agency, which allows coal companies to violate water and air quality standards without fines, and you have an updated version of “Love Canal.”

The environmental damage does not stop with a disappearing mountain top. The heavy coal mining leads to toxic waste sites in the mountain regions above the valleys, created from the water used to wash the coal before it is shipped and these sites leak and pollute the water supply downstream, carrying highly toxic material.  Several websites have been put up to monitor the mining operation, but the state and Federal Government seem to collude as obstacles for better environmental regulation. The trouble is that while wind energy might be successful for the future of local inhabitants, how will the energy needs of others be met who receive the coal over long distance railroad shipments? You have to decommission these coal plants one at a time, when you have a suitable alternative and until that can be achieved, the forces promoting mountaintop removal will keep going with few obstacles in sight that can stop them. If you had only two solutions to our energy needs, nuclear power and coal mining, the preferred choice would be obvious.  The solution at hand is to build a new, modern transcontinental power grid that collects electricity from all forms of power generated in different ways and distribute that power efficiently to homes and businesses. This is an infrastructure issue. Yes, it would be better to replace coal-fired power plants with natural gas in the short-run, and it seems obvious that the wind turbine option for the people of Coal River Valley makes far more economic and environmental sense, but how to resolve the challenges of implementing this new technology in place of coal is something we can only achieve through the force of a national government, not a state government, which, in the case of West Virginia seems hopelessly corrupt and entirely devoted to the private, rather than the public interest.

RFM

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