Move update: I’m in the process of moving this site to the new host. So far, everything is going better than expected, and I’m currently trying to get the DNS change to take effect so this url points to the new location. But again, let me . . . → Read More: Uncle Carl speaks to all of us]]> Carls Sagan’s pale blue dot, with an unforgettable video:

Move update: I’m in the process of moving this site to the new host. So far, everything is going better than expected, and I’m currently trying to get the DNS change to take effect so this url points to the new location. But again, let me stress that this should not change anything for users. While you might experience a few very short-term glitches, your bookmarks, RSS feeds, etc. should all work fine (he typed with crossed fingers) once the move is complete.

After two decades of drilling through miles of Antarctic ice, Russian scientists are about to breach an underground lake that has not been exposed to the surface in more than 20 million years. Lake Vostok, as the body of water is called, is part of a chain of more than 200 lakes . . . → Read More: Big doings at Lake Vostok]]> Lake Vostok Will be Breached:

After two decades of drilling through miles of Antarctic ice, Russian scientists are about to breach an underground lake that has not been exposed to the surface in more than 20 million years. Lake Vostok, as the body of water is called, is part of a chain of more than 200 lakes hidden beneath the ice, some of which were formed when Australia and Antarctica were still connected. Vostok will be the first one of all to be opened when the drill hits water next week.

The post from Planet 3.0 goes on to say that there’s reason to assume there’s some form of life down there, which leads me to ask at an elevated volume and pitch, “Have none of these scientists seen a bad horror or SF movie, ever???” Seriously — someone is going to encounter something like the illegitimate love child of a grizzly bear and a komodo dragon, and wind up getting his brain sucked out through his ear.

If everything goes as planned (he typed as he flinched), you won’t have to do or change anything to keep accessing this site. Your bookmarks, links, RSS feeds, the whole smash should keep working exactly as . . . → Read More: TCOE is moving!]]> I’m in the process of making the final arrangements to move this site to a new hosting company.

If everything goes as planned (he typed as he flinched), you won’t have to do or change anything to keep accessing this site. Your bookmarks, links, RSS feeds, the whole smash should keep working exactly as they do now.

As I cut over to the site’s new cyber-home, you might experience — how shall I put this delicately? — some distinctly sub-optimal user experiences. In more pedestrian terms, between getting DNS to point to new site and setting up everything exactly right in the new location, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if you come here (or, more accurately, there) only to be greeted by a message saying WordPress can’t find its database, or you see the layout/theme of the site is messed up, or who knows what. I will do my best to shield your tender sensibilities, dear readers, from such horrors of the digital age, but I ain’t makin’ any promises.

As for what happens after the move, there will be more changes. Including:

• An optional sub-domain form of this site’s address, likely tcoe.grinzo.com. The current/old way will still work fine, and will not be deprecated.
• A completely new project, likely with its own sub-domain and separate non-blog.
• Possibly a discussion forum related to the new project.
• A bunch of other stuff that I think of while in the shower or waiting for a red light to change.

Oh, and I’ll have an announcement about my new affiliation with a site you all know and love.

See the page for the data.

Do I really have to launch into the whole argument about how utterly absurd it is for Americans to be buying this mix of vehicles in 2011, or what that says about the astonishing level of RDS (reality . . . → Read More: Top selling vehicles in the US]]> Vehicle Technologies Program: Fact #712: January 30, 2012 Top Vehicles in the U.S., 2011:

See the page for the data.

Do I really have to launch into the whole argument about how utterly absurd it is for Americans to be buying this mix of vehicles in 2011, or what that says about the astonishing level of RDS (reality detachment syndrome) the US is exhibiting via such actions? And do I have to point out how the probability keeps growing, year by year, that people who buy much larger than needed vehicles will get crushed by “high” fuel prices and collapsed resale values when (gasp!) the whole country suddenly discovers that “forever” is a term better reserved for fairy tales than natural resources or sinks? No? Good. I don’t have the energy or the disposition to drag us all through that one more time and remain civil about it.

I will say this: When it happens, I will be the last person to feel sorry for those suddenly in financial distress because they ignored what so many people were telling them and they’re now “buried alive, upside down” in their vehicle. Within a couple of years, I expect to replace my Scion xA with an EV, complete with a bumper sticker that says, “You fuel your car with gasoline??? How quaint! And how criminally stupid.”

Global warming is hitting not just home, but garden. The color-coded map of planting zones often seen on the back of seed packets is being updated by the government, illustrating a hotter 21st century.

It’s the first time since 1990 that the U.S. Department of Agriculture . . . → Read More: It’s warming; ask the plants]]> New map for what to plant reflects global warming – Yahoo! News:

Global warming is hitting not just home, but garden. The color-coded map of planting zones often seen on the back of seed packets is being updated by the government, illustrating a hotter 21st century.

It’s the first time since 1990 that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has revised the official guide for the nation’s 80 million gardeners, and much has changed. Nearly entire states, such as Ohio, Nebraska and Texas, are in warmer zones.

The new guide, unveiled Wednesday at the National Arboretum, arrives just as many home gardeners are receiving their seed catalogs and dreaming of lush flower beds in the spring.

It reflects a new reality: The coldest day of the year isn’t as cold as it used to be, so some plants and trees can now survive farther north.

…

The Arbor Day Foundation issued its own hardiness guide six years ago, and the new government map is very similar, said Woodrow Nelson, a vice president at the plant-loving organization.

“We got a lot of comments that the 1990 map wasn’t accurate anymore,” Nelson said. “I look forward to (the new map). It’s been a long time coming.”

Nelson lives in Lincoln, Neb., where the zone warmed to a 5b. Nelson said he used to be in a “solid 4,” but now he has Japanese maples and Fraser firs in his yard — trees that shouldn’t survive in a zone 4.

Vaughn Speer, an 87-year-old master gardener in Ames, Iowa, said he has seen redbud trees, one of the earliest blooming trees, a little farther north in recent years.

“They always said redbuds don’t go beyond U.S. Highway 30,” he said, “but I’m seeing them near Roland,” 10 miles to the north.

The US public is giving the highest priority to economic issues, according to the findings of the Pew Research Center For The People & The Press January 2012 Political Survey. 86% say that strengthening the economy should be a top priority . . . → Read More: Americans have no sense of urgency about global warming]]> Pew survey finds US public ranks economy as highest priority policy issue, global warming as lowest:

The US public is giving the highest priority to economic issues, according to the findings of the Pew Research Center For The People & The Press January 2012 Political Survey. 86% say that strengthening the economy should be a top priority for the president and Congress this year, and 82% rate improving the job situation as a top priority. None of the other 20 issues tested in this annual survey rate as a top priority for more than 70% of Americans. Only 25% called global warming a top priority, a decrease of 13 percentage points over 5 years.

Everyone who is surprised by or not filled with dread by this will now form a line and wait to be slapped with the Salmon of Enlightenment.

This release is an abridged version of the Annual Energy Outlook that highlights changes in the AEO Reference case projections for key energy topics. The Early Release includes data tables for the Reference case only. The full AEO2012 will be released April 26, 2012.

Download the AEO2012 Early Release Report

…

Expected . . . → Read More: Doc alert: Annual Energy Outlook 2012 Early Release]]> EIA – Annual Energy Outlook 2012 Early Release:

This release is an abridged version of the Annual Energy Outlook that highlights changes in the AEO Reference case projections for key energy topics. The Early Release includes data tables for the Reference case only. The full AEO2012 will be released April 26, 2012.

Download the AEO2012 Early Release Report

…

Expected changes in the AEO2012 complete release

The Reference case results shown in the AEO2012 Early Release will vary somewhat from those included in the complete Annual Energy Outlook (AEO) that will be released in spring 2012, because some data and model updates were not available for inclusion in the Early Release. In particular, the complete AEO2012 will include the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in December 2011; updated historical data and equations in the transportation sector, based on revised data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Federal Highway Administration; a new model for cement production in the industrial sector; a revised long-term macroeconomic projection based on an updated long-term projection from IHS Global Insight, Inc.; and an updated representation of biomass supply.

See the page above for additional tables in PDF and Excel format not included in the main document.

Please note this blockbuster on page 9 of the main document:

In the AEO2012 Reference case, the estimated unproved technically recoverable resource (TRR) of shale gas for the United States is 482 trillion cubic feet, substantially below the estimate of 827 trillion cubic feet in AEO2011. The decline largely reflects a decrease in the estimate for the Marcellus shale, from 410 trillion cubic feet to 141 trillion cubic feet. Both EIA and USGS have recently made significant revisions to their TRR estimates for the Marcellus shale. Drilling in the Marcellus accelerated rapidly in 2010 and 2011, so that there is far more information available today than a year ago. Indeed, the daily rate of Marcellus production doubled during 2011 alone. Using data though 2010, USGS updated its TRR estimate for the Marcellus to 84 trillion cubic feet, with a 90-percent confidence range from 43 to 144 trillion cubic feet—a substantial increase over the previous USGS estimate of 2 trillion cubic feet dating from 2002. For AEO2012, EIA uses more recent drilling and production data available through 2011 and excludes production experience from the pre-shale era (before 2008). EIA’s TRR estimate for the entire Northeast also includes TRR of 16 trillion cubic feet for the Utica shale, which underlies the Marcellus and is still relatively little explored. The complete AEO2012 publication will include a more in-depth examination of the factors that affect resource estimates.

January 20, 2012

Campaign Urges American Meteorological Society to Get Tougher on Climate Change

In the wake of record-breaking extreme weather in 2011, campaign says it’s essential that T.V. meteorologists “Forecast The Facts”

www.forecastthefacts.org

San Francisco, CA – A new campaign, Forecast the Facts (www.forecastthefacts.org), launches Sunday to pressure TV meteorologists to . . . → Read More: Site alert: Forecast the Facts]]> Via an e-mail acquaintance comes the following press release:

January 20, 2012

Campaign Urges American Meteorological Society to Get Tougher on Climate Change

In the wake of record-breaking extreme weather in 2011, campaign says it’s essential that T.V. meteorologists “Forecast The Facts”

www.forecastthefacts.org

San Francisco, CA – A new campaign, Forecast the Facts (www.forecastthefacts.org), launches Sunday to pressure TV meteorologists to inform their viewers about climate change. The launch coincides with the kick-off of the American Meteorological Society’s (AMS) annual meeting in New Orleans, LA.

The campaign will deliver thousands of petition signatures that demand the AMS pass a strong statement on climate change. The current statement—drafted in 2007—is set to expire on Feb 1. In the five years since, scientific consensus about climate change has grown even stronger, and the Forecast the Facts campaign is urging the AMS to reflect that consensus in their new information statement. The new statement, drafted by a panel of experts, requires approval by the 21-member AMS Council, which convenes on Sunday, January 22 at their annual meeting.

“This is an important moment in the history of the AMS,” said Daniel Souweine, the campaign’s director. “It’s well known that large numbers of meteorologists are climate change deniers. It’s essential that the AMS Council resist pressure from these deniers and pass the strong statement currently under consideration.”

In the coming months the campaign plans to launch a full-fledged initiative to educate and activate communities at the local level. Grassroots outreach efforts will include a robust and creative online and offline engagement campaign, including video, advertising, and activist tool-kits, among other interactive elements.

The issue of climate change denial among television weather reporters has gained increasing attention of late, especially with the release of a national study by George Mason University in March 2010. The study found that 63% of T.V. meteorologists think climate change is due to natural causes, and a full 27% think global warming is a scam.

The AMS is the leading national organization for meteorologists, with over 14,000 members. Its information statements are “intended to provide a trustworthy, objective and scientifically up-to-date explanation of scientific issues of concern to the public at large.“ According to the George Mason study, meteorologists trust information from the AMS more than almost any other source, including climate researchers, making the AMS statement on climate change a closely watched document in the meteorological community.

Recent increases in extreme weather have added further impetus for meteorologists to report on climate change. In 2011, the United States experienced a record twelve “billion-dollar” extreme weather events, including flooding from Hurricane Irene, unprecedented tornadoes in the Midwest, and crippling droughts and wildfires in the Southwest. Most scientists believe that climate change exacerbates extreme weather, a conclusion affirmed by the International Panel on Climate Change’s November 2011 report on the subject.

Jay Rosen has an . . . → Read More: Looking for a truth oasis]]> A little over a week ago there was a minor event in the blogosphere that didn’t get a lot of attention among the enviro sites, but probably should have. I’m as guilty as anyone of not raising its profile, as I didn’t mention it at the time. Time to fix that.

Jay Rosen has an excellent post on his blog, PressThink, So whaddaya think: should we put truthtelling back up there at number one?, in which he talks about Arthur Brisbane’s, the Public Editor at the New York Times, asking if reporters have an obligation to call out sources for their false statements. The reader reaction to Brisbane’s comment was, as one might expect, a swift, loud, and indignant, “Hell yes!!!”, which seemed to surprise Brisbane. I very highly recommend Rosen’s post and the 120+ comments in the ensuing discussion, as well as Joe Romm’s take.

I think what we have here is an interesting dynamic that might not be obvious at first blush. Certain parts of the media complex have become increasingly distant from the sort of doggedly aggressive journalism that once made some people, including me, see Journalists as underpaid, under appreciated, overworked heroes, the champions who devoted their lives to exposing lies and fraud, all for the betterment of society.[1] To say that many of today’s “journalists” have devolved into mere stenographers who parrot virtually any inanity uttered by a “newsmaker”, as the common charge goes, is to state the painfully obvious. And as for many of the rest — the ones at Fox News leap to mind — who don’t even belong in the same category, the less said, the better. But how did we get here? How did we go from Woodward and Bernstein to rampant stenography?

I think that over a period of decades journalists became far too easy a target for disgruntled politicians and other public figures. The practice of true journalism came to be seen by the public as nothing more than cynical self-interest run amok, and its practitioners as merely another special interest group. (I certainly don’t mean to imply that journalists were faultless; they made plenty of mistakes and even committed a few cases of outright fraud.) This created a feedback loop: Politicians beat up journalists; public opinion of journalists dropped, making it ever easier for politicians to blame everything on journalists, which only lowered their standing with the public even further, etc. After decades of this browbeating, we saw a cultural shift in journalism. The pursuit and maintenance of an aura of “impartiality” became much more important than calling out lies for what they are, as Rosen pointedly points out. This kind of shift can very easily become deeply entrenched — not least of all because the group it benefits the most, politicians, is exceedingly good at locking in a huge advantage with public sentiment — and that’s what’s happened now. It’s become so bad that we have the Public Editor of the New York Times asking head exploding questions about the appropriateness of calling a lie a lie.

Of course, when we move from merely political to science-based topics, the issue becomes far thornier. Can we really expect the average journalist to keep things like gigatons of carbon vs CO2, and greenhouse gas emissions vs. just CO2, or kilowatts vs. kilowatt hours straight? And when we get to higher levels of abstraction, we see rampant errors. One group that never fails to push my buttons includes the reports that implicitly or explicitly assume that the US generates a sizable share of its electricity with oil. That was true around the time of the original oil embargo, in the early 1970s, but now we use oil to generate only about 1% of our electricity. And as for the bright, shiny, clean future of natural gas powered everything — don’t get me started.[2]

One of the objections of working journalists will be that it’s virtually impossible to rebut the same lie in every single article about a Romney stump speech in which he falsely accuses President Obama of “apologizing for America”; it would make the stories tedious and unreadable. There’s a simple solution to that, in the age of the Internet. Instead of rebutting the lie fully in the article itself, simply say: “This assertion by Mitt Romney has been investigated and found to be false. See our [url] on our web site for the full explanation.” Then any newspaper or magazine can build up a library of their fact checking results and refer to them as needed, without forcing their readers to slog through the same boiler plate prose for the Nth time, while still making it available for newcomers or anyone else who wants to see it. News outlets could even pool resources and build a common, shared library, which would lend even more credibility to it. And for those in the Traditional Media who want to look like one of the cool kids, they can enlist readers in the process. Let them suggest new additions to the library or help with the investigations. In the areas like politics and climate change there would be no end of readers (some paid corporate shills, to be sure) eager to contribute to such an effort. As long as the material was vetted by real journalists who have the appropriate domain knowledge before being used in the ultimate explanation, the chances of the effort being yet another tool for public manipulation would be very low.

What does all this matter? Isn’t this so much “inside baseball” for journalism junkies? No, it isn’t, for a reason that I’ve been talking about on this blog for nearly nine years: We’re in a lot of trouble on multiple fronts, thanks to peak oil and climate change and their hideous interactions and knock-on effects, and we need everyone pulling in the same direction, especially voters, who will increasingly be called upon to ignore the lies pushed by fossil fuel companies and other special interests and act to promote our collective well being. It’s bad enough that in an age of Citizens United we’re horribly outgunned by the liars, but if the last line of defense, journalists — our seawall against the quickly rising tide of misinformation, if you like — are so humbled that they’re openly asking if they should fulfill their most basic duty, then we’re in far more trouble than I thought.

[1] To younger readers this might sound like a bad joke, but when I went to college it was common for students to apologize for having a TV in their dorm room and add, “I only have that so I can watch 60 Minutes“. Indeed, the classic mental image of two-fisted journalism was Mike Wallace and a cameraman kicking down the door to some executive’s office, shoving a mic in his face and demanding to know how long the company was selling toxic sludge to school cafeterias packaged as pudding cups.

[2] For just one example of why a full embrace of natural gas is a very bad idea, see CNG vehicles: A cheap, shiny new bridge to nowhere.