This is what kills me about this oil spill. No one gives a flying shit about the gulf coast, but now as it looks like it might get into the big currents out there, the rest of the country is actually paying attention.  God forbid the filth wash-up in Florida where all the retired baby-boomers will have to cancel their Cialis fueled walks on the beach, or  even worse the east coast. Lets panic now, since before it was you know, just the gulf. It’s the same thing with the offshore drilling – no way would we sully the East coast with our energy needs – oil rigs, wind farms or otherwise, we’ll just do it in the gulf, cause you know its not as pretty, not as wealthy and the hurricanes come in every year and beat the crap out of it anyhow.

Hope you guys enjoy not eating fish for the next few years.

To be clear here, I acknowledge the necessity of the offshore rigs (in our albeit screwball energy strategy), it’s just prevailing attitudes of non-concern about the environmental impacts of this that really chaps my hide. Also the idea that no one thought something this bad could ever happen? Please.  I’m sure BP has a room of guys sitting around dreaming up zombie-apocalypse- equivalent events for oil rigs, and how to either work around them or account for just enough safety to pacify those in charge.  Deep within the bowels of BP this exact scenario is in a file somewhere.

At the end of the day though, this mess belongs to everyone who drove to work this morning, myself included.

…and is anyone really surprised that the health care industry lawyers found a way to kill kids, at least for a few more years?

The authors of the law say they meant to ban all forms of discrimination against children with pre-existing conditions like asthma, diabetes, birth defects, orthopedic problems, leukemia, cystic fibrosis and sickle cell disease. The goal, they say, was to provide those youngsters with access to insurance and to a full range of benefits once they are in a health plan.

To insurance companies, the language of the law is not so clear.

Insurers agree that if they provide insurance for a child, they must cover pre-existing conditions. But, they say, the law does not require them to write insurance for the child and it does not guarantee the “availability of coverage” for all until 2014.

Yup, that free market sure does take care of everybody, doesn’t it?

If you don’t believe climate change is real, just because Fox News and Sarah Palin told you it’s snowing out, now might be an excellent time to reevaluate your position (i.e. remove your head from your ass).

The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world’s oceans,” said Shakhova, a researcher at UAF’s International Arctic Research Center. “Subsea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap.”

Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It is released from previously frozen soils in two ways. When the organic material—which contains carbon—stored in permafrost thaws, it begins to decompose and, under oxygen-free conditions, gradually release methane.

More…

From the science-may-be-slightly-more-complex-than-making-a-sandwich-that’s-why-we-have-scientists department:

Most don’t see a contradiction between a warming world and lots of snow. That includes Kevin Trenberth, a prominent climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

“The fact that the oceans are warmer now than they were, say, 30 years ago means there’s about on average 4 percent more water vapor lurking around over the oceans than there was, say, in the 1970s,” he says.

Warmer water means more water vapor rises up into the air, and what goes up must come down.

“So one of the consequences of a warming ocean near a coastline like the East Coast and Washington, D.C., for instance, is that you can get dumped on with more snow partly as a consequence of global warming,” he says.

So global warming or no, please stop saying that the billions of tons of CO2 our civilization has pumped into the atmosphere is having no consequences just because it’s snowing. Your ignorance is making my head hurt.