You can't make electricity without water. I mean, you can, but you have to use things like "solar panels" or "wind turbines," and who's going to do that? (Lots of people, I guess, but that doesn't help my point.) A 2009 study suggested that half of the freshwater we use goes to energy production, boiled to create steam to turn turbines, or used to cool off reactors. When we run low on water -- or when the water gets too warm -- the ability to generate electricity declines or halts. (Except from wind turbines and solar panels; I'll just keep pointing that out.)

According to the International Energy Agency, the amount of water we use for energy is about to go up. A lot. From National Geographic:

The amount of fresh water consumed for world energy production is on track to double within the next 25 years, the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects. …

If today's policies remain in place, the IEA calculates that water consumed for energy production would increase from 66 billion cubic meters (bcm) today to 135 bcm annually by 2035.

That's an amount equal to the residential water use of every person in the United States over three years, or 90 days' discharge of the Mississippi River. It would be four times the volume of the largest U.S. reservoir, Hoover Dam's Lake Mead.

Climate Central reports that a weather-related record ended yesterday morning: the longest the U.S. has gone without a tornado-related death, 220 days.

[A] large and powerful tornado struck Adairsville, Ga., killing at least one person in a mobile home park. That tornado, which may rank as an EF-4 -- the second most powerful on the Enhanced Fujita Scale -- overturned cars on I-75 and damaged numerous buildings in downtown Adairsville, which is about 60 miles northwest of Atlanta.

A local news broadcast included a helicopter flight over the area damaged by the twister.

The rate of piracy off the coast of Somalia in East Africa has dropped significantly over the past few years. The International Chamber of Commerce maintains a live map of attacks; the plurality at this point are off the coast of India. Earlier this month, a Somali pirate kingpin announced his retirement using that traditional pirate tool: the press conference.

At the same time, attacks along the western coast of Africa have increased. One key target? Oil. From Quartz:

The East Africa attacks were also sometimes on oil tankers, but with the goal of squeezing out large ransoms from the cargo-owners. The difference now is that the West Africa attacks are after the oil itself. On Jan. 21, for example, a tanker called ITRI was captured by pirates near Cote d’Ivoire; it has not been heard from since. Most of the oil attacks are off the coast of Nigeria, where pirates ply the Niger Delta.

If you're wondering why you thought you might have heard a sound something like a combination of giggling and coins jingling and a breeze ruffling the fur of an ugly otter, it's because Donald Trump is happy today. Trump hates wind turbines, not because he understands how they work or what they're used for (probably) but because he doesn't want them in the ocean near his bullshit golf course.

He is happy because this happened. From the Guardian:

A wind turbine in north Devon has collapsed, leaving local residents concerned about safety. It is understood to be the first such reported incident in the UK, although blades have fallen from turbines in a small number of cases.

The turbine was sited on farmland in the Bradworthy area and fell down in the early hours of Sunday morning. Margaret Coles, chairwoman of Bradworthy parish council, which opposed the erection of the turbine, told the Daily Telegraph that strong winds had hit the area. "The bolts on the base could not withstand the wind as we are a very windy part of the country. Dulas [the energy company] have egg on their face," she said. "There are concerns about safety."

Well, yes. When a big, heavy thing specifically designed to be used in the wind is knocked over by the wind, that should rightly prompt concerns.

This is the historic neighborhood of Marktown, near East Chicago, Ind. It's a historic area, built a century ago to accommodate workers at a nearby steel plant, dubbed one of the "Seven Wonders of Northwest Indiana."

Now zoom out.

Marktown is like that house in Up, surrounded on all sides by newer, uglier buildings -- in this case, industry. Scroll to the northwest a little and you'll see Marktown's greatest threat: the BP Whiting oil refinery. Midwest Energy News tells the story:

About a quarter of the pastel, stucco Marktown homes are now vacant and crumbling. There is a general appearance of abandonment and decay. But on the evening of Jan. 23 the Marktown community center was bustling, packed with residents confused and alarmed about the news circulating over the past few days. …

Kim Rodriguez, a 54-year-old lifelong resident, had called the meeting to try to save the neighborhood.

That’s because BP officials recently acknowledged they are looking to buy up and raze Marktown homes.

One of America's great soap operas is being performed live right now on Capitol Hill. It is scripted, predetermined, poorly acted, rarely interesting, predictable. Ladies and gents, the nomination hearings of Chuck Hagel to be secretary of defense.

Yesterday afternoon, we noted that Hagel, if OK'd by the Senate, will step down from his board position at Chevron. We suggested that this also meant Hagel would forget his years of fossil fuel advocacy, cleaning his slate on energy issues. Because that's how it works.

Apparently, we were either right -- or Hagel read and responded to our snark. Probably the latter. From The Hill:

Former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), President Obama’s nominee for Defense secretary, is backing a controversial ban on military purchase of alternative fuels that have higher greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil-based fuels. …

Hagel also backs military programs to expand use of biofuels in defense operations, but he argues large-scale use should only occur when the fuels are cost-competitive.

We'll parse this out. The first paragraph above relates to a ban authored by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), meant to limit Defense Department investment in alternative fuels that -- from extraction to refinery to combustion -- create more climate pollution than conventional fuels. The targets of this measure are fuels like liquefied coal or tar-sands-based diesel. Hagel opposes using those fuels.

It is earnings season, that every-three-months ritual in which publicly traded companies reveal whether or not they made money while stock owners hold shaky fingers over mouse buttons, cursors resting on "sell."

If the company is an oil company, the question is not whether it was profitable but, rather, how excessively profitable the company was. Did Dinosaur Oil top its $18 bajillion quarter of last year as analysts expected? Traders hold shaky fingers over mouse buttons, hoping the enormous profits were enormous enough.

This morning, Shell stepped up to the plate. From the Financial Times:

Shell said its profits on a clean current cost of supplies basis, which strips out changes in the value of oil inventories, and excluding identified items, stood at $5.6bn compared with $4.8bn a year ago -- an increase of 15 per cent.

$5.6 billion in profit. That's $62 million a day over the last three months. It's $720 every second. Meaning that Shell would have earned:

A bit of surprising news this morning: The economy actually shrank in the fourth quarter of 2012. It was only down by an annual rate of 0.1 percent, but it had been expected to grow by 1.1 percent. And it didn't drop because of burdensome regulation or slow job growth. It dropped because of the Pentagon.

From The Washington Post:

[F]ederal defense spending fell at an astounding 22.2 percent annual rate in the quarter, which subtracted 1.28 percentage points from GDP growth. That was in part a reversal from the unusual 12.9 percent gain in the third quarter. But when the two quarters are averaged together, the defense sector was a drag on the economy in the second half of 2012 -- and that’s before a “sequester” of automatic defense cuts goes into effect this year if Congress doesn’t act to avert it.

That "sequester" is the result of a poison pill that Congress administered to itself. Last year, knowing full well that Congress couldn't be trusted to get anything done without some sort of threat hanging over its head, Congress decided to force Congress to act, passing a bill that created huge, automatic spending cuts unless Congress got its act together and figured out a budget package. Well, Congress was not smart enough to avoid Congress' trap, so now those $1.2 trillion in budget cuts are slated to go into effect.

At the end of 2012, the Pentagon saw those cuts looming; this week, it announced 46,000 layoffs. If the full weight of the cuts go into effect, the damage to the economy could be severe.

Enter Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) with an idea. From Environment and Energy Daily:

And that's that. From CNN:

A federal judge in New Orleans Tuesday approved a $4 billion plea agreement for criminal fines and penalties against oil giant BP for the 2010 Gulf oil spill, the largest criminal penalty in U.S. history.

U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Vance imposed the terms that the Justice Department and BP had agreed to last November, which include the oil company pleading guilty to 14 criminal counts -- among them, felony manslaughter charges -- and the payment of a record $4 billion in criminal penalties over five years.

Once you add in the $1.4 billion levied against Transocean, the total bill for polluting the Gulf of Mexico and killing 11 workers is $5.4 billion. Or, if you're so inclined, $5.3 million a day since the explosion on April 20, 2010.

The Gallup Organization -- purveyors of fine polling products such as its Nov. 5 prediction that Romney would win; employers of possible future Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel (join the club); defendants in a lawsuit filed by the federal government alleging that the company inflated its prices -- released a poll yesterday. Let's look at it!

The top headline was that Republicans and Democrats differ more in their opinions on gun laws than on any other topic: 28 percent of Democrats are satisfied to some extent with existing laws on guns, compared with 59 percent of Republicans. Fine. Not surprising.

Here's what's interesting: The numbers related to "quality of the environment" -- a poor replacement for environmental laws, mind you -- broke down as 51 percent satisfaction among Democrats and 61 percent among Republicans. On "energy policies," 44 percent of Democrats are satisfied compared to 31 percent of Republicans.