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And this is why they are going to hell

There are those that take money from others for personal gain. We call them crooks.

And then there are those that take money from oil companies, and in exchange do whatever they can to end the world as we know it. We call them the Bush administration. From today's New York Times:

The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

...

The fresh efforts to quiet him, Dr. Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In the talk, he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the earth "a different planet." The administration's policy is to use voluntary measures to slow, but not reverse, the growth of emissions.

After that speech and the release of data by Dr. Hansen on Dec. 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who relayed the warning to Dr. Hansen that there would be "dire consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Dr. Hansen said in interviews.

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The fight between Dr. Hansen and administration officials echoes other recent disputes. At climate laboratories of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, many scientists who routinely took calls from reporters five years ago can now do so only if the interview is approved by administration officials in Washington, and then only if a public affairs officer is present or on the phone.

Where scientists' points of view on climate policy align with those of the administration, however, there are few signs of restrictions on extracurricular lectures or writing.

I would love to wait by the pearly gates with a camcorder. Won't they be surprised!

Big profits, little ethics

Exxon Mobil Corp., you may have heard, just ended the most profitable year ever, for any American corporation. Ever. To the tune of $34 billion.

That means Exxon pulled down about $1,110 a second last year.

Nonetheless, as Carl Pope extensively documents, the company remains one of the biggest deadbeats in the world, still digging in its heels about paying victims of the Exxon Valdez oil spill (2,000 of which are dead -- and their surviving family members have no standing in the case, and will never receive anything). Then there's the matter of oil and gas royalties, which -- despite the skyrocketing cost of oil and gas, and subsequent industry profits -- have remained level over the past few years. All that profit is going directly into corporate coffers.

"Without a shadow of a doubt, Exxon has the best management in the oil industry,"' said Doug Leggate, an analyst at Citigroup Inc. in New York.

Yeah, I guess you could say that. If you were a soulless fuckwit.

Anyhoo, the point of all this is that ExxposeExxon has a new video up lampooning Exxon, and it's kinda funny.

(Also, here's my tribute to departing Exxon CEO Lee Raymond, from August '05.)

Swanky New York event heats up the green scene

Emily Gertz is a regular contributor to WorldChanging.com, and an internet content and strategy consultant for nonprofits. She has written on environmental policy for BushGreenwatch, and on the intersections of environment, culture, art, and activism for The Bear Deluxe and other independent alternative publications. Thursday, 26 Jan 2006 New York, N.Y. I have seen the […]

From Pee Pee to Po-Po

Visualize world pees If you’re a fan of answering nature’s call, in nature, urine luck. Pees on Earth is a collection of photos by Ellen Jong, who documented herself poppin’ squats all over the world. She hopes the book has a trickle-down effect, inspiring others to be one with their environs. Is this what they […]

You already know basically what I’m going to say, don’t you?

Well, nothing to report on water quality in the U.S. -- all is hunky-dory these days! Good thing, too, because our energies are elsewhere, restoring what we destroyed doing improvement projects in Iraq. Hey, how's that going?

Because of unforeseen security costs, haphazard planning and shifting priorities, the American-financed reconstruction program in Iraq will not complete scores of projects that were promised to help rebuild the country, a federal oversight agency reported yesterday.

Only 49 of the 136 projects that were originally pledged to improve Iraq's water and sanitation will be finished, with about 300 of an initial 425 projects to provide electricity, the report says.

What? But all the money we're spending on restoring quality of life to the Iraqi people!

The US government will complete just a fraction of the planned massive reconstruction projects in Iraq before $18.4 billion in federal funding runs out next year, according to a government audit released yesterday.

But ... but ... isn't money put aside for specific projects?

Among the obstacles were sharply higher spending for security, strategy shifts in response to the changing Iraqi environment and increased spending to sustain programs when Iraqis take over, the report said.

...

Water resources and sanitation took the biggest hit among the sectors, losing $2.185 billion, or 50.4 percent of its original allocation, the audit found. The next hardest-hit was the electric sector, slashed 22.5 percent to $4.31 billion.

Oh well. So we're bungling the job in Iraq. At least the water's all clean and drinkable here in the U.S. of A. Right, guys? Right?

Fish Passage Center, R.I.P.

Sen. Larry Craig's long-time quest has paid off: The Idaho Republican has succeed in killing the Fish Passage Center, which has monitored salmon stocks for 20 years. By all accounts, the Center did good, non-partisan science, but Craig didn't like "data" coming between him and his political goals.

The Center's duties were transferred to other, presumably more cooperative, agencies today. Lisa Stiffler has more.

Friedman’s fantastical SOTU speech

His overall fitness as a pundit aside, The Mustache is once again beating the green drum in the most prime real estate in print media. This week, he urges Bush to take on energy independence and global warming in the State of the Union speech (ha ha ha ha!):

I Get the Nic Out of You

California deems secondhand smoke a toxic air pollutant Californians may soon breathe a little easier than the rest of us, now that the state has become the first in the nation to classify secondhand tobacco smoke as a toxic air pollutant. In a 6-0 vote on Thursday, the state Air Resources Board put secondhand smoke […]

Kernel Ganders

Ethanol decent on efficiency but not on greenhouse gases, study finds The heated debate over biofuels took another sharp turn this week: New research in the journal Science claims that replacing fossil fuels with corn-based ethanol is energy-efficient (contrary to some previous studies), but doesn’t do much to cut greenhouse-gas pollution. Researchers from UC-Berkeley determined […]

Re-Spent, Ye Sinners

Bush admin plans to fund new dawn for nuclear power Like an atomic Dr. Frankenstein determined to reanimate the corpse of the civilian nuclear-power industry, the Bush administration intends to allot $250 million in fiscal year 2007 to researching new ways to reprocess spent nuclear fuel — technology largely abandoned in the 1970s as too […]