And apparently based on the so-called favorable employment report released Friday, U.S. sweet crude increased by $1.48 to end the week at $97.84 per barrel, while Brent picked up $2.51 to finish at $114.58 per barrel.
Gas-pump prices appear erratic, depending where ye be: Statewide average in California is $3.73 a gallon for regular, up 3.7 cents in a week, but meanwhile, a good friend of mine residing less than two hours south of me recently paid $4.19 a gallon — Sup with that?

(Illustration found here).

Maybe we should take the plunge already and go Eurozone — $10-a-gallon gas would force stiff-necked US peoples to alter lifestyles and move on before the whole thing becomes reality.
New fuel for old vehicles — there’s about 240.5 million cars and light trucks cruising US highways and the average age of those vehicles rose to 10.8 years last year from 10.4 in the year before, due mainly to bad times in Detroit and the economy.
Apparently from indications beyond a recession, US peoples have been easing off the private vehicle for awhile now.
Via AlterNet  two years ago:

Among the trends that are keeping sales well below the annual figure of 15-17 million that prevailed from 1994 through 2007 are market saturation, ongoing urbanization, economic uncertainty, oil insecurity, rising gasoline prices, frustration with traffic congestion, mounting concerns about climate change, and a declining interest in cars among young people.
Market saturation may be the dominant contributor to the peaking of the U.S. fleet.
The United States now has 246 million registered motor vehicles and 209 million licensed drivers — nearly 5 vehicles for every 4 drivers.

Kids and cars:

Perhaps the most fundamental social trend affecting the future of the automobile is the declining interest in cars among young people.
For those who grew up a half-century ago in a country that was still heavily rural, getting a driver’s license and a car or a pickup was a rite of passage.
Getting other teenagers into a car and driving around was a popular pastime.
In contrast, many of today’s young people living in a more urban society learn to live without cars.
They socialize on the Internet and on smart phones, not in cars.
Many do not even bother to get a driver’s license.
This helps explain why, despite the largest U.S. teenage population ever, the number of teenagers with licenses, which peaked at 12 million in 1978, is now under 10 million.
If this trend continues, the number of potential young car-buyers will continue to decline.

Plus these kids now are also faced with an incredible financial burden, not only with a humongous student-loan debt, but a bleak employment picture (despite Friday’s numbers) — unless one is an oil/gas person (corporations are people).

Maybe a bit of inequality right there: Exxon’s $41.1 billion in 2011 profit translates into nearly $5 million in profit every hour, or more than $1,300 every second. The annual profit comes near the record revenues of $46.23 billion in 2008…Between 2008-2010, Exxon Mobil registered an average 17.6 percent federal effective corporate tax rate, while the average American paid a higher rate of 20.4 percent.

Maybe venture into the ugly-oddness of fuel:

Gasoline prices are higher at the beginning of 2012 than at the beginning of any previous year ever — even at the beginning of 2008, a year when the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline reached a record $4.114 on July 7.
In its Daily Fuel Gauge Report, AAA Texas noted Friday a national average of $3.467 for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline — up from $3.455 a day ago, $3.389 a week ago, $3.288 a month ago and $3.116 a year ago.
“We’re seeing the highest gasoline prices that we’ve seen,” Sarah Schimmer of AAA Texas said Friday.
“2011 was a record year, and in 2012 we’re definitely seeing higher prices.”

And all this for mobility, not only just for driving my Jeep around town, but oil/gas framed within the way-big picture of how the existence of an entire civilization depends on the black, bubbly shit — no way yesteryear can continue into the nowadays.
In reality, peak oil is actually the end of easy oil, low prices at the pump and so forth, and this peak supposedly occurred worldwide in about 2005 — so we’re already on the downside.
One interesting look at future possibilities comes from “Fleeing Vesuvius: Overcoming the Risks of Economic and Environmental Collapse,” a collection of essays from economists, environmental scientists, a couple of architects and even a corporate lawyer on the premise of how close we are to being totally f*cked.
From a review by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall of Fleeing Vesuvius and posted Friday at DissidentVoice:

The title refers to the volcano that destroyed Pompeii in 79 AD, specifically the large number of residents who failed to save themselves, despite weeks of earthquakes, gaseous clouds and other obvious signs that an eruption was imminent.
For more than a decade, a growing body of evidence suggests that the planet is on the verge of economic and ecological collapse.
Yet the vast majority of us do absolutely nothing to prepare for the stark conditions ahead.
…
All (the essay writers) are in basic agreement around the book’s central premise: the industrialized world needs to urgently downsize its energy use, both to stave off catastrophic climate change and to conserve dwindling fossil fuels.
In his Introduction, “Where We Went Wrong,” the late Irish economist Richard Douthwaite points out that one barrel of oil provides the equivalent labor of a man working forty hours a week for twelve years.
He goes on to stress that before the advent of cheap fossil fuels, capitalism was impossible — an economy relying on human labor and animal power is too inefficient to support it.
By definition capitalism depends on capital accumulation, the production of an economic surplus that can be reinvested in new capital (property and machines) to expand production even further.
Producing a surplus of this size only became possible because of the vast amount of cheap (practically free) work performed by fossil fuel energy.

And Ms Bramhall also reveals a brightness from the essays, not all doom-n-gloom: The last five sections of the book focus on solutions, with inspiring examples of new approaches to land use, agriculture and industrial design from individuals, groups and communities who have begun the transition to a less energy-intensive lifestyle.
Inspiration needs to have already been popped — too much pie-in-the-sky without actual political reality.
One updated  sample chapter of Fleeing Vesuvius can be found at The Oil Drum.
And another review of the essay collection can be found here.

A major snag in the optimism — the above-mentioned political reality.
So says Kumi Naidoo, head of the environmental group Greenpeace, who spoke Friday at the big-wig, pow-wow Munich Security Conference, and chimed a loud alarm.
Via Raw Story:

“The moment of history we are in can be described as a boiling point or a perfect storm,” he told the assembled gathering of world leaders, ministers, top brass and defence policy experts at the annual Munich gathering.
“We are seeing a convergence of multiple crises happening at the same time. A food crisis, climate crisis, poverty crisis … and then of course the financial crisis and a demographic crisis and a global governance democratic crisis,” he added.
“The bottom line is that too many of our leaders … are sleepwalking us into a crisis of epic proportion,” he claimed.

One of those doing the sleepwalking is US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who’s also in Munich, Germany, this weekend for the conference, but her schedule has no room for end-of-life-as-we-know-it antics fostered by environmental activists — Clinton will most-likely reminisce about “…what a key partner Europe is in the global security, economic, democracy promotion agenda that we have.”

Just wake ‘em later.

Of course, there’s so much chatter about that particular sporting event, but not much on really what’s happening in our country and the world — the future looks dumb: “Do you know the vice president of the United States?” Austin asks. “I don’t know who it it’s, it’s, it’s somebody….Bin Ladin,” one student responds.
Only gets worse as the days, months and years of tomorrow will only bring problems no amount of education can handle (with bad English).

(Illustration found here).

Despite the education, or maybe because of it, President Obama’s view of the earth’s environment has been toned down to the point even a Republican could understand — the words are less frightful and easier to swallow like a nice pat on the head.
In Obama’s state of the union last week, ‘climate change‘ was mentioned just once (not at all in 2011).
One must remember, the White House switched from ‘global warming,’ to ‘global climate disruption‘ because it’s much, much easier to pass on to the ignorant masses in the search for more politically palatable ways to put horrible news in a happy context.
From the Washington Post:

When he did utter the phrase, it was merely to acknowledge the polarized atmosphere in Washington, saying, “The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change.”
By contrast, Obama used the terms “energy” and “clean energy” nearly two dozen times.
That tally reflects a broader change in how the president talks about the planet.
A recent Brown University study looked specifically at the Obama administration’s language and found that mentions of “climate change” have been replaced by calls for “clean energy” and “energy independence.”
Graciela Kincaid, a co-author of the study, wrote: “The phrases ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’ have become all but taboo on Capitol Hill. These terms are stunningly absent from the political arena.”
…
There is power in how language is deployed, and people setting policy agendas know this well.
In 2002, Republican political strategist Frank Luntz issued a widely cited memo advising that the Bush administration should shift its rhetoric on the climate.
“It’s time for us to start talking about ‘climate change’ instead of global warming. . . . ‘Climate change’ is less frightening than ‘global warming,’ ” the memo said.

And the GOP is into fear, but only in the fear itself, not the root cause.

A good view of the most-immediate future lies in the past.
The Green blog at the New York Times on the so-called “Little Ice Age,” which started at the end of the 13th century and lasted well into the 19th century and how this small speck makes a huge wad.
Money quote:

Bette Otto-Bliesner, a co-author of the study and a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, suggested that the study has important implications for the modern-day climate change discussion.
“I think people might look at the Little Ice Age and think that all we need to save us from rising temperatures are some volcanic eruptions or the geo-engineering equivalent,” she said.
“But when you see what happened when global temperatures dropped by just one degree and you look at current predictions of six or seven degree increases for the future, you realize how precarious things are for life as we know it.”
“I don’t see a lot of hope that we can somehow compensate for the climate trajectory we’re on,” she said.

(h/t The Oil Drum).

On that big game, my store is way-looking forward to it — more booze!
In contrast, supposedly, or at least theoretically, every alcohol-drinking US person will consume at least seven beers on Sunday.
As we slowly die, we scream, ‘Drink Up!’

Part of an e-mail yesterday from my youngest daughter, who lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota: Oh yeah, It’s like 50 degrees and sunny today. crazyness, right? I was sweating like crazy riding my bike to work this morning. Global warming man…
The kid’s got some sense — just talkin’ ’bout the weather.

(Illustration found here).

A warm winter, duh!
From Climate Central:

This week, it’s likely that warm temperature records will be broken throughout the eastern U.S., with forecast highs in New York City approaching 60°F on Tuesday and Wednesday, and reaching the mid-60s in Washington, D.C. According to the National Weather Service (NWS), record highs may also be set today in Islip, N.Y., and Bridgeport, CT.
It has also been unusually warm in the mid-section of the country.
As Paul Douglas wrote for the Minneapolist Star-Tribune, the Twin Cities missed setting a record high by just four degrees on Monday, topping out at 44°F, about 20°F above average for the date.
Douglas wrote that there have been just three subzero nights so far this winter in Minneapolis-St. Paul, down from the average of 19 to date.
“It’s been one of the mildest winters on record; at the rate we’re going this will easily be a “Top 10 Warmest Winter” in the Twin Cities,” Douglas wrote.

And it’s only gonna get worse — Dr. Jeff Masters at Wunderblog: But it strains the bounds of credulity that all of the extreme weather events — some of them 1-in-1000-year type events — could have occurred without a signicant change to the base climate state. Mother Nature is now able to hit the ball out of the park more often, and with much more power, thanks to the extra energy global warming has put into the atmosphere.
No one seems to be much concerned, however.

Despite all the warming, the US MSM still doesn’t connect the dots, or put two-and-two together, or use any other glib phrase to describe how Americans are walking around in January bundled up in a Slayer t-shirt seemingly without a care in the boiling world.
These warm countrywide temperatures ain’t no flash in the pan.
Joe Romm at Climate Progress:

Our science-based institutions, like the National Center for Atmospheric Research, have no difficulty straightforwardly explaining the connection between human-caused global warming and these monster heatwaves.
If only our news-based institutions could do the same.
Now as I’ve said many times, every story about extreme weather does not need to mention global warming.
But if you are writing about a heatwave that is so uniquely extensive in space and time — just the kind of heat wave climate scientists have warned would become increasingly likely — and you are devoting an entire science article to explaining why it’s been so warm, then, yes, it is incumbent on you to at least mention global warming.

And political irony from Craig Ferguson: “It was so hot in Washington that Congress had to install a fan on the debt ceiling.”

Beyond just talkin’ about the weather, we should be screaming, crying about it.

Including this horror show in Florida — and I don’t mean  the upcoming GOP primary:

“As it was happening on the northbound side, it was happening on the southbound side as well,” he said.
“There was nowhere to go. It was just cars hitting cars and cars.”
He called the scene “horrendous.”
“Everybody was crying,” he said. “You still can’t see anything.”
Some motorists were stuck in their vehicles, he said, calling it “mass chaos.”

Mankind should take another look at how we move ourselves around on this earth.

(Illustration found here).

Even as more than 300 people have been arrested in Oakland in an Occupy throw-down, the problem of inequality is been seen as worldwide, an in vestment in a trouble future and if ignored problems will keep popping up everywhere.

A UN report — “Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing” — displays the growing trouble of cash flow.
From the BBC:

Ms Halonen (co-chair of the report, Finnish President Tarja Halonen) emphasised the theme of equality that runs through the report, in terms of gender and redressing the burgeoning gap between people on high and low incomes.
“Eradication of poverty and improving equity must remain priorities for the world community,” she said.
…
“We undertook this report during a period of global volatility and uncertainty,” it says.
“Economies are teetering. Inequality is growing. And global temperatures continue to rise.
“We are testing the capacity of the planet to sustain us.”
To turn this around, it says: “We need to change dramatically, beginning with how we think about our relationship to each other, to future generations, and to the ecosystems that support us.”

Even as the US turns skeptic, just north of us is calling bogus:

Some of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s newly-appointed senators are emerging as global-warming skeptics in the wake of aggressive government positions to abandon the Kyoto Protocol, slam environmentalists and downplay potential damage caused by Canadian oil and gas exploration.
“I felt like it is kind of an insult to be a denier for a long time,” said Sen. Bert Brown, last month at a parliamentary committee studying energy policies.
“It feels pretty good this morning.”

Laugh at the tomorrow, cry for the future.

A penny here, a penny there and soon you’ve have a pile of some real money.

(Illustration found here).

Crude is still gushing upward.
From liveoilprices: In London, Brent crude oil futures for March 2012 delivery was trading at $111.22 a barrel, 15.30 GMT today on the ICE Futures Exchange.
Meanwhile, WTI: US Light crude oil futures for March 2012 delivery was trading at $99.67 a barrel, 15.06 GMT today in trading on the NYMEX. The US oil contract is up 1.2 percent over this mornings opening price of $98 a barrel.

The shit with Iran is the bad bet at the pump.
The International Monetary Fund warns the planet:

The International Monetary Fund warned on Wednesday that global crude prices could rise as much as 30 percent if Iran halts oil exports as a result of U.S. and European Union sanctions.
If Iran halts exports to countries without offsets from other sources it would likely trigger an “initial” oil price jump of 20 to 30 percent, or about $20 to $30 a barrel, the IMF said in its first public comment on a possible Iranian oil supply disruption.
The IMF highlighted the risks of rising tensions over Iran sanctions in a note on Wednesday sent to deputies from G20 countries who met in Mexico City last week.
The price impact caused by a cut in Iranian exports could be exacerbated by below average oil stocks in many countries, the result of tight oil market conditions through much of last year, the IMF said.

And in this the old ‘peak oil’ ugly raises its head.
Via the New York Times:

In an opinion piece (paywall) released on Wednesday by the journal Nature, James Murray of the University of Washington and David King of the University of Oxford point out that global oil production appeared to hit a cap of about 75 million barrels a day in 2005.
Since then, they note, small supply bumps have caused big price gyrations, yet even when prices spike above $100 a barrel, supply appears incapable of rising to meet the demand.
The professors make only a glancing mention of the term “peak oil,” a widely promoted and widely attacked concept, but their argument resembles some of the less feverish versions of the peak oil case.
They essentially argue that oil supply now represents a large strategic risk to global economic growth, and that smart governments ought to be developing comprehensive plans and pushing hard to move their citizens into more efficient cars, onto public transit and so forth — a greener energy path that would also be good for the climate.

Even with all this mess at the gas pumps, there’s an underlying bullshit irony to it all.
Oil companies know the future is coming — via TreeHugger:

Utilities, the oil and gas industry, agricultural companies and insurers are building assumptions about rising temperatures and extreme weather events into their scenario planning.
This is what’s being called climate adaptation or climate preparedness.
The payoff from investing in adaptation could be substantial.
In 2011, insured losses in the U.S. from natural catastrophes, including tornadoes, floods and hurricanes, topped $105 billion, breaking the record of $101 billion set in 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina, according to Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance firm.
Some of those losses had nothing to do with climate change, but others did.

Pump it down and dirty.

In the US today, apparently all collective eyes were glued to South Carolina where intelligence-deficit Republicans held their primary to select from among a short-list of bullshitters a warm body to run against President Obama this November.
And Newt Gingrich is now the man of the hour — a later laugh is always loudest.
From a late afternoon post at CNN: “Gingrich has been harder to kill than Rasputin,” Republican strategist and CNN contributor Alex Castellanos said Saturday. “He has been dead three times in this campaign, and … the guy keeps coming back.”

US politics for 2012 so far has Never-Ever witnessed such a handful of completely worthless and despicable characters — a line up of reasons why this country/world is f*cked.

A most-likely insurmountable obstacle is truth of priorities and sight.
And Newt is no friend of the environment — he’s goes where be Robert Dollar.
An entire US political party (there’s only two) is working way-hard to create calamity for the coming years — twisting knowledge like a pretzel, cherry-picking data and just out-and-out lying — which in turn morphed a most-important circumstance into a cultural/religious phenomenon.
Last week, the Washington Post‘s Michael Gerson positioned correctly: But however interesting this sociology may be, it has nothing to do with the science at issue. Even if all environmentalists were socialists and secularists and insufferable and partisan to the core, it would not alter the reality of the Earth’s temperature.
There it is — reality.
And a shit-biscuit reality for our kids.

What set me in this thought direction was a post at The Dish earlier today which included the writings of Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke, especially Burke, who was concerned that the ‘earlier’ generation made up of his own contemporaries ought not jeopardize the future of still later generations who had not yet been born by creating chaos and disorder.
And a further look at the US future via five trends, the biggest problem being the national debt.
Debt?

The US has one, and really only one problem, and it’s a humongous one (along with the entire freakin’ planet), and it ain’t financial.
The near-immediate by-and-by carries a most-disconcerting view like this quick clip found right here  — a sight of the near-immediate past into the nowadays that casts a look at a future horror for all our offspring.
Another related contemplation comes from Dianne Monroe at Speaking Truth to Power — she portends this is an unique period in world history and “an amazing time to be alive.”
Some snippets:

If you are reading this, you are alive today, and that means you are part of this Great Unraveling/ Great Turning, or whatever name we choose to call it.
If you, like me, are middle aged or beyond, we have lived through the apex of a global empire now passed irrevocably into decline.
When exactly that point of turning was passed is the topic of many discussions.
I am not sure how important it is to know that precise point.
We can see that it happened sometime as we were following our dreams and passions, pursuing careers, raising families, paying mortgages… or however we chose to spend those years of our lives.
We know that something big happened on the way down with the economic crisis of 2008, even if the mainstream economic pundits keep assuring us that prosperity is just around the corner.
…
We are experiencing this great crumbling from within, as it is happening.
We will not experience it as an academic lecture or experiment (although some may try), with us standing outside of and observing some scientific process.
We are each in different locations as it unfolds.
One analogy I have heard is that it is like a long, slow train wreck.
The people toward the back are still riding along comfortably.
They may not have even noticed that something is amiss.

Good post, but like a lot of others has way-too much chasing windmills in the mind.
Despite some success in gaining traction — the Occupy movement opened eyes to the impact of income inequality, the Internet blackout rebellion last week knocked SOPA for a loop, and even the public demonstrations that helped put a end to the Keystone pipeline — all good results with good intentions, but the broad matter of a swiftly-changing climate hasn’t been seriously addressed, and it may never even have a chance.
And yes, this age is most-interesting and amazing, and therefore will become more violent and dangerous.
Some US peoples — currently tagged a subculture — have become “preppers,” or those preparing themselves for what they call, “uncivilization,” the disintegration of society and government — the end of life as we know it.
Take a look  at American Preppers Network.
And this from Reuters‘ interviewee Patty Tegeler on acquiring survival equipment and stockpiling supplies of freeze-dried food: “I think it’s silly not to be prepared,” she said. “After all, anything can happen.”
Anything always happens.

Good sense goes back a long way.
From IPS and the modern Mayans:

But the end of a cycle does not mean the end of the world, and the collective hysteria triggered by the supposed 2012 Maya doomsday prediction does not at all reflect the thinking of today’s Maya Indians in Guatemala.
“There are leaders who let themselves be carried away by what they hear, or because ’13′ has very strong energy and they are worried that a catastrophe will happen, but none of that is true,” said Antonio Mendoza, an activist with Oxlajuj Ajpop, a local NGO whose name in the Maya Quiché language refers to the 13 forces represented by the Maya calendar.
On the contrary, he said, “this new stage is extremely important for reflection and analysis about human coexistence and nature,” he told IPS.
…
Mario Molina of the national network of Maya youth organisations, RENOJ, told IPS that Dec. 21 “will not mark the end of the Maya or the world, but will be a moment to assess the progress made in the development of nature and humanity.”

One must remember the operative words here: ‘neoliberal policies.’
A concept that take in absolutely no account of nature and humanity.

A view from the UK’s Guardian:

For decades, many of the poorest in developing countries have been left reeling from free-market World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) economic policies.
Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) included forced privatisation, public spending cuts and lowered taxes on the global south.
They spelled a triumph for Milton Freedman’s Chicago School of Economics, which proposed that only by leaving everything to the market could economies flourish.
Prosperity did rise for the few, as levels of inequality deepened.
Sound familiar?

And the children will cry and wonder why.

Last year, despite all kinds of horrible weather/climate shit, the news media has way-down-played climate change as anything more than a storm in passing — coverage for the common folk has just “fell off the map.”

(Illustration found here).

Up here along California’s northern coast this early Thursday rain is beating down, bolstered by a pretty-good wind — most likely an off-shoot from that big storm blasting the northwest (via Wunderblog): Field reports late Tuesday already indicated lots of natural and human triggered slides ranging from about 1 to 3 feet deep. Avalanche warnings already in effect for high danger…and with warming…further winds and additional heavy to very heavy snow…some quite dense…avalanche activity should become larger and more severe on Wednesday.
And what about that white stuff in Algeria, as …an unusual sight in the North African country, with scenes of palm trees surrounded by snow.
What, me worry?

You betcha.

One terrible aspect with the science on climate change is the re-occurring situation of shit being worse than originally proposed, as this little snippet from two years ago: We now know that, without effective action, climate change is going to be larger and more difficult to deal with than we thought.
And now, a new one, bringing extreme weather events into focus with climate and the speed of change, all done by math nerds.
From PhysOrg.com (h/t The Oil Drum):

Swiss mathematicians have shown that the risk of extreme climate events is largely underestimated.
They are developing a model for better understanding the impact of climate change.
…
For several years now, the scientists have noted that the increase in extreme events associated with climate change appears to be having much more of an impact on society than the increase in mean temperatures.
Natural disasters are accompanied by a significant human and economic cost.
In the case of exceptional heat waves, the mathematicians found that, based on global warming predictions, the probability of an event at least as severe as the 2003 heat wave will be six times greater in 2050 than it was in 2003.

This doesn’t seem to matter, however, if the MSM keeps pushing climate change away from A1 and onto the society pages without much ado, leaving people to fend for their mental selves — a horror story in itself.
The standard thought from the standard brain: ‘Somebody will figure out something, they always do.’
This line I’ve heard from countless folks, some more intelligent than others, but all have some kind of gray matter stored in their skull caps.
Since climate change is such a huge, way-out-there subject, a thing one “believes” (like it’s a religion or something), and not like a ball-bat up-side the head, people tend to skip away from really getting down and dirty with our one and only environment.

People seem to have a need to feel better than the reality — one has to have hope in order to work through tomorrow, right?
In view of this, a lot of problems that don’t literally face us each minute/hour/day are pushed aside and placed in a giant petri dish called the “optimism bias” — also known  as the “positivity” illusion.
A paradox of that ain’t gonna happen to me.

From a discussion at CNN Health:

“It is a natural human inclination to see our situation and our future through rose-colored glasses,” says David Ropeik, author of “How Risky Is It, Really?: Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts.”
“We tend to see our prospects as being far better than they may actually be — and particularly when compared to the next guy.
This optimism lets us deal with hardship and take chances in life.”
…
Most people are mildly optimistic and that’s a good thing, observes Dr. Tali Sharot, author of “The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Mind.”
“The 20 percent or so of people who do not have an optimism bias are clinically depressed.
In fact, when things go really bad, people become more optimistic, not less, because that’s when we need it most.”
According to Sharot, there is even more reason to celebrate our inclination toward hope.
“Optimism is better for your mental health – it eases your mind and actually lowers your stress.”
…
At the end of the day, “the bias toward optimism is helping you cope to some degree, but it can also be deceiving you into ignoring a danger,” notes Ropeik.
“To the extent we are less worried about something than we should be, that clearly raises our risk.
If optimism bias is letting us deny that our stressed lives are bad for our health, that harm far outweighs the measure of relief optimism can bring.
“Two things to keep in mind: you want to be aware of the risk and you want to be clear about the psychology behind the way you read and assess the risk.
When you know both, you will be better equipped to take action.”

Unless it’s done too late — optimism without reality won’t travel far.

No wobbling of that sort from Santorum — he’s an out-and-out denier.
“There is no such thing as global warming,” he told a smiling Glenn Beck on Fox News in June 2011.
That same month, he told Rush Limbaugh that climate change is a liberal conspiracy: “It’s just an excuse for more government control of your life and I’ve never been for any scheme or even accepted the junk science behind the whole narrative.”

One would hope the mass of US peoples who vote can see through the shit rain coming from Iowa — Mitt Romney, not Rick Perry, should go home to assess the results if a twitchy, bat-shit crazy Rick Santorum could foam-up a near-tie in yesterday’s near-useless Iowa caucuses.

(Illustration found here).

Even as these self-promoting assholes parade through the GOP elimination contest, climate change is still eating away at the fabric of life — in denial of a process that can make your nose bleed is a criminal act that harms every air-sucking person on this earth.
And anyone who calls it ‘junk science’ is worse than a warmonger.
And in Rick Santorum‘s case it’s all about the money.
From Think Progress last October:

On the campaign trail, Rick Santorum says his career since the Senate has been a paid commentary role at Fox News and as a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
But a mandatory disclosure requirement for presidential candidates reveals something new: Santorum has maintained his lifestyle through a well-paid consulting gig with Consol Energy Inc and a lobbying firm called American Continental Group.
…
According to the disclosure, Santorum is paid more than $330,000 for his work on behalf of Consol Energy, American Continental Group, and a public relations firm called the Clapham Group.
He was paid $217,000 from the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and $239,000 for his contributions to Fox News in 2010 and the beginning of 2011.

Santorum might be even more ass-holish and slimy than Newt Gingrich, who by the way, received an underwhelming fourth-place finish in Iowa — he’s history, and as a historian, Newt knows.

While all the airwaves were filled with Iowa corn-fed shit: On Christmas Day, December 25th, the temperature at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole site soared to an all-time record high of 9.9°F (-12.3°C) at 3:50 p.m. local time, eclipsing the former record of 7.5°F (-13.6°C) set on December 27, 1978. The low temperature on December 25th was a mild (relatively!) 0°F (-17.8°C). Records at the site began in January 1957. Its elevation is 9,301 feet (2,835 meters). (h/t wunderground.com).
And here in the sweet US of A, the environment is also warmer: Aided by a strong warm surge toward the end of the month, new U.S. daily high temperature records exceeded daily cold records in December by a ratio of 1.8 to 1, a margin of 80 percent. (from CapitalClimate).

And here on the Left Coast, the warmth spreads: The mercury hit 85 degrees in Woodland Hills, breaking a record of 84 set in 1994. Burbank topped out at 80 degrees and Saugus in northern Los Angeles County had a high of 83 degrees. “It’s been nice and toasty for the holiday season,” said National Weather Service meteorologist David Sweet. (sfgate.com).
Which in turn could create a human disaster.
Also from sfgate.com:

There was about as much snow on the ground last July 4 as there is now at historic Phillips Station off Highway 50 near the Sierra at Tahoe resort.
Some say the skiing was better then, too.
Frank Gehrke, chief snow surveyor for the California Department of Water Resources, might have had better luck counting butterflies than taking snow measurements, but he nevertheless found a tiny patch of glaciated material shaded by trees.
…
“That’s the lowest January measurement ever,” Gehrke said. “With pretty much no fall storms at all, that’s not a surprise.”
…
Lake Oroville, the primary storage reservoir for the State Water Project, is at 72 percent of capacity, which is 114 percent of normal for this time.
Shasta Lake, which is part of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Central Valley Project and is the largest reservoir in the state, is currently at 68 percent of capacity, or 106 percent of normal.

Up here on California’s northern coast the situation isn’t so much warmth, but wet — very little rain so far this season, and if it does rain, most of the time it’s sprinkle-like and just damp.
Old timers tell me they haven’t seen this type of weather in years, if ever.

A press release last November from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (h/t Climate Progress):

Spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States, new research shows.
The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase dramatically in coming decades if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to climb.
“Climate change is making itself felt in terms of day-to-day weather in the United States,” says Gerald Meehl, the lead author and a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
“The ways these records are being broken show how our climate is already shifting.”
…
The modeling results indicate that if nations continue to increase their emissions of greenhouse gases in a “business as usual” scenario, the U.S. ratio of daily record high to record low temperatures would increase to about 20-to-1 by mid-century and 50-to-1 by 2100.
The mid-century ratio could be much higher if emissions rose at an even greater pace, or it could be about 8-to-1 if emissions were reduced significantly, the model showed.

Hurrah, now on to New Hampshire!

Although prices here in northern California have dipped a bit, it’s still freakin’ high compared nationwide — the national average for regular this week is $3.258 a gallon, still more than 20 cents higher than the same time last year.

Meanwhile, in California the statewide average hit $3.576, up 2 cents since Dec. 19, according to the Energy Department’s weekly survey of service stations. That shattered — by 28.9 cents — the old record of $3.287 a gallon set in December 2007 and was tied in December 2010.

(Illustration found here).

The price of oil — beyond the natural-technical problems — has been influenced by more swinging bullshit centered around Iran, which, in the face of new efforts by the US and the European Union to halt Iran’s nuclear program, has threatened to close the most-vital Strait of Hormuz if the shit gets too deep.
Some experts Iran is bullshitting.
Maybe not — the two-mile-wide strait is much closer to Iran than just the physical: After boasting yesterday: “Shutting the strait for Iran’s armed forces is … easier than drinking a glass of water,” Iran’s navy chief Admiral Habibollah Sayari said: “Today, we don’t need [to shut] the strait because … it is completely under the control of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
A nasty set of circumstances, though, it doesn’t seem to ruffle many feathers.

The US, however, will not be intimidated, and pooh poohed the possible action as an empty gesture:

However, playing down the threat, State Department spokesman Mark Toner called it as nothing more than mere “bluster.”
According to Toner, this was just another attempt by Iran to draw attention away from the key issue, that of their habitual “non-compliance with international nuclear obligations,” he added.

A lot of drama is being played out with this Iranian deal — the US claims it has certain “red lines” (kind of like those famous, ‘line in the sand’ routines) that if crossed would justify a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and then, the shit would really hit the fan.
Israel is the most concerned.
Jason Ditz at antiwar.com:

Officially, of course, both sides would insist such an attack was about Iran’s nuclear program.
But since both nations have been claiming Iran is within striking distance of acquiring nuclear weapons since the mid-1980s, the excuse isn’t going to really fly internationally, so both nations are hoping to settle on something which could be the “trigger” for the attack.

This ‘trigger’ ain’t no horse on some happy trail.

Bluster or not…
From liveoilprices: In London, Brent crude oil futures for February 2012 delivery was trading at $107.90 a barrel, 08.03 GMT this morning on the ICE Futures Exchange.
And WTI: US Light crude oil futures for February 2012 delivery was trading at $99.53 a barrel, 07.42 GMT this morning in electronic trading on the NYMEX.

The quickly approaching new year signals even higher prices to come.

Humanity is fatally blind.
Seeking oil for energy is akin to eating poison — it tastes good and makes us feel good all over, but will kill us in a horrible, twitching death.
Talk about bat-shit crazy — the intake of this crude is making an environment already stunned near-beyond recovery even worse and apparently the glutton forces are stronger than self-preservation.
Even the so-called ‘saving grace’ of the Canadian tar sands oil creates a horrible future:

Extraction of Alberta’s energy-intensive tar sands has expanded steadily in recent years, with about 232 square miles now exposed by mining operations.
That expansion is expected to double over the next decade, which could mean the destruction of 740,000 acres of boreal forest and a 30 percent increase in carbon emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector.

And in perspective (via DeSmogBlog): The latest tally (2008) puts Canada’s GHG emissions at “only” 1.8 per cent, which is swell as long as you don’t think about Canada’s population amounting to just 0.004 per cent of the world’s total. That makes Canada the fourth worst polluter per capita. It also makes our 34 million inhabitants the seventh largest source of CO2 among all the countries in the world – that’s seventh from a list of 216 countries and jurisdictions.

And the end result?
From TreeHugger:

A new study in the Journal of Glaciology shows that the glaciers in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca mountain range are melting so quickly that the water they supply to the arid region is being threatened 20-30 years earlier than expected.
Lead researcher Michel Baraer, from McGill University, told IPS News that the time needed for the region to adapt to the coming water shortages, previously thought to be decades off, “those years don’t exist.”
Baraer said that the glaciers feeding the Rio Santo watershed are now too small to maintain past flows of water.
During the dry season water availability is expected to be 30 percent lower than historic levels.
In the 1930s glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca covered 850 square kilometers.
Today they cover less than 600 sq km.
In a global context, the World Glacier Monitoring Service recently has said that 90 percent of the glaciers studied in its latest Glacier Mass Balance Bulletin are losing mass.
In the Himalaya, 75 percent of the glaciers there are melting; the USGS fully puts the blame on this on global warming and not other factors.

My underline for some way-emphasis — and that, my friends, ain’t bluster.

“There is less clouds in the sky than before. Too much sun, which isn’t good for the plants, a lot less rain. How do you expect the plants to grow?”
…
Hundreds of thousands of people depend on the tea sector, but if climate change is responsible for the hotter weather being experienced now, it is just a matter of time before these plantations perhaps disappear altogether.

(Illustration found here).

Although Bangladesh tea picture is rosy right now — The average price of Bangladeshi tea rose 2.1 percent to 159.28 taka ($1.96) per kg from the previous sale, said an official at the National Brokers Limited, the country’s largest tea broking firm — the future isn’t so bright.

A warming world will make dust of leaves and plants.
Via Climate Progress:

The results of studies that try to quantify the effects of climate change on biodiversity loss — which include damage to the micro scale level of subspecies and genetic variation — are perhaps most shocking.
When, however, you focus on the response to climate change at the macro level, the ecosystem level, you get a better understanding of what is one of the major drivers of that biodiversity loss: forced migrations.
And even here, the numbers may be larger than one would expect, as a new assessment by NASA and Caltech published in the journal Climatic Change shows that by 2100 some 40 percent of “major ecological community types” — that is biomes like forest, grassland, tundra — will have switched to a different such state.
According to the same study most of the land on Earth that is not currently desert or under an icecap will undergo at least a 30 percent change in vegetation cover.
Based on IPCC temperature projections for 2100 [which are probably on the conservative side] of 2-4 degrees Celsius warming scientists of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology ran special computer models to calculate the most probable ecosystem responses across the planet.
This average temperature rise is of similar magnitude to the warming that occurred between the Last Glacial Maximum and the onset of the (milder) Holocene — with the big exception that the current warming is happening about 100 times faster — and for ecology that makes a huge difference, the authors stress.

Acceleration of the process is the key.
And not only has the world kicked the climate change can-of-worms on down the dusty road (via 2020), but has failed to even fund the ‘normal’ disasters, making the planet “dangerously unprepared” for future crises.

Earlier this month, the American Geophysical Union at its annual meeting in San Francisco painted a cruel picture of the can of worms.
The problem is bigger, faster and shitty-er.
Via Climate Science:

Four years ago scientists thought the Arctic would not be ice-free in summer before 2100.
Two years ago, the estimate was 2060.
This year, scientists say the ice could be gone by 2030, possibly even 2020.
As Arctic ice melts and temperatures rise, vast stores of methane frozen under the Arctic Ocean are starting to thaw and vent to the atmosphere.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, 20 to 56 times as powerful as carbon dioxide.
Researchers had seen small plumes.
But a recent survey showed, to their shock, large areas of the ocean pocked with continuous, powerful plumes stretching a half-mile or more across.
In the Andes, conventional wisdom held that residents had 20 years to 40 years to find a replacement for the dwindling glaciers serving as key dry-season water reservoirs.
That time is up, reported Michel Baraër, a researcher at McGill University in Montreal.
The era of “peak water” is past, he said, and hundreds of thousands of people living downstream face an immediate future of diminished and more variable flows.
…
“The planet is going through incredible change,” said Jonathan Foley, director of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment.
“Through rapid uses of the environment, we are pushing our planet in extreme ways.”
…
“We are now on a very different planet than anyone has ever seen before,” Foley said.
“All of our predictions are going to be wrong.
We are going to be very, very surprised.”

Of course, not everybody — some can see the future in the tea leaves.