High overcast again this early Tuesday on California’s north coast, and as the planet spins into oblivion the dark lingers.
And sunshine won’t change matters.

In light of the EPA’s okay last Friday of the Keystone XL pipeline, was this prior to the report’s release from Jack Gerard, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute: “It’s our expectation it will be released next week. We’re expecting to hear the same conclusion that we’ve heard four times before: no significant impact on the environment.”
Nothing shitty going on here, move along.

Just the fate of humanity resting on a dip stick.

(Illustration found here).

The oil business is oozing — the EPA report wasn’t expected already, maybe further along in this election year, but with the close-ooz of the business of politics, no wonder.
DeSmogBlog points this out:

In fact, as the Keystone decision-making process has unfolded, the oil and gas industry has had — as they’ve enjoyed for decades — intensive access to decision-making in the White House.
This access has helped form the Obama administration’s schizophrenic energy policy, in which the President backs both renewable energy and fossil fuels without acknowledging that the two are competitors.
When fossil fuels gain market share, renewables lose.
While even the World Bank has called for immediate action on climate change, the API, which has worked hard to shape Obama’s views on fossil fuels, has also worked to create doubt around the very concept of fossil-fuel-driven climate change and to downplay the impact their industry has had.
There’s no question that the oil and gas industry wields enormous sway inside Washington D.C.
The API has spent $9.3 million dollars this year alone on reportable lobbying expenses, the highest amount in the group’s history, according to data from OpenSecrets.org.
This summer, a DeSmog investigation found that API spent $22.03 million dollars lobbying at the federal level on Keystone XL and/or tar sands issues since June 2008, when the pipeline project was first proposed.
The API has also worked hard to convince lawmakers that voters overwhelmingly back the pipeline (despite a groundswell of grassroots organizing that has led to the project’s declining popularity).

In the crisis for the ages — climate change — Obama is a whack. James Hansen, former NASA guy and way-long-time crier on the horror of climate change, said it true two years ago:

If he chooses the dirty needle it is game over because it will confirm that Obama was just greenwashing, like the other well-oiled coal-fired politicians with no real intention of solving the addiction.
Canada is going to sell its dope, if it can find a buyer.
So if the United States is buying the dirtiest stuff, it also surely will be going after oil in the deepest ocean, the Arctic, and shale deposits; and harvesting coal via mountaintop removal and long-wall mining.
Obama will have decided he is a hopeless addict.

And like a shitload of bad associated with climate change, those tar sands operation is worse than they figured — always this under-looking the facts. Another study, another pile of shit.
Via Climate Central:

A new University of Toronto-Scarborough study published Monday says there’s another reason to be concerned about oil production in the tar sands: The Canadian government may have underestimated emissions of carcinogens known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, from the Alberta tar sands, and they may be a major hazard to both human and ecosystem health.
Official estimates of PAH emissions from the Alberta tar sands have been used by the Canadian government to approve new tar sands development, and estimates for PAH concentrations in air, water and food in the region may also be too low, leading to an underestimation of PAH risk to human health, the study says.
PAHs are not greenhouse gases, and have no direct effect on climate change.
But their source does: The U.S. State Department in its Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, released Friday, says the production and processing of a barrel of tar sands crude releases 17 percent more carbon emissions than the average barrel of crude produced elsewhere.
…
Because sources of these emissions may not have been considered in official inventories, the risk PAHs pose to human health and the environment may be much greater than previously thought, Wania said.
“The implication of these results is that the emissions from tailing ponds are being underreported,” Blais said.
“We can explain this a number of ways. These emissions from tailing ponds can be very difficult to estimate. They could be occurring below the surface of the ground. They could be below surface, below grade. They could be following fissures or fractures in the rock.”
Blais said Wania’s team’s modeling is very useful in revealing whether official PAH inventories are realistic.
That’s important because PAHs are a health issue for anyone living near the tar sands or the Keystone XL pipeline if it were to leak, he said.

But, who really gives a shit, as long as the US has the power to keep going — but to where?