environment – Page 66 – Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment.

The Lanthanides Lamentation Limerick:

China’s Ban on Selling Rare Earth Minerals to Japan Continues, Officials Say

By KEITH BRADSHER and EDWARD WONG New York Times Published: October 10, 2010

HONG KONG — Chinese customs officials continued to bar all exports of rare earth minerals to Japan over the weekend, industry officials said, but the Chinese government showed signs of taking a more conciliatory stance toward Japan. …

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China told European political and business leaders Wednesday that China had not imposed any bans on exports of industrial minerals for political purposes and that it did not intend to stop exports in the future. Rare earths are used in the manufacture of hybrid gasoline-electric cars, computer screens, large wind turbines and many other applications.

Mr. Wen made his remarks in a speech at a China-European Union business meeting in Brussels. Chinese officials have consistently taken the position that they have not imposed any regulations preventing rare earth exports; any such regulations could be easily challenged at the World Trade Organization. …

Throughout the halt on exports of rare earth minerals, China has allowed continued exports of manufactured products that use rare earths, like powerful magnets, and highly purified rare earth metals. Japan is the largest importer of rare earth minerals and ores. Companies there use the material to make a wide range of high- technology products and have been reluctant to import manufactured goods from China instead.

Even before questions arose over the exports to Japan in late September, China had been putting tighter caps on rare earth exports for the last five years. When the export halt was imposed, the quota for 2010 was within a month and a half of being exhausted. But shipments could continue into November if customs officials allow a resumption soon. Edward Wong reported from Beijing and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong.

Note: China mines 97% of the world’s rare earth metals.

The Lanthanides Lamentation Limerick:

What is “Rare Earth Metals”, and who gives a hoot?

They’re all mined in China with prices to boot.

We closed our own mines

with lawsuits and fines.

We need them for green jobs: No freedom to toot.

Frankly I’m exhausted.Is this my new reality? A limerick.

Investing in America: A CNBC Town Hall Event with President Obama Sep 2010.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: ”Thank you very much. And quite frankly, good afternoon, President Obama. I’m deeply honored to be in this forum and so grateful for CNBC for making the forum available so you can speak to American citizens just like myself. I’m a chief financial officer for a veterans service organization and that’s here in Washington. I’m also a mother, I’m a wife, I’m an American veteran, and I’m one of your middle-class Americans.

Quite frankly, I’m exhausted. Exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the man for change I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now. I’ve been told that I voted for a man who said he was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class. I’m one of those people and I’m waiting, sir, I’m waiting. I don’t feel it yet. While I thought it wouldn’t be a great measure, I would feel it in some small measure. I have two children in private school, and the financial recession has taken an enormous toll on my family. My husband and I joked that we thought we were well beyond the hot dogs and beans era of our lives. And quite frankly, it’s starting to knock on our door and ring through that that might be where we’re headed.

And quite frankly, Mr. President, I need you to answer honestly, is this my new reality?”

The President answered something of no consequence, but to better reflect the new reality he might as well have answered like this:

Now, don’t get me started, you are what you eat:

Do not eat the hot dogs, they are processed meat.

The new EPA

Will have the last say. *

With beans you fart methane, and that’s greenhouse heat.

*On July 29th 2010 the Agency rejected challenges to its claim that, “climate change caused by emissions of greenhouse gas is a danger to public health.”

Save the Chesapeake Bay. A Limerick.

Last September we went down to Virginia Beach for four spectacular days. The weather was perfect, the surf was building day by day and I swam with the Dolphins! They came within 30 feet of me, a school of more than a dozen. Above the Blue Angels trained, first two, then four, then all six in perfect formation. The approaching hurricane Igor slowed down to 7 mph instead of the predicted 14 which gave the people of Bermuda one more day to prepare, and by then it will have gone down in energy one more level. As we (my wife and I) do every year we take a look at the status of the Chesapeake Bay on the way down and up. To the most casual observer it seems that the deterioration has stopped and a slow recovery is in place. To be an environmentalist means you take a regional approach to a problem and attack it as a regional matter. The solution for Chesapeake Bay is quite different from the Everglades, the Bayous or the water needs of the West. Then on the news comes this insane call to arms: Global Climate Disruption.

All I can do is make another Limerick:

We’re trying to save our Chesapeake Bay.

Why Climate Disruption? And Global? No way!

It’s all about land use,

And water and refuse.

The Ice Age and Warm Period, they went away.

Climate Change is now Global Climate Disruption. A Limerick.

(CNSNews.com, Sep 14 2010) – John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, says that the term “global warming” is “a dangerous misnomer” that should be replaced with “global climate disruption.”

This calls for a Limerick:

First Warming, then Climate Change, now Global Climate Disruption:

John Holdren has seized a political option.,

So when shove comes to push,

He can blame it on Bush,

In case of a major volcanic eruption.

The jet on e-bay Limerick.

There once stood a corporate jet in Anchorage,

When Sarah took reins of the State she had courage.

Without a delay

she put on e-bay

that state-supplied jet on Ted Stevens, Anchorage.

(Ted Stevens International Airport, that is)

I have researched matters further, here is version 2 of the Limerick.

There once stood a corporate jet in Juneau,

and Governor Sarah – “you Betcha ” you know

without a delay

she put on e-bay

that fuel-guzzling state-supplied plane in Juneau.

Those were two of the only three airports in Alaska with runways long enough for the W III jet.

Update: While it was put on e-bay, the sale of a corporate jet is a little more complicated than processing it thru PayPal, so the deal was finalized using a broker.

Ode to Nancy Pelosi, Limerick song.

LEFT: Nancy Pelosi tries her best to explain her strange behavior.

RIGHT:Question: Why does an American Woman Infidel do the sign of the cross in the great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus Syria? Answer: Nancy Pelosi does the sign of the cross to pay her utmost respect to the skull of John the Baptist. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi looks at the tomb containing the head of St. John the Baptist inside the historic Umayyad Mosque, during her tour at a popular market in downtown Damascus, Syria, Tuesday April 3, 2007.

(President George W. Bush criticized the trip, saying it sends mixed signals to Syrian President Bashar Assad. )

Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the house in Jan 2007. What power does she have anyhow?

Let us take a look at the U.S. Constitution:

Section 7 – Revenue Bills, Legislative Process, Presidential Veto All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills. Section 8 – Powers of Congress The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

How has our economy been performing since she took the reins of the purse strings? There is an interesting article by Mark Trumbull, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor / February 21, 2007 : Despite the ongoing costs of US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the outlook for the federal budget has grown substantially brighter. Tax revenues are rising much faster than spending, according to Treasury Department numbers released last week. The recent trend is strong enough that, were it to continue, the budget could move into surplus in barely a year, one economist calculates. Already, the federal deficit is shrinking toward about half the size that it has averaged since 1970, when analyzed as a percentage of gross domestic product. The shift reflects a strong economy, with higher incomes and corporate profits generating a bigger flow of tax revenue. In turn, the Treasury’s progress could help the economy by buoying investor confidence in the nation’s fiscal position. Some experts say the budget could achieve balance in the short run of the next few years. In unveiling its proposed budget this month, the Bush administration forecast black ink on the federal ledger in 2012. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), in its recent annual outlook, also shows a surplus for that year. So, after three and a half year of Nancy Pelosi, how are we doing? I can only say it has gone from good to bad to verse:

Ode to Nancy Pelosi, Limerick style.

Since Nancy Pelosi took over the gavel

Was our economy quick to unravel.

She is more than bad,

The worst that we had.

We finally stopped contemplating our navel.

Since Nancy Pelosi took over as speaker

Our job situation has gotten much weaker

All jobs that are lost

Since she got the post

And as for advise, shame to all who still seek her.

For Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader

The Chinese exploiters a life-line did feed her

Our debt load increased

Four trillions at least

We all must this fall go and vote to unseat her

For Nancy Pelosi, known Tea Party hater

Gets scared when the grandmothers start to berate her

It does go to show

That she doesn’t know

The Tea Party is a great hate dissipater.

Ode to Nancy Pelosi, Limerick song.

Two feet of snow in Seattle! A Limerick.

They got two feet of snow in Seattle

The alarmists are losing the battle.

“It is only weather”

It’s cold, warm, whatever.

Please move on, there’s no science to settle.

On a serious note: The world is getting colder.

Photo by: Jackie Nichols Gladish of FEMA

As shown above (see the datapoint in the square box), the Jan 25 2012 UAH AMSU daily temperatures are the coldest for the globe at 600mb of all the years tracked since 2002 (warmest 2010, previously coldest 2008)

Above is worldwide average temperatures at the 2 meter level. The new Dr. Ryan Maue reanalysis based global temperature anomalies has declined dramatically this month – almost a full degree Celsius!

(Forecasts for temperature 8 days in advance are appended to the reanalysis values.)

Will the average temperature go up or down in the future?

Science is not settled.

Obama loves Spain. It’s hard to explain. A Limerick.

Let’s follow the pattern of Spain (1)

Go green, go in debt, inflict pain.(2)

Too many are jobless (3)

The Socialists clueless (4)

They got voted out to Spain’s gain. (5) (6) (7)

(1) On eight occasions, the current occupant of the White House (Obama) has referred to the Spanish model as an example to follow.

(2) After a leaked Spanish government report, a newspaper in Spain (La Gaceta) confirms that the country’s “green economy” policies — the model for the Obama administration’s “green jobs” efforts — have been a disaster: expensive, ineffective, and unworkable

(3) The official jobless rate in Spain went from 7.9% in May 2007 to 19% in Nov 2009. It now stands at 22.8% (Oct 2011)

(4) The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (Spanish: Partido Socialista Obrero Español [parˈtiðo soθjaˈlista oˈβrero espaˈɲol], PSOE [peˈsoe]) is a social-democratic political party in Spain. Since the General election on 14 March 2004, the PSOE has been the governing party of Spain. The PSOE is a full member of the Party of European Socialists and the Socialist International.

(5) MADRID — Spaniards struggling with high unemployment and a credit squeeze delivered a punishing verdict on almost eight years of Socialist government at the ballot box on Nov 20 2011, turning to the conservative Popular Party in the hopes of alleviating the pain of Europe’s debt crisis. The Popular Party, led by Mariano Rajoy won 186 seats and a governing majority in the 350-seat lower house of Parliament, while the governing Socialists plummeted to 110 seats from 169. It was the Popular Party’s best showing, and the Socialists’ worst, since Spain’s return to democracy in the 1970s.

(6) Spain took advantage of strong demand to sell nearly twice as many bonds as initially planned at its final bond auction last year on Dec 15 2011, although market participants expect the country’s borrowing conditions to remain tough next year. The strong response to the auction, which brought much-needed respite to the battered Spanish bond market, helped power the country’s bonds higher, with the yield on bonds due in two years falling to their lowest levels since late October.

(7) Jan 27 2012 Fitch Ratings has resolved the Negative Rating Watch on six Eurozone sovereigns, downgrading the IDRs for Belgium, Cyprus, Italy, Slovenia and Spain while affirming ratings for Ireland. The Negative Outlook on all six countries indicates a slightly greater than 50% chance of a downgrade over a two-year time horizon.

Obama and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Keystone XL pipeline decision.

The Obama administration announced Nov. 10 it would delay a politically explosive decision on the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline until after the 2012 elections. Congress corrected this dithering by forcing Obama to make a decision one way or another. He chose not to build it.

This decision was bad on so many levels it is hard to count them all.Let’s try to look at the ways:

Canada has oil sands and is exploiting the resources. U.S. is dependent on importing a large share of its crude oil.

The cheapest and most efficient way to transport crude oil is through a pipe line. It is also the safest and most reliable way of getting crude oil from point A to point B. To not O.K. the pipeline increases the cost and makes us more dependent of crude oil from the Middle East and Nigeria, as well as Venezuela.

Canada really, really wanted this deal. It would help improve our relations. Now they are strained.

The unions really wanted the jobs. It would supply them with more than 20000 direct, well-paid jobs. In addition there is secondary business generated whenever a project of this magnitude is undertaken. Why not generate jobs?

The newly discovered oil fields in North Dakota and Montana could use the pipeline as well. Now they will have to go it alone or transport their oil on railroad or barge traffic instead, a more expensive and less safe option. So why did Obama delay the decision?

It was because of the environmentalists. Let us examine why this decision was equally horrible from an environmentalist’s perspective. Canada is a sovereign nation. They have the oil and will sell or use it one way or another. The most energy conserving way is to transport it through a pipeline. Transport via train, truck or barge uses more energy (read more CO2) and costs about $15 per barrel vs. $5 for a pipeline.

Canada will sell it’s oil to China if we don’t want it. China has a well deserved reputation for producing a lot of pollution. The best environmental solution is for us to import this oil.

Nebraska protested there was a danger to damage their aquifer. The Keystone XL management offered to reroute the pipeline away from this sensitive aquifer, thereby solving that objection. By not importing oil from Canada the total carbon footprint will increase. We lose, and Canada loses. (I am not concerned that the CO2 is increasing, but that a valuable natural resource is excessively depleted.) Now it turns out that Canada has left the Kyoto Protocol, thereby being free to burn as much of its carbon as they want. Was that really what the environmentalists wanted?

So why did Obama first delay the decision until after the 2012 election, and then when forced deny the permit? Here are five possibilities:

1. Obama is a true believer that ”this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”. As a true environmentalist his role can not be overestimated .

2. Obama is deliberately wrecking our economy, refuses to have an energy policy that will create jobs, but will support protest movements and foment unrest.

3. Obama is acting on orders from Global Governance people that do want U.S. to be totally dependent on international law and U.N. mandates.

4. Obama promised to be Brazil’s best customer from their deep sea oil drilling success, paid for by U.S. loan guarantees. He must be true to his promises.

5. Obama is half insane and surrounded by bad advisors.

This is the best I can do to explain the reasons for this decision.

Climate challenges. The term for today. A Limerick.

From The Austrailian:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/climate-change-long-drought/story-e6frg6nf-1225984667890

THE term “climate change” could be replaced by “climate challenges” if a federal commissioned marketing study is taken onboard. The study of attitudes to climate change among farmers, commissioned by the Agriculture Department, found only 27 per cent of those surveyed believed human activity was causing climate change, compared with 58 per cent of urban dwellers. As well, primary producers are “very resistant to carbon trading”. “It fills them with dread, and there were strong negative reactions towards it,” the report says. Handed to the department late last year, the report warns that terminology that fails to take into account the attitude of primary producers towards human-induced climate change risks failure. The term “climate change” sets up negative reactions among primary producers for a number of reasons, from skepticism through to perceptions that they are being held solely responsible for causing climate change, it says. “Preferred terms such as ‘climate challenges’, ‘prolonged drought’ and ‘risk management’ are accepted, better understood and more likely to motivate change.” The report, prepared by Sydney-based marketer Instinct and Reason, was aimed at developing a communication strategy as the government seeks to sell its climate change message. It says many primary producers feel climate change and mitigation efforts are no more important compared with other significant challenges such as low prices, increasing costs, labour shortages and declining profitability. “Many primary producers expressed the view that human-induced climate change is yet to be proven and dismiss the idea that it is behind the climatic situations they currently face. Instead, they prefer to see it as yet another period of drought or change in conditions that will eventually pass.”

Is the climate a challenge? That is what they say.

Hot from the presses, the term for today.

The reason is muddy.

A marketing study

coined it. The weather will probably wash it away.