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Obama may still buckle on Keystone

Monday, 30 January, 2012
By Alex Diaz

So Keystone has become a high-stakes political chess game following the president’s decision to kill the project. This Talking Points Memo article says Republicans have no expectations of getting Obama to sign infrastructure legislation including a Keystone rider, but they’ll attach the rider anyway as a pure political play: to blame Obama during the campaign for opposing job creation and economic growth.

Frankly, I’m not betting the farm on Obama vetoing the bill, particularly if Republicans in exchange go along with his cherished hike in infrastructure spending, designed precisely to create jobs. As the article says, even his Democratic base is split on the pipeline, at a time when jobs truly are THE issue in this election.

The case for a veto no matter what is, I believe, stronger. Politically, he shows backbone and principle, can blast Republicans for the same anti-job position they want to pin on him, and secures the grassroots support he so desperately needs from his environmental base, the same base he has mutilated into apathy with other antagonistic ecodecisions.

But then again, on the subject of backbone and principle, the president has been quite convincing of late that he doesn’t have any when it comes to climate change. The signs are anything but reassuring.

The U.S. was one of the countries that most blocked progress (even simple steps) at Durban. Obama’s new all-or-nothing energy policy proudly includes record hikes in American oil and gas exploration. And when he “killed” Keystone, I’ve warned earlier that we would be ill advised to celebrate much, so absent from his statement was any mention of climate change. Now, if he was willing to turn on the climate at these crucial moments, what makes us think he’ll stick to the Keystone decision in the face of potential political risk?

The writing is all over the wall, folks. This man has simply abandoned the climate in favor of his reelection. He fails to see the political, historical and economic value (to him!) of standing up to the Republicans on this all-important issue. So don’t let his support of cleantech fool you. On Keystone, we simply do not know which way he’ll go.

Alex Diaz is news editor and sustainability specialist at Caribbean Business newspaper in Puerto Rico and writes about global green in his Google+ page.
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Pingback: Granola Report: January 31, 2012 « The Granola Report
tobeornottobe

Obama: “How poor am I that do not have patience! I that put up with the Republican attacks in congress! I that put up with the environmental lobby on the streets! What wouldest you have me do, but be warned,
I am not bound to please thee with my answer.”
Obama may still buckle on Keystone: “You must listen first with your heart not with your head. It is imperative that no more manmade pipelines with oil inside them are allowed to go ahead under your administration. The birds will suffer, the trees will be filled with fear, and waterways will forever mourn. ”

Repbulicans: “Answer me this governor or forever hold thy silence. Is it true that motor cars run on fuel? Is it true that fuel costs money? Is it true that if the citizens of this great nation have the means to survive then this great nation will survive? ”

Scientist reporting to capital Hill: “Hear me now for much foolish talk pains me. Not all food comes from electric cars, not all rain from solar panels, not all life from oil pipelines, and perhaps not all truth from wikipedia. An article in Science magazine illustrated that a rise in carbon dioxide did not precede a rise in temperatures, but actually lagged behind temperature rises by 200 to 1000 years. A rise in carbon dioxide levels could not have caused a rise in temperature if it followed the temperature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C… Carbon dioxide dissolves in the ocean to form carbonic acid (H2CO3), bicarbonate (HCO3-) and carbonate (CO32-), and there is about fifty times as much carbon dissolved in the sea water of the oceans as exists in the atmosphere.Gas solubility decreases as the temperature of water increases. :In order from man made c02 emissions to cause measurable temperature increases it is necessary to determine whether the increased manmade c02 in the atmosphere results in increased temperature. Such isolation is made possible with the different isotopes of carbon, C13 and C12 leading to a hypothesis that (obtained fromhttp://wattsupwiththat.com… )The long-term increases in carbon dioxide concentration that have been observed at Mauna Loa since 1958 could be driven more than by the ocean than by mankind’s burning of fossil fuels.

The question now is not so much as what causes co2 and ways to minimise co2, rather what modulates temperature? That such a mechanism must exist is clear given previously high temperature and c02 levels in the geological history. If such a mechanism had not/does not exist then as temperature had risen co2 levels would have risen feeding back into higher temperature via positive feedback. A barren wilderness in what is now called earth would have resulted.

What may modulate the earth’s temperature and therefore indirectly modulate the release of co2 in the oceans?

It has been suggested by space daily
http://www.spacedaily.com/2006/090112183735.ojdq7esu.html that
The earth’s climate has been significantly affected by the planet’s magnetic field, according to a Danish study published Monday that could challenge the notion that human emissions are responsible for global warming.

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