Tag Archives: year

Chart of the Day: The World Has More Oil Than It Needs

by ziarullibertatealocuridemunca Posted on December 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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I don’t have a lot to say about this, but I wanted to pass along this chart from Chris Mooney over at Wonkblog. Basically, it shows that although both supply and demand for oil have been roughly in sync for the past five years, demand abruptly dropped earlier this year and is projected to stay low next year. This is why prices have dropped so far: not because supply has skyrocketed thanks to fracking—the supply trendline is actually fairly smooth—but because the world is using less oil.

This is a short-term blip, and I don’t want to make too much of it. Still, regular readers will remember that one of the biggest problems with oil isn’t high prices per se. The world can actually get along OK with high oil prices. The problem is spikes in oil prices caused by sudden imbalances between supply and demand. Historically this wasn’t a big problem because potential supply was much higher than demand. If demand went up, the Saudis and others just opened up the taps a bit and everything was back in balance.

But that hasn’t been true for a while. There’s very little excess capacity these days, so if oil supply drops due to war or natural disaster, it can result in a very sudden spike in prices. And that can lead to economic chaos. But if demand has fallen significantly below supply, it means we now have excess capacity again. And if we have excess capacity, it means that the price of oil can be managed. It will still go up and down, but it’s less likely to unexpectedly spike upward. And this in turn means that, at least in the near future, oil is unlikely to derail the economic recovery. It’s a small but meaningful piece of good news.

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Chart of the Day: The World Has More Oil Than It Needs

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Yak Dung Is Making Climate Change Worse

by TorstenBobbitt Posted on December 8, 2014

Mother Jones

This story originally appeared in Slate and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

It gets pretty cold this time of year in Tibet. For centuries, the solution to this problem was a win-win: just burn that huge pile of yak dung that’s been accumulating all summer.

For millions of nomadic Tibetans, it’s a system that works. But that system comes at a hefty cost. Tibetan homes have some of the worst indoor air pollution in the world, and the soot the dung fires release is a big contributor to climate change.

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Yak Dung Is Making Climate Change Worse

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This guy’s typhoon tweets make the climate crisis urgent, touching, and funny all at once

by JeanettHowie Posted on December 4, 2014

This guy’s typhoon tweets make the climate crisis urgent, touching, and funny all at once

By on 4 Dec 2014 1:15 pmcommentsShare

The worst storm of 2014 is moving across the Western Pacific, headed for the Philippines. There’s a chance it will just graze the island nation — but there’s also a chance that Super Typhoon Hagupit is headed straight for the area hit so hard last year by Super Typhoon Haiyan.

Writes USA Today:

Hagupit strengthened into a typhoon Tuesday and continued to strengthen Wednesday, with sustained winds of 150 mph, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center said.

That is equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane. A typhoon is the same type of storm as a hurricane but is called a typhoon in the western Pacific Ocean.

The storm was about 800 miles east of the Philippines and could be near the island nation by Saturday.

When Haiyan struck last year, 7,000 were killed or went missing, and, more than a year later, the country is still recovering. Many people still live in temporary shelters, made homeless by the most powerful typhoon to ever hit land.

At the time, there was also a U.N. climate conference underway in Warsaw, Poland. The Philippines’ climate change commissioner, Yeb Saño, had his hometown destroyed, and went on a hunger strike during the conference in hopes of spurring “meaningful” progress.

Now, as Hagupit bears down, there’s another U.N. climate conference underway, in Lima, Peru. This time, Saño is at home. He is again trying to raise awareness about his vulnerable country’s plight in the face of climate change. Notably, on Twitter:

And sometimes, with a sense of humor about the whole thing:

Fingers crossed that this year’s summit won’t get the same kind of deadly and urgent reminder of the threat of climate change that Haiyan delivered in 2013.

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This guy’s typhoon tweets make the climate crisis urgent, touching, and funny all at once

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Pines, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This guy’s typhoon tweets make the climate crisis urgent, touching, and funny all at once

Cheap gas will make Thanksgiving traffic even worse this year

by LloydCrommelin Posted on November 25, 2014

Cheap gas will make Thanksgiving traffic even worse this year

By on 25 Nov 2014commentsShare

Think last year’s Thanksgiving traffic was bad? This year, it’ll be even worse. Drivers should expect this Wednesday’s travel times to be 25 to 36 percent longer — and for rush hour to start two hours earlier — than on a typical Wednesday, according to the annual INRIX Thanksgiving Traffic Forecast. Basically, INRIX analysts say, don’t even bother trying to drive between 2 and 5 p.m. on Wednesday, unless by “drive” you mean “sit and stare at a Coexist bumper sticker,” which, I know, is everyone’s favorite thing.

Still, we’re a masochistic bunch. AAA projects that over 46 million people will journey more than 50 miles for Thanksgiving this year — the biggest number since 2007, and a 4.2 percent increase from last year.

And why, for heaven’s sake?! Probably ’cause gas is cheap: This week, we’re seeing the lowest gasoline prices since 2009. The national average is $2.85 a gallon right now, 43 cents cheaper than last Thanksgiving. That means drivers in Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle, in particular, are going to be sitting in some of the thickest gridlock in years, according to INRIX:

INRIX

Yeah, Los Angeles drivers know a thing or two about traffic, but man, the above chart suggests that the average pre-Thanksgiving trip is probably going to take them more than a third longer than the average traffic-clogged day, says analyst Jim Bak.

“Los Angeles is simply the worst place to be on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving,” said Bak. “The combination of people arriving for the holiday with those leaving town and normal commuter traffic will result in steady traffic all day long.”

Oh boy! Now that sounds like a happy holiday — and yet another reason we really, really don’t want cheap gas.

Source:
Inrix Thanksgiving Traffic Forecast Predicts Longer Delays This Year for Drivers on Wednesday Afternoon

, INRIX.

AAA: More Thank 46 Million Americans to Celebrate Thanksgiving with a Holiday Getaway, Most Since 2007

, AAA.

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Cheap gas will make Thanksgiving traffic even worse this year

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These State Lawmakers Want To Save Thanksgiving From Greedy Retailers

by Trista3686 Posted on November 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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In recent years, more and more big-box retailers have begun forcing their employees to work on Thanksgiving Day. Now, some Ohio state legislators have had enough. They’re introducing bills that would give workers the right to refuse to punch in on Thanksgiving, and, if they do agree to show up on the holiday, to receive substantial overtime pay.

“Thanksgiving Day is supposed to be a day when we retreat from consumerism,” says Cleveland’s Democratic State Rep. Mike Foley, the author of one such bill. “It’s a day when you hang out with your family, go play touch football, have a big turkey dinner, and complain about your crazy uncle or cousin—but you don’t think about super blockbuster sales at Target.”

Foley’s House Bill 360 would allow stores to open on Turkey Day but ban them from retaliating against workers who opt to stay home with their families. Workers who do show up would be guaranteed triple wages—which would also apply on Black Friday if stores open earlier than normal (12:01 a.m. and earlier openings have become common).

Foley says he was inspired to write the bill last year while leafing through newspaper circulars advertising Thanksgiving Day sales. “My wife said, ‘You’re a legislator, do something about this,'” he recalls. “And I thought, ‘Well, I am.'”

If employers want to treat Thanksgiving as “an opportunity to make money or get above the black line, so be it,” say Democratic Rep. Robert Hagan, the bill’s cosponsor. “But the fact still remains that they have that responsibility to take care of their workers.”

Out in Middletown, Connecticut, Democratic State Rep. Matt Lesser has pledged to introduce a similar bill next year. “The idea is to discourage retailers” from opening on Thanksgiving, he told the Hartford Courant. “And if they do require their workers to come in on Thanksgiving, that they would at least be paid overtime to compensate.”

Laws restricting Thanksgiving Day commerce aren’t without precedent. For decades, Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island have completely banned most retailers from opening their doors on Thanksgiving and Christmas. The rules date back to Colonial-era “blue laws” that restricted commercial activity on Sundays. More recently, some labor advocates have called for a federal blue law to protect Christmas and Thanksgiving. (Don’t hold your breath).

Although the GOP likes to think of itself as the party of family values, Foley and Hagan say that the Republicans who control the Ohio legislature want nothing to do with their Thanksgiving law. Their bill, first introduced last year, was quickly tabled. It’s not expected to come up for a vote this year either. “They are on the side of the retailers, the restaurant owners, the people making the money, as opposed to working families,” Hagan says. “That’s the bottom line.”

Still, the backlash against Turkey Day retail has gained some steam. The Boycott Black Thursday Facebook page has more than 100,000 likes. And more than two-dozen retail chains plan to stay dark on Thanksgiving this year, including Barnes & Noble, Bed Bath & Beyond, Dillards, Nordstrom, GameStop, and Costco. “We don’t believe that we will lose ground to competitors,” GameStop president Tony Bartel told the New York Times. “Even if we lose ground to competitors, we are making it corporate principle—we have committed to associates that we will not open on Thanksgiving.”

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These State Lawmakers Want To Save Thanksgiving From Greedy Retailers

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The Ohlone People Were Forced Out of San Francisco. Now They Want Part of Their Land Back.

by OpalSkillen Posted on November 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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“There are only three ways to get land,” said Tony Cerda, chairman of the Costanoan Rumsen Carmel Tribe, in 2010. “You can buy it, have it given to you, or steal it.” It’s clear which one of those applies to his people, the Ohlone, who lived in the central California coastal region for thousands of years prior to the arrival of Spanish missionaries in the 1700s. The Ohlone once numbered as many as 15,000 on lands stretching from the San Francisco Bay to Big Sur. But following years of enslavement under the Spanish mission system and, later, persecution by settlers, they are now largely a people in exile.

Cerda’s tribe—about 2,000 people living in the Pomona area east of Los Angeles—are now the largest contemporary Ohlone group in the state. They’re leading the push for cultural recognition in the city of San Francisco. Specifically, they’re asking the city for land to build a cultural center as part of a proposed shoreline redevelopment project in the Hunters Point Shipyard area. The area was once the location of a historic Ohlone village and burial site—one of over 425 in the San Francisco Bay region.

Ohlone leaders say a cultural center would highlight the oft-overlooked history of California’s native people while serving as a permanent place for today’s tribes to continue their song, dance, language, and art traditions. And they’re also hoping to rebuild their cultural presence through community events like the annual Big Time Gathering, which took place in October in San Francisco’s Presidio National Park. This year’s gathering was the biggest yet, drawing more than 100 Native Californians from seven different tribes. Their goal is to honor their roots, says Neil Maclean, one of the event’s organizers: “Through hearing them sing, seeing them dance, and joining with them in ceremony, the Ohlone will tell their side about what it is like to survive.”

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The Ohlone People Were Forced Out of San Francisco. Now They Want Part of Their Land Back.

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Voter ID Laws: Terrible Public Policy, But Probably Pretty Feeble

by FFJLaunaxxkc Posted on November 19, 2014

Mother Jones

Republican-led voter-ID laws may be pernicious, but Nate Cohn says there are three reasons to think their actual electoral impact is overstated:

To begin with, the true number of registered voters without photo identification is usually much lower than the statistics on registered voters without identification suggest. The number of voters without photo identification is calculated by matching voter registration files with state ID databases. But perfect matching is impossible and the effect is to overestimate the number of voters without identification.

….People without ID are less likely to vote than other registered voters. The North Carolina study found that 43 percent of the unmatched voters — registered voters who could not be matched with a driver’s license — participated in 2012, compared with more than 70 percent of matched voters.

….There’s no question that voter ID has a disparate impact on Democratic-leaning groups….But voters without an identification might be breaking something more like 70/30 for Democrats than 95/5. A 70/30 margin is a big deal, and, again, it’s fully consistent with Democratic concerns about voter suppression. But when we’re down to the subset of unmatched voters who don’t have any identification and still vote, a 70/30 margin probably isn’t generating enough votes to decide anything but an extremely close election.

When I looked into this a couple of years ago, I basically came to the same conclusion. Only a few studies were available at the time, but they suggested that the real-world impact of voter ID laws was fairly small. I haven’t seen anything since then to suggest otherwise.

None of this justifies the cynical Republican effort to suppress voting via ID laws. For one thing, they still matter in close elections. For another, the simple fact that they deliberately target minority voters is noxious—and this is very much not ameliorated by the common Republican defense that the real reason they’re targeted isn’t race related. It’s because they vote for Democrats. If anything, that makes it worse. Republicans are knowingly making it harder for blacks and Hispanics to vote because they vote for the wrong people. I’m not sure how much more noxious a voter suppression effort can be.

These laws should be stricken from the books, lock, stock and extremely smoking barrel. They don’t prevent voter fraud and they have no purpose except to suppress the votes of targeted groups. The evidence on this point is now clear enough that the Supreme Court should revisit its 2008 decision in Crawford v. Marion that upheld strict voter ID laws. They have no place in a decent society.

At the same time, if you’re wondering how much actual effect they have, the answer is probably not much. We still don’t have any definitive academic studies on this point, I think, but Cohn makes a pretty good case. It’s possible that Kay Hagen might have lost her Senate race this year thanks to voter ID laws, but she’s probably the only one.

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Voter ID Laws: Terrible Public Policy, But Probably Pretty Feeble

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Get ready for another extremely cold winter starting NOW

by Unacoomt Posted on November 5, 2014

Get ready for another extremely cold winter starting NOW

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5 Nov 2014 6:01 PM

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If you didn’t experience last year’s polar vortex, let me offer a brief ode to The Great Northern Indiana Winter 2013-14: One morning, I woke up to a thermostat reading 36 degrees INSIDE THE HOUSE. It is because I endured you, Winter of 13-14, that I can consider myself a serious BAMF.

Climate change likely contributed to the cold weather carnage that swept the Midwest and eastern parts of the U.S. last winter. And this year, it looks like we’re not going to get a break. Here’s Slate’s Eric Holthaus with some cold comfort:

Over the last few weeks, seasonal climate models have shifted more and more toward the idea that this winter will be a doozy. Now that we’re within shorter range, the odds of recurring cold snaps — at least for the rest of November — are increasingly certain. Over the last few days, shorter-term weather models have locked on to the growing likelihood that — for the Eastern United States, at least — winter starts now.

Now? As in, now-now? Like, early-November-not-even-Thanksgiving-yet, now? C’mon Holthaus, you’re makin’ us noyvous. But according to meteorologists, there’s a super-typhoon set to hit Bering Sea on Saturday that is expected to hasten winter’s coming on the East Coast — and bring well-below freezing temps to the Midwest. Here’s a map of what you can look forward to next week:

It’s not just the cold that’s getting out of control; the west was hit with unprecedented warmth this year — not to mention California’s continuing drought from hell. We know we’re starting to sound like scratched vinyl here, but climate change exacerbates extreme weather. In fact, according to a Stanford study, climate change makes extreme temperatures at least three times more likely. I, for one, am heating up my rice bags.

Source:
Bundle Up: November Is Going to Be Really Cold in the Eastern United States

, Slate.

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Get ready for another extremely cold winter starting NOW

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GDP Increases At Not-Bad 3.5% Rate in Third Quarter

by MelanieXFI Posted on October 30, 2014

Mother Jones

Today’s economic news is fairly good. GDP in the third quarter grew at a 3.5 percent annual rate, which means that the slowdown at the beginning of the year really does look like it was just a blip. Aside from that one quarter, economic growth has been pretty robust for over a year now.

At the same time, inflation continues to be very low, which you can take as either good news (if you’re an inflation hawk) or bad news (if you think the economy could use a couple of years of higher inflation).

We could still use some higher growth after five years of weakness, but at least we’re providing a bit of a counterbalance to Europe, which appears to be going off a cliff at the moment. Count your blessings.

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GDP Increases At Not-Bad 3.5% Rate in Third Quarter

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The Craziest Things Republican Candidates Have Said About Climate Change In One Video

by Nathan64Pdlnc Posted on October 28, 2014

Mother Jones

This story originally appeared in the Huffington Post and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Can the GOP’s 2014 candidates give a straight answer on climate change? It appears not.

Many Republican candidates have offered roundabout answers to climate change questions. Some have said the climate isn’t changing at all, while others have disputed research showing that human activity is driving those changes. Then there’s Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM), who said during a debate this year that he’s confident our climate isn’t changing because he has “Googled this issue.”

Lee Fang of The Republic Report put together a mash-up of Republican candidates’ greatest hits on climate change this year.

Watch it above.

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The Craziest Things Republican Candidates Have Said About Climate Change In One Video

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