Here’s some interesting headlines from today’s Huffington Post.

Tom Matlack Should Women Really "Go Ugly?”

AOL Real Estate: Real-Estate Disclosure: What You Don't Know Can Hurt You

PopEater: 'Jackass' Star Ryan Dunn, 34, Dies in Car Crash

WATCH: Jon Stewart Live On Fox News, Tells Host 'You're Insane'

Oh, and then there is this little item…..

'Shocking' Oceans Report Warns Of Impending Mass Extinction

Yeah. Nothing important to see here. Let’s go back and talk some more about why Megan Fox REALLY got fired from the Transformers movie.

Crap. What a society we have. We are currently hearing some of the most dire predictions mankind has ever seen about the environment, and it mostly rates a big, collective yawn. Mankind is going to richly deserve everything that happens to us.

A few thoughts regarding the terrible destruction in Alabama and the rest of the Southeast.

There have been a number of things happening in the last few days that I would like to comment on, but I think this one is the most pressing. The destruction due to a huge outbreak of powerful tornados is a little personal to me, as I used to live in Mississippi and Alabama. I finished up high school in a small town in Alabama, not unlike those just wiped off the map, about 45 miles from Tuscaloosa and lived in Birmingham for a couple of years. I still have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the South, as I think the mentality, attitudes and racism in that part of the country are ridiculous and belong more to the 19th Century than the 21st Century. I detested my time in high school there. But still, I know a number of people down there and have absolutely no desire to see this kind of tragedy visited on anyone.

I was always aware of the risk of tornados while living in Alabama and Mississippi, but it wasn’t a real “fact of life” like it is when I visit Oklahoma for my job. There, you know it is serious business. Maybe it’s just the difference in the amount of information available back in the 70’s vs. now. I do remember a small town about 40 miles away that was hit hard when I was in high school. We used to play them in football. That was a bit of a wake up. But I do remember some big time thunderstorms that were kind of frightening.

Actually, now that I have started writing this, I realize that I don’t have much to say, other than say how sorry I am this happened, which is worth exactly nothing to the people going through this and have lost their loved ones and their entire belongings.

Contribute to the Red Cross or other disaster relief programs if you feel so inclined.

I really hope that this isn’t the harbinger of things to come regarding extreme weather. But unfortunately, it feels like it might be, some people’s feelings about global warming and climate change notwithstanding.

Update: I got an answer to an e-mail I sent to an old friend who lives in Birmingham. He and his family are fine, but he said that the big tornado, the one that got Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, passed just 7 miles north of his house. MUCH to close for comfort, I would say, but there is also an old saying, "A miss is as good as a mile." Or seven.

I also hope that perhaps, just perhaps, many of the arch-conservatives that live in the Deep South might think a little better of the federal government after President Obama visits within two days of the event and pledges that the government will be there to help them during this terrible time. I believe that this is one reason a benevolent government like ours exists, for the benefit of its citizens, especially in time of need. Perhaps some others might change their minds when they are on the receiving end of this assistance.

Methane: The real environmental time bomb.

Forget carbon dioxide. Here’s a story regarding what could potentially be the final kicker in global warming and climate change.

Gas locked inside Siberia's frozen soil and under its lakes has been seeping out since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. But in the past few decades, as the Earth has warmed, the icy ground has begun thawing more rapidly, accelerating the release of methane — a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide — at a perilous rate.

Some scientists believe the thawing of permafrost could become the epicenter of climate change. They say 1.5 trillion tons of carbon, locked inside icebound earth since the age of mammoths, is a climate time bomb waiting to explode if released into the atmosphere.

Most climate scientists, with a few dissenters, say human activities — the stuff of daily life like driving cars, producing electricity or raising cattle — is overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, methane and other gases that trap heat, causing a warming effect.

But global warming is amplified in the polar regions. What feels like a modest temperature rise is enough to induce Greenland glaciers to retreat, Arctic sea ice to thin and contract in summer, and permafrost to thaw faster, both on land and under the seabed.

There are huge amounts of methane trapped in a frozen state in both the earth’s permafrost and underneath the ocean’s floors. If we ever reach a point where massive amounts of methane are released into the atmosphere, that would most likely mean the end of human society as we know it. Oh, a number of individuals and even groups would survive. But whatever society might finally result from the remnants of our current society would have more in common with the stone age tribes than our current cities which are totally dependent upon cheap energy, plentiful food, clean water, a very complex infrastructure, and a division of labor among our current populace that allows very intense specialization. You think there will be much need for investment bankers, designers of video games, or changers of lubricants in automobiles? I seriously doubt it, as the survivors will be scrabbling in order to remain so.

But we are all too wrapped up in our little insanities to care. Global warming is a myth. Scientists are elitists. Opinions matter much more than facts. Hate thy enemy and smite him before he smites you, even metaphorically. That's all that matters these days.

NASA study shows that first half of 2010 is the hottest on record.

Following fast on the heels of the hottest Jan-May — and spring — in the temperature record, it’s also the hottest Jan-June on record in the NASA dataset [click on figure to enlarge].

It’s all the more powerful evidence of human-caused warming “because it occurs when the recent minimum of solar irradiance is having its maximum cooling effect,” as a recent must-read NASA paper notes.

Remember last winter when the east coast of the U.S. experienced some pretty good snowstorms? And do you also remember the wingnuts, such as Rush Limbaugh and many others, screaming at the top of their lungs about how the presence of snow pretty much repudiated the concept of global warming and climate change? I certainly do, although I am pretty sure that Rush would never use the word "repudiate."

Well, where are they now? Are they going to say something about this data? No, I don’t suppose not.

Chart and quoted text from Climate Progress, via HuffPo.

And if that isn't bad enough news, here's some news of the near future from Stanford University.

Exceptionally long heat waves and other hot events could become commonplace in the United States in the next 30 years, according to a new study by Stanford University climate scientists.

"Using a large suite of climate model experiments, we see a clear emergence of much more intense, hot conditions in the U.S. within the next three decades," said Noah Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford and the lead author of the study.

Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), Diffenbaugh concluded that hot temperature extremes could become frequent events in the U.S. by 2039, posing serious risks to agriculture and human health.

"In the next 30 years, we could see an increase in heat waves like the one now occurring in the eastern United States or the kind that swept across Europe in 2003 that caused tens of thousands of fatalities," said Diffenbaugh, a center fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment. "Those kinds of severe heat events also put enormous stress on major crops like corn, soybean, cotton and wine grapes, causing a significant reduction in yields."

I find it almost a relief that I won't be around to witness the worst of the looming environmental catastrophe. I do worry about what kind of life my daughter and her family might find for themselves.

So Rand Paul thinks that accidents just happen all by themselves?

Here is a recent quote from Mr. Paul on the ongoing BP-caused ecological disaster.

What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of, ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,’ ” Mr. Paul said, referring to a remark by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar about the oil company. “I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. I’ve heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it’s part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it’s always got to be someone’s fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen.”

I cannot begin to explain how many misguided notions and outright lunacy those few sentences contain. And to think that this is from who will probably be a U.S. senator by the end of the year is absolutely frightening.

But let’s talk about that bit about accidents “happening.” Paul’s quote makes it sound as if accidents don’t have a cause. They sometimes just appear for no reason and are totally unexpected. This is absolutely incorrect, and this is a very ridiculous thing to say about very complex, man-made technology. This happens to be an area that I know something about.

Since the beginning of the 20th Century, there has been a study of industrial accidents -- why they occur and what can be done to prevent them. If you put in the correct search words, you can find all sorts of books on Amazon that talks about accidents and their causes. This is a very specialized field of study done by a number of very dedicated and intelligent people. Accidents do not just “happen.” There are causes, usually multiple ones, for every serious industrial accident. The response of our society has been to mandate certain safeguards and minimum acceptable safety standards by the Code of Federal Regulations. Every important and potentially hazardous industry in this country is regulated in this manner – aviation, railroads, finance, drugs, mining, nuclear power… The list goes on and on. We do this for the common good of the American people.

When things start going wrong is when companies start taking shortcuts or bypassing these regulations. This is not to say that these regulations are perfect and, if followed, would prevent every accident. That is not true. But it would be much less likely that a catastrophic accident occurs if the appropriate regulations are followed. And, of course, there is always the inevitable pushback from the industry and their lobbyists. Money and political pressure can do wonders to weaken and even remove protective legalization. Alternatively, companies can just ignore the rules and fight tooth and nail when challenged. This appears to be what Massey Energy was doing when a coal mine they owned in West Virginia, the Upper Big Branch Mine, experienced an explosion that killed twenty nine workers. From Wiki:

In 2009, the company, Massey Energy, was fined a total of $382,000 for "serious" unrepentant violations for lacking ventilation and proper equipment plans as well as failing to utilize its safety plan properly.[18] In the previous month, the authorities cited the mine for 57 safety infractions.[19] The mine received two citations the day before the explosion and in the last five years has been cited for 1,342 safety violations. The CEO of Massey Energy, Don Blankenship, has received criticism for his apparent disregard of safety.[20]

Accidents do not “just happen.” There are causes. They might be from heretofore unknown or truly unexpected causes, but there are causes. In the case of the catastrophic explosion about the Deep Horizon oil drilling rig and subsequent oil release from the bottom of the sea floor, it appears that many regulations were not complied with and many warning signs were ignored. Yet, BP and Transocean pressed ahead. The most important considerations were schedule and cost.

There is a concept called “magical thinking.” I even wrote a post about it myself a while back. But this concept seems to have taken firm root in the boardrooms American corporations and the front line management of American industry. The thinking seems to go, “We don’t need to follow these regulations. They are not doing any good and just costs us money to follow them. Nothing bad is going to happen. Trust us.” That’s what it can be boiled down to. “Trust us. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

This is the thinking that has given us the worst ecological disaster in American history, which no one knows how to fix. Even if these geniuses figure out how to stop the huge flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico today, we will still be faced with decades of the effects of the oil that is already there. This thinking gave us the worst financial meltdown this country has seen since the Great Depression. This thinking gave us twenty nine dead miners in West Virginia.

Accidents occur for reasons, and regulations have been put in place to reduce the likelihood of something going terribly wrong because of the reasons that we know about. Willfully ignoring these regulations in the chase for ever-expanding profits for people who are already rich is obscene.

The corporations in this country, along with the government agencies that are tasked with oversight, need a drastic change of focus and purpose. Regulations are not evil. Accidents do not “just happen.” Unfortunately, I believe that this country is too far gone. Huge corporations are too voracious, too powerful, too willing to do whatever it takes to retain and expand their profits. Following rules are for little people.

It seems to me that Mexico has a very large coastline on the Gulf of Mexico.

That might be one reason it is referred to as "The Gulf of Mexico." So, if huge amounts of oil and dead birds and sea life start showing up on Mexico's beaches, I am wondering what they might do. Can a foreign country claim more than $75 million in liabilities from BP?

I am actually very sorry I feel this way, but I find myself somewhat hoping that the beaches around Miami and St. Pete get really fouled with oil. That should get someone's attention. Finally. I have had it with these cretins that are trying to minimize this catastrophe.

Hybrids and electric cars are not “green.”

I find myself very annoyed at television commercials about these so-called “green” automobiles that show all sorts of flower, trees and animals, thus implying that these things are actually great for the environment. Hey, they aren’t, O.K.?

What the companies that make these vehicles are implying is that it is a matter of degrees. Nothing that contributes pollution to the environment is good for the environment. It is just “less bad” than the alternatives, and even that may be a red herring. I maintain that "less bad than the alternative" is not really "being green." And, when the big picture is considered, even being "less bad" is something that really hasn't been proven yet.

What is not being considered about electric cars that need to be recharged fairly often is that this electricity must come from somewhere. It must be generated, and the overwhelming source of electrical power in this country is from coal-fired power plants. Burning coal on a large scale is not and never will be “green.” If everyone were to stop driving vehicles that burn gasoline, that would indeed be a major contribution to the removal of pollutants in our air. However, has anyone ever checked to see how much more electricity that we might need to support this huge increase for demand? I suppose some of the effects of that demand might be mitigated if everyone were to charge up their vehicles at night when the normal demand is lower. Still, that’s a lot of juice that needs to come from somewhere.

Let’s talk about the batteries needed for a bit. Batteries can be considered to be a hazardous material. If we have huge amounts of electric cars and hybrids that need to have significant battery capacity, what happens to these batteries when these cars start to be junked in huge quantities? We are going to need a complete new industry that deals with recycle of used automotive batteries. There are many problems with the normal lead-acid battery that are normally used in today’s vehicles. There are also problems with lithium-ion batteries that are being used in aviation applications. Perhaps the most promising approach would be to use fuel cells, which convert a fuel, such as hydrogen, into electricity. However, if we were to want to use massive amounts of fuel cells in our transportation system as it exists today, when we are going to need a huge source of hydrogen. How are we going to do that? It takes a huge amount of electricity to disassociate hydrogen from oxygen in water. Now we are back to the problem of how are we going to generate that much electricity? And we all remember what happened to the Hindenburg, right? Hydrogen is a very explosive gas.

The problem, ecologically speaking, with hybrids is that they indeed reduce the amount of gasoline consumed, and therefore reduce emissions. However, hybrids also introduce the same problem with batteries that was not present with purely gasoline-powered vehicles. These batteries need to be produced, and produced in an environmentally friendly as method as possible, and a way must be devised to dispose of these batteries in a similar manner.

I am not arguing that our society should not use these types of vehicles. I am just saying that we should not let ourselves, once again, be deluded into thinking that we are doing the “right thing” by an industry who wants to sell you something. Let’s not just fix one big problem by introducing new problems. And, most certainly, let's not just pretend we are doing our part because we happen to drive one of these new vehicles and figure that everything else is just "someone else's problem."

On Human Nature, Safety Critical Industries and Big, Big Money.

I’ve been really suspicious about the commercials that British Petroleum has been running on TV lately. You know the ones, where there are a bunch of “everyday Americans”, talking about the need for “common sense” energy. One of the things that is always mentioned is, of course, drilling for more oil domestically, which means off-shore oil wells. I have always felt that these actors, who were obviously paid and have rehearsed their lines, would include potential energy sources such as biofuels and wind farms as sops. Those are just throwaway lines to make BP look like they care about diversity. I wonder how many wind farms and biofuel projects that BP really has going right now?

No, their main goal was to open up America’s coastal waters for new oil drilling. That’s the entire point of those commercials. BP couldn’t give a crap about developing wind or solar farms. Those produce electricity, which, unless I am severely mistaken, BP doesn’t market.

BP and all their Big Oil buddies were succeeding in their plans. President Obama had already stated that his administration was opening many areas in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico to more drilling. “Drill, Baby, Drill” goes the refrain. Sarah Palin’s most outstanding accomplishment in the modern lexicon. Thanks to these commercials, and a whole lot of money funneled to politicians (Republicans and Democrats alike), Big Oil had won. They were getting their prize, and they essentially didn’t have to do much more than that.

That is, they had won until BP shot itself, along with the rest of the country, in the proverbial foot by the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform, which killed 11 people. That would have been bad enough all by itself, but now we are left with an open spigot spewing out crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Unless a super-human effort is made to stop it, the resulting slick will foul the beaches of Louisiana and Mississippi within days. Current news stories indicate that the entire pocket of oil might just gush out into the Gulf before the geniuses at BP can figure out how to cap the wound.

I didn’t trust BP before this accident, and I certainly don’t trust them now. The company apparently refused to include a half million dollar safety device that is designed to stop this specific accident from happening. Brazil apparently mandates such safety devices for drilling around their country. Shell Oil apparently includes such devices on their wells, even though the U.S. government doesn’t mandate they be used. The story I saw said that BP didn’t include such a safety device because it was too expensive.

I would bet that BP easily spent a half million bucks on lobbying congressmen. There’s something more than just saving every single dollar that they can. BP and a whole lot of other companies in many other safety-critical industries (such as coal mining) refuse to include basic safety features for their operations and their employees just because they can, because they don’t want anyone to tell them that they must. It is against their principles. No one is going to tell them how to run their business! And that includes, in their minds, including a bunch of unnecessary stuff related to safety that would only slow things down, even though the money and effort spent wouldn’t amount to a drop in the bucket of their overall operations. And besides, what could happen? Trust us. We have it all under control…

I believe that’s what’s behind this. All the news in the last few months about industrial accidents has all include information about the company’s efforts to avoid government oversight and regulation. All of them. The case against the owner of the Sago coal mine in West Virginia is well documented. It was a matter of principle for the owners. They were not, under any circumstances, going to let the government tell them what the must do. Period. I have seen reports of the same thing going on with this and other BP drilling rigs. There was a recent explosion of a Tesoro petroleum refinery in Anacortes, Washington that killed seven people. That plant had a history of safety violations. It is also an unfortunate fact that companies with a history of safety violations, like BP, Sago and Tesoro, always seem to be able to fight against the fines and required fixes, where they end up paying chump change. The result is that nothing happens. Until something really terrible happens, like an oil platform explosion, a coal mine explosion or a petroleum refinery explosion.

That’s how it goes these days. These huge corporations are the ones that actually run the country, given their army of lawyers and lobbyists and a sea of cash they are quite willing to spend on fighting regulations and oversight. They don’t mind spending millions, even billions, to fight against regulations when what they are fighting against would seem to be less expensive in the long run.

This is a matter of principle for them, these “giants of industry.” Nothing is going to change in this country until we have a very large change of perspective. In the 80’s, this was referred to as a “paradigm shift.” We don’t use that term anymore. But that is what we need. But given human nature and the huge amounts of money we are talking about, there is almost a zero chance of that happening.

Part 2 of this later.

I want to say a word about Kindle, Amazon’s electronic book viewer.

I know that Americans are usually obsessed with owning the newest and hippest thing available. It doesn’t matter that the older thing is still quite functional. It becomes obsolete because it is deemed to be obsolete by the industry and the consumers.

On some occasions, this is warranted. No one really wants 8 track or even cassette tapes anymore. I keep hearing that the death of musical CD’s is imminent, although I have a feeling those are going to hang on for quite a while. I am still quite annoyed that my perfectly good printer/scanner/copier is obsolete and not supported and I can’t use the scanner feature anymore because HP decided they weren’t going to make a new application software for Windows XP and beyond. So, just because we upgraded our computer, we are now without a scanner. I find that infuriating.

All right, that was a bit of an unnecessary diversion. I wanted to talk about why Kindle is even a product available for sale. The base models cost about $300. Even with that outlay, you still have to buy the e-books, unless you are into the free classics. The hardware will, no doubt, need to have upgrades every once in a while. It will probably also do all sorts of cool stuff like be able to surf the internet and such, which a person’s cell phone or blackberry already does if that person is inclined to have the coolest thing.

My point being, this is rather a pricey proposition. Plus, we now need the manufacturing and support capabilities necessary to build and maintain these things. More toxic waste will be generated by the manufacture and disposal of these things. So, what the heck is wrong with just buying the damn book? Yeah, O.K., new hardcover books are expensive and they are printed on paper, which requires dead trees. But still, is just the fact that you have a Kindle, that you are among those who have the newest and hippest thing available, really that much of a rush that we have to have an entirely new and expensive electronics gadget to replace something, in this case, printed books, really necessary?

I admit, I am a book person. I have a nice little library where my shelves are full of books (and DVD’s), many of which are rather old. I didn’t buy them new. I would love to know the history behind some of the books I have. I have a number that were printed in the late 1890’s. I find that fascinating all by itself, much less the subject of the book itself. I just think we are losing something with this move. I frankly, just don't see the point.

Sure, printed books will always be with us. Hopefully, in the future, they won’t be looked upon as anachronistic antiques.

And now for something completely different, radioactive wasp nests.

From the Seattle Times:

By The Associated Press

RICHLAND — Workers cleaning up the Hanford nuclear reservation are going after radioactive wasp nests.

The Tri-City Herald reports 6 to 12 inches of top soil are being dug up this month from 6 acres near the H Reactor. And, workers will dig up more individual mud dauber wasp nests over about 75 acres of the nuclear reservation in southeast Washington.

The contractor handling the clean-up, Washington Closure, says the nests were all built in 2003 when water was used to dampen dust during demolition of an H Reactor basin. That attracted the wasps that used the mud to make tube-shaped nests for eggs.

Spokesman Todd Nelson says the nests are "fairly highly contaminated."

Well, that’s all we need. I think I read something a couple of years ago about radioactive bats at Hanford. Now, we have a story about radioactive wasp nests. Fortunately, it’s only about the nests right now and not the wasps themselves. I can’t imagine having a giant radioactive dirt dauber settle down in my yard and start burrowing under the crawlspace. I’m telling you, one of these days, Mother Nature is going to come back gunning for us. Global climate change is probably too slow a method, as well as not being terribly reliable, to really get rid of human beings. She might pick a faster method one of these days. Giant radioactive dirt daubers are probably as good a method as any. (No, the AP story didn’t say anything about “giant.” But really, is there any possibility, at all, that there might be a highly radioactive insect that ISN’T a giant monster?)

The poster is of the film, Monster from Green Hell. For a great review of that film, check out the B Movie Graveyard.

Subaru gets an environmental “F minus” on their new television ad.

I really don’t know what to make of the new Subaru commercial. You may have seen it. Some guy is lovingly “retiring” his old Forrester by parking it under some remote tree, with a few other junked cars, so that his Forrester can “live on.” How heartwarming…

My question to Subaru is, what the hell is up with this? These days, isn’t it the “done” thing in commercials to show everyone how “green” your product is? Even if your product isn’t “green” in any sense of the word, companies are still trying to convince the general public that it is, seeing as that is where the new public sensibilities seem to lie. But this new Subaru commercial is advocating that you NOT dispose of your used car in an environmentally sound way. You should to just go find some tree out in the middle of nowhere where you can just park it, in case someone, somewhere is too cheap to go to the dealer and get some new car parts.

I got news for Subaru. Disposing of your junked cars like that seems to be a requirement in places like Montana (you don’t believe me, take a ride on the Amtrak Empire Builder and see how many yards along the tracks have junked cars stored there). But this is not the environmentally sound approach, and I think Subaru should be ashamed for even suggesting that this might be a good thing to do. We need people who are MORE environmentally aware, not less. We have enough of those clods already.

I don’t care how much you loved your old car. You do not just go take it out somewhere and park it under a tree when it dies or when you get tired of paying the mounting repair bills on it. Donate it to some charitable organization that takes used cars (running or not) and somehow makes money off of them for their charity. You are doing somebody a favor and you are not out there trashing the environment with what will eventually become a rusty pile of useless metal, plastic and rubber.

Picture from here.