Collide-a-scape

Joe Romm rarely disappoints. Nary a day goes by when he isn’t showcasing his intolerance, inconsistency, and disaster fetishism.

Let’s highlight the most recent best of the worst, starting with the bile he spewed on Friday to kick off the long holiday weekend. You won’t find any disgust expressed by Climate Progress readers (or such comments that make it past Romm’s censor), so check out Tom Yulsman’s reaction and takedown at CEJournal. After that, read the point-by-point rebuttal offered by the Breakthrough folks, the objects of Romm’s ire.

On Sunday, Romm inadvertently revealed why debate over global warming is so often driven by non-related weather conditions or events, when he expressed hope that a vote on Waxman-Markey by the House occurs before the August recess

since the ideal time to debate a global warming bill is probably during the hot summer.

Yeah, nothing focuses people’s minds more than a typical July scorcher.

Oh wait, it turns out that hurricanes are even better, so I suppose it makes sense that Romm continues to play up the specter of future Katrinas, as he did on Monday and Tuesday:

We are stuck with a fair amount of warming over the next few decades no matter what we do. But if we don’t reverse emissions trends soon, then Category 4 and 5 storms smashing into the Gulf coast seem likely to become a rather common in the second half of this century.

Whether you agree or not with his hurricane frequency-global warming connection, you have to at least admire Romm for his measured prescription, when he advises that we simply need to act “soon.”

Oh, scratch that. In the next breath, Romm reverts to style with this kicker:

Preserving the habitability of the Gulf and South Atlantic Coast post-2050 can only occur if we reverse U.S. and global emissions trends immediately.

Sorry, Joe, but “immediately” seems out of the question. Can we settle for “soon”? Or does that still spell doom?

Here’s a recipe for Memorial Day weekend madness: two boys, ages 2 and 4, two sleep-deprived parents, endless rain, long stretches in a car listening to the same three CD’s (Backyardigans, Dan Zanes, and some random Micky D’s happy meal compilation that includes a Cindy Lauper classic.)

Incredibly, we decided to extend the insanity by a day.

Back to regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.

Sure, Waxman-Markey has left the station, and that’s going to be reason enough for cap and trade fence-sitters to hop on. But as Grist’s Kate Sheppard reminds us, the ride is going to get pretty rough, with plenty of agonizing stops along the way.

So with that in mind, if anybody wants to hop off, the WaPo’s Steven Pearlstein argues it’s not too late.  It’s fine to admire the political mastery that got the bill out of committe, he says, but after you wipe the stardust from your eyes, there’s still no denying that Waxman-Markey is

a badly flawed piece of public policy. It is so broad in its reach and complex in its details that it would be difficult to implement even in Sweden, let alone in a diverse and contentious country like the United States.

Pearlstein suggests that, as the reality of the bill’s flaws set in, we pivot from what’s politically possible to a policy much more practical:

The Waxman-Markey bill may be the best bill that the political system can produce, and surely it is far preferable to doing nothing. But now that we know what a climate-change bill looks like when it is jury-rigged to accommodate all the special interests, maybe Americans will be willing to reconsider one of the cleaner, simpler approaches — a carbon tax with all the revenue rebated to households, for example, or a cap-and-trade system that generates enough revenue to erase the national debt, or even a tough new regulatory regime requiring businesses to produce more fuel-efficient cars, buildings and appliances.

Of course, Pearlstein is a business journalist, so he doesn’t suggest how the clunky Waxman-Markey train can be turned around, much less how it can be exhanged for a sleeker model.

I’ll probably end up a male version of Ruth Gordon’s famous character, eating Froot Loops with Coke.

But this approach, as reported in the NY Times, seems the way to go:

“We play for blood,” says Ruth Cummins, 92, before taking a sip of Red Bull at a recent game.

The allure of technology is so great as the Ultimate Answer that politicians, policymakers and engineers continually chase after it the way a drug addict chases after that first high.

And so, speaking of drugs, we learn today that a squad in the Homeland Security Department is trying out all manner of hi-tech gimmickry to fix that pesky little border problem once and for all.

As reported in The Wall Street Journal, the government geeks are

not ashamed to admit that they draw inspiration from comic-book superheroes and science-fiction novels as they dream up the gizmos and gadgets they hope will keep bad guys at bay.

One of them is called the Squid, which a guy in Tempe, Arizona dreamed up in 2005 while watching a car chase on TV. He sketched out his idea on a napkin while  smoking cigars and downing pints of Guinness.

Pay attention you science fair whiz kids: Homeland Security liked the additional sketches so much they threw $850,000 at the squid inventor. (As the WSJ piece describes, the squid is “a lightweight disc about he size of a manhole cover, lies on the road and ejects rubbery tentacles on command to ensnare fleeing vehicles and drag them to a stop.”)

Another brilliant but low-tech idea is destined for the environmental engineering annals. It involves a plan

to flood the border with a particular breed of wasp with a taste for Carrizo cane, a massive weed that grows in dense stands along the Rio Grande, providing cover to smugglers…scientists, working with the Department of Agriculture, tracked down the wasps in Spain and have spent two years watching the critters in a secure greenhouse — gauging their appetites, assessing their role in a swampy ecosystem and finally breeding them into a swarm suitable for deployment on the Texas border. The first invasion is set for this summer, near Laredo.

I guess nobody bothered to tell these mad scientists about the law of unintended consequences–more specifically, what happens when exotic species are set loose in the environment to fix a problem.

But that would assume that the people who oversee our policies on illegal drugs and immigration are already familiar with the law of untendend consequences.

We have ample proof that’s not the case.

There are two competing apocalypse narratives in the media today: one concerns global warming and the other journalism.

I tend to shrug off the former (enough things about this world already bum me out and besides, plenty of people already carry that catastrophe torch), but I’m on board with the latter.

So is Sy Hersh, who recently told students at Boston University that the “game’s over” for newspapers. Hersh, whose own endurance is remarkable, added,

it’s not just the end of journalism, it’s the end of democracy. And that’s not an exaggeration.

A journalist reflects on whether a story he wrote was influenced by his own biases and private advocacy.

Green the Pentagon’s mighty military apparatus and everyone else will follow.

At least that’s the WSJ’s Keith Johnson’s useful interpretation of the latest CNA report, entitled, “Powering America’s Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Security.” Johnson’s historical perspective is instructive and makes me think that the clarion call issued on Monday by a high-voltage group of retired military officers might echo longer than I indicated here.

If all the main players and policy instruments in the congressional debate over climate change were represented in a demolition derby, here’s what it might look like:

In a brand new Lexus GS, a Democratic politician (Waxman-Markey) is behind the wheel, clumsily groping at an anorexic cap and trade bill in the front passenger seat.

In the same car, a Republican politician (Joe Barton) is seated directly behind the driver, unable to resist smacking the back of Waxman-Markey’s head. To Barton’s right is environmental advocate A (James Hansen), urging the driver to crash the car. To Hansen’s right is environmental advocate B (Joe Romm), urging the driver to keep his eye on the road and his foot firmly on the accelerator. Meanwhile, muffled noises can be heard from the trunk, where carbon tax is bound and gagged.

Trailing behind is a roaring gaggle containing the rest of the concerned pack. Earth guardian Al Gore mans his own Ford Escape. Ramming him from behind is fossil fuel lover Marc Morano, laughing hysterically in a 1970 Cutlass Supreme.

Just behind Morano is philospher scientist Gavin Schmidt and his gang, all crammed into a vintage VW bug.

In the pressbox, reporter Andy Revkin covers all the action. Unruly fans in the stands occasionally throw tomatoes and eggs at him.

The rest of the world watches the spectacle, open-mouthed, except in Beijing, where lots of giggling can be heard.

UPDATE: [Here are some stories on the CNA report from BusinessWeek,  DefenseNews, and ClimateWire. Additionally, the DOD Energy Blog weighs in, and so does The New Security Beat.]

Nice timing by CNA, issuing this new report today by its Military Advisory Board, entitled, “Powering America’s Defense: Energy and Risks to National Security.”

Climate change is tagged as a big national security concern, as it was in CNA’s landmark 2007 report. There was a press reception at Newseum this morning, so there’s bound to be media coverage later on and tomorrow, which will be a welcome diversion from the Waxman-Markey lulapalooza.

But can CNA sustain the buzz beyond the 24-48 hour news cycle? If climate change should be regarded as a true military concnern, then why aren’t these guys out more on the climate politics and policy front-lines? That’s where the war is being fought.

I’ve just started reading the new report, but a quick scan delivered up these two notable quotes:

From retired Air Force General Chuck Wald:

An unstable climate, which is what we’re creating now with global warming, will make for unstable civilizations.   It will involve more surprises.  It will involve more people needing to move or make huge changes in their lives.  It pushes us into a period of non-linear change. That is hugely destabilizing.

From former U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Gordon R. Sullivan:

There is a relationship between the major challenges we’re facing. Energy, security, economics, climate change—these things are connected. And the extent to which these things really do affect one another is becoming more apparent.

Why aren’t these guys on Fox News, CNN and Jon Stewart?  Shouldn’t they be regulars at Capitol Hill? On a college circuit tour? Why can’t one of them be blogging for Foreign Policy Magazine? Let’s go guys, get engaged every day if you want to make a difference.