[UPDATE: MSNBC may be around 4:20 pm.]

… corn ethanol and offsets respectively.

Marketplace is local times — and everybody knows they are NOT NPR.

MSNBC is, I think, between 4 and 4:30.

Yes, I know. It’s too late to set your DVR’s. [Note to self: As if.]

Both of these were last minute.

The Marketplace story was triggered by this:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry asked the government to cut “skyrocketing” food prices by waiving half of the renewable fuel standard for ethanol made from grain.

What a great idea! Who ever said all Texas Governors were dumb!

The American Petroleum Institute (API), the trade organization for the oil and natural gas industry, has just begun running a feel-good commercial that argues “America’s future” lies in drilling out domestic reserves of oil and natural gas off our coasts, in our western lands, and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Here’s what the ad says:

Oil and natural gas powered the past. But the future? Fact is, a growing world will require more. 45% more by 2030, along with greatly expanding alternatives. We have substantial oil and natural gas resources right here. Enough to power 60 million cars and heat 160 million households for 60 years. With advanced technology and smart policies, together we can secure America’s future. Log on to learn more. [TEXT: EnergyTomorrow.org / The People of America's Oil and Natural Gas Industry]

Watch it:

The “facts” in Big Oil’s ad are based on a thirty-six page API document entitled, “The Truth About Oil and Gasoline.” This “primer” was published last week, with numerous figures and charts on oil company profits and gas prices, but nary a single mention of climate change or greenhouse gas emissions. Here are the facts Big Oil left out:

Future With 45% More Oil And Gas Demand Involves 60% More Global Warming Emissions. The projection of “45% more by 2030″ gas and oil demand is drawn from the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Outlook 2007 report. The API accurately describes the increase in global oil and gas demand in the IEA’s business-as-usual scenario, although United States demand is only projected to increase by less than 5%. However, API fails to mention the business-as-usual scenario also predicts energy-related carbon emissions would “increase by almost 60%” by 2030.

Business As Usual Spells Catastrophic Future. The IEA business-as-usual scenario would put the planet on a pathway to “temperature change at equilibrium of about 4.9 to 6.1 degrees C [8.9 to 11°F] compared to pre-industrial levels.” That’s five to seven times as much warming as we’ve already experienced, and would make catastrophic global change — including mass species extinction, crop devastation, and significant sea level rise — unavoidable.

Big Oil Ignores The ‘Secure’ Scenario. The IEA’s report includes a “450 Stabilisation Case,” in which greenhouse emissions are limited such that atmospheric concentrations stabilize at 450 parts per million of CO₂ equivalent — what the IPCC calculated is need to avoid catastrophic climate change. In this scenario, total global oil and gas demand only increases by 10 percent from current levels, not the 45 percent that API says the world will “require.”

The ad’s tag line, “Together, we can secure America’s future,” mimics the We Campaign climate activism spot that concludes: “Together, we can solve the climate crisis.” The path Big Oil envisions — even as warning signs increase — would instead destroy the future of America and the rest of the planet.

Is $3.25 to $3.50 a gallon the long-awaited for inflexion point for driving a shift in U.S. car-buying habits? Obviously we can’t know for sure, but the Detroit News reported that “cars outsold light trucks” in March. [One auto industry insider told me yesterday that this was only the second time that has ever happened in some two decades.]

Yes, the recession no doubt had an impact on the sales of big, expensive vehicles. But since gasoline prices are going to mostly be going up over the next decade or two, possibly to well above $4 or even $5 a gallon (see “Peak Oil? Bring it on!”), this should be (yet one more) wake-up call to Detroit.

What exactly happened in March? According to a cars.com blog:

In March, small cars like the Ford Focus — up 24% — and Honda Fit — up 73.8% — were bright spots almost universally among automakers. Hybrid sales were also up. On the other end of the spectrum, trucks like the Ford F-Series — down 23.8% — and Dodge Ram — down 31% — saw huge losses, as did truck-based SUVs.

Here are their numbers for March 2008 sales performance for a spectrum of cars, trucks, SUVs and hybrids:

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“He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.” A Biblical proverb for our times, it turns out….

The bark beetle is devastating North American trees (see “Climate-Driven Pest Devours N. American Forests“).

Global warming has created a perfect climate for these beetles — Milder winters since 1994 have reduced the winter death rate of beetle larvae in Wyoming from 80% per year to under 10%, and hotter, drier summers have made trees weaker, less able to fight off beetles. [Picture shows forests turned red by beetle.]

New reseach published in the journal Nature, “Mountain pine beetle and forest carbon feedback to climate change,” (subs. req’d, abstract reprinted below), quantifies the current and future impact just from the beetle’s warming-driven devastation in British Columbia:

… the cumulative impact of the beetle outbreak in the affected region during 2000–2020 will be 270 megatonnes (Mt) carbon (or 36 g carbon m^-2 yr^-1 on average over 374,000 km² of forest). This impact converted the forest from a small net carbon sink to a large net carbon source.

No wonder the carbon sinks are saturating faster than we thought (see here) — unmodeled impacts of climate change are destroying them:

Insect outbreaks such as this represent an important mechanism by which climate change may undermine the ability of northern forests to take up and store atmospheric carbon, and such impacts should be accounted for in large-scale modelling analyses.

Any “good news” here? Only if you like very dark irony. The accompanying news story (here, subs. req’d) notes:

Even if climate change brings further warm winters to the region, however, experts think this infestation has probably peaked. Mountain pine beetles can only reproduce in the largest trees, which were abundant thanks to a growth spurt after wildfires raged across western North America 80 to 140 years ago. Soon 80 to 90% of those large trees will be gone, Kurz says. “The beetle will eat itself out of house and home, and the population will eventually collapse.”

Hmm. “Eat itself out of house and home.“ Does the bark beetle sound like any other species we know? Finally, the species formerly known as homo sapiens sapiens is no longer alone in its self-destructive quest to destroy its habitat. Inhert the wind, indeed.

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