Video of ruined nukes

The latest NYT banner headline is “Taming Reactors May Take Weeks.”  They also have a good story today on “Danger of Spent Fuel Outweighs Reactor Threat.”  CP readers learned that crucial fact back on Monday.

The Oil Drum has a useful piece today, “Fukushima Dai-ichi status and potential outcomes,” that may demystify the situation (if that’s possible).

I’ll excerpt those below, but first, an amazing video of the smoldering wreckage shot by intrepid Japanese in a low-flying helicopter:

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The Koch petrochemical billionaires are continuing to bankroll Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), the Tea Party Republican who won Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat in a special election last year, campaign disclosure forms reveal. The Koch Industries political action committee dropped $2500 on Brown in February, according to their March filing. Before Brown’s election in 2010, the Kochs had directed $50,400 to his campaign. Brown directly expressed his gratitude to the Kochs at the March opening of the David H. Koch Integrative Cancer Institute, as this ThinkProgress video shows:

The exchange “belied Brown’s claims that he won’t be politicking until next year,” the Globe’s Glen Johnson notes. Brown “may spend $25 million on his campaign.”

Other recipients of the Kochs’ carbon cash in February include the PACs of Sen. Jim DeMint ($5000), Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) ($5000), Rep. Steve Roskam (R-IL) ($2500), and Sen. Mitch McConnell ($2500), and the campaigns of Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) ($5000), Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) ($3000), Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) ($2500), Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL) ($2500), Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) ($2500), Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR) ($2000), Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK) ($2000), Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) ($1000), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) ($1000), Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) ($1000), and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) ($1500).

Ross, Rogers, Kinzinger, and Burgess are all part of the “Committee From Koch” — the members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce who voted this week to overturn the scientific finding that global warming is a threat and block EPA rules against climate pollution.

The White House is just lousy at messaging across the board, as I and others have noted many times.

Obama also seems to have bad luck.  He endorsed offshore drilling shortly before the biggest offshore oil disaster in history.  He embraced new nuclear power plants in a speech last February, and now we are seeing the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl unfold.

But in many respects people make their own bad luck from a messaging perspective when they don’t have a coherent guiding philosophy that they explain to people again and again, a narrative, as it is more popularly called (see Is progressive messaging a “massive botch”? Part 2: Drew Westen on how “The White House has squandered the greatest opportunity to change both the country and the political landscape since Ronald Reagan”).

Ironically, Obama has so wanted to be a Reagan, but whatever one thinks of Reagan — and certainly he helped destroy US leadership in clean energy, among other things — he had a story and he stuck to it, so much so that he is revered for things that he never even did.  How else could a multiple tax-raiser be revered by those who make no new taxes a litmus test?

There was no philosophical or political reason for Obama to embrace offshore drilling, especially when he did, since he got nothing in return for it.  Same for nuclear power.

What inspires this latest post is Obama’s refusal to make the clear case that Republican budget cuts would be devastating to the health and well-being of this country.  A number of people have complained to me just how bad last week’s press conference was.  Let me pull out just the question and answer on the budget:

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Humor from America’s Finest News Service:

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LIMBAUGH:  The Japanese have done so much to save the planet … and yet Gaia levels them [laughs], just wipes them out. Wipes out their nuclear plants, all kinds of radiation. What kind of payback is this? That is an excellent question. They invented the Prius. In fact, where Gaia blew up is right where they make all these electric cars. That’s where the tsunami hit. All those brand new electric cars sitting there on the lot. I like the way this guy was thinking. It’s like — it’s like Gaia hit the Prius and [Nissan] Leaf place. It’s like they were in the crosshairs, if we can use that word, it does. What is Gaia trying to tell us here? What is the mother of environmentalism trying to say with this hit? Great observation out there, Chris.

You just can’t make this stuff up.  Indeed, this would be hard to believe — even for Limbaugh — if it weren’t all on video.

I agree with AmericaBlog:  “If anyone on the left talked like this, the Republicans would have their job in a day. It really is a sign of how badly the powers-that-be on the left play the political game, that Rush Limbaugh is still on the air.”

Media Matters has the video and full transcript:

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House GOP still says accurate weather forecasting and hurricane tracking are luxuries America can’t afford

Last month, Climate Progress reported on House Republicans’ shortsighted attempt to obliterate funding for new environmental monitoring satellites””the sole source of some data for weather and climate forecasters.

On Tuesday, in its latest three-week extension of government spending, the GOP, apparently not content with the depth of its evisceration, upped the ante by voting to cut an additional $115 million from NOAA’s Acquisition account.  CAPAF’s Michael Conathan has the story.

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Opposing Republican efforts to forbid climate regulations, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) said Tuesday that the science of manmade climate change is “unequivocally true.”  Brad Johnson has the story.

Rockefeller, a strong defender of his state’s coal industry, spoke out on the Senate floor against an amendment submitted to a small business bill by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) that would strip the Environmental Protection Agency of the ability to regulate greenhouse pollution.

McConnell introduced the amendment, drafted by global warming denier Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), as Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) passed companion legislation out of the House energy committee with unanimous Republican support. After stating that the EPA is “created to regulate carbon dioxide emissions,” as the U.S. Supreme Court found, Rockefeller described his arguments with coal-industry climate deniers:

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Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) opposes measures to reduce oil consumption, telling his constituents last year, “Passenger rail is not in Ohio’s future” (see New GOP governors kill $1.2 Billion in high-speed rail jobs).

But Kasich does want to Drill, Baby, Drill in his state parks, as Think Progress reports.

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Clean energy puts U.S. ahead, Chu says

The U.S. Energy Department needs a holistic approach in researching clean energy if it’s to out-compete the rest of the world, the energy secretary said.

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On Wednesday, March 16^th, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson proposed national emissions standards for coal fired power plants that would curb the release of dozens of poisonous substances including mercury, arsenic, and dioxin. These proposed standards were hailed by public health organizations as well as by many utility companies.  CAP’s Emily Bischof has the story

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By Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

In the run up to its latest “drill, baby, drill” hearing on Thursday, the House Natural Resources Committee’s GOP leadership has launched a propaganda campaign blaming $4 gasoline on the Obama administration, saying it has “repeatedly blocked access to American energy.”

This show trial is intended to deceive the public into believing that if we just jettison our environmental squeamishness and open up our federal lands, primarily in the West, we’d have an inexhaustible supply of oil that will magically produce $2 a gallon gasoline.

It’s a myth:

– Federal lands in the U.S. have proved oil reserves of 5.3 billion barrels. That’s little more than 9 months of U.S. oil consumption.

– Vast stretches of the American West are already under lease to oil and gas companies – about 41 million acres. That’s more than the size of New England.

– Of the acres currently under lease to the energy industry, only 30 percent are being used to produce oil and gas, leaving 29 million acres – about the size of New York state – available but not developed.

– Estimates of unproved oil resources can be grossly inflated. The Bakken Formation in the Dakotas, while still large, actually has less than one percent of the oil that was first estimated.

One thing about the House Natural Resources Committee’s leadership is no myth: it’s a puppet for the oil and gas industry.

In the last election cycle, chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) received $85,671 from the oil and gas industry, his number one industry contributor, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Oil and gas was also number one for Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT), chairman of the public lands subcommittee. For Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO), chairman of the energy and mineral resources subcommittee, oil and gas was number two.

This ThinkProgress cross-post puts Barbour’s connections to the oil industry under the microscope 

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