Advice columnists are like financial analysts. The overwhelming majority can’t beat the market — which, for the analyst, is an S&P index fund and, for the columnist, is your typical friend or relative.

And like your friend or relative, sometimes the advice is very good, and sometimes … not so much. As an instance of the latter, we have the ‘advice’ of Salon’s Cary Tennis in a column titled “How to protect my children?”

The letter writer, “Mom of Three,” is “a happily married woman in my mid-40s, with three children ranging in age from 8 to 15.” She has a good job and her life is great. She says, “I’m not sure what advice you can offer me, but I feel compelled to write”:

I love my family dearly, and my children bring me great joy.  So what’s the problem then? I worry that I’ve brought them into a world whose future holds overpopulation (for which I myself feel a bit responsible) and global warming. My children have such bright futures ahead, which may be completely devastated by these global crises.

I feel guilt at having brought them into the world, and yet I can’t imagine not having them in my world. I feel so hopeless that I am unable to make the world a better place for them. My happiness in the present is marred by my heartache thinking of their future.

How do I cope with these feelings?

Fair enough question. And similar to questions I’ve thought a lot about both as a father and as someone who spends a lot of time speaking with college students.

The full response by Mr. Tennis is too long to repost, but you’ll get the painful gist of it here:

Dear Mom of Three,

Your heartache is the heartache of all parents. Let this heartache be with you and do not be unkind to yourself because of it. It is not only the heartache of all parents. It is the heartache of all humans.

All humans feel this same heartache as we see that those we love we cannot protect and that everything we know and love will one day be gone. We are all filled with occasional sorrow when we stop to glimpse the fact that all that is familiar and safe, all that is beautiful, all will be gone as we also will be gone and those we love will be gone, and all the torments also, all the things we are catching up on and taking care of, all the things we are dreading and disapproving of and wishing we didn’t have to deal with, all those things, too, will be gone, and all the evils we despair of and all the tragedies whose lessons we use as guideposts, all that will be gone, the lessons of politics and philosophy, the works of art, the music, the novels, everything will be gone. Everything. Nothing can outlast the ceaseless churning of idea and matter and time. And because everything will be gone none of this will matter, either, none of what I say or you say or what we feel, and that is the farther assumption, the one we often do not get to, that since we will die and everyone we know will die, none of this worrying will matter in the least, and so, if we accept that all this will be gone, we can accept that all our worrying is just the fretting away of precious moments, a vain and fruitless mental activity over which, indeed — and this is the important part — we have some measurable, demonstrable control!

… You will be forgotten. I will be forgotten. This whole thing will be gone. Yet I think that our consciousness will remain. This I have experienced firsthand. So I am not worried. Nor am I as crazy as I used to be. I am merely more certain that I can do nothing about anything….

… Meditate on these things. Just meditate. Just sit and let these things enter your consciousness, and if there is strife and conflict in your relationships with your husband and your kids, see what you can do to lower the conflict. Let them be. They are going to go. They are beyond your control already. You are just a passenger now.

I know what you’re thinking, “Dude, chill out!” Or, maybe, “Dude, you’ve chilled out so damn much you’re frozen.” Either way, you’re probably thinking he may not be cut out to be an advice columnist and indeed that he needs an advice columnist more than she does. But I digress.

For me, what’s of interest is that he completely missed the point of the question, treated her specific concern as if it were existential angst, and gave a not terribly germane reply.

But what if we actually tried to answer her question? What is a mother to do who feels certain responsibility, guilt, and heartache for bringing her children into a world that may be devastated by overpopulation and global warming, who feels hopeless about her ability to make the world a better place?

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BuzzFeed reports that House Republicans came out of their lunch meeting with President Obama confident he will say yes to the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. Rep. John Carter (R-La.) said Obama “indicated” he will support the pipeline.

The truth is the Keystone XL pipeline decision is still months away. There is no indication of how the State Department will decide, and it will happen as early as this summer. Administration officials and reporters confirm the report is false:

.@arthurdelaneyhp says Freshmen GOP Rep at lunch meeting said Obama fielded Keystone pipeline Q but never said he’d approve

— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) March 13, 2013

Additional reports of the meeting indicate Obama only said he will make a decision on Keystone XL soon. It is worth noting BuzzFeed’s own story now carries the rebuttal from the White House stating that the future of the tar sands pipeline has not been determined.

Keystone XL supporters might be optimistic based on a State Department’s draft report that surprisingly concluded the project is environmentally “sound.” There are tens of thousands of activists who disagree.

Of course, Republicans aren’t content to leave the decision to the State Department. Polluter-backed House Republicans have repeatedly tried to force its approval, with their most recent attempt just last week.

Today, the Wall Street Journal editorial board published a gem of an editorial titled “Drill, Barack, Drill.” You might be able to guess what it’s about from the title.

It takes a report from the Congressional Research Service about drilling on public lands, engages in some flagrant cherry picking, shoots out some outright falsehoods, and concludes that the Obama Administration has been standing in the way of fossil fuel development on federal lands.

The truth, while sobering, is very different from the creative accounting performed by the Wall Street Journal ed board. Here’s the reality.

WSJ Says: “All of the increased [oil] production from 2007 from 2012 took place on non-federal lands.”

That’s one cherry to pick. There’s a whole tree though. Looking at the whole CRS report gives you the full story:

When comparing fiscal year 2010 with 2007, growth in the federal share of production was about 82 percent of the total.

That’s a lot of growth in production not on private and state lands. The report also says that crude oil production will continue to be significant, and “could remain consistently higher than previous decades.”

WSJ Says: “Federal share of total U.S. oil production has slid under Mr. Obama to 26% in fiscal year 2012 from 31% in fiscal 2008.”

In fact, oil production from federally owned places was higher in every one of the past four years compared to 2008, when oil hit a record high price of $142.50 per barrel. In fiscal year 2008, total crude oil production was 1,550 thousand barrels per day. The rate of production for the next four years has been: 1,731, 1,989, 1,715, and 1,627 thousand barrels per day. The Wall Street Journal may be trying hard here, but none of those numbers is smaller than 1,550.

The domestic boom is driven by ample tight oil (shale oil) and shale gas resources on private lands. In 2012, Adam Sieminski, the Administrator of the Energy Information Administration testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee that:

Because the shale resource basins are largely outside of the Federal lands, so too is shale production. In this case, the geology is working in favor of non-Federal landowners.

The rapid increase in natural gas production from shale resources, found largely outside the Federal lands, over the last 5 years has significantly reduced natural gas prices and the relative attractiveness of conventional natural gas resources, including those of Federal and Indian lands. (EIA)

Also, most oil and gas shale plays in the contiguous U.S. are on private lands:

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House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) released his fiscal year 2014 budget yesterday. Once again, he offers a path to prosperity that is limited to corporate special interests like Big Oil.

Despite nearly two-thirds of Americans echoing President Obama’s push to tackle climate change through regulation, Ryan decided to concentrate his energy strategy on “restoring competition to the energy sector” and “stopping the government from buying up unnecessary land.” Unsurprisingly, Ryan has multiple cases of misinformation and at times, blatant lies.

Let’s break down the eight biggest falsehoods from Ryan’s energy vision:

1. “The construction of the Keystone XL Energy Pipeline would create more than 20,000 direct jobs and 118,000 indirect jobs while battling the high cost of gas.”

Contrary to Rep. Ryan’s claims, the Keystone XL pipeline would actually only support 35 permanent and 15 temporary jobs after construction is complete, with “negligible socioeconomic impacts,” according to the State Department’s revised draft environmental impact assessment.

2. “Once it was in operation, the pipeline would contribute an additional $5.2 billion in property taxes to communities along the route during the life of the pipeline.”

The TransCanada assessment that claims that the six states crossed by the pipeline would receive an additional $5.2 billion in property taxes fails to account for the likely damage caused by oil spills along the pipeline route. “In the past five years, more than half a million barrels of oil and other hazardous liquids have been spilled from U.S. pipelines, killing 76 people and causing some $2.4 billion in property damage, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.”

3. “The administration continues to penalize economically competitive sources of energy and to reward their uncompetitive alternatives. On the one hand, it pours money into its favored industries.”

According to an analysis by DBL Investors, the oil and gas industry has received a total of $446 billion in government subsidies from 1918 through 2009. Meanwhile, the renewable energy industry received just $5.5 billion from 1994-2009. U.S. taxpayers have invested $80 in oil for every $1 invested in clean, renewable energy. Moreover, the big five oil companies –BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell — made a combined profit of $118 billion in 2012 while Reuters reported that the three American companies’ tax payments were “a far cry from the 35 percent top corporate tax rate.”

4. “In 2012, the Congressional Budget Office found total energy subsidies were $24 billion, of which $16 billion were spent on ‘green’ energy programs and $2.5 billion on fossil fuels.”

Ryan actually misquoted the report, which actually refers to subsidies from 2011. Furthermore, the Congressional Budget Office found that the government only spent $3.6 billion on energy efficiency and renewables in 2011.

5. “Many of the administration’s loan-guarantee projects have failed.”

Independent analysis of the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program has shown that that these investments were not only successful, but cost-effective. Despite the hysteria behind Solyndra, the program will cost $2 billion less than initially expected, for a total cost of $2.7 billion. To put that in perspective, the fossil-fuel industry got a whopping $70 billion in government subsidies from 2002 to 2008. The Loan Guarantee Program has allowed extremely important projects to move forward, including the world’s largest wind farm and our country’s biggest concentrating solar power project. Critically, the program created jobs for nearly 60,000 people.

6. “Beyond Solyndra, the latest ill-fated ventures include a $737 million loan guarantee to Solar Reserve for a 110-megawatt solar tower on federal land in Nevada and a $337 million guarantee for Mesquite Solar 1 to develop a 150-megawatt solar plant in Arizona.”

Politico reported that both of these projects are either already generating power or are on schedule with construction.

SolarReserve’s 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes project, near Tonopah, Nev., has inked a 25-year agreement to sell electricity to the power company NV Energy. The project is on track for completion later this year…. Ryan’s other target, the Mesquite Solar 1 project west of Phoenix, flipped the switch to electricity generation earlier this year. Media reports described it at the time as a success story of the DOE loan guarantee program.

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Grass for cellulosic ethanol production.

Cellulosic ethanol is a biofuel produced from grass, wood chips, and other feedstocks that don’t double as food. So unlike traditional corn-based ethanol, it promises to avoid encroaching upon and destabilizing human food supplies — assuming it can become commercially viable. And according to a survey by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), that time may come as soon as 2016.

The report found that the costs of enzymes, pre-treatment, and fermentation in the production process have all fallen significantly, and as a result the cellulosic biofuel industry expects its product to be cost competitive with corn-based ethanol and gasoline by 2016. But more ground needs to be covered if that goal is to be achieved. In 2012, cellulosic ethanol production cost $0.94 per litre, compared to the $0.67 per litre cost of corn-based ethanol — which is already competitive with gasoline.

So it’s understandable that Harry Boyle, the lead biofuel analyst at BNEF, is advising caution: “The cellulosic ethanol industry has something of a history of over-promising cost reductions and under-delivering. However, it may be dangerous to assume that it will not become competitive this decade.” And the report found several reasons to think the survey’s prediction might pan out:

The survey found that the largest cost elements for producers in 2012 were project capital expenditure, feedstock and enzymes. The operating costs of the process have dropped significantly since 2008 due to leaps forward in the technology. For example, the enzyme cost for a litre of cellulosic ethanol has come down 72 percent between 2008 and 2012.

Improvements in running costs for cellulosic ethanol plants will turn the spotlight squarely onto capital costs, which survey respondents expected to make up fully 45 percent of the overall expense of manufacturing a litre of cellulosic ethanol by 2016 — with feedstock contributing a further 34 percent. Developers will have to find ways of reducing the initial outlay on the plant, and reducing risk to attract cheaper financing. Boyle said: “We expect therefore to see a shift in focus over the next five to 10 years — from technology enhancements to logistical planning — that in turn suggests the industry is maturing.”

Globally, there are 14 enzymatic hydrolysis pilots; nine demonstration-stage undertakings; and 10 semi-commercial scale plants either announced, commissioned, or due online shortly. Five of the semi-commercial facilities are located in the US, but a swing towards Brazil is expected in the near future, with two announced there so far. Bloomberg New Energy Finance defines a semi-commercial facility as having capacity of 90 million litres per year, requiring an initial outlay of approximately $290 million. By 2016 the second and third tranche of plants will be reaching commissioning, with annual capacities ranging from 90 to 125 million litres. The initial outlay per installed litre is expected to fall from the original $3, to $2, due to economies of scale and a reduction in over-engineering.

If this report proves accurate, it could be a game-changer for biofuels and their role in the climate change solutions mix, given the problems that have so far bedeviled the energy source.

The requirements set by both the United States and Europe that a certain portion of their fuel supply come from biofuels have so far resulted in a huge diversion of corn crops away from use as food and into biofuel production. The increased demand for biofuels also drives farmers to dedicate land that could be used for food to biofuel feedstock production. The resulting spike in food prices and destabilization of food supplies has been disastrous for the populations of many poorer and developing countries around the globe. Most assessments of the 2008 food crisis found that biofuels played a role, compounding the threat of greater food insecurity already posed by climate change — which can in turn ferment geopolitical insecurity and destabilization.

On top of all this, corn-based biofuel use drives the conversion of grasslands and forest into cropland, even though the former two actually do much more to reduce carbon in the atmosphere than the latter. Combine that with the carbon emissions from increased agricultural production, and corn-based biofuel actually negates most, if not all, of its carbon-reducing benefits.

Imagine a future where we buy light bulbs based on how much light we want, instead of how much energy they burn because all light bulbs are already pretty efficient. Oh wait, that’s now!

Hurricane Sandy approaches the Atlantic coast October 29, 2012. (NASA image.)

By Adam Voiland, via NASA’s Earth Observatory

Few images are as beautiful and as terrifying as a satellite view of a hurricane about to make landfall. On October 29, 2012, the Suomi NPP satellite captured an ominous nighttime view of Sandy — an enormous hybrid storm that was part hurricane, part Nor‘easter — churning off the coast of New Jersey.

The string of city lights that stretches from Washington to Boston was mostly gone, blanketed by thick, ghostly storm clouds. One of the most brightly lit cities in the world, New York, was little more than a faint smudge through Sandy’s clouds.

In a matter of hours, that smudge of light would go dark. Large swaths of Manhattan were under water. The Rockaways were on fire. Rooftops along the New Jersey shore became temporary islands for people escaping a wall of seawater that surged inland.

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The American Petroleum Institute will announce a new TV ad campaign today attempting to protect fossil fuel tax breaks from fiscal policy negotiations. Their arguments on production and jobs are familiar, and familiarly bogus. [The Hill]

The group, which is the oil-and-gas industry’s largest trade association, will announce a new TV ad campaign.

The White House and many Democrats have for years been pushing to strip the petroleum industry’s ability to claim several tax deductions, calling them a multibillion-dollar taxpayer handout to an industry that doesn’t need it.

But industry officials and their allies have beaten back the efforts thus far. They say that higher taxes on energy producers would slow what has been booming oil-and-gas production, harm job creation and unfairly single out their industry.

Rep. Ryan’s new budget doubles down on the exact same policies helping corporate special interests like Big Oil at the expense of seniors, the middle class, and the most vulnerable that he and Mitt Romney ran on and lost on in 2012. [Politico]

Coming on the heels of a new carbon tax proposal, a group of House Democrats have announced a series of floor speeches to call on Congress for a response to climate change. [The Hill]

President Obama said Tuesday that drought fueled by climate change creates problems for barges bringing goods out of the Midwest down the Mississippi. [The Hill]

Flammable ice: Japan is the first nation to successfully extract natural gas from frozen methane hydrate deposits on the seabed, which remains an expensive procedure. [The Guardian]

The European Union is set to partially suspend its controversial airlines emissions tax scheme, stopping the clock until the International Civil Aviation Organization meets in September. [IOL]

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, chairman of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, announced plans for the fifth biennial C40 Cities Mayors Summit discuss ways to fight global climate change. [CBS/AP]

Australia’s solar market may hit 10,000 megawatts as early as 2017, reaching “saturation” levels for owner-occupied houses in many areas. [Renew Economy]

A group of scientists and energy analysts has laid out a plan by which New York State could, in theory, eliminate its use of fossil fuels and nuclear power by 2050. [NYTimes]