Today's American Energy Alliance Clips & Comment

Prediction: This same article will be written exactly one year from now.  

National Journal (12/30/13) reports: “Here's something to watch in 2014: the collective psyche of the green movement. If President Obama green-lights the Keystone pipeline, the movement will face questions about its tactics and goals at a level unseen since major climate-change legislation collapsed on Capitol Hill in 2010. ‘If the pipeline is approved, it's a defeat for 350.org, Sierra Club, et al, with no real strategy for what comes next,’ said Alex Trembath, a policy analyst with the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental think tank whose founders have often criticized movement tactics. Whatever the decision, it will be a defining moment for a movement that has had its ups and downs under Obama. After the 2010 climate-bill defeat, some analysts and activists wondered whether several big green groups, such as the Environmental Defense Fund, had launched a tactically shaky campaign that required too many concessions before failing outright.”

Bright Bulb Award:

"…there's still the issue of ice volume. Climate changers usually warn about Arctic ice, which has been receding over the past few decades, but rarely address the overall growth of ice in Antarctica."– Debra Saunders, RealClearPolitics

Resolution: To no longer take joy in these little ironies. Perhaps I'll just start tomorrow. 

RealClearPolitics (12/31/13) reports: “A funny thing happened during Australian climate change professor Chris Turney's venture to retrace a 1912 research expedition in Antarctica and gauge how climate change has affected the continent: Two weeks into a five-week excursion, Turney's good ship MV Akademik Shokalskiy got trapped in ice. It turns out, global warming notwithstanding, that there's so much ice down under that two ice-breaking vessels sent to rescue the research team cannot reach the Australasian Antarctic Expedition. Years ago, global warming believers renamed the phenomenon ‘climate change’ — probably because of pesky details such as unusually cold weather undercutting the warming argument. Now, just as advocates argue that earth is approaching a tipping point, there's so much ice floating in Antarctica during the Southern Hemisphere's summer that the Australasian Antarctic Expedition posted in a statement: ‘We're stuck in our own experiment.’”

I'm still holding out for hoverboards. 

Fiscal Times (12/30/13) reports: “Despite lots of hype among techies and tree-huggers, the demand for electric vehicles has stalled at dismally low levels. Even as sales of electric cars inch up each year, the total number of plug-in vehicles sold since 2010 is less than 160,000 cars, according to the Electric Drive Transportation Association. The bad news continues: a new federal report expects demand to remain that way for the next 25 years. By 2040, the sale of new electric vehicles and new hybrid electric vehicles will comprise about 1 percent each of all new car sales. That would be an increase from last year’s sales of electric vehicles, which were ‘negligible,’ according to the report.”

Out: Dangerous. In: Catastrophic.

Slate (12/31/13) reports: "A new study published in Nature suggests that climate change is even worse than scientists had previously anticipated, upgrading the forecast from 'dangerous' to 'catastrophic.' According to the study's authors, temperatures are currently snared in an upward spiral: As earth gets hotter, the heat prevents sunlight-reflecting clouds from forming, trapping more heat and further exacerbating the problem. The result could be a temperature climb of 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100."