Another question I might have asked of Al is, Do you think it would be a good idea for President Barack Obama to appoint Arnold Schwarzenegger as his Energy Czar?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

You're almost always right, except when your New York roots show and you make claims like pizza is not junk food.  (Look, I've eaten a few slices at St. Marks Pizza at 3 a.m., too, but it's still junk food.)  However:

1. We don't want carbon sequestration for coal to ever be ready.  If it were, there'd be no chance of getting rid of this evil industry that has been destroying ecosystems with mining and polluting the air for centuries, and now goes so far that it blasts off the tops of mountains in its lust for coal bucks.  Some of us realize that because of mining, "clean coal" will always be an oxymoron.  But for the large majority, which is highly uninformed and/or just doesn't care about the natural world, it's best if coal can always be portrayed as spewing filthy pollution, whether it's massive amounts of CO2 or other pollutants.

2. Appointing the Governator to any position where he would be making decisions that directly or indirectly have significant environmental or ecological effects would be a very bad move for the environment.  Schwarzenegger has been touted by himself and the corporate propaganda machine as an environmentalist, but he's far from it.  He places the interests of the business community first -- why do you think he's a Republican? -- and has appointed industry hacks to head agencies that are supposed to regulate their industries.  He's nowhere near as bad as the current Darth Vader group, but he's still far from what's desirable.

Arnold seems to have a big enough appetite for political power that I doubt we've seen the last of him after he steps down as governor.  Perhaps the most likely scenario is him running for U.S. senate.  He may well be one of the few Republicans in all of California who would have a chance of winning.  And down the road you can expect him to once again push for a constitutional amendment that allows immigrants to become president.

Arnold may show more "flexibility" than his bedfellows on the rigid right, but his commitment to green is as shaky as the next poll.

Why is Al Gore so confident that the technology for carbon sequestration for coal is already ready?  Would that it were so!; but is it?

Yes, as explained here.

Two words -- "for coal" -- are redundant. Strewing CO2-hungry rock grains sequesters carbon from all sources.

The other quadruped is wrong to believe that solving one of coal's problems is a bad thing. It does not make coal's future long and large. France shut down its last coal mine years ago.

--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996

Peal oil has now changed the debate. Enviros need to catch up with the peak oilers or be left behind. Gore showed that he has done enough research to know that oil decline will be permanent and lead to ever higher oil prices, on average. He is obviously working on a new narrative, one I think that has a far better chance of success than the old incremental "put a price on carbon" or "green jobs" mantras. Staving off economic collapse ought to get even Republicans on board, even if they don't give a s*** about future generations.

Right arm DR that conventionally wise Brokaw made it impossible to pay attention to the interview.

Did he talk about the best part of Gore's plan?  The idea to tax carbon and reduce payroll taxes by that same total taken by the carbon tax?

It prices carbon without raising taxes or cap and trade hedge fund bubble gumming up the works.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

The tax cut would increase as carbon taxes increase.  Conserving fuel and energy would leave taxpayers with big savings via the payroll tax cut, combined with saving money not paying for carbon intensive energy.

A subsidy diversion from fossil fuel industries directly to solar panel and wind and farm biogas investors of 5 to 10 cents per kwh would be further incentive to reduce carbon emitting energy consumption.

Despite his bone headed touting of 'clean' coal CCS, this tax plan makes up for this and other obvious foot in mouth episodes.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

But it will never happen. Fuel taxes are being raised as we speak as the result of the conversation started when the "tax holiday" nonsense was proposed.

 

"...a 90 percent chance that the US has contributed .2 degrees F of temperature increase in the last 50 years..." The IPCC Consensus in perspective

I stand by my assertion, that pizza is NOT junk food.  (And it passes over my head why that should be a New Yorker's prejudice.  I do not recall ever eating pizza from St. Mark's Pizza; and, when I was up and about at 3 AM, back in the day, I was usually holding an Irish whiskey on the rocks, aware that closing time at 4 was imminent, and that I had to close the deal with the cute guy I was chatting up fairly quickly.)

Au contraire, it surprises me that you, a man of the people, should disdain Italian cuisine, one of the most happifying ways of bringing comfort to poor people ever evolved.

Back to Al Gore, etc.: Of course I was asking those questions purely for information, and it is wrong to infer that I had an agenda.  I know nothing about energy, or energy policy.  But I do know that our own beloved DR is associated with the (ever so slightly hyperbolical and calorie-dense) battle-cry, "Coal is the enemy of the human race!"; and yet, after all, it was that same wise DR who typed "counterproductive riff on CCS," while still acknowledging that Al Gore is a hero of his, or at least someone whom he admires.

So you see the nature of my perplexity.

G.R.L. Cowan,
we are all tetrapods now.  Even the snakes.

"Carbon" is indeed derived from the Latin word for "coal," carbo, carbonis.  But modern chemists have apparently given the word a significantly different meaning, which by no means restricts the element to coal.  If "carbon sequestration" is nowadays uniquely applied to the combustion of coal, and of no other fossil fuel, rendering my uneducated prissy precision "for coal" redundant, then I am most grateful for your correction, dear G.  (Or, if you prefer, R.  Or, for that matter, L.)

Dear Steven T, and Wolverine, and all dear Californians,
I only asked the question about Arnold in an Obama administration, because the possibility is out there, encouraged by none other than Arnold himself.  And I thought, hypothetically, that Al Gore might playfully bounce around the inadequacies of both Obama and Arnold for a bit.

What you dear Californians need to ask yourselves is: Is Maria Shriver a second Nancy Reagan?  We blue-state voters were none too pleased that Nancy Reagan herself was the FIRST Nancy Reagan.  So then is it hypocritical for us to hope that Maria Shriver should be a true-blue liberal Kennedy, and prove herself to be a SECOND Nancy Reagan, i.e. pulling the strings behind her puppet husband?

Ha ha.

Anyway, if anyone is interested: Obama's policy statement on energy (as well as those on health care, etc.) is already fairly cautious, not to say conservative; so it would not surprise me if he did a "new politics of change" thing and asked Arnold to join him in his Cabinet.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Good pizza is not junk food. It is in fact one of the most well balanced single foods you can eat, especially if you load it up with good organic vegetable toppings and mushrooms on top of a home made whole wheat shell you coat with garlic and olive oil before you bake it.

As long as you keep the ingredients good and the fat managable relative to your exercise levels it is one of the top foods there is. It also happens to be the food that fuels more late night studies and work sessions than any other.

Oddly enough another great well balanced food, for which the same advice applies, is ice cream.

Anyway, the whole energy issue is one huge smoke and mirrors circus of the under informed being mislead by the unethical.

I've spent years trying to get people to pay attention to real workable answers that could be put into place immediately and are cost effective and the media, government and investors turn a dead ear to it because it isn't flashy enough.

Van Jones is right and is saying the same things I have been saying for years. (see the itinerary for the UN NGO conference in Seoul a few years back)

There are workable solutions available now, ready to be built, that are productive, put people to work, produce true renewable clean energy and are safe and reliable.

Such a program as the Green New Deal would yield many of the same benefits as the space program did. New jobs, new technologies, a huge leap forward in many areas while being productive both economically and intellectually in addition to the environmental (and thereby health and productivity also) benefits.

Visit our website or email us for more information as we are actively looking for people to work with to help improve the future of our civilization.

a) we are leaving coal behind us.

"And the quickest and easiest way to back out the coal, which is the worst of the problem, and oil, is to look at electricity generation."

b) the burden of proof for the future of coal is on its advocates, not the rest of society.

"I also think that the coal and oil industries can play a big role in this if they will make good on the promise that carbon capture and sequestration will be real."

from a major technogreen these were bombshells, i think.

G.R.L. Cowan, we are all tetrapods now.  Even the snakes.

"Carbon" is indeed derived from the Latin word for "coal," carbo, carbonis.  But modern chemists have apparently given the word a significantly different meaning, which by no means restricts the element to coal.  If "carbon sequestration" is nowadays uniquely applied to the combustion of coal, and of no other fossil fuel, rendering my uneducated prissy precision "for coal" redundant, then I am most grateful for your correction ...

I was aiming to educate in a non-philological way.

Some carbon dioxide sequestration methods are, hypothetically, attached to particular combustors' exhaust pipes; since coal burners make more CO2 per unit of energy than any other burners, if any burners were logical candidates to have CO2 catchers attached, they would be.

And so, in the hypothetical case of attachments to burners, CCS applies specifically to coal. One cannot, even hypothetically, go around attaching CCS equipment to every new car in China.

Another CO2 sequestration method does not attach to any particular flue ...

We have documented active sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) in chrysotile mine tailings at Clinton Creek, Yukon and Cassiar, British Columbia...

(http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005AGUFM.B33A1014W)

... and is not hypothetical.

I have seen snakes; when I was young and foolish, I even handled a green mamba that had been killed recently enough to be still wriggling. There weren't any feet.

Not a mambo. I am reminded of Michael Caine's explanation of the difference, in, I think it was, "Without a Clue".

--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996

Without that, I couldn't support another budget busting, debt producing, raygun voodoo economics, supply side tax cut.  Hehey.

And of course a "no new taxes" style tax cut is targeted at the rich.  Bushwacking our national solvency and leaving working class and middle class families to fend for themselves in an economy monopolized by GOP connected corporatist lobbying.

Gore would aim the payroll tax cut at families  who are under 100k in annual income.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

This is the only response from an economist?  No comment on his payroll tax cut, offset by a carbon tax?

Gore is no Obama, it's true.  Not galvanic, but who else is even trying to lead in this area?  Economists?  All they have for us is more "free" market trading.  

A cap and trade bubble to analyze with complex math theories run through vast supercomputers.  Post bubble, when it is too late for our climate.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

I'm just asking, maybe it would be more effective for you (to paraphrase Martin short's "Nathan Therm") to examine your own theories and how they relate to this payroll tax cut idea, rather than impugning Gore's media personna?

Sorry for the whipping, but flagellation is not just for flagella anymore.  It's emerging into a popular cultural trend.  

Especially towards experts who reassure us that they are using complex theories we could not possibly understand to manage our national and global finances.  

Then when the next bubble in the "free" markets necessitates the next bailout of "investment banks" or mortgage giants or hedge funds (LTCM) at the expense of our currency and national credit rating, they shrug and say, well no one "model" is perfect.

This gets irksome after a new financial disaster and bailout every few years, amongst calls from experts to keep trusting "free" (unregulated) markets to fix everything right up with market efficiency.  That government regulation would impede and never could match.

Now experts implore us to allow trading in GHG emission permits to price carbon.  "Free" markets will save our climate!  Why not just price the carbon as Al has proposed?

You certainly don't owe us any explanation, I'm just saying that it might be a good idea.  Hehey.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Neither pizza nor "Meet The Press" is junk food.

First... we generally prepare our pizza on a whole wheat crust not containing animal fat or hydrogenated vegetable oil. Then we brush  it with olive oil, spread pesto (made from fresh basil, walnuts, olive oil, garlic, and parmesan cheese), or cover it with a home-made tomato sauce. On top of that, we usually add diced tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, chopped basil, and/or black olives, depending on what's available and what we crave. Top with a little grated cheddar or mozzarella. How is that junk food? We also prepare a southwestern version using a cilantro pesto and pepper jack cheese.

Second, I thought Tom Brokaw  was doing a pretty good job on "Meet The Press". Last week -- or the week before -- he peppered the McCain "surrogate" with a string of questions regarding McCain's pandering to the base by changing his views on a whole series of issues now that he's running for President. Brokaw essentially pointed out what a flipper-flopper McCain is... and not because of sincere informed change of perspective.

Brokaw is SUPPOSED to ask the sort of questions he did when Gore was the guest, even if informed voters and political junkies already know the answers. It is up to the guest to respond. If Gore didn't come up with a good answer, blame Gore not Brokaw.

When Brokaw stops asking tough questions, whether viewers like or dislike the guest, "Meet The Press" will be junk food.

Sort of funny...  I'm still angry at Ted Kennedy for missing several opportunities to respond to Tim Russert. The Democratic leadership misses SO MANY opportunities to communicate their views to voters! Why???!!!!!!!

First, Canis, focaccia -- no cheese! -- is Italian, pizza is American.  But that said, I don't consider any European "cuisine" (that term seems too lofty for most European food) to be healthy.  East Asians seem to have the best diets, based on veggies and rice with small amounts of meat and no dairy.  Europeans eat far too much meat, dairy, and processed foods, the latter mainly from white flour.  Brown rice would be a major improvement in Asian cuisine though, and many Chinese and Thai restaurants in San Francisco now offer it.

Second, pizza is junk food because two of its three  basic ingredients, cheese and white flour, are junk food.  My standard of what constitutes junk food might seem a little high, but all dairy is junk food because it's completely unnatural (milk is for babies only and is unhealthy for anyone else, and milk from another animal even more so) and highly processed foods like white flour are junk food by definition.  The less food is processed, the healthier it is, and I draw the line at white flour and its manifestations, because unless one is starving, white flour provides more negative effects than positive ones.  Sure, you can substitute whole wheat flour or cornmeal -- the latter tastes really good, BTW -- and make pizza less of a junk food, but it still depends on cheese.

It's humorous to see all the people who've reacted to my comment about pizza being junk food, as if this hit a nerve or something.  I eat pizza too, though living in San Francisco it now consists solely of Indian pizza (if you eat pizza west of Chicago you're not likely to get anything good), and I also love cheese enchiladas with mole and ice cream.  But I eat these things very occasionally and don't lie to myself that they're healthy.  They're just fun foods that won't hurt you if you eat them sparingly and not regularly.

You eat moles? That's certainly sustainable but taking the the predator thing a bit too far. :-)

>But I eat these things very occasionally and don't lie to myself that they're healthy.

Then you have to check out better ways to make pizza because you can make it far better still than you acknowledge here.

I grow my own organic tomatoes, buy free range beef and defat it before I use it, and use home grown organic vegetables and spices.

You already mentioned whole wheat crust, and I also add flax seed to it some times when I have some extra.

Good organic low fat cheese rounds it out and keeps the fat low and the taste high.

Check out great recipes from people like Gram Kerr and the Frugal Gourmet.

>They're just fun foods that won't hurt you if you eat them sparingly and not regularly.

This applies to many things and with a little effort most such foods can be made a lot healthier, as can much of our current energy and consumerism picture which is causing so much trouble.


Visit our website or email us for more information as we are actively looking for people to work with to help improve the future of our civilization.

You eat moles? That's certainly sustainable but taking the the predator thing a bit too far. :-)

>But I eat these things very occasionally and don't lie to myself that they're healthy.

Then you have to check out better ways to make pizza because you can make it far better still than you acknowledge here.

I grow my own organic tomatoes, buy free range beef and defat it before I use it, and use home grown organic vegetables and spices.

You already mentioned whole wheat crust, and I also add flax seed to it some times when I have some extra.

Good organic low fat cheese rounds it out and keeps the fat low and the taste high.

Check out great recipes from people like Gram Kerr and the Frugal Gourmet.

>They're just fun foods that won't hurt you if you eat them sparingly and not regularly.

This applies to many things and with a little effort most such foods can be made a lot healthier, as can much of our current energy and consumerism picture which is causing so much trouble.

Anyway, if you ever travel out this way you will have to stop by for good, organic low fat pizza that tastes like it came from a big city Italian Pizzaria. (It runs in the family.)

Visit our website or email us for more information as we are actively looking for people to work with to help improve the future of our civilization.

Pizza is most certainly Italian. Please read the following:

While certainly ancient, the earliest origins of pizza are not at all clear. One interesting legend recounts that the Roman soldiers returning from Palestina, where they had been compelled to eat matzoh among the Palestinian Jews, developed a dish called picea upon gratefully returning to the Italian peninsula.

Most sources, however, agree that an early form of pizza resembling what today is called focaccia was eaten by many peoples around the Mediterranean rim, e.g., by Greeks, Egyptians etc.

These dishes of round pita-like, cooked bread with oil and spices on top are the ancestors of pizza, but are not properly speaking pizza. The tomato was unknown and the Indian water buffalo had not yet been imported to Campania, the area around Naples.

With the discovery of the New World, the tomato made its way to Italy through Spain. It was considered a poisonous ornamental and so in the first centuries of its import was not eaten.

The Neapolitan people seem to be the first to wholeheartedly adopt the tomato into their cuisine, so that in our day the (plum) tomato is the most characteristic element of Neapolitan cuisine.

Over the centuries, a veritable tradition of pizza was developed among the Neapolitan poor. It is not surprising, then, that a modern pizza, that is, with mozzarella di bufala and tomato was made in 18711 in Naples for Princess Margherita of Savoia by Raffaele Esposito. This patriotic pizza, of basil, tomato and mozzarella, in honor of the new tricolor Italian flag's red, green and white, became the pizza alla Margherita. This form of pizza was then made known, popularized and adapted in all the world through waves of emigration from Naples in the late 19th and early 20th centuries."

I lived in Germany. A large number of first generation owned Italian restaraunts dot the country. Pizza Margherita is what I ate all the time. I also danced often in Northern Italy in the area around Milano........ and I can assure you there are "Pazzarias" all over the place and I ate in many of them.

Victory in Pattani

Thanks very much for your historical comments on the famous Pizza Margherita, surely one of the greatest culinary artefacts in history, malgrado l'opinione amara ed invidiosa del mio sempre amatissimo cugino Ser Wolverine.

On pizza/foccaccia, and Italian antiquities: Cf. Aeneid 7, and the Trojans "eating their tables," i.e. the flat bread on which their vegetables were spread, during their initial picnic by the Tiber, as a fulfillment of the prophecy that that is how they would know when they had arrived.

On cheese as "baby food": No.  Milk is baby food, and milk is way yucky.  But cheese is a work of art, and requires the contributions of all kinds of (very small) living creatures whom we usually do not encounter face-to-face in every-day life, and whom therefore we do not usually have the opportunity to thank properly.

On Al Gore missing an opportunity on "Meet the Press": Well, so what?  Barack Obama himself was jittery and giggly, sitting across from Tom Brokaw.

Brokaw asked Obama a very good question, which I wish had been picked up subsequently, regarding two poll responses, by African-Americans, a large majority showing they believe racism is alive and well in America, and also that judicial sentences are weighed to the disadvantage of black defendants.  Does Obama go along (asked Brokaw) with the African-American majority?

I myself entirely agree with the African-American majority (to the disappointment of my friend Mad Mac, but perhaps in accord with my friends Amazing and Wolverine).  But, more importantly, it would be nice to get a full, honest answer out of Obama.

Perhaps DR can arrange a private meeting of Gristmillites with Obama, when we can ask him such touchy questions ...

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

As for blacks in America and the judicial system, I suspect there's some of both. Blacks commit far more crime, for historical and socio-economic reasons, and they are also punished more severely by the judicial system which is biased against them.

Victory in Pattani

It's this kind of racism that is built right into the wing nut brain that is the most dangerous.  Empathy, ethics, and civilization ends where this insidious programming starts.

Any mob can easily take over the deeply damaged central processor of these automatons.  The mechanical/organic analogy fits altered states of consciousness like this.  The hive or mob instinct in action, word and deed.

Check out "Generation Kill" on HBO for examples.  

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Would DR like to ask Van Jones the question that Tom Brokaw asked of Barack Obama?

Hey Amazing, nice comment!  HBO is beyond our budget, though, to say nothing of our schedule.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

"Generation Kill" is very realistic, and very disturbing.  Reminds one of Vietnam coverage in 69. The My Lai massacre occurred in a so-called "free fire zone", that term was mentioned in an unarmed village massacre in the series.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Now, amazing, I do not pretend that you can not think, and I would appreciate it if you did not insinuate the same about me. You know almost nothing about me, yet feel comfortable making these kind of ridiculous and sweeping statements - as if I am sitting around waiting for orders to kill blacks.

If civilization ends where "this insidious programing begins" then why didn't American civilization end before it began? Or do you mean just the kind of civilization you approve of?

Victory in Pattani

The statement was too general to be true ("measurable, and obvious ") for one thing.  But racial prejudice generally comes in this form.  Usually it is subconscious.

Sloppy reasoning and hate mongering go together.

Nice exposure of the actual nature of race hatred though.  Were you serious?  Or were you just talking for effect as in most of your other posts here?  

Like the ones about how you love oil war, but won't join up because they don't pay enough?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin