What's Wrong With This Picture?

Seriously, what's wrong with it?

This is is one of the ski slopes being used for the skiing events at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.  Note that most of the snow appears magically on the course, and little anywhere else.

That's because all of the snow in Beijing being used for the Games is man-made.  The slopes are in an area northwest of the city formerly known as Peking that gets cold in the winter but it is very dry.  As much as 49 million gallons of water were used to create the artificial snow,  an in a part of China that is considered "water-stressed." 

It's not the first time artificial snow has been used in the Winter Olympics.  Given the unpredictability of winter weather, a condition that pre-dates climate change, some artificial snow has been used to supplement natural snow in snow-prone towns that have held the Winter Olympics, but not to replace the real thing - at least not on such a large scale as this.  And the large amount of snow being manufactured for the Beijing Winter Games is not only stressing the water supply, it's actually contributing to climate change, what with all of the energy needed to pull off such a grand escapade.  

Some athletes think it's perfect for skiing and snowboarding, while others think it's too icy and dangerous.  But even if it were the safest and most fun snow available, all of this fake snow is causing real problems for the environment.  China is already the biggest emitter of carbons on the planet; this cavalier attitude toward the natural environment for a silly sporting event does not help.   

Pruitt Out Of Gas

While the rest of the world is maximizing fuel economy in their cars and continuing to invest in the technologies that can make cars even more efficient, Environmental Destruction Agency administrator Scott (where are all the rhymes-with-glass-poles in this country named Scott?) Pruitt is rolling back gas mileage standards from the Obama administration that would have doubled corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) numbers in the automakers' lineup by 2025.  He says it's impractical to expect that from automobile manufacturers.

Ahem . . . sure, if you want to keep selling SUVs and pickup trucks.  The government is just pandering to American car manufacturers who don't want to take the time or the money to invest in smaller, leaner cars, the sort of cars Europeans have bought for decades - some of which have been made by General Motors, before it sold Opel and Vauxhall to PSA, and Ford.  And despite some decent fuel-sipping cars, along with electric cars and hybrids, the two manufacturers really don't have their hearts in more ethical vehicles, when gas-guzzling pickups and SUVs bring in higher profits because it takes so much raw material to make them. And a nation of consumers brainwashed by clever advertising, folks who love the power and feel of a big vehicle, keep buying them.  I've only known one person who ever needed an SUV, and she grows her own food and keeps a coop of chickens.  She needs a big vehicle to transport her feed and seed. 

Gone are the days when automakers could make the size of a subcompact an asset in These States.  Even Volkswagen, who once urged car buyers to think small and consider a Beetle, is pushing big SUVs in America now.  We are told that the automakers who do business in this country are merely responding to consumer demands, but much of that demand is fueled, no pun intended, by government activity - not just lower CAFE standards but subsidized gasoline, which is why it's so inexpensive and why oil companies are so highly profitable.  And Scott Pruitt, a fossil-fuel energy producer's wet dream with eyes, is happy to keep the system rigged against small cars.

Pruitt's time as America's chief environmental outlaw maybe over, though, as a lobbyist for a liquefied natural gas producer has given the EDA (formerly EPA) chief a sweetheart deal in the form of low rent on a condominium apartment in Washington even as he's been racking up expensive travel bills at the taxpayers' expense.  Trump is happy with the job Pruitt has been doing to enable private industry to run roughshod over a land, air and water, but he may have to let him go for his bad press and for casting the White House in a negative light.  Don't start doing backflips if Pruitt leaves the administration soon; Trump will simply find someone worse to run the environmental office.

Who could be worse?  I don't let myself think about it.

In a very related story, General Motors announced it's discontinuing the Chevrolet Sonic subcompact while Ford is considering discontinuing the Fiesta in the U.S. market.  Could this be because they don't have to offer smaller cars to meet the now-discarded fuel economy standards Obama issued?  Gee, ya think? >:-(   

Irma . . . Jose?

On this anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, we're taking stock of the aftermath of a disaster of a different sort. 

Hurricane Irma slammed into Florida yesterday, blowing street signs and trees out of the ground, turning pieces of buildings into deadly projectiles, flooding Miami (above), leaving nearly six million people (at last check) in the dark, and rendering the entire state as a wasteland.  And a friend of mine,  a sister of another friend, my maternal cousin, and my paternal uncle and his wife are all in the middle of it. 

And Irma isn't done yet.  It's moving into the Atlanta area and the South Central states, and it will likely bring more misery.  And even with all that, there is still . . . 

. . . Hurricane Jose.

Jose formed on September 5 and is currently looping around in the warm waters of the North Atlantic Ocean just east of the Bahamas.  It won't be a threat to anyone for at least a week, but by next weekend things may change.  Jose will start to move northward, and while it may go out to sea, computer projections from the Global Forecast System and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts - the so-called GFS and Euro models, respectively - show it moving north close to the U.S. East Coast and possibly, sometime during the middle of next week,  hitting the Canadian Maritimes, hitting New England, or . . . making a direct hit on New York City or on Washington, D.C. via the Chesapeake Bay.

Here we go again!

One GFS model run even showed Jose making a hard-left turn, in the manner of Sandy, into southern New Jersey and moving westward toward Baltimore.  And all of these models show Jose's central pressure anywhere between 935 and 955 millibars - which would indicate a more powerful storm than Sandy was.

How much more powerful?  I don't let myself think about it.

To be honest, no one knows what's going to happen with Jose.  New Jersey weather blogger Jonathan Carr notes that the storm could fall apart while it goes around in a circle near the Bahamas and get taken out by trade winds to the northeast or remain intact and still stay out at sea.  But a hit on the Northeast or on southeastern Canada is also possible.  We'll just have to wait.

So, I have to repeat the same spiel I offered here this time last week, albeit with changes of dates.  I may end up blogging less frequently in the days leading up to wherever this hurricane is going. And if it turns out that the storm is zeroing in on New Jersey, I will be putting this blog on hiatus and shutting down my Music Video Of the Week page temporarily, because while I may be able to post a new video on September 15, I may not get to post one on September 22 if the power goes out just before then and stays out for some time to come.  My beautiful-women picture blog - front-loaded with posts scheduled to publish automatically all the way to the end of October - will continue, with or without me. 

It wouldn't surprise me if Jose hit my area of the country.  First Harvey hits Texas, then Irma hits Florida . . . the Northeast would logically be next.  It's as if America, so long a country dedicated to plundering the environment and denying climate science, is suddenly being punished by God, with God's bratty kid sister, Mother Nature, dishing out the punishment.  Twenty seventeen has been a tough year for  this country, with hurricanes on the coast and wildfires in the West.  And even if Jose spares the U.S., worse will almost certainly follow. :-(  

Where Paradise Lay

See this?

Well, you're going to see a whole lot more of it.

Congress just passed a law repealing former President Barack Obama's regulation against dumping coal sludge in waterways without proper testing.  Trump is expected to sign it.

Environmentalists are reportedly "concerned"  (actually, more like "outraged," but let that pass).  On CNN, reporter Rene Marsh explained that environmentalists were afraid that this could lead to more pollution, while coal companies complained that the regulation was too cumbersome and cost jobs.  And that was it . . . and that was all.  No in-depth look at the regulation.  No probing questions about the coal companies' opposition to it.  Only that it was repealed, and so anchor Jake Tapper moved on to something else, which I can't remember.  

Meanwhile, a Senate committee, with only the Republican majority in attendance, approved for full Senate consideration polluter Scott Pruitt's nomination to be Environmental Protection Agency administrator, despite a boycott by committee Democrats.  The GOP simply waived the rules that the minority committee members have to be present.  This is the third time Senate Republicans have suspended committee rules to get a Trump nominee sent to the full Senate for a vote.  The Democrats might as well have not even bothered to attend committee meetings . . . and so begins one-party rule.

But, you probably missed these stories about the fascists in Washington laying waste to the environment . . . because you were too busy following the news about Beyoncé being pregnant with twins.

Morons.

Burn On, Big Gulf, Burn On

If the mere threat of an oil rig accident in the Atlantic Ocean from offshore drilling wasn't enough to convince supporters of noted book-banning wolf killer Sarah Palin's energy policy - which was co-opted by President Obama earlier this month - to change their minds, then the real accident in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coast should.

A BP oil derrick recently exploded, killing eighteen people and causing an underwater pipe to emit oil - now up to 42,000 gallons a day - into the the Gulf of Mexico. The oil slick is slowly making its way toward the shore, threatening several marshes and estuaries in Louisiana and possibly Mississippi. For a region still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, this man-made disaster maybe too much. Commercial fishing interests and environmentally sensitive areas alike are threatened, and no one knows what's going to happen. It could affect areas like Chandeleur Sound, just south of Gulfport, Mississippi, and western Mississippi Sound. Barrier islands that shield those waters, CNN reports, were devastated by Katrina in 2005 and haven't fully recovered.

Ironically, this is all happening as the Interior Department took a step in the right direction in energy policy - approving a wind turbine farm five miles off the coast of Nantucket.

The government plans to set fire to as much of the slick as possible to burn it out and prevent much of it from reaching the shore. So, "drill, baby, drill" has become, "burn, baby, burn."

That's why there's still no offshore drilling off the California coast. No one wants a "Frisco inferno."