Watercooler 6/5/2017 Open Thread: A Climate of Change

Childhood is awesome. It is a time in your life of absolutely ZERO personal responsibility, and of the infinite opportunity to dream of being whatever you want to be. Billy wants to be an astronaut, Sarah a doctor, Stevie an artist, and little Becky a fashion model. Me…I wanted to be a meteorologist. I built my first weather station when I was 14, and now have a professional-grade Davis station at the house:

I learned that with a barometer, a wind vane, and a cloud chart, you can forecast the weather with reasonable accuracy out to about 24 hours. After that, it’s all a crap shoot, as there are too many variables coming into play. Furthermore, when you consider climate and weather on a geologic time scale, the magnitude of our planetary system is realized, and it is critical to understand that while we may THINK we have some demonstrable effect on our climate, outside of localized issues like smog, man’s influence on the global climate and the resulting weather isn’t even a rounding error.

This past week, we were inundated with story after story about President Trump withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Accord, and the impending doom that awaits us all. The Guardian, Politico, Reuters, Slate, CNN…the ever-cerebral mensas over at Vox, et al: the collective vapor-locking of the typical mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, emotionally hysterical statists was noteworthy only in the headcount and should barely elicit no more than a yawn from anyone with a modicum of common sense.

However…with all the hyperbole and hand-wringing and wailing and beating of breasts among the chattering class, there was one teensy-weensy story that was reported on and hardly noticed through all the emoting:

Oil starts gushing through controversial Dakota Access Pipeline

After months of protests, lawsuits and occasional clashes, oil started flowing Thursday through the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. The 1,172-mile-long pipeline is now in full commercial use, said Vicki Granado, spokeswoman for Energy Transfer Partners — the pipeline’s developer. The pipeline is expected to move 470,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

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