The Greatest News of the Last Week

++ Rolling Stone reported that President Obama already made up his mind on the Keystone Pipeline. He's a "No" according to two senior White House officials. The next day one such official tried to walk this back but who knows.

++April was the first month since humans that carbon emissions averaged 400ppm. That's higher emissions than it has been for a million years.

++Thom Hartmann has been the only television commentator who has systematically followed the climate change story and given it the severity it deserves.

++But even Thom can go wobbly on us. He had Guy McPherson from the University of Arizona on his show. Guy says flat out that we will be extinct in 15 to 20 years. Thom made sure that we knew that Michael Mann in "The Scientific American" wrote that we had 20 years to make the right policy decisions to strike a balance.

++Besides President Obama's "decision" on the Keystone XL Pipeline,the other good news is that the Mayan Apocalypse is scheduled for 2021. The scientists just didn't translate the hieroglyphs right.

That takes us into Guy McPherson's predictions.

++The ACLU released information this week about "Little Gitmo" where Muslim prisoners and environmentalists are being held in the Midwest. Their   emphasis were on Muslim Americans being held because of their connections in a "nexus" of terrorist groups. But the eye-catching quotes come from people who have been held as "eco-terrorists", which can mean a whole host of things.

++In my opinion, the whole NSA issue really pertains to the repression of environmental activists. There seems to be less protections for them than anyone. The killing of environmental activists in the United States has skyrocketed in the past decade. 

++ While solar energy has increased 400% since 2010, we should look at the backlash against alternative energy supplies. ALEC, the Koch-funded legislative arm,has ramped up actions against solar energy on the spurious claim that it will increase energy costs.

++In the senatorial race in North Carolina, none--I repeat--none of the GOP candidates believe climate change is man-made--let alone a real phenomenon.

++Virtually all of the House GOP and Senate do not believe climate change requires any policy remedies.

++It will be fascinating to see whether any GOP Presidential candidates for 2016 believe in climate change. As late as 2008,John McCain expressed his view on this matter making him the second to last Republican to believe in climate change--the last being Jon Huntsman.

++The House GOP want to change the government's research into climate change into research on severe weather. 

++If you have one major political party in denial,then policy changes necessary to avoid absolute disaster can not be made. 

++Rachel Maddow gets kudos for bringing an obscure fact to the fore on oil exploration. During the past two weeks, ExxonMobil has bragged that they have $12billion in exploration projects in Russia. Chevron bragged they would be in the forefront of oil exploration in the Arctic off Alaska, even though they blew it. All of this is interesting but as Rachel Maddow showed none of these guys have any plans on how to prevent Arctic oil spills or how such spills would operate. They are so ignorant that they will create small oil spills to study their effect.