Juggling Dynamite

The US Fed has bluffed again, promising a rate hike and chickening out.  In doing so they admitted that the global economy is faltering and they believe that any move off zero rates will quicken its demise. If Ms Yellen were honest her statement would say:

” We messed up. We lowered rates for years to keep pushing debt-fueled consumption and we bankrupted the world. Then we bailed out the most reckless actors with public funds and have been funneling cash to those same criminals ever since. Now the system is so broken we are powerless to improve it. All we can do is talk brave and hope for miracles before people realize the magnitude of our errors and come after our heads.”

Despite its efforts for nearly two decades to raise doubts about the science of climate change, newly discovered company documents show that as early as 1977, Exxon research scientists warned company executives that carbon dioxide was increasing in the atmosphere and that the burning of fossil fuels was to blame.

The internal records are detailed in a new investigation published Wednesday by InsideClimate News, a Pulitzer Prize-winning news organization covering energy and the environment. Here is a direct video link.

For all those folks who insist climate change is a hoax and no good reason to embrace clean energy and electric vehicles, this one’s for you:  do you like clean air?  See:  Outdoor Air Pollution will kill 6.6m people each year by 2050.

Deaths caused by outdoor air pollution are already shockingly high, and they’re expected to keep rising. That’s despite efforts to clean up the world’s factories, roads, and energy supplies.

In 2010, about 3.3 million people around the world died from prolonged exposure to tiny bits of dust and chemicals floating through the air. That figure is set to double by 2050, according to the most comprehensive study yet of global outdoor air pollution and its causes, published today in the journal Nature.

If you live in a country such as the U.S., which has been cleaning up its coal-burning power plants and increasing the gas mileage of its auto fleet, don’t think you’re in the clear. Of the 15 countries with the most deaths from outdoor air pollution, the U.S. comes in at No. 7.