Texas Rep. Cites Biblical Flood as Example of Climate Change

In his five-minute remarks today on theKeystone Pipeline, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, pointed out a "divergence of evidence" onglobal warming, citing the biblical Great Floodas an example of climate change.

Barton delivered remarks today at the Subcommittee on Energy and Power hearing in support of the Northern Route Approval Act, legislation that would grant Congress the authority to approve the controversial Keystone petroleum pipeline.

"I would point out that people like me who support hydrocarbon development don't deny that climate is changing," Barton, 63, said. "I think you can have an honest difference of opinion of what's causing that change without automatically being either all in - that's all because of mankind or it's all just natural. I think there's a divergence of evidence."

But it was his reference to the biblical flood that left people scratching their heads.

READ MORE: Expert Cites Evidence of Great Flood

Although Barton acknowledged the changing climate, he compared the changing environment to the biblical story of Noah's Ark and the Great Flood in an attempt to defend his claim that natural tendencies can perpetuate climate change.

"I would point out that if you're a believer in the Bible, one would have to say the Great Flood is an example of climate change, and that certainly wasn't because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy," he said.

The Bible teaches that God created the flood to destroy the world because of mankind's evilness.

Barton, who has been fairly outspoken about the issue of climate change, said mankind has been adapting to the climate since the beginning of existence.

He delivered remarks in 2009 at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing saying that climate adaptation is the "practical, affordable, utterly natural response to nature when the planet is heating or cooling," suggesting that humans find shelter when it rains, shade when they are hot, and a warm place to stay when it's cold.

A group of extreme athletes, however, disagree.

Seventy-five Olympic medalists sent a letter to President Obama urging him to take action on climate change. X Games champions and World Champion snowboarders who have signed the letter say "winter is in trouble" for the very reason that Barton is disputing.

"We know this warming is human-caused," the athletes wrote. "We can do something about it and it can be done, now, from limiting carbon pollution from our nation's dirty power plants to rejecting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline."

If you ever read Dickens, you are probably familiar with debtors’ prisons. The idea is that if someone owes money they can’t pay, throw them in prison as punishment — making it certain that they won’t have the opportunity to come up with the money to pay their debt.

In a word, it’s idiotic.

Abolishing debtors’ prisons was a triumph of sanity and human rights.

So why am I writing about this long-abolished policy? Because it’s back, it’s right here in the U.S. of A., and it’s spreading. It’s in Ohio, it’s in Georgia, and it may be coming soon to a state near you.

Debtors’ prisons punish the poor for being poor. High rollers who owe platinum-sized debts don’t end up there. After all, that wouldn’t be seemly, now would it.

Some examples of the lunacy in Ohio from Think Progress:

• Jack Dawley owed $1500 to the municipal court in fines and costs, and was behind on child support payments. He was locked up for three and a half years. Seems unlikely that he was better able to take care of his kids financially from prison than he had been before.
• Tricia Metcalf, a single mother, got a trip to jail every time she couldn’t pay her monthly $50 fine for writing bad checks.
• Megan Sharp and her husband are both unemployed. Hubby is in jail for overdue fines. Megan couldn’t afford $300 worth of fines for driving on a suspended license and got ten days in jail. Now the couple owes $200 more than they originally did, with no more resources to pay it off than they had before.
• In the course of six weeks last summer, one municipal court jailed at least 45 people for not paying fines and costs.
• During the same period another municipal court threw 75 people in the slammer for the same reasons. That first court better ramp it up — just 30 more people and they could have had a tie.

Imprisoning people for owing money also punishes the state for being dumb as dirt. States usually pay more to keep the poor under lock and key than it would cost to pay off the debt. I’m not recommending that Ohio step in and pay the money prisoners owe, as that could create an incentive for people to incur debts they can’t pay.

I am recommending ending this stupid debt-leads-to-jail system. Folks, listen up: people tried this before and abolished it. They did that for a reason. Read some history, for crying out loud.

Locking people in prison is supposed to serve three purposes.

• Retribution: good old revenge. Better than a lynch mob or other vigilante justice.
• Rehabilitation: teach the offender not to break the law again and help him develop other options. Offering libraries and classes in prison furthers this goal.
• Deterrence: criminals can’t reoffend if they are sitting in a jail cell. This one is a little iffy given the amount of violence prisoners inflict on each other, but at least the rest of us are safe for the duration of the sentence.

So how does locking up poor debtors stack up against these goals?

• Retribution: not so great. When the money is owed to an institution like a court or a bank, as it often is, there really isn’t anyone thirsting for the bad guy’s blood. It’s not likely that there would be any vigilante justice here — just bureaucratic torture, which will happen regardless of a prison sentence.
• Rehabilitation: some prisons may offer the resources to help prisoners learn skills that will earn them money after their release. But sometimes even marketable skills aren’t enough to net a job, as so many laid-off people have learned in the last few years. Perhaps the big house will convince debtors to change their ways and pay what they owe, but that assumes they have the resources to do so.
• Deterrence: this is just silly. While debt dodgers languish in their cells, interest on debts accrues and child support payments pile up. This is not the way to prevent people who cannot pay from amassing more debts they cannot pay.

Are there people who have the money to pay what they owe and simply refuse to do so? Sure. But those types can afford good lawyers who keep them out of jail. The ones behind bars are the ones who just don’t have the money to buy their freedom.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio issued a report this month outlining why Ohio’s policy is inane and arguing that it also violates both the federal and state constitutions:

The U.S. Constitution, the Ohio Constitution, and Ohio Revised Code all prohibit debtors’ prisons. The law requires that, before jailing anyone for unpaid fines, courts must determine whether an individual is too poor to pay. Jailing a person who is unable to pay violates the law.

It also violates common sense. That can be a rare commodity in legislative debates, but one can always hope.

Related Stories:

Judge Blasts Alabama “Debtor’s Prison”

Citizens Jailed for Owing Debt

Sen. Franken Wants to Curb Abusive Collections Practices

Read more: american civil liberties union, debtors prison, ohio, poverty

Arkansas AG says oil pipeline gash 22 feet long

Arkansas AG says pipeline gash 22 feet long; ExxonMobil hands over 12,500 pages on oil leak

Associated Press -

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- An ExxonMobil pipeline that ruptured last month and spilled thousands of barrels of oil in central Arkansas has a gash in it that is 22 feet long and 2 inches wide, state Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said Wednesday.

"The pipeline rupture is substantially larger than many of us initially thought," McDaniel told reporters Wednesday evening.

McDaniel's update on the March 29 oil spill in Mayflower, about 25 miles northwest of Little Rock, comes as lawyers and investigators review more than 12,500 pages of documents his office received from ExxonMobil. McDaniel sent a subpoena to ExxonMobil, seeking inspection records, investigative documents and maintenance records related to its Pegasus pipeline that ruptured in Mayflower.

It wasn't immediately clear what all the documents contain; McDaniel said his office received them just before he held a news conference Wednesday.

"More documents will be received and requested from Exxon in coming days," McDaniel said. "But now everyone's priority continues to be the cleanup efforts in Mayflower."

So far, crews have recovered about 28,200 barrels of oily water and about 2,000 cubic yards of oiled soil and debris, according to a statement from ExxonMobil and local officials.

"We still do not know how much oil was released. We still do not know the exact makeup of the crude itself, of the chemical solvents used in the transportation process," McDaniel said. "And our immediate concern tonight is with the weather."

A severe thunderstorm raked the area Wednesday, but there were no immediate reports of weather-related incidents at the site of the oil spill. ExxonMobil and local officials in Mayflower said crews secured equipment and strengthened a containment system protecting the main body of nearby Lake Conway.

McDaniel said he retained a firm to conduct an independent analysis of the cleanup process. He's also retaining technical advisers to provide independent air sampling and other scientific data.

To cover those and other costs, McDaniel requested $4 million from Exxon.

ExxonMobil spokeswoman Kim Jordan says the company has received McDaniel's letter and will respond directly to his office.

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Syrian troops launch counterattack on south

This citizen journalism image provided by Aleppo Media Center AMC which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows destroyed homes in a government airstrike and shelling, in the neighborhood of Marjeh in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria, Thursday, April. 11, 2013. A U.S.-based rights group on Thursday accused Syria of war crimes by indiscriminate and sometimes deliberate airstrikes against civilians, killing at least 4,300 people since last summer. (AP Photo/Aleppo Media Center AMC)

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian government forces launched a counteroffensive in the south, capturing a town and killing at least 45 people including women and children, opposition activists said Thursday.

The attack on the town of Sanamein followed a rebel advance in the area in recent weeks. They opposition fighters captured army bases and a major town in the strategic province of Daraa along the border with Jordan.

"They slaughtered any person they found," an activist in the nearby town of Busra al-Harir who goes by the fake name of Hamza al-Hariri told The Associated Press via Skype. He would not give his real name for fear of government reprisals.

"This is the ugliest massacre since the one in Houla," he added, referring to a region in the central province of Homs where more than 100 civilians were killed by government forces in May last year.

Rebels advancing in the south in recent weeks have been aiming to secure a corridor from the Jordanian border to Damascus about 60 miles away in preparation for an eventual assault on the capital.

Regional officials and military experts note a sharp increase in weapons shipments to opposition fighters by Arab governments, in coordination with the U.S., in the hopes of readying a push intoDamascus — the ultimate prize in the civil war that has killed more than 70,000 in two years.

Rebels already control vast portions of northern Syria bordering Turkey.

State-run Syrian TV said the armed forces "wiped out terrorist groups" in Sanamein and the nearby town of Ghabagheb. It added that troops were targeting rebel hideouts in different parts of Daraa. They included the villages and towns of Tafas, Jasssim, Dael and Tseel and the report said they had inflicted casualties in those areas.

The city of Daraa, the provincial capital, was the birthplace of the uprising against President Bashar Assad in March 2011

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group reported clashes on Thursday in the city of Daraa and said there were casualties among regime troops.

State-run Syrian TV said government forces killed or wounded dozens of gunmen in the city of Daraa, including foreign fighters.

The Observatory said at least 45 people, including five children and seven women, were killed in the attack on Sanamein. It said they were killed by "shooting, shelling and field execution," a reference to people reported to have been shot at close range.

The Syrian National Coalition, the main opposition group, said more than 60 people were "brutally" killed in the town. After troops stormed Sanamein, the group said they used some civilians as human shields and took others as hostages before looting some homes.

The differing death tolls could not be reconciled.

The SNC said the regime carried out the attack in Sanamein after it failed "to stop the operation to liberate the province of Daraa, the southern entrance to Damascus."

In addition to the stronghold in the north, rebels have also captured parts of the east along the border with Iraq recently. But the strategic region between the southern outskirts of Damascus and Jordan — known as the Houran plains — is seen as a crucial gateway to the capital.

Dozens of rebel units have carved out footholds in areas to the east and south of the capital, and use their positions there to fire mortar shells at the heavily guarded city.

Daraa borders Jordan and the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

"The regime is trying to score a victory in Daraa and send an internal and external message," said Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory.

Al-Hariri, the activist from the nearby town, said the attack on Sanamein began at 5 a.m. Wednesday with intense shelling. About five hours later, troops began advancing into the town and clashing with rebels, he said.

He said he had a list of 48 names of the dead as well as about 20 who have not been identified yet.

By nighttime, troops were in control of the whole town, he said.

An amateur video posted online showed 15 bodies covered with sheets, some with their faces covered with blood. The dead included four children and a woman.

"These are the bodies that we have been able to collect so far," said a man wearing a black Islamic headband and an opposition flag around his neck.

The video appeared genuine and corresponded to other AP reporting on the events depicted.

Activists also reported clashes and shelling Thursday in the central province of Homs, Deir el-Zour in the east and Raqqa, Aleppo and Idlib provinces in the north. They said rebels shot down a helicopter carrying food and supplies to an army base near the northwestern town of Maaret al-Numan, killing the pilot and three other soldiers.

Also Thursday, Syria's Foreign Ministry complained to the United Nations and the U.N. Security Council about al-Qaida's activities in Syria, saying that Damascus has been fighting the group for two years.

The Syrian government denies there is an uprising and says it is fighting terrorists carrying out a foreign conspiracy.

The letter came a day after the leader of the most formidable rebel group in Syria pledged allegiance to al-Qaida but distanced himself from a claim that his Islamic extremist faction had merged with the terror network's Iraqi branch.

Al-Qaida in Iraq said Tuesday that it had joined forces with Jabhat al-Nusra or the Nusra Front — the most effective force among the disparate rebel factions fighting to topple Assad. It said they had formed a new alliance called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

In other developments, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch accused Syria of committing war crimes by indiscriminate and sometimes deliberate airstrikes against civilians, killing at least 4,300 people since the summer.

The regime's air power is its biggest advantage in the civil war, helping to repel rebel advances on Damascus and to prevent a rival government from setting up in the northern stronghold.