… please remember what the nation’s top climate scientist has said:
… the most serious effects will be visited upon the young and the unborn, the generations that bear no responsibility for the problem.
Archive for October, 2010
When you see kids out trick-or-treating tonight …
Sunday, October 31st, 2010Tom Toles climate humor
Sunday, October 31st, 2010Cartoonist Tom Toles has two environmentally-themed cartoons today. The first is “Arrows of time”:
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Vitter of sea-rise-threatened Louisiana: “I do not think the science clearly supports global warming theory”
Sunday, October 31st, 2010
The state that stands to suffer the most from human-caused climate change has elected leaders who want to stop efforts to avoid its inundation (see “Sea levels may rise 3 times faster than IPCC estimated, could hit 6 feet by 2100“). That’s true of the Governor and presidential hopeful (see “Jindal tries to block climate change regulation“). And It’s true of GOP Sen. Vitter who tried to block climate change response centers.
In their final debate on Thursday night, Vitter and his challenger Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-LA) grappled with global warming, which threatens Louisiana with destruction through sea level rise, strengthened storms, heat waves, and drought. Brad Johnson has the story and the video the reveals the sharp contrast between these two candidates on the issue that should be of greatest importance to Louisiana voters.
A beautiful coalition against dirty energy
Sunday, October 31st, 2010Our guest blogger today is Van Jones.
New polls are showing that the majority of Californians reject Proposition 23, a November ballot initiative — funded by Texas oil companies — that would effectively repeal the state’s landmark clean energy and environmental protection laws.
What the polls do not show and what few news outlets are covering, is the striking diversity of voices that are demanding clean energy, and rejecting the false notion that protecting the planet and our public health will hurt the economy.
Entertaining but ultimately disappointing Rally To Restore Sanity (and/or Fear!) by Stewart and Colbert
Saturday, October 30th, 2010
I attended the entire pre-election ‘rally’ by comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert today. If the health and well-being of the nation and countless future generations, including my daughter, weren’t at risk in the election Tuesday, one could revel in the entertainment.
But Stewart aspires to be more than an entertainer. While he was clearly trying to walk a fine line here and not be overtly politically, the fact is it’s long, long past time to pick sides. The political message basically equated Tea Party extremists and people like Limbaugh and Beck on one side with people on the other side who have sometimes pointed out the extremism of the Tea Party, like Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews.
Sorry, Jon, but Matthews ain’t Palin or O’Donnell. Olbermann ain’t Beck. Not even close.
It is precisely the kind of false equivalence that Jon Stewart skewers on his show. More than anything else, the rally’s whole, “why can’t we just all get along through compromise and reason” message reminded me most of Barack Obama circa 2008 or is that circa 2009 or is that circa now?
Weekend Open Thread
Saturday, October 30th, 2010For two weekends in a row, this new CP feature has garnered 99 comments. I’m hoping we can get to triple digits in this thread.
Climate Hawk Baron Hill: ‘The science is overwhelming’
Saturday, October 30th, 2010This is God’s green earth and we ought to respect it.
Faced with relentless attacks on his vote for clean energy legislation, Rep. Baron Hill (D-IN) slammed his critics for questioning climate science and doing the bidding of special interests who are destroying the environment. Brad Johnson has the story and the video.
Video: Student leader and veteran challenges Koch to debate Prop 23
Saturday, October 30th, 2010This week Joel Francis, a senior at Cal State Los Angeles and a Marine Corps veteran, flew to the Wichita, Kansas headquarters of Koch Industries. His mission was to knock on Charles Koch’s door, and demand he defend his involvement in Prop 23. CAP’s Jorge Madrid has the story.
“If you are going to try to hurt the economy of a state you don’t even live in, then you ought to have the courage to explain yourself in person” said Francis.
Richard Somerville editorial: How much should the public know about climate science?
Friday, October 29th, 2010Unfortunately, the world needs to take firm action about the threat of manmade climate change within the next decade…. Realistically, there may be no chance to educate the general public in depth about the science so quickly. Meanwhile, a well-funded and effective professional disinformation campaign has been successful in sowing confusion, and many people mistakenly think climate change science is unreliable or is controversial within the expert community. Thus, the more urgent task for us scientists may well be to give the public guidelines for recognizing and rejecting junk science and disinformation. If students today, who will be adults tomorrow, can understand and apply these guidelines, they may not need a detailed knowledge of climate change science. To that end, I offer the following six principles.
Climatologist Richard C. J. Somerville is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Although I did my thesis research at Scripps, we’ve never formally met.
Somerville helped organize the must-read 2007 Bali Climate Declaration, in which more than 200 of the world’s leading climate scientist explained why we must limit total warming to no more than 2°C.
He sent me a new essay published online with open access in Climatic Change, “How much should the public know about climate science?“ He notes that recent research shows “global emissions of greenhouse gases must peak and decline within the next decade if global warming is to be limited to a level that avoids severe climate disruption” (see figure below).
Given the success of the most effective, immoral, and self-destructive disinformation campaign in US history, scientists need to focus their messaging on a handful of key points. Somerville offers six:
Energy and Global Warming News for October 29; Global geothermal capacity will grow 78% by 2015; Reducing cost and improving efficiency in solar modules; Fight global warming with eggshells?
Friday, October 29th, 2010Global Geothermal Capacity Will Grow 78% by 2015
In its recently released Sixth Edition of the Geothermal Report, ABS Energy Research concludes that although 2009 was a very difficult year for the geothermal industry, the market will continue to grow over the next five years.
World Series and Prop 23 update: Californians want to defeat both Texas Rangers and Big Texas Oil
Friday, October 29th, 2010
So far, the San Francisco Giants are pounding the Texas Rangers in the World Series. As a Yankee fan — there, I said it, but I was born and raised in a small town in New York — I wouldn’t normally care much who wins.
But there is a delicious coincidence in this series that might get you rooting for the Giants, as California’s 350.org headquarters explains:
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Politifact slams climate science denier John Loughlin
Friday, October 29th, 2010
State Rep. John Loughlin, the Republican candidate for Rhode Island’s First Congressional District, is part of the radical anti-science, pro-pollution movement that is a core plank of Tea Party ideology. Brad Johnson has the story, which I follow with a reposting of Politifact’s thorough debunking of Loughlin’s disinformation.
When asked why he signed the Americans for Prosperity “No Climate Tax” pledge at an October 19 debate, Loughlin launched into a falsehood-drenched rant about climate science:
BP and Halliburton knew cement was unstable — used it anyway to ’seal’ Macondo well
Friday, October 29th, 2010Halliburton and BP knew weeks before the fatal explosion of the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico that the cement mixture they planned to use to seal the bottom of the well was unstable but still went ahead with the job, the presidential commission investigating the accident said on Thursday.
We’ve long known that the three underlying causes of BP’s Titanic oil disaster were Recklessness, Arrogance, and Hubris. Back on May 9, I noted that an expert reviewer found the well’s cement seal “was probably faulty” and inadequately tested (to save money). Now we have a better handle on the proximate cause, thanks to a new report from the presidential commission investigating the disaster.
And it should surprise no one Halliburton that the energy giant formerly run by Dick Cheney is culpable (see “BP oil disaster is Cheney’s Katrina“). As the NYT editorializes today:
Study: Global warming is driving increased frequency of extreme wet or dry summer weather in southeast, so droughts and deluges are likely to get worse
Thursday, October 28th, 2010A new study by a Duke University-led team of climate scientists suggests that global warming is the main cause of a significant intensification in the North Atlantic Subtropical High (NASH) that in recent decades has more than doubled the frequency of abnormally wet or dry summer weather in the southeastern United States.
The NASH, commonly referred to as the Bermuda High, is an area of high pressure that forms each summer near Bermuda, where its powerful surface center helps steer Atlantic hurricanes and plays a major role in shaping weather in the eastern United States, Western Europe and northwestern Africa.
That’s from the Duke University news release for a new study in the Journal of Climate.
In a September 2009 post, “Hell and High Water hits Georgia,” I noted that, “as climate scientists have predicted for a long time, wild climate swings are becoming the norm, in this case with once-in-a-century drought followed by once-in-a-century flooding.” And in fact, the flooding was more like a once in 500 year event.
Now a team of scientists has quantified the rise in extreme wet and dry summer weather — and finds global warming is likely the main cause. The release continues:
GOP leaders tell Obama: There will be “No Compromise”
Thursday, October 28th, 2010Earlier this week, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Now more Republicans have crush the always-dubious notion that we might see some sort of post-partisan compromise on energy or any other government-funded strategy to create jobs or protect the health and well-being of our children. ThinkProgress has the story. (more…)
Climate hawk Schwarzenegger says Prop 23 fight sets national example: “Stand up against the oil companies”
Thursday, October 28th, 2010In an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) said he believes politicians in Washington need to fight the “people that have polluted the world, who have enriched themselves in doing that,” and defend climate action, as California is now doing. Schwarzenegger has joined with California’s cleantech community, the climate movement, and economic justice groups to “wipe out Proposition 23″ — the oil-funded initiative to kill the state’s landmark global warming legislation, AB 32.
Brad Johnson has the story — and must-see video — of a man who epitomizes the term ‘climate hawk‘:
Salon on The New Barbarism: Keeping science out of politics
Thursday, October 28th, 2010Climate skeptics reach a new low. Their goal: Don’t let scientists influence policy, period.
That’s Andrew Leonard, one of the must-read columnists at Salon. He takes the opportunity of the lame Scientific American online poll to eviscerate one of the nonsensical arguments fashionable among the anti-science crowd.
As an aside, if you check out the poll results now, the disinformers have clearly driven their faithful lemmings to it in droves. With almost 7 times as many respondents, an even higher fraction have now voted for the nonsense, self-destrucive positions, including the one Leonard dismantles:
Energy and Global Warming News for October 28th: China to focus on promoting electric cars; Africa’s climate conflicts; EPA urged by Big Oil to delay new ozone standards; Remember renewable energy?
Thursday, October 28th, 2010China ‘to focus on promoting electric cars’
Chinese authorities have agreed to promote electric cars to address the country’s intensifying energy and pollution concerns, as auto sales surge, an official said Thursday.
Masters: “Strongest storm ever recorded in the Midwest smashes all-time pressure records”
Wednesday, October 27th, 2010My dad was the biggest Republican that ever walked the earth. He always said: “Actions have consequences.” To pretend that a 38% increase in greenhouse gases isn’t going to have any impact, that we can have our cake and eat it too, and smear it all over our face, and maybe have our grandchildren deal with the hangover, I think it is immoral.
That’s Minnesota meteorologist Paul Douglas in an exclusive interview with Brad Johnson about the “weather bomb” that just hit and the global warming deniers that populate his state.
Visible satellite image of the October 26, 2010 superstorm taken at 5:32pm EDT. At the time, Bigfork, Minnesota was reporting the lowest pressure ever recorded in a U.S. non-coastal storm, 955 mb. Image credit: NASA/GSFC.
But let’s start with meteorologist Jeff Masters, who puts this staggering superstorm in context and examines the climate change angle:
Filming together for the first time in 16 years, a truly dynamic duo say “No on Prop 23″
Wednesday, October 27th, 2010This must-see video is about to go viral:
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