Climate Progress: An insider's view of climate science, politics, and solutions

Coming together on climate bill

Defying conventional wisdom that a hardened partisan divide and looming midterm elections will prevent the type of compromises necessary for big reforms, business leaders and environmentalists are redoubling their efforts to advance an energy and climate bill in the Senate.

It’s a seemingly improbable goal, but upending that way of thinking is one of the objectives of a Capitol Hill lobbying blitz launched last week by executives from nearly 200 large and small companies. A dozen CEOs — including Shell Oil’s Marvin Odum, Duke Energy’s Jim Rogers and NRG Energy’s David Crane — are scheduled to meet with lawmakers and administration officials Tuesday.

“Comprehensive climate change legislation is not part of the liberal agenda,” said Crane, whose company operates a wide range of energy facilities that run from wind to coal to nuclear. “It’s a decidedly centrist thing. We reduce carbon emissions, and we reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Both parts of the political spectrum should come together on that.”

“Any capitalist with a pulse knows China is moving forward,” said Tad Segal, a spokesman for U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of business and environmental groups that favor reform. “We can solve a crisis at the same time we grow jobs.”

Another business coalition, called We Can Lead, which includes a mix of pro-reform businesses, is taking the campaign to the public by running television and print ads urging Congress to “move swiftly and boldly” and pass legislation.

Chu takes R&D budget request to House Science panel

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I’m going to invent a new word — CONservativeDESCENDING. It carries the traditional meaning “displaying a patronizingly superior attitude” but it only applies to people displaying such an attitude while adopting an anti-scientific position, while descending into disinformation and obfuscation that threatens all of our children and countless generations beyond them.

After all, everyone with strongly held views appears condescending to those who disagree with them, but only those who are CONservativeDESCENDING can be patronizingly superior while being objectively wrong. Indeed, the fact that just about everyone appears condescending to those who disagree with them makes it utterly inane for the Washington Post to publish an Outlook piece Sunday, “Why are liberals so condescending?” — and have a “Q&A, Mon., 11 a.m.: Outlook: Why are liberals so condescending to conservatives?”

Before addressing the nonsensical thesis of the piece in as un-condescending a manner as possible, let me first note that the piece is doubly nonsensical being published in the Post, which is the home of the single most condescending person in the country — or at least the single most condescending person who has a media megaphone, the person who defines the word CONservativeDESCENDING.  Indeed, while I defy you to find any liberal columnist for the Post who routinely displays a patronizingly superior attitude to conservatives, I defy you to find a George Will column that does not display a patronizingly superior attitude to liberals.

For instance, just last year, the Post published one of his anti-scientific pieces with the headline, “Climate Change’s Dim Bulbs.”  I kid you not.  What was particularly striking about that condescending diatribe was that the Post, abandoning any journalistic standards, let Will publish for the third time global warming lies debunked on its own pages!  That is the epitome of CONservativeDESCENDING.

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How activists took on oil companies

Activists can work for years before Congress takes notice.

Just ask Theo Colborn, a scientist in Colorado who started studying the environmental impact of natural gas drilling in 2002. She has worked with dozens of grassroots groups to highlight the dangers of a natural gas extraction method.

Earlier this month, Colborn’s message reached Capitol Hill. Lawmakers spent the better part of a hearing on ExxonMobil’s proposed merger with XTO discussing hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

Companies use the technique, which requires pumping millions of gallons of chemical mixtures into the ground, to extract natural gas from shale rock. Environmental groups say the process contaminates drinking water.

XTO, a natural gas supplier, owns many of the nation’s shale reserves, and ExxonMobil plans to mine those for natural gas. The oil executives testified that fracking would create jobs and provide Americans a domestic fossil-fuel alternative.

“It’s tantamount that we find a way to continue that practice because it is such a valuable resource,” XTO Founder Bob R. Simpson testified.

Hmm.  He meant “paramount” and not “tantamount.”  Or perhaps the transcriber got it wrong.  Hard to tell these days with the general decline in editing skills.  The bigger question is why didn’t the reporter or the editor notice the mistake?

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To get clean energy, upgrade to Electricity 2.0

While clean energy has captured the imagination of everyone from Silicon Valley venture capitalists to President Obama, it has yet to fulfill its job-creation promise. Non-hydro renewable power accounts for just 3.5 percent of electricity in the United States, compared with 28 percent in Denmark, a leader in the transition to renewable energy. In a study released today, I examine why progress has been so slow in the electricity industry – the network at the center of the wider energy network. The answer turns out to be that our highly regulated system, uniquely complex by global standards, is blocking progress.

Put simply, only by upgrading from Electricity 1.0 – the closed, highly regulated network created a century ago – to Electricity 2.0 – an open, distributed network – can America unlock the potential of clean technology and experience a renewable energy revolution.

It is often said that an inadequate electric grid is slowing the rollout of clean renewable energy. But why is the grid inadequate? Because the regulatory regime of Electricity 1.0 guarantees the current state of affairs. While the industry research consortium, Electric Power Research Institute, has done an outstanding job in improving the reliability of the network, utilities do virtually no research and development. Laws bar them from trying new business models, innovating and taking risks. This bias against innovation prevents utilities from purchasing technologies developed by others. Thus, entrepreneurs find the gates of the network closed. It should not be surprising that a highly regulated industry cannot lead a revolution.

So, how can America upgrade to Electricity 2.0? As with telecom reform, Electricity 2.0 will require nothing less than a Big Bang that includes federal legislation as well as close cooperation with the states to harmonize rules of the road. Partial reform, such as has taken place in Texas and California, is a start, but it is not enough. What’s needed is an entirely new plug-and-play architecture that opens the grid to everyone, making connection the norm not the exception.

And then we have this bombshell about ‘Smokey Joe’ Barton who thinks Global Warming ‘Is A Net Benefit To Mankind’ and who loves TVMOB aka Lord “Hitler Youth” Monckton (see Rep. Barton: Climate change is ‘natural,’ humans should just ‘get shade’ — invites ‘expert’ TVMOB (!) to testify).

Barton earned $100K from gas investment

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