Climate Progress

The live feed will be here or here. You must tune in on time if you want to hear me because I am giving the opening remarks.

Former EPA administrator Carol Browner will also be participating in the event.

Details here. Possibly more to come Monday morning.

International negotiators are flocking to Poznań, Poland to figure out how to extend the Kyoto protocol, whose climate targets end in 2012. I believe that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process is essentially dead — especially from a United States perspective — as I will discuss this week.

Still, Poznań will be getting a lot of media attention from December 1 to 12, even if the United States is still represented by a bunch of bad cops. So here’s what you need to know. As the website on Poznań, aka COP-14, explains:

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In part one, I suggested four principles that President-elect Obama’s economic team should follow as they create an economic recovery package. To sum up, America needs long-term investments in a new energy economy, with every dollar used strategically to solve several problems at once, including energy security, economic stability and a rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Obama clearly understands this prescription. He has announced that he will champion a two-year recovery package to create 2.5 million jobs, in part by “creating the clean energy infrastructure of the twenty-first century.” To his credit, he told governors and international leaders meeting in California last week that our economic mess will not deter his commitment to this investment.

“I promise you this,” he said in a taped address. “When I am president, any governor who’s willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House. Any company that’s willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington. And any nation that’s willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States of America.”

The question is whether the Congress and the American people will support a recovery package designed not just for short-term stimulus, but for long-term health.

Obama hasn’t said how big his investment package will be, but there is speculation it could climb to as much as $700 billion. Here are some suggestions on how some of that money should be allocated:

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CBC News reports:

The Canadian Coast Guard has confirmed that in a major first, a commercial ship travelled through the Northwest Passage this fall to deliver supplies to communities in western Nunavut.

The MV Camilla Desgagnés, owned by Desgagnés Transarctik Inc., transported cargo from Montreal to the hamlets of Cambridge Bay, Kugluktuk, Gjoa Haven and Taloyoak in September.

“We did have a commercial cargo vessel that did the first scheduled run from Montreal, up through the eastern Arctic, through the Northwest Passage to deliver cargo to communities in the west,” Brian LeBlanc of the Canadian Coast Guard told CBC News.

“That was the first — that I’m aware of anyway — commercial cargo delivery from the east through the Northwest Passage.”

NEW ERA IN ARCTIC SHIPPING?

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[Update: The Green Recovery event at CAP will be webcast live here Monday, noon EST.]

When Barack Obama introduced us to his economic team in Chicago this week, you could almost hear an intercom blasting in the background: “Dr. Obama, please report to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, stat.”

The new advisors gathered around the President-elect looked like a crew of brilliant doctors about to go to work on a patient who is flat on his back and suffering a heart attack together with a bunch of strange and confusing symptoms — an apt description of the our economy today.

[JR: Thankfully, Barack is not cantankerous, misanthropic, and Vicodin-addicted, like a certain TV doc modeled after Sherlock Holmes. And hopefully, unlike both George Bush and Gregory House, team Obama won’t nearly kill the patient several times before finding the right cure.]

How the Obama team chooses to diagnose and treat the patient will mean everything for the long-term prognosis. The economy needs more than a jolt from a defilibrator; it needs a heart transplant. The doctors should use the paddles if they must, but the patient needs a lot more treatment, both short and long term.

As Obama’s team begins work on a recovery package, I hope they’ll keep a few guiding principles in mind.

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The Washington Post has a good piece on the Herculean effort the new heads of the EPA and Interior Department will face in dealing with the mess the Bushies made. This mess is comparable to the one Hercules cleaned up in his fifth labor when he diverted an entire river to clean up the Augean Stables.

The article also includes the long list of the names that have been floated so far for both agencies

Few federal agencies are expected to undergo as radical a transformation under President-elect Barack Obama as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department, which have been at the epicenter of many of the Bush administration’s most intense scientific and environmental controversies.

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The Politico noticed the “overheated” response to their journalistic blunder (see “Politico pimps global cooling for Hill deniers“). To their credit, they partly acknowledge they made a mistake:

Editor’s Response from Politico’s Jeanne Cummings:

Giving voice to the losing side of a national debate is often fraught with peril. It requires navigating a terrain littered with grudges, slights, insults and hard feelings.

To do that without becoming ensnared requires extraordinary care. In Politico’s case, we slipped.

The article in question was never intended to offer a sweeping examination of the scientific support for or against climate change.

It set out only to provide an update on the last hold-outs against global warming given the dramatic shifts — both electorally and in public opinion — against their position.

Politico found them still feisty and readying for a fight despite their diminishing odds.

That’s the part we got right.

Here’s where we slipped: The headline overstated what was in the story. That’s a chronic problem in the industry that might have been mitigated if the article had plainly stated its narrow intent, which it didn’t. It also should have included the challenges to the cited scientific data.

Indeed, the headline was especially bad: “Scientists urge caution on global warming.” But so was the whole story, which Politico is still reluctant to accept:

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[JR: The story doesn’t say, but I assume the solar from the Mojave would be solar baseload aka CSP.]

In Los Angeles on Monday, Mayor Villaraigosa’s office presented a ground-breaking plan to generate 1.3 GW of solar electricity by 2020. But this effort is just one of many initiatives that LA has taken as a leader in urban sustainability and green policies.

The LA Times reports the specifics of the solar plan that Mayor Villaraigosa’s office is hoping to put into action in coming months:

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[This is my list. I’d love to hear what you feel thankful for.]

10. Tina Palin [Sarah Fey?]. Palin helped ruin John McCain’s chances by turning off independents and in general being emblematic of his erratic approach to decision-making. Plus she is the gift that keeps on giving as “64% of GOP voters say Palin is their top choice for 2012,” which means she may help lead conservatives to an even bigger defeat in 2012. And she made possible Fey’s SNL uber-fey impression. Talk about win-win. Thank you very much!

9. Climate Scientists. If you enjoy spending time outdoors, thank a climate scientist for helping to alert the world in the 1970s and 1980s to the dangers of chlorofluorocarbons, which led the nations of the world to control their use just in the nick of time to save the ozone layer that protects us from dangerous ultraviolet radiation. Can you believe that within five years of the first scientific papers on CFCs deadly impact, the United States voluntarily banned their use in spray cans? Now saving the planet requires much more than simply doing good science. It requires a willingness to suffer the gauntlet of the climate deniers disinformation campaign. And the stakes are much higher — the health and well-being of the next 50 generations. TYVM James Hansen et al.

8. The Thrilla in Vanilla. OK, it wasn’t Ali-Frazier, but Henry Waxman’s smackdown of John Dingell for chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee was high drama with high consequences. Finally, we have a champion of serious action and strong regulation, someone who gets the dire nature of global warming, in charge of the crucial committee for climate, energy, and health-care legislation. TYVM House Democrats!

7. The Daily Show. And the Rachel Maddow Show. And the Colbert Report. With a gazillion channels, the wasteland is vaster than ever. But thanks to Jon Stewart and his ilk, sometimes TV seems only half vast [and yes, I’ve waited a long time to use that pun]. How would we really know what’s going on — and how would we retain even a smidgen of our sanity — without these modern-day bards? Certainly not by paying attention to the drivel that passes for the MSM (see, for instance, “The New York Times blows the bark beetle story“). Oh, and maybe a TYVM to Mad Men, House, Entourage, Battlestar Galactica, and yes, Lost, for distracting us or at least me from the worst reality television show in history — The West Wing starring Dick Cheney and George Bush.

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The mere fact that the National Review Online would name their climate blog “Planet Gore” (PG) tells you how little regard they have for science in general or for those working to prevent the greatest preventable threat to the health and well-being of future generations.

In the blogosphere, strong adjectives fly wildly, and I myself have been known to use them from time to time. But Chris Horner’s attack on me (and Grist’s Dave Roberts) today is beyond the pale. Responding to our shredding of what are easily two of the worst climate pieces of this century by a reasonably legitimate news operation (see “Politico pimps global cooling for Hill deniers” and “Politico’s journalist malpractice“), PG’s Chris Horner wrote:

On cue, aspiring Obama administration climate thug Joe Romm of the Soros-funded Climate Progress … and David “Nuremburg-syle trials for those b@$tards” Roberts of Grist did what they’re paid to do: change the subject by attacking the person with names and slurs.

First off, that requires an apology. I have made very clear I do not aspire to the Obama administration. Seriously, though, in what way am I “a brutal ruffian or assassin“? That does require an apology. It is inexcusable, even for someone with Bush-like language skills who doesn’t know the meaning of the word nonplussed and who once told CNN’s Glenn Beck, “This is a political issue because it’s been politicized, and we wouldn’t even be talking about it right now if it weren’t for the politicians.”

Second, Horner wins the 2008 “instant self-revelation award” for revealing himself to be a hypocrite in a single sentence. He calls me a “thug” and then claims I change the subject by attacking the person with “names and slurs.” As anyone who read my post can see, I provided extensive links to studies and experts who debunked the Politico’s central nonsense about global cooling. Characteristically, however, Horner simply rants without any appeal to facts or evidence.

Third, Horner works on climate issues as a Counsel at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which actually runs ad campaigns aimed at destroying the climate for centuries. You can read all about Horner at ExxonSecrets.org. He is a master of pushing long-debunked denier talking points, stating as recently as April 2005, “the atmosphere inarguably shows no appreciable warming in the 25-year history of satellite and radiosonde measurements (initiated in response to the cooling panic).” Amazing how “inarguable” denier claims turn out not only to be arguable but scientifically disapprovable — yet CEI still keeps the long-debunked statement on its website.

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