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

Strong, immediate U.S. action on climate change is critical to maintaining our competitiveness (see “Why the United States REQUIRES a strong climate bill to remain competitive, Part 1” and “Part 2: When the global Ponzi scheme collapses (circa 2030), the only jobs left will be green“).  The Center for American Progress’s Director of Agriculture, Trade and Energy Jake Caldwell looks at the language in the Waxman-Markey climate bill focused on competitiveness — and how it could be improved — in a post-first published here.

When President Barack Obama greets representatives from the world’s largest developed and developing economies later this month in Washington, D.C, as part of his administration’s reengagement with the rest of world to find solutions to global warming, expect him to argue in clear terms that a concerted, worldwide solution is required. U.S. action on climate change is obviously urgent after years of neglect by the Bush administration, but Obama’s energy team knows that an international agreement with binding commitments from all major emitters of greenhouse gases remains the best means to meet the twin challenges of boosting global economic prosperity and protecting our planet.

Persuading our trading partners around the world to sign onto a global accord to limit greenhouse gas emissions is a central component of the administration’s foreign policy. An international agreement is within reach through the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate processes. In the meantime, the U.S. Congress has to move forward with an energy bill to build the competitive and innovative U.S. clean-energy economy that Obama and the congressional leadership promised during the election campaign last year.

That process began early last week when House Energy and Commerce Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chair Ed Markey (D-MA) released a draft energy and climate bill that would boost renewable energy, increase efficiency, and reduce pollution. The proposed legislation also presents a new plan to deal with the thorny but critical issue of maintaining U.S. manufacturing competitiveness in energy-intensive industries in a low-carbon global economy.

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“Morano … was also among the first reporters to write about the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign…. Morano penned an article questioning the Purple Heart medals of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.).”

Swift boat smearer Marc Morano, former denier-in-chief (DIC) for Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL), is emailing around his bio and his new website to whatever members of the media are aching to tarnish their professional reputations.  You can read that full bio in the Wonk Room post “Climate Depot Alert! Global Warming Denier Marc Morano Sets Up Shop! Now With Crazier Formatting!” — I can’t bring myself to inflict it on you.

And yet Swift Boat smearer Morano leaves out of his emailed bio that on May 3, 2004, he wrote the CNS article “Kerry ‘Unfit to be Commander-in-Chief,’ Say Former Military Colleagues” — a pack of lies ahead of its time! He leaves out his smearing of Murtha.  He never mentions he was “previously known as Rush Limbaugh’s ‘Man in Washington,’ as reporter and producer for the Rush Limbaugh Television Show.”  Isn’t this all first-paragraph-bio stuff for a right-winger?  Well, thank heaven for SourceWatch.

So major media, if you think the research behind the widely repudiated Swift Boat smear was credible, if you think Rush Limbaugh’s rantings are credible, then, by all means, as Morano suggests, keep his name and info in your Rolodex (font, color in original):

For your on-air expert contributor talent files: Credentialed “Counter Guest” to popular global warming ideology

I will be taking a different tack.  Morano is simply not part of the legitimate discussion about climate science and policy.  Marc Morano is unquotable and uncitable.

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The Washington Post published a terrific article, “New Data Show Rapid Arctic Ice Decline,” on page A3 today by reporters Juliet Eilperin and Mary Beth Sheridan.  The piece begins by noting that “the region is warming more rapidly than scientists had expected.”

In a stinging rebuke to columnist George Will and editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, it contains this remarkable paragraph:

The new evidence — including satellite data showing that the average multiyear wintertime sea ice cover in the Arctic in 2005 and 2006 was nine feet thick, a significant decline from the 1980s — contradicts data cited in widely circulated reports by Washington Post columnist George F. Will that sea ice in the Arctic has not significantly declined since 1979.

Wow!  I have never seen a major newspaper so overtly contradict the lies misstatements by one of its own columnists in its news pages (as opposed to its editorial page). I’d be interested if any readers have seen anything like this before.

But this isn’t just a rebuke to Will, who, after all, is a widely debunked anti-scientific extemist when it comes to global warming (see “Is George Will the most ignorant national columnist?” and “Washington Post publishes two strong debunkings of George Will’s double dose of disinformation“).

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The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported Monday:

[Arctic] ice older than two years accounted for less than 10% of the ice cover at the end of February.

So it is “thinner and more vulnerable than at anytime in the past three decades,” as the AP reports. “The amount of thick sea ice hit a record wintertime low of just 378,000 square miles this year, down 43 percent from last year.”  Why is that a concern?

“That thick ice really traps ocean heat; it keeps the planet in its current state of balance,” said Waleed Abdalati, director of the Center for the Study of Earth from Space at the University of Colorado and NASA’s former chief ice scientist. “When we start to diminish that, the state of balance is likely to change, tip one way or another.”

Sounds like a tipping point to me — and to NSIDC and IPY (see NSIDC: Arctic melt passes the point of no return, “We hate to say we told you so, but we did.” and The International Polar Year: “Arctic sea ice will probably not recover.)

Why should we care about Arctic ice disappearing?  Because, as a major 2008 study found, Permafrost loss linked to Arctic sea ice loss:

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