Climate Progress

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Okay, the Declaration of Interdependence sounds a lot like the Declaration of Independence.

By saying that it is a self-evident that all humans are created equal and that our inalienable rights include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, our Founding Fathers were telling us that we are all in this together, that we are interdependent, that we have a moral duty to protect these inalienable rights for all humans.  President Lincoln, perhaps above all others, was instrumental in making clear that the second sentence of the Declaration was “a moral standard for which the United States should strive,” as Wikipedia puts it.

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In its May 2008 Corporate Citizenship Report, ExxonMobil promised:

In 2008, we will discontinue contributions to several public policy research groups whose positions on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner.

Bullshit.

Okay, you’re not shocked.  Still, it is worth publicizing their deceipt, as the UK’s Guardian did:

ExxonMobil continuing to fund climate denial groups, records show

The world’s largest oil company is continuing to fund lobby groups that question the reality of global warming, despite a public pledge to cut support for such climate change denial, a new analysis shows.

Company records show that ExxonMobil handed over hundreds of thousands of pounds to such lobby groups in 2008. These include the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in Dallas, Texas, which received $75,000 (£45,500), and the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, which received $50,000.

According to Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, at the London School of Economics, both the NCPA and the Heritage Foundation have published “misleading and inaccurate information about climate change.”

…  Ward said: “ExxonMobil has been briefing journalists for three years that they were going to stop funding these groups. The reality is that they are still doing it. If the world’s largest oil company wants to fund climate change denial then it should be upfront about it, and not tell people it has stopped.“

The oil giant’s full list of 2008 grantees is here.  They also gave money to such purveyors of misinformation on climate change policy as American Council for Capital Formation Center for Policy Research and American Council on Science and Health and Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies and Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and National Black Chamber of Commerce, which recently released this doozy:

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Contest: Replace the ‘Saudi Arabia’ Trope!

On Monday, as I was listening to a news call with Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, and Ken Salazar, the Interior secretary, Mr. Reid spoke some proud words:

Nevada, he said, is the “Saudi Arabia of solar energy.”

But is it? Indeed, with all due respect to Mr. Reid, claims for “the Saudi Arabia of solar energy” have already been made on behalf of Australia and Africa.

Forbes recently suggested that Saudi Arabia was the Saudi Arabia of solar power….

But given that the planet’s oil supplies, including those in Saudi Arabia, are finite by their very nature, it might well be time to find a new metaphor — particularly when referring to renewable energy sources.

After all, Matthew Simmons, the author of “Twilight in the Desert” (2005), has argued that Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves are peaking, and could decrease far faster than Saudi officials say.

The environmental toll of plastics

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Mary Bono Mack Should Be Burned in Effigy and Voted Out of Office

That’s the screaming headline at screaming right-wing blog Red State.  The article asserts, “she should now be targeted”:

… we beat her and her husband at the polls.

Yes, you heard me. We can get at Mary Bono Mack in two ways — her district and that of her husband. He should feel the heat just as much as her.

“Feel the heat” for voting to support efforts to stop global warming — yes, irony can be so ironic. Greenwire via the NYT explains the source of the latest ideological purity test of the ever shrinking GOP, “Conservative Ire Rains on 8 Republicans Who Voted for House Climate Bill.”  For CP readers, these folks are heroes:

The eight Republicans are Mark Kirk of Illinois; Mike Castle of Delaware; Mary Bono Mack of California; Dave Reichert of Washington; John McHugh of New York; and Frank LoBiondo, Leonard Lance and Chris Smith of New Jersey.

But not to the defacto leader of the GOP, Rush Limbaugh:

“This is an outrage. This is something that everybody who voted for this thing needs to be sent packing….”

I always thought “small is beautiful,” was a motto of the environmental movement but apparently it’s the new motto of the Republican Party, along with Gingrich’s “I am not a citizen of the world!” and, of course, “Drill baby, drill.”

And then we have top conservative blogger Michele Maglalang aka Michele Malkin, once called by a newspaper “an Asian Ann Coulter,” to which she responded “I’m not Asian, I’m American, for goodness’ sake. I would take the comparison to Ann Coulter as somewhat of a compliment.”  She put this poster on her website:

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In the first half of his Sunday interview after the passage of the Waxman-Markey bill, Obama said he was confident the Senate will pass the climate and clean energy bill.  He also asserted “My strong belief is that innovation and technology are going to accelerate our process beyond these targets, and that we’re going to look back and say we can do even more.”

Then Obama invited Energy Secretary Steven Chu and climate czar Steven Carol Browner to chime in (transcript here).  Here is the rest of the interview:

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High cost and delays are standard operating procedure for new nukes around the globe (see “Turkey’s only bidder for first nuclear plant offers a price of 21 cents per kilowatt-hour“ and “What do you get when you buy a nuke? You get a lot of delays and rate increases…”).  The same is true in the nuke-friendly land up north:

Ontario Puts Nuclear Upgrade Plans on Ice

Two years into a $20-billion nuclear upgrade project meant to replace aging reactors with next-generation technology, the Ontario government put the entire process on hold Monday, citing excessive cost and uncertainties involving the ownership status of the sole Canadian bidder.

“Emission-free nuclear power remains a crucial aspect of Ontario’s supply mix,” Ontario’s minister of energy and infrastructure, George Smitherman, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the competitive bidding process has not provided Ontario with a suitable option at this time.”

As he told reporters, “We’ll know the right price when we see it and we ain’t seen it yet.”

… To date, Areva is the only nuclear company to have sold a third-generation reactor, to the Finnish electric utility.

And that hasn’t gone so well (see GOP wants 100 new nukes by 2030 while “Areva has acknowledged that the cost of a new reactor today would be as much as 6 billion euros, or $8 billion, double the price offered to the Finns”).

‘Green jobs’ pitch swayed just enough coal-state lawmakers

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Turns out justice delayed is not always justice denied

The uphill battle to beat the inevitable conservative filibuster attempt against climate action just got one vote easier.  Think Progress reports:

Eight months after the 2008 election, the Minnesota Supreme Court has declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of the state’s U.S. Senate election. The unanimous decision clears the way for Franken to be seated:

“For all of the foregoing reasons, we affirm the decision of the trial court that Al Franken received the highest number of votes legally cast and is entitled under Minn. 32 Stat. § 204C.40 (2008) to receive the certificate of election as United States Senator from the State of Minnesota.”

This weekend on CNN, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) said that he would be ready to “sign” the certificate officially declaring Franken the winner as soon as the supreme court gave the “green light“:

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In 2007, the IPCC warned that “as global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5°C [relative to 1980 to 1999], model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% of species assessed) around the globe.”  On our current emissions path, we will warm far more than that this century, which suggests we risk the high end of species loss.

A new study in Science study (subs. req’d) confirms this risk.  It examines “the pace of diversity loss leading to the Triassic-Jurassic boundary (TJB).”  It finds “the sudden diversity drop ^… coincided with a mere ~100 to ~350 ppmv rise in CO₂ concentration,” and “CO₂-induced global warming was likely an important contributory factor to plant species turnover at the TJB.”

The study notes “The abrupt plant diversity loss … is consistent with expected plant responses to a catastrophically rapid rather than gradual environmental change,” such as might be caused from a massive release of methane  Good thing homo “sapiens” sapiens isn’t doing anything that might bring about catastrophically rapid climate change, like say 5°C warming in one century or a massive release of methane (see NOAA stunner: “Methane levels rose in 2008 for the second consecutive year after a 10-year lull”).

Worse, the study concludes:

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Amazon Conservation Policy Working In Brazil, Study Finds

Contrary to common belief, Brazil’s policy of protecting portions of the Amazonian forest from development is capable of buffering the Amazon from climate change, according to a new study led by Michigan State University researchers.

The study, to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, contends state and federal governments in Brazil have created a sustainable core of protected areas within the Amazon. And even if the remaining Brazilian Amazon is deforested, the climate will not significantly change – thereby protecting the Amazon’s ecosystems.

New Measures to Aid Solar on Public Lands

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced measures on Monday to hasten the development of solar energy on Western public lands.

Mr. Salazar, appearing in Las Vegas with Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, said that 670,000 acres of lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (an agency within the Department of the Interior) would be studied to determine whether they could support large solar power arrays.

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You just can’t teach an old petro-dog re-new-able tricks.

The UK’s Guardian reports:

BP has shut down its alternative energy headquarters in London, accepted the resignation of its clean energy boss and imposed budget cuts in moves likely to be seen by environmental critics as further signs of the oil group moving “back to petroleum”.

Sad, but not terribly original or surprising (see “Shell shocker: Once ‘green’ oil company guts renewables effort“).

But Tony Hayward, the group’s chief executive, said BP remained as committed as ever to exploring new energy sources and the non-oil division would benefit from the extra focus of being brought back in house….

“It saves money and brings it closer to home … you could almost see it as a reinforcement [of our commitment to the business],” he said.

Paging Dr. Cal Lightman!

Seriously, they gut the program and claim it is “reinforcement” of their commitment.  Perhaps BP stands for “Beyond Prevarication” or “Beyond Pinocchio.”

In the business world, “money talks, bullsh!t walks” — so let’s follow the money (as it departs the BP clean energy biz):

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