Climate Progress

In a campaign notable for its lies by the Arizona Senator (see “In HIS big speech, McCain’s 10 energy lies top Palin’s 4 energy lies“) and for lies by and about his VP choice (see “Slick Sarah, the make-believe maverick“) we have the mother of all lies. McCain is asked by a reporter about Palin’s national security credentials, and he (eventually) answers:

She knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America.

This time it’s personal. I mean seriously. Palin hardly knows anything at all about energy (see “Pork queen Palin is an earmark expert, NOT energy expert“). Heck, she knows very little even about oil if it doesn’t come from Alaska (see “Most revealing Palin energy whopper: Iran could cut off a fifth of the world’s energy supplies“).

I’m not sure what to be most scared about — the lie or that McCain tells it with a perfectly straight face, as this video shows (at about 4 minutes in).

H/t to Americablog.

When George Bush declared that the United States is addicted to oil, it may have been the most insightful moment of his presidency. It is a cruel but apt analogy, and that’s why the big push for more domestic oil production is so disturbing.

John McCain has created the “Drill Here, Drill Now” mantra, as though he wants to sink a well wherever he’s standing at the moment. When vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin gave her coming-out address at the Republican National Convention, the crowd started changing “Drill, Baby, Drill.” McCain’s selection of Palin was a concession to conservatives in many ways, including those who think climate change is liberal mythology and fossil energy is the fuel of the future.

But what would life be like for an America still addicted to oil?

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E&E Daily (subs. req’d) reports today that “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) hopes to bring three competing energy packages to the floor next week that include wider offshore oil and gas drilling.”

I think the key is that any proposal brought up must marry “opt in” offshore drilling with a serious extension of renewable energy tax credits (plus incentives for plug ins). It should partly pay for itself by closing oil industry loopholes. That, of course, is what the Gang-of-10 bill does, and Reid said that will be brought up.

Reid should not allow a vote on just more drilling. It would be criminal to let the renewable tax credits expire this year — especially given the Gang-of-10 bill already signed off on the 5-year extensions. Here are excerpts from the article:

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Here’s the absurd headline for the online version of Revkin’s NY Times story about how “a ring of navigable waters has opened all around the fringes of the cap of sea ice drifting on the warming Arctic Ocean”:

Arctic Ice Hints at Warming, Specialists Say

Hints?! How about “shouts from the rafters.” After seeing that, I thought “here we go again” (see “Note to media: Enough with the multiple hedges on climate science!“). Then I saw the print headline:

Warmth Opens Arctic Routes, Experts Say

Now that is a good headline — accurate and no punches pulled, not misleading and wishy-washy. The story itself, however, is still too wishy-washy on the issue of warming:

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[Someone noticed the factoid below and e-mailed it to me — and it is too rich not to comment on and try to learn from.]

I recently wrote a post “Note to media: Pork queen Palin is an earmark expert, NOT energy expert.” It began:

If you Google Palin energy expert, you’ll find more than 10,000 hits. It’s no surprise that conservative shills like George Pataki and Haley Barbour use that label — heck, a major conservative talking point is that she’s a foreign-policy expert because “Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia,” as Cindy McCain put it. Conservatives are desperate to inflate the resume of this partially vetted semi-qualified VP choice….

Now here’s the great thing. If you Google Palin “energy expert” now, my post is the first entry:

clipped from www.google.com

Search Results

1. Climate Progress » Blog Archive » Note to media: Pork queen Palin ...

   Sep 3, 2008 ... palin.jpg If you Google Palin "energy expert," you'll find more than 10000 hits. It's no surprise that conservative shills like George ... climateprogress.org/2008/09/03/note-to-media-pork-queen-palin-is-earmark-expert-not-energy-expert/ - 24k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Now that is change I can believe in.

So I have a Query to all those who understand search engines:

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You can see it live here. After that, it will be downloadable.

I was a tad milder than in my blog posts.

Nature recently ran an article on “Energy alternatives: Electricity without carbon.” Like most discussions written by people who don’t follow clean energy closely, the article lumped baseload solar (also known as concentrated solar thermal power) in with solar PV and generally treated it as an afterthought.

Here is everything that they wrote about baseload solar:

Solar cells are not the only technology by which sunlight can be turned into electricity. Concentrated solar thermal systems use mirrors to focus the Sun’s heat, typically heating up a working fluid that in turn drives a turbine. The mirrors can be set in troughs, in parabolas that track the Sun, or in arrays that focus the heat on a central tower. As yet, the installed capacity is quite small, and the technology will always remain limited to places where there are a lot of cloud-free days — it needs direct sun, whereas photovoltaics can make do with more diffuse light.

Costs: The cost per kilowatt-hour of concentrated solar thermal power is estimated by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, at about $0.17….

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My brother Dave lives in Minneapolis and has been interviewing RNC delegates. Here is Barb Davis White in her own words (audio here):

WHITE: My name is Barb Davis White and I’m running for the 5th Congressional District against Keith Ellison for the United States House of Representatives, which is called Congress.

ROMM: Where are you on global warming?

WHITE: Well, global warming really has not been proven. There are 30,000 scientists, including Al Gore’s professor, from Princeton, who says that we are now in a cooling stage. And ev-every — also every other climate that has been warmed had better grapes.

ROMM: So you don’t believe in global warming and you don’t think that people caused it.

WHITE: No, I think global warming is a scam. I think it’s a scam to put taxes — more taxes on us, and it’s called carbon taxes. Our environment has never been so clean, and if we want to push global warming, let’s push it on China, where the smog is so thick that you almost need a helmet to breathe. Let’s push it on Africa and see how they adapt to it, because they’re not going to.

That is frighteningly incoherent, even for a would be GOP representative. Is this really the best person Republicans can find in Minneapolis? Or perhaps that’s whom they are recruiting (see “The deniers are winning, especially with the GOP“). So you don’t end up totally depressed, there’s a second interview at the end with a DNC delegate who is a Minneapolis City Council member. So, yes, the Twin Cities has some sane politicians.

UPDATE: I’m trying out a new plug-in that will put audio files right into the post. Let’s see if it works:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

You can listen to the streaming video live here. Later, Earth Beat Radio, hosted by the irrepressible Mike Tidwell, will post the interview here.

“I’m nothing special, in fact I’m a bit of a bore….” Okay, my 18-month-old daughter is an ABBA fan. Go figure.

But if I am preaching to the choir, as Brewster worries, then I must say, thank you for the music, for giving it to me.

I wouldn’t be blogging this much if you all weren’t tuning in and writing all your comments. I wouldn’t be adding new features like “Must have PPTs” if it weren’t for the response. And I’m hoping to add yet another feature, podcasts, in time for my brother to do interviews at the Republican National Convention.

As for preaching to the choir, well, last month alone, the choir was over 115,000 unique visitors (triple last year at this time) reading 3.3 pages each. I do get plenty of deniers and doubters, but I have no illusions that we change their mind and since I won’t put up with their posting long-debunked disinformation, I suspect most don’t stick around long. We also get some undecideds.

But I’ve long thought that giving progressives the best information and best arguments with a vigorous debate is about all you can do in our current political climate.

That said, I lot of the media read this — which is one of the reasons I do so many media critiques.

And so do a lot of young people. They get here through Google, unexpectedly enough, mainly researching reports on polar bears. In fact, here are my most widely read posts year to date (with # of views in parens):

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