Climate Progress

The fading hopes for the Lieberman-Warner climate bill have all but ended (see E&E News, “Sponsors lower expectations for Lieberman-Warner bill,” subs. req’d, reprinted below).

Serious climate legislation had been in critical condition for some months (see “Boucher lets conservatives block House climate bill” and “Don’t hold your breath on Lieberman-Warner passing in 2008.”). Doctors and family members finally pulled the plug this week, and the patient appeared to lose all vital signs. The coroner listed the cause of death as “apathy.”

The only hope for revival now rests in the faint possibility that Lieberman-Warner turns out to be either an immortal cop, a vampire private detective or possibly a relentless, indestructible killing machine from the future that had taken on the guise of so-so climate legislation in an effort to fulfill its mission of ruining life on this planet for homo “sapiens.” [Note to self: That was a bit harsh.]

More seriously, too many Senators simply wanted to do too much watering down of L-W, plus we have the little-known provision of the Constitution that says all pieces of legislation aimed at sparing billions of people from unimaginable misery must receive 60 votes. The messy details are below:

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From today’s Climate Wire (subs. req’d):

Climate change may help Fla. farmers save their land

No — I’m afraid that between sea level rise, storm surges, and hurricanes, climate change won’t be saving anybody’s land in Florida.

What Climate Wire meant, of course, was that action on climate change might provide income to farmers and forresters in Florida — as is clear from their source, Orlando Sentinel, which has a better headline, “Florida farmers, foresters could profit from the global-warming fight, a study finds.”

George W. Bush — dark green? I kid you not. Here’s what he said in his press conference today:

One thing I think that would be — I know would be very creative policy is if we — is if we would buy food from local farmers as a way to help deal with scarcity, but also as a way to put in place an infrastructure so that nations can be self-sustaining and self-supporting. It’s a proposal I put forth that Congress hasn’t responded to yet, and I sincerely hope they do.

I have no idea what he’s talking about — what proposal did he put forward to Congress about local food? But I’m sure the 100-Mile Diet folks are on the phone with the White House right now.

What’s next for Bush — composting?

Affection for our planet is misdirected and unrequited. We need to focus on saving ourselves.

I have a new piece in Salon, “Let’s dump ‘Earth’ Day.” It is supposed to be mostly humorous. Or mostly serious. Anyway, the subject of renaming Earth Day has been on my mind for a while, or at least since this post last Friday:

I don’t worry about the earth. I’m pretty certain the earth will survive the worst we can do to it. I’m very certain the earth doesn’t worry about us. I’m not alone. People got more riled up when scientists removed Pluto from the list of planets than they do when scientists warn that our greenhouse gas emissions are poised to turn the earth into a barely habitable planet.

The earth is certainly not important enough to qualify for an ABC debate question. Who wears an Earth lapel pin? Arguably, concern over the earth is elitist, something people can afford to spend their time on when every other need is met. But elitism is out these days. Only bitter environmentalists cling to Earth Day. We need a new way to make people care about the nasty things we’re doing with our cars and power plants. At the very least, we need a new name.
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A few days ago, Climate Progress brought you “Breaking News: The Great Ice Age of 2008 is finally over — next stop Venus!” That scientific finding was based on the NASA (and Hadley Center) temperature data through the end of March. Now NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) weighs in with its data (here), reaffirming the end of the Great Ice Age of 2008:

Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the second warmest on record for March and the January-March year-to-date period ranked eleventh warmest.

March 2008 missed the record for the warmest March (2002) by a whopping 0.07°F. March 2008 was the warmest March over land in the record, beating the previous record by nearly 0.3°F. And it was the warmest March over land and sea in the northern hemisphere on record by 0.2°F .

Once again, the geographical distribution of the warming continues to be really, really bad news for those worried about …

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Bush’s speech is not until 2:45 pm (you can watch it here on C-SPAN3), but those engaged in my proposed drinking game are already plastered. Why? The front-page story in today’s WSJ (subs. req’d) says of the Bush speech:

He will also argue against legislation that raises taxes or makes demands that are technologically unattainable and could hurt the economy, such as by raising fuel costs. He will call for more emphasis on new technology rather than raising the price of old technology.

[Hmm. Who else makes that pitch?]

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As noted the last time I wrote about a big Bush speech, “Bush climate speech follows Luntz playbook: “Technology, technology, blah, blah, blah”

Bush has given us a new drinking game: Down a shot whenever the President uses the word “technology” in a climate speech. You’d get 19 shots for today’s 21 minute speech!

And I’d throw in another shot for every time Bush says the word “goal” or “bureaucrats” with a bonus shot for the famously redundant “unelected bureaucrats.” If Bush proposes a plan with hard targets for the entire economy, all drinking stops (and, of course, Hell freezes over). Since most of the speech will be no doubt be same old, same old, same old, it may be a tough day for everyone’s liver.

THE YOGI BERRA CLIMATE SPEECH?

Now according to Revkin’s blog:

The rumors Tuesday were that the speech would include a plan to eventually slow, stop and reverse emissions of carbon dioxide from power plants.

Hmm. Didn’t Bush run in 2000 on a plan to limit emissions from power plants, only to renege on the campaign promise two months into his term “under strong pressure from oil, coal, and car companies“? Let’s see, I wonder which quote from Yogi Berra will best describe this new speech:

• “This is like deja vu all over again.”
• “You got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”
• “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
• “Slump? I ain’t in no slump… I just ain’t hitting.”
  
• “I made a wrong mistake.”
• “I wish I had an answer to that, because I’m tired of answering that question.”
  

THE EMPEROR NERO CLIMATE SPEECH

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Here is Gore’s Law:

As an online climate change debate grows longer, the probability that denier arguments will descend into attacks on Al Gore approaches one.

It is modelled after Godwin’s Law from 1990, which states:

As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

Although in fairness, Godwin’s law applies to most heated political debates, including global warming. In fact, famed meteorologist and global warming denier William Gray told the Washington Post last May:

Gore believed in global warming almost as much as Hitler believed there was something wrong with the Jews.

Hat tip to Grist, which hat tips to Deltoid, who got it here.

To the extent that it’s reassuring to know that there are people out there who are even more worried about the future, check out “Collapsing Cities.” The website is “built collaboratively by members of Steering Committee for Pioneer Clusters Intelligent Communities,” whatever that is. I am a tad concerned about their banner motto, “Seeding Socioeconomic Avalanches!” Aren’t avalanches bad?

Still, one has to admire their goal: “Optimum-Energy Communities: Moving Towards Zero Dirty Energy Use!”

A top NASA scientist just emailed me the breaking news: “The ice age expired!”

Even more shocking — the rate of warming this year has been just about unprecedented in the historical record — even faster than Climate Progress had predicted just last month based on the NASA data from February (see here).

Just look at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies dataset (here). While January’s land-ocean global temperature was a mere +0.12°C above the the 1951-1980 average and the February anomaly was +0.26°C — the March anomaly was a staggering +0.67°C.

[Warning — the following chart is not suitable for children or those who believe in global cooling. Please cover their eyes since the 2008 data, plotted in red below, might give them nightmares.]

This leading NASA scientist was himself stunned by the “temperature derivative” — geek speak for the rate of change. At this rate I’m afraid, we have only a couple of decades before the Earth becomes another Venus.

My advice to you: Hug your children, make love to your spouse, sell your beachfront property, and then spend your entire life savings as quickly as possible — assuming, of course, that three months of data can be used for climate projections. And, heck, if one month’s data is good enough to get stories on climate cooling from leading journalists at the Wall Street Journal (”Little Ice Age? Cold Snap Sparks Cooling Debate“) and New York Times (”Climate Skeptics Seize on Cold Spell“), three months ought to be enough for front page stories that change your entire life.

OUR CHANGING WEATHER CLIMATE

When we first reported this story (here), the Earth was in the death grip of an Ice Age that had lasted an unprecedented 4 or 5 weeks, nearly one-millionth the duration of recent Ice Ages. Earlier this year, websites were trumpeting bleak headlines like “Solar Activity Diminishes; Researchers Predict Another Ice Age“) or “Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming.” Or, for those who prefer geek-talk over bleak-talk, it was time for an “Update on Falsification of Climate Predictions,” as Roger Pielke, Jr. put it.

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