The California Highway Patrol say a man stole a car to make a court appearance on a previous auto theft charge.

Patrol investigator Chris Linehan says he arrested Samuel Botchvaroff Tuesday as he sat inside a stolen 2000 Range Rover at the Vallejo courthouse. The 24-year-old Botchvaroff had just left his arraignment on auto theft charges stemming from an Oct. 31 arrest.

Linehan said the Range Rover’s LoJack system helped him locate the vehicle, which had been stolen from Oakland earlier Tuesday morning.

Authorities say Botchvaroff told officers his car had been impounded, and he had no other way to get to his arraignment.

He was booked into Solano County Jail on suspicion of auto theft and possession of stolen property.

Okay it doesn’t have a lot to do with global warming directly, but for some reason, when I first read the story, I immediately thought of this:  “Is the global economy a Ponzi scheme?“

In the first 40 minutes of Saturday’s debate on the landmark bill, representatives from the minority party objected — or threatened to object — no fewer than 75 times, throwing in 35 “parliamentary inquiries” for good measure. The debate was delayed by nearly 90 minutes.

Anybody who wondered whether more active involvement by President Obama in the climate bill process — lots of town hall meeetings, big speeches, more direct lobbying of members — would have led to a better outcome now has their answer.  No.

After all of the administration’s effort — “hours after President Obama exhorted Democratic lawmakers to “answer the call of history” — Democrats passed the health care reform bill 220-215 with 39 defections.  Precisely one Republican voted for it, Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao, who represents a heavily Democratic district in Louisiana.  So the score in the House is 0 votes for the stimulus, 1 for health care reform and a whopping 8 for the climate and clean energy bill, which actually ended up with one less vote overall – see The U.S. House of Representatives approves landmark (bipartisan!) climate bill, 219 – 212. Waxman-Markey would complete America’s transition to a clean energy economy, which started with the stimulus bill.

We’ve recently seen every Senate Republican support a trumped-up effort to boycott and obstruct the clean energy bill (see “The GOP’s phony excuse for delaying the climate and clean energy bill“).  The WashPost’s Dana Milbank has an excellent piece on the GOP’s essential (Groucho) Marxist nature over the health care bill, “The object of their objections“:

At long last House Democrats passed their health-care legislation Saturday night. The Republicans objected. Often.

The debate was only a few minutes old when Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) rose to speak. “I ask unanimous consent — ”

“I object!” shouted Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), the leader of House conservatives.

” — to revise and extend — ” Capps continued.

“I object! I object!” Price hollered.

Capps tried again. “I ask unanimous consent to revise my — ”

“I object!”

” — remarks — ”

“I object! I object! I object! I object!”

The presiding officer pointed out that Capps had not said anything that could be objected to.

Capps started over. “I ask unanimous consent to revise my remarks — ”

“I object!” cried Price, sounding like Ned Flanders on “The Simpsons.” “I object! I object! I object! I object!”

” — care denied because of a preexisting condition — ”

“I object! I object! I object!”

In the first 40 minutes of Saturday’s debate on the landmark bill, representatives from the minority party objected — or threatened to object — no fewer than 75 times, throwing in 35 “parliamentary inquiries” for good measure. The debate was delayed by nearly 90 minutes.

Ned Flanders may be the modern analogue, but it’s pure Groucho Marx in Horsefeathers — though more Groucho than Marx brother, I’m afraid:

I don’t know what they have to say,
It makes no difference anyway,
Whatever it is, I’m against it.
No matter what it is or who commenced it,
I’m against it.

Your proposition may be good,
But let’s have one thing understood,
Whatever it is, I’m against it.
And even when you’ve changed it or condensed it,
I’m against it.

I’m opposed to it,
On general principle, I’m opposed to it….

It is a certainly a consistent philosophy, if ultimately self-destructive.

Related Post:

• Honey, I shrunk the GOP, Part 1: Conservatives vow to purge all members who support clean energy or science-based policy
• Honey, I shrunk the GOP, Part 2: Opposing clean energy hurts GOP — Mellman
• Honey, I shrunk the GOP, Part 3: RNC Chair Steele withdraws support for Rep. Kirk over his vote on climate and clean energy bill
• Honey, I shrunk the GOP, Part 4: Moderate GOP candidate yields to angry conservative. Gingrich says if this keeps up, “we’ll make Pelosi speaker for life and guarantee Obama’s re-election.”

What has gotten Eli hopping mad?  This remarkable “you-are-a-pigeon question”:

Which, if any, of the following statements comes closest to capturing your attitudes and opinions about global warming?

(We’ll give you a chance to amplify in your own words later–but I need to pigeonhole–umm, stereotype–umm, put you in a ‘box’ if at all possible. If necessary, just pick the least objectionable statement, or indicate that you prefer not to say.)

O I believe global warming is the crisis of this generation, and should be the highest priority for policy makers right now.

O I think global warming is undoubtedly real and a serious problem, but I think it has been ‘overplayed’ by the press, politicians and some organisations.

O It looks to me like global warming probably has a grain of truth in it, but it’s almost certainly not as bad as it has been made out to be.

O I believe global warming is true, but not man-made.

O I don’t believe global warming is true. I think natural forces account for the changes in climate and there’s no need to look at human contributions–which in any event have not been proven.

O This issue is not even at the top of my radar screen. I don’t pay much attention to global warming or climate change, it doesn’t influence how I live, how I spend my money, who I vote for–I don’t really pay too much attention to this.

O I prefer not to say.

I’m filing this post under humor only because I never bothered starting a category for “unintentional humor.”

Eli notes “the airspace between the first and the second choice and the fine gradations between the rest,” which is to say that all of the later choices are designed to 1) get lots of votes that totally outnumber the votes for the first choice and 2) make the first choice seem extreme, even though it is certainly the closest to representing the current state of our scientific understanding, albeit not with language I would use (see “Intro to global warming impacts: Hell and High Water” and UK Met Office: Catastrophic climate change, 13-18°F over most of U.S. and 27°F in the Arctic, could happen in 50 years, but “we do have time to stop it if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon”).

Examiner.com has inspired me to offer my own “First Annual Survey on the Examiner’s First Annual Push Poll on Global Warming.”  Which, if any, of the following statements comes closest to capturing your attitudes and opinions about the Examiner’s First Annual Push Poll on Global Warming?

• I believe the Examiner.com’s First Annual Push Poll is the single most laughable example in recent memory of how deniers and delayers try to use every form of media to misinform and mislead the public on global warming, which is the gravest preventable threaten to the health and well-being of future generations, and should be the highest priority for policy makers right now.
• I believe the Examiner’s First Annual Push Poll is the second most laughable example in recent memory of how deniers and delayers try to use every form of
  media to misinform and mislead the public on global warming, which should be the highest priority for policy makers right now.
• I believe the Examiner’s First Annual Push Poll is undoubtedly a real and a serious problem, but I think it has been ‘overplayed’ by Eli Rabbet, and is more of an irrelevant waste of time than an outright push poll aimed at misinforming and misleading the public on global warming, which should be the highest priority for policy makers right now.
• I believe the Examiner’s First Annual Push Poll is not at all serious, but an obvious spoof of a real poll on global warming, which should be the highest priority for policy makers right now.
• I don’t believe the Examiner’s First Annual Push Poll is true.  You made it up.  What do you take us for — anti-scientific deniers and delayers who don’t know the first thing about global warming, which should be the highest priority for policy makers right now?
• The Examiner’s First Annual Push Poll is not even at the top of my radar screen, assuming that I even had a radar screen, which I don’t.  I’m too busy trying to stop catastrophic global warming, which should be the highest priority for policy makers right now.
• I prefer not to say just how lame is the Examiner’s First Annual Push Poll global warming, which should be the highest priority for policy makers right now.

If you would like to amplify on your opinions regarding global warming and climate change, please do so in the Comments section.

Tim Lambert (aka Deltoid) calls it the “Pielke Pity Party.”  Eli Rabett calls it “The great Pielke meltdown.”

The woe-is-me post is a substance-free ad hominem attack on Berkeley economist Brad Delong and some of the leading science bloggers, including me.  What is so fishy about the whole thing is that it tries to paint Pielke as some sort of innocent victim whose only sin is to have — cue violins — “patiently and persistently built upon an academic record of peer-reviewed research on aspects of the climate that they disagree with.”

In the real world, of course, Pielke routinely tries to drown the reputation of top scientists — including all three thousand attendees of an Al Gore talk at the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a coauthor of the recent NOAA-led climate impacts report — with no justification whatsoever (click here or see below).

In this piteous post, Pielke announces, “I have a major book on climate coming out next year that will be in bookstores everywhere.”  How disappointing for those of us who thought he was “voluntarily” going into semi-exile when he shut down his popular Prometheus blog and started his obscure but cleverly named “Roger Pielke Jr.’s Blog.”

So let’s set the record straight.  Roger Pielke Jr. is the most debunked person in the science blogosphere, possibly the entire Web. Heck, computer scientist Tim Lambert (aka Deltoid) has a whole category just for Roger, which I commend to anyone who still takes the man seriously.  Lambert’s latest withering must-read takedown is “Another Pielke train wreck” (reposted by DeLong):

The thing about a Roger Pielke Jr train wreck is that you just can’t look away. Check this one out. Pielke claims that there were 1,264 times as many news stories about a Michael Mann study that suggests that hurricanes are at a 1,000 year high as about a Chris Landsea study that found no increase in hurricanes over the past century. (Mark Morano , of course, links to Pielke’s post.)

The fun is in the comments as folks try to explain to Pielke that there is a film director called Michael Mann and that maybe Pielke shouldn’t count those stories. Pielke comes back with the claim that restricting the search to “Michael Mann” + nature + hurricanes + Aug 13-15 gives 1,412 stories. Some folks might wonder how restricting the search gives you more results, but not Pielke. In fact, if you read what Google says at the link Pielke gave it says that there are “about 20″, and if you look at all the results there are just 11. A similar search for the Landsea paper gives 5 news stories. This difference may be due to one paper being published in Nature and the other in The Journal of Climate.

Update: Soon after I posted this, Pielke finally made a correction, allowing that being out by a couple of orders of magnitude was a “bit sloppy”. Heaven knows how wrong he would have to be before he admitted to being sloppy or very sloppy.

Where there is a “Another train wreck,” you can be sure there is an initial Pielke train wreck and the Pielke train wreck continues.  Lambert himself recommends starting with this debunking of RPJ.  After DeLong posted an email from someone pointing out that Pielke (Jr) is “dishonest and wrong,” came this must-read email exchange where DeLong questions Pielke’s sanity.

One could publish an entire book of debunked nonsense by RPJ, but it looks like Roger is going to save us the trouble. I have every confidence his collecution of confused contrarianism will be a poor man’s Superfreakonomics, just as “error-riddled” but with only 1% of the sales.

Roger is right less often than a broken clock.  He’s like a clock that knows what time it is and then shows the wrong time just to get attention.

Back to the the pity party.  Roger writes:

Here is how it works. The really giant fish — public intellectuals like Tom Friedman and Paul Krugman — confer authority on the big fish of the liberal blogosphere. They do so by applauding the work of the big fish and saying that they trust them.  This is a useful exchange because the big fish amplify the writings of the giant fish in the blogosphere and do the dirty work of taking down their political opponents by playing some gutter politics that the giant fish would rather not be seen playing. This has the effect of establishing the big fish as people to be listened to, not because they are necessarily right about things, but because the giant fish listen to them and the giant fish set political agendas.

Among these big fish feeding the giant fish are Joe Romm, Brad Delong, RealClimate, and there are of course many others, but these are the ones I have first-hand experience with (lucky me). Each of these professionals has great potential to positively influence policy debates in positive ways. Instead they all actively have chosen to engage in pretty embarrassing and unethical behavior that caters to tribal, echo-chamber politics.

[UPDATE:  No, the metaphor and his graphic of big fish eating smaller fish eating even smaller fish (similar to the picture above) don't actually make sense, since the really giant fish don't actually eat the big fish, but I digress.]

But wait, Roger Dangerfield gets respect from people in the blogosphere with more readers than he has all the time, too.  Well, one person.  The Swift Boat smearer Marc Morano is his Boswell.  Sure Morano doesn’t have a Nobel Prize, but he does have a long history of pushing disinformation, just like Roger.

What do I mean when I say that they engage in embarrassing and unethical behavior? For instance, their blog etiquette is simply a disgrace, especially for people who claim to be professional, e.g., they each disallow substantive comments that they disagree with, either from me or from those supporting things that I have said.

A lecture in blog etiquette from Pielke is like a lecture in business ethics from Bernie Madoff.

Pielke has one primary mission in his professional career and on his blog — other than working with his colleagues at The Breakthrough Institute (TBI) to spread disinformation aimed at stopping any serious climate action, of course — and that is to shout down any talk of a link between climate change and extreme weather.

For completeness sake — so there’s one post I and others can link to when pointing out “Roger Pielke Jr. is the most debunked person in the science blogosphere” — let me return once again to the most egregious multiperson smear by Pielke (see  Unstaining Al Gore’s good name, Part 1: The NYT’s false “guilty of inaccuracies and overstatements” charge began with a false charge by Pielke):

On February 13, Gore gave his talk at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in which he used the slide. The video is here and the slide is at minute 7.  You’ll probably end up watching the whole video a few times because you’ll find it hard to believe how Pielke spun a perfectly reasonable presentation into a vicious assault not just on Gore, but on the integrity of the hundreds of scientists in the audience….

On February 15, two days after the talk, our old friend Roger Pielke, Jr, wrote a blog post titled, “Not A Peep from Scientists” in which he quoted the CRED report just as I did and then not only sharply criticized Gore for using that slide to make his argument, not only attacked Gore for supposed “blatantly” misleading the audience with “scientific untruths,” but attacked every single member of the audience for not objecting:

And of all of those scientists in attendance, here is a list of those who sought to set the record straight on blogs and in the media: OK, I couldn’t find any, but if you know of any such reactions, please share in the comments…. But as the non-response to Al Gore’s in-your-face untruths shows, the misrepresentation of climate science for political gain has many willing silent collaborators.

So for Pielke the entire audience of three thousand scientists are “willing silent collaborators” in the “misrepresentation of climate science” because of their supposed “non-response to Al Gore’s in-your-face untruths” shows. But this string of “in-your-face untruths” doesn’t exist. Please listen to the video yourself and try to find them. I challenge any credible person to find them. Remember, we aren’t talking about one or two ambiguous word choices here. You need to find a bunch of blatant in-your-face untruths.

Good luck.

Pielke writes:

In his speech Gore attributed a wide range of recent weather events to human-caused climate change including floods in Iowa, Hurricane Ike, and the Australian bush fires.

No he doesn’t….  Gore does show a picture of Ike and say

It is the view of many scientists that the intensity of hurricanes is affected by the warming issues.

That is a fact. I interviewed many such scientists for my book. Indeed, that carefully worded sentence should be a strong clue to any listener that Gore understands the science, that he understands the debates over what can and can’t be attributed directly to global warming right now, and is working hard not to make any inaccurate statements. Gore doesn’t attribute the 500-year flood in Iowa to human-caused climate change. He does refer to the “heat that puts more moisture into the atmosphere that causes longer downpours,” but that is such a well-confirmed impact of warming that even the Bush report cited above acknowledges it.

As for bushfires, Gore says the fires have “ignited a nationwide debate that is very much focused on global warming.” That is also a fact. Many Australians who are suffering through a once-in-a-thousand year drought make the climate connection explicitly. For instance, Australia’s climate change minister Penny Wong recently said, “All of this is consistent with climate change, and with what scientists told us would happen” (see “Australia faces collapse as climate change kicks in”).  So far the non-response of the audience to Gore’s quite reasonable statements does not seem very shocking at all. They heard what Gore said, not what Pielke claimed he said.

It is quite clear that Gore is not attributing every single extreme event that he shows to climate change — that is clear from his wording. Gore is making a statistical argument that we are seeing more extreme weather events and more intense (i.e. record-breaking) weather events — which is why he has so many “anecdotal” or individual extreme weather event slides — and that “many can be linked to factors that are worsened by human emissions.”

How do I know this is the case Gore is making? Because I went to the page (102) in the book An Inconvenient Truth where Gore has his original figure from Munich Re and other insurers (whose “science experts have made the attribution” of rising extreme events to climate change as Kalee explained to Revkin). Gore writes of ” hurricanes, floods, drought, tornadoes, wildfires,” and says:

Many can be linked to factors that are worsened by global warming.

All this is quite in the mainstream of scientific analysis. And has been for a long time…

And what is even more unbelievable about Pielke’s smear of thousands of AAAS scientists for refusing to speak out when Gore supposedly linked extreme weather events to climate change is that Pielke himself told Nature in 2006:

Clearly since 1970 climate change (i.e., defined as by the IPCC to include all sources of change) has shaped the disaster loss record.

Yes, that is what Pielke said.  You can look it up yourself (see Pielke in Nature: “Clearly, since 1970 climate change … has shaped the disaster loss record”).

Pielke is the uber-denier.   Pielke denies everything, including that which he himself has said. After his latest smear, no other word fits him.

In fact, here’s an extended excerpt from the 2006 Nature story, “Insurers’ disaster files suggest climate is culprit” (PDF here):

Insurance companies, acutely aware of the dramatic increase in losses caused by natural disasters in recent decades, have been convinced that global warming is partly to blame. Now their data seem to be persuading scientists, too. At a recent meeting of climate and insurance experts, delegates reached a cautious consensus: climate change is helping to drive the upward trend in catastrophes.

The meeting, held near Munich on 25–26 May, was jointly organized by Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance company, and the University of Colorado in Boulder. It brought together climate, atmosphere and weather researchers with economists and insurance experts to discuss what could be behind recent disaster losses, both economic and human….

Delegates seem to have found the record persuasive. Their consensus statement, to be released on 8 June, says there is “evidence that changing patterns of extreme events are drivers for recent increases in global losses”….

“Dissent over the issue is clearly waning,” says Peter Höppe, head of Munich Re’s Geo Risks department, who co-chaired the workshop with Roger Pielke Jr, director of the University of Colorado’s Center of Science and Technology Policy Research. “Climate change may not be the dominant factor, but it has become clear that a relevant portion of damages can be attributed to global warming.”

Previously sceptical, Pielke says that he is now convinced that at least some of the increased losses can be blamed on climate: “Clearly, since 1970 climate change has shaped the disaster loss record.”

Now in his fishy meltdown post, Roger the not-so-innocent victim of attacks by every serious science blogger, writes:

So why me? Maybe I’m just lucky. But maybe it is because I have patiently and persistently built upon an academic record of peer-reviewed research on aspects of the climate that they disagree with, but cannot touch via conventional academic argumentation. Among the arguments I have made (with colleagues of course)…:

1. There is no greenhouse gas signal in the economic or human toll record of disasters.

I apologize for not warning you in advance to put your head in a vise to prevent explosion.

What you fail to realize is that for Roger “climate change” as defined by the IPCC, “global warming” and a “greenhouse gas signal” are obviously and utterly completely different things.  Sort of.  In a June blog post, Pielke praises a new article, “Tropical cyclone losses in the USA and the impact of climate change — A trend analysis based on data from a new approach to adjusting storm losses” (subs. req’d), which concludes:

In the period 1971–2005, since the beginning of a trend towards increased intense cyclone activity, losses excluding socio-economic effects show an annual increase of 4% per annum. This increase must therefore be at least due to the impact of natural climate variability but, more likely than not, also due to anthropogenic forcings.

Yes, you read that right.

Pielke says an article that concludes there is a better than 50% chance that human-emissions are contributing to increased losses from hurricanes since 1971 is “a valuable paper.”

But he just asserted that his work (with colleagues, of course) makes the case, “There is no greenhouse gas signal in the economic or human toll record of disasters.”  But he himself told Nature “Clearly since 1970 climate change (i.e., defined as by the IPCC to include all sources of change) has shaped the disaster loss record.”  But he smeared the professional reputation of thousands of scientists because they didn’t complain or walk out when Gore perhaps implied a connection betweenclimate change and the disaster loss record.

As I’ve written before (see here):

Pielke’s obsession on this point is so extreme that he trashes the reputation of any scientist who even suggests that there is the tiniest link whatsoever between climate change and extreme weather — even though he himself has stated such a link exists.  Indeed, he has smeared the integrity of many hundreds of the country’s top scientists for merely sitting through a discussion of the issue that doesn’t meet his extreme form of political correctness

This is why so many people in the science blogosphere block his comments or ignore his diatribes.  It is impossible to engage him in debate because he is the Humpty Dumpty of climate policy:

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,’ it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’

But Humpty Dumpty isn’t the right metaphor.  No, when I mentioned to one blogger I was thinking about writing on Pielke’s meltdown, he wrote me “require all comments to uses a fish metaphor.”  And that got me thinking.

If Roger calls Krugman a Giant Fish and me a Big Fish and Lambert a Minnow, what fish is Roger?  One fish immediately leapt into my mind’s eye — Remoras aka suckerfish or sharksucker.  As Wikipedia explains:

The host they attach to for transport gains nothing from the relationship, but also loses little. The remora benefits by using the host as transport and protection and also feeds on materials dropped by the host. There is controversy whether a remora’s diet is primarily leftover fragments, or the feces of the host.

Is that not Roger Pielke, Jr.?

Here’s the best photo I could find on the Web, something to keep in mind whenever you think of Roger:

Comments are welcome, but please, please — use a fish metaphor or metaphor!

This morning, activists from the Yes Men troupe claiming to represent the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced the organization was reversing its years of opposition to any climate bill before Congress, saying in jest that the “Kerry-Boxer Bill is a good start to a strong climate bill.” CNBC and the Fox Business Network cited the many companies who have quit the Chamber as a reason for the fictional about-face.

The Chamber of Commerce quickly tried to quash the reports that it had reversed its “Scopes monkey trial” stance. Chamber of Commerce official Eric Wohlschlegel broke into the press conference held by the Yes Men at the National Press Club, shouting, “This guy is a fake!” After a “mild shoving match at the podium,” Wohlschegel told reporters, “It is a very sad day.” U.S. Chamber of Commerce official Thomas J. Collamore decried “public relations hoaxes” and called for “law enforcement authorities to investigate this event”:

Public relations hoaxes undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change. These irresponsible tactics are a foolish distraction from the serious effort by our nation to reduce greenhouse gases.

Of course, it is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other right-wing corporate groups that have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars supporting “public relations hoaxes” to “undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change.” As PG&E Chairman and CEO Peter Darbee explained his company’s departure from the Chamber, “extreme rhetoric and obstructionist tactics seem to increasingly mark the Chamber’s stance on this issue.”

It’s doubtful that the Chamber — chaired by race-baiters and corrupt global warming deniers — will now be decrying clean coal carols, climate skeptics, fearmongering, and broken economic analyses as it spends over $100 million a year to lobby Congress.

Related Posts:

• Dirty coal group’s 14th forgery impersonated American veterans. Real vets support strong action on climate and clean energy — as does GOP Senator John Warner, former Armed Services Committee chair
• NPR takes on ‘clean coal’ astroturfers
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ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE, Oct 2 (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama would consider attending climate talks in Copenhagen in December if heads of state were invited, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters on Friday.

“Right now you’ve got a meeting that’s set up for a level not at the head of state,” Gibbs said on Air Force One as Obama traveled home from a brief trip to Copenhagen. “If it got switched, we would certainly look at coming.” (Reporting by Jeff Mason)

Okay, sure, I’m never going to get the dateline Jeff Mason’s story had — but then he’s not going to get the one I had!

Anyway, I don’t think it would be much trouble to extend an invitation to heads of state.  After all, VP Gore went to Kyoto in 1997.  And then there is that other overseas trip the President made last week (see “If Obama is going to Copenhagen to push Chicago’s Olympic bid this week, he has to go in December to push a climate deal, yes?“)

So he should go, and I think there is a good chance he will.

UPDATE:  Please note this was a comment by Gibbs, who probably doesn’t follow this issue very closely.

Still, there is much confusion about its name.   I heard it straight from the primary sponsors themselves that it is “Kerry-Boxer” and not the other way around.  The House bill is Waxman-Markey, and it would be inappropriate (and confusing) to call it Markey-Waxman.

It may not seem like a big deal, but this minor brouhaha actually made it into E&E News PM (subs. req’d) last night with a Shakespearean sub-head:

What’s in a name?

Many observers in the climate debate were caught off-guard by the fact that Kerry is now listed as the lead sponsor on the bill, rather than Boxer.

Boxer explained that she had always planned it that way.

“This bill has been Kerry-Boxer from day one, from the first day that we’ve ever started to get together,” she said.

The California Democrat cited last year’s Senate debate on a climate bill that had both Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.) listed as original co-sponsors.

“I’m not an egotist when it comes to my name on a bill,” Boxer said. “The important thing is to get it done. And by the way, it’s going to be a Reid bill on the floor.”

Cardin said he, too, had long expected Kerry to be the lead sponsor. “What was presented today wasn’t the committee bill,” he said. “It was a bill from the two leading architects of the global climate change energy bill. That’s how we see it. We see both as the leading figures in the U.S. Senate on this issue.”

’nuff said.

A repost from Wonk Room.

This Tuesday, as President Barack Obama and other world leaders addressed the United Nations on the need to tackle global warming, some entrepreneurs hoped to demonstrate their own solution. Notably, this solution allows humanity — at least those who are sufficiently wealthy — to completely ignore climate change. The Yes Men displayed SurvivaBalls, self-contained survival suits impervious to the ravages of global warming, on the banks of the East River:

When the planet heats up, it will be time to slip into something more comfortable – like the SurvivaBall. A self-heating, self-cooling and self-powered pod, the SurvivaBall is designed by top scientists to weather all of the effects of climate change to keep its user alive through catastrophe. Even though it makes its occupant resemble a giant tick, it’s also luxurious – “Like a gated community for one,” claims the SurvivaBall’s site. And only for the low price of $100 million!

Although the demonstrators of “Halliburton’s solution to global warming” hoped to reach the United Nations headquarters, they were detained by New York City police. However, CNN’s Jeannie Moos was able to file a report on the pranksters’ novel approach to a planet under siege [Video above].

Just as Yes Men activists were detained on Monday “when they handed their own version of the New York Post (headline: ‘We’re screwed!‘) to the paper’s conservative owner, Rupert Murdoch, the group’s founder was arrested during the roll-out of the SurvivaBall.” After all charges were dropped, Yes Men founder Andy Bichlbaum has been released.

An ice shelf off the coast of Greenland in 2006 (above) and last week (below)

“We always assumed there would be some secret lairs here and there, but the sheer number now being exposed is indeed troubling,” said noted climatologist Anders Lorenzen, who claimed that the Arctic ice caps have shrunk at the alarming rate of 41,000 square miles per year. “In August alone we discovered 44 mad scientist laboratories, three highly classified military compounds, and seven reanimated and very confused cavemen. That’s more than twice the number we had found in the previous three decades combined.”

“This is no longer conjecture,” Lorenzen added. “This is a full-blown crisis.”

According to oceanographers, the Arctic Circle has been devastated by the effects of global warming in recent years, threatening hundreds of men and women who use the frozen tundra as a place to conduct bizarre experiments in human-animal grafting, carry out massive government cover-ups, or simply as a hidden headquarters from which to battle the forces of evil and fight crime.

“Last week a giant ice sheet broke off and split my prized underground complex nearly in half,” said Dr. Raygun, a self-described psychotic mastermind best known for his diabolical thought-control experiments. “Now millions of dollars in state-of-the-art doomsday devices are gone—all because of the environmental carnage wrought by the human race.”

“You spend your whole career concocting a brilliant scheme to wipe out all of mankind, and what happens?” Dr. Raygun continued. “They bring about a major global catastrophe completely on their own, those fools!”

Evil Scientist Dr. Raygun has begun the expensive task of moving his entire mutant staff to their Titan moon base.

Scientists predict the problem will only get worse as rising temperatures release methane trapped in Arctic permafrost, perpetuating the warming cycle and threatening the habitats of those who depend on the ice caps for safety from the prying, meddling public.

Earlier this week a flying saucer surfaced and is reportedly still pulsating with increasingly intense, unearthly colors. And late last month, a mystical order of Nazi occultists emerged from an underground bunker where they had spent decades communing with the Hyperborean gods and attempting to breed a new Aryan super-species destined to destroy Homo sapiens and rule the earth for untold millennia.

The 12 elderly Germans were detained by local law enforcement in Wainwright, AK.

According to a Natural Resources Defense Council survey, 78 percent of sinister one-eyed industrialists based in the Arctic have been forced to relocate their powerful underworld shadow governments, with many now secretly orchestrating world affairs from dormant volcanoes on remote islands.

Many villains have also been forced to change their entire way of life.

Zawallah, the super-intelligent ape whose gold-teleporter crippled the global economy during the 1980s, recently ceased operation of his orbital heat cannon. Others, meanwhile, are genuinely concerned about the effect that increased temperatures may have on the future of humanity.

“Gwaahhhhrrr-huaawwwrr-gwaahhhrrrr,” cried test subject PR-433809-21, the ghastly result of a human cloning experiment gone horribly awry. “Pwwwuuuagharrgh!”

But not all inhabitants of the polar ice caps are upset by global warming. Last month saw the thawing out of a team of British explorers frozen in 1848. Expedition members told reporters they were confident that, if more ice melts, they can finally complete their original mission of discovering a Northwest Passage.

For the time being, most researchers have shifted their attention away from the ice caps and toward finding a way to contain the giant reptile monster Bizarricus, who was trapped in an ice floe by Japanese scientists in the 1950s and has now returned to teach the world a lesson about the folly of man.

From the geniuses at The Onion.