Our view on climate change: Imperfect ‘cap-and-trade’ is best option to fight warming

It’s complex, costly — and as good as the political system can produce.

Reasonable people can disagree about how bad global warming will eventually be if nothing is done, and some of the doomsday scenarios might well be overblown. But virtually all climate scientists concur that it’s a dire enough threat that the wise course of action is to sharply curb use of carbon-based fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas.

Since CP has a daily news roundup, I thought I’d add an editorial feature, too, maybe not every day, but occasionally, especially when I’m on travel, as today.

This is from USA Today editorial board, which is I think is fairly mainstream.  Here’s the rest:

Ideally, that would happen without raising costs to consumers or causing some job loss, but that’s a little like saying it would be nice to go to heaven without doing what’s necessary to get there. Solar, wind, nuclear and virtually all lower-emission energy alternatives will cost more, at least initially. The only sure way to move from traditional fuels to a greener mix anytime soon is to begin making it more expensive to continue on the current path and let the market work out the most effective way to do it.

The simplest solution would be a gradually rising tax on carbon-based fuels. In the real world, however, that is a political non-starter, and any tax would inevitably become complex after Congress got done writing in exemptions and discounts for various groups. Further, a tax wouldn’t set a hard limit on greenhouse gas emissions.

That leaves the “cap-and-trade” approach pending on Capitol Hill.

There are plenty of reasons to dislike cap-and-trade. It’s complex, intrusive and would cost money and jobs. But if the threat of human-induced global warming is real, and the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence suggests that it is, this plan or something like it is probably the best tool the political system can produce to begin to counter it.

Cap-and-trade gets its name from the way it would work: Cap greenhouse gas emissions; sell or give away permits for emissions that are allowed; and have utilities, factories and other emitters trade those permits in a special market. A utility, for example, could either fix its plant to emit less greenhouse gases or buy permits from some other business to keep emitting a higher amount. Over time, the cap would get tighter and the permits more expensive.

It’s complicated, but it works. Europe’s cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases, in place since 2005, has helped cut emissions 5% below 1990 levels, and reductions are on track to more than double by 2012. Closer to home, the U.S. began battling acid rain in 1990 with a cap-and-trade regime for sulfur dioxide, which combines with water vapor in the atmosphere to produce sulfuric acid. That plan worked better than even its supporters hoped, slashing emissions at far less cost than projected.

To combat climate change and promote clean energy, the House passed a cap-and-trade bill in June on a 219-212 vote that demonstrated how controversial the measure is. The Senate is waiting to take it up sometime after health care, and it won’t be easy. Every Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee boycotted the session when the panel approved a bill this month.

The House plan certainly needs improvement. It is stuffed with favors for well-connected lobbies, a distasteful reminder of Congress’ inability to focus sharply on the national interest. And critics claim consumer costs would be in the range of $3,000 or $4,000 a year per household. But the neutral, non-partisan Congressional Budget Office paints a more manageable picture.

CBO’s analysis of the House bill forecasts an average net cost per household of $175 a year, with the lowest-income households receiving $40 a year in benefits and the highest-income households paying $245. CBO projects that job loss could be “significant” in industries tied to traditional fuels but would be offset by new jobs elsewhere. That all seems an acceptable price compared with the potential consequences of global warming — melting ice caps, rising sea levels, droughts and wildfires, shifting agricultural patterns and political instability.

Perhaps the most potent arguments against cap-and-trade are that unilateral U.S. action wouldn’t be enough to reverse global warming, and that it would be self-destructive for the U.S. to act without ensuring that rapidly growing greenhouse gas polluters, such as China and India, also limit emissions.

Taken together, though, these criticisms amount to an argument for doing nothing, which is simply not an option after years of official U.S. indifference. When world leaders gather next month in Copenhagen to try to set a framework for international action, they’ll be looking to the U.S. for direction.

It’s true that if the U.S. acts, there’s no guarantee others will go along. But it’s a virtual certainty that if the U.S. doesn’t lead, then no one else is likely to follow.

The NY Times has just given some of its precious real estate to one of the lamest and most irrelevant op-eds ever published on climate change:  ”Ben Franklin on Global Warming.”  The gist of it seems to be that since weather changes over small parts of the Earth’s land were noticed by people in the 18th century and that Franklin himself apparently noticed part of what is now well understood and modeled by scientists as the heat island effect — “cleared land absorbs more heat and melts snow quicker” — that we should somehow think … well, actually, I can’t even figure out what the author is trying to say.

The piece appears to be a novel take on the “teach the controversy” strategy.  The author, Ben Gelber, meteorologist at WCMH-TV in Columbus, Ohio, sort of acknowledges anthropogenic global warming science but mostly makes irrelevant connections between the past and today to imply that what’s happening now is nothing really new.  If Gelber thinks we should do anything about global warming, he keeps it to himself.

Well, anthropogenic global warming is new, and it would be catastrophic or worse to do nothing about it — see, for instance, “Humans boosting CO2 14,000 times faster than nature, overwhelming slow negative feedbacks” and “Imagine a World without Fish” and “Intro to global warming impacts” 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.”

But hey, I’ve written too much already.  You respond, and I’ll lift the best comments up into the main post.

• Protecting polar bears gets in way of drilling for oil, says governor Palin
• Palin’s axis of evil animals: Beluga whales join polar bears and wolf cubs
• And who really cares about wolves or their cubs anyway?

But if the Washington Post, which has four stories on Palin and her new book, Going Rogue, today, can take the headline quote above and put it on their front page in big type, well, then it must be news:

As the Post’s one-time motto put it, “If you don’t get it, you don’t get it.”

Never mind the fact that inaction on energy would destroy a livable climate for billions.  No, Obama was rocking the establishment boat by trying to do too much too fast, taking on problems that were mired in decades of inside-the-beltway inaction because they were too difficult.

But now, in a stunning piece titled, “Enough Afghan debate,” Broder flips his criticism entirely.  Obama simply can’t act fast enough on perhaps the most complex issue of his presidency — even if it means getting this vital and dangerous issue completely wrong:

The more President Obama examines our options in Afghanistan, the less he likes the choices he sees. But, as the old saying goes, to govern is to choose — and he has stretched the internal debate to the breaking point.

It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision — whether or not it is right.

As the Washington Monthly opines on this piece by “the so-called Dean of the D.C. Media Establishment”:

“Whether or not it is right.” The Commander in Chief, in other words, should put expediency over merit. Speed is preferable to accuracy. It’s only the longest military conflict in American history, with the future of U.S. foreign policy on the line — the president should worry less about due diligence and thoughtful analysis, and worry more about picking a course, even if it’s wrong. Other than the loss of American servicemen and women, untold billions of dollars, and undermining U.S. interests in a critical region, what’s the worst that can happen?

What a crock.

I realize there’s been a painful decline in the quality of Broder’s analysis in recent years, but this column is a mess. He’s effectively calling for President Obama to act and think more like President Bush — make decisions first, and think through the consequences and implications second.

Worse, Broder goes so far as to castigate the administration for “all this dithering” — using Dick Cheney’s preferred choice of words.

The premise of the piece is that a decision is needed immediately. Where did this arbitrary deadline come from? Broder doesn’t say; he just warns of the Taliban “coming back in Afghanistan,” as if the Taliban hasn’t already reclaimed much of the country.

For Broder, Obama is moving too fast and too slow.

I understand why many readers wish Obama were pushing harder and moving faster on the bipartisan climate and clean energy bill.  But in fact, on most major issues, particularly ones like global warming and Afghanistan, a President basically gets one shot.  Again, look at health care, where the president is pushing his hardest with speeches, town hall meetings, and intense hands-on lobbying with members of Congress.  There’s still no Senate bill.

I’ve always said Obama could get a better climate bill in 2010, and so he will.

Related Post:

• Newsweek stunner: Why the “status quo” establishment media’s coverage of global warming is so useless, Part 1

Our guest blogger is supermodel Cameron Russell, a junior at Columbia University and the organizer of the “Supermodels Take It Off For Climate Change” video for the 350.org movement.  This is a Wonk Room repost.

Right now, preventing catastrophic climate change is just about the most important thing any one of us should be working on right now. 350.org organized a worldwide day of action which took place on October 24. The goal of their effort was to educate and generate attention around the setting of a 350 parts per million CO2 target goal for the meeting to be held in Copenhagen in December. I know something about getting attention and decided to contribute to their effort.

In the history of the world, all five mass extinctions have been accompanied by massive climate change, so we are facing an incredibly serious threat. In fact, we are technically in the sixth mass extinction right now, and it is the first mass extinction being attributed to humans.

The whole “Supermodels take it off for climate change” project happened from start to finish in a little under two weeks and 300 phone calls–who knew production was so complicated! All the girls — Rachel Alexander, Shannon Click, Hanne Gaby, Olya Ivanisevic, Alla Kostromicheva, Heidi Mount, Crystal Renn, Rianne Ten Haken, and Nicole Trunfio — are my friends and loved shooting the video for a good cause, so that part was relatively easy to pull together. But let me tell you who was really responsible.

Indirectly there are three people responsible for this video: Tibor Kalman, Bill McKibben, and Robin Chase:

My all-time hero Tibor Kalman showed the world the ability of mass media to convey serious images and create real discussion (think 90’s Benetton advertisements of people with AIDS). Climate change, which is often seen as very political or scientific, needs to be made a people’s issue. My hope is that this ad helps re-brand environmentalism.

Bill McKibben, advocating scientist James Hansen’s target of 350 ppm CO2 to avoid catastrophic effects from climate change, leads the 350 movement — a widely successful environmental action campaign that remains in close touch with science and politics.

Finally Robin Chase, founder of Zipcar and Goloco, is my mom and raised me in a household that didn’t drive when it could be avoided, bought used clothes and almost nothing else, and led our family and friends by example showing us that it doesn’t matter how much you have. She also taught us to appreciate our personal and unique strengths, skills and experience, and figure out how to put them to good use.

There were at least 26 other people directly involved in making it. Eleven other models donated their free time, a precious day off for these top girls who work nearly every day from their late teens to as late as their early 30’s. Some of them have professional lives outside of modeling too. Cystal Renn just put out a book called Hungry about her transformation into a plus size model — it’s been incredibly successful and earned her a spot on Oprah. Nicole is the host of Bravo’s “Make Me a Supermodel” show. Heidi is the proud mother of two year-old Liam.

Then there was a whole team of people that made the girls look amazing: a stylist, Shandi Alexander, and her two assistants, a hairdresser, Kevin Ryan, and his two assistants, and two make up artists, Jesse Lawson and Fara Homidi, who all donated their free time as well. Then there was our amazing director Damani Baker, the three guys who assisted him, and Andrew Zuckerman who took still photos. There was my co-prodcuer Alex Vlack who also let us use his studio and turn his office into a wardrobe room. Finally there was Christana Tran and Heather Hughes who work at Women and Supreme model management that helped provide designer clothing and coordinate models.

Wells also produce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas thought to contribute to global climate change.

C’mon.  I think we are at least one decade, if not two decades or more, passed a time when the words “thought to” are justified.

Note to Beardon:  Why exactly do you think it is called a greenhouse gas?

This hedge remains all too common in the media — see Memo to Wall Street Journal: You can do better than “greenhouse gases, which are believed to contribute to climate change.”

As I wrote in that earlier post, this hedge is especially pointless and misinforming because of the second hedge — “contribute to.”  All but the most extremist deniers of the basic climate science accept that carbon dioxide contributes to global climate change.

So perhaps the NewsHour might catch up with the scientific understanding and write some variation of:

… carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that causes the global climate to change.

And people wonder why the public is still underinformed on this subject.

Related Posts:

• Note to media: Enough with the multiple hedges on climate science!

What I didn’t realize is that Newsweek was not getting duped by Big Oil — it was getting cash from the American Petroleum Institute in return for “access,” as journalism and ethics experts told E&E News (subs. req’d).

Newsweek since 2007 has sold advertising packages to the oil industry’s biggest influence group that included the right to co-host forums on energy issues, including two where members of Congress sat side-by-side on panels with the association’s president.

American Petroleum Institute ranks among advertisers that have reached a spending threshold that allows them to attach their name to a Newsweek event and have their top executive as a panel speaker. API President and Chief Executive Jack Gerard was the sole industry speaker joining Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Reps. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) and Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) at an “executive forum” the magazine and API held at the U.S. Capitol in March.

Newsweek and API have teamed on four forums so far and are planning another — “Climate and Energy Policy: Moving?” — for Dec. 1, when the Senate could be holding a floor debate on climate legislation. An invitation sent yesterday to lawmakers’ offices said Gerard again would be a panelist and that requests to speak were “currently pending confirmation with notable members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate.” Lawmakers receiving invitations included Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

I urge all lawmakers to shun this event.

TPM Muckraker also has a good story on part of this, “Newsweek And Oil Lobby Team Up To Host Climate Change Event With Lawmakers,” which noted:

In February 2008, the news weekly and the oil lobby held a panel discussion on “Globalization Trends and Energy and the Growing Competition for Resources.” That event featured Foroohar, the author of the recent Newsweek story lauding big oil, as well as Tony Emerson, the managing editor of Newsweek International, API’s then-CEO Red Cavaney, and an energy specialist for the Chamber of Commerce. Emerson, moderating, described API as “an advertising partner.”

Remember, the API is spending millions to spread disinformation about the climate bill (see here) and create fake grassroots campaigns against it (see “Leaked memo: Big Oil manufacturing ‘Energy Citizen’ rallies to oppose clean energy reform“).

The E&E story, “API’s partnership with Newsweek raises ad cash and ethics questions,” is so shocking that I will excerpt the rest of it at length below:

Newsweek said it imposes ethical safeguards for the events, including that industry sponsors have no say in who is invited as panelists or what questions will be asked by the moderator, usually a Newsweek editor. API has no direct contact with the magazine’s newsroom, which sometimes covers the forums, said Mark Block, the magazine’s director of external relations. Outside media are invited and attend, and everything said is on the record for publication.

“There’s absolutely no conflict of interest, because they’re not driving our editorial” content, Block said. “These events are transparent. They’re on the record. They’re inclusive of media. They’re inclusive of people that might disagree. There’s no concern of appearance of impropriety because it’s an open and transparent process.”

But journalism and ethics experts decried the arrangement.

“You’re selling access,” said Edward Wasserman, Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. “Newsweek is using its reputation as a great news organization to convene these officeholders to talk about public policy. Then it’s renting out a space at the table for one of its customers who would not be at the table if not for giving money to Newsweek.”

John Watson, associate professor of communication law and journalism ethics at American University in Washington, agreed.

“You’re enticing them to buy these ads to get this thing of value,” Watson said.

And they aren’t just selling access to lawmakers, they are selling access to journalists.  Hence the green-washing story I critiqued, “Big Oil Goes Green for Real.”

Newsweek has had the co-presentation partnerships with advertisers since at least 2003, Block said. The relationship with API started in May 2007, when API and the magazine teamed up for a forum called “Progress on Energy Legislation in the 110th Congress.” At that forum, like the one earlier this year, API’s president had the stage along with members of Congress. Panelists were then-API President Red Cavaney, Rep. Jim Matheson (R-Utah), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and a Newsweek representative.

Newsweek under the program also has held events sponsored by petroleum company BP, a question-and-answer session in 2007 and a Q&A and roundtable discussion in 2008 on “the Future of Energy.” BP chose not to have an executive appear as part of either one, although it was eligible to do so. Newsweek has teamed with Ricoh and Lufthansa Airlines on more expansive leadership conferences that featured two to three 45-minute discussions. There are partnerships with others, as well.

About 20 to 30 advertisers reach the spending level where they are “afforded the opportunity to co-present an event with Newsweek,” Block said. The majority chose not to do so, he said, because they either don’t have an issue that would work with a forum or don’t want the publicity.

Block declined to reveal the level of advertising required, but said that, “they’re all at a very high level that they’d be offered that opportunity.”

Newsweek develops the content of the events, with no input from the advertising partner, he said. Of the advertisers, he said “what they are allowed to do, they will have their most senior person take part in the discussion. That is the extent of their participation.”

The person chosen to speak “must be credible and must be accredited,” Block said. He described Gerard and his predecessor Cavaney as meeting both criteria because “they’re speaking on behalf of a lot of people.”

… Newsweek and API also united for an event in February 2008 called “globalization trends and energy and the growing competition for resources.” Cavaney, API’s president at the time, spoke at that along with Karen Alderman Harbert, who at the time had just left her job as Department of Energy assistant secretary for policy and international affairs. There was another event in May 2008 at Stanford University on energy research innovation.

At the Washington events, Block said, Newsweek invites outside media, lawmakers and people from think tanks and schools.

“The panel is very objective and does not have the editor speaking directly with the panelist before the event,” Block said. “It’s not influencing A. how Newsweek covers the story, B. how the moderator asks questions, or C. how the audience” responds and asks questions.

“There’s absolutely no conflict of interest because they’re not driving our editorial” content, Block added.

So then it was just a coincidence that, as TPM wrote (linking to me):

In September, Newsweek ran a story by Newsweek International editor Rana Foroohar entitled “Big Oil Goes Green For Real,” which infuriated environmentalists by asserting that oil industry investments in alternative energy were no longer just green-washing, but rather were “the real deal.”

Yes, as TPM notes, Newsweek has written some tough-minded stories on Big Oil, but nothing can compare to their September Big Wet Kiss to Oil [Note to self:  That is one mixed metaphor!].

Back to E&E’s story:

Asked whether the events give API and other advertisers access to lawmakers, he said that “Jack Gerard and API are sophisticated and organized enough that they have the ability to reach these people without Newsweek.”

The safeguards Newsweek puts into place at the events don’t negate the conflict, said Watson with American University.

“There should be an impenetrable wall between media fundraising, which is what advertising is, and the newsroom,” Watson said. Rules put into place “after the fact,” he added, are “bandages to cover a gaping ethical wound.”

“The firewall is there not only to prevent the quid pro quo but the appearance of quid pro quo,” Watson added. Journalists must be considered credible to convey information readers trust, he said.

“As soon as there’s any connection between income and newsroom employees, you’ve stepped off the precipice,” Watson said.

As the Old Media’s business model dies, more and more publications are selling access.

Newsweek is not the only publication that holds events sponsored by industry. Atlantic Media and the Wall Street Journal are among those that accept corporate funding. Criticism of Newsweek’s arrangement with advertisers comes not long after the magazine’s parent, the Washington Post Co., suffered a major ethical black eye.

The Washington Post this summer had planned to have a series of off-the-record dinners at the home of its publisher, Katharine Weymouth, where corporations, lobbyists and interest groups could pay $25,000 for private access with public officials and journalists. The series of “salons” was canceled after a flier on it slipped out and Politico reported the plan.

That scandal, and the partnerships that Newsweek and others have with industry, come as newspapers and magazines suffer plummeting circulation. Most media companies are looking for new sources of revenue.

“This is a crisis period for journalism,” Watson said. “Everybody is looking for a new market paradigm. The danger is that everything else of value to journalism is at risk because you have to stay alive.”

… Atlantic Media surpasses Newsweek in terms of number of events with industry. So far this year, it has hosted 54 sessions alongside corporations, advocacy organizations and sometimes nonprofit groups, said Zachary Hooper, a spokesman for the company. There are usually multiple sponsors for each event, he said, and they are “people who have a particular vested interest in a topic.” Many of those same people are advertisers, he said.

Companies sometimes directly help fund conferences, Hooper said. Other times, they buy ad packages that include funding a conference.

Last week, Atlantic Media held an event on water as an environmental concern. Agriculture and biotechnology company Monsanto Co. and Black & Veatch, an engineering, consulting and construction company, sponsored the gathering. Monsanto Co.’s CEO Hugh Grant and Dan McCarthy, president and CEO of Black & Veatch Water, spoke during a panel discussion during the event. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Anne Castle, Interior assistant secretary for water and science, also spoke at the summit.

Atlantic Media with the Aspen Institute co-sponsors the Aspen Ideas Forum and its D.C. counterpart, Washington Ideas Forum. Corporate sponsors of the 2009 Aspen Ideas Forum held in July included Altria, Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton, Ernst & Young, Philips, Shell, and Thomson Reuters. Atlantic Media and the Aspen Institute charge admission for the Aspen festival.

“I don’t really think there is a conflict” of interest, Hooper said. “These are structured as an open dialogue. These are all on the record.” Outside media can attend, he said, adding “the panels are structured to encourage debate and not focus on any one particular agenda.”

The Wall Street Journal holds six forums a year that are sponsored by companies as part of an advertising package, said Robert Christie, vice president of communications for Dow Jones & Co., which owns The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones sells tickets to the events that are restricted to certain people. To attend the chief executive officer council, for example, one must be the head of a large enough company.

The events are open to outside media, Christie said, and are covered by Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal. The newsroom side of the company handles the content of the events, and “they meet the same standards as the stories that go into the Journal,” he said.

All of the events have members of Congress attending, Christie said. He rejected the idea that companies at the events have special access to those lawmakers.

“All of our conferences are public, whether you attend or you just view on WSJ.com,” Christie said. About the lawmakers who attend, he said “most of them just make a speech and leave.”

Again, it doesn’t matter that the conferences are public or the dialogue is on the record.  As I’ve said, the access to big time reporters is as valuable as anything else Big Oil is buying.

Media watchdogs remain vigilant to expose these cash-for-access stories, stories that were, ironically, once the stock and trade of Big Media itself.

Kudos to TPM and E&E for breaking this important story.

But first I’m going to repost a response to the NYT piece by Grist’s Dave Roberts:

JR:  As I wrote back in May, if you saw Gore’s terrific testimony on Waxman-Markey with former Sen. Warner (details here, full CSPAN video here), then you saw the absurd attempt by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) to suggest that the reason Gore has been advocating climate action for decades is to make money.  FoxNews doctored the video of Gore’s response to smear him, and I’m excerpting a post from Morgan Weiland and the researchers at Media Matters who first blogged on this outrage in here.

On the May 1 edition of The O’Reilly Factor, during a segment suggesting that former Vice President Al Gore has profited from his advocacy of renewable energy and climate change mitigation, guest host Laura Ingraham presented clips of Gore’s April 24 congressional testimony that had been edited to remove his statements that he donates the money he makes from his climate-related work to a non-profit organization.

Introducing the segment, Ingraham stated: “It seems that being green does pay big time — just ask Al Gore. Mr. Global Warming was worth about $2 million or so when he left office in 2001, but after eight years of tirelessly working to save the world, the planet, he’s now reportedly — get this — worth a whopping $100 million. His financial windfall came up at last week’s Capitol Hill hearing.” Ingraham then aired the following selectively edited clips from Gore’s testimony:

REP. MARSHA BLACKBURN (R-TN): Is the legislation that we are discussing here today, is that something that you are going to personally benefit from?

[Ingraham's cut]

GORE: If you believe that the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is because of greed, you don’t know me.

[Ingraham's cut]

GORE: I’ve been willing to put my money where my mouth is. Do you think there’s something wrong with being active in business in this country?

BLACKBURN: I am simply asking for clarification –

GORE: I’m proud of it.

BLACKBURN: — of the relationship.

GORE: I’m proud of it.

The full exchange from the hearing is included below, with the parts Ingraham provided in italics, and Gore’s relevant responses — which were omitted from the O’Reilly Factor segment — in bold:

BLACKBURN: So you’re a partner in Kleiner Perkins. OK. Now, they have invested about a billion dollars in 40 companies that are going to benefit from cap-and-trade legislation. So is the legislation that we are discussing here today, is that something that you are going to personally benefit from?

GORE: I believe that the transition to a green economy is good for our economy and good for all of us, and I have invested in it. But every penny that I have made, I have put right into a nonprofit, the Alliance for Climate Protection, to spread awareness of why we have to take on this challenge.

And Congresswoman, if you’re — if you believe that the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is because of greed, you don’t know me.

BLACKBURN: Sir, I’m not making accusations, I’m asking questions that have been asked of me and individuals — constituents that were seeking a point of clarity, so I am asking you for that point of — point of clarity.

GORE: I understand exactly what you’re doing, Congresswoman. Everybody here does.

BLACKBURN: And, well — you know, are you willing to divest yourself of any profit? Does all of it go to a not-for-profit that is an educational not-for-profit –

GORE: Every penny that I have made –

BLACKBURN: Every penny –

GORE: – has gone to it. Every penny from the movie, from the book, from any investments in renewable energy. I’ve been willing to put my money where my mouth is. Do you think there’s something wrong with being active in business in this country?

BLACKBURN: I am simply asking for clarification –

GORE: I’m proud of it.

BLACKBURN: – of the relationship.

GORE: I’m proud of it.

JR:  Not only does Ingraham doctor the video, here is what she says after showing it.

INGRAHAM: Did she get the question actually answered? With us now Marc Morano, who’s the executive editor of….

JR:  Yes, Laura, she did get the question actually answered — you just doctored it out and now have the nerve to make that slanderous insinuation.

This isn’t to say Senate passage will be easy, but I think it is now likely, and, it is certainly far more likely than it was two months ago.  That’s what makes the lead story in today’s Washington Post so flawed.  It opens:

With Democrats deeply divided on the issue, unless some Republican lawmakers risk the backlash for signing on to the legislation, there is almost no hope for passage.

Uhh, yeah, well, it now looks like quite a few GOP lawmakers are willing to risk that backlash.  Equally lame, the article’s subhead is “Democrats Deeply Split,” and the print edition continuation headline is

With Senate Democrats still divided, climate bill’s prospects cool

Now what’s particularly amazing about that headline — other than it gets the direction of recent political movement exactly backwards — is that the WashPost quotes precisely one Democrat dissing the bill’s prospects, Ben Nelson (D-NB).  Yet no serious vote counter had ever considered Nelson a serious prospect.  For E&E, Nelson was always a “probable no.”  For Nate Silver, Nelson is a whopping 10.29% “probability of yes” — the lowest of any Democrat (see “Epic Battle 3: Who are the swing Senators?”

The real news, and it’s pretty big, is actually buried at the end:

Graham and Kerry are set to meet Wednesday with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, as well as with Obama’s top climate adviser, Carol M. Browner, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to discuss a possible compromise. They are also setting up meetings with colleagues on the issue.

Wow!  Graham and Kerry are now directly engaged with the White House.  That is what should have been the headline and lede.

“There is nowhere near 60 votes for a nuclear power bill on its own. There’s not 60 votes for a cap-and-trade bill as it’s currently constructed,” Graham said in an interview. He said combining the two measures is “the only way you’ll get to 60 votes.”

It is what Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope calls “the old formula for bipartisanship.”

“They would agree on a goal, they would not agree exactly on the means to a goal, and they’d come up with a legislative solution that takes elements from both sides,” he said.

Wow again!  Even the Sierra club is warm to the deal, even knowing it will include a strong title on nuclear energy and another on drilling for oil and gas.

And Graham, for his part, has become a lightning rod for controversy back home. On Oct. 22, the American Energy Alliance, an advocacy group funded in part by energy companies, launched a radio, TV and online advertising campaign in South Carolina that has cost “close to $300,000″ so far, according to the group’s spokesman, Patrick Creighton.

Featuring a Halloween theme, the TV commercial warns of “some scary stories coming out of Washington” and says, “The latest is Senator Lindsey Graham’s support for a national energy tax called cap-and-trade.”

Creighton said the group questions why Graham says a deal will help offshore drilling, which Congress has already allowed.

Groups backing the climate bill came to Graham’s defense last week. They aired radio and television ads that featured state Sen. John Courson, a conservative Republican who became concerned about global warming after witnessing the decline of polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba.

“Out-of-state interests are attacking our Senator Lindsey Graham,” Courson says in an ad underwritten by Republicans for Environmental Protection, “because he’s backing an energy plan that produces more power in America.”

Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said he is optimistic that the parties can reach an accord because Americans are not divided along party lines on global warming. “Is there bipartisanship in the country? I think clearly there is,” he said.

So the real headline is that with the prospect for serious bipartisanship, climate bill’s prospects warm.

Roger Pielke Jr., never one to shy away from a battle, believes that Dubner and his co-author Steven Levitt have indeed been criticized by Joe Romm over at Climate Progress.

Yeah, I “criticized” them.  Can’t argue with that.  As the commenter below notes of Kloor’s false charge against me in Nature:

Why else is that Nature would have had to doctor up your first post at their climate blog? Do you think that they were worried about any legal problems you may have brought to their publication by defaming Romm? Or do you think they were simply embarrassed that they had hired someone who doesn’t know the difference between slander and libel?

So yes Kloor has been trying to spread false charges about me — again and again for months, as you will see. But at least Nature intervened to stop him in this case.

So after months and months of Kloor smearing me, misrepresenting what I wrote, and attacking other climate science advocates, I finally decided to do one post to set the record straight.

Some might have you believe that journalists (even those who are really mainly bloggers) should not be the subject of hard-hitting critiques by bloggers (though apparently bloggers can be).  I think even bloggers have the right to set the record straight.

UPDATE 2:   As one of the commenters at Nature blogs wrote in response to the original smear by Kloor:

What a nonsense disclosure, Keith. You haven’t just “weighed in on the matter on my own blog.” There’s almost not a week that goes by in which you don’t have something derisive to say about Joe Romm, often times in concert with Roger Pielke Jr.

So there’s no surprise that when there’s a controversy over a book replete with climate change errors that have been discussed at length across the internet, that you should focus on charges of “slander” by Roger Pielke Jr. against Romm. Are either you or Pielke Jr. lawyers who can speak competently about “slander”? Are you aware that unfairly raising charges of slander is also a form of slander?

This is extremely unprofessional. But par for the course for a blog that got off to an extremely rocky start by having Roger Pielke Jr. as one of its original authors.

Kloor often flaks for Pielke, who just happens to be a Senior Fellow at The Breakthrough Institute (TBI).  As I discuss in “A Breakthrough Institute primer,” TBI has dedicated the resources of their organization to trying to kill prospects for climate and clean energy action in this Congress and to spreading disinformation about Obama, Gore, Congressional leaders, Waxman and Markey, leading climate scientists, Al Gore again, the entire environmental community and anyone else trying to end our status quo energy policies, including me

Finally, for a complete debunking of the underlying charge that my critique of Superfreakonomics was in any way a smear of the authors, read “One error retracted, 99 to go. Superfreaknomics authors will, in future editions, correct their claim that Caldeira believes “carbon dioxide is not the right villain.” What follows is an updated version of the original post.

Friends, Rommans, countrymen, lend me your ears….

One of the oldest rhetorical tricks is to emphasize a point by pretending to deny it.

This notion is so core to rhetoric that the ancient Greeks even had a few related figures of speech named for it — most broadly, apophasis (from the Greek word for “to deny”), the figure of speech that stresses an idea or image by negating it. As Shakespeare has Marc Antony say to the Roman citizens in the “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” speech after Caesar’s assassination, “Sweet friends, let me not stir you up to such a sudden flood of mutiny.” He wants — and gets — a mutiny.

There is a related figure, Paralipsis, which Wikipedia describes this way:

Paralipsis, also known as praeteritio, preterition, cataphasis, antiphrasis, or parasiopesis, is a rhetorical figure of speech wherein the speaker or writer invokes a subject by denying that it should be invoked. As such, it can be seen as a rhetorical relative of irony.  Paralipsis is usually employed to make a subversive ad hominem attack.

The device is typically used to distance the speaker from unfair claims, while still bringing them up. For instance, a politician might say, “I don’t even want to talk about the allegations that my opponent is a drunk.”

… Proslepsis is an extreme kind of paralipsis that gives the full details of the acts one is claiming to pass over; for example, “I will not stoop to mentioning the occasion last winter when our esteemed opponent was found asleep in an alleyway with an empty bottle of vodka still pressed to his lips.”

Paralipsis was often used by Cicero in his orations, such as “I will not even mention the fact that you betrayed us in the Roman people by aiding Catiline.”

This is all by way of introduction to one Keith Kloor, a blogger who week in and week out trashes climate science bloggers, including me, often parrotting the disinformation of Roger Pielke, Jr., “the most debunked person in the science blogosphere.”   Since his blog is obscure, I have ignored him until now, and plan to do so again in the future.  But Nature’s climate blog has started running articles by him [which is no great claim to serious journalism -- one of the first Nature blog posts was by Pielke himself, and Lambert (aka Deltoid) writes a must-read debunking of it here (be sure to read the comments)].

As a result, I looked at Kloor’s website and saw that he went after my parents with the clever rhetorical smear:

I suspect that Romm is trying to rationalize his own behavior with the kind of lazy practice that perhaps happened with regularity in a past era–maybe even at the Times Herald Record in the 1960s and 1970s, which is where Romm first learned all about journalism, when his parents were at the helm of that Hudson Valley paper. But I wouldn’t want to impugn his parents’ legacy or that paper’s reputation with such an accusation. Maybe I’ll just call up some old friends who worked at that fine paper in recent years….

I dealt with the substance of the issue Kloor is commenting on here — “Anatomy of a debunking: Caldeira says Superfreakonomics is “damaging to me because it is an inaccurate portrayal of me” and filled with “many” misleading statements. Dubner continues to make false statements, parroted by Pielke and Morano. DeLong urges authors to “abjectly apologize” for the chapter.”  And I discussed it further here, where I solicited the feedback of a real journalist — Bloomberg interview of Dubner and Caldeira backs up my reporting on error-riddled Superfreakonomics. Dubner is baffled that Caldeira ‘doesn’t believe geoengineering can work without cutting emissions.’ While I have never claimed to be a professional journalist — and I was acting as a both a blogger and expert colleague of Caldeira’s who was, among other things, expressing outrage in a private email at how his work was misrepresented following a recent email interview on the exact same subject — what I did once is what many journalists do today routinely (much more so than in the past, in fact, especially in radio and TV news).  As I’ve said, it was a unique case and in retrospect I would do it in the manner Pooley suggested.

But what Kloor does routinely in his public blog is what no serious journalist in the world does even once. I am quite sure you will be shocked both by what he regularly writes on his blog and even more that he would actually try to pass himself off as anything but a run-of-the-mill blogger, as someone who is in a position to lecture anyone else on what journalistic practice is.  I would have ignored him, as I have done for months now, but for his attack on my parents, including my late father, which is simply beyond the pale even in the tough to-and-fro of the blogosphere.

As you can see in the excerpt above, he cleverly smears my parents with apophasis/paralipsis, the rhetorical device which literally gives him “deniability.”  But a smear it is.  He has no knowledge whatsoever of any bad journalistic practices at that paper — in fact both of my parents were award-winning journalists — but simply hypothesizes that they may have done something “with regularity” that he views as “lazy practice.”  As we’ll see, one sure fire way to know that you are practicing good journalism is to be attacked by Kloor.  Kloor’s blog posts this year prove he is the Glenn Beck of bloggers.

Note that in the above quote, he even threatens to try to dig up some dirt on my late-father and his paper, which again, is just far, far beyond the pale of acceptable practice even on the blogosphere.

But as outside the mainstream this attack was, it’s actually standard operating procedure for Kloor.

On October 18, Kloor suggested Michael Tobis is might be “delusional.”

UPDATE:  My point in that cite is primarily about Kloor’s language, to show that he is just a run-of-the-mill blogger has no business criticizing other bloggers for using strong language.

On October 17 Kloor wrote:

More proof that environmentalists can’t chew gum and talk about climate adaptation at the same time comes in this post from David Roberts at Grist.

The cognitive dissonance from this crowd continues to amaze me.

Note the broad brush smear that all environmentalists are morons.

As is typical of Kloor, Roberts wasn’t even talking about adaptation.  He was merely stating the obvious (in pictures), that “The idea that sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere will save us is akin to the hope that a math equation can be solved by erasing one of the numbers.”  As an aside, as I’ve written many times, even one wedge of carbon capture and storage — under 1/10th of the total solution — represents a flow of CO2 into the ground equal to the current flow of oil out of the ground. It would require, by itself, re-creating the equivalent of the planet’s entire oil delivery infrastructure (see “How the world can (and will) stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution“).  And Roberts’ point was we have all lot of other problems besides climate change.

On October 9, I wrote of Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize award, “Obama and his international negotiating team led by Secretary of State Clinton have helped create the first genuine chance that the entire world will come together and agree to sharply diverge from the catastrophic business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions path.  This award simultaneously acknowledges what they have achieved and pushes them and the world toward delivering on Obama’s promise.  It is well deserved.” Kloor quotes those words and writes:

It’s all about politics with Romm, which if he was honest, he would at least own up to in this case. He knows the award isn’t deserved; any sane person can see that.

This from a guy who criticized me by saying “That’s not how reputable journalists operate–we don’t set out to deliberately trash people.”  That’s all he does is trash me and Roberts and Tobis and our “crowd.”

This from a guy who brags in his blog “I’ve been an adjunct journalism professor.”

For the record, here is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who “served as national security adviser to President Carter and is now a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies” on PBS’s News Hour the same day:

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Dr. Brzezinski, I’m going to start with you.  What was your reaction?

BRZEZINSKI: Well, I feel he definitely deserved it, but he also has to earn it.

WOODRUFF: Definitely deserved it. Why?

BRZEZINSKI:    But also has to earn it.  He deserves it because, in the course of less than a year, he really has refined America’s relationship with the world. He has grandly improved America’s image in the world. He has committed America to a series of policies designed to resolve conflicts and to deal in a non-unilateral fashion with key issues. And he has committed America to grand goals in the area of nuclear weaponry, global problems and so forth.  You know, if you consider that this has taken place in the course of just several months, that’s a tremendous accomplishment for the most powerful state in the world, to have its total posture changed, redefined, improved, more idealistic.

Huh.  Woodruff didn’t say Brzezinski was dishonest and insane.  I wonder why.  Maybe she’s not a blogger like Kloor.

Note that Brzezinski pretty much said exactly what I said.  Obama deserved it, but now he has to deliver.  Anyone can disagree.  This isn’t climate science, just an opinion.

Week in and week out, Kloor just trashes people who disagree with him.  In some cases merely for expressing an opinion, as I did here.

Now I use tough language — though mostly for people demonstrably pushing scientific disinformation and in any case not the beyond-the-pale trash talk Kloor routinely does — but then I don’t claim or aspire to be professional journalist as Kloor does.  I view myself as a champion for climate science.  I also try to imagine what future generations would say and then dial that language back maybe 50% — since I rather expect they’ll be violently cursing our names for decades if we listen to the likes of Kloor.   Unlike Kloor, however, who spends the majority of posts in fact-free trash talk, I spend the overwhelming majority of my posts actually reporting on climate science, solutions, and politics.

In Kloor’s brand of trash blogging, misrepresentation is standard operating procedure.  He writes:

At any rate, one of Romm’s constant themes at Climate Progress is that the mainstream media is incompetent and unscrupulous when it comes to climate reporting.

That half truth is another clever smear.  Yes, a constant theme of CP is that much (though not all) of the mainstream media is “incompetent” when it comes to climate reporting.  But “unscrupulous”?  That’s a very strong word –  a Kloor-type word.  I don’t think I’ve ever accused a member of the mainstream media of being devoid of scruples.  I certainly don’t think the mainstream media is unscrupulous when it comes to climate reporting (and I don’t count Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh in the MSM).  In any case, if it’s a constant theme, Kloor should have no difficulty finding 10 examples.  But he can’t because the charge is just another false smear.

The above quotes are but a fraction of the trash blogging you can find on Kloor’s blog.  Rather than subjecting you to any more, let me just end with the clearest evidence that Keith Kloor is the Glenn Beck of bloggers.

On August 12, in a big wet kiss titled “Morano Bridges the Climate Divide” (whose opening line is “Yes, you read that right”), Kloor writes:

If you think the public discussion of climate change is best served by a free flowing exchange of information and perspectives, then Morano’s Climate Depot is one of your gateways, like it or not.

Yes, you read that right!

Kloor is praising the latest disinformation-fest of the guy who was the first to publish the Swift boat smear against John Kerry, the guy who was “previously known as Rush Limbaugh’s ‘Man in Washington,’ as reporter and producer for the Rush Limbaugh Television Show” (thank you SourceWatch), the guy who was the right-hand disinformer for Inhofe — a Senator so out-of-the-mainstream even the Washington Post mocked him as “the last flat-earther,” — the guy who routinely makes stuff up and misrepresents scientists’ work, as I (and others) have repeatedly shown (see, for instance, Scientist: “Our conclusions were misinterpreted” by Morano, CO2 — but not the sun — “is significantly correlated” with temperature since 1850 and Inhofe and Morano keep making stuff up, this time utterly misquoting Revkin on Hansen).

Morano keeps smearing serious reports by just making up stuff, writing recently, “Why does Eilperin fail to note that a top UN IPCC scientist, Mojib Latif of Kiel University in Germany told a UN conference earlier this month that he is now predicting global cooling for several decades….”  The answer is that Morano’s assertion is an outright falsehood (see here).

For more, see ConWebWatch’s “Lies, Conservatives and Statistics: Marc Morano’s Fantasy.”

But for Kloor, Morano is just helping us all develop a “healthy habit” by being “a true news aggregator” — when in fact over 90% of Morano’s links are to disinformers and deniers and outright smear-jobs.  His occasional links to genuine climate science blogs are primarily to mock them.

Oh but it gets better, which is to say shockingly worse.  On September 15, Kloor actually criticizes Morano, “He exploits everything–even a noble man’s death– to score cheap points for his side.”  Duh.  But quickly goes on to say:

Look, I’m already on record about the value of Morano’s site. I also get a ton of traffic every time he links to me; I’m glad when it happens because as I have argued, he has a constituency that I think is important to communicate with. Let me also say I have a soft spot for him. The guy is unfailingly congenial and polite. And he has a sense of humor.

Tell that to John Kerry.  Or Murtha.  Or the hundreds of serious climate scientists who Morano and Inhofe have repeatedly smeared over the years for doing nothing more than trying to inform the public about the dangers of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions.  Or the countless environmentalists whose tireless efforts to avert catastrophe have been met with lie and lie after lie.

Tell that to the billions of people whose lives will be needlessly ruined if policymakers and opinion leaders actually believe the disinformation and misrepresentations that Morano pushes day after day after day.

Morano isn’t “communicating” with his “constituency” — he is feeding them a pack of lies.

Oh, but Morano links to Kloor and drives traffic to him.  And Morano makes him laugh!  And apparently he’s not rude to Kloor.  Why should he be?  His BFF Keith Kloor serves a useful function as a third party source who misrepresents and smears the people he disagrees with, so Morano can link to him approvingly without having to spend the time himself misrepresenting and smearing.

Where the heck do they teach that in journalism school?  Is that what they teach at the University of Colorado’s Center for Environmental Journalism, in Boulder, where he was a Fellow “during the 2008-2009 academic year”?

Kloor is a run-of-the-mill blogger who often flaks for delayers like Breakthrough Institute Senior Fellow — and University of Colorado at Boulder professor — Roger Pielke, Jr.  He is not an arbiter of good journalism.  Quite the reverse.  He is a model of what not to do.

So if you’ve ever been attacked by Kloor, take it as a badge of honor.

NOTE: If you have questions for the editors at Nature as to why Kloor is writing for their Climate Feedback blog, you can email Olive Heffernan, who runs the blog. Her email is conveniently listed by Nature here: o.heffernan [ at ] nature.com. You might want to cc Nature’s Editor-in-Chief, Philip Campbell, whose email address has the same form, as Google reveals. And heck, if you think having Kloor write for their blog enhances Nature’s reputation, go right ahead and tell them that.