Global Warming Denial
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Where are the Conservative Solutions to Climate Change?
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Cooling Rumor Debunked: The World Is In Fact Still Warming
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Global Warming and Meat: A Debate with a Bite
What Will Global Warming Look Like on the Ground?
Published November 19, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
It's easy to talk about global warming on grandiose terms (the word "global" is in the title, after all). But it's sometimes harder to imagine what the concept really means for our daily lives. Some of us want to know what will happen when all the analysts and number-crunchers have gone home and the climatic disturbances start appearing one by one.
The UK's Telegraph recently published an article detailing some of the changes those of us not exposed to the extremes of a drowning island or a melting Himalaya might experience as the climate warms. What can we expect? Here's a run-down of some of the possibilities in Europe.
U.S. Carbon Emissions Plummeting
Published October 14, 2009 @ 05:37PM PT
Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, reports today on the Institute Website that the United States “has now entered a new energy era, one of declining emissions. Peak carbon is now history.”
I’m so used to doom and gloom on the topic of cutting emissions that I had to look at this twice. Could it be true, as Brown contends, that “what had appeared to be hopelessly difficult is happening at amazing speed”?
Well, he’s got a chart, so it must be true. It shows a steadily climbing line representing “U.S. Energy-Related Carbon Dioxide Emissions” starting just over 600 million metric tons in 1950 and peaking at over 1,600 in the middle of this decade. The striking part is the precipitous decline over the last few years. It looks like we’re somewhere down around 1,500 now, and falling.
Brown reports that extrapolated data for 2009 will reveal a 5 percent drop in U.S. oil use this year and a 10 percent decline in coal use. The last two years have seen a 9 percent reduction in U.S. carbon emissions from burning all fossil fuels. It seems to be true! As Brown says: “the energy efficiency revolution that is now under way will transform everything from lighting to transportation.”
Apple Quits Business Lobby Over Climate Opposition
Published October 05, 2009 @ 01:36PM PT
Today we iPod Touch addicts and MacBook users can claim one less guilt trip: Apple Computer has become the latest high-profile defection from the US Chamber of Commerce, over the group's opposition to curbing greenhouse gas pollution.
In a letter dated today, communicating the company's immediate resignation, Catherine A. Novelli, the vice-president of worldwide government affairs at Apple wrote, "We strongly object to the chamber's recent comments opposing the E.P.A.'s effort to limit greenhouse gases." Kate Galbraith at The New York Times' "Green Inc." blog snagged the letter and put it online:
As a company, we are working hard to reduce our own greenhouse gas emissions by relying on renewable energy at our facilities and designing more energy-efficient products for our customers. We have undertaken this unilaterally and without government mandate, because we believe it is the right thing to do. For those companies who cannot or will not do the same, Apple supports regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and it is frustrating to find the Chamber at odds with us on this effort.
Inhofe Watch: Senator assembling 'truth squad' for December climate talks
Published September 29, 2009 @ 09:13AM PT
Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Congress' leading climate change denier, told the National Review Online last week that he wants to "lead a truth squad" to December's United Nations climate treaty talks in Copenhagen.
No word at that time on other members of the squad. "I'll see who's willing to come," said Inhofe, who wants "to make sure that those attending the Copenhagen conference know what is really happening in the United States Senate.
"Some people, like Senator Barbara Boxer, will tell the conference, with Waxman-Markey having passed in the House, that they can anticipate that some kind of bill will pass EPW."
Inhofe is speaking of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, of which he is the ranking minority member. Although Inhofe has been eager to portray climate legislation as moribund in the Senate, Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) are apparently going to introduce a climate bill tomorrow, as I reported from Pittsburgh last week.
Second Firm Exits Coal Group That Opposes Climate Bill
Published September 09, 2009 @ 07:30PM PT
Is the coal industry's anti-climate action front group losing steam?
Five weeks ago, news broke that a PR firm hired by one of the most prominent coal lobby groups, the "American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy," had sent forged letters to Congress in opposition to the Waxman-Markey clean energy and climate action bill. The letters were made to look as if they were from community groups. Rep. Ed. Markey has since spearheaded a House investigation into the letters, uncovering several more fakes.
A week ago, Duke Energy announced that it had left ACCCE, because powerful members of the pro-coal group oppose the climate legislation, which Duke supports.
Today another company has fled the ACCCE embrace: Alstom Power, a French company that manufactures power plant parts, and works on carbon sequestration.
Inhofe Watch: Oklahoma senator's torture denial
Published September 03, 2009 @ 04:24PM PT
Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) is the Congressional standard-bearer for global warming denial.
(And the recipient of hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions from the oil, gas, and utility industries.)
Yesterday, he demonstrated that his is an equal opportunity capacity for self-delusion, when he told constituents at a town meeting that there has "never been a case of torture" at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
If only this were true. But it's just as accurate as Senator Jim's claims about global warming, which is to say not accurate at all. The the Center for Constitutional Rights, International Committee for the Red Cross, and the CIA itself have all documented the use of torture by American interrogators against detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison.
It's unlikely that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder would have bucked the wishes of his boss, President Obama, and appointed a prosecutor to investigate abuses of detainees by the CIA, if there were no case to be made.
What's this got to do with global warming? It goes to credibility.
How to Fail at Climate Change Journalism
Published September 01, 2009 @ 12:36PM PT
When does reporting on climate change become reporting fail?
When The Washington Post, one of the nation's most important national newspapers, leaves off sifting for useful facts and dialogue on climate change, in favor of republishing a lot of lowest common denominator yammer.
This is what veteran reporter Doug Feaver did when he lifted around two dozen reader responses to a story, published in yesterday's print and online editions, about how environmentalists are coping with oil lobby tactics for defeating climate policy reform this year. The article focused in particular on the lobbies' efforts to fend off establishment of a carbon dioxide emissions cap, as well as a market for trading carbon emissions credits -- both included in the House-passed climate and energy bill.
As the Senate prepares to take up its versions of the House bill, reporter David Fahrenthold writes, oil and coal lobbies are organizing astroturf rallies. They're also running TV ad blitzkrieg campaigns in the Mountain West, the region that's home to several crucial Senate swing votes.
Environmentalists, meanwhile, are staying largely inside the Beltway, and in his analysis "are struggling in a fight they have spent years setting up."
[Environmentalists] are making slow progress adapting a movement built for other goals -- building alarm over climate change, encouraging people to "green" their lives -- into a political hammer, pushing a complex proposal the last mile through a skeptical Senate.
Even now, these groups differ on whether to scare the public with predictions of heat waves or woo it with promises of green jobs. And they are facing an opposition with tycoon money and a gift for political stagecraft.
"Progressives and clean-energy types . . . made a mistake and slacked off" after the House of Representatives passed its version of a climate-change bill in June, said Joseph Romm, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who blogs on climate issues. "And the other side really kept making its case."
[Then again]..."People have been naysaying all year long," said Josh Dorner of the Sierra Club. But, he said, "We got a bill through the House, and you know . . . all signs point to yes" in the Senate.
That's not to say it's a level playing field: climate change activists are by and large not sitting on the giant pools of money available to fossil energy lobbyists and campaign operatives.
Still, this is a provocative and useful bit of reporting. My own professional observations often support it: When it comes to a substantial "national dialogue" on energy policy and climate change action, I still hear crickets chirping.
