Politics
An Open Letter From Van Jones: 'What you can do'
Published September 17, 2009 @ 06:03PM PT
Van Jones e-mailed this message to friends and supporters on Tuesday, Sept. 15. It's his first public comment since resigning from the White House on Sept. 6:
Dear Friends:
My family and I want to thank everyone for the outpouring of love and support that we have received over the past week or so. I resigned from the White House on Sept. 6, and I have remained silent since then—in keeping with my promise not to be a distraction during a key moment in the Obama Presidency.
Over the past several days, however, many people have been asking how they can help and what they can do.
The main thing is this: please do everything you can to support both President Obama and the green jobs movement. Winning real change is ultimately the best response to these kinds of smear campaigns.
I ask everyone to:
Super Typhoon Choi-wan Hits 160 mph
Published September 16, 2009 @ 07:53PM PT
Above: Super Typhoon Choi-wan on Sept. 15, 2009. Credit: NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center.
Terrible beauty: Super Typhoon Choi-wan is currently the strongest storm on the planet. The monster storm is sweeping westward across the Pacific with sustained winds of 160 miles per hour (with gusts up to 315 mph) toward Japanese islands to Tokyo's south.
It's not aiming for any major population centers, but is still remarkable for being over 1,000 miles wide, and the strongest of this year's Pacific typhoon season.
A team from Japan's Nagoya University and the country's Meteorological Research Institute say that even fiercer superstorms become more and more likely after 2050, if we don't curb global warming.
If the Earth's ocean surfaces warm by about 3 deg. C from pre-industrial levels over the next century (a scenario explored by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), a super typhoon stronger than Hurricane Katrina could hit Japan some time after 2050, these researchers announced last week. Such extreme superstorms could blow at sustained ground winds of 180 mph.
The world's major industrial nations have jointly agreed to keep the Earth's warming below 2 deg. C. by the end of the century...but have yet to make clear exactly what steps they'll take to make sure of that. And in any case, most climate experts have said they have no faith that the political efforts being made at the moment can possibly hold warming back from less than a disastrous 4-5 deg. C by century's end.
(August's sea surface temperatures were the warmest in at least 160 years.)
What's it going to take to change this probable future into a disaster averted?
What Cost Delaying Climate Bill Until 2010?
Published September 16, 2009 @ 03:21PM PT
Yes, there is a certain logic behind including this image. Read on.
Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) yesterday floated the potential that the Senate might put off climate policy reform to 2010.
As I blogged last night, Mr. Reid suggested to reporters (including one for E&ENews, which broke the story) that the Senate is looking at a "busy, busy time" for the rest of this year, with the fights for health care reform and banking regulatory reform apparently sucking up all available legislative brain matter.
"And, of course, nothing terminates at the end of this year," said Mr. Reid. "We still have next year to complete things [climate and energy policy reform] if we have to."
The mop-up operation commenced promptly, with an aide to the senator backing his boss off the edge of the procrastination cliff: "Mr. Reid's spokesman, Jim Manley, says the senator is 'a long way from making a decision' on when to hold a vote on climate legislation and 'still intends to take health care reform, [financial] regulatory reform and cap-and-trade to the Senate floor by the end of the year,'" Stephen Power reported on The Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog last night,
What's at stake here?
One in Three "Obama Czars" Has Congressional Approval
Published September 13, 2009 @ 10:43AM PT
In the wake of Van Jones' departure from his White House green jobs role, some critics of the Obama administration are conflating their objections to Jones with other avowed worries -- such at the supposedly excessive number of appointees in the Obama administration who are not subject to Congressional oversight.
But a little digging into the facts reveals that there's much less to this "czar crisis" than these reports would have us believe.
There are three dozen or so advisors and appointees being singled out by commentators on Fox News (as documented here by Media Matters), as well as CNN's Lou Dobbs and punditocracy figures like conservative blogger Ilya Somin, as evidence of Obama administration intent to grab extra-Constitutional powers for the executive branch, and evade Congressional oversight.
[[Data point: Dobbs has proven himself susceptible to being spun by misinformation on global warming in the recent past.]]
Lately on the SGW comment boards these "czars" are inflaming a lot of debate. Let's unpack the two essential falsehoods in this supposed controversy -- one overt and one more subtle.
First, the fears:
Change.org member Kevin M. started an action calling for overthrow of "Obama's czars," and posted in the comments:
I don't care what color of skin you have or what party you are from but when [you break] the United States Constitution you should be punished. i don't think he is going take over the world as you people may think that i think ... I'm talk[ing] about the Czar's because they didn't go through congress....
Next: the subtle lie debunked, after the jump.
Despite Mixed Signals on Climate, the Time for Action Is Now
Published September 11, 2009 @ 06:42PM PT
Above: "Photo petition" student climate action, courtesy of It's Getting Hot in Here: Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement
President Obama has signaled that national health care should take precedence over climate change. But his first major speech to the UN, later this month, will be on global warming.
Following the death of Ted Kennedy a few weeks ago, Senators John Kerry and Barabara Boxer delayed the introduction of a climate bill in the Senate. It's now looking increasingly unlikely that the Senate will pass a bill at all this year, although Boxer still maintains that she plans to introduce one in early October.
With all these mixed signals coming from our elected representatives, where does that leave the movement to stop climate change?
Fatalistic Friday: 'We're waiting for our climate speech, Mr. President', major Arctic melt, more
Published September 11, 2009 @ 02:37PM PT
Above: Pacific walrus swimming to shore at an Alaskan beach. The Obama administration may give the species special protections under the Endangered Species Act, because it is losing critical habitat to global warming. Source: US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Presented for your amusement: our semi-regular horse pill of bad news about climate change. Look out -- there's a signpost up ahead that reads...Fatalistic Friday.
Climate Activists Wait for an Obama Speech to Call Their Own: As President Obama delivered his health care speech this week, climate change activists said they were waiting patiently for a similar rhetorical moment. While there is broad acceptance about the president's decision to push global warming to the back burner for now, Obama needs to grant climate change equal attention on prime-time television in coming months, they say.
With less than 100 days until the Copenhagen talks begin, time is running out. "I don't have a problem with him keeping the climate powder dry for now," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, which is pushing to strengthen global warming legislation that passed the House in June. "But, ultimately, it may take a big goosing from the White House to achieve some resolution in the Congress." (ClimateWire)
Arctic ice meltdown greater than average again in 2009: The Arctic sea ice has retreated to the third-lowest level in recorded history -- the fourth time in the past five years that the annual summer meltdown has been far greater than average. The ice has already diminished this year to less than 5.3 million square kilometres, with a week or two of melting left to go. The all-time biggest retreat was recorded in 2007 at 4.13 million square kilometres, and the 2008 retreat fell just short of that record. (CanWest News Service)
Effects of Arctic warming seen as widespread: The Arctic Circle has been warming faster than other latitudes. And the impacts are showing on the region's plants, birds, animals and insects. "The Arctic as we know it may soon be a thing of the past," Eric Post, an associate professor of biology at Penn State University, said in a statement. (Associated Press)
Van Jones Aftermath: O'Reilly tells Beck that communism is dead
Published September 10, 2009 @ 11:06AM PT
Newsflash: Van Jones was a small fish. And communism no longer threatens the United States.
Source: Bill O'Reilly of Fox News
Check out this segment (below) from the Sept. 8 broadcast of The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News. Bill O'Reilly quizzes colleague Glenn Beck on l'affaire Van Jones. And then tell me in the comments what you think is going on here.
