Climate Progress

The League of Conservation Voters beat me to punch in trashing Chevron’s recent greenwashing ads, with “I Will Point Out Hypocrisy“:

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My occasional series on the conservative movement stagnation continues with Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Government Elimination Tax Reform.

On Monday, the New York Times ran a long story, “Among Republicans, a Debate Over the Party’s Road Map Back to Power,” about the response of leading right-wing thinkers to the question “how can conservatives chart a path back to power after this month’s Republican defeats?”

Norquist offered a strong endorsement for continuing the GOP’s ostrich-like [dinosaur-like?] ignorance on climate change:

… he suggested that some calls to update conservatism — by taking global warming more seriously, for instance — were essentially disguised calls to move the party to the left.

“They will be cheerfully ignored,” Mr. Norquist said.

Denial is bliss.

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Ding Dong the Dingell is gone! Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) will take the gavel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in January.

This is huge for those who’ll want strong action on both climate change and clean energy and energy independence (and health care). Heck, it’s the second best piece of news on global warming this month!

I’m told the vote was 137-122. I will post updates as they come.

UPDATE 1: The NYT piece is now up: “Longtime Head of House Energy Panel Is Ousted.”

UPDATE 2: The E&E Daily piece (subs. req’d) is below:

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I’ve never done this sort of thing before, but I am asking you to nominate Climate Progress your favorite science blog (click here) for a Weblog award. Please read this whole post first, however.

If you go to the site, you’ll see why I am sticking my nose under the camel’s tent of shameless self-promotion beyond a general desire to win, drive traffic to this website, create a groundswell of support for strong climate legislation, and possibly save your children and my 22-month-old daughter from a ruined climate….

Certain websites, who will remain nameless www.climateaudit.org and wattsupwiththat.com, have, shall we say, very enthusiastic supporters … not that there’s anything wrong with that, unless, of course, having Climate Audit be cowinner of the 2007 Best Science blog rubs you the wrong way.

Please note the Rules and FAQs:

• The number of nominations a blog receives is irrelevant. One nomination is enough…
• Rather than add a “me too” nomination for a site you’re encouraged to use the “+” icon to indicate your preference for nominees. The “+” ratings are one extra piece of information the finalist selection panel can use to help generate the finalist slates in each category.
• The nomination period has been extended to Friday, November 21, 2008 [that would be tomorrow].

There will only be 10-15 finalists, so please do act now (click here). Thank you for your support.

Okay, I made up the last two, but the Washington Post reports today:

For the first time, a federal advisory board has approved criteria that clear the way for farmed fish to be labeled “organic,” a move that pleased aquaculture producers even as it angered environmentalists and consumer advocates.

You can put lipstick on a pig…. No, wrong aphorism. You can call a dog a horse, but it is still a dog … though some conservatives will no doubt try to ride it.

OK, maybe there isn’t a good aphorism, but this last minute frenzy of destruction is getting absurd (see “Bush makes final push to worsen warming, make our children dumber, and sicken all Americans“). The story offers several reasons why this latest assault on our language and environment is a bad idea:

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Part 1 looked at some of the climate actions Obama should take in his first hundred days. This post looks at some of the tough questions that are posed by the climate and energy dilemmas.

To lead America into a post-carbon economy, President Obama and the 111th Congress will have to revolutionize the biggest and most heavily lobbied of the government’s programs. That means taking on the armies of the status quo, who have money and inertia on their side.

It’s a battle that must be fought and won. Today, our public policy is riddled with crisis-inducing, self-defeating contradictions. The next Congress will have to resolve some tough questions that past Congresses avoided. For example:

1. What action will Congress take to prove to the world that the United States is serious about addressing climate action?

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The so-called paper of record ran a major story Tuesday on the country’s most infamous climate-driven pest, “Bark Beetles Kill Millions of Acres of Trees in West.” Great story, other than neglecting to mention climate change. It’d be like an article on an outbreak of avian flu that left out any discussion of birds

So we have the national “liberal” media, like the NYT and NBC, blowing this story, while the local, conservative media get it right, see “conservative San Diego Union knows climate change is killing Western forests” and “Oldest Utah newspaper: Bark-beetle driven wildfires are a vicious climate cycle.”

Of course, the journal Nature understands the science, as an April article made clear: “Mountain pine beetle and forest carbon feedback to climate change.” So does the Canadian media: “Climate-Driven Pest Devours Canada’s Forests.”

The NYT did get the grim, superficial facts of the story right:

From New Mexico to British Columbia, the region’s signature pine forests are succumbing to a huge infestation of mountain pine beetles that are turning a blanket of green forest into a blanket of rust red. Montana has lost a million acres of trees to the beetles, and in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming the situation is worse.

“We’re seeing exponential growth of the infestation,” said Clint Kyhl, director of a Forest Service incident management team in Laramie, Wyo., that was set up to deal with the threat of fire from dead forests. Increased construction of homes in forest areas over the last 20 years makes the problem worse.

Yeah, home building is the cause of this problem — that’s why in Alaska, “over three million acres of forest land has been devastated by the beetle,” as senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) described in a May 2006 speech on climate change. Seriously, that is pretty much the only explanation the NYT story offers, although the accompanying video does inch much closer to the truth, strangely enough.

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E&E News (subs. req’d) has the breaking story on the political pugilistic prizefight to police pollution:

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) scored a slim opening round win today in his bid to take the gavel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee from Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.).

Waxman captured a majority of support from the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, a group heavily tilted toward allies of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). The final tally was 25-22, according to Steering Committee co-Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.)

So this was definitely not a knockout, but more of a split decision by the judges. The bad news for Waxman is that he scored a close win in a Pelosi-friendly group that is more liberal than the Democratic caucus as a whole.

To win the chairmanship, Waxman, a 17-term lawmaker from Beverly Hills, still needs a majority vote from the entire House Democratic Caucus. A secret-ballot vote is scheduled for 9 a.m tomorrow among approximately 260 Democrats who will serve in the 111th Congress — and a heavy dose of lobbying from both sides is expected before then.

The prize remains a big one, which is why this is a major prizefight:

The victor will play an important role over the next two years in moving President-elect Barack Obama’s energy, environment and health care agenda.

Here are more details:

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NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reports:

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

Given that this report is just out, I’m assuming they have sorted out the data entry issues that briefly caused problems for NASA (see here and here). Also worth noting from the NCDC report:

• According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the October 2008 Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent, which is measured from passive microwave instruments onboard NOAA satellites, was the third least October sea ice extent on record, behind 2007 and 2006. Average ice extent during October 2008 was 8.4 million square kilometers, which is 9.5 percent below the 1979-2000 average. Sea ice extent for October has decreased at a rate of 5.4 percent per decade, since satellite records began in 1979.
• El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions remained in a neutral phase during October.

Since interest in the monthly temperature reports is so keen these days, let me repeat the key points from my an earlier post on the monthly data. While the monthly data doesn’t tell us much about the climate, the peer-reviewed scientific literature has a couple of interesting forecasts for the next decade:

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Assuming this story is real — I’ll let those who can translate Chinese check out the original source, which, of course, could also be wrong — the US government isn’t going to let this happen.

But I’m gonna print this because the non-primary source, The Truth About Cars, is pretty credible, and because I can put this under the category (gallow) humor:

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