Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 1085

Martin Bunzl on "the definitive killer objection to geoengineering as even a temporary fix"

Solar radiation management –  aka 'hard' geo-engineering — is, literally, a smoke and mirrors solution to the dangers posed by unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases,.

As science advisor John Holdren resasserted in 2009 of strategies such as space mirrors or aerosol injection, "The 'geo-engineering' approaches considered so far appear to be afflicted with some combination of high costs, low leverage, and a high likelihood of serious side effects."

And, of course, those 'solutions' do...

Peabody Chairman and CEO Boyce: We can only save the poor by destroying them — with coal

The greatest crisis we confront in the 21st Century is not a future environmental crisis predicted by computer models, but a human crisis today that is fully within our power to solve. For too long, too many have been focused on the wrong end game.

For everyone who has voiced a 2050 greenhouse gas goal, we need 10 people and policy bodies working toward the goal of broad energy access. Only once we have a growing, vibrant, global economy providing energy access and an improved human...

Climate zombies on the march: Senate nominee John Raese (R-WV) blames volcanoes for global warming

This a TP cross-post.

Millionaire businessman John Raese, running as the GOP Senate nominee to fill Robert Byrd's West Virginia seat, wants to take the state back to the 19th century. Not only does he want to return capitalism to the era before child labor laws, Social Security, and civil rights laws, he also promotes a pre-industrial vision of science. In an interview with Real Clear Politics, Raese said he has "zero" trust that "human activity is contributing to climate change":

The...

Dirty Money: Big Oil and corporate polluters spent over $500 million to kill climate bill, push offshore drilling

See full data on how much energy companies and trade associations spent on oil lobbying for 2009-2010 (.xls)

Oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill makes a pattern in Gulf waters in this AP photo.  Here's another pattern:  Big Oil and its allies have spent more than  half a billion dollars in lobbying and campaign contributions to stop pollution reductions over the past year an a half .

CAPAF's Daniel J. Weiss, Rebecca Lefton, and Susan Lyon have the numbers and charts in...

Energy and Global Warming News for September 27: Renewables continue remarkable growth; China wants climate treaty by 2011; China's electric car 'moon shot'

Growth in renewables capacity, annual and five-year average

Renewables Continue Remarkable Growth

By 2010, renewable energy had reached a clear tipping point in the context of global energy supply, concludes the "Renewables 2010 Global Status Report." With renewables comprising fully one quarter of global power capacity from all sources and delivering 18% of global electricity supply in 2009, the latest release of the definitive assessment of the state of the global renewable...

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres: There will be no 'Big Bang' climate pact

Brad Johnson of The Wonk Room is covering the Clinton Global Initiative.

Speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative on Tuesday, new UN climate chief Christiana Figueres criticized the failures of the Copenhagen talks and said that a comprehensive "big bang" global climate treaty is not possible.

Figures, who was chosen to be the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary after Yvo de Boer stepped down following Copenhagen, discussed her expectations...

What will future generations condemn us for?

Once, pretty much everywhere, beating your wife and children was regarded as a father's duty, homosexuality was a hanging offense, and waterboarding was approved — in fact, invented — by the Catholic Church. Through the middle of the 19th century, the United States and other nations in the Americas condoned plantation slavery. Many of our grandparents were born in states where women were forbidden to vote. And well into the 20th century, lynch mobs in this country stripped, tortured...

Van Jones slams Koch Industries' role in Prop 23 - Calls for progressives to stand up to extremists in November: "I don't think you want the Tea Party running your community, running your family, running your government."

Lee Fang of Wonk Room has the story and the video.

Well before the conglomerate Koch Industries plunged $1 million into Prop 23 — a ballot initiative in California to essentially repeal the state's revolutionary clean energy climate change law AB 32 — the Wonk Room revealed that front groups controlled by Koch had been working to promote Prop 23. Americans for Prosperity, the front group founded and financed by Koch Industries' executive David Koch, had organized Tea Party rallies in...

The Light Fantastic

[image error]Thomas Edison perfected the first incandescent light bulb in 1879. It burned for 13.5 hours. And incandescent bulbs are still burning 131 years later, but at a price that's costly to both our wallets and the environment. Incandescents are extremely inefficient. They operate at about 20 percent efficiency with the other 80 percent given off as heat energy. And an incandescent light bulb's average lifespan is only around 5,000 hours or roughly one year.

But while incandescents are looking ...

Christine O'Donnell debunks Darwin: "Why aren't monkeys still evolving into humans?"

Put on your head vises.  Here's more brain busting must-see-TV from the one-time dabbler in witchcraft and full-time GOP Senate candidate, courtesy of Bill Maher, via a TP cross-post:

For the second week in a row, HBO's Real Time host Bill Maher revealed a previously-unaired clip of Christine O'Donnell on Politically Incorrect. Recall, last week Maher showed a clip of O'Donnell professing to dabble into witchcraft, and pledged to show a new clip of O'Donnell every week until O'Donnell...