Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 1168

Saving the parched West

Last year, when the House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, more than half of the representatives from the mountain West voted against the comprehensive climate and energy legislation.  Given that extensive research predicts the West will experience some of the worst impacts of climate change in the U.S., including a permanent drought with Dust-bowl like conditions by mid-century — and an increase of wildfire burn area by as much as 175% — the resistance among western...

NYT: "BP Says That Oil Flow Has Stopped as Cap Is Tested"

Gotta love that New York Times headline.  The paper doesn't trust BP's claims anymore, even while reporting "Live feeds of video images from the undersea well clearly showed that the release of oil had had been completely halted"

I've seen some slight misreporting that the gusher is 100% capped for good.  Apparently not:

"We're encouraged by this development, but this isn't over," Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who is overseeing the federal response to the spill, said in a...

NOAA: June is fourth month in a row of record global temperatures, first half of 2010 also on record pace - 10 warmest years on record all since 1995

NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has posted its State of the Climate, Global Analysis for June.  The results confirm NASA's:   The first half of 2010 breaks the thermometer.

Here are some highlights and a fascinating chart comparing recent years:

June was the fourth consecutive month that was the warmest on record for the combined global land and surface temperatures (March, April, and May were also the warmest). This was the 304th consecutive month with a combined global land...

Bobby Jindal's "barrier islands" are washing away

Last month I warned that Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) was demagoguing a sand barrier 'solution' that probably won't help, will take many months, use up valuable resources, vanish in the first storm — and many scientists think will make things worse.  As one Coastal geologist explained: "I have yet to speak to a scientist who thinks the project will be effective."

So I know you will be shocked, shocked that Jindal's "obvious" response to the BP oil disaster is already failing.  Brad Johnson...

UK, Germany and France: Europe must cut emissions 30% to capture "low carbon economic opportunities."

In articles published simultaneously in newspapers in three countries, U.K. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne, Jean-Louis Borloo and Norbert Roettgen, his counterparts in France and Germany respectively, set out the economic benefits for increasing the EU's climate change targets to a 30% cut.

Here's an excerpt from one of those articles:

Europe's current focus on recovery from recession must not distract us from the question of what kind of economy we want to build...

Energy and Global Warming News for July 15: Will 'solar trees' sprout in parking lots? Obama to promote electric vehicles — not climate action — in Michigan

Will 'Solar Trees' Sprout in Parking Lots?

Part of the fine print in solar power systems is that whatever wattage number is quoted, it is usually "peak watts,'' or the amount of electricity that the panel would deliver when the sun is directly overhead. For the rest of the daylight hours, the output is lower; a graph showing minute-by-minute production resembles a sharp mountain peak.

One way to do better is to mount the panel on a metal backbone and let it tilt over the course of the day...

Michael Lind of the New America Foundation misinforms on both climate science and clean energy - The center cannot hold. Here's why it shouldn't.

As climate change and clean energy have become first-tier political issues, many otherwise smart people who know precious little about either subject are suddenly making pronouncements on both as if they were opining on who should win American Idol.

A case in point is Michael Lind, whose title is "policy director of the economic growth program at the New America Foundation," though as we'll see, his ideas make it sound more like an Old America Foundation and make him sound more like D...

Hate-speech promoter Lord Monckton tries to censor John Abraham - What you can do to help

At the end are some suggestions for how you can show your support for Abraham.

Back in May, engineering professor John Abraham eviscerated The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (TVMOB) in a must-see video.

TVMOB is, of course, a shameless purveyor of hate speech and anti-science disinformation (see Lord Monckton repeats and expands on his charge that those who embrace climate science are "Hitler youth" and fascists and links below).  [Please note that the picture on the right is not...

UK Guardian slams Morano for cyber-bullying and for urging violence against climate scientists

I have previously written about The rise of anti-science cyber bullying and the role played by Swift Boat smearer Marc Morano — who believes climate scientists should be publicly beaten.

The UK Guardian has posted an outstanding piece slamming Morano's "warped world vision" and the 'award' he just won:

But that this award was announced within hours of Morano posting on his Climate Depot website the email addresses of a climate scientist next to a link to my story from last Monday about the...

The challenge of China's green technology policy

I would like to close with an observation that I gained from watching World Cup soccer over the past few weeks. In particular, I was struck by the recurring juxtaposition of two advertising billboards in the background of the soccer pitch, one in red by an American company—McDonald's, the other in blue by a Chinese company—Yingli Solar. I thought to myself, this is the World Cup, the world's biggest sporting stage, and China is proudly showcasing the future of its economy with a...