Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 1263

NASA: Easily the hottest January — and hottest Jan-April — in temperature record - Plus a new record 12-month global temperature, as predicted

It was the hottest April on record in the NASA dataset.  More significantly, following fast on the heels of the hottest March and hottest Jan-Feb-March on record, it's also the hottest Jan-Feb-March-April on record [click on figure to enlarge:].

The record temperatures we're seeing now are especially impressive because we've been in "the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century." It now appears to be over. It's just hard to stop the march of manmade global warming, well, other than by...

As oil continues to gush into the Gulf, Mississippi offers $75 gas cards to tourists. - Downplaying the BP disaster, Gov. Barbour encourages tourists to 'enjoy the beach' as dead dolphins wash ashore

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) has been an outlier amongst Gulf Coast governors, downplaying the BP oil spill instead of working to mitigate the disaster and rethinking the wisdom of offshore drilling.  TP has the story in this twin repost.

1)  Mississippi officials are encouraging tourists to use more oil, offering people gas cards if they come to the region:

Gov. Haley Barbour said that the Mississippi Gulf Coast is open for business, despite the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In an...

We invest in research, but what about teaching? - Improving science education requires rethinking academic priorities

Since President Obama's announcement of the Educate to Innovate program in November 2009, an encouraging number of technology and media companies, non-profit organizations and government agencies have been working in concert to strengthen the nation's approach to science education. But the reality is that the lion's share of transformation must come from within: from school systems, in the case of K-12 education, and from the academy, in the case of higher education.

A position paper...

Eliminating tax subsidies for oil companies

President Obama's 2011 budget proposes to eliminate nine different tax expenditures that primarily benefit oil and gas companies. Cutting these special tax deductions, preferences, and credits would save the government about $45 billion over the next 10 years.  CAP's Sima Gandhi has the story in this repost:

CAP has previously argued for eliminating tax expenditures for multibillion-dollar oil companies such as BP, ExxonMobil, and Chevron that would be profitable even without government ...

As oil continues to gush into the Gulf, Mississippi offers $75 gas cards to tourists.s - Downplaying the BP disaster, Gov. Barbour encourages tourists to 'enjoy the beach' as dead dolphins wash ashore

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) has been an outlier amongst Gulf Coast governors, downplaying the BP oil spill instead of working to mitigate the disaster and rethinking the wisdom of offshore drilling.  TP has the story in this twin repost.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) has been an outlier amongst Gulf Coast governors, downplaying the BP oil spill instead of working to mitigate the disaster and rethinking the wisdom of offshore drilling. He has claimed that this new spill "it isn't a...

Peak oil production coming sooner than expected - Media, public, governments unprepared for the End of the World (As We Know It)

Source: Sweetnam, DOE, April 2009

The BP oil disaster reminds us once again of the many large costs of oil use not included in its price.  But because conservatives have blocked or rolled back all serious efforts to move us off of oil in the last three decades, peak oil will soon change that (see Deutsche Bank: Oil to hit $175 a barrel by 2016 and World's top energy economist warns peak oil threatens recovery: "We have to leave oil before oil leaves us").

Energy economics expert and...

My interview on Diane Rehm - Plus my 'debate' with Greenpeace on Senate climate bill

You can listen to the full Diane Rehm show here.  This didn't end up being a debate, and I think was pretty informative.

Democracy Now! has posted a full transcript of what they bill as "Greenpeace v. Center for American Progress: A Debate on the Kerry-Lieberman Climate Bill."

I don't really consider it a debate when the other person basically agrees on the problem and simply wants a much stronger bill.

You can watch the video here.  Here's the full segment, including the Kerry intro:

JUAN...

Jon Stewart on BP Oilpocalypse

The Daily Show's segment is titled, "There Will Be Blame":

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c


There Will Be Blame


www.thedailyshow.com

Related Post:

There will be Oil

Transocean dodges paying U.S. corporate taxes by locating its headquarters in Switzerland

Transocean, Ltd, the company that operates the Deepwater Horizon oil rig which recently exploded in the Gulf, is the "world's biggest offshore drilling contractor."

We've already seen that the Deepwater Horizon drill rig used the Marshall Islands' flag as a "flag of convenience" so it "could comply with that country's standards, and not the U.S. regulations" (see "Oil well's blowout preventer had leaks, dead battery, design flaws").

Now the AP reports today that Transocean, after moving its...

Vote online to help fund Climate Crock videos

Click here to vote for Peter Sinclair, our favorite Climate De-Crocker.

If you'd like to have Sinclair get some much needed funds to make his videos even more effective, you can vote for him on the Brighter Planet website: http://brighterplanet.com/project_fund_projects/138.

His project is currently neck and neck for first place and you can give him up to three votes (after having registered at the website).  Voting ends Saturday.

Sinclair, of course, is the guy who proved former TV...