A short while ago, Sir Oolius received a fundraising email from the Competitive Enterprise Institute asking for donations to help them with their new raison d'etre: yelling "FU, Al Gore!" as loudly and as often as possible. The fruits of this effort are now upon us in the form of a national ad whining campaign: If carbon = life, then Al Gore ... Since it's Friday, here's another gem that's too bad even for the CWI to attempt to air nationally:

I have nothing pithy to add to this story, but only because the inanity of the quotes is so hard to top. From Restructuring Today ($ub req'd) (my emphasis on the good bits): Bush touts climate accomplishments of his administration March 6, 2008 Contrary to popular opinion, America is in the lead on global climate change and clean energy technology, President George Bush told the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference in the nation's capital yesterday. "Since I've been the president, the federal government spent more than $12 billion to research, develop, and promote alternative energy sources," said Bush. The private …

Okay, so at the recent Heartless Heartland skeptic/denier/disinformer/climate-destroyer conference (I promise to propose a better term this week!), one of the few attendees who was a non-non-believer in science emailed me the following: Marc Morano, Sen. Inhofe's press secretary, just cited your post on the dangers of consensus as an example of how deniers are forcing climate action proponents to retreat. "We're making them afraid of using the term 'consensus'!" Now, that is humor! After all, my article is titled "The cold truth about climate change: Deniers say there's no consensus about global warming. Well, there's not. There's well-tested science …

Southern Baptist Convention to back off from outright denialism tomorrow?

So, who said: With $55 oil we don't need incentives to oil and gas companies to explore. There are plenty of incentives. Yes, that would be our president, three years ago. And yet with oil at nearly twice that price, Bush still refuses to cut subsidies and shift that money to clean technologies. And he still claims that the solution to our energy and climate problems is "technology, technology, technology, blah, blah." But, as we've seen, that is all just rhetoric or sleight of hand. Daniel J. Weiss, Director of Energy Strategy at the Center for American Progress, has an …

Dingell says he'll release a draft of a House climate change bill for comment and feedback in mid-April (sub rqd).

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Kari Manlove, fellows assistant at the Center for American Progress. ----- Over 100 retailers, manufacturers, and trade and advocacy groups have sent a familiar message to the Senate: Pass the renewable energy tax package! About two weeks ago, over 500 members of the American Council on Renewable Energy also sent a letter to Congress encouraging the renewable of the production and investment tax credits. Ever since these tax provisions were cut from December's energy bill, support for them has been snowballing. There is no coincidence to this latest bombardment. This is the umpteenth …

Most of what needs to be said about the substance of the just-concluded Heartland Institute Skepticpalooza Clown Show has been said (see, in particular, Miles and Joe). Just a couple of stray observations. The science of climate change has nothing to do with it. There are plenty of interesting questions in climate science, but the people at this conference have nothing to say about them. To me, the interesting aspects of the conference are sociological and political. On the sociological front, I was groping around for the right analogy when I remembered a club some kids formed in my high …

If only Congress would have signed on to the Manhattan Declaration years ago, we could have spent valuable resources wisely summarizing nonexistent reports, thereby avoiding the subprime crisis.

That Saturday Night Live-esque headline was inspired by a story in The Wall Street Journal yesterday: Top executives from General Motors Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. Tuesday expressed doubts about the viability of hydrogen fuel cells for mass-market production in the near term and suggested their companies are now betting that electric cars will prove to be a better way to reduce fuel consumption and cut tailpipe emissions on a large scale. Really? Hydrogen cars of dubious viability? Who ever could have guessed that in a million years? And electric cars are "a better way to reduce fuel consumption and …