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Ford, Toyota, GM all to help meet Obama’s goal of 1 million plug-ins by 2015

Major car companies are starting to vote on their choice for the “car and fuel of the future” with big bets on manufacturing capacity.  The winner, no surprise, is going to be highly efficient plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and pure electric vehicles (see, for instance, “Everything you could want to know about plug-in and EV […]

What’s going down, Down Under?

Australia is the canary-in-the-coal-mine koala-in-the-bushfire for climate change, since it is the most arid habited continent (see “Australia today offers horrific glimpse of U.S. Southwest, much of planet, post-2040” and “Global Boiling: Australia’s hellish black Saturday of extreme fire“).  Prime Minister Rudd has been “moving forward with an imperfect but positive climate policy agenda that […]

The epic battle for the Senate, Part 1: What we can learn from the House vote.

A few moderate senators in both parties hold in their hands the fate of climate legislation — and hence the possibility that the nation and the world might have a realistic chance of averting catastrophic climate impacts.  That’s because The GOP has made the fateful — and fatal — decision to cast its lot with […]

Must-read NOAA paper smacks down the deniers

Nothing occupies global warming deniers more than trying to prove that the U.S. temperature record — a tiny portion of the global temperature record — is not reliable.  Now NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center has issued an excellent Q&A, “Is the U.S. Temperature Record Reliable?” that should settle that question for any objective observer. The […]

Lamar Alexander (R-TN) calls nuclear “the cheap clean energy solution”

Lamar Alexander (R-TN) is somewhat bizarrely called a Senate “fence-sitter” by the E&E News analysis (which I’ll blog on shortly). If you’re watching the Senate climate hearing, then you just heard the most uninformed endorsement of nuclear power ever offered in the U.S. Senate. One can say many things about 100 new nuclear power plants […]

France imports UK electricity as summer heatwave puts a third of its nukes out of action

To avoid maxxing out on my July quota of irony in the first week of the month, I will simply report this as a straight news story.  The UK Times reports: With temperatures across much of France surging above 30C this week, EDF’s reactors are generating the lowest level of electricity in six years, forcing […]

“Republicans can’t regain their souls for demagoguing the issue”

“There’s got to be something more important than getting reelected,” Perriello said in an interview with Politico. “If I lose my seat, and that’s the worst that happens, I could live with that.” But the 34-year-old believes Democrats will win this fight. “This is a gift,” Perriello said of the vote. “For the first time […]

How I learned to stop worrying and love the blogosphere

The debate over Waxman-Markey reminds me of what I love most about blogging. No, it’s not what you think, it’s not the chance to be snarky.  I don’t need the blogosphere for that. No, what I like about the blogosphere is that it ultimately drives a precision in language and a clarity of thought because […]

Roger Pielke Sr. misrepresents the science of global warming

RealClimate has just eviscerated Roger Pielke, Sr. in an important post, “More bubkes.”  I am going to excerpt it at length because: It thoroughly debunks some now-standard denier talking points on sea level rise, ocean heat content, and Arctic sea ice that the Pielkes, WattsUpWithThat, Inhofe, George Will and others have been pushing. It has […]

Another ExxonMobil deceit: They are still funding climate science deniers despite public pledge

In its May 2008 Corporate Citizenship Report, ExxonMobil promised: In 2008, we will discontinue contributions to several public policy research groups whose positions on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner. Bullshit. Okay, you’re not shocked. […]