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Amtrak arrests its own contest participant

Getting a grip on climate chaos is going to require a functioning rail system -- one that people will willingly use.

Would such a system arrest photographers participating in its own annual photo contest?

Every time Amtrak falls apart -- which typically occurs on days ending in "y" -- it hurts us all. If Obama wants to make concrete change fast, he could do no better than to make rail revitalization a high priority. He should aim to create a system that he would be happy to have Malia, Sasha, and Michelle use.

Meanwhile, we've got Amtrak ... because the federal government doesn't think the DMV inflicts quite enough suffering.

NY Daily News: Obama considering moving USDA pick Vilsack to commerce

Obama's nomination of former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack as USDA chief is turning into a strange saga.

First a crew of Big Organic execs join forces with a few activists to launch an enigmatic website to "support Vilsack" -- even though he's a shoo-in for confirmation.

Now comes this, from the Daily News "Mouth of the Potomac" blog:

A well-placed source says one option under consideration in filling the now vacant commerce secretary's slot is to tap ex-Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack for the job. Vilsack already has been named to serve as Barack Obama's agriculture secretary, and easily could move into the commerce position. The source tells The Mouth that Vilsack would be "a perfect choice" for Obama.

Huh? I don't understand how it would be "easy" to move a nominee from one agency to another; seems like it would be politically messy. "He's the ideal USDA pick ... no, I mean, he's the ideal commerce pick!" But the transition team has already vetted Vilsack; maybe that's what the reporter meant by "easy."

If the switch did happen, we'd be back to square one viz., the USDA: with the Obama team circulating a rather dismal short list, while activists push a more progressive choice.

Update [2009-1-7 13:25:46 by Tom Philpott]:According to "sources close to" Vilsack, the ex-governor of Iowa won't be moved from USDA to commerce, Des Moines television station KCCI reported Wednesday. Vilsack is in Washington, D.C., "interviewing candidates for future [USDA] staff positions."

Skeptic screed on progressive news site recycles familiar myths

This post was co-written with David Roberts.

Recently Harold Ambler, climate crank and proprietor of TalkingAboutTheWeather.com, published an essay on Huffington Post replete with gross factual errors about the science of climate change.

Word is that this was an editorial slip-up on HuffPo's part; they don't typically provide a place for this kind of agitprop. The essay is gone from the site's portal pages and rumor has it The Huff herself may address the issue soon.

Regardless, the essay is out there getting skeptics all twitterpated (again). These folks can't find a scientific journal with two hands and a flashlight, but nothing escapes their RSS feeds.

So lets examine a few of the claims again. After all, the only thing hucksters need is for the rest of us to get tired of repeating the same damn truths over and over again. Right?

Right off the bat Mr. Ambler recycles a classic, one of the most durable and thoroughly discredited skeptic chestnuts:

Because it turns out that there is an 800-year lag between temperature and carbon dioxide [in the ice age record], unlike the sense conveyed by Mr. Gore's graph. You are probably wondering by now -- and if you are not, you should be -- which rises first, carbon dioxide or temperature. The answer? Temperature. In every case, the ice-core data shows that temperature rises precede rises in carbon dioxide by, on average, 800 years.

The basic science of atmospheric carbon dioxide is well explained in the IPCC reports and on numerous web sites, including in Grist's How to Talk to a Skeptic series. It's puzzling that it continues to confuse skeptics.

Former N.Y. guv says stimulus funding should go to smart meters and plug-in charging stations

Newly minted Slate columnist Eliot Spitzer (yep, that one) has some deep thoughts about, ahem, stimulus. He says the big bucks should be spent on transforming the economy rather than on repairing the bridges, buildings, and other infrastructure of yesteryear, and he names two energy initiatives as top priorities:

In the energy arena, two investments are critical. The first is smart meters. These would permit, with a smart grid, time-of-day pricing for all consumers, with potentially double-digit reductions in peak demand, significant cost savings, and consequential remarkable energy and environmental impacts. These declines in peak demand would translate into dramatic reduction in the number of new power plants. The problem with installation of smart meters has been both the cost and, often, state-by-state regulatory hurdles. Now is the moment to sweep both aside and transform our entire electricity market into a smart market.

Second, the most significant hurdle to beginning the shift to nongasoline-based cars is the lack of an infrastructure to distribute the alternative energy, whether it is electricity -- plug-in hybrids -- or natural gas or even hydrogen. Once that infrastructure is there, it is said, consumers will be able to opt for the new technology. If that is so, let us build that infrastructure now: Transform existing gas stations so they can serve as distribution points for natural gas or hydrogen, build plug-in charging centers at parking lots, and design units for at-home garages. These would, indeed, be transformative investments.

Newsweek once again deceives its readers about energy alternatives

Two Stanford scholars have taken to the pages of Newsweek to pen a piece on "clean coal" that embodies all the pretzel logic surrounding that subject.

It's called "Dirty Coal Is Winning" -- and the reason dirty coal is winning, we're told, is that we're not dumping enough money into the quest for clean coal. Oh, and those pesky environmentalists:

Environmentalists, in their opposition to coal of any kind, may provide the coup de grâce. Greenpeace, riffing on James Bond, is hawking a "Coalfinger" spoof on the internet and is deep in a campaign to stop all new coal plants. U.S. environmental groups recently announced a campaign to expose clean coal as a chimera. Thanks to such efforts, in the United States it's now nearly impossible to build any kind of coal plant, including tests of clean technology. As the world economy recovers, nations will once again turn to their old stalwart, dirty coal.

Damn greens! Their efforts to expose the fact that there's no such thing as clean coal are preventing us from creating something called clean coal. (But seriously: Can someone point to a bona fide test of coal with CCS that enviros prevented? Not "CCS ready," that is, but actual CCS?)

Notice, though, the unspoken premise here: Our choice is dirty coal or "clean coal." If we don't spend billions on "clean coal," we're stuck with dirty coal.

It says something extremely bad about our energy debate that you can write a piece in Newsweek that simply assumes that premise, without defense. Let's go down the same old path:

Mississippi governor illustrates how the resource curse works in America

If you think of U.S. energy policy in Freudian terms, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour represents the pure, unbridled id. His energy strategy for the state? "More energy."

If you're wondering what that means, he spells it out:

Mississippi has large deposits of lignite coal, and the Mississippi Power Co. has announced that it will build a coal-fired electrical generation facility that will have carbon capture and sequestration. As I understand it, this coal-fired plant will have the emissions of a power plant powered by natural gas because the captured carbon will be compressed and then injected into older oil wells to boost production.

Rentech has announced that it's building a coal-to-liquids fuels plant near Natchez. In Greenville we've got a biodiesel plant going in. And Entergy has already applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a second nuclear reactor near St. Francisville.

The response of his interlocutor T. Boone Pickens? "The rest of the country might want to take a look at your state."

Yeah, take a look at what the resource curse looks like in America: Among U.S. states Mississippi ranks 50th in infant mortality, first in children living in poverty, second in teen pregnancies, 48th in bachelor degrees, 50th in per-capita income, first in obesity, 49th in overall health, second in unemployment, and first in poverty.

Despite the grinding poverty, Mississippi ranks 14th in per-capita energy consumption, perhaps because it ranks 47th in energy efficiency.

Yes, the rest of the country might want to take a look at what a supply-obsessed "more energy" strategy yields.

House Speaker says she has the votes for a cap-and-trade bill, but …

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday said she has enough votes in the House to pass cap-and-trade legislation aimed at curbing greenhouse-gas emissions, but she's not certain Democrats will be able to do that in 2009.

"I'm not sure this year, because I don't know if we'll be ready," Pelosi said in a press conference yesterday. "We won't go before we're ready."

E&E reports ($ub req'd):

Pelosi acknowledged the December deadline looming over U.N. negotiations toward a new international climate change agreement. "We're sensitive to Copenhagen and the rest of that," she said, referring to the Denmark capital that will host the next annual U.N. conference. "And it's a very high priority for me."

But Pelosi said she could not guarantee that President-elect Barack Obama would be able to sign a cap-and-trade law before Copenhagen.

"I would certainly hope so, but I can't tell you that that is the case right now," she said. "Of all the bills that we have done, you know I sort of know the policies, I know what the possibilities are, this is the most, should we say, controversial, not controversial, mysterious."

Pelosi added that any legislation on cap-and-trade needs to be crafted carefully. "We have to do it right. I don't think we can take any chances. So this is going to take some very thorough scrutiny as to how we go forward."

Big Organic execs and some activists rally behind Obama's USDA pick

A group of NGO chiefs, activists, and Big Organic executives have launched a website and petition to support Tom Vilsack, president-elect Barack Obama's choice to lead USDA.

Participants in the site, known as supportvilsack.com, include Bob Scowcroft, executive director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation; Iowa sustainable-food activist Denise O'Brien (who recently guest-posted on Gristmill); Wayne Pacelle, CEO of the U.S. Humane Society; Gary Hirshberg, CEO of organic-yogurt giant Stonyfield Farm; Steve Demos, founder of soy-food giant White Wave (now owned by industrial-dairy behemoth Dean Foods); and several others.

Institutionally, the Organic Trade Association -- whose members range from tiny producers of hemp products to global agribiz giant Bunge -- signed on.

The effort strikes me as bizarre. Why band together to support someone who's a shoo-in to be confirmed? Vilsack is no firebrand reformer; his nomination will generate little controversy in the Senate.

Moreover, I understand the argument -- made on Gristmill by O'Brien and by John Crabtree of the Center for Rural Affairs -- that Vilsack is a relatively innocuous pick. After all, Obama's short list of USDA candidates included some real doozies, like agribusiness lobbyist Charles Stenholm.

But Vilsack isn't likely to lead U.S. food/agriculture policy in new, more sustainable and socially just directions -- at least not without a real push from below. As I've written before (and many others have pointed out), he has been a fervent booster of the genetically modified seed and biofuel industries -- both of which proffer what I think are dead-end "solutions" to environmental problems and offer little to any but the largest-scale and most commodity-oriented farmers.

I agree with the thesis that the sustainable-food movement should "work with" Vilsack, in the sense of pushing him to chart new directions in food/ag policy. But the "support Vilsack" movement (if it can be called that) seems less like a push than an uncritical embrace. Why, again?

Colorado's new senator married to environmental lawyer

While we don't know much about the environmental stances of newly appointed Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet (D), we do know that the man who will fill Ken Salazar's seat has at least one interesting tie to the green community.

His wife, Susan Daggett, is an environmental lawyer who formerly worked for the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, where she represented environmental groups in litigation related to the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and other environmental laws.

Daggett has also worked for the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, and is now an independent consultant who works with conservation groups on oil and gas development issues in the Rocky Mountain region. She is currently a member of the Denver Board of Water Commissioners, a member of the board of trustees for The Nature Conservancy's Colorado chapter, and a member of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper's Greenprint Council, which helps direct the Greenprint Denver sustainable-development initiative.

Bennet is the son of Douglas Bennet, who has served as the CEO of NPR, the president of Wesleyan University, and assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs in the Clinton administration. Michael Bennet's brother, James Bennet, is the editor of The Atlantic Monthly and a former New York Times correspondent.

The staggering cost of new nuclear power

A new study [PDF] puts the generation costs for power from new nuclear plants at from 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour -- triple current U.S. electricity rates!

This staggering price is far higher than the cost of a variety of carbon-free renewable power sources available today -- and 10 times the cost of energy efficiency (see here).

The new study, Business Risks and Costs of New Nuclear Power [PDF], is one of the most detailed cost analyses publicly available on the current generation of nuclear power plants being considered in this country. It is by a leading expert in power plant costs, Craig A. Severance. A practicing CPA, Severance is co-author of The Economics of Nuclear and Coal Power (Praeger 1976), and former Assistant to the Chairman and to Commerce Counsel, Iowa State Commerce Commission.

This important new analysis is being published by Climate Progress because it fills a critical gap in the current debate over nuclear power -- transparency. Severance explains: