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The ongoing humiliations of the tattered ‘climate skeptic’ movement

These last few years have not been kind to the climate flat-earthers. Their patron political party got drubbed in the mid-terms, the IPCC demolished their favorite talking points, numerous post-IPCC scientific results make the IPCC look conservative, and the impetus for action on climate change is growing at breakneck speed everywhere outside the U.S. executive […]

Senate testimony on yet another example of climate amplifying feedbacks

Global warming makes wildfires more likely and more destructive -- an amplifying climate feedback that releases more carbon into the atmosphere. The full committee of the Senate for Energy and Natural Resources is having a hearing on the subject today. You can get live video here -- click on Live Webcast.

I'm looking forward to this hearing since one of the witnesses is Dr. Thomas Swetnam, Director of the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research and Professor of Dendochronology, University of Arizona. He coathored the August 2006 Science cover story, "Warming and Earlier Spring Increase Western U.S. Forest Wildfire Activity" ($ub. req'd). The abstract is viewable online -- here is the conclusion:

California officials will poison lake to target nonnative fish

We’re not gung-ho about invasive species, but somehow poisoning an entire lake to get rid of them seems counterintuitive. Nonetheless, California’s Lake Davis will get that treatment from state Fish and Game Department officials tomorrow, in the latest attempt in 15 years to rid the reservoir of nonnative northern pike.

Gore recites climate woes in speech at U.N.

Al Gore's address to the U.N. General Assembly today was a much darker affair than I assumed it would be. Given that the stated goal today is to lay the groundwork for international institution-building and unity of vision, I expected he'd take a more inspirational approach. Instead, about three-quarters of his speech was a thorough enumeration of the effects global warming is already having on the planet.

Included in his litany of woes:

• The faster-than-expected melting of Arctic ice, the million of years it will take for the caps to reform if they melt entirely, and the pressure the melting puts on the Greenland shelf.
• The potential six-meter rise in sea levels associated with such melting.
• Glaciers retreating all over the planet.
• The total disappearance of Lake Chad.
• Stronger typhoons, cyclones, and hurricanes making landfall worldwide.
• Record floods in India, Bangladesh, and elsewhere.
• 35,000 people killed in 2003 European heat wave.

Goodness.

Umbra on green laundry detergents

Dear Umbra, What are the “green” high-efficiency detergents for washers? Thanks,Marilyn Dearest Marilyn, A perfect question for parenting fortnight. Children have such tiny clothing that you wouldn’t think it would add up to an increase in laundry volume. Until you saw the proof. Too bad keeping them naked (cuuuute!) and periodically hosing them off is […]

White House behind lobbying campaign to undermine California auto-emissions plan, Waxman charges

Arnold Schwarzenegger, who gave a rather good speech today here at the U.N. climate summit, is famously attempting to cut California's greenhouse-gas emissions. Now come accusations that the White House is behind a lobbying effort to get the U.S. EPA to reject Schwarzenegger's plan to regulate GHGs from cars and trucks.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chair of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, got wind of the situation. Writes Jesse Lee in "The Gavel," Speaker Pelosi's blog:

Chairman Waxman has obtained internal e-mails which show that Transportation Secretary Mary Peters personally directed a behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign approved by the White House to oppose EPA approval of California's landmark standards reducing greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.

New report debunks libertarian attack on Portland city planning

A while back, a guy named Randal O’Toole at the libertarian Cato Institute put out a report "debunking" Portland, Ore.’s efforts to encourage dense, transit-oriented development. As Portland is at the forefront of such efforts, the report was taken as a debunking of New Urbanism in general and got lots and lots of press. The […]

L.A. building schools close to freeways

More than 60,000 students in Los Angeles attend school within 500 feet of a highway, and seven more traffic-spooning campuses are in the works, despite health experts’ warnings that such pollution-proximate students are at increased risk of asthma and other illnesses. All of the schools will be built with air-filtration systems, but such systems do […]

Bush’s climate summit promises no change in U.S. stance

Bush may be hosting a climate summit this week, but "what he will not do, officials said, is chart any shift in policies." Specifically, the Washington Post reports:

Top Bush administration officials said the president is not planning to alter his opposition to mandatory limits on greenhouse gases or to stray from his emphasis on promoting new technologies, especially for nuclear power and for the storage of carbon dioxide produced by coal plants.

This is straight from the Frank Luntz playbook on how to seem like you care about the climate when you don't: Technology, technology, technology. Yada. Yada. Yada. Delay, delay, delay.

Leaders of Chile, Austria, Ecuador, and other countries talk about the climate challenge

Here at today's U.N. Climate Summit in New York, everyone seems to agree that bringing America into a leadership role on climate change is a necessary condition for forestalling the climate change crisis. From my perspective, then, the success or failure of this summit should be judged by its ability to make progress on that front.

We've heard from -- among others -- Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and Federal Chancellor of Austria Alfred Gusenbauer, both of whom delivered passionate speeches about the pressing need for mitigation but without really explaining why countries (and America in particular) are hesitant to mitigate their emissions or how to upend that hesitance. We've heard about California's inspiring example, without hearing how crucial it is for that example to influence the greater United States. And on and on.