Articles by Joseph Romm

State’s governor pursuing clean energy and GHG reductions

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Kari Manlove, fellows assistant at the Center for American Progress.

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Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has prioritized clean energy policy and aims to reduce the state's energy consumption 15 percent by 2015. In addition, Maryland is a part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electric utilities.

With those goals topping the governor's agenda, Maryland's Senate chambers have been a hot spot for progressive policy lately, juggling a handful of issues that will become magnified this summer as we launch into the national debate on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.

Research finds (once again) that climate change is not caused by cosmic rays

One more denier talking point has been debunked by scientists using actual observations. You can read the Science News article here, which explains, "New research has dealt a blow to the skeptics who argue that climate change is all due to cosmic rays rather than to man-made greenhouse gases."

You can read the original article, just published by the Institute of Physics' Environmental Research Letters, "Testing the proposed causal link between cosmic rays and cloud cover," online here. The major finding:

[N]o evidence could be found of changes in the cloud cover from known changes in the cosmic ray ionization rate.

Here is the full abstract:

Corn hits a new record — $6 a bushel

At the end of February, I blogged on a Fortune article that had the subhead "The ethanol boom is running out of gas as corn prices spike." That article noted:

Spurred by an ethanol plant construction binge, corn prices have gone stratospheric, soaring from below $2 a bushel in 2006 to over $5.25 a bushel today. As a result, it's become difficult for ethanol plants to make a healthy profit, even with oil at $100 a barrel.

Just six weeks later, we have an AP article with the subhead "Corn Prices Jump to Record $6 a Bushel, Driving Up Costs for Food, Alternative Energy."

And it gets better worse:

At least, according to South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.):

"Climate change is the road less traveled but he's traveled it even more than Al Gore," Graham said. "Al Gore has talked about it and deserves great recognition but he was around here a long time and never introduced a bill."

Let's see: McCain got 43 votes the first time he pushed his bill with Lieberman. He added some nuclear subsidies for the second go-round and got 38 votes. I'm not sure he can lay claim to great achievements.

The key point for me is that unlike Gore -- and unlike Clinton and Obama -- McCain doesn't support the policies needed to successfully address catastrophic climate change without devastating the economy (and without an absurd over-reliance on nuclear power):

• McCain "might take [new CAFE standards] off the books"
• McCain's crooked talk on nuclear power
• Even more doubletalk on mandates from John McCain
• Why John McCain isn't the candidate to stop global warming
• McCain's doubletalk express on global warming

Heck, McCain ramped down his talk about climate recently, even as Gore ramps up his communications effort. For the full statement by Graham, and a full rebuttal, see ThinkProgress, which has a great post that I'll just reprint below [unindented]: