In response to growing protest, the CEO of General Motors publicly committed to reviewing his corporation’s funding of the Heartland Insitute, the radical right-wing organization that is planning a campaign to spread climate-science denial in public classrooms. Over 10,000 GM owners have signed a petition organized by Forecast the Facts to get GM to pledge not to support Heartland’s attacks on science. GM CEO Dan Akerson told Climate One’s Greg Dalton at a San Francisco Commonwealth Club appearance that he does not agree with Heartland’s climate denial.

Akerson stated that he was castigated by other GM executives after saying that he believes global warming is real, calling dissent on climate science “healthy.” He described GM’s efforts to reduce its ecological footprint and distanced himself from the work of the GM Foundation, the charitable arm of General Motors that made the contribution. Akerson then promised to review his company’s support for the Heartland Institute:

This is $15,000 that was committed to before I came in. I also think the Heartland Institute, I’m told, does other things. I find this interesting. I won’t go any further, but I’m going to take another look at it when I get back to Detroit. I’ll leave it at that.

Watch it:

Before the petition effort, GM spokesperson earlier defended the corporation’s support for the Heartland Institute, calling its work “careful and considerate.”

“I always say actions matter more than words,” Akerson said at the beginning of his response.

Forecast the Facts director Daniel Souweine issued this reply:

We are encouraged that CEO Dan Akerson has committed to review GM’s funding of the Heartland Institute. We hope that review leads to the result that more than 10,000 GM owners have been asking for: a public commitment by GM to stop funding Heartland immediately.

One in a series of posts about the Heartland Institute’s inner workings, from internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green. ThinkProgress is among several publications to have published documents attributed to the Heartland Institute and sent to us from an anonymous and then unknown source. The source later revealed himself. Heartland Institute has issued several press releases claiming that one document (“2012 Climate Strategy”) is fake and asserting other claims regarding the other documents. ThinkProgress has taken down the “2012 Climate Strategy” document as it determines the document’s authenticity.

Third least snowy winter on record for the contiguous U.S.

Contiguous U.S. temperatures for winter (the months of December – January – February), from 1895 – 2012. The winter of 2011 – 2012 was the 4th warmest winter on record, behind 2000, 1999, and 1992. Winter temperatures have increased by abot 1.7°F per century (red linear trend line.) Image credit: National Climatic Data Center.

by Jeff Masters, excerpted from the WunderBlog

February is gone, and the non-winter of 2011 – 2012 is the history books as the fourth warmest in U.S. history, said NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center yesterday. The winter average temperature of 36.8°F was just 0.4°F cooler than the warmest winter on record, the winter of 1999 – 2000. If you lived in the Northern Plains, Midwest, Southeast and Northeast, it seemed like winter never really arrived this year–27 states in this region had top-ten warmest winters. Across the U.S., only New Mexico (41st coolest) and Alaska (35th coolest) had winter temperatures colder than average. According to NOAA’s Climate Extremes Index, the percent area of the U.S. experiencing extremes in warm maximum temperatures (top 10% on record) was 49 percent–the 4th highest value since the index began being computed in 1911. Jackson, Kentucky, Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, and Trenton, New Jersey all had their warmest winter on record.

Read more

by Dr. Sarah Green, reposted from Skeptical Science

“Yes, our climates change. They’ve been changing ever since the Earth was formed.” — Rick Perry

Previous major global climate changes were glacial cycles that happened long before human civilization developed.

The human species evolved during the last 2.5 million years. Our far distant ancestors survived through multiple gradual cycles of cold ice ages, but did not experience any previous “hot ages.”

We homo sapiens in our current form appeared only about 200,000 years ago. So our species has survived two ice ages. In each ice age global temperatures were colder by 4 °C. The warmest period ever experienced by early humans was [at most] about 1 °C warmer (global average) than today. That period occurred between the two most recent ice ages, 120,000 years ago (Eemian). Over the next 100,000 years temperatures gradually decreased into a new ice age. During that colder period humans began to expand out of Africa and across the globe. Ever since the Eemian much cooler temperatures have been the norm.

Human civilization is roughly 12,000 years old, as defined by the start of permanent settlements and agriculture. Agriculture became established as the glaciers retreated from the last ice age. Modern society has developed entirely in our current geological epoch, the Holocene. Global temperatures haven’t varied by more than ±1 °C since. There have been regional shifts in climate (Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age, etc), but since civilization began humans have never experienced a hotter global climate than now.

Going back further, over a million years or so, our pre-human predecessors experienced a series of long cold glacial cycles. Several short interglacial periods were as warm or slightly warmer than our current climate. For example, the climate 400 kyrs ago, was slightly warmer than now. But more typically for the last million years it’s been 4 to 8 °C colder. Each transition from warm to glacial ages and back took thousands of years, giving humans and prehumans many generations to adjust.

So, really, the climate hasn’t changed much since we settled into towns, invented plumbing, and started calling ourselves civilized.

Since humans and our human ancestors have been on Earth, average global temperatures have never been 3 °C warmer than now. In the next 100 years our children will be the first people ever to experience that kind of climate

But, perhaps Mr. Perry is thinking he’d like to live in a climate eons ago, closer to when the Earth was formed.

Read more

A slanted Washington Post story by Peter Whoriskey attacked the innovative $50 light bulb that won the Department of Energy’s $10 million L Prize for lighting innovation as being “costly,” “exorbitant,” and “too pricey” in comparison to a $1 incandescent bulb — based on faulty math. The Philips LED bulb, which is assembled in Wisconsin with computer chips made in California, is a technical breakthrough, with high-efficiency natural-color light. At no point does the article — which appeared online with the tendentious headline “Government-subsidized green light bulb carries costly price tag” — compare the lifetime cost of the super-efficient (10-watt), long-lasting (30-year) bulb with that of traditional 60-watt light bulbs. An accompanying infographic prepared by Patterson Clark and Bonnie Berkowitz compared costs, asserting that the lifetime cost of the $50 bulb plus electricity would end up being $5 more than traditional bulbs:

Washington Post graphic incorrectly claims lifetime cost of $50 LED bulb is $5 higher than traditional incandescents.

Unfortunately for the Washington Post’s credibility, the cost calculation was extremely wrong. Clark and Berkowitz’s assessment assumes that the kilowatt-hour price of electricity is $0.01, instead of actual average retail price of $0.12 and rising. This factor-of-ten error demolishes the entire premise of Whoriskey’s article. ThinkProgress Green has prepared a corrected graph, based on a low-ball estimate of $0.10/kWh electricity:

A corrected version of the Washington Post lightbulb cost comparison shows $50 LED bulb over $100 cheaper than incandescents. Prepared by ThinkProgress Green.

Instead of issuing a correction, the Washington Post silently excised the false section of their infographic online.

Whoriskey’s attack on the innovative, money-saving light bulb was promoted by the Drudge Report and picked up by right-wing blogs as further evidence that American clean-tech innovation is an Obama boondoggle. At Michelle Malkin‘s blog, Doug Powers complains about the “$10 million in prize money taxpayers are on the hook for in order to pay a company to create light bulbs people either can’t afford or won’t want.” Gateway Pundit screams: “It’s an Obama World… Gas Reaches $5 a Gallon & “Green” Light Bulbs Cost You $50 Each.” “The same people who can afford to drive a Volt (and have the limo pick them up when it runs out of charge) will be the ones purchasing this idiocy,” Pirate’s Cove blathers. American Enterprise Institute scholar Kenneth Green blasted the “Ludicrous Prize” as one of “epic energy-failures.” At Ricochet, George W. Bush speechwriter Troy Senik asks, “What lost? A bulb powered by the hoofbeats of unicorns?”

One of the strangest phenomena of modern-day politics is the right-wing antagonism toward American clean-energy manufacturing, a consequence of the fossil-fuel industry’s stranglehold on our nation’s conservatives. The Washington Post shouldn’t be aiding and abetting this ugly trend.

(HT Daily Kos)

by Ellie Johnston and Andrew Jones, reposted from Climate Interactive

The prevalence of games in our culture provides an opportunity to increase the understanding of our global challenges. In 2008 the Pew Research Center estimated that over half of American adults played video games and 80% of young Americans play video games. The vast majority of these games serve purely to entertain. There are a growing number of games that aim to make a difference, however. These games range from those that show players the complexity of creating adequate aid packages and delivering them to places in need to games that require people to get out and work to improve their communities to do well in the game.

Looking at the climate change challenge there are a number of games and interactive tools to broaden our understanding of the dynamics involved. Climate Interactive, for one, has led the development of the role-playing game World Climate, which simulates the UN climate change negotiations and is being adopted from middle school all the way up to executive management-level classrooms. Many are recognizing the power of games and everyone from government agencies to NGOs to a group of teenagers is trying to launch a game to help address climate change. Below are some of the climate and sustainability-related games we’ve found. Let us know if you’ve found others.

Read more