As promised (the briefest interview I’ve ever had on CNBC)

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Yes, Planet Gore finds NASA administrator’s Michael Griffin’s Luddite comments to be both “conservative” and “judicious.”

They specifically endorse these Luddite remarks:

To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change. First of all, I don’t think it’s within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown. And second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.

Every reputable climate scientist has denounced these views, and even the White House has walked away from them. But to PG:

This is a fair point with which only the Panglossian can disagree. There are undoubtedly benefits from global warming to agriculture and in terms of lives saved — the experts agree that more lives are saved than additionally lost in a warmer world.

Now that is disinfotainment. Yes, Darfur is apparently a benefit, to PG. So is a once-in-a-1000-year drought causing Australia’s ‘food bowl’ to run dry. Not to mention what the future holds if we don’t change course immediately: catastrophic sea level rise, superhurricanes, “a different planet” as Griffin’s employee, James Hansen and four dozen other experts just warned about. But for PG’s Iain Murray:

In short, I fail to see what the problem is. Is the stance conservative? Certainly. Is it injudicious? Certainly not.

And I always thought conservatives wanted to conserve what we have — Silly me. If Griffin is a judicious conservative, I’d hate to meet an injudicious one.

The U.S. media got suckered by a head-fake on climate from President Bush. And it isn’t the first time the media has played Charlie Brown to Bush’s Lucy van Pelt on global warming.

Here is how the U.S. media covered the story of George Bush, would-be climate activist:

Bush Signals Shift on Warming – Washington Post [print edition headline]

Bush unveils new climate strategy – MSNBC

Bush Proposes Goals on Greenhouse Gas Emissions – New York Times. Quotable Quote: “If carried through, such an agreement would be the first in which the United States … has committed itself to a specific target for cutting them.” [Winner of the Pulitzer for best use of the word "if" in a major news story.]

The foreign media had a very different take:

Bush kills off hopes for G8 climate change plan – The Guardian

Bush sidesteps G8′s climate change agenda – The Independent

Opinion: A New Spin on an Old Strategy – Deutsche-Welle (Germany) Quotable quote: “To put it bluntly: The washed-up inhabitant of the White House hasn’t learned a thing. This time, too, his ideas are far behind those of the German G8 presidency….”

So which coverage is right? The answer is clear, ironically enough, from a Dana Milbank piece on page A2 of the Post, “As the World Warms, the White House Aspires” that completely undercuts the story on A1:

Read more

Hurricane season begins today — and it is supposed to be a doozy. We may see as many as 17 named storms and five major hurricanes (wind speed of 111 mph or more). See here for multiple forecasts compared.

Considering that we already had one named storm, Andrea, 3 weeks before the official start of the season, it seems unlikely that we will have a replay of last year, with its average hurricane season.

The scientific debate continues to rage over how much global warming is affecting Atlantic hurricanes. As always, I am inclined to listen to our top climatologist, NASA’s James Hansen, especially when he is joined by four dozen expert coauthors.

According to their recent article, “Dangerous human-made interference with climate,”

We conclude that the definitive assertion of Gray (2005) and Mayfield (2005), that human-made GHGs play no role in the Atlantic Ocean temperature changes that they assume to drive hurricane intensification, is untenable. Specifically, the assertions that (1) hurricane intensification of the past decade is due to changes in SST [sea surface temperature] in the Atlantic Ocean, and (2) global warming cannot have had a significant role in the hurricane intensification of the past decade, are mutually inconsistent. On the contrary, although natural cycles play a role in changing Atlantic SST, our model results indicate that, to the degree that hurricane intensification of the past decade is a product of increasing SST in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, human-made GHGs probably are a substantial contributor, as also concluded by Mann and Emanuel (2006). Santer et al. (2006) have obtained similar conclusions by examining the results of 22 climate models.

The oceans are getting warmer, and hurricanes are getting more intense as a result.