Kudos to New Scientist for taking on the skeptics. Here are the myths they debunk (that Slate‘s Emily Yoffe would do well to read):

• Human CO₂ emissions are too tiny to matter

• We can’t do anything about climate change

• We can’t trust computer models of climate

• They predicted global cooling in the 1970s

• Chaotic systems are not predictable

• Mars and Pluto are warming too

• The ‘hockey stick’ graph has been proven wrong

• It was warmer during the Medieval period, with vineyards in England

• It’s been far warmer in the past, what’s the big deal?

• Global warming is due to the Sun, not humans

• Ice cores show CO₂ increases lag behind temperature rises, disproving the link to global warming

But wait, there’s many more debunked myths — the Global Warming Denyers have been a busy bunch lo these many years:

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The Washington Post wraps up its series on Dick Cheney with a long story about his role promoting pollution: “The vice president has intervened in many cases to undercut long-standing environmental rules for the benefit of business.”

His actions directly led to “the largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River.”

Be sure to read to the end to see Cheney’s role pushing a new rule to gut the Clean Air Act, causing EPA administrator Christine Whitman to resign.

I just couldn’t sign it,” she [Whitman] said. “The president has a right to have an administrator who could defend it, and I just couldn’t.”

A federal appeals court has since found that the rule change violated the Clean Air Act. In their ruling, the judges said that the administration had redefined the law in a way that could be valid “only in a Humpty-Dumpty world.”

A Humpty-Dumpty world created by the Vice President. Or perhaps he should be called the Head Vice President, for the torture he has put the country through.

Ecorazzi reports on Bruce Willis’s recent bit on David Letterman.

Willis poked fun at green celebrities with his wind turbine hat, boxer briefs made from recycled tires (“a little chaffing problem”) and plans for a new film inspired by Al Gore.

The video is here.

Greenwire says it was Southern utilities. A subscription is required, but I’ll post the whole article below the fold, as it were.

In brief, last week the Senate tried to require power companies to generate 15% of their electricity from renewable energy by 2020. That modest renewable portfolio standard (RPS) was killed by the combined efforts of utilities like the Tennessee Valley Authority, Southern Company, and Duke Energy.

The whole story is here:

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Climate Change is Making Poison Ivy More Potent – Wall Streeet Journal. “The reason? Rising ambient carbon-dioxide levels create ideal conditions for the plant, producing bigger leaves, faster growth, hardier plants and oil that’s even more irritating.”

U.S. Is Creating 3 Centers for Research on Biofuels – New York Times. “The three centers … with $125 million each in capital, will be in Oak Ridge, Tenn.; Madison, Wis.; and near Berkeley, Calif.”

Why Desalination Doesn’t Work (Yet) – LiveScience. “Current methods require about 14 kilowatt-hours of energy to produce 1,000 gallons of desalinated seawater.” If half of U.S. water consumption “came from desalination, the United States would need more than 100 extra electric power plants, each with a gigawatt of capacity.” Not a terrific solution for droughts driven by greenhouse gases from fossil fuel plants.

Schwarzenegger says US must cut emissions before China does – Bloomberg. “We can’t go to India and China and say, “… we want you to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, when we are in fact the one that has 5 % of world population and emits 25 % of greenhouse gases,”’ the governor said. “We have to show leadership.”

Absent a President Eisenhower actively seeking the advice of scientists, NASA’s James Hansen notes that scientists “can still try to provoke needed discussions in various ways.” Hansen’s way is to speak out in public as often as possible and to write prolifically.

Hansen has just posted, “How Can We Avert Dangerous Climate Change.” He explains:

It is a slightly edited version of recent congressional testimony to which I have added a number of references that I did not have time to compile prior to the testimony.

Here is the abstract:

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