Palin had told Katie Couric “I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate.”

The debate transcript reveals she still can’t get her talking points straight on this issue:

I’m not one to attribute every man — activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man’s activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.

It’s “attribute changes in the climate to activity of man”!

And, of course she repeated the The Big Energy Lie that John McCain actually believes in an “all of the above” energy policy — twice:

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In tonight’s debate, Palin suggested that the “$700 billion” the U.S. spends a year on imported oil (the figure is actually closer to $536 billion) could be replaced by domestic sources. She further claimed that Alaska’s “energy” supply (by which she means only oil) is helping America on the path to energy independence.

But the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler points out that “various government agencies” have concluded that “crude oil production could be increased at most between 1 and 3 million barrels per day, on top of the 5 million barrels a year [day] already produced domestically. The United States currently consumes about 20 million barrels annually [per day], so an expansion of domestic drilling would make barely a dent in that amount unless consumption also is reduced.”

On behalf of the oil and natural gas industry, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) has opposed federal protections for the polar bear, whose existence is threatened by drilling operations and their global warming pollution. A new report from the Guardian reveals that the “science” Palin relies upon to claim all is hunky dory in Alaska comes from notoriously right-wing flaks funded by Big Oil. It has been previously revealed that Palin suppressed the work of her state’s staff scientists. The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington explains Palin’s use of climate change skeptics:

In official submissions to the US government’s consultation on the status of the polar bear, Palin and her team referred to at least six scientists who have questioned either the existence of warming as a largely man-made phenomenon or its severity. One paper was partly funded by the US oil company Exxon Mobil.

Palin’s complaint to the Department of Interior cited the pre-publication Exxon Mobil paper — “Polar bears of western Hudson Bay and climate change” — six times, and even attached a copy. “Polar bears” was eventually published by the obscure Journal of Ecological Complexity, with funding not only by Exxon Mobil, but also the American Petroleum Institute (Big Oil’s lobbying shop), and the Koch Industries money machine:

This paper was authored by Alaskan scientist Markus Dyck, Timothy Ball, Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon, and David Legates. All but Dyck are notorious climate skeptics with extensive ties to the Exxon-Bush right wing machine. As polar bear biologist Andrew Derocher told the Alaska Daily News, “I would venture to guess that, beyond Markus Dyck, none of them had ever seen a polar bear.”

Looks like the Arctic may have set a record this year after all. The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said today that Arctic sea ice volume likely hit a record low in 2008. They reconfirmed that the sea ice extent (or area) “dropped to the second-lowest level since satellite measurements began in 1979″ and that “Despite cooler temperatures and ice-favoring conditions, long-term decline continues.”

But the big news was the announcement about ice volume, since that has huge implications for future ice loss:

NSIDC Research Scientist Walt Meier said, “Warm ocean waters helped contribute to ice losses this year, pushing the already thin ice pack over the edge. In fact, preliminary data indicates that 2008 probably represents the lowest volume of Arctic sea ice on record, partly because less multiyear ice is surviving now, and the remaining ice is so thin.” [See Figure -- Click to enlarge.]

This figure compares ice age in September 2007 (left) and September 2008 (right). It shows the sharp increase in thin first-year ice (red) and the decline in thick multi-year ice — both “second-year ice” (orange) and “third-year and older ice” (yellow). “White indicates areas of ice below ~50 percent, for which ice age cannot be determined.”

NSIDC explains what prevented 2008 from beating the 2007 record low in ice extent:

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A: Lipstick.

Carbon offsets and mortgage-backed securities are quite similar in that is impossible for the vast majority of people, even experts, to know what value they have, if any.

In the case of the securities, before paying good money for them, you have to figure out what the value of the underlying mortgages are. Oftentimes they are almost worthless. In the case of carbon offsets, before you pay good money for them, you have to figure out the value of the underlying projects they fund. Oftentimes they are almost worthless.

The only difference between the two is one of perception. Most people now realize how dubious the securities are. But most people apparently don’t realize how dubious the offsets are, because sales of offsets keep rising. So I repeat, the only difference is “lipstick” — the offsets look on the surface to be more attractive.

At a policy level, offsets can destroy the environmental value of climate legislation (see “Boxer bill update: Probably no U.S. CO2 emissions cut until after 2025” and “McCain speech, Part 2: Relying on offsets = Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic“). Indeed, at a large scale, offsets are probably worse than the securities, because even if the mortgages are underwater, you know the houses aren’t valueless. But as a major 2008 analysis from Stanford found

… “between a third and two thirds” of emission offsets under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) — set up under the Kyoto treaty to encourage emissions reductions in developing nations — do not represent actual emission cuts.

And this led to the study’s stark conclusion:

… any offset market of sufficient scale to provide substantial cost-control for a cap-and-trade program will involve substantial issuance of credits that do not represent real emissions reductions.

Talk about your sub-sub-sub-prime loans.

Yet even at an individual level, lots of vendors are selling very dubious offsets, including the Chicago Climate Exchange, as many journalists have found when they examined the underlying projects (see here and here and here).

In particular, I have argued that the most popular offsets are the most dubious:

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Today, 152 members of the House of Representatives — over one-third of all members and nearly two-thirds of all Democrats — signed and submitted a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stating their guiding principles for “comprehensive global warming legislation” to “save the planet from calamitous global warming.” The letter, led by representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Jay Inslee (D-WA), was delivered to Pelosi this morning.

The legislators describe four key goals:

1. Reduce emissions to avoid dangerous global warming;
2. Transition America to a clean energy economy;
3. Recognize and minimize any economic impacts from global warming legislation; and
4. Aid communities and ecosystems vulnerable to harm from global warming.

These are the necessary principles that should guide any path out of the climate crisis. What makes this letter significant is the strong, specific details endorsed by the 152 signatories. These include the following measures to respect the severity of the danger of rising greenhouse gas emissions:

– “The United States must do its part to keep global temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels.”

– “Total U.S. emissions must be capped by a date certain, decline every year, be reduced to 15% to 20% below current levels in 2020, and fall to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.”

– “A mechanism for periodic scientific review is necessary, and EPA, and other agencies as appropriate, must adjust the regulatory response if the latest science indicates that more reductions are needed.”

– “Cost-containment measures must not break the cap on global warming pollution.”

– “The United States must reengage in the international negotiations to establish binding emissions reductions goals under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change . . . for the United States and other developed nations to achieve combined emissions reductions of at least 25% below 1990 levels by 2020, as called for by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

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The world’s second-largest maker of solar batteries plans a massive increase in capacity to meet soaring demand. Bloomberg reports:

The company will raise the capacity to 6 gigawatts as early as 2014, from 1 gigawatt estimated for 2010…

Sharp, which lost its market-leading position to Thalheim, Germany-based Q-Cells AG last year, is focusing on expanding its solar-cell output through thin-film technology. This uses 1 percent the amount of silicon needed for conventional models….

One gigawatt of power is enough to light up at least 200,000 households of four people in Japan….

Yes, the United States created the solar cell industry and literally launched it into space 50 years ago. And yes solar PV is going to be one of the largest job-creating industries of the century, projected to grow “from a $20 billion industry in 2007 to $74 billion by 2017.” And yes today America has precisely one of the top ten PV plants, with plummeting market share, as the figure above makes all too painfully clear

But don’t get all friggin’ sentimental on me. Think of the few billion dollars U.S. taxpayers saved because:

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Even with only a few months to go in his reign of terror, Darth Vader never phones it in. He just keeps blasting away.

In August, the Post headlined the story, “Anti-Regulation Aide to Cheney Is Up for Energy Post,” noting that the “promotion that would put one of the administration’s most ardent opponents of environmental regulation in charge of forming department policies on climate change.”

It’s not like we have any recent evidence that regulations are needed for maintaining the health and well-being of Americans.

F. Chase Hutto III has played a prominent behind-the-scenes role in shaping the administration’s environmental policies for several years, the officials said, helping to rewrite rules affecting the air that Americans breathe and the waters that oil tankers traverse. In every instance, according to both his allies and opponents, he has challenged proposals that would place additional regulations on industry.

The good news is that the Senate isn’t gonna give him the job. The bad news is, it doesn’t matter. As E&E Daily reports this morning:

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The U.S. Conference of Mayors has just released a Green Jobs report establishing a national Green Jobs Index that finds

[T]he U.S. economy currently generates more than 750,000 green jobs–a number that is projected to grow five-fold to more than 4.2 million jobs over the next three decades. The report … is the first calculation of its kind to measure how many direct and indirect jobs are in the new and emerging U.S. green economy.

The report notes “It could be the fastest growing segment of the United States economy over the next several decades and dramatically increase its share of total employment.”

In making its forecast, the report assumes growth in alternative energy that I think are both conservative and incomplete:

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