Turns out you can only fool most Alaskans most of the time. As the AP reported [expalined?] at 9:41 pm EST:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens has lost his bid for a seventh term. The longest-serving Republican in the history of the Senate trailed Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich by 3,724 votes after Tuesday’s count.

That’s an insurmountable lead with only about 2,500 overseas ballots left to be counted.

Stevens, who turned 85 Tuesday, also revealed that he will not ask President George W. Bush to give him a pardon for his seven felony convictions.

AP’s earlier story on Stevens is below.

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It is judgment day, deniers and delayers. There is a new sheriff coming to town, and he isn’t an anti-scientific stooge like the current one or his boss VP.

President-elect Barack Obama gave ringing remarks to the governors climate summit:

“My presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process. That will start with a federal cap and trade system. We will establish strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80% by 2050. Further, we will invest $15 billion each year to catalyze private sector efforts to build a clean energy future. We will invest in solar power, wind power, and next generation biofuels. We will tap nuclear power, while making sure it’s safe. And we will develop clean coal technologies.

I have already heard some enviros attack Obama for “only” going back to 1990 levels by 2020 — even though that is the same goal that Arnold Schwarzenegger has in California, which has had years to develop and employ more serious and aggressive strategies. In fact, getting back to 1990 levels will require all of the talent, eloquence, and magic PEBO has — and he’ll need the support and hard work of every last one of us.

Some enviros are also attacking Obama for spending any money to try to develop clean coal. Certainly clean coal has no prospect whatsoever of helping achieve 2020 goals, and probably not even 2030 goals, but gasifed coal and biomass with carbon capture and storage may be a critical element of a long-term effort to get back to 350 ppm.

Anyway, enough with what the snipers and kibitzers have to say. Here are Obama’s full remarks:

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RealClimate has a great post, “Mind the Gap!” that explains some of the confusion about recent temperature trends.

Two key datasets, from the UK’s Hadley Centre and NASA show warming, as I’ve noted before. But “there are no permanent weather stations in the Arctic Ocean, the place on Earth that has been warming fastest. The Hadley record simply excludes this area, whereas the NASA version assumes its surface temperature is the same as that of the nearest land-based stations.” Even so, the Hadley data clearly show the planet is warming, see “Hadley Center to deniers: We are STILL warming.”

It is possible to reconstruct the recent warming in the Arctic and use that to fill in the gaps. The National Weather Service’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) has done just such a reanalysis:

As RealClimate explains: “The animated figure shows the temperature difference between the two 5-year periods 1999-2003 and 2004-2008. Such results do not show the long-term trends, but it’s a fact that there have been high temperatures in the Arctic during the recent years.”

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GreenTechMedia reports:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday signed an executive order that would speed up renewable energy development and require 33 percent of utilities’ electrical power to come from renewable sources by 2030.

The governor is aiming to use Executive Order S-14-08 to compel two state agencies, the California Energy Commission and the Department of Fish and Game, to work more closely on dealing with conflicts between renewable energy developers and environmentalists over building power plants and transmission lines (see California Lukewarm to Sunrise Powerlink).

This executive order will maintain California’s dual leadership in the renewable power and energy efficiency.

As California goes, so goes the nation. Under Obama, you can expect a much stronger federal renewable portfolio standard and expedited transmission line siting and permitting.

If the Obama administration can successfully translate the best policies from California and other states, then we need never build another traditional coal plant again (see “Is 450 ppm possible? Part 5: Old coal’s out, can’t wait for new nukes, so what do we do NOW?“)

Kudos to Arnold. He would indeed make a very capable secretary of energy.

Related Posts:

• California makes efficiency “business as usual”
• California tightens building standards yet again
• Energy efficiency, Part 4: How does California do it so consistently and cost-effectively?

Obama named more than a dozen people to craft policy positions and monitor the Bush administration’s efforts at U.S. EPA and the Agriculture, Energy, Interior and Transportation departments, with former Clinton Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes in the overall lead of the transition’s energy and natural resources team.

Greenwire (subs. req’d) has the names:

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