The NYT reports:

President Bush announced $13.4 billion in emergency loans on Friday to prevent the collapse of General Motors and Chrysler, and said another $4 billion would be available for the hobbled automakers in February. The entire bailout is conditioned on the companies undertaking sweeping reorganizations to show that they can return to profitability….

The decision to use the stabilization fund was also a major turnabout for Mr. Bush, who for weeks had insisted that the Treasury program should not be used to help the automakers.

In the end, it was clear that Mr. Bush did not want G.M. or Chrysler, both American icons, to go down on his watch.

I guess losing New Orleans, America’s good name, our civil liberties, the credibility of the constitution and of the Justice Department (and the SEC and every other watchdog agency), the health care of millions of people, rising wages for most Americans, the housing industry, the financial sector, the economy in general, the climate for the next thousand years, [insert your W-driven calamity here], was enough for the President. I know it was enough for the rest of us.

Bush has punted this problem, and all the others, to Obama:

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It appears that Jeremy Piven, the star of HBO’s Entourage series, is being poisoned by coal. Piven “split from the critical and commercial hit Broadway revival of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow, citing doctors’ diagnosis that he’s suffering a high mercury count,” causing Mamet to quip that Piven quit to “pursue a career as a thermometer.” Piven’s doctor, Carlon Colker, explained that his mercury poisoning was caused by a high-sushi diet:

Dr. Colker said that an initial battery of tests on Mr. Piven had shown normal results. But after Mr. Piven said he was a frequent sushi eater who consumed fish about twice a day, and that he used herbal remedies, Dr. Colker tested him for heavy metals. Dr. Colker said that these tests revealed “a very, very elevated level of mercury” in Mr. Piven’s blood, adding that it was five to six times the upper limit that is typically measured.

Organic mercury poisoning from fish consumption causes nervous system damage with symptoms similar to cerebral palsy. Mercury in fish has reached alarming levels. In the United States, about “one in six women of childbearing age now have unsafe levels of mercury in their blood” and “between 300,000 and 600,000 children are at serious risk of severe neurological and developmental impairment from mercury exposure each year.”

But why is sushi such a poisonous threat?

Mercury dissolved in water accumulates in the muscle tissues of fish. As the Natural Resources Defense Council explains, “Many of the fish chosen for sushi are the apex predators of the fish food chain, which means they can bear high concentrations of mercury.”

The mercury comes from the same toxic polluters responsible for global warming pollution, particularly coal-fired power plants, as coal is naturally contaminated with high levels of mercury. Coal-fired power plants are the largest source of mercury air emissions worldwide, responsible for about 1500 tons of mercury added to the atmosphere each year. In the United States alone:

Coal-fired power plants emit around 60 tons of mercury into the air annually.

Gold mining releases about 10 tons of mercury annually.

Waste incineration emits 10 to 12 tons of mercury annually.

Corrupt Environmental Protection Agency officials are complicit in this deadly debacle. The Environmental Integrity Project‘s Ilan Levin tells the Wonk Room:

The Bush administration bought the U.S. electric industry a decade of inaction. Mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants have remained the same for eight years despite the development of new technologies that could reduce them by about 90 percent.

The AP story is here.

This Senate race is a key reason I have been holding up announcing the winner of the election predictions contest. And you thought I had forgotten. No, it’s just that a few people (including yours truly) are very, very close.

[I think that as a climate-saving strategy geo-engineering is largely somewhere between a dead end and a hoax -- why would you choose chemotherapy that might make you sicker if your doctors told you diet and exercise would definitely work (see "Geo-engineering remains a bad idea" and "Geo-Engineering is NOT the Answer")?

The likely new science advisor, John Holdren, has written, "The 'geo-engineering' approaches considered so far appear to be afflicted with some combination of high costs, low leverage, and a high likelihood of serious side effects." And the new head of NOAA is someone "who would put oceans first," whereas absent a successful effort to stabilize at 450 ppm or below, most geo-engineering schemes would put oceans last, leaving them acidified and inhospitable to most current ocean life, possibly for hundreds of thousands of years. But do our children and their children and the next 5000 generations really need a livable ocean if it means we don't have to reallocate about 1% to 2% of our wealth today (see "Absolute MUST Read IPCC Report: Debate over, further delay fatal, action not costly")?

Yet desperation drives some people to contemplate extreme things, and climate scientists are increasingly desperate to prevent global warming (see "Desperate times, desperate scientists"). Jeff Goodell files this reports dispatch from the AGU's annual meeting.]

On Wednesday, in the Q & A session after Jim Hansen’s talk about the dire state of the earth at the AGU meeting, eminent Rutgers University professor Paul Falkowski asked Hansen: “The genie is out of the bottle now — What do you think of geoengineering as a way to deal with global warming?”
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… and I am one of them.

Each year the AAAS Council elects members whose “efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications are scientifically or socially distinguished.” It means a lot to me to be recognized by my peers for my work, which is certainly not the traditional scientific career.

I am “being honored for distinguished service toward a sustainable energy future and for persuasive discourse on why citizens, corporations, and governments should adopt sustainable technologies.”

And what forum is better for persuasive discourse than a blog?

All new Fellows are listed in the current issue of Science (subs. req’d).

PEBO has picked Jane Lubchenco, a prominent marine biologist at Oregon State University, to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science between 1997-98. A video of her talk on “Climate Change and its Implications for Oregon” can be found here.

In “Obama preparing to appoint three more climate change activists,” Climate Wire (subs. req’d) notes: “The early nomination could be a sign that NOAA will take on a prominent role in federal efforts to combat climate change, experts said.” She is yet more evidence of Obama’s seriousness to take science seriously and to act aggressively on climate change (see “Obama’s strongest message on climate yet: John Holdren to be named Science Adviser“).

Now if we could only get the media to understand that people like Holdren and Lubchenco are not “climate change activists” — they are world-class climate scientists who feel the urgent need for action because, as Holdren says, “civilization has already generated dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system. What keeps me going is my belief that there is still a chance of avoiding catastrophe.”

Given that we have just gone through eight years of disinformation from the White House and muzzling of climate scientists at federal agencies including NOAA, perhaps the best news is that Lubchenco has “longstanding interest in communicating complex scientific issues to the public and lawmakers”:

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