The NYT reports on Obama’s 244-188 win:

Without a single Republican vote, President Obama won House approval on Thursday for an $819 billion economic recovery plan….

As a piece of legislation, the two-year package is among the biggest in history, reflecting a broad view in Congress that urgent fiscal help is needed for an economy in crisis, and at a time when the Federal Reserve has already cut interest rates almost to zero….

All but 11 Democrats voted for the plan and 177 Republicans voted against it.

If the House R’s won’t vote for the only stimulus on the table during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, it’s hard to see how they are going to vote for a serious bill addressing the climate problem, whose existence they don’t even acknowledge and opposition to which they see as a political winner (see The conservative stagnation, Part 12: Cap & trade bill will return GOP to power “in 2010″³).

So be it (see “Q: Does a cap & trade bill have to be bipartisan?“).

The Wonk Room would like to congratulate Center for American Progress senior fellow Alice Madden, whom Colorado governor Bill Ritter today named as Colorado’s new climate-change coordinator. Alice served in the Colorado legislature since 2000 and was the House Majority Leader until she stepped down this month due to term limits.

Alice wrote engaging guest posts on the Wonk Room about Colorado’s unique energy and resource issues, from oil shale to water sharing.

We couldn’t agree more with Gov. Ritter’s sentiments:

Alice Madden has distinguished herself as one of Colorado’s most accomplished and talented public servants. Her thoughtfulness and problem-solving skills will be crucial as we strive to achieve the goals in Colorado’s Climate Action Plan and strengthen Colorado’s New Energy Economy. Expanding the use of wind, solar, geothermal and clean-burning natural gas will create jobs, clean the air and address climate change.

Once again, the office of Sen. James Inhofe (Denier-OK) has put out a press release riddled with misstatements, this one attacking the nation’s top climate scientist James Hansen.

Their last release was notable for the outright lies and distortions by Inhofe and his top staffer, Marc Morano (see Scientist: “Our conclusions were misinterpreted” by Inhofe, CO2 — but not the sun — “is significantly correlated” with temperature since 1850 and Inhofe recycles long-debunked denier talking points — will the media be fooled (again)?)

Now they are making stuff up about Hansen, claiming the Bush Administration did not try to muzzle him, when they clearly did, as the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee documented in a December 2007 report. Somehow I think that report, which is based on “over 27,000 pages of documents from the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Commerce Department,” two investigative hearings, and the depositions and interviews of key officials is a tad more credible than the words of some former NASA engineer.

It is absurd for Inhofe to have a blaring headline that “Hansen’s Former NASA Supervisor” says Hansen “was never muzzled,” when this guy does not appear to have been Hansen’s supervisor (he “did not have the authority to give him his annual performance evaluation,” an authority possessed by every supervisor I ever had in government — see also NASA’s Gavin Schmidt here) — and in any case, had a position above Hansen only from 1982-1994, a full decade before the muzzling occurred!

I don’t want to waste a lot of time debunking pathological make-stuff-uppers like Inhofe and Morano, but let me point out one representative lie. The Morano post blares:

NYT’s Revkin chides Hansen for promoting sea level claims that are not ‘even physically possible’

But let’s go the link and see what Revkin actually wrote.

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SciAm reports that

• Pound for pound, beef production generates greenhouse gases that contribute more than 13 times as much to global warming as do the gases emitted from producing chicken. For potatoes, the multiplier is 57.
• Beef consumption is rising rapidly, both as population increases and as people eat more meat.
• Producing the annual beef diet of the average American emits as much greenhouse gas as a car driven more than 1,800 miles.

I primarily focus on technology-based solutions since they can be the basis of government policy and since many websites are devoted to personal behavior choices, like No Impact Man.

Behavior-based strategies really only work at large scale when societal values change (and/or prices jump) sharply, which is certainly inevitable in the coming years as more and more people come to grips with the increasingly painful reality of human-caused global warming (see “What are the near-term climate Pearl Harbors?“) and realize just how immoral it is to maintain current levels of GHG emissions per capita at the expense of the next 50 generations to walk the earth (NOAA stunner: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe).

For a good article on how one meat-loving environmentalist has changed his behavior, see Mike Tidwell’s “The Low-Carbon Diet.”

I am a big fan of MIT’s John Sterman, one of the world’s leading experts on systems thinkers.

In a post on “The Greenhouse Effect and the Bathtub Effect,” Revkin notes that Sterman’s work trying to reduce the biggest source of climate confusion is related to the new NOAA-led paper that I discussed here: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe.

The bathtub analogy is that while atmospheric concentrations (the total stock of CO2 already in the air) might be thought of as the water level in the bathtub, emissions (the yearly new flow into the air) are the rate of water flowing into a bathtub. We need to lower the level, not just the flow. A great video clarifying the issue is here. It is narrated by my friend Andrew Jones. If you want to play the simulation itself, go here.

Revkin got Sterman’s comments on the paper, which I am reposting below:

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In testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Vice President Al Gore will call for “decisive action” to combat the climate crisis, including passage of President Obama’s economic recovery package, a cap-and-trade system, and an international climate treaty:

If Congress acts right away to pass President Obama’s Recovery package and then takes decisive action this year to institute a cap-and-trade system for CO2 emissions – as many of our states and many other countries have already done – the United States will regain its credibility and enter the Copenhagen treaty talks with a renewed authority to lead the world in shaping a fair and effective treaty. And this treaty must be negotiated this year.

Not next year. This year.

The hearing is being webcast live on C-SPAN.org. Below is the full text of former Vice President Al Gore’s testimony as prepared for delivery to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations:

We are here today to talk about how we as Americans and how the United States of America as part of the global community should address the dangerous and growing threat of the climate crisis.

We have arrived at a moment of decision. Our home – Earth – is in grave danger. What is at risk of being destroyed is not the planet itself, of course, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for human beings.

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UPDATE: Gore testimony below.

Nobelist Al Gore is testifying today in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on “The Road to Copenhagen.” You can watch the live video stream here.

We are having a snow and ice storm in DC today, so of course that leading science blog the Drudge Report went nuts with a banner headline:

GORE HEARING ON WARMING MAY BE PUT ON ICE

Drudge quotes an unnamed “Republican lawmaker” as emailing him, “I can’t imagine the Democrats would want to showcase Mr. Gore and his new findings on global warming as a winter storm rages outside.” Seriously, do GOP lawmakers have nothing better to do than email Matt Drudge about the local weather?

Salon’s response, “Breaking news: Despite global warming, snow still exists” put it well:

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Stopped EPA from blocking California’s effort to regulate tailpipe GHG emissions. Check!

Stopped a new coal plant. Check!

The next “stop” on the Obama Climate Action Train is the “endangerment finding” so the EPA can finally put a stop on greenhouse gases.

In Massachusetts [vs. EPA], the Supreme Court found that greenhouse gases (GHGs) are “pollutants” under the Clean Air Act; that EPA must determine whether GHGs emitted from new motor vehicles do or do not endanger public health or welfare, or supply a reason for not making this determination; and that, if EPA makes an “endangerment finding,” it must issue regulations.

The key question: Can elevated levels of GHG concentrations be reasonably anticipated to endanger public health or welfare? Does the Pope buy papal indulgences carbon offsets?

This is not a tough call for a President who just said: “climate change, which, if left unchecked, could result in violent conflict, terrible storms, shrinking coastlines, and irreversible catastrophe.” And for 1,000 years! Indeed, he campaigned on this very issue (see the October 16 post, “Obama to declare CO2 a dangerous pollutant“).

In an email to EPA employees, Administrator Lisa Jackson wrote of “five priorities that will receive my personal attention” — the first of which is “Reducing greenhouse gas emissions”:

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