The NYT reports that President Obama has indeed chosen Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) for Commerce Secretary, but got nothing for it:

The Democratic governor with the power to fill the Senate seat signals that he will leave it in Republican hands, depriving his party of a chance to reach 60 votes, a magic number when it comes to passing legislation.

What’s the point? As I have previously blogged — Is a possible 60th Senate seat worth a not-very-green GOP Commerce Secretary? — Gregg isn’t green, he has consistently voted with uber-denier Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL) against renewables, he is a huge step down from Bill Richardson, and whatever bipartisanship there is in Washington these days, it is solely in the minds of Democrats.

The only point of naming Gregg was to get his Senate seat for a Dem.

This is unforced error number two (see “An Anti-Regulation Regulatory Czar — Obama’s first unforced environmental error?“).

The Washington Post ran a very good article on electric vehicles (EVs) Saturday. I recommend it to anyone who wants an overview of the important issue of where American companies will source their batteries. The article notes:

GM plans on a battery pack big enough to last 40 miles, at which point a small gasoline engine will take over. Some rival companies are considering a smaller battery pack that might go only 20 miles, still enough to serve the needs of many local commuters without adding as much weight and cost.

That was my point in the post, “Has GM overdesigned the Volt: Is a 40-mile all electric range too much?”

Like pretty much all recent articles on EVs, it highlighted the uber-marketers of the EV world:

Shai Agassi, the chief executive of Better Place, which is building electric car infrastructure in Israel, Hawaii, Northern California and several other places, thinks electric cars should have batteries only. He proposes setting up swap stations where motorists on long trips could exchange a depleted battery for one fully charged.

“We just don’t think that the answer to how to extend the battery is to put a power plant in our trunks,” he said.

You can see a computer simulation of the Project Better Place battery exchange station here.

I recently asked my EV wonk friends what they thought of the battery swap out model, and I will reprint some of their answers below. I have never actually found anyone who thought it was a viable idea. Where, for instance, would it be done? Sunday’s NY Times asserts:

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Recognizing the new era of “energy transformation,” a Montana electric utility has decided to “scrap its plans for a $900 million coal-fired power plant east of Great Falls and turn instead to renewable energy to meet the needs of its 65,000 Montana customers.”

Years ago, the Southern Montana Generation and Transmission Cooperative introduced plans to build the Highwood Generating coal-fired plant to satisfy the electricity needs of Great Falls, Montana. Today, CEO Tim Gregori announced “they are changing construction plans from a coal-fired facility to a natural gas and high wind producing plant.” This switch will dramatically reduce the pollution footprint of the facility, from soot to greenhouse gases, and will take less time to get up and running. Montana Environmental Information Center Program Director, Anne Hedges, announced, “This is a relief“:

It’s a relief to the land owners adjacent to the plant. It is a relief to people across the state and across the nation who are concerned about the direction of our climate.

MEIC, Citizens for Clean Energy, Earthjustice, and Sierra Club’s Move Beyond Coal campaign worked together for years to challenge the Highwood plant on its environmental impact, including its mercury and particulate matter pollution. The utility also recognized that the global warming emissions of coal give the fuel an “aura of uncertainty” — in other words, a large economic risk, as has been pointed out repeatedly by economic analysts. It no longer makes environmental nor economic sense to rely on 19th-century technology to power a 21st-century America.

This is the radioactivity-free kind of meltdown, as Helsingin Sanomat reported:

The Finnish nuclear power company Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) is seeking damages of EUR 2,400 million from the consortium of Areva and Siemens for delays in the construction of Finland’s fifth nuclear reactor in Olkiluoto.

Makes one look forward to what might happen if a truly litigous country had a major nuclear Renaissance fueled by, say, taxpayer money (see The nuclear bomb in the Senate stimulus plan).

The Finnish newspaper has a great photo of “The Olkiluoto III nuclear reactor construction site in December 2008.”

Here are more details on the meltdown between the partners in this debacle:

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The conservative movement stagnation has a new leader, Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele. Dave Roberts of Grist reports that, contrary to popular misconception, the man of Steele was the first to flack the phrase “Drill baby, drill” at the RNC (aka The moment the Republic died). His post is reprinted below Steele’s convention speech:

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Perhaps somebody heard my Plea to Obama: Kill the Air Force liquid coal plant. McClatchy reports:

The Air Force rejected the plans for the coal-to-liquids plant because of possible conflicts with the 341 Missile Wing’s nuclear mission. The release said the concerns included decreased security near the base’s weapons storage area, interference with missile transportation and “explosive safety arcs and operational flight safety issues.”

Not to mention that liquid coal is an environmental abomination with impossible economics used primarily by the desperate and isolated:

The main users and producers of fuel from coal have been South Africa and Nazi Germany.

Still you’ll be delighted to know that the Air Force is already using the fuel of the Third Reich and apartheid:

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Note to media: The Ghost of Climate Yet to Come says, “It’s not too late!”

RealClimate makes a good point with the title of its post, “Irreversible Does Not Mean Unstoppable” about the recent NOAA led paper (see Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe):

We at Realclimate have been getting a lot of calls from journalists about this paper, and some of them seem to have gone all doomsday on us.

Indeed, this is the perfect paper for someone, like say, Lou Dobbs, who can go from hard-core doubt/denial to credulous hopelessness in one breath, as he did Friday (h/t ClimateScienceWatch):

Let’s assume, for right now, that there is such a thing as climate change, let’s assume it’s manmade. What indication–what evidence do we have, what reason do we have to believe that mankind can do anything significantly to reverse it because a number of people, as you know in the last two weeks, are reported that, that, this is a 1,000-year trend irrespective of what we do.

Yeah, let’s assume, for right now, there is climate change and let’s further assume its manmade since there’s like no factual basis for actually knowing those things. Then let’s tell the public the latest research means if there is manmade climate change, the situation is now hopeless — when in fact the latest research makes it all the more urgent to keep total emissions and concentrations as low as posisble

Seriously. This guy has his own hour TV show on a major cable network — albeit one that fired its staff covering science and environment and hired a psychic to cover climate change (OK, let’s assume, for right now, that I made up that last part).

The whole world has become Dickensian (see “A Tale of Two Disasters“), which just happens to remind me of another Dickens story relevant to the theme that irreversible does not mean unstoppable:

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President Obama has been crystal clear that jumpstarting the clean energy transition is one of his top two priorities — and inseparable from his commitment to jumpstarting the economy as a whole (see Obama asserts “no single issue is as fundamental to our future as energy”).

Further underscoring his commitment is his amazing energy team, which includes Carol Browner, his climate and energy adviser. In a cover story on Browner, National Journal (subs. req’d) quotes former transition chief and current Center for American Progress president John Podesta explaining why her selection reflects Obama’s plan to change business-as-usual in Washington:

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Australia has been suffering its worst heatwave on record, the first time temperatures exceeded 110 F for 3 days running. It’s been so hot that on Thursday, the low at Melbourne airport was 87 F.

Australia is the canary in the coal mine for climate-driven desertification. The astonishing decade-long drought in southern Australia was declared ‘worst on record’ last year. My headline quote is from the UK’s Independent story, which notes:

Australia, the driest inhabited continent on earth, is regarded as highly vulnerable. A study by the country’s blue-chip Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation identified its ecosystems as “potentially the most fragile” on earth in the face of the threat.

Australia is but the first and most seriously impacted of the arid sub-tropical (and near-sub-tropical) climates that are facing horrific desertification from climate change. For instance, Lester Snow, Director of California’s Department of Water Resources said Friday

We may be at the start of the worst California drought in modern history.

Two years ago, Science (subs. req’d) published research that “predicted a permanent drought by 2050 throughout the Southwest” — levels of aridity comparable to the 1930s Dust Bowl would stretch from Kansas to California. The UK’s Hadley Center warned in November 2006 that their research predicted multiple permanent Dust Bowls around the planet on our current emissions path:

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