Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress (text here) had to focus on the economy in this greatest of downturns since the great depression.

Yet he made clear that even in these darkest of times — indeed, especially in these darkest of times — we must make clean energy a top priority, we must address our dependence on oil, and we must “save our planet from the ravages of climate change” if we are to remain a great nation:

We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before….

Now is the time to jumpstart job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down….

The recovery plan and the financial stability plan are the immediate steps we’re taking to revive our economy in the short-term. But the only way to fully restore America’s economic strength is to make the long-term investments that will lead to new jobs, new industries, and a renewed ability to compete with the rest of the world. The only way this century will be another American century is if we confront at last the price of our dependence on oil….

We are a nation that has seen promise amid peril, and claimed opportunity from ordeal. Now we must be that nation again. That is why, even as it cuts back on the programs we don’t need, the budget I submit will invest in the three areas that are absolutely critical to our economic future: energy, health care, and education.

Here is where he gets specific on clean energy and climate action:

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In a sweeping address to both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Cabinet, President Barack Obama introduced his budgetary plan for the United States government, explaining it will “invest in the three areas that are absolutely critical to our economic future: energy, health care, and education”:

It begins with energy.

Obama described how countries like China, Germany, Japan, and South Korea have leapfrogged our nation, becoming the leaders in energy efficiency and renewable energy — using technology invented in the United States. “It is time for America to lead again,” Obama declared to sustained applause. He noted the recovery plan’s investments in renewable energy, efficiency, and a new clean electrical grid. However, he challenged the Congress to deliver legislation to limit global warming emissions “to truly transform our economy” and “save our planet”:

But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America. And to support that innovation, we will invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.

Obama recognizes that these intertwined crises require both the carrot and the stick. While Congress has been willing to support new incentives and tax breaks for energy development (including the crassly misnamed “clean coal”), both Democrats and Republicans have balked at putting a price on global warming pollution. Now the challenge is for Congress to rise to his challenge and act.

President Barack Obama’s excerpted remarks on energy: Read more

[Please email the NYT at nytnews@nytimes.com to demand a correction for the egregious mistakes in Tierney's column and/or email its public editor at public@nytimes.com to explain you are "concerned about the paper's journalistic integrity."]

The backlash from George Will’s disinformation rightly grows each day that the Washington Post stands behind his lies (see “Post is staffed with people who found ZERO mistakes in George Will’s error-filled denial column“). Media Matters has samples of widespread outrage in the country here, and a new report from CAPAF challenges the WP to issue a correction.

Now it is time for outrage over John Tierney, who not only makes stuff up just like Will, but is actually on the New York Times staff as their ‘science’ columnist. When we last saw Tierney, he was spreading lies and disinformation about science adviser nominee John Holdren (see “More proof Holdren is a great choice: Pielke, Tierney, Lomborg, and CEI diss him“).

Today, the NYT not only let him print more egregiously made up stuff to smear Holdren (and Energy Secretary Steven Chu). But they actually published an article “Politics in the Guise of Pure Science” under the heading “FINDINGS” about Chu, Holdren, climate science, and climate solutions with precisely one source — Roger Pielke, Jr. That would be like publishing an article critical of Obama’s handling of the financial crisis and only citing Bernie Madoff.

Amazingly Pielke is quoted at great length as an “honest broker” on climate issues [pause for laughter, hope the orchestra starts to drown him out before he can finish talking], even though his policies are indistinguishable from that of leading global warming deniers (see “Finally, Roger Pielke admits he supports policies that will take us to 5-7°C warming or more“).

I am not going to debunk everything Tierney wrote — like Will, his piece that brings to mind Mary McCarthy’s famous quip about Lillian Hellman:

Every word she writes is a lie — including ‘and’ and ‘the.’

But let me focus on the three most egregious things he writes — at least the first of which the New York Times should retract and correct:

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Of all the many Congressional hearings this week (see here), the one you can’t miss is the House Ways and Means Committee “Hearing on Scientific Objectives for Climate Change Legislation.” In announcing this hearing, Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) said:

The development of climate change legislation will be a priority for the Ways and Means Committee during the 111th Congress. The Committee must define the environmental objectives that we hope to achieve with climate change legislation before we can design such legislation. These objectives must be based on science.

What makes this a destination webcast are the witnesses:

• Dr. James Hansen, Adjunct Professor, The Earth Institute at Columbia University, New York, New York
• Dr. Brenda Ekwurzel, Climate Scientist, Union of Concerned Scientists
• Dr. John Christy, Director of the Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama in Huntsville

Hansen, of course, is the nation’s leading climate scientist, who has arguably been right longer than any other U.S. scientist and thus always deserves our attention (see “Right for 27 years: 1981 Hansen study finds warming trend that could raise sea levels“).

Christy, of course, is one of the nation’s few remaining seriously credentialed deniers (or, more accurately, a delayer, inactivist, and denier-eq), who has arguably been wrong longer than any other serious denier-eq and thus deserves our inattention and scorn (see “Should you believe anything John Christy and Roy Spencer say?“). [A denier-eq is someone who pretends to accept the science as laid out by the IPCC, but who advances arguments and policy proposals that are no different from those who deny the science.]

Hansen and Christy have “met” before, and Hansen bitch-slapped him made a series of scientifically far more persuasive arguments:

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The first satellite designed exclusively to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide from space failed to reach orbit during this morning’s launch, NASA reported. The Orbital Carbon Observatory (O-C-O, an acronym that matches the chemical diagram for carbon dioxide) “did not achieve orbit successfully in a way that we could have a mission,” Nasa launch commentator George Diller announced following the early-morning liftoff. “I am bitterly disappointed about the loss of OCO,” Dr. Paul Palmer, a scientist collaborating on the mission, told BBC News. “My thoughts go out to the science team that have dedicated the past seven years to building and testing the instrument.” NASA’s announcement explains the loss in dry terms:

When OCO launched Feb. 24, the payload fairing did not separate as it was supposed to and the mission ended.

The OCO would have complemented the Japanese satellite Gosat, designed to measure carbon dioxide and methane emissions with an infrared spectrometer and a cloud and aerosol imager. Gosat successfully launched on Friday. The two satellites were designed to work together and cross-check each other’s measurements, with “a common ground validation network to help combine data from the missions.”

Satellite measurement of CO2 emissions is needed to complete scientists’ understanding of the carbon cycle. Scientific American’s David Biello explained the mystery of the missing carbon before OCO’s launch:

Human activity—from coal-fired power plants to car tailpipes—is responsible for nearly 30 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide wafting into the atmosphere yearly. We know that roughly 15 billion metric tons remains in the atmosphere for a century or more. A portion of the rest ends up in the ocean—acidifying saltwater and making life tough for corals—and another chunk appears to be helping tropical trees grow thicker. We don’t know, however, where the rest of humanity’s CO₂ is disappearing to.

So we started green when Obama named Bill Richardson for Commerce Secretary. Then he withdrew and was replaced by the not-very-green Judd Gregg. Then he thankfully did the next 50 generations a big favor by withdrawing.

Now Obama appears to be back on the green track with the likely choice of former Gov. Gary Locke of Washington, a Democrat and the only Chinese-American ever to be governor of any state. As E&E Daily (subs. req’d) reports, he is green and climate smart and “well-regarded by Washington state environmental groups:

“Governor Locke has the experience of being governor of Washington, where protecting the environment is critical to the state’s strong economy and our high quality of life,” said Sudha Nandagopal, Washington Conservation Voters spokeswoman. “Having a person with that background shaping national policy is important in this time when addressing climate change and clean energy issues is critical to reviving out economy.”

In particular, environmentalists point out that Locke was one of the original authors of the West Coast Governors Global Warming Initiative, which laid the foundation for the Western Climate Initiative.

Locke also took several other actions as governor that linked economic development with environmental policy, including a 2002 executive order stating that the state would use its buying power to purchase environmentally friendly products and another in 2005 establishing efficiency standards for state operations.

Indeed, you can go the archived website from when he was governor, and take a look at everything he did under “Combating climate change”:

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The long-awaited drop in prices for solar photovoltaics (PV) appears to be close at hand. Soaring demand for PV and high prices for silicon have kept PV prices up for the past several years, but had two beneficial impacts:

• Producers ramped up polysilicon production
• PV companies pursued designs with less silicon.

The result is that Business Green reports:

The price of solar panels could fall by as much as 40 per cent by the end of the year as huge increases in polysilicon supplies lead to a sizable fall in production costs for solar panel manufacturers.

Analysts have been predicting this price drop for a while [-- I had heard this prediction at a climate solutions summit in January 2008].

If this drop does materialize, it is quite a big deal and will help keep demand on its staggering growth rate with PV becoming one of the largest job-creating industries of the century, projected to grow from a $20 billion two years ago to a $74 billion industry by 2017 (see “Sharp to boost thin film solar capacity 6-fold to 6000 MW by 2014, U.S. hits snooze button“).

Here’s the rest of the story:

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