In terms of his cachet in the blogosphere, Joe Romm is something like the climate change equivalent of economist (and New York Times columnist) Paul Krugman.

Okay, I am tooting my own horn here. But hey, this is a weblog — and I do bill this as “an insider’s view of climate science, politics and solutions,” so I think readers should know when a credible independent source validates my claim.

[Note: If anyone has come here from the U.S. News link, be sure to read "An Introduction to Climate Progress."]

“Green Economy” is the focus of the April issue of U.S. News and World Report. Their website describes the piece I’m featured in as:

8 Top Washington Players
The most influential energy and environmental policymakers in the Obama era.

Inside, they list Lisa Jackson, Barbara Boxer, Lisa Murkowski, Steven Chu, Al Gore, Henry Waxman, Carol Browner, and me.

My profile (here) begins with the over-the-top Krugman comparison above, and continues with a pretty fair description, I think (with maybe one tiny asterisk): Read more

Time for the media to call conservatives out for repeatedly exaggerating and distorting the work of MIT — and the cost of climate action in general, which is “one tenth of a penny on the dollar.” In fact, MIT found the costs on lower and middle income households can be “completely offset by returning allowance revenue to these households.”

This guest post by Lee Fang was first published by Think Progress.

Think Progress previously reported the outright lie being told by Republicans that the green economy legislation before Congress would “cost every American family up to $3,100 per year in higher energy prices.” GOP leaders apparently arrived at this number by intentionally misinterpreting a 2007 study conducted by MIT.

PolitiFact interviewed John Reilly, an MIT professor and one of the authors of the study, who explained he had spoken with a representative from the House Republicans on March 20, and that he had clearly told them, “why the estimate they had was probably incorrect and what they should do to correct it.”

Nonetheless, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) decided to use the $3,100 figure to attack cap-and-trade, while the National Republican Campaign Committee blasted dozens of press releases like the following on March 31:

Read more

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)

The “April Fools” Republican budget would keep America on the Bush-Cheney path of paying fossil fuel polluters to burn up the planet. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, sketched out their plan to continue Bush-era policies in the Wall Street Journal:

Our budget lays a firm foundation to position the U.S. to meet three important strategic energy goals: reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil, deploying more clean and renewable energy sources free of greenhouse gas, and supporting economic growth. We do these things by rejecting the president’s cap-and-trade scheme, by opening exploration on our nation’s oil and gas fields, and by investing the proceeds in a new clean energy trust fund, infrastructure and further deficit reduction.

Now I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Their “firm foundation” is just rehashed talking points from George W. Bush, who similarly promised year after year (after year after year after year after year after year) to reduce our dependence on foreign oil:

Rejecting Cap-and-Trade. In 2007, the Bush White House threatened to veto the Lieberman-Warner cap and trade bill as “bad legislation” that “would raise fuel prices and raise taxes on Americans” and “demand drastic emissions cuts that have no chance of being realized.”

Opening Oil And Gas Exploration. Under Bush, the United States opened the floodgates to domestic drilling, increasing the number of permits issued each year by the federal government increased by more than 361 percent. From 2004 to 2007, the Bureau of Land Management issued 28,776 permits to drill on public land, ten thousand more than the number of wells actually drilled. The only result? Record profits for oil and gas companies at the expense of American farmers and ranchers. Meanwhile, gas prices exploded and our dependence on foreign oil rose to record highs.

Clean Energy Trust Fund. Bush established a cornucopia of “clean energy” initiatives, including the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership for “clean nuclear,” Future Gen for “clean coal,” the International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy, and the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. Under the cover of these voluntary programs, Bush slashed funds for renewable energy, blocked energy efficiency standards, and even killed off FutureGen‘s attempt to make coal less dangerous.

Like Bush, the House GOP is lying to the public while relying on the goodwill of industry, showered with subsidies, to reduce pollution. In reality, even well-designed voluntary agreements (VAs) between government and industry to reduce catastrophic pollution don’t work. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change explains, “there is little evidence that VAs have achieved significant reductions in emissions beyond business as usual (high agreement/much evidence).”

Paul Ryan sums up his Bush-lite plan to cut taxes on corporations, privatize Medicare, and increase subsidies for oil tycoons by saying:

In the recent past, the Republican Party failed to offer the nation an inspiring vision and a concrete plan to tackle our problems with innovative and principled solutions. We do not intend to repeat that mistake.

April Fools!

I wish this were an April Fool’s story.

Energy Daily (subs. req’d) reported Tuesday:

In a ruling that drew a sharp dissent from one justice, the Ohio Supreme Court last month backed a decision by the state’s utility commission to keep secret key information about “side agreements” made by Duke Energy Ohio Inc. that gave electricity price cuts to certain industrial customers in exchange for their public support for a past rate hike request by the utility to the commission.

The state court rejected a challenge by the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, the state ratepayer advocate, which contended that it was wrong and contrary to state law for the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) to withhold key details about the side agreements from the public given their impact on the utility’s old rate case.

PUCO countered that the information constituted legitimate “trade secrets” that could damage the industrial customers or Duke by revealing their corporate business strategies to competitors.

The Ohio Supreme Court takes the “public” out of public utility.

This story is such a classic example of how so many PUCs are in the pocket of the big utilities — in case you were wondering why they just keep approving new power plant after new power plant and rate hike after rate hike even though “Power plants costs have doubled since 2000” and “efficiency is the only cheap power left.”

Here is the rest of this sad story:

Read more

Not April Fool’s!

And yes, USCAP’s favorite green(washing) utility CEO, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, seems painfully unaware of the three cheapest low-carbon baseload options — energy efficiency and recycled energy and biomass cofiring. Heck even “Southern Company embraces the only practical and affordable way to ‘capture’ emissions at a coal plant today — run it on biomass.”

And don’t get me started on Concentrated solar thermal power Solar Baseload.

The trick on April 1 is to distinguish the spoofs from the real stories.

Last week, global warming denier The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley testified at a House hearing on climate change adaptation (see Rep. Barton: Climate change is ‘natural,’ humans should just ‘get shade’ — invites ‘expert’ TVMOB to testify).

Turns out Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) had a wish-it-were-April-Fool’s exchange with TVMOB:

Read more

Tulsa, April 1. The daughter of GOP Senator James Inhoof (R-OIL) competing in a recent ice-skating tournament:

[pro-player]http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/GlobalWarmingProof.320.240.flv[/pro-player]

Explain that away, Deniers!

I find this even more compelling than “Revealing Evidence Proves Global Warming.”

Washington, DC, April 1 — CBS News has obtained exclusive video footage calling into question the claims by ClimateProgress blogger Joseph Romm that running a car on hydrogen is not practical.

Dr. Romm, a physicist and taxidermist, first became a minor celebrity in the tight-knit energy policy community when he reversed his pro-hydrogen-car position from the 1990s with the publication of The Hype about Hydrogen: Fact and Fiction in the Race to Save the Climate, which claimed to “prove” that hydrogen-powered cars are decades away.

As the video shows (warning, not suitable for children under 13), Dr. Romm has been driving a car that runs on hydrogen for years. In fact, the fuel Romm uses contains more hydrogen per gallon than the same volume of liquid hydrogen!

Jeremy Rifkin, hydrogen enthusiast and president of the Foundation on Economic and Energy Trends (FEET), said, “This confirms what we suspected all along. Hydrogen denier — I think he prefers the term “delayer”– Romm was just cashing in with a contrarian book. I’m sure he raked in literally hundreds of dollars spouting his nonsense.”

At a hastily-assembled news conference, Dr. Romm said, “Yes, it’s true. My car turns hydrogen into energy that powers the wheels. But … but it also runs on carbon. The engine burns gasoline, a hydro-carbon, and….” The croud began to jeer, at which point Romm brushed away a few tears and said, “So I made a mistake. That happens. It proves I’m human, which you know, for some people, is a revelation.”

Island Press has agreed to remove the book from the three remainder stores still carrying it.