Dr. Bill Chameides is the dean of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He blogs at HuffingtonPost.com and his own GreenGrok.com, which is certainly worth reading.

He just posted “Impressions from National Academies Climate Summit,” in which he drops a bombshell quote from Eileen Claussen, head of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change (the two are pictured above). But Chameides treats the quote as if it were just another piece of the puzzle, rather than a stunning revelation of a lack of understanding of climate science — assuming the quote is accurate. Here is what he blogged:

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Ever since President Obama introduced a budget that included his cap-and-trade plan to invest in a green economy and make work pay instead of pollution, conservatives have falsely attacked it as a $3100 light-switch tax, despite their lack of an alternative plan. On Tuesday, the Senate bowed to the barrage of propaganda and passed two amendments to the budget that imply any move to clean energy is a risky tax on consumers. On Wednesday, the Senate explicitly preserved the filibuster for green economy legislation (67-31 vote), even if “the Senate finds that public health, the economy and national security of the United States are jeopardized by inaction on global warming” (42-56):

SUPPORTING THE FALSE CHOICE OF ECONOMY V. ENVIRONMENT

Amendment No. 749, introduced by Sen. Boxer (D-CA): Requires that green economy legislation does not “increase electricity or gasoline prices or increase the overall energy burden on consumers, through the use of revenues and policies provided in such legislation.”

Passed 54-43; Bingaman (D-NM) and Byrd (D-WV) joined every Republican in voting against; Gillibrand (D-NY) and Kennedy (D-MA) not voting.

Amendment No. 731, Sen. Thune (R-SD): Requires that green economy legislation does not “increase electricity or gasoline prices.”

Passed 89-8: Bingaman, Cardin (D-MD), Corker (R-TN), Durbin (D-IL), Feinstein (D-CA), Menendez (D-NJ), Udall (D-NM) and Whitehouse (D-RI) voted against, Gillibrand and Kennedy not voting.

PRESERVING GREEN ECONOMY FILIBUSTER

Amendment No. 869, Sens. Whitehouse (D-RI) and Boxer: Allows non-filibusterable budget reconciliation for green economy legislation, if “the Senate finds that public health, the economy and national security of the United States are jeopardized by inaction on global warming.”

Rejected 42-56: Begich (D-AK), Byrd, Cantwell (D-WA), Dorgan (D-ND), Feingold (D-WI), Hagan (D-NC), Landrieu (D-LA), Levin (D-MI), Lincoln (D-AR), McCaskill (D-MO), Murray (D-WA), Nelson (D-NE), Rockefeller (D-WV), Stabenow (D-MI), Webb (D-VA) joined every Republican in voting against, Kennedy not voting.

Amendment No. 735, Sen. Johanns (R-NE): Prohibits the use of reconciliation in the Senate for green economy legislation.

Passed 67-31: Baucus (D-MT), Bayh (D-IN), Begich, Bennet (D-CO), Bingaman, Byrd, Cantwell, Casey (D-PA), Conrad (D-ND), Dorgan, Feingold, Hagan, Klobuchar (D-MN), Kohl (D-WI), Landrieu, Levin, Lincoln, McCaskill, Murray, Nelson, Pryor (D-AR), Rockefeller (D-WV), Stabenow, Tester (D-MT), Warner (D-VA), Webb joined every Republican in voting for, Kennedy not voting.

The budget language affected by these amendments calls for green economy legislation that “would invest in clean energy technology initiatives, decrease greenhouse gas emissions, or help families, workers, communities, and businesses make the transition to a clean energy economy.”

Of course that legislation will affect electricity and gasoline prices in some way — any plan to end our pollution Ponzi scheme will. There’s no way to write energy legislation that guarantees prices don’t go up, just as there’s no way to write legislation that guarantees prices don’t go down. However, thanks to President Bush, we do know what happens without clean energy policies — electricity and gasoline prices skyrocket, polluters profit, pollution rises, and the economy tanks. And we also know that the sun, the wind, and efficiency are free. Conservatives want to maintain the Bush-Cheney policy of letting oil and coal companies write our laws, demolish our economy, and ruin our planet. Unfortunately, it seems there are few in the Senate who are able or willing to stand up against them.

We need a plan for a green economy, not political gimmicks without answers.

[Please Digg this post by clicking here.]

I am trying to identify the plausible CO2-mitigation strategies that are scalable — that can comprise at least a half a wedge (see “How the world can stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution).

So when a new process gets this much hype — as in Scientific American‘s, “Cement from CO₂: A Concrete Cure for Global Warming?” — it deserves scrutiny. Wired magazine’s “The Top 10 Green-Tech Breakthroughs of 2008,” provides both a good summary of the process and more evidence of the hype:

1. CALERA’S GREEN CEMENT DEMO PLANT OPENS

Cement? With all the whiz bang technologies in green technology, cement seems like an odd pick for our top clean technology of the year. But here’s the reason: making cement — and many other materials — takes a lot of heat and that heat comes from fossil fuels.

Calera’s technology, like that of many green chemistry companies, works more like Jell-O setting. By employing catalysis instead of heat, it reduces the energy cost per ton of cement. And in this process, CO2 is an input, not an output. So, instead of producing a ton of carbon dioxide per ton of cement made — as is the case with old-school Portland cement — half a ton of carbon dioxide can be sequestered.

With more than 2.3 billion tons of cement produced each year, reversing the carbon-balance of the world’s cement would be a solution that’s the scale of the world’s climate change problem.

In August, the company opened its first demonstration site next to Dynegy’s Moss Landing power plant in California, pictured here.

As the sage once said, “Amazing, if true.”

Yet whether Calera’s process can actually sequester significant amounts of net CO2 and whether it is scalable has been called into question by some of the country’s leading climate scientists, including Ken Caldeira, a widely published expert on the carbon cycle whom I have known for many years.

Emails on this subject have been racing around the Internet, and I have communicated with both Calera and Caldeira (yes, I know, the kind of strange coincidence that makes reality so much less plausible than fiction).

While this is a long post with a lot of unavoidable chemistry it, the bottom line is that I think Caldeira has made a strong case that

• The scalability of the process is in doubt
• We won’t know if net CO2 is saved unless Calera is much more forthcoming on all of the inputs and outputs

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Companies and architects are building homes made from shipping containers to provide temporary disaster relief housing and modern, chic beach homes. This article is reprinted from the Center for American Progress’s “It’s Easy Being Green” series.

There’s an emerging and innovative solution to the environmental, economic, and housing concerns we face around the globe: shipping container homes. It turns out reusing the old containers is an inexpensive, efficient, and environmentally friendly way to build homes that can be used by low-income residents or as temporary housing following a natural disaster. Architects and humanitarians alike have jumped on the bandwagon to make everything from chic urban spaces and stylish homes to disaster relief and affordable housing.

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[You might try sending emails to the reporters below. My guess is they didn't put a lot of thought into what they were writing and might be open to writing it differently in the future -- since this isn't the WSJ editorial page.]

The media misinforms the public about climate science in many different ways. One, as we’ve just seen, is by publishing long-debunked disinformation over and over again.

But misinformation can be as damaging as disinformation. Consider this March 27 Wall Street Journal piece, “Climate Talks Look to U.S. Role,” by Leila Abboud at leila.abboud@wsj.com and Stephen Power at stephen.power@wsj.com (emailed me by a sharp-eyed reader). It contains this pointlessly hedged sentence:

The U.S., under the Bush administration, didn’t ratify the Kyoto treaty, and China and other developing countries such as India and Brazil aren’t obligated under the treaty to restrict emissions of greenhouse gases, which are believed to contribute to climate change.

I think we are at least one decade, if not two decades, passed a time when the words “are believed to” are justified.

Note to Abboud and Power: Why exactly do you think they are called greenhouse gases?

This hedge is especially pointless and misinforming because of the second hedge — “contribute to.”

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Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, fool me three times, shame on the media.

In a move that calls into question the journalistic integrity of the entire Washington Post editorial staff — especially editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt, who should be fired — the newspaper has published a third disinformation-pushing op-ed by George Will “Climate Change’s Dim Bulbs.”

The distortions and disinformation in Will’s earlier two pieces have been widely criticized and debunked (see “In a blunder reminiscent of Janet Cooke scandal, the Washington Post lets George Will reassert all his climate falsehoods plus some new ones“).

Indeed, the WP published a devastating critique by the World Meteorological Organization on the “misinterpretation of the data and of scientific knowledge” in using WMO data from one year to try to “invalidate the reality of global warming and its effects” — along with an op-ed making the same exact point (see “Washington Post publishes two strong debunkings of George Will’s double dose of disinformation“).

Why on earth would the Washington Post publish a long letter by the WMO Secretary General (here) last Saturday, explaining how his organizations’ work was misused by Will, and then let Will publish this sentence today:

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