Climate Progress is launching a new feature today.  With the help of  Center for American Progress staffers, we’ll post links to some of the top energy and global warming stories of the day, with a short summary.  So if you only have a couple of minutes to check the blog, you’ll still be able to get a quick survey of the day’s news.  And it will help me feel better about not writing about every lost drop of the open fire hydrant of energy and climate news coming out every day.  And yes, we will generally be doing this much earlier in the day!  Comments welcome.

Top Stories

Science Daily
When Oceans Get Warmer Carbon Dioxide Uptake On Marine Plankton Will Be Reduced, Potentially Increasing Climate Change
The ocean plays a central role in Earth’s climate system and has considerably slowed down climate change by taking up about one third of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted through human activities.  But that is likely to change in the future, as an experiment that warmed up plankton found.  “What came as a surprise to us was that the plankton consumed up to one third less CO₂ at elevated temperatures. Ultimately, this may cause a weakening of the biological carbon pump”, says Prof. Ulf Riebesell from IFM-GEOMAR, the principal investigator of the study.

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As corporate lobbyists and conservative politicians strive to maintain a pollution-based economy, a new progressive alliance has formed to fight back. The Climate Equity Alliance is calling for policies to ensure that energy legislation reaches President Obama’s desk benefiting people instead of polluters. The green economy legislation introduced in draft form by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) — sets national standards for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and global warming pollution — but leaves open whether polluters will be subsidized to achieve those standards.

Today, more than two dozen organizations from the research, advocacy, faith-based, labor and civil rights communities came together as the Climate Equity Alliance. Alliance members include the Center for American Progress, Green for All, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the Service Employees International Union. Their principles recognize that clean energy legislation needs to be sustainable, honest, and fair:

– Protect people and the planet: Limit carbon emissions at a level and timeline that science dictates.

– Maximize the gain: Build an inclusive green economy providing pathways into prosperity and expanding opportunity for America’s workers and communities.

– Minimize the pain: Assist low and moderate income families in meeting their basic needs.

– Shore up resilience to climate impacts: Assure that those who are most vulnerable to the direct effects of climate change are able to prepare and adapt.

– Ease the transition: Address the impacts of economic change for workers and communities.

– Put a price on global warming pollution and invest in solutions: Capture the value of carbon emissions for public purposes and invest this resource in an equitable transition to a clean energy economy.

The Climate Equity Alliance’s recognition that attention needs to be paid to global boiling impacts is critical, as every state in the nation already suffers from major climate-related costs — costs which will continue to rise as the planet heats up. The full list of members is below.

The alliance specifically calls for “public and private investments that help rebuild and retrofit our nation,” “training and job readiness programs,” “direct consumer rebates” to low- and moderate-income households, “assistance and tools” for workers in carbon-intense industries, and the use of carbon price revenues to invest in the public good, instead of “windfall profits for corporations.” Read more

… the New York Times for today’s:

Oil Giants Loath to Follow Obama’s Green Lead

The Obama administration wants to reduce oil consumption, increase renewable energy supplies and cut carbon dioxide emissions in the most ambitious transformation of energy policy in a generation.

But the world’s oil giants are not convinced that it will work.

Tell the Pulitzer committee to stop taking any more submissions.  We have an obvious winner.  Who ever would have guessed that big oil companies are loath to support efforts “to reduce oil consumption”?  If that isn’t “news” what is?  I guess the Times takes their motto literally:  ALL the news that’s fit to print.

Wait.  Stop the presses at the paper of record.  Here’s an even bigger story for them:

Tobacco companies loath to support efforts to reduce smoking

Where is my Pulitzer?

Related Post:

• Dumbest headline of 2009: “Bush may be giving Obama breathing room to fight global warming”

So I had this debate with a former Swift Boat smearer you may have heard about (see here).  And I uttered the truthful statement that “windpower now generates more jobs in this country than coal mining.”

The popular right-wing disinformation website (yes, I know, that is redundant) Newsbusters, devoted a post to attacking me for making that statement.  But the statement is true — indeed, the source that first publicized this was business-friendly Fortune magazine, “Wind jobs outstrip coal mining.”

Now conservatives don’t like this accurate talking point or any talk of green jobs at all (see “Mything in action: Why conservatives hate green jobs“), since every card-carrying conservative knows the only way to create jobs is to cut taxes for the wealthiest 1% of Americans. That’s why they are trying to shout it down, and that’s why I am writing this post.

Newbusters could not and did not dispute the truthful claim, but only assert that they don’t like the talking point:

Now, in fairness, Romm only mentioned coal “mining.” However, even this analogy is flawed:

Note to Newsbusters:  I wasn’t making an “analogy.”  I was making a simple statement of fact.  I didn’t say the coal “industry,” as you note.  But you then go on to quote the Christian Science Monitor blog that does not argue the statement I made was flawed.  Did you even read the piece you cited?  It was critical of Fortune for using “coal industry” rather than “coal mining.”  When Fortune crossed out “industry” and wrote in “mining,” it reported that Fortune had “corrected its story.”  In your effort to refute me, you actually quoted from a source that backs me up!  Doh!

The statement is correct.  Progressives should also know that the comparison is a fair one.  Here’s why:

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An alliance that includes the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI), Johnson Controls, Rocky Mountain Institute, and Jones Lang LaSalle — has come together to green the world’s most famous office building.  By 2013, a team of experts assembled by these organizations aims to reduce the Empire State Building’s energy consumption by 38 per cent, and save its tenants $4.4 million per year in avoided energy costs.

This could be a major flagship project that helps energy efficiency earn its spot next to renewable energy as well-recognized tonic to our environmental and economic ailments (electricity efficiency alone makes up 3 out the 14 stabilization wedges in the full global warming solution).

Of the over 60 efficiency projects that were modeled for the building using cost-benefit curves, the partners identified eight economically viable upgrades:

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[Click to enlarge.]

Is there anyone left at the Post who backs Will, other than Fred Hiatt (see “Washington Post reporters take unprecedented step of contradicting columnist George Will in a news article“).