For those of us who believe that maintaining a livable climate pretty much depends on a U.S.-China deal on greenhouse gas emissions (see here), the Guardian‘s story Monday was a bombshell:

China and US held secret talks on climate change deal

“¢ Negotiations began in final months of Bush administration
“¢ Obama could seal accord on cutting emissions by autumn

But was the story true?  Turns out I know one of the key players:

“My sense is that we are now working towards something in the fall,” said Bill Chandler, director of the energy and climate programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the driving force behind the talks. “It will be serious. It will be substantive, and it will happen.”

I’ve known Bill since my DOE days, so I called him to get the scoop.  He says the story is mostly true — and thus a true potential breakthrough that may well lead to a major announcement in the fall — but it has inaccuracies, including the nature of the deal being discussed.  Let me try to separate fact from hype and examine what China might be willing to commit to (assuming we makes serious commitments, too, a la Waxman-Markey).

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Chuck Todd, the NBC political director, is incensed by a Center for American Progress Action Fund update on the clean energy jobs bill being marked up by the House energy committee. The update described Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) and Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) as “moderate Democrats” who announced their support for the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454), driving Todd into a tizzy:

Did I read this right? Did CAP call John Dingell and former black panther Bobby Rush “moderates”? . . . Maybe on the energy issue, as far as CAP’s concerned, Dingell is a “moderate” since he’s always been on the side of the auto industry on key emissions votes. But should CAP really call these two moderates? Stuff like this in official press releases can immediately cost folks credibility with readers of said releases.

“Perhaps ‘fence-sitting Democrats‘ or ‘Democrats who are moderate on climate’ might have been a tad better,” Joe Romm points out on Climate Progress, “but this press release hardly deserves the harsh attack from Todd.” Dingell and Rush are two of the 18 committee members who the trade publication E & E News identified as undecided on Waxman-Markey. In fact, E & E News senior reporter Darren Samuelsohn described Rush as a “moderate” last week:

Even as Waxman said he could pass the bill out of his committee, at least a half-dozen moderate and conservative Democrats held back in declaring their support for the climate bill, including Reps. Rick Boucher of Virginia, Bobby Rush of Illinois, Diana DeGette of Colorado, John Barrow of Georgia, Baron Hill of Indiana and Melancon.

Both Rush and Dingell have voting records on energy issues that put them to the right of most Democrats, according to Oil Change International:

In fact, Dingell has not been merely “moderate” on energy issues, but practically indistinguishable from Republicans. Dingell, who has received millions of dollars from polluting industry, “has been one of the great obstructionists of action on making our automobiles more fuel-efficient and less polluting.”

Todd continues to read “tea leaves” to make prognostications about the prospects for climate change legislation. To maintain his credibility, perhaps he should pay more attention to facts and better reporters instead.

We’ve seen a lot of recent polling that Americans support strong climate action (see Mark Mellman : “A strong public consensus has emerged on the reality and severity of global warming, as well as on the need for federal action” and “Americans support greenhouse gas regulation even if it could “substantially” raise energy prices.”  This guest post, first published here, presents a new “audience segmentation analysis.”  I’d ask readers which segment they’re in, but if you’re not alarmed, you’re reading the wrong blog!

There are six unique segments of the American public that each engage with the issue of global warming in their own distinct way. Just over half of American adults (51 percent) are either Alarmed or Concerned about global warming, and these individuals are poised to vote on the issue with their pocket books and at the ballot box.

The Alarmed (18 percent of the U.S. adult population) are the segment most engaged in the issue of global warming. They are very convinced it is happening, human-caused, and a serious and urgent threat. The Alarmed are already making changes in their own lives and support an aggressive national response (see graphs below).

The Concerned (33 percent) are also convinced that global warming is a serious problem and support a vigorous national response. Members of this group have signaled their intention to at least engage in consumer action on global warming in the near term, but they are less personally involved in the issue and have taken fewer actions than the Alarmed.

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Now that energy and global warming have leaped into the political mainstream, lots of reporters who aren’t knowledgeable on either subject are writing and blogging on it.  And that means we can expect a lot of dubious sloppy suboptimal reporting by people who are more interested in the personality drama and traditional politics than in digging into the substance of this “new” issue — see Media stunner: When asked “Does it matter, from a journalistic point of view, whether [Freeman Dyson is] right or whether he’s wrong?” his NYT profiler replies “Oh, absolutely not.”

It also means we are going to get a lot of reporting on the subject from political experts who don’t understand that this issue has unusual politics:

• We have “moderate” Republicans like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Charlie Crist embrace strong statewide climate action comparable to Waxman-Markey, but you can’t get a single GOP House member or more than a couple of GOP Senators to support such action.
• You can have some traditionally progressive Congressional Democrats in certain regions who do not immediately embrace strong action.

The motivation for this post is NBC’s political blog, First Read, in which Chuck Todd attacked the Center for American Progress (Action Fund) for a press release, which I reprinted here, over this phrase:

Five moderate Democrats announced their support for ACES, including John Dingell (MI), Gene Green (TX), Bobby Rush (IL), Bart Gordon (TN) and G.K. Butterfield (NC)….

This caused Todd, who apparently needs to fill up space in his blog just like the rest of us — although he has a day job as NBC Political Director –  to go ballistic:

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Our guest blogger is Dave McCurdy, President and CEO of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

You might be surprised to hear who’s cheering the Obama Administration’s announcement of a national program to regulate greenhouse gases (GHG) and fuel economy: the auto industry.

Yes, the automakers whose products emit about 17% of the man-made CO2 in the US are saying today that a challenging federal set of GHG regulations is a good start. We believe this is a solid alternative to a regulatory train-wreck of conflicting standards across different agencies and states.

The EPA’s recent finding on the danger of GHG has driven home the fact that we are all in this problem together. The Obama administration’s announcement drives home the fact that we are all in the solution together.

We now have a genuinely national effort to address the GHG produced by all emitters in order to reach tomorrow’s low-carbon economy.

But setting the challenging national program is only the first step. The next steps are crucial. A national effort of this magnitude will require a comprehensive mix of support for new technologies, investment in infrastructure, and smart regulation.

The auto industry has already been working on the technology – actually, we’ve been working on it for years. In addition to improving the efficiency of gasoline and diesel engines, we’ve poured billions of our R&D dollars and engineer’s time into hydrogen, ethanol and electricity alternatives.

While we’ve made a great deal of progress in those areas, we have also learned that there is no single “silver bullet” technology that will satisfy all of our energy and environmental needs.

Achieving the tough new federal program will require everything on the table…and moving out the door. After all, it’s going to take a lot of efficient vehicles to make a dent in total emissions. So, we hope politicians will commit to providing real incentives that enable consumers to quickly adopt those newer, more efficient vehicles.

But consumers are going to need the infrastructure to support this progress, and that is out of our hands. Government will have a critical role to play to ensure the infrastructure is ready for the commitments we are all making.

Finally, long term progress requires long term planning, and the auto industry has stressed that we need smart, consistent regulation – especially a national emissions program. This announcement by the Obama administration gives us that challenging set of national standards.

We thank President Obama for committing to be a leader on these issues; we congratulate President Obama for fulfilling that commitment.

Today’s announcement has confirmed that we are all in this solution together. We are hopeful that this is only the beginning of a comprehensive national policy.

Oxygen drawn from the air reacts within the porous carbon to release the electrical charge in this lithium-air battery.

Air-fueled Battery Could Last Up To 10 Times Longer: Ground-breaking Technology For Electric Cars

A new type of air-fuelled battery could give up to ten times the energy storage of designs currently available.

This step-change in capacity could pave the way for a new generation of electric cars, mobile phones and laptops.

The research work, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), is being led by researchers at the University of St Andrews with partners at Strathclyde and Newcastle.

The new design has the potential to improve the performance of portable electronic products and give a major boost to the renewable energy industry. The batteries will enable a constant electrical output from sources such as wind or solar, which stop generating when the weather changes or night falls….

The STAIR (St Andrews Air) cell should be cheaper than today’s
rechargeables, too. The new component is made of porous carbon, which
is far less expensive than the lithium cobalt oxide it replaces.

Original press release here.

Complaints from left and right as House markup nears

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You can follow the continuing markup of the Waxman Markey bill on C-SPAN3 here.  I am reprinting below a daily update from the Center for American Progress Action Fun:

Here’s what to look for as markup moves in to its second day

WASHINGTON, DC“”Yesterday brought few surprises as opening statements began in the House Energy and Commerce Committee markup of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES). Opponents of the bill complained about a lack of debate despite more than 40 days of hearings on the issue over the past two Congresses and continued to cite debunked talking points and statistics to try to stop progress on converting America to a clean energy economy. The bill’s supporters discussed the need to get our country off its addiction to foreign oil and create clean energy jobs in states across the country.

Five moderate Democrats announced their support for ACES, including John Dingell (MI), Gene Green (TX), Bobby Rush (IL), Bart Gordon (TN) and G.K. Butterfield (NC), as they recognized the many benefits this bill will bring to districts across the country. As the debate continues, more members are expected to announce their position on the bill.

Today, the committee moves to amendments, and watchers can expect to see more obstruction from the opposition in the form of hundreds of amendments designed to weaken the bill. As CAPAF’s Tom Kenworthy has noted:

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NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reported last month:

Based on preliminary data, the globally-averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was  the fifth warmest on record for April, and the January-April year-to-date period tied with 2003 as the sixth warmest on record.

lt is worth noting “the El Ni±o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) transitioned from a cold phase (La Ni±a) to ENSO-neutral conditions during April 2009,” which kept things on the coolish side.  If we stay neutral (as most models currently predict), it’ll get hotter and if go into an El Ni±o (as some models predict) then we should be back to setting record temperatures.

And no, I don’t think the monthly data tell us much about the climate.  But I know reporting it annoys the deniers.  More seriously, it is definitely worth seeing where it is warming [click to enlarge]:

Once again, the geographical distribution of the warming continues to be really, really bad news for those worried about the land of the permafrost permamelt, where it is running upwards of 4°-5°C (7°-9°F) warmer than normal.   This is worrisome because:

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