The Breakthrough Institute (TBI) has dedicated the resources of their organization to trying to kill prospects for climate and clean energy action in this Congress and to spreading disinformation about Obama, Gore, Congressional leaders, Waxman and Markey, leading climate scientists, Al Gore again, the entire environmental community and anyone else trying to end our status quo energy policies, including me (see “Memo to media: Don’t be suckered by bad analyses from the Breakthrough Institute” and “Will America lose the clean-energy race? Only if we listen to the disinformers of The Breakthrough Institute“).  Now they are embracing and defended those who deny the reality of climate science.

This year TBI founders Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger published a string of factually untrue, egregious statements in an essay titled:  “The Green Bubble:  Why environmentalism keeps imploding.”  The biggest whopper:  “It has become an article of faith among many greens that the global poor are happier with less and must be shielded from the horrors of overconsumption and economic development-never mind the realities of infant mortality, treatable disease, short life expectancies, and grinding agrarian poverty.”  No one in the environmental movement believes that, but it is a right-wing fantasy of the “greens.”  Robert J. Brulle, Professor of Sociology and Environmental Science, Drexel University utterly debunks this essay (see below) and writes of this quote, “Who or what environmental group has ever said anything of this nature?  This statement is an out-and-out fabrication.  One wonders if there are any fact-checkers at The New Republic.”

They misrepresent Al Gore’s entire thesis and worldview:

Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, like Silent Spring, was considered powerful because it marshaled the facts into an effective (read: apocalyptic) story”¦..

In promoting the inconvenient truth that humans must limit their consumption and sacrifice their way of life to prevent the world from ending, environmentalists are not only promoting a solution that won’t work, they’ve discouraged Americans from seeing the big solutions at all.

Yes, that’s right, they are even attacking the Rachel Carson who died decades ago after helping launch the modern environmental movement!

And no, Gore doesn’t believe nor has he written anything like that as I explain here.

So I just wanted to collect in one place some responses to set the record straight and to defend the reputation of the many, many scientists and environmentalists and leading political figures that they routinely attack:

• For an excellent debunking by the media of a typically flawed TBI analysis attacking the clean energy bill, see Markey spokesman: “The Breakthrough Institute seems to believe, much as the Bush administration did, that technology will solve all, even without a market.”
• For TBI’s standard tactics, see “Shellenberger and Nordhaus smear Gore by making stuff up” and “S&N go after Obama by recycling GOP talking points.”
• For their falsehoods about Waxman and Tom Friedman, which was praised by the uber-conservative deniers at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (see here).
• For a good example of where in the political spectrum their assaults on environmentalists and climate scientists fit, see “George Will embraces the anti-environmentalism “” and anti-environment “” message of The Breakthrough Institute.”
• For a good example of how TBI senior fellow Roger Pielke, Jr. directly attacks the reputation of countless serious scientists (see “false charge by Pielke”).  Computer scientist Tim Lambert (aka Deltoid) has a whole category just for debunking Pielke.  For a debunking of his smear on the reputation Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Evan Mills and his coauthers — all leading scientists — in the 13-agency NOAA-led report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States (see here).
• For TBI close association with the blogger Keith Kloor, see here.
• Bizarrely, TBI now defends the error-riddled screed Superfreakonomics, even though the authors trash every clean energy technology that TBI claims to endorse.
• For a rebuttal of the false claim that I smeared the Superfreaks, see “Bloomberg interview of Dubner and Caldeira backs up my reporting on error-riddled Superfreakonomics” and “One error retracted, 99 to go. Superfreaknomics authors will, in future editions, correct their claim that Caldeira believes “carbon dioxide is not the right villain”.”
• Finally and most revealing, TBI is now defending global warming deniers, which may not be a total surprise since Nordhaus even admitted on CP, “We have argued for five years now that efforts to build the clean energy economy needed to be centrally defined around energy independence not global warming” and “Pielke has admitted he supports policies that will take us to 5-7°C warming or more.“

The rest of this post focuses on how TBI and its founders Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus are spreading falsehoods about President Obama and publishing very bad analyses designed to push their anti-climate-action, anti-environmental agenda.  In particular, we’ll see how just how hypocritical TBI is — how desperate are they to sell out their principles in order to attack President Obama.  I’ll end with Brulle’s debunking of the TNR essay that George Will so loved.

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Fast on the heels of the fifth warmest April on record, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reports:

Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the fourth warmest on record for May, the fifth warmest for boreal spring (March-May), and tied with 2003 as the sixth warmest January-May year-to-date period.

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, the El Ni±o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) seems to be heating up, although I’m told it takes a few months before El Ni±o conditions would translates into warmer global temperatures.

You may recall that earlier this month, NOAA put out an “El Ni±o Watch,” so record temperatures are coming and this will be the hottest decade on record. This is based on an analysis of all the dynamical models they use to making their forecast:

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House Agriculture Committee chair Collin Peterson (D-MN), who has been blocking the passage of comprehensive climate legislation, dismissed a White House report on the damaging effect of global warming on U.S. agriculture. Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the chief of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association and one of the top scientists in the Obama administration, called the climate impacts report released yesterday a “clarion call for action” for a problem that “is happening now, and in our own backyards.” However, the Wall Street Journal reports that Peterson, “when asked by reporters Tuesday about the report’s findings, said they run counter to what many in his region are experiencing“:

We’ve just had the biggest floods and coldest winters we’ve ever had. They’re saying to us [that climate change is] going to be a big problem because it’s going to be warmer than it usually is; my farmers are going to say that’s a good thing since they’ll be able to grow more corn.

It is not apparent what farmers Peterson is talking about. As the report explains in its section on the agricultural impacts of climate change, global warming brings not only warmer temperatures but also heavier floods. Despite the relatively cold winter of 2008, over the past thirty years winter temperatures in Peterson’s Minnesota have risen more than 7°F. In fact, floods and higher temperatures associated with global warming have already damaged America’s corn crops, with worse to come:

Analysis of crop responses suggests that even moderate increases in temperature will decrease yields of corn, wheat, sorghum, bean, rice, cotton, and peanut crops.

Responding to Peterson’s argument on a telephone briefing organized by the Center for American Progress, USDA Global Change Program director Bill Hohenstein explained that scientists have estimated that “the effects on the corn yield in the Midwest” from observed changes in temperature and carbon dioxide levels “are a decrease of about 3 percent, not accounting for changes in water availability.” Hohenstein was citing an earlier U.S. Global Change Program report, The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in the United States:

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Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has arguably done more than any other Governor to promote clean energy and strong climate action.  He certainly has earned the right to be heard on national energy and climate legislation, so I am reprinting this recent op-ed.

California has always been on the front lines of progress in America, leading our country into a healthier, wealthier and more secure future.

From motion pictures at the turn of the 20th century to computer software at the turn of the 21st century, our newest high-tech industries have all been launched here.

We’ve led the way toward a cleaner, greener environment, too. I’m proud that our state needs waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency because our air quality standards are so much better than the national average.

Californians understand better than anyone that we need more jobs and a stronger economy. We need to stop climate change “” and our best chance of achieving all three goals is to have Congress put a cap on carbon pollution.

That’s why I’m proud that California has become a leader once again — by championing the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The bill was recently passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, thanks in large part to the strong support of more than half a dozen members of California’s Congressional delegation, including Palm Springs’ Rep. Mary Bono Mack.

A carbon cap is vital because the pollution that causes climate change has risen to dangerously high levels, and that is largely because the environmental costs are hidden. We pay for the fuel we burn but not for the pollution we emit. That pollution causes serious damage to our world, and in the long run, we all pay for it.
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What a shock, what a major “news” story:  One of the world’s leading drug dealers says every customer must stay addicted to his product even as the price — and global warming pollution — goes up and up.

ConocoPhillips chief warns of impending oil crisis

Government efforts to curb climate change could soon spur an oil crisis more severe than those already experienced, the head of oil and gas giant ConocoPhillips has said.

“We’re very concerned that if we don’t keep the supply up we’re going to see another crisis,” said chief executive officer Jim Mulva.

Government intervention in the energy market “has an impact” on the willingness of companies to pour billions into the development of new projects, Mulva told an economic summit in Detroit, Michigan.

“If we’re not investing in replacing our resources in fossil fuels then we’re going to create a bigger challenge soon: higher price spikes and volatility in the cost of our energy than what we’ve experienced even in the past,” he said.

“That’s not going to be helpful to the recovery of our economy.”

… “We’re not against alternatives and renewables. But to say we want to get off fossil fuels to (replace them with) an alternative is unrealistic.”

Yes, for the oil giants, there simply is no alternative to to humanity’s self-destruction — or to peak oil, for that matter.  At least the reporter felt some obligation to present the view of somebody who doesn’t profit from destroying the climate — Van Jones, “the green-jobs handyman.”

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See also: Statement by Professor Pan Jiahua on Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner’s (R-WI) Remarks

A congressional delegation led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) recently traveled to China to assess the potential for cooperation on international climate change efforts and to survey China’s independent efforts to reduce its CO2 emissions. Ranking member of the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) was part of this delegation. His take away from the trip? Nothing good. At a press conference in Beijing on his way home on May 28, Sensenbrenner said:

“It’s business as usual for China. The message that I received was that China was going to do it their way regardless of what the rest of the world negotiates in Copenhagen.”

The take-home message from his full remarks and previous statements were clear: The United States should do nothing on climate change because China will do nothing. The line that China is not cooperating with the world on climate change is an old wag in the debate over enacting a domestic cap and trade. We’ve seen it emerge again in hearings over the American Clean Energy and Security Act introduced by Congressmen Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) and we can bet on it coming up when the Senate takes up companion legislation in the coming months.

We already knew that Sensenbrenner is no friend of ACES. But what’s newly troubling is that he based his incorrect comments in Beijing largely on remarks made by a Chinese economist, Pan Jiahua, who directs the Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Sensenbrenner used an article in the Sydney Morning Herald that quoted Professor Pan to accuse him of “denigrating the Waxman-Markey [energy and climate] bill,” especially its midterm targets of 17 percent cuts below 2005 by 2020. He also claimed that Professor Pan said that, “China has been too aggressive in reducing their [sic] emissions.” Sensenbrenner insinuated after a personal meeting with Professor Pan that he might be “speaking for the thinking of China,” and concluded that Pan’s position represented a “significant step backwards.”

This story is not over yet. In an exclusive statement released to the Center for American Progress, Professor Pan characterized Sensenbrenner’s selective reading of his comments in the Australian press and the account of their closed-door meeting as both “improper and unethical,” and designed to “frighten the American public and halt U.S. progress on solving the problem of global warming.”

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