NOAA reported the blockbuster news today:

The world’s ocean surface temperature was the warmest for any August on record, and the warmest on record averaged for any June-August (Northern Hemisphere summer/Southern Hemisphere winter) season according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. The preliminary analysis is based on records dating back to 1880.

NCDC scientists also reported that the combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for August was second warmest on record, behind 1998.

This is almost certainly the new El Ni±o on top of the long-term warming trend (see NOAA says “El Ni±o arrives; Expected to Persist through Winter 2009-10″³ “” and that means record temperatures are coming and this will be the hottest decade on record).

Pretty impressive given that we’re at “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century,” according to NASA.  Go figure (see “Another long-debunked denier talking point is debunked again: Changes in the Sun are not causing global warming“).

As the AP noted about the July, which also had record ocean temps:

Breaking heat records in water is more ominous as a sign of global warming than breaking temperature marks on land, because water takes longer to heat up and does not cool off as easily as land.

“This warm water we’re seeing doesn’t just disappear next year; it’ll be around for a long time,” said climate scientist Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in British Columbia. It takes five times more energy to warm water than land.

The warmer water “affects weather on the land,” Prof. Weaver said. “This is another yet really important indicator of the change that’s occurring.”

As revealed by the NOAA video above (via Andy Revkin),  it is getting hot pretty much everywhere, except of course over the continental United States, a small fraction of the world’s overall landmass inhabited by a large fraction of the world’s deniers, delayers, and disinformers who continue to trumpet the supposedly “cool” weather of the United States as part of their overall planetary cooling nonsense.  And that’s too bad because we need all the unmuffled warnings we can get given that humans are not like slowly boiling frogs, we are like slowly boiling brainless frogs.

Once again, the geographical distribution of the warming continues to be bad news for those worried about the permafrost permamelt, since temps even in the summer ran upwards of 3°C (5.4°F) warmer than the 1961-1990 norm over much of Siberia, as National Climatic Data Center’s figure shows:

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You’d think the serious media (and politicians) would treat with some skepticism the disinformation issued regularly by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which runs fossil-fuel-funded, falsehood-filled ad campaigns aimed at destroying the climate for centuries.  But as Brad Johnson shows in this Wonk Room piece, the pathological disinformers of CEI are still treated as if they had the credibility of, say, a CSI pathologist.

According to Declan McCullagh, a libertarian blogger who works for CBS Interactive, secret Obama administration documents reveal that the cost of clean energy cap-and-trade legislation would be $1,761 per household “” despite official estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Congressional Budget Office, and the Energy Information Administration of about a postage stamp a day [see summaries and links below]. Based on Treasury Department documents acquired by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), McCullagh claims that “a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent“:

The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent. A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration’s estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

This is pure twaddle. McCullagh is confabulating a “disclosure” out of whole cloth:

Obama’s Plan Would Have Established Tax Cuts For Working Families. In his State of the Union address, President Obama proposed a green economy plan that would create a $100 to $200 billion carbon market and use the money raised from polluters for middle class tax cuts.

Congress Did Not Adopt President Obama’s Plan. The Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) is comprehensive clean energy legislation, coupling the carbon market with national renewable energy and energy efficiency standards. Unlike Obama’s plan, the ACES Act would establish a more limited carbon market, distribute most permits for free to polluting industry, with provisions that compel utilities to pass along their value to ratepayers, and provide further assistance for low-income consumers. One can’t use an analysis of Obama’s proposal to calculate the economic benefits of the legislation now being considered.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act Builds A Clean Economy For A Postage Stamp A Day. The EPA estimates a net cost of about $100 per household per year, which would be fully offset for lower-income consumers. The Congressional Budget Office “” which did not consider the energy efficiency measures or the cost of inaction “” determined “that the net annual economywide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion””or about $175 per household.”

The American Clean Energy and Security Act Cuts Electricity Bills And Dependence On Foreign Oil. The EPA has found that Waxman-Markey cuts household electricity bills by seven percent by 2020. The EIA found the legislation would save Americans $5,600 per household in reduced dependence on foreign oil.

To come up with false claim that Obama’s plan was “the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent,” McCullagh ignored where the money would come from “” polluting industries with billions of dollars in annual profits “” and where the money would go “” tax cuts for working people.

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World Bank spends billions on coal-fired power stations despite own warnings

The World Bank is spending billions of pounds subsidising new coal-fired power stations in developing countries despite claiming that burning fossil fuels exposes the poor to catastrophic climate change. The bank, which has a goal of reducing poverty and is funded by Britain and other developed countries, calls on all nations in a report today to “act differently on climate change”.

It says that the world must reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, but it is funding several giant coal-burning plants that will each emit millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide a year for the next 40 to 50 years.

Britain is contributing £400million to a World Bank fund that claims to support “clean technology” but is financing coal power plants.

The bank’s World Development Report says: “Developing countries are disproportionately affected by climate change “” a crisis that is not of their making and for which they are the least prepared. Increasing access to energy and other services using high-carbon technologies will produce more greenhouse gases, hence more climate change.”

…  The report says that unless the world acts now to cut carbon dioxide emissions it faces a 5C (9F) rise in global temperatures by the end of the century. “Such a drastic temperature shift would cause the possible dieback of the Amazon rainforest, complete loss of glaciers in the Andes and Himalayas, and rapid ocean acidification leading to death of coral reefs,” it says.

“The speed and magnitude of change could wipe out more than 50 per cent of species. Sea levels could rise by one metre this century, threatening 60 million people. Agricultural productivity would likely decline throughout the world and over three million additional people could die from malnutrition each year.”

The 260-page report advises against “locking the world into high-carbon infrastructure” but makes no mention of the bank’s plans to subsidise coal power plants in India, South Africa, Botswana and other developing countries.

Last year the bank and its partner, the Asian Development Bank, approved $850million in loans to finance a coal-fired plant in Gujarat, western India.

The Environmental Defence Fund, a US lobby group, said that the plant, the first of nine planned in India, would be one of the biggest new sources of greenhouse gases on Earth, emitting 26.7million tonnes of CO2 a year for the next 50 years.

The bank is also contributing $5billion towards South Africa’s power generation expansion plan, which includes six coal plants.

Doh!

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According to Declan McCullagh, a libertarian blogger who works for CBS Interactive, secret Obama administration documents reveal that the cost of clean energy cap-and-trade legislation would be $1,761 per household — despite official estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Congressional Budget Office, and the Energy Information Administration of about a postage stamp a day. Based on Treasury Department documents acquired by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), McCullagh claims that “a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent“:

The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent. A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration’s estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

This is pure twaddle. McCullagh is confabulating a “disclosure” out of whole cloth:

Obama’s Plan Would Have Established Tax Cuts For Working Families. In his State of the Union address, President Obama proposed a green economy plan that would create a $100 to $200 $80 billion carbon market and use the money raised from polluters for middle class tax cuts.

Congress Did Not Adopt President Obama’s Plan. The Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) is comprehensive clean energy legislation, coupling the carbon market with national renewable energy and energy efficiency standards. Unlike Obama’s plan, the ACES Act would establish a more limited carbon market, distribute most permits for free to polluting industry, with provisions that compel utilities to pass along their value to ratepayers, and provide further assistance for low-income consumers. One can’t use an analysis of Obama’s proposal to calculate the economic benefits of the legislation now being considered.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act Builds A Clean Economy For A Postage Stamp A Day. The EPA estimates a net cost of about $100 per household per year, which would be fully offset for lower-income consumers. The Congressional Budget Office — which did not consider the energy efficiency measures or the cost of inaction — determined “that the net annual economywide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion—or about $175 per household.”

The American Clean Energy and Security Act Cuts Electricity Bills And Dependence On Foreign Oil. The EPA has found that Waxman-Markey cuts household electricity bills by seven percent by 2020. The EIA found the legislation would save Americans $5,600 per household in reduced dependence on foreign oil.

To come up with false claim that Obama’s plan was “the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent,” McCullagh ignored where the money would come from — polluting industries with billions of dollars in annual profits — and where the money would go — tax cuts for working people.

In reality, President Obama’s proposal would have amounted to tax cuts worth hundreds of dollars for working families, with the added benefits of greatly reduced dependence on toxic oil and coal, billions of dollars of investment in clean energy, and the avoidance of catastrophic climate change.

McCullagh argues that his so-called “disclosures” will “probably not aid the political prospects of the Democrats’ cap and trade bill,” and quotes CEI’s Chris Horner: “It’s nice to see they’re not spinning each other behind closed doors.” Horner, who filed the FOIA request, runs global warming denial blogs for CEI and the National Review. In June, McCullagh breathlessly promoted CEI’s other “scandal” of a global warming denier economist who works for the EPA.

Opponents of clean energy reform are inflating the costs of action by 1,000 percent, while minimizing that the threat of climate change and our dependence on fossil fuels. Ironically, these lies may actually aid the political prospects of action, as the American public grow more disgusted with the unethical tactics of polluters and their right-wing allies.

“They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent”¦  Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have entered upon a period of danger.  The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to its close.  In its place we are entering a period of consequences”¦.  We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now”¦”

Winston Churchill, November 12, 1936

Paul Gilding, former executive director of Greenpeace International, has another piece I’m reposting, “The Parallel Universes of Climate Change. Where do you live?” You may remember Gilding from Tom Friedman’s Ponzi scheme column (see here).

Some days my head hurts, as I shift between what feels like two parallel universes in the climate change debate. First I have these conversations with world-class scientists who calmly lay out the scientific view of the various risks posed by climate change and their relative scale and likelihoods. They tell me the science says it is almost certain the impacts will be serious and destabilising for our society and our economy. The science also describes a lower level of risk – which they find hard to quantify but generally say between 10% and 50% – that the impacts of climate change will be catastrophic, perhaps even civilisation threatening. This could include widespread famine, war and economic collapse. Not certain, but a reasonable possibility.

It is very clear when you listen to these scientists and read their peer-reviewed reports that, on any calm and rational analysis, we should be preparing for a carbon reduction war. Yes, a war – with all that implies about focus, effort and sacrifice. The threat posed is, after all, a “clear and present danger” and the response should be strong, global and immediate. This should be a ‘whatever it takes’ moment.

Then I shift into the parallel universe.

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Just hours after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) floated the notion that cap-and-trade bill MAY wait till 2010, a top aide unfloated it, as E&E News (subs. req’d) reports today:

Jim Manley, a Reid spokesman, insisted last night that “no decisions have been made” on floor timing for a comprehensive climate and energy bill. “We still intend to deal with health care, [Wall Street regulatory] reform and cap and trade this year,” Manley added in an e-mail.

Again, it’s probably 50-50 at this point with the bill is voted on this year.

The story also has news on the progress Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and John Kerry (D-MA) are making putting together their draft bill:

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The President of the US Chamber of Commerce, who is resisting calls from his own board members to stop fighting against federal climate policy, is being richly compensated by Union Pacific, a company which — along with some of its key businesses partners — is vigorously fighting against federal climate policy.

When we last left the Chamber it had admitted that calling for the ‘Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century’ on climate science was dumb, but it was still aping the deniers.  But even before that, many wondered, Why is the Chamber of Commerce a right-wing echo chamber when much of its Board supports a strong clean energy and climate bill? Pete Altman, NRDC’s Climate Campaign Director, has an explanation in this piece first published on NRDC’s Switchboard blog.

The U.S. Senate is about to begin an historic debate over whether to pass comprehensive legislation to create a clean energy economy and combat climate change. We are writing this open letter to urge the Senate to pass a bill this year that will reduce U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases and harness market forces to spur technological innovation, invest in effective solutions, and jumpstart a clean energy economy – both in the U.S. and around the world.

So begins an open letter to the Senate last week from a dozen leading businesses.   These companies speak from their own experience reducing emissions while increasing profits:

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