This Tuesday, as President Barack Obama and other world leaders addressed the United Nations on the need to tackle global warming, some entrepreneurs hoped to demonstrate their own solution. Notably, this solution allows humanity — at least those who are sufficiently wealthy — to completely ignore climate change. The Yes Men displayed SurvivaBalls, self-contained survival suits impervious to the ravages of global warming, on the banks of the East River:

When the planet heats up, it will be time to slip into something more comfortable – like the SurvivaBall. A self-heating, self-cooling and self-powered pod, the SurvivaBall is designed by top scientists to weather all of the effects of climate change to keep its user alive through catastrophe. Even though it makes its occupant resemble a giant tick, it’s also luxurious – “Like a gated community for one,” claims the SurvivaBall’s site. And only for the low price of $100 million!

Although the demonstrators of “Halliburton’s solution to global warming” hoped to reach the United Nations headquarters, they were detained by New York City police. However, CNN’s Jeannie Moos was able to file a report on the pranksters’ novel approach to a planet under siege. Watch it:

Just as Yes Men activists were detained on Monday “when they handed their own version of the New York Post (headline: ‘We’re screwed!‘) to the paper’s conservative owner, Rupert Murdoch, the group’s founder was arrested during the roll-out of the SurvivaBall.” After all charges were dropped, Yes Men founder Andy Bichlbaum has been released.

I’m 72 years old and I’ve never seen anything like it before.  It’s the first time ever.

We have seen the future, and it is Australia — and it isn’t pretty (see “Absolute must read: Australia today offers horrific glimpse of U.S. Southwest, much of planet, post-2040, if we don’t slash emissions soon“).

NASA’s Earth Observatory reported yesterday:

A wall of dust stretched from northern Queensland to the southern tip of eastern Australia on the morning of September 23, 2009, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image [see amazing photo below]. The dust is thick enough that the land beneath it is not visible. The storm, the worst in 70 years, led to canceled or delayed flights, traffic problems, and health issues, reported the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) News. The concentration of particles in the air reached 15,000 micrograms per cubic meter in New South Wales during the storm, said ABC News. A normal day sees a particle concentration 10-20 micrograms per cubic meter.

Australia is the the driest inhabited continent on earth, with a fragile ecosystem, which makes it the canary in the coal mine for how global warming will create Dust Bowls in the SW and around the globe (see “Australia faces collapse as climate change kicks in”: Are the Southwest and California next?).

It is, sadly, probably too late to save much of Australia.  But it is not too late to save the U.S. Southwest and other key regions in or near the subtropics.  We can still prevent the worst.

Two years ago, Science (subs. req’d) published research that “predicted a permanent drought by 2050 throughout the Southwest” on our current emissions path “” levels of aridity comparable to the 1930s Dust Bowl would stretch from Kansas to California.  The Bush Administration itself reaffirmed this conclusion in December (see US Geological Survey stunner: SW faces “permanent drying” by 2050.)

And a major new study led by NOAA found that if we don’t act to reverse emissions soon, these global Dust Bowls will be irreversible for a long, long time (see NOAA stunner: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe).

The anti-scientific website WattsUpWithThat happily assures us that we should simply ignore all of the well-known climate science predictions that this part of Australia would become hotter and drier — even though Australia’s 1000-year drought is strong evidence the predictions were right.  Watts finds a ‘reader’ who claims the epic Dust Storm has “nothing to do with the dreaded Climate Change.”  Seriously!

Watts also points out a bright side:  “dust headed to sea has an unappreciated benefit – it will fertilize the ocean with its mineral rich dust.”  Yes, the record drought wipes out land-based crops, and we’re in the process of poisoning the oceans for millennia, but hey, a massive Dust Bowl may create “some interesting blooms of sea life in the weeks to come.”

Ah, yes, the “unappreciated benefit” of a disastrous dust storm.  You can’t make this stuff up!  But what do you expect from a guy who offered the ‘inanity defense’ for his effort to censor Peter Sinclair’s video, saying he was “doing him a favor.”

Back in the real world, the ABC story Watts cites notes:

Topsoil from the drought-ravaged west of NSW was stripped from the earth and pushed by huge wind gusts to the east….

Dr John Leys from the NSW Department of Environment’s Dust Watch division says it looks like dust storms such as this will become more prevalent.

“There has been a report from CSIRO that show that this drought is the first of its type, because we’ve never had droughts which have been so hot,” he said.

Record heat with record droughts — who ever would have predicted that (see “Must-have PPT: The ‘global-change-type drought’ and the future of extreme weather“)?

More from NASA:

Strong winds blew the dust from the interior to more populated regions along the coast. In this image, the dust rises in plumes from point sources and concentrates in a wall along the front of the storm. The large image shows that some of the point sources are agricultural fields, recognizable by their rectangular shape. Australia has suffered from a multiple-year drought, and much of the dust is coming from fields that have not been planted because of the drought, said ABC News.

Here’s the amazing satellite picture of the Wall of Dust [click to enlarge]:

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I’m going to be on a panel at the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh Friday afternoon.  Details below:

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India Weighing Emissions Curbs

Trying to burnish its international reputation as it prepares for a major climate conference, India is considering adoption of curbs on carbon emissions that it has long resisted.

India had thus far rejected emission cuts, declaring that they would compromise the populous nation’s economic growth, even as developed countries criticized its intransigence. But under a proposed national law, India may set limits on greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decade, focusing on energy efficiency, new building codes, clean energy and fuel economy standards.

India’s leadership hopes that by acting on its own, rather than responding to what are likely to be tough demands from other countries during the December climate conference in Copenhagen, the measures will garner more domestic support.

“We have to take up bold new responsibilities that we have evaded so far,” Jairam Ramesh, India’s environment minister, said at a recent trade conference. “But if we want durable political consensus, then it has to be rooted in domestic legislation and not in an international agreement.”

The cuts would be a national goal; they would be neither an internationally binding commitment nor open to international verification. Still, Ramesh said he hoped that the measures would portray India as a “positive player” in climate talks.

India’s emerging economic might and global ambitions are nudging Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, an Oxford-educated economist, to be more mindful of the nation’s image. His aides say he wants India to engage with the world in a way that befits its aspiration to be a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and have greater say in the running of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Buildings offer emission-cutting projects that pay for themselves

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Senate leaders indicated that while there will be a debate on the Murkowski amendment, it will not come to a vote.

Her effort to undermine the Clean Air Act, to fiddle while Alaska burns has failed.  But she will likely come back to offer this amendment in the future.  EPA action through the CAA remains an imperfect and politically unreliable tool for achieving short-term, medium-term, and long-term emissions reductions — and no tool at all for achieving an international climate treaty (see “The dangerous myth that the EPA’s endangerment finding can somehow stop dangerous warming if the climate bill dies“).

Climate science activists need to focus on passing the comprehensive energy and global warming bill to create jobs, increase America’s energy independence, reduce pollution, and preserve clean air and clean water for future generations.  And who knows, if she has any intellectual consistency and any interest in stopping her home state from being ravaged, maybe the Senator from Alaska will vote for the final bill — see Murkowski calls for tougher energy bill: “Climate legislation must have more immediate environmental benefits” than Waxman-Markey!

UPDATE:  Here is the EPA letter against the latest version of the Murkowski amendment.

UPDATE2:  She is on the Senate floor right now (12:53) throwing in the towel and defending her absurd proposal.  Now she claims there is a “rush” to pass a Senate climate bill — after 12 years of doing nothing.

UPDATE3:  Murkowski says she will “working in good faith” with those in the Senate trying to pass a comprehensive climate and energy bill.  She says she has cosponsored cap-and-trade legislation.  Claims the Senate energy bill would significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which isn’t true.

UPDATE3:  Sen. Feinstein (D-CA) smacks down Murkowski at great length, saying “we can’t afford to bury our heads in the sand on climate change” and if you don’t want the EPA to take action, then the only alternative is cap-and-trade.  “Global warming is real….  it’s happening all over the world.”  Attacks the “Flat Earth Society” who opposes action.

To prove a point known only to him, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck throws a frog in boiling water (maybe).  It’s not entirely clear from the video that Beck actually did what he said he did:

“You know the old saying, if you put a frog into boiling water, he’s going to jump right out, because he’s scalding hot, but if you place the frog in lukewarm water and gradually raise the temperature, it won’t realize what’s happening and die?”

Once and for all people, this assertion is a myth.  As Wikipedia puts it, German physiologist Friedrich Goltz “demonstrated that frogs will indeed remain in slowly heated water, but only if their brain is removed” — see “Turns out humans are not like slowly boiling frogs “¦ we are like slowly boiling brainless frogs.”

Now if anyone on the planet is proof that our species is like slowly boiling brainless frogs — that we should drop one of the sapiens, and, provisionally put the other one in quotes, so we are Homo “sapiens” sapiens — that would be Glenn “Almost everyone who does believe in global warming is a socialist” Beck.

But here’s the ironic thing about Beck’s rant — his big complaint against Obama here is that, yes, “he’s forced us to think”:

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On Tuesday, PG&E Corp. quit the US Chamber Of Commerce over its “extreme position on climate change.” Now New Mexico power company PNM has given up seat on the Chamber’s Board of Directors, issuing this statement:

We strongly disagree with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s position on climate change legislation and particularly reject its recent theatrics calling for a ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ to put the science of climate change on trial. We believe the science is compelling enough to act sooner rather than later, and we support comprehensive federal legislation to  meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect customers against unreasonable cost increases.

Again, they would seem to be leaving the Chamber’s Board because it has been overrun by climate science deniers and disinformers (see “Are Chamber President Tom Donohue’s Ties to Union Pacific Railroading the Companies that Support Climate Policy?” and “Chamber admits calling for ‘Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century’ was dumb “” but it still apes the deniers“).

NRDC’s Pete Altman notes that on Monday “Nike circulated this statement regarding their serious disagreement with the US Chamber for its recalcitrant position on climate policy”:

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Perhaps I should send Toles my earlier post, “Turns out humans are not like slowly boiling frogs “¦ we are like slowly boiling brainless frogs.”