Senator Kerry:  Has your study been peer reviewed?
Kenneth Green:  No, I don’t work in the peer review literature, Senator. I don’t work for a university.

Steven Hayward, the F.K. Weyerhaeuser fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, recently said, “The brain waves of the American right continue to be erratic, when they are not flat-lining.”  He may have had in mind his AEI colleague Kenneth Green, whose lack of knowledge on climate was laid bare for all to see by Sen. John Kerry in today’s Finance Committee hearing:

I don’t know what is more revealing and embarrassing for Green and AEI — that Green couldn’t actually name a single peer-reviewed study in his defense or that when Kerry calls him on it, his only defense is an appeal to authority — his own “opinion” (!):

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Our guest blogger is supermodel Cameron Russell, a junior at Columbia University and the organizer of the “Supermodels Take It Off For Climate Change” video for the 350.org movement.  This is a Wonk Room repost.

Right now, preventing catastrophic climate change is just about the most important thing any one of us should be working on right now. 350.org organized a worldwide day of action which took place on October 24. The goal of their effort was to educate and generate attention around the setting of a 350 parts per million CO2 target goal for the meeting to be held in Copenhagen in December. I know something about getting attention and decided to contribute to their effort.

In the history of the world, all five mass extinctions have been accompanied by massive climate change, so we are facing an incredibly serious threat. In fact, we are technically in the sixth mass extinction right now, and it is the first mass extinction being attributed to humans.

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U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday he would travel to Copenhagen next month if a climate summit is on the verge of a framework deal and his presence there will make a difference in clinching it….

“If I am confident that all of the countries involved are bargaining in good faith and we are on the brink of a meaningful agreement and my presence in Copenhagen will make a difference in tipping us over edge then certainly that’s something that I will do,” Obama told Reuters in an interview.

I had written back on October 9, after the Nobel Peace Prize announcement, that it looks like Obama will be going to Copenhagen after all.

The only question is whether there will be enough progress to motivate him to come.  Reuters notes that the President remains optimistic n spite of the too-slow movement in the Senate:

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Cost of extra year’s climate inaction $500 billion: IEA

The world will have to spend an extra $500 billion to cut carbon emissions for each year it delays implementing a major assault on global warming, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday.

At United Nations climate talks in Barcelona last week negotiators from developed countries said the world would need an extra six to 12 months to agree a legally binding, global deal to cut carbon emissions beyond a planned December deadline.

The IEA, energy adviser to 28 industrialized countries, said the world must act urgently to put greenhouse gases on a track to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius.

Every year’s delay beyond 2010 would add another $500 billion to the extra investment of $10,500 billion needed from 2010-2030 to curb carbon emissions, for example to improve energy efficiency and boost low-carbon renewable energy.

“Much more needs to be done to get anywhere near an emissions path consistent with … limiting the rise in global temperature to 2 degrees,” said the IEA’s 2009 World Energy Outlook. “Countries attending the U.N. climate conference must not lose sight of this.”

What needs to be done?  See “Must-read IEA report explains what must be done to avoid 6°C warming” and “IEA report, Part 2: Climate Progress has the 450-ppm solution about right.”

Here’s more from today’s story:

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Our guest blogger is supermodel Cameron Russell, a junior at Columbia University and the organizer of the “Supermodels Take It Off For Climate Change” video for the 350.org movement.

Right now, preventing catastrophic climate change is just about the most important thing any one of us should be working on right now. 350.org organized a worldwide day of action which took place on October 24. The goal of their effort was to educate and generate attention around the setting of a 350 parts per million CO2 target goal for the meeting to be held in Copenhagen in December. I know something about getting attention and decided to contribute to their effort.

Watch it:

In the history of the world, all five mass extinctions have been accompanied by massive climate change, so we are facing an incredibly serious threat. In fact, we are technically in the sixth mass extinction right now, and it is the first mass extinction being attributed to humans.

The whole “Supermodels take it off for climate change” project happened from start to finish in a little under two weeks and 300 phone calls–who knew production was so complicated! All the girls — Rachel Alexander, Shannon Click, Hanne Gaby, Olya Ivanisevic, Alla Kostromicheva, Heidi Mount, Crystal Renn, Rianne Ten Haken, and Nicole Trunfio — are my friends and loved shooting the video for a good cause, so that part was relatively easy to pull together. But let me tell you who was really responsible.

Indirectly there are three people responsible for this video: Tibor Kalman, Bill McKibben, and Robin Chase:

My all-time hero Tibor Kalman showed the world the ability of mass media to convey serious images and create real discussion (think 90’s Benetton advertisements of people with AIDS). Climate change, which is often seen as very political or scientific, needs to be made a people’s issue. My hope is that this ad helps re-brand environmentalism.

Bill McKibben, advocating scientist James Hansen’s target of 350 ppm CO2 to avoid catastrophic effects from climate change, leads the 350 movement — a widely successful environmental action campaign that remains in close touch with science and politics.

Finally Robin Chase, founder of Zipcar and Goloco, is my mom and raised me in a household that didn’t drive when it could be avoided, bought used clothes and almost nothing else, and led our family and friends by example showing us that it doesn’t matter how much you have. She also taught us to appreciate our personal and unique strengths, skills and experience, and figure out how to put them to good use.

There were at least 26 other people directly involved in making it. Eleven other models donated their free time, a precious day off for these top girls who work nearly every day from their late teens to as late as their early 30′s. Some of them have professional lives outside of modeling too. Cystal Renn just put out a book called Hungry about her transformation into a plus size model — it’s been incredibly successful and earned her a spot on Oprah. Nicole is the host of Bravo’s “Make Me a Supermodel” show. Heidi is the proud mother of two year-old Liam.

Then there was a whole team of people that made the girls look amazing: a stylist, Shandi Alexander, and her two assistants, a hairdresser, Kevin Ryan, and his two assistants, and two make up artists, Jesse Lawson and Fara Homidi, who all donated their free time as well. Then there was our amazing director Damani Baker, the three guys who assisted him, and Andrew Zuckerman who took still photos. There was my co-prodcuer Alex Vlack who also let us use his studio and turn his office into a wardrobe room. Finally there was Christana Tran and Heather Hughes who work at Women and Supreme model management that helped provide designer clothing and coordinate models.

Thousands and thousands of climate science advocates — including me — will be in Copenhagen next month trying to advance an international deal that gives the world a chance to avoid catastrophic global warming.

And then there will be the man even the Washington Post calls “the last flat-earther,” Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL).  Why is he going?  The Ada Evening News reported Monday:

Inhofe said he still intends to attend the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference.

“I’m always the spoiler at this thing. Last night I was on the Larry Kudlow show. He said, ‘Inhofe is the one-man truth squad going to Copenhagen.’ So when Barbara Boxer, John Kerry and all the left get up there and say, ‘Yes. We’re going to pass a global warming bill,’ I will be able to stand up and say, ‘No, it’s over. Get a life. You lost. I won,’ ” Inhofe said.

Sadly, the U.S. Constitution restriction — “No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years” — applies only to physical age.  The senior junior-high-school Senator from Oklahoma is proof of that.  What’s next for Inhofe?  Perhaps during the Senate floor debate he plans to say “La, la, la, la, I can’t hear you”?

Inhofe makes other equally revealing nonsense statements in the interview:

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Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) knows that his state’s trees are being ravaged by warming-driven pests now and that Montana faces 175% to 400% increase in wildfire burn area if we don’t reverse course sharply and soon on greenhouse gas emissions.  That’s why he supports strong climate action and said last week, “There’s no doubt that this Congress is going to pass climate change legislation.”

Bizarrely, though, his Finance Committee will hold an utterly missable hearing today on the “future of jobs” under clean energy legislation that has a witness list stacked with fossil-fuel-industry-funded polluters and deniers.  Wonk Room has the story, excerpted below:

Appearing before the committee are four industry or conservative lobbyists and one coal-industry union lobbyist, Abraham Breehey. The only economist to testify will be Margo Thorning, a lobbyist for the anti-tax American Council on Capital Formation. Also testifying is Carol Berrigan, a nuclear industry representative, Van Ton-Quinlivan of Pacific Gas & Electric, and American Enterprise Institute fellow Kenneth Green.

Green regularly spouts anti-scientific nonsense like, “We’re back to the average temperatures that prevailed in 1978″¦.  No matter what you’ve been told, the technology to significantly reduce emissions is decades away and extremely costly” “” from a 2008 speech AEI later removed from their website (excerpts here).  Last month, Green weirdly compared EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to Clint Eastwood and carbon polluters to criminals.

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Despite promises to fast-track development of three electric car models using federal loan dollars to prevent its bankruptcy, Chrysler announced yesterday that it will instead disband the engineering team responsible for the projects.

For decades Chrysler has relied on selling gas hogs like trucks and minivans to turn a profit. As the producer of five out of the top 10 most polluting, inefficient passenger vehicles in America, Chrysler has not surprisingly seen its sales plummet by half in the last few years of volatile gas prices. So the plans to become a leader in the electric vehicles market introduced under pre-bailout CEO Bob Nardelli seemed like a welcome change of direction for this old industrial giant.

However, Chrysler’s new CEO Sergio Marchionne, who took leadership of the company after the government-brokered merger with Fiat, is himself personally skeptical of electric vehicles, stating that E.V.’s will only account for one to two percent of overall production by 2015 – a mere 60,000 vehicles.

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