Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of SuperFreakonomics, has embraced charges by the right wing that a handful of illegally obtained private emails means that the scientific consensus on climate change is actually a dangerous conspiracy. Dubner lent credence to the fevered “ClimateGate” ravings of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and other global warming deniers in an interview with Fox Business Network host David Asman. Dubner purports that the hacked University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit emails reveal that the supposed “consensus” on global warming is because “everybody’s scared to be an outlier, everybody’s scared to be a skeptic.” After Asman compared climate scientists to Stalin and Hitler — we’re not kidding — Dubner jumped in to accuse “potent” scientists of “colluding” to “tell Al Gore what to say,” and “distorting evidence” to “make their findings be right for their position”:

You can’t read these e-mails and feel that the IPCC’s or the major climate scientists’ findings and predictions about global warming are kosher. You can’t. They may be, but if you read these you have to have a whole lot of skepticism about that. And of course, coming into Copenhagen these are going to have a big effect how the world looks at you. They’re going to say, “Wait a minute. You say these climate scientists have been telling us we have to stop burning fossil fuel tomorrow?”

Watch it:

By asking whether “we have to stop burning fossil fuel tomorrow,” Dubner — a top blogger for the New York Times — gets to the heart of why this bizarre theory of a cabal of all-powerful climatologists is getting support from conservative media and politicians. The incontrovertible science — based not on manipulated data but on decades of basic research — is that the burning of fossil fuels is drastically reshaping our planet’s climate, melting the glaciers, and acidifying the oceans. And the only known way to restore conditions to those safe for human civilization is to dramatically reduce the use of fossil fuels. Doing so, however, would affect the incredible profits and power of the oil and coal industries, and of their ideological allies.

One of the scientists, for example, who is “telling us we have to stop burning fossil fuel tomorrow” is Ken Caldeira, who Dubner and Levitt falsely portray in their book as a supporter of their mindless contrarianism. Is Dubner now accusing Caldeira of being part of this conspiracy?

Dubner continues:

But the point is this: carbon mitigation as a plan to stop global warming — even if you devoutly believe that global warming is the biggest problem we ever faced — won’t work.

This is an even more radical claim than what’s in SuperFreakonomics, in which Dubner and co-author Steven Levitt merely argue — based on flawed logic and falsehoods — that carbon mitigation would be ruinously expensive and difficult.

In fact, if we stop treating our atmosphere like a sewer, the climate system will heal itself over time, potentially more rapidly than we expect. That our past inaction will continue to bear consequences into the future is a reason to act with greater swiftness, not to dither further. The longer we delay, the more difficult and expensive the challenge to reduce pollution while adapting to a hostile world becomes.

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NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies posted these fascinating figures last week (click for PDF).  Yes, the one place in the world where it warmed the least this year is, of course, the good old (continental) U.S. of A.

I noted last week that NASA reports hottest June to October on record*, but the figure and monthly data (here) reveal several other interesting things:

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The 2007 IPCC Assessment, the most comprehensive and respected analysis of climate change to date, states clearly that without substantial global reductions of greenhouse gas emissions we can likely expect a world of increasing droughts, floods and species loss, of rising seas and displaced human populations. However even since the 2007 IPCC Assessment the evidence for dangerous, long-term and potentially irreversible climate change has strengthened. The scientific evidence which underpins calls for action at Copenhagen is very strong. Without co-ordinated international action on greenhouse gas emissions, the impacts on climate and civilisation could be severe.

That is the “Summary” of the just-released statement by the Met Office (the UK’s National Weather Service, within the Ministry of Defence), the Natural Environment Research Council, and the UK’s Royal Society (the UK’s national academy of science, “the world’s oldest scientific academy in continuous existence,” founded in 1660).

The Royal Society’s motto is apt:  Nullius in verba — Latin for “On the words of no one” or “take nobody’s word for it.”  It is “an expression of its enduring commitment to empirical evidence as the basis of knowledge about the natural world.”

Our U.S. National Academy of Science should release something like this.

Below is the full must-read statement:

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OK.  You’ll have to go here for the video.

If someone can find a working embed code for it, put the link in the comments.

“A mirror facet for a solar dish is cut on a machine at Tower Automotive in Livonia, Mich. The maker of body parts and other components decided to diversify after its orders from automakers dropped during the downturn.”

Solar energy industry brings a ray of hope to the Rust Belt

Areas hard-hit by the U.S. automakers’ slump are pitching themselves to green technology firms. Workers and machines that used to crank out cars are now making parts for solar and wind power plants.

At a recent solar energy conference in Anaheim, economic development officials from Ohio talked up a state that seemed far removed from the solar panels and high-tech devices that dominated the convention floor.

Ohio, long known for its smokestack auto plants and metal-bending factories, would be an ideal place for green technology companies to set up shop, they said.

“People don’t traditionally think of Ohio when they think of solar,” said Lisa Patt-McDaniel, director of Ohio’s economic development agency. But in fact, the Rust Belt goes well with the Green Belt, she said.

In years past, Sunbelt governors recruited Midwestern businesses to set up shop in their states, dangling tax breaks and the lure of a union-free workforce.

Now the tables have turned as solar start-ups, wind turbine companies and electric carmakers from California and the Southwest migrate to the nation’s industrial heartland.

They’re looking to tap its manufacturing might and legions of skilled workers, hit hard by the near-collapse of the United States auto industry and eager for work.

For all of green tech’s futuristic sheen, solar power plants and wind farms are made of much of the same stuff as automobiles: machine-stamped steel, glass and gearboxes.

That has renewable energy companies hitting the highway for Detroit and Northeastern industrial states, driven in part by the federal stimulus package’s incentives and buy-American mandates.

Irvine’s Fisker Automotive, for instance, will manufacture its next plug-in electric hybrid car at a defunct General Motors assembly plant in Wilmington, Del.

And Stirling Energy Systems, which is building two massive solar power plants in Southern California, has signed deals with two automotive companies to make components for its giant solar dishes.

India’s PM Singh pledges deeper emissions cuts with ‘global support’

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• Embarrassing climate e-mails will have limited impact
• Scientists behaving badly won’t change evidence….

WASHINGTON, Nov 23 (Reuters) – Revelation of a series of embarrassing e-mails by climate scientists provides fodder for critics, but experts believe the issue will not hurt the U.S. climate bill’s chance for passage or efforts to forge a global climate change deal.

Already dubbed “Climategate,” e-mails stolen from a British university are sparking outrage from climate change skeptics who say they show that the scientists were colluding on suppressing data on how humans affect climate change.

Reuters got the headline and analysis right, but we don’t name these things after the victim of these illegal hacks — a livable climate.  We name them after the crime or its location a la Watergate.  Certainly in this modern version of The Purlioned Letter, a better name would be Hackergate, if only because Nothing-gate isn’t catchy enough to catch on.  But I welcome your suggestions.  The winner of this contest gets … absolute nothing.

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Congress must pass a strong climate bill. The House took an important step in June when it passed a measure with broad carbon-reduction provisions. Now the ball is in the Senate’s court. No one, regardless of political ideology, will be completely satisfied with the final legislation, but this should not hold up progress. In the decades to come, Congress will need to revisit climate change many times and adjust the law as necessary.

For now, the most important thing is to put a price on carbon, a price that reflects the true cost to the planet of emitting greenhouse gases. This is why a cap-and-trade system — whereby overall emissions are limited, and companies may buy and sell emissions allowances from one another — must be the cornerstone of climate legislation.

Cap-and-trade could be called cap-and-innovate. Setting a price for carbon emissions won’t just build momentum for an international climate accord; equally important, it will give companies an economic foundation for investments in energy efficiency and clean energy, unleashing the innovation that only a well-functioning market can provide.

Unless such a climate bill becomes law soon, our country will slip further behind in the competition to shape the world’s energy future.  Renewable energy technology is advancing quickly in Europe and Asia, giving other countries critical first-mover advantages. Germany and Great Britain have robust offshore wind industries. Israel and Denmark are deploying electric vehicle infrastructures. China is becoming the world’s primary source for solar panels.

That’s an excerpt from an excellent piece in the Washington Post‘s Sunday Outlook section by Ralph Izzo, chairman and CEO of the Public Service Enterprise Group, an energy company, who “began his career as a research scientist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.”  Here’s more:

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