OK, our neighbors up north don’t talk that way, as the video below make clear

But they — or, rather, their government, seems to be trying to outdo our last Administration in inviting climate change to do its very worst (see “A Canadian view of Copenhagen“).

Here is the last of the five “mouth” videos that I filmed up way too close and personal in sardine-like conditions.  This is Rick Bates, Executive Director of the Canadian Wildlife Federation — yes, I was surrounded by an impressive, eclectic international crowd, all brought together in one small place thanks to the incompetence of the UNFCCC in handing out twice as many credentials as the Bella Center could hold!

Watch (but cover your eyes):

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Complements 10 New Technology Roadmaps by the Major Economies Forum

Today the Obama administration took another major step towards mitigating global warming pollution.  Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the launch of the Renewables and Efficiency Deployment Initiative (Climate REDI) as well as ten new clean energy technology road maps under the Global Partnership, which was launched under the Major Economies Forum (MEF) in July in L’Aquila, Italy.

Under Climate REDI, the United States is contributing $85 million to a global pot of $350 million over five years (other contrubutors being Australia, Italy, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and others) that will accelerate the deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies through four programs:

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Don’t be fooled about climate science. In April, 1994 — long after scientists had clearly demonstrated the addictive quality and devastating health impacts of cigarette smoking — seven chief executives of major tobacco companies denied the evidence, swearing under oath that nicotine was not addictive.

Now, the American public is again being subjected to those kinds of denials, this time about global climate change. While former Alaska governor Sarah Palin wrote in her Dec. 9 op-ed that she did not deny the “reality of some changes in climate,” she distorted the clear scientific evidence that Earth’s climate is changing, largely as a result of human behaviors. She also badly confused the concepts of daily weather changes and long-term climate trends when she wrote that “while we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can’t say with assurance that man’s activities cause weather changes.” Her statement inaccurately suggests that short-term weather fluctuations must be consistent with long-term climate patterns. And it is the long-term patterns that are a cause for concern.

Climate-change science is clear:

That’s Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of the journal Science writing in WashingtonPost.com.  Unfortunately, WashPost didn’t run this in their print edition, where it would be read by the same people who read the notorious Palin piece (see “The Washington Post goes tabloid, publishes second falsehood-filled op-ed by Sarah Palin in five months “” on climate science and the hacked emails!)

Since the Palin piece was read by, who knows, maybe 10 more people — probably far more than that when you consider all the papers that reprint Post op-eds, but not online columns, I though the least CP could do is reprint Leshners’s entire piece.  It continues:

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The Wonk Room is blogging and tweeting live from Copenhagen.

As the second and final week of the the United Nations Climate Change Conference begins, the Bella Center is now thronged with members of civil society, the world press, and governmental delegations, overwhelming the 15,000-person facility. At the end of the week over 110 heads of state will arrive, meet, and speak publicly on whether they can sufficiently address this existential threat.

Church Bells

Over the weekend, about 100,000 people from around the world participated in a festive and overwhelmingly peaceful march — three people were charged for violent acts — from the center of Copenhagen to the Bella Center, where the United Nations Climate Change Conference is taking place. On Sunday, Desmond Tutu and Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, led an ecumenical service as churches around the world rang their bells 350 times.

Closed Doors

Negotiations continue behind closed doors, as developing countries express their frustrations about the state of negotiations. African delegates staged a several-hour boycott to push developed nations to ensure an extension of the Kyoto Protocol. As the Los Angeles Times’ Jim Tankersley writes, the public conflicts are “one big optical illusion,” as “a few key negotiators have quietly and steadily hammered away at the obstacles to a deal.” Slow progress is being made on issues from reducing deforestation to shared commitments by major emitters, awaiting a final push by world leaders. In the Fossil of the Day ceremony, climate organizations criticized the United States and the European Union for their failure to commit to strong action and close loopholes.

Acid Oceans

“You cannot cut a deal with Mother Nature,” Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed said today, as the first head of state to arrive in Copenhagen, his small island nation in threat from the rising, warming, and acidifying seas.

Today is Oceans Day in Copenhagen, with a day-long symposium in downtown and several events in the Bella Center. Oceanographers Ove Hoegh-Guldberg and Rob Dunbar reported that current levels of carbon dioxide have already caused dangerous ocean acidification, coral bleaching and ice-sheet loss. Both agreed that the safe level of carbon dioxide concentrations for oceans and icecaps is well below current levels (390 ppm), let alone the 450 ppm target recommended in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

The clean energy economy is busting out all over — at least in the absurdly crowded line waiting to get accredidation to attend the UNFCCC conference in Copenhagen.

Here is Steen Broust Nielsen of MAKE consulting on how Denmark is leading the way with wind power:

Not so coincidentally, one of today’s news clips, is a Boston Globe op-ed, “Green and prosperous? Denmark leads the way,” which I excerpt below:

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Do-It-Yourself Solar at Lowe’s

It’s inevitable: More do-it-yourself solar panels will be available, this time in your nearest Lowe’s.

Lowe’s is now carrying solar panels from Los Gatos, Calif.-based Akeena Solar that feature built-in writing and racks and an installation technique that aims to simplify the steps and shorten the time it takes to put solar panels on a rooftop (see video from Akeena).

Lowe’s is selling the Andalay at $893 per panel, available at 25 stores in California. Akeena said handy homeowners could install the panels themselves if they don’t want to hire people to do it, but they might still need an electrician to connect the rooftop system to the home’s circuit.

The announcement brings home what Akeena and some other solar companies see as the future of residential solar market. Instead of hiring contractors or roofers, homeowners could install solar panels themselves and save on labor costs (see An Ikea for Solar? and Getting Solar Energy Cheap and Easy).

A number of startups are developing this kind of do-it-yourself solar energy systems, including Armageddon Energy (see video). Meanwhile, companies such as Dow Chemical are working on solar cell-embedded roofing materials, which will require strong insulation to protect the cells from moisture and other weather elements (see Dow to Roofers: Our Solar Shingles Are Coming).

Other big-box retailers such as Home Depot already sell solar panels and related parts, though they sell them along with installation services and even financing.

Whether homeowners would embrace the do-it-yourself idea is uncertain. A solar energy system remains a bulky appliance, and erecting them on a roof isn’t as easy as plugging in your big-screen TV….

The use of microinverters allows Akeena to design a simpler solar energy system. Each Andalay panel has a microinverter attached at the back for converting the direct current from the solar panels to alternating current for on-site use or for feeding the grid. Most of the solar energy systems installed today use centralized inverters.

Using microinverters allows Akeena to eliminate some of the high-voltage DC wiring that would otherwise be necessary to bring the electricity from solar panels to a central inverter, which typically sits in a box next to the house.

World’s mayors tackle climate change on their own

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Installers and people who train them!

Again, I was in Denmark’s and the UNFCCC’s version of Disneyland, so I wasn’t going to risk not getting the audio, even it if meant getting too close.  This is not my best video, but I’m still posting it because it’s important to hear from the people who are doing the nuts and bolts of the clean energy economy.

This is Danish-American Lisa Ann Cairns, Ph.D., Vice President of Texas-based ONTILITY, which “connects the green economy down to the ‘last mile’ ” and is a Dept. of Energy grantee for solar training:

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Another video waiting in the line from hell (and high water?), this time from an Israeli.  Apologies I forgot to get her card.  Apologies also for the abrupt ending.  There were lots of barely audible announcements we kept straining to hear amidst the too-crowded crowd noise:

Too bad the UNFCCC accredited twice as many people as could fit in the Bella Center where the delegates are negotiating the climate’s future.

For more on the Carbon Disclosure Project, click here.

This is a repost from Think Progress.

On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace touted his show’s “fair and balanced” bona fides by claiming he was going to host a debate on whether climate change actually exists. Promoting the conversation on its website, the official blog of the show wrote, “Does climate change exist? We’ll have a fair and balanced debate on Fox News Sunday.”

The debate pitted prominent global warming denier, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), against the author of climate change legislation in the House, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA). When Wallace pressed Inhofe to confront the fact that the last decade has been the hottest in recorded history, Inhofe “” true to form “” denied the reality:

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As the climate change summit meeting moves forward in Copenhagen, it is increasingly clear that more than just the environment is at stake. The global environmental crisis is at the heart of practically all the problems now confronting us, including the need to create a global economic model grounded in the public good.

It is directly linked to security issues and to increasingly dangerous ethnic and international conflicts; to mass migrations and displacements of people, which are already destabilizing politics and economics; to growing poverty and social inequality; to the water crisis and energy and food shortages.

Excuses and pretexts for not taking action on the environment, and assertions that there are more important problems, are simply no longer credible. If we fail on this problem, we’ll fail on all the others.

That’s Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, is founding president of Green Cross International and head of the Climate Change Task Force (CCTF), in the NYTimes.com.  Here’s more:

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What do you think his legacy is?

As I noted last week, “Revkin rumored to be considering bolting from NY Times.” Now it’s official.   The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media reports today:

Andy Revkin’s Last Day at NY Times: December 21
Science writer Andrew C. Revkin, the individual journalist most identified with reporting on climate change, is leaving The New York Times. His last day will be December 21, and he will affiliate with Pace University. He is expected to continue working on his popular Dotearth blog through The Times, though details are still being arranged.

Revkin’s move has been in the works for some time, and he says he decided some two years ago – after writing a “next 20 years” personal memorandum about his career plans – that he would leave journalism. He cites frustration with journalism and also personal fatigue after routinely working virtually 24/7 in recent years.

Comments welcome.

To me, he leaves a mixed legacy — as these ClimateProgress posts demonstrate:

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This is reposted from MORE. com

For millions of women, global warming is more than just a concept. It’s hurting them and their families right now. Here’s how they are coping.

Imagine having to walk six hours for a drink of water. Or being surrounded by so much rising water your ancestral homeland is sinking before your eyes. Or that the ice that has literally supported your community for untold generations is cracked, splitting and swallowing your loved ones, along with their way of life. The main problem with climate change is water, says Kristie Ebi, a public health and toxicology expert with the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Too much, too little, wrong place, wrong time.”

Rich nations produce the bulk of the greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming, yet the effects are felt most in the poorest parts of the world. The impact is especially hard on women, who often grow the food, find the water and gather the firewood. At the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December, representatives from 192 countries will meet to hammer out a new plan for curbing emissions. Meanwhile, the women most affected by global warming are leading the way in adapting to it””sometimes making a change as basic as raising ducks instead of chickens, so their food supply can swim instead of drowning the next time there’s a flood. These five women never expected to be facing these issues at this stage of their lives. But they’re adapting to the challenge with courage and grace. And you can help. Here are their stories:

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Warning — I am no cinematographer under the best of circumstances.  But having flown the redeye and then being wedged with a few hundred other people waiting for hours to get accredited as an observer for the international climate conference being held in the Bella Center in Copenhagen — with no actual line movement for most of that time — and then to learn  it was only one of those Disneyland-esque “lines” just to get into the real line, well,  at least I had my Flip Camera.

So I did a bunch of interviews that definitely give new meaning to the phrase up close and personal.  My apologies, but given the experience with the NREL director in a far less noisy setting, I wanted to make sure to get the audio.  And I did.

The first minute or so of this video is some gallows humor about the line — and then you’ll get the policy perspective of Daniel Argyropolous, a German (half Greek) who had worked for the German government on renewable policy and is now working in Great Britain for Garrad Hassan, which bills itself as “the worlds leading renewable energy consultancy.”  If you think some Europeans mock our lame renewable energy policies, which have cost us global leadership in a variety of technologies we were once the world leader in, you’re right!

Watch:

I had already interviewed the woman I panned to, and will post that shortly.

Related Post:

• Why other countries kick our butt on clean energy: A primer
• “Invented here, sold there.”
• Solar PV market doubled to 6 Gigawatts in 2008 “” U.S. left in dust, having invented the technology

The great environmental writer and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, is the guest blogger.

I’ve spent the last few years working more than full time to organize the first big global grassroots climate change campaign. That’s meant shutting off my emotions most of the time””this crisis is so terrifying that when you let yourself feel too deeply it can be paralyzing. Hence, much gallows humor, irony, and sheer work.

This afternoon I sobbed for an hour, and I’m still choking a little. I got to Copenhagen’s main Lutheran Cathedral just before the start of a special service designed to mark the conference underway for the next week. It was jammed, but I squeezed into a chair near the corner. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, gave the sermon; Desmond Tutu read the Psalm. Both were wonderful.

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Our guest blogger is Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org and the author of the forthcoming Eaarth: Making A Life in a Tough New World.

I’ve spent the last few years working more than full time to organize the first big global grassroots climate change campaign. That’s meant shutting off my emotions most of the time—this crisis is so terrifying that when you let yourself feel too deeply it can be paralyzing. Hence, much gallows humor, irony, and sheer work.

This afternoon I sobbed for an hour, and I’m still choking a little. I got to Copenhagen’s main Lutheran Cathedral just before the start of a special service designed to mark the conference underway for the next week. It was jammed, but I squeezed into a chair near the corner. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, gave the sermon; Desmond Tutu read the Psalm. Both were wonderful.

But my tears started before anyone said a word. As the service started, dozens choristers from around the world carried three things down the aisle and to the altar: pieces of dead coral bleached by hot ocean temperatures; stones uncovered by retreating glaciers; and small, shriveled ears of corn from drought-stricken parts of Africa. As I watched them go by, all I could think of was the people I’ve met in the last couple of years traveling the world: the people living in the valleys where those glaciers are disappearing, and the people downstream who have no backup plan for where their water is going to come from. The people who live on the islands surrounded by that coral, who depend on the reefs for the fish they eat, and to protect their homes from the waves. And the people, on every corner of the world, dealing with drought and flood, already unable to earn their daily bread in the places where their ancestors farmed for generations. Read more