Below are all the posts written this year that were viewed by 12,000 or more people.  These numbers don’t count views by my subscribers, who don’t show up in any of my stats unless they click on link and visit Climate Progress.

This list is perhaps a better introduction to Climate Progress than the most-discussed posts of 2008, since it is basically driven by what the rest of the blogosphere thinks are the best and most timely CP posts.

Regular readers can probably figure out what post written this year was (easily) my most widely read — viewed by over 63,000 people!  Hint:  It was certainly the most linked to and talked about post I did this year — particularly since the subjects of the post came after me.  But I was quickly vindicated by independent analysis and reporting — and leading writers and bloggers picked up and expanded on my key points — so it became the most influential post I did this year.

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Could states’ financial troubles BOOST chances for a bill?

“I think it [climate legislation] is important. I think we ought to take it up,” Specter said in a brief interview last week. He’s also said any final bill must protect manufacturers and provide a major boost for low-emissions coal.

Today, The Hill has an antidote to the flawed, unbalanced reporting in the Politico that I discussed yesterday.  The Hill is not wrapped up in pushing a center-right narrative, like the Politico, but just focuses on getting the story right.

This is a superior piece of reporting from the start, with its headline, “Senate climate change fight looks as tough as healthcare reform bill.”   Assembling 60 votes for comprehensive climate and clean energy jobs legislation was never going to be easy in this political climate, but any story has to begin with the White House commitment to climate action and the bipartisan team working with the administration:

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Even as the Senate argues whether to pass clean-energy legislation, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is finally moving to regulate global warming pollution. One of the leading opponents to the EPA’s proposed regulations, slated to go into effect in March, 2010, is Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA). On Monday, Jindal “and the secretaries of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources and Louisiana Economic Development filed objections with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson,” claiming the Supreme-Court-mandated standards “will certainly have profound negative economic impacts“:

There is no doubt this change will certainly have profound negative economic impacts on the state of Louisiana, as well as the entire country.

In reality, regulations to limit greenhouse gases would reward business investment in labor instead of pollution, in new technology and development instead of reliance on 19th-century fuel sources. An analysis by the Center for American Progress and the Political Economy Research Institute found that strong regulation and standards would create billions in revenue and tens of thousands of new jobs:

Louisiana could see a net increase of about $2.2 billion in investment revenue and 29,000 jobs based on its share of a total of $150 billion in clean-energy investments annually across the country. This is even after assuming a reduction in fossil fuel spending equivalent to the increase in clean-energy investments.

Whereas regulation of pollution will likely benefit Louisiana’s economy, there is actually “no doubt” that unmitigated climate change “will certainly have profound negative economic impacts” on the state of Louisiana. “The letters say nothing about the cost of inaction,” the New Orleans Times-Picayune notes, “as Louisiana’s coastline is ravaged by rising sea levels, jeopardizing business investment in the state’s most populated areas”:

In 2005, the global-warming-fueled Hurricane Katrina devastated Jindal’s state, costing this nation $80 billion, killing thousands, and displacing a million people. Katrina and Rita caused $1.6 billion in agriculture damage in Louisiana alone.

In 2008, Hurricane Gustav “was the largest agricultural disaster in Louisiana history,” according to Jindal, as he announced the distribution of $54.8 million in federal taxpayer aid this month.

In 2009, this summer’s “record-setting heat wave and simultaneous dry spell,” followed by extreme “late-season rains,” buckled roads and further damaged crops, driving even more farmers into bankruptcy.

According to a recent analysis published in Nature, “an additional 2 degrees of global warming could commit the planet to 6 to 9 meters (20 to 30 feet) of long-term sea level rise,” which would “permanently submerge New Orleans and other parts of southern Louisiana.”

Energy consultant Michael Lynch and I do not agree on oil, especially peak oil (see Open challenge to long-wrong Michael Lynch, who predicted back in 1996 “real oil prices FLAT for the next two decades”: I’ll take your bet on $30 oil).  So I offered him a wager:

Here’s my bet to Lynch.  Let’s take the average price of oil from 2010 to 2015.  For every $1 a barrel it is below $40, I’ll pay you $200, if you pay me a mere $100 for every $1 a barrel it is above $40.

He didn’t like my terms and counter-offered (here) “say $65? per barrel adjusted for inflation.”  I don’t actually read that website, since it’s run by the anti-science disinformers, and he didn’t post the terms in the comments here, which is the main reason I’ve been slow to reply but in any case, the bet is one no believer in peak oil could refuse, and I did want to accept it before the year ended.

It isn’t entirely clear from his post whether he is taking the other terms of my wager or offering a straight bet on the average price, which would also be fine by me.  So we’ll have to work that out along with which oil price we’re going to use.

I do take Lynch’s point that the oil price is not definitive proof one way or another of the peak oil theory:

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