White House statement on $2.3B in awards for clean-tech manufacturing jobs:

WASHINGTON – Today at the White House, President Obama announced the award of $2.3 billion in Recovery Act Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credits for clean energy manufacturing projects across the United States. One hundred eighty three projects in 43 states will create tens of thousands of high quality clean energy jobs and the domestic manufacturing of advanced clean energy technologies including solar, wind and efficiency and energy management technologies.

As part of the Recovery Act, these tax credits are focused on putting Americans back to work by building a robust domestic manufacturing capacity to supply clean and renewable energy projects with American made parts and equipment. These credits are also an important step towards meeting the President’s goal of doubling the amount of renewable energy the country uses in the next three years with wind turbines and solar panels built right here in the United States.

“Building a robust clean energy sector is how we will create the jobs of the future,” said President Obama. “The Recovery Act awards I am announcing today will help close the clean energy gap that has grown between America and other nations while creating good jobs, reducing our carbon emissions and increasing our energy security.”

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“If you’re willing to give me nuclear power, I’m willing to follow Lindsey Graham’s lead and do a little bit on the cap-and-trade bill.”

I totally buy the argument that we need to set a cap on carbon emissions….

I was once again reminded how many business and investment types are thinking quite practically and capitalistically about green, job-creating technologies. For us Hamiltonian conservatives who believe in internal improvements, energy and infrastructure are obviously the two big areas where we should be investing.

David Brooks is one of the few leading conservative intellectuals who hasn’t been knee-jerk anti-science on climate change.   In a 2005 piece on conservative intellectual exhaustion, “Running Out of Steam” he even asserted:

Global warming is real (conservatives secretly know this).

Well, subsequent events have demonstrated that if conservatives (other than Sen. Lindsey Graham) know that global warming is real, it is the best kept secret since, well, that whole fake moon landing thing (see “Unscientific America, Part 1: From the moon-landing deniers to WattsUpWithThat” and Honey, I shrunk the GOP, Part 3: RNC Chair Steele withdraws support for Rep. Kirk over his vote on climate and clean energy bill).

Still, Brooks himself knows it, and in a pretty candid “New Year’s Resolutions” piece (with fellow NYT columnist Gail Collins), he spells out what he believes.  I would not that Collins does not particularly distinguished herself in this piece:

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Large parts of the world are quite warm, especially the Pacific’s El Ni±o region, so 2010 still likely to be hottest year on record

Climate change is taking place as the earth continues to warm up.

In the UK, 2009 as a whole was the 14th-warmest on record (since 1914). This above-average temperature trend was reflected globally, with 2009 being the fifth-warmest year on the global record (since 1850).

It [the recent cold snap] doesn’t tell us anything about climate change, which has to be looked at in a global context and over longer periods of time.

The UK’s Met Office, part of its Defence Ministry, has an excellent post, “What’s causing the cold weather?”

They explain that unlike the usual weather pattern of the last 20 years, “over the past three weeks the Atlantic air has been ‘blocked’ and cold air has been flowing down from the Arctic or the cold winter landmass of Europe.”   They also note that December wasn’t record-breaking in terms of cold, but merely “the coldest for 14 years and colder than the long-term average.”

More significantly, the Met Office notes (and yes the figure above is their posting of last week’s land-surface temperature anomalies):

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LCV makes it easy to tell your Senators to support the bipartisan climate and clean energy jobs bill.

A moderately amusing video from the League of Conservation Voters:

LCV urges you to Tell your Senators to support the Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act – and makes it easy to do: Read more