Reid: “Finally – and perhaps most importantly – Congress needs to send the market a clear signal on the costs of global warming pollution to drive far greater investments into geothermal and every other form of renewable energy and energy efficiency.”

I keep telling everyone that it’s coming — see “Memo to swing Senators: You are going to vote on a bipartisan, economy-wide climate and clean energy jobs bill this spring. Get over it.”

But if folks don’t believe every word and action from the President (see “Coming to Copenhagen commits Obama to getting the bipartisan climate and clean energy bill passed“), perhaps they’ll believe the Senate majority leader in his must-read speech to a Geothermal Energy Association-sponsored conference today (prepared text here):

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But is there a hidden attempt to “warn mankind about the planet’s impending destruction”?

Keith Johnson of the WSJ‘s “Environmental Capital” blog just announced its termination:

After more than two years and over 2,000 posts, Environmental Capital is closing its virtual doors.

Although I didn’t agree with all of the analysis, I’m quite sad to see this “Daily analysis of the business of the environment by The Wall Street Journal” go.

The WSJ obviously has a right-wing editorial board and an editorial page that is a leading source of anti-science disinformation.  But the blog seemed reasonably independent and was certainly a timely source of information on energy and environmental issues.

The NYT’s Revkin tweets:

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Warming might or might not stall for “several years” but we risk “an unprecedented warming in the history of mankind if no measures are taken to cut global carbon dioxide emissions”

Here is Dr. Mojib Latif, perhaps the world’s most misquoted climate scientist, in a previously unpublished op-ed (boldface in original).

Given all the warnings about and plans to forestall global warming, people may be surprised to find, over the next several years that, over parts of the Northern hemisphere, summers are no warmer than before, maybe even a bit cooler–and that winters are as cold, or a bit colder, than they have been in the past couple of decades.

This is because the climate may go through a temporary halt in warming.  It’s nothing unusual, just a natural fluctuation. It doesn’t mean that global warming is not still at work, or that we no longer need to worry about global temperatures rising by as much as 6°C by the end of the century — an unprecedented warming in the history of mankind if no measures are taken to cut global carbon dioxide emissions. The only problem is that by considering the mean of many models of global warming, the natural fluctuations are averaged out, if they were not initialized by the current climate state, and this can be confusing.

Anyone who thought Latif, head of the Ocean Circulation and Climate Dynamics Division at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, was not a firm believer in human-caused global warming and the threat it poses, missed his 2009 book, Climate Change: The Point of No Return (The Sustainability Project).  And they missed the NPR interview where he said, “If my name was not Mojib Latif, my name would be global warming.  So I really believe in global warming.”

Before printing the rest of the piece, let me explain how Climate Progress came to publish it.

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White House says stimulus created 51,700 clean energy jobs

The White House reported Wednesday that the $5 billion in stimulus funds spent to promote clean energy has created 51,700 jobs nationwide.

Clearly most of the $90 billion in the stimulus package for clean energy has yet to be spent, according to the second quarterly report to Congress on the Recovery Act’s impact by the Council on Economic Advisers. It says another $26 has been obligated but not yet doled out.

The Recovery Act, pushed by President Obama but opposed by Republicans when it passed last year, promotes renewable energy such as solar and wind, energy efficiency, grid modernization, high-speed rail, vehicles with advanced fuel technologies and green job training.

“These investments have the potential to jumpstart the transition of the American economy to greater efficiency and cleaner energy,” says the CEA in a summary posted online. In addition to the 51,700 new jobs, it says the funds have helped create another 11,000 jobs.

“This employment impact is expected to increase substantially over time,” the CEA says. Measuring them in “job-years” — one job for one year, it projects 719,000 new clean ener
gy “job years” by end end of 2012.

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2010 still poised to be hottest year on record despite cool start in parts of Northern Hemisphere

Note:  The NASA results are not yet official, but should be Friday.  The figure above does not have the December data, but the final figure will look almost identical.

Eli Kintisch at Science Magazine just published, “2009 Hottest Year on Record in Southern Hemisphere.”  He quoted NASA mathematician Reto Ruedy of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies on the as-yet-not-released December and yearly data.  We’ve all been waiting for NASA’s final report on the year — to see whether 2009 will be the second hottest year on record (see Must-see NASA figures compare 2009 to the two hottest years on record: 2005 and 2007) and whether NASA would make an official prediction that 2010 is likely to be the hottest on record, as the UK’s Met Office has and as Hansen himself did (here).

So I called up Dr. Ruedy, and he said that the data have been processed but won’t be released officially until Friday, as they are awaiting completion of the accompanying report.  Here’s the story.

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“We intend to consider comprehensive clean energy-climate legislation that will cap global warming pollution and create jobs,” said Regan Lachapelle, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), on Wednesday.

The Hill seems to be doing some of the most even-handed political reporting on the bipartisan climate, clean air, clean energy jobs bill (see, for instance, The Hill: “Dozens of Democrats want to move a climate change bill, including centrists such as Sen. Arlen Specter”).  Yesterday’s story opened:

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America imported 4 million barrels of oil a day””or 1.5 billion barrels per year””from “dangerous or unstable” countries in 2008 at a cost of about $150 billion.  CAP’s Rebecca Lefton and Daniel J. Weiss examine the implications of our growing energy insecurity in this repost.

A recent report on the November 2009 U.S. trade deficit found that rising oil imports widened our deficit, increasing the gap between our imports and exports. This is but one example that our economic recovery and long-term growth is inexorably linked to our reliance on foreign oil. The United States is spending approximately $1 billion a day overseas on oil instead of investing the funds at home, where our economy sorely needs it. Burning oil that exacerbates global warming also poses serious threats to our national security and the world’s security. For these reasons we need to kick the oil addiction by investing in clean-energy reform to reduce oil demand, while taking steps to curb global warming.

In 2008 the United States imported oil from 10 countries currently on the State Department’s Travel Warning List, which lists countries that have “long-term, protracted conditions that make a country dangerous or unstable.” These nations include Algeria, Chad, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Our reliance on oil from these countries could have serious implications for our national security, economy, and environment.

Oil imports fuel “dangerous or unstable” governments

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