Coincidentally, Gates is funding geoengineering research

Billionaires say the darndest things!  The above screen shot of a nonsensical Bill Gates piece dissing energy efficiency came from his website, The Gates Notes, which turned into a HuffPost piece, and then Yahoo News.

Yes, even the very rich are very confused about energy efficiency, renewable energy, climate policy, and global warming — mainly because they keep bad company (see “Error-riddled ‘Superfreakonomics’, Part 2: Who else have Nathan Myhrvold and the Groupthinkers at Intellectual Ventures duped and confused? Would you believe Bill Gates and Warren Buffett?“):

• The Gates’ Foundation mostly ignores global warming (see here)
• Warren Buffett are so wrong “” and outspoken “” about cap and trade (see here)
• Gates and Buffett visited the Athabasca tar sands “” the biggest global warming crime ever “” to satisfy “their own curiosity” but also “with investment in mind” (see here).

Now Gates has launched an amazing series of myth-filled missives and misfires this month, many of which channel Bjorn Lomborg (aka the Danish delayer) in their disdain of near-term climate action and embrace of, yes, geo-engineering.  If you have the stomach for a rambling discourse mostly dissing renewable energy, clearly inspired by the uber-confused Myhrvold, start with his “Podcast Series: Energy and Climate Change” here.

You’ll learn that wind power is competitive only because of subsidies — nary a mention of the massive subsidies for nuclear, a Gates favorite, or fossil fuels, let alone the devastating climate impacts of continued use of fossil fuels.  In his discussion of renewables, you’ll learn that “solar is the cutest of all these things” — yes, “cutest.”

You’ll learn “the biggest issue that is often missed is the storage issue.”  Apparently absent Gates’ genius, none of us have ever thought about the issue of storage.  Gates seems unaware of the major advances occurring in storage (see “The Holy Grail of clean energy economy is in sight: Affordable storage for wind and solar“), which is probably why he worries about it so much, saying that the biggest problem is the “seven-day periods with no sun” and “seven-day periods with no wind,” which lead him to ask, “In the 1% case are people willing to freeze to death“?  Yes, apparently 1% of the time the country is without any wind or sun for 7 straight days.  Seriously, listen to the podcast (this is at the end of the first one).

Oh, but nuclear is great — “it’s as good as renewable.”

Now apparently someone told Gates that attacking insulation (!!!) looked stupid, because a few days later someone rewrote the above headline, adding a “just” after “not” at his website and HuffPost — though he missed here.  But even the rewritten piece is laughable:

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Deficit peacocks like Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) and Sen. John McCain are behind President Barack Obama’s call for a multi-year spending freeze on “non-security discretionary spending.” But these same politicians who want to impose austerity measures on a struggling economy have opposed plans which would cut the deficit while strengthening the economy. My colleague Igor Volsky has explained how stalled health care reform — while dramatically expanding coverage and saving people’s lives — would also cut the deficit. As it turns out, President Obama’s signature push to limit global warming pollution is also a deficit-slashing measure:

The Congressional Budget Office – the arbiter of the federal budget impact of all legislation – just released an analysis that the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, S. 1733, “would reduce budget deficits (or increase future surpluses) by about $21 billion over the 2010-2019 period… In years after 2019, direct spending would be less than the net revenues attributable to the legislation in each of the 10-year periods following 2019. Therefore, CBO estimates that enacting S. 1733 would not increase the deficit in any of the four 10-year periods following 2019.”

The Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs Act itself is limited in its deficit and jobs impact, because it gives 70 percent of pollution credits — worth $625 billion — away for free in the first decade. We can get faster clean energy reform and a bigger deficit impact by restoring Obama’s original budget plan for a full auction of pollution credits, so that industries pay the American taxpayer for the privilege of polluting our air. These increased revenues would hasten job creation, clean energy investment, and the clean up of the deficits created by George W. Bush.

Congress is blocking not only health care reform but also clean energy legislation that would clean the air, create millions of green jobs, and eliminate our dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

Instead, we get a spending freeze as the planet burns.

Guest post by Tom Kenworthy, Senior Fellow, American Progress.

While Congress moved in fits and starts in 2009 on bipartisan legislation to spur the deployment of renewable energy and reduce global warming pollution, the U.S. wind energy industry powered ahead at a record pace.

Issuing its end-of-year report, the American Wind Energy Association said the industry installed nearly 10,000 megawatts of new capacity during the year, growing at an annual rate of 39%. The U.S. now has a total of 35,000 megawatts of wind energy installed, enough to light and power 9.7 million homes and the equivalent of removing 62 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year and taking 10.5 million cars off the road.

Though the industry avoided a predicted 50% decline in domestic wind turbine manufacturing because of the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus and the Obama administration’s commitment to clean energy job creation, AWEA CEO Denise Bode said a stronger federal policy on renewable energy is needed to keep manufacturing robust.

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Our guest bloggers are Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and Rebecca Lefton, a Researcher for Progressive Media at American Progress.

Continuing her drum beat of pro-oil spin, Sarah Palin recently asks on Facebook “Where’s the Oil in Our National Energy Policy?” calling on the U.S. to expand domestic oil and gas developments while ignoring efforts to reduce dependence on foreign oil – one fifth of which comes from countries that are dangerous or unstable. As usual, her post is full of errors, half truths, and lies. Palin’s post cites and links to an article by Michael J. Economides, a conservative oil-industry scientist, at Investors Business Daily. Let’s set the record straight on Sarah Palin’s energy policy:

SARAH’S SPIN: “The U.S. government under Barack Obama has yet to acknowledge once, in spite of widely held estimates, that oil will continue to account for 40% of world energy demand 25 years from now — this while total world energy demand will increase by 50%, at least.” [Facebook, 1/24/10]

FACT: The Department of Energy (DOE) determined that even under existing policies (no significant increase in fuel economy or greenhouse gas pollution cuts) “liquids share of world marketed energy consumption declines from 36 percent in 2006 to 32 percent in 2030.” DOE predicts that “total world consumption of marketed energy is projected to increase by 44 percent from 2006 to 2030.” That’s without limits on global warming pollution that many countries plan to adopt, which should lower world energy demand. The Energy Information Administration estimates that U.S. oil demand will rise only one half of one percent between 2008 and 2035.

SARAH’S SPIN: “Nor has the administration, mired in Kyoto and Copenhagen global climate rhetoric, acknowledged that fossil fuels, oil, gas and coal will still account by then for over 85% of world energy demand, a largely unchanged contribution from what it is today.” [IBD, 1/21/10]

FACT: The Department of Energy predicts that fossil fuels – oil, gas, and coal – will account for 83 percent of world energy consumption in 2030. Of course, that assumes that there are no changes in energy policy or reductions in global warming pollution, which would reduce the use of fossil fuels.

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Climate change is the greatest risk facing the insurance industry

Climate change is a fact, and it is almost entirely made by man. It is jointly responsible for the rise in severe weather-related natural disasters, since the weather machine is “running in top gear”. The figures speak for themselves: according to data gathered by Munich Re, weather-related natural catastrophes have produced US$ 1,600bn in total losses since 1980, and climate change is definitely a significant contributing factor. We assume that the annual loss amount attributable to climate change is already in the low double-digit billion euro range. And the figure is bound to rise dramatically in future.

Those are the words of the CEO of Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, in December.  The anti-science crowd tries to shout down any talk of a link between climate change and extreme weather but even the loudest shouter told the journal Nature back in 2006, “Clearly since 1970 climate change (i.e., defined as by the IPCC to include all sources of change) has shaped the disaster loss record.”  Indeed, that Nature article reported four years ago:

At a recent meeting of climate and insurance experts, delegates reached a cautious consensus: climate change is helping to drive the upward trend in catastrophes.

The evidence has only gotten stronger in recent years.  A major study published in 2009, “Tropical cyclone losses in the USA and the impact of climate change “” A trend analysis based on data from a new approach to adjusting storm losses” concluded:

In the period 1971-2005, since the beginning of a trend towards increased intense cyclone activity, losses excluding socio-economic effects show an annual increase of 4% per annum. This increase must therefore be at least due to the impact of natural climate variability but, more likely than not, also due to anthropogenic forcings.

A 2009 NOAA-led report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, identified a number of climate-related impacts that are occurring now and expected to increase in the future that could shape the disaster loss record:

Many phony charges are now being leveled at the IPCC because the anti-science crowd smells blood in the water, and many “journalists” are ready to repeat their nonsense (see “EXCLUSIVE: UN scientist refutes Daily Mail claim he said Himalayan glacier error was politically motivated.”

The newest phony charge came Sunday from another dubious source in the British press, “UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters.”   But on Monday, the IPCC slammed the story as “misleading and baseless.”  As the “IPCC statement on trends in disaster losses” explains:

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GM to make its own electric motors in 2013

General Motors Corp. is back in the electric motor business.

The automaker said Tuesday that starting in 2013, it plans to build its own electric motors for hybrid and electric vehicles. GM has been getting electric motors for those vehicles from suppliers, but wants to make the motors in-house in order to lower costs and improve quality and reliability.

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This is a guest repost from Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson.  I may need to add a new category — uber-extreme weather.  The anti-science crowd has been strangely silent about this uber-storm, though they love to tout cold snaps as evidence of nonexistent global cooling (see “Disinformers to media: Please make case for something that isn’t true using data we don’t believe“).  For more on the records set by this story, see Capital Climate’s “Strong Pacific Coast Storm Breaks Rainfall, Low Pressure Records.”

The “strongest winter storm in at least 140 years,” swept through the Southwestern United States last week, “bringing deadly flooding, tornadoes, hail, hurricane force winds, and blizzard conditions.” Rain dumped on Los Angeles, San Diego, and Phoenix, as mountains received up to four feet of snow. Wind gusts exceeding 90 miles per hour, tornadoes, and water spouts spun off the monster storm. Over 159,000 people lost power in the storm’s wake. Meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters wrote on Friday that the storm was “truly epic”:

We expect to get powerful winter storms affecting the Southwest U.S. during strong El Ni±o events, but yesterday’s storm was truly epic in its size and intensity. The storm set all-time low pressure records over roughly 10 – 15% of the U.S.-over southern Oregon, and most of California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah.

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