Based on their inquiry and evidence, “the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact. We have found no reason … to challenge the scientific consensus … that ‘global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity’.”

We believe that the focus on CRU and Professor Phil Jones, Director of CRU, in particular, has largely been misplaced….

In the context of the sharing of data and methodologies, we consider that Professor Jones’s actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community….

Likewise the evidence that we have seen does not suggest that Professor Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process. Academics should not be criticised for making informal comments on academic papers.

These are quotes from the British House of Commons Science and Technology Committee must-read report on Phil Jones and “the disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.”

Climatologist Michael Mann called the report an “exoneration” of Jones and said:

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The Wonk Room has long detailed the role of the billionaire brothers of Koch Industries, Charles and David Koch, in destroying American prosperity. Their pollution-based fortunes have fueled a network of right-wing ideologues, from McCain mouthpiece Nancy Pfotenhauer to loony conspiracy theorist Christopher Monckton. In public, the Kochs like to burnish their reputations by buying museum and opera halls. In private, however, they’ve outspent Exxon Mobil to fund organizations of the climate denial machine, as Greenpeace details in a new report:

Although Koch intentionally stays out of the public eye, it is now playing a quiet but dominant role in a high-profile national policy debate on global warming. Koch Industries has become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition. This private, out-of-sight corporation is now a partner to Exxon Mobil, the American Petroleum Institute and other donors that support organizations and front-groups opposing progressive clean energy and climate policy. In fact, Koch has out-spent Exxon Mobil in funding these groups in recent years. From 2005 to 2008, Exxon Mobil spent $8.9 million while the Koch Industries-controlled foundations contributed $24.9 million in funding to organizations of the climate denial machine.

This report, “Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine” documents roughly 40 climate denial and opposition organizations receiving Koch foundation grants in recent years, including:

– More than $5 million to Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) for its nationwide “Hot Air Tour” and “Regulation Reality Tour” campaigns to spread misinformation about climate science and oppose clean energy and climate legislation.

– More than $1 million to the Heritage Foundation, a mainstay of misinformation on climate and environmental policy issues.

– Over $1 million to the Cato Institute, which disputes the scientific evidence behind global warming, questions the rationale for taking climate action, and has been heavily involved in spinning the recent ClimateGate smear campaign.

– $800,000 to the Manhattan Institute, which has hosted Bjorn Lomborg twice in the last two years. Lomborg is a prominent media spokesperson who challenges and attacks policy measures to address climate change.

– $365,000 to Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE) which advocates against taking action on climate change because warming is “inevitable” and expensive to address.

– $360,000 to Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy (PRIPP) which supported and funded “An Inconvenient Truth…or Convenient Fiction,” a film attacking the science of global warming and intended as a rebuttal to former Vice-President Al Gore’s documentary. PRIPP also threatened to sue the US Government for listing the polar bear as an endangered species.

– $325,000 to the Tax Foundation, which issued a misleading study on the costs of proposed climate legislation.

The blockbuster report covers the role of Koch’s dirty network in promoting the ClimateGate smear campaign, pushing junk science about polar bears, fueling supposedly independent Spanish and Danish studies that attacked green jobs, and selling a pack of lies about the costs of climate legislation.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is leading the bipartisan effort with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) to craft comprehensive climate legislation that can overcome a Senate filibuster. “The green economy is coming,” Graham said when he announced the partnership with Kerry and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) last November, explaining that he was “convinced with my colleagues that controlling carbon pollution is good business.” However, Graham is also co-sponsoring the effort by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) to reverse the scientific finding by the Environmental Protection Agency that global warming pollution endangers public health and welfare. Speaking to business and environmental leaders Monday in Columbia, SC, Graham declared that he wants “to stop the EPA from regulating carbon,” which would be “a disaster for every state”:

This administration is not going to back off. They are going to regulate carbon. If Congress doesn’t get involved, it’s going to be a disaster for this state and it’s going to be a disaster for every state.

He continued:

The Supreme Court has allowed the regulation of carbon through the Clean Air Act. The question is, is Congress going to be smart enough to stop it? I want to stop the EPA from regulating carbon and allow elected officials to come up with a statutory scheme that not only cleans up the air, it creates jobs instead of losing jobs and gets this country on the path to energy independence.

Graham’s assertion that Clean Air Act regulation of global warming pollution would be a disaster is baseless. The Clean Air Act has been such a successful piece of legislation that the coal industry front group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and the oil-funded think tank American Enterprise Institute tout its track record of cleaning up our air while keeping our economy strong. The myth that environmental protection and economic growth are incompatible has been repeatedly debunked, in theory and practice. A healthy economy thrives on a strong framework of rules.

The Clean Air Act global warming rules for mobile sources — the joint EPA-Department of Transportation greenhouse gas tailpipe standards — have been embraced by environmentalists and the auto industry alike, after years of litigation and astroturf campaigns claiming that such regulation would destroy Detroit. It was the decay of regulation that brought the American auto industry to its knees:the lack of competitive standards for domestic carmakers and the lack of financial regulation that allowed Wall Street to blow up the American economy.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has acceded to the unfounded attacks on the Clean Air Act by delaying and weakening rules for stationary greenhouse sources that were first proposed by the EPA under the Bush administration, even as politicians promote a fear campaign that “churches, schools, restaurants and even large homes could fall under new federal regulations aimed at curbing greenhouse gases.”

The traditional tools of the Clean Air Act must be complemented by a comprehensive redirection of national energy policy if we are to confront the increasing disaster of climate change. But the idea that Congress should pass climate legislation to prevent the specter of the mean nasty EPA Carbon Cops — as Koch Industries’ Americans for Prosperity is selling in Arkansas right now — is, quite simply, toxic.

Anyone who has specific ideas for marketing the book or knows someone who might need review copy should email me at the address here.

My new book doesn’t come out until the week of April 19th.  But you can pre-order it on Amazon.com (click here).  You know you want to after getting all these Climate Progress posts for free for so long….

Seriously, though, the timing couldn’t be better for Straight Up:  America’s Fiercest Climate Blogger Takes on the Status Quo Media, Politicians, and Clean Energy Solutions.  We were always planning for it to come out the week of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day and roughly the same time as when the Senate would start taking up the bipartisan climate and clean energy jobs bill.  But now it looks like Graham, Kerry, and Lieberman are going to introduce their bill the same week the book comes out!

The bill should tee off the most important environmental and energy debate of our time.  In the book, I put the core issues of the debate — climate science, clean energy solutions, and environmental politics — in perspective.

Here’s the back jacket for the book:

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Do you think that having a price on carbon is crucial?

I do. I absolutely believe a price on carbon is essential — that will send a very important long-term signal. [But] if it’s five years from now, I think it will be truly tragic, because other countries, notably China, are moving ahead so aggressively. They see this as their economic opportunity to lead in the next industrial revolution.

That’s from an interview of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, by Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek and WashPost.  Here’s more Q&A with the Nobel Prize-winning physicist:

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Republican senators say they can work with Democrats, despite dire predictions that the healthcare fight would make cooperation impossible.

Okay, this story from The Hill isn’t a big shock.  But once again, John McCain proved how out of touch he is:

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AFP: “Many scientists have warned that if global temperatures rise more than 2.0°C (3.6°F) by century’s end, Earth’s climate system could spin out of control, unleashing human misery on an unprecedented scale.”

Kudos to AFP for its bluntness on the harsh reality of climate science today, a sharp contrast to the generally wishy-washy reporting in this country.

Europe’s electricity could be all renewables by 2050

Europe could meet all its electricity needs from renewable sources by mid-century, according to a report released Monday by services giant PricewaterhouseCoopers.

A “super-smart” grid powered by solar farms in North Africa, wind farms in northern Europe and the North Sea, hydro-electric from Scandinavia and the Alps and a complement of biomass and marine energy could render carbon-based fuels obsolete for electricity by 2050, said the report.

The goal is achievable even without the use of nuclear energy, the mainstay of electricity in France, it said.

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Fourteen men representing the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth (AEEG) are meeting with Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John Kerry (D-MA), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to negotiate the terms of comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation.  Brad Johnson has the background of this remarkably non-diverse group.

Per Matt Yglesias’s note that the “male-dominated nature of Wall Street is a source of dysfunction,” meet the AEEG:
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I met John Denver when I lived in Colorado and worked at Rocky Mountain Institute (in a place he helped build).  I’m quite sure he would have approved of this spoof of his classic song:

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