My critique of malaria paper, media coverage STILL holds up

The main subjects of my recent analysis — The non-hype about climate change (and malaria) — have chosen either to support my key conclusions or not refute them.

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Watts and Goddard seem in denial: “We are still about six weeks away from anything interesting happening in the Arctic.”

The big climate news up north is the Arctic double stunner:  Sea ice extent (area) is now below 2007 levels, while the even more important metric of ice volume hit a record low for March (according to the Polar Science Center).

Data from both the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) show Arctic sea ice extent shrinking below the level of 2007 at a rapid pace:

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Reid: “Weaning ourselves off of oil is a hard fact for us to face.”

White House senior advisor David Axelrod has not been viewed as a friend to climate legislation by enviros.

Indeed, I’ve been told by multiple sources he is one of the reasons why high-level administration figures so rarely talk about the threat of global warming.  Sadly, he is among those who have been duped by bad polling analysis into thinking it is not a winning issue.

So his remarks today are somewhat heartening:

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ExxonMobil anxiously grasps its gigantic but unsustainable gold mines, pumps cash (much of it from your wallet to places far away), pours GHGs into the atmosphere, pushes its publicity machine, and doesn’t seem to comprehend the relationships between a healthy climate and the lives of our grandchildren.  They try to confuse you in the process.  Their actions delay the creation of millions of jobs and our ability to author a healthier future.  And that’s putting it politely.

ExxonMobil will be holding its Annual Meeting of Shareholders this week, on May 26 in Dallas.  If you get your news from the status quo media, you might not have a full picture of the company (see NYT suckered by ExxonMobil in puff piece titled “Green is for Sissies”).

Guest columnist, frequent commenter, and former Chevron employee, Jeff Huggins paints a poignant portrait of the petro-giant.

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“Millions of people in the American right who sit around and say there’s no such thing as mankind destroying his environment through climate change or whatever, there’s an example of what we’re doing right now. We can destroy our habitat on this planet, and it’s the only one we got.”

On Monday, May 17, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews erupted in anger at the oil disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. Matthews expressed his rage at the profits BP continues to reap as it fails to fix the growing environmental apocalypse.  Brad Johnson has the story and the video:

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Most of the blame for the BP oil disaster rests with BP, Big Oil, and its strong-arm supporters in Congress for the voluntary, “trust us,” self-regulation we have today (see St. Petersburg Times: “It’s becoming increasingly evident that self-regulation has not worked”).  Some of the blame certainly resides with the Minerals Management Service, which became absurdly cozy with the industry under the Cheney-Bush administration (see “Flashback to 2008 MMS sex-for-oil scandal“).

That doesn’t let the Obama administration off the hook entirely.  In theory they could have cleaned up the MMS from day one, but in practice Republicans made that task infinitely harder.

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Schooling Fish Offer New Ideas for Wind Farming

The quest to derive energy from wind may soon be getting some help from California Institute of Technology (Caltech) fluid-dynamics expert John Dabiri — and a school of fish.

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On Monday, May 17, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews erupted in anger at the oil disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. Matthews expressed his rage at the profits BP continues to reap as it fails to fix the growing environmental apocalypse. He also criticized the behavior of the Obama administration, which has let the foreign oil giant control much of the disaster response. Matthews wondered why President Obama doesn’t “nationalize that industry and get the job done” and noted that in the “brutal society” of China, “they execute people for this”:

It is maddening that our government is — everybody says, “Capitalism is great. Unbridled free enterprise is great.” Look at it!

The moral hazard created by privatized profit and socialized risk has allowed bankers to cripple our economy and energy companies to destroy our planet. Matthews concluded by calling out the “millions of people in the American right” who deny the threats of climate change and other environmental catastrophes from our dependence on fossil fuels:

Millions of people in the American right who sit around and say there’s no such thing as mankind destroying his environment through climate change or whatever — there’s an example of what we’re doing right now. We can destroy our habitat on this planet, and it’s the only one we got.

Watch it:

Rush Limbaugh fired back, saying Matthews is “basically asking for a dictator” with his “delusional, deranged” commentary. Matthews has repeated his criticism of BP and the administration, telling Jay Leno on May 21 that President Obama is acting like “a Vatican observer here.” On May 19, Matthews asked for “Harry Truman to come back and do the job” — making reference to Truman’s seizure of the steel industry in 1952.

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Lost: Graham will vote for Dirty Air amendment, wants more drilling

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said yesterday he was confused by Graham’s demands for what needs to be done to win his vote on the climate bill.

Sen. Lindsey Graham’s keeps issuing contradictory and cryptic statements on the climate bill (see Graham is incoherent).  He is now officially more incoherent and incomprehensible than Rand Paul and the TV series Lost respectively, as E&E News PM (subs. req’d) makes clear:

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Just about the only place you see this kind of pinprick on U.S. consumers in the MSM is in a political cartoon:

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