As the BP oil disaster drags on, the public’s desire for clean energy investments and increased oversight of corporate polluters has greatly intensified. CAP’s Daniel J. Weiss and intern Ariel Powell have the important data and charts from a major new poll.
WordPress says this is the 5,000th post on Climate Progress.
President Barack Obama told NBC’s Matt Lauer he would have fired BP CEO Tony Hayward for his dismissive comments about the foreign oil giant’s Gulf of Mexico disaster. After relating Hayward’s “very big ocean,” “very very modest” and “I’d like my life back” comments, Lauer asked, “He doesn’t work for you, but if he did, would you want him out?” Obama replied that Hayward would be out of a job:
He wouldn’t be working for me after any of those statements.
Watch it:
Hayward’s dismissive comments are not unusual for BP management — Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, COO Doug Suttles, BP America President Lamar McKay, and Managing Director Bob Dudley have likewise minimized off the scale of the disaster and the devastation to the United States of America while overselling their failed attempts to stop the oil gusher, which may now be flowing at four million gallons a day.
According to National Incident Commander Thad Allen, Tony Hayward is still actively involved in the oil disaster response, discussing issues regularly with Allen. In addition to the failed efforts to stop the leaks, BP still controls claims processing, environmental contractors on land and sea, volunteer assistance, access to the disaster site, hotlines, and data collection.
At TAPPED, Adam Serwer writes:
One of the things I used to like about the president is that he always seemed indifferent to village demands that he acquiesce to whatever empty political gesture they wanted him to make. Americans are going to be happier about his handling of the oil spill when the oil gets cleaned up, safeguards are put in place to prevent this from ever happening again, and BP faces some real consequences. They’re not going to be happier because the president has pulled out his Bruce Willis impression.
The American nuclear industry, primed to begin new construction projects for the first time in 30 years, is about as eager for an operating problem at an old reactor as the oil industry was for a well blowout on the eve of opening the Atlantic coast to oil drilling.
Let’s file this under, “worst-case scenarios waiting to happen” — a file that has grown uncomfortably large in recent weeks (see BP calls blowout disaster ‘inconceivable,’ ‘unprecedented,’ and unforeseeable).
New York Times reporter Matt Wald has the story, “An Old Nuclear Problem Creeps Back“:
As oil from BP’s Deepwater Horizon well makes its way deep into the marshes of the Gulf Coast, and the wildlife toll mounts, the company announced today that cleanup costs have already reached $1.25 billion and are growing quickly. Given this devastation, it’s not surprising that a vast majority of Americans “” 72 percent “” now have a negative view of the company, a new Rasmussen poll found. However, 22 percent still have a somewhat or very favorable view of the foreign oil giant.
EnviroKnow examined the crosstabs from the poll and found that this group of BP supporters is made up disproportionately of conservatives. Guest blogger William Tomasko has the story in this TP repost.
Marc Morano and other climate conspiracy theorists are promoting a cruel hoax against a fourth-grade child, the Wonk Room has learned. Morano, the former Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) aide and Rush Limbaugh producer who promoted the Swift Boat slanders, is pushing the story that a “4th-grade climate skeptic wins junior division of National Science Fair,” originally published by the Bee-Picayune in Beeville, TX:
R.A. Hall Elementary School fourth-grader Julisa Castillo has been named junior division champion for the 2010 National Science Fair. Her project, “Disproving Global Warming,” beat more than 50,000 other projects submitted by students from all over the U.S.
Castillo’s project, which wasn’t even a top project within her school science fair six months ago, looked at the historical temperature record in Beeville and extrapolated the results to the entire globe to derive the “creative” conclusion that there is “not enough evidence to prove global warming is occurring.”
As scientist and climate blogger Michael Tobis reported yesterday, Castillo “received a package containing the trophy, medal and plaque, along with a letter” that purported to be from Linda Slakey, the National Science Foundation’s Executive Director of Education & Human Resources, saying that Castillo was named the “Jr. Grand Champion of the NSF’s “2010 National Science Fair” and had won an “all-expenses paid trip to Space Camp at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.”
The letter was a complete fabrication, according to the NSF, which has referred the incident to their Office of Inspector General. The Wonk Room contacted the NSF for this email interview with public affairs official Maria Zacharias:
Q: Did you send the attached letter?NSF: No.
Q: Does the National Science Foundation run something called the “2010 National Science Fair”?
NSF: No.
A: Is there a Junior Division of the NSF’s 2010 National Science Fair for 9 to 11 year olds?
NSF: No.
Q: Was Julisa Castillo named the Junior Grand Champion of the NSF’s 2010 National Science Fair?
NSF: No.
This was a cruel hoax played on a fourth grader, furthered by irresponsible journalists who failed to identify the implausibility that “panel of judges” with “former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, 14 recipients of the President’s National Medal of Science, and four former astronauts” would honor a child’s work of flawed pseudoscience, and propagandists like Morano.
After the hoax was exposed, Morano posted a link to Michael Tobis’ debunking, writing “Update: 4th-Grade Skeptical Climate Science ‘winner’ revealed as hoax!”
His site is now only 99.9% (approximately) false.
I will be speaking at an all-day climate forum Wednesday in Pasadena sponsored by Marketplace Public Radio. You can watch it live 8 am to 5:30 pm Pacific Time (click here). I’ll be on 11:30 am PT.
There is a great line up of speakers, including Kolbert, Mann, Santer, and Oreskes. Here are the details on my panel, “Finding the Policy Path”:
Report: Renewables Revolution To Provide 95 Per Cent of Global Electricity By 2050
The world could produce 95 per cent of the electricity it needs from renewable sources by 2050, cutting greenhouse emissions from the energy and transport sectors by 80 per cent without jeopardising economic growth.
It’s time to put America’s skilled and dedicated military in charge of responding to the BP oil disaster, argue Daniel J. Weiss, Rudy deLeon, and Susan Lyon in this CAP repost.
Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) has released his “Practical Energy Plan.” It is practical only in the sense that it would do practically nothing to stop catastrophic global warming. Below is a statement by CAP’s Daniel J. Weiss followed by a Union Concerned Scientists repost.
TP’s Amanda Terkel reports, “As BP tries to shirk responsibility for the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, people around the country are spotting some ironic signs at BP gas stations”:
If you can snap similar pics in your neighborhood, send ‘em in.
Edited by Joe Romm, we cover climate science, solutions and politics. Columnist Tom Friedman calls us "the indispensable blog" and Time magazine named us one of the 25 "Best Blogs of 2010." Newcomers, start here.
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga.
Joe Romm has pulled together the secrets of the greatest communicators in history to show how you can apply these tools to your writing, speaking, blogging — even your Tweeting.
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