Gotta love that New York Times headline.  The paper doesn’t trust BP’s claims anymore, even while reporting “Live feeds of video images from the undersea well clearly showed that the release of oil had had been completely halted”

I’ve seen some slight misreporting that the gusher is 100% capped for good.  Apparently not:

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10 warmest years on record all since 1995

NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has posted its State of the Climate, Global Analysis for June.  The results confirm NASA’s:   The first half of 2010 breaks the thermometer.

Here are some highlights and a fascinating chart comparing recent years:

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Last month I warned that Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) was demagoguing a sand barrier ‘solution’ that probably won’t help, will take many months, use up valuable resources, vanish in the first storm “” and many scientists think will make things worse.  As one Coastal geologist explained: “I have yet to speak to a scientist who thinks the project will be effective.”

So I know you will be shocked, shocked that Jindal’s “obvious” response to the BP oil disaster is already failing.  Brad Johnson has the story:

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In articles published simultaneously in newspapers in three countries, U.K. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne, Jean-Louis Borloo and Norbert Roettgen, his counterparts in France and Germany respectively, set out the economic benefits for increasing the EU’s climate change targets to a 30% cut.

Here’s an excerpt from one of those articles:

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Erosion threatens 1,000-foot sand berm, July 7.

As experts warned, Bobby Jindal’s “obvious” response to the BP oil disaster is failing. Since the beginning of May, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) has pushed a crash effort to build artificial “barrier islands” from dredged sand to prevent BP’s toxic oil from reaching Louisiana’s fragile coastline. He and other Louisiana politicians excoriated the federal government for waiting until June 3 to authorize the $360 million project, even though “categorically, across the board, every coastal scientist” questioned its wisdom. In mid-May, Jindal justified the barrier-island construction by saying it was the “obvious” thing to do:

It makes so much sense. It’s so obvious. We gotta do it.

“We know it works, we have seen it work, but if they need to see it work, they need to do that quickly,” argued Jindal. On May 27, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) attacked President Barack Obama, calling his administration’s caution “absolutely outrageous“:

Here the president doesn’t seem to have a clue. His decision on the emergency dredging barrier island plan is a thinly veiled ‘no.’ Approving two percent of the request and kicking the rest months down the road is outrageous, absolutely outrageous.

In fact, the first artificial island project is already showing serious signs of erosion, with heavy equipment sinking into the ocean. Photographs released by Louisiana scientist Leonard Bahr and the US Army Corps of Engineers show that the artificial island E-4, intended to reach an 18-mile length, is struggling to survive at 1,100 feet:

Berm E-4, June 25	Berm E-4, July 7
Berm E-4, July 8

“You don’t want to destroy the village to save the village,” Tom Strickland, the U.S. Interior Department’s assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, explaining on June 23 the federal government’s decision to only provisionally approve the construction of forty miles of sand berms along the Chandeleur Islands. Strickland estimated the berms would last “probably no more than 90 days.”

Jindal is pressing for the federal government to approve the emergency construction of 125 miles of sand berms, arguing the 0.2 miles constructed are “are doing what they were intended to do.”

Will ‘Solar Trees’ Sprout in Parking Lots?

Part of the fine print in solar power systems is that whatever wattage number is quoted, it is usually “peak watts,” or the amount of electricity that the panel would deliver when the sun is directly overhead. For the rest of the daylight hours, the output is lower; a graph showing minute-by-minute production resembles a sharp mountain peak.

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The center cannot hold. Here’s why it shouldn’t.

As climate change and clean energy have become first-tier political issues, many otherwise smart people who know precious little about either subject are suddenly making pronouncements on both as if they were opining on who should win American Idol.

A case in point is Michael Lind, whose title is “policy director of the economic growth program at the New America Foundation,” though as we’ll see, his ideas make it sound more like an Old America Foundation and make him sound more like Dr. Doolittle.

Ironically, while the “think small” centrists help undermine the political consensus for even modest climate action, every year we delay ensures that when we do act to address global warming, we will have to think very, very big.  As the executive director of the International Energy Agency said last year, “we need to act urgently and now. Every year of delay adds an extra USD 500 billion to the investment needed between 2010 and 2030 in the energy sector”.

The NAF website claims that it “invests in new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States.”  Why?

Too often, these challenges have proven impervious to conventional party politics and incremental proposals. With an emphasis on big ideas, impartial analysis and pragmatic solutions….

But in a Sunday Washington Post piece, “Comprehensive reform is overrated. For real change, Washington must think small,” that Lind and NAF proudly tout on their website (screenshot above), Lind argues for not doing terribly much to address our climate or energy problems:

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What you can do to help

At the end are some suggestions for how you can show your support for Abraham.

Back in May, engineering professor John Abraham eviscerated The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (TVMOB) in a must-see video.

TVMOB is, of course, a shameless purveyor of hate speech and anti-science disinformation (see Lord Monckton repeats and expands on his charge that those who embrace climate science are “Hitler youth” and fascists and links below).  [Please note that the picture on the right is not TVMOB nor do I think he would ever participate in this.]

TVMOB then tried to incite an academic hearing against Abraham. Now TVMOB has written a more detailed and more laughable response, which Deltoid debunks here:  “I think that they might have to rename it the Monckton gallop” and Eli Rabbett here and here.  DeSmogBlog explains why “most people will conclude that John Abraham is a careful scientist and that the Lord Monckton is a belligerent and unapologetic polemicist”.

Monbiot calls it “magnificently bonkers,” pointing out “how frequently climate change deniers resort to demands for censorship or threats of litigation to try to shut down criticism of their views.”

But, as Skeptical Science notes, what’s not funny is that

Now Monckton is trying to censor Abraham — urging Watts Up With That readers to pressure St. Thomas University to take down Abraham’s presentation.

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I have previously written about The rise of anti-science cyber bullying and the role played by Swift Boat smearer Marc Morano “” who believes climate scientists should be publicly beaten.

The UK Guardian has posted an outstanding piece slamming Morano’s “warped world vision” and the ‘award’ he just won:

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I would like to close with an observation that I gained from watching World Cup soccer over the past few weeks. In particular, I was struck by the recurring juxtaposition of two advertising billboards in the background of the soccer pitch, one in red by an American company””McDonald’s, the other in blue by a Chinese company””Yingli Solar. I thought to myself, this is the World Cup, the world’s biggest sporting stage, and China is proudly showcasing the future of its economy with a solar technology company. What is the U.S. best able to showcase?

Hamburgers.

I believe this image speaks volumes about the state of play not only in the global clean energy race, but also in the global competitiveness landscape. At the same time, I do believe there is a window of opportunity to do the right things to get America’s house in order so that it too can shape its energy future.

That’s from the oral testimony CAP’s Julian L. Wong gave to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.  His excellent full written testimony is below:

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