Did Hollywood eco-celebrities and Toyota get played?

I agree with Juan Cole that “Any broadcast that pits a climate change skeptic against a serious climate scientist is automatically a win for the skeptic, since a false position is being given equal time and legitimacy.”  This caveat extends to any climate realist debating any disinformer skilled in the Gish Gallop — see “Debate the controversy!”

A Siegel reports that “Under the title, The Darker Side of Green, Lexus has chosen to host a series of ‘debates’ on climate change as part of its roll-out of hybrid Lexus CT200h. These events are hosted by a celebrity, with an environmentalist journalist and prominent skeptic ‘debating’ climate-change issues.”

This looks to me like another self-inflicted PR black eye for Toyota’s reputation, especially since they gave airtime to the likes of hate-speech promoter Lord Monckton.

What follows is a repost from Siegel’s blog.  At the end is some analysis by

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As Yogi Berra said, it’s d©j  vu all over again.  BP worked hard to keep journalists away from their disaster (see ” The pictures BP doesn’t want you to see“).

Now, in the wake of its own oil spill, Enbridge is apparently learning from the best, which is to say the worst, TP reports:

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CAP’s Brad Johnson makes the case for the need for a systematic approach to science following major ecological disasters such as the BP oil disaster at Science Progress.

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As nation, Russia, and world swelter under record heat, NY Times’ Tom Zeller publishes dreadful he-said/she-said, quote-mining piece

We now know that “After the hottest decade on record, it’s the hottest year on record, seemingly the hottest week of all time in satellite record and we may be at record low Arctic sea ice volume.”  In this country, we saw new daily high temperature records beat new cold records by nearly 5 to 1 in June.

Uber-meteorologist Jeff Masters reports today:

The year 2010 is now tied with 2007 as the year with the most national extreme heat records–fifteen.

So, naturally, the NY Times is out with what would, for any other paper, be one of its worst climate stories ever, but which is just run-of-the-mill dreadful for the former paper of record (see here)?

The Tom Zeller’s piece, “Is It Hot in Here? Must Be Global Warming,” buries the one crucial scientific fact that eviscerates its entire narrative:

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Mass. lawmakers agree on wind energy permits bill

Massachusetts lawmakers have reached a compromise on a bill designed to streamline the permitting process for new wind energy facilities.

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Our guest bloggers are CAP’s Daniel J. Weiss and Rebecca Lefton.

The big five oil companies – BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell – reported their second quarter profits during the week of July 26^th.   To the surprise of almost no one, these companies made a huge combined profit of $21.7 billion this quarter.[1] This is 50 percent more profit compared to the second quarter of 2009. Their total profit in the first half of 2010 is $50 billion – almost double compared to 2009.

Big oil companies are using part of their huge windfall to pressure Congress to defeat measures that would protect public health and the environment.  According to lobby reports, these five companies spent nearly $18 million in the second quarter to lobby on efforts to hold them more accountable for the damages from blowouts or disasters like BP’s Deepwater Horizon fiasco by removing the $75 million liability cap on damages from oil spills.  The American Petroleum Institute, big oil’s lobbying arm, leads the charge to block unlimited liability for companies’ oil disaster related economic damages.

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The explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon exploratory rig on April 20, and the ensuing deep-sea gusher of oil and methane into the Gulf of Mexico is now one of the greatest environmental tragedies in the history of the United States. President Barack Obama has appointed former U.S. Navy Secretary and former Mississippi Governor Ray Mabus to “restore the unique beauty and bounty of this region.” Mabus’s task demands the full resources of the scientific community of the gulf region, as well as specialists from around the globe. Without coordinated leadership from the government, the ecosystems and communities of the gulf may be suffering damages without reparation for years.

To meet this challenge, the administration must establish a clearinghouse for gulf region science as soon as possible, led by a scientific leader like Dr. John Holdren, the Presidential Science Adviser, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Director, or Dr. Subra Suresh, the incoming director of the National Science Foundation. This effort must have a clear sense of urgency, with flexibility for rapid response. In the words of Sustainable Ecosystems Institute director Deborah Brosnan, we need a “science war room” for the Gulf of Mexico, including “ecologists, wildlife biologists, oceanographers, fisheries scientists, toxicologists and ecological economists.”

This gulf research war room should be an interagency effort, including NOAA, the Department of Interior (National Park Service, U.S. Geological Survey, and Fish & Wildlife Service), Environmental Protection Agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Energy, NASA, and state agencies. The initial actions of the federal government to comprehend this catastrophe are a good foundation for such a coordinated effort:

Funding research: The National Science Foundation has taken the lead in soliciting academic research on the BP spill, requesting proposals for grants from its Rapid Response Research program on May 27. Since then, NSF has already awarded 44 grants worth nearly $5 million. Funding for this national priority should be multiplied at least a hundredfold and billed to BP. Program leadership should rapidly and transparently establish a strategic mission and a process for utilizing the best science to direct remediation efforts.

Data publication: The government has begun the effort of compiling and publishing the reams of scientific data relevant to the BP disaster online. Data.Gov/restorethegulf links to dozens of datasets and agency websites. GeoPlatform.Gov/gulfresponse includes multiple layers of geospatial data. All the data being collected by the government, BP contractors, and the academic community on this disaster should be brought together as rapidly and transparently as possible.

Scientific symposia: The government has begun convening scientific symposia on the BP spill. On May 27, Environmental Protection Agency, NOAA, and the University of New Hampshire Coastal Response Research Center convened a meeting to “study dispersant use and ecosystem impacts of dispersed oil.” NOAA, NSF, U.S. Geological Survey, and the Consortium for Ocean Leadership (a group of oceanographic institutions) held an emergency Gulf Oil Spill Scientific Symposium on June 2 and 3 at Louisiana State University. Lubchenco outlined the work NOAA is conducting, as did USGS director Marcia McNutt. Clear lines of inquiry should be established for future conferences, and much greater outreach needs to be made to the scientific community.

One of the most critical roles for the gulf research war room will be the long-term monitoring of health impacts of this toxic event. Center for American Progress health experts Ellen-Marie Whelan and Lesley Russell recommend that the Department of Health and Human Services assistant secretary for health “be designated to launch and oversee the coordinated response plan implemented whenever a situation arises that can threaten public health.” The assistant secretary “would have responsibility for ensuring—in conjunction with other federal, state, and local agencies, academics, and the private sector—that needed services are delivered and information is collected, and that data, information, and resources are transferred to the responsible HHS agency or agencies.”

The leader of this public effort must face the challenging but critical task of resolving conflicts with the scientific investigations now enmeshed with the foreign oil giant BP. As established by the 1990 Oil Pollution Act, BP is liable for any damages to public natural resources, and government officials are now working with BP contractors on the natural resource damage assessment process, as required by 15 CFR 990.14(c). But quantifying exactly what those damages are will require unbiased scientific research.

BP is hiring as many scientists as possible to join its private contractor army and influence the research. The U.S. government must move quickly to protect the integrity of this process. Currently, there is no mechanism to ensure that this BP-funded research remains impartial to the interests of the funder. In a foreshadowing of future conflicts, the Obama administration stands accused of “political intervention” for attempting to establish even moderate oversight over BP’s $500 million Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative. It is the responsibility of the federal government to act on behalf of the public good and protect the integrity and transparency of the science surrounding the gulf disaster.

Read the extended version of this post at Science Progress.

Calling the issue the defining difference between himself and Republican Meg Whitman in the governor’s race, Democrat Jerry Brown gave an impassioned defense Thursday of California’s landmark global warming law.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Mercury News editorial board, the attorney general called Assembly Bill 32 “” now under attack by conservatives and some business interests as a job killer “” “a path forward” for the Golden State. Brown said the new law would create hundreds of thousands of clean-energy jobs, reclaiming from China leadership of the cleantech economy.

“This is a powerful future,” Brown said. “I see this as the key” to job creation.

The San Jose Mercury news has a very good story on the importance to the governor’s race of the fossil fuel-funded Proposition 23 effort to repeal California’s clean energy and climate laws.  You can read previous posts on Prop 23′s economic impact, national repercussions, and funding from Texas oil companies.

Here’s more from the story, starting with Whitman, who believes “AB 32 is not going to create more green jobs in California“:

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Does this mean they’ll stop printing the lies about global warming?

IN A DEPRESSING case of irony by juxtaposition, the death of climate change legislation in the Senate has been followed by the appearance of two government reports in the past week that underscore the overwhelming scientific case for global warming — and go out of the way to repudiate skeptics.

So opens “The truth about global warming,” an editorial in today’s Washington Post.  Apparently lost on the editors is the other equally depressing case of irony by juxtaposition:

• WashPost goes tabloid, publishes second falsehood-filled op-ed by Sarah Palin in five months “” on climate science and the hacked emails!
• WashPost recycles another denier WSJ op-ed, this time from coal apologist Bjorn Lomborg. Funny how two new senior Post editors came from the WSJ.
• The Washington Post, abandoning any journalistic standards, lets George Will publish a third time global warming lies debunked on its own pages

And that is but the tip of the rapidly melting iceberg, which is which why the Post won the 2009 “Citizen Kane” award for non-excellence in climate journalism.

Does this editorial now mean the Post will repudiate skeptics like Palin and Will — or, rather, refudiate them?

Still, even if the irony is lost on the Post, the piece is well worth reading:

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