China winning race for green jobs

China’s green jobs from solar and other cleantech industries are growing faster than the US and other countries, says Clean Edge annual report

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“The attorney general’s logic is so tenuous as to leave only one plausible explanation: that he is on a fishing expedition designed to intimidate and suppress honest research and the free exchange of ideas upon which science and academia both depend — all because he does not like what science says about climate change.”

This week, Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli attempted to criminalize all of climate science “” using Post Normal logic.  Yesterday, Tom Toles had the above cartoon, and the Washington Post wrote a powerful op-ed, “Ken Cuccinelli seems determined to embarrass Virginia“:

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Here’s a key point that the media has failed to explain and the the anti-science disinformers refuse to accept: The Earth’s overall temperature does not change randomly on a decadal scale “” it changes when it is driven to do so by an external forcing.

The Little Ice Age is a case in point, as Skeptical Science explains in this repost:

The argument that we’re simply “coming out of the Little Ice Age (LIA)” makes one of two assumptions:

1. The planet oscillates around some natural equilibrium temperature such that after it cools, it must warm to return to this temperature, and vice-versa.
2. Whatever caused the LIA cooling has reversed phase and is now causing global warming.

The first assumption demonstrates a lack of understanding regarding what causes planetary temperature changes.  The second does not hold up under scrutiny of the empirical data.

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Glenn Beck defends: “We are going to have to have these things”

As ThinkProgress reported yesterday, South Fulton Fire Department firefighters from Obion, Tennessee, last week stood by and watched as a family’s home burned down because their services were available by subscription only, and the family had not paid the $75 fee. Immediately, right-wing writers at the conservative movement’s bulkhead magazine, The National Review, leapt to the defense of the county and argued in support of the notion that firefighting should not be a public service available to all, regardless of ability to pay.

Now, local news station ABC 7 is reporting that the Obion County Budget Committee met last night and has decided to expand the subscription-only fire service to additional towns.  TP has that story — and Glenn Beck’s defense of the county’s approach to fires — plus videos.  Again, I’m filing this under adaptation because there’s a global warming lesson here somewhere”¦.

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Levi Strauss & Co., the California-based apparel giant that invented blue jeans over a century ago, has come out in strong opposition to Proposition 23.

Prop 23 is a ballot initiative that would suspend the state’s landmark global warming and clean energy laws.  The company called it “backward thinking.”  TP has the story.

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