One of the many differences between science and religion is that science is almost completely unconcerned with what any individual scientist believes, no matter how famous.  Religions, of course, are typically built around famous individuals, like, say, Mary Baker Eddy, and what they believe.  Sadly, these days, journalism — even at once-great newspapers  — also appear to care more what one individual believes than what scientific observation and analysis actually tells us.

Last week I wrote about how a physicist named Hal Lewis who doesn’t know the first thing about climate science resigned from the American Physical Society because he doesn’t know the first thing about climate science.  I debunked the laughable — and unintentionally ironic — post by “former television meteorologist” Anthony Watts comparing Lewis’s words of resignation to “a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door.”

Only anti-science disinformers believe scientific views are no different from religious ones, that a letter from a non-climate-scientist (particularly one who hasn’t bothered to learn the first thing about climate science or talk to actual climate scientists) would carry any weight at all, let alone lead to a major new science religion of Lewisism (Wattsism?), since, of course, that’s not how science works.

I never would have imagined in a hundred years, though, that the once respected Christian Science Monitor would publish a piece by Watts that opens with this pure anti-science headline and subhead (and picture of Martin Luther):

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On Saturday, the Republican National Committee (RNC) held a large “Victory Rally,” which ThinkProgress attended, just outside Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was the highlight of event, while RNC Chairman Michael Steele, several GOP congressmen, and right-wing media tycoon Andrew Breitbart also gave speeches to the excited, mostly-elderly crowd in a hotel ballroom. Notably absent were Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, California’s GOP Senate and governor nominees.

But curiously present was the conservative “grassroots” astroturfing outfit Americans for Prosperity (AFP), which held a “No Jobs Fair” to encourage people to vote yes on Proposition 23, a referendum on the ballot this year that would essentially scrap California’s landmark global warming law.  TP has the story and video in this cross-post.

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This cross-post is by CAP’s Daniel J. Weiss.

One of Washington’s favorite parlor games is identifying each political party’s presidential hopefuls long before the campaign begins and handicapping their prospects. One such contender, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, is climbing up the charts as a possible 2012 GOP presidential candidate.

This week The Washington Post‘s David Broder, the dean of America’s political pundits, penned a fawning column about Daniels. After Daniels gave a speech last week at the Hudson Institute, Broder gushed:
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You know an act of Congress is beyond Onion-esque when even the Politico mocks it in their “Morning Energy brief“:

SOME THINGS YOU CAN’T MAKE UP – Obama yesterday signed off on the Lisa Murkowski-led effort to rename an Alaska ice field (“Ted Stevens Icefield”) and a mountain (“Mount Stevens”) after the late senator who tirelessly advocated for fossil fuel development.

The irony compounds.  Lisa ‘fiddle while Nome burns’ Murkowski herself has been trying to block EPA action that might help save her warming-ravaged state.  She introduced this bill into the Senate on September 20 — six weeks after Stevens’ death, and, coincidentally I’m sure, the Monday after her Friday, September 17 decision to run as write-in candidate to hold on to her Senate seat.  Yes, she is a real Ted Stevens lover, that Lisa M is.

As Lily Tomlin famously said, “No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.”

Sure, the US Geological Survey completed a detailed study two years ago, the Glaciers of Alaska, which found “more than 99 percent of Alaska’s large glaciers are retreating” as a result of climate change.   And sure, the USGS report found, “The estimated annual volume loss from Alaska during the recent period, 96±35 km^3/year (Arendt, and others, 2002), is nearly twice that estimated for the entire Greenland ice sheet during the same period.”

But are those reasons not to enact “S.3802 — Mount Stevens and Ted Stevens Icefield Designation Act“?  Before you answer, here’s something I bet you didn’t know:  Calving icebergs from Columbia glacier, one of the fastest melters in the newly designated Ted Stevens Icefield, have been linked to the Exxon Valdez disaster.  In its entry on glacier retreat, Wikipedia notes:

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Wind is the new cash crop in rural Wash. town

On an 80-degree day in this tiny rural town, winds gust up to 30 miles per hour, tossing tree branches and whipping hair into faces. Resident Cheryl Davenport smiles. She knows she’s making money.

“It’s a T & E day,” said Davenport, 62, using jargon familiar to locals. “T & E,” means “turn and earn,” a mantra whispered to hundreds of windmills. Davenport sits on her porch on days like this, rocking in a chair and cheering spinning white blades, “Turn and earn, turn and earn.”

Like many in Goldendale, Davenport and her extended family leased their expansive agricultural land to a wind developer. Turning turbines sitting on their property bring in about $200,000 annually, money divided among a clan of six. In a place where the per capita income is $32,550 a year, that supplies a healthy boost. It is small town America in the age of clean energy promotion.

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Smart land use in the fight against climate change

This cross-post is by CAP’s Tom Kenworthy.

Fast-track renewable energy projects

View Fast-Track Renewable Energy Projects in a larger map
Source: Bureau of Land Management

America has great advantages as it faces an urgent need to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy and a lower carbon future, including enormous renewable energy resources and a vast public and private land base to develop and deliver that clean, inexhaustible energy. This transformation will mean greater energy security and a more sustainable and prosperous economic future. Yet getting to that future will test our resolve and ingenuity. And getting there while treating our land resources in ways that sustain rather than deplete and degrade them will test our wisdom.

This challenge is already beginning to unfold in America’s desert Southwest, which is home to some of the best solar resources in the world as well as vast landscapes that are ecological treasures and fragile wildlife habitats.

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“The American people have every right, and every reason, to blame a Republican president and a Republican Congress for the mess that confronted the Obama administration on January 20, 2009 “” let us be honest be about this.”

ThinkProgress filed this story of a conservative blurting out the truth from Costa Mesa, CA:

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