We are in the middle of the Jewish Festival of efficient and renewable Lights.

Hanukkah commemorates the “rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem” twenty-two centuries ago. The miracle being celebrated is that they only had enough “consecrated olive oil to fuel the eternal flame in the Temple for one day. Miraculously, the oil burned for eight days.”

From my perspective, the miracle was a sign from on high to use renewable fuels and/or put them in a lamp that burns very, very efficiently. And speaking about green lights, how about an LED motherboard menorah “” but you’d better run it on renewable power.

In honor of Hanukkah, here’s a guest posts on efficiency, “Home energy efficiency: no surprise, very fast paybacks to be expected,” from A. Siegel’s Get Energy Smart Now! blog:

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Disinformers get it very wrong and Inaccuweather’s Bastardi absurdly asserts sea ice trend is “leveling off and will turn the other way”

Researchers often look at ice age as a way to estimate ice thickness. Older ice tends to be thicker than younger, one- or two-year-old ice.

The death spiral of Arctic sea ice continued this year, according to both observations and modeling.  The figure above comes from the National Snow and Ice Data Center.  In September, NSIDC’s director Mark Serreze said, “The volume of ice left in the Arctic likely reached the lowest ever level this month” and “I stand by my previous statements that the Arctic summer sea ice cover is in a death spiral. It’s not going to recover.”

Also in September, a first-of-its-kind analysis by an international team of 18 top scientists found “less ice covers the Arctic today than at any time in recent geologic history” and this ice loss is “unexplainable by any of the known natural variabilities.”

In November, Rear Admiral David Titley, the Oceanographer of the Navy and the Director of Navy’s Task Force Climate Change, testified that “the volume of ice as of last September has never been lower” — and that it is headed to zero in the summer.  You can read his testimony here.

Peter Sinclair has an excerpt of his testimony in an excellent video that shows just how wrong the discredited disinformers from WattsUpWithThat were in their sea ice projections this year:

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I have long said blogging is problematic for professional journalists (see “What exactly is the difference between journalism and blogging?“).

But if reporters are going to blog — if their editors are going to insist on it as part of their jobs — then they have to make some semblance to not be mere stenographers.  The New York Times Green blog is not PR Newswire.

So I was a bit surprised when John Broder simply republished Sen. Inhofe’s disinformation, including his video, in a post Senator Inhofe: “I Was Right and They Were Wrong,” which included mean-spirited nonsense like this:

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Climate Power Couples Take Charge

Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa has asked five pairs of rich and poor nations to tackle the questions necessary for a positive result at the Cancun talks.  Brad Johnson has the story of these Bennifers and Brangelinas of the climate negotiations, who will hold the key to the incremental success hoped for here:

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The Wonk Room is reporting and tweeting live from the international climate talks in Cancun, Mexico.

Helping Others Helps US

A new report from the Center for American Progress and the Alliance For Climate Protection finds that American support for an international adaptation fund for the most vulnerable countries will reap great rewards for the future security of the United States. U.S. firms will “capture a substantially larger share of global clean energy markets,” “risks of climate-related national security threats” in unstable regions will be reduced, and there will be “billions of dollars in reduced climate impacts in the United States.”

Climate Power Couples Take Charge

Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa has asked five pairs of rich and poor nations to tackle the questions necessary for a positive result at the Cancun talks. These Bennifers and Brangelinas of the climate negotiations will hold the key to the incremental success hoped for here:

Britzil: Britain and Brazil have the greatest responsibility, assigned to break the deadlock over the future of the Kyoto Protocol.

Bangralia: Australia and Bangladesh are developing draft text for international financing and technology transfer.

Spalgeria: Spain and Algeria are working together on adaptation assistance for developing countries.

Grenaden: Sweden and Grenada will “work on long-term global goals for slowing climate change,” the “shared vision” text for the long-term cooperative action track (the non-Kyoto-based agreement).

New Zindonesia: New Zealand and Indonesia are working on “other issues about curbing greenhouse gases,” most likely the flexible mechanisms like the REDD+ deforestation plan and land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) language.

In addition, India, the United States and China are working on a plan for international monitoring of emissions pledges from developing nations — the International Consultation and Analysis (ICA) approach to Monitoring Reporting and Verification (MRV).

Diminished, Dangerous World Drives Urgency

The dangerous interference with the climate system that is already taking place is driving urgency among most nations at the conference. “Even when we’re underwater, when the bubbles pop, you’ll hear us yelling,” Seychelles delegate Ronny Jumeau tells the Los Angeles Times. The devastating flooding in Colombia has forced Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, to cancel his scheduled trip to the talks — even though global warming itself is what is affecting his nation. And a new report from Dara projects that there will be a million climate deaths a year by 2030. Nearly all of the deaths will take place in least developed nations, and nearly of them are preventable if a sufficient international adaptation effort is funded.

Japan Leads Obstructionist Bloc With Russia And Canada

The future of the Kyoto Protocol, which puts all emission reduction obligations on developed nations but expires in 2012, is not resolvable at the Cancun talks. Recognizing that, the United States, China, the European Union, and nearly all of the least developed nations have indicated their willingness to continue negotiations but let final decisions come next year. However, at the beginning of this conference, Japan took a hard-line position against continuing the Kyoto Protocol in any fashion, and the governments of Canada and Russia have joined them. This poison-pill strategy threatens to overshadow the pragmatic approach taken by nearly all the other delegations for these talks.

JR:  The staggering imbalance between the scale of clean energy action being pursued by China and that pursued by this country grows clearer every day.

China to hit 500 Gigawatts of Renewable Power by 2020!

On the same day that Senate Republicans filibustered a vote for renewable energy in the USA, by contrast – China has just published an astoundingly ambitious and exciting renewable energy plan for the next ten years.

China’s plan is to get a total of 500 Gigawatts of renewable energy on the grid by 2020. It explodes wind power from a mere 25 GW on the grid now, to a staggering 150 GW, a six-fold increase on the previous already ambitious plan.

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E&E News (subs. req’d) has a long story today, “DOE: Parlor game of potential Chu successors begins, if prematurely.”  Turns out the key word is “prematurely.”

While it’s fascinating to learn that soon-to-be-former governors like Arnold Schwarzenegger are leading candidates for the job of Energy Secretary if it opens up anytime soon, all my sources had said there were no signs that Chu was planning to leave.

Now, Politico’s Morning Energy reports:

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A blueprint for near-term leadership

The vital national interests of the United States require our nation to forge a global partnership with developing nations to accelerate their climate actions through new international investments in clean energy technologies, energy efficiency, tropical forest conservation and climate adaptation.

This is a cross-post from The Alliance for Climate Protection and Andrew Light of the Center for American Progress.

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The U.S. Senate failed miserably at putting a price on carbon this year.  But, that doesn’t mean that the Senate can’t take actions that will meaningfully improve the clean energy industry, putting us on a path to a low-carbon future.  CAP’s Richard Caperton has the story.

Last Thursday, Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) took a tremendous step forward by introducing legislation that would extend two incredibly important clean energy stimulus programs.  In his Middle Class Tax Cut Act of 2010, Baucus proposes extending both the Section 48c Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit and the Section 1603 Treasury Cash Grant in Lieu of Tax Credit programs.

Unfortunately, the Baucus bill did not muster the 60 votes necessary to end debate and pass it, failing 53-37.  Every Senate Republican who voted opposed it. There may be a deal later this week that extends all the tax cut for two years, and could include these provisions as well.

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Pachauri: Climate change impacts are ‘here and now’

As the world’s environmental ministers arrive in Cancun, Mexico, for the 19th year of negotiations to address global warming pollution, new climate disasters are killing people across the planet.  IPCC chief Dr. Rajendra Pachauri warned Friday at a forum on communicating climate science that the impacts of climate change are here and now. Brad Johnson has the double story.
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