Our guest bloggers are Daniel J. Weiss, Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy, Kate Gordon, Vice President for Energy Policy, and Michael Linden, Associate Director for Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress.

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address waved the green flag for innovation and competition in the clean-tech sector. He proposed a number of programs to speed the development and manufacturing of domestic energy efficiency and renewable energy sectors to help American businesses race with their Chinese, German, and other competitors. But before the president’s proposals had completed their initial laps in Congress, the Republicans’ proposed House continuing resolution (or spending bill) for the remainder of fiscal year 2011 waves the yellow caution flag that they would slow down — if not outright halt — the promise of America’s clean-tech revolution and all the ensuing companies and jobs it would create.

The proposed bill would slash clean-tech and energy investments by nearly 30 percent, devastating this growing but immature industry that struggled during the Great Recession. The House Appropriations Committee majority bragsthat it “cuts climate change funding bill-wide by $107 million, or 29%, from the fiscal year 2010 enacted level.” The proposed budget includes many other cuts that would harm innovation, the economy, and public health:

The House Appropriations Committee majority claims its bill would cut spending by more than $100 billion between now and October 1. And clean energy, one of the great hopes for American global competitiveness, is one of its biggest targets: Read more

How self-destructively anti-science are the next generation of conservatives? The New Republic‘s Bradford Plumer visited the booths at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in DC and reported this:

The Collegians For a Constructive Tomorrow let passersby hurl eggs at pinup photos of Al Gore and Penn State paleoclimatologist Michael Mann; I saw one girl chuck an egg so vehemently that she has to leap back to avoid the splatter.

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We are the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens.  That’s mainly because we are the only species that gets to name all the species, so we can call ourselves “wise” twice!

But given how we have been destroying the planet’s livability, I think at the very least we should drop one of the sapiens. And, perhaps provisionally, we should put the other one in quotes, so we are Homo “sapiens,” at least until we see whether we are smart enough to save ourselves from self-destruction (see Science stunner: On our current emissions path, CO2 levels in 2100 will hit levels last seen when the Earth was 29°F (16°C) hotter).

Of course there are dolphins, but they seem rather unlikely to survive our carbon-fest (see Nature Geoscience study: Oceans are acidifying 10 times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred and “Geological Society: Acidifying oceans spell marine biological meltdown “by end of century”).  Hmm.  Perhaps the book will have to be renamed, “So long, and thanks for killing all the fish.”  But I digress.

Now comes word that IBM has developed an “artificial intelligence” that positively kills on Jeopardy!.  Yeah, I know, climate hawks would have preferred they spent a few million bucks developing an “artificial intelligence” that convinces people to stop spewing climate-destroying emissions into the air, but, really, at the end of the day, we already have Al Gore, and would you rather listen to some damn alarmist machine or watch Ken Jennings finally lose.

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How to kill a potentially not-bad idea in 5 easy steps

Multiple head-vise alert!

Let’s say you’re a major national lab, affiliated with a major university, concerned about critiques of the global temperature record.  Let’s say you get the bright idea to assemble some really smart scientists and statisticians “to resolve current criticism of the [global] temperature analyses, and to prepare an open record that will allow rapid response to further criticism or suggestions.”

Let’s set aside the fact that the various groups involved from NASA to NOAA to the Met Office have been undertaking their own reviews (see The deniers were half right: The Met Office Hadley Centre had flawed data “” but it led them to UNDERestimate the rate of recent global warming and “Watts not to love: New study finds the poor weather stations tend to have a slight COOL bias, not a warm one“).

You know that because you are prestigious, independent institution, you can bring fresh eyes and credibility to this supposed problem.

How would you go about killing this potentially not-bad idea?   How about picking a co-chair whose knowledge of the subject has been widely criticized?  How about including a bunch of prestigious scientists who know very little about the subject and who have little involvement in the actual study?  How about having your only actual climate scientist — presumably chosen for extra credibility — be Judith Curry?  How about having a family member of the ill-informed co-chair be project manager?   How about taking money from one of the biggest funders of anti-science disinformation in the world?

What’s that you say?  No serious organization on the planet would do something like that, especially in an effort whose entire purpose is to boost credibility?

Let me introduce you to the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study, launched in part with a grant by the prestigious Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, co-chaired by Richard Muller (author of widely debunked books, blog posts and Wall Street Journal op-eds), and co-funded by … wait for it … the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation!

I warned you about the head vises!

Let’s start with Muller.

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This reposting is from Bill McKibben, 350.org founder and author of the must-read book Eaarth.

Frankfort, Kentucky, that is, the capitol of one of America’s most coal-dominated states. And tonight, the site of something really wonderful. For 72 hours, a small group of demonstrators have been holding a ‘sleepover’ in the governor’s office, refusing to leave until he agrees to take action to stop the absurd practice of ‘mountaintop removal’ coal-mining.

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I am re-recycling RecycleBank’s 10 romantic ways to green your Valentine’s Day:

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Technology Review: It used to be thought, five to eight years ago, that hydrogen was the great answer for the future of transportation. The mood has shifted. What have we learned from this?

Steven Chu: I think, well, among some people it hasn’t really shifted. I think there was great enthusiasm in some quarters, but I always was somewhat skeptical of it because, right now, the way we get hydrogen primarily is from reforming [natural] gas. That’s not an ideal source of hydrogen. You’re giving away some of the energy content of natural gas, which is a very valuable fuel. So that’s one problem. The other problem is, if it’s for transportation, we don’t have a good storage mechanism yet. Compressed hydrogen is the best mechanism [but it requires] a large volume. We haven’t figured out how to store it with high density. What else? The fuel cells aren’t there yet, and the distribution infrastructure isn’t there yet. So you have four things that have to happen all at once. And so it always looked like it was going to be [a technology for] the distant future. In order to get significant deployment, you need four significant technological breakthroughs. That makes it unlikely.

… If you need four miracles, that’s unlikely: saints only need three miracles.

That was Energy Secretary Steven Chu nearly 2 years ago in a Technology Review interview, explaining why he didn’t think that hydrogen fuel cell vehicle research should be a priority for the DOE.

Back then he tried to sharply reduce the bloated hydrogen budget and redirect the funds toward clean energy technology development and deployment programs that could actually achieve significant benefits for the American public in the foreseeable future, something I’ve been recommending for years. (see “Chu agrees with Climate Progress and slashes hydrogen budget“).  But the Congress restored the money.

Now he’s trying again.  In a blog post Friday, “Winning the Future with a Responsible Budget,” the Nobel prize-winning physicist explains, “In the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the Department is reducing funding for the hydrogen technology program by more than 41 percent, or almost $70 million, in order to focus on technologies deployable at large scale in the near term.”  Chu said in May 2009 that the multiple technological and infrastructure challenges meant it was unlikely we would convert to hydrogen car economy in the next two decades.

For a detailed analysis of the 4 miracles needed — indeed of the challenges facing all alternative fuel vehicles — see “Hydrogen fuel cell cars are a dead end from a technological, practical, and climate perspective “” Chu & Obama are right to kill the program.“  The Nobel Laureate Burton Richter has explained in detail why “The present hydrogen fuel cells are losers… Losers. They have to go back to the R&D lab.”

One reason climate hawks should hope that he succeeds is that hydrogen cars are one of the least cost-effective strategies for reducing carbon emissions ever imagined:

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China Profits From Solar Policy as Europe Backpedals

China, the world’s biggest electricity consumer, is figuring out how to capture a larger share of the solar-energy market without losing money.

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In a new blog post, the Koch-fueled Heritage Foundation continues to defend the fossil fuel industry at the expense of American jobs. Heritage attacked Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson for testifying that stronger limits on dangerous air pollution could create over a million jobs. Her testimony was based on a study by the University of Massachusetts Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), which found that electric utilities would create 300,000 jobs (or 1.5 million job-years over five years) as they clean up aging, polluting power plants.

Brad Johnson has the story.

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On February 9, Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA), Ranking Member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Bobby Rush (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Energy and Power Subcommittee, added yet another voice to the uproar over the proposed “Dirty Air Act.”   CAPAF’s Valeri Vasquez has the story.

The draft bill by Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (R-MI) would overturn the scientific finding that carbon dioxide and other pollutants threaten public health and welfare.

Waxman released a white paper from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that describes the significant economic benefits from the Clean Air Act.  For instance, implementing the Clean Air Act’s public health protections would potentially amount to “2.8 percent of total U.S. health care costs.” Total annual savings are estimated to be over $50 billion. Translation? Net economic benefits exceeding $1 trillion in 2010 alone, a number projected to reach $2 trillion by 2020.

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