Miss California earned her way into the semifinals in preliminary judging including interviews in which she was one of only two among 51 contestants to unequivocally support teaching evolution.

The newly crowned Miss USA, Alyssa Campanella, 21, of LA, said:

I was taught evolution in high school. I do believe in it. I’m a huge science geek…. I like to believe in the big bang theory and, you know, the evolution of humans throughout time.

Here’s the video (followed by a head-exploding video of some of the answers by other contestants):

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Last fall, thousands of youth climate activists called on President Obama to restore solar to the White House, removed 20 years ago by Ronald Reagan. In October, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced that “by the end of this spring, there will be solar panels and a solar hot water heater on the roof of the White House.” Today, with less than 24 hours before the summer solstice, Ramamoorthy Ramesh announced that the date of White House solar installation won’t even be publicly decided until September at the earliest, based on the timeline for the DOE’s Rooftop Solar Challenge:

The Energy Department remains on the path to complete the White House solar demonstration project, in keeping with our commitment, and we look forward to sharing more information — including additional details on the timing of this project — after the competitive procurement process is completed.

The Rooftop Solar Challenge, part of the Department of Energy Sunshot Initiative to accelerate the deployment of solar technologies, is designed to encourage local and regional governments to improve market conditions for rooftop solar installations. The Sunshot Initiative program was only announced in April of this year, and the final date for submissions to the rooftop challenge is August 31. There is no date established for when the “competitive procurement process” is to be completed.

Although the work being done by Ramesh, one of the nation’s top solar-power scientists, as the head of the Sunshot Initiative, is crucial, tying the White House demonstration solar installations to this program is a transparent excuse for a broken pledge.

The threat of our polluted climate and the urgency of rebuilding our economy with clean technology should be the Obama administration’s paramount concern. Their deferral of a commitment made to our nation’s youth in the midst of this crisis is a grave disappointment.

The two-week long United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change intercession meeting ended on Friday in Bonn, Germany.  The talks revealed major issues that are hindering the progression of outcomes achieved in Cancun.  The Parties are not in agreement about the future of the Kyoto Protocol, how to operationalize the agreements reached in Cancun, and international climate finance. Parties will attempt to resolve these issues in the lead up to the next major UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa in November.

Here is a news roundup of what happened in Bonn.

Bonn climate talks end with no agreement on key areas

Two weeks of tense global climate talks wrapped up on Friday, with countries insisting they had made progress on technical issues but accepting they were still nowhere near agreement in the three key areas of finance, greenhouse gas emission cuts and the future of the Kyoto protocol.

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David Doniger, in a NRDC cross-post

The Supreme Court today reaffirmed that it is the Environmental Protection Agency’s job to curb dangerous carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act, deciding in Connecticut v. American Electric Power that states cannot bring suit directly against five of the nation’s largest power companies to curb their emissions as a public nuisance.

Power plants are the nation’s biggest climate polluters.  Each year they pump more than two billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air – pollution that is driving dangerous heat waves and smog episodes, rising seas, and stronger storms, floods, and droughts, threatening our health and safety and our homes and communities.

For more than a decade, environmental organizations and leading states have pursued legal strategies to force power plants and other big carbon polluters to clean up.

When the Bush administration denied that EPA had any authority to curb carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act, NRDC joined a state-environmental coalition to challenge that misreading of the law.  The Supreme Court rejected the Bush position in a landmark 2007 case called Massachusetts v. EPA, ruling that EPA has the duty to protect us from dangerous carbon pollution under the nation’s 40 year old clean air law.

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To great fanfare, Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) announced that New Jersey would be pulling out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the northeastern cap-and-trade system for reducing global warming pollution and increasing green investment. There was only one problem — Christie doesn’t actually have the unilateral authority to withdraw his state from the compact. He is attempting to overturn by fiat the clear language of legislation passed in 2007 mandating New Jersey’s involvement. Today, the New Jersey Senate moved legislation out of committee that would reaffirm the intent of the existing law Christie wants to overturn:

This Legislature declares that Governor Christie’s decision to withdraw New Jersey from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), announced on May 26, 2011, is inconsistent with the intent of the Legislature as expressed in the “Global Warming Response Act,” P.L.2007, c.112 (C.26:2C-37 et al.), and P.L.2007, c.340 (C.26:2C-45 et al.), known as the “Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative” or “RGGI” implementing law.

The legislation now goes to the full Senate for a vote. The sister bill in the lower house has also passed out of committee.

New research “points toward projected sea level rise lying at or near the upper range of current projections, more than a meter [100 cm, 39 inches] by the end of this century under business-as-usual carbon emissions,” says co-author Michael Mann.

The National Science Foundation news release for the study, “Climate related sea-level variations over the past two millennia,” explains

The rate of sea level rise along the U.S. Atlantic coast is greater now than at any time in the past 2,000 years–and has shown a consistent link between changes in global mean surface temperature and sea level….

“Sea-level rise is a potentially disastrous outcome of climate change,” says [co-author Benjamin] Horton, “as rising temperatures melt land-based ice, and warm ocean waters.”

The NSF-funded work is “the first continuous sea-level reconstruction for the past 2,000 years.”  The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study concludes, “Using an extended semiempirical modeling approach, we show that these sea-level changes are consistent with global temperature for at least the past millennium.”

The figure above is from a 2009 PNAS paper, “Global sea level linked to global temperature” by two of the authors of the new paper, Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Martin Vermeer of Helsinki University of Technology.  The new study “reinforces those projections in my view,” according to Rahmstorf.  “AR4″ stands for the lowball projections of sea level rise (SLR) that were made in the IPCC Fourth Assessment report.

We are currently close to the A1FI emissions pathway, though frankly, none of the IPCC models encompass the most dangerous of the amplifying carbon-cycle feed backs (the melting permafrost, see here), not do most SLR models encompass the staggering polar warming we face on our current path (see M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F — with Arctic warming of 20°F)

Even so, the recent scientific literature makes clear we are likely to blow past the AR4 projections by mid-century (see “JPL bombshell: Polar ice sheet mass loss is speeding up, on pace for 1 foot sea level rise by 2050“).

Co-author Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State, explained the significance of the new research in an e-mail:

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The Obama administration is fighting anti-science Republicans to create a Climate Service within the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration. The NOAA Climate Service would consolidate NOAA’s existing, widely dispersed, climate capabilities under a single management structure to meet America’s rising demand for authoritative and timely climate information. Tea Party Republicans successfully included a rider preventing its establishment in the FY 2011 continuing resolution, but now the fight is over the FY 2012 budget, which includes a budget-neutral provision for the new climate division.

On Wednesday, the House science committee is holding a hearing on the proposed climate service, with NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco and Robert S. Winokur, Deputy and Technical Director, Office of the Oceanographer of the Navy, Chief of Naval Operations, scheduled to testify.

NOAA’s climate information provides long-range forecasting ranging from two weeks, to seasons, to decades out. Climate services help the public to make informed decisions to prepare for and become more resilient to the new reality of our changing world. Individuals, businesses, and local governments rely heavily on this information – the rapid increase in climate disasters and extreme weather has only increased the demand for these forecasts. Even without a coordinated approach, NOAA’s climate information directly benefits the American people:

– NOAA’s climate forecasts, from seasonal precipitation outlooks to weekly on-the-ground U.S. Drought Monitor assessments, are helping firefighters in Texas to prepare for and respond to a record extreme wildfire season.

– NOAA’s climate information is being used by the U.S. home building industry, which estimates savings of over $300 million per year in construction costs alone from using just one of NOAA’s climate tools.

– Insurance companies rely on climate data such as the normal (mean) temperature, precipitation, height above sea level, and storm frequency to calculate insurance premiums and coverage based on catastrophe models.

NOAA’s climate services are currently distributed across five line offices. As carbon pollution destabilizes the climate, demand has outpaced NOAA’s capacity to effectively deliver requested products and information and exceeded its ability to meet or be responsive to future needs. The reorganization would significantly boost the agency’s efficiency, strengthen science across NOAA, and improve delivery of vital weather and climate forecasts – at no additional cost to the taxpayer.

Nothing less than the full mobilization of the nation’s resources will allow us to survive the changing threats of our polluted climate. However, the Tea Party has a policy of science denial. The formation of this service threatens the know-nothings within the Republican Party who deny that the fossil fuel industry is creating a dangerous world — so they are preventing the government from protecting the American people.

Today, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar demonstrated his conservation leadership by halting the race to mine uranium at the edge of the Grand Canyon National Park for six months, and setting the stage for a full 20-year withdrawal. As John Podesta and other conservation leaders stated in their request several weeks ago, this move by the administration is necessary to protect one of America’s greatest assets and one of the world’s natural treasures.

For those of you that do not follow the politics of our public lands, this might seem like an obvious choice, made simply to capture headlines about protecting Grand Canyon National Park. However, when it comes to public lands these days, it requires a fight to protect even the greatest of places.

Back in 2008, the New York Times broke the story that a British company had begun exploratory drilling just miles from one of the main entrances to Grand Canyon National Park. This shined a national spot light on a mining boom that was growing across the West.

Many of the foreign-owned mining companies responsible for the boom were staking claims right outside national parks. The Pew Environment Group’s Ten Treasures at Stake report depicts in great detail the growing threat. Data from the Bureau of Land Management cited in the report shows that in 1995 there were less than 100 mining claims in uranium-rich areas near the Grand Canyon. By 2007, that number grew to more than 6,000 mining claims, and today there are more than 8,000.

In 2009, Salazar temporarily stopped new claims by issuing a two-year moratorium so the Department of the Interior could study the impacts of uranium mining on Grand Canyon National Park. Without today’s announcement, the clock would have run out at the end of this month. Salazar issued today an emergency withdrawal order that extends the moratorium another six months, until a final environmental impact statement can be issued. Salazar also announced that he has directed the preferred alternative in the final rule to be a full 20-year withdrawal of the threatened lands around the Grand Canyon.

Politicians had lined up on both sides of the debate. More than 60 Democrats, led by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), sent a letter asking Secretary Salazar to fully withdraw 1 million acres for 20 years in order to stop new mining claims. At the same time, Republicans Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Trent Franks (R-AZ) requested that Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) hold a hearing questioning “the Administration’s perceived environmental concerns” about uranium mining creating a “serious national security threat.”

This political divide should come as no surprise, especially when one considers that the National Mining Association donates three times more to Republicans than it does to Democrats.

However, Gosar was quick to capitalize on the Grand Canyon’s popularity to promote the oil industry agenda. “Arizona’s First Congressional District is home to countless popular vacation destinations such as the Grand Canyon National Park,” he wrote in a press release. “If gas prices continue to soar, our local communities could be hit hard by decreased tourism and fewer visitors.”

Where is that concern for the tourism impact that would be caused by countless mines popping up next to Grand Canyon National Park? What about the impact on the Colorado River that sustains the National Park and provides drinking water to 25 million Americans? The list of reasons for protecting Grand Canyon National Park is long and wide ranging.

Still, some conservative leaders feel it’s better to play up fears of government overreach than recognize that some places should be protected.

Regulatory oversight turns into regulatory oversights

Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation’s aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.

Time after time, officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission have decided that original regulations were too strict, arguing that safety margins could be eased without peril, according to records and interviews.

The result? Rising fears that these accommodations by the NRC are significantly undermining safety — and inching the reactors closer to an accident that could harm the public and jeopardize the future of nuclear power in the United States.

The AP has a blockbuster study of the NRC’s nuclear regulatory ‘oversight.’

I’ve been arguing for a long time that there was no nuclear Renaissance, that the industry had failed to get its act in order and had priced itself out of the market.  Then back in October, Exelon CEO John Rowe explained that Low gas prices and no carbon price push back nuclear renaissance a “decade, maybe two.” In short, nuclear power has gone from “too cheap to meter” to “too costly to matter.”

The meltdown in Japan pulled back the veil on the grim underlying economics of nuclear power and certainly killed the myth that we can afford to skimp on review, oversight, and safety in an effort to save money (see “The Nukes of Hazard“).

Now the AP has revealed that the kind of lax oversight common in Japan is apparently common in this country, too.  Here’s more from the AP’s sobering, must-read analysis:

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Rogers:  ”90% of power plants built in the last 10 years in the US have been natural gas. It’s like the crack cocaine of the power industry.”

If Jim Rogers, the CEO of Duke Energy, is right about natural gas being the crack cocaine of the power industry, then what are renewables – broccoli? The vegetable that everyone knows is good for you, but tries to avoid eating as long as possible?

The glut of gas on the market due to the “shale gas revolution” has kept prices low, making it difficult for renewable energy developers to compete on in the merchant market (i.e. spot market.) On the flip side, it’s forced manufacturers to continue improving technologies to drive down costs, and because of the “flight to quality,” has forced developers to build the best projects possible.

So what is the verdict? Is the “Golden Age” of natural gas, as the International Energy Agency calls it, going to hurt or help renewables? The analysis is very mixed. From a recent Reuters piece:

“The economic viability of a lot of the renewables are getting killed because we have too much gas in the world right now,” said Jeff Currie, global head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs.

“It’s made a lot of these other projects like solar and wind struggle in terms of their economic viability, and coal too.”

Building new gas plants was half the price of new nuclear, and much cheaper than wind and solar, said John Rowe, chairman of U.S. power company Exelon Corp. Shale gas has especially suppressed prices in the United States.

As Joe Romm wrote in his recent Climate Progress analysis of the IEA “Golden Age of Gas” report, the climate impact of a massive scale-up in gas would be immense. And the IEA acknowledges this:

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A round-up of climate and energy news. Please post other stories below.

‘Fracking’ Disclosure to Rise

The natural-gas industry, bowing to longtime pressure, will disclose more information about the chemicals it uses in the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing.

On Friday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed into law a bill that will require companies to make public the chemicals they use on every hydraulic fracturing job in the state. While a handful of other states have passed similar measures, Texas’s law is significant because oil and gas drilling is a key industry in the state and the industry vocally supported the measure.

Environmental groups said the law doesn’t go far enough, but they agreed it was an important step.

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CLEARING UP THE CLIMATE DEBATE: Bureau of Meteorology scientist Karl Braganza explains why we know the climate is changing, and what’s causing it.

What would we do without Australian scientists?  We have physicist John Cook, who runs the must-read blog Skeptical Science, where the figure above comes from (see Eight great figures summarizing the evidence for a “human fingerprint” on recent climate change).

Then the Australian scientific community decided that they were mad as hell and not going to take it anymore — in an open letter reposted here last week (see Australian Scientific Community: “Climate Change is Real, We Are Causing It,” Media has Botched the Coverage).  Now some of those scientists are contributing to a multipart series at “The Conversation” website.

The second in the series, “The greenhouse effect is real: here’s why,” is reprinted below.

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A recent CNBC.com piece at asked the question: “Does the solar industry have a PR problem?” Unfortunately, the story itself is the PR problem.

The piece cited a March study from two reputable organizations, SolarTech and San Jose University, which found that only 39% of Americans think solar is reliable and only 11 percent think it’s affordable.

The article was attempting to address an important point: That solar companies still have a lot to do to counter perceptions that solar doesn’t work. But rather than take a detailed look at customer experiences to actually figure out if solar is working, or examine the important steps solar companies are taking to address the problem, the reporter highlights the opinions of companies with a direct financial interest in pushing the perception that solar doesn’t work:

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