NSF Inspector General:  “Finding no research misconduct or other matter raised by the various regulations and laws discussed above, this case is closed.”

Reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere temperatures, Mann et al.

Two things we know with extremely high confidence:

1. Recent warming is unprecedented in magnitude and speed and cause (so the temperature history looks like a Hockey Stick).
2. Michael Mann, the lead author on the original Hockey Stick paper, is one of the nation’s top climatologists and a source of first-rate analysis.

We know these things because both the Hockey Stick and Mann have been independently investigated and vindicated more times than any other facet of climate science or any other climate scientist (see links below).

Readers also know that “the first rule of vindicating climate science is you do not talk about vindicating climate science.”  While the anti-science extremists who rule the Tea Party and the right-wing bunkosphere keep shouting lies about the Hockey Stick and Mann — and urging their followers to “shout down” science-based commenters on independent websites — the vindications of the science and the man are reported as quietly as if they came from the Whos of Whoville.

And so after countless investigations — 3 in the U.K., 2 by Penn State, the EPA, the NOAA IG — that have all unanimously found the allegations against climate scientists and their research conclusions based on the hacked “ClimateGate” emails to be wholly unsubstantiated, a top GOP presidential candidate backed by the fossil fuel industry still gives voice to the Texas-sized lie (see “Denier Rick Perry Takes $11 Million from Big Oil, Then Claims Climate Scientists ‘Manipulated Data’ For Money“).

And so while Mann and the Hockey Stick were getting yet another full vindication (from Penn State) earlier this year, Fox News was trumpeting one final investigation:

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Climate science denial is one of the strongest anti-scientific currents running through today’s Republican Party. American conservatives, who tend to be most skeptical of the scientific consensus on greenhouse pollution, generally hold other politically relevant anti-science views, such as support for creationism and opposition to stem-cell research. As global warming touches all of our lives, people are having to reconcile the reality of a polluted world with their personal moral views.

Presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) is presenting his denial of climate science as rooted in his same faith that evolution is a hoax. Perry’s response to the greenhouse-powered drought in Texas has been to issue an official prayer for rain, while spurning man’s responsibility. On the campaign trail, he portrays the climate science as a “secular carbon cult” working against his infallible faith.

However, climate science denial has a very different provenance from other conservative anti-scientific attitudes. The facts of climate science challenge the business model of the fossil fuel industry, whereas the facts of evolution and the like challenge religious fundamentalism. The oil industry and evangelicals form two pillars of American conservatism (see the work of Allen Lichtman and Kevin Phillips), but their networks and influence are not the same. Climate denial has traditionally been spread not through conservative churches but through the secular, oil-funded media networks — the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh.

The arguments made against natural selection are rooted in a century-old cultural conflict over the origin of man. However, the main line of attack against climate science has been taken recently from the tobacco industry playbook, raising doubts about the science and convincing business leaders that the expense of pollution reduction would be ruinous. Climate denial draws from the false conflict between economy versus environment rather than the false dichotomy of science and religion. Evangelical teachings don’t exclude the conclusion that being wasteful of the planet’s resources could be harmful. The conservative evangelical community has been split over climate change, with old-line partisan evangelicals like James Dobson supporting the oil companies, and next-generation evangelical conservatives like Rick Warren joining the Catholic Church in recognizing that fossil pollution is an issue of Christian suffering.

However, we are now entering a new era in climate change. Global warming is no longer a future threat, but an existing reality. Storms are stronger, droughts are more dangerous, oceans have risen and glaciers receded. The change in the global climate has led to changes in the weather that everyone can detect in their daily lives, not just scientists making careful measurements. This is transforming an issue primarily of concern to elites — the coal and oil barons whose economic well-being is directly threatened by changes in our energy infrastructure — to one all Americans must grapple with on a personal level. They must each answer the basic question of whether humans have responsibility for damaging the climate, threatening all they hold dear.

Meanwhile, the conservative climate denial machine has ramped up its efforts to make global warming conspiracy theories a matter of conservative dogma, with endless stories about dastardly climate scientists working with George Soros, Barack Obama, the United Nations and other leftist bugbears to take away basic American freedoms.

The upshot is a rise in grassroots climate denial, conservative parents accusing ungodly teachers of pushing the ideological “theory” of climate change to their children. The National Center for Science Education, the long-time leader in the fight to protect classroom biology from evangelical fundamentalism, is getting increasing reports of global warming flareups. Tea Party Republicans at the local and state level — elected on an economic platform but dominated by religious conservatives — are integrating climate-denial propaganda into their religious worldview.

Perry, even more than his fellow oil-evangelical conservatives like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Sarah Palin, is openly willing to traffic in public repudiation of the scientific enterprise. As the ravages of climate change increase, there is likely to be a rising tide of grassroots American conservatives who will find comfort in his pseudoreligious denial of the harsh fact of a world diminished by pollution. Only time will tell whether those Christians who instead answer nature’s clarion call and fight climate pollution will win the battle for the soul of American conservatism.

Fox Viewers Overwhelmingly Think We Should Prepare For Alien Invasion Before Fighting Climate Change

It’s hard to know which is more head exploding:  This study — “Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis” — or the response of Fox News and its viewers.

Let’s start with the study — which, for the record, was not supported by NASA.  It is the nuttiest paper I have ever seen from people who seem to understand (and not dispute) basic climate science.

The study came out a while ago but nobody noticed until the Guardian ran a story with these headlines:

Last week, GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said she could get gas prices below $2 a gallon.  Experts said the only way that would happen is if we went back into a deep recession, which of course might well happen if the Tea Party extremist became president and enforced her slash and burn policies.

Yesterday, Jon Huntsman, who continues to play the role of truth teller in the race, mocked Bachmann for her voodoo economics on ABC’s This Week:

 

“I just don’t know what — what world that comment would come from, you know? We live in the real world. It’s grounded in reality. And gas prices just aren’t going to rebound like that.

“But just as we are in a static world, that is completely unrealistic.  And, again, it’s talking about things that, you know, may pander to a particular group or sound good at the time, but it just simply is not founded in reality.”

Explaining that the Tea Party’s economics is not founded in reality wins Hunstman big points for honesty, but whether it is a winning political strategy in the hotly contested race remains to be seen.

 

Below are old comments from the earlier Facebook commenting system:

• Mark Jewett · Top Commenter · Northern Illinois University

I almost choked! A member of the Fascist Party that actually has a grasp of reality?

4 · Like · Reply · Subscribe · Monday at 9:35am

Peter S. Mizla · Top Commenter · Vernon, Connecticut

Despite Huntsman’s admitting that ‘humans play a role in climate change’ the rest of his views are only ‘less fascist’ then the rest of the republican party.

3 · Like · Reply · Monday at 10:02am

Tracy Schario · GWU

He could be the dark horse candidate. But he’s eloquent, cultured and sensible.

1 · Like · Reply · Monday at 8:02pm

Mark Jewett · Top Commenter · Northern Illinois University

It’s unfortunate that this delusional guy actually thinks he has a chance. Eloquent, cultured and sensible are 3 adjectives that are not usually something that gets you elected in the Fascist Party. Those with those qualities are, as far as I can see, are looked upon with disdain in that Party. Adjectives that come to mind for a successful Fascist candidate are : Mono-Syllabic, brutish, racist, backward, stupid…you get the point.

Like · Reply · 21 hours ago

Marie Harris · Top Commenter

Huntsman really doesn’t stand a chance – the teabaggers would never vote for him as the moderate GOP are overwhelmed by the etremists.
But, I enjoy hearing a GOP disparage his own party members for their ignorance, their record, their statements and their belligerence.

3 · Like · Reply · Subscribe · Monday at 10:06am

Peter S. Mizla · Top Commenter · Vernon, Connecticut

The arrogance of just about all republicans is suffocating.

1 · Like · Reply · Monday at 10:33am

Jim Vijay · University of Florida

Wow! If Bachmann knows of a way to reduce the price of gas to $2/gallon, but refuses to reveal how unless she is elected President, she is costing the entire USA hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Most of those dollars go abroad – adding to our trade deficit.

What hootspa! What a hoot, ya?

2 · Like · Reply · Subscribe · Monday at 9:55am

Craig Edward

I like Huntsman but he might as well be a Communist in the current Republican party he has no chance of winning any primary. That’s how far right they have gone.

2 · Like · Reply · Subscribe · Monday at 10:00am

Neal J. King

I don’t know if it would help, but it would be fair to throw some support in Huntsman’s direction. Wouldn’t it be preferable if all candidates in the general election were, at least, sane?

1 · Like · Reply · Subscribe · Monday at 9:54am

Peter S. Mizla · Top Commenter · Vernon, Connecticut

Huntsman has views now in the 21st century that are hopelessly out of date- by 30 years.

Like · Reply · Monday at 10:07am

Neal J. King

And the views of the other GOP candidates are from what era? They seem to be a recipe for a lead-in to the second great depression. Economics as if Keynes had never wrote …

Like · Reply · about an hour ago

Christopher Winter · University of Iowa

http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2011/08/20/hey-obama-defend-the-social-safety-net-win-big-in-2012/

Links to a good video from /Hardball/.

Like · Reply · Subscribe · Monday at 1:04pm

Mike twotwo · Top Commenter (signed in using Hotmail)

A real pleasure to see that Huntsman isn’t following the script. Now Perry and Bachman will have to waste time defending their lunacies, Huntsman gets to lob more facts at them, and the reporters will love it. (btw, the log in here to comment is getting more and more difficult).

Like · Reply · Subscribe · Monday at 10:04am

tom baker · Top Commenter (signed in using Hotmail)

it’s so much fun seeing R’s take these brutal reality-checks from one of their own for a change.

maybe mr. huntsman will inspire some of the press corps to go ahead and do their job, rather than cower in fear of R reprisal.

Like · Reply · Subscribe · Monday at 10:43am

Arne Perschel · Friends with Joseph Romm

Is their strategy to pave the way for a more ‘moderate’ Republican? Maybe Sarah Palin? Compared to these goofball candidates, Palin actually looks intelligent!

Like · Reply · Subscribe · Monday at 10:10am

SoundMusic, Inc.

Huntsman’s doing the work Obama should be doing in dismantling the GOP’s slate of perverts, racists, idiot fundies, nutbags, sociopaths and liars.

Like · Reply · Subscribe · Monday at 11:40am

Research associate Lisa King isolates DNA at the Sangamo BioSciences lab in California – by Getty Images

I was on Countdown with Keith Olbermann last week and came up with the headline phrase, “If You Are Anti-Science, You Are Anti-Jobs.”

I think this is an important message to deliver.  I would have said it’s important message for progressives to deliver, but the fact is it is an important message for everybody not in the extreme anti-science crowd to repeat.  Indeed, “moderate” conservative GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman said this weekend that being anti-science is as counterproductive for the nation as it and self-destructive it is for his party:

We raise up our young people we tell them to get a good education and tell them to move forward and solve the great challenges of today, find a cure for cancer, make the world a better place. We then get the results are willing to jettison it and to shun it?   I just think that’s the wrong direction.

Here is the transcript from the Countdown story, “Joe Romm explains how science will help U.S. compete with India and China“:

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Canada moves to phase out coal

Canada released long-awaited regulations Friday that analysts said could phase out most of the country’s coal by midcentury.

The new rules apply a stringent performance standard on new plants, requiring them to emit roughly the same greenhouse gases as natural gas generators. That means that new coal plants won’t be able to be built in Canada without carbon capture technology, since coal typically releases twice as much carbon dioxide as natural gas does in the burning process.

Considering that carbon capture has never been proven at commercial scale to control coal’s emissions, the fate of the fuel in Canada is uncertain.

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Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) vetoed legislation to preserve New Jersey’s participation in a regional climate program on Friday. As he vetoed the bill (S. 2946) which would have blocked his decision to pull out of the successful Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), Christie announced that he had been convinced by scientists that manmade climate change is a real threat. The New Jersey Star-Ledger reports that he said “climate change is real“:

He added that “human activity plays a role in these changes” and that climate change is “impacting our state.”

“I can’t claim to fully understand all of this,” he said. “Certainly not after just a few months of study. But when you have over 90 percent of the world’s scientists who have studied this stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role it’s time to defer to the experts.”

He added that climate science is complex and “we know enough to know that we are at least part of the problem.”

Christie’s position on climate science is essentially the same as that of GOP presidential candidates and former governors Mitt Romney (“I believe that humans contribute“) and Jon Huntsman Jr. (“90 percent of the scientists say climate change is occurring”). All of these Republicans have supported regional cap-and-trade programs to reduce greenhouse pollution in the past, then flipped to opposing them with the rise of the Tea Party.

Christie is still not actually willing to accept the facts — virtually every major scientific body in the world says that the threat of man-made climate change is real and merits urgent action. Like Romney and Huntsman, his words put him at odds with the anti-science zeal of the Tea Party but his actions keep him perfectly aligned with their fossil-fuel paymasters.

Driven by demand from countries like China, India and Brazil, the global market for automobiles is accelerating faster than ever. According to an analysis from the auto trade journal Ward’s, there are now over one billion cars, light-, medium- and heavy-duty trucks on roads around the world, up from 980 million at the end of 2009.

In just half a year, the global auto fleet expanded by around 35 million vehicles. That’s the second-biggest increase ever.

The U.S. is still has the biggest population of cars and trucks – one for every 1.3 people in the country. But the American fleet is not growing much, only about 1% a year. The explosion in automobile deployments is coming from China, where registrations grew by 27.5%, bringing the country’s vehicle population to 78 million. That increase was more than half of the total global expansion, according to Ward’s.

The leap in registrations gave China the world’s second-largest vehicle population, pushing it ahead of Japan, with 73.9 million units, for the first time.

India’s vehicle population underwent the second-largest growth rate, up 8.9% to 20.8 million units, compared with 19.1 million in 2009.

Brazil experienced the second largest volume increase after China, with 2.5 million additional vehicle registrations in 2010.

China put 16.8 million vehicles on the road in 2010. Industry analysts were forecasting another 15% jump in sales in 2011, but the market slumped after the government stopped providing subsidies for car buyers in order to temper the market. Even so, China’s vehicle population could surpass America’s in just a few years.

According to the International Transport Forum, the global vehicle fleet could reach 2.5 billion by 2050. No doubt that those cars and trucks will be much more efficient than today’s vehicles, especially with China and America setting tighter fuel standards.  And many of them will be electric-drive vehicles.  But another doubling of the global market — even with an increase in efficiency — means massive increases in greenhouse gas emissions.

Auto industry executives everywhere are giddy with joy; meanwhile, those concerned about climate change wonder if we have the wisdom to take our foot off the fossil-fuel accelerator.

Bill McKibben, speaking from jail after getting arrested for protesting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, said, “We don’t need your sympathy, we need your company.”

Who are the doctors, lawyers, teachers and students joining Bill McKibben in civil disobedience against the pipeline? Watch this video from the first days of protest to see who is answering the call:

Artist Glendon Mellow at Scientific American blog directs us to Street Science Art.  Here’s some more:

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