As a matter of rhetoric, the President’s big job speech exceeded expectations, a solid A.  He used simple language and repetition — the cornerstones of effective public speaking — to promote his “American Jobs Act.”  He repeated some variation of the phrase “Pass this bill” 17times (see transcript here).

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews who, like many of us, has been highly critical of just how mealymouthed Obama has become, said it was “probably his most rousing political performance in a long while.”  HuffPost’s Howard Fineman writes, “Obama Puts Passion Into Speech Rarely Seen In His Presidency.”  If only Obama had been speaking this way for the past couple of years….

On substance, it was a solid B.  The biggest disappointment was that he never mentioned clean energy by name as a focus area.  No, I’m not going to keep giving him a failing grade for not talking about climate change in a jobs speech focused on the near term — although this speech shows precisely what he could have done 2 years ago to get the climate and clean energy jobs bill passed.

The most Obama said on clean energy was to continue his theme that clean energy is a core job-creating industry of the near future:

If we provide the right incentives and support – and if we make sure our trading partners play by the rules – we can be the ones to build everything from fuel-efficient cars to advanced biofuels to semiconductors that are sold all over the world.  That’s how America can be number one again.

And I have the Fact Sheet for the AJA, which points out the $25 billion school modernization effort can be used for “greening and energy efficiency upgrades.”  This is similar to the “Fix America’s Schools Today” initiative you can read about here.

The President also offered a strong defense for maintaining rules and regulations even during this tough times:

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By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund

The House Natural Resources Committee began its fall agenda today with a hearing on creating jobs through developing offshore and renewable energy resources. The Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Vice President for Energy Policy Kate Gordon was on hand to argue that green jobs are a bright spot in the economy, but warned that this success will not last if we do not create a market within the U.S. for clean energy:

In conclusion, the U.S., frankly, risks squabbling while Rome burns on this issue. The future of energy and the economy lies in cleaner energy solutions. We must embrace that future now or we will risk become the world’s great importers of technology and innovation rather than its leaders. Thank you.

Watch it:

Meanwhile, Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) spent his opening statement describing 10 policies that the President should focus on during his speech on jobs this evening. Seven of the ten policies that Rep. Hastings detailed heavily promote fossil fuels, such as drilling more in the Gulf of Mexico, opening up sensitive places in Alaska to drilling, and developing oil shale resources. (The other three policies that Hastings included on his list relate to renewable energy, but as ThinkProgress previously noted, the solutions that the Republican members put forth on this issue could pose “unintended consequences” to the industry).

House Republicans continue to promote the mature and highly profitable fossil fuels industry by accusing the Obama Administration of hindering oil and gas development. A report released yesterday by Wood Mackenzie and paid for by the American Petroleum Institute found that opening up more areas to drilling and getting rid of “regulatory burdens” will create 1.4 million jobs by 2030. The Wood Mackenzie witness at today’s hearing expanded on this point by describing how the “current path of policies which slow down the issuance of leases and drilling permits.”

But as Stephen Lacey at ClimateProgress pointed out yesterday, the oil and gas drilling in the U.S. is actively and steadily increasing under this Administration. Headwaters Economics found that U.S. onshore drilling activity was at 91 percent of the 20-year high. And, the U.S. is currently drilling more than anywhere else in the world: today, according to industry research firm Baker Hughes, there are 1,968 oil and gas drill rigs operating in the U.S. and 1,700 rigs operating in the rest of the world combined.

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Galileo faces the Roman Inquisition who, without evidence, demand he recant his statements on heliocentrism.

The most head-exploding moment in last night’s GOP debate was this:

POLITICO: Gov. Perry, Gov. Huntsman was not specific about names, but the two of you do have a difference of opinion about climate change. Just recently in New Hampshire, you said that weekly and even daily scientists are coming forward to question the idea that human activity is behind climate change. Which scientists have you found most credible on this subject?

PERRY: Well, I do agree that there is — the science is — is not settled on this. The idea that we would put Americans’ economy at — at — at jeopardy based on scientific theory that’s not settled yet, to me, is just — is nonsense. I mean, it — I mean — and I tell somebody, I said, just because you have a group of scientists that have stood up and said here is the fact, Galileo got outvoted for a spell.

Let’s set aside that the U.S. National Academy of Sciences concluded its 2010 review of climate science saying these are “settled facts“: The “Earth system is warming” and “much of this warming is very likely due to human activities.”

It’s the Galileo line that drew all the attention.  The media may not be ready to offer a full-throated defense of climate science, but they know that Galileo was the scientist, that the Inquisition were composed of religious zealots analogous to Perry (who prayed for the EPA to stop environmental regulations), and Galileo didn’t get “outvoted.”

Invoking “Galileo” is Perry’s “dog-whistle” to the deniers, a name they like to invoke on their side, as laughable as that may sound — see “How climate science deniers spread doubt for political ends.”

NY Times Science reporter Henry Fountain has a piece that discusses this issue in more detail, “Historian Says Perry Misses Point on Galileo and Climate Change”:

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This week, Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) left the campaign trail to respond to wildfires in Texas that he described as “surreal” and “as mean-looking as I’ve ever seen.” The fires, fed by a summer of heat and drought far beyond anything Texas has ever experienced before, have destroyed over 1,000 homes.

“The science is not settled on this,” Perry said at last night’s GOP debate, rejecting the fact of manmade global warming. “Just because you have a group of scientists who stood up and said here is the fact,” comparing himself to Galileo, who was persecuted by religious leaders. Perry responded earlier this year to the Texas drought — then much weaker — by issuing an official proclamation to pray for rain.

ThinkProgress reporter Scott Keyes questioned the Perry campaign about whether the extreme heat, drought, and fires in his state have influenced Perry’s belief that global warming is a hoax concocted by scientists to get money. Mark Miner, Perry’s national press secretary affirmed that the “natural disaster” “doesn’t change his position”:

No, I mean this is a natural disaster going on in Texas right now. It’s a terrible situation. It doesn’t change his position. There are differing views. As president, you shouldn’t listen to one group and change all of our policies that are going to kill jobs just for the sake of one group.

Watch it:

Asked again if he sees a connection between global warming and the types of droughts and wildfires we’ve seen, Miner said that he thought the fires might have been started by arson, completely ignoring the question of how Texas got so dry and hot that its fires have become overwhelming.

Texan climate scientists do not agree with the Perry campaign, unsurprisingly. “We can be confident we’ve made this hellish summer worse than it would have been,” Texas A&M’s Dr. Andrew Dessler told NPR News about the effect of greenhouse pollution on Texas. Because of global warming pollution, Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon told ThinkProgress, “evaporation has been enhanced, soils and plants dried out faster, streamflow declined faster, and temperature records were easier to break.”

In late May, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced he was pulling his state out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, explaining that it was “not working.”  Now a stunning tape of a secret meeting between Christie and Charles Koch sheds light on the Governor’s inexplicable decision to abandon a program that was not only cutting pollution, but was funding clean energy and, as it turns out, reducing New Jersey’s budget gap.

David Koch, introducing Christie:  Five months ago we met in my New York City office and spoke — just the two of us — for about two hours on his objectives and successes in correcting many of the most serious problems of the New Jersey state government.  At the end of our conversation, I said to myself, “I’m really impressed and inspired by this man. He is my kind of guy.”

Koch is the biggest funder of climate disinformation in the country, a billionaire pollutocrat who pulls the string of the Tea Party, which in turn is driving the country to a ruined economy and an unlivable climate.  And Christie is his kind of guy.  You can see why they wanted to keep this behind closed doors.

Koch has more to say on his budding bromance:

Another example of Governor Christie’s commitment to the free enterprise system is that only a few weeks ago he announced that New Jersey would be withdrawing from the [Regional] Greenhouse Gas Initiative which is a [cheers and applause], which would have raised energy costs, reduced economic growth and led to very little, if any, benefit for the environment. [A 'boo' is heard.]

Yes, Christie showed his “commitment to the free enterprise system” by pulling out of a market-based system invented by Republicans and economists, championed by President George H. W. Bush, and originally supported at a regional level by GOP Governors like Pataki of New York.

At the time of Christie’s move, people monitoring RGGI were baffled. The program had raised tens of millions of dollars for clean energy projects without noticeably raising rates. But after acknowledging that climate change was real and then raiding $65 million from the program in order to close a budget gap, Christie actually had the gall to say the program was “gimmicky.”

But now the reasons for Christie’s awkwardly hypocritical stance on RGGI are becoming more clear. Perhaps the program wasn’t “working” for the Koch Brothers, the oil billionaires who have spent of millions of dollars trying to tear down cap and trade and any other programs related to clean energy?

Here’s the audio tape of Koch introducing Christie:

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If the U.S. adds green jobs, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) seems to think it will only increase unemployment. The presidential contender pointed to Spain to prove her point that global warming is a “political agenda” during the third GOP presidential debate Wednesday night:

What we’re seeing is that a political agenda is being advanced instead of a scientific agenda, and this is leading to massive numbers of jobs being lost. The president told us he wanted to be like Spain when it came to green job creation, and yet Spain has one of the highest levels of unemployment. The president is bringing that here in the United States. And I think tomorrow night, when the nation tunes in to the president, I’m afraid that we won’t be seeing permanent solution. I’m afraid what we’ll be seeing are temporary gimmicks and more of the same that he’s given before.

Watch it:

Bachmann was referencing an Exxon-funded 2009 report about Spain’s renewable energy investments that made the false claim that every new green job destroyed two other jobs. The paper, published by the right-wing think tank Instituto Juan de Mariana, was thoroughly debunked in 2009. Even the regional Spanish government disputed the bad numbers the report’s author used.

It is not too surprising that Bachmann ignores the real numbers about jobs created from renewable energy compared to jobs created by fossil fuels. In fact, green investments create more jobs. A recent Brookings study found that the green economy sector is larger than the fossil fuel sector, and that clean energy sector in particular grew by 8.3 percent between 2003 and 2010, nearly twice as fast as the overall economy.

The Arctic ice cap, critical to the stability of the global climate, is melting away. Scientists have recorded new minima in total ice volume and area. Arctic ice volume, estimated by the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington, plummeted to 4275 cubic kilometers by the end of August, well below the 2010 record minimum of 4428 cubic km:

On September 6, Arctic sea ice area fell to 2,917,493 square km, 2000 square km below the previous record of September 7, 2007:

Arctic sea ice extent, as measured by the National Snow and Ice Data Center, has not yet reached its minimum for the year, and it it unknown whether 2007′s record minimum will be broken.

Politicians’ understanding of the public’s beliefs on climate is much poorer than their understanding of the science.

I’ve talked to senior officials from the Administration as well as journalists who cover them — and both groups report that team Obama has bought into the nonsensical and ultimately self-destructive view that talking about climate is not a political winner (see “Can you solve global warming without talking about global warming?).

Now I suppose it is perversely true that if your messaging is as dreadful as the Administration’s — where you turn the triumph on healthcare reform into a political liability, where you buy into and repeat the pernicious right-wing frame on issues from the debt ceiling to clean air for kids (!) — then whatever you talk about will turn out to be a political loser.

But the fact remains that the public strongly supports climate action and aggressive clean energy policies even during the deep recession, even in the face of an unprecedented fossil-fuel-funded disinformation campaign during the climate bill debate — even without the White House using its bully pulpit to tip the scales further (see “Memo to policymakers: Public STILL favors the transition to clean energy” and links below):

This confusion about public opinion and messaging extends far beyond politicians to many in the progressive community and media.  So I’ll be doing a series of posts in the coming weeks to set the record straight.

I’m fortunate to be able to start with a previously unpublished memo from one of the leading experts on public opinion and climate communications, Prof. Edward Maibach of George Mason University.  He is Director of their Center for Climate Change Communication and a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Communication.

Maibach has been involved in some of the most in-depth, multi-year polling on this subject, the widely cited “Climate Change in the American Mind Series.”  He discusses his findings, and why they are at odds with Obama’s silence on climate change, below:

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Below is testimony from Kate Gordon, Vice President for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress. She spoke this morning at a House Natural Resources Committee Hearing.

The question of how we can best harness our natural resources to generate sustainable, secure energy and create high-quality jobs is critical in light of the triple crises America now faces: an economic crisis that has left 14 million people unemployed; an energy security crisis that leaves us vulnerable to every international incident and natural or manmade disaster; and a climate crisis that threatens the very planet we live on. In true American entrepreneurial spirit, we at the Center for American Progress Action Fund believe that these crises bring enormous opportunity, but only if the United States decides to get off the bench and join the green jobs race already being run by most of the other developed countries in the world. I am glad to share my and the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s perspective on how green jobs can contribute—and in fact are already contributing—to our long-term economic and environmental health, and I look forward to your comments and questions.

In my testimony I will discuss the vast potential of our natural resource base to spur clean energy production, as well as the many jobs and businesses that have already been created in the clean technology sector. I will also highlight the increasingly vulnerable position of the United States in the global clean energy marketplace, and specifically the work other countries are doing to become innovation leaders while creating clean energy jobs. I will conclude by recommending several specific steps this Congress and administration can take to protect our land and water while putting America back on track to lead the clean-tech revolution, just as we led the Industrial and high-tech revolutions that came before.

These recommendations include:

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Presidential candidate and Texas Gov. Rick Perry bragged last night during the third GOP presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan library in California that Texas had cleaned up its air under his watch:

PERRY: Let me tell you what I find compelling, is what we’ve done in the state of Texas, using our ability to regulate our clean air. We cleaned up our air in the state of Texas, more than any other state in the nation during the decade. Nitrous oxide levels, down by 57 percent. Ozone levels down by 27 percent.

That’s the way you need to do it, not by some scientist somewhere saying, “Here is what we think is happening out there.” The fact of the matter is, the science is not settled on whether or not the climate change is being impacted by man to the point where we’re going to put America’s economics in jeopardy.

But Perry didn’t tell the full truth about Texas’ clean air (along with ignoring the fact that scientists have already settled the science on climate change). According to the Associated Press, Texas did reduce emissions, most of which were required under the federal Clean Air Act. Texas still emits more carbon dioxide — the chief greenhouse gas — than any other state, thanks to its oil and gas industry. And Perry signed a bill passed by the Texas legislature that delays enforcing stiffer clean air regulations for two years. Several Texas cities continue to violate health-based limits on smog, with Houston chief among them and one of the worst cities in the nation for air pollution.

Perry may brag about the numbers he sees as important, but he ignores the bigger picture — not to mention the proven science behind the climate changes fueling the massive wildfires burning across his state.

BP removes tar balls in Alabama

BP workers used fishing nets to scoop tar balls off Alabama’s Gulf Coast beaches yesterday after the sands were fouled by gooey, dark gobs churned up by heavy surf from tropical system Lee.

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John Cook, founder of the blog Skeptical Science, has won the New South Wales Government Eureka Prize for Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge.  It is “awarded to an Australian individual, group or organisation for communication that motivates action to reduce the impacts of climate change.”

I know what you’re thinking — there’s an English-speaking government that awards prizes for advancing climate change knowledge — let’s move there!  But there’s no need to move — the American government’s lack of climate knowledge means we’ll have Australia’s climate soon enough!

Cook richly deserves the $10,000 prize for Skeptical Science, the must-read myth-smashing blog he has put together on a shoestring budget.  Hmm.  My daughter’s shoes don’t have strings anymore.  Maybe it should be a “velcro-strap budget.”  Cook certainly has velcro’s sticktoitiveness —  especially in the face of the unremitting assault from the anti-science extremists of the bunkosphere who go after anyone who is a good communicator on climate science.

What follows is a recent example of the kind of post that makes Skeptical Science so invaluable:

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A leading American solar company is set to begin the largest residential rooftop project ever undertaken, effectively doubling the number of solar systems currently on homes around the U.S.

Armed with funds from two major investment banks and a loan guarantee from the Department of Energy that will cover close to a third of the $1 billion project, SolarCity plans to install 160,000 solar photovoltaic systems on houses and other buildings on military bases around the country in the next five years.

As a “solar services” provider, SolarCity owns, operates and maintains the systems, and sells the electricity to the end-user. By working with investment banks to pool together often-complicated state and federal incentives, the company streamlines the process and simply offers the customer solar electricity — often at prices lower than current electric rates.

Given the relentless attack on green jobs and the DOE’s loan guarantee program in recent weeks, this story is particularly relevant.

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