A coal-industry astroturf group is running a public campaign to harass Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann for his “radical agenda” of climate science. The Common Sense Movement/Secure Energy for America Political Action Committee (CSM/SEAPAC) has established a website asking people to criticize the Penn State Speakers Forum for allowing Michael Mann to speak about the climate change challenge. “Join us in calling on the administration to disinvite the disgraced academic,” the group says on its Facebook page.

On the webpage, CSM/SEAPAC accuses Mann of “manipulating scientific data to align with his extreme political views on global warming”:

On February 9th, the Penn State Forum Speaker’s Series is featuring Professor Michael Mann in a speech regarding global warming. This is the same professor who is at the center of the ‘Climategate’ controversy for allegedly manipulating scientific data to align with his extreme political views on global warming. Join us in calling on the administrators of Penn State to end its support of Michael Mann and his radical agenda.

The suggested text for the letter to editor says Mann is “conspiring with his left-wing cronies to intimidate and silence those who would dare to question his intentions,” tarring Mann with “questionable ethics” and “extreme political activism.”

Michael Mann, one of the most most respected scientists in the field of paleoclimatology, has been the victim of a long-running harrassment and intimidation campaign by right-wing ideologues and conspiracy theorists, including political and legal threats by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. After hackers stole emails from a climate unit in Great Britain, climate deniers renewed their attacks on Mann, forcing several academic inquiries, all of which debunked the slanderous charges.

SEAPAC is a wing of the Pittsburgh-based astroturf group Common Sense Movement, which is running the “I Am Coal” campaign. Contributors include James Clifford Forrest III, president of coal company Rosebud Mining, David Young, president of the Bituminous Coal Operators’ Association, and the top executives of Swanson Industries, a West Virginia mining equipment company.

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by Jorge Madrid

Another week, another misguided attack on green jobs.

This week, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) is going after the Department of Labor’s green jobs training program. The program, which was signed into law by fellow Republican George W. Bush, was funded for the first time under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Issa says the program has produced “abysmal results” and failed to meet its goal of placing 52,762 American workers into green jobs. As of June 2011, the program had placed 8,035 workers into jobs, about 10 percent of the final goal. While this placement ratio is indeed disappointing, it reflects deeper issues within the larger economy, and is also based on some premature and misleading analysis.

His attacks have been nicely debunked by both the Center for American Progress and Green for All, but it is worth revisiting the top reasons why Issa’s attacks miss both the point, and the facts, about green jobs.

1. Green Policy + Green Investment = Green Jobs

Jobs are created when the economy demands goods and services; and investment from the private sector flows to the market when policy “TLC” (transparency, longevity, and certainty) is strong.  The United States has not met either of those requirements when it comes to green jobs, and we largely have our Republican representatives and their rich patrons in the fossil fuel industry to thank for that.

For one, the 111^th Congress failed to put a price on carbon pollution, which would have sent a clear market signal to invest in low-carbon goods and services like solar, wind, and energy efficiency. For another, Republicans and the fossil fuel lobby have vehemently opposed nearly every policy that would signal increased demand to green employers, including a national renewable energy standard, and strengthening clean air standards on coal-fired power plants.

Without some TLC and strong policies in place, clean energy businesses will continue to face major market uncertainty; workers will continue to find it difficult to get good jobs in the green economy; and our country will continue to fall behind in the global clean energy race.

Issa and his Republican colleagues slashed the tires of our automobile and are now complaining that the car is moving too slow.

2. Job Training Does Not Necessarily Mean Job Creation

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A coal-industry astroturf group is running a public campaign to harass Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann for his “radical agenda” of climate science. The Common Sense Movement/Secure Energy for America Political Action Committee (CSM/SEAPAC) has established a website asking people to criticize the Penn State Speakers Forum for allowing Michael Mann to speak about the climate change challenge. “Join us in calling on the administration to disinvite the disgraced academic,” the group says on its Facebook page.

On the webpage, CSM/SEAPAC accuses Mann of “manipulating scientific data to align with his extreme political views on global warming”:

On February 9th, the Penn State Forum Speaker’s Series is featuring Professor Michael Mann in a speech regarding global warming. This is the same professor who is at the center of the ‘Climategate’ controversy for allegedly manipulating scientific data to align with his extreme political views on global warming. Join us in calling on the administrators of Penn State to end its support of Michael Mann and his radical agenda.

The suggested text for the letter to editor says Mann is “conspiring with his left-wing cronies to intimidate and silence those who would dare to question his intentions,” tarring Mann with “questionable ethics” and “extreme political activism.”

Michael Mann, one of the most most respected scientists in the field of paleoclimatology, has been the victim of a long-running harassment and intimidation campaign by right-wing ideologues and conspiracy theorists, including political and legal threats by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. After hackers stole emails from a climate unit in Great Britain, climate deniers renewed their attacks on Mann, forcing several academic inquiries, all of which debunked the slanderous charges.

SEAPAC is a wing of the Pittsburgh-based astroturf group Common Sense Movement, which is running the “I Am Coal” campaign. Contributors include James Clifford Forrest III, president of coal company Rosebud Mining, David Young, president of the Bituminous Coal Operators’ Association, and the top executives of Swanson Industries, a West Virginia mining equipment company.

Read SEAPAC’s suggested letter to the editor for its harrassment campaign against Mann: Read more

Rep. Cantor (R-VA):  In addition, Chairman Hastings will add provisions boosting domestic energy production and American jobs both offshore and on, highlighting innovative new technologies that will unlock our vast oil shale resources and reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil.

X-axis is the range of potential resource in billions of barrels. Y-axis is grams of Carbon per MegaJoule of final fuel. NASA’s Hansen has said, “Exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts.” Oil shale is much worse!  [Graph source: Farrell and Brandt, "Risks of the oil transition," 2006.]

The most “anti-environmental House in the history of Congress” wants to get dirtier in 2012.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has already voted 191 times to roll back clean air and water rules, energy efficiency standards, and even to keep Styrofoam in the Congressional cafeteria.

Perhaps the worst casualties are the words “global warming” and “clean energy,” which have become more toxic in the House than the anti-environmental laws themselves.

Expect more of the same in the coming months.

With the legislative season back in full swing, House GOP leaders have made it very clear that fossil fuel production is their one and only energy priority.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) sent around a memo this week outlining his party’s agenda for the first quarter of this year, and energy is one of the most important issues for GOP leadership. The theme: drill, baby drill.

Along with celebrating the death of cap and trade, Cantor wrote about trying to pass a new transportation bill that would use (future and uncertain) oil and gas revenue from new drilling operations in pristine wilderness to fund transportation infrastructure upgrades — while at the same time reducing or eliminating programs for bicycle and pedestrian coordination programs. The bill would strip away dedicated federal funding for mass transit and put more money toward building highways.

This is part of a broader House strategy to focus on an aggressive push to dig deeper for more unconventional oil, not on the necessary transition away from fossil fuels. The strategy simply digs a deeper hole to prevent ourselves from addressing climate change. From the Cantor memo:

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In a letter to the White House Office of Management and Budget, top House Republicans demanded the long-delayed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation for greenhouse gas pollution for very large emitters be killed. House energy committee chair Fred Upton (R-MI), former chair Joe Barton (R-TX), and energy and power subcommittee chair Ed Whitfield (R-KY) asked OMB acting director Jeffrey Zients to stay EPA’s regulation of new and modified power plants that produce more than 100,000 tons per year of carbon dioxide pollution:

We understand that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is currently reviewing the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposal to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from new and modified power plants through the New Source Performance Standards program. We write to request that you withhold the regulation from issuance. We are concerned about the regulation’s impact on jobs and the economy, and that it will not comply with all applicable Executive Orders, including the President’s Executive Order 13563 and its predecessor, Executive Order 12866.

“Our regulatory system must protect public health, welfare, safety, and our environment while promoting economic growth, innovation, competitiveness, and job creation,” begins Obama’s Executive Order 13563. “It must be based on the best available science.”

The EPA rule is the long-delayed result of a suit brought against the George W. Bush administration by several states in 2003, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007 that the EPA had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. The Bush White House then blocked the efforts by the EPA to comply with the law, and the Obama administration has slowly rolled out a watered-down rule that won’t reach full implementation until 2016. Scientists have warned that the United States needs to rapidly reduce its carbon pollution no later than 2015 for human civilization to have a reasonable shot at maintaining a safe climate, based on the best available science.

However, in the fantasy world of Upton, Barton, and Whitfield, global warming doesn’t exist — so even the EPA’s soft limits on carbon pollution are a “back door cap-and-trade regime” that will “burden struggling businesses and families,” instead of one of the most important accomplishments of Obama administration to protect public health, welfare, safety, and our environment while promoting economic growth, innovation, competitiveness, and job creation.

Electric utilities are the top contributors this cycle to Upton, Barton, and Whitfield. During this campaign cycle alone, the letter’s authors have received a combined $431,550 from electric power companies.

Download the anti-climate letter from Upton, Barton, and Whitfield to the OMB.

Following the most damaging year of climate disasters in the United States in history, the insurance regulators in three states – California, Washington, and New York – announced that all major insurance companies operating in their states will be required to assess and publicly disclose the climate-change related risks they face, both in their underwriting as well as in their investment activities. Because of the consolidation of the insurance industry, this state-level action is effectively a national policy, as it affects 90 percent of the entire U.S. insurance market. Benjamin M. Lawsky, superintendent of New York’s Department of Financial Services, whose portfolio includes insurers, said in a statement that global warming pollution presents “unique risks” for the insurance industry to address:

Global warming presents unique risks, and it is vital that our insurance industry adequately account for the impacts of climate change. We look forward to working with the industry to address these important and growing risks.

Climate scientists have predicted broad-scale increases in extreme weather due to greenhouse pollution — particularly sea level rise, heat waves, drought, and extreme precipitation — for decades. The science that is of utmost important for the insurance industry to embrace is that these long-term trends are accelerating with the exponential increase in fossil fuel burning. Insurance models based on the assumption of a stable climate, using historical averages, are dangerously wrong.

Now, climatologists are starting to be able to quantify the influence of greenhouse pollution on specific events. In 2006, Dr. Kevin Trenberth estimated the global warming influence on the deadly 2005 hurricane season. Climate scientists broadly agree that the 2011 Texas drought shows a clear global warming signal, though different methodologies deliver different estimates. In future years, as disasters rise, climatologists will be able to better explain how changing the chemistry of our atmosphere and oceans with the burning of coal and oil is poisoning our weather.

The other unavoidable fact of manmade climate change is that no-one can truly prepare for what will happen. Climate scientists know that global warming is influencing the jet stream, El Nino cycles, and other mesoscale weather phenomena, but cannot predict how that influence will manifest in future decades. Hurricane intensity is expected to increase but future storm tracks and frequency are largely unknown. Even without a global warming influence, tornadoes and high-wind events are unpredictable. And the cumulative impacts of accelerating damage to transportation, agricultural, electrical, and other infrastructure are impossible to insure against.

Royal Dutch Shell announced today profits of $31 billion for 2011, up by 54 percent since 2010. Shell’s fourth-quarter profits slipped four percent compared to the fourth quarter last year. But spurred by high energy prices, the company is making more profit on fewer barrels of oil and cubic feet of natural gas.

Here are a few other facts about Shell:

• Shell made $31 billion in 2011 profit, or over $3.5 million every hour.

• Production of oil and natural gas both fell 3 percent, from 3.3 million barrels equivalent per day to 3.2 million.

• Shell, which is Europe’s biggest oil company, is the second biggest player in U.S. oil and gas lobbying, spending nearly $15 million last year.

• Shell repurchased 4 percent of its stocks in 2011, which benefits the largest shareholders.

• With just BP left to announce its fourth-quarter profits, the big five oil companies stand to pocket more than $130 billion in profits.

Related Post:

• ExxonMobil Makes $41 Billion, But Pays Estimated 17.6% Tax Rate, Lower Than Most Taxpayers (But Not Romney)

How the U.S. can match Europe, which has 53 offshore wind projects, nearly 3,800 MW of capacity

by Kit Kennedy, reposted from NRDC’s Switchboard

Today the Obama administration moved forward with plans to develop the enormous offshore wind energy resources along the Mid-Atlantic coast, using a “Smart for the Start” approach designed to expedite the siting process while incorporating strong environmental protections.

Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior Department, (DOI), and the head of DOI’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, joined Governor O’Malley of Maryland in Baltimore to announce the latest developments.

The administration released plans for developing waters off New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and Virginia. Offshore wind power could create tens of thousands of jobs and generate power for millions of homes in the region.

Specifically, the Department of Interior approved “wind energy areas” off the coasts of these states where projects can move through the regulatory approval process more quickly, as well as model lease language and environmental review documents for the initial site assessment process, which is the first step in developing an offshore wind project.

The smart-from-the-start approach means taking into account the need to protect ocean ecosystems, wildlife and existing human uses in order to site things where they make the most sense. This is the kind of progress anticipated to increase as the administration implements the National Ocean Policy created by the President in 2010.

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Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney used Glenn Beck-style appeals to conspiracy theories about George Soros and climate change in his successful campaign against Newt Gingrich in Tuesday’s Florida Republican primary. Romney attacked fellow climate flip-flopper Newt Gingrich for his appearance in a commercial on a “loveseat” with Nancy Pelosi for Al Gore’s climate campaign in 2008. In the ad, Gingrich endorsed “action to address climate change.” In a public email, Romney’s campaign spokesman Ryan Williams bashed Gingrich as being part of the “Soros agenda” for the advertisement:

It is interesting to see the latest attack from Speaker Gingrich and his disintegrating campaign. Unlike Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney never sat next to Nancy Pelosi in an ad funded by George Soros on behalf of Al Gore’s global warming initiative. As recently as 2008, the Soros agenda had no better friend than Newt Gingrich. Nice try, Mr. Speaker.

The extremist lurch of the Republican Party away from climate policy shows how American conservatism has been taken over by anti-science fossil fuel interests like the Koch brothers. In 2007, Gingrich, eventual Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), and other prominent Republicans advocated for market-based limits on greenhouse gas pollution. During the 2008 campaign, McCain’s campaign lurched into the embrace of radical anti-science ideologues like Koch operative Nancy Pfotenhauer and Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK). With the onset of the Obama presidency, Gingrich became a leader in the politically motivated fight against cap-and-trade legislation, working with Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, the Koch front group Americans for Prosperity, and the radical climate denier network to convince Tea Party activists that climate legislation was a liberal-elite conspiracy.

In order to lock up the Republican nomination, Romney has now joined this anti-science climate denial movement with gusto.

Download Romney’s “Newt & Nancy’s Loveseat” mailer.

After winning the Florida primary this week, Mitt Romney celebrated with a call to “fight for the America we love.” But will Romney’s energy policies preserve that America?

In order to show his passion for the country’s natural beauty, Romney is fond of quoting the song “America the Beautiful.” Earlier this week, before leading an awkward sing-a-long with a crowd at a retirement center in Florida, he talked about why the song captures the “rivers and mountains” and the “beauty of the land” that made him fall in love with the country.

But under Romney’s energy plan — which is to “aggressively develop our oil, our gas, our coal” while denying the very real danger of manmade global warming — that America may not be the same for coming generations.

In celebration of Romney’s unique relationship with the environment, here’s a video we put together on the candidate’s energy policy in song — sung by Romney himself.

(Many thanks to Think Progress video editor Jeff Spross for helping out with the final product.)

This morning, Punxsutawny Phil came out of his burrow on a unseasonably warm, sunny day, and predicted six more weeks of winter — but much of the United States has skipped the season entirely. Punxsutawny, like most of the United States, has been experiencing a freakishly warm winter, as our planet’s climate heats up from greenhouse pollution. A record high of 59°F was set in Punxsutawny on Tuesday — the mean high based on previous decades is 34 degrees. Today, instead of the chilly, snowy 17-degree morning that was normal when the Bill Murray film was made in 1993, the crowd cheered on the groundhog at above-freezing temperatures.

Much of the country is experiencing a “year without winter,” with thousands of daily record highs set in January. Even including Alaska — which has been seeing some record-cold temperatures as the Arctic climate grows more unstable — there were 22 times as many record highs as there were record lows in January. (Without global warming, one would expect about the same number of record highs as record lows.) Excluding Alaska, the lower 48 states saw 29 times as many record highs as record lows.

Many people in the United States are enjoying the warm weather, but it’s also bringing weird and dangerous change. In Washington DC, cherry trees are already budding. WIth hibernation signals disrupted, suburbs are seeing an influx of bears. Wheat crops are threatened as the warmth saps soil moisture. With the acceleration of global warming due to ever more fossil fuel pollution in the atmosphere, these disruptions are only a small hint of what is to come in future decades.

The year 2006 will probably remain the record warmest winter for the United States, with 2011 coming in close behind.

Other stories below: Three states require insurance companies to disclose climate change response; filmmaker sounds the alarm over plastic

Changes in global wind patterns have pushed the East Australian Current southward and warmed temperatures in the ocean off Tasmania by several degrees in the past few decades.

Global warming drives dramatic changes in ocean currents

An ever-expanding network of sensitive measuring devices, including ocean buoys is enabling researchers to get a better handle on the magnitude and scale of global climate change, including a patterned emergence of ocean hotspots alongside currents that wash the east coast of the major continents.

The warming in those areas far exceeds the average rate of ocean warming, according to research published the journal Nature Climate Change this week.

“We would expect natural change in the oceans over decades or centuries but change with such elevated sea surface temperatures in a growing number of locations and in a synchronised manner was definitely not expected,” said  Dr. Wenju Cai, of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation….

“Detecting these changes has been hindered by limited observations but with a combination of multi-national ocean watch systems and computer simulations we have been able to reconstruct an ocean history in which warming over the past century is 2-3 times faster than the global average ocean warming rate,” he added.

The changes are characterised by a combination of currents pushing nearer to the polar regions and intensifying with systematic changes of wind over both hemispheres, attributed to increasing greenhouse gases.

Cai said the increase of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been the major driver of the surface warming of the Earth over the 20th century.

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