Famed scientist James Lovelock has always been in a category of one when it comes to global warming. See for instance my June 2009 post, “Lovelock still makes me look like Paula Abdul, warns climate war could kill nearly all of us, leaving survivors in the Stone Age.” That’s mostly because he doesn’t follow the scientific literature.

Now that he has dialed back his doomism — alarmism is a wholly inadequate word for Lovelock’s (former) brand of unjustified hopelessness — the media and the deniers are just so excited. That’s especially true since Lovelock has now overshot in the other direction of climate science confusion and just keeps peddling nonsense.

And so we have this MSNBC story:

‘Gaia’ scientist James Lovelock: I was ‘alarmist’ about climate change

James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too….

“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium….”

He was wrong about his doomism before, he is wrong about Gore now, and he is apparently uninformed about basic climate observations (see “Breaking News: The Earth Is Still Warming. A Lot“). Indeed, even MSNBC feels compelled to note:

Asked to give its latest position on climate change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement that observations collected by satellites, sensors on land, in the air and seas “continue to show that the average global surface temperature is rising.”

The statement said “the impacts of a changing climate” were already being felt around the globe, with “more frequent extreme weather events of certain types (heat waves, heavy rain events); changes in precipitation patterns … longer growing seasons; shifts in the ranges of plant and animal species; sea level rise; and decreases in snow, glacier and Arctic sea ice coverage.”

Duh.

But Lovelock hasn’t been speaking sensibly on the climate for a long, long time. Back in 2007, he was saying this sort of thing:

“By 2100, Lovelock believes, the Earth’s population will be culled from today’s 6.6 billion to as few as 500 million.”

… To Lovelock, cutting greenhouse-gas pollution won’t make much difference at this point….

As I wrote at the time, Lovelock makes “you — or Al Gore or James Hansen or even me — look optimistic by comparison.”

Memo to Lovelock: Gore never asserted billions would die or anything close to what you’ve been saying. And unlike you, he always believed — and still does — that it’s not too late. So if you finally admitted you were wrong, that’s awesome, but don’t try to claim you were just saying what others were. You weren’t. Not even close.

In 2008, Lovelock was inspiring this kind of headline and story:

We’re all doomed! 40 years from global catastrophe – and there’s NOTHING we can do about it, says climate change expert.

… “By 2040, China will be uninhabitable.” Lovelock believes that the Chinese, because of their high levels of industrial activity, will be the first to suffer, with the death of all plant life.

“So I think the Chinese will go to Africa. They are already there, preparing a new continent – the Chinese industrialists who claim to be out there mining minerals are just there on a pretext of preparing for the big move.”

This kind of doomist nonsense is precisely why I’ve been critical of Lovelock here for many years. Yes 1 billion people will go to the one continent that can’t feed itself today and which will be Dust-Bowlifying and superhot. Seriously.

Now I know some readers may believe billions will die this century. I don’t.

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by Catherine Woodiwiss

Speaking at the National Cathedral yesterday, famed environmental writer Wendell Berry delivered a clear message for Earth Day: We have a moral obligation to protect the environment.

Berry, a living legend in the environmental movement, addressed a crowd of nearly 200 faith leaders, community organizers, farmers and environmentalists at the Cathedral yesterday.

“The idea of the intractability of problems is wrong. Don’t get into this with a goal or a schedule. You must do it because it is right – because it is right, or it [your fight] will never last,” said Berry.

Author of over 80 novels, short stories, and essays, and poems, Wendell Berry has been a tireless advocate for localism and environmental stewardship for nearly 50 years.

He famously coined this brilliant twist on the Golden Rule: “Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.”

On Sunday, Berry was honored as a “Steward of God’s Creation” from the National Religious Coalition on Creation Care (NRCCC). Several major players working to elevate the interfaith-energy movements were on hand to help celebrate Berry’s work, including climate activist and 350.org founder Bill McKibben and Earth Day Network board member Gerald Torres.

“To measure the power of [Berry’s] words, look what they have wrought,” said McKibben. “He raised the gospel of things like local food – [how special it must be] to see signs that that world is now taking shape.”

Torres agreed, also tipping his hat to the long tradition of faith-based environmentalism. “We can say that the best way to celebrate faith, and faith in our future, is to protect the Earth.”

Earlier Sunday morning, Dr. Matthew Sleeth, Executive Director of the Christian environmental education organization Blessed Earth, hosted a conversation with Berry in the Cathedral sanctuary. Berry pulled no punches for destructive environmental practices like mountain top removal. “People who own the world outright for profit will have to be stopped,” he warned. “By influence, by power, by us.”

Sunday’s activities at the National Cathedral were coordinated by NRCCC and Blessed Earth. This was the first of several events on environmental issues organized by the faith community during Earth Week.

Catherine Woodiwiss is a Special Assistant with the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress.

by Michael Mann

As a climate scientist, I have seen my integrity perniciously attacked, politicians have demanded I be fired from my job, and I’ve been subject to congressional and criminal investigations. I’ve even had death threats made against me. And why? Because I study climate science and some people don’t like what my colleagues and I have discovered. Their attacks on scientists are part of a destructive public-relations campaign being waged in a cynical effort to discredit climate science.

My work first appeared on the world stage in the late 1990s with the publication of the third assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which featured what is now popularly known as the hockey-stick graph. Using what we call proxy data – information gathered from records in nature, like tree rings, corals, and ice cores – my co-authors and I pieced together the puzzle of climate variability over the past 1,000 years. What we found was that the recent warming, which coincides with the burning of fossil fuels during the Industrial Revolution, sticks out like the blade of an upturned hockey stick.

By itself, this finding didn’t indicate that humans were solely responsible for the warming, but it was a compelling demonstration that something unusual was happening and, by inference, that it was probably related to human activity. Over the last few decades, the evidence, based on work from thousands of studies, has become much more robust and conclusive.

Nevertheless, our graph depicting the anomalous warming trend became an icon in the climate-change debate. Since then, I’ve found myself a reluctant, and almost accidental, public figure in the larger discussion about human-caused climate change.

Being caught in the middle of this “debate” has given me an opportunity to talk about the stark reality and dimensions of the problem. As the staid scientific journal Nature put it, climate researchers are in a street fight with those who seek to discredit the accepted scientific evidence, and we must fight back against the disinformation that denies this real and present danger to the planet.

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ConocoPhillips is the first of the Big Five oil companies to report quarterly profits, taking $2.9 billion in profits for the first few months of 2012.

Beginning May 1, 2012, the oil giant is splitting into two companies, and it has sold billions in assets over the past few years.  As Conoco prepares for a major overhaul, it continues to finance the campaigns of mostly-Republican politicians, helping ensure billions in tax breaks.

Here are the major takeaways from Conoco’s profits:

Conoco made a $2.9 billion profit this quarter, compared to $3 billion it made Q1 in 2011. Reuters reports this is due to decreased output after a spill in China and the company selling off assets for the upcoming split.

Conoco paid an 18 percent effective federal tax rate in 2011, and an average 27 percent between 2008-2010.

The company spent 66 percent of its Q1 profits — or $1.9 billion — buying back its own stock, which enriches the largest shareholders and executives.

Conoco is sitting on $3.7 billion in cash reserves.

Conoco spent $20,557,043 on lobbying in 2011, making it the sixth-largest overall spender in 2011 and the top oil and gas company.

The company has donated over $300,000 to federal candidates for the 2012 cycle, 91 percent going to Republicans. Its PAC has spent $60,000 since January. Recipients include Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), Sen. John Barasso (R-WY), Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA), Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), and Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI).

The outgoing CEO James Mulva received a $27.7 million salary, a 55 percent jump in 2011.  Mulva has contributed at least $20,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and to Minority Leader Mitch (R-KY) McConnell and Senate Finance Ranking Member Orrin Hatch (R-UT).

Conoco uses its billions in profits to protect its tax breaks and finance policies benefiting the oil industry, primarily aimed at Republican players.  Conoco and its CEO — who received an $8.5 million raise — are doing quite well, even as Americans struggle to pay higher gas costs.

ExxonMobil and Shell are the next companies to report their profits this Thursday.

You’ll be glad to know that in the last 12 months, that whole climate change problem went away. At least that’s the impression left from comparing President Obama’s 2012 Earth Day proclamation with the 2011 one.

Last year’s proclamation was pretty rousing on the issue of global warming:

… Looking to the future of our planet, American leadership will continue to be pivotal as we confront the environmental challenges that threaten the health of both our country and the globe.

Today, our world faces the major global environmental challenge of a changing climate.  Our entire planet must address this problem because no nation, however large or small, wealthy or poor, can escape the impact of climate change.  The United States can be a leader in reducing the dangerous pollution that causes global warming and can propel these advances by investing in the clean energy technologies, markets, and practices that will empower us to win the future.

While our changing climate requires international leadership, global action on clean energy and climate change must be joined with local action….

Can’t argue with any of that. Sure, Obama isn’t doing bloody much on climate change, and he’s nonsensically censoring it from his major speeches even though it may be one of the definitive wedge issues of our time (see Democrats Taking “Green” Positions on Climate Change “Won Much More Often” Than Those Remaining Silent).

But at least one day a year, when people are focused on the environment, surely we can all come together and at least mention, in passing, without too much fanfare, in a meaningless proclamation, the gravest preventable threat to the Earth’s environment and humanity’s well-being.  Yes we can — not!

Here’s the full 2012 proclamation:

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Mitt Romney has long been trying to Etch-A-Sketch away his rich guy persona.

He’s said that at times in his life he’s worried about getting a pink slip and, more recently, that ”I’m also unemployed.”

On Friday, he personally guaranteed that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would be built if he’s elected president:

“I will build that pipeline if I have to do it myself,” Romney said during a speech before state Republican Party leaders gathered at a retreat in Arizona.

I suppose now that he’s put the plans for his La Jolla car elevator on hold, he needs some project to keep him busy. But who knew he was a steel-drivin’ man?

Then I checked and sure enough, Bruce Springsteen had written a song about Romney. Here’s one of the verses:

Mitt Romney told his captain
“Lord a man ain’t nothin’ but a man
But before I let that steam drill beat me down
I’m gonna die with a hammer in my hand, Lord, Lord
I’ll die with a hammer in my hand.”

Still, if the pipeline to Canada’s climate-destroying tar sands must be built so we can export more refined product overseas, shouldn’t the few thousand jobs go to people without a quarter billion dollars?

by Kiley Kroh

In another stark warning about the dangers of Arctic Ocean drilling, the German bank WestLB announced on Friday that it would not provide financing to any offshore oil or gas drilling in the region. The company’s sustainability manager said the “risks and costs are simply too high.”

The decision was made just a week after insurance giant Lloyd’s of London issued a report concluding that offshore drilling in the Arctic would “constitute a unique and hard-to-manage risk” and urged companies to “think carefully about the consequences of action” before exploring for oil in the region.

Dustin Neuneyer, sustainability manager at the corporate and investment bank WestLB, explained the decision to Environmental Finance:

“The further you get into the icy regions, the more expensive everything gets and there are risks that are hard to manage.… There are projects that are evidently unsustainable in an encompassing sense. For WestLB, the risks and costs are simply too high.”

The bank’s new eight-point policy on offshore drilling lays out specific criteria for the projects and companies that are eligible for financing — excluding any exploration or production activities in areas where the average temperature for the warmest month is below 10°C (50° F).  Additionally, the policy’s criteria — which are binding for any company seeking a loan — require companies to use the best available technology, abide by the highest technical safety standards, and show that activities are validated by an independent third party.

The concerns raised by Lloyd’s of London and WestLB come as Royal Dutch Shell prepares to drill in Arctic waters off the coast of Alaska this summer. The recommendations of these institutions echo those in the recent Center for American Progress report, Putting a Freeze on Arctic Ocean Drilling: America’s Inability to Respond to an Oil Spill in the Arctic.

The dearth of supporting infrastructure throughout Alaska’s North Slope — including ports, roads, railroads, and permanent Coast Guard facilities — coupled with the lack of sound science and extremely volatile conditions make any potential offshore operations precarious at best.  The remote location, harsh and unpredictable conditions, and absence of proven clean-up technologies designed for Arctic conditions would make large-scale response efforts nearly impossible.

Those factors represent a cost and risk WestLB isn’t willing to shoulder.

The stakes are high for Royal Dutch Shell, which after spending nearly five years and $4 billion, will likely soon receive the necessary permits for exploratory drilling in the remote Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. And other oil giants aren’t far behind — Exxon and ConocoPhillips are aiming to start offshore operations in the pristine Arctic Ocean by 2013.

WestLB might be the first bank to explicitly refuse financing for offshore drilling in the Arctic, but they may not be alone for long. “Other banks contacted us and are very interested in this approach and policy,” Neuneyer told Environmental Finance.

How many influential corporate voices will have to raise concerns before someone hits the pause button on Arctic Ocean drilling?

Kiley Kroh is the Associate Director of Ocean Communications at the Center for American Progress.

by Sarah Pavlus, via the Colorado Independent

Two of the country’s largest private water utility companies are participants in a massive lobbying effort to expand controversial shale gas drilling — a heavy industrial activity that promises to enrich the water companies but may also put drinking water resources at risk.

The situation — which some watchdogs describe as a troubling conflict of interest — underscores the complex issues raised by the nationwide push to privatize infrastructure and services like water, prisons, and roads.

The water companies – American Water and Aqua America – are leading drinking water suppliers in Pennsylvania, where drilling is booming. They also sell water to gas companies — which use a drilling technique that requires massive amounts of water — and have expressed interest in treating drilling wastewater, a potentially lucrative opportunity.

These investor-owned, publicly traded water utility companies are also dues-paying “associate members” of the gas industry’s powerful Marcellus Shale Coalition, a fact confirmed by coalition spokesman Travis Windle, who says associate members pay $15,000 annually in dues. “Our associate members are really the backbone of the industry,” adds Windle.

Both water companies serve millions of people across the country – Aqua America operates in 11 states and American Water in more than 30. Neither company is currently in Colorado.

The coalition, which is led by major gas producers, contends that “responsible development of natural gas” will bolster the region’s economy while providing an important source of domestic energy. It has reported over $2 million in Pennsylvania lobbying expenditures since 2010.

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A round-up of the top climate and energy news stories. Please post more links below.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon made a call to double global consumption of renewable energy over the next two decades in order to ensure sustainable economic development. “It’s possible if we show political leadership,” Ban said about the goal that falls under a sustainable energy initiative aiming to have universal access to power by 2030. Currently, renewable energy accounts for about 16 percent of world consumption. [AFP]

If you want to appreciate what Barack Obama is up against in 2012, forget about the front man who is his nominal opponent and look instead at the Republican billionaires buying the ammunition for the battles ahead. [New York Magazine]

Researchers have found that climate change is likely to have far greater influence on the volatility of corn prices over the next three decades than factors that recently have been blamed for price swings — like oil prices, trade policies and government biofuel mandates. [New York Times]

Researchers  warned that global warming threatens the water supply for urban communities in Arizona, in a new report funded by the Department of Commerce. [The Oklahoman]

A simmering trade dispute is highlighting a debate about the kinds of jobs America can sustain in a greening economy. [Los Angeles Times]

Researchers have uncovered a surprising and potentially important new source of Arctic methane: the ocean itself. The high concentrations of the greenhouse gas recorded in the air above cracks in the ice could be evidence of yet another positive feedback on the warming climate – leading to even faster Arctic warming, the New Scientist reported. [News Track India]

More Britons than not regard subsidies for wind power development as a good deal, an opinion poll suggests. [BBC]

The European Commission will delay asking members to approve a measure that would label oil from oil sands as worse for climate change than crude oil — a temporary victory for Canada, where such oil is produced. [Washington Post]