Every year, Americans are inundated with new fad diets and weight-loss programs that can supposedly help shed 20 pounds or more in just a week. These programs are pushed by fly-by-night gurus and hucksters who understand that people are often motivated by instant results that rarely endure, not by the work it takes to achieve lasting success.

As any credible health professional will tell you, the only way to realize and sustain healthy weight loss over the long-term is with discipline, a balanced diet, and a consistent regiment of exercise.

So what does this have to do with energy and climate? Because the same forces may be underway in the U.S. energy sector.

The graph below represents America’s “carbon weight” — otherwise known as carbon emissions from the energy sector. And it shows an improvement. Q1 Carbon emissions from the energy sector are at the lowest level they’ve ever been for the last 20 years. Seen from a narrow weight loss perspective, that’s a really good thing.

So bravo, America. You’ve made great progress since you last went to the doctor’s office — an 8 percent decrease in carbon poundage! But to holistically assess the nature of your progress, we need to take a little survey.

What have you been consuming since we last saw you?

Natural gas?

Hmm. You do realize that’s considered the “crack cocaine” of the utility industry, right? And while natural gas is certainly “cleaner” for your system when burned compared to coal, it’s still a fossil fuel that contributes excess carbon poundage. Scientists and public health officials are also still trying to determine all the other consequences — things like water contamination and methane leakages — that may harm your health in other ways.

At least you’re consuming less coal. In fact, you’ve reduced your consumption of coal by almost 20 percent compared to the first quarter of 2011 — a stunning decrease. Your carbon emissions from coal dropped 18 percent through March. You’ve also dramatically increased your share of healthy efficiency and renewable energy compared to your previous energy diet — but it’s still not nearly enough.

And how have you been feeling?

I see your temperature continues to rise. You had the hottest 12 month period on record, the hottest half year on record in 2012, the hottest July ever, and you’ve already broken or set more than 27,000 high temperature records so far this year — more than all of 2011.

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Wind energy draws strong bipartisan support, with more than 81 percent of installed wind capacity located in Republican congressional districts, bringing billions of dollars in private investment.

You wouldn’t know it based on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. Romney has called wind investments “boondoggles” and wind jobs “imaginary.” And the candidate doubled down on his anti-wind policies by announcing his opposition to extending the production tax credit for the industry.

This policy has infuriated some Republican voters and lawmakers from wind-driven states. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) explained his increasing frustration with the campaign at a recent town hall:

“I’m the author of the wind energy tax credit of 1992, and there were people from outside the state came into Iowa and issued a press release that the Republican candidate for president was opposed to wind energy, and I felt it was just like a knife in my back, as the author of the bill, without even being consulted about it,” he said during a town hall meeting at the Greater Burlington Partnership offices in Burlington.”

Grassley takes a much harsher tone now than when Romney’s campaign first announced the policy. Grassley was initially skeptical of Romney’s true position, saying in July, “I have got to get to the bottom of what they are doing, because I think people that didn’t know what they were doing said it, because [Romney] was over in Poland, he obviously wasn’t thinking about wind energy.” But Romney has maintained the position.

Romney’s campaign still hasn’t gotten the message from Grassley, or the dozens of other Republican supporters, wind businesses, and the majority of Americans who support wind investment. It hasn’t helped that Romney has been completely silent on what his policy would do to the 215 wind-related businesses in Iowa, and 75,000 jobs nationally. He offers no alternative to the 37,000 jobs that could be lost if the tax credit isn’t extended past 2012.

JR: Last month I had a piece, “We’re Already Topping Dust Bowl Temperatures — Imagine What’ll Happen If We Fail To Stop 10°F Warming.” The WashPost reported this week:

The United States will suffer a series of severe droughts in the next two decades, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Moreover, global warming will play an increasingly important role in their abundance and severity, claims Aiguo Dai, the study’s author.

His findings bolster conclusions from climate models used by researchers around the globe that have predicted severe and widespread droughts in coming decades over many land areas…

“We can now be more confident that the models are correct,” Dai said, “but unfortunately, their predictions are dire.”

For more on what the models have been saying, go here.

What follows is an update on the Dust Bowl of 2012 from Meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters.

August 14, 2012 drought conditions showed historic levels of drought across the U.S., with 62% of the contiguous U.S. experiencing moderate or greater drought, and 46% of the county experiencing severe or greater drought. Image credit: U.S. Drought Monitor.

by Jeff Masters, via the WunderBlog

by Adam James and Bracken Hendricks

Years ago, the Sara Lee baking company spent months in the lab to develop a new product that they imagined would fly off the shelves: the easy-bake cake. Mix, pour, and heat — it was simple, easy, and revolutionary. Better yet, all the trial focus groups raved about it. So Sara Lee took it to market and… well, it didn’t sell.

So they went back to the drawing board, tweaked the recipe, packaging, and brought it back to the focus groups. Again they loved it, again Sara Lee put it on the shelves, and again it wouldn’t sell.

What was the problem?

Sara Lee did not understand its market. Yes, the company was dead right that easy-bake cakes made sense for hardworking mothers. But what they didn’t understand was that moms wanted to feel like they had really given the cakes a special touch.

The solution?

Include a cracked egg in the recipe. It was easy enough to package the mix with a powdered egg, but then it just wouldn’t have that special touch. From then on, the mix flew off the shelves.

The moral of the story is that sometimes you can have a product that is smart and tailored to meet the needs of your potential customer, but if you don’t understand their preferences, you will strike out every time. Energy efficiency financing has struggled with just this marketing problem for quite some time, which is frustrating, because it makes such good sense.

Market Segmentation vs. Market Classification

The problem (along with the Sara Lee story), as it was explained by Richard Kaufmann, a senior adviser to Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, is that energy efficiency advocates haven’t done enough to understand market segmentation. Sure, they understand market classification — residential single family, residential multi-family, commercial, industrial. But the range of motivating behaviors for the owners, building managers, and tenants who actually make the decisions on how and when to improve their properties within these real estate classifications has been left largely unaddressed.

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By Evan Girvetz and Frank Lowenstein

Whether you look globally or locally, the last several months featured heat, heat and more heat. And by looking at weather station records over the past 60 years, researchers led by renowned NASA scientist Jim Hansen show this is part of a new trend toward much warmer summers.

Extremely hot summers — warmer than virtually ever occurred during a base period of 1951-1980 — have occurred across more than 10% of the world’s lands during the past several years. This means that extremely hot temperatures are more than 10 times more likely to occur now than 50 years ago.

And we are simply not prepared for these temperatures!

You have likely felt the intense heat this year, which has broken tens of thousands of heat records across the U.S. Heat like this is deadly: the heat has killed dozens of people across the U.S., including more than 60 heat-related deaths over a two-week period earlier in the summer.

But do you also recall the heat wave in Texas and Oklahoma just last year that killed 100,000 cattle and 500 million trees? The Russian heat wave two years ago that killed 56,000 people? The European heat wave in 2003 that killed an estimated 70,000 people? Hansen’s paper indicates that these events may be climate-change related, and that people throughout the world are now at increased risk from heat-related disasters.

Other impacts of prolonged heat and drought are also a major societal concern. The hot period from March through July contributed to a failed cherry crop in Michigan, and the lowest corn yields in almost two decades, which are likely to cause higher prices and rippling problems for food and energy supplies.

What can we do to protect our health, food and water systems and our economy?

There are things that can be done to prepare, but it takes a combination of good information, local engagement and action, and supportive national policies to help implement innovative solutions that can reduce risks of global warming and climate change to people and communities.

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An East Texas landowner shows his opposition to Keystone XL. (Photo c/o Tar Sands Blockade.)

by Bill McKibben, via Grist

Almost exactly a year after we launched civil-disobedience actions in Washington to protest the Keystone XL pipeline, folks across Texas are doing the same thing this week.

Or rather, they’re doing something bolder and more courageous — instead of trying to make a political point, they’re actually announcing plans to put their bodies on the line to stop the construction of a portion of the pipe.

But unrelenting pressure from the oil industry was enough to persuade Obama to give the pipeline companies a few slices off the loaf. In fact, the president promised to “expedite” approvals for the southern portion of the pipeline, stretching from Cushing, Okla., to Port Arthur, Texas. It was a real low point for the Obama administration, a perfect emblem of its bankrupt “all of the above” energy “strategy.”

And now TransCanada is ready to begin construction — and a brave crew of local residents is ready to try and stop them.

All along, the pipeline has drawn many different kinds of foes. In this case, environmentalists worried about oil spills and global warming are joined by Tea Party conservatives outraged that a private company is allowed to grab land from people who don’t want to sell it.

It’s hard to predict how it will all turn out. From the beginning of this fight, the oil and pipeline companies have seemed to hold all the cards. A survey of energy “insiders” conducted last fall found 91 percent thought Transcanada would win a permit for the whole route. Instead, just this one portion has been approved. But building even this portion is going to take a fight. Texans aren’t known for submitting quietly to outside authority — if a foreign corporation is going to take their land, it won’t be without a real struggle.

And this one takes place against a special backdrop — the unrelenting heat and drought that have marked one of the toughest summers in American history. If there were ever a moment to take a stand, this is it. Everyone who cares about the future owes these Texans a debt — and in fact, you can help pay their legal costs with a donation.

This comes on the heels of protests in West Virginia blocking mountaintop-removal coal mining, in Montana protesting plans for new coal-export facilities, and on the railroad tracks of the Pacific Northwest stopping trains with coal headed for Asia.

A lot of people are waking up — and the noise that will come from Texas in the next few weeks will add to that loud and lovely din.

The worst of the U.S. Drought Monitor categories, exceptional drought, is broadening its hold on Oklahoma. [The Oklahoman]

Thursday’s report shows 38.86 percent of the state is experiencing exceptional drought, compared to 16.03 percent the previous week. In all, 100 percent of Oklahoma falls in the severe to exceptional drought categories.

One such experience would be bad, but this year makes two consecutive.

“The second year of drought is challenging,” Oklahoma Agriculture Secretary Jim Reese said. “Producers were certainly looking for some relief. We would love to take advantage of these market prices. Cattle producers sold a lot of cattle last year and for the most part are operating smaller herds to get through this.”

The dryness has been so intense in the nation’s heartland that for a broad swath of the country — covering all or part from Missouri west to California and from Texas north to Montana — drought conditions are likely to persist all the way through the end of November. [Climate Central]

Food security experts working on a chapter in a U.N. overview of global warming due in 2014 said governments should take more account of how extremes of heat, droughts or floods could affect food supplies from seeds to consumers’ plates. [Reuters]

Crews in central Washington, rural Idaho and Southern California made gains on several wildfires, allowing some evacuees to return home and protecting two vacation towns from a massive encroaching blaze. [Washington Post]

Investment in U.S. ethanol production, which along with a drought-plagued crop is being blamed for near-record corn costs, may decline should federal use requirements for the biofuel be reduced, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said. [Bloomberg]

What will things look like in 2050 as more and more of the land gets paved over? How hot will the summers be? And how could that temperature rise be mitigated? [Los Angeles Times]

India’s shortage of monsoon rainfall was brought into focus Thursday, with two states formally declaring rain-deprived areas to be in drought and with Parliament likely to take additional steps to mitigate the impact of the rain deficiency on the broader economy. [Wall Street Journal]

A major report on oceans and climate change, released today, says the damage under the sea is much clearer than when it released its last report on the subject three years ago. [ABC News]

Thailand, the world’s largest rice exporter, is content to sit on a record stockpile as the worst U.S. drought in half a century may boost prices, according to Commerce Minister Boonsong Teriyapirom. [Businessweek]