It looks like Romney’s mockery of Obama’s 2008 pledge of climate action had one positive impact.

At the 2012 Democratic National Convention, President Obama said tonight to a large national TV audience:

And yes, my plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet – because climate change is not a hoax.  More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke.  They’re a threat to our children’s future.  And in this election, you can do something about it.

Worth filling up a couple of shot glasses, I’d say — though repeating the denier “hoax” frame is not the way to debunk it.

Here’s what leads up to it:

You can choose the path where we control more of our own energy.  After thirty years of inaction, we raised fuel standards so that by the middle of the next decade, cars and trucks will go twice as far on a gallon of gas.   We’ve doubled our use of renewable energy, and thousands of Americans have jobs today building wind turbines and long-lasting batteries.  In the last year alone, we cut oil imports by one million barrels a day – more than any administration in recent history.  And today, the United States of America is less dependent on foreign oil than at any time in nearly two decades.

Now you have a choice – between a strategy that reverses this progress, or one that builds on it. We’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration in the last three years, and we’ll open more. But unlike my opponent, I will not let oil companies write this country’s energy plan, or endanger our coastlines, or collect another $4 billion in corporate welfare from our taxpayers.

We’re offering a better path – a future where we keep investing in wind and solar and clean coal; where farmers and scientists harness new biofuels to power our cars and trucks; where construction workers build homes and factories that waste less energy; where we develop a hundred year supply of natural gas that’s right beneath our feet.  If you choose this path, we can cut our oil imports in half by 2020 and support more than 600,000 new jobs in natural gas alone.

Yes, that’s an “all of the above” energy policy. So down one drink and put the other down the drain.

Beats mockery, though. Comments?

UPDATE: Good speech with a great finish. I’d still give Bill Clinton props for the best speech of both conventions. Gov. Jennifer Granholm had the best line of the night:

In Romney’s world, the cars get the elevator; the workers get the shaft.

JR: Invisible Obama, I must confess that all these years I was eating lunch at home between blog posts I had no idea you were sitting right next to me. But Clint Eastwood opened my eyes — and ears — and for that I’m grateful.

IO:

JR: I’m sorry. You’re right.  You’re very busy. You have a big speech tonight and President Clinton is a tough act to follow so let’s get right to this. First, what did you think of Clint’s decision to interview you at the RNC?

IO:

JR: Quoting Magnum Force, that’s funny. I’ll post the video:

And what did you think of Mitt Romney’s mockery of your pledge to “slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet”?

IO:

JR: Well, I can’t print that….  Just kidding. Yes, it’s true Romney’s policies would speed the rise of the oceans and slow the healing the planet. Yes, he apparently believes that rising seas lift all yachts. But your clear understanding of the problem raises the question: Why have you and your administration been treating climate change like Voldemort — “The Threat-That-Must-Not-Be-Named.”

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by Ros Donald, via The Carbon Brief

Last week Australia and the European Commission  announced they would begin linking emissions trading schemes (ETS) in two years’ time.

An emissions trading scheme sets a cap on carbon emissions, requiring polluters to hold a permit for each tonne of carbon dioxide they emit. The level of the cap dictates how many permits are available.

Under the European ETS, each EU member state sets a national cap for carbon emissions, which is then converted into allowances for polluters. At the end of every year, polluting industries must say how much carbon dioxide they have emitted. If they’ve used more than their allocation, they have to buy permits from those that have spare, and the market sets the price of those permits.

David Parnell, director of the Centre for Environmental Economics at the University of Western Australia,  explains that under the EU ETS:

“[I]t’s not actually the price that causes the overall cuts in emissions. The cap determines the level of emissions, and the required cuts in emissions cause the price. That is, permits have a value because they allow you to avoid making cuts in emissions.”

The current Australian system works in a different way, with the government setting the price of carbon dioxide allowances. This may be why the scheme is commonly referred to in Australia as a carbon tax, even though it isn’t really a tax, but a capped emissions trading scheme. The government decided that a fixed carbon price would reduce uncertainty in the scheme’s early years, but Australia plans to move to a full blown emissions trading market over the next few years.

What’s going to happen?

Last week, Australia and the European Commission announced there would be a full two-way link between their emissions trading systems by July 2018. Businesses will be able to use carbon units from either the Australian or the European emissions trading systems interchangeably.

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Photo courtesy of NASA

by Bob Berwyn, via Summit County Citizens Voice

Past climate change in the Dead Sea region was sudden and dramatic, with Mediterranean-type vegetation giving way to desert plants within just a few decades as the climate dried out.

One of those dry spells may have resulted in the Canaanites’ urban culture collapsing while nomads invaded their area, perhaps establishing a climate link to biblical events described in the Old Testament as the exodus of the Israelites to the Promised Land.

The new climate data from the area came from a detailed study by scientists with the Steinmann-Institute for Geology, Mineralogy and Paleontology at the University of Bonn, who tracked distinct dry periods during the pottery Neolithic Age (about 7,500 to 6,500 years ago), as well as at the transition from the late Bronze Age to the early Iron Age (about 3,200 years ago).

“Humans were also strongly affected by these climate changes,” said Dr. Thomas Litt, describing how the climate in the region shifted within just a few decades.

The researchers established their 10,000-year climatology record with lake bed sediment cores, using pollen analysis to determine the vegetation that prevailed during drier and wetter periods.

They matched the fossil pollen to indicator plants for different levels of precipitation and temperature. Radiocarbon-dating was used to determine the age of the layers.

“This allowed us to reconstruct the climate of the entire postglacial era,” Litt said. “This is the oldest pollen analysis that has been done on the Dead Sea to date.”

In total, there were three different formations of vegetation around this salt sea. In moist phases, a lush, sclerophyll vegetation thrived as can be found today around the Mediterranean Sea. When the climate turned drier, steppe vegetation took over. Drier episodes yet were characterized by desert plants. The researchers found some rapid changes between moist and dry phases.

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Over the last 36 years, the government’s Weatherization Assistance Program has helped millions of low-income Americans make their homes more energy efficient and reduce energy costs. In some cases, those improvements were the reason recipients could afford to stay in their homes.

But this vital, common-sense program is now under threat. As part of the bizarre push back against smart clean energy and energy efficiency investments, WAP has become a political target. Funding for the program has dwindled, and it’s very likely that Congress will minimally fund it for a second year in a row. That could be devastating.

The 50-minute documentary below, put together by filmmaker Joshua Wolfe, chronicles how WAP began and why it’s so economically important. The program once had very strong bipartisan support. But it’s now a victim of politics. This film illustrates just how sad the conversation around energy in this country as become. Watch it:

Here’s what the filmmaker, Josh Wolfe, wrote to Andy Revkin of the New York Times:

What we often forget is that in those 36 years, the program has not just made peoples’ lives better but it has accumulated knowledge, talent and resources that make it better each year than the year before. If the program’s budget gets cut dramatically, much of those 36 years of investment will be lost. We can’t rebuild it overnight if we decide to increase program funding two years from now. It is also probable that if the continuing resolution passes at the $68 million funding level many of the people you meet in this film will lose their jobs in the near future. I hope that this film can help lawmakers realize the value of WAP and preserve the work of the last 36 years.

Are we really going to let politics destroy such a vital tool?

One year ago today, the solar manufacturer Solyndra filed for bankruptcy after receiving a $527 million loan guarantee. The bankruptcy set off a political firestorm in Congress, and eventually worked its way into the presidential campaign.

Today, the Republican party is using Solyndra as a key tool in its campaign against Obama — smearing the entire clean energy industry in the process.

If you’ve been paying attention to the issue over the last year, you’ve likely heard the name “Solyndra” so many times it makes you nauseous. But most Americans are only now paying attention to the campaign, so it’s likely that many are hearing the name for the first time. If you’re wondering what the GOP claims on Solyndra are all about, here are some facts to put the issue in context:

1. The loan guarantee program supporting Solyndra has been a success

The loan guarantee program, which provides government backing of private loans for first-of-a-kind projects, was designed to help leverage capital for innovative renewable energy projects during the height of the financial crisis. And it worked. Since the program was enhanced through the stimulus package, it has supported the world’s largest wind farm, the first commercial cellulosic ethanol plant, some of the largest solar PV plants in the world, and the country’s largest concentrating solar power project — nearly 40 projects in all that helped keep 60,000 people employed during the economic downturn.

2. The Solyndra bankruptcy represented a small fraction of the overall program

The loan guarantee program came under fire after the bankruptcies of a few high-risk companies — most famously Solyndra — that received backing. But according to John McCain’s National Finance Chairman, Herb Allison, the overall cost to taxpayers will be $2 billion less than actually budgeted for. Backing up the findings of Herb Allison, the Congressional Research Office also concluded that the majority of loans were extremely low risk. In fact, over the last 20 years of experience, the U.S. government has shown a knack for managing risk — with loans and loan guarantee programs only costing tax payers 94 cents for every $100 dollars invested.

3. There is “no evidence” of political manipulation

Since Solyndra went bankrupt, House lawmakers have held 12 hearings and official meetings, acquired more than 300,000 documents, issued two subpenas, and likely spent more than a million dollars on the investigation. What have they found? “No evidence of wrongdoing,” reported Bloomberg Businessweek. And in a more detailed investigation, the Washington Post went further: “The records do not establish that anyone pressured the Energy Department to approve the Solyndra loan to benefit political contributors.”

And just last month, House GOP lawmakers issued a progress report on their investigation. As The Hill reported on the findings: “Republicans have not shown that the loan was granted as a result of political favoritism, despite repeated campaign-trail claims that the administration steered loans to Solyndra and other green-energy projects on the basis of political donations.”

4. Dozens of Republicans supported loan guarantees or similar programs

Since the Solyndra bankruptcy, many Republicans have scrambled to create a political scandal. However, a review of official documents and news reports over the years reveals that more than 60 Congressional Republicans — many of whom are critical of government support of renewables — have lobbied the Department of Energy for loan guarantees, grants, and other support for clean energy projects in their districts. In addition, Congressman Darrell Issa, one of the leaders of the House investigation into the Solyndra bankruptcy, strongly supported billions of dollars in loan guarantees for nuclear energy projects. However, when such tools are used for renewable energy, he labels it “picking winners and losers.”

5. Republicans have bluntly admitted the investigation is political

With multiple Congressional and journalistic investigations revealing no evidence of political manipulation, why does the GOP continue to spend so much time on the issue? One Republican, Representative Jim Jordan from Ohio, recently admitted that the plan was to keep Solyndra in the headlines throughout the election — no matter what the outcome: “Ultimately, we’ll stop it on Election Day, hopefully. And bringing attention to these things helps the voters and citizens of the country make the kind of decision that I hope helps them as they evaluate who they are going to vote for in November.”

A year after the Solyndra bankruptcy, we still haven’t found any evidence of political wrongdoing. But facts be dammed, the GOP is now using Solyndra as a central part of its national messaging strategy against Obama. So the next time you hear “Solyndra” in a debate or on the campaign trail, keep these facts in mind.

by Graham Readfearn, via DeSmogBlog

If the world’s conspiratorial blogosphere was broken up into food items on a wedding buffet table, then an eclectic array of plate-fillers would surely be on offer.

There would be canapés topped with faked moon landings and hors d’oeuvres of Government-backed plots to assassinate civil rights leaders.

Sandwich fillings would come from US military staff at Roswell in New Mexico (cheese and alien, anyone?). The alcoholic punch would be of the same vintage as that which the British Royal family gave Princess Diana’s chauffeur, as part of their plot to kill her. All of the catering would be provided by the New World Order.

Then there’s the salad of human-caused climate change being a hoax, with the world’s climate scientists, national academies and the declining Arctic sea-ice all in on the conspiracy.

Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Western Australia (UWA), is about to publish research which shows that a strong indicator of the rejection of climate science is a willingness to accept conspiracy theories.

His paper, to be published in the journal Psychological Science, is titled “NASA faked the moon landing – Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science“.

The study details the results of a controlled online questionnaire posted on blogs between August and October 2010.

Among the conspiracy theories tested, were the faking of Apollo moon landings, US government agencies plotting to assassinate Martin Luther King, Princess Diana’s death being organised by members of the British Royal family and the US military covering up the recovery of an alien spacecraft that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico.

In the paper, Lewandowsky concludes that “endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories… predicts rejection of climate science”. The research also claims a correlation between people who endorse free-market economics and the ”rejection of climate science”.

He told DeSmogBlog:

There’s a fair bit of previous literature to suggest that conspiratorial thinking is part of science denial. Conspiratorial thinking is where people would seek to explain events by appealing to invisible, powerful collusions amongst individuals, rather than taking events at face value. The absence of evidence for the conspiracy is sometimes taken as evidence of its existence and any contradictory evidence is itself embedded into the conspiracy.

In his paper, Lewandowsky adds: “Endorsement of the free market also predicted the rejection of other established scientic findings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer.”

Given the well documented links between free market think-tanks and climate science misinformation, this finding isn’t surprising.

But back to that “conspiracist ideation” trait which Lewandowsky and other researchers, such as Pascal Diethelm and Martin McKee, have identified among people who reject science.

Because rather fittingly, no sooner had Lewandowsky’s paper begun to make headlines than the world’s loose, nimble and definitely-not-conspiring network of climate skeptic blogs began to construct their own conspiracies about Lewandowsky’s research.

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With gas prices rising over the Labor Day weekend, Republicans have resumed political attacks and proposed policies that do not help consumers with costs.

As expected, Republicans have renewed calls to fulfill the oil industry’s wishlist by increasing drilling on public lands, building the Keystone XL pipeline, and maintain billions of dollars in tax breaks for mature, highly-profitable companies.

National gas prices reached $3.83 on Monday, the highest ever on Labor Day. Reasons for the short-term 9.4 percent jump in prices this August include refinery closures from Hurricane Isaac and a major fire at a Chevron California refinery earlier in the month. Of course, Republicans are now pointing fingers at Obama for rising gas prices — and the National Republican Congressional Committee jumped on the bandwagon this weekend with a press release touting the Keystone XL pipeline and blaming the president for the jump.

This came after Romney unveiled an energy plan focused exclusively on oil, with a false promise to end gas price shocks.

Despite GOP wishes, oil prices cannot be pinned on the president. Instead, Republicans use gas price pain to push canned “solutions” that benefit big oil and not consumers. Consider these proposals:

– The Keystone XL pipeline could cause gas prices to rise: The Keystone XL pipeline would move dirty Canadian tar sands oil across America for export. It will not improve U.S. oil production. Since it will ship oil past Midwestern refineries toward the Gulf, Bloomberg estimates that it would cause gas prices to increase for some Americans.

– Boosting domestic oil production doesn’t prevent gas price shocks: According to a Congressional Budget Office analysis this spring, increased oil production wouldn’t insulate consumers from jumps in prices. Domestic production is already at an eight-year high, and CBO reports that even if prices did drop, it would make consumers “more vulnerable to increases in oil prices. Even if the United States increased production and became a net exporter of oil, U.S. consumers would still be exposed to gasoline prices that rose and fell in response to disruptions around the world.” The only way to protect consumers, argues CBO, is to use less oil.

– Fuel efficiency standards help both the auto industry and consumers: Higher gas prices usually mean fewer auto sales, but auto sales have been strong this summer largely because of production of fuel efficient cars. The Obama administration recently finalized higher fuel standards that raise the efficiency of the nation’s auto fleet to 54.5 mpg by 2025. Mitt Romney opposes these standards, and wants to undo existing ones. The 54.5 mpg target will cut U.S. oil dependency by 3 million barrels a day, save consumers $1.7 trillion over the next decade, and reduce the impact of rising prices.

ThinkProgress has documented how critics didn’t thank Obama when gas prices unexpectedly dropped this summer. Now, taking advantage of the higher prices, Republicans are again blaming the President — all while advocating policies that do little to actually solve the problem.

by Ron Pernick, via Clean Edge

Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention last week ought to serve as an urgent wake-up call to anyone that cares about America’s energy, environmental, and economic future. At the podium, Romney chided President Obama on global warming, and his hoped-for GOP administration is advancing an “energy independence” plan built much more on the polluting industries of the past than the innovative clean technologies of the present and future. Somehow, global warming, renewables, and other clean-tech pursuits have become some of his favorite punch lines.

But clean tech is far from a laughing matter. Instead it’s the stuff of major multinationals such as GE, Toyota, and Siemens who are investing and making billions of dollars annually from their clean-tech initiatives; of startups including Tesla, SolarCity, and Agilyx who are respectively working to innovate electric vehicles, solar power finance, and plastics recycling; and of young Americans across our nation working to advance clean technologies, address climate change, and build thriving for-profit and non-profit ventures.

And contrary to what some would like you to believe, renewables energy production isn’t a marginal industry; it’s expanding rapidly in importance and penetration. In 2010 three states got more than 10 percent of their electricity generation from wind, solar, and geothermal. One year later, the number had doubled to six states including South Dakota and Iowa, which now generate approximately 20 percent of their total electricity from the wind alone. Clean tech isn’t shrinking; it’s starting to scale up to significant percentages for utilities, cities, states, and nations.

Perhaps this growth is exactly why some entrenched interests – and the politicians they fund – are working so hard to demonize clean tech, spread misinformation, and demoralize its supporters. But this partisan behavior overshadows a critical point: clean tech has historically been a bipartisan endeavor, and even to this day is supported by governors, mayors, and others on both sides of the political aisle. Even more important, renewables are overwhelmingly supported by citizens of all stripes and affiliations in poll after poll.

Three Energy Pillars: Renewables, Natural Gas, and Efficiency

In our just-released book, Clean Tech Nation, which looks broadly at the entire clean-tech industry, Clean Edge senior editor Clint Wilder and I make the case for a U.S. energy future built on renewables, responsible natural gas, and efficiency. Our research shows that most of the developed world simply doesn’t need new coal or nuclear to meet their energy objectives. Instead, the world’s industrialized nations could pursue:

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The loss of Arctic ice is massively compounding the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, ice scientist Professor Peter Wadhams has told BBC Newsnight. [BBC]

White ice reflects more sunlight than open water, acting like a parasol.

Melting of white Arctic ice, currently at its lowest level in recent history, is causing more absorption.

Prof Wadhams calculates this absorption of the sun’s rays is having an effect “the equivalent of about 20 years of additional CO2 being added by man”.

The Cambridge University expert says that the Arctic ice cap is “heading for oblivion”.

In 2008, Al Gore strode onto the stage at Denver’s Invesco Field to a hero’s welcome, throwing his support behind Barack Obama to take on the “global climate crisis.” When Obama takes the stage this week, Gore will be nowhere in sight. [Politico]

This year’s outbreak of West Nile virus is the worst since the illness was first observed in the United States in 1999, officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday. [Los Angeles Times]

In a new report titled “Game Changer: How the Sports Industry Is Saving the Environment,” the Natural Resources Defense Council presents case studies of greening initiatives by sports leagues and franchises like switching from fossil fuels to solar energy, installing low-flush toilets to save water and conspicuously displaying recycling bins. [New York Times]

Forecasters say Leslie has strengthened into the sixth hurricane of the Atlantic season but still remains far from land. [Associated Press]

A new race for water is rippling through the drought-scorched heartland, pitting farmers against oil and gas interests, driven by new drilling techniques that use powerful streams of water, sand and chemicals to crack the ground and release stores of oil and gas. [New York Times]

There are a couple of things going on that are more curious than scary, showing that tropical storms and hurricanes can do some pretty strange things. The first has to do with Isaac, which could be giving birth to a new storm in the Gulf of Mexico. [Climate Central]

A 3,600-acre fire in the San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles chewed through thick brush in steep terrain that hadn’t burned in two decades amid hot, dry conditions. [Businessweek]