Treehugger – July 23, 2010
I know I’ve ranted and raved a fair amount about the ignominious death of comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation. But lest we all head into our weekends wholly downtrodden and helpless-feeling, a few more words need to be uttered before the casket is lowered into the ground for good (am I getting carried away with this metaphor, here?). Here are some important final thoughts on the demise of the climate bill — and where we can and should go from here.
The battle isn’t over
This is true in more ways than one — first, it is unlikely but possible that some form of carbon-pricing legislation could surface next year, from entirely different tack and framing.
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The New York Times – July 23, 2010
Over the past two years, cap-and-trade advocates used the threat of U.S. EPA climate regulations as a key driver in the push for climate legislation on Capitol Hill. Now, Democratic leaders face the challenge of renewed bipartisan interest in handcuffing EPA before it takes action.
President Obama and many Democrats reveled six weeks ago in the successful defeat of a Senate bid to neuter EPA’s authority over emissions. But with the Senate climate bill dead, new momentum is building for legislation that would pre-empt the agency’s power under the Clean Air Act to regulate stationary pollution sources.
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The New York Times – July 16, 2010
SHORTLY after losing the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore embarked on an arguably even more ambitious campaign: to save the planet from destruction by global warming. His efforts, which included his documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth,” won him a Nobel Prize. But Mr. Gore has not yet achieved his goal of convincing America to limit the industrial pollution that causes climate change.
“America is still debating whether and how to reduce carbon emissions, and a loud minority continues to insist that global warming isn’t real or caused by man,” writes Eric Pooley in “The Climate War: True Believers, Power Brokers, and the Fight to Save the Earth” (Hyperion, $27.99), an illuminating if often ponderous book.
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The Denver Post – July 16, 2010
A National Academy of Sciences study released this morning quantifies potential impacts of climate change – linking water in rivers, crop yields and wildfire damage to specific temperature increases.
For example, for every 1.8 degrees of warming, Colorado can expect 5-10 percent less water in the Arkansas and Rio Grande rivers, the study found.
The study on likely future effects of climate change also anticipates 5-10 percent less total rain in Colorado and other southwestern states. And forest fires are considered likely to devour 3 times more land for each 1.8 degrees of warming.
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The Sacremento Bee – July 15, 2010
Supporters of California’s global warming law have raised more than $2 million so far to defend the landmark legislation in what’s shaping up as an expensive November ballot battle.
Filings with the California secretary of state show that environmental groups and clean energy advocates were big givers to the campaign against Proposition 23, which would suspend AB 32 until the unemployment rate drops to 5.5 percent.
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Power-Gen Worldwide – July 19, 2010
“Currently, there are no adequate mechanisms under international law to balance the competing tensions climate change presents to state sovereignty. On one hand, climate change threatens state sovereignty because the catastrophic loss of life and property of millions of people would deprive states of control over their domestic territories,” researchers in the United States report.
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Global warming alarmists claim vindication after last year’s data manipulation scandal. Don’t believe the ‘independent’ reviews.
The Wallstreet Journal – JULY 12, 2010
Last November there was a world-wide outcry when a trove of emails were released suggesting some of the world’s leading climate scientists engaged in professional misconduct, data manipulation and jiggering of both the scientific literature and climatic data to paint what scientist Keith Briffa called “a nice, tidy story” of climate history. The scandal became known as Climategate.
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CNN – July 7, 2010
Climate change scientists have been cleared of any wrong-doing after a seven month investigation unveiled that professor Phil Jones did not fudge data to try to silence skeptics. Muir Russell, who led the investigation, found that scientists at the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia did not do anything to change or alter critical data and they still produced work in a “rigorous and honest” way. Read the rest of this entry »
Britain’s Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia, suffered a data breach in recent days when a hacker apparently broke into their system and made away with thousands of emails and documents. The stolen data was then posted to a Russian server and has quickly made the rounds among climate skeptics. Read the rest of this entry »