Month: October 2012

In the run up to last week’s debate, citizen’s groups delivered 160,000 signatures to PBS’s Jim Lehrer, asking that he bring up climate change as an issue for the candidates. PBS said this was the largest number of requests they had ever received of this type.

Of course, as we know, Jim Lehrer, the media, and the candidates continue to ignore the defining issue of the century, beyond Mitt Romney’s enthusiastic affirmation “I like Coal”.

Still,  there it sits, calmly licking its chops.

WSJ:

In a famous psychology experiment, participants watching a video of people passing a basketball around while moving missed a remarkable sight: Midway through the video, someone wearing a gorilla suit strolls through the exercise, pauses to beat his chest, and moves on. The key was that participants were asked to count the number of passes made by players wearing white shirts, and the focus on one activity induced a kind of blindness to the extraordinary visitor.

Invisiblegorilla.com

Would you see the gorilla?
Almost everyone has the intuition that the answer is “yes, of course I would.” How could something so obvious go completely unnoticed? But when we did this experiment at Harvard University several years ago, we found that half of the people who watched the video and counted the passes missed the gorilla.
It was as though the gorilla was invisible.

The Hill:

Climate change has become a sleeper issue in a number of Senate races as Democrats attempt to paint their opponents as extreme, based on their views on the issue.

It’s a largely straightforward peg for an attack that some Democrats hope will appeal to centrist voters that may be swayed if they see the Republican candidate as part of the party’s extreme.

In the Maine and Nebraska Senate races, the independent and Democratic candidates, respectively, have focused in on their opponents’ position, that man has little to no role in climate change, to argue that they are too far outside of the mainstream for voters in their states.
In Maine, independent Senate candidate Angus King recently launched an ad featuring him telling the camera that Republican opponent “Charlie [Summers] … doubts climate change science, favors taxpayer subsidies for big oil, and thinks Washington isn’t broken.”
Summers said at one of the candidates’ debates, which was focused solely on energy and the environment, that he doesn’t believe that climate change is caused primarily by humans, and cited other factors — like volcanic eruptions — that he believes affect the environment. It’s a position that King spokeswoman Crystal Canney said offered a contrast between the two candidates, and one that she believes Maine voters — who live in a state with a strong green energy sector and leans Democratic — will consider in November.
“I think when someone makes a statement that climate change is caused by volcanoes, I think you have to alert the public,” to what they believe, she said.
Summers’ campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Continue reading “Climate Issue Refuses to be Ignored”

Here’s a Danish ad promoting bus travel. This is a bus you want to get on. Just trust me on this one.

Actually I took a bus from  Ann Arbor to Detroit Metro not long ago (long story), and –  you know, it was pretty great. Big seats. Big windows. Smooth, quiet, and they had wi-fi. That would be a no brainer on medium distance trips.

If you liked watching Rep. Paul Broun shame the entire country with his fundamentalist, biblically inspired tirades on the floor of congress, you love knowing how denialists have a plan, frighteningly successful so far,  to spread ignorance over the entire country…

Source here.  H/T to commenter Maurizio.

Talking Points Memo:

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) tore into scientists as tools of the devil in a speech at the Liberty Baptist Church Sportsman’s Banquet last month.

“All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell,” Broun said. “And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”

According to Broun, the scientific plot was primarily concerned with hiding the true age of the Earth. Broun serves on the House Science Committee, which came under scrutiny recently after another one of its Republican members, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), suggested that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses against pregnancy.

“You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth,” he said. “I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.”

Broun — a physician, with an M.D. and a B.S. in chemistry — is generally considered to be among the most conservative members of Congress, if not the most. He drew national attention in 2010 for saying he did not know if President Obama was an American citizen.

Anyone care to check if Rep. Broun is one of the “scientists” that signed the “Oregon Petition” supposedly debunking climate change? Free prize to anyone who tracks that one down.

Rep. Broun sets out his scientific views on climate below.

Continue reading “Congressional Climate Denier: “I don’t believe but the Earth’s about 9000 years old””

I did not know that.  Abraham Lincoln was the only President to hold a patent.  Lincoln’s understanding of Science and Technology helped lead to the founding of the National Academy of Science.

More from Richard Alley, and Earth the Operator’s Manual.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unimagined in common hours.   –   Henry David Thoreau

One of the great stories untold in the American media is the ongoing revolution in one of the world’s most advanced economies  – as Germany undertakes a bold and serious transition from powering a great engine of prosperity on fossil fuels, to plentiful and inexhaustible renewable energy.

Listening to Mitt Romney double and triple down on the bogus Fox/Fossil narrative about “clean coal” and failed renewables, it might be well to consider how one of our toughest manufacturing competitors is going all-in on the high stakes renewable energy revolution of the new century.

Paul Gipe’s WindWorks:

German use of coal to generate electricity has declined steadily from 1990 to 2011, according to readily available statistics on the German electricity system. The percentage of coal-fired electricity in German electricity generation has fallen from 56.7% in 1990 to 43.5% last year–a decrease of more than 10% despite a increase in total electricity generation during the same period of about 10%. At the same time the share of renewable energy in the electricity mix has increased from 3.6% to 19.9%, mostly due to the rapid development of wind energy and biomass.
It’s necessary to make this statement short and succinct because, if anyone has missed it, there’s a presidential election campaign in full swing here in the USA. And with it is a full-on, no-holds-barred propaganda war against renewables.
Weekly–if not more often–a new broadside appears and makes the rounds of generally right-wing blogs and talk shows. The latest talking point is that Germany is burning more coal than ever because of all the intermittent renewables that have been added to the system.
So, let’s have some fun with numbers and separate fact from fiction.
First, the source. All the data I’ll use comes from the Work Group on the German Energy Balance (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Energiebilanzen) and can be downloaded from their web site.
There are others sources of this data. This happens to be one that I could find easily, the data was relatively concise, and it was in spreadsheet form.
Ideally, I would put all the information on one chart, but this much to busy to easily read and comprehend. Consequently, I’ve broken the data down into a series of charts.

Summary
German renewable generation now exceeds generation from hard coal and generation from nuclear.
Total renewable generation was less than brown coal in 2011. However, at last year’s pace of growth, renewable generation may exceed that from brown coal by 2015.

Continue reading “A Success Unimagined”

Briefly, I’ll say I was disappointed. Sorry, but Jim Lehrer – earnestly insipid  even at the peak of his powers 20 years ago, needs to go away.  160,000 signatures asking him to raise the most important issue of the century at this presidential debate went unheeded.

Here’s the fact check from Climate Progress.

ClimateProgress:

If you watched the real-time reaction to the debates, the disappointment among folks within the energy and environment community over the lack of attention to climate was palpable. Even with 160,000 signatures delivered to PBS’ Jim Lehrer calling on him to ask the candidates about climate change, the issue was completely ignored during the 90 minute conversation — continuing a long streak of silence throughout the campaign.

Apparently, neither of the candidates — particularly Obama — has been watching the polls showing that climate could be a major factor in how undecided and Independent voters cast their ballots.

Energy issues were sprinkled throughout the debate, however. The mentions were focused mostly on domestic drilling and clean energy spending. Obama stuck to his talking points about developing “new sources of energy,” repealing billions in tax credits for the oil & gas industry, and supporting an “all of the above” energy strategy. But other than making fluffy statements about supporting clean energy, Obama didn’t make any specific claims on the issue that required fact checking.

Romney, on the other hand, made a number of more specific, inaccurate statements on the issues:

1. “Gas prices have doubled under Obama.”

When Obama came into office, he was dealing with the impact of the greatest financial crisis and economic collapse since the Great Depression. That’s why gas prices were so low; demand had declined substantially. Even the Cato Institute and the Wall Street Journal have pointed out this obvious fact: “When Mr. Obama was inaugurated,demand was weak due to the recession. But now it’s stronger, and thus the price is higher.”

Here’s a chart that shows what happened to gas prices during the recession:

And as many analysts have pointed out, presidents have little control over oil and gasoline prices: Oil prices are set on the global market, which is controlled by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, a cartel. High oil prices are responsible for high gasoline prices: The cost of crude oil was 64 percent of the cost of a gallon of gas in September 2012.

Continue reading “Rope a Dope? Let’s Hope. Presidential Debate Recap”