Climate skeptics found plenty of reasons to dig out their dreary critiques this week, between the continuing controversy over erroneous reports from the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) and the record-breaking snowfall on the East Coast. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and his family built an igloo which Inhofe then dubbed "Al Gore's house" in the streets of Washington, D.C. The Virginia GOP ran ads attacking the state's Democratic representatives for their support of cap-and-trade and urged voters to "tell them how much global warming you get this weekend." And skeptics across the world claimed that the smaller mistakes in IPCC reports undermined the organization's broad conclusions on climate change science.
Let's plow through this slushy thinking before it piles up too high.
Snow still happens in a warming world
In the winter, it snows, and one snowstorm does not overthrow all of climate science. "Perhaps it's time for a refresher," wrote Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones. "'Weather' and 'climate' are not the same thing. Weather is what happened yesterday or may happen tomorrow; climate patterns occur over decades."
"We can absolutely expect climate change to bring blizzards in places that don't normally see a lot of blizzards, like Washington, D.C.," chimes in Jonathan Hiskes at Grist. "Climatologists expect just this sort of 'global weirding': less predictable, more extreme, more damaging."
Cold temperatures, even record lows, do not contradict the extensive body of evidence that global temperatures are rising. As Hiskes points out, erratic weather patterns support climate change theories, and the coming seasons will feature more newsworthy weather events. Chalk up the snowfall that shut down the federal government for almost a week as a bad sign, akin to harsh storms like Hurricane Katrina.
Climate science stands despite IPCC errors...
The IPCC messed up. The international organization is meant to gather and review the body of climate change science and produce definitive reports on that field. But in past reports, the organization included a few facts unsupported by real scientific research. Mother Jones' Sheppard runs down these mistakes: the IPCC cannot back up its claims about the rising sea-level in Holland, crop failure in Africa, and the melting of Himalayan glaciers.
The bottom line, though, is that these errors do not affect the reports' main conclusions. As Sheppard explains, "The controversies over the IPCC's data haven't challenged the fundamental agreement among the vast majority of scientific bodies that climate change is happening and caused in large part by human activity."
...but that does not excuse the IPCC's behavior
The IPCC cannot use that broad consensus as a defense, however. The organization needs to maintain both an impeccable reputation as a scientific body and its independence from political pressures. At The Nation, Maria Margaronis argues that in the climate arena, science and politics have been wedged too closely together.
"On a subject as politicized as this, it's not surprising that scientists have been found guilty of hoarding data, smoothing a graph or two, shutting each other's work out of peer-reviewed journals," she writes. "The same goes on in far less controversial fields, where what's at stake is only money and careers. ... Every research paper and data set produced by climate scientists or cited by the IPCC is now fair game for the fine-toothed comb, whether it's wielded honestly or with malicious intent. Nit-picking takes the place of conversation."
Margaronis suggests that scientists admit to uncertainties and open up their data, while the rest of us stop looking to them as unimpeachable oracles on climate change. But as long as skeptics jump on a researcher's every doubt as a refutation of all climate science, that's not likely to happen.
Brace for impact
Negative attitudes about the IPCC and the snow are not idle threats to climate reform. As Steve Benen writes at The Washington Monthly, "It seems mind-numbing, but Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) said snowfall in D.C. has had an effect on policymakers' attitudes."
As cheap as they are, stunts like Inhofe's seem to dampen lawmakers' political will to pass real climate change legislation. Apparently, the Senate, already tip-toeing away from the cap-and-trade provisions passed in the House, can't talk about global warming when there's snow on the ground.
Foot-dragging like this costs the United States money and credibility. Administration officials are already downplaying expectations for the next international conference on climate change, to be held next winter in Mexico. And if the Senate gives up on a comprehensive climate bill and passes a weaker provision, the country will ultimately pay the price in higher deficits.
At Grist, David Roberts declares, "Good climate policy is responsible fiscal policy." His evidence? Reports from the Congressional Budget Office. The Senate's comprehensive climate legislation (known as the Kerry-Boxer bill) knocks $21 billion a year off the deficit, according to the CBO. The watered-down alternative increases the deficit by $13 billion a year.
Encounters with the arch-skeptic
Citing snowfall as an argument against global warming-and against passing climate change legislation!-is not the only half-baked idea climate skeptics throw around. As Joshua Frank notes for AlterNet, "There are usually a range of issues these skeptics raise in an attempt to cast doubt on climate change evidence." Frank offers a primer of responses to common complaints-i.e. humans don't contribute to global warming, that carbon emissions aren't to blame, either, that climate science cannot accurately measure global warming.
Keep this resources handy. It only takes one event, like this week's snow storm, for those misguided arguments to surface.
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Today is "Young and Future Generations Day" here at the International Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen, and I'm here with my wife Wahleah and our two-year-old daughter Tohaana. Along with thousands of other young people, we're doing everything in our power to convince world leaders to commit to a fair, ambitious, and legally binding international agreement based on a target of 350 parts per million (ppm), which is the safe upper limit of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Less than 400 miles away in Oslo, Norway, President Obama is accepting the Nobel Peace Prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." If ever there was a time and place to live up to that honor, now, in Copenhagen is it.
Four former Nobel Peace Prize winners have endorsed a target of 350ppm. On December 12th, 2008, at the international climate talks in Poznan, Poland, Al Gore (2007 winner) said to a huge crowd: "Even a goal of 450 parts per million, which seems so difficult today, is inadequate. We need to toughen that goal to 350 parts per million."
On Wednesday, President Obama pledged to cut U.S. carbon emissions "in the range of" 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. Obama also confirmed that he will attend the international climate conference in Copenhagen next month, as Aaron Wiener notes for the Washington Independent. But here's the catch: It's a one-day deal. Obama is only planning to stop by Copenhagen on Dec. 9 before flying to Oslo to accept his Nobel Peace Prize. The climate talks, on the other hand, span Dec. 7 to Dec. 18.
Last year, Blue Dog Leonard Boswell received a left-wing primary challenge from former state Representative Ed Fallon. Boswell's central, and perhaps only, message to left-wing and new media-focused Democrats was his endorsement by Al Gore. Desmoinesdem explained at the time:
Accompanying these messages, Boswell's campaign has made sure to remind Iowa Democrats that Al Gore supports Boswell, whereas Fallon supported Ralph Nader for president in 2000. A photo of Al and Tipper Gore, along with a letter from Gore endorsing Boswell, are prominently displayed on the front page of the Boswell campaign's website.(...)
Last Thursday another glossy mailer from the Boswell campaign arrived in my mailbox. This one focused on Gore's endorsement of Boswell, with a large photo and a letter from the former vice-president. Here is an excerpt from that piece (all bolded passages were bold in the original):
Leonard Boswell, a remarkable congressman and my friend, is facing a serious primary challenge.
Whether the issue is global warming or increasing the minimum wage, making college more affordable or expanding health care to every American, Leonard Boswell is on the front lines of these issues, working hard for Iowans every day.
Democrats and Republicans on the committee took turns criticizing the legislation. Their chief complaint is that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, rather than the U.S. Department of Agriculture, would be in a charge of the credit program through which farmers could get paid for practices that store crop residue in the soil or otherwise reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
"As this bill stands today, I can't vote for it," Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Ia., told Vilsack. "I don't know of anyone else in the committee who can."
Al Gore is arguing that the Waxman-Markey climate change legislation has "the moral significance equivalent to that of the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and the Marshall Plan of the late 1940s." Now, Leonard Boswell, along with seemingly all other Democrats on the Agriculture Committee, is hijacking climate change legislation unless it removes the EPA's authority to determine carbon offsets. Note that this is already on top of the bill's provision to eliminate the EPA's ability to regulate carbon itself, which is actually a step backward for climate change regulation in the Unites states.
The reason I bring is up is that, whenever groups like Friends of the Earth or Greenpeace criticize Waxman-Markey for not going far enough, they are immediately smacked down by bloggers like Joe Romm at Climate Progress for failing to offer up "politically realistic" alternatives. However, if this is all about political realism, then why are we seeing the following from Al Gore and Climate Progress in response to the Agriculture Committee's actions:
Al Gore has not made a single public statement about either Leonard Boswell or the Agriculture Committee, despite what they are currently doing to Waxman-Markey.. This is even though Boswell largely owes his position in Congress to Al Gore. One might think that political realists would use this past support to try and influence Boswell in some manner.
Climate Progress have never even mentioned Leonard Boswell once for the more than three years of their existence
according to Google. In fact, Climate Progress has never directly attacked the actions of the Agriculture Committee in the same way that it has repeatedly, and sometimes viciously, attacked environmental groups that criticize of the bill from the left. All Climate Progress is doing about the Agriculture Committee's actions is putting up articles declaring that the House will pass the bill, and a guest post very politely telling farmers why it would be super swell if they supported global warming legislation.
As such, here is my message for the self-proclaimed political realists who are supporters of Waxman-Markey:
The Democrats on the Agriculture Committee are probably, as a group, the most electorally vulnerable Democrats on any House committee. Some of the Democratic members of this committee, like Leonard Boswell, owe their continuing presence in Congress to people like Al Gore, and certainly to hundreds of progressive donors who would be upset about what Agriculture Committee Democrats are currently doing to climate change legislation. As such, either start directly attacking these vulnerable Democrats in progressive media and Democratic fundraising circles for what they are doing to Waxman-Markey, or stop priding yourself on your political realism.
If Waxman-Markey really is so unbelievably awesome, as both Al Gore and Climate Progress keep arguing, then we should be doing everything possible to pass it. Instead, Al Gore and Climate Progress seem to be giving the Democrats on the Agriculture Committee a free pass on significantly watering down the bill. I have no idea this is happening, but it certainly isn't because they are using all available, politically realistic means to pass Waxman-Markey.
Start playing some hardball, or stop telling us that we are about to get the best climate change bill politically possible.
Congressional Democrats have scored positive, or even, favorable / approval ratings according to all eight polling firms that have conducted public opinion surveys on them since the Inauguration. These figures are remarkable because, in most polls, they are the first positive approval ratings from Congressional Democrats since early 2007 (and, in some cases, since early 2002, after the September 11th attacks). However, it is not just Congressional Democrats who have seen a dramatic improvement in their image since President Obama took office. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also entered stratospheric, 2-1 positive territory on favorabliliy over the past few months.
Check out Clinton's favorability ratings compared to this time one year ago (more in the extended entry):
Next week Barack Obama will nominate key members of his energy and environmental team and among the likely choices are some to be happy about including Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Chu.
On Tuesday Obama met with Al Gore and, sandwiched between comments on the Blagojevich case, succinctly outlined most of the big plan I summarized a few days ago:
(transcript below)
I think it is clear from these comments that Obama is not aiming for incremental change. To achieve the kind of change Gore talks about, a switch to clean power in ten years, will require not only implementation of technologies we currently have but new breakthroughs. That's what makes Chu's appointment so encouraging: he leads the lab that has been working on the breakthroughs.
Still, there are skeptics who say the cost and the time necessary for a conversion to cleaner power make this undoable during a severe recession. More on that below.
Even as King Coal is trying to put a $6 billion coal plant in Virginia, Al Gore and a whole lot of DC green groups are beginning a campaign to point out that there is no such thing as clean coal. Their web site is This is Reality. This is part of a larger movement to wean us off of fossil fuels, which Congresswoman Donna Edwards has already endorsed.
The Reality campaign is the first TV campaign to go after the coal industry directly, and hopefully it will demystify this industry's power.
The campaign schedule has been pretty intense over the last week and will continue to be so until the BIG day on Tuesday, November 4th. I want to congratulate everyone for putting so much effort into this year's election, not just for an individual campaign, but for the entire Democratic ticket. I've seen people in every community throughout the 5th district working to make sure the message is getting out.
I want to remind everyone it is important that we finish strong. Don't take anything for granted, ignore the polls and work like the polls show our candidates 5 points down. Remember, while all indications show Barack Obama will be our next president, if we believe the polls, Al Gore would be concluding his second term or we would be working to re-elect President John Kerry right now.
One of my biggest frustrations with Democratic leaders is their refusal to embrace the energy policy Al Gore outlined this summer, which could "end our reliance on carbon-based fuels" in the next decade.
Barack Obama has offered an energy policy that's a big improvement on what George Bush has done. Unfortunately, Obama still supports more investment in so-called "clean coal" and has not ruled out expanding nuclear power.
On the plus side, Obama also calls for generating 10 percent of our country's electricity from renewable sources by 2012--which sounds great until you learn that the U.S. has already surpassed that goal.
Here are statements from Al Gore at the Clinton Global Initiative.
This is a crisis that is happening NOW. Scientists around the world are practically screaming from the rooftops to stop it.
"If you're a young person, I believe we've reached a point of civil disobedience" ...to do things like take down coal plants.
Civil disobedience from young people doesn't just happen, it requires leadership from older people willing to put their ass on the line. the US is now assigning the military directly on US soil "to help with civil unrest and crowd control". Does he think that young people are just out and out stupid? The other side has the guns and the authority to use them.
Anonymous Liberal, who some of you may remember from his occasional pinch hits for Glennzilla, makes a point worth highlighting, The Media's Moment of Truth:
This election is a test of the political media in this country. If journalists can't find a way to dissuade the use of flagrant dishonesty as a tactic, they will have failed this country miserably.
Some people don't seem to like that I am not totally enthralled and inspired by the remarkable speeches at the Democratic convention so far. While I think the speeches have been decent, it is true that I am not enthralled. In the extended entry, I explain why, and also explain what I am looking for in these speeches.
Although he uses an old-timey analogy, I think Ed Rendell is generally correct in his assessment of Obama's wordy, intellectual speaking style:
"He is a little like Adlai Stevenson," Rendell mused. "You ask him a question, and he gives you a six-minute answer. And the six-minute answer is smart as all get out. It's intellectual. It's well framed. It takes care of all the contingencies. But it's a lousy soundbite."
"We've got to start smacking back in short understandable bites," he said, noting "Everybody is nervous as all get out. Everybody says we ought to be ahead by 10, 15 points. What the heck is going on?"
Even though one of the attractions to Obama in the nomination campaign was that he seemed to be a charismatic speaker in the style of Jack Kennedy or Bill Clinton, there have been numerous times during this campaign where I have wondered if we just nominated Gore or Kerry again. Obama does not do a good job of fitting his speeches or answers into sound bites. Many of his ads have reminded me of the five-paragraph essay you were probably taught in freshman composition. There are times when he seems to over intellectualize his framing of policy on the stump in a manner that is reminiscent of Gore or Kerry.
However, I have to disagree with Rendell on the utility of such a speaking style. While it doesn't seem to be helping Obama in this campaign, I am just as tired of having to dumb things down in order to win elections as I am having to appeal to socially conservative whites. Further, the intellectual lucidity of Bill Clinton is often overlooked because he won, but he often gave lengthy, intellectual answers to questions, too. It isn't necessarily a problem.
We nominate smart candidates with strong grasps of policy, and we should be proud of that, not afraid. We shouldn't think that we have to dump nuance and gravitas just to appeal to voters. America is not such a an incredibly provincial nation of xenophobic anti-intellectuals that those qualities will always be negatives. After all, Clinton, a Rhodes scholar, won twice. Also, the nation voted for Al Gore, and John Kerry only narrowly missed. Intelligence is not necessarily an electoral loser.
The problem comes in when our candidates talk this way, but give our opponents a pass for not talking this way. Bush was framed as an idiot, and he looked dumb compared to both Gore and Kerry. That hurt him in the polls, and it can hurt McCain in the polls, too. Obama can keep talking like Stevenson, or Gore, or Kerry, or whoever, but he needs to make McCain pay for his frequent gaffes about his knowledge of policy and international relations. Obama's speaking style will help him as long as McCain is regularly mocked for not grasping important details. People don't want another idiot in the White House. This is a line of attack we should pursue, not wring our hands about looking like the smartest kid in the class.
Gore's group sent out the following email promoting the ad on Sunday. It's rare to send out two emails bunched up so closely together, so it's likely that the group is subtly covering for their earlier email on Thursday calling for Congress to stay in session with an attack on drilling.
This commercial, with Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi, was put out eight months ago by Al Gore's 'We Campaign' on climate change. It was a perplexing choice, because Gingrich was one of the most ardent opponents of climate change action for most of his career in politics, and featuring him as a good guy on the issue would give him credibility he might misuse. Sure enough, two months ago, Newt Gingrich, backed by coal companies and billionaires, started the Drill Here Drill Now campaign, and the talking point about taking care of the environment was a key part of the message that 'environmental moderate' Newt Gingrich delivered (Gore has bitterly referred to the Drill Here Drill Now campaign as 'drinking the hair of the dog that bit you').
Gore's rationale for including Newt Gingrich was that the movement on climate change must be bipartisan, so he must feature people like Newt Gingrich in his campaign or else it will fail. I was curious if there was a larger strategy here, or if Gore had accidentally greenwashed Gingrich, who is now referred to as an 'environmental moderate'. It looks to me like it wasn't an accident, that Gore has continued to hire Beltway hacks that sabotage his aims and spew out a conventional wisdom that is harmful to the movement to change our climate policies. Here's an email the group's CEO, Cathy Zoi, sent out on Friday, the day Congress went on recess.
(Written in satire. A literal translation for the tonally impaired is available upon request.)
This weekend I went to Austin, Texas, to attend the third annual Netroots [Aryan] Nation, the convention formerly known as Yearly Kos and recently called a "Klan gathering" by Bill O'Reilly.
I agree with O'Reilly that "including the Nazis and the Klan... there is not a more hateful group in the country than the Daily Kos People." I too hate this hateful conference, which encourages democracy, open politics, participatory democracy, grass roots organizing and other Nazi-ish thing. But I attend each year, under the guise of a Laughing Liberally comic and Living Liberally leader, in order to counter the lies of the liberal media, who receive their talking points and marching orders directly from Subcomandante Markos [Moulitsas]. I go because somebody needs to document the atrocities that are ignored by the appeasement era press and distorted by the Netroots deniers. I go to show the world the truth. I go to say Never Again.
So, here are some of the things you won't hear from the liberal media about the four-day gathering of over 2,000 progressive bloggers, journalists, politicians and activists.
I have little doubt that Senator Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic Nominee had it not been for her caving to right wing talking points and voting for the Iraq War. Being on the wrong side the the biggest foreign policy disaster in a generation is what advanced her career from inevitable nominee to junior senator. At the time, many of us in the netroots were flabbergasted, we knew it was a disastrous course of action and came to the conclusion that those who sided with George Bush and the neocons either had no grasp of the situation or were doing it for as a purely political calculation (and a poor one at that as Clinton discovered).
Iraq was the single biggest foreign policy decision, but when it comes to the global climate crisis, I'm getting a sense of déjà vu from the positioning and language used by San Francisco Mayor and 2010 California Gubernatorial hopeful Gavin Newsom as to why he's siding with PG&E against the Sierra Club on clean, renewable energy.
As many of you saw, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom gave a green speech introduction for Van Jones on Sunday at Netroots Nation. But immediately after his green speech, a local blogger asked a very important question:
I just asked Newsom if he would support the Clean Energy Act. At first, he said yes -- absolutely. Then he said, "oh are you talking about the one about PG&E?" I said yes. He said, "oh no it's horrible." I asked him to elaborate, but he would not. I then asked, "is that because your consultant [Eric Jaye] is working for PG&E?" Newsom denied it, but really. It was kinda pathetic.
Indeed. As we all know, Al Gore thinks the entire country needs to go 100% clean electrically by 2019 and Mayor Newsom won't try for his city to do the same by 2040?
As I mentioned earlier, I'm obsessed with gas prices and energy politics on the Democratic side. I have a mixed view of Al Gore's politics, but it is undeniable that his important vision on how to solve the energy crisis is workable and something we should all get behind. T. Boone Pickens acknowledges that this is a crisis we can't drill our way out of, but the DC media villagers and Bush Dog Democrats and corrupt Republican are intent on making sure that progressive ideas about a new energy economy die in their crib. You don't have to look any further than this week's Meet the Press, where new host Tom Brokaw went after Al Gore with the same subtle smears we've seen for years.
Not everyone agrees; Digby quotes this Todd Gitlin piece on how Tom Brokwaw on Meet the Press is more willing to deal with substantive discourse than Tim Russert. But when I read over the transcript of this last Meet the Press, it certainly did seem filled with the same subtle denialist instincts and petty character smears that characterizes most media coverage of climate change. But anyway, I've excerpted this with examples that I think show Brokaw rehashing the Villager party line on both Al Gore, sustainable energy, and climate change.
First of all, Brokaw of course misrepresented the science and pretended there's a debate on climate change.
