Jon Stewart on the Congressional Climate Change Deniers

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Benghazi!

 And while you morons were being distracted with some serious non-issues, you end up with climate (and other) disaster while you were paying attention on other things:

Warming 'increasingly disruptive' across US - report

Feel fucking brilliant as you were guided into disaster by not having enough brain power and critical thinking skills to tell the difference between your arse and a hole in the ground.

Sheeple?  You morons ever been on a farm?

OK, not only are the Republicans making gun regulation a partisan issue, they are also using climate change. Guns aren't as much of a biggie as climate change is, but it's bad that the pseudoconservatives in the US are willing to play with the planet (unlike conservatives in other countries who admit there is a problem).

What if the world were a different place?  CHeck out this video from Congressman Jared Huffman:


Guns aren't as much of a biggie since people are more likely to kill themselves with their guns than stop a crime.

What loss is it if a gun loon accidentally kills himself (herself)?

The Case Against Al Gore

The Propaganda Professor

If you try Googling something like "Gore's 2013 prediction", you'll come up with an ocean full of blogs sneeringly touting Gore's pronouncements that the Arctic would be ice free by 2013. What an idiot!  What a lunatic! What a shill! What a propagandist! What an opportunistic manipulator!

But what you'll have a much harder time finding is his actual words. So let's take a look at them. Chances are you saw them here first:

Last September 21 (2007), as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is "falling off a cliff." One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years.

In case you're having struggles with the Mother Tongue, let's point out that there's a difference between "could" and "will"; between "one study estimated" and "without a doubt"; and between "in as little as 7 years" and "in at most 6 years".  In their ever-mounting desperation for a Gore flub, the anti-sciencers also turned to a speech he made in 2009, in which he supposedly said that the arctic ice could be gone in 5 years. Even if that had been what he said, that would mean this year (2014) and as of this writing it's only January. But what he actually said was this:

Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months will be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years.

Climate Change and the Polar Vortex

Somehow these didn't make it into the post:



In other words, there is a difference between "weather" ("what's going on outside the window right now") and Climate ("A longterm trend averaged over many years"):

New Naming System for Hurricanes and Extreme Storms

It hard to argue with someone who is blind to the fact that they have been lied to...

This slide show relates to climate change, but it pretty much applies to almost everything that the right wants to promote from smoking to gun control.

For example, it was pretty much accepted that the Second Amendment applied only to Article I, Section 8, clause 16 Militias until fairly recently, but there is now "new scholarship" that challenges that interpretation which is funded by the NRA.  Note who the speaker was at that conference!  Of course, he should have recused himself from the case for bias--it might even be an ethics violation for him.

But, as this suggests, you need to do some thinking for yourself, which most people are adverse.

Besides, the myth is far more comforting.

But, if you have doubt, then you need to do your own research to try and find the truth.  My suggestion is to go to primary sources--not Second Amendment "Scholars".

Why is it that when idiotic laws are mentioned in other countries does it happen to be satire?

In this case the "Get Away With Murder" laws.  Why would anyone in their right mind want to make it so easy for people to get away with murder?

Of course, unlike the real "Get Away With Murder" laws, this comes from a UK satirical site.

Kind of a shame that laws like this  in other countries only are mentioned in satirical websites such as the Daily Mash or Newsthump:
http://newsthump.com/2012/12/04/offset-murder-offers-wealthy-an-easier-way-of-tackling-climate-change/

Tuesday 4 December 2012 by Waylandsmithy

‘Offset murder’ offers wealthy an easier way of tackling climate change

A psychopathic think-tank has suggested a radical solution to man-made global warming, by murdering impoverished strangers so the wealthy can offset their carbon emissions.
With CO2 emissions growing by over 3% a year, the lobby group insists there should be no delay in reducing the pitter-patter of tiny carbon footprints.
Environmentalists have known for some time that planting trees can be time-consuming and boring, whereas paying a hitman to kill a few families on a Pacific atoll can easily offset a trans-Atlantic flight.
For a monthly fee ‘Carbine Offset’ will shoot people you weren’t likely to meet anyway, so you can continue to use an outdoor hot tub in January with a completely clean conscience.

Carbon offset opportunities

Graham Collis says his group has never been so busy.
While driving a Prius is too horrible a fate for his customers to imagine, many are more than happy to ‘offset murder’ for the sake of their children’s future.
For many, such a simple choice will come as relief. As Collis explained, “It’s much harder to slightly reduce our own emissions, than to completely stop someone else’s.”
Targeting the World’s poorest would appear to be cruel at first, but Collis pointed out that the malnourished are poorly insulated, and idle fat cats make better carbon sinks.
The figures are astonishing. Wiping out just a handful of sub-Saharan subsistence farmers could offset several winter skiing trips.
Though some have criticised the plan as ‘monstrous’, Collis is unrepentant.
“If we’re honest, none of my clients are ever going to change their behaviour, so the people we’re offsetting were going to die shortly anyway”, he insisted.
“At least this way, we can tell our children that we managed to hit a few of our targets.”

Cenk on Climate Change

Climate Change

Climate change a threat to national security.

The Director of the U.S. Navy Task Force on Climate Change, Rear Admiral David Titley gave an assessment of the risks presented by climate change at the Copenhagen conference in December 2009 , including the likely need for greater humanitarian and disaster relief missions, and the dangers posed by such “wild cards” as ocean acidification and rising sea levels. But he also expressed the hope that “climate change may be viewed as a common enemy that will bring nations together toward a common end.”

The Department of Defense Quadrennial Defense Review issued in February 2010, which is a periodic assessment of national security issues facing the United States, the Pentagon stated:

“Climate change will affect DoD in two broad ways. First, climate change will shape the operating environment, roles, and missions that we undertake. The U.S. Global Change Research Program, composed of 13 federal agencies, reported in 2009 that climate-related changes are already being observed in every region of the world, including the United States and its coastal waters. Among these physical changes are increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the oceans and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt, and alterations in river flows.

Assessments conducted by the intelligence community indicate that climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and the further weakening of fragile governments. Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease, and may spur or exacerbate mass migration.”

This Quarterly Defence Report can be found here.

The problem is that certain industries have spent millions on promoting climate change skepticism while like most issues, no real dialogue seems to exist on the matter. The problem is that climate skepticism runs contrary to scientific thought and more informed discussions.

Getting off topic

I am deeply confused by how Americans use political tags--in particular how they abuse the term Socialist.  Seriously people, this Spanish Socialist Party shows what happens when you vote socialist:


Unfortunately, the ad was attacked by pretty much everyone in Spain. On the other hand, it does catch your imagination and beats the type of political ads one typically sees: especially US attack ads.

According to Bill Wharton, co-chair of the Socialist Party USA,Sarah Plain was far more of a Socialist than Barack Obama since she raised taxes on the big oil companies, and sent the revenue to the people.

Nothing Barack Obama has done comes remotely close to socialism, not even Obamacare.  Somehow the fact that Romney introduced a similar plan is lost on the right.

Next we come to climate change which is up for demonisation on loads of fronts, yet the UK Conservative Party (You know, the Party that produced Margaret Thatcher) has Policy on Climate Change as part of their platform:

Climate Change and Energy
The Government believes that climate change is one of the gravest threats we face, and that urgent action at home and abroad is required. We need to use a wide range of levers to cut carbon emissions, decarbonise the economy and support the creation of new green jobs and technologies. We will implement a full programme of measures to fulfil our joint ambitions for a low carbon and eco-friendly economy.
* We will push for the EU to demonstrate leadership in tackling international climate change.
* We will seek to increase the target for energy from renewable sources, subject to the advice of the Climate Change Committee.
* We will continue public sector investment in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology for four coal-fired power stations.
* We will establish a smart grid and roll out smart meters.
* We will create a green investment bank.
* We will retain energy performance certificates while scrapping HIPs.
* We will establish an emissions performance standard that will prevent coal-fired power stations being built unless they are equipped with sufficient carbon capture and storage.
* We will cancel the third runway at Heathrow and refuse permission for additional runways at Gatwick and Stansted.
* Through our ‘Green Deal’, we will encourage home energy efficiency improvements paid for by savings from energy bills.
* We will reform energy markets to deliver security of supply and investment in low carbon energy, and ensure fair competition.
* We will give an Annual Energy Statement to Parliament to set strategic energy policy and guide investment.
* We will work towards an ambitious global climate deal that will limit emissions and explore the creation of new international sources of funding for the purpose of climate change adaptation and mitigation.

We can also get into conservatives who supported gun control--the most famous being Richard Nixon who said  about gun control in 1969. "Guns are an abomination,".  had he felt free from fear of gun owners' retaliation at the polls, he favored making handguns illegal and requiring licenses for hunting rifles.

It was President George Bush, Sr. who banned the import of "assault weapons" in 1989, and promoted the view that Americans should only be allowed to own weapons suitable for "sporting purposes."

It was Governor Ronald Reagan of California who signed the Mulford Act in 1967, "prohibiting the carrying of firearms on one's person or in a vehicle, in any public place or on any public street." The law was aimed at stopping the Black Panthers, but affected all gun owners.

Twenty-four years later, Reagan was still pushing gun control. "I support the Brady Bill," he said in a March 28, 1991 speech, "and I urge the Congress to enact it without further delay."

One of the most aggressive gun control advocates is Republican mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York City, whose administration sued 26 gun manufacturers in June 2000, and whose police commissioner, Howard Safir, proposed a nationwide plan for gun licensing, complete with yearly "safety" inspections.

Another Republican, New York State Governor George Pataki, on August 10, 2000, signed into law what The New York Times called "the nation’s strictest gun controls," a radical program mandating trigger locks, background checks at gun shows and "ballistic fingerprinting" of guns sold in the state. It also raised the legal age to buy a handgun to 21 and banned "assault weapons," the sale or possession of which would now be punishable by seven years in prison.

So, why does conservative usually apply to people who are batshit crazy in the USA these days?

After all, Socialism is much more fulfilling!

Guns and the Incredibly Gullible Climate Change Deniers

The right wing is fact averse; this man is not, and he's serious about conservation.  Climate change denials are funded by big oil. 
This is one more way to fight the right wing ideology in place of objective reality.  Of course, by the time any of those guys on the right admit that climate change is real, that it is a largely man-made problem, it will be too late to do anything useful. 

Three cheers for this guy, for trying.

From Think Progress Green:

Conservation Hawks Founder: ‘If Climate Change Isn’t Real, I’ll Give You My Beretta’

By Brad Johnson on Feb 16, 2012 at 5:04 pm

When the grizzly charges, what do you do?

The founder of Conservation Hawks, an organization of sportsmen dedicated to fighting climate change, will give up his gun if global warming is a hoax.
“If you can convince Conservation Hawks chairman Todd Tanner that he’s wasting his time, that he does not have to worry about climate change, he will present to you his most prized possession: A Beretta Silver Pigeon 12 gauge over/under that was a gift from his wife, and has been a faithful companion on many a Montana bird hunt,” Hal Herring writes at The Conservationist. “I know the gun, and I’ve hunted and fished with Todd for years. He’s not kidding. You convince him, he’ll give you the gun.”

Let’s say you are walking down a trail in the wilderness with your wife and kids, and you come upon a grizzly sow, standing on a carcass. She charges, flat out. You’re in front of your family. What do you do? Just give up? Pretend it’s not happening? Let her maul you and everything your care about? Of course you don’t. You take action. That is how I see climate change. It’s real, it’s threatening everything we love. Not taking action is not an option.

Tanner rebuffed the argument that action on global warming pollution just means a government takeover. “You want to talk about government intrusion, think about what it means if we don’t address this now while we have the time and resources,” he said. “We will lose the freedoms that we have because somebody—and it will be government—will be in an all out effort to try and address the effects. To try and address the effects of our neglect. We’ll face the worst thing of all- losing our freedom. And we’ll already have lost most of hunting and fishing. That’s how serious I believe this is.”
So those of you who deny the threat of global warming — Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, Rush Limbaugh, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, David Koch — this could be yours if you can convince Tanner that there’s really just a scientific conspiracy to trick people that greenhouse pollution is dangerous:

A Beretta Silver Pigeon 12 gauge shotgun

Climate Skeptics Take Another Hit

From Kevin Drum's MoJo Blog


What happens when climate deniers decide to try a new methodology?

University of California-Berkeley physicist Richard Muller criticized Al Gore in the past as an "exaggerator," has spoken warmly of climate skeptic Anthony Watts, and has said that Steve McIntyre's famous takedown of the "hockey stick" climate graph made him "uncomfortable" with the paper the hockey stick was originally based on.

SO, he started up the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project (BEST) in 2010 to show the world how to do climate analysis right. Who better, after all? "Muller's views on climate have made him a darling of skeptics," said Scientific American, "and newly elected Republicans in the House of Representatives, who invited him to testify to the Committee on Science, Space and Technology about his preliminary results." The Koch Foundation, founded by the billionaire oil brothers who have been major funders of the climate-denial machine, gave BEST a $150,000 grant.

But Muller's congressional testimony last March didn't go according to plan. He told them a preliminary analysis suggested that the three main climate models in use today—each of which uses a different estimating technique, and each of which has potential flaws—are all pretty accurate: Global temperatures have gone up considerably over the past century, and the increase has accelerated over the past few decades. Yesterday, BEST confirmed these results and others in its first set of published papers about land temperatures. (Ocean studies will come later.) Using a novel statistical methodology that incorporates more data than other climate models and requires less human judgment about how to handle it (summarized by the Economist here), the BEST team drew several conclusions:

• The earth is indeed getting warmer. Global average land temperatures have risen 0.91 degrees Celsius over the past 50 years. This is "on the high end of the existing range of reconstructions."
• The rate of increase on land is accelerating. Warming for the entire 20th century clocks in at 0.73 degrees C per century. But over the most recent 40 years, the globe has warmed at a rate of 2.76 degrees C per century.
• Warming has not abated since 1998. The rise in average temperature over the period 1998-2010 is 2.84 degrees C per century.
• The BEST data significantly reduces the uncertainty of the temperature reconstructions. Their estimate of the temperature increase over the past 50 years has an uncertainty of only 0.04 degrees C, compared to a reported uncertainty of 0.13 degrees C in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.
• Although many of the temperature measuring stations around the world have large individual uncertainties, taken as a whole the data is quite reliable. The difference in reported averages between stations ranked "okay" and stations ranked "poor" is very small.
• The urban heat island effect—i.e., the theory that rising temperatures around cities might be corrupting the global data—is very small.

In the press release announcing the results, Muller said, "Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the US and the UK." In other words, climate scientists know what they're doing after all.

The BEST report is purely an estimate of planetary warming, and it makes no estimate of how much this warming is due to human activity. So in one sense, its impact is limited since the smarter skeptics have already abandoned the idea that warming is a hoax and now focus their fire solely on the contention that it's man-made. (And the even smarter ones have given up on that, too, and now merely argue that it's economically pointless to try to stop it.) Still, the fact that climate scientists turned out to be careful and thorough in their basic estimates of temperature rise surely enhances their credibility in general. Climategate was always a ridiculous sideshow, and this is just one more nail in its coffin. Climate scientists got the basic data right, and they've almost certainly gotten the human causes right too.

I realise that George Monbiot is discussing climate change, but...

I find a lot of the topics I discuss here can have comments made along the lines of

There is one question that no one who denies manmade climate change wants to answer: what would it take to persuade you? In most cases the answer seems to be nothing. No level of evidence can shake the growing belief that climate science is a giant conspiracy codded up by boffins and governments to tax and control us. The new study by the Met Office, which paints an even grimmer picture than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will do nothing to change this view...

Perhaps we have to accept that there is no simple solution to public disbelief in science. The battle over climate change suggests that the more clearly you spell the problem out, the more you turn people away. If they don’t want to know, nothing and no one will reach them. There goes my life’s work.

George Monbiot, The Unpersuadables

It is amazing how people will see what they want to see and remain fixed in their beliefs.

Or as George also says:

Tell people something they know already and they will thank you for it.
Tell them something new and they will hate you for it.

Solyndra

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Dog Gone added the Daily Show Clip

Solyndra has become known as a boondoggle in the US. If you haven't heard, it's the solar power company that got $500 million in Recovery Act loans from the Department of Energy and then went belly up a couple of weeks ago.

Conservatives have been trying to paint this as a big scandal of some kind, despite the fact that: the company had plenty of private investors too, it's the only DOE loan that has failed so far, and there's no real evidence that anyone in the White House did anything worse than push OMB to speed up their decision-making process a bit in 2009.

It’s often claimed that the Solyndra loan guarantee was “rushed through” by the Obama Administration for political reasons. In fact, the Solyndra loan guarantee was a multi-year process that the Bush Administration launched in 2007.

You’d never know from the media coverage that:

• The Bush team tried to conditionally approve the Solyndra loan just before President Obama took office.
• The company’s backers included private investors who had diverse political interests.
• The loan comprises just 1.3% of DOE’s overall loan portfolio. To date, Solyndra is the only loan that’s known to be troubled.

The loan guarantee has been attacked as being political in nature because one of the Solyndra investors, Argonaut Venture Capital, is funded by George Kaiser, a man who donated money to the Obama campaign. What critics don’t mention is that one of the earliest and largest investors, Madrone Capital Partners, is funded by the family that started Wal-Mart, the Waltons and the Waltons have donated millions of dollars to Republican candidates over the years.

Climate Progress is publishing this timeline, verified by Department of Energy officials, that shows how the loan guarantee came together under both administrations to set the record straight. In fact, rather than rushing the loan for Solyndra through, the Obama Administration restructured the original Bush-era deal to further protect the taxpayers’ investment:

May 2005: Just as a global silicon shortage begins driving up prices of solar photovoltaics [PV], Solyndra is founded to provide a cost-competitive alternative to silicon-based panels.
July 2005: The Bush Administration signs the Energy Policy Act of 2005 into law, creating the 1703 loan guarantee program.
February 2006 – October 2006: In February, Solyndra raises its first round of venture financing worth $10.6 million from CMEA Capital, Redpoint Ventures, and U.S. Venture Partners. In October, Argonaut Venture Capital, an investment arm of George Kaiser, invests $17 million into Solyndra. Madrone Capital Partners, an investment arm of the Walton family, invests $7 million. Those investments are part of a $78.2 million fund.
December 2006: Solyndra Applies for a Loan Guarantee under the 1703 program.
Late 2007: Loan guarantee program is funded. Solyndra was one of 16 clean-tech companies deemed ready to move forward in the due diligence process. The Bush Administration DOE moves forward to develop a conditional commitment.
October 2008: Then Solyndra CEO Chris Gronet touted reasons for building in Silicon Valley and noted that the “company’s second factory also will be built in Fremont, since a Department of Energy loan guarantee mandates a U.S. location.”
November 2008: Silicon prices remain very high on the spot market, making non-silicon based thin film technologies like Solyndra’s very attractive to investors. Solyndra also benefits from having very low installation costs. The company raises $144 million from ten different venture investors, including the Walton-family run Madrone Capital Partners. This brings total private investment to more than $450 million to date.
January 2009: In an effort to show it has done something to support renewable energy, the Bush Administration tries to take Solyndra before a DOE credit review committee before President Obama is inaugurated. The committee, consisting of career civil servants with financial expertise, remands the loan back to DOE “without prejudice” because it wasn’t ready for conditional commitment.
March 2009: The same credit committee approves the strengthened loan application. The deal passes on to DOE’s credit review board. Career staff (not political appointees) within the DOE issue a conditional commitment setting out terms for a guarantee.
June 2009: As more silicon production facilities come online while demand for PV wavers due to the economic slowdown, silicon prices start to drop. Meanwhile, the Chinese begin rapidly scaling domestic manufacturing and set a path toward dramatic, unforeseen cost reductions in PV. Between June of 2009 and August of 2011, PV prices drop more than 50%.
September 2009: Solyndra raises an additional $219 million. Shortly after, the DOE closes a $535 million loan guarantee after six months of due diligence. This is the first loan guarantee issued under the 1703 program. From application to closing, the process took three years – not the 41 days that is sometimes reported. OMB did raise some concerns in August not about the loan itself but how the loan should be “scored.” OMB testified Wednesday that they were comfortable with the final scoring.
January – June 2010: As the price of conventional silicon-based PV continues to fall due to low silicon prices and a glut of solar modules, investors and analysts start questioning Solyndra’s ability to compete in the marketplace. Despite pulling its IPO (as dozens of companies did in 2010), Solyndra raises an additional $175 million from investors.
November 2010: Solyndra closes an older manufacturing facility and concentrates operations at Fab 2, the plant funded by the $535 million loan guarantee. The Fab 2 plant is completed that same month — on time and on budget — employing around 3,000 construction workers during the build-out, just as the DOE projected.
February 2011: Due to a liquidity crisis, investors provide $75 million to help restructure the loan guarantee. The DOE rightly assumed it was better to give Solyndra a fighting chance rather than liquidate the company – which was a going concern – for market value, which would have guaranteed significant losses.
March 2011: Republican Representatives complain that DOE funds are not being spent quickly enough.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI): “despite the Administration’s urgency and haste to pass the bill [the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act] … billions of dollars have yet to be spent.”
And House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-FL): “The whole point of the Democrat’s stimulus bill was to spend billions of dollars … most of the money still hasn’t been spent.”
June 2011: Average selling prices for solar modules drop to $1.50 a watt and continue on a pathway to $1 a watt. Solyndra says it has cut costs by 50%, but analysts worry how the company will compete with the dramatic changes in conventional PV.
August 2011: DOE refuses to restructure the loan a second time.
September 2011: Solyndra closes its manufacturing facility, lays off 1,100 workers and files for bankruptcy. The news is touted as a failure of the Obama Administration and the loan guarantee office. However, as of September 12, the DOE loan programs office closed or issued conditional commitments of $37.8 billion to projects around the country. The $535 million loan is only 1.3% of DOE’s loan portfolio. To date, Solyndra is the only loan that’s known to be troubled.
Meanwhile, after complaining about stimulus funds moving too slowly, Congressmen Fred Upton and Cliff Stearns are now claiming that the Administration was pushing funds out the door too quickly: “In the rush to get stimulus cash out the door, despite repeated claims by the Administration to the contrary, some bets were bad from the beginning.”

What critics fail to mention is that the Solyndra deal is more than three years old, started under the Bush Administration, which tried to conditionally approve the loan right before Obama took office. Rather than “pushing funds out the door too quickly,” the Obama Administration restructured the original loan when it came into office to further protect the taxpayers’ investment.

What actually happened, how it could have been prevented and who's responsible, are these things are orthogonal to the battle taking place in political circles. That battle has nothing to do with the facts.

For a mix of financial and ideological reasons, U.S. conservative movement activists, operators, and politicos hate clean energy. They don't believe in climate change, they love fossil fuels and fossil-fuel campaign donations, and they think, or want the U.S. public to think, that clean energy is weak, unreliable, marginal, and dependent on government subsidies. They have been trying to make that case for a long while.

What Solyndra gives them is a symbol, something to use as a stand-in to discredit not just the DOE loan program, but all government support for clean energy and indeed clean energy itself.

Cons understand post-truth politics. They understand that truth is utterly inert in an era when mainstream institutions are viewed with hostility and skepticism, the media is fractured, and there are no shared norms or referees to enforce them. The side that wins is the side that plays to its audience's existing preconceptions with a simple message repeated over and over and over again in multiple venues.

That's what is happening now around Solyndra. The right is going after this whole hog, trying to make the name synonymous with clean energy boondoggle. And the left is flailing around, throwing out this fact and that fact with no coherent message. Additionally, the right pretty much has a lock on the US media so that the message that this was yet another Obama and environmentalist failure is repeated over and over.

That works with the Low Information Voters who believe that global warming is a hoax, or in some way a disputed theory. Unfortunately, they are the people who need to be reached with better information rather than fed more of the corporatocratic propaganda.

See also:

• Exclusive Timeline: Bush Administration Advanced Solyndra Loan Guarantee for Two Years, Media Blow the Story
• Solyndra is the next ‘Climategate’

24 Hours of Reality

Denial Ends 14 September 2011





See also: http://climaterealityproject.org/

Mark Hertsgaard, Climate Cranks, and "Conservativism"

This little factoid really bothers me:

There is a major paradigm shift in the climate story, in the climate problem. What changed, sometime around the turn of the century, was that global warming triggered outright climate change, and it did so a hundred years sooner than scientists expected. And so that huge shift in the problem – the fact that now we're locked into a significant amount of climate change, even if we do everything right--Mark Hertsgaard

Mark Hertsgaard and the Climate Cranks from Mark Hertsgaard on Vimeo.

The problem is that Conservative parties outside of the US have admitted to climate change, as this screen capture from the UK Conservative Party shows:


UK Conservative Party (You know, the Party that produced Margaret Thatcher) Policy on Climate Change:

Climate Change and Energy

The Government believes that climate change is one of the gravest threats we face, and that urgent action at home and abroad is required. We need to use a wide range of levers to cut carbon emissions, decarbonise the economy and support the creation of new green jobs and technologies. We will implement a full programme of measures to fulfil our joint ambitions for a low carbon and eco-friendly economy.

* We will push for the EU to demonstrate leadership in tackling international climate change.
* We will seek to increase the target for energy from renewable sources, subject to the advice of the Climate Change Committee.
* We will continue public sector investment in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology for four coal-fired power stations.
* We will establish a smart grid and roll out smart meters.
* We will create a green investment bank.
* We will retain energy performance certificates while scrapping HIPs.
* We will establish an emissions performance standard that will prevent coal-fired power stations being built unless they are equipped with sufficient carbon capture and storage.
* We will cancel the third runway at Heathrow and refuse permission for additional runways at Gatwick and Stansted.
* Through our 'Green Deal', we will encourage home energy efficiency improvements paid for by savings from energy bills.
* We will reform energy markets to deliver security of supply and investment in low carbon energy, and ensure fair competition.
* We will give an Annual Energy Statement to Parliament to set strategic energy policy and guide investment.
* We will work towards an ambitious global climate deal that will limit emissions and explore the creation of new international sources of funding for the purpose of climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Now, why can't the US Republican party and other "Conservatives" get on the same bandwagon?


See also:
Generation Hot
Mark Hertsgaard
Generation Hot on Facebook
Why Are Republicans Against The Science?
The Conservative Party | Policy | Where we stand | Climate Change and Energy

Lesson for Climate Deniers

Well, well, well, look whom I found. via Outside the Interzone

Global Warming Explained

From firedoglake

Not only is the global warming explanation useful for some of our denier friends, but the description of "cherry-picking" is great too.