The White House announced Friday that President Obama will go to the Copenhagen climate talks on Dec. 18, the final day of the meeting, instead of Dec. 9. Dave Roberts at Grist thinks this good news. He writes that "after being declared dead a dozen separate times by the media, it would seem Copenhagen is still very much alive and kicking":
The first week of every COP meeting consists of posturing, speeches, protests, and NGO reports. Everything of significance to the treaty is announced late in the meetings, often on the last day, after a flurry of last-minute negotiations. Coming to Copenhagen at the climax of the talks, specifically to push negotiations "over the top," as the White House statement says, is a risky move for Obama. He’s got skin in the game now; he’ll look foolish if he rides in at the last minute and fails to broker an agreement.
If he’s willing to stick his neck out like this, Obama must be pretty confident that he can get a deal. There have been signs of momentum for weeks now. The much-discussed deal with China was just one in a raft of commitments from the developing countries, including India and Brazil. Movement from the developing world has undercut one of U.S. conservatives’ principal arguments for inaction. Over 65 world leaders have pledged to attend.
Meanwhile, the U.S. EPA is expected to finalize its endangerment ruling on CO2 on Monday—the kickoff day of Copenhagen—making regulations on CO2 legally mandated and all but inevitable. That’s likely to help motivate the Senate, where Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are busy working out a compromise bill that can get 60 votes. Kerry released the Foreign Relations Committee’s contribution to the bill today, which would authorize programs, including adaptation funding and technology transfer, that the U.S. is expected to offer as part of a deal in Copenhagen.. |
• • • • • • •
Green Diary Rescues appear on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The diary rescue begins below and continues in the jump. Inclusion of a particular diary does not necessarily indicate my agreement with it.
• • • • • • •
mogmaar My trip to the White House yesterday: "I went to the White House yesterday, as one of 150 youth climate leaders invited to take part in the Clean Energy Forum. Let me repeat that: youth activists were invited to discuss climate policy with 4 cabinet secretaries. This is not the same movement it was two years ago, and I think the changes have been overwhelmingly positive."
Desmogblog pointed out yet another attempt at SwiftHacking. Hackers attempt to access Canadian government Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis: "According to sources at the University of Victoria, two people claiming to be network computer technicians presented themselves at the headquarters of the Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis and tried to gain access to the data servers. When challenged by an employee, the two individuals hastily left. The timing of this attempted break-in is very suspicious given that it occurred so closely on the heels of the release of hacked emails and data from a similar facility housed at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK."
rperks explained why Senator Robert Byrd’s statement on coal needing to get with the future is a sea change of momentous proportions in Sen. Byrd's Wise Words a Eulogy for Mountaintop Removal?: "Even now, after reading Byrd's words multiple times, I'm still trying to process the implications for those in the coalfields who for years -- and every day -- live the tragic consequences of the world's worst coal mining. At the very least, having the mining industry's long-time, legendarily powerful political champion issue a wake-up call on coal represents a monumental moment -- and quite possibly marks a monumental shift in the way coal mining is done in Appalachia. Clearly, Big Coal is in a state of panic over this huge development."
• • • • • • •
Oke has posted the Overnight News Digest.
Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who is running for the U.S. Senate, wrote Ohio Jobs Through 21st Century Energy: "This $25 million bio-refinery near the University of Toledo’s Health Science Campus in South Toledo is receiving a $20 million federal grant. Today, it received the personal attention of the Obama administration with the visits of two cabinet secretaries to the plant, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack (former governor of Iowa) and Energy Secretary Steven Chu (a Nobel Prize winner)."
Muskegon Critic wrote a pair of diaries on the Asian Carp situation in What's Your Place of Refuge? and Granholm Threatens Legal Action to Close Canal Locks, Fed may step in, close locks: "This is the last straw, and we're not going to let this invasion happen. We're not going to let this infestation crush what's left of our this ecosystem's natural beauty. Those locks are closing down. Period. If you don't know the story...it goes like this."
RLMiller warned Don't Boycott Copenhagen: Palin Virus Spreads: "Alas, Sarah Palin is not one of them. Just as she did with her spurious ‘death panel’ claim, she's now spearheading Congressional Republicans' attacks on all things climate-related. She's specifically urging President Obama to boycott Copenhagen, generally demanding that the entirety of climate science be thrown out because of the manufactured ‘climategate’ scandal (a better term is SwiftHack -- click this link for EnviroKnows' encyclopedic collection of all SwiftHack related news), and more generally spreading the virus that is created at the precise center of the merger of staggering stupidity, greed, and ego. And her virus is contagious."
A Siegel explored Sarah Palin's zombie charm ...Sarah Palin has weighed in on ClimateGate, using Facebook to jump in with her perspective on SwiftHack. The leaked e-mails involved in Climategate expose the unscientific behavior of leading climate scientists who deliberately destroyed records to block information requests, manipulated data to ‘hide the decline’ in global temperatures, and conspired to silence the critics of man-made global warming. A theme to follow. ‘Critics of man-made global warming ...?’ Guess what, Sarah, I consider myself a ‘critic of man-made global warming.’ I know that this is happening and that it is endangering my, my (and your) children's future. We should all be critical of ‘manmade global warming’ and act, forcefully, to end it. What is the ‘conspiracy to silence’? It comes from those, like Marc Morano and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who have diligently worked to distort the discussion and attack those who follow the evidence of and sound the alarm about humanity's ever-mounting impact on the global eco-system."
He also lamented the time wasted on ClimateGATE: Some tastes of Truth rather than truthiness: "Sadly, we need to spend time on the anti-science syndrome sound machine's efforts to spin and promote ClimateGate / SwiftHack as something meriting focus rather than recognizing that every serious piece of work in the field is highlighting that the situation of climate change is getting more dire (essentially) on every front of the climate crisis. While we should be spending our intellectual capital figuring out best mitigation paths, necessary adaptations, and determining (and moving forward with) the best paths to execute them, we need to deal with escalating distortion machine falsehoods asserting that the hacked CRU emails supposedly undermine the science as opposed to giving deniers a tool to further muddy the conversation and inhibit necessary action. We should be focusing on clean energy jobs instead ..."
Raquel Brown, writing for The Media Consortium asked Will Copenhagen be Enough?: "The world series of climate change is just around the corner. Next week, global leaders will convene in Copenhagen to discuss how the world will address climate change. The United States and China, who together exhaust 40% of the world’s emissions, have already committed to reducing their carbon output. But will it be enough? In an interview with Paul Jay of The Real News, British environmental writer George Monbiot, argues that the cuts major leaders are proposing don’t match up with what the science demands."
Desmogblog dug into The oily echo machine behind "climategate": "The goal of this campaign, which began around the time of the first Kyoto Protocol negotiations, was to assemble a group of like-minded ‘free-market’ think tanks and pseudo-experts that would bring into question the scientific realities of climate change, create doubt with the public and politicians and effectively delay the introduction of clean energy policy in the United States. It's no coincidence that the groups pushing this story the hardest have a long history of taking money from oil and coal companies to attack the conclusions made by climate scientists."
eljefebob thought perhaps we should go about Lowering Expectations for Copenhagen Climate Conference: "The success of a worldwide program of controlling GHG emissions hinges on the US and China, since almost 50% of these gases are produced by these countries. China, even though it is the second largest economy in the world and the largest creditor nation, has for years argued that the burden for greenhouse gas reductions should fall on older industrialized nations to make up for 100 years of emissions from them. The US, under GWB, refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol because it didn't include reductions in GHGs for China."
climate science watch presented Ben Santer’s Open letter to the climate science community: "Climate scientists are being subjected to slanderous attacks by demagogues in high office and the global warming disinformation campaign. Climate Science Watch is posting here an ‘Open letter to the climate science community’ by Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, written in response to the illegally hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK. Santer says: ‘We are now faced with powerful "forces of unreason" — forces that (at least to date) have been unsuccessful in challenging scientific findings of a warming Earth, and a "discernible human influence" on global climate. These forces of unreason are now shifting the focus of their attention to the scientists themselves. They seek to discredit, to skew the truth, to misrepresent. They seek to destroy scientific careers rather than to improve our understanding of the nature and causes of climate change.’"
The Electrical Worker at U.S. Falling Behind in Green Jobs Growth and jamess at The half-hearted, Greening of America, via China, Spain, Poland ...: looked at the apparent lag in creating green jobs: Throughout the 2008 election season, we were told that the green-energy economy would put our economy back on the road to recovery by creating tens of thousands of new jobs in wind, solar and other non-polluting energy sectors. But more than one year later, the promise of a green recovery is looking more and more elusive, says Steven Greenhouse from the New York Times:The Great Green Hope for lifting America’s economy is not looking so robust. ... Growth in clean energy industries and in green jobs has been considerably slower and bumpier than anticipated, industry experts say. ... Last week, the Gamesa wind turbine plant in western Pennsylvania announced it was laying off nearly half its 280 workers. Last month, General Electric said it would close a solar panel factory in Delaware ... There are myriad reasons why green jobs have grown more slowly than hoped. The clean energy component of the $787 billion stimulus package has only recently started to kick in. Energy experts say that banks, which have been reluctant to lend generally, have been especially loath to lend for alternative energy projects."
B Amer wrote that a Bipartisan Energy / Climate Change Bill Is Still in the Cards: "It is becoming more and more apparent that the Senate's energy / climate change bill is going to require Republican votes. With Democrats like Jim Webb pushing back against the bill and offerring one that does not cap carbon, we will need to pick up some Republicans to get this thing passed. It's also apparent that anything with a shot to get through this congress is going to need support of business."
sarahnity gave us some Links for Frugal Gift Ideas: "There have been a bunch of great diaries posted with gift ideas in this series. I can say that almost without ego, since most of these weren't posted by me. Check the comments section in these diaries as well, there are often some realy clever ideas posted there as well."
RiotLibrarian hugged trees in The Scientific Environmentalist: "Trees provide a huge range of environmental benefits. For one, they act as a kind of natural water storage: they absorb water from the soil when it is wet, and slowly release water after they have processed it. This helps to mitigate the effect of drought, and keeps soil from becoming too dry. This is important; when soil becomes too dry, rain events are more likely to cause flooding or high stormwater flows. Even when high stormwater doesn't cause flooding, it can seriously erode stream channels and wash a greater numbers of chemicals and sediments into waterways. So in general, trees are one of the best water/stormwater management tools we have."
Nachy Kanfer of the Sierra Club Ohio Beyond Coal Campaign and .Bruce Nilles reported on Another Coal Plant Scrapped Due to Costs: "Last Wednesday, American Municipal Power announced it would likely not build its proposed 960-megawatt coal-fired power plant in southeast Ohio. The plant had suffered several cost increases and growing public opposition regarding its environmental impact. The Sierra Club has opposed this dirty facility from the beginning through grassroots activism, outreach to the financial and investment community, media work, and litigation."
pollwatcher had some big problems with the proposed Counterproductive, Stupid Jobs bill: "This is change?! A noninnovative, counterproductive, same ole same ole, bad for your children jobs bill is starting to work it's way through congress. Building more highways, tax breaks for businesses, and a full 1/3 going to support the unemployed. Things are just getting started, and if they go down this path we're all in real trouble. ... Why are we wasting our time with the same old jobs program approach that creates temporary jobs, and few of them, and ties us down to an old economy that can not be revived."
terryhallinan discussed a new kind of
Factory Farming: "The origins of this endeavor were growing algae in plastic bags hanging from rotating panels in 'clean' rooms. I use the term advisedly since the spaces hardly fit the category of scientific labs dealing with such things as nukes or the ebola virus. The vegetable growing modules look pretty much like a display in most any large garden shop but are basically the same advanced hydroponic technology."
8ackgr0und N015e went meta in Life vs. intelligent life - the importance of climate change.: "The planet is teeming with life. Most of it is microscopic. A lot of it is barely visible to the naked eye. A lot of it doesn't live very long.Stuff that we care about like animals and plants are not the big players. Kill off enough bees and we all go down. At least the humans and most of the plants we rely on will. But life will continue. We just wouldn't be here to notice. This raises an interesting problem if you are interested in the long-term survival of our species. Intelligence matters. But only if knowledge is turned into action. The bad news is anti-intellectual arguments are starting to run roughshod over reasoned thinking."
Unenergy detailed his Trip to Boulder City Solar: "During a trip in August, across the United States, one of the things I had planned was to visit a number of solar installations. Just out from Las Vegas, not far from the airport at Boulder City which flies people to/from The Grand Canyon, there is a substantial solar trough power station. Its output is 65 Megawatts, which using rule of thumb of 1,000 people per MW, can supply enough power for 65,000 homes whilst the sun is shining. For a city heavily dependent on the Hoover Dam for its power and water, any means to potentially reduce water flow for power generation out of Lake Mead, makes sense. Particularly when you consider the drought and massive drop in water level in the lake since 1999.
Other green diaries included:
DC: Take Action on Climate Change! by OrganicConsumer.
Never Mind About Global Warming by Alien Abductee.
Underscored: importance of providing ecosystem services and mitigating climate change by Sue McMurray posting as 123idaho.
Tales from the Larder: Olive Oil, Part Two, the Recipe by Patric Juillet.
Why Food Safety is Win-Win Legislation by makeourfoodsafe.
Pres. Obama will travel to Copenhagen toward end of Conference by John Campanelli .